This week we were to plan a mini-lesson for vocabulary development for "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" and I've decided to create one that would be fitting for the placement classroom that I'm in right now, however I would never use this book for my first and second graders so I'm going to write this lesson as if I were using a different book then I'll make some adjustments for "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" with more specifics.
My students have a pretty hard time reading and I'm in a 1st/2nd grade class (all students are below the level they should be). So I've decided that if I were to use this book in my classroom, firstly I would only pick out a portion of the selected book I want them to read (and make sure it's an appropriate portion) I would read the selection aloud to the students and then have the students pick out the words that they don't understand. Perhaps I'd give them all a copy of the selection or I'd write it on the board and they'd have to circle the words they didn't understand. From here, we would talk about context clues, picture clues and spelling in order for them to try to create an understanding of the words they don't know. Being the teacher, I could predict which words the students would be unfamiliar with so for part two of the lesson I would write the words they didn't understand in a new sentence, in order for them to be able to draw more conclusions about the "meaning" of the word. Lastly, I would ask students to write their own sentences using the new vocabulary terms and probably ask them to draw a picture to go along with it.
After reading, I'm sure you can easily see how it could be adapted for an older audience using "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry". Simply changing the book and the chosen selection from the book would make the lesson more appropriate for older students. Also I probably would not ask 6th or 7th graders to draw me a picture accompanying their sentences :)
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2 comments:
Megan,
My ideas for incorporating this book into my classroom were really, really similar to yours. Because I am in a Kindergarten classroom with students who are for obvious reasons not fluent readers I chose to take out only segments of the book for the students and have them talk through words they didn't understand through defining, acting out and drawing the word's meaning. While I do have some students who really are reading extremely well, I'm sure you can agree with me in that it's hard to see the student's who are performing below par struggle. You had stated that your 1/2 split students are still struggling, what does the teacher do for them? What kinds of literacy practice are they getting and do you agree with it or think she/he should be doing something else since apparently it's not working as well as they have planned?
I really like the idea of just picking out a portion of the book to discuss for students who are below reading level. I think this would really get them to focus on what it is they are actually reading and also not feel so intimidated by a large passage or chapter. I also like the idea of having students circle words they don't understand and then creating a discussion around those student selected words. I think context clues and pictures are an invaluable tool to use while reading and can really help students figure out what is going on. I had a student reading to me in class one day tell me that she was able to figure out the words she was stuck on by looking at the pictures. This really demonstrated to me that students use the strategies we talk about, even without us knowing it! I don't think anyone ever explicitly taught her that (because she is in kindergarten and a beginning reader) it was just something she figured out that worked for her. The extension of the lesson where students apply the new vocabulary words by writing them in sentences and drawing a picture is a really great idea and is an informal assessment that can show you whether students understood the words or not.
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