Bat Loves the Night-- First Grade

This Close Read lesson was completed with my first grade ESL students. I once again relied on the ReadWorks.org website for parts of this lesson. To begin, the students listened as I read aloud the story. I didn't generate much background knowledge because the Close Read strategy specifies not to do that so we really just dug into the book.

During this first read, I asked the students to think about the main idea. I use prompts like, "What is the author trying to tell us?" and "Do you think this author is going to give us information or entertain us?" It usually becomes clear early on that this story was written to give us information about bats. Once I finish reading aloud, we then discuss my prompts from the beginning. I always ask students to tell me what information from the story helped them to come up with an answer. This way they have to justify their answer and not just shout out anything that comes to mind.

The second read of this story focused more on vocabulary words. As I read it aloud again, the students were armed with highlighter tape so they could highlight words that were confusing to them. Using the tape poses a problem because students just want to mark every word. It's always interesting to me how many times students will solve this problem by correcting each other and saying things like, "You really don't know what _____ means?" The student who wants to use tape for the sake of using tape, generally backs off with blurting out ideas and really listens for words that are confusing to him/her. Once we are done listening for vocabulary words and highlighting them, the students then worked together to see if they could come up with ways to figure out the words (think context clues here... a bonus as students scaffold back to previously taught lessons!!) Those really tricky words that couldn't be figured out, were then discussed as a whole class to make sure they understood each one.

The third read was tricky because I wanted them to read it themselves but I only had one book. I decided to let them read with a partner as they filled out a graphic organizer about bats. The other students worked on different skills around the room and then we switched places. During this read the graphic organizer worked well to keep them focused but I really wanted to make sure they grasped some of the main concepts in this book. So I also included a list of questions they had to answer as they read. Here are the questions: 1. What is the story mainly about? Use details from the story to help you explain your thinking. 2. When does bat hunt for food? How do you know this? 3. How does bat fly during the dark night without bumping into things? Use one of the vocabulary words in your explanation. 

I feel like this lesson was very successful! The students seemed to be highly engaged in the story all the way through the final read and the graphic organizer looked amazing from the students. It was a very simple graphic organizer from ReadWorks but it really helped them to understand the story.

I am really starting to see how the Close Read strategy is beneficial to students of all ages. A difficult book is worth reading many times if you really want to understand it!!!

Second Grade Close Reading with Text Markings

For my high level first graders and second graders, I have decided to use the folder system. This just allows us to keep the current stories we're working on in one place for easy access.

The second graders have been working on a short story called "I'm Trying to Eat, Please!" by Vanessa Richie. This story came from MobyMax. A paid site I use for language instruction that also has stories that align with various skills.

Here are the steps we took for this Close Read:

First read: short discussion about the title and pictures. They read silently around the room.

Second read: I read as they mark the text with the symbols we've discussed. We are using the star, question mark, exclamation point and circling words system at this grade level too.

Third read: We took turns reading aloud and cleared up anything that confused them as we read. Their writing piece was to write about something they need to control so that they are a better person.

Here's an example of two students' writing:

As you can see, my students have issues to work on but don't we all have something to work on to become a better person??? I really loved the message of this story as we all try to become a better person.