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.

RL.7.1 - Make Inferences, Cite Textual Evidence

We zoomed in more heavily on inferring today. Inferring was a 'thinking code' I introduced earlier last week, but it definitely is a skill that needs more attention. I used this chart to anchor what it means to infer.

Textual evidence and background knowledge are essential for inferring. To help students remember to include both when writing about their inferences, I used these sentence stems as prompts. You'll see on the chart that it says "word-for-word support" and "paraphrased support" which are ways to cite text that I taught last week. Refer to this blog post for those anchor charts!

Students did a practice activity on the computer in which I sent them the following passage that I found on this website:
Screech! Karen stomped on the gas pedal the moment the light turned green. She looked over her left shoulder and zigged past a semi-truck. She zoomed ahead and looked over her right shoulder and thenzagged past a motorbike. She glanced at the clock on the console of her vehicle and darted into the parking lot. Whipping into a parking spot, she grabbed her suitcase and ran through the lot, up the escalator, and into the terminal. Her heavy suitcase was smacking and bouncing the whole way. As soon as entered the terminal, she heard an announcement over the loudspeaker, "Final boarding call for flight 205 to JFK..."Karen looked at her ticket and then at the line to get through the security checkpoint, which wrapped around several turnstiles and slithered like a lethargic snake. Karen sighed and then slowly walked to the customer service desk.

I asked two questions that required students to infer. They were:
1. Where is Karen?
2. Why does she walk slowly at the end of the passage?

Here are two student responses for question 1:
* I infer that Karen is at an airport. I think this because the text says she heard an announcement that said it was the final boarding call. From my background knowledge I know that airports will go on the loudspeaker and announce one last time before the plane takes off These are called boarding calls. Therefore, that is how I came to infer that Karen is at an airport.
* I infer Karen is at an airport. I believe this because in the text it says that she was rushing through the terminal and she had a suitcase with her. It also talked about her boarding a flight. From my background knowledge, I know that at airports they have terminals to separate flights and a suitcase is often something people bring to the airport to take on a plane. Therefore, I infer that Karen is at an airport.

Here is a student response for question 2:
* I infer that Karen is walking slowly at the end of the passage because shse probably missed her flight! I infer this because it says the line went all the way down the hall way and "Karen sighed and then slowly walked to the customer service desk". From my background knowledge I know that if someone sighs, it usually means you're disappointed and a line that goes down the hallway means it will take a while to get to the front. That's how I came to infer that Karen missed her flight!

Color Poems, Immigrant Challenges/Contributions, & Author's Perspective!

Last week, we continued to work on our color poems in Writer's Workshop. Prior to peer conferencing, I had students circle 5 words in their poems that they weren't sure of in terms of the spelling. I also had them put a question mark next to the two phrases in their poem they thought they could make better with the help of a peer. By doing this, students had specific areas in their poems to work on with one another.

Over the past two weeks, I've taught several lessons on how to use a dictionary successfully (those darn guide words are tricky, aren't they?!) During students' color poem peer conferences, pairs used dictionaries and their Quick Word books to find the correct spellings for the words each student circled in his or her poem. (Note: Some kids needed help spelling more than 5 words. For the sake of making peer conferencing a manageable task, pairs only had to tackle 5 from each poem together. Adult help was given for the rest of the words.)

After peer conferences, students poems looked very ... COLORFUL! You can see this writer's original ideas in pencil, her own revisions adding adjectives and extending her ideas in red, and fixes made during her peer conference in blue.

Now that their poems had been taken through the writing process, I had students publish their poems in our computer lab to learn that word processingt is another way to publish writing. Students are learning typing skills during IMC time with Mrs. Barels - our awesome library media specialist. They are getting faster and faster with word processing! (Note: I encourage students to wear their headphones while typing to help eliminate distractions and extra talking. I highly recommend it!)

 

I also taught students to insert a text box and fill it with their color using the paint tool and use the 3D word art tool to type the name of their color. I plan to have students put a little flap over the name of their color so their audience will truly have to infer the color they are writing about before peeking at the answer. Students poems were proofread by an adult prior to printing (this one still needs an adult eye!) ;)

In social studies, we are continuing to use our leveled immigration readers to learn more about the reasons immigrants left their homelands, the challenges they faced, and the contributions they've made to American society. The texts below came from National Geographic. I love them because the look of the books is the same, as are the three main ideas discussed in each of the books. It's the complexity of the content that is differentiated, allowing ALL students to access information at their independent reading level. Yay!

