Parts of a Tree, Kindergarten Lesson

Readworks.org is a website that I've come to rely on for useful passages and lessons aligned with the common core. If you've never been there, please check it out. It's really worth it to sign up and it's FREE!! You'll find comprehension units, novel units, skills/strategies lessons and lots of reading passages all organized by grade level, lexile and skills. You can even create your own binder to store any lessons you want to keep for future use. Have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE this site!!

Here's one lesson I used from ReadWorks that follows the Close Reading strategy. My Kindergarten students and I were reading the "Parts of a Tree" passage. This is a one page passage about four different parts of a tree: leaves, bark, branch and roots. It's a very simple story but I was amazed at how my students had no idea about the names of these parts. Most of my students are high level ESL so this really surprised me. The only part they had background knowledge about was leaves.

During the first reading, I read aloud the whole passage and emphasized the vocabulary words with my voice. We then had a short discussion about trees and what they see happening to them during this time of year. During the second reading, I stopped reading to talk about the four parts. After reading the passage, I drew a picture of a tree with the four parts and we talked some more about their function. To make sure the students were clear about the parts (I'm not the best artist!), I also found pictures online with the parts labeled. Now the students had two pictures to help them understand the vocabulary terms.

After the third reading the students answered questions from a worksheet that was generated by ReadWorks. Since these are kindergartners in the first semester of school, most questions have pictures as answers but some of the questions asked students to read words, write answers and draw pictures. Here's an example of one page of the assessment students completed:

I read aloud the questions to the students and then they circled their answer choice. I was surprised at the details students included in their drawings. Reading closely really helped the students understand this lesson and I think they will retain the knowledge learned for a long time!

Apples by Gail Gibbons and Kindergarten

Recently my kindergarten students used the Close Reading strategy to read Apples by Gail Gibbons. I chose this book because I knew it would be difficult for my ESL students to understand all the vocabulary in the story. I figured the Close Reading strategy would be a good fit for this book and the students.

I started off by reading aloud the story from the beginning to the end. Before I read aloud, I gave a quick introduction about the book and discussed how the author is trying to teach us things about the history of apples. After the first reading, we had a short discussion. Next, I reread only the parts of the book I really wanted my students to focus on. Johnny Chapman and learning the words dormant, seedlings, and blossom were what we focused on. During this second read, we had more in depth discussions about the parts I chose. I used the third read as an echo read because the students really enjoy echoing me and it's great speaking practice for my ESL students.

Here are some of the questions I asked during the second read:

1. Who is the person that helped to bring apples all across the United States?
2. Can you give me an example of how the author shows you what dormant means?
3. Would you like to read another story like this? Give reasons from the story to tell why you would or wouldn't want to read another story like this one.
4. What is the author's purpose for writing this story?

Finally, to make sure my students really understood the vocabulary words I chose, I had them use a graphic organizer to draw a picture and add a sentence using the word. It's the same graphic organizer I used earlier. I love it because the students get to be creative but also think critically about the word as they use it in a sentence. Since printing can still be a little difficult for the students, I write their sentence on another paper and then they copy it to their graphic organizer. Here's an example of student work:

This graphic organizer was created by Ladybug's Teacher Files and it's definitely a favorite of mine!