Kevin Henkes Puppet Project

One of my favorite parts of the Kevin Henkes author study is the family projects that the students bring in. They are asked to make puppets for one of Kein Henkes' mice stories. I love the creativity and pride that the students have. I love seeing the book that they choose as their favorite. Thank you, Kevin Henkes for such delightful stories!

Opinion Clines

Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning: Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom by Pauline Gibbons is the Chets Creek book study that I have been attending led by our Reading Coach, Melanie Holtsman.  There are about fifteen teachers who meet each week after school from first through fifth grade, including a couple of Math teachers. We only meet for forty five minutes so Melanie has quite a challenge to get us thinking. The third strategy from Chapter 3 that I have tried  is called "opinion clines." (I admit that when Melanie explained the strategy I doubted it could be used with first graders!)

The idea is to arrange items in a line representing a continuum.  Student need knowledge to be able to make decisions so I decided to use the characters from our Kevin Henkes Author Study.  The students know these characters well and relate to these characters.  I put a continuum on the board with "worried" at one end to "never worries" on the other end. The challenge was for the students to use their knowledge of  Kevin Henkes' characters and to place each of the characters on the continuum using reasons to support their opinions from the books. Putting Wemberly at the worried end was a no brainer. He is the main character in Wemberly Worried, but making a decision of where Sheila Rae, the brave and spunky Lilly fit was a little more challenging. Soon the discussion and disagreement started.  The students argued back and forth using examples from the book, and accountable talk, to try to change opinions.  When we couldn't come to a consensus, the students voted and the above is the continuum the students finally agreed upon.  Not bad! 

Trying Something New: "Hot Seat"

One of the great things about teaching at Chet's Creek is that we are always involved in a book study. Right now we are reading Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning: Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom by Pauline Gibbons with Reading Coach Melanie Holtsman. It is an especially timely book as our second language population continues to rise each year.  Melanie always tries to tie the words we are reading directly back to something that we can do the next day in our classroom, so that the learning sticks!

This week we read Chapter 3, "Collaborative Group Work and Second Language Learning."  This chapter talks about the philosophy behind collaborative work and why it works so well with our EL students and then gives some suggestions for group and paired activities across the curriculum.   Melanie always tries to have us practice something as if we are students so that we can better understand how the students feel, so... we practiced  "Hot seat" where a student pretends to be a character from a shared book  and answers question from the class as if he were that character.  Melanie always asks us to try out one of the strategies that we are taught so we can share for the next time (is she a great teacher, or what?)  So... as we left, my co-teacher and I talked about how we could use "Hot Seat" as a strategy in the author study of Kevin Henkes that we are deep into right now.  We really want to eventually do some close reading using the lens of looking at one of the characters, Lilly, because she appears in several of the Kevin Henkes' books, but we knew her character was "too big" to begin this activity.   So my co-teacher volunteered to do the first round and pretend that she was the character Wembery from Kevin Henkes' Wemberly Worried. Wemberly worries about everything so she was an excellent first choice for us to pick.  I explained the game to the children and then reread the book, telling the students that they should look for parts in the text that led them to questions for Wemberly.  This book is FULL of the things Wemberly worried about so the questions came so easily.  Enjoy the video snippet of Tracy playing the part of Wemberly as the students ask her questions, using the text!

After about five minutes one of the students came up and whispered in my ear that he thought he could be Wemberly, so "going with the flow" (as Grandma suggests in the book) we had him take the "hot seat."  He did a remarkable job!  The students were so engaged.  Our ELL students DID ask questions!  Tomorrow we will try Sheila Rae, a strong Kevin Henkes character, and then next week, our ultimate goal, Lilly!

Persuasive Mem Fox Essays

To bring our Readers' Workshop Author Study of Mem Fox together with the persuasive/opinion writing we have been doing in Writers' Workshop, the children wrote persuasive essays this week about their favorite book, character or author.  Some of these young writers still tend to make connections instead of using text evidence for their reasons, but they are moving in the right direction.   Enjoy some of their writing.

I love Mem Fox because she wrote one of my favorite books, Harriet, You Drive Me Wild!  Do you know why?  Because Harriet reminds me when I was little because I was messy too.  My other reason is that Harriet was pesky.  In school I am pesky too.  My other reason is it is happy and sweet at the end because Harriet is on her mom's lap and her mom said, "I love you Harriet." Then they picked up the feathers and started to laugh.  See I told you I love, love this book because you cannot take your eyes off adorable Harriet.

Have you read a Mem Fox book?  I have read lots of her books.  My favorite is Possum Magic because I like Hush.  He is so cute.  I like his mouth and his little pink nose.  Another reason I like Hush is because Hush is afraid of snakes, just like me.  Hush goes on adventures with his Grandma, just like me and my Grandma went to the mountains.  Now you can see why I like Hush so much?

My favorite book is Feathers and Fools.  It has a sweet ending because the baby peacock and the baby swan become bffs.  I like the baby swan because he did not beat up the peacock and they become animal friends forever.  I like this book because it has happy and sad.  It has happy at the end and sad when they all kill each other.  I love, love, love Feathers and Fools

I have read so many Mem Fox books so I want to tell you about one.  And it's my favorite.  The name of the book is Feathers and Fools.  Shall we get started?  By the way it's about peacocks and swans.  Okay. now shall we get started?  So "in a rambling garden long ago and far away there lived a pride of many different peacocks. Nearby in the rushes and reeds of a clear blue lake..." Now you see how I like how Mem Fox puts her words together.  I like how Mem Fox always makes it funny because you can't really kill someone with a feather! I also like Feathers and Fools because its happy in the end when they become friends.  Instead of killing each other, they say similarities instead of differences.  That's why Mem Fox rocks. 

Favorite Mem Fox Book

As we are preparing to write persuasive essays about our favorite Mem Fox book and character, the children decided on their favorite book today.  On an index card they wrote and drew a picture on one side of the card identifying their favorite Mem Fox book, and then wrote one reason why the book is their favorite on the back.  We had to move the children from reasons such as "I liked Guess Who? because it's about a witch and my birthday is in October" to deeper more meaningful reasons!  It's not easy, but as we discuss using the text as evidence for our reasons, the children move closer to reasons that make a difference.

I think this may be the first year that Feathers and Fools has been a class favorite.  It's a dark story about peacocks and swans that fear their differences and end up killing each other.  Peace seems forever lost.  Then two little eggs hatch, one swan and one peacock,  who have no memory or experience and walk away as friends.  The kids just seemed to "get" this book.  Think we'll revisit it again before we write about favorites to see if we can draw out even more of the deeper meaning.

Anzac Biscuits and Lamington

As we read Mem Fox's Possum Magic, you could see the students' eyes glaze over as she mentioned all the different foods and cities in Australia that are so unfamiliar to our American children.  To make the places come alive for the children we reread the story as each child followed Hush and Grandma Poss's travels on a map of Australia.  Today to give the students a taste for the Australian goodies that Mem includes, we tasted Anzac biscuits (that they ate in Adelaide) - a crispy oats and coconut, maple-flavored cookie.  Tomorrow we will try lamington which made Hush visible in Hobart - or at least our Americanized version!  Our sample is a little pound cake cut into rectangles with cocoa and sugar icing poured over the top and sprinkled with coconut.  Yum! 

Next we're looking for a little Vegemite.  Any suggestions?

All About Mem Fox

Each year we do one Author Study in Kindergarten, Eric Carle, and two in first grade, Kevin Henkes and Mem Fox, and with each author study we do a chart including some facts about the author.  I've never enjoyed doing these charts because basically, I had all the information and I never could get the engagement I wanted with the students.  This year I tried something new. I sent home a homework page that was optional.  I asked the students (and their parents) to go to the author's web site and find out one fact about the author's family, one fact about one of the author's books and then one fact that they just thought was interesting.

This year when we made the chart, the students were totally engaged.  Many of the students had been on the web site and had discovered all kinds of interesting information.  They couldn't wait to share and to add on to what their classmates said.  I added the students' names to each statement and that added to the engagement.  This is a keeper!

Celebrating Eric Carle in 2012

In Kindergarten Author Studies are all about retelling books.  At Chets Creek we chose the beloved early childhood author and illustrator Eric Carle to focus our first author study.  All through this unit the children have worked on ways to retell each story.  They have used pre-made props and made some of their own props.  They have drawn sequences of events and have played games to reinforce the events in each story.  They have completed story maps and have answered literal and inferred questions as they have gotten to know each book better and better.  More than the retelling, an author study is about looking across a body of work.  The children have compared and contrasted stories and of course, Eric Carle's art as they have gotten to know him and his body of work.  Many of our retelling activities are kept on our grade level wiki.

