The children are seated on the floor, facing a poster that features a teddy bear propped against a tree in a large yard or park. The poster is mounted in the middle of a large blank sheet of paper. Ms. Tayloe says, “We're going to get some of the words for this week's reading vocabulary by shaking words out of this picture. I want you to study the picture carefully and when I call on you, come up and point to something in the picture and say what it is. Then I'll write the word and draw a line from that part of the picture to the word. We'll start learning to read the words as we go along.”

The children study the picture (Figure 1.1). After a few minutes, Ms. Tayloe asks them if they have found something they'd like to share. All hands go up, and Ms. Tayloe calls on Celeste.

Figure 1.1.

Celeste reaches up, points, and says, “That's a ladder.”

Ms. Tayloe draws a line from the ladder and writes ladder in large print, announcing each letter as she writes it: “l-a-d-d-e-r spells ladder.” She then spells ladder again, while the children watch and listen. “Now, I'll spell it again, and you say each letter after me.” She does, and then asks another child for a word.

“Small ladder,” says Brent. “There's another ladder, a small ladder.”

Ms. Tayloe draws a line from the small ladder and writes small ladder in large print, announcing each letter as she writes it: “s-m-a-l-l spells small; ladder, l-a-d-d-e-r spells ladder. Small ladder,” she says as she places her hand under the first word and then the next. Then she asks the students to spell the words with her.

“Sit,” says Marvin, and points to the teddy bear. “The bear's sitting.”

Ms. Tayloe draws a line from the bear's seat and writes The bear's sitting. She spells each word aloud as she writes the sentence and then takes the children through each word in turn: saying the word, spelling the word, and then asking the children to spell the word with her.

She then points to the first word. “What is this word?”

“Ladder,” they chorus.

Ms. Tayloe asks, “And if you saw the word and couldn't remember it or weren't quite sure, what could you do?”

“Go down the line to the ladder in the picture,” they say.

“Right,” Ms. Tayloe responds. “Find the word or the group of words, trace the line, and check your reading.”

The lesson continues. “And what's this word?” Ms Tayloe asks, pointing to the word small.

“Small,” they chorus again. She repeats the process with ladder then asks for the whole phrase, and calls on Chris.

“Small ladder,” says Chris.

“Who thinks she's right?” asks Ms. Tayloe. The children's hands go up. The teacher continues to elicit words from the children, continuing the pattern as before, examining each word and regularly reviewing all of them.

By the end of the session the class has identified the words listed in Figure 1.2 (p. 4) and can say each word as the teacher points to it and runs her hand down the line for them to check their reading. Ms. Tayloe finishes this segment of the picture word inductive model by asking the students to notice if any of the same words appear in the books they are taking home for the evening to share with their parents.

Figure 1.2

The following day, as the children enter the classroom, some go to the picture word chart and look at the words, saying them to each other and following the lines from the words they don't remember to the elements of the picture. Again, the children sit near the poster. Ms. Tayloe has them read the words, using the picture to help them locate the referents for the words.

Ms. Tayloe has taken the computer file of words that were shaken out of the picture and printed them in large type to make word cards. She includes duplicates of the words that were listed more than once—such as two ladders and two baskets. Ms. Tayloe gives each child a complete set of word cards and asks them to read their set. If they can't remember a word, they are expected to go to the poster, match the word, and trace the line to the part of the picture it represents.

Much activity ensues. The children find their personal space, spread out their word cards, peer at the words, and say them (usually aloud) to themselves. Occasionally, the students ask Ms. Tayloe if they are right, and she sends them to the picture to find out for themselves. Soon, children are getting up and down, holding a word card and locating the word on the chart.

As she moves around the classroom, Ms. Tayloe encourages the students, notes which students are reading their words correctly, which words are causing the most difficulty, and which students need to visit and revisit the chart.

She notices that Derrick has his word card with apple upside down as he searches the chart. She takes his card and turns it right-side-up, saying, “Try it this way, Derrick. Some of these letters are tricky and you have to study them very carefully.” She notices Janine is getting frustrated as she searches for half-eaten and gives her a clue by saying, “Janine, this word describes one of the apples; take a look at the bottom of the chart.”

