The Story of Ruby Bridges

When students enter the room today, they find the Smart board on with a new lesson waiting and a new text on their desks.  The students will be reading The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles.  To kick off Black History Month at my school, my principal is bringing in a children's theater presentation of Ruby's story.  In order to give my students the background knowledge they will need to understand the play, they will read Ruby's story and answer some text dependent questions.

The Smart board lesson is short- enough to give them some basic information.  We go through the slides before moving on to the actual text.

I instruct the students to take out their Close Read Bookmarks and to open their books.  Even though I"m reading, I want them to follow along and continue to make connections to the text. I read to them.  My reading is a reminder to them of what fluent reading sounds like and allows them to practice being fluent in their head- safely.

After we read the book, the students have a lot of questions.  I try to answer what I can and refer back to our Leader unit to Martin Luther King, Jr. and his "I have a Dream Speech."  It is somewhat confusing for my students to understand why the white parents were so angry at Ruby for going to their school.  

I hand out the questions and have students begin.  I tell them they may want to use their Close Read Bookmarks and read the text again before they actually begin answering their questions. At this point, I gather a group of my struggling readers to help them formulate answers.  They are still having trouble with understanding just what the question is asking and finding the stamina to go back in the text for the evidence.