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!