Structures and elements of dramas and plays *Freebie!

Do you spend much time on drama? Like, after PE or lunch?

Hahahaha I am cracking myself up.

Well, obviously, that's not the kind I'm talking about. For the past two weeks, I've been working in some fourth grade classrooms.

Our current unit in reading is drama: plays. We've been working on the structures unique to dramatic literature (cast of characters, stage directions, scenes, etc.), and making inferences to describe the characters in dramas. 

And it's been so much fun!

We started out by introducing the various structures of drama and just finding examples in a dramatic text.

We used Storyworks by Scholastic. There aren't a ton of stage directions at the beginning of each scene, but they're engaging plays for kids. 

These are the structures we introduced. For each one, we had students practice a gesture to help them remember the meaning. For example, the gesture for "dialogue" is to place your open hand on your mouth and move it away from your mouth to show the lines the characters say. These gestures helped students recall the meaning of the structures.

The second day, we started out by identifying the genre (again). It's so important for kids to practice identifying the genre of a text and think about how that will impact their reading - the strongest readers change the way they read a text based on the genre. That's why teaching reading by genre is so important!

We used our genre cards on rings to identify the genre and then I gave each student about ten tiny post-its. They had five minutes to hunt through the genre and identify the structures we introduced the day before.

After the kids hunted through their dramas and labeled the structures they could find, I handed out this table. You can download it for free from Google Docs. It includes the main structures of drama and the definition. As we read, we tried to explain how that dramatic structure helped us as a reader and filled in the third column.

The next few days, we worked on describing characters in drama using their words (dialogue), actions (stage directions) and what other characters said about them (others' dialogue). To do this, we used one of the sheets from my Scaffolded Reading Responses for Drama and Plays.

Students collected details about the main character in the play, named Felipe. They noticed his dialogue (he often told lies), the stage directions (he whined, stomped his feet, and crossed his fingers behind his back when he made a promise), and what other characters said about him (his servants didn't have a very good opinion of him).

Then students used the sentence starters in the middle of the page to write a response using their evidence. Students were able to write about the character using specific details from the text and make accurate inferences. It was a good start in helping students understand dramas and plays!

For more ideas about teaching dramas and plays, check out my Teaching Drama pinterest board here.

 

Grab my Scaffolded Reading Responses for Drama and Plays on TPT!

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Historical Fiction: Accessing background knowledge with Goin' Someplace Special

With Black History Month underway, I wanted to share a successful lesson I delivered in a fifth grade class that might help your students understand the historical context of some African American literature. 

In our fifth grade classes, our bilingual students are spending the whole day in English for the first time in their school careers. We have a wide range of levels of English acquisition, from students who just arrived from Mexico to students who have spent their entire school careers in our school. 

To help the kids think about what they already know as well as develop their English speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, one fifth grade teacher and I planned some specific activities for students while supporting their historical fiction unit.

If you haven't read this story, you should. It's a sweet story of a girl who wants to go someplace special by herself. Because of segregation laws, she isn't allowed in many places in her town. She finally reaches "someplace special," and it turns out that it's a library. Sob sob sob. 

I figured that, if students didn't understand the historical context for a story, they wouldn't be able to explain how the event created the situation for the story. So to help students as we read Goin' Someplace Special by Patricia McKissack, we started out with some pictures.

I scoured the internet (it wasn't actually that hard) for photos that depicted segregation. I wanted actual photos so students could reflect on actual historical events and understand that this story was based on true events in American history.

We divided the kids into five groups and gave each group a specific colored marker. The photos were glued on to construction paper and taped to the walls around the room. Each group went to one of the photos and had three minutes to write everything they noticed and thought on the construction paper. They used these speaking and writing stems:

I noticed...

I think...

This makes me think of...

This reminds me of...

Then they rotated to the next chart and read what the previous groups said. After reading and discussing this, they added their thinking in their colored marker.

By the time they'd been through several charts, they started picking up language from each other! They were using each other's words such as "discrimination", "strike", and "privilege."

