This past week we began our study of Determining Importance. I always struggle with this unit because everything seems so obvious to me for NON FICTION, but I know I have to tie in Fiction. Not to just compare and contrast, but also to teach my 1st graders how to decide what is important in fiction as well as NF.
I've used Tanny's book, Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading when I was teaching inferring. My kids didn't seem to be getting it this year, and I went back to the beginning, using Tanny's lesson ideas of the old shoe and based on the clues, what can we infer about the owner. (Ch. 4). We used several different items and what do you know, with concrete lessons in inferring, when we went back to the abstract, they got it! I started off with the concrete this time for determining importance. Why I didn't think of this before is why Tanny writes a book and why I use her ideas! I know in math I have to show them concretely before I move to abstract, but I just didn't make that transition in reading. Now these lessons are right from her book, Ch. 6, so be sure and take a look. The first day, I brought in a gym back filled with a wallet, a coin purse, masking tape, a camera, a stapler, a hole punch, lipstick, gum, chapstick and such. Just as in her lesson, I told them I was going to the health club right after work to walk around the track. (That they bought that is a testament to the lesson!) Anyway, I didn't want to take my purse and could they help me decide what I should take in my backpack and what I should leave out. The power of the lesson is that for each item, whether I'm keeping it in the bag or leaving it out, they had to justify why one was important and why something wasn't. They did a great job with this. The 2nd day I used Chris Van Allsburgs pictures from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. I just picked one of the "tame" ones and said that I was trying to tell my daughter about these pictures and I couldn't remember them. I could remember some of the details, but nothing really made sense in trying to describe one picture in particular to her. Would they help me out? We turned out the lights and I used a flashlight to move around the picture. I read the lead at the bottom and the one we used said: "He was sure he had seen the door handle turn." They did a great job getting me to move the flashlight to what was important in that picture: The door (and it's small size), the man coming down the stairs, and knowing that this was a basement or cellar. They could justify why certain items weren't important, EXCEPT to develop the setting, but the key items to look at were the door and the man's legs that were shown walking down the stairs. The 3rd day I used a wordless picture book: A Circle of Friends by Giora Carmi. As Tanny says in her book, "its a powerful story and simple, clean drawings, Carmi uses ink lines with only one person or object per page in full color, making this book easy to use with a large group." The kids quickly zeroed in on the colored item, but then they used their eyes to move out into the important details in the drawings, such as the expressions. They didn't make wild predictions with the unimportant items, but made true predictions that made sense when they justified them with the important details. As we moved ahead a few pages, I would go back and recap, only hitting the important part of each picture. By the time we got to the end, we knew this story! They were enthralled with this book. We spent 40 minutes for this lesson and not one child was off task...they were all involved. When we finished, they went knee to knee and discussed the Big Idea of this book. As I roamed, they were all getting it. When they turned back to share they said it was about sharing kindness. That if one person is kind to another, then it keeps going until that kindness makes it way back to you. (They said better than I can...but they are right; this is a pay it forward type book!" Next week we begin by learning that in a fiction book, we predict what might happen and that in a non fiction, we can predict what information we might learn. So we will be moving away from concrete to a little bit more abstract. So...if you had any doubts about buying this book, give them up. I only wish I had had this book last Fall. Thanks Tanny! Sandi 1st Elgin _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
