We finally began looking at the Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading signposts this week, starting with the tried and true Contrasts and Contradictions . I wanted to share with you a few of the things we did in class that helped the students to really grasp the idea of a character acting out of the norm for that particular character. To introduce the signpost to my fifth graders, I began with the "Thank You, Ma'am" lesson in the book.  I highly recommend purchasing the book and starting with this lesson, if you haven't.  There are a lot of great ideas contained within the book itself that will be helpful to you as a teacher when teaching the signposts. Click the link above that will take you to my Amazon Affliate link to purchase the book. During that introduction lesson, I created this  anchor chart with the students.  They wrote the information in their journals as I was writing on the poster.  Having the kids write this down really helped them to beg...
A while back, I share with you how I planned to run reading rotations in my room (actually, a year ago this October!)  I have something to share with you now.... It didn't work for me. I know....a collective gasp just went up among the Teaching in Room 6 followers.  Something didn't work??  How could that be??  ;) Seriously though, the plan I had mapped out so carefully just wasn't in the cards.  I think a lot of it had to do with my "all or nothing" approach.  I felt like if I didn't do rotations every day, then what was the point? Well, my school is moving towards a "Universal Access" mode, where I will have a push in aide for 40 minutes per day, and I think this is the PERFECT time to try rotations again. You can read my exact plan here (which I am going to try again) but I wanted to share the rotation sheets with you, since I many of you asked for them before.  So here they are . These aren't editable (due to clip art terms) but ...