Celebrating Kevin Henkes

In the midst of Lucy Calkin's new writing units, first grade found a little space to celebrate one of its favorite authors - Kevin Henkes. After a four week study, the grade level came together for a little celebration of all they had learned.

Our first grade is large with thirteen teachers so any project that we do "together" is a big deal.  It's not easy when you're trying to get so many teachers to agree, but I work with one of those rare group of teachers that are remarkably collegial.  They share.  They support each other.  They work together.  With four teachers meeting as a small committee in just an afternoon after school, centers were designed and a celebration day was ready as a culminating event.   The students rotated through three centers.

The first center was watching movies of the books we had studied while the students ate "cheesy snacks" in celebration of all of Henkes' mice characters.

Then it was to the "Lightbulb Lab" to make Lilly's purple purses and movie star glasses and Mr. Slinger's ties and glasses.  This was probably the students' favorite center as the girls asked to wear the purses all the day and boys kept on the ties.







Finally the students moved to another room to play Kevin Henkes Bingo which was the perfect review of Henkes' characters and mice books.

Earlier in the week students had been divided into groups for Readers' Theater of some of the stories.  They practiced fluency and intonation all week.  In the afternoon students made their final presentations.  We will be giving "Academy Awards" for the best Readers' Theatre group and individual awards for individual performances at our next Awards Day.  Students really love these stories so they have loved doing all these culminating activities.

The thing is that first grade teachers don't HAVE to do this author study.  It's really a lot of extra work, but they choose to do it because they know the students really develop a love of reading and a love of narrative from these books that they so naturally relate.  It makes your heart leap when the students beg to get a Kevin Henkes book during independent reading and work so hard to say every single word -with expression! - even when the book is above their reading level or when they search the vocabulary board to find a Kevin Henkes word they can use in their writing.

It makes MY heart leap when I see a group of teachers work together so tirelessly to make something happen for their students, just so they will love reading!

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!

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.

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!

Mem Fox Celebration Day!

We began our Mem Fox Celebration Day by Skyping a teacher in Australia, Amanda Marrinan! It was quite an adventure! It was 1:00 am her time but she stayed up so we could have a conversation. Each class had prepared a question so the children asked everything from if she had known the Crocodile Hunter and if she had been to the Australian Zoo to what she thought of Mem Fox when she met her and her favorite Mem Fox book. She had even prepared some of the Aussie dishes that the children had read about in Possum Magic such as lamington, pavlova, minties and even Australian tim tams. We are indebted to our Technologist Melanie Holtsman for traveling around the world virtually to make the experience available to our youngsters!

Our next adventure was hearing a former Creeker play the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal wind instrument native to Australia. Sam had lived in Australia when was a first grader! He left his college classes to come share with our children. They were fascinated by the handmade instrument and it's sound and the story he told about termites carving the hollow tube of the gum tree !

Then it was back to our classroom to preform Mem Fox Readers' Theatre scripts that the children have been practicing all week. They presented Koala Lou, Hattie and the Fox and Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge to the delight of their classmates. We tasted pavlova and made some Australian crafts. We completed the day by playing Mem Fox Bingo which was a review of all of the books, characters, Australian animals and places that we had learned about throughout the four week study. While the children have loved Mem's pattern books, they equally loved her touching stories. It will be hard to say good-by to this amazing author.