This week I have started a Fudge-A-Mania novel study with my gifted reading students. Today was our first day and I am so excited at how it went. I purchased my Literature Guide from Pieces of Learning and it came with everything I needed to get started. The one thing I really liked about this literature guide as appose to some of the others that I have purchased is that the activities included were things I had learned about in my graduate program. Whenever I create a lesson, I always try to include activities that are researched based.

Before I began the lesson I made each of my students a folder to hold all of their supplies for this novel study. I also made each student a journal so that they could have a place to do their reader's response activities in. My students were thrilled when I showed them their journals.

Today I had the students work with a partner to do the first activity. The guide included a sheet with 40 or so words that the students would see once they began reading. We said these words out loud together and then the students worked together to cut apart the words and place them into groups. The way they grouped the words were up to them. The only rule was that each group must have at least three words in it. Then the students created labels for the groups they made. I was so impressed at how the students had chose to group the words.

Tomorrow I am going to have students try to look at all of their groups and see if there are any groups that can be combined.