FOCUSING ON CRAFT WITH FIRST CHAPTER FRIDAYS
We love the practice of introducing texts, topics, authors, and genres to students by reading the first chapter aloud. First Chapter Friday is a wonderful opportunity to end the week with reading joy. It’s also a strategy that, when planned with intention, can support most aspects of the curriculum. This post is part of a series that will introduce ideas for leveling up your First Chapter Fridays without diminishing its central purpose of engaging readers. Read the previous posts on Supporting Fluency, Vocabulary, and Word Study and Incorporating Graphic Texts.
Allison Marchetti, co-author of A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, defines craft as simply “the choices a writer makes.” Craft encompasses the intentional moves writers make to engage and impact their readers. As the Purdue Online Writing Lab reminds us, “most writing is generated out of a need to communicate with an audience thus, we might think of writing as a conversation with that audience, rather than just words on a page.”
Here are some suggestions for focusing on craft with First Chapter Fridays:
- Think aloud to make the ways you read like a writer visible.
- While reading, stop and model the practice of noticing and naming the writer’s craft moves.
- Revisit portions of the text in a targeted mini-lesson. Possible areas of focus include reading like a writer, noticing and naming craft, and elements of craft to notice.
- Invite students to close read a short passage and identify craft moves they notice. This can be open (What does it say and how does it say it?) or more directed (What do you notice about the punctuation choices in this paragraph?).
- Follow up close reading for craft by moving students into their writer’s notebooks to practice the move or incorporate it into revision.
- Introduce an excerpt from a text by a different writer and discuss the similarities and differences they notice.
- Use sections of the chapter to launch a mini-craft study into a specific move such as dialogue, paragraph divisions, or incorporating technical vocabulary.
- Use this as an invitation for students to read like writers during independent reading and share the craft moves they notice in small groups.
Dan Nott defines a hidden system as “something we don’t notice until it breaks.” He explains that “when these systems are doing what they are supposed to be doing, they become so commonplace that we hardly see them.” Because we often take these systems for granted, we tend to overlook the inequalities and environmental harms they perpetuate. He used comics to create Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day and takes us along on his deep inquiry into three of the hidden systems we have come to rely on most.
With the recent drop of The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s lyrical genius is at an all-time high. As a resident and long-time Swiftie, many of my conversations have been around Taylor Swift and this newest album. But as I discussed all the lore surrounding Taylor, one thing kept repeatedly coming up – the vocabulary. In just one-week post-release, I have had many conversations in the group chat about what on earth “esoteric” means, or “precocious”, or “petulance” and how they add to the richness of the lyrics. Of course, as I listened, I did what any millennial with an iPhone would do when they don’t know a word, I googled them. However, this got me thinking about my students, and how I could explicitly teach vocabulary through lyrical analysis. 
Where the Lockwood Grows by Olivia A. Cole is a riveting blend of fantasy, mystery, and social commentary that will captivate readers of all ages.
Girl in Pieces