April Means Poetry Month for Fifth Graders!

It's hard to get fifth graders motivated for many things, especially in the Spring AND the fact that their resource time is at the end of the day.  So, in essence, they've already "clocked out" for the day.  It does mean they're more than a handful some days!  Thank goodness for our Makerspace - they LOVE that!  So, when I have to do other activities with them that supersede the Makerspace, well, they're not happy.  (Gosh, it's like they have to WORK in school!).

Traditionally, the librarian at our school has always helped the fifth grade teachers by doing a poetry/figurative language unit in April.  Last year, I was so excited and found my favorite all time poem - Jabberwocky - on video and showed it to them.  Then, we looked at copies of the poem and circled figurative language/nonsense words.  Yeah, I think I was the only one excited about it except for maybe 5 total students. :(  I did the best I could with the rest of the unit but there was a lot of grumbling and protests about doing this during resource.

So, this year, I wanted to make sure I was more on top of things as well as making it more fun and active for the students.  Yes, I'll still have those grumblers, but maybe not as many!

First, I asked the writing teacher which figurative language concepts were most important to focus on (similes/metaphors, personification, idioms, and hyperbole).  Then, I created a pretest/survey for students using Google Docs.  You can access it {here} if you'd like to look at it.  I'm planning on asking students to complete it during this week before Spring Break so we can start rolling after break!

This weekend, I've tried to get a head start on planning the unit.  The responses from the survey will give me an idea of how much time to spend on each concept and, frankly, which classes need help where.  Although I'm already planning activities for each concept, I figure even if I don't use them, I can save them for next year's group.  Now in my second year of the Library, I feel I have a better feel for lessons and have even reorganized my filing cabinet and hopefully spend less time "planning" next year and be able to pull files and teach!

Using Pinterest as an inspiration, I looked first at Idioms.  We have this great book called Even More Parts by Tedd Arnold I'll read to students.  Then, we'll watch the video I found {here} about idioms and complete an activity where students use pictures to figure out the idioms.  Since I'm not sure if these are copyright friendly, I'll share it {here} but won't on my teacher stores.  Then, using a sheet I found on another site, students have to pick and draw an idiom to define its real meaning and use it in a sentence.  I figure I can give this to the teacher for a grade!

With similes and metaphors, I figured I'd best not push my luck with the worksheet.  So, after reading Skin Like Milk, Hair of Silk by Brian P Cleary, we'll make it a little more "real life" by looking at quotes from some of my students' favorite books and authors.  To make it a bit more interactive, I have QR codes on each quote so students can scan to see if they guessed simile or metaphor correctly.  I'm not sure if I"ll do it like a Scoot, where students move to each table and work in a group or not.  Either way, I've uploaded the activity on TPT and TN if you'd like to see it closer.

So, I'm left with Personification and Hyperbole.  These should be fun, but I'll save them for another post (and maybe get home by dinnertime so my husband doesn't complain!).

Inference Investigations and Main Idea Mysteries

Wow, this has been quite a year in the library!  I love my new position and am very happy that I'll get to do it all over again next year!

That being said, a lot of my "social media" has been neglected due to it as well as some family matters we've been going through.  With that being said, this summer's goal is to polish up some of the things I did in the library and, if I haven't told you about it already, will share with you on here!  Unfortunately, I'm down to a "dumb phone" since my Droid was left at a dr's office and hasn't shown up yet :( but its better than no phone at all, so I can't complain too much!  I must admit, though, I miss Google Calendar most of all.  Not that I can't access it from my laptop, but it was sooo nice to have on the go!  Funny that's what I missed, but like many of you, I become full time mom during the summer and need that schedule!!!

Back to school things, though!

One thing that my fourth and fifth grade teachers asked me to work on at the end of the year was main idea, context clues, and inferencing to help review for the state tests.  Knowing its the end of the year, that the kiddos were wild and crazy, I wanted to do something active that would engage them, but also be beneficial.

I had seen on Pinterest how people used Pixar movies to teach different comprehension strategies.  So, on two of my wiki pages for my students, we used movie clips (including this great detective series from Houghton Mifflin, although I never could find "part 2" to any of them).

I followed that up with an activity.  For context clues, we took the book, Baloney, by Jon Scieszka, and first watched a YouTube version of the read aloud.  Then, I had photocopied pages and made an "alien translator" for students to use to figure out what the alien words meant in the book.  For some of my more "active" classes, we did this orally, but believe it or not, it was the higher classes that took to the alien translator and groaned when we ran out of time to finish it!  (Always makes you feel good to plan an activity where the kids are sorry to leave it!!!).

Here is the what the alien translator looks like.  Click {here} to see more.  You can also check out the page I used for context clues, with the videos, {here}.

Our next lesson, the kids were begging for more video clips to watch, so we looked at videos {here} and {here} and then completed our follow up activity.  This was, as I told students, a use of their detective skills.  They were given 3 cards and had to figure out 1) what they had in common and 2) go look around the library for the answer card to write on their recording sheet.  It was a definite hit and the kids had a blast!  It was great for them to be up and moving around test time, when they had been sitting all day.  They were even willing to calm down with the main idea passages that I had cut up and had them put back together like puzzles.  (Click on the title page to see it on TPT).

So I taped the "dog" card in the library (since these were my older students, it was fun to hide them in tricky places!).  Students received a bag with the other 3 cards, wrote it on their recording sheet (below), and once they figure it out, they had to find the dog card!

I presented these to students cut up and in baggies.  They had to piece it together and put the main idea at the top.  If we had more time, and maybe another week in resource, we would've talked about how the main idea was really the topic sentence of the paragraph!

I have to admit, I was surprised and very pleased the kids were so into these activities!  It's a rough time of year to be a resource teacher apparently!  I remember last year with my classroom, we were doing a space unit at the end of the year to help "maintain control" as well as keep the students' interest.  My students really enjoyed the "Around the Room" type activities where they had to find answers throughout the library.  We did go over some ground rules (it's still the library - no running), but they loved being up and mobile.....AND I got a kudos from my principal for doing something meaningful but also very "kinesthetic."  Hee hee :)

So, as the summer goes along and I "fix up" the activities I created (but had no time to post about), I'll hopefully be seeing you more on here!  I'm actually kind of glad I waited so I can reflect on what worked, what didn't, etc. so I can get them ready to go for next year's crew! :)