Janet Bellavance First Grade Constructed Response to Text

Teacher Janet Bellavance Class Grade 2 Date 7/21/09 Writing genre Constructed Response to text

CENTRAL IDEAS

Content: Characters’ actions reveal their personality traits

Reading: Re-reading and paraphrasing help build deep understanding of text.

Listening Comprehension: Students will listen to a higher level text. Through interactive read-aloud, students will gain understanding of the main character, Rikki Tikki Tavi, and how his actions make him proud.

Writing: To write effectively in Response to Text, we choose evidence from the text thoughtfully and explain its relationship to the focus of the writing.

Focusing Question

What reasons does Rikki Tikki Tavi have to be proud of himself?

Focus (answer to focusing question)

Rikki Tikki Tavi has a right to be proud of himself because of all the things he did to protect the family.
He killed the snake Karait before he could bite the little boy thus saving his life. He fought and killed the cobra Nag as it lay in wait in the bathroom to attack the family. He ran to the melon patch and bit off the tops of the baby cobra eggs crushing the deadly young snakes. He saved the last egg to distract Nagaina with and lure her away from striking the boy and his family. He followed Nagaina down into her den holding on to her tail, battling her to the end. As a mongoose, RTT “did his job well” and rid the house and garden of all deadly snakes.

Building Content Knowledge, Understanding of Writer’s Craft

• Provide background info on India (globe/map), mongooses, and cobras (photos, behavior)
• Read story first time through without interruption.
• Use Frayer model to analyze word “Proud”
• Use enlarged color photos of story to sequence events (hang up for visual reference)
• Coffee Can Theater: use props to dramatize story and have this available for students to do independently retelling the text during choice time (put plastic eggs, rubber snakes, boy, mom, dad, and bird in the coffee can)
• Read story second time and build public notes under focus question
• Turn and Talk during story using guided conversation to collect evidence to support Rikki being proud of himself.

Structures

• I turn focusing question into a statement. And have that written on a chart and posted next to the question and evidence we collected.
• We review graphic of 5 finger paragraph/hamburger paragraph
• We use evidence form our public notes to write a paragraph together.

Writing / Revising

Provide focus question: “What reasons does Rikki Tikki Tavi have to be proud of himself?” on chart paper. I model how to change focus question into a statement…”RTT has many reasons to be proud of himself.”

Take the evidence we collected from the text and recorded on the public notes and write it as sentences to support the focus statement. Have students sequence the evidence and decide on which ones are most important.

Work on conclusion together, playing around with 2 or 3 different wording options.

Lesson Sequence

• Provide background info on India (globe/map), mongooses, and cobras (photos, behavior)
• Read story first time through without interruption.
• Use Frayer model to analyze word “Proud”
• Use enlarged color photos of story to sequence events (hang up for visual reference)
• Coffee Can Theater: use props to dramatize story and have this available for students to do independently retelling the text during choice time (put plastic eggs, rubber snakes, boy, mom, dad, and bird in the coffee can)
• Read story second time and build public notes under focus question
• Turn and Talk during story using guided conversation to collect evidence to support Rikki being proud of himself. Record this evidence as public notes.
• In pairs, have students orally rehearse the first statement they will write under the focus. Listen to some pairs, then record one on chart. Continue with this process until there are at least three pieces of evidence recorded on chart.
• Conclusion: use some past samples of student writing and examples from books they know to illustrate ways that authors write conclusions. As a group, practice writing some together and then decide on which one to use (something like…Rikki Tikki Tavi should be proud of himself because he did what mongooses are born to do and saved the family he lived with. OR Rikki Tikki Tavi has the right to be proud because he risked his life several times to protect the family…OR RTT should be proud because if it wasn’t for him… One time I was proud when I ….)

Assessment:

Informal assessment. This lesson is designed for early Sept. The goal is to give students a review of collecting evidence from a text to support a focus statement. I will know students are able to do this by their level of participation in the process (listening in on Turn and Talk partner conversations, noting examples they provide during our interactive read aloud, and questions/talks they may have about the word “proud” and whether the evidence supports that word, etc.)

Next Steps: Gradual Release of Responsibility

Since this is an initial and very guided process, my next steps would be to repeat this process with several other Read Alouds throughout the year. My goal would be to give students a focus question and have them independently write a constructed response, using the hamburger paragraph format and public notes that we have collected during the reading, I would continue to provide students with the opportunity for oral rehearsal to make their thinking clearer and their sentences sound better.