This is the first version of 3 books about Little Red Riding Hood that we will ultimately be comparing. For this first lesson, I am really leading the students through the activity because of the vocabulary level. Choosing good descriptive words is VERY difficult for my students (beyond 'good' and 'bad') and I want them to bolster that vocabulary and become more independent as we move through more versions of the stories. I will set up the events in a beginning/middle/end organizer so we can compare later, as well have the kids complete a description of the characters for comparison later.
The later lessons are Red Riding Hood Smelled Like Apples (Lesson 2 of 4), Images Have A Voice (lesson 3 of 4) and Wanted.. One Big Bad... (Lesson 4 of 4).
I chose this book because it was fairly easy to understand. It basically gives a different motivation for the wolf and reasons why he acted as he did. It has a sweet ending and is a nice comparison to some of the more difficult texts that we read later from a different country.
"Imaging" is the term that my district uses for "visualizing". In order to stay true to the district expectations, I'll continue to use this verbage. Visualizing is a critical skill for 2nd graders because they need to 'go deeper' in the text. By visualizing as they read, they are creating and tweaking images in their minds as they actively read. This kind of 'close reading', forming images using text, verifying and changing those images, and ultimately comparing their images to the author, creates critical readers and deepens comprehension.
Underlined words below are lesson vocabulary words that are emphasized and written on sentence strips for my Reading & Writing word wall. I pull off the words off the wall for each lesson, helping students understand this key 'reading and writing' vocabulary can be generalized across texts and topics. The focus on acquiring and using these words is part of a shift in the Common Core Standards towards building students’ academic vocabulary. My words are color coded ‘pink’ for literature/’blue’ for reading strategies/’orange’ for informational text/'yellow' for writing/’green’ for all other words)
Common starting point
Give the purpose of the lesson
Introduce strategy - teacher models
As we describe these characters, I help students look to the text and infer how the characters respond to major events and challenges. (RL.2.3) The Common Core Standards encourages teachers to model this skill and help develop a level of rigor for students to be able to perform in terms of their ability to articulate important details about text elements.
Guided practice - work with the students
Assign Task
I just chose a students' picture at random and put it on the large chart. We created one large class chart for this lesson.
Formative Assessment
When you preview the book and think about your class's ability, I will leave it up to you which pages to stop on and how often to have the kids use imaging. My kids needed more prompting so I stopped after every few pages, but did still remind them of details that I had read, gave them ideas of what to draw and helped, in general. I expect they will improve as we continue to practice this skill. Second graders typically do not always have a lot of confidence about their reading and ability to form images, especially comparing them to the author. As we continue to compare author's versions of these fairy tales from other countries or perspectives (RL.2.9), they will see that there are different interpretations and no 'right answer', which should improve their confidence. I think that's why the Common Core Standards include this focus area. As students critically compare works on similar topics, they realize that perspectives vary and they should be open to different interpretations of stories.
Reflect on what you know
Scaffolding and Special Education: This lesson could be easily scaffolded up or down, depending on student ability.
This lesson could be taught to students with academic challenges because it is mostly drawing and discussion. I did read the story aloud because of the text level. When they were thinking of feeling words, I kept a list on the board that they could reference for spelling.
Students with greater academic ability should be able to use higher level vocabulary to describe the feelings and senses. We had a good time going beyond 'good' and 'bad' to 'exciting', 'wicked', 'dastardly', and 'fabulous'.