This week they were reading the story 'King Jack and the dragon' by Peter Bently and Helen Oxenbury.
At the beginning of the book the three boys gather the things they need for their fort.
I began by reading the book for enjoyment, stopping to explain key vocabulary on the way. Many of the student's hadn't heard words like fort and stronghold before.
Then I gave each student a number (1-7) and asked the students to sit beside the picture with that number. The students were given whiteboards and markers and then I introduced the class to 'verbs'. I started by showing them examples of some verbs I had thought of. Then I asked them to look at their picture and talk with their group about what the boys were doing in the picture. They had to write verbs on their whiteboards that went with their picture. They could use verbs from my example or come up with their own.
Next, the students were asked to decide on the best 3 verbs for their picture. Each group were given 3 blue strips of paper to write their verbs on (1 verb on each strip) and these were glued onto the picture paper.
We repeated that task but this time we looked for appropriate adverbs. Again, the students could chose from my list or their own and they wrote them on whiteboards. Then they chose 2 appropriate adverbs from their whiteboard and wrote them on strips of yellow paper. These were also glued onto their sheet.
Now they had 5 words glued beside their picture - 3 verbs and 2 adverbs.
They cleaned off their whiteboards and listened to the instructions on how to write a 'step' - starting with a verb and including an adverb. Each student in the group had to write a step on their whiteboard using the words around their picture. The students then each shared their step with the group. The group then discussed the good and bad points of each person's step. They were asked to take all of the 'good' things and come up with one 'group step' for their picture.
This was then checked for errors by the teacher and then they wrote it onto a strip of cardboard and glued onto their picture. So now each picture has 5 words and a 'step' or instruction sentence.
This is all we got time for in the lesson.
The next step is for the classroom teacher to model the layout of the entire procedure. The class chose a title and then use the pictures to create a list of needed equipment (which is written in the story near each picture!) and then the steps that the student's wrote will be added to the procedure. Finally, a concluding statement will be made about the fort.
The students really enjoyed this lesson and they worked well drawing out the needed vocabulary from the pictures. This book does not say the instructions instead it is all shown through the pictures. The words with the pictures simply lists the things the children used - not how they used them. So the students had to analyse the pictures to get these words.
It is a good example on how to take a text from word level to sentence or statement level and then create a whole text.
I hope you found this lesson useful.