Cats

     This year marks the 10th or so year that I've been teaching out of the Houghton Mifflin reading series.  I won't go into budgets/categorical funding/state of California or whatever is the reason behind having the same series for this long, but suffice it to say, it's stale.

     We start off with very easy, phonetic and predictable stories like The Cat Sat and The Mat.  Both are about cats, which are typically a high interest topic with first graders, but I think they each have about 25-30 words total, with the featured sight words making up about a third of that.  When I thought about teaching this again, I was filled with dread.  Ugh, the same old same old...

     But being trained in GLAD strategies, I was able to breath new life into Sam, the cat who sits on the laundry, tv, and dining table no matter how many times he's told "Go, Sam Cat!"  I gathered pictures of cats and taped them to a blank "mind map" which had the word "cats" in the middle of it.  I had the kids put their "heads together" and talk about cats, then tell me words that describe cats, which I wrote on the mind map.  Doing this readied them for reading the story and making it more interesting.
 

     Later in the day, we chanted and put motions (total physical response) to a poem about cats.  When they put it in their poetry folder, they had to copy the simple sketches, highlight their words, then read and tally.  It was an awesome day and made me look forward to more cat activities during the week!

I don't know the author of this poem.  I've been using it for Forever, though.

     The next day I used the Sentence Pattern Chart strategy to teach sentence building.  GLAD encourages using academic vocabulary, so across the top of the chart I put the parts of speech that would be in our sentences.  I had to complete the chart over two days, as the kids got antsy more quickly than I had anticipated, so the first day, we just brainstormed the verbs and prepositional phrases (the where? and when?).  The next day, we reviewed the poem and the story, then finished the chart by adding adjectives.

Made by First Graders who talked it out first.  I messed up on the color for verbs, which is ok, since I don't encourage perfectionism.

     We practiced singing the sentences to the tune of Hickory Dickory Dock and had lots of practice orally.  By the next day (day 3) I had the parts written on strips, color coded.  Their table teams were tasked with building ONE sentence with the parts I had given them.
     Their first cooperative learning lesson went pretty well.  There was some protest such as, "I don't have enough"  or "She took mine," which I knew would happen.  It's so interesting that even though I modeled and explained, had individuals repeat directions back, and I had the whole class repeat directions back, that this still happens.  It must completely baffle new teachers.  Anyway, it took some maneuvering (thank goodness there were 3 adults in the room!), but they were able to successfully make their sentences.

This was the 10th day of school, as evidenced by the Zero the Hero puppets!

        Each team then had to make sure everyone at their table could sing the sentence.  Each table got a chance to show off!  A few tried to hide and not do it, but when we all encouraged and clapped after their second try, their faces lit up with huge smiles.  This makes my heart sing.

        So on the final day, a Thursday, I wanted them to write their own sentences using the pattern chart.  Again, we practiced some singing to the tune of Hickory Dickory Dock all together, then I told them to "turn and talk" and tell someone a sentence.  Then I had volunteers say their sentence aloud.  After I modeled how to build my own sentence by using the parts of speech on the chart, I gave them some cat stationary on which to write their own sentences.  They ALL did a great job!!

Serious, orange cats sleep on the couch.

I didn't worry so much about punctuation and capitalization, as the objective was to build a sentence properly.

      GLAD works, and I encourage anyone who has to teach anything at all, to get trained and utilize the strategies.  There is no other way (that I know of at least) to get kids talking and using academic language quite like it.  

    Next week, we will read another tired story, Ten Dogs in the Window.  I plan on doing these same activities, plus some others...

Super Sentences

     I was unsettled about the Runaway Pumpkin activity from Friday, mostly because it seemed too hard for about 7 students.  I wanted to re-teach the art of a super sentence so as I drove my 45 mile commute, I mulled, which, actually, is a great time to think up some really powerful lessons.
     Some background is that my team of four first grade teachers recently attended training on how to GLAD-ify our teaching, meaning make language more accessible to all students (well, focused on ELL, but in first grade they are all acquiring language).  One of the strategies is sentence patterning.
     A sentence patterning chart and subsequent activities are extremely powerful.  Students are taught about the parts of speech in an informal way.  For now, they are being taught the pattern of adjective, noun, verb, and prepositional phrase, and we use the academic language peppered with the definition to make it more understandable.
     We, my first grade level team, call a sentence "super" if it follows this pattern because it gives more information to the reader.  To extend, I add a little editing portion once they've "finished" (in quotes because I'm forever being told, "I'm done") and shared out that in order to make it "perfect" check for a capital, spaces, and period.  It's so cute when they all at once turn their heads toward their papers to fix errors!
     So after weeks of supported, scaffolded, and guided sentence building based on the sentence patterning chart, I was more than a little dumbfounded.  Why was it so hard?  After mulling, I decided it came down to mechanics and not enough support.  Those seven students were bogged down by poor fine motor skills, lower ability in phonemic awareness, and general lower ability than the rest.  Differentiation, re-teaching and more practice was clearly needed.
     I am very pleased with my re-teach lesson, as they all were successful without having to have much assistance from me.  To begin I wrote three super sentences on the board and I had them "turn and talk" about which words were the adjectives, which the noun, etc.  So I underlined the parts of speech in the color coded fashion that is GLAD.  For example, "The black cat zoomed through the living room."  Once they'd decided, I chose volunteers to say which was which.  I proceeded with two more sentences.  Then I erased and drew the colored lines on the board without any words, but reminded them which was which and wrote that in the academic language.  I then had them "turn and talk" about a sentence they could make up and share.
     They came up with fabulous sentences!  So much oral work is what was missing from my Friday lesson.  To guide toward independent practice, I put a picture of a pumpkin up on the digital projector so they could go to their seats and write a sentence, but wait!  When I put the picture up...

photo credit unknown

 ...I had them put their heads together in their teams to come up with a pumpkin sentence that followed the pattern.  I then called on the numbered head (kids are assigned a number within their team) to report out a sentence.  They came up with, "The orange pumpkin is sitting on the balcony,"  "A fat pumpkin is sitting on a bus seat."  "The orange pumpkins are sitting on a mat."  I gave feedback for each one, honoring their creativity.
     Here is what they made on their own papers:

This student had a very hard time during Friday's lesson.  When I got to her, she was already halfway done! Her pumpkin sat on the window sill.

This student needed support from me, as his paper had no spaces between words.  I helped him sound out as well. His pumpkin fell off the slide at school.

This activity was easy for this student.  He could have added more, but was content to have it done and color. His pumpkin sat on the vine.

This girl had a very original idea!  That is a balcony and she wasn't sure about her spelling of  "pumpkin" so she marked it with an sp.

In the amount of time it took some to write one sentence, this student was finished with three.

     You can see that classes have an enormous array of ability levels.  Finding the right balance so all can be successful and not bored sure is a balancing act!