Prior Knowledge Activity with Using the 5 Senses........

One of the activities that my students did this week was called " Using the 5 Senses" to help establish prior knowledge.  It worked "perfectly" with the story we were reading which was out of our basal.  It's called Boomtown and goes with our Westward Migration study  in social studies.

To begin this activity, Students opened their basals to the first page of the story.  We discussed the title and what students thought the story might be about.  A student mentioned going west and the gold rush... The students had enough prior knowledge to know about the time period of the story.  I introduced to them a chart which listed the  5 senses.  Here's a pic.

I then showed them how I would complete the chart, thinking about the title of our story Boomtown.  Students  were given 3 minutes to reflect upon what they might see, hear, smell, touch, and taste during the time period of the story.   Finally, they completed the chart at their desk and we shared our ideas as a class.  Here's a pic of our 5 Senses Chart for Boomtown.

Another day, we worked more on the strategy of" questioning".   I wanted students to write down questions that they wanted to  discover as he/she read the story for the first time.  Again, I modeled to my students 3 questions I would like to find out from reading the story, and then it was their turn to think of 3 questions.  The students wrote them on this chart.

Then they read the story independently trying to find the answers to these questions.  My students did fabulous!  I was so proud of them.  Once the activity was over and we were wrapping up , many students said how the 5 senses chart and creating questions to look for as they read the story helped  them.   They also enjoyed these two activities as well.

The two activities we completed can be found in my Reading Comprehension Posters and Teacher Task Cards pack found on both TPT and TN.   I'm having a sale at my TN shop.  So this little bundle is $2.40 right now. There is at least one activity for each type of reading comprehension strategy.  Take a peek!

Have a wonderful Wednesday.  Please feel free to share  the reading comprehension strategy activities you use in your classroom.  I would love to hear about them!!