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!!!!!

 

 

 



Subtraction Superhero

Subtraction Superheros

Hello everyone!! It has been a crazy past few weeks for me and the craziness will only continue because we are coming close to the end of another school year!!!  I have been working away on a few new projects that i have recently posted on TPT.  I wanted to take some time to discuss my "Subtraction Superhero" pack with everyone!  It's one of my favorite packs so far!    So without further adieu here we go!!!!

The first center in this pack is a task card/scoot center for the kiddos.  I created 32 of the task cards that you see above.  Each task card has a different subtraction problem.  Some of the problems require regrouping and some do not.  I also included recording sheets for these.  These can be placed around the room for students to look for and solve.  

"THE SAME AS" Center

This center has two parts.  First, the second picture shows two different pictures.  There are actually 8 of these ranging from the #4-11.  The students will lay these out away from each other.  Now, The picture on the top shows many different "flashcards'  with subtraction problems on them.  There are 16 pages of these.  All of those problems answers fit into one of the "same as" categories.  Students are to flip the flashcard over one at a time, solve them, then place them in the proper pile/category.  They will record their answers on the recording sheets provided. 

This center helps shows students the different ways to get the same difference.

SUBTRACTION BOOM

This center is self explanatory to many of you!  It is exactly the same as "bump"  I made 9 different boards for this center.  Students are given 2 dice.  Each student takes a turn and rolls both dice.  They add those two dice together.  They take that # and subtract it from the # on the game board.  If they get an answer that is on the board they cover it with their colored chip.  Students play until entire board is covered.  Whomever has the most chips on the board wins!!

KABOOM

Students will get into groups of 2-3.  They will shuffle the playing cards and place them in a pile.  The pile must all be facing down.  Each student takes a turn flipping one card over.  Whomever figures out the problem first must slam their hand on their mat then say the answer.  If they have the correct answer they keep the card.  If not the other player gets it (if there are only 2 players).  If there are 3 players the other 2 would fight for it.  If a player flips over a “kaboom” card they must put their entire pile of cards back in the middle deck.    The teacher can decide how many kaboom cards to include during the game.  Whoever has all (most) of the card in the end wins!!

There are 11 pages like the one above for the playing cards.  There are also three KABOOM mats included.  

MEMORY

Students will need to flip all cards over face down on the floor in front of them in an array.  They will take turns flipping 2 cards over at a time.  One card has an answer and once has a subtraction problem.  They have to get a match between the subtraction problem and the answer. 

Ex:  They can flip a card that has 12-3 and then they must find the card with the answer or 10. 

If they do not have a match they simply flip the cards back over in the position they were found and continue playing.  The game is over once they entire board is cleared.  Whomever has more matches wins!

There are 4 pages of playing cards for the memory game.  2 pages have the subtraction problems and the other 2 pages have the answers.  

I cant wait to use this with my kiddos!  If you are interested head on over to my TPT shop "The Magic of Teaching" to pick up a copy!!! Thanks for reading!

Literature Circles

Literature Circles

 

 

Hello all!  I can't believe May is already here!  Seems like the year flew by!!  When it gets to be this time of the year I usually get in my mood...I get obsessed with planning things for the upcoming year and making new products!  I'm sure there are many like me out there lol!  Anyway, My recent project that I just finished up is a packet for literature circles.  I am obsessed with them!  I think they are fantastic, and I have seen great benefits from them in my experience.  I had always used pre made literature circle pages that I had found on the internet, but I felt like they were always missing something (not to mention they lacked the cuteness that I love so much :)  So, I decided to make my very own and post it on TPT.  For this blog I'm just going to walk you through the pack and explain what each section is and how to use it. I hope you like it and head on over to my TPT store to go download a copy!!  Here we go!!!

 

 

This first thing on the list for literature circles are the recording pages that I created for each job.  Each recording sheet is specific to each student and they job they have.  Now, with that being said what I usually do is create a packet for each student with each recording page in it because they will all eventually get to do each job. I will discuss each job and how I use them..

