Anchor Chart

I keep seeing all these SUPER cute anchor charts on Pinterest, and decided as part of my "getting organized summer", I was going to make some anchor charts too.  Teaching about nouns happens at the beginning of third grade, so here is the noun anchor chart I made:

**VERY IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE:  my drawing abilities are very often surpassed by the abilities of my third grade students.  Third graders, I have found, are amazing little artists!

 I need to find out how other teachers have used their anchor charts in their classrooms!  How do you use yours?

Mystery Reader

A couple of years ago I was looking at the cool teaching blogs on Scholastic, and came across the idea of Mystery Readers on Beth Newingham's blog.  She has some pretty incredible ideas, and I was very excited to try having Mystery Readers in my classroom.  BOY am I glad I did!!  The Kiddos ATE IT UP!  

If I were to think of the top five things that contribute to my students becoming lovers of reading, Mystery Readers would without a doubt be one of them!

Every Friday, after lunch, I have a Mystery Reader come and knock on our classroom door.  Our class Mayor (or leader) for the week answers the door and let's our Mystery Reader in.  The kiddos are always SUPER excited to see who the Mystery Reader will be.

I try to get a wide variety of Mystery Readers to visit our classroom; parents, school personal, special community helpers and my personal friends and family.  We have even "Skyped" with one of my favorite authors in New York City.

Before a Mystery Reader comes into our classroom, I ask them to do four things:

1. To pick a children's book they love, or help me to find one for them.  If they love it, so will my students.
2. To tell my students about why they love reading and how it has been important in their lives.
3. To tell my students about the job they have and how being a good reader is vital to their job.
4. To explain to my students why getting an education was important to them and encourage my students to go to college.  

Can we say, "four birds with one stone".  That's how we teachers roll :).

Here is an example of a Mystery Reader.  One of my sweet friends works at a nearby zoo.  One year she brought a 60 pound tortoise to class and read a book about a turtle.  She explained how much she loved reading, and without it, she would never have been able to read the important books about how to take care of animals.  She also talked about getting a degree in biology and told my students if they wanted to work with animals, they definitely needed to go to college and be good readers.  

Do you think the kiddos were paying attention?  YEP!

Another one of my friends works in the athletic department at a nearby University.  She was great!  She talked about some of the athletes the kids were familiar with and then asked them the question, "What do you think is one of the MOST important things these athletes do in order to play at a University?"  The kids responded with, "Work out!",  "Practice!!" or "Run" etc...   My friend responded, "All those things are very important, but they would never be able to play at the University if they weren't good readers, and they didn't study hard everyday.  If they don't get good grades, they don't get to stay on the team."  

The little athlete kiddos in my class were listening, I guarantee it. 

Before a Mystery Reader leaves, I take a picture and put it on the bulletin board in our classroom library.  The pictures stays up all year long.  If possible, I also place the book our Mystery Reader read in a special place in the classroom.  This quickly becomes the most popular and wanted book of the week.

Mystery Readers pack a wallop!  The kids think it is great and it makes my job of getting students to love reading a lot easier.  What are some of the ways you get your kiddos become lovers of reading?

Reading Stamina

I have to show you my favorite tool for reading stamina. It's just a little tool, with a big attitude. Okay, it doesn't really have an attitude, but it helped change my students attitude towards recording our reading stamina time. I like it for the following reasons:

1. It has a large magnet on the back and sticks right to the white board. The amount of time remaining is visible to the entire class.

2. The minutes are posted in 5 minute increments like a clock. I point this out to my students and it helps with learning to tell time.

3. It has a slight ticking sound that helps cue my students that it is time for reading. It just lulls them right into reading time. They become accustomed to the sound and even during DEAR time they beg to have the timer on. I love things that are cues for my students and help establish procedures.

I found this on Amazon.com.

As our class increases our reading stamina time, I write the number of minutes we have read on the white board next to the clock. I made this simple box to record minutes with. I just tape it to my white board next to the clock. Each day we add a few more minutes. We decide as a class how long we want to read for that day, and then write the actual minutes read in the box.

Click here to download a free copy: 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0tk6JUgU7jqNzFvc0lLSVZTWU0/edit?usp=sharing

My Students love taking turns being in charge of setting the timer and changing our recorded minutes. It's simple, but I love it and so do the kiddos.