We haven’t kicked off our new school year yet, but I am starting to gear up, and am trying to ease G back into the habit of having regular lessons. As G is a beginning reader, we spend a lot of time on literacy skills in order to give her a firm foundation. I try to sprinkle them throughout our days, to tie them into whatever else we are studying. I have always found her the most amenable to anything having to do with religion, so since tomorrow is the Feast of the Transfiguration, G and I spent some time reading and talking about the story. I took out both our Tomie de Paola Bible and our Children’s Picture Bible, and we opened them to the story of the Transfiguration.
Literacy Skills: Comparing and Contrasting
Before we read the story, we did a little pre-reading activity and studied the illustrations. We talked about what similarities G saw between the photos, and then what differences she could find. Some of the things she noted were the color choices of each artist, the fact that one had only Jesus, Elijah, and Moses, while the other also depicted the apostles. She also noted the differences between how individual figures were depicted.
Comparing and contrasting is an important pre-reading skill, and one that will carry over into other academic areas as G gets older. Finding similarities and differences requires a child to pay close attention to detail, which will help improve their comprehension skills by helping them to retain information better. It also helps them to learn to organize information in their head.
Today we focused on comparing and contrasting the illustrations. Tomorrow, we will return to the story and read both, practicing this skill with the text itself. This will give G an opportunity to further hone her attention to detail, an area that she struggles with.
Literacy Skills: Retelling and Comprehension
Reading comprehension is an entirely different skill from reading itself. When we say a child can read, usually what is being referred to is decoding, the act of sounding out the words and pronouncing them properly. Comprehension is understanding what has been read, not only the decoding of words, but also the ability of the reader to understand the meaning of those words, on their own and in the context of the sentence, to be able to synthesize the information. Another facet of comprehension is the reader’s ability to activate prior knowledge and experience, and to use that prior knowledge to help them more fully understand the meaning of what they are reading.
What does this mean? This means that as I read G the story of the Transfiguration, she is processing the story, and filling in the gaps with what she already knows. For example, the story of the Transfiguration mentions both Elijah and Moses, and both of the illustrations we looked at depicted them. G was able to identify Moses in one of the illustrations without my help because she noticed that he was carrying the 10 Commandments. She has heard that Bible story before, and so was able to place Moses in the story accurately, as well as to start to grasp the significance of his being present at the Transfiguration. She knows he’s important in the Bible, so it makes sense to her that he was there.
After reading the story of the Transfiguration, G completed two activities to allow me to understand how much of the story she was comprehending. The first was a drawing activity. Since we spent a lot of time looking at the illustrations in her Bibles, I asked her to illustrate the story in her own style, creating a picture that tells the story.
Then, after she was finished, I asked her to tell me about her story, writing down what she said. Looking at what she drew, I was able ascertain some of the key points that stuck out to her- Jesus alone in the cloud, the mountain location, the shining light. Asking her to tell me about it gave me even more information. For example, she didn’t draw the voice from the cloud, but she talked about it.
Because she is still learning to write, I typed her story into a handwriting practice site and printed it out for her to trace. Writing things down is a way that many people learn and can be a great way to solidify knowledge. It has the added benefit of strengthening her fingers and giving her practice with writing her letters.
Plans for Tomorrow’s Feast
Tomorrow we’ll continue our focus on the Feast of the Transfiguration by re-reading the story and working on these same literacy skills in new ways. For example, now that G is familiar with the story, we can look at what the story teaches us I’ve got a coloring page planned, and while we color, G and I will talk about the resurrection and how Jesus gives his apostles, and us, a glimpse of it at the Transfiguration (our key lesson for the feast).
I’m not usually one for food, but I do love Kendra’s idea of making whipped cream on the Transfiguration, so we may give it a try. You can find more of her food tips and explanations in her fabulous book.
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