Comprehension - Part #4. Making Connections

Making Connections is a great strategy to get students thinking about the text and how it is similar to themselves, another text or the world in which they live in. Making connections helps develop a deeper understanding of the text and the characters.

The easiest one to start with is Text-To-Self Connections.

To introduce this, I would pick a basic book that is about a situation that pretty much anyone can relate to. For the younger grades, any Charlie & Lola book is perfect. Before reading, tell students that you want them to listen to find a part of the book that is similar to their life. Read through the book and then have students talk with a partner about how they are similar to book/character.

Put up the prompt "This reminds me of..." on the board and have students use this to guide their answer for reporting back to the class.

In terms of bookwork, have students draw a picture and then write a sentence/paragraph about their connection. You can use the following sentence starters;

* This reminds me of...
* The character is like me because...
* I remember when...

Once students are comfortable with Text-To-Self connections, move onto Text-To-Text. Make the connection (ha!) between what they have just done and what they will be doing now (listening to connect). Good texts to use for this;

* The Gruffao and The Gruffalo's Child
* The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
*  The Stinky Cheeseman & Other Fairly Stupid Tales and any fairytale covered in the book
* Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf's Story

Once again have students discuss and then write. This time use the sentence starters;

* The character _______ reminds me of ____________ in ________ because...
* The text ____________ reminds me of ___________ because...
* This story is like _______ because...

Teaching Text-To-Text connections provides a great starting block for comparing texts.

The last connection to teach is Text-To-World. Any text that is about a global issue would be fine. One of my favourites is George Saves the World by Lunchtime. This text is also great for reminding students about recycling and disposing of rubbish thoughtfully :D

Use these sentence starters to guide student responses;

* This reminds me of _________ because...
* This is like when....
* Something similar happened....

Once you have introduced these strategies, you can then use them as reading response activities. A great way to practice writing and encourage deeper thinking about what students have been reading!

I have a pack of posters and thinking stems in my TPT store that would be a perfect companion for teaching this strategy;

Next up: Questioning!

A Week on Year 4

This week I was lucky enough to have one class for the entire week! I had a lot of fun. It's nice when you can plan a series of lessons that connect, rather than just turn up and do random, one off lessons.

So this post will be about my favourite lessons of the week, because if I write about everything, this will turn into a TLDR post.

For Literacy, I focused on The Gizmo by Paul Jennings.

I love his stories, I remember reading them as a kid and would spend hours reading them in one go. The Gizmo is a great story to do with the older grades as the story is interesting and has themes the students can relate to. If you haven't read this book before, it's about a boy called Stephen who is pressured into stealing by the school Bully, Floggit. Stephen feels guilty about stealing so he tries to make it right by returning what he stole. However he can't, so he tries to rid himself of the item in different ways. Along the way he faces a few entertaining mishaps and by the end of the story he has learned his lesson.

I had only read the first chapter, when the students started to ask and answer their own questions about the story (by themselves! I didn't even have to ask them to!). The main question; "Why would Stephen hang out with this Floggit guy when he is such a jerk?". So that started a big discussion on how sometimes people hang out with people they don't necessarily like because they don't want to be an outcast or seen as a loser.

Throughout the week we did a few activities around the book such as; coming up with excuses to tell Floggit to avoid stealing the Gizmo and character profiles. The character profile activity produced some great responses. I let the students design it however they wanted. So some of them did it as a wanted poster, some as a profile and one student drew a picture of Stephen and wrote paragraphs about his personality around the picture.

We finished the book on Thursday and I told the class that if they liked the story they could go to the library and check out other books by Paul Jennings. I also mentioned how he wrote a few other books about The Gizmo, so they begged me to bring them in for Friday.

On Friday I read The Gizmo Again.

Which, automatically lent itself to Text to Text Connections. Similar theme as the original; nice guy gets influenced by the bad guy to do the wrong thing and so he learns his lesson to not listen to the bad guy.

We also did some Reciprocal Teaching. I got to use my Reciprocal Teaching Pack (don't you just love shameless promotion?).

The text we used was Possum Magic by Mem Fox. To start off I went through each of the roles, the class was already familiar with this strategy, so it was a quick recap. Then as we read the text, students practiced using the roles. The text was good for the clarifying strategy, as it involved a lot of Australian terms and since some students were from different cultural backgrounds they didn't know what some of the things were. The internet was used to help with the visuals.

Another great Literacy lesson was about the book, A Little Election by Danny Katz.

After we discussed the story, I gave the students the task;
Imagine you want to be the 'Prime Minister of (insert school name here)'. What policies would you introduce and why? Develop a campaign to convince your teacher and peers to vote for you.

Students were allowed to work in groups or individually. They were allowed to develop their campaign however they wanted. Some students wrote a speech and some designed a poster. They used paper, computers and iPads to present their ideas.

