Strategies
This unit is planned to be taught in the beginning of the second trimester in January, after the Christmas break. This timeline is essential for my students for a few reasons: since the learning strategies that are used in this unit have been practiced and have been internalized by the students by this time, they need little or fewer reinforcements; the class routine and structure and expectations have been set, and students are comfortable making mistakes and learning from them; they are learning about ecosystems and habitats in science; they learn how animals live together and depend on each other and their habitats for survival.
I employ a number of cooperative and group learning strategies in my class, to promote social skills and communication among my students. According to researchers like Slavin, Cooperative learning has improved student achievement, race relations, and in turn students’ self-esteem.33
Think-Pair-Share
Think-Pair-Share is a commonly used cooperative learning strategy developed by Frank Lyman.34 This strategy is used across all grade levels and schools. It has three stages to develop higher-order thinking. In the first stage, Think – the teacher encourages students to think about a given prompt, a guiding question, or an inquiry question for a few seconds. At this time, the teacher can also model thinking aloud to show what a thought process involves. In the second stage, Pair – they pair up with a partner and talk about their thoughts with each other. This partner sharing is helpful to reduce anxiety for the students before sharing with the class, and it also provides an opportunity to them to formulate their ideas in sentences. In the third stage, Share – they share their ideas with the whole class. I will be using this strategy throughout this unit.
Collaborative Conversation
Collaborative Conversation is a SEAL strategy designed to help students communicate with each other in a safe environment. Students talk with partners or in a group in a meaningful way, one that is relevant to the topic and practice the use of academic language.
As they are guided into higher-level thinking, they learn to use respectful language such as “excuse me,” “I agree with you,” “I disagree with you, because…,” or “in my opinion,” as well as using respectful body language while interacting with others, such as maintaining eye contact while actively listening to a person and nodding your head to agree or disagree while listening.
Numbered Heads Together
In this cooperative learning strategy,35 students work in groups. Each student is assigned a number from one to the highest number in the group. In my class, I have students in groups of four, and I assign each student a number from one to four. The idea is for the students to work together by putting their “heads together” to come up with the solution to a guiding question.
Then I randomly select a Popsicle stick from four Popsicle sticks, which are numbered from one to four as well. The student who has the same number as that Popsicle stick is assigned the role of “spokesperson” for his or her team. The goal is for each member of the group to contribute his or her ideas, and the spokesperson records those ideas and presents them to the whole class, ensuring the equity of voice.
Frontloading Vocabulary
To help my English Learners, I usually frontload challenging vocabulary before starting a lesson. I usually bring pictures and/or real objects that match the vocabulary word in the context of the story. Students have an opportunity to use the new vocabulary words in various settings through different subject areas and centers throughout the day as they internalize the new words.
Sentence Frames and Question Frames
Sentence and question frames are provided to the students, especially the English Language Learners, to help them frame their sentences to help their conversations flow. These sentence frames are differentiated in three levels to support the students’ learning such as,
“Pooh wants to find Eeyore’s tail because ______________.”
“Pooh decides _______________________, because_______________.”
“The reason Pooh _________________________________.”
These sentence frames are used to guide students’ thought process while they are working individually or in groups.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers reinforce the background knowledge of the students, and they also help them visualize the information and internalize it. They help the students brainstorm new ideas before writing. Our school uses the graphic organizers developed by the company called, Thinking Maps.36 These graphic organizers follow a consistent pattern and a protocol for use and are color coded for ease of distinction of different ideas. Each Thinking Map serves a different purpose. There are eight Organizers, and the students will use them for describing, comparing and contrasting, finding cause and effect of situations.
Freytag’s Pyramid37
I use this model while teaching my students about the plot of a story. This model is useful because it visually shows them the beginning, middle, and end of a story. As the reader goes up the side of the pyramid, he or she can visually see the rising action in the plot and a need to solve a problem in the story.
Problem Solving Strategies
There are many problem-solving strategies, in education, as well as in life. Over the years researchers have refined these strategies to solve a problem logically. I teach my students to use six steps to solve a problem. This strategy includes: identifying a problem, analyzing the problem, generating potential solutions, selecting and planning a solution, implementing the solution, and evaluating the solution. These steps can be taken to solve problems in math, science, or real-life situations. For instance, when faced with the problem of trapping a Heffalump, what might the characters do? The students can go through these steps in dealing with a situation in the story and use the real-life problem solving skills to find out a solution and then compare it to the Pooh’s and Piglet’s solution. The students don’t have Heffalumps in their real life, but they do have personal or academic Heffalumps that they need to overcome.
Read Aloud
My students love listening to a story being read aloud to them. This is evident from their engagement during the read aloud and clapping at the end. When teachers read aloud, they lend their voice to the characters and are able to model expressive reading and academic language to the students. They can also model where to stop and pause, where to put stress, and where to change their voice. This makes reading engaging for the students and reinforces concepts about reading and language.
When students listen to a story being read aloud, they are able to imagine what the character is like, and that knowledge allows them to connect and associate with the characters more strongly. By listening to the stories, students will be able to visualize Piglet as “squeaky” and Eeyore as indeed “gloomy,” and Pooh, naturally, a “growler.”
