Visualizing Michigan Legends
This lesson was near the end of a unit on Michigan legends. The students had their first taste of "book club" work in third grade, placed in leveled groups, and each given a "just right" Michigan legend book. They worked as a class with the mentor text, The Legend of Mackinac Island by Kathy-jo Wargin, to determine importance in text, retell the story sequentially, practice fluency, and foster comprehension through visualization. After the students saw the model and worked as a class with the mentor text, they went back to their book club groups to continue to build fluency and comprehension with their own at-level texts.
At this point in the unit, the students had a chance to read through the legend, retell the legend, practice reading lifted passages from the legend, and in doing so, had improved their comprehension. The students told me constantly that they were visualizing the story, or certain moments in stories, and I wanted to give them an opportunity to create this visualization on paper. This helped build their comprehension of their designated moment in the story, as well as contribute to the group’s comprehension of the entire legend. These visualizations were used the following day during their fluency video recordings of the legend on an iPad, which was then shown to the class.
At this point in the unit, the students had a chance to read through the legend, retell the legend, practice reading lifted passages from the legend, and in doing so, had improved their comprehension. The students told me constantly that they were visualizing the story, or certain moments in stories, and I wanted to give them an opportunity to create this visualization on paper. This helped build their comprehension of their designated moment in the story, as well as contribute to the group’s comprehension of the entire legend. These visualizations were used the following day during their fluency video recordings of the legend on an iPad, which was then shown to the class.
orrin_michigan_legend_visualization.pdf | |
File Size: | 154 kb |
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Class-Created Story Mountain
Before the holiday break, the students completed a unit on writing realistic fiction pieces. Each day, they were encouraged and challenged to adapt my mentor teacher's personal narrative into a realistic fiction piece. This called for creativity, and the students excelled in brainstorming ideas for the parts of the writing process: coming up with story ideas, developing internal and external character traits, writing story leads, using action, and description, etc.
When the students went back to their seats to individually apply the skills they had orally and collectively demonstrated with my mentor teacher, many of them struggled to apply that same creativity in coming up with ideas, and others' difficulties mastering the mechanics and spelling held their stories below benchmark for third grade standards.
This lesson is at the beginning of a unit that calls the students to collectively write a story based off of a sequence of pictures in a wordless book. This follow-up unit will allow the students to again see the realistic fiction process modeled for them, and they will contribute to the story's development, apply these techniques with proper mechanics, and have a model as part of their prior knowledge bank when asked to write another realistic fiction story.
When the students went back to their seats to individually apply the skills they had orally and collectively demonstrated with my mentor teacher, many of them struggled to apply that same creativity in coming up with ideas, and others' difficulties mastering the mechanics and spelling held their stories below benchmark for third grade standards.
This lesson is at the beginning of a unit that calls the students to collectively write a story based off of a sequence of pictures in a wordless book. This follow-up unit will allow the students to again see the realistic fiction process modeled for them, and they will contribute to the story's development, apply these techniques with proper mechanics, and have a model as part of their prior knowledge bank when asked to write another realistic fiction story.
orrin_class_created_story_mountain.pdf | |
File Size: | 27 kb |
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I notice, and This Makes Me Think
This
lesson was taught over two days as front-loading to Lucy Calkins' personal essay
writing unit. The students had written personal narratives and realistic
fiction stories, and focused upon stretching out story details
step-by-step. They focused upon narrative introductions, identifying
conflict and the heart of the story, and writing a resolution with a strong
ending.
In order to transition into the very different style of non-narrative personal essay in which the students would establish theses, and develop mini-stories in support of these theses, I wanted to move the students from thinking about sequential stories, to how these personal, true stories can serve as evidence to support a point.
This lesson, stretched over two days, was aimed to get students to dig deeper into their noticing, and identify patterns and what their observations make them think.
In order to transition into the very different style of non-narrative personal essay in which the students would establish theses, and develop mini-stories in support of these theses, I wanted to move the students from thinking about sequential stories, to how these personal, true stories can serve as evidence to support a point.
This lesson, stretched over two days, was aimed to get students to dig deeper into their noticing, and identify patterns and what their observations make them think.
orrin_i_notice_lesson_plan.pdf | |
File Size: | 28 kb |
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personal_essay_introduction.pdf | |
File Size: | 938 kb |
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