Making Read Alouds Interactive {How Santa Got His Job Edition}

I love making read alouds interactive. In fact, I love teaching literacy skills straight from read aloud books. It's a great way to not only get good stories into your classroom, but to teach skills that your students need at the same time.

One of the most important things to do while reading a book aloud is to model THINKING WHILE READING. Your students need to HEAR what you are thinking in your head while you are reading, so they can understand what THEY are supposed to be doing when they read. They need to be interactive when reading on their own, too!

The lesson that I'm posting today can be done easily with any book, but if you want to do this exact lesson, all you need is the book How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky. (Plus chart paper, markers, and sticky notes if you choose!)

In my classroom, I usually get the anchor charts "prepped" beforehand with a title, but other than that, we do our anchor charts TOGETHER as a class. That's what makes it interactive. My students give me feedback on what we should add, what they want to add, etc. It's a SHARED anchor chart. I never pre-make a full anchor chart. I find that then it's just a poster for them to stare at. If they make the chart WITH ME, they have more ownership and understanding of the concepts.

For this lesson, when students arrive in the morning, they will see this anchor chart and they are asked to grab a sticky note and record their answer/prediction on it and then stick it to the chart. This should be quick and easy, and it will get the students thinking and engaged right away, even if we aren't going to be reading the book until later in the day. In fact, they may not even realize that the question has anything to do with a book! This is PART of the "before reading" activity.

 If you aren't into using the sticky notes like I am (I do it all the time as a quick strategy!) You can also just ask students for their predictions when you start the lesson and record the answers for them on the chart.  I have them all record their answers, stick them up, then once it's time for us to meet and start this actual read aloud, I start pulling them off, read them to the group, then record our ideas onto the chart. (Without repeating any!) 

Show your students your "During Reading" anchor chart that you have prepared, so they know what to be listening for and looking for when you start reading the book. You may decide that you want them to look for other things, but here is what I put on my anchor chart. The "ways Santa got his job" could be changed to "Skills Santa has for the job." These are basically just a few big things that happen in the story that you want your students to be ACTIVELY listening for!
{To stay engaged and interactive!}

Next, is the easy part...start reading the book! As you read, THINK ALOUD, stop and say things like, "Oh, here is a good skill that would help him be Santa, I'm going to add that to the anchor chart." and "Wow, I think that job will help him get the job as Santa, I'm going to add that to the chart." Also, "Oh no, that's a big problem and obstacle that got in Santa's way, let's record that to talk about later." Let the kids raise their hands and "think aloud" too. Sometimes, if you don't normally teach like this, it can be hard to get used to because the story will be interrupted many times! BUT, that's super important if you are really modeling how to "think while reading." The only way to truly model it is to do it OUT LOUD and unfortunately, that may interrupt your perfect story... in a GOOD way! 

             

After finishing the story, we go over and discuss some of the things that we came up with DURING READING and decide if we need to add anything that was really important. Then we move onto the AFTER READING portion of the lesson.

There are a few ways that you can do this. You can simply just have a discussion, you can pose and post the questions, then have the students choose one to answer on a sticky, or you can actually have them pull out a response type notebook to answer the questions. The "after reading" portion should connect the before and during reading portions of your lesson and shouldn't skipped! It's important to help with your students' comprehension!  Although I just have my students respond on a sticky note or in a response notebook, I am including a freebie today with some of the response questions and a place to answer the questions. You can choose one of them or all of them, or you could have your students choose which one they'd like to answer!

Visit my store for this freebie (click on the picture below!) and please let me know if you do this lesson and how it goes! I can't wait to hear!

Post It Notes for Thinking

So... I went a little crazy at Target when I found these marked down to 10 cents each at the Back to School clearance markdowns back in September. 10 cents!?!?! What?!!?!? Surely I would find a use for them. I love, love, love the REAL POST IT BRAND post-its. So much better and stickier than the generic ones. I think I bought about 40 packages and I wish I would have bought more. There were TONS! I had texted all of my crazy teaching friends and the other Targets in our same city didn't have any. I had also posted on Instagram to share with even more crazy teachers! Nobody else seemed to find the same great deal as I did! You can imagine my excitement when I scanned these at the price check scanner!

What do I need 40 packages of sticky notes for? Well, I gave each student one package. They were super excited. We use them for a quick "Check for Understanding" after many reading and math lessons. I have taken some pictures of examples below. 

