Descriptive Dragons

I love organic teaching. Its path grows from student interests and classroom happenings. It is free of packaged activities, isolated skill worksheets and sequenced programs. Instead, it listens to and follows rhythms of natural, connected, purposeful learning.

My class is currently reading, discussing and loving the book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin. The book weaves ancient Chinese folktales into the story about a girl named Minli. Minli leaves her dry, gray home to embark on a journey to the Man of the Moon whom she hopes will change her fortune. She meets up with a dragon, who joins her on her journey with hopes that the Man of the Moon will help him learn how to fly. (sound familiar?)

My students' excitement about the delightful dragon as well as the folktales in the story led me to the library in search of Chinese folktales about dragons. I did find some great Chinese folktales but also found the book Dragons:  Fearsome Monsters from Myth and Fiction. This book not only draws the reader in with its beautiful illustrations, but happens to be a FANTASTIC model of nonfiction writing. The descriptions and legends written about each dragon are full of descriptive writing with good adjectives, similes, and varied sentence structures.



The Lessons:

1. Using a Mentor Text to Inspire Our Own Ideas

I selected some of the dragons from the book to scan and put onto this Powerpoint. I introduced the project by telling students that they would be creating their own dragons and in order to do that, we'd use this book about dragons from all over the world as our inspiration. As we went through the Powerpont, I read the background stories about each dragon and the detailed descriptions of its body parts.

2. Art and Talk as a Pre-writing Activity

Students were given large white paper on which to draw a pencil sketch of their dragon. They were asked to draw the dragon in the center of the white space, keeping space around the dragon for descriptions of body parts. Before we began,  I told them they needed to think carefully about the details of their dragons, specifically their body parts. They should be thinking about what their dragon does, what kind of personality it has and how it uses its body. Then they went over the pencil with a black Sharpie. The final step was paint. They carefully picked out their colors and I arranged their paint into a paper plate palette.Talk played an important role in this art activity, as students discussed their dragon's origins, body parts, and roles with each other.

3. Creating a Class Word Bank with Wordle

To prepare for the writing, I looked back to original dragon book as a model. I thought about the vivid adjectives that the author used to describe the dragon's body parts. I noticed that each body part was described using rich language; adjectives, similes, and varied sentence structure.  I wanted to figure out a way to help my students focus on using rich language in their writing. So, I used Wordle for a lesson in using the Thesaurus as well as a way to broaden my students' vocabulary. I generated a list of words that I thought my students might use in their dragon descriptions. This list was based on both the ideas in the books as well as what I was hearing my students share about their dragons. I selected common adjectives such as big, mean, small, soft, good, and shiny. I wrote one word on the top of a piece of lined paper so that I had enough words for each student in the class. We revisited the dragon book, noticing the wonderful adjectives. I asked them where could authors find synonyms, or words that mean almost the same thing as words like good, big, and evil. They knew the Thesaurus was good for this purpose. I explained to them that we would be creating our own word wall of wonderful words for us to use in our writing by using a tool called Wordle. I  modeled how to first look up words that mean the same thing as the word good using the print thesaurus and then how to look up words that mean the same thing using the online Thesaurus. They concluded that the online one was easier to use AND had more words. As we did this, I showed how to list the words underneath the word good. After that, I modeled how to use Wordle. I typed the synonyms of the original word and the original into Wordle and demonstrated how writing the word more than once would make it bigger. Students were then given their own words and did the same, creating these word clouds.

3. More Pre-writing with a Planning Sheet
I knew that some of my students already had a pretty complete story about their dragon in their heads, but others needed some guidance to develop their story. I looked at the elements that the author used in his descriptions and created this planning sheet for students to fill out. Before we began, I used it to "interview" a few students in the class about their dragon, knowing that listening to their classmates  would help spark more ideas. So I just went down the list asking, "What is your dragon's name? Where is it from? Where does it live? What kind of personality does it have? What is its job? Is it ancient, mythological, or media? What are its special abilities?" and so on. Students were then ready to fill it out on their own.

