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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How to Teach Reading by Genre

A few years ago (maybe five or six) our state standards changed for reading, pretty dramatically. I know all of you who have been through the Common Core Craze can understand that.

I, however, am from Texas, where we do what we want *snap snap*, and Texas moved to genre-based standards several years back.

At that time, my reading program was based on the Reader's Workshop model, with adjustments to suit me, and my shared reading three days a week was fiction. The other two days was informational text.

This was great for me (I love fiction, and I tied my informational articles to science, so double whammy), but it didn't exactly address my new genre-based standards, which included literary genres: fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction (biography), and informational genres: expository, persuasive, and procedural. I had some work to do to teach reading by genre.

One of the first things I did was take a look at my standards and figure out which standard was expected to be taught (and honestly, tested) in which genres. I used the document below to figure out where I had to teach different standards, like cause-and-effect, predicting, making inferences, and sequencing.

Then I chose some titles for each genre that I wanted to focus on as mentor texts for really understanding how that genre worked and how good readers approach that genre. My kids and I worked through a variety of texts, noticing the features of each genre and recording them, and other important characteristics (like author's purpose, which is actually the essential reason genres are different), and charting them on some giant charts.

To help kids make the distinction, I divided them up onto literary and informational matrices.

During the study of each genre, we examined several texts and isolated the essential elements and strategies to use to best comprehend that genre.

Poetry
Poetry was a struggle for many students. They didn't really know how to start! To give them a handle on the main elements of poetry, we used an acronym that my colleague and I created: POETS. The chart below shows what students would look for in a poem. They marked evidence in different colors for each element, trying to put them together to make meaning out of the poem.

This chart shows how we read for the elements, whole-class, and mark our evidence.

I love reader's notebooks. For each genre, we responded using different strategies. The strategy shown from my model notebook below was great for poetry. I honestly can't remember the name, but this is how it works:

1. Read a poem aloud to students - each student has a copy to mark up as you read.
2. Read again, slowly, instructing students to find a spot to respond to. Students underline the line and put a star at the end of the line. They quickwrite in response to the poem.
3. Read the poem again, very slowly. As you get to the place where students responded, they jump in and read the response they wrote.

The first time we did this, my kids were a little uncomfortable and nervous. But you know, learning happens when we don't quite know what's going to happen! I did it again, with a poem called "Shelling Pecans," and they seemed to have a better experience, because they expected to share. It was a very interesting strategy that I would use again! 

Other posts on teaching poetry

Fiction
When I introduced fiction, I made sure to introduce a variety of genres - I really spent some time here, choosing texts from each genre to make sure that students had a good understanding of the varieties of fiction they might enjoy reading. We read historical fiction (Nettie's Trip South), and science fiction (Sector 7). We read myths and folktales! And at the end of the unit, one of the kids' most interesting responses (I always ask for their input) was "I never knew there were different kinds of fiction."

How rewarding is that?

An important part of a strong reader's workshop program is independent reading. While it's important for students to enjoy reading (really the most important thing), you have to find different ways of ensuring that students are applying their strategic thinking in their independent reading. One fun way is the question ring below.

I hole-punch the cards in the corner and put them on a binder ring. I hang them in the classroom library, and students can choose a question to respond to in their independent reading. There's a ring for each genre. We practice using the rings to respond to our reading during our whole-group lessons, and then, as we practice with each genre, I add the rings to the library.

Other posts on teaching fiction

Drama

Drama is a very unique genre as well. As we read dramas, we add to our chart of drama features. It's important to do more than simply name the features. We need to help students understand the purpose of that feature, so they know how to use it. For example, students very readily point to words in brackets and pronounce, "stage directions!" But do they use those stage directions to understand how a character is feeling or acting? If not, then we have to teach them how to do that!

Other posts on drama

Expository
Expository text is very focused on pulling out important information. We practice my favorite summary strategy: providing each team with a sentence strip. They write the main idea of their paragraph and then we put them all together to build a super summary! You can read more about that here.

I also added my Expository question ring to the classroom library!

Other posts about teaching Expository text

Persuasive
Persuasive text is a very specific type of informational text. It's informational, but it's tinged with someone's bias and persuasive techniques. I used this persuasive cube in partners to help students think through a persuasive text and identify the persuasive techniques and arguments used by the author.

