Genre Study and A Giveaway!

With common core coming the students are expected to have a much greater language arts base. I knew right away that I would have to tackle a variety of texts. I try to read aloud to my class every day at least once from a chapter book, once from a poetry anthology, and once from a picture book. Even if it's just for a few minutes I know that it is helpful. This year we have done genre studies and my kids are really good at picking out what type of a book they are reading. Here are some pictures of what we do and how it works.

First off we focus on a genre. I try to do most of my read alouds from that genre.  I have genre posters with catchy poems to help the students remember which is which.  Here is an example of two of them. I hang them up on our genre focus wall.

I wrote these myself. I love poetry!

Next I put only the books we are studying for that unit out on my display cart. The kids like to go to these after they have been read. They often use them for partner reading or for early finishers. This also helps with fluency.

Something new we have started now that we have worked through all the genres is an interactive genre graph. As the kids do independent reading they can move their name to match the genre they are reading.

We've done some writing about our genres for hall displays. It's great to have the students write opinion pieces and defend them using support. This is huge with common core. 

All of these wonderful genre ideas are available for purchase in my Teachers pay Teachers store. But I will give the entire document away to the first three people that comment. Just make sure you follow me, leave a comment with your email address, and enjoy!