I was pretty impressed, they came up with a lot of good ideas as well as justifying the reasons behind them. Was pleased to see that no one came up with the 'We will just play all day' idea :P

Our Art topic was 3D Illusion Art. Last week, I did the 3D hand activity and they were pretty impressed, so I did some research and found two more activities. On the Monday we did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.frubilledkunst.dk/)

On Tuesday, when I came back (on Monday, I had no idea that I would be back on that class for the rest of the week), a few of them had taken them home and completed them to show me. So, I knew that I had to find another one to do with them on my last day. We did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.teachkidsart.net/)

The thing I love about 3D Illusion Art is that it looks complicated, but it's actually quite simple and the kids just love it! It kind of makes me want to start up some kind of Art Club if I get a job next year...

I really enjoyed my week on the class. I've always seen myself as an Infants Only teacher, but I think I would quite enjoy having a year 4 class. I kind of wish I had put different preferences on my EOI for 2015. The kids kept asking me if I could be their teacher next year, lol. I wish!

Next week, I have work on Monday and then I am back to waiting eagerly by the phone. I seriously think I am the only nutter who is up at 5am each morning so I can be all ready to go if I get a call after 6am :P

In TPT news, I have uploaded a bunch of new products and revamped a few of my older ones. I'll write about them next time.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend :)

Scooters, teaching and etc!

This week has been busy!

On Sunday my boyfriend and I bought scooters. The area we live in has a lot of outdoor areas, so it seems silly not to have an outdoor activity. Bikes would have been too bulky to store in the apartment and I don't think that I would be that great at it. Scooters seemed like the most practical option. We went to a whole heap of stores to find a scooter that would be appropriate for an adult. We were not having much luck at first, everywhere seemed to stock the Razor scooter, which was way too small. We were about to give up, when we found The Commuter Scooter at Kmart. It's a lot bigger and sturdier than the Razor as it's made for teenagers/adults. I was a bit wobbly at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. It's so much fun and a good work out too. My arms and legs were feeling the burn after the 2hr ride. We did attempt to go riding after work during the week, but I was too tired. I think it will be a weekend/no work day activity :P

On Monday, the technician from the internet company came out to fix the connection. Turns out the people who lived here before us took a cable out of the network cupboard, so that's why it was not connecting. There was also a cable that needed to be swapped in the building's cupboard. So we were not charged a fee as it was not our fault. Win!

On Tuesday, I had a year 3 class. I was originally told that I was on a year 5, so I had come prepared for that, but then it was changed. The teacher left work so I did not have to do any last minute emergency planning. It was a good day, especially because I had a bunch of students from my 2012 class :)

On Wednesday, I had the same year 1 class as I have had previously. It's nice to come back to the same class because you learn their names and get a picture of what their abilities are. Here are some of the lessons that I did with them;

* Reading Response - I love Dr. Seuss books, my all time favourite book is "I Wish That I Had Duck Feet". If you haven't read it before, it's about a boy who wishes for various animal parts because they would benefit him, however along the way he recognises that they would also cause problems for him. In the end he just wants to be himself.

After reading the book, students had to draw a picture of themselves with an animal part that they would like to have. Once the picture was drawn they had to label it and then write about why they wished for it. Students used iPads to look at pictures of animals to help them with their drawings. In the end students shared their response with the class.

* Time - Years ago, I bought one of those educational clocks. It's been very useful for casual teaching and even in my own class. I brought that in with me and we did o'clock times. After I did several examples on the clock, I picked students to come up and make some times for the class to read. Then we played a whole class matching game, matching pictures to the correct time label. Then they worked independently on a worksheet and then we finished off with a game of bingo.

*  Comprehension, Summarising - Elmer books are always popular with students, so I brought in Elmer and Wilbur. The version I have comes with a CD reading off it, complete with sound effects. After hearing the text, students summarised the story by completing a story map. They then used the story map to help them retell the story orally.

During the day I used GoNoodle. I love this site and the kids do too. It's very useful for brain breaks between lessons and the kids love watching the character grow after completing a few activities. The Frozen song was the most popular activity. If it were up to the kids, we would have sung Frozen all day :P

On Thursday, I was on Kindergarten. The teacher left me work. It was tiring, but a good day overall.

On Friday, I was called in to cover classes while teachers went to help prepare for the big school celebration. I ended up on Kindy for 2 hours and then spent the rest of the day making displays. It was a lot of fun. If I wasn't a teacher, I would be a graphics designer. Taking requests and fulfilling them made me feel like I was working as one :) I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, they looked fabulous! I will make a modified version of the pennant bunting and upload them to TPT at some point.

I have also been working on new resources for myself, which I have added to my TPT store. Here are some of my latest products;

This activity pack contains 11 activities that can be used with any fictional text. This is pretty useful for me at the moment because I always use fictional texts on my casual days. Some of the activities include; designing a different cover, book review, creating a character, character profile and writing tasks.

I love doing the morning routine on the SMART board. This file includes your typical pages; days of the week, calendar, number of students, weather chart and days at school.

This activity pack contains resources to teach recount writing to your students. Alternatively it can be placed in a folder as part of a writing center. Includes a poster explaining what a recount is, an example text and word wall cards.

Check out my TPT store to see the rest of my new resources.

So far I have one day of work next week. I have a year 4 class on Monday. I have almost finished planning my work for the day. I like having the older grades because you can do more independent tasks with them. I am going to be using the iPads as part of one of my literacy lessons. Should be fun :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!