Time For Kids

Time For Kids!!

 

Hello everyone!  Today is Friday, and it's a 3 day weekend for most of us because of the Holiday!  I can't wait for the end of the day because then I head up to my cabin on the river for the entire weekend!! I hope everyone else also has lovely plans for the 3 day weekend ahead! 

Anyway, I'm blogging today to talk about my new TFK pack I made and placed on TPT.  I don't know about everyone else, but I LOVE TFK!!! I have loved it since I was a little kid.  I think it is a wonderful resource for teachers to use in the classroom.  However, I have noticed recently that many teacher to not get the chance to get to the TFK in their classroom with everything else they have to get done (myself included).  I think this is a shame because the kids enjoy them as well, and it keeps them updated on the world around them.  Soooooo.... I decided what better way to incorporate these then TASK CARDS!!! If you know me at all you know that I am obsessed with task cards.  I think they are amazing and so time efficient.  Therefore I made this pack of TFK into task cards for students to use when they are early finishers or there is some down time.   The colored pages are the pages that I cut and laminate, and the other pages are the recording sheets. I will explain to you each task card and what I do with them in my classroom.  I also include recording sheets for each!  Here we go!!  I hope you enjoy!

 

MAIN IDEA

This task card focuses on the concept of the main idea.  Here, students will chose 3 articles from the magazine to read.  While they read they will need to find the main idea of each article as well as three supporting details. 

They will record their findings on this recording sheet. 

 

Power Words

Each TFK has a section of "Power Words" is many of the articles.  These words are essentially vocabulary words.  For this, the students will need to choose many of the words to look up the definition for, write the sentence they found it in in the article, find a synonym and antonym for the word and create their own sentence using the word properly.

Here is the recording sheet, and they can use as many as they need/want.  I usually just keep a large pile of these in a file that they can grab from.

 

CAUSE AND EFFECT

Cause and Effect is a concept that many kiddos struggle with.  This is something that they can do to help them practice the skill.  The students will read through the magazine, paying attention to any cause and effect relationships within certain articles. Once they read through the magazine they will choose an article that had good cause and effect relationships in it.  They will write down 2 causes and 2 effects from the article.  You can have them do this on as many articles as you wish!

 

 

 

FACT AND OPINION

Fact and opinion seems to be another topic that can be a little tricky for the younger kids.  So again, I thought why not practice it here!  It's a great place for this, because many of the articles in TFK are political which would give the kids a chance to look for fact and opinion or create their own.  So, for this task card the students will read an article and figure out which information in that article is fact and which is opinion.  If they cant find that much fact or that much opinion in just one article they can go on to read another. 

 

 

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

 

For this task card, students will need to read at least 2-3 of the articles within the magazine.  Once they read 2 or 3 of them, they will have to compare each article to the others.  They will fill out the graphic organizer that has them write down similarities between the articles as well as differences. 

 

 

COVER PAGE PREDICTOR

I really like this task card!  I love to see where students minds travel when they have to predict.  I think it's fascinating the things they come up with.  So, for this card students will need to deeply analyze the front cover of the magazine.  They will need to look at the photo's and the text.  once they have analyzed each inch of the cover, they will write down 3 detailed descriptions of what they think they will be reading about throughout the magazine and why.

 

 

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Students always connect better with a story or piece of writing when they can connect with it.  therefore, for this card students will have to read 2-3 articles within the magazine.  They will then choose which one of those articles they would like to work with.  Once they decide, they will then create a text to text connection, a text to self connection, and a text to the world connection.  They need to write a detailed description of their connection to make it make sense with the article.

 

 

YOU"VE GOT SKILLS

In each and every TFK there is a "You've Got Skills" section on the very back of the magazine.  Students will use this task card and recording sheet to solve all the puzzles, answer all the questions, and so on. 

 

 

REFLECTION

I again LOVE to see what my students are thinking in their brains when the read.  So for this, I have the students focus on the main article of the magazine.  I want them to read the article at least twice, really reading for detail and comprehension.  Once they have read it twice, I give them this task to write a reflection about the article.  Give me a little synopsis about it, and then tell me how they felt about the article and why.  This reflection should be detailed and in Paragraph form.

 

 

CONTRIBUTION CREATOR

Last, but certainly not least, I added a contribution creator task card for this TFK.  For this card, the students will again be focusing on the Cover story of the magazine.  Once they read it through twice and really get a grasp of it, I have them brainstorm and think of how they could possible contribute to anything in the article.  For example, if the article discusses a tsunami in another country...how could they help that crisis?    They will need to write a section describing the main idea of the article, and then they can give me a paragraph on how they can contribute.

 

 

So....there ya have it!  Those are my TFK task cards that can work for many different grades.  I have posted them in my TPT store (The Magic of Teaching)  If your interested head on over and check them out!  I hope you enjoy them!

 

 

HAVE A WONDERFUL MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!!!!!