Teaching Theme with Cloudette (A Mentor Text Lesson)

Theme. We know it when we see it, right?

But it's one of the most challenging skills to teach kids, in my opinion. Kids tend to say, "Overcome challenges!" is the theme, no matter what the text says. Or maybe that was just my class...

Either way, getting kids to dig a little deeper requires a lot of think alouds, modeling, and breaking down of the thought that goes into deducing a theme!

That's why, when the Reading Crew opened up this awesome spring mentor text link-up, I decided to use Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld.

Cloudette is the story of a teeny tiny cloud who feels like she's too small to help anyone with rain or snow. It's a feeling that kids often recognize!

Cloudette is perfect for teaching theme because the character's traits, motivations, problems, and solution is so perfectly lined up. It's a very explicit way to introduce a complicated skill!



Before Reading: Set a purpose
Before you read, set a purpose for reading with your students. Your purpose is to analyze the

character throughout the story to figure out what lesson we can learn from their actions and changes.

During Reading: Gather evidence
Use the handy-dandy graphic organizer provided in the freebie below to record your evidence from the text and your thinking about it. Model noticing how the character changes and solves her problem, especially.

After Reading: Model thinking about theme
Introduce the idea of "theme": the message or lesson you can learn from a text. It's usually some positive advice that is good to know! Themes (in children's picture books, anyway) tend to be feel-good messages that you'd want children to have as a set of beliefs. Use the evidence you gathered to model how to figure out the lesson you can learn from Cloudette's actions.



 
Handy Tip!
Sometimes, when students struggle to figure out the theme of a text (especially when the world is full of themes), it can help to provide them with a short list of possible themes. This is a good scaffold for starting to figure out theme and it will help students feel more successful at first!

The handout included in the freebie below helps students by providing a table of character changes and possible themes associated with those changes.

Grab the entire lesson freebie on TPT!  

Enter the big giveaway! My code word is: cloud! And be sure to check out some of the other great posts & freebies for teaching with mentor texts!

The gradual release model is the way to go when teaching new strategies to kids. Enter your email address to get a gradual release freebie!

      a Rafflecopter giveaway    

An InLinkz Link-up

  Pin It

Engaging, interactive read alouds with purpose!

The other day I was planning with one of my grade levels and we were talking about making read aloud a little more interactive. Don't get me wrong: read aloud is inherently awesome. You're sitting on the carpet, reading awesome books, talking about your reading. What's not to love? 

But we have these kids....

The kids who have difficulty focusing and therefore might miss out on some of the best parts.

The kids who are so quiet that, unless you pull it out of them, they won't share their thinking.

The kids who raise their hands every forty-seven seconds to share about, "One time when that happened to me," and you're like, "Really? That happened to you? The time you were at your aunt's house for Thanksgiving and she got her head stuck in a turkey?" (True story, by the way. Or anyway, it's a true story that one time a kid told me that happened.)

So, to continue the conversation, I decided to write about my four tips for making read alouds engaging and interactive!

1. Start with a great text.

Consider your audience. Children easy to engage if you think about their interests! If you have to teach literary nonfiction, and you can choose between a book about Derek Jeter, Yankees star, or a book about Pelé, the King of Soccer, go with the book your kids will relate to more.  Look for books with...

• Engaging topics
• Interesting language 
• A good flow - easy to follow
• Some vivid illustrations (you don't have to show all of them, but you might want to choose some great ones)
• Age-appropriate language

2. Set a purpose for reading.

Before you choose your book and plan your lesson, figure out why it is you're reading at all. Are you going to focus on story elements? character analysis? emotions? traits? changes? relationships? theme? The focus of your lesson will influence your book selection and the kinds of conversations you want kids to have. 

Set that purpose for reading with your kids. One great, interactive way to do this is with my brand-new Interactive Read Aloud Signs. Set a purpose for reading and provide kids with the signs. During the read aloud, students hold up their sign when they find evidence that matches their purpose!  

Another easy way to set a purpose is to ask a purpose question at the beginning of the lesson and give each student a sticky note. As you read, students will think about the question and write their thinking and evidence on the sticky note. They can Think-Pair-Share about their thinking, too!

This way serves as a great formative assessment! Read the kids' thoughts and see what they're thinking!

 

3. Plan some interesting, thoughtful questions and conversation starters.

Read the book first - reading that isn't fluent is BO-RING, and confusing as well! Figure out a few places you might like to pause and have students think about the text. Consider your purpose and find a few spots that kids can't help but react! Don't stop too frequently - it'll kill the story. 

