Monday Made It: Making Connections and Story Maps

Tara is hosting her Monday Made it once again, and to be honest I didn't think that I would have anything to share.  I've made so much stuff lately... I'm kinda sick of my glue gun, but still in love with my laminator, Google free clip art,  and the Fontmoochers font!  So today I'm sharing my new reading posters with you.  I had these same type of things last year in my classroom - just on a plain anchor chart paper, but I wanted to make them special for this year (and hopefully hold up throughout the year).

So here is my Story Map poster and here is the kid's version.  I did try to upload my poster stuff but I can't make the font stay the same on the upload... any advice?  These story maps are in sheet protectors for their binders.  They won't write on them, but it will be a reference for them as they make their own on copy paper.  This was created after we had a training last year on nonlinguistic representation where they mentioned that even the older kids should see as many visuals/graphic organizers as possible, and have the option to draw.  After we go through the stories, my kids have the option of drawing or writing the different parts of the story - Setting, Characters, Beginning, Middle, End of the Story (at least 5 - 7 different details), and what the link to the theme is.  It's just a quick thing we do to be able to retell the story in our own words or pictures.    

Here is my Making Connections poster.  Same thing - after we preview and learn about the story, the kids create a Making Connections paper on the back side of their Story Map.  They relate the weekly story to other texts, their own personal story, the World (news stories or real life stories), and media (TV shows or movies that it reminds them of).  When they are doing theirs, I'm also creating one using the document camera so they can see, of course my paper will look different than theirs...  then we share... It's interesting to see their world through the use of the different class stories we read.  

Well that's it!  I hope you had a great day!