As I introduce new genres, it's important for students to learn how to navigate between genres. I use these three questions to help students think about what genre they are reading. It's so important for students to naturally think about texts differently to determine what's important about each genre. Students who are fuzzy on this read each genre the same, usually like fiction, and studies show they are the least able to navigate those genres. So we spend a lot of time on it!

The chart below helps kids remember to think differently on three major genres:

Genre bookmarks are a great way to help kids be independent in their identification and thought about genre during independent reading. If you provide them with each bookmark as you learn about each new genre, they can pull their set of bookmarks out during independent reading.

I copied them onto colored cardstock and provide them to students, one at a time. Students "grow" their set, and when they choose an independent reading book, they identify the genre, pull out the bookmark, and think about the questions or items under the "Look for" part of the bookmark.

And then there's testing.

Dun-dun-DUNNNN!

I know, I hate it, too. But if we teach our children to be real readers and real writers, we can more easily teach them to navigate the test structures and be successful. When we focus only on testing, we neglect the real thought and rigor of the world of reading and writing. Instead, focus on real reading and writing, and then bridge it to the test. This is how I bridge genre instruction:

We reviewed each genre with a mini-selection. Each student had a copy and they practiced using the three questions to decide on their strategy for approaching the text (ex: Do I look for characters? conflicts? main ideas? arguments? stage directions?). We marked the essential elements, and decided on the author's purpose. Then we brainstormed the kinds of questions we expected to see on the test and recorded them on our chart.

We repeated this for the most frequently tested genres.

And we built our test-genre wall!

 We developed a strategy chant to remember what's important about each genre! It goes to the tune of a cadence, like "Sound off- 1-2". The first four stanzas are the verses, and the last stanza is the sound-off.

I cut up a million questions from the released tests, and students sorted them into different genres, based on the evidence they could find in the question and answer choices. It's incredible how much they could infer, just from the questions and answers!

These activities are part of my 200-page Teaching Reading by Genre materials on TPT. It's full of teacher planning tools and printables, lesson ideas, anchor charts, and strategies for each genre!

And my Genre Study Book is a great way to provide students some reader's notebook pages or a folder book for reference, as you undertake your genre study!

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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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The importance of teaching genre: I don't understand basketball...

I don't know how to watch basketball. I stare at the screen, watching sweaty men run back and forth. They dodge and leap, pass and receive, their shoes squeaking on the floor and the buzzer sounding, "AAAAAAAAAAAA!"  And I don't get it.  I mean, I get the basic idea. Two teams in different colored uniforms, ball in hoop = points. But I watch it and my eyes don't move right. They bounce from one player after the other, trying to locate the ball. They skip across half the court searching and once I find the ball, that player passes it to someone else and I've lost it again.  Someone once told me it's because I don't know what to look for. "Don't follow the ball," he told me. "Notice the movement of the two different teams. Watch the collective team by looking at the movement of the colors in the uniforms. Don't focus on the ball. You can't keep up." This helped (the one time I practiced it) but I didn't practice it much.  I didn't practice it because it's hard to watch and I didn't want to. Baseball, however, is comprehensible to me. I'd rather watch baseball. This understanding helps me when I think about reading instruction. Studies show that kids read everything like fiction unless we provide specific genre-based instruction. They look for a character and a story in all texts, unless we coach them in what to look for. That was the rationale for this anchor chart.

To create the chart, we wanted to pass out a variety of texts that are either fiction, poetry, or expository. We have previously taught the genres of fiction and poetry, but expository text is something new for our kids (as a genre of reading). Students will identify the genre of each text and then use it to review the characteristics of fiction and poetry. The teacher will create a chart from the students' background knowledge.

After the first two columns are complete, the teacher will directly introduce the purpose and characteristics of expository texts.

The idea behind this is the same as helping me learn how to watch basketball - it helps kids know what to look for in a text. If I pick up a text and say, "This is fiction. I'm going to look for a main character who has a problem and solves it," that gives me some mental velcro to stick the important pieces of the story to. 

If I pick up an informational text and say, "This is expository text. I'm going to read to be informed about a topic. I'll look for main ideas of each section to find out what's important," I will be prepared to read that text and pull out what's important.

It's all about making meaning!

And kids who make meaning of text are more likely to read something. Which is why I hate basketball.

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