TEACHERNET Education Webspace - RPS

By Eleanor Koldofsky (2005)

Summary

The story of Clip Clop lends itself to the reading strategies of making connections, questioning and visualizing. If the story is used to model these strategies, the teacher would read to students and stop to think aloud when he/she makes a connection, a visual image or asked a question. If the story is being used for guided practice, the teacher would invite students to talk about their connections, mental images and questions. Recording their thinking on chart paper might be a part of this guided practice or might be done during independent practice. Responses might be written on sticky notes with text codes and brief explanations or they might be written on two column note forms. Possible headings might include: What the Text Said/My Strategy Thinking, What the Text Said/My Questions, etc. depending on the strategies being practiced.

Connections

These are examples of some possible connections that could be made. The teacher could model thinking about these connections and/or when students are already familiar with the modeled strategy, invite students to share their connections. Questions about some of these things might help to get that started.

• Text - to - Self

• prior knowledge of how horses have been used by people
• prior knowledge of other animals that help people
• background knowledge of how we acquired the things we needed in the early 20th century
• animals in the children's lives that are not their pets

• Text - to - Text

• other books from this time period
• other books about horses or animal friends

• Text - to - World

• knowledge of places in the world where horses and other animals are still used in similar ways

Visualizing

Listening for the sound words of the horses hooves and the descriptions of the horses and their jobs while trying to form mental images in their minds before seeing the pictures might be an interesting exercise for students.

Questioning

Each new horse and its job might suggest potential questions. Identifying questions and then deciding whether they are ones that can be answered from the text, with more research, or from the students' own heads is an important part of this strategy. Questions might lead to inferences and hopefully their answers will mean better understanding of the story. These are some of my own questions that I might model for students:

• What does the word "Criminentlies" mean?
• Why was the milk in bottles?
• Could you buy tea bags from the tea wagon? Did it serve tea?
• Was the produce man a farmer? Did he come every day?
• Did the ragman sell rags, bones and bottles of just collect them? What did he do with them all?
• How did the fire wagon put out the fires?
• Why do horses wear horse shoes?
• What did they use the ice for?
• Why did they need coal and wood in the winter?
• How did the camera work that took her picture?

Strategies Used in the Activities Suggested on the Willow Awards Site

We identified the following reading strategies as being necessary for students to complete the activities that are suggested on the Willow Awards site. Depending on a student's familiarity with using the strategies, they may need some explicit teaching and modeling to be able to complete the activity independently.

• Research other animals that are "willing workers" and help people. Determining Importance, Synthesis
• Research pioneer life or other topics such as transportation. Determining Importance, Synthesis
• Write a poem using sounds or alliteration. Visualizing, Synthesis
• Interview a family member, relative, or neighbour, about things they remember from their childhood. Questioning