RL.7.6 Character Maps, W.7.2 Writing Prompts, & L.7.4 Context Clues

I modeled for students how to use a character map to show how an author develops a character in a story. My students don't normally struggle with finding examples from the text to support each trait, rather they struggle to explain why the example is evidence of the trait. To help push their examples to a higher level, I had students color code their writing. Text in black was the paraphrased example from the book. Text in red was their own thinking for why the example supported the character trait.

 For guided practice, I had students complete a character map for the characters of Edwin and Garvey. Early in the story, both men serve as mentor characters to Cole. We first brainstormed character traits to describe Edwin and Garvey. Here was our list:

 Students pulled up the character map on their Chromebooks, typed 'Edwin and Garvey' into the character box and selected three character traits from the board that they wanted to prove and explain with evidence from the text. Students skimmed chapters 1 & 2 (which we had read on a previous day) to find examples.

This student found two examples from the text that supported the fact that Edwin and Garvey are wise, helpful, and patient men.

Our next lesson required students to use their character maps to respond to a prompt about how Ben Mikaelsen develops characters in Touching Spirit Bear. I modeled how to analyze a prompt by color-coding each of the expectations of the prompt. As I started drafting, I color-coded each section to show where in my draft I addressed each part of the prompt.

Students then went in and color-coded their writing to identify areas where they weren't answering the prompt. This process helps students realize there are many things a writer may need to pay attention to in a prompt in order to receive full credit. The Smarter Balanced Assessment will definitely require students to analyze a prompt and respond to multiple parts!

The next day, students read Ch. 3 & 4 on their own and practiced using context clues independently. As they read, they recorded two examples of difficult words as they read, what they inferred them to mean, and the context clues that helped them understand better.

 Later on that day, students shared their words/charts with a partner.

 Partners picked two of their words to create a Context Clues poster together. The following expectations were posted on the board for students to use as a guide.

Here was the sample Context Clues poster I made so students had an idea of what the final product should look like. 

 When students felt they were 'done', I handed them a mini-checklist to help them assess whether they had everything they needed on the poster.

RL.7.6 - Character Development & L.7.4 - Word-Solving Strategies

Yesterday we started discussing how an author develops a character through the character's thoughts, actions, and dialogue. As we read aloud Ch. 1 of Touching Spirit Bear, we looked for examples of thoughts, actions, and dialogue that revealed more about Cole. We sorted them on our chart.

Afterwards, I had students categorize sentences I took from Ch. 1 of the text. On the left side, they labeled each sentence with either 'thought', 'action', or 'dialogue'. This helped them explicitly recognize the difference between the three which will come in handy later when we write narratives. On the right side, I had students infer character traits for Cole (the protagonist) as a result of reading each sentence. It was safe to say that many of the thoughts, actions, and dialogue author Ben Mikaelsen writes in Touching Spirit Bear help us understand Cole's character; he is an independent, fearless, disrespectful, abandoned, angry teenager.

Today we previewed some new words that students would hear in Ch. 2. We are continuing to practice using context clues and online resources to determine meanings of unknown words. I don't plan to do this for EVERY chapter, but I do want students to have word-solving skills early on while reading this book so they can apply them as they take on chapters independently later and in their own independent reading books. I will be giving a quiz soon on some vocabulary words from Touching Spirit Bear that we haven't talked about yet that will require students to demonstrate their ability to use context clues and online resources to word solve.

Similar to a previous lesson, students highlighted context clues and inferred the meaning of the vocabulary word. They confirmed and/or revised their inferences using dictionary.com.

L.7.4 - Word-Solving Strategies: Context Clues & Other Resources

In continuation of yesterday's lesson, we reviewed the use of context clues (words before or after a difficult word) to help a reader come closer to the meaning of an unknown word. Sometimes there aren't context clues to help us or we need to confirm our inferred meaning. One way to do this is to use a dictionary. Students used dictionary.com to check their inferred meaning and refined their understanding with the information provided in the online dictionary. You'll see in the far right column, this student added information that may have been missing from her original guess.

 We have a word wall that will continue to grow as we read more and more into Touching Spirit Bear. We added our own meanings in red next to each vocabulary word to remind us of their definitions while we read. We start Ch. 1 on Monday!

Introducing Touching Spirit Bear: Making Predictions & Using Context Clues (L.7.4)

The Power of Choice: How Do Our Decisions Affect Our Lives and the Lives of Others?

I think middle school students can benefit a lot from learning units in themes. This summer I read Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, and while the Lexile level is only 670, the themes in the book are complex and are ones that many middle school students will be able to relate to in some way, shape, or form. Life is all about making decisions, learning and growing from them, and transforming to become more of who you really want to be. That is exactly what the main character in this book experiences. The themes of justice, the power of nature, the circle of life, anger and revenge, culture, healing, and forgiveness are ones every human can learn from, especially adolescents. I'm planning to use Touching Spirit Bear, in addition to several non-fiction texts related to topics in TSB, to teach the Common Core Standards my co-workers and I have organized for this quarter. It's the first time I've tried this sort of unit, but I'm excited about the possibilities. I would like to give credit to Erin Grysko, whose unit guide entitled "The Power of Choice: How Do Our Decisions Affect Our Lives and the Lives of Others?" has been one of my co-workers' and my main resources. Thank you for sharing your work with the world!

In previous days, we did a few activities that required students to think about choices and decisions that would prepare them for Touching Spirit Bear and realizing how choices and decisions play a role in ALL our lives. Some of the activities included: playing Would You Rather? , watching video clips of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and The Lion King, listening to the song Cat's in the Cradle. As always, students responded orally and in writing to questions that asked them to reflect on how choices and decisions played a part in each.

Today it was finally time to start getting our hands on Touching Spirit Bear! Today's activities started like this:

 So, that's exactly what my students did - they looked at the cover and made some predictions (inferences) based on the picture clues:

 Here is what one student wrote as a result of that prompt. You'll notice the sentence stems helped him get his thinking started. Sometimes I feel like a few sentence stems are all kids need to get their thoughts going!

Here is another student response:

Students shared their thinking as a whole group, and we created a KWL chart of some things that we KNOW for sure about the book and things we WANT TO KNOW as a result of the cover and back blurb. 

Students recorded the KWL chart underneath their predictions.

In my next class with my students, I introduced some vocabulary from Ch. 1. I modeled using context clues as a word solving strategy by highlighting the clues in each of the example sentences that lead me to make an inference about what the word might mean. I modeled the first two. Students did the rest of them on their own, highlighting the clues in the sentence that led to their inference. This strategy is Common Core State Standard L.7.4. The student learning target is: I can infer the meaning of unknown words using context clues (examples found in surrounding text).

For some words, context clues aren't always an option for word solving, so we used Dictionary.com as an electronic resource to confirm whether our inferences were right. This strategy is Common Core State Standard L.7.4. The student learning target is: I can verify my inferred meaning of an unknown word by consulting general and specialized references (dictionaries).

Students filled in the definition if it was different than their inferences and/or revised their original inferred definition.