Oh, the drama! Shakespeare in 4 West

The boys in 4 West performed a bit of drama today as they read aloud and "reenacted" a scene from Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar. After a bit of grumbling, the boys really got into it as they acted out the scene in which Caesar falls. Before acting they acted the scene, the boys read the scene aloud and we talked through the challenging language that Shakespeare used. We also discussed the elements of a play and compared them to the elements of a story. We focused on summarizing the play and using context to decipher words that were challenging. Once the boys understood what was happening, we selected roles and students "acted" out the reading. By the second take, they looked like professional actors.

I couldn't get them to break formation...

Getting into it a little more...or just plain tired of reading this scene for the third time.

Life Lessons

Sometimes what students need most cannot be found in a textbook or in a lesson plan. Today, my students didn't need a lesson in English, they wouldn't have been able to concentrate on analyzing a poem. Instead, what they needed most was just time to talk and to process the recent loss of one of their friends. I was surprised to hear about the recent death of a Form 4 student. I was terrified that if I brought it up in class my students wouldn't want to talk about it, or that I wouldn't know what to say to them, or that they would break down and I really wouldn't know what to do. When I asked the other teachers what they were saying to their students, they said that they weren't going to say anything, they were just going to go on with their lessons. Ignoring my student's loss and trying to teach an English lesson just didn't make any sense to me. So today, we spent time talking about how they were feeling as well as some healthy ways that they can process and deal with what has happened. I think that sometimes we separate school from real life, but there are times when the two meet and it then becomes more important to focus on life lessons rather than on textbook lessons.

Basketball Review!

In Form 1 West we spent the class reviewing for their test next week. I began with a review of all that we had covered in grammar. We went through their notes and their textbook and we talked about the different topics that students should study for the test. Since Form 1 students are still making that transition from a primary school to a secondary school. I spent more time reviewing with these students then I did with my older students. I went over different study strategies that they could try including recopying their notes that only cover the topics that will be on the test, creating a study guide, studying 15-20 minutes each night, studying with a friend, creating flash cards. We talked creating good study habits now, before they are in Form 4 and have to take the final test, the KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education), the one that makes or breaks their chances of going on to university.

After lecturing them on study skills and reviewing topics that would appear on the test, students played a basketball review game. Students could take "free throw shots" worth one, two, or three points. I divided the class into two teams. Each team took turns having one student from each team select a sticky note and reading the questions to the team. If the team answered the question correctly they received the points, if not, the other team has the opportunity to answer the question and get the points. Teams take turns "shooting" and earning points all while reviewing things they need to know for their test.

The questions were on the back of the sticky notes. 

The more challenging the question, the more points the question was worth.

Grammar Jeopardy!

Today students were contestants in our class game of Jeopardy! After taking notes on the progressive and perfective aspect in the past, present, and future they put their knowledge to the test. I divided the class in to two teams. Teams took turns, as I called a student to come up to the our jeopardy board and select a post it note under our six different categories and read it to the class. Each sticky note had the point value on the front and on the back was a question about the type of aspect. Questions ranged from define progressive aspect in the future? How do you form the past perfective aspect? And rewrite the following sentence in the present progressive aspect.

The questions were on the back of the sticky notes

John selecting a question from the progressive present category.

The team would then decide the answer and it wouldn't count until the student who read the note answered the question (this was so that the team could openly discuss the question without fear of saying the wrong answer). If the team was right then they got the points that the question was worth. If the team was wrong, the other team got the chance to answer the question for the points.

Reading the question aloud to his team

Listening to the teams response before answering

Our grammar jeopardy game ended in a tie!

After the game, we did a review for next weeks test! With only this week and next left in the term I want to see how my students are doing, so I have decided to give all six of my classes a test. I have written up six different tests specific to the material covered in that class, printed them at a computer cafe, and made nearly 250 copies total! I think I'm more nervous than my students. The tests are more of a reflection of my teaching. I am dying to know how effective this new teaching style was for students. I must say that I am not a fan of tests. I prefer projects over tests any day, however with the amount of poverty and lack of supplies in the school, this seems like the only fair way to gather information on how much my students have learned from my teaching! I hope they all do well! Regardless, I will be posting class averages at the end of next week!

Forever Young...

Today in Form 4 West the senior boys put their skills to practice as they compared and contrasted the lyrics to the songs, "Forever Young" by Youth Group and "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan. Word travels quickly in a small school and Form 4 boys were asking for music during English. So, I wanted to also give them the chance to complete a Venn-diagram on their own, without any guidance since they had been introduced to this tool last week.