We have also practiced using our Post-its to record our thinking. I modeled how to think while reading for Enemy Pie and then recorded my thinking on the Post-its to show the students. I first stuck the stickies into the book as I was going, then later, when I had to return the book (same as what the kids would have to do), I took them out and stuck them into my reading journal to document the thinking I had while reading this book.

I snapped some quick pictures of students "thinking while reading". I also gave them all a brand new mechanical pencil to entice them to WRITE MORE about their thinking while reading! It's the small things that get them writing/thinking! If a ten-cent package of Post-it notes keep them thinking for 70 days/sticky notes, then it's all worth it to me! :)

Loved That Lesson Linky- January

Today I have joined The Teacher Studio in a Loved That Lesson Linky!

 I am reposting my favorite lesson this school year, Close Reading with Oreos, from November!

What a fun day! My team and I heard about this awesome OREO cookie lesson from the third grade teachers at our school and of course, since it involved OREOs, we had to try it!! It was just one of those awesome lessons, better than I thought it would be. It made my whole day! (Even if the kids had been eating Oreos!)


Here is the actual lesson that I found online: Close Reading Activity: An Introduction to Close Reading

Here is how it went in my room today!!!

First, I passed out one cookie to each student. I did it in kind of a rushed way (on purpose) and told them to eat it AS SOON AS THEY GET IT. ("What!? Eat it before everyone else has one? This is weird...." All real comments.) By the time I was done passing them out, a few kids had finished their cookies. My plan was working perfectly. I encouraged a few kids to "Hurry, finish it up, we have to move on."

After some weird looks from the kids (Did I mention this was at 9:45 in the morning?) I had them all take out a Post-It note and a pencil. I asked them to write down what they just ate. ("Uh...okay...Mrs. Stuckey is losing it..." again, real comments.) A lot of the kids looked at me like I was asking a trick question, they were trying to write a complete sentence and use capitals and periods just to tell me they ate an Oreo. It was actually comical. Then I asked them to share with me what they ate, here were the responses:

Obviously, their responses were Oreo cookie, oreo, and one kid actually said Vanilla Wafer (gotta love it!) I didn't record that on the anchor chart because she was so embarrassed that she wrote that. But later, her mistake would be perfect for teaching the lesson.

Next, I passed out ANOTHER Oreo (could it be true!?), but I told them this time they could NOT eat the Oreo! I had them come down to the carpet with their Oreo cookie and I explained to them what they were going to do next.

• Look at the cookie carefully.
• Smell the cookie.
• Think about the cookie.
• Eat the cookie VERY slowly with your eyes closed, thinking about every bite you take.
• Think about the texture and the taste of the cookie while you are eating.

What happened next was quite comical because they were literally SAVORING these cookies. I took a few pictures of them eating them with their eyes closed and I SO wish I could share them with you, but I won't.

When they finished, we did our "second read" of the Oreo. I had the categories in red written on the anchor chart (while they were eating). I asked them to describe all of the parts listed. They couldn't stop talking! Look at how much they had to say after their "second read" of the Oreo!


The lesson that we all learned: It's okay to read through something fast the first time (like their first Oreo cookie), but if you do, you can only recall minimal information about it. If you reread it a second time and THINK while you are reading, you can recall a lot more! In fact, it might be smarter to do that the FIRST time!

My little lady that said she ate a Vanilla Wafer...perfect opportunity for my lesson! Sometimes we read through something so fast and with so little thinking that we literally DO NOT KNOW what we read! Right? She ate an Oreo and when she was done, had no idea what she had just eaten...just like our reading sometimes! 

They loved it! I loved it! They were excited about Oreos in the morning and asking if we could please do more reading lessons like this one! Ha. I was excited to show them a concrete example of how to Close Read! The rest of the day, we referred to our reading as our "first Oreo" or a "second Oreo." For example: Wait a minute, I didn't understand that. Let me REREAD and think about my Oreo (the text) one more time.

Try it tomorrow! You will love it too! So glad that this activity was introduced to me by some of the other amazing teachers at my school and I just couldn't wait to share it with you all!


Here are some other fun lessons that have joined this linky!!! Thank you to The Teacher Studio for organizing this!

An InLinkz Link-up