Daily Reading Introductions

Some of you already know this and have asked me about it, but I want to extend my thinking...

I am pondering doing five-minute (give or take a few minutes) reading skill introductions every day next year, kind of like a grabber. I have been thinking about how there are coming attractions that get people invigorated about movies to come and even how at the beginning of some Sister, Sister episodes (I have been tapping into my "growing up in the 1990s" self lately), Tia and Tamera introduced, to an extent, what the topic of the show was. I have also thought about how youth pastors and pastors capture the interest of the youth group or congregation at their church. They research the scripture they are going to reference and come up with anecdotes, sometimes about their families or other everyday situations, to get peoples' attention.

I want to reference topics the class can relate to, from Star Wars to the Hunger Games and everyday occurrences that happen at home. I want to reference sports, food, travel, and hobbies as well as current events- and often employ humor.

Some of the skills are going to be: 

• How do you choose a Just Right book? 
• What is schema? 
• Inquiry and questioning 
• Main idea and supporting details
• Cause and effect
• Comparing and contrasting 
• Context clues
• Author's purpose 
• Order of Events
• Plot elements
• Theme
• Tone and mood
• Character traits
• Text-to-text connections
• Text-to-self connections 
• Text-to-world connections 
• Text features
• Author's word choice
• Grabbers authors use in story writing
• Inferences and predictions
• Quotations vs. thoughts to self
• Similes
• Metaphors
• Personification 

Each skill is going to be covered for 1-2 weeks, which will be either three or six days (because I will only have introductions Mondays-Wednesdays). I want the introductions to be memorable, so I will don costumes, speak in my infamous accents, play music in the background, and sometimes pull in a few students to act out my short script. Sometimes I will shoot videos in advance as well, sometimes using a green screen or at a location like a theme park or Barnes and Noble, which was a neat concept introduced at my school last year (Voracious Vocabulary, where my principal, assistant principal, or both introduced 5 vocabulary words a week on our school's morning show). Some lessons will call for class interaction while others will be ones to merely watch. 

Before I write my anecdotes and scripts, I will look at my lists of mentor texts and articles that address each of the skills I mentioned. One that comes to my mind is cause and effect, which can be supported by short scientific video demonstrations (Head Rush clips are perfect), explanations of what happens in a movie students know, video game references, or references to goofy blunders. Cause and effect is a skill that easily applies to the real world. 

Of course, the skills will be defined and explained as much as possible. I was watching this video (below) today and seeing how the skill can be referred to as "effect and cause". I want to make the skills as easy to grasp as possible- the simpler the explanation, the better.

Seeing I just referenced Scholastic Storyworks and how I subscribed for two years, I also like seeing how I can utilize the resources I have had for a while. The teacher guides for all the older issues are still available, so I keep one each of a Storyworks issue in a teacher reference drawer for mini-lessons. I also like utilizing digital editions.

I like how the grabber idea can easily lead into a 20-minute mini-lesson. I am looking forward to seeing what I come up with- and how you interpret my idea. If you have any ideas or advice, that would be great!