4. Give them time to talk!

Once you know where you're going to stop,  make sure you have a cooperative discussion structure set up for them to talk to each other. Think-Pair-Share is the easiest one to plan, but you might experiment with others, too! Here are a few great ideas, if you're looking to jazz it up!

5. Use it as an opportunity for writing!

Kids get ideas by connecting to books you read aloud. After the read aloud, have students respond to the book! You can do this in two ways:
1. Have students write a reading response by providing sentence frames to respond to the purpose you set at the beginning of the lesson. If you're using my Interactive Read Aloud Signs, the sentence frames are already provided on the back!

2. Have students write a seed or an idea in their writer's notebooks. They can make a simple connection to write about later. The more ideas in their notebooks, the better!

 If you're looking for some fun, interactive tools to jazz up Read Aloud time, check out my Interactive Read Aloud Signs on TPT! I've got a brand-new set for fiction!

Pin It

Responding to Reading: Double-Entry Journals* Freebie!

One interesting way to use reader's notebooks is a double-entry journal. In a double-entry journal, you have a two-column page. On the top of the left side is a quote that is directly lifted from the text. On the top right, respond to the line of text. Monitor your thinking and explain how you reacted to the quote.

To use double-entry journals with your kids, be sure to model, model, model. If you pause and open up your brain for your kids enough, they can start to think in the complex way you're modeling. Here's a little script you might use for a double-entry journal.

1. Choose a book you will honestly react to. I love anything by Eve Bunting, but I'm generally in tears by the end of the book, so maybe stick to Patricia Polacco.
2. Read a part of the book and stop after a line that meant something to you.
3. Say: "This line is very powerful. I think I'm going to stop and think about it."
4. Record the quote on the left side.
5. Model thinking aloud on the quote. You may use the following as starters:
- I am surprised/shocked/saddened/excited because...
- This makes me think of....
- This reminds me of another book I read where...
- I chose this quote because...
- Because of this, I think ___ will happen because...
- I wonder...

This is a double entry written by one of my fourth graders when we read Esperanza Rising.

  A few tips for double-entry journals: 1. Don't kill it. Any strategy, when overused, gets pretty boring pretty fast. Choose some great texts to use this strategy with, periodically; not every time kids read! 2. Read the responses! You'll be surprised how interesting they are, and how much they tell you about your kids. 3. Model, model, and then model some more. Children don't just pick up new strategies like this. We need to give them opportunities to try it out together. 4. Talk it out. If kids are having trouble getting started writing on their own, have them talk to a partner about their thinking, or make a class-wide dialogue entry together. 5. Use sentence starters to help kids (and yourself) think. A sample anchor chart is included on this post about monitoring comprehension!

    Try it out and let me know how it goes! And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

Pin It

Studying Characters' Emotions

One great book to use to help students understand characters' emotions is The Way I Feel by Janan Cain. It's a beautifully illustrated book. On each set of facing pages, there is an emotion represented in the tones and colors of the illustration. The text rhymes and does a vivid job of describing that specific emotion, showing kids when they might feel that way.

 

To make inferences using The Way I Feel during a read aloud, simply cover up the emotion with a post-it. Have students gather clues by recording the details the character says, does, and what other characters are doing. The illustrations make a great place to gather information too!

Then they can infer the emotion depicted on each page. If kids are stuck, provide them an Emotions List like this freebie I've made for you on Google Drive

 

Grab the freebie here!

Then we worked with making inferences on some character emotions task cards. I handed out the cards to students and they highlighted evidence on the card that helped them infer how the character was feeling in that instance.

After they marked their evidence, they sorted the cards into different headers of the emotions. Students used their lists for this, too, to help them think of different ways to describe how the character felt in the card. Rather than always saying, "The character was angry," they learned words like "furious," or "upset."
 

We also have students gather clues during shared reading. During our reading of Wolf, students recorded evidence and made inferences about the wolf's emotions.

 

Grab these ideas in my Character Emotions Unit    and my 41 Characters Analysis Tools.  

  !   Pin It

Responding to Reading: Responding to Questions *Freebie!

One question teachers frequently ask is, "How can I monitor my students' understanding during a read aloud or shared reading?" Sometimes, it's enough just to see what kinds of thoughts students are having as they read. Sometimes, though, I need to see a specific response to a purpose question. After playing with a few ideas, I tried out this reader's notebook strategy for having students respond in a focused way to our read aloud or shared reading. The strategy is: question strips!

