Currents in Literacy

Inside Real Classrooms: Things That Work

Kindergarten

Kindergarten teachers Jennifer Haushalter, Alexandra Mills, and Evelyn DeRosa started a weekly program where their students meet with their third grade book buddies to engage in literacy activities. This winter they started an ongoing project with chapter books. After choosing a chapter book together from the school library, the buddies began their reading adventure. Third graders read one chapter at a time to their kindergarten buddy. After completing the chapter, the buddies discussed what happened and their favorite part. The kindergartners drew a picture representing their favorite part while the third graders summarized the discussion in writing. After the book is read and each chapter summarized, book reviews are ready for the press.

First Grade

In her classroom, Carol McNamara helps her students learn to "attend to the moment." Recognizing that in our society children are often accustomed to things happening fast and are not used to having a calm body and mind, Ms. McNamara looks for ways to help children slow down, pay attention, and focus on the moment. At a conference on "Mindfulness in a School Setting," she learned techniques which she has put into practice. Often she asks her students to close their eyes and focus on their breathing. Recently, when the children moved from a group lesson on the rug to their seats to begin writing, she asked them to close their eyes, put their thumbs and index fingers together, and concentrate on this light touch. The effect was dramatic; the children instantly quieted and in a very short time were ready to give their full attention to their writing assignment.

Poetry books are an ongoing literacy activity in Joyce Karlson's class. At least once a week she displays a poem on chart paper. The class reads the poem together, discusses the meaning, finds the descriptive words, and talks about why the poet chose these particular words. The poem is re-read by the group. Individual children also read it aloud for the class. The children then paste a copy of the poem into their poetry notebooks and illustrate it. Before the book is put away each child reads the poem to Ms. Karlson or another adult in the classroom. Follow up consists of arranging sentence strips to reconstruct the poem, or writing original poems in this style using other descriptive words.

In Alice Marullo's class, guided reading is up and running. At a given time, Ms. Marullo asked a student to gather the members of his guided reading group together. The members of this reading group then left the activities they were undertaking to join Ms. Marullo at a side rug area. There they were introduced to their new book, Henry and Mudge, the First Book. After a brief introduction, the students read a section of the story independently. Ms. Marullo circulated among the group, asking individuals to read parts of the text out loud to her. She discretely took notes on reading strategies used and neglected by each student. They discussed what took place in the story, and talked about "tricky words" they had encountered in their reading. At the end of twenty minutes, the group was dispatched to continue the work they had begun earlier, and another student was sent around to gather her reading group.

Second Grade

Cynthia Putt's class wrote haiku poems as part of their study of the moon. They studied many aspects of the moon and developed a prominently displayed list of moon related words: waxing, waning, phases, lunar, etc. Ms. Putt read both fictional and informational books to the class as part of their investigation, and the class viewed a video of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. A fifth grade class prepared the second graders for the haiku writing by visiting their room, explaining the haiku format, reading their poems, and leaving them in the classroom for the second graders to study. Ms. Putt helped her class organize their thoughts for moon haikus by leading the class in brainstorming words the children suggested that fit into four categories: the moon reminds me of, words to describe the moon, words associated with the moon, and feelings the moon creates. The class enthusiastically worked on their individual haikus, carefully counting out the required syllables on their fingers.

Leatrice Crivello's letter writing lessons connect learning this skill with responses to literature and students' personal experience. After reading Gregory, the Terrible Eater, she asked the students in this reading group to write letters to Gregory, the goat in the story. To prepare the whole class for the lesson, she asked them to draw pictures of an adult with whom they enjoyed participating in a specific activity. The children then described the adult and this activity in their letters. Ms. Crivello shared a model letter she had written about dancing with her cousin who has Down syndrome and passed around a photograph of the two of them dancing. By sharing an important personal experience, she demonstrated how writing can be used to communicate and preserve significant real-life events.

Third Grade

Ruth Santino led her class step-by-step through the process of composing a paragraph. First she demonstrated how to web ideas using a sunburst pattern. The ideas on the web were then written in no particular order as a list. Finally the listed ideas were arranged in order of importance. With the help of the class, Ms. Santino composed a paragraph on the blackboard, incorporating the ideas from the list into the body of the paragraph, and choosing the appropriate topic and closing sentences. The class was then ready to follow this procedure on their own.

