A New, and More Difficult, Book Report Format

I have previously posted a few times about book report formats and cool book report themes. The one I used last semester was called Book Report Sandwiches, and I have also used the Book Report Brochures as both an individual book report and an end of book activity.

The sandwiches are well and good, and my class enjoyed doing the brochures very much. I kept a few of the exemplary works posted on a bulletin board in the classroom, and as you can see I constantly had many of these up there. It was a badge of honor to get a book report posted on the board, and a few students had multiples up there.

I'm going to be asking my students to do something a little more demanding... a little more "grown up" this semester. I have chosen to use what we're going to called the "detailed long format." This Detailed Long Format asks students to do quite a bit of analysis. It clocks in at 5 pages, and is very in depth for this age group. If you're looking for something a little more challenging for your students, I recommend using this format of book report. 

Some 5th Grade Greek Mythology Resources

My class will be studying a lot of Greek Mythology in the coming weeks.

Let me be a little more precise. We're reading The Lightning Thief right now, and I love to teach some Greek mythology while we're reading what has quickly become a classic in my classroom. But more on The Lightning Thief later.

My school district is mandating the use of "work stations" in reading class. This is basically just another way of saying "centers," "groups," or "guided reading." But that's another post for another day.

This post is simply just some resources about Greek Mythology that are usable in the 5th grade classroom. In my case, it will be in the reading class. Let's get started.

A lot of the things I'll be either printing out about Greek Mythology or having students read and synthesize on the internet will come from The Greek Mythology Webquest that is found on fairfieldschools.org. I pick and choose from the great selection of stories and Gods. I don't necessarily follow the webquest itself, although it is excellent if you choose to do so.

Greek Mythology for Kids - This is a listing of many resources at the timeless Mr. Donn . org (a great resource site).

BBC Primary History: Ancient Greeks - A great listing that students can use in individual research.

Winged Sandals - I can't pass on this FANTASTIC website. I'm going to have my students do some individual research this week using this great interactive, flash (or HTML) based site. The stories are interactive, are read to the students, and they can play games, download pictures, etc. It really is about as high quality as it gets.

SOME PDF DOCUMENTS:

Greek Mythology Cheat Sheet - It is what it says, a great cheat sheet for the teacher who may need to brush up a little bit (I've been there, trust me).

Yesterday's Classics - A great little reader that you can pull from for students to study a few specific Greek topics (and by a few, I mean a lot).

Listing of Greek Gods and Roman equivalents - Page 2 is a nice table that I'm going to utilize in class.

Lightning Thief Activities - I'm using this as I go through the Rick Riordan book, but there are some great activities and print outs in here that could be of service to anyone teaching Greek Myth.

Reading Interest Survey (Best Title I Could Think Of)

About four and a half years ago, I posted an interesting "Reading Interest Survey," a post that was titled Reading Interest Survey (I know, it was one of those interesting titles that just grabs your interest).

I was looking through some old posts, and decided I would take the survey again. This is one of many iterations of interest surveys that can be done with students to get some valuable, qualitative information that can help you better understand the needs, wants, and learning styles of your students.

Here are my responses. You can also click the link I have provided to be taken to a .doc version of these questions that is ready for printing: READING INTEREST SURVEY .DOC FORMAT

1. Do you like to read? I enjoy reading very much. I don't read as much for pleasure as I would like, especially during the school year, but during vacations I end up reading quite a bit.

2. How much time do you spend reading? During the school year, not much. In fact, I'll sometimes find myself going months without reading for pleasure. When I find something I'm interested in, and have time, I'll read an entire book in one sitting.

3. What are some of the books you have read lately? I just finished reading The City of Ember to my students, and we are currently reading Holes. Personally, I am working on Lucifer's Hammer, an old sci-fi classic. I'm looking for some zombie stuff so I can get back into that genre.

4. If you are going to buy a book, where would you go? My personal favorite is the used book store here in Las Cruces called Coas. It's a huge used book store that takes trade ins for credit. I can go in there and buy a basket full of books for a few dollars.

5. Do you ever get books from the school library? I'm a teacher, so yes. Usually not books for reading, but instead I usually check out books to assist with research in the classroom.

6. About how many books do you own? I have about 250 books at home, and about 600 on my shelf at school (not counting all the textbooks/dictionaries/etc.).

7. What are some books you would like to own? I REALLY want to get my hands on the entire collection of The Walking Dead comics.

8. The kind of reading I like best: Zombies, history, science fiction.

9. Do you like to read the news, either online or in the newspaper? Yes, I usually read the news either on my cell phone or on my tablet. There's a free local newspaper called the Bulletin that I like to read as well.

10. What parts of the newspaper do you like? Columnists, headlines, sports, comic strips, politics, current events, and editorials

11. What are your favorite television programs? The Walking Dead (I bet you didn't see that coming), Jeopardy, King of the Hill, Open Court, Breaking Bad.

