This week we had the opportunity to work with a grade 5/6 class with the ‘The Wolves in the Walls‘. This was a very fun and engaging morning as we enhanced the lesson with Virtual Reality.

Read Aloud

We started by doing station reading, where we had five different readers all assigned to a different part of the story, and small groups of students would move from station to station. Because of this staggered start, students who were waiting to start listening to the book had the opportunity to work on the vocabulary parts of their ‘The Wolves in the Walls’ booklet.

Vocabulary Work

“Vocabulary is the glue that holds stories, ideas, and content together… making comprehension accessible for children”, (Sometimes Reading is Hard, page 94). 

There were two pages of vocabulary work in their booklet, which primarily worked with tier III words, because students required direct and specific instruction of what the word meant, and they have not encountered that word before. This book and virtual reality experience was a great way to not only increase comprehension and engagement, but strengthen student vocabulary!

Virtual Reality

Once students completed all five parts of the read aloud, they returned to class where they had to opportunity to experience ‘The Wolves in the Walls’ through virtual reality, using headsets from the District Resource Center. All the students loved this! Some of the students were initially hesitant, but after watching their peers they were excited to try. We could connect the iPads and VR headsets to cast what the student was seeing onto the iPad, which all the students loved. There is a similar 360 degree video of ‘The Wolves in the Walls’ available here.

Workbook

Once students were finished with the VR experience, or while they were waiting their turn, they had a workbook to complete. It was difficult to pull students away from observing their peers experiencing the VR. I worked with one student on this and was very impressed with his comprehension of the story, as well as all the small differences he noticed between the read aloud and VR. The booklet we used with this class was great, because it had a wide variety of activities which provided an entry point for all students.

Curricular Connections

Grade 6 English Language Arts

Big Idea: Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.

Content: Story/text: text features and literary elements.

Curricular Competencies: Understand how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning.

Grade 5 English Language Arts 

Big Idea: Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.

Content: Story/text: text features and literary elements.

Curricular Competencies: Understand how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance meanings in text.

Cross-Curricular Connections

Last year I created a story drama based on this book, which would be an awesome cross-curricular connection!