Comparing and Contrasting 2 texts (standard 9) in preparation for Social Studies Centers

Whole Class Instruction to Support Comparing and Contrasting Sources of Information Related to Immigration (3-5) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

Informational Text Writing in connection with Science Content

Ever since spending some time with the wonderful educators at TCRWP in NY this February, I find myself visiting their site often and viewing their common Core videos often. What you will find in their teaching videos is the epitome of standards based teaching. I happen to be in a season of studying closely how reading, writing and content areas can and should complement one another. Here is an example of how you might introduce Informational Writing in the context of a Forces & Motion Science Unit:

 

Second Grade Information Writing (Forces and Motion) from

  TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

There are a few things that stick out to me when watching this video, aside from the "magic ball" toss for sharing, I like how she is so explicit in her example and that the students really know what and how to be talking with partners when that sharing time comes. One of the things the folks at TCRWP really understand is that writing is a very high level activity, it requires synthesis, planning, organization, etc. Often times we jump too quickly into just writing. In order for students to feel the least bit prepared they need to be taught thinking and organizing strategies and they need chances to talk. 

For those of you who are Thinking Maps teachers, I immediately envisioned a brace map with parts of the book or even a tree map for the chapters. 

As the planning continued, students might benefit from seeing you use one of those maps as an organization tool. 

One other thing I would add is that in this lesson and as the students begin their writing, I would have a word bank of forces & motion vocabulary visible for reference. If we truly want our students to understand and use their new knowledge in this type of writing, we need to remind them of the proper vocabulary. It may also help to reference a text features chart so that when she adds the "mopping" heading it can be referenced. Take a look at a couple other primary writing videos in the Reading and Writing Project Vimeo site: http://vimeo.com/tcrwp/videos