Close Reading and Common Core

Hello everybody. This is a big week for me. My Common Core Reading Bundle was picked to be featured for Teacher Tuesday at the Late Night Coffee Blog and I'm a guest writer for Rachel Lynette tomorrow at Minds in Bloom.  Come back and click below to read my close reading article at Minds in Bloom.

                                                               

Now for Tuesday's Tip. I created learning teams for math this year to work on tasks connected to the new common core math standards. My students absolutely love working with their teams. While exploring bigger numbers, I gave each team a set of place value blocks. After telling them what number I wanted represented, the teams had to make the number two different ways and draw it out. They really were able to grasps the concepts such as 12 hundreds = 1,200, 10 tens=100,  and so on.  I repeated the process with different numbers. You can download the recording sheet below.

Stop back tomorrow and follow the link mentioned above to read my article about close reading.

 

Heatin' Up on Freebie Friday

Wow! It's a hot one today in Ohio! It's a good day to stay in the air condition, so I'm working on planning for the new school year.  We're fully implementing the new common core standards this year along with a new state teacher evaluation process. Needless to say, a lot of change going on. 

  To prepare for this year, I've created organizers to either use as a teaching tool or an assessment of the Reading Literature and Information Text Standards. Along with each standard I've created a coordinating I Can Learning Target to post during the lesson.

 I'm sharing an organizer and learning target for this week's Freebie Friday at TBA. Enjoy and Stay Cool!

Characters! Characters!

 I begin my character study with a common core  I can statement on a chart that has a line  like the one below. The students place a dot  where they think their understanding of the  concept is. After the unit, the students place another dot . Usually every dot is on the right by then.

                                            

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     No, I'm not sure how  Still Learning    I can do it!

    I end the unit with a character book project that I'm sharing  for Freebie Friday. Here are some pictures of the finished products. 

                     

                              Character Book Project Freebie