Let's Talk About What We're Going To Read

Alright fellow teachers, this was the best lesson that I have had yet and I highly recommend that you give it a try!  For this lesson, not only did I pre-select the book and pages that I wanted to read (remember less it best with younger children), but I thought of a discussion question to get my little ones thinking before we even began the book.  This week we were focusing on the canopy and some of the creatures that live in this level of the forest.  My question before hand was "What does the canopy look like?"  Prior to this we had already discussed the canopy the day before and some of its characteristics.  By posing this question I was tapping into their prior knowledge as well as getting them to recall what we had already discussed.  Once we had discussed what the kids recalled, knew, or thought they knew, we dove into the pages that I had selected.  I stuck to two different books with a total of three pages.  I have found with this particular class that if you go past three pages, you lose their attention, which is vital to a good lesson.  While we read and looked at the pages the kids were allowed to ask their questions and we discussed them often referring to the book for answers.  I wanted the kids to see that books are good for more than just stories and by locating their answers in the book, I proved this point.  One of the pages that I had selected dealt with howler monkeys.  So following our discussion and reading, I located howler monkey sound bits on the internet and played them for the kids.  They were amazed and as a result of using the internet along with my informational book they are more able to recall the information that we learned about howler monkeys.  The overall results of this lesson was amazing.  My assisstant only recorded six different distracting behaviors.  For 4-yr-olds, that alone is proof that this method is the best!  Well, once again let me know if you try this and what the overall results were.
Erin

What is the Main Focus?

For this informational text, my goal was simple: find a specific topic that was to be the focus and only read pages that had information concerning that focus.  This requires some preparations before using the text because you need to look through the book that you are going to read to identify the pages that you want to share.  What I did is I selected several text that contained information concerning the forest floor in the rainforest.  I wanted specific information concerning the animals that live there and the overall look of the forest floor.  I then marked those pages with Post-It notes that way I could find them easily, cutting back on the amount of time wasted.  When I conducted this activity with my students, I used too many pages which we learned from my last post was a big no no.  So when you try to use focused areas of your informational text, remember less is still best!  My overall results for this lesson were not the best, but that was because I saw what their limit was and blew right past it.  For those of you trying this method, keep that in mind.  Children lose patience just as easily as we do, so keep the information limited to their tolerance level.  You'll feel so much better when you do.  Let me know how this type of lesson works out for you!
Erin

Let's Try Shortening The Amount Read!

This time when I attempted to incorporate an informational text, I decided to use the suggestion of one of my colleagues and only read part of the book everyday.  Before I began circle time activities, I looked over the text that I had selected which was about gravity.  Gravity is a hard concept for young children to understand because it isn't something that is concrete.  I chose to look at the first three pages of this book which basically had the children think about why they just didn't fall off of earth and why everything fell to the ground when pushed, pulled, tripped, or dropped.  I stopped to question the kids as I read each sentence and when the book posed a question I stopped to have the kids think about it and discuss possible answers.  The third page of the text that I selected ended with a question, so I told the kids that their homework for the night was to think about this question and what the answer might be.  Once again, I had my teacher's aide mark tallies on the spreadsheet provided, of all the distracting behaviors that she noticed.  The following are the results.  Talking to neighbors was not noticed.  Kicking feet was noticed 1 time.  Playing with hands was noticed 2 different times.  A non-related question was asked 1 time.  Playing with clothes was noticed 2 different times.  And other distracting behaviors was noticed 3 different times.  As you can probably see from the original tallies marked, the number of distracting behaviors decreased with just a reduction of pages and discussing what was read as we read it.
For the remainder of the week I continued with reading only a few pages and discussion as we read with the same results with the exception of Thursday, but this was because we had a tornado drill in the middle of circle time, causing my students to lose their focus for the remainder our lesson.
Thanks for joining me,
Erin

Let The Journey Begin

I started my journey into the world of informational text by providing myself a base from which to grow from.  I read a informational book about stars without questioning or stopping.  During this time I had my assistant mark tallies on the spreadsheet that I provided, all the disrupting behaviors that occurred.  The following behaviors were observed: talking to neighbor on 7 different occassions, kicking feet four different times, playing with hands 5 different times, non-related questions asked 1 time, playing with clothes 5 different times, and other distracting behaviors 6 different times.  As you can see it wasn't a very successful lesson.  For the next trial, I will incorporate an activity that I have either discussed with colleagues or have read about. 
Thanks for joining me,
Erin