Before we read a section of text in class, I would read it myself and write a question or two that I thought might help students evaluate their thinking. I used question stems from our state assessment and other rigorous sources, in order to build students' familiarity to the questions' syntax.

I typed these questions up, and copied them until I had a series of them running down the page. I can usually fit 12 or so on one page. I printed them out (it often only took two sheets to get enough for each student in my class to have one) and then I cut them into strips.

After our shared reading or read aloud (in this case, Esperanza Rising was our shared reading, so everyone had a copy - great for citing evidence from the text), I handed out one question strip to each student. They took a glue stick and quickly zipped it across the page, and then stuck the strip on.
 

I modeled, modeled, modeled how to write a simple but complete response to the question. After modeling for oh, about forever, my students were able to write coherent and accurate responses to the questions. I wrote questions about characterization, inferences, and personal connections for students to respond to. It was great insight into my students' understanding!

  Check out these posts about other ways to use Reader's Notebooks to respond to reading! Monitoring comprehension Writing book letters Double-entry journals Writing about characters Responding to questions And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

Pin It

Responding to Reading: Writing about characters* Freebie!

  

For students to really understand fiction, they need to have a strong understanding of the characters. The characters' traits drive the conflicts and themes of the story! In our shared reading of Frindle, my students and I spent a lot of time writing about characters. 

We started with a simple purpose for marking with post-its: Find evidence about Nick Allen's character. You can use his words, actions, or things other characters say about him. As we read, we marked placed we noticed his character becoming clear with post-its and wrote a short reaction on each post-it. 

After we read, I had students gather their post-its and stick them into their reader's notebook under, "Evidence about Nick Allen."

Then we brainstormed words that could describe his personality.

I wanted students to make some sort of decision about Nick's character, so I asked them a question with controversy: "Is Nick Allen a troublemaker?" Depending on my students' perspective, they would have different ideas about this.  To help my students understand different types and roles of characters, I introduced the vocabulary: Protagonist and Antagonist. I wanted my students to notice character interactions and think about how the characters were working against each other because of their personalities.  I chose a good chapter to introduce this concept - the chapter where we meet Mrs. Granger, who is Nick's very strict fifth grade teacher. As we read, we gathered evidence about Mrs. Granger and then wrote a prediction about how these characters would interact. 

Here is one of my students' brief responses to this chapter. On the bottom of the page, you can see that we connected this shared reading lesson to independent reading. The students had the same purpose for reading as we introduced during our whole-group reading lesson: Gather evidence about your character to describe him or her. Predict future events based on what you know about the characters. This student wrote about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, his independent reading selection.

And this student wrote about her character, Stuart Little. 

Scaffolding students' reading responses by setting up a purpose for reading with a graphic organizer and then providing sentence starters is a great way to grow your readers and writers.  This simple organizer requires students to identify the evidence in the text that helps them understand the characters' relationship. Then they use the starters to write a short response.

A strong connection between your whole-group lessons and students' independent reading can help students be purposeful and thoughtful during their independent reading time, building strategies to support their reading comprehension. And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

Pin It

Responding to Reading: Writing Letters about Books* Freebie!

Book Letters are incredible. They are one of the best things I did in the classroom. Lovers of books love to talk about books. We love to share books we love with other book lovers, too. Book letters, which students wrote to me in their reader's notebooks, are a great way to get interactive with your readers and really figure out what's going on in their heads!

To model book letters (because we know you must model every single behavior and strategy you expect in your classroom!) I started by responding in letter form to a book we'd read together. This is a book letter I wrote to my class about The Bee Tree, back in 2008. Wow, right? It's amazing what you'll find once you start going through your files!

I shared a copy of the letter with each student and they stuck it into their reader's notebooks as a sample. They loved getting a letter from their teacher, even though they all got the same one!

After reading another book aloud, I modeled writing book letters in front of the students. You really have to slow down your thinking to do a good think aloud; examine your thoughts and explain how you know what to do, and where your ideas are coming from.

Creating a list of sentence starters is helpful, too. You can check out the anchor chart I used to do this here, on a previous post about monitoring your comprehension.

This is a cherished letter from one of my lovely students, who was reading Because of Winn-Dixie.

I tried to respond to the letters as often as possible. I'm not going to lie; it can be a challenge. But if it's important to you, you'll find the time! And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

Pin It

Responding to Reading: Monitoring Comprehension* Freebie!

