Story Elements and Theme

We are departmentalized beginning in fourth grade, so each of us teaches our own homeroom reading - except in the beginning of the year. Because I am the fourth grade language arts teacher, I cover the summer reading in this class, and when we're done, the other homeroom teacher will take over for her kiddos. So, today I wanted to share what we've covered the first two weeks of school.

I had my incoming fourth graders read Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo as one of their required books over the summer. I don't require specific books or even genres throughout the year, but by having everyone read the same book, this allows me to teach story elements easily because we can use the events and characters of one book that everyone already knows.

We began by discussing characters in the story. My kiddos named the characters and gave descriptions which included both internal and external traits.

After discussing the characters in the story, we defined internal vs external conflict. We then went through each character and gave examples of each type of conflict for our main characters.

We discussed setting, defined it and then the kiddos gave their ideas of setting from the story.

From there we focused on plot - looking at the events that take place in the story and creating a plot diagram. This was new for them and they really caught on quickly.

Following the plot discussion, we focused topics the author develops in the story. A few that the students came up with were loneliness, friendship, family and love.

During our second week of school, we defined and discussed what a theme is in a story and how the students can use events in the story to show support for these themes in the story. I wanted the students to move from a general topic they think is in the story to develop the idea into a theme. We focused on the topic of friendship.

My read aloud for the second week was You and Me by Susan Verde.  After reading the book, the students took the topic of friendship and generated a theme statement: You can find friendship in unexpected places and at unexpected times.

We then discussed what it means to have a friend, how do you make friends, how do you keep friends, and what makes a good friend. Finally, students created "Friend Wanted" ads where they stated reasons to support the statement: I make a good friend because...

Here are a few:

How do you teach your students about topics and theme in reading?

Writing About Reading - Round 2

A couple of weeks ago I participated in an online book group that read Cynthia Lord's A Handful of Stars. (If you haven't read it yet, pick it up immediately! It is an awesome book.) We were interested in our writing about our reading. We all have our students write about their reading, so we thought we'd practice what we have them do. It's not an easy task!

During the first book club, we all put our notes in a shared Google Doc. It was great being able to read everyone's thoughts. Many people took pictures of their notebooks and uploaded them into the document. It was great to see how differently everyone jots while reading. The other thing that I really enjoyed was reading everyone's notes and comments and being able to reply to other's comments. I found my thinking became much deeper and taken in new directions after reading the thoughts of others.

For the second round of book club, we broke up into groups of 3 to 4 and chose different books. My groups is reading Gordon Korman's Masterminds. Although we're only on chapter 10, this book is excellent! It really grabs you from the very beginning. We started with a shared Google Doc but someone from our last group introduced Padlet to us. If you have used it before, it's super easy to use and would be great for all kinds of things students can do in the classroom. So, most of us decided to try Padlet for taking notes this time. What I found so far is that by each of creating our own Padlet, we've lost the conversation feeling we had in the first book club. We're posting in our own Padlet page and then putting a link in the Google Doc. There is an option to share a Padlet page with others, so I'm hoping my group with either be willing to post together on one Padlet page or go back to the Google Doc. We'll see. I'm definitely still enjoying it, but I can tell my thinking isn't moving as much as it did the first time.

If you haven't tried Padlet, I would highly recommend it. It's super easy to use and would be very easy for the kids to pick up on and use.

Writng about Reading - A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord

A huge thank you goes to Julieanne Harmatz! She organized an online book club for teachers to practice what we want our students to do - write about reading. We used Cynthia Lord's new book, A Handful of Stars. Julieanne set up a Google Doc for each set of chapters we read and shared it with us so we were able to comment. It was like having a great conversation with friends!

First, let me just say this book is awesome. Second, sharing with this group of teachers was invaluable! It definitely reminded me how much better a book is when we get to share our thinking with others. By reading the thoughts of these smart women, it opened my mind and broadened my thinking into areas I didn't go on my own. It also made me think deeper when someone thought along the same lines about something that I did.

Julieanne asked us to choose one thing that really stuck with us through the book and to write about it, as this might be something we have our students do.

I'm including the picture of the front cover because my image of choice is Lucky. I think Lucky represents so much in this book. I'd like to focus on the theme of invisible vs seen/seeing. Lucky is going blind, and yet he sees clearly and opens the eyes of those around him, especially Lily. Lily says everyone knows the migrant workers are there, yet they're invisible to the townspeople, until Lucky goes charging off and Salma saves the day by enticing him with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Lucky opens the door for friendship between Lily and Salma and Lily truly sees Salma, her family, and the workers. There is a conflict that continues throughout the story and resolved at the end having to do with friendship. Lily says at one point when she's with both Hannah and Salma, "I didn't know exactly who to be - the person I was with Salma or the one I was with Hannah." (78) Lucky just knows who is truly there. We see this again and again when he responds to someone entering the store or when Lily takes him somewhere. Lucky removes this cloak of invisibility of the character so the reader then gets to truly "see" the character. This theme is developed further when Salma enters the Downeast Blueberry Pageant, and the whole town "sees" Salma when she responds to the questions.

There is so much in this book. This is just a small snippet of the thoughts I had while reading. I found it valuable to figure out how I like to jot ideas/notes while reading, as well as see what worked for others. This, like so many other things we do, reminds me to give my students choice. What works best for them? I need to model different ways of jotting my thinking while reading, let them practice, and then let them choose what works best for them - and perhaps that might change, which is okay, too. I also realized that as much as I really enjoy writing about my reading, I really enjoy talking about it more. It takes a lot of effort to put my thoughts and ideas into writing, and honestly, sometimes I want to stop before I'm finished with my thinking. I need to remind myself of this, too, when I'm having my students write. I think I see this often when I know I can have a great discussion with my kids about our reading, but then when I read their writing, it's surface level. I am thinking about how to focus their writing which might make it more manageable for them and not overwhelming.

This has been a great experience. I have really loved the sharing of ideas and collaboration. We're continuing with a final Twitter chat to discuss this idea of writing about reading on Tuesday night at 7:30 EST #WabtR. Join us!