Product Swap: Little Match Girl

I participated in the product swap!

I swapped products with Jen over at Teaching, Life, and Everything in Between.

The first thing I want to say is that I am disappointed I don't have any pictures to share. I had planned to take some from the finished products this week, but ended up being out ALL WEEK because of the flu, so I am very sad I don't have pictures to share.

My students really enjoyed the story of the Little Match girl. and found it very touching. First off, I really love this product because Jen provides two versions of the story at different reading levels, with vocabulary activities designed around each one. This is perfect because I work with 4th grade ESOL students, and have 6 different groups that I work with, all at varied reading levels and language levels. The differentiated nature of this product was a HUGE bonus for me, as was the connection to the Common Core.

Jen also provided very thorough instructions throughout, especially for the Turn-and-Talks. I really liked the inclusion of the turn and talks, because my students need a chance to speak out loud about what they've read and what they're thinking. The mainstream teachers that work with my students don't always give them this opportunity, so I try to have plenty of "talk time" in my class. Another reason this product was so great for my students.

Next, Jen includes some activities for visualizing. We used the charts she included, which gave passages from the story, a box for "what I see" and a box for "what I think it means". I then shook it up a  little bit by having students draw their own picture for one of the passages, and writing a caption or quote from the story to go with the picture.

With one of my groups, we used the discussion cards to help us facilitate a mini Socratic Seminar about the story. The discussion cards were a great addition to the format of a Socratic Seminar, and I was very surprised by some of the insights and thoughts my students shared during the discussion.

Finally, I also really loved Jen's inclusion of writing extension activities. My students really need a lot of practice on this because they are very similar to the BCRs that my students do on the state test in March. Jen's prompts were perfect because they were related to the story, gave students a chance to make additional connections, and required them to pull information and evidence from the text to answer the question.

There are even some more activities included that I didn't have time to get to before the students went home for break. I wish I had more time so I could get them all in!

All-in-all, this is a great product and I can't wait to see more from Jen!!