For this lesson, I had students use a two-column note-taking technique to record important information. In one column, students listed the challenges their immigrant group had on their journey to America. In the other column, students listed the challenges their immigrant group had in America. Again, each student was given a reader that was appropriate for their independent reading level.


After students finished recording the challenges for their specific immigrant group, they met with everyone else who read about the same group of immigrants to compare information and make revisions to their notes, if needed.

 Here's a clip of some of the groups as they discuss their immigrant groups. It's a little hard to hear what they're saying but I assure you they were focused on the topic (immigrant challenges).

The next day, I showed students how to organize their information using an electronic note-taking program called Kidspiration.

Here is one student's graphic organizer on the challenges Chinese immigrants faced on their journey to America and the challenges they faced once they got here.

In a final lesson last week, students read the four pages from their reader that discussed the ways their immigrants have contributed to American society. By looking at students' graphic organizers, I could easily monitor the kind of information students were deeming important and support students who needed me the most.

Here is one student's web on how German-Jewish immigrants have contributed to American society! I could tell this student understood that German-Jewish immigrants have written books and music, made films, shared their knowledge and skills, and contributed to medicine, biology, and inventions. At the time I took this picture, he was adding in the names of specific German-Jewish immigrants and linking their names to the appropriate bubble on the web.

In reading, we are continuing on with explicit mini-lessons on determining importance. On Friday, I taught students that when reading a piece of non-fiction text, good readers should:

• Identify the the main idea
• Infer the author's opinion and perspective about the topic
• Think about their own opinion in comparison to the author's

I used an article called Can Kids Stop Kids From Smoking? (from the Comprehension Toolkit by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis). I modeled how to analyze each section of the article to pull out the main idea and thought aloud about what I believed the author's opinion was of the topic of kids smoking. I also thought aloud about my own opinion and how it compared to the author's. Finally, I revealed my own written response to pull all my thinking together. I colored coded each section of my response so my students could see each of the three sections of my response.

For guided practice, I gave students a different article called Turn It Off! The article focuses on TV Turnoff Week (which just happens to be this coming week!).

 

Students read the article and thought about the main idea, the author's opinion, and their own opinions regarding TV Turnoff Week. Students wrote their own response to the article in the My Thinking tab of their Thoughtful Logs to help me assess their ability to think about main idea and author's perspective. I left my own modeled response up on the SMARTboard as a scaffold for students while they worked independently.

Here is one student's response. You can see she was able to pull out the main idea, identify the author's perspective about the topic, and think critically about her own opinion. When I conference with her, I will applaud her ability to do these three tasks as a reader of non-fiction. My teaching point will be to stress the importance of rereading her writing to make sure it makes sense from beginning to end. :)

Lastly, Casey was person of the week this week. He brought in his dog, Trevor, for us to enjoy! It was a wonderful way to end the week!

 

Main Ideas, Poetry, & Responding to Historical Fiction

In reading we have been learning more about determining importance. In a previous lesson, students learned to put a red sticker next to piece of information that made them think, "Stop! This is important, essential information!" and a green sticker next to a piece information that made them think, "This is just a little detail that I can let go of..."

In this lesson, we continued on in our article called 'Doctor Bugs' from a National Geographic magazine (March, 2008). Rather than placing a single red and green sticker next to two spots in the text, I modeled how to use my pink and green highlighters to code every sentence. I did a think aloud to explain to kids why I made a sentence pink or green. It helped students see that everything we read in a text is either important/essential information or just little extra details.

