The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan ~ A Unit of Study (Yr 4 upwards) This lesson provides students with the opportunity to develop their literal and inferential comprehension skills with the use of a fictional text. This unit of study includes predicting, discussing and viewing before assessing students’ comprehension abilities. Arts Ideas can also be incorporated into this unit.
The joy in this lesson is the students predfictions, impressions and descriptions are so varied it provides evidence to the students how we all interpret differently. This unit could be taught over a week or two weeks, because each time the text is shown something new is seen. Year 4: Year 5: Lesson 1 – Introduction/Warm up: Student prediction – To gain their attention tell students the title ‘The Lost Thing’, but don’t show them the cover and you could complete a class brainstorm of possible predictions, individual prediction on Post-It note or a quick T/P/S Lesson 1 – Body: Read the text to students – just READ! Lesson 2: Possible discussion points as a class: Lesson 4: Conclusion: What is Visual Literacy? | Picture This! Visual Literacy in the Classroom. Research shows that Visual Literacy, “a person’s ability to interpret and create visual information—to understand images of all kinds and use them to communicate more effectively,” is a successful strategy for all learners (Burmark, 2002, p. v).
But what does this really involve? In the preface to Burmark’s book Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn (2002), Tad Simons defines visual literacy as “a learned skill, not an intuitive one. It doesn’t just happen. One becomes visually literate by studying the techniques used to create images, learning the vocabulary of shapes and colors, identifying the characteristics of an image that gives it meaning, and developing the cognitive skills necessary to interpret or create the ideas that inform an image, be it a television show, photograph, painting, chart, graph, advertisement, Power Point slide, animated GIF, or monster movie” (p. v).
So what does this look like in the classroom? Albers, P. (2007). Alberto, P. Avgerinou, M. (2008). Wayspicturetells. EvaluatingPixBooks. Resource 1. Australian_curriculum_-_english. Petaa_nswsyllabus. A morning in Year 6. A new beginning → My summer is over. I am in Adelaide on a PYP course and slowly my school brain cells are coming to life. As usual part of my awakening is a […] Team work → I have always promoted team work in my classroom, sometimes I will put my students into groups, at other times I will let them choose. Of course some groups will work better than others, some […] Why I love Wednesdays → Wednesday – The hump day, a not quite halfway through the week kind of a day. Our Class Essential Agreement → A great deal of talking and reflecting has been going on in our class this week. NMA - Collections search results.
Www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/19633/Analyse_political_cartoons_bw.pdf. Digital Storytelling. Academic Vocabulary Games. Vocabulary Strategies - Learning Tasks. Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary. Doing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary. Every Monday my seventh grade English teacher would have us copy a list of 25 words she'd written on the board.
We'd then look up the dictionary definitions and copy those down. For homework, we'd re-write each word seven times. Good, now you know it. Test on Friday and never for those 25 words to be seen again. Poof. Old school, yes. Copying definitions from the dictionary we would probably all agree is not an effective way to learn vocabulary. The truth is, and the research shows, students need multiple and various exposures to a word before they fully understand that word and can apply it.
Selecting Words Ah, so many words, so little time. My first year teaching, before my tenth graders began reading Lord of the Flies, I went through every chapter and made lists of all the vocabulary words I thought they'd have trouble with, so that I could pre-teach them. When I looked at those long lists, I began to freak out. Then, here's what to do after the students pick their own words: Resources. Vocabulary Instructional Strategies: Marzano's 6-Step Process.
By Kimberly Tyson, Ph. D. Vocabulary and its strong relationship to comprehension has been verified over and over again. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read as well as reading to learn. We also know that increasing vocabulary knowledge plays a large part in overall school success and has a direct impact on comprehension. Effective vocabulary instruction is a key foundation to helping students acquire a wide and diverse vocabulary.