4. Using Our Wordle Word Bank and a List of Adjectives to Write
We looked back at the dragon descriptions once again, this time focusing on the body part descriptions. I asked students what they noticed about the author's writing. They noticed the word choice and how it made them feel. As we read through this list of adjectives together, students highlighted any words that would describe their dragon and its body parts. Then we looked at our beautiful Wordles, noticing words up on the wall that we might use. They were then ready to write about at least 3 body parts, using this organizer.

5. Word Templates to Create Professional Looking Pieces
I taught the students how to open up this Word template and save it as their own in their folders. They typed their body part descriptions onto the template, which would be printed, cut out and glued onto their dragon pictures.

6. Back to the Mentor Text
Once again we revisited the mentor text. We looked at the background information the author wrote about the dragons. I printed out three examples to give to my students. Armed with highlighters, we read each one, highlighting and discussing pieces of the writing that we liked and might apply in our own writing. This is not a new process in my classroom, but before we do this I always ask, why do we look at other people's writing? We talk about how we can get ideas and learn from other writers.


7. Getting the First Lines Down
Most of my students were ready to write, but some were having trouble with that first sentence. So I asked students to share how they were planning to begin, and I wrote those ideas up on the board. That helped inspire anyone who was stuck.

8. Putting it All Together
After publishing their dragon pieces, they each inserted a map of the dragon's origin. Some students created a comparison diagram to show the dragon's actual size. The students cut out and glued their labels to their dragon paintings. They created a fancy title and we hung the entire display up in our hallway for others to enjoy.


9. Publishing for a Wider Audience
I am in the process of taking pictures of the finished dragons. Students are going to read the accompanying story they wrote on our iPods. They will be published on a wiki. Students love to get their work published onto the Internet because, as one student put it, "It will be up there forever!"

Authentic technology integration? But how?

Here is my Top Ten Unit from start to finish. Technology, language arts, science, and 21st century skills are integrated seamlessly. The entire unit with lessons can be found here. The Top Ten wiki is at http://top10.sblc.wikispaces.net/

What Does a Green Screen Video Production Teach?

This is the second green screen video that my students created with my assistance. The first they had really no concept about what the green screen was going to do. The video was to be of interviews with rocks in which they would play specific types of rocks while reporters interviewed them. The students made rock costumes out of cardboard complete with glitter for obsidian and sand for sandstone. After video taping each interview, I put the movie together with background images.

So, when the second video opportunity came along, the Water Cycle, they already had a concrete experience with the green screen. We discussed the effects that happened with the first video such as how the glitter on Clark's rock looked super shiny or how Carter's gold rock faded into the background. Or how Xandra's green shirt made her disappear into the background. Then after reading the script and picking out parts, the students brainstormed ideas for costumes that would create the effects they wanted. I facilitated the discussion as students shared possibilities for water vapor and the sun. Then, students were given a planning sheet. Working with partners,their task was to draw and label their costumes and write down the materials they would need.

After they made their costumes, they performed costume tests. We put up the green screen and took short clips of them in front of it. I used a random background and as a class we watched the tests. As they watched the clips, the students talked amongst themselves about ideas to make the costumes better achieve the effects they were striving for. Students then made changes to their costumes or started from scratch or kept them the same.

Three of my students chose not play a part in the video. I gave them the job of photos. As the rest of the class worked on costumes, they had conferences with their classmates about what types of photos they would like for their backgrounds. Then, the photo committee searched for and saved photos from the Internet. They kept them organized and gave them names that would help me as I later put the movie together.

The video taping itself involved a tremendous amount of teamwork. Students worked together to practice their parts, set up the props and stage, direct the scenes, do makeup and costume fix ups, and video tape.

Once the video was taped, I did the final editing, cutting and piecing the clips together, putting in the photos, and adding music clips.

Students have watched the video enough times that they have it memorized. I gave them a little assessment, asking them to write about real life examples of 3-4 parts of the water cycle. They all scored 100 percent.

So, what does a green screen video production teach?

Do I HAVE to write a response?

