five favorite things at reading and writing workshop

our favorite things this week...we loved having our students act out some of the problems they have encountered while reading. a helpful anchor chart  we used was the drop that bad habit chart. the children are realizing that reading nonfiction books can be tricky.

this anchor chart was created in our first unit of study

first-graders had a TEA party celebrating the books they are reading.  how do you have a tea party? all the children come to the rug and learn that at a tea party you get to chit-chat with a friend about something important to you.  for this tea party students get to chit chat about some of the facts they are learning from their nonfiction books.  it's tea party time! 

we have been using many of the strategy lessons from  jenn serravallo's book (we 💜 this book). in the lesson below, students had to read the words, look at the picture and think, what in the picture is the same as what's in the words? what's new? next students had to try to write extra facts from looking at the picture.

example created by the teacher

tiny tip: we found using books with heavy picture support works best.

giraffes have long necks.

plants can die and cars get ruined

another strategy lesson we implemented was one in which the children reread a part of their book to add more details.  we were excited to try this lesson out because rereading books is such an important part of our workshop time.

this lesson takes rereading one step further by having students read, sketch and think about adding more details to their initial thoughts. each time they sketched they thought more about what they learned and deepened their understanding about the topic.

click here if you would like this sheet

another lesson the kids loved in the getting smart about nonfiction reading was the mini-lesson on chatting and learning. in this lesson the children learned about the power of conversation and they learned that sometimes we find the most interesting information and we are introduced to new topics because of our friends.

we hope you had a fabulous fantastic friday!

jessica & laura & melissa