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!

March Madness

I'm not sure what "March Madness" means in your part of the world, but at Chets Creek it means that the Principal is coming for a read aloud. Susan Phillips does one of the best read alouds in the building. She was a kindergarten teacher and you can tell the moment she starts to read aloud. She dropped into my class to read the 2001 Chets Creek Book-of-the-month, Apple Batter, yesterday. Not only was the book a delightful story about perseverance that the children LOVED, but the Principal guided my students through a question and answer session to help them think deeper about the characters and the story line.

As a Leadership Team we have identified read aloud as the starting place to deepen our children's comprehension skills in our building. While we want children to think deeply so that they are ready for our state assessment beginning in third grade, comprehension is about so much more than the ability to answer tricky questions on a state assessment! We want our children to fall in love with stories. We want them to beg us to finish reading a story that we have started in class. We want them to sneak books home and read them under the covers after lights out. We want them to speed through breakfast so they can get to school and share the latest adventure with a friend that they read the night before. In other words, we just want them to leave elementary school in love with reading. We believe we can do this by talking about books and choosing books that make children emotional - whether the book makes them excited, happy, sad or boiling mad! That is why Mrs. Phillips is spending time with every single classroom of students. Besides, she really likes spending time with kids! It's one of her favorite things to do!

Listen to a piece of the story to see just what the Principal is doing during OUR March madness!