A4L+Unit+6+for+5th+Grade-Fall


 * Authors and Actors**

In this unit the literacy objectives will be **writing personal narratives (story beginnings, descriptions, story endings).**

The art form that is utilized is **Theater** (**theater exercises**) Students and teachers will have a firm understanding of statue, __#|body shape__, gesture, vocal expression and be able to use theater exercises to support generating ideas, community building, theater skills and techniques.

Texts used during this unit will be //Knucklehead// by Jon Scieszka, //Best Friends// by Mary Beth Olson and //The Wall// by Eve Bunting.

Classroom management - Mr. grgory's 5th grade class at Sanders-Clyde did an amazing job this morning with acting out Sounds and Exclamations. The students were directed to use Open Space and Act Out Statues. There are 29 students in this class and all students participated and moved about the classroom without any disruptions. The writing following this exercise was powerful. All of the students wanted to share their story beginnings. The movement portion of the lesson provided the foundation for the writing. Judy

__"Who Did It?" Lessons__ So far students are truly enjoying the theater exercises designed to aid their writing. However, I found that they struggled to take what they did in the statues and truly incorporate it in their writing. In the next set of lessons (for //The Wall//) I intend to include more modeling of the writing in order to hopefully help them better understand how they can move from theater to writing. I also found a Reading Rainbow episode on United Streaming for //The Wall// that I may try to incorporate in social studies somehow. I think, particularly with this emotional piece, the more students are exposed to it, the better they will understand how the author uses the detail in their writing to evoke such strong emotions.

My partner, Erin, also suggested we use the pictures that we're taking of the students to show them their statues as they write, so they can better describe what they're doing. It's hard for them to truly "see" their statues and their partners don't always do a great job of describing. So I look forward to incorporating this idea in upcoming lessons. Samantha (Ellington) 10/18/2012

__The Wall Lessons__ I really enjoyed teaching this series of lessons, and was surprised at the response from my students. Because of the topic of the text I wasn't sure that my students would be able to connect to the text, especially after seeing how excited they were about "Who Did It?" To my surprise, they were very eager to share stories about loss and picked up easily on the details that Bunting included. Perhaps the most successful lesson in this series was the lesson where students described objects. On the day I had this lesson scheduled the weather was not cooperating so we had to stay inside to find and describe our objects. To make it more exciting for students I allowed them to touch things that I normally wouldn't have (such as decorative objects collected from around the world, musical instruments, etc.). The kids really enjoyed trying to mislead their peers about what they were going to describe. Some of my kids even walked up to other students and touched their hair, or put their ear to a shoulder, etc. The descriptions turned out pretty good though a few students didn't want people to know what they were describing and were too vague. I think I did a better job of modeling this time and was much more pleased with the results as the drama activities translated into more descriptive writing.

I also decided to make the "Stand Up If" activity a silent activity. So I put the sentences in a SMARTboard lesson. I'm attaching that activity if anyone wants to use it in the future. Samantha (Ellington) 10/31/2012

Here's the Stand Up If activity in a SMARTboard file. Enjoy!

__"Best Friends" Lessons__ I just taught the first lesson in this series today and the drama activities were a huge hit. The speed friending activity was awesome. My kids really enjoy moving around to work with multiple partners. In fact we do a similar activity on a regular basis to review, I call it "walk and quiz." When we have tests or quizzes that require knowledge of basic facts (like states and capitals, vocabulary, etc.) I let the kids play "walk and quiz." The game goes like this...I put on music. When the music plays, students move around the room. When the music stops, they find the closest person to them and partner up to quiz each other on the facts. They love playing this game and request it often. I could see using music with the speed friending game too. Play the music for students to find a partner, then cut it so they can share information about friends.

I also scanned in the student notebook and the texts. Here are PDF versions of each so you can use on the SMARTboard... File for text. File for student notebook. I look forward to continuing these lessons and seeing how my kids are able to write endings to their narratives! Samantha (Ellington) 10/31/12

Great work everyone! Kevin Nutter

__"Best Friends" Lessons__ We just wrapped up our Best Friend lessons and did the "performance" where students read their endings while a group performed statues. I had a couple of groups that did a great job with the statues and really exaggerated so the audience could get the full effect of the ending. Students also did a good job of making sure the endings actually matched the text. We had a great discussion about how the endings had to have the same mood that the author already established, and how the characterization had to match, etc. So I think that really helped with the writing process to make sure the endings weren't totally off the wall. The only obstacle that I ran into was some of the endings turned into mini narratives. So next time I need to make sure our discussion also includes some talk about endings being concise and not perhaps a second chapter! :)

I want to upload two video clips to Teacher Tube so I can embed them here. But I'm having difficulty uploading to Teacher Tube. Any suggestions??? Samantha (Ellington) 11/9/12