Tag: metacognition

remove.bg for book and writing responses

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I recently learned about this site in an email from my tech coaches. I knew I wanted to use it but didn’t have a legitimate reason to use it in my reading classroom. Today, however, when I introduced digital reading responses, specifically #booksnaps, it was the perfect site.

#Booksnaps – Do your students do a daily response to their independent reading? I’ve always used a variety of strategies (worksheets, post-its, reading journals, interactive notebooks) but have never found one that really excited my students, until today, using the remove.bg site. I introduced Tara Martin’s #booksnaps to my readers using the Google apps options of Slides and Drawings. We began with a focus on our metacognition … what thoughts did you have while reading? I used our whole group informational texts that we’d analyzed throughout this week and had my students find a page, section, paragraph, etc. that affected their thinking the most. We followed the procedures for a typical #booksnap, which can be found here at Tara Martin’s site. However, instead of searching for emojis or using bitmojis (neither of which is completely appropriate for my students) I had my students take selfies of themselves using their webcams, trying to portray their emotions and feelings or thoughts while taking the picture. Then they used the remove.bg site to remove the background from their selfie and they had their own little picture of themselves, ready to be added to their slide and turned into a real-life “selfmoji’ or inserted onto a new background that related to their reading using a new Google Slide. We downloaded the slides as a jpeg or png file to add to our #booksnaps.

My fourth graders were in! In our excitement we played around a bit. (It was one of those moments their excitement just needed to be let it before they could focus on their actual task.) I’ll admit, I created a “selfie” with the president and first lady, I went to the Super Bowl, and my students put their faces on athletes, past presidents, video game characters, and one even floated in a pool of gold coins. The excitement was a bit out of control, but the ideas and creativity were endless. When it came time to respond to our reading, students were also excited to find creative ways to show their thinking, and for a minute, I’m pretty sure my classroom was magic. Everyone was working, thinking, collaborating, and sharing their thoughts about their reading in a way that I’ve never seen them before. They were genuinely excited to talk about their books. My teacher heart left school full and excited for next week.

Here are a couple of the photos I made while playing around, and an example of what one of my students made.

Now, the possibilities are great for how we could use this website in our writing. My students are currently working on a research PBL about the planets. Guess what their next background will be?

Making Inferences with Wordless Picture Books

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One of the hardest strategies I teach my fourth grade readers is making inferences.  Of course, I begin by modeling with a picture book.  I read aloud, I stop and think out loud and show how I use my background knowledge and fill in the gaps to understand.  We discuss our understandings based on information that’s given “right there” and information that must be inferred.  This part my students get.  However, when it comes to my students’ own reading, they have a really hard time explaining their thoughts and inferences.  It’s the metacognition that gets in the way.  Have you seen this?  Even the ones who are making inferences have a hard time explaining how they know.

So this time, I started by explaining to my students that inferences are something that happen all the time.  I asked my students what they would think if I showed up to school in my high heels and fanciest dress with my hair done up.  I asked what they would think if they heard thunder, if they saw smoke, if a diaper fell out of my purse.  I gave examples over and over and they all inferred, and they all explained how they knew.  I told them, you’ve been making inferences since you were born.  Next, we talked about visualizing, which we’ve been working on anyway, and connected those mental images they get to filling in the gaps while they are reading.  It was a quick introduction that took about 10 minutes and my students were feeling good about their ability to make inferences for the rest of our lesson that day.

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Next, I introduced our anchor chart.  I explained the most common inferences good readers make.  I explained the process of making an inference.  And we were ready to begin our “inference challenge”.  Now, I logged into Epic! (a free for teachers digital reading app) and projected the first couple of pages of two different wordless picture books.  I told my students I wanted them to look at the pages and think about their thinking (the metacognition part).  If you’re wondering, I gave my students two books I knew they’d never seen before, “Blue Rider” by Geraldo Valerio, and “Bird Cat Dog” a graphic novel by Lee Nordling and Mentikell Bosch.   Graphic novels really hook my boys.  If you haven’t tried using these with your class, I highly suggest it!

I asked my students to share their inferences and their evidence and recorded it on a t-chart.  I praised everything.  They were inferring so accurately!  Now for the challenge … they were to work with a partner and write the narrative story that the authors left out.    I can’t even tell you how hard they worked and how well they did.   What you should know is that I teach a collaborative class and my students who are labeled sped did just as well with this activity as my general ed students and my TAG students.  It was a success!  And you guessed it, most of my boys wanted to use the graphic novel and were just as engaged in their work as my girls.

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I gave them about 35 minutes to read and write the story.  They were engaged and actively working the entire time, and although they weren’t finished with their narratives, I stopped them and asked if anyone wanted to share.  This is a time that is often hard to get everyone to participate in, but not this time.  EVERYONE wanted to share!  And when it was time to move on to reading groups and independent assignments for the week (which wasn’t this), the students begged for more time to write their stories.  So, I made a promise that they’d get to continue next week.

Y’all, I would do this lesson and activity over and over again.  They just got it in a way that no other introduction lesson I’ve ever done for this strategy has ever showed.  Even in our reading groups, in which we were working on visualizing and sensory details, my students began talking about the inferences they were making while we read.  I can’t tell you how proud I was.

thanks for reading!