Thursday, May 19, 2016

End of the Year!

I always give my kids a book as their end of the year gift. This year I found the book The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo for only $1.00 at Scholastic!  I was so excited! This is a great book!


I also made these bookmarks to give to them with the book.  I made the bookmarks on Canva.  I LOVE Canva! If you haven't used Canva...you really need to.  I could spend hours making things on there.  It's FREE!  You can check it out here:  CANVA


 


Here's a quick end of the year page for the kids to do...

 
 
 
If you want to see some more end of the year activities, check out my previous blog posts HERE OR  HERE!
 
 
 
Need some end of the year treat bag ideas?  Here are a couple examples:
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Have a GREAT summer!
 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Making Book Clubs Engaging

My students love book clubs, but just doing the regular old reader's response with pencil and paper can get old after a while.  I have been slowly trying to add some more interesting options for them to choose from to respond to their books.

FREE

Balloon Stickies was a big hit with my book clubs. They LOVED this. The app is so easy to use and I thought they did a great job! I had them find a picture from their book or use an image from Google that represented someone or something in their book. Then, they had to use the Balloon Stickies app to write what their character might be thinking.

Here are a few examples from the Freckle Juice Book Club Group...






One more activity for book clubs is using Flipquiz to get the reading groups talking and writing about the text. This website is so easy to use and can be used as a fun review for anything.

You can create a free account here:
 

I created a Flipquiz board with thinking stems and questions for students to respond to in their groups and reading logs. I leave the Flipquiz up on the board and students decide what category and point amounts they want. They click on the one they want and respond by talking with their group and writing in their reading notebooks.

Here's my example:
 


When you click a category, your prompt opens up like this: