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| Overview |
Children thrive in an environment where they are active participants in their learning. In this kindergarten activity the children will listen to My Teacher's Secret Life, discuss the content, and make predictions about what the teacher and their peers do when they are away from school. The students will readily join in the discussion by offering information about their unique personal lives. As their teacher you will help them discover who you are outside of school. This process allows you and your students to form a bond and create a positive community that will last the entire school year.
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| From Theory to Practice |
The first days of school are crucial for setting a class atmosphere where children feel welcome. They will be meeting new people and discovering new things. Laying a foundation early for a community to grow in the classroom is vital for success throughout the school year. As Bobbi Fisher notes, "[C]ommunity is the entire orchestra playing in harmony, with each musician contrubuting his or her best to the piece. Just as the conductor is responsible for the quality of the music, we as teachers are responsible for the quality of community that develops in our classrooms. What we expect, model, and create becomes the reality. Children will rise to our expectations of the kinds of caring and learning that should go on" (1).
Fisher, Bobbi. 1995. Thinking and Learning Together: Curriculum and Community in a Primary Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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| Student Objectives |
Students will
- listen to the book, My Teacher's Secret Life, looking for clues to enhance their listening skills.
- discuss what they like to do outside of school.
- discover what their teacher enjoys outside of school.
- draw a picture and write about their lives away from school.
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| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
- Arrange personal artifacts you have brought from home around the room.
- Gather children to central reading location.
- Hang chart paper for all to see.
Instruction & Activities
- Introduce My Teacher's Secret Life to the class and read it aloud.
- Open discussion and let students talk about what they do away from school. Allow for every student who wants to share.
- Record individual responses on chart paper.
- After children have responded, propse to children, What do you think Ms./Mr. ______ does after school and on the weekends? Instruct the children to look around the room for clues. Expand on what is said by sharing some information about your life outside of school.
- After the children return to their seats, list what they have guessed about you on another sheet of chart paper, including drawing some of the items.
- Teacher then models writing a book of his or her life using the Stapleless Book Planning Sheet. If possible, make copies for each student to bring home.
- Working at home with their parents, the class draws glimpses of their personal lives on the planning sheet, showing what they enjoy doing when they are away from school. They can include photographs, drawings, and at least two sentences about their pictures. Have the students bring their chosen materials to school the next day.
- Have each student create a stapleless book of their own "secret lives."
- Finally, encourage the children to share the books with each other, reading what they wrote and decribing their artwork.
Web Resources
- Stephen Krensky Author Homepage
http://www.stephenkrensky.com/
- Krensky talks about his books for teachers and students on this inviting Web site.
- Stapleless Book Student Interactive
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/stapleless/index.html
- ReadWriteThink Stapleless Book
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| Student Assessment/Reflections |
- Observe students as they participate in class discussion.
- Give students feedback on their stapleless books. This is a good diagnostic tool to gauge the level of the students' writing skills at the beginning of the year.
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3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4 - Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5 - Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
12 - Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
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