After 30 minutes, most of the students are still actively engaged with studying and reading their words, but Ms. Tayloe decides this is enough for today's lesson. “All right, guys, let's put our word cards back in their envelopes.”

The following morning, she again reviews the chart with the children. Then she asks them to take out their word cards and put words together according to how they are spelled. Ricardo says that tree and trees and ladder have two letters just alike. Ms. Tayloe asks him to point to the letters and he does. Jan put apple and teddy together because one has two p's together and the other has two d's together. Kareem responds to Jan's category by saying that apples has two just alike; Brian put teddy and ladder together because they have two d's in the middle.

Ms. Tayloe decides to expand on that point by asking the students to look at apple and apples and to figure out how the words are the same and how they are different. Robin responds by saying that they are spelled the same except for the circles on the end. After prompting, Robin says that apples has the circles on the end, and Zoe says s, apples has an s. And apple is just one apple and apples is two apples.

The students continue sharing their categories. Ms. Tayloe pauses when tree and trunk are placed together because of the tr at the beginning. She asks, “Now, think very carefully.” She takes a pair of scissors and cuts a bit off one edge. “I just trimmed this piece of paper. How do you think the word trim will be spelled at the beginning?”

The children are puzzled for a minute, and then hands begin to go up. Ms. Tayloe waits until nearly all the pupils have an idea, and then calls on Bernardo, “Like tree!”

The class discusses Bernardo's answer, and then Ms. Tayloe writes trim on a blank poster near the chart. They all read the set of words on the chart once more, and end for the day. Ms. Tayloe finishes by asking the children to see if they notice any words that begin like tree, trunk, and trim in the books they are taking home for the evening to share with their parents. If they find any new words she says they should write them down to add to the new poster tomorrow.

On the fourth day, after they have read the words on the chart, Ms. Tayloe asks the students for sentences about the picture as a whole. The sentences include “The teddy bear is sitting in the countryside,” and “There are apples all over the place.” One child points to an apple core and wonders, “Who do you suppose ate that apple? Can teddy bears eat apples?” Ms. Tayloe records about a dozen sentences, and they read them together before closing the session.

The next morning, every student receives a printout of the previous day's sentences and the author's name. Their task is to find a word they can read, find their own sentence, and just have fun reading what they have created.

In this scenario, Ms. Tayloe was using the picture word inductive model to elicit words from the children's listening and speaking vocabularies. She then helped the students to study and master those words for use in their individual reading and writing. By reclassifying some of the words according to letter sounds, she also began an early exploration of phonics.

The PWIM in 2nd Grade

We drop in on Ms. Frazier and her 2nd grade combination class the third week of school. Ms. Frazier has 22 students, 10 native English speakers and 12 students whose native language is Spanish. These 12 students entered kindergarten with limited English proficiency and were in a transitional bilingual program during kindergarten and 1st grade. Ms. Frazier speaks a little Spanish but is not fluent; however, she is familiar with second language development. This is the second unit in which students have used the picture word inductive model and Ms. Frazier is still teaching them the moves of the model.

Ms. Frazier gathers the students in front of a large picture that is pinned to the bulletin board and centered in the middle of two large strips of light-blue board paper. As they seat themselves on the rug, she says, “Make sure you have your personal space around you and that you can see the picture.” She takes a minute to help students adjust their spaces and continues, “We're going to work with this picture for the next few days, just like we did with the picture of the playground. We'll shake a lot of words out, learn to read and spell those words, and maybe we'll write about the picture so we can practice our writing. Now, be ready to tell us something you recognize in the picture. Everybody will have a chance to share.”

Ms. Frazier waits about a minute until most hands are up and calls on Enrique, “What's something you see in this picture?”

Enrique points to a necktie one of the children in the picture is wearing and says, “That's a necktie.”

Ms. Frazier draws a line from the necktie to the paper and says “Necktie. Now, I want you to listen while I spell necktie first and then we'll spell it together so that you get lots of practice on your spelling.” The children listen while Ms. Frazier says, “N-e-c-k-t-i-e,” and writes the letters as she says them. Then again, “N-e-c-k-t-i-e spells necktie. Now, all together.”

The children chorus the spelling as Ms. Frazier points to each letter. “Now, that spells . . .?”

“Necktie!”