Additionally, active engagement helps students take part in the learning process and begin to “own” the words and understand word meaning in multiple contexts. Teachers need a variety of instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary Instructional Strategies: Marzano’s 6-Step Process The six-step process includes the following steps: For several years, I’ve been teaching this process to teachers and helping them implement it in their classrooms. Lessons Learned The process works best when you don’t skip any steps. Vocabulary Ideas compiled by Deb.doc. Expanding Vocabulary, One Schools Creative Idea (ARTICLE) Expanding Vocabulary, One School's Creative Idea (ARTICLE) We are always looking for clever and creative ideas for supporting children as they work on expanding their vocabulary. We received permission from Darlene, a literacy coach from Canandigua, New York, to share with you her school-wide vocabulary initiative call "Big Dog Words.
" The initiative is grounded in the research by Isabell Beck, PhD and her work with 'tier two' words. (you can read more about these types of vocabulary words in her book: Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Isabel L. Beck, et. al.) Darlene writes, "Our "Big Dog" vocabulary words were taken school wide last year as I created 2 Big Dog words lists (one for primary and one for intermediate). Students are presented the words over the announcements (1 word per week). This summer we even had a Big Dog Vocabulary Reading Challenge for students where they looked for their big dog words in the books they read. Vocabulary Game. International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Online Keyboard LEXILOGOS.
Teaching Challenges: Literacy Unit - Rowan of Rin. This week we began a novel study on the book Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda. This is an adventure story that usually appeals to boys aged 9-12 and can be that motivator that hooks them into reading. Emily Rodda is brilliant at crafting stories that appeal to reluctant readers. Another of hers that I love is Finders Keepers.I'm going to keep a record here of the activities we do with each chapter. I have been using the Four Roles of the Reader to develop these activities.
Feel free to use and/or modify these ideas with your students. For the complete Rowan of Rin unit (in reverse order!) Chapters 1 and 2 - SummaryIn these chapters we meet the characters and find out that the village Rin is in trouble. Work on developing reading fluency with the first three paragraphs.Highlight nouns in this passage. Text User Discuss features of a first chapter in a Narrative. Lettrs. Rowan of Rin.
Writing. Free Educational Games Online. The Literacy Block. Saturday, 7 July 2012 at 3:47 pm A literacy block should provide a balanced program of literacy instruction including the following teaching/learning approaches to support reading and writing. Essential Reading Components: Modelled Reading occurs when an expert reader reads a difficult text to less experienced readers, enabling the experienced reader to model how effective readers sound, solve and think about texts when readingThe “think aloud” strategy is used strategically by the expert reader to model thinking and problem solving actions.
Reading Aloud occurs when an expert reader reads a difficult text to less experienced readers for the purposes of: building a community of readers,creating shared experiences amongst students,exposing students to new ideas, story lines, characters and contexts,exposing students to new vocabulary, text and language structures,building a love of reading. Shared Reading Guided Reading Guided Reading/Reciprocal Teaching Independent Reading Modelled Writing The Aim. Literacy Resources. Literacy Resources for Teachers 2010 Improvement Plan (.doc) 2010 Improvement Plan (.pdf) Blank Frayer Model (.doc) Blank Frayer Model (.pdf) Bloom - One Page Poster (.doc) Bloom - One Page Poster (.pdf) Clock Buddies (.pdf) Department Chair Schedule (.d0c) Department Chair Schedule (.pdf) Gradual Release of Responsibility Graphic (.pdf) Jigsaw Notetaking Sheet (.doc) Jigsaw Notetaking Sheet (.pdf) Lit Toolbox Cover (.doc) Lit Toolbox Cover (.pdf) Major Adolescent Literacy Concepts (.pdf) Marzano Vocabulary Instructions (.doc) Marzano Vocabulary Instructions (.pdf) October Mentor Plan (.doc) October Mentor Plan (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Bookmark (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Notetaking Chart (.doc) Reciprocal Teaching Notetaking Chart (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Record Sheet (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Template (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Worksheet Example (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching Worksheet (.pdf) Reciprocal Teaching (.doc) Reciprocal Teaching (.pdf) Six Thinking Hats (.doc) Six Thinking Hats (.pdf)