12. How much time do you spend watching television? During the school year, probably 2-3 hours a night, during the summer, probably a lot more than that.

13. What is your favorite magazine? Wired

14. Do you have a hobby? If so, what is it? Yes, reading.

15. What are the two best movies you have ever seen? The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Inception.

16. Who are your favorite entertainers and/or movie stars? Matt Damon movies are always awesome, Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio makes good movies, and believe it or not, Brad Pitt, his movies are always good.

17. When you were little, did you enjoy having someone read aloud to you? Yes, I did. I still do.

18. List topics, subjects, etc. which you might like to read about: Zombie fiction, I love the stuff and can't find it. The Holocaust, I am immersed in the genre, and am always trying to find more.

19. What does the word 'reading' mean to you? Reading means interacting with language without speaking, with written words. That's the simple definition I guess.

20. Say anything else that you would like to say about reading: Reading opens door, it changes world views, and it has the power to shape lives.

The Giver End of Book Collaboration Project Completed

A few weeks ago my class completed their end of book collaboration projects based on the Lois Lowry book The Giver. The Giver End of Book Collaboration Project is a class project I came up with to get students working together to produce different products that show their understanding of this fantastic book. You can also download the project specifications in pdf format HERE.

I took some pictures of the things that I decided to hang up on one of our bulletin boards in the classroom:


The first two images show the bulletin board in its entirety:

These next two images show some of the art work close up.

These last two images show the triorama timeline that was made.

The Giver End of Book Collaborative Class Projects

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a book I have posted about before, in a book review I did in 2008, and just a few months ago on the pages of this blog, in a post shrewdly titled The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Some Great Ideas for Teachers. 

As of today, September 28th, my class is nearly done with the book. In fact, we will finish the story in just a few more days. When that time comes, I plan on having my class complete a series of projects. The big push in my school district right now is collaborative learning / cooperative learning (something I've always used consistently in my classroom). It is harder to find opportunities for collaboration in reading class, especially as it relates to literature, but I've come up with a little something that is appropriate for the 5th grade classroom, and I call it simply the end of book collaboration projects.

In this, there are five projects that students can participate in. There is a mega triorama display, a collection of art work based on the story, a classroom imagining of the book of rules, advertisements to visit the community we know as "sameness," and the opportunity to re-imagine the ending, or expand upon the ending of the book. 

These projects give students the opportunity to work in their strengths, be it art, writing, or simply thinking creatively. The pdf document that I have created for this project includes a self-check for students to use, and a scoring rubric.

One word of caution here, if your students haven't finished the book, do not show them this document, it includes spoilers that would ruin the ending. This also holds true for you, the teacher. If you're reading this book for the first time, stay away from the document until you're done, I'd hate to ruin the ending for anyone. 

OK, so now for what you came for. To download this document in pdf format, simply click HERE. 

Book Report Idea: Book Report Sandwiches

My students are learning to love to read. I say learning because like so many other students, they don't see the joy in reading when it's been reduced to worksheets, basal readers, and isolated skill work.

I focus on letting my students read silently every day for 20 minutes, and when I do this, I'm reminded of my all time favorite class, 7th grade Literature with Ms. Gossett. This class was very simple, she had hundreds and hundreds of books available. We were allowed to read anything we wanted as long as it was within a year of our level below or higher. That was the whole class, we read and read and read, and produced book reports in different formats when we were done. That was the class that I actually read a novel for the first time, and I was hooked.

It's just sad that I didn't have that experience until 7th grade, and this was an advanced level course. How many students never get this opportunity?

So, to make a long story short, I ask my students to read and find something they enjoy. Of course, it's important to tie this reading into something tangible, in our case, isolated skills taught within the literary experience.

When my students are done with a book, they must produce a book report of some sort. I recently come across a great format that my entire class is "eating up," and that is the book report sandwich. This gives you the different areas of the report as bread, lettuce, tomatoes, etc., and each different ingredient of the sandwich. As I said, I came across this and can take no credit for it. I found this idea on the website for Mystic Valley Regional Chart School, and you can access this great .pdf file, it is called Sandwich Book Report. The document contains the necessary papers you would copy to make the sandwich, in both color and black and white, a scoring rubric, and some rough draft pages with prompts. It's excellent stuff!

Book Report Project Idea: Book Brochures

There are numerous, practically infinite, ways to do book reports. But, I would definitely argue that they are very important in the classroom. We want our students to read, and we want them to know that they're accountable to what they read. For me, the absolute back bone of my literacy instruction is the daily read aloud. We read books together all year, as a shared experience, and much of the reading instruction is themed around the book. For example, we just completed our first read aloud this year, The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop (a fantastic choice for 4th or 5th grade read alouds, especially early in the year, HERE is a short post I did many years ago on this book).  So a lot of instruction was themed around the knights of the round table, chivalry, and castles.