We gathered some very interesting and enlightening background knowledge. They had a lot of concepts and were able to connect historical events and people (such as segregation, Martin Luther King, Jr., strikes, Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks), but they didn't have specific vocabulary. 

We worked on giving them words to express their specific ideas. A few that came up were "segregation," "African Americans" as a replacement for the outdated "colored people" phrase they were using, and "separate but equal".

After visiting each chart, I told them that the historical events pictured in the photos would be the context for our story, so we had to have a good understanding. The teams worked on writing a single sentence that would explain the historical event. 

Then we started to read the book. Each student had a copy of the story and a post-it. I asked them to read to find examples of how the historical event was represented in the story. Students marked several places where we saw the conditions of segregation affecting our story.

Using the ideas that students marked with their post-its, we created a simple cause-effect map to explain how the historical events affected the story. Then students chose another event from the story and used the sentence stems on the bottom of the above chart to record their thinking about the historical event and the story.

Students were really able to explain how the historical events affected the story! The above student obviously has a stronger handle on English written expression with errors common to English Language Learners, but even our newcomers were able to produce some response.

One student even explained, "She wanted to get to the library because all were welcome there." Awww, what a message!

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Sequencing the plot's events with The Sweetest Fig

So I'm sitting here in my house, drinking White Zinfandel (what else) and watching SVU. It's like a blast from the past. Because this is what I love to do when I blog. Except today, I am not completely doing what I love to do. Because there is a mosquito in this house. I HATE MOSQUITOES. They eat me up. I just got up from the computer to spray myself with Off! And I'm INSIDE my house! Arrgh!

Anyway...

The last two weeks have been a little hectic. One of our kindergarten sections was too small and had to close, and one our fourth grade sections were too large and we had to open a new one. That means - have you guessed it yet? - that our kindergarten teacher had to move to fourth grade. Three weeks after school started. WHAT?! I know. In her shoes, I would've cried. Daily. Like, every day all the time. She's been a trooper and so lovely to work with!

Anyway, to help her with the transition, and the kids too, I spent reading and writing in her classroom for about two weeks. And I LOVED it! Oh, I can't tell you how much I miss having a class of my own. 

So I had a blast. We were working on the idea of plot, which I connect very tightly to fiction structure. Fiction structure, as you've probably heard, can be very clearly represented with Freytag's Pyramid, which looks like this, basically:

The pyramid includes a few basic pieces.

Exposition: we are introduced to the main character, their trait, their motivation, and the setting.

At the end of the exposition, we find the problem. This is often the opposite of what the character wants. 

Then there's rising action. During this time, the problem grows or the character tries to solve it.

At the point of the climax, the problem has reached a peak point. Either it will be solved (often by a decision the character makes), or it will be impossible to solve by the character. Either way, there is a resolution to the problem.

Then there's falling action - we often find evidence for the character's change here. They usually learn some sort of lesson from the way the problem was resolved, and the outcome of the resolution can also be found here, at the end of the story.

To help students understand what to focus on, that is, what is important for summarizing the plot's events, we focus on five main elements:

Main Character

Goal/Motivation

Problem/Conflict

Solution/Resolution

Outcome & Lesson Learned

We color code it, just like above. And we chant it, and we sing it, and we dance it, and we gesture it, and we write it over and over to make sure they know what to look for in fiction! I connect these elements to Freytag's Pyramid like this:

The story that we used last week to discuss the plot's main events was The Sweetest fig by Chris Van Allsburg. I personally love Chris Van Allsburg and most of his books. They are so very teachable! 

And, best of all, it's available in English and Spanish!

Anyway, I started by making copies of the pictures from the story - not all the pictures; just some important ones I thought were necessary to retell the plot's main events. I showed students the cover of the book, and then I had students in groups sequence the events in the order they predicted they might happen in the book.