Ms. Frazier calls on Maryanne, who points to a roll of tape in the picture and says, “Tape.”

Ms. Frazier draws a line from the roll of tape to the paper and says, “Now, let's learn how to spell tape.” She spells it, then has the students spell it as she points to each letter and says “Now, t-a-p-e spells . . .?”

“Tape,” the children say almost in unison.

For the next 20 minutes, the group continues to shake words out of the picture. Gold letters, books, white board, and children are quickly identified. For each word, Ms. Frazier spells the word and pronounces it again, and then the children spell and pronounce it. One student adds people as another word for the group of children in the picture.

Periodically, Ms. Frazier reviews the words, pointing to each and showing the students how they can follow the line from the word to the object it refers to. As in their first unit, they are building a picture dictionary. If they need the meaning of a word for independent reading or writing, they can trace the line from the word to the object.

Yellow book and blue book and shiny book are added to the chart. T-shirt is volunteered and Ms. Frazier spells it t-e-e s-h-i-r-t. Harry bursts out with, “That's not T-shirt. It's spelled with a big T!” Ms. Frazier adds T-shirt to the chart as well. She has students read both versions but spell only shirt with her. She says, “I'll have to check and see if both spellings are correct. See what you can find out. Boy, girl, uniform, and uniforms are added, as are green hat and picture. Altogether, about 25 words appear.

Ms. Frazier reviews all the words with the children, then leads them into a discussion of the picture: “Now, several of you asked me where these children are. Where do you think they are?”

“School,” says Marta.

“How many of you agree with Marta? And what makes you think they are in school?”

“Well, it could be a family, but there are too many children.”

One student asks, “Why are they all wearing red?” Ms. Frazier has them speculate for a while and ideas like “special class” and “their school makes them do it” surface.

Robert suggests that it's probably a school because there's a white board in the picture and most houses don't have white boards. Francesca suggests that the presence of a big library corner makes it likely that the picture is of a group of students at school.

Paul says it can't be a home because there are too many books. Anna adds, “And homes don't have bookcases.” There's some discussion about these statements.

Finally, Ms. Frazier confirms that it is a school. In this school students wear uniforms; the school is in Nottingham, England, about 6,500 miles from their school in California; and these are 5-year-old students. Ms. Frazier shows the class a map and asks Sarah to come up and put her hand on California. Ms. Frazier puts her hand on Nottingham to show the distance.

“Tomorrow we'll continue with our picture. When you have a little time today, practice reading our words. If you have trouble reading a word, what do you do?” asks Ms. Frazier.

“Trace the line to the picture,” says the class.

And the first lesson ends.

The next day the students gather around the picture at 9 a.m. and Ms. Frazier announces, “We're going to work on our silent reading a little before we read our new words.”

Ms. Frazier points to book on the picture chart. “Book!” she shouts. “Was I reading that word silently?”

“Noooo,” they respond.

“That's right. I read it aloud, didn't I? Now, as we read the words around the picture, I'll point to a word, and you say it silently to yourself. Then I'll trace the line from the word to the picture so we can check our reading, and then we'll say the word silently and then read and spell it together, aloud. Let's do one together for practice. Here we go, silently.”

Ms. Frazier points to a word and about half the children read it aloud. She says, “Let's all read it again . . . silently. Don't let any letter sounds or words escape your mouth. Here we go, just practice reading it in your mind.” She points to a word, holding her hand against her lips, everyone is silent. She traces the line, “Now, aloud.”

“Boy,” they chorus.

“Great!” exclaims Ms. Frazier. “Look at this word. Read it silently. Don't let any words or any letter sounds escape from your mouth.” She points to uniforms and traces one line and then the other to students wearing uniforms, and then says, “Now, aloud.”

“Uniforms,” they chorus.

“What good readers. Let's do another one.” And the process continues, with Ms. Frazier pointing to words, the students reading them silently, Ms. Frazier tracing the line so they can check their reading, and everyone reading the words aloud.

Ms. Frazier gives them envelopes with word cards from yesterday's work and says, “For the next 15 minutes, I want everyone to work individually on reading your set of words. Use the picture chart when you need to.”

They begin the third lesson the next morning with a quick review of the chart. After all the words are read, Ms. Frazier begins to prepare students for the process of classification. She begins with concrete objects because the attributes are so easily clarified.

Ms. Frazier picks up a yellow plastic bucket and shakes it, “What's this?” The class responds:

• Our math bucket;
• Our pattern blocks;
• Our shapes; and
• Triangles and rectangles.

Ms. Frazier says, “I'm going to select some pattern blocks from this bucket. I'm going to sort out some and put them together. I want you to think about why I put them together. See if you can come up with at least two reasons.”

Ms. Frazier pulls out five pattern blocks and holds them so students can see them. Then she calls on Kerri, who says, “You put them together because they're all red.”

“How many of you agree with Kerri that these are all red?” Hands go up. “Does anyone have another reason?” Scott volunteers that they have four sides. Again, Ms. Frazier asks who agrees. They all do.

Serena says, “You put them together because they are red, have four sides, and are square.”

“Serena just gave us three reasons why I might have put these pattern blocks together,” says Ms. Frazier. “Who agrees with all three reasons?” Some students who saw only one attribute come to recognize that the teacher made a category of objects that have several attributes in common.

“Now, let's switch to words. I want you to learn to study words carefully and put them together in groups based on how they are spelled or what they mean.” She places several word cards in the large pocket chart with the words turned away from the students. “I want you to do the same kind of detective work with these words as you just did with our pattern blocks,” says Ms. Frazier as she turns the cards over. “Everyone read them silently.” Then she demonstrates “checking your reading” by taking each card and placing it under the matching word on the chart and running her finger down the line to the object(s). Ms. Frazier has chosen the word cards person, people, and pictures.

“Now, why do you think I might have put these words together?” asks the teacher.

She calls on Jeselle, who shyly ventures that the reason is that all three words begin with p.

“Who agrees? These three words begin with the letter p?” Ms. Frazier pauses for the students to study the words for a few seconds. “Now,” says Ms. Frazier, “let's read the words together and see if you can come up with another reason why I might have put them together.” They read them, first silently, then aloud, as she points to them. “Now, I am going to read them aloud and you listen. See if you can think of another reason. You were right, one reason was they all begin with the letter p as in pig.”

She pronounces person, people, and pictures carefully and several hands go up. She calls on Annelle who states that the words all have e in them, and people has two e's.

“That's correct,” says Ms. Frazier. “What else can you discover? Read them silently and think about them. Ron?”

“Person has a `son' in it,” observes Ron.

“Can you think of anything else, Christina?” asks Ms. Frazier.

Christina responds that it's like they're two words. Ms. Frazier prompts Christina to explain that, and the student says that it's like it has two parts, two pieces. The teacher then pronounces the three words, slightly emphasizing the two syllables. “Good thinking, you discovered both reasons I put those words together: They all begin with p and they all have two parts or syllables. Would paper fit in this group?” She writes paper on the board and the students assure her it would fit the group.

“How about pen?” asks Ms. Frazier. There is some disagreement about whether pen would belong, so Ms. Frazier uses the difference between pen and pencil for a little more practice. Then she asks the students to sort the words in your envelope any way you want to, and be prepared to share your groups and tell us why you put the words together.

She passes out the envelopes, helps the students spread out, and they get to work. Ms. Frazier circulates, observing the word groups being formed, checking to be sure the students can read the words, sending some students to the chart to check their reading, and asking students to tell her why they put words together.

Lots of categories emerge (see Figure 1.3). Although many students have similar groups, what they see in the words and what they can articulate vary widely. Some students attend more to letters and sounds, some to the meanings of words, and some to a combination.

Figure 1.3. Word Groups Categorized by Students

Ms. Frazier ends this lesson by commenting on several categories and then uses her large word cards to share the category containing book, board, and boy. The class discusses the initial /b/ sound and the varying sounds of /oo/, /oa/, and /oy/. Their homework is to find at least six words that begin with b and o, list them on a piece of paper, and drop them in the picture word box in the morning.

On Thursday, they begin with a quick review of the words and add a few words to the chart. Then Ms. Frazier uses some of the words from the homework papers for a short explicit-instruction lesson on /oo/, /oa/, and /oy/. Part of the content generated by students during this segment includes a list of words that rhyme with book and boy and a discussion of the influence of r on vowels. Then she asks students to reclassify their words to see if they can identify any new groups, and to make sure they can read every word on the chart. Their homework is to see if they can find any more words that stand for people when we don't know their names.

