Both lessons went largely as planned and in my view, met or worked toward the goals I described yesterday. The power of frontloading was evident as students talked about what they know or have noticed about free verse poetry or book reviews. Thank you to a teacher who sent the following links for book reviews and trailers on youtube. Frontloading can come in many formats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-yZPF0s_cg
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=7TgTiqTdoCo
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=uI0CGISc7mo
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=IX6OpZW2WOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=8edW3IeaHuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cs3OmXMm68
She has used these for writing book reviews but also for stimulating interest in books and reported that after viewing one of these, the book in question would enjoy an upswing in popularity.
In Grade 3...
I chose to model a review of a novel I love. I was really unsure, even as I wrote the first few lines, whether I should use a book of my own or a children's book. I went with Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver because I thought I could write with more authenticity and passion. I told the kids my audience was my book club and my purpose was to convince them all to read this book so we could talk about it. As at least one member of my book club just might read this, I need to admit to making that story a little more compelling than it really is. They have read it. But most of them missed the meeting where we talked about it! It can't be a surprise to you that writers sometimes change things to get a better story. :)
Here is the review I modelled today:
Here are the things the students noticed me do:
In our after school planning we decided that tomorrow we will start by rereading my review. I will probably make a couple of revisions and then we will return to our list of "What can be in a book review". From this list we plan to build criteria for the reviews we will write together and individually. Nancy (our resident writer at John de Graff and my teacher) did not necessarily do this with every class but it did happen some of the time. We are choosing to do it because the students are accustomed to it and we think it will meet our needs. We will also move into the "we do it" phase tomorrow, doing a shared write of a review of a book the teacher plans to read in the morning. We know they are ready, because as one student said when asked what they had noticed me do, "Well you sure took charge of things. You did all of the talking."
And that would define modelling. It may also mean that I need to work on being a little more subtle.
In Grade 2...
The teacher and students shared with me all that they had learned from reading free verse poetry. The chart speaks for itself:
I shared my thinking about how I might decide what to write about and I jotted some of the ideas I came up with on my chart paper. I said that I would ask myself questions like:
What do you like to do?
What do you know lots about?
What is something that you care about or have strong feelings about?
I decided to write about the plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Perfect choice you are thinking, and so poetic. Here is my poem:
Again we talked about what they noticed me do as a writer that they might try. In preparation for our shared writing tomorrow, I asked them each to take a sticky note and write down a topic we might all know enough about to write about it together. The teacher and I selected three that we will present tomorrow for the group to choose. One of the things I learned from Nancy was to remember that in Shared Writing I hold the pen. That means final decisions are mine. Nancy told the students that when they were writing they could choose to use ideas that they liked but for now we were going with this. It worked beautifully for her. Tomorrow afternoon we will see how it works for me as we move into the "We do it" stage of the OLM.
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