Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2
Session 1: Making Movies in Our Minds as We Read
Connection / Tell children about a time when words on a page brought a character to life for you.Teaching Point
Readers can make a movie in our mind where we become one of the characters. / Reread an intense but brief section of your read aloud book, and as you read, pause often to visualize, describing what you are seeing and enacting it.
In a mini lesson we take the class back to a familiar bit of the read aloud text.
Name what you are doing: you pause often to put yourself in characters shoes.
“Readers did you notice when I read, I made a movie in my mind? It’s sort of as if the words on the page are the script of the movie. I read them; I project then into my mind. This way as I read, I see what Rob is seeing, doing and remembering.”
Active Involvement
Continue reading, pausing often to prompt the children to walk in the shoes of the character, seeing what he or she is seeing, thinking what he or she is thinking. / Stop and Jot: Ask the students to use their notebooks now to sketch what they are seeing or they can use words. After a moment ask them to turn and talk to their neighbor.
Link: Send students off to read / “Remember, when you are reading make sure you are making the movie of the story in your mind.”
· Make it as likely as possible that when the children disperse to read, they continue visualizing and almost dramatizing.
· Ask them to mark especially powerful passages as they read independently.
Mid Workshop
Teaching Point / “Readers, envision not only the characters engaged in the action of the story but also the setting.”
Share / Point out the class chart of “Ways to Share Books With a Partner”
Add the idea that readers can read a favorite part and act it out. Start with, “Previously, in…” then summarize the book to that point. Now put the book between you and your partner and take turns acting it out.
Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2
Session 2: Living in the World of the Story
Connection / “Story-tell” a time when you lived on auto-pilot until someone helped you wake up and pay attention.Teaching Point: Readers need to monitor not only for sense but also for complacency, and to have fix-up strategies to wake ourselves up, reminding ourselves to envision as we read. / Remind children of a story where a character crossed a threshold and entered a new world, examples, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, Narnia, Wizard of Oz.
All readers must cross a threshold of sorts so that they too enter the world of the story.
“Readers, when any one of us reads a fiction story, we need to let whatever book it is take us through the magic doorway and let us enter the world of the book. It might not be a fantasy world, but it is the world of the story. We read and we see the world through the eyes of the main character.”
Active Involvement: Read aloud an upcoming section of the read-aloud book, asking students to listen as if they are living within the scene. / Read a section of the book aloud as you prompt students to reenact the scene, then give them the opportunity to reenact without prompting. (Direct partners to assume different roles.)
“Let’s continue to read______. Listen as if you are the character so later you can reenact this moment.”
Link: Send students off to read. / “Today try to read your independent book like we’ve been reading our read-aloud. Try to practically turn it into a play. Try to be the main character. From now on as you read try to make the stories come to life. Read as if it is happening, act it out if you need to, as if you have entered into the world of your story.”
Mid Workshop
Teaching Point / Readers keep offstage characters in our peripheral vision. (Students remain aware of the other characters and consider what they are doing when not part of the action) (Use drawing as a means of envisioning)
Share: Readers reflect on our reading lives and establish goals for ourselves. / Gather the children and ask them how their reading went. “Readers, it’s time to stop for today. Show me with a thumbs up or thumbs down whether you were able tor read yourself awake”
Ask them to study their goals and set new reading goals for themselves based on their logs.
Coach them to boost the level of what they are doing to build their reading muscles.
Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2
Session 3: Stirring Our Empathy Through Personal Response
ConnectionRecall a scene you and your students read previously and envisioned. You will revisit this scene to show how empathy adds to our responsive reading / Readers, remember yesterday when we read about______.
We pictured it in our minds, we could actually see……(Share the scene you want students to remember from the prior days reading)
Teaching Point
Readers not only envision, but we often empathize with the characters. / · “Today I want to teach you that when we read ourselves awake, really envisioning what’s happening in the story, so that we are almost in the characters shoes, we often find ourselves remembering a time in our lives when we lived through something similar. We bring these feelings and insights from those experiences to bear on our understanding of what we are reading.”
· We usually approach a book with our baggage – feelings – tucked away, but we need to nudge ourselves to respond personally as we read.
· Reference the book you are reading as a read-aloud. Give an example of what you have tried.
Active Involvement
Encourage readers to let the scene you have been discussing spark memories of times they have experienced something similar. / Students jot their associations down and then talk about how the personal response illuminates the passage for them.
“Readers, as I read a bit more of the story I want you to let it jar your memory about______” When I finish reading just stop and write as quickly as you can about a time when something similar happened to you.
Help students name what they have done and transfer it to another text. Now ask, “How does this memory help you to understand how the character is feeling…think and give me thumbs up when you have an idea to share.”
Link
Send students off to read / · “Today when you are reading….”
· Remind students to empathize with their characters as they read independently and to use post its to mark places in the text that prompt such work.
Mid Workshop
Teaching Point / Readers make connections between a text and our lives to become more insightful. As students read suggest they hit the “Pause” button when they come to a spot that helps they realize something about the character. Tell them it helps to, “Walk in the shoes of the character”. Students partner share how the book is affecting them.