During Friday's lesson, Ms. Frazier begins working with the students on titles and sentences. She's worked with them a little on titles during read-aloud time and during their group language-experience lessons. As the students gather around the picture, she says, “Who remembers what a title does?” The responses include “Names of books,” “Names of stories,” “Covers of books,” “Tells us what the story's about.” Ms. Frazier asks the students to study the picture carefully and think of a good title for it. She gives them a minute to think, then collects about 10 titles. As students volunteer titles, she asks them how the various titles relate to the picture. Some are comprehensive and accurate; some are less so; and some are sentences. Here are a few of their responses:

“I think the picture should be called `all colors,' because there are so many colors in it.”

“`Children in uniforms,' 'cause they're all wearing red uniforms.”

“`Shiny books,' there are lots of shiny books in their school.”

“`Kids in school.' They are at school.”

After listening to some proposed titles, Ms. Frazier notes to herself that she wants to bring a few books to class to spark discussion using both familiar titles and new ones; she'll talk with students about length, content, and promises to the reader represented by informative titles. For now, however, they move on to sentences.

Ms. Frazier writes sentence on the board and under it she writes two of the sentences she heard during discussion:

• The students are all wearing uniforms.
• There are young kids gathered around their teacher.

She asks the students to read the sentences silently, reading as many words as they can. Then they read the sentences together.

“Remember, we helped Davida turn the first sentence into the title Students Wearing Uniforms because Davida mentioned that the students are all wearing uniforms. That seemed really weird to her, and so much of the picture was taken up by students in uniforms. And Gini came up with the title of Children Around Their Teacher. Well, that is good thinking. You came up with some nice titles that describe what is happening or what we can see in our picture. Later, we'll work on titles again. For journal time, you may want to write something that goes with your title.

“Now, homework,” says Ms. Frazier. “Study our picture sometime today and pretend you are going to write a letter describing the picture to someone who has not seen it. Be ready on Monday to share something from your pretend letter.”

On Monday morning, when it's picture word time, Ms. Frazier has the overhead projector set up. She and the students begin the lesson with a quick reading of the picture word chart, work on two target sight words, and add a few more /oo/, /oa/, and /oy/ words to the wall charts. They spend the next two days generating and recording sentences describing things in the picture. The sentences cover almost everything in the picture. Not all of the sentences were perfectly prepared by the students. For example, “Gold letters are on the uniform” began with a student observing “gold letters.” The teacher prompted the student by asking where the letters appear. The teacher worked with the student's response of “On the uniform” to produce the sentence. Other sentences proposed by the students include the following:

• They like school because they're smiling.
• They like to read because they have books all around them.
• The tops of the uniforms are all alike, but the bottoms are different for boys and girls.

When the students offer ideas that are not obvious or that might require interpretation, Ms. Frazier asks them for their evidence. For example, the proposed sentence “The children are learning by listening to the teacher” prompted the teacher to ask, “Why do you say that?”

“They are all being quiet, sort of leaning close to the teacher, and it doesn't look like they're talking,” responds the student.

Serena adds, “They are learning because they are good listeners and they read lots of books.”

“All the kids in this picture love school.”

“They look like they are happy.”

“Why do you think so?” Ms. Frazier asks.

“Most of them are smiling. They look like they're happy working together.”

“These kids are learning how to read and write.”

“How do you know?” Ms. Frazier asks. “Could they be getting ready for music?”

“I see their work, and they have a chart up too! And you said they were kindergarten kids.”

On Wednesday, the teachers gives each student a copy of all the sentences printed on light green paper. The next few lessons focus on learning to read the sentences. As Ms. Frazier walks around listening to the students read their sentences, she targets some high-frequency words (in, on, The/the, They/they) for additional work.

The following week students begin classifying the sentences. Ms. Frazier has them work with partners and they spend several days reading and classifying sentences. At first, Ms. Frazier just observes and listens to their categories; she wants to find out how they are thinking and to be sure their reasons for grouping are accurate. About half the students put sentences together based on how they are written and what word starts the sentence (these all begin with they; these begin with they are). One student describes her category as all having five words and the word the in them.” About half the students put sentences together based on a topic or what they think the sentences are about, such as students in uniforms or what's in the room. Some students group their sentences according to both content and sentence structure.

