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Toy Boat for First Graders

This week I focused on a book titled Toy Boat by Randall de Séve for my first grade students. In this story a boy creates a toy boat out of material he found at home. The boy loves this toy boat and takes it everywhere he goes. But the toy boat becomes restless with his new home and longs for an adventure on the nearby lake. The author takes us through some troubling times for the toy boat as he discovers that being at home with the boy is the best place for him to be.

I choose to use this book as a close read because it uses some language that can be hard for students to understand. Also because the author sets up this story to really make us think about where we belong in the world. The words I picked that would be hard for my students were blustery, humble, quiver and spied. As we came across these words, we highlighted them and tried to use context clues to figure out what they mean.

My students fell absolutely in love with this book! They made great connections to their favorite toys and how they would feel if they lost that toy. Talking about where they belonged in the world was a little more challenging for the students to think about. It's hard for students to imagine their life without everything they have now. We did eventually get to the point of being satisfied with what they have and not always wanting more.

Here is a list of text dependent questions I asked as we read the book the second time:
1. What was the boat made from?
2. How does the boy feel about the boat? How do you know?
3. How are the other boats treating the toy boat? How do you think that makes the toy boat feel?
4. What is different about the fishing boat from the other boats?
5. Why does the author say, "It knew just where it wanted to be?"
6. Do you think the toy boat was good or bad? Use words from the story to help explain your thinking.

As a culminating activity, they responded to the prompt: The perfect place for me is...

Stay tuned, I'm hoping to post some pictures of their responses when we get that far.

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! 

Close Reading is all the Rage

Hello,

Yes, you've heard about it, read about it, and even Pinned it! But how do you incorporate such a worthwhile strategy like close reading into your curriculum in a meaningful way? I've dabbled with it but don't feel like I really use it correctly. I teach the most wonderful ESL students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. They come from all over the world and bring a lot of unique experiences with them. I need to reach them, excite them, and stretch them every day. I'm hoping that by incorporating close reading strategies into my lessons, I will be a better teacher and my students will become better readers.

My goal is to post at least one resource, idea, accomplishment, failure, or lesson on this blog each week. I hope you learn from me (my mistakes) and are able to incorporate some of my lessons into your own curriculum. Please comment about things you've tried with your students and resources that you feel work best for you. Let's start this journey!