Summarizing Lesson for Children

Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman  is about a police man, Officer Buckle, and his dog, Gloria. Officer Buckle and Gloria visits schools and give safety tips to the children. Before Gloria came along, Officer was never paid attention too. Sometimes, the students would start snoring. Even the adults did not pay attention to Officer Buckle. Once Gloria started accompanying Officer Buckle to the schools, the students started paying more attention. They would get so excited when Officer Buckle spoke. They would cheer, clap, and laugh. Officer Buckle was so happy that the students found his speeches fun and exciting. One day, Officer Buckle watched Gloria and himself on TV delivering a speech to a school. Officer Buckle found out that the students were not clapping for him but for Gloria!! During his speeches, Gloria would do neat tricks which resulted in the students reactions. Officer Buckle got so mad, he did not want to go to anymore schools. The schools still wanted Gloria to come though, so when Gloria went to the schools by herself, she was lonely and the students did not learn any safety tips. This resulted in an accident with a student and teacher. The following day, Officer Buckle received letters. The students said they missed him and told him about the accident. Officer Buckle then realized that Gloria and him are a team. Since then, he tells students that one of the most important safety tips is to "always stick with your buddy."

This is a great story for students to summarize. It has a clear main idea and moral. This book would be easy for the students to explain what happens because the book is not only easy to read but they can use their schema. Using their schema allows them to more easily identify the moral and main idea of the story. We found two fun activities that the students can do in the classroom at http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/summarizing/summarize_lessonplans.html. One activity is a fortune teller (what used to be called a Cootie Catcher). The template can be found on the website. The students would build the fortune teller and be able play with their classmates or themselves. For example: The student would pick a tab, after pulling the tab up, their would be a question like "Who are the main characters?" and the student would have to answer it. Each tab would ask something different that would help the students be able to summarize the story. The second fun activity we found was a paper bag report. Each student would be given a paper lunch bag. On the front of the bag, the students would draw an important scene from the book. They would also put the title and author on this side. One the back of the bag, the students would write the main characters and conflict and resolution. Finally, the students would put items inside the bag that represents the story.

 Cat Kong by Dav Pilkey is an excellent descriptive tale of adventure and discovery. The story follows along with King Kong’s plot, but is substituted with a cat for the monster and mice for the people. Cat Kong is captured by the mice and transported back to the city of Mousopolis and is put on display. He escapes the captors and rampages through the city until he falls from a very tall skyscraper to his death.

The text follows along very well with the images. The text turns out to be very descriptive which gives the students a multitude of new words to infer from the images associated with them. While reading the text, you begin to see these conversations between the mice and parts that are not shown with the images, which leads to the visualizing the parts of text that are not shown through the pictures.

While considering options on books to use for the visualizing and inferring lesson, the best way we could think of, was to use a picture book that had descriptive text. This would give a good basis on unfamiliar vocabulary, because the text would be more advanced. The pictures are very detailed and showed exactly what was going on in the story. This is exactly what we achieved with this book, and it follows along well with taking background knowledge of the reader and applying it to the visualizing and inferring process to obtain deeper meaning of the text through descriptive images and vocabulary.

Making Connections

Sophie got so angry when her sister took her Gorilla!!! AHHHHHHHH!!! Not only did her gorilla get taken, but when her sister snatched her toy away, she fell over a truck. She is so angry, she wants to stomp and roar. She feels like she is about to explode. Instead of doing something she might regret or get in trouble for, Sophie goes outside to climb her favorite tree. There, she is able to calm down. She did not know how to handle her anger, but she removes herself from the situation and finds comfort in something she enjoys.

This book is great for introducing and practicing inferring about text. Teachers can ask questions like, "Look at the picture of Sophie, how do you think she is feeling?Why?" and as the story progresses, teachers can ask "How do you think Sophie will react?", " What will she do next?", and "Do you think Sophie is making the right decision. Why?" Teachers can then ask students to remember a time when they got angry and how they handled the situation.

It is important for children to be able to be able to identify what they are feeling. Once they are able to identify the feeling, they are able to problem solve a lot easier. This entire lesson relates to GPS standards SSKE4 and ELACCKW8.  A cute activity that could be done with this book is Charades. A student will pull an emotion form the bucket the teacher hands them. The student then has to act out the emotion. The rest of the students in the class have to guess the emotion based on facial expression and physical movements.

Founding Father

The book I pick this week correlates perfectly with GPS’s standard for First Grade (SSH1a). The story is Thomas Jefferson: A Picture Book Biography by James Cross Giblin. It tells the story of Thomas Jefferson was a small child growing up Virginia. It describes his life as he moves from his boyhood farm Shadwell to Tuckahoe and when he was nine he move back home to Shadwell. The whole book is a story of his life, from when he studied law in Williamsburg, but when he heard a speaker attach the policies of Great Britain, and from that moment on is when his thought of his country began. In 1776, Thomas attended the Second Continental Congress and authored the Declaration of Independence. It also described his life after the war, he was ambassador to Paris and Vice President to John Adams and in 1801 he was elected President. He died on July 4, 1826, and he was determined he would not die before it so he could see the nations’ 50^th anniversary.

