Nonfiction in Science

Wow, I cannot believe that it has been two months since I have last blogged.  This school year has been one of the most hectic and stressed that I can remember.  I hope that this feeling of being completely overwhelmed soon disappears!  Anyway, enough of the whining and onward to using nonfiction in science.

I am currently teaching two AIG (gifted) language arts classes, one standard science class, and one inclusion science science.  I am thoroughly loving it all, just hoping that I am doing all four groups justice.

Since my background has mostly been language arts in  middle school, my strengths lie there.  I think that science is the perfect place to teach those nonfiction text features and structures. 

In North Carolina in 7th grade, we teach weather and climate.  My inclusion class was struggling with the concepts associated with the topic. As I was meandering through the picture book section of Barnes and Noble, I stumbled across the book Climate Change by Peter Benoit.  As I sat (yes, in the kiddy section of Barnes and Noble) and read this book to see if it was something I could use, I had many ideas running through my head.  I bought the five copies they had on the shelf and had them order me three more so that my students could work in groups of fours. 

The book is written with several different text structures:  cause/effect, problem/solution, question/answer, and description.  Along with finding these text structures, it had many of the nonfiction text features we have been studying.  Students used their copies of the nonfiction text features cards created by Beth Newingham to identify the parts of the text to make reading it a little easier. 

For one section, students were given enough sticky notes so they would have three per subheading.  While reading each section, students were required to write in their own words three facts/ideas/pieces of information, one per each sticky note. 

Students really enjoyed this activity and seemed to actually learn the information they discovered while reading the book.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well they did with this activity and how much information they retained after reading. 

As you can see in the pictures below, there are three other adults in the room with this class.  There are an inclusion teacher, a student intern, a one-on-one assistant for two of my autistic students, and myself with 24 students.  Even with that many adults in the room, we feel wiped-out and unsure of any progress after working with that class each day. 



Climate Change by Peter Benoit

Students working on reading and taking notes on their sticky notes in their interactive notebooks.

More note taking...



Intern working with a group of students.

Another groups of students using sticky notes to take notes in their interactive notebooks.

Inclusion teacher working with a group of students reading Climate  Change.

One-on-one assistant working with two of our autistic students.

My group of girls working together to take notes and understand our climate. 



Enjoy and hopefully it won't be another two months until the next post.

Randy

Really?

Really?  That has become our new catch phrase in my class this year.  I suppose it is inevitable since I use that word often all of the time.  I just have to shake my head and laugh about it when I hear a student say it.  At this point in the year, I honestly do not even have a chance to get the word in my brain before one of my students have already uttered it in some sarcastic tone.  I am so glad that they "get" me and my humor - that was a concern when I moved from 7th grade to 6th grade this year (actually not by me, but by a fellow 6th grade teacher).  I did not let it bother me very much, she is a newer teacher and I HAVE taught 2nd and 5th grades prior to middle school.

Anyway, I am going to share one funny from my class right before spring break before I post some more interactive notebook pictures.  I hope you are ready for it...it IS epic and was a proud moment for the sarcastic teacher that I am.

Let me set the stage...I had a female student who was leaving about 1/2 hour early.  We were dismissing at noon that day (and it was my birthday).  Names have been changed to protect the innocent. 

John (boy student):  Sally, please take me with you.
Sally (girl student):  Sorry John, I didn't bring my leash today.
Me:  Laughing out Loud in the back of the room (with the rest of the class) and issuing a proud fist pump or two.

Ok, so now on to more interactive notebooks.  Have I mentioned how much I love these things?  They really have helped keep me focused and centered this year.  I really wish someone would write a book about them to be used in a language arts classroom.

This is a foldable we created on Knots in My Yo-yo String by Jerry Spinelli.  It is from a Dinah Zike book called Notebooking Central Notebook Foldables Strategies for Comprehending and Interacting with Informational Text.

This is just a practice paragraph where each student wrote their own, but the neat thing is the sticky note at the bottom.  I figured out how to print on a couple different sizes of sticky notes.  Each student was given a sticky note to use to check their paragraphs.  Love these!!

This is a window foldable that was created using another Dinah Zike book, Notebook Foldables for Spirals, Binders, & Composition Books.  This was on changing singular nouns to plurals.

This is just a summarization page from out notebooks.  We worked on different summarization strategies for students to use.

Another summarization strategy glued into our notebooks taken from our SIOP training.

And here is another foldable from Dinah Zike for students to use for summarizing.  In addition, I found a story pyramid summary that students can use in their summarization efforts.

 Hope this post has not completely bored you to death.  Stay tuned for more pictures...and details on an AWESOME find that I well...found...to help make students notebooks just a little more organized.  Did I mention how much I LOVE being organized???