Over the next several weeks, join us in a celebration of the legacy of Dr. Rozlyn Linder. Our colleague, friend, and important voice in literacy education. While we continue to mourn losing her this past December, her teaching, vision, and work lives on and inspires.
For each post, we will reference her books, workshops, and conversations in the specific ways we are using them today.
We know Roz’s work influenced so many of you, too, and so we invite you to write your own #RozTaughtMe. We suggest your post structure may go like this:
- Capture Roz’s work (a strategy, method, chart, writing lesson, etc)
- Share how you have used it or how it has inspired your teaching
- Invite others to try it out as well
Please link your posts in the comments section of any #RozTaughtMe post and/or share on Twitter and Facebook. We will round up and reblog some of your posts as guests posts here on our Community blog.
#RozTaughtMe guest post by Jamie Trauger, 1st Grade Teacher at Milton Avenue School, Chatham, NJ
Learning NF Facts from Pictures and Words
I saw Roz present a workshop at Kean University in Union, New Jersey this past October. Her knowledge of students and their literacy needs was astounding.
I wanted to use her ideas with my first graders, so I purchased her book, K-2 Chart Sense. I have used many lessons from this book while teaching my whole class and during my strategy groups. One particular lesson that stands out was, “What did We Learn?” (page 138). This lesson teaches students that they can learn facts from nonfiction books by studying both pictures and from words.
This is such an important concept for young readers to understand especially when reading nonfiction books. I was excited to try it with my students.
How I’ve Used Roz’s Work
After doing this for a few pages, we stopped and had a discussion about what we noticed on our new chart. The students (and myself) were surprised that we had more sticky notes on the “learned from pictures” side!
I explained to the students that nonfiction books offer such amazing things to learn from photographs, captions, and labels. We talked about how if we didn’t stop and look at the pictures, think about all the sticky notes not being on our new chart. We wouldn’t have learned all these new things!
The students went off to read independently in their “just-right” books. During partnership time, students were asked to share what they learned in their nonfiction books from both pictures and words. I heard such amazing conversations as I met with the students. Some even admitted that before this lesson, they hadn’t even noticed some of the pictures and just were reading the words.
Try It!
Nonfiction reading is fairly new at this age level. Students need to be explicitly taught how to read nonfiction and all of its text features. This lesson does just that! My students are now paying attention closely to the pictures and the words.
Please share your thoughts or your own #RozTaughtMe posts by linking to them in the comments below.
