Wonderful Writer: Paul Galdone

The Three Bears

Paul Galdone

Voice

Lesson Focus: Using voice in writing

Focus Grade Level: First Grade

Time Frame: One Day

Focus Text/Author: The Three Bears/ Paul Galdone

Supporting Text:

·         Goldilocks and The Three Bears/ James Marshall

·         Martha Speaks/ Susan Meddaugh

Other Materials:

·         Chart paper

·         Letter writing paper

·         Markers

·         pencils

Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:

Standards: Writing Process and Writing Applications

K-2 Benchmark:

Writing Process

B. Develop audience and purpose for self-selected and assigned writing tasks.

Writing Applications

A. Compose writings that convey a clear message and include well-chosen details.

C. Write friendly letters and invitations complete with date, salutation, body, closing and   

     signature.

1^st Grade Level Indicators:

Writing Process

2. Develop a main idea for writing.

3. Determine purpose and audience.

10. Add descriptive words and details.

Writing Applications

3. Write friendly letters or invitations that follow a simple letter format.

Book Summary:

In this children's classic, Galdone gives a new generation of readers an entertaining look at Little Wee Bear, Middle-Sized Bear, Great Big Bear, and Goldilocks. Graphically interesting, the text appears respectively sized in "Little Wee," "Middle-Sized" and "Great Big" characters, cleverly differentiating each bear's speech.

About the Author:

Paul Galdone was born in 1907 in Budapest, Austria- Hungary and immigrated to the United States in 1921. Galdone studied art and served in World War II.  In addition to being an author and illustrator of children's books, he was employed as a bus boy, electrician's helper, and fur dryer. His work was awarded runner up for the Caldecott Medal and selection by the American Library Association for notable books. He died of a heart attack on 7 November 1986, in New  York.

Before the Lesson:

This should not be your students’ first letter writing experience. This should be a review for them and the teacher’s letter should be a model. It should also be a familiar read for the students. Remember to use the Three Little Bears as an example of different ways to include a character’s or author’s voice in their writing.

Lesson Steps:

1.       Read the story of The Three Bears to the class. Remind students of how he uses different names for the characters.

2.       Discuss how Paul Galdone used the three voices of the bears to understand the characters feelings and actions in the story. How did Baby Bear feel? How did you know that? How did Papa Bear feel? How did Paul help you know that? How did Mama Bear feel? What makes you think that?

3.       How did changing our voice help us know who was talking in the story? This is an example of voice in stories. Good writers use voice to help their readers understand who is talking in their stories just like Paul did,

4.       Tell students and turn to a partner to talk like Papa Bear would to Goldilocks. Discuss how his voice would be stern and firm. Do the same thing with Mama Bear’s voice. How did she feel? Sad because she did not have permission or an invitation to come in. Then do it with Baby Bear’s voice. How did he talk? Hurt, because his things were broken.

5.       Model writing a letter using a think aloud of how Mama Bear would write to Goldilocks. As you write the letter, remind students of where to put capitals, punctuation and indentations (although this is not the complete focus). “I think if I was Mama Bear, I would say that I was disappointed in his behavior. That is how my mom talks to me. I would also say I hope he asks permission next time because I hear my mom say that a lot.”

6.       Have students state why you can tell it is from Mama Bear before reading the closing. Encourage connections to their own lives and how their mom’s would talk.

7.       Have students go back and write a letter to Goldilocks from one of the three bears using voice just like Paul did in his writing. Remind students that they will want the reader to know who is writing the letter without looking at who it is from. Tell students to not put who it is from yet until after the partner share.

8.       Have students share their letters with a partner. Can their partner tell who it is from? If so, why? If not, how could they make it better?

9.       Encourage students to fix anything that will make their voice clear in their letters. Then write who the letter is from.

10.   Post examples of writing that used voice like good writers do.

11.   Encourage to practice using voice in letters or writing stories. Explore other books to understand how voice is used to create humor, sadness, anger and other emotions.

Additional Resources:

http://writingfix.com/6_Traits/Primary/Bear_Bear_Bear.htm

http://apps.educationnorthwest.org/traits/lessonplans.php

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com

Wonderful Writer: Jane Yolen

Owl Moon

Jane Yolen

Sentence Fluency

Lesson Focus: Using a variety of strategies to start sentences

Focus Grade Level: First Grade

Time Frame: Several Days

Focus Text/Author: Owl Moon/ Jane Yolen

Other Materials:

·         chart paper

·         copies of a short passage from Owl Moon-enlarged print

·         highlighters

·         Construction paper copies of three chosen sentences from Owl Moon

Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:

Standard: Writing Processes

K-2 Benchmark:

D. Use revision strategies and resources to improve ideas and content, organization, word

    choice and detail.

