For this lesson, I worked with a
book called ‘Ming-Lo Moves the Mountain,’ as part of the children’s unit on
ancient China. In the book, Ming-Lo and
his wife live beneath a huge mountain.
The shadow of this mountain makes it impossible for them to grow crops,
and rocks are constantly falling on their house and damaging their roof. Mingo-Lo goes to the village wise man for
advice on how to move the mountain on various occasions. Each time, the wise man thinks for longer, so
more smoke builds up from his pipe. He
tells Ming-Lo to try moving the mountain by pushing against it with a large
tree he has cut down, by pleasing the mountain gods with food, and by making
lots of noise and frightening the mountain away. Finally, when none of these things work, he
tricks Ming-Lo and his wife into “moving the mountain” by doing the dance of
the mountain. They are to pack their
belongings, including the sticks making up their very house, and do a dance
that is really just walking backwards with their eyes closed. He is successful in tricking them, and
Ming-Lo and his wife are convinced they have moved the mountain, and live
happily ever after away from the mountain.
All of these details are important to know when you read the student
work samples attached to this page.
I
read the book with each of the three ability groups for reading in the
classroom, and it was definitely interesting to see how each group responded
differently to the text. I first gave
each group a minute or two to look through the pictures and at the title, and
we talked about what the book might beabout based on this evidence. As we read round-robin style, I asked
questions to check for comprehension. I
had the students predict if each idea was going to work in moving the mountain,
and helped define some new vocabulary words.
My cooperating teacher observed this lesson, and recommended to me that
I move away from round-robin reading, as students get nervous and it takes from
comprehension. She like my opening
activity, and the closing writing activity which I will explain momentarily,
but said that I should have something more engaging for the students during the
reading, like a Venn diagram or character map to work with. I am so glad she gave me so much feedback,
and I will definitely keep this in mind!
For
the comprehension activity, I had the students write a letter to the wise man
from the story, from either Ming-Lo or his wife. I gave some vague ideas about how their
letter might go, and they really had some interesting ideas! Some students, like Layla and Will, pretended
to have figured out the wise man’s trick after the story’s close- and some
showed some real anger in their responses!
Others, like Bailee, assumed the position of the blissfully-unaware
couple at the story’s end and just thanked the wise man for his help. Ethan, a student who is very clearly gifted
and talented, wrote more than two pages, explaining his feelings throughout the
story. I was impressed by the children’s
abilities to assume another point of view so well, and I liked that this
particular assignment allowed them to write in many different ways. The one student who didn’t show an ability to
write from another point of view was Logan, from the low readiness group. He wrote a third-person summary of the story
instead, but he still showed decent comprehension of the story, which was
encouraging. I think having them write
these letters was a great alternative assessment of their comprehension, letter
writing skills, and ability to see things from a point of view that is not
their own. I will definitely be using
this sort of activity in the future! These
letters, by the way, are the first, unedited drafts. The next day I was able to take some time to
help the children edit their letters, and these will be an official writing
grade for them this quarter since my teacher really liked the assignment.
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