April 6, 2013

We had a fun and relaxing Spring Break, and we hope you all did as well.  It was good, however, to get back into our routine.

We had an exciting breakthrough this week.  All year long we have tried to encourage our students to become independent thinkers, to take lessons to another level, to take ownership of the lessons, and to kind of run the room while we facilitate.  And it finally happened!!! We read the book I Am The Dog I Am The Cat. The purpose was to reinforce the idea of voice in writing by having students identify the voices of the two characters in this book.  In the middle of the reading one of our students said, "Hey, I have a great idea.  Everyone could read a dog part or cat part.  We can try to sound like them."  You could have knocked us over.  It was one of those moments of "Why didn't I think of that?"  We have been using this book for years!!!! So our lesson plans took a turn.  We typed the book into a reader's theater for the kids to perform.

To ensure students used voice in their performance, we needed to have a discussion about the moods, feelings, and attitudes of the cat and the dog.  The students chose their character and then practiced their parts in two separate groups--the dog group and the cat group.  We had to model a lot to try and help the students become their character.  This was a challenge, but it was a fun one!  After three days of practicing in separate groups and as a whole group we were ready to perform.  The students recorded their performance in a podcast.  We will be doing some editing this weekend by adding sound and pictures.

To take this voice lesson one step further we went back to our original writing lesson.  We brainstormed a list of other pairs that could go together such as cookies and milk, fish and worm, brother and sister, bird and worm, rabbit and carrot etc.  After choosing their character pairs, students worked in groups to discuss what these voices might sound like and words the voices might use.  Then it was time to write.  We are still in the middle of our rough drafts, which you will find below.

Students are also working on the flap books they will use to publish this writing.  Below are samples of that, too.  You can find our complete three-lesson writing plan called Writing With Voice at our Teachers pay Teachers store.

This week we decided to keep the blog short and sweet.  Talk to you online next week.  Have a great week.

Kim and Anne