Narrative: Is this really Kindergarten?

I have been watching a series of lessons on narrative writing in a Kindergarten classroom that have just blown me away!  Below is an example of one student's narrative story.  She has worked on this one story for a couple of weeks - an accomplishment itself for such a young writer! The red indicates where she used a red pen to edit her story.

It was a really chilly (red pen edited from the word cold) in my glass room.  I was freezing. Brrrrr.

Mom didn't know what was wrong with Shadow. Shadow was eating.  Hmmmm.  Shadow was eating - crunch - mulch with germs in there.  I was frightened.  I screamed on top of my lungs, "MOM!"

I didn't know what to do.  Ahaaaaaa.  Mom got an idea.  Mom went outside - creak - and mom took my hula hoop - chch - and shook the hula hoop at Shadow and Shadow ran away from the mulch.  Shadow is a yellow lab.

Make sure you watch your dog if you have mulch because maybe your dog will eat your mulch up.  I hope you learned a lesson.

I hope you can see all the lessons that were taught that are evidenced in this student's work.  First of all, children were taught to think of a "story" with a main character, a setting and then a problem and a solution  Then they learned to think through the beginning, middle, and end of their story by telling the story over their fingers (a Lucy Calkins technique).  They started with the characters and the setting in the beginning of their story, as you can clearly see in this work (Shadow is the main character and the author is in her glass room - the Florida Room on the back of her house.)  The students then thought about a problem with the main character and finally a solution.  After they had written the beginning, middle and end, they were taught to develop a closing for the story instead of the typical kindergarten closing of "The End."  This work clearly shows that closing by telling the reading to watch dogs eating mulch and hoping the reader learned a lesson!  Students were taught to make sure that their pictures matched their words and in these pictures the student has even labeled  much of her work. 

But this teacher took it even further.  This is kindergarten and this child is using a red pen to edit her work!  Oh my!  One of the extension lessons was about choosing extraordinary words to replace ordinary words ( a vocabulary in synonyms!)  This was actually a series of lessons where students chose words and then brainstormed some extraordinary words they could use in small groups.  This work was transferred to a word wall that students were taught to use.

The teacher also took a group of six of her top flyers and taught them to use the Thesaurus on the Microsoft Word program so that as she taught the class to replace words using their own imaginations and the word wall, she taught this small group to replace words using the Thesaurus - which is what this student did with the word "cold" changing it to chilly.  She set up six laptops at the back of the room for these students to use.  This is a skill that these students will use for the rest of their writing careers!

The next series of lessons were on writing craft, onomatopoeia.  You can easily see how this child was able to add in these sound words with her red pen!

To continually assess the work the teacher used a rubric as she worked through each part of the narrative standard. She worked with the students to write each element, adding them one at a time, deciding with the students what would be a 1-2-3 for each part of the rubric. (S on the rebric stands for strategies which were the extention lessons.)

The children self-assessed by dropping a popsicle stick in one of the 1-2-3 buckets at the end of each element lesson.  The amazing thing is that as they dropped the popsicle stick in a 1 or 2 most of them were each able to talk about what they needed to move their stick to the next number point.

What is astounding about this unit of work is that the teacher had 18 of her 35 students exceed the class rubric (which far exceeded the kindergarten standard for narrative writing) by forming a story with a beginning, middle and end and by editing their work to include both extraordinary words and onomatopoeia!  She actually pushed her student well past the standard simply because she had so many students ready for the enrichment! WOW!

Update:  I had a very angry e-mail from a reader after this post that told me to quit posting writing that obviously a parent had done!  I had to laugh, realizing how little some teachers expect from their kindergartners!

Oral Retellings

Before a child can write "just like Kevin Henkes" in  Writers' Workshop, he has to be able to orally retell a story. He must be able to hold an entire story in his head before we can ever expect him to transfer the craft that he hears into his own writing.  Retelling also deepens comprehension.  It helps students understand beginning, middle and end and to sequence the events of the story.

To practice retelling we spend a week on orally retelling  Kevin Henkes' stories. On the first day we show the children a written retelling of Owen with a beginning, a middle with three events, and an ending. Then the students cut out puppets of the main characters of Owen that we put on Popsicle sticks and we encourage the students to retell the story to a partner. We, of course, model how we would retell the story before the students try it on their own. After they have practiced, we have several students come to the front and use their puppets to retell the story. The children then take the puppets home so they can continue to practice the retellings with their family.

We do virtually the same thing on the next day with the story Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. We first show the children a written retelling with a beginning, a middle that includes three events, and an ending. Then we give the children five pictures from the story that represent each of the five parts, one picture for each part. We begin by modeling our own retelling of the story with a partner. I tell a part of the story and then my co-teacher tells a part and then I tell a part... until all five parts have been told. Then the students practice with a partner. Finally we bring a partner pair to the front to "fishbowl" retelling the story for the class. Once again, the students take their pictures home and are encouraged to retell the story to their family.

And still another day we pass out a piece of construction paper to each student. Each table (groups of 5-6) decides on one of Kevin Henkes' books and chooses one of the five parts to illustrate and then to retell. After the children at the table have illustrated their part of the story, they hold up their picture and in order, retell their part of the story.

All of this oral work provides the background for understanding story elements. Until a child can retell a story orally by holding the entire story in his head, he is not able to summarize and it is summary that we will finally reach as we end this unit. The ability to summarize leads to synthesis and it is the synthesis across an author's entire body of work that will be the goal for our most advanced students. Stay tuned to watch the children's growth across this unit...

A Last Look at Mem

We have completed our author study of Mem Fox but as standard-based bulletin boards went up last month, Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard's board displayed some of the work that was done during this unit. It's worth one last look!
Having children make connections to Mem Fox' books is one of the ways that we hope to have children connect to her work. We want our children to understand that good readers activate their own prior knowledge when reading a book and that they make connections to help them understand the setting or the character or the character's motivation and reactions of particular situations that they have encountered in their own lives. Associating an experience in a book with one that the child has actually lived, helps him understand the character and the stoy. The same is true for setting, characters, moods they have read about in other books. Making those connections to the new book helps them understand, predict, analyze what is happening in the new book. The student above shows that he has made a connection between Mem's Shoes from Grandpa and There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat. In this case the child recognizes that both are pattern books with rhyming text that add on. Understanding the structure of the book helps the student predict what will come next.
In the work above the student sequences the major events in the story Possum Magic. Not only does this require recall of basic information but the student is also determining the most important events in the story and summarizing them into a few short sentences - all strong components of comprehension!
In the final example, the student compares a story by Mem Fox with another story that he knows. This type of comparing and contrasting helps the student analyze what happens in both stories.

All of these activities are ways that students are taught to read across the books of the same author. Knowing more about Mem Fox and the type of books that she writes, where she gets her ideas, where she is from and what is important to her will add layers of comprehension to the student's experience with her books. Comparing and contrasting and making connections to other books will also help the student understand what is happening in these new books. All of the reading and writing in an author study is to teach our students to comprehend at a deeper level and to help our children mentor themselves to the author so that they are able to recognize and to duplicate some of Mem Fox' craft in their own work. Maybe we are watching the birth of a new Mem Fox right in our own classrooms!

Night Noises

Night Noises is another delightful book by Mem Fox that revisits the elderly characters that she so often incorporates into her stories and a nighttime theme. As we move more deeply into Mem's work, we want our students to be able to retell her stories. Night Noises is full of the onomatopoeia (writing craft) that Lily Laceby hears during the night as her family sneaks up on her to wish her a surprise "Happy Birthday!" To retell this story the students used a worksheet and wrote each of the sounds that are in bold red type from the story. Then they went back and recorded the event that made the sound in the same box. After the children had completed their illustrations, they practiced retelling the stories using their drawings. You can find a copy of this graphic organizer at the grade level wiki under the subsection "Author-Mem Fox." Enjoy one child's drawings below!

Princess Pigtoria and the Pea

Henry Cole and Pamela Duncan Edwards have visited Chets Creek several times - and for good reason. Henry is an illustrator and Pamela is an author and they write children's books. Not only do they write wonderfully playful books, but they are absolutely entertaining to children and adults alike. They spend an exhausting day entertaining each grade level of children. Children never for get their days with real authors and illustrators!

They began their day with our Book-of-the-Month which was introduced to the faculty by our Principal, Susan Phillips, and just happened to be one of Cole and Edward's newest books, an alliteration Princess Pigtoria and the Pea which is based on the traditional fairytale The Princess and the Pea. If you visit the Book-of-the-Month wiki you will find an 8-minute video of Pamela reading the book while Henry draws, along with Susan's write-up of the book for the faculty and the vocabulary strategies that she introduced. Each book-of-the month is accompanied by the introduction of a strategy that the teachers can use in their classrooms. Susan introduces the strategy and then has the teachers "experience" the strategy for themselves. This morning each grade level took one of the strategies and turned it into a performance to teach to the other grade levels. We saw other alliterations, proverbs, slang, acronyms, anagrams, palindromes (words spelled the same forward and backwards such as mom, radar) hink pinks (angry father=mad dad), tongue twisters, riddles, and new to me - Tom Swifties, eponyms, portmanteaus, and toponyms!! I hope Henry and Pamela enjoyed our playfulness and fun! We certainly enjoyed having them as we introduced this newest book-of-the-month but also as they entertained our children. You are teaching our children to love books and to love to read! Thanks Pamela and Henry. You are the BEST!

A future Creeker
with another beloved Edwards and Cole book