And then we read. Students re-sequenced the events based on the story. To help them connect to the pyramid, I took a set of the pictures that were sequenced and we discussed each one. I asked, "What purpose did this event serve in the story?" or "Why did the writer include this event in the story?" "Where does it belong on our fiction story map?" and we placed them on the map.

 

 By the end of day one, students had identified which events represented the main events of the story's plot: who the main character was, what his traits were and what he wanted (motivation). They identified the problem and noticed how it grew. They explained the solution to the problem, and realized that it wasn't pleasing to the main character! Then they described the outcome. 

Come back again in a few days to read about what we did to help students take these events and summarize their reading!

Happy Teaching!

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Schoolwide Writing Contest: The Best Part of Me

Last year, we hosted our first school-wide writing contest. The prompt was something my principal found that could be accommodated to suit writers of all levels: The Best Part of Me.  This prompt is general, yet personal. Students can share as much of their souls as they choose, so it made a beautiful end-of-year writing piece, but I could see it serving well at the beginning of the year, too, to help you "get to know" your kids, and to help them see each other as real people. And because you would model, model, model, they would get to know you, too! I recommend reading at least two books to help activate language and ideas. A couple of the books I pulled out and put into a basket for our teachers were:

And this one, although I haven't read it, looks like it would serve really well!

As you read and activate language and ideas, chart them out! These are a couple sample charts.

This is a sample I provided my teachers with: During a class conversation, chart out the different body parts and the reason that part is the best part of you! 

One of my teachers built this chart with her kids to help them think of options. 

And if you're ever stuck for inspiration, PIN! These are some of the great pins that helped our teachers think about helping students write in response to this prompt:

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Each teacher selected one piece to represent their class. I am not sure how they did this. I only had to choose between five or six for each grade level and it was excrutiating. How they chose between twenty or so kids is pretty impressive.

I mean, I know they used a rubric. I just think it's hard.

From there, we chose a grade level winner. This posed another challenge. I am working on it, but I am not yet a fluent Spanish speaker or reader, as many (over half) of our students are. Kids in grades K-4 wrote their pieces in Spanish if they were in a bilingual classroom setting. I had to call in for (bilingual) reinforcements to help me judge the pieces to make sure everybody had a fair shot!

Each grade level winner received a "First Place Winner" certificate and each class winner received a "Distinguished Writer Award". 

This piece, albeit short and simple, was especially moving. The student who wrote this piece is not used to winning much of anything, really, and his smile stretched from ear to ear when he went up to receive his certificate. 

Here's an adorable display that one of our teachers created out of their students' work!

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Using context clues effectively: not as easy as it sounds!

As adults, we have a fairly good vocabulary and often a pretty good intuition about what unknown words mean. We know which words are important to our understanding and which words are not so necessary. We an tell if a word has a positive or negative connotation from reading around it and gathering clues about the tone. We do lots of things naturally that help us not only figure out the meaning of unknown words, but understand how they relate to the words around them. Kids.... not so much. When we ask a child to use "context clues", most of the time they have no clue what we're talking about. Really take a minute and ask your students, "What are context clues?" and see what they say. It's enlightening and depressing all at the same time.

If kids are going to perform this very complex and sophisticated task of determining the meaning of unknown words, we have to help them understand a few things about how words relate to each other in a sentence, and how to use that to determine word meaning. Introducing the Strategy This is why I put together the Four Questions.
1. What job does the word do in the sentence? Does it describe another word? Show you how something is done? Name an object?
2. What part of speech is the word? If it names an object, it's a noun. If it describes a noun, it's an adjective. If it shows an action, it's a verb.
3. Which other words tell you about the word? If the word is describing something, what do we know about that thing? If it's a verb, what is happening? 4. What word has a similar meaning to the word? Are there words that would match the meaning of the word in that sentence, and relate to the other words in the same way? There are a few variations of these questions, depending on what kids need. But as we worked with kids on using these four questions, we realized that something was missing - the big picture. In order to help students get a better idea of the context of the paragraph or story/article, we decided to zoom out and sketch what was happening at the time that word was introduced. We required the kids to use exact details in the paragraph. One of my fifth grade teachers created this context clues mat to help students use the questions and a quick sketch to determine the meaning of unknown words.

