When It All Comes Together
I started Movement III on Tuesday a couple of weeks ago with, unusually, two boys. One, Camden, is a smart boy who has been pushed at home to read and believes that he is the smartest child in the universe; Evald is an able child who is doing his second year of Kindergarten with me, and is itching to read.
When I got my materials together for Words that day, I had several of the small books ready (and the sentence strips to go with them) and I had a pen and several pencils at the table with me. Movement III books, in case you have forgotten, are 5 or 6 half-size sheets of lined paper stapled with a cover of a half-sheet of construction paper. There are only lines on these pages, no picture spaces. I called Evald and Camden together to the table to start them off.
“I know what I want for my Word,” said Evald immediately.
“Great,” I said. Of course at this stage a Word is not only one word, but has been a sentence on a tag strip for some while.
“I know,” replied Evald with, fortunately, an emphasis on the “I” rather than, with impatience, on the “know.”
I smoothed out the strip I would write his sentence on and picked up my ball-point pen. “Tell me,” I invited him.
“My mom is getting a job,” he said.
I wrote, saying the words as I did so, “My mom is getting a job” without the period. I turned the strip so that it faced him. “Read this,” I said. As he read I framed the words of his sentence from above with my thumb and forefinger. “And because this is a sentence, what goes at the end?” I asked.
“A period!” he said, so I put one on.
“Now you write this sentence into this little writing book, and you will read it in Word Circle today.”
“Okay,” he said, and settled down to do that while I turned to Camden.
“What will you write in your little writing book today, Camden?” I asked.
Camden has been single-mindedly focused on Star Wars since the first day of school, so I naturally expected a sentence about that subject. “Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up,” he said.
“My goodness, you’re right,” I replied. “Is that your sentence for today?” He nodded. “Okay, here it is,” I said as I began to write. “Why am I making an upper-case S for Saint?”
“Because it’s the first word in the sentence.”
“Right. And why am I making an upper-case P for Patrick’s?”
“Because it is somebody’s name.”
“Right!” I turned the strip, he read it, and he settled down to copy it into the little book.
“I’m done,” said Evald. I looked it over.
“Great! You remembered the period and everything! Now go read it to two people.”
When we came to Word Circle that day there was a lot of interest in those two boys when they read from their books. “C’n I have one of those?” Randy called out.
“Probably everyone will have one eventually,” I smiled. “Tomorrow I’ll choose two more to start. Now whose turn is it?”
It is a little unusual to have boys start first, mostly because the girls tend to be slightly ahead of the boys in fine-motor skills and so their printing is often a little clearer.
There are also two other boys and perhaps six girls who could have started that day and who have now gotten Movement III books of their own. When the children read their Word pockets to a friend in the morning, the Movement III children can do either the pocket or the book. They feel very powerful!
It is a little more time-consuming for me at the beginning of Movement III, but soon it becomes as routine as anything else. Each child still gets my attention for two or three minutes in the morning; I hear about important things, often (not Star Wars); and the children know that their own ideas and adventures are part of their day. I love it.
