Book Club
Beezus and Ramona
I have started a new adventure with some of my Littles. I am hosting an enrichment book club for higher level readers in Second Grade. I'm excited about this new adventure because it's the opposite side of what I'm used to doing. Usually, I only have intervention kiddos, so this is a fun switch for me! I'm working with a group of five and I look forward to taking you on our book club adventure!
Until the next time,
Author Study - Beverly Cleary
We will be reading Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona for our book club book. Whenever I introduce a new novel to students, I like to begin with an author study. I think it's important for students to get to know the person who brought the characters to life. For our first lesson, I adapted a couple pages I got from the novel study resource I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. Without sharing a picture of Beverly Cleary, I had students sketch how they thought she looked. {They are still a work in progress. Stay tuned for the final product!}
Our next task was to do a little research on our Chromebooks. I had written several questions on my white board and gave each Little a marker. When they found the answer to a question, they ran up to the board and wrote the answer to the question in their color. At our next meeting, we will take all the information we gathered today, plus their portraits, and create a poster all about Beverly Cleary to hang in the hallway. Stay tuned for our next meeting!
The poster turned out amazing! But what is more important, my Littles worked together as a team to decide which pieces of information were the most important to add to their poster and how to design it. All I did was cut the paper and letters. They did the rest. Take a look!
Chapter 1 Discussion
After reading the first chapter, we had a discussion. Using our novel study folders I put together using the resource linked above, we came up with a one sentence summary about Chapter 1. Boy, was that difficult to do! But while deciding on what was the most important point of Chapter 1, we had amazing discussion! I'm already so very proud of this group. They are working their little bottoms off on this project!
After we finished our discussion and came up with our one sentence summary, each student had to pick a bean bag. The bean bags had different questions written on them. Just to make it a little more fun, after each Little answered their question, they had to toss the bean bag into a bucket. They may have gotten an extra treat if everyone answered their question correctly AND sunk the bean bag. You must read the answers to these questions. I laughed so hard at some of their answers!
"When Ramona ruined the book, I would have said 'Sorry,' and tried to get wite-out and return it."
"Naughty."
"Beezus because she wasn't as bad as Ramona who got herself in trouble."
"When I chose to ride my scooter in the house and knocked something over by the lamp."
"Maybe Ramona will not be naughty."
Chapter 2 - Character Analysis
For this discussion, we started looking at the different characters is Beezus and Ramona. I prepped a few pieces of chart paper with the different characters and hung them on my white board. When my kiddos arrived, I had different color Post-It notes waiting for them. Curious as always, they wanted to know what we were doing. After talking about the chapter, I had them each choose a color and move somewhere around the room. I wanted authentic answers from each of them, so I asked them to separate. We through each character that we have met...so far...and they added characteristics. We will continue to add characteristics as we read the book together.
Chapter 3 - Creative Writing
As I was listening to Chapter 3 and doing cardio at the gym, I came up with the idea for a fun activity for Chapter 3. In this chapter, Ramona crashes an Art class that Beezus is taking because she wants to be more imaginative. For their assignment, the students in the class were to draw an imaginary creature. Beezus tried so hard, but what she really needed to do was relax and let her imagination take over. When I finished my cardio, I had a new lesson ready to go in my head.
My school as adopted Lucy Calkins this year as our reading and writing curriculum. I always want to try to incorporate things my kiddos are learning in their regular classroom, so I thought a creative writing lesson would be perfect for this week.
I again asked my kiddos to find a comfortable spot because I wanted each creature to be unique to their personality. I gave them instructions to use their imagination to draw an imaginary creature. Then, they were going to use colorful words to describe their creature. We discussed what good descriptive words look like, and I let them create. Take a look at what they came up with.
At our next meeting, they wrote their descriptive paragraphs about their creatures. We are still finishing these up, but here is them working.
My Littles' finished products. I'm so proud of their creativity.
Chapters 4-5-6
For these chapters, we worked on Story Elements, Cause and Effect, and Making Inferences. Most of these activities were done verbally, so I have no documentation. However, after Christmas Break, we will be wrapping up our Book Club with a few more activities.
Wrapping It Up
After Christmas Break {and several Snow Days}, we wrapped up our Book Club on Beezus and Ramona. I didn't want to give my Littles a paper assessment since this was somewhat for fun, so I found an Escape Room based on the book. They were able to spend a full hour on the Escape Room and, as a group, completed it! They were so very proud of the work they had accomplished!
Each Little received their own clue book to fill out as the completed the different tasks. I allowed them to complete tasks in whatever order they wanted, but they could not work together.
Task 1: Plot
Students had to put plot events in the order they occurred in the book. By doing so, they found a hidden code.
Task 2: Characters
Students had to match characters with descriptions to discover a hidden code.
Task 3: Vocabulary
Students had to match vocabulary words and definitions to discover a hidden code.
Task 4: Secret Message
Students had to decipher a secret message about the book using symbols. This was definitely the most tricky and they were allowed to work together on it.
This resource came from Teaching Literacy on Teachers Pay Teachers. Pick up your copy below!