Forming Questions & A Hippos Freebie

Last week read the cutest book about an amazing pair of friends called Own and Mzee: Language of Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumbu and Peter Greste (whew!) I chose it not only because I love the story, but it also provided an example of hippo related non-fiction and lends itself to some good text-to-text connections to the story George and Martha Round and Round from our reading series. 

We made this chart to compare some of the  features of fiction and nonfiction.

We've also been working on forming relevent questions about a text for a couple of weeks now and this week we moved in to forming thick questions and discussing the difference between the two.  I wish I could find the link to share these little charts.  I've used them for quite a few years now. I think they originally came from Beth Newingham but all of the links I could find have been removed.

Students wrote thin and thick questions about our two books on index cards and added them to

the pocket chart.  We also made these little flap books

Students wrote questions on the flaps that they could ask a partner to check their understanding of details in the text.   Under the title flap they wrote a thick question to discussand then used these during Read to Someone.

{Click here}if you'd like a copy of this little flap book.

It's pretty simple, but I thought I'd share in case it might be helpful to someone.  :0)

I'm linking up with Teaching Maddeness for a Friday Flashback!

What have you been doing in your classroom this week? Head on over and link up!