Growing Readers and Writers by Teaching with Mentor Texts

One of our most important goals as educators of readers is to help instill a love for reading.  Yes.  It is also to teach them how to read.  Yes.  But we also want them to understand what they are reading. And not just at a surface level, but at a deeper level.  So basically...our goal is to nurture our students into...
deep, thoughtful, fluent, "can't put the book down" readers.

Not an easy task.  But an exciting one.
And one that requires some great mentor texts that support and excite our young readers.

Last year, Tanny McGregor stopped by our classroom to present a new lesson on theme.  Within this lesson she used concrete materials, anchor charts, and discussion to help our firsties discover the theme across several texts. We were excited to put what we learned from her into place this school year.  And we knew just the books that we wanted to use.

 Ruby In Her Own Time and Leo the Late Bloomer are two texts with a similar story line.  As you can probably guess from the titles, both stories are about characters that learn to do things a bit later than their peers.  They are "late bloomers" and learn to do things "in their own time."

Ruby is a duckling that hatches later than her siblings, learns to eat late, and also learns to swim last.  But as the title states, Ruby learns to do all the things that her peers do, but at her own rate and in her own time.  Just like the little duckling, Leo learns to read, write, draw, and speak; however, he did not "bloom" until he was ready. It is interesting that the mother in both texts know that the child will "bloom" in their own time.

To begin, I want to introduce the word "theme" to my first graders because this a new term for them.  The Common Core states "retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson."  The shift from the term "central message" to "theme" happens in forth grade, but I don't think it is a bad idea to expose them to both terms.

 When identifying a theme across multiple texts, Tanny called them "Text Cousins." As the lesson progresses, the possible themes are recorded on a large chart paper.  This allows students to think about all the possible themes based on evidence from all three texts.

 To begin our study of central message, I will display a quote from Gandhi.  I will read it, we will read it, and they will read it.

The students can then identify surface level information about this quote such as: 16 words, 2 contractions, or 2 sentences.  As these surface level items are discussed the students will get to touch the surface of the sand in my glass bowl.

Side note: I am using "moon sand" for this lesson because I like the way it moves when we dig deeper for the theme.

After students explore all their surface level thinking with the quote, I want them to begin thinking about what Gandhi really means by this quote.  What is his message to us?  (As I ask this question, I am going to dig deeper in the glass bowl.)




As students share their thinking in this lesson, I will keep track of these theme ideas on our chart paper; however, students will also get to dig deeper into our bowl and place a "digging deep: theme" card at the bottom of the bowl.

We will continue our discussion of digging deeper into the theme with the book Leo the Late Bloomer; however, I will only be showing the illustrations from this text and talking with students about what they see going on in the story.  I want them to focus on the overriding theme and message from the author through the illustrations.  Once the picture walk is complete, students will add their theme ideas to our chart (while also digging deeper into our bowl).

The final book, Ruby in Her Own Time, will then be read aloud in its entirety.  Students will "turn and talk" to decide what they think the possible theme could be across all these texts.  As we record these theme ideas, I will be asking what evidence led them to that conclusion.

This lesson can be used with any texts that fit the needs of your students.  Within this resource, you will find the quote from Gandhi typed up in case you would like to use these specific "text cousins: (as Tanny called them).  Along with the quote, there are surface level and digging deep cards.

The surface level/deeper thinking cards can be used as an additional visual when the students touch the surface of the sand or dig deeper into the bowl.  I would like them to not only see the surface of the sand but also SEE where their thinking would fall in this bowl.  Then when they have deeper thought, I want them to not only dig, but place a thinking card.

Two graphic organizers are included to assist your students understanding of surface versus deeper thinking.  The first organizer is more of a labeling activity to help them show you what they learned from the lesson.

The second organizer requires students to determine the theme of a text and provide support for their thinking.  This could be used in a whole group, small group, or independently.

I hope that this is a lesson that you can use with your students this year. Be sure to grab your Freebie by clicking on any of the product images!  Please let me know if you have any suggestions or questions about this lesson on theme.  Thanks!

