Using Padlet to Recommend Books

One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to use more technology. I've seen the website Padlet mentioned a lot in conferences I went to and blogs I've read, but wasn't sure how to use it in my classroom since we're not 1:1 and most of the time, I only have access to iPads for 5 kids. Inspired by Katie Muhtaris and Kristin Ziemke , I decided to make a wall to allow students to make recommendations to each other. Katie suggested posting links to the wall blogs and book trailers that the kids have made, too. I don't have any of those yet, but I'd love to have a place where all of those are collected for students to reference when they need book ideas!

I have a classroom blog that students have been posting on about their assigned summer reading. I posted a link to my wall there, and left simple instructions on how to post to it. Since I'm not sure how often kids are checking the blog during the summer, and if anyone is going to be brave enough to post there, I'm not sure if it'll take off during the summer. But if it's up there, at least it'll be a reminder once school starts to teach the students how to use it!

Created with Padlet

Reading in the Wild Chap 3: Sharing Books

Several seventh and eighth graders from my school were chosen by Big Shoulders, a non-profit in Chicago that works with inner-city kids, to go to a weeklong science and leadership camp in Wyoming. And I got to be their chaperone! Which means for the past week, there was lots of this: 

And not so much this:

But now I am back in the world of cell-phones and computers, with much comfier beds and much less interesting wildlife (good-bye moose, hello squirrels and pigeons).

This chapter of Reading in the Wild was all about how to create reading communities through sharing books with each other. Although I share books with my friends and family all the time (and am somewhat addicted to goodreads), I could definitely do more in the classroom. One of the ideas she had that I loved was to connect with parents about reading so it will be encouraged at home, too. I have a classroom blog, and it would be really easy to share book recommendations there. I used to feel awkward about giving parents advice, especially since I don't have any children of my own. If teaching children to read is supposed to be my area of expertise, though, I should do more to teach the whole family how to encourage this. 

I also really liked her displays in the classroom that involve sharing books. Covering a wall (or maybe a few of the lockers? We don't have much wall space) with black butcher paper and having students write quotes from favorite books would be a great way to have students share their reading. It would also help them to look at the book as writers and see how powerful sentences are constructed. Similarly, it was fun to see Miller's classroom door display of books she'd read over the summer. Again, I'm thinking of covering the lockers with this, since I already have a "welcome to fourth grade" sign I use for my doors. The best part is handing this display over to the students after a few weeks, and having them come up with their own themes to display. Less things created by me, more by the students is always a win! That does mean I should read some more children's literature over the summer so I have something to put on the door/locker, since I'm pretty sure that Divergent and Rainbow Rowell's books are a little too old for fourth grade. I've heard great things about Wonder and The One and Only Ivan, so I'll add those to the list now :) Anything else? 

The book commercials are also a great idea, and I love that she mentioned to do these during transition time! Writing the title and author on the board would help students who want to read the same book write down the important info. I'm always trying to find ways to make use of every moment, since there are obviously never enough minutes in the day to get everything in.

Reading in the Wild: Chapter 2

Woohoo! First linky party.

First of all, I need to say I love the premise behind this book, of getting kids to be independent, lifelong readers. Considering that my husband has actually told me to put a book down so he could talk to me, I'm pretty sure I qualify as a "wild reader." I never read The Book Whisperer, so it is going on the reading list. Immediately.

Something new: Reading logs to record all the books students have read. I like how the ones Miller uses have a begin and end date, and that it asks how students chose their book. I also like how she uses it when she conferences with students, to see how often they're reading and finishing books. I've used reading logs in the past, but usually forget to emphasize them in the second half of the year and only the kids who already read all the time remember to fill them out. I plan on having my own reading log for the kids to see, too!

Something I've done before: Book raffles. I'll show my kids 5-6 new books (usually from Scholastic), then have them write their names on slips of paper and give the students a chance to be the first reader of the book. They loved this, and it generated a lot more interest than if I'd simply put the books in my library. Who doesn't love to win something?

Something to work on: Read alouds. I do try to read aloud, but it's not sacred time. We might only do it twice a week, and we'll usually only get through 2 1/2 books in a year. I think I might switch from doing a few whole class novels this year to doing all independent reading and literature circles. Those novels will then be read alouds, and I know I'll make time for them since I love them so much.

Something else to work on: Getting students to recommend books to each other. I've thought about getting a big pocket chart, writing every student's name on a card, and having students stick books they think their classmates will like behind their names. I think this will take up too much space, though. Any ideas out there of quick (and space-efficient) ways to do this?

I have not quite figured out how to add the link-up for the book study to this post, but here's the website I found it on if you want to read more: 

Group Discussion

Sometimes I wonder how it is that students can talk for hours about Pokemon and Minecraft, but find it impossible to talk about something that's actually, you know, educational. One thing I tried to do more this past year was explicitly teach students how to have discussions in class, instead of just talking directly to me.

In the past, I've talked about making eye contact and facing the speaker, but the students really needed more instruction. During a presentation last year from the Nature Museum, we talked about giving the students sentence starters for conversation. I took sentence strips and wrote out a few, like "I agree with…and would like to add…" and "I disagree with…because…".  We started out with these written on index cards and students fish-bowling a conversation (having a few students sit in the middle of a circle while the rest watched) with the cards in their hands. After some practice, students were able to use them on their own. Voila, discussions in class. Some of the time.

Something I want to try this year is assessing these conversations, especially with the Common Core speaking and listening standards. This idea came from another great presentation, this one from Jaime Bailey at BER. She discussed how to use a scoring checklist while listening to group conversations, to help you assess how students are doing and so that they know exactly what you expect. I simplified it for fourth graders, and so that I could fit four checklists on a page and not have to flip through papers while listening. Because we all know that all those papers would end up on the floor. You can grab a copy here.

I'd start off by going over this checklist as a class and having students model both good discussion techniques and poor ones. Especially since I already know quite a few students who would be excellent models of inattentive conversationalists. I'd then have a few students meet in a group to discuss an article while we grade them together. It would probably be easier to do this at first in small groups discussing a short piece of text, like a Scholastic article, and then eventually reaching my ultimate goal: using these for literature circles. 

Diving In

I learned to dive about three years ago. I could swim just enough to keep from drowning, but had no intention of ever jumping into the water head first. My husband convinced me otherwise. I am far from a world class diver, and still need to give myself a mini-pep talk before I jump, but it's good to know that new adventures often work out.

I've been a blog stalker for about two years now. I love reading everyone's posts, but have always wondered whether anyone would read mine. So here goes my dive!

I've been teaching fourth grade for the past eight years. It's the only grade I've ever taught, and I love it! I teach in an inner-city Catholic school in Chicago. I know a lot of people think private school means we have lots of resources, and while that's true for some schools, it's not for this one. We are getting new math books this year to replace our current series, in use since 1999, and I wonder if I'm the only teacher left with an overhead projector and chalkboard. The staff is fabulous, though, and we're lucky that standardized tests are not the be all and end all of our school year. We are also slowly upgrading, and I hope to have several iPads to use in the classroom this year.

I'd love to connect with other educators and share ideas. If you have any advice about getting started, please let me know!