Iowa Children's Choice Award Read-Aloud Recap

Third, fourth, and fifth graders have recently completed their work with an Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee. (You can read about our pre-reading activities in Google Classroom HERE.)

So what did students do with their read alouds? A whole lot of reading comprehension strategies! Each week we broke down the reading to focus one of five different areas: summarizing, visualizing, making connections, questioning, and determining importance. Each of these was applicable to that week's reading, regardless of the read aloud, which made planning all that much easier.

We started with a summarizing activity called Somebody Wanted...But...So...Then. 

You can access the handout HERE.

We followed up our summarizing work with visualization. Using large pieces of bulletin board paper on the tables, students could draw distinct scenes or images from that day's read aloud. Not surprisingly, papers from class to class depicted similar moments from the reading.

Our work took us back into Google Classroom for an activity related to making connections. As they listened to the reading, students typed connections into a Google doc and turned in their work prior to check out.

You can access the handout HERE.

For our questioning activity, students worked in their table groups to write thoughtful questions. Each table had question stems they could use as examples, and they could also draft their own original questions.

You can access the handout HERE.

Finally, we wrapped up our work with a determining importance activity. Students had the choice to draw or write about an important event from the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Below are samples from Dash and Loot.

Now that we're finished with our read alouds, students will be using the books to write sample book reviews in Destiny Quest before going ahead with their own book reviews on books of their choosing. And of course we'll be voting in late February for an Iowa Children's Choice Award winner. Stay tuned for our building winner!