Program Background
International Charter School Program Features
Program Model: 50/50
Languages: Spanish and English
Language of Initial Literacy Instruction: All students are taught in the partner language and English simultaneously
Student Background Within the Dual Language Program
Linguistic Profile: Within the Spanish/English dual language program at ICS, roughly three-quarters of the students are native Spanish speakers.
Ethnic Profile: Families’ countries of origin include Cape Verde, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, and the United States.
Percent of students in the program qualifying for free/reduced price lunch: Approximately 80%.
Unit Plan
Standards to Be Addressed
New England Common Assessment Program Reading Grade Level Expectations (June 2004 draft)
- R–4–4.1: Identify or describe character(s), setting, problem/ solution, major events, or plot, as appropriate to text; identify any significant changes in character(s) over time.
- R–4–5.2: Describe main characters’ physical characteristics or personality traits; provide examples of thoughts, words, or actions that reveal characters’ personality traits.
- R–4–5.6: Identify causes or effects, including possible motives of characters.
- R–4–6.1: Demonstrate knowledge of the use of literary elements and devices (e.g., imagery and exaggeration) to interpret intended meanings.
International Charter School Grade Level Expectations–Speaking and Listening
- Recite brief poems (two or three stanzas), soliloquies, or dramatic dialogues, using clear diction, tempo, volume, and phrasing.
- Summarize major ideas and supporting evidence for them presented in spoken messages and formal presentations.
Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century
- Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.
- Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
Guiding Questions
- How do writers, readers, and actors bring characters to life?
- How can readers use textual clues to create mental images and interpret characters’ moods and actions?
- How do readers use schemas to understand characters?
- How are traditions similar/different between cultures?
- How do cultural traditions shape our perspectives/upbringing?
Big Ideas
- Readers create mental images of characters’ personae and actions, based on aspects of text.
- Readers can better understand a text by thinking about and discussing characters’ motivations and relationships to other characters.
- Readers can use prior knowledge to understand characters.
- Different cultures have their own portrayals of the same character or legend, but some elements are universal.
Background/Prior Knowledge to be Activated in the Unit
- Experience with the performance of stories, such as books read aloud and theater productions
- Familiarity with various types of characters from fairy tales, legends, and popular children’s fiction
- Knowledge of cultural elements (in particular, specific characters) associated with traditional holidays
Assessment
Both self-assessment and teacher assessment rubrics are used to assess students understanding of the content and language objectives. Written responses from days two and four should be assessed with regard to students’ use of information given in the text to infer their characterizations. Self-assessment rubrics for the performance evaluate the student’s success in reading aloud with appropriate expression and fluency.
Teacher checklist for group work, noting how well students are able to work cooperatively with their peers and to provide constructive feedback to each other.
Objectives
Content Area Skills and Concepts
- Making and confirming predictions about text using prior knowledge and textual clues, such as titles, topic sentences, key words, and foreshadowing
- Visualizing—creating images of setting, characters, and events—based on aspects of text
- Drawing inferences about cause and effect
- Identifying thoughts, words, or actions that reveal characters’ personality traits
Language Skills
- Reading aloud with appropriate expression and fluency
- Understanding vocabulary: mental image, schema, foreshadowing, visualize, mood, character, traits
- Understanding idioms and exaggerated descriptions of characters in the text
Teaching/Learning Activities
Day 1: Students browse through a selection of scripts for Readers’ Theater. The teacher guides a class discussion to identify the elements of Readers’ Theater and to help students understand how to use the scripts. Students form groups of six with at least one English dominant speaker in each group. Each member of the group receives a copy of the script for the play A Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale by Aaron Shepard. The play has two speaking roles and four narrators. In their groups, students read through their scripts, choose parts, and mark their lines to practice as homework.
Day 2: The students gain an understanding of the characters by identifying words and phrases that suggest character traits, sketching their mental image of the characters, discussing their sketches, and rereading their scripts aloud with appropriate expression. They compare the character of St. Nicholas and the Dutch St. Nicholas celebration in the play to other cultures’ traditions.
