Roald Dahl Author Study (January 2014)

Roald Dahl is one of my favorite authors and so when deciding where to go next with our guided reading groups I was happy to take on the task of designing a Roald Dahl author study for the whole class. First things first, I gathered as much information about Roald Dahl as possible to put together a bulletin board and introductory lesson.

Reading With Roald Dahl Bulletin Board

As I researched the man I considered to be one of my favorite authors I realized I fell in love even more. Not only was Dahl a fascinating writer that captured readers' attention with wild and wacky stories, but he had lived the most extraordinary life. I couldn't wait to share it with my students through the Smart Notebook lesson I created.

Afterwards, we took a tour of Roald Dahl's amazing author webpage to explore the many fun activities on the site. It is a tremendous resource for teacher activities and information about the author and his books. In addition, there are fun class games and activities. The first one we took on was a writing exercise. Part of what makes Roald Dahl such a fascinating writer is that he uses interesting language (instead of saying "beautiful" he says "dazzling"). Part of his method was to collect lists of words under a heading. I explained to the class that this was a good exercise for great writers to keep an arsenal of words in case they are ever at a loss of how to put something. As a class we chose to list words that we thought fell under the category of "funny". The students came up with words such as hysterical, hilarious, laughable, unbearable, and goofy. At the end of the lesson I charged the students with never again going with the same old boring funny when writing a story again, but to refer back to our list and use one of our fabulous new and interesting words that mean just the same!

The class is split into three different reading groups. I have a group of readers that are on grade level and we have the pleasure of reading one of my absolute favorites, Fantastic Mr. Fox. The students learned what an antagonist is and discussed what exactly makes someone an antagonist. I put together a study guide that contains not only plot and inferential questions, but also includes activities that have the students looking for and even creating figurative language of their own. 

We are still in the midst of reading our books and playing with figurative language. As a final project students will work together as a group to create a sequence of events for the novel within a depiction of our hero, Mr. Fox. Seeing the kids excitement over Roald Dahl and his books has solidified for me that Roald Dahl was successful in his mission: "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."

More updates to come as we complete our projects and finish other wacky and wonderful exercises. Next week, the kids will create their own new words and give them life (definitions and illustrations) just as Roald Dahl did!

Student Worksheet: After students
developed a list. They individually
selected one to illustrate for our
class dictionary.

Student Worksheet: Students worked
in pairs to come up with their own
"gobblefunk". We had a pre-lesson on
prefixes and suffixes.

Roald Dahl Author Study Part Deux

For final projects for the author study we did group reading projects for Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me, and George's Marvelous Medicine. The entire class also did an additional project for the whole class read, The Magic Finger.

Below you will see the finished product for the group project for my reading group that read Fantastic Mr. Fox. The students first completed the story map in the shape of the fox. Each person had a part of the story map to fill out (character descriptions, setting, problem, solution and conclusion). They then pulled out their favorite parts including wacky phrases and figurative language to add around the images of the scenery from the book. I was so proud of the collaboration that I saw when this team was planning and putting together this project. They were respectful to each other and listened and gave compliments to their teammates at every turn.

For The Magic Finger I created an image of the cover of the book that I could drop the kids' pictures into and then asked them to journal what they would use their "magic finger" for if they had one.

Model I wrote to show students what was expected
for The Magic Finger project.

Invitation to parents for our Roald Dahl Author's Celebration!

Additionally, to wrap up the month long author study we threw a Roald Dahl Author's Celebration. We watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which was our snack time read aloud) in our pajamas and ate popcorn. We had a pizza and ice cream sundae party at lunch and recess time. Finally, we invited parents into the classroom to take a tour of all the splendiferous Roald Dahl projects the kids worked on: 3M's Gobblefunk Dictionary, Individual Book Projects, Figurative Language Flip Books, an iMovie trailer of all things Dahl and book blogs using www.kidblog.org to highlight their favorite Dahl book!

GIRLS Group

Last year, a colleague approached me towards the middle of the year about an idea of hers to help teach the fifth grade girls how to have healthier friendships and be strong, independent women. I was happy to jump in on the project and lead the lunchtime program with her because I was noticing a lot of the same issues in the fourth grade as well. We worked together to plan weekly lessons that centered on positive thinking about topics such as body image, friendships, conflict resolution and other issues important to young girls.