To begin the lesson, I copied the lyrics of both songs on the board and the students copied them into their exercise books. We went over the lyrics together and then students got to listen to both songs before separating into four groups and discussing similarities and differences. To help direct some discussion, I asked students to look at the message in both songs, the tone/mood of both, who was speaking and who was being addressed, and the impression that they got of the age of the singers.

Lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Forever Young"

Youth Group's version of "Forever Young"

For this activity, students were using their reading comprehension skills to analyze the songs before they could compare and contrast them. They were also getting independent practice a newly taught strategy/tool, the venn-diagram. Most importantly, students were using critical thinking skills as they discussed what they thought the tone/mood, message, etc. of the songs were. This was a challenge for most students because they are used to answering basic recall questions. I asked students to support all of their statements with direct evidence in lyrics from the songs.

One group hard at work analyzing both songs...

Intense discussion going on in the back...

Great ideas being discussed in the corner...

In the end, students agreed that the song by the band, Youth Group gave them the impression that it was sung by young people because it says "Let us stay forever young" meanwhile Bob Dylan is addressing the young saying "May you stay forever young." Students also agreed that the the first song seemed to have a more desperate tone of wanting to stay young and a fear of getting old, compared to Dylan's song which is simply saying I hope you can remain forever young. Students did a great job using Venn-diagrams in this lesson as well as supporting their statements of similarities and differences!

Egyptian Mummies in English!

In order for students to understand what they are reading, they must understand how different types of materials are organized. If students can identify these basic patterns in writing then they will better understand how they must read it in order to comprehend it. This concept is a concept that I have really been focusing on with Form 3 West. We have explored how stories are written by looking at the various story elements and we have looked at how a newspaper is organized, and today we looked at how an informative text, specifically an article, is organized. We discussed that topic that the article is written about is usually mentioned in the title of the article. Then there are main ideas about that topic, followed by supporting details. We organized all this discussion into a visual that looks like this…

Topic of Article

I.               Main Idea

a.     Supporting detail

b.     Supporting detail

c.      Supporting detail

II.             Main Idea

a.     Supporting detail

b.     Supporting detail

c.      Supporting detail

I must say that as a teacher with a concentration in social studies, it has been a long two months teaching English without mention of history. So I cannot describe my excitement when I discovered a tattered (and I mean tattered) national geographic magazine on one of the bookshelves at the home. The magazine was from October 1999, it was missing it’s cover along with many other pages, and there were some pictures and articles cut out. However, I was elated to find that the article on mummies was fully intact! Of all the topics in history and all the ancient civilizations, my absolute favorite topic is ancient Egypt and mummification. So you can only imagine how excited I was to present this to my students!!!  

There was the small problem of only a single copy of the article and to make copies for even half the class would have be quite costly. However, when I read very slowly, pronouncing everything very clearly, and stopping to check for understanding after two paragraphs, my students are able to understand what I say. This is not the most efficient or effective way of teaching, but it allows me to introduce them to reading materials that they otherwise would not see. When I asked students if they had ever heard about National Geographic Magazine before there wasn’t even one student who was familiar with the magazine.

For this lesson, I read the article aloud and asked students to take notes on what they recognized as the main ideas and the supporting materials. Then as a class, we organized the article into the main points and the supporting details! 

The start of our notes...

Although my students did not quite share the same level of excitement about mummies as me, I soon learned that that was because they had never studied mummies and they didn't even know what a mummy was! This I found shocking! However, today students learned what mummies were, how they were created, and that the 150 mummies unearthed in the Valley of the Mummies showed influence of the Greeks and Romans. According to the article the influence of the Greeks and Romans diluted the strict traditional practices of the Egyptians! Fascinating stuff going on in English!

Grammar games!

In Form 1 West today, students learned about possessive and reflexive pronouns! Students took notes on possessive pronouns being pronouns that show ownership of something to someone. Then we talked about reflexive pronouns being pronouns that refer back to the pronoun in the sentence. Students looked at a variety of sentences where they identified the possessive and reflexive pronouns, students selected the correct possessive and reflexive pronoun to complete the sentences, and students created sentences of their own. After all that practice, it was time to put their skills to the test with a game...