 

After color-coding a section of my article, we looked specifically at where all my pink highlighting (important information) appeared in the text. I wanted kids to know that important information isn't just in the first sentence of a paragraph - it's hidden throughout the texts we read! It's our job as readers to really think carefully so we don't miss the important information. One student noticed that a lot of my green sentences started with the word "I" - in other words, many of the sentences I coded as an 'extra little detail' were the author's opinion or personal experience with the bugs he was writing about. We decided together that even though the author's personal experience and opinion give him credibility that he's seen them first-hand, an author's opinion and personal experience isn't essential and important to remember. We also discussed how important a header is to helping you decide what is important about a text! Students had a similar chart to this one in their Thoughtful Logs

For guided practice, I handed out this same text to the kids and had them code the last section on the page called, 'Bugs with Horns'. Students used their green and red markers to identify important and unimportant information.

Listen in to my conversation with one of my kiddos as he practices coding important and unimportant information.

Like we did in the mini-lesson, students tallied where they found important information while reading the 'Bugs with Horns' section of the article.

My hope was that students would code the text similarly to one another even though they worked independently. As I walked around to assess their progress, I was pleased to see most students highlighted both the entire second and third paragraphs green. Those paragraphs were mainly about the author's personal experience and opinion about the stagflies, which students learned were not important.. The kids discovered there was important information in the fourth and fifth paragraphs, with just one sentence in the fifth paragraph that wasn't important!

In a lesson earlier this week, we made the connection that important information can help us find the main idea of a text. You can see in this student's Thoughtful Log, I modeled for students how to find the main idea of two books we had read previously in the day. (I forgot to take a picture of my SMARTboard slide!) Then I had students read an article on fossils for independent practice. Students wrote in their Thoughtful Logs what they thought the main idea of the article was.

I always try to find ways kids to use technology during our reading block, so today I had students head to the computer lab to use a main idea website. On the website, there are several short stories for students to read, followed by a drop down menu of three choices for a main idea for the reading.


To keep kids honest and to slow down their often 'click-happy' fingers, I had students record what they believed the main idea was for each of the short readings before clicking the 'submit' button.


After writing down the main idea and clicking 'submit', the computer would tell students' whether they got the main idea right or not. Students recorded their progress by circling Yes or No next to each story title on the worksheet I created to coincide with the activity. This was a quick way to assess who understood main idea and who will need more support in guided reading.


Here's a short clip of this student as she reads the text, records what she believes the main idea is, submits her answer, then records whether she got it right!

In writing, we started a new genre - poetry! April just happens to be Poetry Month, too. I used Dr. Seuss' My Many Colored Days to help teach the following objectives (that I put on an anchor chart but forgot to take a picture of!):

1. Poetry is compact writing expressing intense emotion.
2. Poetry provides opportunities for word play.

 

I made a chart for students' Thoughtful Logs that they glued in their Genre Learning tab. As I read through each page of the book, we analyzed what emotions were represented by each color in the book. I had also copied a few phrases from the book to show how Dr. Seuss played with the size, font, and shape of his words as they related to the poem. Students recorded and glued their learning in their Thoughtful Logs.

 

At the very end of the lesson, I had students apply their learning in their own writing by asking them to respond to the following prompt: "Today has been a _________ day because ..." Students matched their emotions from the day to a color or colors. Some students even played with the size, font, and shape of the words in their responses. You'll notice the student below wrote the word 'great' in the shape of a smile!

Social studies is another excellent subject where students can grow as readers! You may remember a previous blog post about students using a Slaves' Stories website to infer important information about African immigrants' journeys coming to America. I used the book Now Let Me Fly by Delores Johnson to continue what students had learned from the website but to also extend what life was like for these immigrants once they were in America. In the book, many of the children get split from their mother and their lives take them in different directions within the U.S. Here is the anchor chart I started.

Students had a similar chart in the Genre Learning tab of their Thoughtful Logs since the text was historical fiction.

Students wrote down some of my modeled facts and thinking but recorded their own facts and thoughts independently once I got to the bottom of my anchor chart. You can see this student started with writing down my own thoughts but went on to record her own as I continued with the book.

In other fun news not related to literacy, Jaelyn was person of the week last week, and she brought in her cat, Candy, for us to meet! Candy was such a sweet but very nervous cat!

We also had four students get a black-out on their Genre Tic-Tac-Toe board for the month of March. Students who read 100 pages in each of the 9 genres listed on our Tic-Tac-Toe board earned a pizza party for lunch. Congrats to these eager readers!