Nonfiction Celebration

For the past month, we've been reading nonfiction texts and learning how to move from thinking about topics to thinking about main ideas that are supported with facts and details (i.e. evidence) from the text.

To celebrate this hard work, students chose a page of notes from their reader's notebook that they were particularly proud of and created a visual that taught an idea from the text with evidence. They added color to show meaning and may have included visuals. The work on each student's poster came from their notes on their nonfiction reading.

Before our celebration, students practiced teaching their reading partner and gave and received feedback to improve their presentation. They presented their posters to a group of three classmates. We ended the celebration with a gallery walk to share our notes and posters with the whole class.

The video below includes photos of the posters created as well as a few moments of the teaching happening.

The Debater by Sophie

For the past two months in class we have been doing two or three debates.

In the debates, first we read a book together as a class, having two ideas about the character and collecting evidence about why that character is being that way.

The photo above is of Sophie's evidence for two conflicting ideas, that the tree is strong and the tree is weak. She collected the evidence as we read The Giving Tree.

After that, we share some of our evidence with our reading partner. Soon, after that, we get in a caucus and order our evidence. Later, we get with our debate partner and we both get about two minutes to speak. Then we get with our caucus and figure out ways to fight back. After that, we get back with our debate partner and say what we came up with with our partners.

I think this is a good way to learn about perspectives because it teaches us that there is no wrong or right answer and many people can have different perspectives. Maybe if you get fifty people in a room, maybe they could all have different perspectives about the same thing.

The video above contains images and video from a recent debate. The video was compiled by Sophie.