I wish that I could say that this lesson was my own idea, but I have to admit that I was inspired from a lesson online. I enjoy coming up with all my own lessons. Although this lesson was inspired from a lesson online, it was partially my own, because I was so excited about finding this idea online that I forgot to write the directions to the game down. When I was planning my lesson last night, I realized that I had no idea how to play the game, I only had a game board with a bunch of pictures of various items on it...

So, I invented my own game based on the game board I had sketched out. I divided the class in half and had each side select a student who would be the team speaker. The team would think of a sentence that included the item on the board and the pronoun that I gave to them to use. I would alternate between having students create a sentence using a possessive pronoun and a reflexive pronoun. The team speaker would get the sentence from the team and the first speaker to come up to the board and tell me their correct sentence would get a check mark on the square in their team color. At the end of the game we would add up the number of check marks per team.

The game board has e squares on it have that have the names of various things including hat, cat, dog, etc. 

I tell students to create a sentence using the object and a reflexive or possessive pronoun.  For example, create a sentence with a reflexive pronoun and dog. Students could respond, "He walked the dog all by himself". The first team speaker to tell me their sentence gets to check off the square with their team color's piece of chalk. Then we move on to the next square.

  

Although we didn't finish our game before the end of class, the green team was ahead by two points. I think both teams had fun learning about reflexive and progressive pronouns today!

And that's how we roll! Exploring reading comprehension using music and poetry.

With only two weeks left of this term, I decided that I would let my students decided what materials we looked at next. So, on Friday I asked my Form 2 and Form 3 girls what they would be interested in reading next. My Form 2 girls said that they wanted to read more Edgar Allan Poe, after hearing him for the first time last week. Instead of reading another short story to them, I decided to bring in one of Poe's poems. So, in today's lesson we spent two class periods analyzing Poe's poem, "The Raven." We started class by discussing why poetry is often more difficult to comprehend than other reading materials. We talked about symbolism and inferring meaning as two of the biggest challenges that make understanding poetry difficult.

Since, "The Raven" is a narrative poem, we used our story elements (character, setting, plot, conflict, resolution) as a way to make comprehension easier. As we read the poem together we identified these elements. Because of the language and length of the poem, we looked at each stanza together as a class and talked about what was happening.

Since the girls are still having some trouble understanding my accent,

I read a stanza aloud and then had a student read the same stanza again so 

that they could understand every word.

Rachel reading a few stanzas.

Students seemed confused as to why Poe selected a raven, when I explained that the raven is often a symbol of death or darkness in literature, students asked why he didn't use an owl. An owl? Now I was the one who was confused.  I explained that an owl often is a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. The class thought that it was funny that an owl is seen as being wise because in their culture the owl is a symbol of death. That's one thing that I love about teaching here, I'm always learning something new!

After discussing most of the poem as a class, I had my students analyze the remaining stanzas independently. I asked them questions about certain phrases or lines in the poem and they had to summarize what was going on in the stanza as well as answer the questions. I stressed to them that they must use their own words as well as lines from the stanza when defending and supporting their answers. We then talked about the poem as a whole. Student's did an excellent job inferring and supporting their thoughts with evidence from the poem!

In the second to last stanza, I asked students to summarize what was happening.

Students busy analyzing the rest of the poem.

While Form 2 was easy to please, Form 3 girls were a bit more difficult since they said that they were only interested in music. They did not want to read poetry and the only topic they were interested in was music. I searched for an article about music but nothing seemed to be interesting enough. Then I realized that I could bring music into the classroom if we looked at the lyrics of a song. Now, the real hard part came when I had to find a song to use. I wanted a song that had good lyrics that we could look at and analyze. It also had to be a song that I had in my iTunes library. Even with a somewhat eclectic taste in music, I knew that Everclear, Owl City, Kesha, Matchbox 20, Gary Allan, or Enrique Iglesias just wouldn't do for a lesson. After searching through nearly every song, I finally decided on an 80's classic, "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons" by Nena.

I had to go into class early in order to put up all lyrics to the song. 

 I had to stand on a chair just to reach the top of the board.  

I put the lyrics up on the board. I then had students copy the lyrics. I asked them what they were looking at and they said it was a poem. When I told them that they were looking at song lyrics, they were ecstatic. We read the lyrics and then I played them the song on my laptop! Then we looked back at the lyrics and began analyzing them. We looked at what was happening in each stanza. In the end, I asked students to answer the following questions: What is the tone of the lyrics? What do you think Nena's views on war are? What is the overall message that Nena is trying to get across in this song? Students had to defend their answers in their own words followed by specific evidence and lines from the lyrics. This is a real weakness for this class, over half the class was unable to do this on their Form 3 midterm. However, after modeling what I wanted students to do, nearly every single student  in the class was able to answer the questions in their own words as well as provide specific evidence from the lyrics.