Day 3: Students form new groups, and each group chooses a Readers’ Theatre script. The size of each group matches the number of characters in the script. In their groups, students read through their scripts, choose parts, and mark their lines to practice as homework.
Day 4: In their groups, students read through their scripts aloud, and discuss the plot, focusing on characters’ motivations and interactions. Students practice reading their scripts with expression. They also complete a written response to the script focusing on their mental image of the characters. The teacher circulates among the groups to provide language support.
Day 5: Whole-class performance; students offer feedback on performances.
Days 6-10: The process is repeated in the other language (Spanish) with different texts. The cultural focus throughout the Spanish cycle is on values and beliefs. As much as possible, the teacher focuses attention on beliefs and values that help to explain the behavior of the characters, and encourages the class to consider the extent to which these beliefs and values are the same or different across cultures.
Follow-up: The class performs several plays for other classes.
Throughout the cycle, the teacher provides mini-lessons as needed on the following areas:
- Working as a group without the teacher (e.g., how to provide feedback to group members)
- Portraying characters using schemas based on the text
- Reading aloud with appropriate expression and fluency
- Performing in front of an audience
Materials/Resources
- Several copies of a variety of Readers’ Theater scripts
- Transparency of The Baker’s Dozen
- Copies of The Baker’s Dozen for the students
- Blank transparencies
- Paper, highlighters, colored pencils
- Pair/group work checklist
Online Resources:
- Readers’ Theater scripts and resources, primarily in English, but some in Spanish
- More than 23 volumes of Readers’ Theater scripts for a variety of grade levels and content areas, most in English, but some (such as Don Quixote in America by Resurreccíon Espinosa) in English and Spanish
Lesson Plan
Standards to Be Addressed
New England Common Assessment Program Reading Grade Level Expectations (June 2004 draft)
- R–4–5.2: Describe main characters’ physical characteristics or personality traits; provide examples of thoughts, words, or actions that reveal characters’ personality traits.
Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century
- Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.
- Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
Guiding Questions
- How can readers use textual clues to create mental images and interpret characters’ moods and actions?
- How are cultural practices alike/different between two or more cultures?
Motivation (10 minutes)
Whole Group Activity
The teacher asks why it is important for readers to focus on personality traits. As the students respond, the teacher supplies evidence from a text the group has read previously, showing that personality traits contribute to the plot. She notes examples from this text giving clues about the character’s personality (titles, topic sentences, words, foreshadowing clues, etc.)
Assessment
Assessment of sketches: Are they reasonable representations of the characters?
Informal observation of students during group work: Do the students appear to understand the characters’ actions, traits, and motivations? Do they read with appropriate expression?
Extension
Homework: Students interview relatives or a neighbor from a country that is not the United States, or from a minority culture within the United States, about traditional celebrations and characters associated with the celebrations. Students prepare to report their findings to the class.
Objectives
Content Area Skills and Concepts
- Visualizing setting, characters, and events
- Identifying words and phrases in text that highlight characters’ moods and actions
- Synthesizing character traits to form a mental image of the character
- Understanding that characters’ actions can be explained in part by their personalities
- Comparing differences and similarities between two or more cultures/cultural practices
Language Skills
- Justifying a position
- Understanding vocabulary: visualize, mood, character, traits
- Reading with expression and fluency
Thinking/Study Skills
- Providing evidence for interpretations from text
Materials/Resources
- Copies of the script The Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale for each student
- Script on transparency
- Blank transparency of Venn diagram
- Blank paper for drawing
- Highlighters
- Pencils, crayons, colored pencils
Teaching/Learning Activities (1 hour)
Whole Group Activity
The teacher reads aloud from the Baker’s Dozen script, which is on the overhead. She asks students to note words and phrases that provide evidence for the characters’ moods and motivations. After reading two to three pages, the teacher asks the students to summarize what they have learned so far about the characters’ mood and actions in the script
Individual Activity
Students reread their scripts silently and continue to identify words and phrases that highlight the characters’ personality traits and mood. Then each student sketches his/her mental image of one of the characters in the script.
