Tag Archives: Children’s Literature Task

LLED 320 – Poetry Playoffs, Reading Placemat, De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, Whole Class Novels, and Lit Circles: Update for Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011

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We covered a lot of ground today.  Here’s the highlights:

Poetry Playoffs

After reviewing the 8 Ps of Powerful Presentations:

  • Proper Articulation
  • Pronunciation
  • Power
  • Pace
  • Pause
  • Pitch
  • Passion
  • Poise

I asked you to rehearse your best haiku in case you were one of the 8 contestants chosen to face off.  Here’s the draw and how it turned out:

Congratulations to Kira on her victory.  In a related story, check out this clip to see Anthony Bourdain enjoying a bowl of “mysterious meat” pho and a beer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsSiA-JHm0U[/youtube]

If you search this blog using the keywords Poetry Playoffs, you’ll find information I’ve posted last year on how to run a the PP in your class, if you’re interested.

Wrapping Up Writing in the Classroom

I mentioned that we just touched on writing in the classroom.  Also, I urged you to consider the principles of effective writing instruction as you teach.  Penultimately, in an effort to address several comments that arose as I marked your LLED 320 Writing Assessment Tasks, I pointed you toward the ESL Standards document (2001) developed to assist teachers with the assessment of writing, reading, and oral language work completed by EAL / ESL students.  It’s structured similarly to the Performance Standards document we used in class and you can find it on the Ministry of Education ESL website or below:

Finally, if you’re interested in a great LA survey text that has a good section on Writing To Learn, I recommended that you check out Marion Crowhurst’s Language and Learning Across the Curriculum (LB1576 .C76 1993 in Ed LIb).

Factors That Help Students Develop As Readers

We ended our previous session with by having you consider the factors that you thought helped students develop as readers.  I asked you to put your ideas together and create a placemat with a group of three others and try to come up with 3 – 5 factors that all group members could agree on.  After sharing the ideas of several groups, we compared the responses with the research:

I asked you to consider our upcoming reading activities through the lens of those 4 factors.

Considering Whole Class Novel Studies Using Using De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

With your graphic organizer of Chapter 6 – Whole Class Novel from Student Diversity in hand, I asked you to consider the WCN through the lens of one of De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats.  After reading up on what type of thinking each hat represents using the handout below:

I asked for each group to report out on their thinking around WCNs.  To wrap up, we all put on our Blue Hat – the metacognitive hat – and discussed the process of using the 6 Thinking Hats.  It was pretty meta!

Lit Circles: Double-Entry Journal Task

One During-Reading activity that really promotes thoughtful engagement with lit circle books it journaling.  In an effort to model this process with you, I’m asking you to keep a Double-Entry Journal as a means to consider the lit circle activities we’re engaging in during class time.  The task will be completed in class and it’s due on Thursday, 3 March 2011.  Here’s the handout:

To this point you had experienced:

  • Book Talks
  • Time to Read (in class and at home)
  • Sticky Notes

I asked you to choose to of those ideas and to give me your thoughts on them in the My Thinking side of the journal.  We took 10 or so minutes in class to do this.

Lit Circles: Conversation Time

I modeled a Lit Circle conversation with the members of The Hunger Games reading group and utilizing a Fishbowl strategy.  After a quick debrief, I asked each reading group to meet and engage in a similar conversation.  The discussions were lively and could have run much longer than the time we had left in class.

That’s all for today.  As a good follow up to our in-class activities, I recommend reading Chapter 7 – Literature Circles: The Basics, the Big Ideas, and Beyond in Student Diversity. It provides more details on how Lit Circles addresses the factors that help students develop as readers and it illustrates a model of how one teacher uses Lit Circles in her classroom.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Literature Circles: Update for Tuesday, 9 March 2010

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We sunk our teeth into Lit Circles today.  Here’s how it happened:

Your Novel Study Experiences

I started with a prior knowledge piece (mental set) on the sorts of experiences you’d had working with novels in your K – 12 and Higher Ed career as a student.  Strangely, no one mentioned being so engrossed in a book that they couldn’t put it down even when driving 75 miles/hour on the freeway like this guy:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EWGpZwwoM8[/youtube]

The Shape of Lit Circles

After that I outlined the shape of a Lit Circle unit:

  • Pre-LC prep with “Say Something”
  • Reading
  • Discussion Groups
  • Working with the Books
  • Response Journals
  • Comprehension Strategies
  • Celebration

The Research Says…

In hindsight, I wished I’d introduced this part of the lesson with a Family Feud type of voice, like Richard Dawson’s.  Check out how he deals with this family of dummies:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdVuEpD9_IY[/youtube]

We examined the research basis for Lit Circles as outlined on pages 79 – 82 of Student Diversity. The four classroom conditions that enable students to develop as proficient readers – according to Richard Allington, President of the International Reading Association – are:

  1. Reading Volume
  2. High-Success Reading Opportunities
  3. Engaging in Literate Conversations
  4. Useful, Explicit Strategy Instruction

We considered how these conditions fit with those you had identified in the previous class (they fit very well, by the way) and how the Lit Circles strategy advocated by Brownlie, Schnellert, and Feniak addresses these 4 conditions.  In processing this content we used a Bruce Wellman strategy, Paired Verbal Fluency.  The details of that tactic can be found in this handout:

Strategies for Making Learning Active – Bruce Wellman

Assignment #4: Children’s Literature Task

I handed out the task sheet and we took some time to write a double-entry journal piece related to 2 items we’d done to this point in learning about Lit Circles:

  • Book Talks
  • Time to Read Your Lit Circles Book
  • Sticky Notes

Here’s an model of this task:

MODEL Lit Circles Task

Here’s the task handout:

Children’s Literature Task

The Literature Circles Process – Say Something

I reckoned it would be a good idea to get the L.C. lowdown from the source, so I showed a webcast presented by Faye Brownlie.  It is one of many webcasts put on by the Ministry of Education.  The supporting handouts, more details, and links to watch the webcasts on your computer can be accessed via this link to the BC Ministry of Education Webcast index.  The specific L.C. materials we worked with in this class can be found using the Literacy in the Middle Years – Part 2 link found on the aforementioned page.  We watched the “Introduction to Literature Circles” webcast.

After a brief into to the L.C. process, Faye walked us through the Say Something strategy using the poem, My Relatives by Mary Blakeslee.  The timecode for this section of the video is 0:00 to about 13:45.

Here’s the resource package that supports the webcast and includes the My Relatives poem:

Brownlie Lit Circle Webcast Resources

The PPT presentation that supports the webcast and includes details on the Say Something strategy and all other topics referenced in the webcast (including lists of books that work well for Lit Circles) is here:

Brownlie Lit Circle Webcast PPT

The Literature Circles Process – Discussion Groups

After hearing Faye describe the discussion group process (timecode: 41:30 to 48:30), and modeling it for the class with the Persepolis group, we had a go at it as a whole class.  In each group, one person shared the excerpt they had “Sticky Noted” and the other group members “Said Something” about the excerpt.  Where time allowed, the steps were repeated.

Double-Entry Journal… Take Two

We ended class by considering the Lit Circle events and ideas in today’s class and sharing your thinking on 2 items in your double-entry journal.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence