Yesterday, Open Court directed me to blend words out of context, have the children browse the first four pages of the story, and then discuss what clues they read or saw, list unknown words--again out of context, and pose wonderings about the story. Instead, I had the children look at the first four pages of the story and wrote down their clues, problems, and wonderings. Next, I read The Library written by Sarah Stewart.
Before I received my copy in the mail a couple of weeks ago I had never seen the original text. It is beautiful! It is rhyming fiction and the artwork is amazing. Each little stanza is accompanied by a wonderful illustration. I read from the original piece. The dedication stopped me cold! It was dedicated in memory of Mary Elizabeth Brown (the main character is Elizabeth Brown) who had been a reader, a friend, and a librarian. This is never mentioned in the anthology. The children loved the connect and of course asked if she is dead yet. (2nd graders are very curious about who is dead and who is not.) The book is beautiful and with the stanzas being augmented by the lovely illustrations, the children were quite enthralled.
In the past six years that I have worked with this piece in the children's anthology, the children have not clearly received the message of the story. Brown, is an avid reader who lives to read. She ends up with so many books that she donates her home and all of its contents (books) to the town. This year the children GOT it the first time I read it to them. I believe their comprehension of the story was aided by the illustration and text matching. In the anthology half of the pictures have been removed from the story. It was evident that illustrations play a large role in the comprehension of a story. It was amazing!
We read the story using the anthology today, and all of the children wanted to use my book! I have colleague changing up her methods and borrowing my original texts each week! This being the final year with this series, I'll share my used books eagerly!
I could not be happier by what I am witnessing in the classroom, I just wish I could find some more research! I'm plugging along!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Dedication
5 comments:
Wow, I love your blog. I look forward to seeing how it unfolds. I found your classroom example to be very interesting. I am in a new grade this year. I have not been doing a picture walk with my students like I did when I was a Kindergarten teacher. Your example has challenged me to focus more on the illustrations. From your research you found that they are very important. Thank you for sharing about your classroom!
even with 6th graders, we still picture walk. While picture walking, we also look for major headings, subheadings, chapters, etc...
Hello Theresa our topics are very similiar. I can't believe I didn't realize that until right now. I couldn't be more thrilled about your new topic. My topic goes hand in hand with using pictures to create comprehension. We gotta get these kids thinking. Can you imagine if we had a class together with both of our action research methods taking place at the same time. It would make total sense. What are you collecting for data???
Old habits are not easily broken! Unless, of course, you are Theresa's colleague. You mentioned in an earlier post that by tweaking the OCR curriculum, or any other curriculum for that matter, to better align it with the multicultural pedagogy we've studied over the last year, students would more easily access the content of the lessons we try to teach.
This summer, we learned how publishing companies tend to significantly alter story books from their original form in order to save money on publishing costs. The story remains the same, but some pictures are omitted, font styles are changed, and even the formatting can be rearranged resulting in a product that is very different from the original. It seems that poems would be most affected since they are very often written to a specific arrangement of words, phrases, and stanzas.
In this case, the missing peritext made all the difference for both you and your students. Knowing that the book was dedicated to a person who inspired the character helped the students to make a better connection with the story...Cool!
Thanks, Ish! It has been inspiring and exciting. An unexpected added bonus is that I have "done" these stories for YEARS, but this change has made them fresh and new. Watching the students read my book when I know they would never take out their anthology to re-read the story on their own is beyond thrilling!
Post a Comment