Reading Without Walls Challenge, Part 2

We began our Reading Without Walls challenge with a "topic" challenge.  (See my previous post).  This week had us digging in to the "character" and "format" challenges.

We discussed how a character might look different:
  • Hair or eye color
  • Length of hair
  • Skin color
  • Clothing - it could be from a different country or period of time
We discussed how a character might live differently:
  • The story takes place in a different time.
  • The character has a different culture and celebrates different holidays.
  • We don't play the same things.  For example, I am an indoor kid and like to play video games.  I am not like kids that like to run around outside and play.
  • We speak different languages.
  • The character isn't human.
  • The character has an accent.
  • The character lives in the forest.
  • The character is homeless.  I have a house.

1st and 2nd grade students looked for a character challenge book and brought it to the rug.  On the rug students shared their choices and reasoning:

I don't run around in underwear and I don't have super powers.
I have 2 brothers and Greg has 1.
It takes place on an island.  I don't live on an island.
My Nana doesn't live in the city
I draw better than he does
He doesn't like broccoli and I do.

In 3rd-5th grade we also discussed what the format challenge was.  We talked about how we were going to challenge ourselves to read in a format that we don't usually read in.  For example, we talked about how if we typically read nonfiction books, we would try a graphic novel or a fiction book.  We talked about our options - everybody books (picture books), biographies, or even a magazine.

3rd-5th grade students were then directed to locate a character and a format challenge book and decide which one they would take home this week.  They brought these to me and I took their picture with their book of choice.  They told me which kind of challenge book it was.  This served as a great check-in and assessment - did they understand what they were looking for?  For the most part, yes, they did.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Reading Identity: Who am I as a reader?

Image
This lesson was about making a visual representation of our reading selves.  We drew, we laughed, we learned about each other as readers, and started building a reading community.  We did this on a remote day.  *This was developed in conjunction with my brilliant colleagues.* Standards:  AASL: Inquire/Share I.C.1 . Interacting with content presented by others. I decided we needed a theme to tie a disjointed year together and settled on the question:  I spent much of my summer thinking about "identity" but needed a concrete landing place for those big, abstract thoughts.  I wondered what would happen if we thought about "identity" through a reading lens. We read Reading Makes You Feel Good We practiced looking at two options and showing our choice for where we like to read by holding up that number of fingers. Next, we moved on to our directed draw. When we were done drawing, we had a big reveal.  Students were tasked with looking for someone with a similar piece of
Read more

Books as mirrors and windows (with sticky notes & reflections)!

Image
Every year I examine books as mirrors and windows with my students.  Every year I tweak the exploration and this year was no different.  This year's additions included sticky notes and reflections.   Day 1: Mirror moments Sticky notes I created with Tony Vincent's template (link below) After modeling mirror moments (and having students make "me too" signals), students identified a mirror moment from a stack of books at their table.  "This is like my sister and I.  We fight all the time." - 3rd grader "When my mom tells me to clean my room I just sit because I don't know where to start." - 3rd grader Day 2: Window moments In the next class I modeled "window moments" and we drew windows in the air when we heard moments that were "not like us."   Students identified "window moments" at their tables with sticky notes. Students shared their "window moments" through the window we passed around our sharing circl
Read more

Emoji Book Titles

Image
Solving and creating our own emoji book titles was a creative challenge I first started exploring four years ago. It has evolved over time, and this latest version is the one that makes the most sense to me. Try it out  here ! Student-created emoji book titles (From top left corner clockwise: Magic Ramen, Catstronauts, Tiger Rising, Wings of Fire) I love this activity because It requires creative thinking (to both solve and create more) Students choose how they interact - do they want to solve or create? All the activities are student-generated I was able to use Google tools for all aspects of the project Solving emoji book titles I created an interactive activity which allows them to check the answer.  In this google slide activity, students use the emoji clues to guess the title of the book.  By moving the magnifying glass over the box, the answer is revealed. Creating emoji book titles While this activity engages many of our learners, I wanted to offer an option for students to cre
Read more