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In addition to working with "weaker" high school students during the last year, I am working, as part of Pisgat Zeev's 'non-readers' project, with a selected group of fifth and sixth grade students who are having problems reading,. Although this group of students generally has difficulty with 'recoding', many demonstrate low motivation for learning to read and for English learning in general. As a result of my experience last year in an elementary school with many learning disabled, special education and "non-readers" using children's stories, I decided to continue to work on reading through literature.The literature component complements other work I do with the students: one-to-one sessions working on the student's individual weaknesses, disability interference or study skills; using selected portions of Beginner's Files as our text and workbook (especially stories and chants); and longer stories for sixth graders to work on reading comprehension strategies.
My approach has been to introduce a children's story that I feel the students will like--I often ask them for ideas or suggestions. We begin with making predictions from the cover picture and title of the story. Some of the books that I use are familiar to the students from their reading in Hebrew--they seem to especially enjoy learning how to tell a story in English that they have previously learned in Hebrew.
As I read the story for the first time, I use several devices: (1) dramatize the voices of the characters to engage student interest; (2) use pantomime for new vocabulary; (3) frequently ask the students what they think will happen at a particular point in the story based upon the pictures, or what might happen next; (4) ask the students to play a part in the story--either manipulate pop-out pages, repeat a line from one of the characters; make up a song for the story and ask the students to sing the refrain with me.
After we have finished the story the first time, we discuss what happened in the story, and any new words we have learned. During the second reading of the story, I ask students to help me read certain words that they already know, and experiment with words that I hope to focus on at a later point.
I then take material from the book--drawings and certain language awareness points. I instruct the students on a white board how to say certain words by focusing on changes in consonants or vowels or combinations. We then return to the worksheets that I have prepared to read the newly learned combinations in the context of the story. The worksheets always require the students to perform some task--usually drawing a picture based upon the words from the story, or making up a new picture or matching the text to a picture that I have reproduced. By the third reading of the story, the students are taking responsibility for reading most of the story--they take a great deal of pride in having learned certain new words or combinations. The final stage of each story is to draw a story board--I usually start out with asking the students to draw one picture from the story with words that they remember. Over the course of several months of working with the students, they are able to draw up to eight picture frames from the story, and many can write phrases and sentences about the story. They are encouraged to use their imagination in making new endings or developing new characters for the story, or making themselves a part of the story.
Having introduced this general approach, I'd like to discuss several books that I have used with some success.
The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss. This story in its original form is quite complicated for a non-reader. However, there is an opportunity to work with some very simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) blends. So I have rewritten the story on several bristol sheets, copying the characters onto the bristol and coloring them. The retold story is as follows (one line for each card):
The cat in the hat sat on a matAll of my students recognize the Cat in the Hat character, and by using their imagination, they quickly become involved in the story. My worksheets for this story involve students learning to fill in the missing "a" for the CVC words; then filling in missing words; and eventually re-writing parts of the story.
Along came a rat, a very fat rat. He jumped in the vat.
And there he sat and he sat and he sat and he sat.
He jumped out of the vat and picked up a bat.
He took the hat from the cat and hit it with the bat.
And made it flat. And that was that!
Where's Spot? , by Eric Hill. The students LOVE Spot stories--he is an adorable character and they have a chance to manipulate the pages. In this story Spot's mother encounters several animals hiding in furniture while she tries to find Spot. The story line is repetitious, and students join in immediately in telling the story. I walk around the table while telling the story allowing students to open the flaps--they must then identify the animal, the furniture and where it is located, e.g. "behind the door", "inside the clock", "under the stairs". The language awareness points in the story vary on the class--with very weak learners, I focused on first and last sounds for animals, adding other animals with similar sounds. To focus on prepositions, I often have the students play a game with the furniture and objects in the room. Story boards for this story are quite beautiful--students make their own "pop-up" story board--they write prepositions that describe the action of each frame of their story board.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish?, by Dr. Seuss. This books especially lends itself to focusing on various vowel and consonant combinations right within the context of the story, in addition to learning "whole" words by sight. Example include: star/car; four/more; go/slow/low; well/yell; mouse/house; box/Gox/socks; think/Yink/wink/drink/ink/pink; ish/dish/wish/swish; hear/near/ear/fear/dear; gold/hold/old/cold/told; look/Nook/hook/book/Cook/book/hook; sheep/sleep;right/night; all/call. After I have read the story and reviewed language awareness points in the context of the story, I give the students a shortened version of the story, covering about eight different episodes. We read the sections together and the students try to recall the words and draw pictures to accompany the text.
Wacky Wednesday?, by Theo. Le Sieg. This story lends itself to immediate student involvement since they have to pay attention to each frame of the story in order to find the items in the picture that are "wacky".
It is an excellent device for reviewing vocabulary and learning new words. But it is even more helpful to teach the students collocations--some that are "wacky" which the student will not use again, and some that we use every day. The uncommon collations, such as "shoe on the wall" , mouse chasing a cat, faucet upside down--help the students connect to pictures from the story. On a worksheet, I give the students two lines of words--the first line contains nouns or objects that we found in the story; and the second line contains their location or why they were "wacky". After matching the columns, the students have to find the scene in the story.
Since the students are so eager to find the items and participate in the story, my "rule" is that they have to say the name of the item in English, and at least one word in English to describe the problem that they have found. The students quickly pick up the vocabulary. By the second or third reading, I usually assign a whole page to a student to see if they can recall, in English, all the problems in a particular scene.
Since the "wacky" items are not listed in the story, the teacher is free to focus on whatever vocabulary she/he chooses.
The Monster Stories?
I have two Monster books that I have used: Monster and Baby?, and A Playhouse for Monster?, by Virginia Mueller. Monster and Baby? features a story by which Monster tries to stop the baby from crying, and finally discovers that building blocks do the trick, which baby proceeds to knock down. The blocks are different colored--I warn the students to pay close attention to the story since they will have to remember something at the end. The are asked to reproduce the different colored blocks and the correct number for each color in the right place in its pyramid by drawing the pyramid and labeling the colors. The students also like telling the story themselves.
Playhouse for Monster? features Monster learning that having a playhouse isn't fun unless he has a friend to share it with. I ask student to reproduce and label furniture in the house. After we have read the story again, I ask the students to draw their "fantasy" playhouse, labeling the objects in it.
A Colour of His Own?, by Leo Lionni, features a chameleon that is unhappy because he keeps changing colors. With the right dramatic touch, the students get very involved in the story, and are happy that the chameleon finds a solution to his problem--finding another chameleon so that they change colors together.
An interesting end of story device is to ask students to draw a picture and write about the following: "I am ___________ when I am (in, on, etc.) a _____________. We discuss different places and colors before doing this task. Over the last two years, students have come up with very interesting pictures--the usual in nature, colors of favorite sports teams, and some very thoughtful responses. This project emphasizes students' connections with how colors feel and use of color names in English.
There Was An Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly?. My copy illustrated by Pam Adams features a large old woman on each page, with animals in her stomach. The script is written in a circular fashion, which seems to emphasize the rhyming nature of the story with the students. Language awareness points that I emphasize are rhyming elements, such as fly/why/die; wriggled/jiggled (with an opportunity to talk about silent letters); spider/inside her; bird/absurd; that/cat; hog/dog; how/cow cf. know; horse/of course. I have tried to introduce additional activities with this book--however, the students simply love singing the story over and over--so I let them.
Sources for story books: I use my daughter's collection, even though she has very strict lending policies. However, I have found most of my books in used bookstores and libraries around town. With a little imagination, many children's stories can be adapted.
Good reading!
Ellen Hoffenberg-Serfaty
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