I will read aloud two main sections of the book to model and reinforce the techniques of point of view and language. The “Introduction” is written in the first-person point of view through which the author introduces the main characters and his inspiration to write these stories. The introduction helps intrigue the students and make the stories almost magical in nature. The students will be wanting more at this time, asking about the bear, and most interestingly, “Was it a real bear?” This is my most cherished question because these stories are based on a real bear, but I reveal that fact much later when I tie this book with science, as I don’t want to destroy the magic this early on. This also becomes the drum-roll moment for my students, as at this age, they are fascinated by nature and interesting facts. Therefore, I end the unit by reading aloud a heart-warming biographical picture book, Winnie: The True Story of a Bear, Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh, written by Sally M. Walker.
The first story, “Chapter I, In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh And Some Bees, And The Stories Begin,” makes a really interesting read-aloud as the narrator skips between first-person and third-person point of view. The words and phrases where the narrator is using first person point of view are italicized. Students follow along in their books and are visually able to see the change and highlight these changes in different colors.
Along with teacher read-aloud, I will be using two other types of read-aloud activities for this unit: dialogic read-aloud, and student read-aloud.
Dialogic Read Aloud
Dialogic Read Aloud is a part of the SEAL model. During this strategy, teacher reads a picture book that is related to a science and/or social studies theme that the students are working on. A story is read about three times over a course of a week, in which the teacher guides the student from explicit or text-dependent information to below-the-surface information that the students can analyze and synthesize by using techniques like inference and by asking and answering inquiry/guiding questions.
This activity takes about a week, so I will use this activity for the story that focuses mainly on social skills and problem solving: the seventh story, “Chapter VII, In Which Kanga and Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet Has a Bath.”
The seventh story focuses intently on values like respect and empathy that promote social skills. In this story, Rabbit plots to kidnap Roo by replacing him with Piglet in Kanga’s pouch. The reason he is doing this is to scare Kanga and Roo away from the forest, as they are such “Strange Animals”38 who should not be allowed to stay in the forest. I have heard many times in my classroom or on the playground, “No one is playing with me…,” or I see students ignoring others because they look different or are new to the school. Recently, at my school I decided to do a character-building activity when a group of girls started rumors about another girl just because she was new and a bit on the heavier side. By reading this story multiple times, I will be able to guide my students to think and look deeper than just what appears on the surface in their real life scenarios as well.
I will have students focus on the Rabbit’s point of view about Kanga and Roo, Piglet’s point of view about the situation that Rabbit has put him in, and the question of why Piglet agrees to this plot. Students will be able to distinguish their own points of view from that of Rabbit and Piglet, and also from that of the narrator. They will use the Think Pair Share strategy here to talk about their points of view, specifically how they differ or are same with those of the characters. In the third reading, the students will be guided to think about why they think the author wrote this particular story.
Student Read-Aloud: Readers’ Theater
The students will be assigned the roles of the characters differentiated accordingly to their reading levels and interests. The teacher will assume the role of the narrator to model and make it easy for the students to distinguish between the character who is speaking and the narrator who is telling the story. The students are able to develop confidence by reading aloud in a safe environment. The story takes a dramatic turn and comes alive like a play. The students are able to lend their own voice to those of the characters. This makes the characters come to life in the students’ minds. Not only is it easier to distinguish between their points of view, but also it becomes easy to understand the quotation marks and the difference between a direct speech and a narration.
This strategy is done only for certain essential stories that I want the students to focus on, stories that the students have heard repeatedly through the Dialogic Read-Aloud. This gives them a level of comfort to read the story as they internalize the language.
Dramatization/Role play
Readers’ Theater can easily flow into dramatization and role-play. Bringing a story to life resonates with every child in the form of pretend play and dress–up. Dramatization makes the stories come alive and engages students in reading. This provides them with a better understanding of “point of view” and “voice” as they take up the characters’ expression. Dramatizing a story can provide students a glimpse into the characters’ traits and their personalities, their perspectives and their choices. The students are able to experience the consequences of their choices as they become a part of the dramatis personae. This will help them with inference and critical thinking. In an English learner class, it becomes most pertinent for the students to hear their voice and their language. These stories provide the students an opportunity to play with the language.
Close Reading
Close reading is defined as “a focused rereading of a text in which you go beyond a basic understanding of the text. It may involve a passage or key quotation from a text.”39 I. A. Richards, an English poet, critic and teacher, invented this strategy as a new way of reading poetry, though currently schools and teachers use this strategy to comprehend any text, prose or poetry. This method also paved way for New Criticism.
Inference is an important tool for problem solving and critical thinking. “Inferencing is said to be the engine of comprehension.”40 Close reading strategy provides tools to readers, such as inference, to dig deeper into a text.
In this strategy the students read a text at least three times. The first reading is on-the-surface reading that sets the purpose of reading and develops background knowledge depending on explicit information. In the second reading students read a complex portion of the text, focusing on the author’s craft and text structure. The third reading takes the students deeper, requiring them to analyze and synthesize information.
Close reading helps us make “mindful interactions with the text, [that allow us to] create new concepts or internalize new information.”41
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