We had an awesome class discussion about the way that the military were portrayed as being ignorant and eager to go to war, how high tech machines designed to protect could be used to destroy if we were not careful, as well as discussing the power of imagery of the red balloons, as well as speculating what they symbolized. Many students agreed that the red balloons were effective because they are a child's toy and it makes the military look extremely ignorant to go to war over something so harmless. We discussed the tone of sarcasm in the lines "Everyone's a superhero/Everyone's a Captain Kirk." Students also inferred that the red balloons were a symbol of the narrator's dreams or ambitions and in the end the dreams were destroyed by war. I have never seen these girls so excited about reading comprehension and analyzing as they were today! At the end of class we listened to the song again. I asked the girls if the song seemed different to them the second time they listened to it, now that they looked at the lyrics and talked about it, and all the girls agreed that the song seemed much more serious to them.

Predicting the future with modal auxiliary verbs!

Today, in Form 2 West, students spent the class predicting each other's futures! After learning about nine different modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, would, will) and what each is used for, it was time for students to apply what they learned. First, I had students create a few sentences of advise. Using the modal auxiliary verb should, I had students pretend to give their best friends some important advice. Students then shared their sentences with each other. There was lots of great advice, but I didn't hear anyone say, "You should study hard in Form 2 grammar!" It must be because they all are already doing that!

After some time giving advice, I let students create their own classroom rules! They had some pretty interesting rules. For example, the teacher must remember to never give homework, you must enter the class hoping on one foot, and you must give your desk mate a candy bar each Wednesday. Imagine how silly class would be if students made the rules!


After a few minutes of sharing their classroom rules, I walked students through the steps on how to make fortune tellers. We folded the paper oragami style and students had to use the modal auxialiary verbs will, might, and may in order to write different predictions. For example, you will become rich and famous. When a student had their fortune read, they had to identify the modal auxiliary verb.

Concentrating on folding the paper...

Students holding up their completed fortune tellers.

A Little Grim...

Today was all about Venn-diagrams and the Grim Reaper! To my shock and surprise, students in both my Form 3 and Form 4 classes had never heard of or seen Venn-diagrams before. The idea to do a lesson on comparing and contrasting came to me after I noticed that students struggled on their midterm with the questions that asked them to compare and contrast. Many students had difficulty organizing their thoughts or answering both parts of the question. So the purpose of today's lesson was to show students a simple way to compare two things. I presented students with the challenge to compare and contrast Appointment In Baghdad by Edith Wharton with the poem, Incident In a Rose Garden by Donald Justice. 

Comparing and contrasting is often difficult because that is such a broad question, so I asked students to focus on what they knew. As we read, I asked my students to pay attention and find similarities and differences between the two readings based on the story elements we had learned about in a previous class (the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the resolution). 

I read the first story Appointment In Baghdad aloud. This is a short story about a sultan and his young assistant. One day the young assistant entered the Sultan's palace "out of breath and wild with excitement" and he asked the Sultan if he could borrow one of his best race horses. The Sultan asked the assistant why, and he replied, "'Because just now, as i was walking in the palace garden, I saw Death standing there. And when Death saw me, he raised his arms in a frightening motion. Oh, it was horrible! I must escape at once!'" The Sultan gives the assistant his best horse and the young man rides to Baghdad, then the Sultan confronts Death in the palace garden and he asks him why he frightened his young friend. Death answers the Sultan, telling him that he did not mean to frighten the young man. "'You see, I raised my arms only in surprise. I was astonished to see him here in your garden, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Baghdad.'"

The next story that we read was a poem Incident In a Rose Garden. This poem has three speakers, the gardener, the master, and Death. I had three students read the three parts of dialogue. Students discovered that this poem is about a gardener who sees Death in the rose garden. Frightened, the gardener tells the master that he is quitting because he saw Death standing there with a scythe. He tells the Master, "'I think he would have spoken, / Seeing his mouth stood open.'" When the master confronted Death to ask why he scared the gardener, Death answered him "As for your gardener, / I did not threaten him. / Old men mistake my gestures. /I only meant to ask him / To show me to his master. / I take it you are he?'"