E. Edit to improve sentence fluency, grammar and usage.

1^st Grade Level Indicators:

6. Construct complete sentences with subjects and verbs.

7. Mimic language from literature when appropriate.

9. Reread own writing for clarity.

10. Add descriptive words and details.

Book Summary:

In this story a father and his daughter go searching for the great horned owl together on a moon-lit winter night. The little girl ends up discovering how a winter night feels and how much you can learn from watching and listening in the night.  At the end of the story, they finally find the owl they were searching for.

About the Author:

Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction books.  She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century.

http://janeyolen.com/

Before the Lesson:

This should be a familiar read of Owl Moon. Students should already have had the chance to discuss the literary elements of the story. Now, students should be focused on Jane Yolen and how she wrote the story to convey a clear message using clear sentence fluency.

Things to Remember:

This lesson requires students to read passages. This needs to be done when your students have a good foundation of word knowledge and problem solving strategies. This book should be familiar to help with this skill but it should not be a book that they have to learn how to read. You want to make sure they can read the passages with ease if you are going to have your students examine the writing in the story. If they are unable, create an overhead of the passages and read it as a class and do a whole group lesson rather than peer work.

Lesson Steps:

Day one

1.       First, read Owl Moon to the students.

2.       Discuss that author Jane Yolen shows off what she does best.  Jane writes beautiful descriptions that sound so rhythmic.  While it might be hard to pinpoint exactly for your students what makes it flow so well, help guide the discussion.  Jane, for example, varies back and forth between longer sentences and shorter sentence.  She also, for the most part, begins her sentences with different words. 

3.       Have several students hold up on construction paper three different sentences from the story you have chosen that vary in length and different beginnings.  Have students discuss and identify the differences between the sentences.

4.       In partners, have students look at a small passage from the story. Have them highlight the beginnings and discuss the different words Jane used.  You will want to group students heterogeneously so that students can help read the story part to each other. I always choose a smaller section with less challenging words.  The very first page is a good page to start the activity.

5.       As a class, create an anchor chart to discuss how Yolen made her story flow. Identify how she made short sentences and long sentences and started with different words. Write down examples on the chart for future reference.  (i.e. she used a person  sometimes, then action words, then describing words, etc.)

6.       As a class, write a shared writing about a day at the swimming pool. Encourage students to think about different beginnings for each sentence while writing it.

7.       After the story is finished, have several students come up and circle the beginning words of the sentences. Did they begin the same? If so, how could we change them? Do our sentences have different lengths? If not, could we change them around to make them shorter or longer?

8.       Fix any changes that you discuss as a class together. Discuss how your story sounds better with the changes and more like how Jane wrote her story.  

Day Two

1.       Remind students how Jane used different sentence structures and varieties to help her story flow better.

2.       Write two examples on the board of the same story.

a.       We went to the beach. It was sunny. It was warm. We had fun. We flew kites. We ate snacks.

b.      We spent a warm, sunny day at the beach. When we got hungry we had a snack. Later on, we flew kites high in the sky. It was a great day!

3.       Tell students that one way to make writing interesting is to write sentences that sound different from each other. We can do this by beginning our sentences differently and making some sentences long and others short.

4.       Read story #1 aloud. Ask the students how the writer did with writing some long and some short sentences. What does the writer need to increase? (long sentences). Reread the story and underline the first word of each sentence. Did the writer do a good job of beginning the sentences different each time?

5.       Now do the same thing with story #2. Help the students to see that the writer of story #2 does a better job of writing interesting sentences.

6.       Discuss how story number 2 was similar to Jane’s writing in Owl moon.

7.       Tell students to go back to their seats and write a description about the moon. Remind students to start sentences differently, use different kinds of words to describe the moon and night and make long and short sentences.

8.       Have students share their stories with peers. Tell the students to circle the words at the beginning of the sentences to show the different beginnings and different lengths.

9.       Encourage students to change any sentences that start differently as peers give advice in their partnerships. This could be a class problem and if it is the case, I would go over different words that they can use to start their sentences in a whole group setting.

10.   Always give students time to change or correct anything they would like.

11.   Post an excellent model of their writing in the classroom for sentence fluency. Encourage other examples to be shared during author’s chair of writing.

12.   Practice this concept throughout all of your students’ writing. Practice is the key to consistent use for students.