The sketch really helped students determine the actual context of the word. If the word is "brush" and the context is describing a park with trees, bushes, and grass, the word "brush" is probably not going to mean "a tool with a handle and bristles". It's going to match the context, and mean "a clump of bushes." Partner Practice & Guided Practice To support this idea, and give kids practice with using context clues purposefully, I created some tools, such as task cards. One of my colleagues used them in her fourth grade classroom and really liked the focused, repetitious use of the strategy.

Students were placed in partners or threes to use the task cards.

After they read the paragraph on the card, they used a recording sheet with the questions on it to help them determine the meaning of the unknown word.

The hardest part was identifying the part of speech - this is unfortunately a difficult skill for our students. Relating it to the job the word does in the sentence was especially helpful.

While other students were working in teams or three, or partners, the teacher pulled over a small group of students who struggled with this skill and coached them through using the cards to practice their context clues.

Application to Test-Taking Isn't this the hard part? We can have kids who verbalize and write about words very well, but when it is applied to a test-taking situation, they don't know how to transfer that learning. One of my fifth grade teachers made this chart with his students to reinforce the use of thinking through context clues in order to answer context clues-type test questions.

Using released tests and passages, the class identified three types of context clue-type questions.  1. Figure out the meaning of the unknown word. 2. Match the dictionary meaning of a multiple-meaning word 3. Find a synonym or replacement word. By isolating the questions they will see and how to use the strategy, students will be better prepared to use context clues in real reading as well as test-taking.  If you'd like to try out the context clues task cards with your kids, just visit my TPT Store: Buzzing with Ms. B and check out the Reading Skills Pack: Context Clues.

What do you do to teach context clues? Pin It

Making Inferences: Scaffolding the Strategy Whole-Class and Small Group *Freebie!

Making inferences is tough! It's is one of the more difficult things we ask kids to do. We model, model, model, but making an inference requires more than following some steps. It requires some sense of what is logical and how we use evidence and background knowledge. It's tricky! Especially for our struggling readers, making inferences requires multiple exposures with lots of scaffolding.  To help kids make inferences that are logical, I try to keep them very closely tied to the text.   This doesn't mean that I don't value their background knowledge - background knowledge is so important to reading deeply! It just means that sometimes, students don't use background knowledge to understand text evidence; they use background knowledge to replace text evidence. And that's not good reading.   So I teach kids to use background knowledge to understand the evidence the text has provided. This means we have to start with the evidence!   

 Whole-Class Scaffolding

 This is a lesson we did with our second grade students. We were focusing on making inferences about a character. Specifically, we were working with A Bad Case of Stripes.

There is a lot of evidence about Camilla Cream's character in A Bad Case of Stripes. We wanted our kids to learn how to focus on searching for evidence to support their inferences. 

First, we started with introducing the strategy and what our purpose for reading was. The questions were charted on the left side of the chart before the teacher began reading the book. The teacher read the first question before starting the book to help focus the kids' thinking.

As the teacher read the book aloud, the kids listened for evidence that would help them specifically respond to the question. As they found evidence to respond to the question, it was charted on the right side. They used the specific details to make an inference and respond to the question. The answer was charted under the question on the left. 

Once the first question was answered, the teacher charted the second question to set a purpose for reading the next piece of text. The process continued throughout the book to help kids think about Camilla's character at different points in the story.

Small Group Scaffolding

 Sometimes what we do for the whole group doesn't "click" with some kids. They try to understand, but the learning is elusive. Small groups are a great time to differentiate your instruction and provide some scaffolding for students to learn a concept in a more structured way.

This is a tool I've used with small groups to help scaffold their inference-making skills. I chose a text very carefully that had several opportunities for students to make inferences. This can be challenging when you're working with a group of struggling readers. It's tough to find a text they can navigate at an instructional level and still have opportunities to "read between the lines" because the text is often so straightforward. Maybe this is easier for others than it is for me, but to ensure that my lesson is as accurate as possible, I really have to do some thinking! 

