Megan Jo Weimer

February 25, 2016

Dr. Gentry

Before, During, and After

Building Challenges to do after, before, and during READING By: Scissors and Crayons

APA Citation:J. C., Mrs. (n.d.). Scissors and Crayons. Retrieved February 22, 2016,
from http://www.scissorsandcrayons.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.scissorsandcrayons.blogspot.com/
Description:
The activity I have chosen is engaging and interactive with others. The Building
Challenges BDA is a way for students to build their knowledge of what is taking place in the
book or passage before, during, and after. Each student should receive a whole deck of
challenge cards or I would turn this into a center and have two deck of challenge cards, I would
let no more than two people at the center at once. The students may even work with a partner
or buddy depending on the size and discipline of the class. The building cards are helpful for
students to stay focused on what they are reading while guiding the students through their
reading. I would allow your students plenty of time to finish the passage and the challenge
cards. Every student is different and may need more time then given. Before reading the
passage, I would allow my students 3-5 minutes to participate in the Before Reading Cards. I
would then let my students begin reading and engaging with the During Reading Cards, this
section is the section I would allow my students to have plenty of time to read the passage and
answer the Building Challenges questions that are on the card. After they are finished with the
before, and during, they now can finish reading the book if they have not done so.Make sure to
give your struggling readers plenty of time to read and build the statement. The after building
statements will help the students connect with the passage they are reading and have some
opinions to think about after they have read the passage. The students could make a model out
of legos or they may draw their model.

Steps:
1. The students will be provided with the building challenges cards.
2. Before Reading the students will flip through the cards and choose the ones before reading,
after reading, and during reading.
3. I would suggest that the cards are already separated into those three categories before the
lesson begins.

4. All the Building challenges are labeled before, during, and after reading which helps the
students choose which card they need to help follow along in the passage.
5. Each student can create their model on paper or create their model with legos.
6. Students will share their opinions and models with one another in small group.

TEKS:
110.13. English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 2, Beginning with School Year 20092010.
(b) Knowledge and skills.
(9) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Fiction. Students understand, make inferences and
draw conclusions about the structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from text to
support their understanding. Students are expected to:
(A) Describe similarities and differences in the plots and settings of several works by the same
author; and
(B) Describe main characters in works of fiction, including their traits, motivations, and feelings.
110.12. English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 1, Beginning with School Year 20092010.
(b) Knowledge and skills.
(14) Reading/Comprehension of Informational Text/Expository Text. Students analyze, make
inferences and draw conclusions about expository text and provide evidence from text to
support their understanding. Students are expected to:
(A) Restate the main idea, heard or read;
(B) Identify important facts or details in text, heard or read;
(C) Retell the order of events in a text by referring to the words and/or illustrations; and
ELPS:
74.4. English Language Proficiency Standards.
(c) Cross-curricular second language acquisition essential knowledge and skills.
(4) Cross-curricular second language acquisition/reading. The ELL reads a variety of texts for a
variety of purposes with an increasing level of comprehension in all content areas. ELLs may be
at the beginning, intermediate, advanced, or advanced high stage of English language
acquisition in reading. In order for the ELL to meet grade-level learning expectations across the
foundation and enrichment curriculum, all instruction delivered in English must be linguistically
accommodated (communicated, sequenced, and scaffolded) commensurate with the student's
level of English language proficiency. For Kindergarten and Grade 1, certain of these student
expectations apply to text read aloud for students not yet at the stage of decoding written text.
The student is expected to:
(D) Use prereading supports such as graphic organizers, illustrations, and pretaught topicrelated vocabulary and other prereading activities to enhance comprehension of written text;
(G) demonstrate comprehension of increasingly complex English by participating in shared
reading, retelling or summarizing material, responding to questions, and taking notes
commensurate with content area and grade level needs;

Pros & Challenges:

I would use this activity for any grade level depending on their reading level and content.
This activity would work well with any subjects. I would accommodate this activity based on the
grade level. For younger students, I would only have one-to-two building challenges for them to
do in each form of BDA. But for higher level thinkers I would let my students participate in all
twelve challenges for BDA. You could also accommodate this activity to have partners or this
activity can be an individual challenge. The challenge with legos in this activity is that the
students could get distracted and want to play with them instead of focusing on their purpose in
this activity. This activity works well with younger students but I would accommodate the
questions to help fit the higher level thinkers. You could even make this activity useful for math
in the way that the students can use only a certain number of legos or they could use diameter,
and perimeter of what they are building.

