Must Read Mentor Texts

Wow 3 days in a row, must be some sort of record!!!!  Today I am linking up Stacia and Amanda from Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Texts linky.

I love using mentor texts in my classroom and have so many to choose from it is hard to pick just one!  But if I must choose, I would pick:

I.LOVE.THIS.BOOK!

Last year I did Hope King's Trick or Treat book reports and one of my kiddos did Elephant and Piggie by him and I found this book and never looked back!  

Quick Overview: A toddler named Trixie goes with her daddy to the laundromat and while they are there she loses her stuffed bunny.  This leads them on a chase to try and find him.  The little girl is too small to speak in the book, so the author uses various letters to convey her talking.  Finally they locate the bunny in the washer and the little girl says her first word -Knuffle Bunny!  

The author goes through lots of dramatic tellings of how Trixie acted when her daddy couldn't understand what she was saying.  They are great!  

  My school is focusing on monthly comprehension strategies and retelling was up first.  I chose to use this book in my presentation as my model.  This book is great to show your thinking while reading.  

What is your go to mentor text???  Link yours up!!

Lucy + Me = BFF, and freebies!!!

I am on cloud 9!!!  I had the awesome pleasure of being able to attend the Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Writing Workshop on Monday.  Amber and I rode down with Ellen and Danielle (2 other Instructional Facilitators) Sunday afternoon and spent the evening in Columbia.  Dinner was at California Dreaming, which was yummy.  The restaurant is in an old train depot, which is so neat!

Amber and I with our Pinnacle Buddy, Carla!

Next we headed out to Wet Willie's, which is basically an adult slushy bar!

What's not to love about that????

We had a great time relaxing and hanging out with other teachers.  But the highlight of the event was definitely seeing Lucy!!!!  She went over the new units of study, and spent a lot of time discussing the new opinion units.  I loved hearing her speak and being so real.  You could tell she was a teacher at heart.  I am so excited about using these new units next year!

When were waiting in line to speak to her, I was sooooo nervous!!!!  When we were up, I'm pretty sure I managed to mutter out something like, "I'm so excited to meet you!  My teaching has been revolutionized by the Reading and Writing Workshop!!!"  At least in my head that is what it sounded like.  This was honestly the highlight of my educational career so far!  

I came back to school and it was back to the grind as usual.  We are having PD tomorrow on Retelling, so I whipped up some freebies that you can use if you want!  

They are in my Google Drive, so just click on the pics to download them!  

Check out the awesome treat I made for my teachers just for attending our PD today!!!  Don't you wish you were in my PD!

As an added bonus for all my amazing followers, I am having a Sale at my TPT and TN through Sunday!  Enjoy 20% off at both!

I Got Skills Linky Party

I'm joining up with my bloggy bff Amber at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher for her Reading skills linky.

I love teaching reading and began teaching shared reading based on skills without a basal reader last year.  The skill I want to share with you today is summarizing.  This is always a difficult skill to teach my 3rd graders.  I was introduced to using foldables in my classroom several years ago and it has become much easier.  I like to use George and Martha to teach this skill.  If you haven't read this book, you are missing out!

It includes 4-5 short stories in one book which allows for me to use the same book all week.  The first day I read aloud the first story and model for the kids how I summarize.  Here are a few examples of organizers I have used in my classroom

From Wendy at One Happy Teacher

 From Jen at Runde's Room

After modeling how to write down something in each of the categories, I model how to take that information and write a brief 1-2 sentences about the story.  The next few days are spent practicing this skill using the other George and Martha stories with their reading partner.  My students use foldables during this practice. 

From Kathy at kbumreading

These are great because they can be used with any genre!  When working on summarizing, I try to focus on it during my minilesson for Reading Workshop, Shared Reading and in Guided Reading.  

Hope that these helpful hints make teaching this skill easier!