Additional Resources:

http://www.cyberspaces.net/6traits

http://www.mrsmcgowan.com/reading/writing_resources.html

http://writingfix.com/Picture_Book_Prompts/OwlMoon3.htm

Wonderful Writer: Laura Numeroff

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

By Laura Numeroff

Organization

Lesson Focus: Organizing ideas using graphic organizers

Focus Grade Level: First Grade/Second Grade

Time Frame: Two days

Focus Text/Author: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie / Laura Numeroff

Supporting Texts:

Any of Laura Numeroff’s stories including the following:

·         If You Give a Moose a Muffin

·         If You Give a Pig a Pancake

·         If you Take a Mouse to School

Other Materials:

·         Organizer one (Question/answer format)

·         Organizer two (Square word map organizer)

·         Organizer three (Wheel visual organizer)

·         Chart paper

·         Markers

Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:

Standard: Writing Processes

K-2 Benchmark:

C. Use organizers to clarify ideas for writing assignments.

1^st Grade Level Indicators:

4. Use organizational strategies (e.g., brainstorming, lists, webs and Venn diagrams) to plan writing.

5. Organize writing to include a beginning, middle and end.

7. Mimic language from literature when appropriate.

Book Summary:

This is a roundabout story that goes full circle with a chain of events with a mouse. It starts by giving it a cookie and then each action leads to the next. If you're going to go around giving an exuberantly bossy rodent a cookie, you'd best be prepared to do one or two more favors for it before your day is through. For example, he'll certainly need a glass of milk to wash down that cookie, won't he? And you can't expect him to drink the milk without a straw, can you? By the time our hero is finished granting all the mouse's very urgent requests--and cleaning up after him--it's no wonder his head is becoming a bit heavy.

About the Author:

Laura Numeroff was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up loving art, books and music. She loved Dr. Seuss, Eloise, and Stuart Little books. She grew up writing and drawing stories for her own books. She started going to college for fashion and ended up switching back to writing for children’s books.  She is a best seller of many books including the If you Give a... books and What Mommies Do Best.

http://www.lauranumeroff.com/

Before the Lesson:

All students are pretty familiar with Laura Numeroff’s books. This lesson should help students understand how authors can organize their writing and work in different ways. Students should focus on making a roundabout story. Before this lesson, there should be some student knowledge of stories going full circle.

Things to Remember:

This lesson should be taught towards the end of first grade. This is a more difficult concept and may take students multiple lessons to understand how to apply this strategy to their own writing. There are three different organizers in this lesson. Decide which organizer will benefit your students the most. The first is a question/answer response they can use to guide their writing. This should be used when students understand organizers completely and can read the questions accurately. The second organizer is a square organizer that is more geared toward writing out each part of the cycle in the story. If students need more visual support, use the third organizer with your students first. It is a picture planner that will help with the roundabout story for early learning of the skill. This lesson will be based around using the wheel organizer but you may adjust it to using the organizer that best fits your students at the time.

Lesson Steps:

Additional Resources:

Day One

1.       First, read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

2.       Discuss how this is a roundabout story. Is there a pattern in this story? How does it go in circles? What words did Laura use to help her organize the story in a circle?

3.       Write down different words that students identify or discover through discussion in which Laura uses to organize this story.

4.       Give students idea wheels to create their own story about giving a mouse something.

5.       The students will link each event together using similar language as Laura. Encourage students to come full circle that it will lead back to whatever the mouse is asking to get in the beginning of the story.

a.       You can do this activity with peers or as a guided lesson with the teacher as a model.

b.      If students have not had sufficient practice with concept, follow a guided lesson model.

c.       If you do this as a guided lesson, have the students create their idea of what a mouse would ask for after he asks for a book. Tell the students that the end has to come back to asking for a book. What could he ask for down to lead back to the book? (glasses, going to bed, getting his book bag, etc.)

6.       Have students retell their class story to a partner using the wheel organizer. How did using Laura’s strategy help us organize this silly story?

7.       Post the class example to use as a model for future lessons.

Day Two

1.       Review the concept of roundabout story by reviewing how Laura organized her story.

2.       Discuss how this method of organization can help you as a writer.

3.       Review the wheels created the day before.

4.       Model creating several sentences using the wheel to start the story on chart paper.

5.       Have the students use the wheels to write out their story about their mouse.

6.       Students need to share their stories with a peer. Monitor sharing and look for students that accurately used the wheel to write their story using good organization.

7.       Share the excellent examples. Identify the successful parts of using organization in their stories.

8.       Give students an opportunity to fix and re-share any stories that were not completely organized. (This is a definite possibility. The students that mastered the concept in the first activity can create their own animal or roundabout wheels for another story while the other students are working on their first story. )

9.       Post an excellent model for students to use. Post both the wheel and the story so other students can see how the students transferred the knowledge into their writing.

