I liked the way the author, Reese, developed a lesson plan (if you will) on story development using picture-books. She and her students definitely reached their objectives.
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For students to develop a sense of story ~ I think she accomplished this task by first introducing wordless books to her whole class. By having the students as a whole group state, and agree on a complete sentence, then the teacher write the sentence down and stick it to the story is great. This gives all students, especially the ones who would normally not participate, the opportunity to actively participate in a nonthreatening setting. Then repeating this process with several books definitely gave all the students a chance to become comfortable with developing stories.
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To use higher level thinking skills ~ The students had the opportunity to show what they knew when they were paired up. Having teams of skilled readers and spellers with less skilled readers and spellers is ideal. Because students are working with wordless books, I feel that this levels the playing fields for all students; therefore the less skilled students wouldn’t feel threatened by the textbook, nor by their partner….now all students get to share in the input of the stories. Having the students make the list of what good writers do and how to write good sentences is wonderful. Since they have already experienced success with the teacher, when they were in whole group, now the list has become their own; so making the decision to use it will be theirs…not because the teacher told them to.
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To develop their writing skills ~ Now that students have worked with the teacher, in a whole group setting, and worked with a partner….they are now ready and very well capable to develop their writing skills independently. Since they have had lots of hands on training, they are ready, and they know to look though the entire book and think about the story; use sticky notes to help them brainstorm ideas and tie their words with the pictures; reread their story to make sure it makes sense, and no errors; then turn it in to the teacher.
I really like this format Reese has laid out. So combining her format with the previous article I just read…Wordless books, by Cassady. I can’t wait to explore all the possibilities and try it with my students.