Form 4 boys reading Incident In a Rose Garden aloud to the class.

Form 3 boys reading the parts of the gardener, the master, and Death aloud.

After reading and discussing both stories, I asked students to compare the story elements in each to find similarities. Students came up to the board to fill in the Venn-diagram.

After discussing similarities, we looked at the differences in each story as students filled in the appropriate parts of the Venn-diagram.

Finally, we were finished comparing and contrasting these stories!

Form 3 boys Venn-diagram completed!

Form 4 boys completed Venn-diagram!

I feel the need to justify to students every time I don't use the textbook to do a lesson. Students were thankful today because they got to read about the Grim Reaper instead of a short story about beauty contests!

"The Tell-Tale Art" of Reading Comprehension!

Students have been working hard in English as they have been applying a variety of reading comprehension strategies to the texts that they have been reading. Today, I introduced the students to Edgar Allan Poe. I selected Poe to not only challenge students with their reading comprehension, but to also capture their interests. I am bored with the selections of reading that their English textbooks offer, I cannot even imagine how students are feeling at this point. So today student's explored Poe's short story, The Tell-Tale Heart.

Before getting down to the reading, I had students do a short literacy activity called story impressions. I selected key vocabulary terms from the story and placed the terms on the board in the order that they appeared throughout the story. I read the terms aloud to the class and explained any words that they did not understand like startled, cautiously, and planks.

The list of vocabulary...

Next, students wrote a short prediction about what they thought the story was going to be about after I described the type of stories that Poe typically writes. After a few students shared their predictions with the class, I read the story, The Tell-Tale Heart aloud to the class stopping occasionally to check for understanding by asking students to answer questions or to summarize. I asked students to pay attention to the way that the vocabulary terms on the board appeared in context.

Lorynna sharing her prediction with the class. 

Lucy reading her story impression/prediction aloud.

Reading The Tell-Tale Heart aloud.

One of my students felt the need to point out that I make funny faces 

when I read aloud! Thanks.

After reading, we discussed if the narrator provided evidence in defense of him being mad or did his evidence make him seem mad. For homework, I asked students to write how their story predictions were the same and different from the actual story. I explained to students that thinking about the reading and comparing and contrasting similarities and differences was one way to understand what they comprehended from the story. Overall, students seemed quite captivated by the writing of Poe. After class, three students chased me down just to ask if they could borrow the book that contained the collections of Poe's work. I was happy to lend it to them! This is the type of excitement over reading that I wanted to see!

My Form 2 girls are such a fun group of students! 

They are always so excited to try anything new!

Making Connections: getting close to books!

Today’s class was all about making connections to the books we read. We looked at the three types of connections we can make between books: text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. We discussed that text-to-self connections include any material that triggers a memory or connection to our personal lives, while a text-to-text connection is when any material reminds us of another book, poem, play, journal, article, newspaper, or any other reading material, and finally a text-to-world connection is when a book we are reading reminds us of an event going on in the world, or a connection to a movie or play or song. We talked about using these three types of connections to better understand and remember what it is we are reading. If we are thinking about how the material we are reading relates to us and our world it can help us make the reading more meaningful and sometimes more interesting.

Three types of connections to reading include text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world.

After discussing the three types of connections, I wanted students to practice making various connections to different types of reading materials. I brought in a variety of materials that I read short excerpts from. I first began with easy books and progressed to harder materials.

We started with a picture story book and ended up at Shakespear!

I wanted students to write what type of connection they had to each excerpt that I read aloud and I wanted them to write about what specifically from the text triggered this connection.  To begin, I modeled what I wanted students to do. I first read a short excerpt from the children’s book Wild Child by Lynn Plourde. The excerpt focused on pumpkins in the fall. I then wrote on the board how this excerpt reminded me of Halloween.

 

Modeling how I wanted students to show their connections.

Students then went to work making their own connections….

Even though students are working hard, they are still having fun!

My students are so sick and tired of hearing this phrase but I love it!

I love to tell my students that to better comprehend what they are reading they need to do more than just read, they need to think about what it is they are reading! And making connections is just one way to help them better understand!

Who knew that auxiliary verbs could be so much fun???

