Looking at Word Nuance with First Graders

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave

On Monday,  I went in their classroom and just asked them if they would do a shared reading with me on this passage.  I pointed out that the passage had a word "wanna" that is a slang word, but the author had chosen that word for some reason.  It was really difficult to not sing this but to read it like a book with the students following along.  I'm sure they wondered what kind of weird passage this was, but the cool thing about first graders is they are pretty much willing to try anything you ask them.  We practiced a few times and I told them I would come back tomorrow to read it some more.  

On Tuesday, I came back with a list of words: chorus, lyrics, slang, rhythm, tempo.  I started off by just saying that the secret about this passage we read the day before was that it was lyrics to a song (pointing to the word lyrics as I explained) and that in a song most songs had a chorus (pointing again) where the lyrics were repeated.  I pointed out the word slang we had learned the day before and then said the other two words rhythm and tempo were kind of the beat and feeling of a song.  They were important signals to help you know if it's a happy song or serious and listening carefully can help you know when it is about to repeat a chorus. I didn't spend but a few minutes on this because it was only just a bit of new info for them to add to their schema and words to possibly help them be able to explain their thinking later on.  I played the song for them and we did a shared reading of the chorus every time it came up in the song.  Their little eyes lit up.  It was fun to watch them enjoying the music and realizing it made it easier to read the passage once they heard it over and over.  We listened a few times...there may have been a little bit of dancing in our seats. :)  I pointed out the word "brave" and how it was repeated in the passage and asked them to turn and talk to their partners about what that word meant.  When listening in and then sharing most of them had the idea that it was not being scared, doing something even if you are scared, courage and many related to the Disney movie Brave.  At the end of their thinking I asked them to go home that evening and think of other possible meanings of the word brave.

On Wednesday, I reviewed their thinking from the day before and validated to them again that those thoughts are correct meanings of the word brave.  But I introduced the idea that words can have shades of meaning or nuances that are completely different.  I explained that today I would show them the visual text for the word brave that the author of this passage had created in the form of a music video.  You can see it here, or in the video lesson below.  The idea was to help them see the word nuance of brave possibly meaning to be brave enough to be yourself, to be different, to do what you want when you want to do it.  I think for first graders they got it.  You can see the entire Wednesday lesson below.

If you find yourself asking, "Why go to all this elaborate trouble of having them see two forms of the word brave when she could have just told them and showed them a picture example of each or read books that represented the word differently in each?"  The reason is 1) they came to the thinking on their own so they are more likely to remember it later 2) this experience was much more joyful which creates more transferable learning and 3) all learners were able to be successful in this experience, no scaffolding necessary.  I am finding visual text to be the level playing field to introduce a concept and it is definitely perfect for close reading.  We really examined the word brave!