Reader's Theater, An Overlooked Powerhouse!

Happy Summer!  I hope that everyone is taking a little time to catch some R&R while summer is still going strong.  Above, I am dropping my soon to be 4th and 5th graders off at church summer camp (sniff, sniff)!  We have never done this before and I don't know who was more nervous me or them?!  Poor baby girl was heart broken because sisters aren't around to play with her...good thing mommy is!  I have played barbies, read a million books, and played beachball volleyball...all before lunch!  Good thing I am a Plexus Powered mommy, cause I wouldn't be able to keep up without it!  These all natural products give me the health and energy to keep up with the demands of life!

I am a huge proponent of Reader's Theater in the classroom!  It does take a little creativity and organization to fit it into the elementary day.  I committed about 10-15 minutes each week and it was WORTH every minute!  The pay offs are BIG!

Powerhouse Pay-Offs

-Kids are excited about reading!

-Parents get involved, are excited, and supportive too!

-Poise, intonation, ennunciation, and authentic fluency and voice are learned through practice, repetition, and peer demonstration!

-Kids are empowered and aquire greater self-esteem about their abilities as a reader!!

These are huge benefits because kiddos who believe they can read are more willing to take risks and push themselves to become better readers!  What teacher doesn't want that for every student who walks through their classroom door?!

How it works for me:

In my classroom I dedicate a roster strictly to keeping track of who is assigned to what script.  This helps ensure that NO one is left out and keeps track of what scripts I have used that year (I try REALLY hard not to repeat).  In the beginning, I try to pick scripts by flexible reading groups.  This allows me at least 1 initial lesson to go over my expectations of a Reader's Theater presentation.  It allows the group to learn to follow a script, ask questions, etc.  I initially did this with 1st graders and it worked just as beautifully with 2nd---I have not yet braved trying this with my preschoolers.  Not sure how it would go or how to modify.  If you have ideas, PLEASE share!!  Our initial lesson during group time would also give me a chance to go over intonation and voice with my kiddos.  We discussed how it was important to read through and understand what your character was like based on their actions  (super authentic reading lesson!!).  We would also discuss what props they might be able to look for at home to help support their role as this character.  (in my letter explaining the scripts to the parents it is noted that they are NOT to go out and purchase props.)  Props are a lot of fun and add to the experience, but I had many students who never got into that sort of thing and that was perfectly fine.  Props were completely optional. In my experience, as the year went on and the kiddos grew more confident, I saw more and more props.  I had to eventually make a rule, that if you brought a "costume", you had to be able to slip it on over your school clothes---no running to the restroom to change!  (great problem to have to solve in my opinion--kids so excited they are willing to go the extra mile to present their script to their peers.)

The Schedule:

So a typical week would have been that I handed out the scripts with explanation letter and part attached on Thursday or Friday.  This would give them the weekend to begin going over their lines.

The next Monday or Tuesday I would utilize 1 reading group time to meet with my theater performers.  This lesson is essential in the beginning to "set the stage" so to speak.  If you have high expectations, like I do, it is necessary to ensure they don't get up their and read like robots or stumble over all their lines.  I'm not talking perfection---but I AM talking practiced.  In fact, in my class I told them that if they could not read their lines then I would become their character.  No one likes to have to struggle in front of their peers.  (this only happened once or twice, Reader's Theater is a pretty strong motivator!)

Then depending on our schedule that week we would present to the class on Wed or Thursday.  I would take pictures that I would post to my website, there was applause and bowing, and then we would have comments.  I would call on 3 people from the polite audience who had a compliment for the group.  Then I would call on 1 person who had a thought for something the ENTIRE group could work on.  (this takes training...if your kiddos are new to this type of feedback sharing, I would let them do the complimenting and YOU do the "work on" part.  Eventually they're coming up with ennunciation all on their own!  Easy, right?!  

I have such fond memories of our Reader's Theater times!  Here are a few of the pictures I dug up from years past.

sometimes I would use the smart board to project an image.  Especially if we were doing a nonfiction Reader's Theater!  The kiddos LOVED this!

 Can you guess what we need to work on here?  If you guessed eye contact and not hiding behind your script, you are right!  Always an unending battle!!

 Before our first few presentations we would always review what appropriate "audience" behavior looked like and sounded like.

Eventually if I did not have an image that needed projected.  I would just project the stage template found in the images on notebook software.

I hope this helps to either affirm or inspire YOU to utilize the reading powerhouse of Reader's Theater in YOUR classroom!

Five for Friday

Linking back up with Doodle Bugs Teaching  for Five 4 Friday!  Happy Friday Everyone!!

#1

First things first! We finally got to finish celebrating my sweet Hubby's birthday with the rescheduled hockey match between the Dallas Stars and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Wednesday night.  This was so much fun and very much unexpected.  I figured when they rescheduled the event for a Wednesday it was going to be out of the question  (see I'm married to the church via my husband and we lead bible studies on Wednesday night!).  However, we found wonderful substitues and decided to continue in our celebration of the wonderful man God has blessed my life with and go and enjoy a night out!  It was fun and best of all our home team won, Go Jackets! (we are originally from C-bus).

#2

Zero the Hero made his appearance again this week!!  On the 10th of April (because we had school and the date contained a zero).  I have modified the way I do Zero the Hero due to circumstances.  I now teach a 3 day a week program and so counting every 10 days would take WAY too long to get to 100.  So I just celebrate with a little treat every time we are actually in school on a date that contains zero and journal about what "zero" left for us.  It has been a great way to keep the kiddos paying attention to numbers in general.  This time around we had die cut 1's and a mini donut left on our snack mats. The kiddos had discussion (facilitated of course by me) about why Zero left the things he did.  They have caught on pretty quickly that Zero really likes round things because he is round.  They eventually figured out that they could make the number 10 with the objects he left them!  Fun for the kiddos and great for their budding brains!!

#3

We were studying birds this week and what is bird week without a cute art project?  Now, I can't take credit for this one, but my teaching neighbor Ms. Kim did the most adorable extension after reading the book Owl Babies by Martin Waddel.  For a closer look, check out my shelf on shelfari.  I did read the book with my class and we did a venn diagram after having a discussion on nocturnal animals.  We decided to compare bats and owls (since we had previously studied bats during the Halloween season).  They did a great job, but thought the name of the chart "venn diagram" was a really funny word:)  Kids at this age are so sweet!!  My sweet neighbor managed to squeeze in an art project that used cotton balls to create the 3 owl babies!!  Absolutely adorable!!  I will need to remember this for next year.  This is a pic that I found on pinterest, but my neighbor used just 1 cotton ball per owl and googlie eyes instead of construction paper.  Still super cute!!  I'll have to remember to take some pics of hers and post.

#4

Instead of a craft, we did a journal entry.  I had a whole bunch of pictures of different types of birds that I gave to the kiddos to pick one that they liked.  Earlier in the week we had talked about how we might draw a bird on our own using simple shapes, like circles, ovals, triangles, etc.  So the kiddos took the pictures (which conveniently had the name of each bird on it) and drew their version and wrote the name.  This is the first time I have ever given them actual lines.  I know that the opinions vary about when to start using lines for writing, but I just wanted to see what they would do.  It was interesting actually.  Some didn't use them at all, while others drew their own lines to use.

#5

As a part of our bird week, we of course had to paint with feathers!!  I normally offer kiddos the choice of table or easel, but this time, I asked them to use the easel.  I only had one kiddo who really did NOT want to use the easel.  It was surprising how much the kiddos who don't usually prefer the easel, LOVED it.  I always tell them how important it is to try new things!!  We had a lot of fun painting with a variety of feathers and "feather-like" objects. 

Don't even get me started on the importance of paint in a child's early development!!  Some of the important ones can be reviewed below for those moments when your adult brain and fear of mess tries to convince you otherwise.

“Given an easel, paper, and paint, and no directions, every child will paint!” (Katherine H. Read 1967)

Paint and Physical Development

• Painting provides numerous opportunities for advancing physical abilities including fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and visual perception (Danko-Mckee & Slutsky 2003). In addition, teachers regularly observe children developing gross motor skills, sensory integration, grip strength and balance when working at the easels.
• Research has documented that the act of painting promotes lateralization of the left and right brain hemispheres (Feldman 2003), improving the brain’s ability to integrate functions such as creative thinking with planning and execution.

Paint and Emotional Development

• The process of painting can be a soothing sensory experience for young children. At Bing, it often aids in separation from caregivers and can be used as a tool to process emotional experiences.
• The medium of paint has the ability to transform feelings and ideas into visual form, offering children a means of communication other than verbalization.
• Engaging with and conversing about paintings (both those created by children and professional artists) promotes an awareness of and an appreciation for the aesthetic qualities in art and in life.
• The act of painting supports the development of self-efficacy, self-restraint and self-correction (Feldman 2003).

Paint and Social Development

• Painting supports the development of a self-concept (Feldman 2003).
• It provides an opportunity to observe peers in their process and connect through a shared interest.
• Group painting invites planning, turn taking and collaboration.
• Painting also supports group project work as a method of documentation and sharing children’s ideas.

Paint and Cognitive Development

• Painting involves a number of cognitive tasks for children, such as “experimentation, exploration of cause-and-effect relationships, critical thinking skills, and visual discrimination” (Danko-McGee & Slutsky 2003).
• While painting, children encounter opportunities to learn about colors, shapes, sizes, textures, categorization and numeracy.
• Painting inspires planning, problem solving and symbolic thinking, as well as discussions involving a child’s own observations and evaluations.

Paint and Language Development

• Painting can encourage children’s discussion of art terminology, qualities of the paint, order, direction, location and spatial relationships.
• Children often incorporate story elements into their work or provide a narrative of their thoughts and theories while they work.
• Research with young children suggests that children who are encouraged to draw and paint at an early age will later learn to compose stories more easily, more effectively and with greater confidence than children who do not receive this encouragement (Applebee 1988; Clay 1995).
• Finally, painting also provides the opportunity to explore visual patterns, imagery and literacy concepts that precede formal writing (Olshansky 1995).

Just wanted to share a few important reminders as to why getting a little messy every day is important!  Hoping you have a terrific Friday!!  That's the News, Views & Stews of my week.  How was yours?

Tuesday tech tip

My daughter wanted to write a story the other day and so I decided to have a little fun and discover some new technology.  I found a great little program called Story Board That . It's an online and app based ( for all you lucky peeps who have chrome books ) program that allows the writer to create story boards with a variety of characters, backgrounds, etc. You can even upload your own pictures!!

My daughters spent their beautiful Saturday creating stories.

Manipulating the character's hair, eye, and skin color. Placing them into the scenes they wanted for their storyline. Adding text in either text boxes or a variety of speech bubbles.  ( remember, this is all on the first real day if spring break!!)

And, the kicker is I had even turned on a movie (planes) just to see if I could pull them away!!  Talk about a teacher's dream come true!!  I actually had to kick them off and tell them that they had worked long enough for today and promise them they could work on it tomorrow.  This has gone on for more than 3 days now!! So.... 

I'm thinking, no!! I'm wishing that I had a classroom to try it out in!!  The motivation is obvious.  The teacher aspects are even better. First of all, the program is EASY to use!! If my 4 year old can do it with little help then any grade school child or partner pair would be able to navigate through(obviously she can't type her story yet). Hmmm I wonder if you can record??  

I absolutely LOVE the teacher dashboard!  Logged in as a teacher, you are able to see the storyboards of all your students at a glance.  In a moment you'll be able to tell whether Suzy Q. is really hard at work on her story, or hard at work creating an imaculate picture. 

 You are also able to present student's storyboards from your dashboard.  I would utilize this mode for group editing mini lessons.  Simply select the desired student's storyboard from the teacher dashboard page and open.  Then located at the bottom of the storyboard are buttons with options, such as "make visible to classroom".

If you are needing an actual product or would like to share with others the work of your students you are able to print and download a powerpoint of the storyboard.

Another fun feature I have discovered while playing with this program is the ability to create a storyboard and save it as a template for your students to use.  I can see this being extremely beneficial for younger classes or faster paced assignments. I could even see using it as an evaluation of recently taught grammar lessons or writing techniques.  The possibilities are endless!

Well, even though it's late....I believe it's a good one!  I hope you have enjoyed this Tuesday's Tech Tip!  

Funday Sunday; March 9

Linking up with Molly at Lucky to be in First and Deirdre at A Burst of First for Sunday Funday, where we fight the Sunday Blues by sharing some of the fun we had over the weekend!

Today is my dear friend's birthday and I had my ladies sing to him in a video!! It made him smile and made my day!  Happy Birthday friend! Hope it was terrific.

My weekend went by in the blink of an eye and was spent on the basketball court. We had our final regular season game and it was super exciting!!

Here are my cuties!! Check out there numbers that they happened to get!  In age order the youngest and the oldest make the middle number:)

I also had the priviledge of listening to my middle girlie play in her percussion group at church this morning.  How I love seeing my girls involved in church.

And that was my Funday Sunday!  Wishing you all a Sunday that was just as fun!

                                                       

Tomorrow will be Totally WRAD!

WRAD

We are so excited for World Read Aloud Day! (WRAD)   Truthfully we are combining celebrations of Dr. Seuss and World Read Aloud Day.  We have decided to share our love of reading with our class by having a couple guest readers come in and share their favorite Dr. Seuss books and utilize technology by listening to someone famous read a book.   I found this really fun site run by the Screen Actors Guild called Story Online. Each book is paired with an activity guide and the videos are high quality.  Check out a couple below.  I hope you take the time to celebrate World Read Aloud Day and change the world by instilling a love of reading in our future!

When Pigasso Met Mootisse


Romeow & Drooliet

A few of my all time favorite Dr. Seuss books are:

See this book on my Shelf I love this read aloud for modeling character voices, to talk about how character's can change, and for teaching about the importance of caring and conserving our resources.

See this book on my Shelf! I love using this book at the beginning of the year to discuss emotions and how we all feel a variety each day.  We discuss how feelings are not bad and all feelings are allowed.  We then discuss how to properly handle and express our feelings so that we all remain in a safe environment.