After the second session of reading sentences and classifying them however they wish, Ms. Frazier selects one of the topic categories she has noticed several students use. Ms. Frazier uses the category to demonstrate grouping sentences by content. She asks students to find a partner and encourages every partnership to find at least one group of sentences that go together because of what they are about. Before they begin, however, Ms. Frazier does a quick drill on an, and, are, all—high-frequency words that she's heard some students confuse and that she wants every student to master.

Through the PWIM, Ms. Frazier is preparing her students for work on writing informative paragraphs about a single topic and main idea, and is showing them how an accurate brief description of their category can provide a good title. For their next lesson, Ms. Frazier will take one of their categories, put together a paragraph, and then talk about how she formed the paragraph.

On Thursday, Ms. Frazier begins the picture word lesson by telling the students that they've put together a number of good categories with their sentences. She elaborates, “Some of you put together sentences about uniforms; some about all the colors in the picture; some about the books, where they were and how they were being used; and some about what the students were doing. Several of you put together three or four different categories, and some of you have written your own piece about what you were most interested in.

“Well, I took one of your categories,” says Ms. Frazier as she places five of their sentences in a large pocket chart, “and I wrote a paragraph about our picture. Let's read these sentences, then I'll share my paragraph.” Ms. Frazier chose the following sentences:

• They have many talents.
• They are learning how to write words and spell.
• They are learning by listening to the teacher and by reading lots of books.
• They look like they are happy working together.
• All the kids in this picture love school.

Ms. Frazier continues, “There are lots of good groups we could write about, but I selected this one because when I asked why you put them together, you talked about kids learning. And that's one of the things I think is special when I look at our picture, and that's what I wanted to write about.”

Ms. Frazier displays this title and paragraph on the overhead projector:

All Kids Learning

These young students have many talents. They're learning how to write words and how to spell. Reading lots of books and listening to the teacher helps them learn. They look like they're happy working together. The kids in this classroom love school because they are learning.

Ms. Frazier gives students time to read the paragraph silently, then she reads it aloud and briefly talks about how to tell the reader who (young students), what (learning happily), how (by reading lots of books, by listening to the teacher, by working together, and because they have many talents) and where (in a classroom).

Ms. Frazier continues by explaining why she changed the first They to These young students, why she added the second how to in the second sentence, and why she replaced picture with classroom in the last sentence. Ms. Frazier puts her first draft on the projector as she talks about a couple of the changes she made in word order and sentence order, and students ask her about a few of the changes from the original sentences.

One student suggests the last sentence needs to be the first sentence. Ms. Frazier agrees that it would make a good opening sentence and that they could switch the first and last sentence and the paragraph would still have the same main message. She also shares why she decided to open with the sentence about talents: “When I look at the picture it reminds me a bit of looking at you and how I feel about you as learners. I have a room full of smart and talented students who can learn anything they want to.”

One student suggests that she add “in Nottingham, England,” to the first sentence.

“That's good thinking, Enrique,” says Ms. Frazier, “because that would tell the reader more about who and where. But where they are attending school wasn't so important to what I wanted to say in my paragraph. Now, if I had been writing about uniforms, I might . . .”

We have been visiting with Ms. Frazier and her students for three weeks of picture word lessons. Most of the lessons were conducted during their language arts time and lasted 30 minutes, a few about 45 minutes, and the unit will continue for at least another week. At reading time, Ms. Frazier will read them the first two pages of four informative books in which the authors have done masterful jobs with who, what, when, where, and how. During free reading time or for homework, she will ask students to select their favorite book from the Nonfiction Book Nook and be prepared to share with their partner and the group who, what, when, where, and how. Soon the group will write a paragraph about uniforms because the students find that to be one of the more interesting topics shaken out of the picture. After the group exercise, the students will write individual paragraphs about at least one of their word groups. They will continue to add words to the chart and to their word wall, to work on spelling and phonics patterns; Ms. Frazier will continue to listen to them, to observe what they are producing, and to model and demonstrate and talk about how the English language works.