- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Tracking objects to find message/theme in Caldecott winner Blackout
Characters and their actions...in Caldecott winner Extra Yarn
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.3 Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events
Monday, February 24, 2014
Library of Congress Resources
Check out this page of the Library of Congress that is just for teachers. Resources such as articles and primary source documents can be accessed by grade level and standard. Check it out as a way of supplementing your current resources and expanding your student's experience with history!
Close Reading in a Read Aloud
My new "friend" Kathleen Tolan works on close reading and accountable talk with intermediate students. Take a look and be inspired!
Learning Targets
Some Visuals to Support our Understanding....
The following figures are from Connie M. Boss and Susan Brookhart's book Learning Targets
Posting Learning Targets
If you can, try to make some permanent space for your learning targets to be posted in your classroom. This will help your students become familiar with where to check in for self-reflection. It can also be a source of anticipation as students see what they will be focusing on later in the day. Reinforcing the language of your targets by posting them is a small, yet impactful choice to make.
Mini Lecture
The word lecture carries with it a boat load of connotations for me, and probably for you as well. First thing that comes to mind is being in trouble. Don't know if you can believe it, but I got myself in trouble often as a young one. Pushing limits, testing my parents, bossing the world around, saying potty words...You name it, i tried it. As a result, I regularly landed myself in the blue chair in the living room for a time out which was usual bookended with a well deserved lectures about my choices.
Additionally I think of my high school history teacher. Lecture was his style, and although I disliked the format of the class at times, I did learn quite a bit about how to organize, retain and use information. Both memories for me are bittersweet because I tend to learn better by talking than listening. The truth is though, there are times when we just need to be told something. Life isn't always a dialogue, sometime it requires a monologue.
This week as I learned about the instructional strategy called "mini lecture" I could imagine the times when it would be appropriate, particularly in social studies and science for us as educators to give a monologue on a topic. It's a bit lit downloading information to your students so that they can draw on it later. Below are some details and tips about mini lecturing. As you will see, it's nothing like a behavior lecture in the blue chair or outlining my history teacher's main points in my mind.
The purpose:
- To give student information related to your topic of study, particularly one event, theory, example, person or point of view under he umbrella of your unit work (ex: March on Washington during civil rights study, Henry box Brown during a study of slavery in the US, the decision to remove Pluto from the list of planets during a solar system unit, or the the process of mitosis in biology)
- To show students visuals, prompt thinking, make connections and model content area vocabulary use
The method:
- 5-10 min, launched with a listening prompt during intro, "today I'm going to talk to you about the March on Washington, I want you to listen for the various opinions that were represented in the crowd in this day."
- Prompt students to take notes, especially in regards to you're string prompt. If students have been introduced to thinking maps, this is a brilliant use of them. Boxes and bullets or outlines can be hard to manage if you're not controlling the speed that you are getting the info (can't go back and "re-listening")
- As the teacher speaks (the pre planned explanation and think alouds, visuals are shown, either from texts or electronically. Maps, photographs, primary source documents, music lyrics, diagrams are all great options. Some teachers may chose to use text features from the course textbook as a way of preteaching and exposing students to what they will read.
- When the lecture is complete, the most logical and important part is the opportunity for students to discuss what they heard (focusing in the listening prompt that was provided.) Beginning with individual reflection and continued note taking, followed by partner or small group sharing and then eventually whole group discussion, scaffolds students thinking in a way that prepares them to talk about their new knowledge.
- Questions generated during this time should be charted for further discussion and exploration throughout the unit.
TIPS
- As Kathleen Tolan and Maggie Beattie Roberts taught us this week, "the most important part of the mini lecture is the mini" Keeping your monologue limited increases focus for students and honors their learning by maximizing their time to write and talk.
- Be prepared! Know what you are going to say and have your visuals in order
- Condsider posting the listening prompt on a chart paper and adding students responses & questions after discussion
Content Area & The Common Core Institute @ Teacher's College
Sitting on the plane on the way home from NY, simultaneously hoping the snow doesn't delay my arrival, and reviewing all that's learned this week. I'm not quite sure how to start actually. Being at Columbia university's Teachers college this week was invigorating. Being taught, challenged and coached by the bright and passionate minds of The Reading and Writing project brought me back to the excitement I felt as an undergraduate. I think it's unusual for us as educators to find ourselves back in a state mind where anything is possible. Unfortunately it's not of the that we get the chance to reimagine how we do things and breath new life into our instructional strategies in the way we did at the institute this week.
The focus of the week was on content area instruction and the common core. Every speaker, session and conversation was focused on increasing our students understanding of the content we teach in social studies and science through authentic integration of the ELA standards. A couple of us from across the country (and a few from further...shout out to my new Puerto Rico friend!) gathered with varying job assignments, career eking this and content areas on our mind. It was a amazing though, to see the seemingly effortless way the TCRWP staff guided us through experiences as students and then as practitioners. It was a perfect balance.
