Strategies
Writer's Workshop
All students come in at a different place in writing, some are just drawing pictures stage, some are putting letters to represent words stage, and some a writing putting words together to make sentences. Writer's Workshop is a way for all students to be successful with their writing by slowly building on what they already know how to do. I will meet with different students daily to see where they are and what they are needing assistance with. It might be organization, punctuation, and sometimes it is just motivation.
As I meet with students I will take notes on what each student needs, and that is how I decide what our mini lesson will be for the next day. If I see a few students struggling on organizing their ideas, we will have a class mini lesson on that subject. A mini lesson usually last no more than ten minutes. I do my mini lesson usually during the middle of writer's workshop. This will give the students a break in writing and a chance to think of something new they might want to do in writing.
Sharing is caring: During this time we get together and groups to share what we have done for the day. There is no negative comments during this time! Students will talk about their writing and the other students in the group will give them ideas of what else they could add to their writing or something they would have done differently if they was writing that story or graphic.
The final part of writer's workshop is Author's Chair. This is when students have their paper, book, cartoon, or graphic finished they get to sit in the special Author's Chair and share with the class what they have done. During this time students are only allowed to comment on what they like about their classmates work. No negative feedback is allowed during Author's Chair EVER. This is not the time to give advice, this is someone's finished project that they are proud enough with, that they wanted to share!
Listening Comprehension
During read aloud we will be developing our listening comprehension by discussing what is going on in the stories. Students will be able to answer questions about the characters and what the characters might be thinking or feeling. Students will be able to ask and answer questions about what is actually going on in the story and be able to discuss this with their peers during turn and talk.
I also want to stay with a theme on my read aloud because, "When children embrace a theme and invest in a journey, they may become better readers". (Zingher 2006) My own experience as a teacher tells be that with good readers become good writers.
Building Animated Flip Books
We will be learning about animated flips books. We will learn about how they are made, why you might want to make one, and eventually make one as a class.
Animated flip books take a lot of time, work, and paper. You must make the same picture many times with just a very little movement on each page. If done properly, when you put all the pages together and flip through the pages you get an optical illusion that the character or picture is moving. This is how the original movies where created.
Building Image
To help my students start using their imaginations I will ask students to close their eyes and I will read a poem or short exert from out graphic novels, when I am finished I will ask students to draw a picture of what they thought the scene might look like. You could also read part of a chapter in a story and ask student to draw what they see. I think it would be best if this is done with either picture less books or not show the pictures from the book to the students, that way there is no right or wrong pictures.
This would be a good time to connect our vision with what it would look like in a comic book. Have I learned a special technique to help my readers understand what I am thinking?
Finding Character Traits
Character traits is a very hard subject to teach and learn in first grade. We will begin by reading a short story or a chapter out of our graphic novels and then discussing the characters. What did that character do that made you think they felt that way? We will then discuss who the main character is and discuss what kind of person they are. We will make a list of some different character traits and a list of character emotions. These are easily confused in first grade. A character trait is how a person acts and a character emotion is how they feel. Connect this to our comics, is there something we have learned that can help our readers know what kind of characters we are writing about?
Activities for Cross Circular Connections
We will be tying our science standards into this unit. My students will keep a Guinea Pig observation notebook where they will write about something we have learned or saw this week though our observations or a book we have read. They can also use their observations in their comic book stories they are working on during writers workshop.
Comments: