Community Narratives

On Monday Cindy started us off with a review of "Showing, not Telling" sentences. We selected a few of the children's applique blocks to pull out a simple sentence, and the children had to come up with descriptive adjectives and adverbs using their thesauruses to expand their sentences. For example:

Seth's urban burglar on the roof

"The burglar is on the roof" (typical simple 3rd grade sentence inspired by one of the embroideries)
burglar: sneaky, quiet, malicious, bad, bungling, etc.
roof: slanted, flat, tall, high, pitched, slippery, dangerous, etc.
is? (could be a more active sentence): climbed quietly, slinked carefully, waited patiently, tip-toed precariously, etc.
==> "The quiet, sneaky burglar slinked carefully across the slippery, slanted roof" (much more interesting sentence!)

After creating some more interesting sentences, we explained that entire stories could come out of the children's pictures. We talked about using the setting (rural, suburban, urban) from their pictures and choosing characters to live there (perhaps from the details they stitched). We came up with some examples of problems and solutions the characters might experience if they lived inside the children's pictures. Then we brainstormed what a beginning, middle, and end of the story might be. The children were provided with a graphic organizer to use for their brainstorming, and I passed their embroideries back to them. I encouraged the students to look at what they had created, imagine themselves entering the picture, and think about what it might be like to live there- what would it be like? What problems would there be?

Alex said she had a daycare center, a school, a park, and an animal adoption center. She made up a story where the children from the school went to visit the adoption center, but a dog escaped, ran around the park, and the children helped capture him again! 

Cindy and I worked around the room, talked to the children about their plans, helped elicit ideas, and kept everyone focused. When children were stuck I asked them to tell me a little about their picture- what buildings had they included, who lived there, what's happening, where could people go, what could they do in that community?
The brainstorming activity took up our morning session, but all the children completed their organizer for the writing of a narrative problem/solution story based off of their community applique embroidery. Since we need to make up some time, we decided I should stay for the afternoon as well to work towards our next goal of a finished written piece inspired by their own artwork.

Emily's grumpy farmer- his sheep kept escaping to the clover field

In our afternoon session Cindy modeled how to use the graphic organizer to flesh out a story using one of the children's appliques and organizers. As a class we offered both plot suggestions as well as vocabulary suggestions for making the story more fun and interesting for the reader. Doing this as a group hopefully helped the children see how the descriptive words they choose can help a writer make decisions. For example, if a character is a "grumpy farmer", well why was he grumpy in the first place? Once the activity was modeled, we passed out writing paper to start the first draft. Again Cindy and I worked the room, helping students stay on task, asking questions to spark their imagination, and editing the drafts as they were complete.

We've decided to have the children create another handmade book for the final version of the stories and illustrate them. I'm scanning thir pictures in to print and use for the covers.

River Model-First Try at a Persuasive Writing

On Wednesday, Marie and I were all set to have the children compose a persuasive piece to be edited and used in a "brochure". This would give the students the experience/practice of using what they have learned about Main Idea and details as they write in a persuasive style, which they hadn't yet done. We talked about who their 'audience' would be (people that would come to visit the river) and the purpose of the writing (to convince those people to visit their river). We had a four-square with the general topics already put in to hand out to the kids. We had decided to use this opportunity to have the kids show what they understood about landforms (the first square); the source (the second square); and the mouth (the third square); as they tried to persuade people to visit their river.

As the lesson progressed, we could see that merging the idea of a persuasive piece with and informational piece (the landforms, the source, the mouth) was confusing for the students, and their writing was not focused. This was certainly a moment to reflect for me as a teacher! The students struggled through trying to include information as they tried to persuade, and the writing pieces needed so much support that I decided to simply use it as writing practice, and to start from scratch on Friday with a more defined writing task.

On Friday, before Marie arrived, I introduced a graphic organizer that was specific to a Persuasive Writing. I modeled the purpose of a persuasive (in this case a brochure) and filled in a large graphic organizer that had 3 Main Reasons, each branching off into 2 details. We decided on the 3 main reasons someone should visit the river would be 1) what you can do there 2) what you can see there and 3) how easy it is to get there. I used the kids ideas to fill in the 2 details for each of these Main Ideas, and reiterated the fact that the conclusion would restate the main purpose-Visit My River.

