The students in Ms. Doescher’s Title I classes at St. Thomas Aquinas are thinking about big dreams and big words. These students include children in kindergarten, first, second, third, and fourth grades.
Books We Read about Big Dreams and Big Words
Kindergarten student read I Dream by Anthony Curran.
First through fourth graders read the following narratives about Martin Luther King, Jr; Ruby Bridges; and Maya Angelou on their guided reading level:
Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport
Maya Angelou: Little People, Big Dreams by Lisbeth Kaiser
The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles
The pictures below show some of the lessons we worked on when reading Martin’s Big Words. We picked out the big words that meant something to us. Then we wrote in a word bubble
- why a particular word meant something to us or
- for what word we wanted to be remembered.
I Dream…
My Big Words…
We started out finding the big words and using those anchors.
Next, they talked about what they learned on the last few pages of the book and what they were still wondering about. We stop often while reading to think about what we learned and wonder or question parts of the story. We then came up with strategies for answering these questions.
The second and third graders subsequently filled out an anchor chart on what they learned and what they wondered while reading their books.
The students used the following strategies for answering the questions that arose:
Since it was Black History Month, Ms. Doescher and the students discussed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words. She used Martin’s Big Words to encourage students to expand their vocabulary and consider their choice of words. Students completed the vocabulary sheet on Wow words as they discovered Wow words while reading.