Kate Longo sat on the rug with six or seven students surrounding her, each one clutched his or her writing folder. Ms. Longo took a "status of the class" report, asking each student what they were working on, and what help they needed from her. She asked each one in turn to "log in" their finished stories, or new titles in their "author's log." Meanwhile, the rest of the class was busy working at their seats illustrating, copying, publishing, or binding a writing piece they had completed. Three parent volunteers circulated, giving help where needed. The students followed a pre-set plan for each piece of writing. They must choose a topic, web their ideas, write a first draft, and write a revised draft after getting teacher input. After completing three pieces, they may choose one of those to publish. Ms. Longo has found that this stipulation slows down the publishing mill and gets each child to evaluate their writing more and realize that not everything they write is of the same quality.

Linda Harding's class has been busy with a unit on poetry. One day, Carrie Mitchell, a student intern, led them through an introduction to cinquains. She began by explaining the structure of cinquains using a model on the overhead projector. Together with the class, she described the various components of the "Sneakers" cinquain on the screen. After the class had discussed each of the five lines in detail, they brainstormed possible topics for the students to use in their own compositions. Students then got busy penning cinquains on horses, pets, dancing, wrestling, and a host of other subjects. Students could be heard grappling for synonyms, searching for feeling words, and discussing the best action words for their particular poem.

Fourth Grade

Virginia MacAuley gathered her students on the rug area in order to discuss the final project for the fable unit they were just completing. She explained that the final project would involve the students writing their own fables. With this in mind, she first read them a fable that she had written. Ms. MacAuley then explained in detail how she had gone about the process of creating her fable. First, she decided on a moral for her fable, then she chose the animals to have in her fable and, finally, she chose an event for the action of the story. With these elements in hand, the story just sort of came together, she explained. She then provided them with a pre-writing activity sheet so that they could begin to organize their thoughts. Soon her students were penning their own fables. The prewriting activity and Ms. MacAuley's modeling allowed the students to tackle this challenging activity with clarity and focus.

Lynda Verity carefully structures the monthly book reports she requires of her fourth graders. These are written in class, not assigned as homework, because she wants to be sure they represent student -- not parent -- work. They consist of three paragraphs. The first paragraph tells what the book is about. In the second and longest paragraph, students tell what they liked about the book, using specifics from the text to support their opinion. The third, concluding paragraph briefly sums up what has been reported. When discussing nonfiction, Ms. Verity asked students to tell three facts they learned from the book. She asked children, "What sentence jumped out at you?" In this way, she built on the children's interest, and encouraged them to build their supporting statements around the sentence which sparked their curiosity.

Fifth Grade

Writing a limerick was one of the writing activities in Maureen Rigazio's classroom. After Ms. Rigazio had explained the limerick pattern, the class and teacher worked together to compose one on the blackboard. After a topic had been selected, the class identified five characteristics of the topic. Under each characteristic, rhyming words were listed. Students found this procedure helped them when they composed their individual limericks. To further stimulate their creativity, Ms. Rigazio played a Mozart recording while they were working.

Much research supports the importance of a teacher allowing sufficient time for a student to respond to questions. The validity of this research was much in evidence in Signe Ulwick's class in reading. The students were gathered around a large table to discuss the previous night's assignment of a chapter in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. When Ms. Ulwick was asking questions to check the students' comprehension, one girl raised her hand but when called on forgot her answer. Ms. Ulwick did not prompt her or move on to another student. Instead, she waited patiently until the girl remembered what she intended to say and answered the question correctly. On another occasion a boy could not respond as quickly as the boys around him wished. They urged him to hurry up. But Ms. Ulwick said, "Don't rush him. Give him time." And he, too, when given enough time was able to answer correctly.

Pauline Golec sometimes starts the day with music by taking attendance or the lunch count by singing each child's name in a variety of notes and tempi and then asking each child to respond "Yes, please," or "No, thank you," using corresponding note patterns. Using the piano in the classroom, Ms. Golec asks children to write words as suggested to them by the sounds of the notes. Vocabulary building, sharing, and discussion of word choices, and vocabulary review are some of the activities she brings to life with music. On one day, while preparing for a unit on biographies, she had the class read a brief summary of Beethoven's life. Then they listened to Mr. Beethoven Lives Upstairs, a tape which exposed the children to some of Beethoven's musical compositions, while also describing his life. Students then compared the text and the tape.