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.