I am often asked how to structure pre-reading knowledge activation sessions in a way that is engaging and meaningful for students, especially if I'm recommending to spend up to two whole sessions in this phase of the literacy-based therapy framework!
The goal of pre-reading sessions is to engage students in lively discussions about topics and words that will help students comprehend the story.
If we want students to be engaged during discussions, we need to provide interesting stimuli.
Below are some of my favorite ideas for activating knowledge and pre-teaching key concepts prior to reading apple themed books in your therapy sessions!
Side note: be sure you are also integrating vocabulary words and concepts that are essential to comprehending the specific book that you are reading.
Virtual Field Trips
Take a virtual field trip to an apple orchard! This is a great way for students to see where and how apples are grown, especially for those that live in urban areas.
Pause the video throughout to talk about orchard related terms like hayride and tractors, discuss how apples grow, and how to harvest apples.
Encourage student driven discussion and pause the video to listen to what students have to say. Student interaction and hearing the connections they make is the goal for this type of activity.
Here are a couple of videos on YouTube you could use:
Pre-teach Vocabulary
Understanding vocabulary is essential to text comprehenison.
We can explicitly work on vocabulary using one or more of the activities below:
Make a word cloud
Vocabulary journal
Create vocab posters to refer back to when reading the story
Sort words by part of speech & display on word wall
Semantic maps
Parts of an Apple
Discuss the parts of an apple! Bring a real apple into the session, cut it open, and see what students have to say/are able to label!
(be sure to bring along a baggie or container so that you can take the apple back home to compost or feed your pets 😉)
This is a great opportunity to work on describing and use of adjectives (e.g. smooth, juicy, moist, soft, mushy) too!
Here is a great YouTube video you could use to introduce and talk about the parts of an apple.
After watching the video, review by having students label the parts on the real apple you brought in.
How Apples Grow
Talk about what apples grow on, what apple trees need to grow, and how to harvest apples.
This a great opportunity to discuss words and concepts like seeds, planting, blossoms, pollinators, pollinating, pollen, harvesting.
You can look at pictures in chapter two of this book to support your discussion.
What Can You Make With Apples
Talk about what you can make with apples! Search Google for pictures to support your discussion.
If you're able to use food at your school, this could be a fun time to make something with apples that students can also eat!
Discuss ingredients and tools that are needed for various recipes - you can even compare and contrast recipes and have students vote on which recipes seem the easiest and hardest to make.
KWL Chart
You can pair a KWL chart (know, want to know/wonder, learned) with all of your discussions.
You can fill one out as a group and fill in the "learned" column together after reading your story.
I hope this has been helpful! 😊
