Guest post by Barbie Pace.
Characters have been the central focus of Reading Workshop and Social Studies in first grade over the past several weeks. During Reading Workshop students began by identifying characters, both main and supporting, and came up with a working definition of what a character is. We learned that characters come in all different shapes and sizes. We met characters who were subway cars, shoes, plants, kids, animals, and many more! After identifying characters, we moved on to describing characters using various adjectives as character traits. As we compared and contrasted characters in our just right books, we learned about Venn diagrams and how to use them to organize various pieces of information.
As we looked closer at various character traits, the Fish realized that the author often tells you more about a character through the descriptions of how they move, how they talk and how they feel. Students worked in partnerships to conduct an in-depth character study from one of their just right books. They worked together to identify adjectives that described their character both on the outside and inside as well. The pairs used Book Creator, Draw and Tell, and Drawing Pad to create their character project that focused on how their character changed over the course of their book. They illustrated pictures, took photographs, and recorded their voices over the course of this project.
To view the Fish Class eBooks, click on the title of the book. If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the ePub file directly to your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you will be able to read the eBook. If you are reading this post on your iPad or iPhone, simply click on the ePub file and open in iBooks.
Characters have been the central focus of Reading Workshop and Social Studies in first grade over the past several weeks. During Reading Workshop students began by identifying characters, both main and supporting, and came up with a working definition of what a character is. We learned that characters come in all different shapes and sizes. We met characters who were subway cars, shoes, plants, kids, animals, and many more! After identifying characters, we moved on to describing characters using various adjectives as character traits. As we compared and contrasted characters in our just right books, we learned about Venn diagrams and how to use them to organize various pieces of information.
As we looked closer at various character traits, the Fish realized that the author often tells you more about a character through the descriptions of how they move, how they talk and how they feel. Students worked in partnerships to conduct an in-depth character study from one of their just right books. They worked together to identify adjectives that described their character both on the outside and inside as well. The pairs used Book Creator, Draw and Tell, and Drawing Pad to create their character project that focused on how their character changed over the course of their book. They illustrated pictures, took photographs, and recorded their voices over the course of this project.
To view the Fish Class eBooks, click on the title of the book. If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the ePub file directly to your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you will be able to read the eBook. If you are reading this post on your iPad or iPhone, simply click on the ePub file and open in iBooks.