Connecting to our characters June 16, 2009

Students then were asked to focus on 1-3 identities that they felt were the most important or most meaningful to them. In 3rd grade, students do a lot of work around character development and mapping in order to create a strong realistic fiction piece. Building upon that, 4th graders had to model their main character around these shared identities. To really get inside the character’s head, each student was interviewed while role playing his/her main character. Some students were really excited about pretending to be their character. They also wrote “I Am” poems from the perspective of their fictional character. 

As this is all going on, students are looking at characters in their Independent Reading books and Read Alouds. They are exploring the characters’ identities and any conflicts those play, or could play. In my class, we read  Freak the Mighty. The main characters have very distinct identities as being both abled and disabled. This helped my students understand an issue of identity while promoting a supportive classroom community. Furthermore, we read the picture book Keep Your Ear on the Ball. In Liav’s 5th grade class, the main mentor text was a short story by Langston Hughes in the book America Street. Also, her students had already read books about the Civil Rights Movement and Jim Crow laws. Such books included Leon’s Story and Fire From the Rock. Students were clearly able to see how somebody’s racial identity can cause them conflict, and even danger.

Conflicts with identity June 16, 2009

As with each new beginning to “The Writing Process,” there are a few days completely devoted to “collecting seed ideas.” We wanted students to understand that while they should have pride in their identities and who they are, they must also realize that sometimes identities can cause conflicts in the world around them. For example, being a kid is fantastic. But sometimes being a child means that you are not taken seriously or your voice is unheard. We used a variety of role playing scenarios from the book Open Minds to Equality. Students read about girls who wanted to play sports, kids who were non-native English speakers, and children with disabilities. It began to open their eyes to how identities are not without conflict.

For our Writing Workshop, students were asked to return back to their list of personal identities. From there, each student picked one identity to focus on and were asked to brainstorm problems that might result from this identity. Students wrote about problems they have encountered and problems that somebody with that identity MIGHT encounter. Students picked one of those potential problems and began writing out entries in their notebooks deciding how a character with their identity might deal with that particular problem.