We are trying something "new" in reading this year. It is actually an "old" idea, taken from a book I found that was written before I was born! I've made some tweaks to the original plan to fit our group but I'm loving it. The basic idea is to get the kids to generate a story that I scribe. I give them a prompt (currently we've been using paintings) and ask them to tell me all about what they see. Then, we take all of the ideas and write a story. It doesn't have to match EXACTLY, it's more important that they are somewhat on task but motivated to re-read the story.
The story that we wrote on Monday with the prompt we used.
Once we write the story, we re-read it a number of ways - just the teacher, as a whole group, one-at-a-time with the teacher, etc. We also play word finding games for vocabulary I know they already have.
Then, on Tuesdays the kids re-read the story together with me as a group and are asked to find new words or phrases. They then read the story "aloud" to the group one at a time.
Agustin is reading back the story!
"Apple"
Once that is completed and I feel the kids are comfortable with the story, they get a copy for their composition books. They then illustrate the story with their own drawing, which helps me to see what they have gotten out of it. They are also asked to underline any words that they know they can read.
Jonah is ready to work today!
Gluing in the typed up stories into their books.
Jonah has underlined the words he knows in red. The half circles are his way to remember "scoops" or phrases such as "pulls down" or "picks up" which are signed with 1 sign, not 2!
Chung has personalized his illustration by labeling the people with the names of our class, but I see the tree and the house so I know he gets the gist of the story.
Agustin's illustration is very similar to the prompt and he was able to explain the story/illustration to me in his own words.
Jonah also personalized the story, making it about his family.
On Wednesday, the students do creative writing using the prompt and vocabulary they have learned during the week. It is unstructured and some students stay closer to the topic than others but I do see evidence that all of them are using new vocabulary that has been introduced.
Sorry, the pictures of this step did not come out clearly - I'll try to type up some examples of their stories soon!
While the kids are writing with the paras, I conference with each one of them. First they read through the story and underline words that they feel they can read today. I then go through the story backwards, one word or phrase at a time, and have them identify the vocabulary.
Any words they read confidently are written on a word strip and added to their vocabulary box.
I know it is hard to see this, but you can see the N-like squiggles in the sample above. These are my notes that a student underlined a word but could not read it back. Overtime the children will be better judges of their own reading ability which will help them to determine "just-right" books.
Now that they are a month into this process, we will begin using their word boxes for a variety of activities including spelling lists, grammar instruction, classification activites and more!
Hopefully this gives you some idea of the work we are doing in reading/writing this year!