After being told to stick to the textbook and to have the students in Form 2 complete the exercises after the lesson on auxiliary verbs, I was frustrated that I wasn’t allowed to explore the topic of auxiliary verbs in my own way. Why should it matter the means or the way that I go about teaching as long as in the end students understand what auxiliary verbs are? I was worried that I would lose the student’s interest and attention (especially Form 2 West, a group of active boys who learn best when they are doing hands on activities) halfway through this lesson. Imagine spending eighty minutes taking notes on identifying primary auxiliary verbs that are used to form the perfect or the progressive aspect. Then, imagine reading through endless example sentences and underlining or filling in the correct tense of the auxiliary verb. I bet you are bored just reading those few sentences.

As a teacher, I understand that not every lesson can be fun and exciting, and sometimes it is absolutely appropriate to take notes and lecture, however, my style of teaching doesn’t allow me to have my students copy endless notes from their textbook without finding someway to liven up a lesson. I believe that if students are exploring new concepts in a fun and exciting way, preferably hands on, they will better understand and remember those concepts. However, I also understand the need to respect the school, its curriculum texts, and the culture, especially since they have so graciously welcomed me in and allowed me to volunteer teach at Mema. The only solution to this dilemma was a compromise.

So today Form 2 boys took notes on auxiliary verbs. They learned that the term auxiliary verb is a fancy-smancy term that is short for helping verb. Students learned that the purpose of the auxiliary verb is to help the main verb in order to give a specific meaning to a sentence. They learned that primary auxiliaries are used: with main verbs to express tense (tense auxiliaries); to show agreement between subject and verbs (singular vs. plural auxiliaries); to form questions (the auxiliary verb goes before the subject); and used in the perfective and progressive aspect (present tense auxiliaries are progressive while past tense auxiliaries are perfect).

After all that intense note-taking and explaining what all that meant. It was time to do some book exercises. Before class, I wrote down all of the sentences from the exercises in the book on sticky notes. I put the sticky notes on the board. Knowing how silly and active the Form 2 boys can get, I introduced to them the game of charades. I had them form groups and each group had to come up to the board, select a sticky note and act out the sentence on it. After the class guessed what was being acted, the group read the sentence to the class and wrote it on the board. As a class we underlined the auxiliary verb in the sentence, changed the auxiliary verb to the correct tense, or filled in the missing auxiliary verb. Students had a blast! We were able to get all the bookwork and exercises from the book done, but we were also able to do it in an exciting and hands on way.

A group selecting a sentence to act out. 

Each sticky note has a sentence from their textbook.

This group acted out the sentence: 

Kindly do the work for me.

Can you name the auxiliary verb?

This group is acting out the sentence: 

The story about the monkeys wearing make-up was a hoax.

If you think regular charades is hard, try acting out a silly sentence like this!

Presenting Form 2 West...they are quite the group of actors.

What’s in a story?

Students spent the day reading children’s books! In order to help with reading comprehension, the students learned about story elements. Nearly every single story contains the same elements and if students are able to recognize and identify the basic story elements then they will be able to better summarize what the story is about.  What better text to illustrate this concept than children’s books. After creating my lesson plans, I frantically searched the bookshelves at the home in hopes of finding a few decent storybooks, since its not like I can go to the local library to find any. The collection of storybooks that I found were very eclectic, but the students ended up loving them. Our list of story books included: The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson, I Met a Dinosaur by Jan Wahl, Matthew’s Dream by Leo Lionni, The Pokey Little Puppy by Janette Sebring, and Wild Child by Lynn Plourde.

s

Such a fun collection of storybooks.

We began class by identifying the parts of a story starting with the tile, the characters, the setting, the conflict, and then the resolution. We discussed how the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the resolution combine to make up the plot of the story. After discussing story elements, I introduced the story, The Gruffalo’s Child to the class. The responsibility of the class as I read was to identify the elements of the story. After I finished reading, the students filled in our story elements chart. Based on the chart, students summarized the story.

This was our class story elements chart for The Gruffalo's Child.

As an elementary teacher, I believe that students are never too old to be read to!

 The class really enjoyed being read The Gruffalo's Child aloud!

Now it was time for the class to practice. Students broke up into four groups. Each group circled up and chose a reader who read the story aloud.

This group of senior boys read aloud The Pokey Little Puppy!

Look how intense this group of boys are as they read I Met a Dinosaur! 

All the groups were so focused!

Then, as a group, students filled out the story elements of their book and each group shared it with the rest of the class. For homework, students got the opportunity to create their own stories!

Chris sharing his groups story elements and summary!

Of course there is homework...