 Before you move on to the next post, my mystery word is Butterflies. [HERE] is the link to the form you can use to keep track of the mystery words at each stop. You'll need them for an entry on the Kindergarten-2nd grade Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


 

An InLinkz Link-up

Reading in Winter Wonderland

Hello and welcome to our second annual Winter Wonderland link up!  Last year, The Reading Crew sponsored a winter literacy hop, but we decided to run it a little different this time. Instead of hopping with the potential of dead links, we decided on a closed link up. What this means is that there is a "map" of the blogs at the bottom of each post, so you can hop through them all at once, visit some today and some later in the week, or see what best matches your literacy needs. 

On each blog, you will see a word in blue font. This is the blog's mystery word. Please be sure to record them because you will need each word for a five point entry in our raffle. To help you keep track, you can print and use the form below.

 

 We are raffling off two wonderful prizes. We are giving away a copy of each book featured in our posts to two winners (K-2 group) and the (3-up group). Each prize package will include 12 books (K-2) and 13 books (3-up). 

On each blog, we will be sharing a mentor text lesson using the book we've chosen. The lesson will be modeling a reading skill (comprehension or writing typically, but some at the primary level may target vocabulary, fluency, or word building).  The materials that are shared may be forever freebies or may be free for a limited time. Please take note of this as you visit the blogs. 

Again, we welcome you to our blogs and wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season.

Trees are one of my favorite things about the season.  The smell of pine, the lights, and the beautiful shades of green.  Living in the Midwest, winter time equates to not a lot of color.  Lots of grays, browns, and white snow. (I do love the white snow!)  But the pine trees still give off their color.

When I found this book quite a few years back, I instantly fell in love with it because it is filled with trees of all sizes. 

Mr. Willowby has his tree delivered but he quickly finds out that it is too tall. So the butler cuts off the top and gives it to the maid.  This tree is too big for the maid and she must chop off the top.  The gardener picks this little treetop up but has the same problem.  And so the story continues through many different characters but the final piece of the tree ends up back at Mr. Willowby's home with a little family of mice.

 The book is filled with great oral vocabulary for our youngsters. Some of the words that stick out to me include: glistening, dashed, splendid, magnificent, haste, delighted, snipped, padding, drowsily, hunk, trim, scampered, frolicking, and nook.  Here are two of my favorites in use.  Oh!  And did I mention that this is a rhyming book, as well?

Before introducing the book I like to get an idea of the prior knowledge students have with the vocabulary words.  I ask them to put a thumbs up for "I know it," a thumbs down for "I've never heard it," and a sideways thumb for "I've heard it but don't know what it means."  This is just a little pretest for me and them because now they know what to listen for as I read the text.

Once I begin reading, I will quickly pause at the six vocabulary words that I have chosen to focus on for the week.  I give a very quick and brief definition.  Sometimes it can be a one word definition.  The example below shows how I would read this page to emphasize the word "scampered."

My lesson has two primary focuses.  I want students to have an understanding of the vocabulary words that I have chosen to point out because I think that they are rich and meaningful to the story.  If they do not understand them, it will impact their comprehension of the story.

But I also want them to be able to retell the story.  This can be done as a whole class and then it can be done independently through a sequencing activity.

This freebie includes three versions of the sequencing activity.  Each version includes the same events but the difficulty of the text changes. See the example of one sentence below:

I like when the students sequence the sentences on construction paper.  This allows for more space to move the sentences around. Once they are in place, students can glue them down.

Since oral vocabulary is learned through repeated exposure, I spend the week quickly reviewing and using the words that were first introduced through Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree.  With this repeated exposure and usage, the hope is that the words will become part of the oral vocabulary of the students too.  Some things that I do to build this understanding is providing kid friendly definitions, giving examples and non-examples of the words, showing images, or asking the students to draw quick sketches of the vocab words.  

