Monday, January 28, 2019
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Blended Book Review
Blended
Sharon M. Draper (Author)
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Middle Grade, Fiction
Publication Date: October, 30, 2018
Isabella switches lives every week. One week she lives
with her dad, his girlfriend, and her son in a very fancy house, and the next
week she lives with her mom and John-Mark in a comfortable house.
She's eleven years old and stuck between two parents who
argue all the time about her, and she's stuck in two different worlds. Switching
houses every week is more than just switching clothes and names (Izzy with her
mom, Isabella with her dad). It's also switching identities.
Isabella is the same person, but her life experiences
with her black dad and her white mom are very different. Isabella and Darren (her dad's girlfriend's
son) are stopped by police, and things escalate quickly when a cell phone is
mistaken for a gun.
Blended packs a lot into a middle grade novel, but kids
deal with these situations everyday: blended families (in race), blended
families (in living situation), questions about who you are, where you belong,
and how others and society perceive you. Blended will hit home for many while offering
insight for those who haven’t experienced these things. It’s a thought-provoking read that middle
grade students will enjoy.
If you’re interested in reading Blended, you can
purchase a copy here on Amazon.
*A copy of this book was provided free of charge for an
honest review.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Use Pictures to Teach and Develop Inference Making Skills
Making inferences can be a tricky skill for students to learn. It can be an especially difficult skill for students who have difficulty decoding and reading fluently at the grade level expectation. Students can spend so much time simply trying to figure out what the words on the page say that by the time they finish reading a passage, they have no idea what they actually read. Comprehension is hard when decoding is hard, and advanced reading skills like making inferences are even harder.
One way to still develop advanced reading skills even with students who are not yet fluent readers is to utilize pictures.
Pictures provide a concrete, accessible avenue for students to dive into advanced skills.
With pictures students can learn, practice, and develop inference making and then transfer those skills to text-based resources as their mastery increases.
The main resource I use to help student develop their inference making skills is: Making Inferences from Pictures
It has 40 weeks worth of high-quality photos. Each week has five photos (one for each day) for a total of 200 pictures altogether.
The best part of the resource is that it is flexible. It can be used as a quick bell-ringer activity to get students seated, working, and thinking. Teachers can also use the lesson to build into larger conversations about inference or utilize narrative writing extension activities.
Have you used these Daily Picture-Based Inference Prompts in your classroom? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section!
