Just Right Review---Gallery Style

Room #7 has been so busy this week.  Two words....Report Cards!  I must say that I love seeing the growth as I fill each one out, but doing one for each of my 27 littles is e.x.h.a.u.s.t.i.n.g!  I have just a little bit more and I will be finished.

I think I can.  I think I can...right?   :)

One of the areas that my littles needed a review on was how to choose a just right book.  We covered this earlier in the year, but for some reason it hasn't stuck as much I had hoped.  It's so hard for the littles to self-select just right books sometimes.  It is especially hard when they have friends that are reading chapter books and they aren't ready.  So, I decided that we needed a refresher on why just right books are important and how to check to see if a book is too easy, just right or challenging.  I split my class into 5 groups.  Each group began at a table with large piece of bulletin board paper with either a question or a topic. Each student had a marker and they were instructed to write what they knew about the question or topic on the paper.  I rotated the groups around so that they got to visit each paper.  It looked a little like this:



 



I learned a lot about what my littles knew about just right books and I also learned where their confusions were.  The posters were great reference points for the next few days for me to use to review.  The littles loved it when I made reference to something that they added to the poster.  Here are a few up close pics of some of their thoughts:

 

The littles really liked being so involved in this gallery style activity.  Even my reluctant students participated.  It was nice to be able to engage everyone at once. 

 

 

After we reviewed Just Right Books, I made posters to put near our classroom library as a reminder.  Our general classroom rule is that a bookbox should contain 1 too easy book, 1 challenging book, and atleast 5 just right books.  Here are the posters :)