I chose a leveled reader from our supplemental materials after several re-reads. I found a few places in the text where I could make an inference. I made a two-columned table and and recorded the text evidence in order on the left side, in the order it appeared in the text. On a separate page, I made a blank some blank boxes and typed in the inferences I was able to make using the evidence. These I typed up out of order.

As students read the text, we hunted for the text evidence. Once they found it in the text, we read around it and thought about what we could "tell" from the evidence. Then we looked at the answer choices - the four inference statements that I typed up on the cards - and decided which one accurately matched the evidence. I had students circle a few words that helped them understand the inference was supported by the evidence. 

These are the questions I asked to guide their thinking:

What does the evidence mean?

From the evidence, which inference can we say is true? 

Which inference is supported by the piece of evidence?

Do the inference and evidence have similar meanings?

These questions helped focus the kids' thinking and made sure they were being logical in their evidence-inference connection.

Supporting inferences with evidence

I did a similar activity to work on the reverse of the evidence-inference process. I provided the inferences on the table, and the kids had to match the text evidence to explain which sentence from the text best supported the evidence. We read the article first and discussed important ideas. Then we read the evidence on the cards and sequenced them to locate the context of the evidence in the text. 

Then we read our inferences on the right side of the column and tried to logically connect the evidence to the inferences on the chart, making decisions about which piece of evidence helped us prove the inference true.

It was more challenging than moving from evidence to inferences, and required more time the first time I taught the lesson. But these scaffolding strategies helped our kids become more deliberate in their inference-making and inference-justifying. I used them with kids in grades three and four; special education students and general education students, too! 

What do you do to support kids' inference-making?

 Here's a handy dandy FREEBIE to help you scaffold your inference instruction!

And get all my Reading Strategy MiniPacks in the BIG BUNDLE!

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Good Expository Introductions... it's time to let "Hi, my name is..." go.

Hi, my name is... Today I'm going to tell you about... Did you know... BO-ring! All of those are pretty uninteresting. But sometimes, that's all that students know to do when they're writing an introduction. Expository writing can be especially difficult, as students tend to use the above beginnings when they write about a topic.   

  To help them develop a better sense of what makes a good introduction (we're specifically calling them introductions in expository, rather than 'beginnings', in the hopes of differentiating from a narrative), we planned the following lesson. We chose to initially focus on three different types of introductions. Asking a question, a surprising fact, and description. Each of these needs to relate and include the central idea of the essay. 

Instructional Sequence: 1. Share a model introduction. Good sources for this include Time for Kids, Sports Illustrated for Kids, etc. A real introduction from a real text is especially meaningful.  2. Discuss as a class - What did the writer do in that introduction? and Why should you use this strategy in your own introduction? 3. The teacher models writing the type of introduction about her own central idea. 4. Students practice writing that type of introduction about their own central idea. After the teacher has shared, modeled, and students have written their own, they choose the best one for their piece. 
Why It's Valuable: Writers use strategies to create interesting and meaningful writing. For students to learn to do this, it's important for them to see real models of writers using these strategies effectively. Then they have to think as writers - why did the writer choose this strategy? How did they do it? Why is it effective? By requiring them to try each introduction before choosing their best one, we're diversifying their writing abilities. We want kids to be able to make choices in their writing to see which strategies best convey the message to their reader. If they're always stuck using the same types of writing strategies, they're limited in their options. We want to grow their awareness about writing choices and their ability to make them! What kinds of expository introductions do you teach your students? Pin It

Expository Text: Main Ideas Anchor Chart & our upcoming plans for third grade!

Main Idea is really hard. For third and fourth graders, anyway, it can be a challenge. Once, my class and I were reading a short text about Abraham Lincoln. It gave details about how he had to walk miles to school, when there was a school, and how he did his reading by candlelight. He had to chop firewood and do all sorts of difficult things to survive as a kid. 