But that's somewhat beside the point. At the end of each read aloud, I ask students to produce some sort of a project. One of my favorites is the book brochure. The following images will show how this brochure was assigned (there are so many ways to individualize this that it's ridiculous to even start mentioning some of those ways), and the finished products hanging on the wall.

It's simple, start with a sheet of construction paper, and fold it in thirds to look like a brochure. When you unfold the brochure, you have an inside (the inside of the flaps) and an outside. It's a great project, and students really are starting to understand that I'm asking them to step up to a higher level of quality. This is the first go around, on only the third week of school. So next time around, I'll see a sharp improvement in the quality of their brochures.

This first image shows what I assigned this go around. It includes a short opinion, a comic strip (of their favorite scene), and the students own cover art for the book. On the inside, I asked for a summary (and found out that numerous students had no idea what this was (they were putting their opinion instead of summarizing), which was good information to know and discuss), as well as four major settings, and three major themes (which is our skill for this week). Finally, they had to complete a short character file for two major characters.

This second image is the view of the cover of an exemplary brochure.

This final image shows the inside of that same brochure. 

Teaching 5th Graders About the Holocaust Through Literature

The Holocaust is one of the most difficult subjects to teach about with students who are in elementary or middle school. In fact, it could be argued that up until 5th or 6th grade, students aren't ready to begin learning about the Holocaust at all. By 5th grade, I do feel that students are mature enough to approach the subject and give it the respect it deserves, if that expectation is set from the start.

Of course, it's not really appropriate to show a class Schindler's List (you'd be fired most likely due to the R rating), so where to begin? The best place is through literature. There are many great books out there for students to read, or for the teacher to read in read aloud. In my old literacy blog, I made a posting that is very similar to this one titled Teaching the Holocaust. I will summarize a few of my favorites here:

• The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak: This book is on my top five of all time favorite books, and was previously reviewed by me four years ago. It's listed as an 8th grade level book, but I've had some really bright 5th graders sit down and read it. It's a little long (at around 900 pages) for a read aloud, but the story is simply amazing. It's a great book to have in a classroom library. There is also a free teacher resource guide (among others) available in pdf format HERE. 

• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne: This story hits hard with most children. It's from the perspective of a child, it has a shocking and sad ending, and really seems to touch on the emotions of the whole thing with most kids. The movie is also quite good. Here is a link to the entire text of the book in pdf format (if you'd rather print it than buy it), and here is a teacher guide.

• The Devil's Artihmetic, by Jane Yolen: This book was written in 1968, and is about a contemporary girl magically transported back to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and is forced to survive. It's a great story with a great movie.

• The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank: One of the all-time best selling books, it needs no introduction. The material in this book and Anne Frank's story are right on for this age group. I have a post titled Teaching About Anne Frank: Classroom Resources that outlines many websites and resources to use in teaching about Anne Frank.

• I Am David, by Anne Holm: Another book written in the 1960's, this one about a boy who escapes from a concentration camp in Bulgaria. For years it was titled North to Freedom, but is now published under its current name. The book is a little slow for use as a teacher read aloud, but the character development is good, and the movie is right there with the story line of the book.

• Maus I & II, by Art Spiegelman: I'll admit it is a stretch to present this graphic novel to 5th graders and have them grasp the subtlety and metaphor that lies within its pages. This book is also very stark and somewhat graphic. I'm not going to argue that it's inappropriate, if I was I wouldn't mention it here, but you might want to limit it to some highly advanced students as a book study. I previously reviewed part I in a post titled Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman.

Facebook in the Classroom? Yeah, Didn't Think So

To anyone who has ever attempted to use Facebook in their classroom, you've probably been met with a block from the school district web filter. I say this is a good thing. I like Facebook as much as the next person, but it doesn't have a place in the classroom. There are so many classroom friendly alternatives out there (that's another post for another day). But what I do like is the Facebook format, and how it can be utilized in class.

Last year, I introduced a lesson that's hardly original, but somehow made it more difficult than necessary. I gave my students some cut outs of the parts of a Facebook home page (I guess it could be the timeline now), and had students construct the Facebook page of a character from the book we were reading. This year, I found a better way, using a pre-made template. I could give links to dozens of these templates, there are even entire websites dedicated to this concept, but I'm going to keep it simple. I'm just going to share the template that I'll be using, a printable pdf, I hope you like it:

Facebook Printable Template pdf

Online Book Collection: Scholastic Listen and Read

In some searching for online book resources, I came across Scholastic Listen & Read, a collection of 54 stories in high quality, online format.

What makes these books great is the simplicity. Some of the content is appropriate for 4th and 5th graders (the Constitution, Presidents, Ecology, etc.), but the reading is more on level for a 2nd or 3rd grader, especially at Level B. The text can also be spoken aloud within the web browser. This is a great tool for younger students, and possibly the struggling readers in the upper Elementary grades. I recommend giving it a quick look.