Well friends it has been awhile since I blogged but I have something I would love to share before these last few days of November are gone. I found this awesome Point of View activity on ELA Everyday In An Eighth Grade Classroom. I was a little worried doing this activity with my fourth grade reading groups but they did awesome.
I have five reading groups that are reading realistic fiction: Tales of Fourth Grade Nothing, Jake Drake Know It All, Skunk Scout, Bridge to Terabithia and Hatchet. I assigned each group member a number either one or two that corresponded to a character in their book. I then had them take an event from the chapter and draw the event from their character's perspective. Wow the kids really did well. In Hatchet , I had the kids either do Brian the main and pretty much only human character and his mom who is not in the story. The kids who had Brian drew him trying to survive in the wilderness. The kids that had Brian's mom had to infer and draw scenes. The kids drew scenes from his mom finding out Brian did not make it to his father to Brian's mom hanging out of a plane looking for her son. Really struck a code with me that even fourth graders can understand a parent's anguish and panic over losing a child.
I put the Point of View display out in time for conferences. The parents did seem to enjoy looking at their children's character's point of view. With this display they also were given a small peek into what we do in reading, which is different than the typical reading class at my school. I juggle five different reading groups that each read a different novel in hopes to give students a choice in what they are reading. My goal is to get them practicing all those wonderful reading skills the pre-k -- third grade teachers work so hard to teach them and to instill a love of reading.
I also do three whole class novels as well. At the end of the year my fourth graders will have read 7 - 8 novels. Our next novel is a whole group novel just in time for Christmas, The
Hope your Thanksgiving was restful and you recharged those batteries to get you through the next few weeks leading up to Christmas.
