Author’s Purpose–Information

Wow!  Two posts in two days!  I can’t lie, I wrote them both and set the post dates.  I’m not avoiding the work I *should* be doing or anything…

My favorite informational author of all time is Gail Gibbons!   She has a book on just about everything and I think her books can be read at almost any elementary grade level.  I am also loving how her style of illustration is evolving.  With all of the digital viewing kids do, I think their idea of what images are interesting is changing and they just don’t gravitate towards the older books.  Here are a few of my favorites:

(images from Amazon.com)

I cannot tell you how much I LOVE the work of Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long!  There books are beautifully written and illustrated.  The lend themselves to teaching so many things!  I also love the description!  The text is written on two different levels – one part is short and more descriptive, then there is additional detail in small writing on the page to give more information.  My students are complete absorbed into listening to these books.  Don’t forget to look inside the front and back covers for a surprise! I see a new one that I need to order!!!

I see these books are available on Kindle, which means they could be projected in the classroom – lots of new options with that! 

The National Geographic Kids Books are fabulous!  They have amazing photographs and sooo many text features. (They are perfect for teaching informational writing and text features, too!)  They are super reasonable through Scholastic, but I have found them at the Dollar Tree, too!

      

I also love bringing in cookbooks, gardening books, newspapers, and magazines to share texts that may not really be thought of in the school.

What books do you like to use to teach author’s purpose”"?

Author’s Purpose–Persuade

Finally, I have something I can post about!  Gracious!  It seems like I haven’t done much worth writing about this year – lots of assessments, worksheets, and workbooks – yuck, yuck, and yuck!  It’s a bit of “This is how you NEED to do this” and personal survival (I’m doggy paddling this year, folks!) during a busy year that is causing this awfulness. I try to sneak the good stuff it when I can!

We have been working on the skill of determining author’s purpose in reading.  I have a few favorite books that I use to teach this skill and I thought I would share the books I use to teach how author’s persuade today.  (These books are also great to use as models for opinion writing, writing with voice, and point-of-view.)

The first set is a pair of books that many teachers use:

Yes, you can guess the writing prompts that would be fun as a follow up!

I found this series by Lois G. Grambling last year and my second graders LOVED them! 

What prehistoric creature would your students like to bring to school or somewhere else?  Another fun topic for writing!

The final set is one that our librarian introduced to my students and I found the books were perfect for teaching how writers try to persuade the reader.  This is The Other Side of the Story Series.  Many of the books are by Nancy Loewen, but there are a few by other authors.  There are 8 in total at this time, and of course I ordered them all!

This is also a great series for comparing and contrasting point-of-view.  I remember writing The Wizard of Oz from Toto’s point of view in 5th grade!

Do you have any favorite books for teaching author’s purpose or opinion writing?

Hopefully I have the time to share some of the other books I am using to teach author’s purpose – fingers crossed!

Reading Workshop: Questioning Part 2

Today I thought would share some of the resources I use to teach comprehension strategies in a quick post.

The Reading Lady has amazing resources.  I especially like the "Teaching Tools,” which has a lot of great resources for the book Mosaic of Thought.  There are great mini-lessons and book lists.  Click on the icons to go to the sites.

   

Into the Book is another great resources for teachers and students. There are lessons, videos, song and other neat tools.

Mandy Gregory also has a great site called": Tips for Teachers.  She has several great resources and book connections.

Great teacher resources:

           

Reading Unit: Questioning

Looks like the linky party was a bust!  I think I came up with a few more ideas to add communication for the rest of the year – hopefully.  It is wonderful to have an extra set of hands in the classroom. However,  as we all know, sometimes the more adults you have in the room, the more challenging interpersonal pieces can be.  This year has been a challenge for me in that regard. I guess I’ll leave it at that and let everyone take from it what you will.

March is the month that we have the comprehension strategy of questioning on our curriculum maps.  We focus on this using both fiction and non-fiction books.  What a tough concept to find resources for!  I’m sure I will stumble upon/create more as time goes on.

 

These are some great charts on Pinterest!  If there was a link back to the original post, I linked the picture.

   

   

Here are a few of the books I plan to use:

   

I used The Little White Owl purely by chance the other day.  I really needed Dr. DeSoto, but could not find my copy and did not have time to go down to the library.  The book actually worked really well!  The kids generated a ton of questions based on the cover of the books.  As we read the book, we stopped when we could answer on of the questions. I will review using Doctor De Soto tomorrow.  Galimoto and The Day of Ahmed’s Secret will be great to focus on """”During Reading” questions.

I also plan to review question words.  We are working on a lot of language pieces in my classroom this year and asking questions is challenging.  I plan to use an activity from:

Awesome resource!  There is a great chapter on Questioning and using a favorite object for students to use to generate their questions.

I am welcoming a student teacher this week!  It is exciting!  I love having student teachers.  They help to energize me and it will be especially helpful to divide up some of the teaching.  Maybe I can feel better about teaching 6 guided reading groups this year!

I will work on posting some more items as the week goes on!  Have a great Sunday!