Strategies
This is a thematic literature-based unit on historical biography. I will provide an assortment of biographies for students to read in order to engage with the content. It is critical for me to make books with a wide range of ability levels available for appropriate differentiation of instruction. I may still have emergent readers, as well as some who are transitional, and possibly, though not always, a few advanced readers in the class at the time of implementation. The importance of providing appropriate materials, and methods for using them, cannot be minimized.
I will also need to provide strategies for students to access their schema, 14 utilize their listening, reading, and writing skills, and retain the content they will be learning. I will utilize a wide variety of strategies to accomplish those tasks. Some of these strategies will be used with each of the historical figures; I will use others at my discretion after learning over time which strategies produce the most effective response. Below you will find the strategies I believe will be best suited to the activities to follow in the next section:
File Folder Schema
I use this strategy for students to organize any prior knowledge or schema, they have for any subject. We create Schema file folders at the beginning of the year. Each file folder is decorated on the outside by the students and has their name and a line for the subject which we are learning. I also have a clip art cartoon depiction of a brain (pictured above) that each child glues on the cover of their folder before they are laminated. This image helps to remind them that we store knowledge in our brain and we can "pull it out" just as we pull a file out of a drawer when needed.
Inside the file folder are blank post-it notes on which the students can write words or draw pictures to assemble their prior knowledge. For example, if the subject is George Washington, on one post-it a child may draw a picture of a dollar bill and on another, he or she might write "president." As the child gains knowledge, he or she will continue to add post-its, representing facts to the folder.
Exclusion Brainstorming 15
This is a strategy I use either at the beginning or ending of a lesson. On a whiteboard or chart paper, I randomly write many "facts" or key ideas about whatever it is we are studying. In addition to the facts or ideas, I will write many extraneous things that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. It is the job of the students to eliminate the items that are "red herrings" one by one, until all that is left are things true and pertinent to the topic, ranking them as high-quality according to their importance. This can be done as a whole group exercise, in small groups, or one-on-one.
Teaching Text Features
Because biography is, among other things, a type of informational text; it is important to teach the features we often find in non-fiction text. I believe it has become increasingly useful to teach directly these components to better prepare primary students for the upper grades. Text features include maps, timelines, captions, charts, headings and sub-headings, informational notes, and bold-faced vocabulary. I am amazed at how ubiquitous these features are in the high quality juvenile biographies available today.
K-T-W-L Charting for Critical Thinking
K-W-L Charting is a time-honored tradition in elementary pedagogy; with its columns for what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we have Learned. In the past year, in an effort to promote critical thinking in my first grade classroom, I have added an additional column for what we Think we know. I use this specifically in content areas where we find a discrepancy in information in texts. I then provide multiple references, including multimedia sources to research and see if we can prove or disprove what we think we know. I believe this will be particularly useful in examining the mythology that has sprung up around many of our historical figures.
Interactive Read-Aloud
I use the Interactive Read-Aloud as a more specific way of conducting a read-aloud, making for better engagement in a whole group, or even small group, setting. It differs from the traditional storybook read-aloud in that it requires more participation from the listeners. In addition to asking questions periodically during the reading, as most of us do already, I invite my students to do one or more of the following: give a thumbs-up when they hear newly introduced vocabulary, link thumb and index finger with thumb and index finger in a chain-like manner above the head when the student recognizes a "connection" to their own life or schema, reformulate certain statements of facts into questions, and pause to fill in elements on graphic organizers during the reading. All of these actions promote "purpose" and force the students to become better listeners.
Interactive Write-Aloud
I usually do Interactive Write-Aloud in small groups, but it can be easily adapted to large groups as well. This is writing that is done collaboratively with my students and me. I love when my students can write independently, but it is also important to "talk" our way through writing. This allows students to wonder aloud, try different ways to say the same thing, and most importantly, listen to me model Standard English. All through the first grade year, I believe it is important to combine oral and written exercises. The final step of the interactive write-aloud is chorally reading the piece that has been written together, thus allowing students to hear what they have written. This is a valuable self-correction tool.
Grand Conversations 16
I use a slightly adapted version of this strategy in my classroom. Most Grand Conversations are almost completely student-centered with minimal guidance from the teacher. I do think that is the optimal way to facilitate a grand conversation. However, that works best in upper grades. First graders need a little more support.
Customarily, a grand conversation has two parts. The first part centers on student-led discussion of the text. They learn to observe the conventions of conversation and speak in turn. The talk concentrates on the "big ideas" they have read about or seen in a video presentation. The second part consists of the teacher pointing out any of the pertinent facts or ideas that were not discussed. I have monitored grand conversations in upper grades where I have not had to intervene at all as the students covered everything, plus adding some interesting ideas that never occurred to me.
In adapting this strategy for first grade, I divide the class into small groups first. I prepare strips of paper with one of the ideas or facts on them. The leader of each group chooses a strip of paper, and begins a discussion in the small group. During this time, I circulate in the room, listening in on the conversations. I remind them of the proper way to converse while modeling complete sentences. After the groups have discussed the idea or fact among themselves for ten minutes or so, we all meet on the carpet in a circle for the Grand Conversation. I usually choose the first speaker by pulling a craft stick from a jar that has a stick for each person in the class. As the conversation progresses, I monitor it closely taking notes to make sure everything is covered. If at the end, not all items have been discussed, I will intervene with some leading questions.
Please know that this strategy cannot be learned in one day by first graders. This is particularly true if you have a lot of English Language Learners in your class, but that makes it all the more valuable to persevere. It takes a great deal of practice and work in small groups in order to get to the point where the Grand Conversation can occur, but it is well worth the effort.
Technology Integration
In researching this unit, I have discovered many websites related to the study of biography. I provide a list of the best websites I have found in the annotated bibliography following the Activity section of the unit. Of particular interest, are interactive timelines for the historical figures we will be learning about. These will serve the dual purpose of bringing the concept of a timeline into focus as well as highlighting events. On these timelines, all the students need do is to move the cursor over a certain year, and whatever events occurred in that person's life during that time appear. I could see my students becoming very engaged in doing this.
Another great means of technology connection I found comes from the website http://www.biguniverse.com. Not only is there a nice variety of online biographies there for the children to read, but there is also a tab under which books can be electronically created and published. This would be an excellent strategy to use for "early finishers" at any time during the day.
You may also find http://unitedstreaming.com produced by the Discovery Channel a useful resource. The Biography website, http://www.biography.com has a Classroom tab under which many "mini-biography" film clips can be found and shown to your class without cost. I have found these helpful in reaching out to children because of the amount of television they watch.
Interviewing
This could be considered more of a skill than a strategy, but interviewing will certainly be a necessary part of at least one of the activities I am planning for the unit. This will be an interesting concept to teach to first graders. I believe that showing clips of interviews of popular celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus, will serve as an example to the class. I will model the procedure by inviting the principal or another adult at the school to be interviewed in front of the class. Following these examples, we will further explore how to ask questions and what makes a good question.
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