During the months of August and September my first grade class has been studying Eric Carle. Below are examples of some of our reader response activities. We completed these activities as a part of our daily literacy centers.
House for Hermit Crab
In A House for Hermit Crab, the hermit crab decides its home is too boring, so it spends a year traveling the ocean, gathering friends and items to decorate its shell. After reading this story, we brainstormed numerous items you could find in the ocean. Then, each student received his or her own plain hermit crab to decorate with items of their choice. They painted their decorated hermit crabs with watercolor and outlined their additions in black marker. Lastly, we learned how to make bulleted lists, and each student created a list of what was on their hermit crab’s house. You will notice that our first grade writers used a mixture of phonetic (sounding out) and inventive spelling to complete this activity independently. You may also notice that many of their words are underlined. This is a strategy we learned during writer’s workshop. If a student does not know how to spell a word, they should stretch it out letter by letter, underline it (to indicate they aren’t sure of the spelling) and then move on. This allows our young writers to work more efficiently and independently. I did write the correct spelling behind the student words after they had finished just so that we wouldn’t forget what they had been trying to spell. I was so impressed with the incredible craftsmanship and creativity used in this activity! I’m sure you will be just as impressed as I was with their gorgeous hermit crabs!
Have You Seen My Cat?
Have You Seen My Cat? follows a simple repeating question/response pattern throughout the story, and so that is what we focused on when we read it as a group. We also examined the different types of ending punctuation used, specifically question marks and periods. Students then selected an animal of their choice and wrote a single page that mimicked the pattern Eric Carle used in his story, paying special attention to using their ending punctuation properly. We have also been practicing proper capitalization, and you can see this learning reflected in their work. They did such an excellent job!
“Slowly, Slowly, Slowly,” said the Sloth
The sloth in this story does everything slowly, slowly, slowly. I used this book to introduce the idea of adverbs to students. While we will be learning about basic parts of speech, adverbs are a bit of an advanced topic at this point in the year. However, our first graders seemed to really grasp ahold of the idea, and they helped me create a long list of adverbs in no time! Next, they thought about which adverb they’d like to write about (noisily, angrily, joyfully, etc.) and then which animal would move in such a way. As you can see, these writing samples are filled with tricky punctuation, such as commas and quotation marks, therefore I modeled the proper format for students. I was so impressed with how well they were able to catch on to these more challenging concepts! While I do not expect our young writers to understand how to use these types of punctuation on their own just yet, it was a great opportunity to introduce them to the students.
All of these wonderful reader responses have been copied and bound as books, which now live in our class library. Our students love to look through their own creations, and it is so fun to watch them beam with pride at their accomplishments!