I honestly don't know how to teach reading without a notebook. When we write about our reading, we process, we explain, we explore, and we think new things about the text we read. We can generate ideas for our own writing, and think of things we hadn't thought until they came pouring out of our pencils.

Share this with your students: share the value that writing about something brings; that you can think with a pencil better than with just your brain.

To support my readers in responding to literature, I had them make a reader's notebook on the first day of school. I believe that, if it's important, do it right away! So I did.

They decorated the covers with things that they enjoyed reading about.

Early in the year, I wanted to work with my students on monitoring their comprehension. In the upper grades, we often work with a whole crop of students who can decode like nobody's business. And then you say, "Tell me about what you read," and they give you blank stares. I've actually had a third grader glance at the pictures (after reading the whole story) and make a up a story just using the pictures.

Oh. My. Lord. That isn't reading. That's decoding. Decoding is not reading; they are not interchangeable.

So it was very clear to me that we had to start noticing our reading thoughts, and fast. I always start by reading a shocking book.

Yes, a very shocking book. One book I use to introduce this idea is It Doesn't Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story.

It's a story about a boy who lives in the barrio, gets roped into being in a gang, and then almost loses his good friend to a gunshot.

Yes, shocking. Why? Why do I read this with my fourth graders? There are several reasons.

1. Some of them live in this world. It is the real world for a lot of our kids. We have to connect with their experiences.
2. It's an important lesson about making choices within limited options; the reality they live in daily.
3. They will definitely think something while they listen to this book.

I read a little piece, and then I stop and think aloud. I think about personal reactions, mostly: feelings. I am surprised that..., I think he is going to..., I wish he would...,

And then I read some more, and then I stop and think aloud some more. I make predictions, and inferences about the character. And then I explain that I'm going to start writing some of these things down. I read, and then I stop and write. I have my students do the same; I read and then I stop and they write. This is a sample of an entry I wrote several years ago.

When I get to the really shocking part: the scene in which the girl gets shot and you don't know if she'll survive, I pause. I ask students to write about that part, without knowing what the ending will bring. And they always have something to say.

The reactions students record don't have to be complex, or structured. I just want them to realize that, as they read, they think!   

After we do this together a few times, I move it to students' independent reading responses. They read and respond to their independent reading book. I read their responses, just to make sure there is thinking going on while they are reading. It's a simple way to get kids responding to their reading. 

Later, we move on to more structured responses. We start to code our thoughts based on the strategy they represent. We create sentence frames for each strategy to "help us think when we're stuck." Seriously, sometimes just saying the words, "I wonder..." or "I visualize..." helps you come up with a response!

As students get better at noticing their reading thoughts and writing about them, I model a more structured reading response. The first paragraph includes a brief summary of the reading. The second paragraph is about 3-4 sentences responding to the reading. At first, I'm just looking for authentic thoughts. Over time, I ask students to choose a focus to respond about; something their entire response will be about. This helps them dig deeper and not think so superficially about their reading. 

And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

Pin It

Potter Fans: Harry Potter Book Club Activities

Harry Potter Fan Club!   Is that not the best reason to go to work? Every Wednesday, from 3:00 to 4:00, an adorable group of students arrives at my room to read Harry Potter. They are the cutest, because they are staying after school, by choice, to read!    I started out by inviting any interested Potter Fans:  

After we started reading, one of the early activities we did was making bookmarks to mark our books!

  After Harry got his wand at Ollivander's, we logged on to http://www.pottermore.com to see what wand we  would receive!

When we read about Harry and Ron on the Hogwarts Express, we made these chocolate frog boxes using this template I found at The Leaky Cauldron.

I had students choose their most interesting character and we started these character maps, using evidence from the text that shows us what the character is like!

 

 

We started a couple handy charts based on the kids' observations after reading a few chapters.

We hunted for characteristics of each Hogwarts house.

 After they noticed the connections between Harry and Voldemort, we started a Venn diagram.

We used an online quiz to figure out which house each student is in (BTW, I'm totally down with Hufflepuff).

 And then we worked on creating our house crests!

We took pictures and put it all together for a nice little display outside my classroom door! The Potter Fans are in!

We made some fun golden snitches using these materials: styrofoam balls, spray glue (which I managed to spray pretty much all over my table, and papers stuck there for weeks), glitter, sparkly pipe cleaners, and sparkly gold foam fun felt.

  Pin It