Throughout the month of December, I worked with the 3rd grade teachers at my school on deepening their students fiction reading skills through a unit of study on characters (based on the CCSS and the work of the TCRWP). One of the greatest challenges that we consistently face as elementary teachers is helping students to build a sophisticated vocabulary that allows them to deepen their ability to infer about characters. Students are much too quick to infer that a character is "nice" or "mean." Or, if they do attempt to use more sophisticated vocabulary, they often use it inaccurately because their level of understanding of the word's meaning is often just that it has a positive or negative connotation, without truly knowing what it means to be, for example, "supportive," or "ambitious." The Common Core Standards call for students to use "domain-specific words and phrases" so we must find innovative ways to do so.

This year, I worked with the teachers on a new way to help students not only build their vocabulary for describing characters, but also to deepen their understanding of what these new words really mean. After briefly introducing several sophisticated character traits by defining them with a more basic level synonym, we modeled how to delve more deeply into one particular trait by considering what a character with that trait might say, think, and do.


Then we assigned each small group of 4 to 5 students one character trait to explore deeply by discussing, acting out, and jotting down what a character with that trait might say, think, or do. After working with their group for about 10 minutes, each group was responsible for teaching their character trait to the rest of the class. By the end of this activity, students were not only exposed to many new sophisticated character traits, but they also began developing a much stronger understanding of what each trait truly means. This lead to more sophisiticated thinking, jotting, and debating about the traits that best fit the characters in their own independent reading books across subsequent weeks.  Check out some student samples from this activity below, and feel free to comment on how you help your students to develop domain-specific vocabulary across subject areas!

I don't know what it is about snow days that inspires me to blog! Maybe it's because snow days are the perfect chance to experiment with new digital literacy tools, and blogging is the perfect forum for sharing the results of experimenting. 

Next week, the gifted teacher and I will teach our staff how to use Educreations, which is a tool for creating and sharing video lessons that both teachers and students can use. Teachers can use this tool to: present a new concept, review a familiar concept, post on their website for parents and students to watch or review material at home, etc. Students can use it to demonstrate and teach how to solve a math problem, when and why to use punctuation, to record a book talk or book review, etc. The possibilities are truly endless, and it's really simple to use! Here is a simple Educreation that I created while experimenting with the tool today. The topic is writing mini-lessons. Warning: my voice sounds pretty funny.

 http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/writing-mini-lessons/15370777/?s=oUzQKN&ref=app

Please comment below on how you have used Educreations or a similar tool in your own classroom OR how you could envision using this tool to support current and future literacy work in your classroom.  

Thanks for reading LOL!