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Introduction
Introduction
I was trained in the Just Think Literacy (JTL) style of read-alouds in 2015 and I have used these strategies in my classroom ever since. JTL is a critical literacy program with an emphasis on how to use graphic organizers effectively with early childhood students to encourage higher order thinking when being read to. There are many elements to this curriculum, but this is what I have found to be the most clear cut and adaptable instructional strategy to encourage students to think deeply and make a variety of connections between story elements.
Picking a JTL Read Aloud
Picking a JTL Read Aloud
When planning a JTL lesson, the first step I take is selecting a book with a clear story arc. This means that there are rising actions, a climax, and falling actions. It also means that there are characters who experience emotions throughout the book that are either reactions to certain situations or that drive the action of the story.
After choosing an appropriate book, I choose pause points in the book that clearly delineate these phases. I usually choose five to seven of these points, and then I ask myself the same questions I will ask my students - "What's happening in the story?" and "How are the characters feeling?". I consider exemplar answers, and what I hope my students will be able to understand from these different parts of the book. Then, I conduct the lesson where I read the book and create the organizer simultaneously. I read the chosen book fluently and with emotion, pausing at the predetermined spots and asking the above questions.
Creating a Graphic Organizer
Creating a Graphic Organizer
JTL graphic organizers are created from student answers during the lesson and are based around student phrasing of ideas. I act as a facilitator and scribe. If a student struggles to answer "What happened in the story?" or "How are the characters feeling?", I may provide another open ended prompt such as "Why do you think that?" or "What in the story makes you think that?" to encourage them to expand on the point. My goal is to leave the cognitive lift to the students. Students also have the opportunity to share their answers to our big questions with partners through Think Pair Shares during the lesson (more can be read about Think Pair Shares in the Kagan Strategies section).
These are two examples of anchor charts my students and I have created using the JTL method for "Happy Birthday, Moon" by Frank Asch and "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell, respectively. I chose these books because in each, the main characters have a clear problem with a clear resolution. "Happy Birthday, Moon" is a simpler book with straightforward character emotions that I tend to read at the beginning of the year with only five pause points. "Owl Babies" is a little more complicated and has more varied emotions - I read it towards the middle of the year and use this book as an opportunity to expose students to more nuanced emotion word vocabulary such as "worried", "relieved", "brave", and "safe".
Applying JTL Skills to Other Projects
Applying JTL Skills to Other Projects
Once students understand both the concepts of emotion words and the bell curve shape of a story arc, these skills can be applied to other activities. Here, I adapted a curriculum lesson where students were working collectively to create a class story about farm animals to include the bell curve they have already studied through JTL. In this way, I connected our curriculum terms such as "problem", "response to the problem" and "resolution" to the visual parts of the story my students had already learned through read alouds with JTL story arcs. This use of graphic organizers allows my students to synthesize information from multiple sources more fluently.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The purpose of Just Think Literacy is to encourage students to think more deeply by using graphic organizers and also having students provide answers. When I complete a JTL story arc read aloud, my goal is to act as scribe for my students, not to give them answers. I enjoy this instructional strategy as it makes our book reading more meaningful for my students. They remember the books we create story arcs for well and often look to our anchor chart to figure out how to spell an emotion word or story title during written activities later on.
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