Author's Purpose and a Little Catch-Up!

Hello all!  Isn't the beginning of the school year just crazy?!  Has it always been this crazy?!  This post is going to be a little long, because I feel like I have so much to catch up on!  And I am using way too many exclamation points!!!  Anyway.....

Common Core really emphasizes digging deeper into the text.  It's very hard to motivate students to do just that.  It's a lot of work!  This year, I decided to really push the fact that they have to be reading detectives.  

I thought this little book was great for teaching what detectives do in a fun and relatable way for them.  We brainstormed what detectives do after reading the story.


I knew they had to have something that made them feel like a detective.  Last year, I made little badges for the different skills, but I found these super cute hat templates online for free!  I just cut out the hat image and attached it to a sentence strip.  You can find them {HERE}.  Such a cute little resource and the kids LOVED them!  


Our comprehension skill this week was author's purpose.  I am going to try to post the resources I use each week for reading on the blog.  

One resource I used was my own.  I made several different author's purpose graphic organizer templates.  One was a flap book.  


We used it with our anchor text for the week and talked about looking for text evidence to back up the author's purpose.  They actually were all about it.  I think the hats won them over!



Here are some cute songs we used to learn about author's purpose.







These are some of the resources I use to practice author's purpose.




We also worked on the 4 types of sentences.  These are some cute videos to use.





And some more pics from our week.  By the way, I am having trouble fitting everything from Journeys into one week.  Are any of you?  One teacher at our school is teaching the lesson for 6 days and then testing on the 7th.  I am thinking about going to this, too.  This past week was a 4 day week for our students and so is next week, so I am stretching out this week's lesson over both weeks.  




We also had our Back to School night this past week.  


We wrote our five whole brain rules using Angie's template from her David Learns the School Rules pack.  I just constructed these pencils in a hurry from scrapbook paper.  Her David craftivity is super cute!



We made some other stuff, too, but of course I forgot to take a picture of it!


Rayann saw this idea on Pinterest.  So, I cut us out some letters with my Silhouette.  I thought it turned out pretty cute!  


We have been working hard on vocabulary.  Here is one making flash cards to help him remember his words.  I have them draw a picture to help them learn and retain the meanings.



I got these little accordion files in the Target Dollar Spot.  They keep their vocabulary cards, letter tiles, math facts, incentive coupons, and any other flash cards in this.  They can just pull it out when they have downtime and study.  

I think that's it!  Thanks for sticking around for my rambling!  Lol!


Have a great long weekend!!!




















2 comments

  1. Wow, what an informative and generous posting...those detective hats will be a big hit! Thank you so much for sharing your all of your brilliance!

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