Downton Abbey, Easter, and Novel studies | Mentoring in the Middle

Downton Abbey, Easter, and Novel studies

   The days have been flying by here and although I've hardly been on this blog, I have been reading lots of other teachers' blogs.  Mostly reading about what people did or hoped to do on their Spring breaks.  And I started to feel a little badly for myself, wondering if I was in the only district that doesn't have a break.  And boy, honestly, I could have used one!

     And then came Easter. And with it a (shortened) break of Friday and Monday.  But that was good.  We hosted some of my family on Saturday and then relaxed a lot the other days.  And that included talking out two daughters into watching Downton Abbey with us.

     You see, I'm a latecomer to this show.  But now I've got all three seasons on DVD, borrowed from a friend from church.  And my husband and I have been watching it, bit by bit.   Bit by bit isn't how my daughters watch movies.  Full immersion is more like it!  So they caught up to us, and then we watched some more episodes together.  What fun!

     In between all of that, I was working on some novel studies for some Lit Circle groups I'm doing.  I run my Lit Circles differently each year, but with one of my classes this year, I felt a need to create something a little more structured.  These kids are not the strongest readers, and so they don't always know what questions to come up with, or how to get a good discussion going, despite some modeling.  So I created packets for them to work through together, hoping that doing that would generate some discussion.


     The packets are filled with graphic organizers that the students work on together to make connections, determine setting and mood, summarize, discover cause and effect, character traits, predict, and more.

     So far, so good!  The kids seem to like working together on them and they're enjoying the novels they're reading.  I still need to finish one for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I promised that group that they'd have the second half of their packet on Friday!  So what am I doing?  Yup, blogging about how I need to get to work on it!




All three of these novel studies are available at my TpT and TN stores.  Just grab the links to my stores from the top of my blog (my stores aren't that large yet, so these products aren't hard to find!)  Let me know what you think.  Follow me on TpT or TN and you'll make my day!  And if you think there's a place for one of these in your classroom, talk nicely to me and I'll send you one!


Have a great rest of the week!
 Marion

No comments

Post a Comment