I am sorry to say that after teaching for five months that I've never done a KWL chart in my class until yesterday. We did one on Abraham Lincoln. I was shocked at all that my students knew about him. They went on for several minutes about tons of detail about his life. My students were excited to share all that they knew about him. When they said what they wanted to find out they were getting excited about learning. We then read different books on him and found out more about his life. I loved this lesson. It was good seeing all that my students knew about him. It was fun also to see them wanting to learn more. I'll make sure that I do KWL charts in my class more often.
Ashlee Allen
3 comments:
Deana did something like this with my class, only it was more verbal, they just told her things they knew about Martin Luther King, Jr. before they read a book about him. They knew so much! I didn't think I had taught them that, but you never know. One kid even said his grandpa knew him - he's an old grandpa! I LOVE KWL charts! They're easy to make, easy to keep up, and then easy to add to at the end of the lessons. I've also had them fill in their own KWL charts before we do one as a class. It's interesting to see what they write down before discussing it as a group.
I love doing KWL charts because they can apply to any text and any situation. Other graphic organizers can also be used this way as well. Do you have one of those district retelling charts? Those are great to use during your literacy block. I need to make sure you have one of those - in fact, the district will give you a big blown up one that is laminated so you can use it again and again. I'll check with Janet about that.
I saw a teacher use one of those retelling charts and I would love to get one-how do I do that? It was a nice change of something to do with the literacy story, it was simple, it made for a great sequence of lessons throughout the week, and it was a good way to get a lot out of the story. I do enjoy doing KWL charts with my class. I have done several with them to introduce stories. Sometimes my students have come up with more information than was actually in the book. They have also come up with questions that were not covered in the story so then we research to find answers to their questions, which teaches students how to find information about their questions.
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