What makes it interactive?:

The students are able to build their own model of the challenge on the cards provided.
Students have the opportunity to actually build their model out of legos or they may create a
model on paper. This activity could be done in a center, individually, small group, or even whole
group. I would allow my students plenty of time to participate in this activity and give everyone a
chance to model. This is interactive because students are engaging with other students and
they have a visual model of what they are reading.

Materials Needed:

Building Challenges Cards

A sheet of paper
A pencil or pen
A book or reading passage
Legos

Time Needed:
I would allow your students plenty of time to finish the passage and the cards. Every
student is different and may need more time then given. Before reading the passage, I would
allow my students 3-5 minutes to participate in the Before Reading Cards. I would then let my
students begin reading and engaging with the During Reading Cards, this section is the section
I would allow my students to have plenty of time to read the passage and answer the Building
Challenges questions that are on the card. The time needed for this activity depends on the
length of the passage or book. I would personally allow my students around 15-30 minutes to
read and build their statements during English Language Arts class time. This building activity
could be made into a simpler version which could potentially shorten the length of time needed.

Building Challenges:
Challenge1: Read or have students read just the beginning/middle of book.
Then Students will build a model that represents how they think the story will end.
Challenge 2: After reading a book or selection, students will build the problem/conflict in the
story.
Challenge 3: This challenge is done after reading. Build an avatar to represent the main
character.
Challenge 4: This challenge is done after reading. Students will build their favorite part of the
story.
Challenge 5: This challenge can be done before, during, or after reading. Students will build
what they think a tricky word means. Tricky word (vocabulary word) is found in story.
Challenge 6: Before Reading and after picture walk, students predict what they think the book
will be about.
Challenge 7: After Reading, Students build a model that represents a time that they were
facing a similar problem/conflict as the character went through in the story.
Challenge 8: This can be done anytime. Students build a model that represents a favorite
book.
Challenge 9: After Reading, Students build a model that represents the setting.
Challenge 10: After Reading, Students build a different ending to the story.
Challenge 11: After reading fiction or nonfiction book. Students build a model that represents
the main idea.
Challenge 12: This challenge is good for after a clear understanding of fiction and nonfiction
books. Students make two models: one that would be fiction and one that would be non
fiction.

Feedback and Reflection:

My classmates gave me wonderful feedback with many comments. In my feedback and
comments, they were positive and sweet as candy. I was able to build confidence on my BDA
and think of ways to incorporating this activity in my lesson plans one day. Most of the
comments were about keeping the students interactive and engaged in their reading. My
strategy does just that, it keeps them engaged and they are able to follow their reading while
participating in the BDA activity. I was able to use this building strategy with a second grade
student that I tutor. He absolutely loved it and he was so happy that he was actually able to use
his legos. I was happy to find a reading strategy that was able to catch the attention of
kinesthetic and visual learners. This activity is very hands on and gets the students moving
while providing a visual for them to see.
The modifications that I received from the peer feedback were to find ways to
accommodate to higher level thinkers like middle school or high school. I believe that middle
schoolers would love to participate in this activity along with high schoolers. Obviously high

schoolers would need more of a drawing activity then playing with legos but I would still offer the
idea. I also enjoyed reading the modifications for SPED, two girls told me that I should try a
smart board activity for SPED and I thought that was a wonderful idea, I would've never thought
of that! Although this activity works well with elementary students, depending on your class I
believe you could use this for any subject or any grade level. All of the modification comments
were beneficial and really made me think outside of the box.
I was so happy to hear all of these positive and happy comments over my BDA. My
classmates always know how to build me up instead of down. My reflection of BDAs is very
beneficial. This project has shown me how important it is to include an activity for before
reading, during reading, and even after reading. I feel that as teachers we forget to incorporate
activities in everything that we do in our lesson plans. We need to make sure to make time to
check for understanding and accommodate to our students that need help with understanding
what they are reading. I cant wait to use all of these BDAs in my future classroom and show my
students that we all learn differently but all that matters is that we are growing in our learning!
We are great teachers!