What if our Characters were on Social Media?

 Let's face it - all of our students (okay most) are active  participants of social media daily. I can testify this is true about my class because I get a follow request from one every day! I decided to apply their love (and admiration) for social media to our literature circles. Small groups are finishing up their small book clubs and as they finish, I've asked students to draw conclusions about their characters and imagine what it would be life if they had a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page. I heavily stressed the importance of making the posts, comments, and pictures represent what happened IN the story. I prompted my kids with questions like, "what would their friends post on their wall? What events from the story would be shared on their page?" It was great overhearing the conversations and analysis of the characters after reading the book. 

Below the pictures you will find the links to each template I used. 

Needless to say, the kids have LOVED this activity and have asked to complete more!

 

Fakebook Template

Twitter Template

Instagram Template 

How you do you integrate social media into your instruction? Share with me!

Seuss Lovin'

I absolutely adore Dr. Seuss. With the famous Dr's 108th birthday approaching this Friday, I know many schools are planning to celebrate Read Across America day. I managed to squeeze in Dr. Seuss fun with my second graders last year, but sadly I won't be able to devote an entire day to Dr. Seuss goodness and fun in 5th grade.

Have no fear! I will find time to wiggle in some Seuss love throughout the week.

First, I stumbled upon two videos that I believe will have my fifth grade boys and girls on edge. Up first, we have the Biebs reading a Seuss classic, "The Cat in the Hat".

Maybe your boys might moan and groan... but wait! Tim Tebow comes to the rescue reading "Green Eggs and Ham"! I'm tebowing in my living room to show my excitement.

I keep pinning and pinning and pinnnnnninggg so many cute Seuss activities. Here are some of my favorites. Click the caption to head to the blog for more information!

Yum! Fancy Frugal Life.

Gobs of Seuss Activities

Throughout my vicious pinning this evening, I kept stumbling upon great quotes from Dr. Seuss. I've always been fond of his way with words and then it clicked! My students are working hard to infer theme and messages from authors. Why not use the Dr. this week? I pulled a few of the most popular quotes and made a little inferring activity for my kiddos. My plan is to just use one a day for a quick think-pair-share inference activity to get our brains thinking for communication arts. We'll see how it goes.

Plus, I feel really awesome because I'm making it available to my friends in blog land through Scribd. Enjoy!

SeussInferringQuotes

What do you have planned to honor our favorite doctor of rhyme?

That's a FACT!

How many days until Christmas break? Not that I'm counting down or anything...

Anyway! The past week or so, we have been focusing on Fact and Opinion. I wanted to find a super-duper-fantastic idea that would leave my kiddos begging for fact and opinion daily, but I came up short. Many google and pinterest searches came up inconclusive. So! I racked my brain and came up with an idea of my own. Shocker! I didn't know I was capable of this anymore.

I'm a big big BIG fan of anchor charts. I don't know what it is, but I love rallying the troops around the carpet and charting information on a piece of chart paper together. Maybe it's the second grade teacher in me. Anyway, I love it. My original plan was to create an anchor chart for fact and opinion, create our own definitions and write examples... blah blah.  (I say "blah blah" like its a bad thing, but I still highly enjoy that idea!)

I decided to give the anchor chart a little face lift. Paging Dr. Paul Nassif (RHOBH, anyone?)!

Using a bulletin board, I created a giant T-Chart with border and my cricut. One side labeled, "Fact" and the other "Opinion".

First, we ironed our own definitions of fact and opinion and wrote those on chart paper. Then, using sentence strips I modeled writing down an example of an opinion. My opinion statement was, "I believe the Grinch is the best Christmas movie, ever!" We discussed why this was my opinion and it couldn't be proven true. Then, I handed the sentence strips over to the kiddos and let them write! They were chomping at the bit to write down examples of facts and opinions. We were writing, stapling, writing examples, and stapling some more. It was super interactive and high energy in my classroom for the entire lesson!

Yes, 3x3=9

Eh, Football is okay!

Overall, it was a pretty fun lesson and now we have our stellar bulletin board to refer to. Anyone have any other great ideas for fact and opinion? Send them my way!

Have you seen my friend Ashley's delightful blog One Fine Day? If you haven't, you should head over because she's hosting her first giveaway! She's a talented blogger and if you aren't following her, you must start NOW!

Smitten & Swell