Drawing Conclusions with Officer Buckle

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 from a wonderful website I discovered
a few years ago, Mrs. Saunder's Third Grade Website, in our literacy centers.
Jessica Saunders has a wonderful site loaded with ideas and resources!  I love her
chapter book trifolds and use some of them with my literature circles.

We've also been working with the syllables -tion & -ture in our word work center.
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!