As we were reading this, I could see how the students were reacting. "Wow," they were thinking. "Harsh."

So when I asked for the main idea, I was a little surprised at the idea they came up with. 

"Life was hard in the 1980s."

WHAT?! Ummm.... yeah, but not as hard as it was in the 1800s! 

Anyway, kids are goofy, so something we think they're getting the big idea, but they're missing an important piece of their comprehension. Like the century or something. 

To help students with main idea, we planned out a few lessons that we think will scaffold their learning. We're starting off with a hands-on activity like this one from Super Second Grade

See original post

Basically, students in groups get a bag with several items all connected to one idea. They have to identify the supporting details and then put them together to make a main idea. 

Teachers will use the understanding students acquired through this activity to make this anchor chart:

Then, we'll practice identifying the main ideas of an article. Teachers are going to use the Bamboo Bears article from the Austin ISD Language Arts Resources site as a source of text. The teacher will white out the subheading for each section and have students use the details in the section and the repeated ideas to create the main idea statement, or a new subheading.

Afterwards, they can check it against the original subheadings! It's a fun and engaging way to practice identifying the main idea!

To teach main idea using the gradual release model, check out my Reading Strategy Miniack: Main Ideas.

We're going to follow up with some tools from my Nonfiction Pack to help kids practice main idea in a variety of ways: sorting, graphic organizers, foldables, and more! Get all 65+ pages on sale this week for 5.00 on TPT!

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Literary Nonfiction: what's important in a biography?

Our big focus for reading this year has been to identify the important characteristics of a genre in order to help our students know what to look for in each genre.  Our current unit of study is about Literary Nonfiction. We are teaching most of the unit through biographies and autobiographies, because they meet the criteria of literary nonfiction: text that provides information but uses literary devices, such as descriptive language or a narrative story structure. This can be a difficult concept for readers who are new to this genre! It's a crossover genre, and it contains characteristics of more than one genre we are familiar with.

In the upper grades (2-5), we planned a unit in which the teacher reads several literary nonfiction texts and looks for specific things in each one, and then adds them to a matrix to help students make connections across texts. 

This is the way our matrix looks in third grade:

In case you can't read the questions, they're 

- Who is the subject/main person?

- What are their traits?

- What are their motivations or goals?

- What challenges does he or she face?

- How do they overcome the challenge?

- What lesson can we learn from their life?

We chose to read...

Wilma Unlimited

Harvesting Hope

and Snowflake Bentley - one of my favorites!

It's especially difficult for kids to understand and decide on a lesson, moral, or theme for the text. Our teachers worked on the theme as the learning that the character does or the reader can do as a result of how the problem is solved (or challenge is overcome). 

Question for you: Which biographies do you love to read with kids? Which have the best messages for us to learn?

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Fiction is all about Character! *Freebie!

My teachers grades 3 - 5 are working hard on introducing fiction to their kids. We've built in tons of read alouds and shared reading experiences to help kids practice noticing, finding evidence, and making inferences about characters.
 

To do this, we're using a few different books. I really recommend using short stories with upper elementary students.

Books like Every Living Thing by Cynthia Rylant and Baseball in April and Other Stories by Gary Soto make the perfect vehicle for giving kids multiple opportunities for analyzing different characters within a short time span!

To give kids a handle on character analysis, we started building this anchor chart.

We added something different to it with each lesson, making sure that we were focused on analyzing elements of character that hit our TEKS and standards!

It was a lot to fit on one chart, but we did it!

To focus on character conflicts, we created a foldable and a simple graphic organizer. 

Outside of foldable

Inside of foldable

Grab it here for free on GoogleDrive!

These are some charts we've used at other times to support character analysis:

Find more great information about Fiction being all about character here:

Teaching That Makes Sense. Click on "The 5 facts of fiction!"

And check out my Character Analysis Strategy MiniPack on TPT!

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