One of our 6th grade standards requires students to analyze how an author uses point of view. Before I can even think of having my students actually analyze an author’s point of view (and more specifically, a character’s perspective), I always try to arm them with some background knowledge and first-hand experience. I decided to allow my students to use googly eyes to eyebomb inanimate objects and write a short story in the point of view of their choice. After winter break the plan is to then kick it up several notches and focus on perspective when reading literature. If you’re not to sure about how perspective and point of view are different, then please read this blog post by Dr. Roz Linder.
One of our 6th grade standards requires students to explain how a story’s plot unfolds and reaches a resolution. We have been working on explaining how an author uses indirect characterization to reveal a character’s personality. This week we revisited plot, and students had to retell the main events in Bud, Not Buddy and explain the plot in their own way. Finally, students had to reflect on their project and choose a theme to represent the text; they had to also make sure they could find textual evidence to support their theme.
It was another busy week in all of Mrs. Leonardo’s sixth grade classes! Let’s take a look at what students learned:
Monday: We started preparing to read Jim Murphy’s excerpt, The Great Fire. Students learned the importance of activating prior knowledge, and we discussed the differences between the connotation and the denotation of a word. We then typed connotations for the term devastation after watching videos about wildfires. This was an important topic of discussion because of California’s current drought and the wildfires raging across California (read about how to help victims of these fires here).
Tuesday: We set a purpose for reading The Great Fire; I introduced students to annotating the text, and we discussed the characteristics of informational text. The student sample above shows annotations after we read the text a total of three times. The before reading portion on the back page is the student’s thoughts from day one. Before reading the text, we read paragraphs one and six in order to build background knowledge.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday: Students learned how to infer by using clues in the text. This particular lesson spanned across three days because some students knew what inferences were, but they didn’t know how to infer. Some admitted that they had no idea what an inference was. Wednesday was spent learning about inferences and how to infer, Thursday was spent practicing how to infer, and Friday was devoted to finding themes within specific paragraphs of The Great Fire.
We’re preparing to write a summary of The Great Fire, then students will create videos in iMovie about the great Chicago fire using toys and green screen! We spent the last half of Friday getting to know the green screen app!
I spent some time updating my YouTube channel this weekend; you can get all of the details here.
This week we will be wrapping up our reading, writing a summary, and preparing to get the ball rolling with our green screen project. More details to come!
First, it was hard for me to believe summer was over. Now, I’m trying to figure out how the first two weeks of school zoomed on by! We kept busy over the past ten days; I had an aide comment, “Wow! You’ve got these kids working hard in here!” WOOHOO! Yeah!
Let’s take a look at what we’ve been working on, shall we?
Writing Survey and Rhetorical Awareness
I spent the summer reading Teaching Writing that Matters: Tools and Projects That Motivate Adolescent Writers. Gallagher and Lee stress the importance of students being rhetorically aware; in other words, students need to know their audience, their purpose, and context for writing. I can remember being asked several times to write about myself during the first days of school. By the time you reach middle school, About Me essays can be a bit boring to write. Gallagher and Lee suggest having students complete a writing survey followed by a Three of Me activity. The Three of Me activity requires students to write three different descriptions of themselves. I thought this would be a great way for me to informally assess students’ writing, and it allowed them to write about themselves in different ways.
Here’s a sample of the writing survey students completed. I really enjoyed reading through these because I got to see some of the rules of writing students have heard throughout elementary school, and I got to see who LOVES to write and who HATES to write.
For the Three of Me assignment, students had to introduce themselves to the class, describe themselves as if they were in an advertisement, and write a campaign speech explaining their qualifications.
Part 1:
Part 2 (students used Google Draw for their “advertisements”):
Part 3 Students explained their qualifications for a public office.:
At the beginning, this concept was a bit difficult for students comprehend. We had to review the words qualifications and public office. We watched a few middle school campaign speeches on Youtube, looked at campaign posters, and watched President Obama give speeches to various audiences. Those videos and images seemed to help a lot!
Reciprocal Teaching/Fab Four Reading Strategies
I also introduced students to Cornell Notes. This was a very scaffolded version of Cornell Notes. My aim is to continuously model how to take notes during the first trimester and continue to loosen the strings as the year progresses. For this lesson, students filled in the yellow blanks with words from my PowerPoint. This lesson was about the Fab Four reading strategies: predict, question, clarify, and summarize. We watched this video and a video I made last year (you’ve gotta watch this! The students love this video!).
On Friday, students came to class and read over their Cornell Notes and discussed any questions they had about Thursday’s lesson with their partner. Then they quizzed each other using the Cornell Notes. After that, they took a short check for understanding quiz I created using Google Forms. 100% accuracy from all classes. Yes!!
After the quiz, we read Gary Soto’s The Drive-In Movies and used the Fab Four Strategies while reading. Before reading, students rated their knowledge of key vocabulary found in the story. We didn’t finish this, so we will revisit the vocabulary on Tuesday. Watch the video I created for this lesson here.
I know it well: I can define this word, I know the part of speech for this word, I can use it in multiple sentences, and I use it in my vocabulary.
I have seen or heard it: I can’t really define this word, but I have seen or heard it before.
I have no clue: I know nothing about this word!
We didn’t break into Fab Four groups; instead we read the story as a class (listen to me read it here), and I paused at certain points in the story to show them how to predict, question, and clarify. After we read the story, students tried their best to write a summary using 15-20 words. Students used the reciprocal reading tracker below for all of their questions, etc.
