Barbara W. Coles Trader
Preparation for Teaching Family Painting and Literature—Establishing Student’s Prior Knowledge: I will elicit answers from the students about the painting/literature. I will use group clustering, which is a creative writing techniques, that will start with specified words in a circle on a large sheet of newsprint paper. In response to the key words, I will connect the students’ related words by diagramming/mapping. In Gabriele Ricco’s book (p. 10), “Clustering shifts from a sense of randomness to a sense of direction which enables people to write in a more natural way.”2
Establishing Fluency in Oral Reading: I will read aloud a synopsis of the literary story for modeling
fluency in oral reading
.
Oral reading fluency
is reading in phrases with appropriate intonation and inflection. This is a complex process since literary writings usually provide very few cues for the readers. I will encourage the students to read their summaries aloud with expression, and I will demonstrate orally appropriate expressions for specific punctuation marks. The students will be given the opportunity to read at least one family story each month silently. The rereadings will be done orally and within the students’ subgroups. Story plays that emphasize a family will help to facilitate the development of
reading fluency
. Thus, I will let the students read a family focused story play at least once per month. I have found that students enjoy reading story plays with embellishment.