Interactive Word Wall Cards
Note to Teachers: Cut out these cards and add to the set created in Lesson 9.
clouddroplet
Mystery Photos: Rainbows
Note to Teachers: These photos should be used during the Picture Tea Party protocol at the beginning of Work Time A.
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Rainbow Facts Chart
Rainbows are made of sunlight and water droplets.
Rainbows often happen after a storm.
Other possible facts:
There are lots of colors in a rainbow.
Rainbows make a stripe in the sky.
For ELLs: Language Dive Guide:
Weather
(For Teacher Reference)
Rationale: This excerpt was chosen for its use of figurative language, its use of prepositional phrases, and its connection to current and future content. Students will apply their understanding of the meaning and structure of this sentence when they write facts about weather for their assessments. Invite students to discuss each chunk briefly, but slow down to focus on the structure paint bright stripes.
Time: 10 minutes
· Throughout the Language Dive– Encourage rich conversation among students about the meaning of each of the sentence strip chunks, what the academic phrases within each chunk mean, and how they relate to the sentence and the text overall. Monitor and guide conversation with total participation techniques and Conversation Cues.
– After asking questions, provide students up to one minute of think time to reflect, depending on the complexity of the question. Alternatively, invite partners to discuss, providing an allocated time for each student.
– Record and display student responses next to or underneath the target language for visual reference.
– Where possible, consider placing sketches, pictures, or illustrations above key nouns and verbs in the chunks after discussing their meanings. This willallow students to quickly access the content of each chunk as they work with the structures in the sentence as a whole.
Deconstruct
· Remind students about the first step in the Deconstruct stage:
“When we do a Language Dive, first we read the sentence. We talk about what we think it means and how it might help us understand our guiding question.”
· Place your finger on the sentence from page 23: Rainbows paint bright stripesof color in the sky.
· Read the sentence aloud.
· Invite students to chorally read it aloud with you.
Deconstruct
· Ask:
“What is the meaning of this sentence?” (Responses will vary.)
“How does this Language Dive help you understand our Unit 1 guiding question: ‘What is weather?’ (Responses will vary.)
· After inviting responses, write and display student ideas.
· If necessary, follow a process similar to the one below for each key word in the sentence that is unfamiliar to students.
· Say:
“There are some words and phrases in this sentence that you might not know, such as stripes. Stripes are lines that are usually part of a decoration, like on a shirt or a wall.”
· Ask:
“Do you see anything in the room with stripes?” (astudent’s shirt; a folder; a bulletin board)
· Say:
“Next, we take the sentence apart, chunk by chunk. We figure out what each chunk means, and why it is important. Let’s talk about the first chunk of this sentence.”
· Display and read aloud the following chunk: Rainbows
· Ask:
“What is this sentence about?” (rainbows)
Say:
“You did well figuring out what the first chunk means, and why it is important. Let’s talk about the second chunk.”
· Display and read aloud the following chunk: paint bright stripes
· Ask:
“What does it look like rainbows do?” (paint stripes)
“We know rainbows can’t really paint. Why do you think the author says rainbows paint? (It is using imaginary language. It means it looks like somebody painted the rainbow, but that is not really how they are made.)
“What are rainbows really made of?” (droplets and sunlight)
“Why do you think the author wrote the word bright?” (to tell more about the rainbow and how it looks; to describe the stripes)
Deconstruct
· Students can pretend they are painting bright stripes.
· Say:
“You did well figuring out what the first two chunks mean, and why they’re important. Let’s talk about the third chunk.”
· Display and read aloud the following chunk: of color
· Ask:
“What kind of bright stripes do rainbows look like they are paining?” (stripes of color; colorful stripes)
· Students can close their eyes and imagine a rainbow, then share what colors they see.
· Say:
“You did well figuring out what the first three chunks mean, and why they’re important. Let’s talk about the fourth chunk.”
· Display and read aloud the following chunk: in the sky.
· Ask:
“Where is the rainbow?” (in the sky)
· Invite students to pretend they are painting rainbows high in the sky. Ask them to describe the rainbows to a partner as they paint.
Reconstruct
· Say:
“You did well figuring out what all of the chunks mean, and why they’re important.”
· Remind students they will now go from the Deconstruct to the Reconstruct stage: “Now that you’ve played with the chunks, let’s put them all back together again into a sentence. Let’s see how playing with the chunks adds to our understanding of the meaning of the sentence and our guiding question. Let’s see how reconstructing helps us understand how English works.”
· Tell students that playing with the chunks out of order like a puzzle can help them figure out how English works.
· Scramble the sentence strip chunks so that the sentence doesn’t make sense and display so all students can see. It may be necessary to read the chunks to them as they work with the sequence.
· Say: “Put the chunks of the sentence in the correct order.”
Reconstruct
· Invite students to work with their partners. Cold call students to come to the front to put the chunks in the correct order for the whole class to see.
· Invite students to look again at all of the chunks in sequence: Rainbows paint bright stripes of color in the sky.
· Read the sentence aloud again.
· Ask:
“What other questions can we ask that will help us understand this sentence?” (Responses will vary.)
“Now what do you think is the meaning of this sentence?” (Responses will vary, but may include: We can see rainbows made of bright colors high in the sky.)
“How does this Language Dive help you understand our Unit 1 guiding question: ‘What is weather?’ (Responses will vary, but may include: It describes a rainbow, which is part of what makes weather.)
· If productive, cue students to listen carefully:
“Who can repeat what your classmate said?” (Responses will vary.)
Practice
· Say:
“You did well putting the chunks back together again and talking about how this Language Dive has added to your understanding of the meaning of the sentence and the guiding question.”
· Remind students they will now go from the Reconstruct to the Practice stage: “You’ve played with the sentence and figured out the meaning, and why it’s important to the guiding question. Now let’s start to use the language in the sentence for our own work.”
· Display and read aloud the sentence frame:
______[weather word] make/s______[weather word] in the sky.
· For lighter support: ______[weather word] make/s______[word that describes] ______[weather word] in the sky.
· Model completing the sentence frame with facts about weather. Then ask students for ideas. Examples:
Droplets make rain in the sky.
Droplets and sunlight make pretty rainbows in the sky.
Reconstruct
· Tell students you will give them time to think and discuss with their partners. Say:
“Use this frame to talk about one weather fact you know.” (Responses will vary.)
· Tell students that posting the chunks in language categories will help them use the language again for future speaking and writing tasks.
· Ask:
“Can you post the language chunks around the room on the appropriate Language Chunk Wall?”
· Examples:
Nouns and noun phrases (people, places, things) / Verbs and verb phrases (actions
and states) / Adjectives and language to describe / Language to talk about location or direction
Rainbows / paint bright stripes / of color / in the sky.
For ELLs: Sentence Strip Chunks:
Weather
Directions for Teachers: Create sentence strip chunks as shown below. Follow the instructions in the Language Dive Guide.
Rainbowspaint bright stripes
of color
in the sky.
Image Credits
Waikiki Natatorium. “rainbow-Clinton Gaughran 2011.” Photograph. Flickr. 18 December 2011.
sagesolar. “Vivid Rainbow over the Forrest.” Photograph. Flickr. 13 Oct 2012.
fundrifter. “Rainbows.” Photograph. Flickr. 27 May 2010.
SNappa2006. “Picnik Suburban Rainbow.” Photograph. Flickr. 28 April 2008.
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