This year we have continued our efforts in GIRLS Group extending the program throughout the year to allow more time for each topic. The benefit of working together on this project is not only to have a team member to provide another point of view on issues, but also it helps model the behavior we try to instill in the fifth grade girls because of how well we work together. We are good friends and can use our collaborative work in school and outside of school to share stories of how, even though we are adults, we understand what it is like to be a girl going through these situations.

Click here to see a story posted on the Germantown Academy website about our group this year.

Reflections

At the beginning of the year, the head of the lower school and I had a similar dream for the year ahead. I had learned about the book Rhinos and Raspberries: Tales of Tolerance for the Early Grades by Lois Lowry during my time at Friends Select School and was interested in bringing it to the curriculum at GA. Many of these tales of tolerance relate to the five pillars of the mission statement and lead to rich discussions on character and social development, something I found lacking in the classroom last year. The head of the lower school had a brilliant idea of starting a program for the coming year of "Mission Stories" that we would carry around with us in our backpacks. These stories would come from faculty, staff and students telling of times when we felt the mission was being lived to serve as a reminder of what it truly means to be independent in thought, compassionate in spirit, confident in expression, honorable in deed and collaborative in action. I took this as a sign that I should start my own mission curriculum in the classroom this year called Reflections. Thus far in the year I have used inspirational quotes to inspire kids to discuss moments when someone is upholding the mission statement. 

Example of student response to reflection
lesson.

The quote featured at the beginning of this post is from the Reflections lesson I organized in November. To go along with the Thanksgiving holiday I decided to tie in thankfulness to the lesson. To begin we listened to Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn, a story of a young boy who discovers that what may seem like not enough money to him could be a great gift to someone less fortunate. After hearing the story students had a discussion about how Sam was living the mission statement. The students all agreed that Sam was compassionate in spirit when he donated his gift of "lucky money" to the poor man on the street instead of spending it on himself. After our group discussion the students were then asked to reflect on the story and respond to a writing prompt.

This lesson along with others has been a great monthly exercise for the students to remind them what it means to live the mission.

Anagram Poems

A colleague of mine stopped by with a fascinating book recommendation. This was a lesson for me that one of your most valuable resources as a teacher is a great librarian. Ours is constantly stopping by with interesting books to support the curriculum she sees us teaching in the classroom. This day it was a poetry book called Lemonade: and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka.

I was excited about it because I like to try to do poetry at least once a month in the class because students who are just beginning to blossom as writers often have fun with the lyricism and freedom of poetry. In this case the poems were all developed from words created from other words. This not only was a great exercise in poetry, but a great word study activity. So I created a Smart Notebook Lesson to show off some of my favorites from the book. After the students heard some samples I gave them the task of creating words from the phrase "Monster Mash" since it was Halloween. As a motivational tool I told them I had come up with 53 different words that could be made from Monster Mash, instantly the students began working furiously to beat my record. The students worked collaboratively in table groups to come up with as many words as possible. I gave reminders that the words should try to fit with the idea of Monster Mash and Halloween so that the poem would make sense and had to hint at the importance of having small words like is and at to construct a cohesive poem. As with the nature of teaching the plan changed mid-lesson. The students were having such a good time creating words from Monster Mash that most of our time was taken up working on the word study piece of the lesson and less on constructing a poem. At the end of the class we put up some of the words the class had created and came up with a few different stanzas that could potentially become a very spooky, zany Halloween poem!

Comparing/Ordering Numbers

Early in the year the students were reviewing how to compare and order numbers. We first reiterated the importance of understanding place value in a number. Then, students were able to use the understanding of place value to help them evaluate where numbers might fall on a number line. As a fun practice the students were given the opportunity to get up and move around. Each student was given a few number cards that they then had to order on a clothesline across the room.

What I particularly enjoyed about this activity was that not only were they practicing a valuable math skill, but they were working collaboratively to do so. It is important for me as a teacher to see kids develop the problem solving skills necessary to working in groups. In business school we learned the four stages of group work-- forming, norming, storming and performing. I believe it is key to begin building the skills necessary for resolving conflict independently in third grade so that they can successfully work together in groups. Since it was the beginning of the year it was helpful to build a strong classroom community with expectations for the students to work together cooperatively and compassionately. The extra challenge to their task? No talking! The students were able to effectively communicate non-verbally with their classmates.

