Accordion Books

Well, it was about as close to a snow day as we get today.  Our buses were cancelled today, and because I teach at a fairly rural school, that meant I only had 6 students in my class ... yep, 6.  Don't ask me why they don't cancel school when the buses are off the road - I have no answer for this.  Anyhow, it was a GREAT day with them.  I got them started on a new art project, got my DRA testing done with 6 that were there (and got prepped for the rest of the students), worked on their orals, and got in some more practice with metric conversions.  The grade 7/8 teacher and myself paired up the classes for two full blocks, so we each got some time to ourselves in the classroom, too.  YAY!

With the extra time I had today, I was able to get a lot of marking done in their reading notebooks.  We're still studying inferring with our Chris Van Allsburg unit.   Last week we read The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.  For our weekly summative task, I decided to do a foldable - the kids love them in math, so I figured they'd love them in language, as well.  I had them make an accordion book.  They had to recreate the cover, using the same style of illustrations Chris Van Allsburg used in the book.  For the inside panels they had to cover:

• a summary of the story
• character traits for two characters (with supporting evidence)
• setting (both place and time - inferred from the story)
• a reflection based on the question, "How did the main character's feelings change throughout the story?" (they also had to include supporting evidence from the text).

This was a nice switch from the usual written summary and reflection - and I was right, the kids loved making them (well, love might be a strong word, but they definitely liked them).  ;)

Happy Monday!!!