Compendium Topic 2:  Open-Mind Portraits

 

Open-mind portraits are an excellent activity for lower grade students, to help them think more deeply about characters in stories, events from the character’s point of view, or even as an introductory activity in middle elementary grades for author / illustrator studies. 

The portraits are created after the children have completed reading a story, or can be done in sections, for longer stories.  The first part is a cut-out of the character’s head and neck.  The children draw a face and hair on it. Next, the students cut out pages of paper, using the head cut-out as a mold, so that the pages have the same shape.  Those pages become the “mind pages” for the booklet.  On them, the students draw and write about the character from the character’s point of view.  They focus on what the character is thinking and doing at different points in the story.

When they are finished, the children take turns sharing their open mind portraits with their classmates, explaining the words and pictures they chose and why they chose them.

If you wanted to do introductory author studies this way, the children could do the head and neck portrait from the book jacket photo, or from their imaginations.  Then, instead of doing the mind pages from the character’s point of view, they would do them based on what they think the author wanted to portray to the reader at the various points in the story.  These could also be used for biographies, and the students would use the mind pages to portray the person’s biography from an autobiographical standpoint.

Lesson Topic:  Comprehension:  Understanding “sequence”

 

Grade Subject:  Second Grade Language Arts

 

Rationale:  Florida Sunshine State Standard:  (LA.A.2.2)  The student constructs meaning from a wide range of texts.

 

Standard 1:  reads text and determines the main idea or central message, identifies relevant supporting details or facts, and arranges events in chronological order.

 

Standard 5:  creates narratives in which ideas, details and events are in logical order and are relevant to the story line.

 

Real Life Application:  Students will need to know how to write accounts of happenings to document events, using proper sequence, and will need to be able to effectively communicate ideas in writing in their business and personal lives.

Objective:  For the second grade language arts students to summarize their comprehension of sequence in a story, so that having heard a short story read aloud, and called upon to form a human chain of sequence of events, they will place themselves in proper sequential order, with 90% accuracy, and when given paper and pencil, will compose a short original narrative story using proper sequence and supporting details, with 90% accuracy.

Prior Knowledge:  The children have been concentrating on the standard listed above, and have been read many short stories, after which there has been a lengthy discussion about the sequence of events in the stories.

  Content:

§         Review writing strategies from standard

§         Review sequence of events and writing steps

§         Read a short narrative story to class before writing assignment.

§         http://www.firn.edu/doe/curric/prek12/pdf/langart3.pdf

Vocabulary Words

Sequence- the order in which events take place

Narrative- to tell a story, based on real or imaginary events

Closure- the ending or conclusion of the story

Details- “action words” or words that make the story more exciting

Material:

• Student Reading Text, story “The Broken Bed”
• Writing paper for each student
• Pencils for each student

Procedures:

Hook:  I will begin by calling the children to the carpet and asking them if they are ready to be the human sequence of events from our story today!

1. Before the lesson, have pencils sharpened for each student.
2. Have enough blank writing paper for each student to have 3 or 4 sheets.
3. I will read “The Broken Bed” aloud to the class, emphasizing clue words like “next, then, first, finally.”
4. Next I will give the following directions:
5. Now, I am going to read five sentences from the story, out of order of how they really took place.  I will choose 5 students to each be one of the five sentences.  You will come up and stand in front of the white board, but place yourselves in proper sequence, not the way I read your sentences.
6. I will ask if everyone understands what we are going to do, and answer any questions.
7. Next, I will read 2 sentences from the beginning, 2 from the middle and 1 from the ending, in random order.
8. Next, I will read the sentences one at a time and choose a student for each.
9. Then, I will ask the students to come forward and arrange themselves in proper sequential order.
10. After approximately 2 minutes, I will ask if the students are ready.
11. I will read my 5 sentences aloud again, in the order I read them in the first time.
12. Next, I will have each child, in the order in which they are standing, read their sentence aloud.
13. We will discuss as a class if they arranged themselves in proper sequence.  Did the first sentence come first, second, second, etc.?
14. High Order Questions:  “Why couldn’t we leave the sentences the way I read them to you?” “What happened to the story when I changed the way the sentences were put in sequence?”  “What would happen if I wrote a story and did the same thing?” “Why is it important for us to use the right sequence of events when we tell or write a story?”
15. Low Order Questions:  “What actually comes before the first sentence in the story?”  “What comes after the last sentence?”  “Why does it come last?”
16. I will read 5 more sentences and choose 5 different children to do the same activity, and reread the sentences in the order I gave them in, and see if they rearranged themselves into proper sequential order, as well.
17. Next, the children will all return to their seats.
18. They will be asked to write their name and the date on the piece of composition paper on their desks.
19. Next, I will ask them to write a short narrative story (and review what narrative stories are.)
20. They will be reminded that their story needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending, and that they need to use details to make their story exciting.
21. They will also be reminded that their story needs closure in its ending.
22. They can write about fiction or nonfiction, and the story can be 1-2 pages long.
23. I will give them 30 minutes to complete their stories, as I circulate the room, answering questions, and helping students come up with topics if they are having trouble.  I will also assist with scaffolding for spelling and grammar, and spend extra time with children who are not as skilled at writing yet as others.
24. After all students are finished, I will choose 3 students to come forward and read us their stories, while the other children sit on the carpet and listen closely.
25. At the close of each of the stories, I will ask their classmates if their story had a beginning, middle, and ending, and if the ending brought the story to closure.
26. I will ask if the details made the story exciting, and if the sequence of events made sense to them.
• Closure/ Review: 
• We will again talk about the standard we worked on today.
• We will talk about how important proper sequence is in a story and how it changes the meaning of the story if the sequence of events is changed.

 

 

Modifications:

Enrichment:  Children who finish writing early can get a book for independent reading from the classroom library. 

Remediation:  Depending on the results of how the children place themselves in proper sequence during the interactive activity, and how they do on sequencing their written narrative stories, I may spend more time and do more activities to emphasize the importance of proper sequence. 

Accomodation:  Billy is an ESE student who is just writing at the beginning level.  He will be allowed to tell us is story orally, or type it on the classroom computer, instead.