Strategies
From my research and the Illustrated Page seminar, I learned that pictures and text have a complicated but also a collaborative relationship. My unit activities will be based on using the collaborative relationship between the arts and writing to show that writing is art and art is writing. The subjects for the read aloud activities were carefully and thoughtfully chosen to ensure that students would feel culturally and personally related to the stories. Each art project is connected to the reading and directly works in conjunction to their writing. This will create entry points to writing for a range of students with different intelligences and needs. The writing activities get progressively harder. Activity 1 and 2 focuses on teaching the concept that words are art and that they work together through simple cultural drawing activities with words. Activity 3 and 4 progresses to more advanced projects including creating acrostic poems with illuminated text and creating a family tree with labels and sentence. Below are the strategies that I will be using in order to successfully teach the activities.
Picture Walk Strategy
What is it: A picture walk is done before reading the book to preview the book.
Why do it: Picture walk can help students learn how to use visual cues for reading strategies, organize information, help with comprehension, set the purpose for reading, and spark students’ interest, tap into their prior knowledge or experiences.
How is it done: The teacher will pick meaningful books for the students. The teacher will flip each page and showing the pictures only. Prior to reading the book of the read aloud, students are asked to look at the pictures and make predictions of what will the book be about and why they think that. The teacher also sets the purpose to see whether the students can make any personal connections to the pictures.
Interactive Read Aloud Strategy
What is it? Interactive Read aloud is a systematic method of read aloud. This includes stopping during appropriate pages to ask meaningful questions for analytical talk and vocabulary building.
Why do it? Read Aloud is an instrumental part of literacy. Socially and emotionally, when a book is thoughtfully chosen students can relate to the character or the events of the story. It is engaging and empowering. Students are eager to dive into a meaningful and self-reflecting discussion and share their life experiences. The more students read, the more foundational skills and vocabulary knowledge they can gain.
How is it done? The teacher will be pairing each activity with a read aloud book that is culturally and personally relevant or revolves around the topic of self and family. This will include the following books: Hieroglyphs from A to Z, Families Around the World, Chrysanthemum, and My Pet Dragon.
Mini Lessons Strategy
What is it? A mini-lesson is where a teacher explicitly teaches a specific skill for about 10-15 minutes. The time is dependent on the student's’ age and attention span.
Why do it: If the lesson goes beyond the students’ attention span, they may have challenges staying seated or paying attention.
How is it done: The teacher will be following the mini-lessons components. This includes connection, which helps students make the connection from what they were learning previously to that day’s learning objective. The second component is explicit modeling and explaining what writing skill or strategy they can try for that day’s independent writing time. The last component is linking what they learned that day to what they can do during their independent writing time.
1:1 Teacher Student Conferences
What is it? The teacher will confer with individual students about their writing.
Why do it: This helps to differentiate, strengthen, and target students’ area of weakness which is hard when teaching the whole class. Conferences also set the tone that the writing process is a road to discovery, where the teacher asks guiding questions.
How is it done? Prior to looking at their writing, the teacher will first ask open-ended questions such as, “How are you? What are you doing as a writer today?” Then the teacher will then look at the students’ work and identify where they need more support. The teacher will then give feedback and teach a specific strategy by defining it, explaining why it is important, and making sure the student understands how to use the strategy. Lastly, the teacher will connect the discussions during the conversations directly back to the students’ writing.
Partner Selecting
What is it? Students will be strategically partnered up for their gallery walk.
Why do it? This will ensure that students with limited English are partnered strategically with someone who can guide them through the discussion. This will also ensure a safe partnership for discussion.
How to do it? For some activities, the teacher will be partnering the students up heterogeneously by their English language level. They will be partnered up with someone of the opposite gender. I will also be considering their personalities and behaviors such as partnering a shy student with someone who is more nurturing in order to create a safe space for their partner to feel comfortable to discuss.
Gallery Walk
What is it? A gallery walk is where the students’ work is laid in plain sight around the room, and students get the freedom to choose what they want to see first. They also get to whisper talk with their classmates about their thoughts on the work. One method they can practice is “I see, I think, I wonder.”
Why do it? It’s an interactive way to share work especially for kindergartners who have a shorter attention span. This creates the sharing process as an active one. Students also have opportunities to share in an intimate setting, which helps students who are shy to speak in a whole class setting.
How to do it? Lay students’ work in the desired pattern around the room. Then set expectations for the gallery walk. One example is to set a time limit per work. When the time is up, then the student can go to another piece of work to examine it.
I think, I see, I wonder
What is it? Students explain what they see on the image, what they think about it, and what they wonder after seeing and thinking about the image.
Why do it? It helps with visual literacy and allows students a systematic way to be more observant of the images. This also creates curiosity and allows for an ongoing dialogue even outside of the classroom.
How to do it? The teacher will model during interactive read aloud using the think aloud method. Carefully picking a page from one of the interactive read aloud books, the teacher will think out loud by stating what s/he see on the page. This may sound something like, “I see the pet dragon and there is something on the pet dragon.” The teacher will then say what s/he think about the pet dragon such as, “I think that it is a Chinese character because the title mentions something about Chinese characters. So I am using the title to help me understand what I am seeing on the page.” Lastly, the teacher will model how s/he extend their thinking by asking wondering questions such as, “I wonder why the author put the picture and the Chinese character together like that?
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