I then modeled writing each main idea as the beginning of each paragraph as a full sentence, and then added each detail as full sentences. I reminded them to add even more details, if they thought they could. I gave another mini-lesson on using a Thesaurus to find better (expensive) word choices to make their writing more interesting to the reader. I then handed out the blank version of the graphic organizer I had used on the board.

Now the students had 2 tasks to focus on, the persuasive writing and using better word choices. The persuasive writing and the searching for better word choices had also both been modeled. Now, the task began to move smoothly! By the time Marie arrived, most of the students were done the graphic organizer and ready to begin the writing. Marie explained how they would make the brochure, and noted the visual elements that would draw "potential visitors" to take a brochure and then perhaps decide to visit the river. She explained how just as the writing was important, so was the decorative aspects of the brochure. She encouraged them to look closely at their writing to choose what to decorate the brochure with (we were using lots of stamps of Naure); again connecting the art to the writing.

Danielle is ready to put her text and picture into her brochure cover

The lesson went smoothly, as each child finished their rough draft, they came to me for editing and then to Marie to embellish the brochure. As in all writing tasks, each child moved at their own pace and the classroom was full of children at different steps of productivity! The writing in the brochures was now more focused and lots of students actually used the thesaurus to change particular words!

Note: I should mention at this point that this particular group of third graders came in September as Basic and Below Basic Readers and Writers, and 1/3 of the class have IEP's that entitle them to extra support from a Resource Room Teacher. Math is also challenge for them. I have adjusted my teaching style since September to accomodate the types of learners in this classroom, we move steadily and methodically, with lots of visual prompts and reminders.

River model wrap-up

Cindy and I recognized an opportunity for an added writing activity and assessment based off of the students' completed river models. We decided to have them create a brochure to invite tourists to visit their river as a persuasive writing piece. I remembered the children being very excited about Captain Dee's riverboat brochure when we went to Upper Black Eddy and thought they'd enjoy making their own. As I started to introduce the concept of the brochure on Wednesday, one of the students pulled out that very brochure from his desk! We looked at what kind of information is included in an advertisement, such as pictures, exciting sensory descriptions of what people will do and see, and contact information.
We had the students look at their river models and fill out a four square writing organizer to prompt their writings, and Cindy modeled how to fill it out on a transparency on the overhead projector. The reading specialist was with us, and she created a set of sentence starters for the kids to use when they started writing their paragraphs. Despite the modeling and the sentence starters, the writing portion was a challenge for many of the students. It took a lot of work and editing to push their ideas.
I think the students' "plateau" was evident. I'm going to read some when I go in on Friday and see if they're what we want to use as the final "copy" for their river brochure. On Friday we'll paint and stamp the background paper and draw pictures to include in the brochure. I've taken photos of ant's eye views of their maps to collage in (see above). If time allows, they'll include their writing, if not, Cindy is considering a revised, more persuasive version of the writing. On the one hand it's frustrating that this supplemental extension activity did not go as simply as I had thought it would, but on the other hand it's good to be able to identify the students' strength and weaknesses to know what we need to work on.

Day 4: Furtraders Narrative ;Cindy's Response

As usual, Marie has done an incredible job of capturing the essence of the lesson in her writing (the previous blog)! I will add that the students noticed a similarity in one of the Van Gogh paintings to The Gleaners. That observation led to a discussion that Van Gogh and Millet were from the same area, and may have seen some of the same types of activities in the community around them. We noticed that the "mood" in Van gogh's similar painting was much 'darker' and briefly discussed the artist's purpose of what he wanted the viewer to see or experience. This observation gave the students an experience in "Author's Purpose", another reading goal we haven't yet explored.

I'd like to note that this experience of writing, brainstorming and recognizing Problem/Solution is a skill not usually fully understood this early in the Third Grade school year. We have only been together for a little more than 3 weeks, and the students seem to have mastered the concept. This will help the students immensely in their reading comprehension. I had never thought to use illustrations or artworks as a springboard for this concept, what an incredible learning experience for me!

As is always the case, time is the enemy in the classroom! There's never enough of it. After Marie left, the students wrote out their Problem/Solutions based on The Furtraders, and they were great! EVERY student exhibited understanding of the concept. I collected them, assessed them, and they are ready to be glued into their sketchbooks next to the foursquare they had used to organize their thoughts. Remember, the foursquare also required them to write and choose who the characters were and the setting, another reading goal!