Taste the Array

Every chance I get I try to make learning as fun and interactive as possible, especially in math. As a student I struggled with math because I was taught through algorithms and rote memorization. As a kinesthetic and visual learner this method of teaching did not work for me. Often times after days of learning a new skill I will allow the students the opportunity to work with manipulatives to strengthen their understanding of the topic.

In this particular case the students were just beginning to learn about multiplication concepts. We began the unit by working with familiar concepts such as the relationship between repeated addition and multiplication as well as visualizing multiplication through building arrays. Once the students had learned how arrays can help us solve multiplication problems the students then had the chance to build their own using a fun (and delicious!) tool. We played a game called "Taste the Arrays" using skittles to build four different arrays.

The students were given charts to keep track of their work:

On each section the student would build an array that I displayed on the board (ie 4 rows of 5) using their skittles. Once they had correctly built the array they then had to write the multiplication sentence (4x5=20) in the space provided as well as the repeated addition (4+4+4+4+4=20).

Once they finished all of their arrays they were treated to a few of their skittles. The students not only loved having the treat at the end of the day, but really practiced their understanding of the different forms a number can take when multiplying.

A Lesson on Curiosity

As a teacher I have always liked the idea of having my students notice and wonder when approaching learning. One word I use to describe myself is curious. I have always had a curious mind. I am constantly learning and looking up new things. One lesson that I recently did with the kids in 4W was focused around this idea of curiosity. I put up a page on the SmartBoard that simply had the word "curious" in the center. I then asked for students to volunteer ideas of what the word curious means to them. Students came up with words and phrases like “full of wonder” and “odd, yet interesting” capturing both of the definitions of the word curious. We then read a wonderful book called The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. The book is about a little boy who lives in a dreary and boring city with no green. He is tired of looking at the drab scenery so he envisions and starts building a garden full of color and life. The garden begins to grow and spread throughout the entire city. What I love about this book is that it shows that even the smallest of ideas can make a big difference. One little spark can set fire to a whole new world. After discussing the book and how the curious little boy made a difference I present the task to the students of looking at the world around them and what they might change about it. How can they make the world better? What would they like to inspire others around them to do? We took a walk out to the nature preserve on campus to give them fresh air and a pleasant setting to think of how they plan to make an impact on the world. Students were collecting litter they found and pressing flowers in their journals. The students were creative and inventive in the ways they thought about our campus and how they could make it even more beautiful.

Beliefs Statement and Reflections on Student Teaching

BELIEFS STATEMENT

As I continue to learn and grow in this program, through my student teaching experiences, I have begun to develop some beliefs that stem from the idea of teachers as researchers.

As teachers we must constantly be researching our students, our methods and finding ways to grow and improve. (Berthoff, 1986) First and foremost I believe that for students to really grow as learners they must feel like they are in control of the process. Students will be more actively engaged in the material when they feel they have ownership over it. I would like to see my students questioning each other, looking to each other for help, and generally engaging in helpful and active discourse throughout lessons. For this reason questions that I try to develop for my lessons are not there simply to reiterate something I already know, but to get more from the students. (Bransford, 2000)

Additionally, when constructing the lessons I always had in the back of my mind particular student's in my classroom and their individual interests and strengths. I am interested in finding ways to give students more opportunities to show their classmates their strengths and interests through sharing work. I want to make this as authentic as possible and therefore I believe that flexibility on what direction a lesson may go is key. 

Finally, I care deeply about each and every one of my students and wish to see them succeed. In order to make sure that each student is getting what they need out of the lesson I hope to provide opportunities for every voice to be heard and give them an active role to promote agency. (Johnston, 2004)

FINAL REFLECTION

As I come to the close of my year of student teaching I can look back and find moments that defined who I am as a teacher today. This portfolio is only a small portion of those moments captured in one place. However, a general theme across the entire year is that I learned the most and grew the most as a teacher when I stopped to listen. When you do this in the classroom it can not only help you teach better to the kids, but it can help reduce classroom management issues because you know what makes the students tick. Dewey proposes that we reconcile the often conflicting ideas of subject matter and the child. We must work as teachers to develop curriculum that shows the students how the material being studied is not really some distant, abstract concept, but a part of their understanding of the world. Part of this is getting to know our students and finding ways to relate the material to their own personal experiences.