10.   PRACTICE! PRACTICE! Use the other Laura Numeroff stories to continue to create roundabout stories using organizers. This concept will not be mastered in one day. It takes much practice for students to independently and consistently use this skill.

www.Writingfix.com

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/If_You_Give_a_____Books/index.shtml

http://www.lauranumeroff.com/

PowerPoint version of Story

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.graves.k12.ky.us%2Fpowerpoints%2Felementary%2Fwinaelliott.ppt&rct=j&q=ending%20of%20give%20a%20mouse%20a%20cookie&ei=ksd6Tav8Msz1rAGJ4Nj_BQ&usg=AFQjCNHepzpXWgYg6LkO4aGCkgOWgOYDTQ

Wonderful Writer: Patricia MacLachlan

All the Places to Love

Patricia MacLachlan

Ideas

Lesson Focus: Using ideas to assist in writing stories

Focus Grade Level: First Grade

Time Frame: One Day

Focus Text/Author: All the Places to Love / Patricia MacLachlan

Supporting Texts:

·         A Chair for My Mother: Vera B. Williams

·         Aunt Flossie’s Hat: Elizabeth Fitzgerald

Other Materials:

·         Chart paper

·         Makers

·         Student papers

·         Graphic organizer (web)

Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:

Standard: Writing Processes

K-2 Benchmark:

A. Generate ideas for written compositions.

B. Develop audience and purpose for self-selected and assigned writing tasks.

1^st Grade Level Indicators:

1. Generate writing ideas through discussions with others.

2. Develop a main idea for writing.

3. Determine purpose and audience.

4. Use organizational strategies (e.g., brainstorming, lists, webs and Venn diagrams) 

    to plan writing.

Book Summary:

A little boy narrates all the special places on his family's farm. Eli knows that wherever the rest of his life leads him, all the places he loves are here on his family’s farm.

About the Author:

Patricia MacLachlan is an author of several picture books and Novels. She lives in western Massachusetts. Patricia MacLachlan is a bestselling U.S. children's author, best known for winning the 1986 Newbery Medal for her book Sarah, Plain and Tall.

http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/w/page/12627296/Patricia-MacLachlan

Before the Lesson:

Please make sure this is a familiar text to the students. Patricia is to be used as a mentor to the students. Her writing should be a model for their future ideas in their own writing.

Things to Remember:

The students should be familiar with graphic organizers before this lesson. In this lesson, they will be utilizing a web to think of different ideas for stories. These ideas will help them create different stories or stories with many ideas about a topic. Graphic organizers are possible to use with first grade but it takes much practice and guidance. This is a strategy that should be used as students gain independence with tasks during the school year.

Lesson Steps:

1.   First, read the story to the class.

2.   Discuss Patricia’s ideas of special places for the boy.

a.   What were some of the special places on the farm that Patricia made Eli remember in her story?

b.  Do you have any special places you remember?

c.  How can you use those places in your stories like Patricia did?

3.   Create a chart of special places in the students’ lives. Then narrow the chart down to one of the ideas using a web as an organizer. (You can make this specific to special places in your home, farm, city, etc.) Label the middle circle “special places at home”. Encourage students to think about the places in their homes that fun things have happened that they remember (i.e. living room-Christmas morning, kitchen-making breakfast with mom, backyard-playing hide and go seek).

4.   If students need guidance, have the students use their own web and fill it in as ideas are discussed and written on the teacher’s model.

5.   If students are more independent, have the students go back to their seats and create their own special places webs after the class discussion and teacher modeling.

6.   Have the students discuss their ideas with peers. They may go and add more ideas that they received throughout these discussions.

7.   Discuss several students’ ideas as a class summary. Have students make connections with their own lives with the ideas and how Patricia’s writing helped them to understand ways to think of different ideas.

Day Two

1.   Have a discussion with the students of how Patricia used many ideas in her story about Eli to create very descriptive places in her story that Eli had on his farm. This can be a peer sharing discussion or a class discussion.

2.   Use the model web from the previous day to demonstrate how to transfer information from the web to their story. Write the story as the class describes it using the questions below.

a.   How can we use our web to make our story as descriptive as Patricia’s?

b.  How can we start our story using the middle of the web?

c.  What is our first idea we would like to discuss? What are some details we can give about this idea?

d.  How can we transition to the next idea in their story? (Students need to have a familiar vocabulary with transitional words.)

e.   Continue with each idea.

f.   How can we end our story?

3.   Have students review their webs to remember their ideas from the previous day.

4.   Encourage students to write a story based on the ideas that they have in their webs similar to what they did as a class.

5.   Use small groups and conferencing to help students transfer information from their organizer to a story format.

a.   How can we start the story?

b.  What is the first thing on your map that you would like to tell about?

c.  What are some details?

d.  Repeat

6.   Have the students share their stories with a peer. Choose a story that demonstrates mastery of using ideas in their stories and post it in the classroom for a model.

7.   CONTINUE with this skill using other authors or mini-lessons to encourage independence. Repetition is vital to first grade students’ understanding and application of a concept consistently.

Additional Resources:

www.writingfix.com

www.scholasitic.com

http://www.ilovethatteachingidea.com/ideas/010317_all_the_places_to_love.htm