Earlier this week I posted on on content area centers, one of the many simple strategies we learned and practiced, but there are a few other things I'd like to share. In the coming days, I plan to post about mini-lectures, nonfiction read-alouds and some strategies for teaching students to think and write about main idea. I'll also share and reflect on the tweets of myself, TCRWP staff and my new colleagues.
Looking forward to sharing my learning!
For those of you who have been teaching primary grades, centers are not new for you. But what having students visit different areas in the room, to engage in a variety of actives was part of our social studies and science instruction? What if instead of cracking open social studies textbooks or jumping into science experiments from our FOSS or EIE kits, we had a day or two set aside for centers? K-8 teachers, I want to challenge you to think about some of these compelling reasons to engage in this type of teaching for the purpose of increasing your student's learning.
Centers are;
* An opportunity for students to engage with content in a variety of the ways, many "access points"
* Requires deep thinking about content, rather than "sit and get"
* Students learn from conversation with one another, defending opinions, justifying thinking with text evidence
* Allows for differentiation in task, support, and thinking
* Great chance to generate and answer "big questions"
* Lends to thoughtful CCSS connections
* Builds independence and ownership of learning
Here are some ideas for centers that could become part of your instruction regardless of the center;
Statistics Center- looking at graphic or numerical representations of the content, consider infographics
Photograph Center- photos from textbooks, articles, internet. Diagrams and drawings that represent scientific content
Listening center- audio of speeches or video clips related to content
Write around center- photo, statistics, poem or passage in the middle, students respond by writing around, and the respond to one another by writing around each other's comments
Text to text- two texts on the topic/content that students read and compare/contrast. Two article with opposing viewpoints, two primary source documents from the same time
Of course students need to know what your expectations are for the centers, and that does take time. Once students know what the expectations are for the photograph center however it doesn't matter if the photos are of the civil rights movement, science content, or even a math diagram, they know what to do.
Planning centers that span over several days, within the context of your collaborative team can greatly enrich student learning!
Stating Learning Targets
This is an excellent example of some simple ways to anchor your students and your lessons in your learning targets. I challenge you to use "I CAN" statements in this way!
"Learning About" vs. Assessing
"Every time I talk to the children I am learning about them. I like the words 'learning about' much more than I like 'assessing.' I learn about my children. I get to know them. I want to know what they know. I want to know how they know. Isn't that what assessment is all about- learning what children know?"- Jill Ostrow, A Room With a Different View (1995)
When I read this I began thinking immediately about my notebook. The one I started my very first year of teaching. Just like most new educators, I was determined to be the "super teacher." I wanted to be different from others, I wanted to know my students so well that I could teach them in exactly the way they needed to be taught. I knew it was a lofty goal but, as usual, I was determined and organized. I had purchased a notebook for anecdotal records and carefully labeled each page. The goal was to make notes (especially in the first days) of little things I noticed about my students. Everything from interests to friendships, fears to silly quotes. I imagined this book of observations to inform my teaching, aid in conversations with families and give me ammo when I was trying to curb out of line behaviors.
The idea came about in one of my undergrad classes on observation, I was sure it would set me a part. The notebook served its purpose for a time, I kept it neat and tidy, and within arms reach. I even did a fairly good job of writing in it regularly, for a while. But before I knew it the daily grind of answering emails, returning parent phone calls, eating 2 bites of lunch at the copy machine, searching for lost mittens... and of course teaching, got in the way of the routine of actually writing. What I developed was a mental notebook, where I still kept a "page" for each of my learners. I tuned into how they talked with their classmates, when or if they shared in class, the kind of books they were drawn to, and most of all what made them smile. I began weaving these bits of knowledge in with how I observed them performing academic tasks and quickly the "notebook pages" became like chapters in are larger reference type library I had built.
I found that when I knew what it was that they were good at, where their knowledge started and stopped and what I could do to keep each of them motivated, it transformed the culture of my classroom and my students' achievement. It wasn't really until my 3rd year in the classroom that I had a clean mental system for learning and applying all I could gather about the little humans in my classroom.
I would encourage you to ponder this as we head towards reading assessment windows and a dense time of learning in the year. I'm not telling you to start a notebook, but you can if it helps. Try to just gather information through conversation, observation and maybe even asking your students to write you letters. Allow what you learn to inform your instruction and guide the way you teach. Doing this will also help you understand their work better and support them in their learning.
