Teaching Block Blues

Reflection:
I tried the method of using literature to spark drama in my teaching block! the kids loved it.

Above is a picture of the book I used, When Vegetables Go Bad! I loved this story, and my associate did as well so it made sense to use. The story starts with a little girl who hides way her vegetables in her pocket so she doesn't have to eat them. Overnight they go bad. 

I started the lesson with a "I wonder" piece. Students thought and pair-shared their ideas about what the book could be about based on the title page alone. So many of them had such excellent ideas. A lot of them made crazy predictions, but it was a very good activity to get their ideas flowing and get them thinking creatively. For this portion, I took observational notes based on the discussions they had in pairs or small groups. 

Next, when we got to the page of the vegetables going bad, students formed small groups and Tableau'ed their predictions based on what they read. They were given options of taking on the main girl character, the mom, the dog, the vegetables, or a made-up character. Each tableau had to be under 30 seconds, with a key point of stop and start for the students to "freeze" on. 

Next, each of the groups were put into vegetable groups based on where they were sitting. We had carrots, red peppers, cauliflower, green beans, green peppers, corn, celery, and asparagus. These groups were given a line of choral reading. I wrote out the lines on the board, and they were given a short time to practice as a group. So when I read out the line in the book, they echoed it back to me. This took three or four tries. It was not as easy as I thought it would be, and certain groups were much more enthusiastic than others! It ended up sounding really cool once the kids got the hang of it. This also worked to keep them really engaged throughout the book. 

This lesson, which I thought would take one language block, ended up taking two. The kids had put so much work into the first Tableau's that I figured we could take it one step further. The next task incorporated some dance (Thanks Kari-Lynn!!!!!). Students were put back into their vegetable groups from earlier, and asked to make up a small dance and chant according to how the book portrayed their vegetable. They were allowed to have 10 seconds of moves. To decrease the pressure, preforming in front of the class was optional but encouraged. Also, we ended up preforming it in a round robin style, where all groups performed their dance and chant at the same time, so we sounded like a very large mob of angry vegetables, like in the book! During this portion, we video taped on the school iPad to ensure that we could re-watch the students performances for assessment later. 

Then, we finished up reading the book. Our last activity was a RAFT writing activity where students had to choose a character and write based on that character. Below is the chart I had given them. Students did this by bouncing ideas off each other in their small groups, but then writing independently. These will be considered formative writing pieces, used in assessment as learning. 

When Vegetables Go Bad

Role	Audience	Format	Topic
Ivy	The world	Writing a blog	Her love for other foods
Ivy’s Dog	Ivy + family	Inner thoughts	How Ivy and her vegetables seem from dog's perspective
Ivy’s Mom	Other Moms	Talking on the phone	Ivy and her refusal to eat vegetables
Vegetable (choose a carrot, turnip, lettuce etc)	US (our class)	Writing us a letter	Why we should all eat our vegetables

The students really loved this lesson. I really loved teaching this lesson. I cannot wait to do it again.