This week I used one of my favorite books, Officer Buckle and Gloria,
to teach about drawing conclusions. We’ve talked a lot about inferring and how
authors often give hints and clues that tell readers more than what they are directly saying.
Most of my kiddos are really starting to”read between the lines”
(Lions, as they love to say!) and go beyond the surface details to find other meanings,
but getting them to the point where they not only think about their
thinking, but are able to verbalize and then write about it is still pretty tricky.
One thing I know for sure is, that I can’t expect my kids to talk about something if I haven’t
given them the vocabulary to do so. And so we are continually adding to our thinking
repertoire “smart words” like metacognition, schema, inferring, context….you get the picture!
After reading Officer Buckle and Gloria we talked about how we can learn more and gain
a deeper understanding of the story by drawing conclusions about the different events
even when the author doesn’t fully explain them. My kiddos each described a story event
and then wrote about the conclusions they drew from them.
We used these reading response trifolds in our small groups. You can find a similar Officer Buckle trifold here.
These activities are from my Action Adventures pack.
Have you seen these? My kids LOVE them! I got mine from a vendor called Books Are Fun
that sets up a display in our teacher workroom each month, but you can also get them
at Toys-R-Us and Target online. We use them for word working and my kids build spelling
and vocabulary words, make anagrams and find the value of their words. I assign vowels
and consonants each a value depending on what we are working on in math.
(ex: C=2, V=10 or C=20, V=100)
I have to warn you, though, that 26 dice hitting a desk makes quite a racket! I started using
these dice trays when I taught Kindergarten to cut down on the noise as well as to keep
the dice from rolling across the floor whenever my little ones used them. I cut a piece of foam
to fit inside a shoe box lid and *VOILA* no more noise or chasing dice!
I’m linking up with the wonderful Amanda at Teaching Maddeness for her
Friday Flashback, even though it’s Sunday! Better late than never, right?
Click on the button to check out Amanda’s blog and all of the great ideas
happening in some fantastic classrooms!
I hope you’re all having a restful 3-day weekend!
I LOVE Officer Buckle and Gloria! It's one of my all-time favorites as well – I'll definitely need to try your inferring activity.
I also really like your quiet dice strategy – very resourceful!
~Jessica
Joy in the Journey
My kids always love this story! Are you a Houghton Mifflin school by any chance?
Thanks for the tip on those trifolds! I need to get your Action Adventure unit, it looks awesome!
Maribel
Learning In Wonderland
Hi Maribel! Yes, we use Houghton Mifflin. With our transition to Common Core we have mixed things up a bit though, trying to tie together as much as we can to science and social studies. We've skipped stories and added others, but kept all of the skills in place.
Are you in a state that is now using Common Core? I haven't looked into this yet, but I read on Hello Literacy blog (love Jen Jones!) that there is a project hosted on a site called Edmodo that is aligning basal series' to Common Core. Apparently there are a lot of resources as well.
Sounds interesting, huh?
Linda –
I love any opportunity to bring back Officer Buckle! It is such a wonderful story!! Love how the stars have a combination of information from the story an the kiddos conclusions/thoughts!
And, the foam in the shoe box top??? LOVE! We have Books Are Fun come visit us, too! Right now they have three hardcover Llama Llama books for $12. Such great deals!
Thanks, as always, for sharing your wonderfulness!
Smiles – Lisa
Growing Firsties
This comment has been removed by the author.
LOVE! We just did Officer Buckle and Gloria from our reading series last week. Our skill was using pictures to learn information but I SO could have tied in Drawing Conclusions as well! I am pining this for next year! Thanks!
Christina 🙂
Apples, Books, and Crayons
applesbooksandcrayons@gmail.com
Hi Lisa! Officer Buckle is definitely a keeper! It lends itself to so many 2nd grade ELA Common Core standards!
Don't ya just love the Books Are Fun cookbooks? I spend waaaaay to much money when they visit!!
I'm so glad you found something you can use in your classroom, Christine!
Hi! I love this lesson and was looking for the link to the tri fold, but it goes to a site for investing. Any ideas on how to find it? Thank you!
Hi Nicole!
Apparently this teacher no longer hosts her original website. I found a similar trifold on Teachers Pay Teachers that I linked in the post. I hope this helps and thanks so much for asking!
What is that saying? "Necessity is the mother of all invention."
Teachers are the greatest when it comes to that, don't you think?
Yes, I am also in AZ 🙂 I will have to look this Edmodo thing up. We use the HM series as well so in second grade so I recognized this story instantly because it's one of my favorites! We are also tying in tons of science and social studies with information text. We haven't decided on skipping any stories yet, but I'm sure that's coming. Out of curiosity, which stories did you leave out?
What a great idea! I love all of the centers that your kids do. 🙂
Jennifer
Darling Little Learners