Monster Unit

We recently finished our language arts unit on monster stories. The rationale for the theme of monsters was that most children have fears about "something in the closet" or "something under the bed." I wanted the students to understand that we all have fears, and sometimes we feel better and are less afraid if we talk about those fears or make a joke of them. We started by reading suspenseful books with monsters in them (see above shelfari). We made predictions about what would happen next in the story. We then discussed clues that the author gave us to make those predictions and how that helped us stay interested in the book.

We then wrote our own monster stories using the books we read as mentor texts. In their story, students were challenged to do the following:
1. Include clues to lead the reader to predictions.
2. Have a clear beginning, middle and end.
3. Describe their monster, and use complete sentences.

They then conferred with me about their stories and we edited the story together. You may notice that there are still some mistakes in their final draft. This is because six year olds will likely make many writing errors. So, rather than overwhelm and possibly discourage them with a paper full of red marks, we focus on correcting the concepts taught in the beginning of first grade (i.e., capitals and periods, story structure, grade appropriate spelling patterns).

Students are now rehearsing their stories for Author's Chair. Doing this will help them build fluency and practice reading with prosody.