Oral vocabulary has been one of my personal focuses this year because I really saw a gap in my teaching.  At the end of the week I have been assessing the receptive and expressive vocabulary of my students to determine if my teaching routine for vocabulary is effective.  I have included the assessment in this freebie.  You can use it with any vocabulary words from Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree or any other book throughout your school year.

Tip:  When I first started using this assessment, my team and I did not include that many words.  We would white out what we did not need.  We also gave the students strips of words typed up.  They would just glue the words down instead of writing them.  This was helpful to us as we all got use to the assessment.  And....we like to throw in some review words!

This is a forever FREEBIE.  Please click on the cover below to grab your copy!

Before you go, I will remind you that my mystery word is tree. You can enter it onto your sheet or into the rafflecopter below. Good luck to you, and I hope you'll come back soon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

 

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An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

A Winter Wonders Celebration

January has hit.  It means a couple of different things to me.

1.  It marks the ONE YEAR anniversary of Adventures in Literacy Land. Time has flown by and I have really enjoyed being part of such a strong literacy community.  I have learned so much.

2. It is mid-year for my firsties.  Things start to really click at this time of year and fluency becomes more of a focus for us.
What better way to celebrate both of these milestones than through a Winter Wonders Blog Hop!

There are so many ways to integrate fluency practice into your daily schedule.  Some things that you can do to work on fluency include:

*repeated readings
*poetry
*reading phrases
*buddy reading
*listening to a fluent reader
*listening centers

But some struggling students need even more.  I have found that some students struggle with fluency because they still have not mastered the high frequency words.

I wanted to combine some of these fluency strategies into one lesson (because I know our time is always limited!) And we are going to call it a 2-Way Fluency Scoot.

During this game students will buddy read, listen to others, read phrases, and read high frequency words repeatedly.  Students will read "growing sentences" to each other in the form of a SCOOT game!

The way these sentences are set up students should be able to read the text fluently by the time they get to very bottom of the page.
Students record this type of activity by evaluating the fluency.

Please click on either image above to grab this freebie!  I hope this game can help to work on fluency in your classroom this winter!

If you would like to find out about the other winter activities we will be doing this year you can follow us on bloglovin'!

Head on over to your next stop and find out what Winter Wonder Erin from I'm Lovin' Lit has in store for you!

Loving Literacy Blog Hop

 

Welcome to...

With Valentine's Day approaching, our group of reading specialists, coaches, and teacher bloggers decided it was the perfect time to share our love of literacy with you.  Each of us is passionate about helping children develop a love of reading, and what better way to love reading than through our favorite books.  Each blogger participating in this weekend's hop is sharing materials for his/her favorite book, book about friendship, or for Valentine's day.  We hope you'll enjoy using them and sharing your love of literacy with your students.

I am the oldest in my family.  It seemed that teaching just kind of happened naturally as the oldest.  Showing my sisters how to ride a bike, set up a Barbie house correctly, or dive into our grandma's pool was just what I did.  I remember spending hours in our bedroom playing "school" and I am pretty sure I was a bossy, demanding teacher.  The love for literacy did not start there.  It came later for me.

As I think about it, the love for literacy may be due to "The Babysitter's Club" series.  Does anyone else remember these books?  I don't think they were ground-breaking, award winning books; however, as a young girl, I fell in love with reading because of these books.  This love just stuck and as I started my career path in education, it was a passion that I wanted to help foster in others.  When the opportunity arose to be a Title I teacher, I jumped at it and have loved every minute.

A few years back I came across "Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch" and I fell in love with this character. Mr. Hatch is quiet, keep-to-himself kind of guy until one day when he receives a Valentine's Day gift in the mail.  This gesture of love changes his behavior in such a positive manner that the whole town notices.  It is such a great illustration of the impact that love plays in our lives.  And it is a great way to teach about how a character changes throughout a story.

Since we have been focusing on metacognition in our classroom (read more here), the focus of this pack is thinking.  The following pages are included:

This unit is available for free this weekend only and exclusively on my blog.  It will convert to a paid product after February 2nd.  I appreciate you dropping by today, and if you are new to my blog and love literacy, I hope you'll take a moment to follow my posts on Bloglovin.

