You know how you plan out everything and make a promise to yourself to stick to that plan? Yep, that was me this past week with our novel study. I worked late Monday night to prepare charts and activities so we would be ready to jump right in on Tuesday and then I got sick. We didn’t end up starting the novel until Thursday, so we haven’t gotten as far as I had hoped we would at this point, but man, did we pack in the activities! I am so proud of my kids, y’all. They have behaved so well this week and I know we wouldn’t have been able to get nearly as much done without their fabulous behavior. 🙂
Here’s what we’ve been up to this past week. Most of the activities can be found in my Tuck Everlasting Unit, which I plan on adding to soon.
We started off by doing a little pre reading thinking. We predicted what they book would be able, based on the cover.
Then we did Book Bits, which I had never heard of. I found them on TpT and thought it might be neat, but I totally underestimated them! I’ve had several kids that have already found their book bit in the novel as we read and they get so excited to see what it really means! If you don’t know what Book Bits are, they are sentences or parts of the book. I gave one to each kid and told them to read theirs and then share with a partner while discussing what they thought it meant and what part of the book it might appear.
Then we moved the desk into a big circle so we could read. I wanted to make it special since we were beginning the book and the kids LOVED reading in a circle! It was time consuming, so we won’t be able to do it daily, but it was a fun way to introduce the novel 🙂
While we read, we practiced taking notes using this graphic organizer. This has already come in handy each time we read!
Something new I did this year was create a central question for each story:
This has worked WONDERFULLY! Seriously, from now on I will do this for every novel study we did. Not only does it serve as a review when we finish reading, but it also provides a purpose for reading. I’ve gone ahead and posted all the questions thru chapter 11. One of the kids were worried it would give away spoilers, but I made sure and wrote the questions as to not give anything away.
We also mapped out the setting of the story. This year I graded the assignment. Students had to provide the following details, which they had to use the text to find:
-the “touch me not” cottage
– the iron fence around the cottage
– the road around the woods
-the cows that had wisely made the road around the woods
-the ash tree in the center of the woods
-the spring at the base of the tree
-pebbles covering the spring
We also talked about the symbolism of the ferris wheel. This is mentioned in the prologue, but is easier for the students to understand as the novel progresses. As an intro to the symbolism, we filled in the center (the hub) and the 3 events that were mentioned in the prologue.
Are you still with me? I told you packed a lot into this past week! 🙂 Friday, we tested how much we knew using a quiz sheet. I allowed the kids to use the book so they could write the page number down. We need a lot of help looking back in the text and finding answers. My sweeties are sometimes lazy and don’t use the text.
And last, we used Padlet to brainstorm how we thought the 3 events were connected. I LOVE padlet! It can be used for SO much and can be set up in no time. I thought of this idea towards the end of class Friday and it literally took less than 5 minutes to create the wall.
If you made it until the end, yay for you! I know, it was a lot! 🙂 🙂
How do you use Padlet in your classroom- do you have the Backpack version? Also- is there a "how-to" guide somewhere to get me started?
How do you come up with your questions that you post?
Employee motivation benefits from group activities, games, exercises and puzzles. Employers must try to use games and exercises ideas to warm up meetings, training, and conferences. These games are great ice breakers for training sessions and meetings.
Can you please post the central questions for the entire novel or provide a way for us to purchase them through your TPT store? I bought your novel unit hoping they were included and they were not. Thanks so much!
I just updated the file to include them! 🙂
Super great ideas! Thanks for sharing, I am going to definitely check out your stuff at TPT.
Thanks for sharing