Do you EVER hear moans and groans when it is time for students to respond in writing to something they've read? I do. But do you, like me, HAVE to teach your students how to write good open-ended responses to text in order to prepare for the standardized test? Looking for alternatives to isolated test practice?

WikiTalks

I have found that a wiki can help provide an authentic context for students to practice writing about what they've read in an online environment. Students need to focus on two things; first how to compose a well-written, supported response AND how to discuss online using elaboration and good punctuation and grammar (i.e. not texting language).  I have created a wiki called WikiTalks where my students discuss short stories or novels that we are reading with another 4th grade class in our school.

Getting Started:  What Makes a Good Online Discussion Post?

I first introduced the concept of online discussions to my 4th grade students by using this What Makes a Good Discussion Response? lesson. They compared online vs. real-time discussions. They then tried out online discussing on the Nutmeg book award wiki as they responded to questions about our read-aloud, The Thing About Georgie. I was not very impressed with their posts.

Students Learn How to Evaluate Quality Discussion Posts
I thought about how I could help my students become more self evaluative as they wrote their own posts. I decided that they needed to take a step out of the shoes of the writer and get into the shoes of an evaluator. So my students were informed that they have been chosen to be Official Discussion Post Judges for the Nutmeg book award wiki. This is a wiki that I have co-created for Connecticut's student book award program. Students, grades 4-8, from schools across Connecticut discuss the books. I told my that students that each month, they would determine the winner of the Wiki Post of the Month based on criteria. With that purpose in mind, students then read many examples of posts, sorting them into 3 piles, not so good, good, great! They used the great posts to create a list of criteria that they would use to judge future posts. This is what they came up with:
Criteria:

_It answers the question.
_It uses details from the book.
_It explains why. (I think....because....)
_It uses good spelling and punctuation.
_The person reading the answer understands something about the story.

They take this job seriously and each month we select a winner. As you can see, we are a bit behind! Snow days have taken a toll here in Connecticut.

Applying Criteria to Own Discussion Posts
Simultaneously, students were introduced to WikiTalks. Here they were going to discuss with the other 4th grade class in our school. I modeled posting a good response and then they tried it. The first time we used it, the students discussed a short story from Jr. Great Books.  I treated the wiki like math manipulatives in that I did not focus so much on the content. I realized that they had a lot to think about procedurally, for example, they needed to learn how to log in, how to reply, how to post, how to navigate through the discussion, and of course how to get a customized icon! They also needed to get over the excitement of seeing their friend's immediate responses and get through a little social chat time.

Not Seeing Quality Posts Yet!
After the initial introduction, students were then expected to focus on the quality of their posts and discussions as they discussed our new read-aloud, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. At first, I did not see much quality in the posts. Even though we (the other 4th grade teacher and I) emphasized that students needed to write complete responses and use good grammar and punctuation, most students were not working to their potential. It wasn't until my brilliant co-worker came up with the self-assessment system that we started to see improvement.

Student Self-Assessment System
I don't have the actual document, but here is a picture.

The students receive a score for the work they do on the wiki. For a score of 3, they must post two quality responses that meet ALL the listed criteria. The criteria we are using is school-wide scoring checklist for open-ended responses, called RACES. For a score of 4, the student must post three quality responses AND post a question. Anything less than two quality posts receive a score of 2 or 1.

But can students really self-assess accurately? I found that most could not. So even though this was a good exercise in evaluating own work, they still needed feedback to really understand the quality of their work.


The Kicker! Individual Conferences and Immediate Feedback
The quality of the responses went up once again when I actually printed out the responses that students went over and scored them myself. I stapled their responses onto their self-assessment sheets, I put my score next to theirs and wrote a couple of short feedback comments. Before the next WikiTalks, I quickly went over with the whole group what I was noticing and tips for how students could bring their scores up. Then, as students started to discuss, I went around and individually showed them their scores and gave them individual feedback. This made a HUGE difference. After the discussions, I printed out the posts again, stapling them to the self-assessments, and scored them myself. I saw improvement in all students' posts and most students scored either a 3 or a 4.

You can read the most recent posts here.