Trading Spaces Tuesday: Asking and Answering Questions

So excited to be part of the first "Trading Spaces Tuesday."  I was a guest blogger at Reading Toward the Stars today.  And Shanon is our guest blogger!! Thank you so much for joining us at Curious Firsties today, Shanon!  We are so excited to have you :)

_____________________________________
 Hi Everyone, I'm Shanon Bourne from the blog A Day In The Life Of A Title I Teacher. I'm so excited to be guest blogging here at Curious Firsties today! Here's a little about myself that you may not have known. I'm a second year teacher who has only ever taught Title I reading. When I was hired my school didn't have a Title I program in place and it was my job to completely create the framework for our program. After a full year of having the program running it has come a very long way and I am proud to call it my baby! I spend a lot of time researching different skills, strategies, and programs that can be used within my program. I teach grades 1st-5th and have approximately 60 students total. Our small group times average about 25-30 minutes 4-5 days a week. It's crazy how fast our time goes but I've learned how to make the most of every minute to focus on our skill(s) for the day/week.

Well, I'm sure you've had enough of learning about me and that you're ready to get on to learning about a reading skill. This week I've been working on the Common Core ELA Literacy Standard RL.1: Asking and Answering Questions. This standard is used in 1st grade - 3rd grade.

My kiddos have a hard time with asking questions that relate to a text and they have an even harder time of answering questions using details from a text. To start each lesson I introduce my students to our handy little questioning poster! I tell them that good readers always have questions about a text before they read it, while they read it, and even after they finish reading it. 

Next, I like to model how good readers ask questions before reading by showing my students the cover of a picture book and asking a few questions aloud:

• who is the author?
• why did the author write this?
• is the information or fictional?
• I wonder what ____ means?
• I wonder who/what ___ is? 
• Where does this story take place? 

Based on the cover art I will ask questions like:

• I wonder why the boy is sad? 
• I wonder who the girl is?
• What is the boy looking at? 
• What type of animal is this? 

There are so many questions that you ask based just off the cover of a book! After asking 2 or 3 questions I'll pick 1 or 2 students to ask a question they have based on the information from the cover of the book and I'll write these questions on our poster. 

Now I begin reading the book. Before I do each lesson I always pre-read my book and mark "stopping spots" with sticky notes. I like to keep all of my questions organized for the next year by creating spiral books for each book. 

I copy the cover of the book onto card-stock and then bind 3 or 4 extra pages of card-stock behind it. 

On each sticky note I record the questions that I have while reading. As I read the book I am able to model to my students how I stop, think about my questions, and record my questions on a post it note. I'll pick a few of my questions to place on our poster. As we continue reading the book I'll stop and pick a student to tell me a question they have and we will record it on our chart. 

After we have finished reading I go through the steps of how to ask a question after reading a book. I always tell my students that there are questions you should still have after reading: what do you still want to know, what don't you understand, etc. and they recorded as many questions as they have in the interactive notebooks. Again, I allowed them to place a question on the chart. 

By the end of our lesson our chart looks something like this

When our lesson is over I send the students back to their desks and allow them to practice asking questions before, during and after reading. I'll pass out a few sticky notes and have them record their questions on a sticky note and stick it inside their book. After they have finished their book they will take the sticky notes out and place them in their interactive journals to keep for our next lesson where we will discuss how to answer questions using details from the text. They will use their questions and see if they can find answers after they finished reading the book. If they are unable to find the answer we discuss other ways that they might be able to find answers to their questions: dictionary, internet, encyclopedia, etc. 

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about how I introduce the standard CCSS.ELA.RL.1 to my students. As a thank you here is a graphic organizer you can use with your students to record their questions while reading. Just click the picture to be directed to my TPT store where you can get your free download! 

 

Be sure to follow me on Bloglovin to learn more about other reading strategies and activities that I do in my room! You can follow me by clicking the image below.