Today all seven kindergarten classes celebrated by revisiting some of their favorite books.  They began the day by donning shirts they made of the very hungry caterpillar.  First up was eating Pancakes to reinforce Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes. They watched a video of the movie as they ate.

Next the children visited a center where they made necklaces threading green and red construction paper circles, spaced apart with cut green straws.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar is absolutely a favorite book and the children enjoyed retelling as they threaded their necklaces.

Of course every celebration needs a hat!  So it was on to the hat center where the children made ladybug bands to celebrate The Grouchy Ladybug.  The children talked about a ladybug being an insect and having six legs. They enjoyed listening to the story once again..

Our final center was a study of Eric Carle's art,  The children took a pattern of a seahorse and covered it with tissue paper just like Eric Carle does with the animals in his books.  Mister Seahorse never looked so good!

Thank you Eric Carle!  We have thoroughly enjoyed our study!  Can't you tell?!!

Author Visit: Carmen Agra Deedy

One of most special traditions at Chets Creek is Media Specialist's KK Cherney's commitment to bring a children's author or illustrator to our campus each year.  This year the children and staff had the opportunity to hear the delightful children's author, Carmen Agra Deedy.  The children were captivated by her stories.  She was born in Cuba and came to the United States when she was three years old.  She told the primary students about leaving Cuba and about her first year in school in Decatur, GA as a first grader and as a second language learner, and about finding common ground in baseball and the peanut man.  Not only was her story heart-wrenching but it was so funny!  She had the children in the palm of her hand!  She told other stories to the assemblies of older students and even met with a group of second language learners during lunch.

Principal Susan Phillips used one of Carmen's books in the morning to provide monthly professional development for the teachers around her book-of-the-month.  This month the teachers walked in to find the Cuban folktale, Martina,The Beautiful Cockroach as their selected book for the month. The table was set up with Cuban coffee ( which was wonderful!) and Cuban bread!   However, the beautiful book was written totally in Spanish!   The Principal asked the teachers in groups of three to read the book and figure out what the story was about as the author watched from the back of the room! 

It was quite interesting to watch the teachers - responses mirrored what we see from our second language students on a daily basis, from those that simply gave up because it was too hard, to those that tried to figure out the story from the few words that they knew (often incorrectly), to those that used other strategies such as looking at the pictures to figure out the story.  The point was to put teachers in the place of a second language student... and it worked quite well.  Principal Phillips then gave the teachers a list of researched based strategies for teaching second language students and asked each group of teachers to write ways that they would use the book to reinforce one of the strategies.  Those teacher-generated ideas will be housed on the school's book-of-the-month wiki so that teachers can return to and use this book, that is now part of their classroom library, each year.

Carmen Agra Deedy with
my kindergarten granddaughter

Students were allowed the opportunity to order one of the author's books before the holiday, so after lunch each of those children was invited to the Media Center to meet with the author and have the book signed.  What a thrill it is for these young students to actually meet a published author!  I loved hearing some of the older students talk about how they have a signed book from each year they have been at Chets Creek!  What a treasured gift of memories.

It was such a special day for the teachers and the children, especially some of our second language learners.  Many of our students heard books by Carmen Agra Deedy for the first time and others revisited books they have loved and had been hearing for the weeks leading up to her visit.  For many this will be a day that is pressed into  their  memories for a long time to come and it will help them realize that authors are real people and help them visualize the possibility of becoming an author themselves! For some of our second language learners who are struggling each day to comprehend what is going on around them, I think this visit must have renewed hope as they look at how well things turned out for Carmen.  Amazing day!

Check out this delightful retelling done by a Cuban-American (former teacher) mom with  a kindergartner in Mrs. Mallon and Mrs. Dillard's class!  People just wouldn't believe what happens at our school!

All they could say was "WOW"!

It's time again for new standard based bulletin boards at Chets Creek and the first grade boards highlight many of the Kevin Henkes activities that have claimed the hearts and minds of our children this nine weeks. I'll highlight several of the boards in the posts to come because each is different in its focus.

The bulletin board above shows many of the activities that students enjoyed as they built to the final product for this author study, a response to the Kevin Henkes' stories. The top border includes pictures that the children drew of their favorite Kevin Henkes character. (Owen won by a landslide!) The side and bottom borders are pictures the students drew of Lilly's movie star glasses! The first activity on this board highlights the graphic organizer that the children learned to use to identify each of the story elements in Kevin Henkes' books. They worked with a partner to identify characters, setting, problem, events and solution. These are the same story elements, of course, that can be found in any fiction, narrative text so the next step was to have students use the same graphic organizer to identify the story elements in a "just right" book from their individual reading bin. Students completed this activity in their Reading Response Notebooks during Readers' Workshop. The overarching goal of these two activities was to have students know what to expect from a fictional story and to have an outline to write their own story.

