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Spinning Record

Literacy Activity

Grade level: Fourth Grade

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Content Area:  Reading, Writing and Communicating

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Colorado Academic Standard: 

First Grade, Standard 2. Reading for All Purposes

1. Apply foundational reading strategies to fluently read and comprehend literary texts.

a. Use Craft and Structure to:

  • Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text. (CCSS: RL.1.6) *

    • (The standard for CCSS: RL.1.6) Identify who is telling the story at various points.

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WIDA Can Do Descriptor:

ELP Level 2 Emerging

Recount by

  • Providing information in graphic organizers

Process recounts by

  • Identifying repetitive words and phrases in texts

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Introduction to the Activity:

Discuss how we have been reading narrative text and have learned to find the characters, setting, and key details in a text.  We have also been comparing and contrasting stories. We have learned about pronouns that take the place of a noun. Today we will be learning how to find out who is telling the story. 

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Start an anchor chart and ask if students have heard of “point of view” before.  Explain that point of view means “who is telling the story.  There are two choices for who could be telling the story.  One is the narrator, who is a person outside of a story, not a character in the story.  A narrator uses the pronouns words, “he, she, they” because they are talking about someone else.  Sports commentators are narrators explaining what is happening on the field.  Next, explain how there is another type of story where the character is telling the story.  That person will use the words, I, me, and my, and may also tell about how he/she is feeling. Tell students we will be listening to a narrative text and ask ourselves, “Who is telling the story?” and “How do we know?”  We find this out from the story.  We look into the text and look for key words. Show video from the beginning section of the Beauty and the Beast movie. Fill in chart showing that the text is written from the narrator’s perspective and talk about the words that help us know this.  Next, show beginning of Cars movie.  Fill in chart showing how the story is told from character’s perspective.

Overview of Activity:

Put students into groups with each group having three to four students.  (The groups will help students to collaborate and encourage students who have different languages or need extra support from students who are strong linguistically.  Each student led group will contain a student who is culturally and linguistically diverse.)  Have a different book at each table and have the groups rotate through the different books (reading growth) to find the point of view. They must talk (oral communication) about what they think and collaborate to find out the point of view. Also, give each group a graphic organizer and a book and have students fill out the graphic organizer (written answers) citing examples from the text.  Students will write down page numbers to go with their text evidence.  Have students read the text and write down who is telling the story. Have each group rotate through each story.

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Justification for the Activity: 

This activity fits the literacy assessment criteria because has the students write in a graphic organizer, the students have to read to get the activity done, and they need to communicate with their peers orally. The activity follows the Wright guidelines, where the students create graphic organizers that help break down what they are learning into categories. Also, the students are reading and checking the text for examples of why it is a certain point of view. This means that the students are working on their comprehension of the text and also looking for examples for what they are seeing in the text. 

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Artifacts: 

  • Graphic Organizer

  • The two videos:

    • Cars Intro

    • Beauty and the Beast Intro

  • The books:

    • Ginger by ​Charlotte Voake

    • The New Baby by Mercer Mayer

    • The Hand-Me-Downs by Andrew Durkee

    • The Tooth Race by Caren Stelson

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Citations:​​​

  • Colombo, M. (2012). Teaching English Language Learners : 43 Strategies for Successful K-8 Classrooms. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

  • ​Disney Pixar. (2017, February 26). Cars: First Race (StopMotionMan Junior, Ed.). Retrieved April 13, 2019, from https://youtu.be/cuYOeFDuBmg

  • Disney. (2014, February 24). Disney Beauty & The Beast Prologue (1080 HD) (Xiᴍᴀɢiɴᴀʀʏʀᴏsᴇ ❤, Ed.). Retrieved April 13, 2019, from https://youtu.be/x2rDrKUb6bM

  • WIDA. (n.d.). Can Do Descriptors. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://wida.wisc.edu/teach/can-do/descriptors​​

  • Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, and practice (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Caslon.

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