Share / Gather readers. Name the steps involved in reenacting an important part of the text and ask them to do it. Coach students as they try it. Celebrate the work of one group to cement the learning for all.
Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2-Volume 1
Session 4: Letting the Text Revise Our Image of the Characters
Connection: Recall that reader’s walk in the shoes of main characters. Tell them that today and always they will do that. / ““During reading time yesterday I know each of you was a character in your book.When your character got furious you probably found yourself clenching your fists, kicking at the ground, scowling at your partner. When your character stopped and looked up and felt the sunshine was shining through, no doubt, you did felt the sunshine on your face” (Help readers to envision your words-act them out!)
Emphasize that readers add in stuff from their own lives as they continue to build mental pictures.
Teaching Point: Readers revise their mental movies when new details in the text lead us to self- correct
(Teaching point will be added to the Anchor Chart, “Strategies Readers Use to Grow Ideas About Characters” / “Today I want to teach you that a reader not only sees, hears and imagines as if they are in the story, making a movie in our minds, but a reader also revises that movie.” Sometimes as we read further into a story we need to say, “Oops, I need to change what I’m thinking.”
Help students picture a character from the read-aloud. As you read on channel them to create an impression that will need to be revised. Demonstrate your thinking,-show how ideas get revised.
Set students up in partnerships to talk about how they need to revise their mental movies based on new information. Summarize what you hope they learned that is applicable to another text, another day.
Active Involvement:
Invite children to revisit a piece of text that they read earlier, this time showing their new sense of character. / Reread a section of the book and have partners then say the dialogue to each other using tone—the words do not need to be exact-“actors” can say what they think the character would say.
Link
Send students off to read / “Today when you read, look for new details that will make you revise that mental movie or yours.”
Remind students that reading not only involves envisioning but also involves re-visioning.
Mid Workshop
Teaching Point / “Readers revise our mental movies, paying attention to details about the main character, other characters, and the setting.”
Share: Readers are reminded of all they know and that they are able to call up what they know when they need it. / Readers-you will have time now to talk with your partners. You may decide how to focus your talk using some of the ideas on the charts. Decide what support you need as a reader. Use your time to strengthen your muscles as a reader. Take a moment to make a short mental list of the work you could do. Thumbs up if you have a few ideas.
Call on a few children to share their ideas.
Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2
Session 5: Spinning All We Know into Predictions
Connection / Tell about a time in your life when, because you knew a person well, you heard that the person was facing trouble and immediately did some envisioning and predicting about how this person would rise to the challenge. (refer to sample on p. 72, and think of your own story)Teaching Point:
Readers go from empathizing to predicting, racing forward to anticipate things that are about to happen go / · Say: “One way readers read actively and wisely, then, is we empathize with the main character. We feel with the main character, in a way that leads us to anticipate what the character will do next.”
· Tell the story of a reader who identified with the character in a book and, to predict what would come next, drew on what the text said and also what he imagined the character probably felt (see sample on p. 73).
· Tell the story of one time when you watched TV and you were able to race ahead, predicting how the story would unfold. Then draw an analogy between watching TV and reading (see sample on p. 74).
Active Involvement / · Invite the children to listen to a scene of the read-aloud text as one might watch a TV show, thinking and then jotting what’s going to happen next. (see sample on page 74 from The Tiger Rising)
· Read selected text.
· Say: “Hmmm. My mind is leaping ahead in the story, isn’t yours? I’m picturing…..(notice something that you visualized as you read). And in my mind I’m almost writing the part of the story that will happen next, aren’t you? Stop and jot on a Post-it note, recording what you think _____ will do next.”
· Invite several children to read their predictions into the circle. You don’t need to discuss each one. Simply putting a few into the air accomplishes a lot.
· Continue reading as a way to show children that readers carry predictions with us, looking for confirmation while also expecting to be surprised.
· Say: “Let’s read on to see what actually happens. Sometimes an author will write the next part exactly as we expect, and sometimes authors throw a curve ball. (see sample from p. 76)
Link: Send s\students of to read / “Today when you read, we want to be the kind of readers who read as if we are in the skin, the voice, the soul of another. When we read this way, we’ll race ahead of the story, predicting, and worrying about what will happen next.”
Impress upon readers the importance not only of walking in the character’s shoes but also of predicting what the character will do next. Impress upon readers the importance not only of walking in the character’s shoes but also of predicting what the character will do next.
Mid Workshop
Teaching Point / Readers lift the level of our predictions by drawing on a knowledge of characters and ourselves. (Use the chart to help students deepen their thinking)
Share / Ask readers to choose how they will share reading with their partners, reminding them of strategies they know. Refer back to the chart containing ways to share our books. (see p. 86 for more explanation)
Say: “Turn and make a plan with your partner about how you’ll spend the next five minutes together, and then get started.”
Following Characters into Meaning: Unit 2
Session 6: Detailing Predictions to Bring Out Personalities
Connection: Remind readers that the strongest predictions are those that are grounded in our knowledge of the characters of our books. / “Often I take a few minutes to recall what I’ve already learned, don’t you? Right now I want you and your partner to use our charts and your memory to list three things you have learned about prediction.”