Narrative Post-Prompt

With soft music playing in the background, our students took 45 minutes today to complete their last prompt piece of the year, this time a small moment narrative. Most of these students we have had for two years. Some came in drawing detailed pictures with the ability to orally tell us about the pictures. At most, they could write a few words, like love, mom, dad and their name. A few came only able to scribble.

Lucky for us (and for them!), Lucy Calkins and Teacher's College, introduced their new writing units as we began kindergarten with this group. We eagerly embraced the new units the day they were in our building. We are so fortunate to have a Reading Coach, Melanie Holtsman, in our building that has been steeped in Lucy's work for years and is an often participant in the summer professional development offered by Teachers College, so we had help along the way as we implemented. We had discussions and saw demo lessons.  This is not the adopted writing curriculum for our county, so we are so fortunate to have a Principal with vision that can see the value and find the money to offer this curriculum to our students.  We were able to teach three of the units before kindergarten came to a close last year and then have been actively engaged with the four first grade units all of this year.

We can see the difference it is making in our youngest writers and today the students will produce this final on-demand piece. As I walked around, I could see that students were going back, rereading and editing.  They had their personal word wall outs to check words, and you could see them stretching words that were unfamiliar.  They were going back to check punctuation, and you could see them erasing and adding capitals. But even more than the conventions, I could see that they were adding dialogue (part of the second grade standard for narrative).  They were adding details to their drawings, speech bubbles and labels.  The best thing is that almost without exception, they worked solidly, without a sound, totally engaged for the entire 45 minutes!  Writing stamina is simply a way of life! As we took the booklets up, I wanted to stop right there and read every one!  We can't wait to see what they have written!

Follow the Bend in the Road

As we decided on our first standards-based bulletin board for the year, our Reading Coach, Melanie Holtsman, challenged us to take the lessons that we were teaching in Lucy Calkins' New Units of Study and to demonstrate the students' work as a result of some of the lessons.  It was an idea we had never presented before on a bulletin board so, of course, the challenge was interesting.  I'm always up for a challenge! Normally we like to take a finished genre of writing and show all the ways that a student has used what they have learned but on this board Melanie wanted us to look at student work after each lesson. We decided to accept the challenge with our bulletin board tied to our Wizard of Oz theme, Follow the Bend in the Road.

This was the "task" and standard.

Task

This year First Grade has embraced the new Writing Units of Study written by the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College under the direction of Lucy Calkins.  We are teaching this “Small Moments” Narrative unit for the first time.

As we opened our first days of Writing Workshop we reminded students of all that they loved about writing in Kindergarten and we welcomed them into a new year’s writing as authors.  We talked about their writing “muscles” and all the books that they were going to write!  We established the rituals and routines of the Workshop.

The lessons displayed on this bulletin board only address the first “bend” in the narrative unit.  The “bend” is like the first set of mini-lessons that go together.  The students stopped at this bend and celebrated their writing, before beginning the next leg of the journey.

Standards

LAFS.1.W.1.3
Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure. 


We looked at four different lessons.  This is a sample of an Introduction, the student work and the commentary from one of those lessons.

Translation: One time I went to my cousin's. It was my first time catching a lizard's tail. It was moving. My mom was there. I put it in the grass and my sister was there.  I went (back) in the afternoon. Then her lizard got stuck in the bush. Then I held the lizard's tail. Then I went to go wash my hands.

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!

Small Moment at the Farm

Lucy Calkins talks about children learning to write about small moments instead of bed-to-bed stories that just tell a sequence of events from the time they get up in the morning until they go to bed in the evening. Our field trip to the farm last week was the perfect example for the children to stop thinking about long, all day stories and just think about a small moment that they could blow up. As we talked about the farm, we talked about each of the things we did - beginning with putting our lunches in the coolers and putting on our name tags to taking the long ride on the bus and then going through the corn maze and then the hayride to see pumpkins and sunflowers ... until we loaded the bus back home and fell asleep! We talked to the children about thinking about a small moment during the day instead of trying to tell everything we did. To emphasize that, we put photographs of moments at the farm onto writing paper and asked each child to choose a favorite moment from a photograph to write about. It was such a great way to explain to the children that we want them to write a lot about one event instead of a list or series of events. Mrs. Ruark modeled with the story about jumping on the corn popper and all the fun she had. She did leave out the part about almost wetting her pants, but I still think the children would have enjoyed that part too! While the writing may still not be quite as deep as we'd like or have as much detail as we'd like, they do seem to be getting the point!

When my class went on the playground I went in the popcorn box and I was excited that I buried Tanner and Jesse. And I played that I was a monster under the water

but it was wasn't really water. And I played and played and played and I was so excited until my pants fell off.

And here is another example of a small moment:

My class went to the farm. And we got to go on a hayride. And it was fun. We saw big sunflowers and big white and normal orange pumpkins and I was in the sun. They call it a hayride?Maybe because it has hay for the seat to sit on. Maybe for another reason. I don't know. But they call it a hayride.

Do mini-lessons make a difference?

Sometimes we wonder if the mini-lessons that we teach make any difference. The Mall-ards (Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard) actually show the difference that mini-lessons make by showing student work "before a mini-lesson" and then the results "after the mini-lesson."

This first example shows the change one student made after a mini-lesson that included the teacher reading the great beginnings in Mem Fox books that had time, place and orientation. This student was able to improve on his story openings.

Before: When Jack came to my house, we had lots of fun.

After: One Saturday morning it was Jack's birthday. He invited me to his party.

In this next example, the student's writing benefits from a mini-lesson about using a question as an introduction to a story.

