Seymour Simon: One Book- Many Uses

One Book: Many Uses

 Wildfires by Seymour Simon

     Seymour Simon's books are great to use in the classroom.  Simon has written hundreds of books on a variety of non-fiction subjects.  His pictures are engaging, and he writes without using typical non-fiction features.  This type of non-fiction writing mirrors what my fourth graders are expected to read and understand during their high-stakes state testing.  Because of this, I decided to use this book with both my entire class and two of my small groups.  By using the same text in small group, I save time by skipping the actual reading of the text.  I also find it easier to elicit critical thinking when using a familiar text.

     First, let me explain a little about how I use small groups.  For my reading structure, I use The Daily Literacy CAFE which is a combination of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser's Daily Five (which is what the children do independently) and CAFE (their assessment to instruction model for teacher-directed lessons and small group work).  All of my groups are based on skills, not reading level.  Currently, my Monday-Wednesday- Friday group is working on main idea and my Tuesday-Thursday group is working on cause and effect.  

 

     The "Main Idea" group started with taking copies of the text and dividing it into sections, based on the main idea.  In order to show this process clearly, we they literally cut and pasted the text into sections.  Then each section was given a title that reflected the main idea.  There work is in green in the above picture, with key words highlighted and circled.

      The "Cause and Effect" group underlined causes in red and effects in blue.