 

PROBLEM SOLVER

 

The problem solver is responsible for reading the section of the story and try to figure out what the problem is. Now, some readers may not get to the main problem in the story during their selection so I decided to tweak my problem solver role.  If the student is not in the part of the book that finally brings about the main problem in the story then they will just need to find some things in their section that they believe may lead to a problem.  They can be small things or big things.  The students will draw the clues or the scenes in the boxes and then explain why they think those scenes from the story are part of a problem.  I include two pages for this job.

 

IMAGE ANALYZER

 

 

The second page in the pack is the recording sheet for the Image Analyzer.  This job requires the student to draw a sketch of all the key points in the entire section.  They must include detail.  Then, on the  lines below their illustration the student must why they chose the images that they did and explain how they connect to the story.  They MUST explain their reasoning.

 

VOCABULARY VIEWER

 

 

The vocabulary viewer is pretty much self explanatory.  Their job is to keep track on any new or interesting words that they might come across in their reading.  They are two write the word down along with its pages number.  Then they must look the word up in the dictionary and record both a synonym and antonym as well as the definition.  To finish it all off they must write out a sentence using the word in the proper way.  I included two pages for this as well.

 

CHARACTER ANALYZER

 

The character analyzer in in charge of discussing each character in depth. The recoding sheet starts the student off with giving them room to draw an illustration of any new character that comes into play in their section, or any character that is super important to the section of reading.  On the lines below the drawings, the student will need to explain why each of those characters are important in the section and describe their characteristics.  They must mention how their actions influence the story. 

 

SCENE SELECTOR

 

The scene selector is to draw an illustration to bring the whole section of reading together as a whole. They are to focus on the most important part of that entire section.  On the lines below the drawing they are to explain why they chose the specific scenes or parts that they illustrated.  They have to give reasoning and examples from the story to explain and back up why it is important to the story.

 

CONNECTION CREATOR

 

The connection creator is responsible for reading the section and then figuring out three different connections.  One connection must be a text to text connection where they have to find something in the text they are reading and connect it to another text that had previously read.  The second connection must be Text to self.  Once they read the section they must try and find a connection from the story to something that happened in their life.  The third connection must be a text to world connection.  They must relate what they read to something that has happened in the world.  If they find more connections they may continue to add to these three.  I added two pages for this and with two different formats.

 

QUESTION SEEKER

 

 

This student has the job of coming up with questions to spark a good and detailed conversation with their group.  Their job is very important and they must take it very seriously.  Their questions will determine how well the meeting goes, so they need to really think of higher level in depth thinking.  They must write down the questions along with the page number that helped them come up with it.  Then there is an answer page where they must find an answer to their questions with the page number they found the answer on.

 

SOLUTION SLEUTH

 

The solution sleuth is responsible for finding clues that may be helpful for finding out the solution to the problem in the story.  The boxes at the top of the page are where the students can/will draw pictures of the clues that they will be using from the section they read.  Then, in the boxes below the pictures with the lines they will need to explain why they think those clues will lead to solving any problem in the story.  Now, I added another page for this job.  

 

 

The second page is for the student who has the section where the problem is actually solved.  They will have to draw an illustration of the scene where the solution is finally told to the reader.  Then they must write a description of the solution and explain why it works for the story.  They MUST include details from the story.

 

SENSATIONAL SUMMARIZER

 

The sensational summarizers job is also pretty self explanatory.  They must read the section and then give a detailed description of the selection.  They must explain that sections importance to the story as well. 

 

The next part of the pack is where I created "job tags" for the students to use and wear each time they get together.  Each tag tells the name of their job and gives a brief description of the job.  These just help to organize the group and they are also super cute!!!

 

 

I am only going to show a few of these tags as examples.  There is a tag for each job that has a response sheet.  Here are a few examples:

 

 

 

I hope that you give Literature Circles a try in your own classroom!  They are truly fantastic and a great opportunity for students to learn how to work together and collaborate. If you do buy my pack please let me know how it works in your classroom!!