#sol15 Reading

I’m excited for tomorrow.  The fifth grade begged to read The One and Only IVAN, and tomorrow we’re starting it up again after an interruption. Because we were interrupted we did something fun that ended up being a terrific review and thoughtful understanding of what we had read so far.

Each student took 10 pages to read and create one or more images on poster paper about the main idea of those ten pages. They included labels and captions and a main idea sentence.

Next, we created sketches of the characters — the faces on paper so we could attach them to rulers as masks.

Then we posted the first poster for the first ten pages and discussed it.  Then each student took one page in those ten pages, read it, and determined the most important part to read. Sometimes it was a sentence, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a few paragraphs.  The students did well at choosing what would best help us remember and understand the story.

For the readings, the person who drew the poster would choose one or two students to be the actors. They would hold character masks in their hands and put up the one in use at the time for that section of reading. The actors would ask someone else to read their section while they were acting.

After that section of ten pages was read and acted, we put up the next posters, and repeated  the process, with discussions, laughter, and explanations as we progressed. The students used their Common Core State Standards for speaking and listening and collaborating. It was very fun and full of learning.

Now we’re ready to begin listening to our audio book while we read along in our own copies. What will happen to Stella? to Ruby? to Bob? to Ivan?

Image Source

Reading Together by Sheri Edwards

Student Actors by Sheri Edwards

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