Action Research: If You're Angry and You Know it...

This week our focus was on the story, If You're Angry and You Know It written by Cecily Raiber. If the title sounds familiar, that's because the pattern follows the song "If You're Happy and You Know It." A large part of my instruction is matching the familiar with the new. Students activate their background knowledge about the song and then use the familiar patterns to read the story. In order to make sure students are transferring their knowledge from the familiar to the new, we engage in lots of practice. This week we:

1) Introduced the book by listening to the song without any words. Once students listened a couple of times, they began to sing the familiar, "If You're Happy and You Know It."
2) I show students the book - we discuss how the title and some of the words are different. I read the book, pointing to the words as I read.
3) I write out the book on sentence strips and students practice chorally reading using a pointer finger. While the word pattern is still familiar, the removal of pictures provides students with the opportunity to think more about the words.
4) We practice word families that naturally occur in text. This week we talked about words that end in -ow and make the long /o/ sound (such as "know" and "show"). Students use magnet letters to make new words and then write the words down in a Word Family House. We also include words that don't belong in the house such as "how" and "now."
5) We practice sight words that naturally occur in text. Students point to words on the sentence strips and make their own flash cards for independent practice. Sight words are put onto the word wall after they have been introduced.
6) By the end of the week I want children to practice what they have learned through writing. Students may write a journal entry about the song or they may write their own version of the story. Many of the books I am using have multiple versions. This story also has a Jungle Edition.

In addition to these teacher led activities, students have ample opportunities for independent practice during center time. This week, I provided a computer center with a virtual keyboard where students can play the song on the computer. I printed out the sheet music for the song and then wrote the corresponding musical notes underneath. Although this new activity required teacher support, students were very motivated to create their own music!

So...How many of you are singing the song in your head right now?

This story is a version of the song "If You're Happy and You Know It" I thought this would be applicable since many of my students frequently deal with angry emtions.