Fictional Stories in Science
Using Fictional Stories as a Pathway to Science Content
Wordless Books and “Say Something”
I am here to report! 🙂
I tried the wordless book strategy called, “say something” that I featured on two different posts last week: Build, Assess, Build Vocabulary with a Wordless Book and More Wordless Books! with my 2nd grade co-teaching class, using the following book:
It went wonderfully well! To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep the students engaged and actively discussing this story, but they were! To re-cap, you have students partner-up and form two lines. Using a wordless book you show one side one page, for example, page 1, by walking down the middle of the line. Once they see the illustrations, they start telling their partner not only what they see, but the story they feel is being told. You then turn to the next page and show it to the other partner. Here are some pictures in action:
This particular story, Time Flies, was an excellent choice. The pictures are vivid and bold, and would often caused shocking and surprise reactions to the students. The students did a great job using the vocabulary and collaborating for understanding. Note: This story is coming in the middle of our PBL focusing on dinosaurs.
We are definitely going to use this strategy in the future…but with some keeps and some modifications.
- Keep: Before we formed our two lines, I showed everyone the cover and we generated a list of possible words and put them on the board.
- Modification: My co-teaching partner suggested that instead of walking down the middle, that we project the picture, so the current storyteller has longer access to the visual. She wondered if this would keep them describing longer. To support logistics, we thought about moving the line, so that one partner’s back would be to the projector, and then having them switch places for the following page. I have a feeling we are going to get some students that try to steal a glance, 🙂 but its a great modification for next time.
Fictional Stories in Science 