Kathy Bumgardner

Juli and I were lucky enough to attend another workshop by Kathy Bumgardner. She is full of great ideas. If you are looking for ideas and help for Reader's Workshop, her website is a GREAT resource. Click HERE to go to her site. We learned a lot from her last year. Our favorites are:

SUMMARY TOOLS - the summary approach where students follow the prompt to summarize a reading selection. The students really took to the one for fiction literature - Someone Wanted But So Then.  When asking a student to summarize last year and they would give me that blank look (you know the one!), I would just say Someone Wanted But So Then. They would immediately be able to completely give me a summary.  It is the perfect support for students learning to summarize on their own.  This along with other great stuff can be found by following the link to her website - FREE!

FICTION & NONFICTION ROLL UP - another great resource we used a lot last year.  We printed each component on a separate piece of paper, taped together, and laminated. Students would "walk" down the roll up giving the information for each component. We did it as a class together at first so students became more confident and began to do this on their own.  This is another thing you can get directly from her website.

This year she had a ton of new ideas.  My favorite though is COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATION STARTERS because this helps solve a problem I had last year.  Whenever I would have the students Turn and Talk about the selection we had just read, the conversations were so lame!  I got really frustrated with the situation and would attempt to model my expectations, but nothing seemed to make much difference.  She has created the cards for the both the reader and the listener to use when discussing a text. They have to use one of the prompts when discussing the text, which helps reduce lame responses where the student is just going through the motions.  The prompts range from "I wonder" to "I believe ____because..." to ""Can you show me the text evidence that shows____?"  If you don't want to make cards for each student, this concept could easily be put into an anchor chart when you are first introducing workshop expectations.

Her website has so many amazing things (free to download) like literacy extension cards, literacy CD wheels, think clouds, fix up strategies, and so much more!  If you are in need to support in reading, this website is a wonderful resource for you.  We will hopefully be seeing more of Kathy this year and will be sure to pass on any great tips she shares.  Let us know if you have any questions about what we have shared with you. We would love to help!
Heather

Books, Books, and More Books!!!

Whew, this has been such a busy summer.  I have three kids ages 6,5, and 4 and I have always looked forward to the summers when they are older because they will be easier than when they were smaller.  I am pleased that summer time is getting easier with my kids, but now it is just getting busier!  Not to mention we started our summer off with my 4 year old breaking her arm!  I had such high hopes for my summer and getting ahead of the game with teachers pay teachers stuff, book organizing, and blogging.  So today, I decided I would start with one of those chores.  Book organizing and leveling.  With the adoption of both the common core and readers workshop, one goal I set for myself was to completely level my classroom library.  My mom and I began this arduous process last summer and got a lot of the way through!  Unfortunately, I did not keep the work up during the school year and I am still NOT DONE!  I want to go into the school year organized and ready for all of my books to be in the hands of my students.  I first had to choose a leveling system for me.  I got my inspiration from Beth Newingham HERE.  That woman is amazing!  I made my own colors and got tons of baskets.  Now I am onto looking up my books on Scholastics' Book Wizard tool.  While I was perusing Pinterest the other day, I came across a pin for Classroom Booksource.  Have you all seen this website!?!?!

 It is absolutely amazing.  On the website you can type in the ISBN numbers of your books and it will add the book to your classroom library.  You can choose the information you want listed with the book.  Guided Reading level, AR book, ect.  For some they already have the Guided Reading level listed, others you may have to add yourself.  So I have just had both classroom booksource and book wizard up at the same time.  They also have an APP for your smart phone that allows you to SCAN the barcode of your books and add it to your classroom library!  AMAZING!!!  The really cool thing is that it gives you the option of choosing a location of the book.  So I can put the basket that the book is housed in.  As it compiles the library it makes it possible for you to use the site as a check out and check in system.  You can add a list of students names.  You can also put requirements for check out.  How many they can check out at a time, a required review at time of check in.  It tracks the check outs as well, so you can see the types and levels of the books your kids are checking out.  I am really excited about this new program.  So today while my kids were doing this...  I got this done...


It is going to take lots of time, but I think if I do several baskets a day, it will fly by!  While I was doing it today, I thought I'd jump on here and let you all know about it as well!  Happy Book Leveling!

Juli