The unit of reading workshop we are wrapping up has focused on reading fiction-- comprehending stories, paying attention to characters, comparing and contrasting books.
Over the last week or so we have focused on the lessons that stories can teach us. We've thought hard about how a book ends, and what the character learns in a book, and discussed how that can be a lesson for us, the reader, too, that we can take with us. Often first graders begin with the more literal interpretation of the lesson, as in "Little Red Riding Hood learns wolves are dangerous," or "the boy learns how to ride his bike." This high-level thinking work is largely approximation at this stage. But we are working hard on thinking of the bigger lesson, as well as the literal one, from our own books and from our read aloud stories. Thinking like this is the early stages of talking about theme in later grades and beyond: what is this book really about? Especially in read aloud discussions, students are getting stronger at this.
Recently, we sorted a stack of books we had previously read aloud into piles based on the lesson the stories teach (all the while noting that books can have more than one lesson). As a wrap-up activity at the end of another day's reading time, students chose a book from their own book bag that they knew and liked and practiced recommending it to others, and they wrote the lesson they felt the book teaches on a strip of paper. Check out our hallway display of these.
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