When I read this I began thinking immediately about my notebook. The one I started my very first year of teaching. Just like most new educators, I was determined to be the "super teacher." I wanted to be different from others, I wanted to know my students so well that I could teach them in exactly the way they needed to be taught. I knew it was a lofty goal but, as usual, I was determined and organized. I had purchased a notebook for anecdotal records and carefully labeled each page. The goal was to make notes (especially in the first days) of little things I noticed about my students. Everything from interests to friendships, fears to silly quotes. I imagined this book of observations to inform my teaching, aid in conversations with families and give me ammo when I was trying to curb out of line behaviors.
The idea came about in one of my undergrad classes on observation, I was sure it would set me a part. The notebook served its purpose for a time, I kept it neat and tidy, and within arms reach. I even did a fairly good job of writing in it regularly, for a while. But before I knew it the daily grind of answering emails, returning parent phone calls, eating 2 bites of lunch at the copy machine, searching for lost mittens... and of course teaching, got in the way of the routine of actually writing. What I developed was a mental notebook, where I still kept a "page" for each of my learners. I tuned into how they talked with their classmates, when or if they shared in class, the kind of books they were drawn to, and most of all what made them smile. I began weaving these bits of knowledge in with how I observed them performing academic tasks and quickly the "notebook pages" became like chapters in are larger reference type library I had built.
I found that when I knew what it was that they were good at, where their knowledge started and stopped and what I could do to keep each of them motivated, it transformed the culture of my classroom and my students' achievement. It wasn't really until my 3rd year in the classroom that I had a clean mental system for learning and applying all I could gather about the little humans in my classroom.
I would encourage you to ponder this as we head towards reading assessment windows and a dense time of learning in the year. I'm not telling you to start a notebook, but you can if it helps. Try to just gather information through conversation, observation and maybe even asking your students to write you letters. Allow what you learn to inform your instruction and guide the way you teach. Doing this will also help you understand their work better and support them in their learning.
More Book Lists
Follow this link to see book list suggestions from Lucy Calkins and The Reading & Writing Project. Some are by genre and topic, others are by grade level. As you write your units of study and order books to be used during your whole group interactive read alouds, this is a good place to look for suggestions. Also consider these titles when choosing books to add to your classroom library.
The image below gives you a glimpse of what you will find on the site...there are other great resources as well, dig around the rest of the site a little!
The image below gives you a glimpse of what you will find on the site...there are other great resources as well, dig around the rest of the site a little!
Inquiry Strategey
OBSERVE...THINK...QUESTION
I'm going to share one of my all-time favorite inquiry-based teaching strategies today. I loved it so much in fact, that I incorporated prompts for it permanently in my classroom. The strategy is called Observe, Think, Question. If you would have walked into my classroom you would have quickly seen a large Eye (observe), a Brain (think), and a questions mark (questions) hanging from the ceiling.
This strategy can be used in any content area using only a photograph, text, or even a video clip. It very simple, and once your students learn it, they can participate pretty seamlessly at any point in your day, in any subject area.
FIRST: the teacher displays an artifact, text, photograph or video clip and the students write (either on a pre-made graphic organizer or a notebook page they have chosen) about what they notice. It takes some practice, but they get good at just "stating the obvious." This stage of the strategy anchors them in the reality without letting them jump ahead to application or prediction. For example, if I displayed this book cover to my students
They might write observations like:
* I see that it is a boy
* I notice he has only one eye
* I notice that there is no nose or mouth
NEXT: The students can verbally share, or record on their paper thoughts they have, and predictions. For the above book cover they may say:
* I think this boy must be the main character
* I think his eye is important
* I think he might wonder a lot because of the title Wonder
LASTLY: Students ask questions about the artifact, text, photo or video clip. I usually have them record their questions first and then pair up to share and generate a few more.
By the end of the exercise, you can imagine that a lot of interest, background knowledge and predicting has been done. It is a helpful strategy that I found replaced KWL charts in my classroom very quickly. Revisiting the OTQ work after learning has occurred allows for reflection as well. Think about how you might do this....
display a map with no title or legend in geography....
show a video clip like this without sound in your biology class....
Try it out and let us know what you think!
Reader's Notebook Examples from the Reading & Writing Project
The Reading & Writing Project is the collective work of Lucy Calkins and Teachers College at Columbia University. Their site is full of examples and info that always reminds me of whats possible. Today I want to show you some examples of what can be done in a student reading notebook, its fun to see pages like this;
And once you teach the students how, they can create these response pages with little support!
Five Child-Centered Principles to Guide Your Teaching- from Sharon Taberski
1. It's better to do fewer things well than many things superficially
2. Balanced Literacy is a menu, not a checklist
3. The parts of our balanced literacy system should work together as a system
4. We learn through multiple exposures over time
5. Our practices should be developmentally appropriate
Questioning Texts
A great example of how teaching students to question texts fosters deeper comprehension
Jeff Wilhelm talks about Inquiry in the Secondary Classroom
Book Lists
On her blog www.allaboutcomprehension.blogspot.com, Heinemann author Sharon Taberski has listed some recommended books for different instructional purposes and reader interests, here they are as of today, but check back there as she adds to the lists often:
Short and Sweet Chapter Books: Older Elementary-Grade Readers
A word about working with words
If you have not yet seen it, I would highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, & Christopher Lehman.