The teaching profession requires you, as a teacher, to act as a perpetual student. I fully plan to continue question and reflect on my teaching practices. Some questions still remain as I leave this year. First, how can I create more opportunity for the students to engage in discourse with each other? Much of my time this year was spent finding ways to have students find a voice in the classroom and engage in discussion-based lessons. However, I think it is equally important for students to learn how to turn to their peers. Particularly, during the discussions I’ve had over the past year I would have liked to see students responding to what their peers were saying (agreeing, disagreeing or simply adding on). This kind of discourse requires modeling and set up that begins on the very first day of school and I look forward to working on this over the coming years. Lastly, how can I motivate my students or give them a sense of independence to want to push themselves and challenge themselves academically that comes from an intrinsic (rather than superficial) place. Thinking about myself as a learner I always enjoyed the challenge and it pushed me to do better in school. This is something I hope to pass on to my students as their teacher.

REFERENCES

Johnston, P.H. (2004). Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Bransford, et al. (2000). How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press. 

Berthoff, Ann E. (1986). The Teacher as Researcher. In D. Goswami and P.R. Stillman (Eds.), Reclaiming the Classroom: Teacher research as an agency for change. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook Publishers. 

Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). Teachers at work building differentiated classrooms. In The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Responsible Science Lesson

Students instantly started working together to sort trash items.
They worked collaboratively and talked each other through
their reasoning. After they were done I asked them to explain
to me why they had classified the items into the different categories.

What

The curricular content of the lesson ties into the general overarching unit the students are working at the moment, I am Responsible. The lesson is focused on how students can be responsible in their lives to help the planet be a better and greener place. Goals for the students include learning about different ways that we can “be green” that are simple and easy first steps to a better world. The students will also focus on trash and recycling, because discarding is an action that even a first grade student can control.  Students will learn about the different types of garbage being thrown away, ending up in the landfill and how that impacts our world. Students will have a better understanding of what can be recycled and how it should be classified and sorted. Most of the state standards are not necessarily focused on environmental issues and sustainability so we chose to focus on classification and sorting since it is a big part of the activity. We will also address the standards on biotechnologies and the idea of waste management through a discussion on the difference between trashing and recycling items. 

                                                                                    

During our "trash talk" I showed the students the Reduce,
Reuse, Recycle symbol and asked them to explain what they
thought each term meant. We talked about what could happen
to the environment if we didn't recycle. Students proposed
different ways to reuse household items and conserve the amount
of paper they use in their school journals.

How

I will start by asking students to sort the trash items into different categories that they see fit. This will allow the students to explore with the different materials and give us a chance to gauge their understanding. I will have the students explain their methods for sorting and then have a “trash talk” about what ends up in landfills and what could be done in terms of recycling. We will have discussions about the repercussions of having all of these things end up in a landfill instead of being recycled and reused. The culminating activity will be reading aloud 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. During and after reading the story students will be prompted with questions about their own actions. After each action explained in the book students will be prompted to see if they already do this and why they do/how this helps our world. This will lead to thinking about ways to be green beyond sorting trash properly and how this is “being responsible.”

Why

Students were actively engaged. Here I show them the recycling
symbol on a can they had just sorted. They continued to try and
find it on the other objects. At the end of the lesson each student
is named "Recycling Star" in charge of keeping the classroom clean.

I selected the topic because it fit into the overarching theme for the coming weeks in the classroom of I am Responsible! The idea was formed around using the text 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. The text was creative and fit along perfectly with the other material being used in the classroom for this unit. It was small, easy steps for even the youngest children to understand and adapt into their daily lives. We believe that most of the learning happens when students are prompted to answer and ask questions amongst themselves and decided to use this to model most of the lesson. There is a recycling bin in the classroom, but students don’t know how to use it properly and this lesson will be a great introduction to proper recycling. There is one particular student that will be pulled into this small group lesson because he constantly expresses an interest in garbage trucks and recycling so this lesson will play into this interests well. The lesson was designed to fill a gap in the current state standards to the School District of Philadelphia. No science standards are expected of first graders and we believe that this lesson is a simple and easy way to introduce students to science that fits into the broader district unit and also teaches kids how to be active and responsible community advocates for sustainability that students in these low performing schools do not normally have access to.

To wrap up the lesson on helping the environment we read Melanie Walsh’s book and discussed how each task was “being responsible.”

