My school district uses Journeys as the adopted reading curriculum and lesson 1 for Kinders is about families. This is a great opportunity to be "community responsive" because all families are different and that needs to be normalized. I heard the term community responsive at an equity training and I really like it. It's a different way of saying culturally responsive, perhaps with a broader lens because by focusing on the needs of your community (your students/your class) you can connect to culture and more. It is yet another way of affirming that we need to know our students and make sure they are represented in our curriculum and our lessons. We took time in this lesson to talk about, and celebrate, that one student just got a new baby sister at home. That is exciting and should definitely be part of this lesson on family! I asked her some questions and she answered (this is an EL student) so that was great language practice!
Reading the main selection and any other texts related to the theme does not take place during my co-taught language lessons. Kinder teachers read the stories at different times. My lesson reinforce language around the lesson's theme.
Today we sang and talked about our families.
I introduced all the family words with "my turn/your turn." This is also a great time to acknowledge ways to say these words in other languages, but I did say we were using certain words for our partner talk. Mommy is fine, but for today, we said "mother."
The song is to the tune of Do You Know the Muffin Man.
We practiced putting different family members in the blank and singing the song. {family member cutouts are from National Geographic Reach curriculum}. The song format provides students multiple opportunities to say the target family member word because it repeats 5 times.
I have a sister a sister a sister. I have a sister and my sister loves me.
During our lessons we do a few things to reinforce positive behaviors. 1) We pull equity sticks and give students opportunities to be the helpers. Our rule is that if we pull a stick and a student looks like a PAX leader (PAX is our positive behavior system), then they can come be a helper. This helps keep students engaged because at this age, they want to be called on to help. If a student is not showing expected behaviors when the stick is pulled, we will choose a different one. 2) We play the "secret student" game. My co-teacher pulls a stick and doesn't reveal the name. She watches that student during the singing to see if he/she is participating. If they are, they get a PAX ticket (students collect those to buy prizes as part of a school wide PBIS system). Both of these help students focus on positive behaviors and encourages all students to practice the language.
After I had multiple helpers choose family members so we could practice the song with all different family member names, we (the two teachers) modeled partner practice by sharing who is in our families. We demonstrated "popcorning" back and forth so we each got to share several people. We modeled using the sentence frame from the song: I have a _____.
We also gave a challenge frame: I have a ____ named ____ . Students could choose to try that if they wanted to.
We taught specific expectations for partner practice earlier in the week using this TALK poster. Today, prior to having them turn and talk, we reviewed our TALK expectations poster. We assign students to partners and also assign them as cookies and milks. Those partnerships change, but stay consistent from lesson to lesson for a decent amount of time. We are careful in planning partnerships to make sure students will work well together.
For our very beginner students, I typically take a photo of my pocket chart and print it in color so that they can have personal images to use during partner talk. This helps to facilitate the target language or provides them an opportunity to point if they are not yet confident in the target language. We only use personal visuals for students who really need them. Otherwise, we expect students to use the pocket chart visuals and the language to express their ideas.
Following partner practice, students drew a picture of their family and labeled the different family members.
Lesson Details:
Content Objective: I can name family members
Language Objective: I can tell who is in my family.
Language Function: Describe people
Language Form:
nouns
proper nouns (if family members are named)
number adjectives
Sentence Frame(s):
Teacher: Who is in your family?
Students:
_____ (mom, dad, sister)
My _______.
My _______is in my family.
I have a _____.
I have a ____ named _____.
I have {number} ____s.
As a follow-up to this lesson, teachers will also teach a lesson about what students can do with their families. I will not co-teach this lesson with classroom teachers, but we planned it together and I am providing the materials.
The cards pictured are What's Happening? Photo Cards from Lakeshore Learning.
The language in this lesson is a little more open-ended (students will come up with the verbs to describe what they do with their families/what is happening in the photos). This is a great opportunity to hear a little more about their own experiences. Students will do a piece of writing that uses this sentence frame and they will illustrate what they like to do with their family. They can try to sound out the word and write it (the words in the frame are printed on the page already) or the teacher can listen and write the students idea.