Small Group Activity
In small groups, students present their sketches, describing the character’s personality and mood and giving examples from the text to support their interpretations. The teacher circulates among the students to provide language support.
Whole Group Activity
Three or four students present their sketches to the class, sharing insights into the character’s actions using textual evidence of character traits. The teacher leads a whole class discussion about how the baker changed during the play and what he learned. The teacher represents insights from this discussion on a Venn diagram.
Students discuss the portrayal of St. Nicholas and the celebration of St. Nicholas Day in the play, and compare that to other cultural traditions that they know.
Review: Now that students have developed a deeper understanding of the text, they reread their scripts aloud in their groups, this time with appropriate expression.
Teaching the Lesson
This Reader’s Theater unit addresses two main goals of dual language programs: developing literacy skills in both languages and promoting cultural competence. Reader’s Theater is an efficient and effective strategy for addressing the first goal because it engages students actively in reading with understanding. The second goal is addressed by selecting Reader’s Theater scripts that lend themselves to making cross-cultural connections. To address both goals, it is crucial to give students access to different genres (humor/drama, realistic/fantastic, historical/modern, folktales, fairy tales, etc.) during the two cycles of the unit (5 days in English and 5 days in Spanish).
This Readers’ Theater unit supports and extends students’ ability to read in two languages by teaching strategies for understanding characters and by emphasizing the importance of reading with appropriate expression and fluency. The unit looks at how text clues, such as exaggeration and idioms, create a mental image of the characters that helps to explain their actions. Students spend time thinking and talking about what is stated and what can be inferred about characters in the Readers’ Theater scripts. In order to explore characterization and performance strategies in both program languages, as well as to ensure that students have the opportunity to practice reading fluently in both languages, the 5-day cycle is conducted first in English or in Spanish and then repeated in the other language, but with different texts.
Because much of the work in this unit is done independently or in small groups, the teacher should circulate among groups to provide language support, prompt learners to extend their thinking, and facilitate cooperative group work. The teacher can also use those opportunities for noting what elements of the lesson are giving students trouble and addressing those points in future mini-lessons.
The teacher ensures that the goal of developing cultural competence is addressed by prompting whole-class discussions of different cultural aspects addressed in the scripts read in class. By encouraging students to describe their own cultural practices and learn about others’, the teacher creates a climate in which students learn about cultural differences and respect their integrity.
The lesson developed for this toolkit takes place during the first week of the cycle, which is conducted in English. One of the language objectives for the lesson is reading with expression and fluency. Reading with expression requires comprehension of the text, including understanding of the characters. Students show that they have understood textual clues to the characters’ personae as they read aloud (e.g., indicating emotion in the sound of their voice).
The culture goal is addressed in discussion when students are encouraged to make cross-cultural connections between one of the characters in the play The Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale, and a literary or mythical character associated with one of their traditional celebrations. Students can discuss the characteristics of the Dutch Saint Nicholas in the play and compare it to a similar character from their culture. The teacher can help to expand the students’ vocabulary and knowledge of dialectal and lexical variations from different Spanish-speaking countries. For instance, in countries like Puerto Rico and Venezuela, el Día de los Reyes is a very important celebration that takes place in January, whereas that day does not have the same importance in Colombia or Chile. Moreover, different countries have different names for the same character. For example, Saint Nicholas is called Papá Noel in Colombia, El Viejito Pascuero in Chile, and Santa Claus (pronounced /klos/) in Puerto Rico. All of these differences and commonalities can be used to enrich students’ cultural understanding in a dual-language classroom. Later in the cycle, when students are working with the scripts they have chosen, the teacher can pay particular attention to underlying cultural values and beliefs that are embedded in stories.