A new activity this year was to take what was learned about the elements of a narrative story and combine that with an adventure using a favorite Kevin Henkes character. Students loved writing these short small moment pieces that were written much like Kevin Henkes' board books from his Box of Treats. Each of Henkes' board books feature a single character in a small moment around a holiday. Jesse's book about Wendell at Busch Gardens uses Jesse's knowledge about the character Wendell and his own background knowledge about Busch Gardens as the setting and puts the character in the problem of finding the roller coaster. Students delighted in designing these new problems for their favorite Kevin Henkes characters. First graders love Kevin Henkes' stories because they can identify with the characters and themes. It is no surprise that they love dividing into small groups to learn their individual lines as they read scripts for Readers' Theatre. They really worked at using expression when they spoke and also practiced their lines so they knew all the words and knew right when they come in for their lines. This activity worked on fluency. The children spent two weeks of Readers' Workshop working on three different scripts. They were able to present each "play" to the class. This activity is a popular extension activity for this unit.
One of the things that first graders learn to do to deepen their comprehension is to compare and contrast. They make connections across characters and across books of a single author. To have the children begin thinking about comparing and contrasting we had them compare and contrast themselves with a Kevin Henkes character. They love his little mice characters because they are so much like the people that they know and by comparison, there is no character that they know better than themselves!
Then of course, the final element featured on this board is the response which is a retelling. This sample also includes the rubric that is given to students to help them decide when their writing is good enough and they have met the elements of a response. Although I have only included Nevin's response opening, this is the complete response.

You should read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes because it's about mean girls who become good friends.

When Chrysanthemum was a baby she loved her name so so much. she would say it in he bathroom mirror, "chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum" and she was jaunty about her first day of school but there was a problem. People were picking on her name. Ha Ha. You have a long name." Then the children met the Music teacher, Mrs. Twinkle. the children began to make fun of Chrysanthemum again. The music teacher said,"If I have a baby, I'll name it Chrysanthemum." Chrysanthemum's whiskers stood straight out. Her tail stood straight out. "Really?" said Chrysanthemum. Now all the girls wanted to be a flower.

I think you would like the book Chrysanthemum because it is a really good book.

All in all, these are just a few of the experiences that children enjoyed as they dove deeply into Kevin Henkes' books to embrace comprehension of narrative test. The title is taken from Mr. Slingers' statement in Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, "All they could say was 'WOW!'"

Addendum 4/29/2011: Chets Creek give an award each time bulletin boards go up for the best boards.  This is the commentary from our SBBB winner!
Congratulations Tracy Ruark and dayle timmons! Your Kevin Henkes author study bulletin board has earned the "Primary Purple Cow Bulletin Board of the Month"! The board includes a look into both reading and writing lessons and student products from parts of the unit. They highlighted graphic organizers based on story elements which they had students apply not only in pairs to a Kevin Henkes' book but also to the student's independent reading books, as well. Additionally they spotlight a student's Response to Literature with rubric, a comparing and contrasting characters activity that deepens comprehension, a creative story, and a Readers' Theatre lesson with Henkes' book, Owen. The border is adorned with student artwork including a drawing of each student's favorite character and colored glasses artifacts. The personalization is second to none with student pictures and puppets of the characters, too. Truly this is a unique board that you won't want to miss especially because you get a glimpse into an author study, Great work!

Kevin Henkes Mouse Pointers

Each of the children has received their own personal mouse puppet this week, sewed by our own Para Extraordinaire Lee Cordoza. The children have been using these little puppets as pointers to keep their place in reading and as their own little puppet character as they read. Just ask them their character's name and they can all tell you!

Readers' Theatre- Choral Style

The children are each practicing an individual part with a Kevin Henkes Readers' Theatre script. At the same time they are practicing a script that they are reading with as a group. Both readings work on fluency - the ability to read like talking with expression. The script with individual parts gives the students a chance to really work on hearing their own voice. The choral reading has more support so that even the weakest reader can use the support of the other readers for words that may be difficult or for reading with expression. Listen as the children begin their choral reading practice.