See this book on my Shelf! I love this story when addressing how we should treat others.  This is a great character lesson book with "The Zax", "Too Many Daves", and "What was I Afraid of?" included.

Hoping Everyone has a WRAD day!!

                                                       

Still Learning...

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Linking up with Doodle Bugs for the Five for Friday Weekly Linky Party.

Valentines and Volcanoes!  

What could be more fun for four year olds!!  I had set out a bunch of old Valentine cards that I had collected over the years (you know, the 4 or 5 that you always have left over...or the extra box or two that you bought "just in case" one of your students forgot).  Wow!  that Valentine station was packed during choice time all week long!  Which is a big deal in a boy heavy class!!  Little did they realize how much fine motor and writing practice they were getting in!!

Science with a Splash of Fun!

Did I say Volcano?  Yes I did!  To celebrate our letter V, we created a volcano and then made it explode!!  What a fun science experiement that was!  I recorded some great videos of the scientific process in action.  The kids made some pretty entertaining predictions and had a lot of fun observing the experiment.  So much fun that we had to do it about 10 or 12 times!!  We went throught a whole BOX of baking soda.  Lots of smiles, memories, and as I like to say "wrinkles in the brain" were made with one simple activity.

Furry Friends

We adopted a new 4 legged family member!!  Her name is Bonnie and she is now sister to older brother Buckeye.  She is a very sweet heeler mix whom we found at the Collin County Animal Shelter.  Our first Dog, Buckeye has had a hard time with our move (which is now 6 mos ago!!)  He has been anxiously chewing away at his paw and everytime we get it healed....he goes right back to it!!  Well after some research we decided to try and add a "pack" member so that he might now feel so lonely during the day....we will see how this goes.  I really don't want to resort to "medicating" our dog so that he will quite trying to chew his foot off!  If you all have suggestions, PLEASE share because I feel like we have tried just about everything!  Comment Below!!

Super Star Students and Bucket Filling....  

I am sure that your school has some form of either or both of these programs.  Because I am pressed for time due to the length of my preschool day,  I have chosen to combine the two during the 2nd half of the year.  Each student gets their own special week of course, but at the end they get to take home a special book of bucket filling notes from each of their friends as a momento!  Now, in my classroom I do most of the writing and the kiddos get to do the pics, but this can go a long way in any classroom.  In my opinion, teaching kids to see the good in EVERYONE is a life lesson that needs to be practiced over and over and over again.

The Superstar Week goes as such:  

Tuesday: 

present poster--great oral language development for both class and student.  

Families have a blast getting involved in creating something to share with the class.

Wednesday:  

Show and Tell Mystery Item--student gives the class 3 clues and students get 3 guesses.  

Afterwhich the star reveals the item, speaks about it, and gets to pass it around.

Thursday: 

 Star Interview (great language development by learning to ask and answer questions!) 

and Bucket filler journal pages are assembled into a book for the superstar to bring home!

Just a bit ago our school hosted its very FIRST art show.  It was an amazing collection of unique and individual art projects created by our kiddos aged 18mos to kindergarten!  We showcased their work gallery style and held a special night to honor them. Everyone had a blast and we all had such a great time creating and admiring their hard work.  Hats off to the Arts and all they offer our kids to developing skills and self-esteem!! We had a blast showcasing the kids and setting up a "gallery" for the parents to come and enjoy!  The best was typing up the "art blurbs" about each budding artist.

Wishing YOU a Happy Friday!!


                                                       

'Though the Weather Outside is Frightful!!

Meet Icy our ice man who helped to exhibit the ability of water to undergo reversible change as well as the difference between liquid and solid.  When I taught "big kid" school we also used this fun experiment to show the entire water cycle.  (we ended by boiling our ice man's puddle away--a bit morbid, but the kiddos LOVED it and therefore REMEMBERED it!!)

So, how to start?  We started by discussing liquids and solids and followed up with a picture sort.  I like to use real-world objects so that the kiddos understand that what we are talking about can be readily applied.  For some quick images to sort, click the link below.

   Solid Liquid Picture Sort

We then talked about how to change a liquid to a solid.  We did a couple of different things that involved cooking (chemical change/irreversible).  We made cupcakes this year, but I have done pancakes in a regular classroom on a griddle.  Fast, easy, and so much fun!  What kid doesn't remember cooking?! You can do the entire scientific process together with each of these.  For older students, see my scientific lab report on TPT.

My Lab Report

Of course at the tender age of 4 we talked about prediction and outcomes and threw around some terminology, but that was not the focus of this unit.  Our aim was to create a strong understanding of the difference between liquids and solids and their properties.  To end our unit of study, we used our science journals to record how snow (a solid) can change to water (a liquid).  These are simple entries but the kiddos are actually enjoying WRITING because it's about our fun science experiments!  That is a huge accomplishment in a classroom that is predominately 4 year old, rough and tumble boys!

News, Views & Stews