Solve the Room (again!)

I posted about Solve the Room back in January and I'm here to share some more...

Those of you who don't know about Solve the Room... you might know about it but just call it something different... Read the Room.... Scoot.... Roam the Room.

It is a very easy to implement... you put cards up around the room (by mid-year or earlier I have my kiddos put up and take down cards)...

Give students an answer sheet & a clipboard... (all of my Solve the Room products have a similar answer sheet like this one...)

And then let your students move about solving the room!

Solve the Room is DEFINITELY something I have to model at the beginning of the year... Voices are off (unless you're asking a friend quietly for help to find a card), look at the card, figure out the answer, then record - in the correct box! The modeling time pays off because after one or two sets of Solve the Room cards, my students can do this completely independently during Math rotations, allowing me to teach the small group in front of me without putting out any fires, and that makes for a happy teacher!

Clicking here will bring you to my TPT store with the search "Solve the Room" already plugged in. You'll find Solve the Room products that will work with grades 1, 2 and 3.

And here are some of my newest Solve the Room products - great for 1st and 2nd grade!

And if you want all these at a reduced price, bundled together...

Do you use solve the room in your class? Let me know in the comments!

Solve the Room

I'm sitting here on this snowy afternoon adding to some of my TPT products, and thought it would be fun to talk about Solve the Room in my classroom.

You might call it Scoot or Read the Room or Write the Room or Roam the Room... in my room we call it Solve the Room.

I have created and downloaded lots of these activities and my kiddos LOVE them! I am all about learning while moving and motor breaks and brain breaks and lots of transitions to keep them up and moving. I usually make Solve the Room a rotation during math Workshop. It is usually the favorite rotation.

Right now I only use Solve the Room for math, but I'd love for any thoughts you wonderful readers have about using these types of activities in reading or writing!

I want to share some of the products I've created and are tried, true and tested in my room and my grade level partners' rooms!

Solve the Room Addition...

Solve the Room Subtraction...

Solve the Room Money...

Solve the Room Time...

 Solve the Room Place Value...

Check these products out! My kiddos love them and they align with CCSS standards in our math units that I use them in. I hope you either like these products or are motivated to create your own to get your kiddos moving around the room and doing math at the same time!

Non Fiction Text Features

I'm super excited to share a sequence of lessons that I co-taught with our amazing reading teacher at my school! We were working on nonfiction text features...

We called each of the lessons a "mission" so here's Mission 1...

The kiddos were read the Mission 1 sheet that is in my TPT product (click product image above). It basically told the kiddos that they would work in groups to go on a scavenger hunt and create a nonfiction text feature poster.

We had 5 groups of 3-4 kiddos and myself and our reading teacher walked around, talking to the kiddos about what they were noticing.

Some of the kiddos were super insightful saying they found lots of headings because there were so many different articles or that they noticed that almost all the photographs had captions. There was also a lot of discussion about the nonfiction text features they couldn't find and why.

They loved the freedom they were given to explore nonfiction text features. Their finished products were pretty great too!

Mission 2

For mission 2, we gave the kiddos 1-page articles with all the nonfiction text features blocked out. I used Times for Kids articles, but you could use anything that is short. You could even retype the article if that was easier.

The kiddos' job was to figure out what they thought was missing which led to a discussion about WHY they thought these text features would be important.
After this mission we had a class discussion about how each of the text features would help the reader and I revealed the original articles to the pairs.

Mission 3

For our last mission, which I used as an activity AND an assessment for nonfiction text features, consisted of kiddos looking for nonfiction text features and explaining why they are important. Each kiddo picked out a nonfiction text, and recorded 4 nonfiction text features they found and why that text feature was important.

Students then paired off and shared what they thought about the nonfiction text features. I loved how when they got to the sharing part that many of the groups actually went into the text to talk about the text features they chose.

The kiddos had a lot of fun with these "missions" and it really helped them to learn the nonfiction text features. The only other suggestion I have that I think helped the kiddos a lot is that I've had them give me a thumbs up during every nonfiction read aloud when they saw a nonfiction text feature. I would stop after every page or so and call on a student with their thumbs up and ask him or her to explain how that text feature helped us as readers.

I hope you can use one or more of these ideas to teach nonfiction text features in your classroom!

SALE

Check out the sale on Teachers Pay Teachers starting tomorrow and ending Tuesday!

My whole store is 20% off!!! Plus additional % off if you use the code on the banner!
And who doesn't love a sale!!!

5 for... Saturday?

I totally am losing track of days... my district is amazing and I've been off since Wednesday... and all of  a sudden it's Saturday... oops!

I am going to share some of the fun stuff we did for Thanksgiving on Tuesday!

We read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving & made retell turkey hats! I got the turkey hat pattern freebie from Hollie Griffith's TPT store!

Then we read Turkey Trouble & disguised our own turkeys... the kiddos LOVED this!

We also made these adorable thankful turkeys... and one of my kiddos made me one with all the things he thought I'd be thankful for, too cute!

I started a little Christmas decorating! Gotta love the Target $1 bin... that's where I found these adorable little ornaments.

And finally... check out my TPT store for 20% off everything Cyber Monday (&Tuesday) sale!

Have a marvelous remainder of your weekend!

Book Talk Tuesday: Bats!

After being MIA for a week... I'm linking up with Mrs. Jump for Book Talk Tuesday...

We've been doing lots about BATS in my classroom over the past week and a half or so.
We started off by reading the well-known: Stellaluna.

We read the beginning of the story together (up until when Stellaluna falls into the bird nest) stopped and made a prediction. We then continued reading and students had to identify if their prediction came true or not. If it didn't they had to tell what really happened.

The next day, we retold the story aloud using our Whole Brain Teaching retell gestures... check out #3 on this 5 for Friday post if you're interested in the gestures. We then reread the story and used this retelling scaffold freebie from me to retell the story in writing. It was the first independent retell my kiddos have done, which is why we used the scaffold. Some of my students will use this scaffold for the better part of the year. Others are already ready for less structure.

We reread the end of the story on the third day of Stellaluna to identify the author's message. We also worked together to find proof of the author's message.

Finally, our book buddies came on their usual Friday mornings but instead of reading with us, helped us make these cute bat crafts. I got these templates free from A Cupcake for the Teacher here.

After we were done with Stellaluna, we moved onto what we Know & Want to Learn about bats. We did a class KWL & then the kiddos created their own. I make sure my students ask a question for the "want to learn" section.

Today we read Bats by Gail Gibbons, whose nonfiction texts I've raved about here. The text is short enough and interesting enough for kiddos to sit through the entire thing! ALSO in the same sitting *gasp* my kiddos were just about jumping out of their seats each time I answered one of our questions from our W section.

We completed the L section while we read (the text directly or indirectly answered each of our questions) then the kiddos went back to their KWL and answered the questions they had asked (if they could).

Later this week, the kiddos will read leveled texts about bats to complete the organizers in my TPT product below. Next week we will compare birds and bats (also with the organizers from my TPT product). Check out the bats/birds mini-unit below!

I love combining a fiction & nonfiction books into mini "themed" learning! I hope you'll consider going "batty" about learning in your classroom too!