Higher Level Questioning as a Form of Assessment

    Throughout the year many of my lesson plans include high level questions that I plan to pose to the students to get them to stretch their thinking. The questions go beyond “what?” and ask “why?” and “how?”. Carpenter and Johnston both stress the importance of having students explain their thinking when teaching. The most important question you can ask in a math lesson is “how did you get that?” and having the student explain their mathematical reasoning to their peers. This forces the student to take on an “agentive position” while retelling their process to the class. (Johnston, 2004) Once you begin to find out how students approach a problem you, as a teacher, begin to learn more about how they think which in turn can help greatly in knowing what areas need to be revisited or where any mistakes may be happening in their thought process. The same goes for teaching any other subject. When doing a read aloud with the class I always start with a series of questions referring back to what we previously covered. This gives me a chance to understand what things may need more time to be fully grasped and what the students are picking up on. Flexibility is an important quality for a teacher to have and with this kind of informal assessment a teacher can adjust lessons accordingly to the student’s needs.

    Bloom’s Taxonomy refers to the different types of learning that can occur in the classroom. At Friends Select School and my own teaching philosophy focuses heavily on two of those levels of learning, cognitive and affective. The questioning used reaches all levels of understanding on the Bloom’s Taxonomy from knowledge all the way up to the highest level of understanding of evaluation.

    Below you will see a selection of questions from a variety of lessons I taught at Friends Select School.

Two Week Curriculum on Underground Railroad

    The curriculum I developed for my two week takeover centered around the idea of the Underground Railroad and communication. The curriculum was designed to give students the chance to explore what interested them about the Underground Railroad. Our first lesson was an introduction to the Underground Railroad. Students helped construct a class KWL chart (pictured below). The students spent 15 minutes offering up questions and things that they “wondered” about the Underground Railroad. As it happened a lot of the questions my students had about the Underground Railroad were topics I had already planned to cover. The lesson was a success because it set the tone for the rest of the unit that I was interested in knowing what they wanted to learn and would listen to them. Many of the social studies lessons followed the pattern of informal assessment discussed earlier in this portfolio.

Similarly, the lesson featured below was a culminating activity of the unit. After several classes discussing the many ways in which abolitionists worked to help end slavery the students were then asked, “If you were an abolitionist what would YOU do to help end slavery?” The students brainstormed together as a class some general ideas of actions they would have taken to help bring an end to slavery. The students had amazing and thoughtful ideas that showed their commitment to social justice issues and taking a stand. 

Class developed list of ideas to end slavery.

An example of one student's action plan.

Once the students brainstormed a list of possible options they were then sent to work in groups of four to pick an “action item” from our class list and develop a step-by-step plan. We discussed the concept that these big ideas were great in theory, but it takes a lot of work to actually set a plan in motion. Students then worked out a plan, discussed and debated with their table members on the best steps to take. This activity truly required students to be involved in what Johnston refers to as a “Democratic Learning Environment”. (Johnston, 2004) The students had to learn how to truly work together as a group. There were some issues of arguing that occurred while the students devised their plans, however the students were forced to come to an agreement (or make a compromise) and work towards a common goal. In business school we learn that one of the most important tools to have is knowing how develop as a group and go through the four stages of forming, norming, storming and finally performing. The same goes for students learning to work in groups in a learning environment. Once the groups had all finished devising a plan they presented their work to the class. As a whole class we discussed each plan and the positives and negatives we saw in each plan. Finally, the class voted on what plan they would have invested in as a member of an anti-slavery organization. This project required the students to involve themselves in the time period and take on the role of those they had been studying. It also gave the students opportunities to engage in debate with their classmates. After instruction from me (the teacher) the students then took on the active role of having a voice and using it to make a difference. 

For the last day of the unit the students visited the historic Johnson House in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. One of the things I learned from my Neighborhood Study was that local resources can often be your greatest tool. The students love when they realize that history happened just around the corner! The house was a stop on the Underground Railroad and housed a meeting space for the Anti-Slavery Association and people such as the “father of the Underground Railroad” William Still. This trip was meant to show students that the Underground Railroad is not just some topic we learn about from a history textbook, but is a living, breathing part of Philadelphia history. Sometimes students learn about historic events that seem so distant and remote from their own lives that it is important to remind students that history surrounds us. The docent pictured here was impressed with how much history of the Underground Railroad we had covered for students so young. Every single hand shot up in the air every time a question was posed and the students were eager to share what they knew.