Characters Sea Frog And City Frog example essay topic

It's early spring or late winter in Newark, Delaware, depending on how cool you find the breeze this morning, and at Downes School the kids are more than halfway through the school year and are really coming along. From the hall comes the sound of violins being played competently, and in Sharon Meconi's first-grade class, the kids are reading and writing with more confidence and poise than ever. "Oh, everyone, you have to hear this. This is so cool", Meconi says, looking at one student's composition. "She's starting her sentence with different words. She's not starting with the same word".

There's still a fair bit of oblique behavioral guidance-"Oh, I love the quiet way Tim is working. Crystal, don't you love the quiet way Tim's working?" -but the class rolls along smoothly, at least to a visitor's eyes. Right now, the class is working on writing letters from City Frog to Sea Frog, learning the formal structure and old-world politeness of the old-fashioned letter. "Did you remember", Meconi says, "at the end, to put 'Love, City Frog'?" Then the letters are put back in the writing folders, the folders put away, and it's time once again for the word wall. Today there is a lot of talk about tricky vowel sounds. The students read the words together confidently, but when, reading them as individuals, one kid has a problem, Meconi keeps things moving so he isn't embarrassed.

She gives a quick hint, then discusses generally with the class what the problems and pitfalls might be in recognizing the particular word. She discusses the word "been" for a while, calling it a "weird one", talks about the spelling patterns of "bright" and "night", pointing out that such similar spellings often rhyme, and moves on to "front."This is a tough one", Meconi says. But soon the word wall is done, and it's time to move on to the day's story. She discusses the characters-Sea Frog and City Frog-and reviews the story's various settings. Sea Frog lives in a bog. "City Frog was in a-this is a brain buster", Meconi says.

When Meconi says something is especially difficult and uses a certain tone of voice, the kids know it's actually something pretty easy. The City Frog's setting, it turns out, is a city. With the concepts of character and setting in mind, the kids can turn their attention to reading the story. Meconi has them get out their "reading fingers", and two kids contribute by acting out the story, which involves a fair bit of hopping and provokes a fair bit of laughter. The reading done, Meconi thanks the actors, and tells the class that tomorrow certain tables will read Sea Frog's dialogue, certain others will read City Frog's, and others will read-and here she stresses the word-the narrator's part. It's a tricky enough concept for first graders, maybe, this invisible speaker who hovers over and relates so many stories, but it's an important thing to understand, and by the end of tomorrow's class they will understand it a bit better.

A couple of days later, the sound of woodwinds floats down the hall as Kasey White finishes up a math class with her second graders. She's showing them old and new coins that are worth a dollar. And she's asking them questions they must reason out possible answers to: "Could you use these to buy a soda in a soda machine? How often do you think grownups get these back as change?" Now it's reading, and time for the word wall. "We have a lot of families this week", White says. "Part" is in the "art" family, "park" is in the "ark" family.

They clap the rhythm of the word, then write it and use it in a sentence. One boy says for his sentence "A little boy has a pain in his head", and another boy grimaces in mock pain-playing around, maybe, but still reacting to the words..