Rhythms in CoTeaching: Storytelling, Line, and Reflection
Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary, 1st Grade, ELA & Visual Art
Kitty O’Connor
Storytime is magical, and two teachers reading together makes for exponential magic! Ms. Bartholomew and I have unlocked the superpower of reading stories together. We have found a joyful rhythm of frontloading vocabulary, reading a story together, following it with an activity that focuses on developing student use of line, and then engaging students in a deeper critical thinking question about the text. Below are a few highlights from these co teaching adventures:
After reading Birds by Kevin Henkes, Ms. Bartholomew and I focused on one page: “If birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew, think what the sky would look like.” Individual students would name a type of line and lead the class in a movement that embodied the line. After establishing the types of lines we are familiar with, we all put our pointer fingers in the air as we watched a video following the tail feathers of a Roseate Spoonbill flying over the wetlands. Students were then given colored pencils and a piece of paper. They watched the screen with pencil to paper as they followed the flight of a hummingbird, a bald eagle, a swallow-tailed kite, and finally, a great-horned owl. After each bird, students would share the observations about flight patterns, noting if a bird stayed in one place, flapped their wings really fast, and then glided, if they seemed to fly fast or slow. Then students discussed how their lines represented each bird’s flight pattern and used adjectives and similes to describe what the sky would look like if birds make marks with their tail feathers.
In another session, Ms. Bartholomew and I read The Empty Pot by Demi. This time, students were prompted: “Plant honesty and trust will grow. Draw an empty pot, using line to decorate the pot. Write about a time you did the right thing even when it was hard.” Student’s interpretations of this drawing prompt brought so many different shapes, sizes, patterns and designs! Our discussion about honesty and personal connections uncovered misunderstandings about the text and allowed Ms. Bartholomew and I to provide clarifications.
We also delved into informational text with a collaborative reading of Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons. After the reading we took students on a walk outside to look at milkweed plants and then students used line to design the symmetrical wings of a monarch butterfly.
All of this built up to a culminating activity of students reading a story to us and creating the illustrations to accompany it. Students worked in groups of two or three on their assigned pages, and one of the biggest take-aways from this task was student collaboration. This activity lead to an impromptu discussion about teamwork, giving feedback, and the difficulty of sharing ideas but the beauty of creating something even better together.
Watching student reactions to our storytelling is what made Ms. Bartholomew and I decide to create a weekly routine of collaborative storytelling. Students were a captive audience that “oohed” and “awed” at our expressive readings. I feel that watching our lively readings made students more comfortable, confident and engaged in creating their own art. This experience with Ms. Bartholomew highlighted the positive impacts of co-teaching.