Before: In this story the student just jumps into the action of the sotry, beginning the story without an introduction. First we went between the cones. Then some people knocked down the cones...

After: In the piece written after the mini-lesson the student begins the story by engaging the reader with a question. One really hot day, I had a soccer game. Have you had a soccer game before?

In this example the lesson was simply about using the red line of the notebook paper to line up writing on the left side. The mini-lesson on the following day was about rereading and editing a piece by adding and deleting words.

Before: This example clearly shows a student whose writing habitually slides down the page.

After: Not only does the student move his writing over to the red line but also rereads and edits his paper by adding missing words and changing words to make a better choice.

Other examples of mini-lesson that are memorable are the TD's lesson comparing how to build an ice cream sundae the same way that you build a narrative story. As a student told his story to the class, he got a scoop of ice cream for each event, an M&M for each character and sprinkles for details. A little whipped cream came at the end for a good ending to the story. The memory of this mini-lesson is likely to have students licking their lips as they write.

Another memorable mini-lesson was Cathy Daniels teaching children to s-t-r-e-t-c-h their story while staying in the small moment. As the student told her story during the mini-lesson Mrs. Daniels stretched a piece of yarn until she and the student were on opposite sides of the room. Every student wanted a chance to s-t-r-e-t-c-h their story when they went into the work session of the Writers' Workshop!

Do mini-lessons make a difference? Not every mini-lesson makes a difference to every single student, but our thoughtful lessons do make a difference in the way that students write, how they think about their writing and how they reread and edit their work.

Writing Partners

As children begin to write their small moments each day they learn new routines. The chart below is one of those new routines that establishes long-term writing partnerships!

1. After the mini-lesson each student finds her name at a place at the table. Teachers have pre-decided which students will work together matching their ability and paying attention to students that will work well together.

2. Students have a few minutes of quiet time where they envision their story. They are told to imagine their small moment in pictures in their mind, like they are seeing a movie. They are visualizing.

3. Next the students choose the type of paper that they want to use. Some students prefer booklets while others choose several sheets of paper with room for pictures and room for words.

4. "Touch and tell." Touch and tell means that each child is going to have a turn telling her story orally. The children choose who gets to go first and have learned several strategies for making that choice. The first child tells her story. She touches each page as she tells what is going to be on that page. Her partner listens.

5. When the first child finishes telling her story, the listening partner gives her some suggestions. Right now the suggestions are very surface such as, "Make sure to draw pictures that match your words," but as the children continue to talk to their long term partner, the feedback will begin to have depth as they begin to know more about each other. After the first partner finishes telling her story and getting feedback, the partners reverse roles.

6. When both partners have practiced telling their story and have gotten feedback, they are ready to put the stories on paper. Children have had mini-lessons on using the date stamp, on stretching words that they do not know how to spell, on where to find color words on the color word chart, on where to find children's names and sight words on the Word Wall, on how to use the alphabet chart on the back of their writing folder if they need to know what a letter looks like, on how to "sketch" so they don't spend all of their time on their drawing, on crossing out if they make a mistake, and on not throwing stories away. They know that great authors call mistakes, revision. All of these mini-lessons come together as these authors write about their young lives.

Now this is Writers' Workshop!

Small Moments

At the half way point for the first nine weeks, Writers' Workshop is in full bloom in Chets Creek Kindergartens. By this time of year each child has published his first piece and most classes have enjoyed their first Publishing Party! Each family has helped the little author decorate a folder of favorite things. These folders (as seen below) act as a list of topics that children care about and can write about. You never hear, "I don't have anything to write about," because teachers just remind students to look at their writing folder covers for ideas! Children self select writing topics each day.On the back of each folder (see below), teachers include an alphabet list. It is not unusual to see children turn their folders to the back and quietly say the ABCs to figure out what a letter looks like or to match a sound. This strategy for figuring out a letter has been taught in a mini-lesson

You might also see students look at the alphabet chart on the wall that is part of an every day ritual of shared reading to find a letter, word or sound. The children are free to go up to the chart and find what they need. They also use the word wall for letters and for the first sight words that have been posted and the color chart that has all the color words. Once words are up in the classroom, children are expected to use those resources when they need a specific word, letter or sound. Mini-lessons have been taught to help students internalize these strategies.

Children are free to choose the type of paper they want to use to write. Some children prefer story paper where they have a place for a picture and a place for writing. Some children prefer a single blank page and others prefer a booklet. All of the different types of paper have been introduced during mini-lessons and children know the routine for getting paper when they need it. At this time of year some children are still telling their stories through drawing pictures and are being encouraged to add details to their pictures that match their story. Others are using pictures and a letter string to represent the words. When you ask them to "read" what they have written, they "tell" the story and will sometimes point to the letters although there is no relationship between the words they are saying and the letters they have written. They don't always tell the story with exactly the same words. Still others are beginning to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the words they want to write and are writing the sounds that they hear. A few children are even beginning to use spaces between words. The longest "story" at this time of year is only a couple of sentences. Some children use three or four sheets of paper to tell their small moment in pictures and words (as seen in the 4-page story above)!

Teachers have had mini-lessons on taking a small moment to write about instead of telling everything that you did from the time you got up until you went to bed. The lessons are taken from Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for Primary Writing. These units will guide much of the Kindergarten design for these young writers this year.

During the independent writing time, the teacher goes around and confers with students. In the picture at the right bottom, the entire table is listening to the point that the teacher is making for a single student. The idea is not to just make a single piece better for a single child but to teach the writer something that they can use today and forever more. These youngsters take writing seriously because their teachers take it seriously. The teachers realize the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing and can tell as much from analyzing writing as they can from listening to a child read. These amazing authors have so many great stories to tell!