The truth is, somehow in the course of the last few years, most classroom educators have lost track of the movement around Common Core. Most of us in MN were initially told that we were not adopting the CCS for ELA, but as you know that has changed, we have. From my perspective, many of us have found ourselves responsible for teaching these standards with very little professional learning about their stark difference to the old standards we used. This book helps to answer the questions you are too embarrassed to ask and provides you answers you can discuss with colleagues and families.
Anyway, one of the most helpful chapters for me has been Chapter 10: Overview of the Speaking, Listening and Language Standards, because one of the major shifts that comes with these new standards is the way we approach teaching conventions, knowledge of language and vocabulary acquisition. These 3 points are the most meaningful to ponder in light of the actual day to day instruction in all grade levels:
Anyway, one of the most helpful chapters for me has been Chapter 10: Overview of the Speaking, Listening and Language Standards, because one of the major shifts that comes with these new standards is the way we approach teaching conventions, knowledge of language and vocabulary acquisition. These 3 points are the most meaningful to ponder in light of the actual day to day instruction in all grade levels:
- "Students need immersion in rich oral and written language, meaning they need to read a lot and be involved in literate conversations in literacy-rich classrooms"
- "Students do need some words to be specifically taught, but teachers should select words that cross many content areas and will be current and visible in students' experience. This is because, for these explicitly taught words to stick, a students must experience them across contexts at least twelve to fifteen times on average. This means words of the week will not have lasting power unless they are attended to in reading, writing and listening across the day as well as across the year."
- "Students need to learn how words work and gain the sense that words can be formed from other words and that words with similar spellings often-though not always- can have meanings derived from one another. This means that vocabulary instruction should not just be centered on word lists but should teach students to be active word solvers."
I am not sharing this to dismiss the teaching of sight or content specific vocabulary. I share it to prompt thinking about why we spend as much time as we do on individual words, their structure and meaning when the reality is, students can often find the meaning and have the spelling corrected as they type it faster than they can access the background knowledge we hoped to build. Instead, these new standards want is to focus on guiding them to be meaning makers and word solvers.
Disciplinary Literacy
"How can adolescents think and learn like mathematicians, historians, or biologists if we do not teach them how to read, comprehend, and think deeply about the texts of each discipline?"
TIMOTHY SHANAHAN & CYNTHIA SHANAHAN
This year we have focused on content area literacy in our Professional Learning as 7-12 teachers. This topic is essential to our view of ourselves as teachers of reading and our desire for students to truly understand and internalize the content from their classes. So when I stumbled onto this article by Timothy and Cynthia Shanhahan, I was delighted to read about the work that was done with content area teachers, content experts and reading specialists to create a cohesive approach to disciplinary literacy instruction. Disciplinary literacy refers to the ability to recognize the purpose and strategies best used in each of the disciplines and apply them so as you more successfully read like an expert of that subject would. The article summarizes the a research project that strategically gathered groups of people to discuss, analyze, reflect and focus on reading purposes and strategies in individual content areas in order to better prepare students for the types of reading they will encounter in their various courses.
The article begins with the explanation of the difference between the literacy instruction received prior to middle school, and the increased need for more specified literacy instruction in grades 7-12. The following figure is provided as an explanation of the literacy grow and stages at Shanahan sees it.
Shanhan explains that the project "has challenged us to rethink the basic curriculum of adolescents literacy instruction, particularly with regard to reading comprehension strategy instruction within the disciplines." This seems to be the most logical way to approach instructing our students. Rather than asking students to make the jump from a Basic to Intermediate Literacy and then tossing them into the world of very complex content text to "figure it out", the results of this project support the need for explicit instruction of reading strategies specific to content and purpose.
Teachers, disciplinary experts and reading specialists gathered to look at the textbooks being used, record their own think-alouds as they themselves read portions of the text, and then identified the most important strategies for readers to master and apply when reading science, history, and math texts. The representatives in each team were able to synthesize what they knew about the topic, curriculum, and reading to create frameworks for instruction that were aimed at providing students what they needed to be successful in the top portion of the pyramid.
The following article sites this project and more simply explains what is necessary to consider in the topic of Disciplinary Literacy. Additionally, this author includes some questions that could be used in a PLC conversation or in collaboration with your site's reading specialist.
"If we are knowledgeable about the distinct differences among content areas why are we using generic literacy strategies across the content areas?"
PLC Discussion Questions
Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy
Vicky Zygouris-Coe, Reading Today Online
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