Core Decisions of Teaching
What?
We decided to focus on sequencing as the literary skill we wanted students to work with. We knew our first grade students had previously worked with the Three Little Pigs folktale in Kindergarten. With that previous knowledge in mind, we developed a lesson closely focused on a comparison of texts and the synthesis of beginning, middle and end. Aligned both with the first grade curriculum and CCSS, sequencing is a literacy objective that students are currently working with. By presenting students with out-of-order events, our objective was for students to arrange these events in the correct sequence, and to further develop their understanding of this skill through the process.
How?
We will combine group work, writing, and discussion to achieve our goal of increasing students’ understanding of sequencing and summarizing events. We will perform a preliminary reading of the traditional version of The Three Little Pigs to reestablish students’ foundational understanding of the master narrative. The students will work as a group to create a storyboard that establishes basic sequencing by ordering images paired with text. The class will listen to a read aloud of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! From this version, each student will be given an event and will work individually to write a summary of the event. They will then work as a group to place the events in the correct sequence. Concluding the lesson, students will participate in a teacher-lead discussion of the similarities and differences between the sequences of both versions of the Three Little Pigs.
Why?
Having learned from a Classroom Mentor that students needed work with intertextual connections and the sequential development of narrative, we decided to engage students in multiple strategies for working with sequence of a text. By combining group work, independent writing, and group discussion, our goal was to design a lesson that supports the belief that students engage best when presented with multimodal literary planning.
We decided to focus on sequencing as the literary skill we wanted students to work with. We knew our first grade students had previously worked with the Three Little Pigs folktale in Kindergarten. With that previous knowledge in mind, we developed a lesson closely focused on a comparison of texts and the synthesis of beginning, middle and end. Aligned both with the first grade curriculum and CCSS, sequencing is a literacy objective that students are currently working with. By presenting students with out-of-order events, our objective was for students to arrange these events in the correct sequence, and to further develop their understanding of this skill through the process.
How?
We will combine group work, writing, and discussion to achieve our goal of increasing students’ understanding of sequencing and summarizing events. We will perform a preliminary reading of the traditional version of The Three Little Pigs to reestablish students’ foundational understanding of the master narrative. The students will work as a group to create a storyboard that establishes basic sequencing by ordering images paired with text. The class will listen to a read aloud of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! From this version, each student will be given an event and will work individually to write a summary of the event. They will then work as a group to place the events in the correct sequence. Concluding the lesson, students will participate in a teacher-lead discussion of the similarities and differences between the sequences of both versions of the Three Little Pigs.
Why?
Having learned from a Classroom Mentor that students needed work with intertextual connections and the sequential development of narrative, we decided to engage students in multiple strategies for working with sequence of a text. By combining group work, independent writing, and group discussion, our goal was to design a lesson that supports the belief that students engage best when presented with multimodal literary planning.