Transferring

Transferring the skills that we are learning in our Author Study to our general reading is our goal. We want the children to understand that learning about story elements (characters, setting, problem and solution) in our Kevin Henkes books helps us understand any fictional story - that if we understand the structure of a narrative story that it will help us predict what will happen in any fictional story and understand comprehension at a deeper level. So that our children can practice using story elements across their reading, we had them use the same graphic organizer that they used for the Kevin Henkes' stories to organize "just right" stories from their reading bin. The children used their reading response notebooks to record the story elements of one of their own fictional books.On the first page the student drew a triangle and recorded the characters, setting and the problem in the story.On the next page he drew a large rectangle and drew the events. Some students wrote three events and others wrote four or six events, depending on the action in the story. On the last page the child drew a circle and inside that ending shape, wrote the solution to the problem in the story. In this way students are transferring the organization of the retelling of the Kevin Henkes' stories into their own reading lives.

Rubric with Response to Literature

As we begin to complete our written responses to Kevin Henkes' books to go in our portfolios around our Kevin Henkes Author Study, the children are given a rubric to help them decide when "good is good enough." We want them to be able to look at their own work and then look at the expectations for a response and begin to work on the revision process by themselves and during conferences with the teacher. We also want them to begin to internalize some of the editing techniques that we have taught. Revising and editing are not always easy for a first grader! Above is our Response Rubric and below Dazha's response to Kevin Henkes' Wemberly Worried with revision and editing comments in red. Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes

Have you ever been worried a lot? If you have, you will know how Wemberly Worried was feeling when she was worried.

This first page and the last page were actually added after the retelling was complete. As Dazha went back and compared her work to the rubric, she realized that she had not included an opening to hook her reader, a connection (which was optional) and a closing, so she added them as the last pieces of her response.In the beginning Wemberly Worried was worried about everything. She was unique because she worried a lot. She worried about big things, little things, and things in between. Wemberly worried in the morning. She worried at night. And she worried throughout the day. And she worried about her doll Petal.

The second sheet is actually the back of the first sheet which shows that Dazha used a technique for inserting information of putting a star on the front page where the insertion is to take place and then writing the information on the back of the page. In this case, Dasha wanted to get extra credit for using one of the vocabulary words, "unique," that we had been studying as part of this Kevin Henkes Author Study, so she added it during the revision process!In the middle she went to school and was worried but she made a friend that had a stuffed animal just like her. They played with each other.At the end Mrs. Peachum said, "Come back tomorrow!" Then Wemberly said, "Don't worry. I'll come back tomorrow." And when she got home Wemberly, her mom and dad danced around in a circle.

Remember when I told you that have you ever been worried a lot? Well I have. When my mom goes in the car washer I get scared, but things come our okay. If you have things that you were worried about they will come out okay.

When Dazha came to this writing conference she wanted to close her response with a connection which she had written, "When my mom..." but when she reread her closing she decided that she wanted it to connect back to the beginning so she added the first sentence on this page and then used the insertion editing mark to add in the middle of the last sentence.

Dazha has learned so much during this unit. She began with the retelling (which was easy for her) of a beginning with the characters, setting and problem and then moved to the middle with its events and then finally the ending which solves the problem. Then she used her rubric to identify the missing parts of her response and added an engaging beginning and a closing to wrap up the piece. She also showed that she had learned some techniques for inserting information by using a star and writing information to be added on the back of the paper and also by using the insertion editing mark to add right above the writing. She even thought about adding a connection which was optional and a vocabulary word for extra credit! Look out Dazha - I might be standing in line one day getting your autograph after you publish your first book!

Kevin Henkes Readers' Theatre

For two weeks we are using Readers' Theatre to culminate our Readers' Workshop unit of author and illustrator Kevin Henkes. Readers' Theatre is a lot like reading a play with children assigned specific parts. The difference is that the children are not expected to memorize their lines and they don't walk around on the stage. Instead they stand in a straight row and "read" their lines. The purpose of Readers' Theatre is for students to practice reading like they talk - to help them read with fluency including with expression. The students gather in a circle each day and practice reading their lines in order. They practice being kind to each other and waiting patiently until a child asks for help before giving a word to a child that might be struggling with an unknown word - no small task. The mini-lessons as demonstration and practice or reading with expression. On Friday the children performed their first scripts. On Monday they will get a new script with a new group or actors. They will perform their new script next Friday!