Reading Portfolios

I found this awesome idea from Beth at Thinking of Teaching.  I love her blog.  She is a 4th grade teacher so I started thinking about how I could use her idea with my students.

 You can see the origional blog post here

There are a couple of things I should tell you.  My 3rd graders this year were considered High Achieving with all of them at grade level, many well above.  I had one students reading as high as 10th grade.  However, even though they could read and comprehend at that level they couldn't always pull out literature elements the way a student of even a grade higher could.  My 2nd Graders were mostly below level or Title 1.  I did not use these for literature circles like Beth did.  I used them as a way for students to show what they learned this year, more like an end of the year wrap up/brag book.

I made templets for everything written that the kids did.  You can get those here....I hope...I've never used Google Docs before. 

 I also precut all the construction paper foldables.  My 3rd graders did all the folding, I just cut everything to the correct size since we used foldables a lot this year.  Fir my 2nd graders I precut and folded everything.  It took forever but it made things easier in the long run.

3rd Grade

Students put together their project and we talked about what would go in each section.  I had them pick their favorite 3rd grade Fiction Chapter book.  

• A picture to represent the book on the front cover
• Book Review using O.R.E.O format
• Main Character
• Connections
• Summary (this was a simplified version of Beth's)
• My Favorite part
• Setting
• They also have the same options for the back project as Beth offered her students.

This Kids LOVED IT and DId an Awesome Job.  They did it completely independently.  Many had to reread books because they found they couldn't remember parts accurately.  It really was a great way to assess students on the skills that we learned during the year.  Here are some 3rd grade examples.  Sorry for all the Pictures.  I just couldn't help myself.

Front Cover

Inside View

My Favorite Part

(Note: Yes, one of my students read THe Hunger Games.  Yes, she is that high of a reader.  Now I am not one to make judgments on content, I leave that to the parents.  However, we did have a conversation how some parts are not ok for others in the class and she was not allowed to share those parts.)

Making Connections

Setting

Accordion Fold Summary

O.R.E.O Book Review

These are all Picture of the back project.  YOu can get information about this from Beth's blog!!

 She made her own Foldable for the back!

I love the rips and ink spots because we all know Ron would do that!

This post took up way more room than I thought it would.  Come back tomorrow to see how I adapted Beth's AMAZING idea for 2nd grade :)  Check out Beth's Blog too.  As I said...AWESOME.