Melissa B. McCarty
Now that the students all have some background on character traits and feelings of characters, we will start looking at scenarios of characters' actions. I want to start with scenarios within a story before approaching an entire book to really scaffold their thinking and my teaching. I will pre-plan Arthur scenarios that happened in different Arthur books and write them on one side of chart paper. In the middle of the chart paper I will write Characters' feelings. I am not yet going to chart their "thinking behind it" or the "clues" found yet because this will be a model lesson. I want to model for them how I inferred the feeling by thinking aloud. I don't want to write too many things on the chart paper, in fear of distraction and confusion. An example of an Arthur scenario would be, Arthur won a writing contest. The prize for first place was a trip to Washington D.C. where Arthur would read his story to the president. Arthur and his family get on the plane tomorrow morning. (Brown, 1992) I would stop after I read the scenario, and show the class that I am thinking in my head by looking up. I would then look down at the class and say, "Hmmm, Arthur is probably feeling nervous and worried. I think this because meeting the President is a huge deal and reading a story that he wrote for him would be …..hmmmm scary. Plus if you notice his face, he doesn't have a happy face, right? He looks worried to me. He might not be able to sleep tonight. Yes, I think he is feeling nervous and scared. Did you notice what I just did there?" This last question is to check for understanding. I will know if twenty hands fly up that my thinking aloud was successful and move on, but on the other hand if I see twenty blank stares then I know I should ask some more questions. Depending on their understanding, I will go through at least five or six different scenarios. When I release my students into their independent reading books, I will give them an inferring slip and if they notice a character is feeling a certain way, I would ask that they write down the page number and a feeling word. Before they leave I will tell them that I will ask for volunteers to share their thoughts! While the class goes back to their seats to practice the focus, I will take two reading groups to focus in more closely at the skills/strategies groups need to work on. The reading groups will be a group of four to five students reading at or around the same DRA level.
By day five of this week I will start putting on my chart, "My thinking behind it." This column will go next to the characters' feelings and it will be the column I am most concerned with. If a student is able to clearly explain the "clues" that helped display the characters' feelings, and then the student understands the focus. Some examples for the thinking behind could be: "I know this by looking at his face." "I know this because I would feel this way."