Picture books make great examples for upper level writing lessons. In this posts, learn to use picture books to teach text structure.
Picture books make great examples for upper level writing lessons. In this posts, learn to use picture books to teach text structure.
Use mentor text children's books to teach sensory description and model for our kids how good writers use all their five senses in their writing to show, not tell.
Use picture books as explicit models to teach text structure: the way authors organize expository information for a specific purpose.
Teaching plot elements to upper elementary students? Use a picture book to engage your students! Read it aloud, and then create a plot diagram!
Why teaching text structure is so important with steps to get started
These picture books that demonstrate narrative writing can be used to help older students learn to write narratives.
For the past two weeks, my class has been learning about figurative language and how to use it to enhance writing. We worked through 6 elements of figurative language: similes, metaphors, hyperboles, idioms, personification, and onomatopoeia. Here is a listing of picture books I used to teach figurative language and the activity we completed for each piece of language: My lovely student teacher started off with a T-Chart on the board with "like/as" in the center. She had a variety of pictures and words on magnets. Students came up and moved the pieces to create similes such as "busy as a bee" or "cool as a cucumber." She then read the class "Crazy like a Fox." Afterward, she brainstormed with the class characters and a plot to create a class simile story. Pairs of students were assigned a page and had to write a few sentences, including one .". They are currently working on finishing off the illustrations. This story is great to read to your class even if you aren't teaching figurative language! It's all about a boy who can't help but shout out and the strategy he learns to stop it from happening. I didn't do much beyond read the story as the students were able to easily understand having done similes first. Again, I LOVE this story! There are two sequels as well: "More Parts" and "Even More Parts." They are quite funny. The entire book is an exaggeration, but there's also some idioms in here as well. I started off this lesson by having students wash their hands. They were so intrigued just from that! When they returned to their desks, there was a bowl of Alpha-bits cereal on each table group. I gave them 5 minutes to make as many words as they could. After, I told them "Eat your words." :) I explained that in this situation, I actually meant "eat your words", but that's not what the saying really meant. Only one student has actually heard the saying before, so they explained it to the class. As I read "Amelia Bedelia's First Field Trip" (you could read any Amelia story, they are all full of idioms) the students munched their snack and were on the lookout for other things that sounded one way, but actually meant something else. They were able to find them all! I didn't use a book for this one. We talked about onomatopoeia earlier in the year when working on "great grabbers" for writing. A student did tell me that Batman comics would be really useful for teaching this though. I heard about this book on my favourite website - Pinterest. I ordered it off Chapters website and am very happy I did. The little red pen has a whole lot of marking to do, and none of the other school supplies want to help her. But, when she falls into the Pit of No Return (the garbage can) the supplies get together to help her out. I started off by making a chart with all the supplies as headings. I also had an actual red pen, stapler, eraser, push pin and green highlighter. I had the students describe the items. After reading the story, we added more to the chart based on how the books are in the story. I called a student up to circle any "alive" words. It was at this point I introduced the term personification. Students made their own chart that had the headings: noun, verb and adjective. The added at least 5 items under each. From there, they could create personification sentences such as "the wind tapped softly on my window" or "the car grunted as it slowly climbed the hill". What books do you use for teaching figurative language? Leave me your suggestions in the comments!
Books for teaching sequencing should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Here are 16 great books for kindergarten or first grade.
Hey Reading Teachers! Are you wanting to teach your students how to read and analyze the text structure of biographies and autobiographies? If so, this resource is just what you're looking for. Using the books, A Picture Book of Helen Keller by David Adler and I Am A Promise by Shelly Ann Frazer and Ashley Rousseau (both can be found on Epic!), students will analyze the texts and answer questions pertaining to the stories and text structure. Biography Question Examples: 1. How do you know this story is a biography? 2. What were Helen Keller's challenges? 3. How is the story organized? Autobiography Question Examples: 1. How do you know this story is an example of literary nonfiction? Give one example of a fiction characteristic and one example of a nonfiction characteristic. 2. What did Shelly Pryce accomplish in her life? 3. What is one possible theme for this story? If you like this resource, I have student anchor charts that would make the perfect introductory supplement to teaching your students about literary nonfiction, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. You can find those here! If you are looking for more activities about biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs, check out the following resources! 1. Text Structure Practice: Reading and Understanding a Memoir 2. Comparing and Contrasting: Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs Thank you! The Handout Factory
There are so many great plot structure mentor texts out there! It was incredibly difficult to narrow it down to these. In an effort to keep the post short, I
Making inferences worksheets and activities aren't always easy for students, but there are fun ways to teach this challenging reading skill.
Use picture books as explicit models to teach text structure: the way authors organize expository information for a specific purpose.
My top 10 favorite mentor texts to use when modeling writing for kids! A helpful book list for teaching kids to write.
Ready to teach text structure? Are you missing something? I have my top 5 nonfiction picture books to use for text structure.
The overall goal of learning about text structure is to get your students to have a better mental representation and organization of the information they read, hear, or see. This will make skills like summarizing or retell much easier. There are 5 main text structures that I teach to my students: These 5 text structures […]
Download my FREE Reference Guide here! Happy Monday, Friends! I'm back with another list of my favorite picture books to teach certain skills and this time we are focusing on PLOT. Be sure and check out my post about picture books to teach THEME and download the free reference guide for that skill here. Now,
