Taft Is Loving Literacy

Literacy is literally everywhere in first grade! Reading and comprehension are key to learning in all subject areas, and our programs apply those skills cross-curricularly. Here are some great examples of reading projects that extended into other areas of discussion last week at Taft!  

Ms. Valentine and Ms. Sweeney’s classes practiced Turn & Talks this week. Turn & Talks are a great way for students to learn communication skills and to share and relate the knowledge they pick up in class with their peers. The Turn & Talk approach is an instructional routine during which students exhibit their content knowledge by having attentive and thoughtful conversations with their classmates. Short prompts help to initiate conversations and the students learned to sit and face their partners when listening to what they have to share!

In Ms. McElroy’s class, students read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes -- an ALA Notable Book and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year (1991).

In the story, a young mouse named Chrysanthemum is teased by three peers for her unique name, which she loves having. The students created puppets to retell the story and discuss how the character may have been feeling about being teased. They also created name number bonds and a name flower to share how each of their own names are unique, just like Chrysanthemum's!

Ms. Umbrino’s class enjoyed reading the book David Goes To School, and used the plot of the story as a way to discuss classroom rules. The titular character, David, is a somewhat ill-behaved student, whose antics will probably make even the best-behaved readers laugh out loud. Despite is mischievous ways, David learns that, despite the difficulties he gets into, he will always receive plenty of encouragement and love. Ms. Umbrino's students (who are much better behaved than David) discussed what decisions David should be making in school, as opposed to the bad one's he's been making.