Task Cards: How are you using them in your upper elementary ELA class?

Upper elementary reading teachers like me are always on the hunt for resources and tools to motivate my students, I have been busy creating. I find that I am always in need of teaching tools that are engaging and motivating, capable of being used in a literacy center, incorporated into Daily 5 instruction, small group, or even whole class work, and can be utilized with minimal prep time on my end. Does that sound familiar? Or like any type of resource you could use?

I have found task cards to be one of these sought after resources. They are a perfect way to be able to reinforce a concept and meet ALL student instructional needs. Here is a peek in to how I have found them to be most effective.

PREP…
First, print them and have students cut them out. I know that there are always a few students that I can heavily rely on for secretarial work each school year. Pass this job along to those students that like to come in early, stay in for recess, or spend a little extra time with you in your classroom.

While there is not a ton of prep in organizing these for classroom use, students love to be put to work and help out. Have students cut out the task cards, you can laminate them so they can be re-used, then re-enlist students to cut out the laminated cards, and use as you see most suitable for your classroom.

Ready for student cutting!

IDEAS FOR USE…
Task cards are an easy tool to incorporate into your classroom any day. I have three sets that you can grab and start using immediately to enforce reading literature skills and vocabulary.

These Character Analysis Task Cards are perfect for deepening student understanding of how characters are feeling based on information that is shared in the text. These cards have a mini-lesson and allow for students to support their understanding of the different feelings of characters with evidence. Understanding characters can be a bit complex and I need my students telling me more than just that a character might be feeling “sad.” I need to know why they are feeling sad and what information from the text made them arrive at this conclusion.

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I created my Reading Literature Task Card Tool Kit because I LOVE reading novels with my students. We often tackle whole class novels in order for students to learn the literature standards. At the end of novels, I want to see what my students have learned, and in addition to an end of book project, we reinforce what we have learned using these reading literature task cards.

There are 8-half page cards that students can focus on and utilize the student answer document to show what they know. Simply read a fiction text, print these cards out, laminate, and watch your students’ understanding of the text come alive.

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My Context Clue Task Cards were created because vocabulary is a challenge for so many of my 6th graders and it is something I am ALWAYS working on helping them develop. I can speak to them all day using colorful words and while this is beneficial, at the end of the day, they need to be able to read the vocabulary and make sense of the 6th grade level and above text they are to be reading.

This resource includes 84-multiple choice task cards that provide some focused practice with using context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. If you are finding that your students could use some additional practice with this word work reading skill, grab this…