 

This is a great book to teach about the life of Thomas Jefferson, and the fact that the book is a picture book biography, it makes it a very effective book for first grade. The Plot is easy to follow, because it follows a chronological flow of events. I feel a book like this should be a must have for any classroom.

The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses

The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses
                        By: Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen


        Ms. Frizzle thinks that her class is supposed to sing at the parent-teacher meeting tomorrow, but it's tonight!!! Ms. Frizzle's class informs the assistant principal that there was a mix-up and Ms. Frizzle is leaving the school. The assistant principal rushes onto the bus to go after Ms. Frizzle to let her know. The children, knowing that the bus is magical, follows the assistant principal, Mr. Wilde, onto the bus.  As the children yell "don't touch it," Mr. Wilde presses the button to shrink the bus.Mr. Wilde and the students go on a journey, armed with Ms. Frizzles notes, which flew out of her car. They start out in the eye of a police office. They learn about sight. Then they go into a little boys ear and learns about hearing. Next, a dog sniffs them up into his nose, where the students learn about smell. They finally land on Ms. Frizzles tongue to learn about taste. They drop onto her hands to learn about touch. After learning about touch they are finally able to get the bus back on the road and return to a normal size, right behind Ms. Frizzle's car. They got back to the school in time for the meeting and their song.

     With this book, students not only learn about the senses and what  they, the students also learn about each part of the body that relates to the senses. They learn about the parts of the ear, eyes, nose, and parts of the skin.Students start learning about senses in Kindergarten with standard SKCS1 but this book is a lot more advanced and is more appropriate for students starting in third grade through fifth. These standards are S3CS1, S4CS1, and S5CS1. In these standards, students will be aware of the important of curiosity, honesty, openness, and skepticism in science and will exhibit these traits in their own efforts to understand how the world works. Students will be able to investigate and observe the world around them.

2X2=BOO!

2X2=BOO!

by Loreen Leedy

This book turns out is a great read for students whether they are interested in math or not. It follows along with a theme that is designed for a time around Halloween. It’s full of bats, vampires, witches, and skeletons. The book starts off at chapter 0, with the Disappearing Zero, which teaches the student how to multiply by zero in a way they understand.Just by following along with the book, a student can do the problems without realizing they are multiplying. Chapter 1 is correlated to the multiplication of one. This follows along a different story of a mad scientist creating objects by one. It is kind of confusing because it is creating more objects from that one item, but the point comes across. Chapter 2 is called seeing double and as you guessed, it’s by two’s. Chapter three follows along with the same process of multiplying by three. Chapter 4 is by fours and chapter 5 is by fives, where it ends the story. The cool fact is at the end of this book there is a times table for the student to review over, and which will be quite useful for them.

The plot of the story follows along with multiplication up to five and is a great book to introduce multiplication in earlier grades such as Second grade where the standards are an introduction to multiplication (MCC2.OA.3). This is an all around good choice for the beginning of the year, around Halloween. This book will allow teachers to use fun props and allow the students to do a variety of fun activities related to multiplication.

Holes by Louis Sachar

 

Louis Sachar creates a dynamic story with complex characters in Holes. The main character, Stanley Yelnats, gets sent to a youth detention center for a crime he did not commit. His family has always been plagued with bad luck because of his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather." This detention center is a brutal atmosphere where the warden uses the boys to look for treasure that her grandfather wasted his life away, trying to find. The conditions of the center are terrible. The boys live in tents that are located in the middle of a desert. They are treated horribly by their caretakers with minimum food and water. Stanley not only has to come to terms with paying for a crime he did not commit, he also has to deal with bunk mates that are less than enthusiastic about a new kid coming into their group. Stanley ends up breaking the Yelnats history of bad luck by finding out what happened so very long ago. A descendent of the woman who brought bad luck to the Yelnats ended up being on of the boys that Stanley rooms with, Zero. Zero not only has a connection with Stanley through their ancestors but Zero is the one responsible for Stanley being at the detention center. He was the one who committed the crime of stealing shoes and threw them off a bridge when they landed at the feet of Stanley as the police were driving by.

Holes  is a contemporary realistic fiction because it contains characters that could actually exist in today's world. The circumstances surrounding Stanley's conviction does seem a little bizarre but people do go to jail today for crimes they did not commit. Families discover answers and secrets from their ancestors all the time. The answers can also help them overcome things like it did with Stanley and his family. This book does contain some historical fiction when Stanley has "visions or dreams" about his ancestors. The people in these dreams or visions correlate to the time period they were from.