In My Classroom: The Forest and the Trees

Prefixes, Metafiction, and Enrichment

2012-01-28T09:57:00.000-05:00

This year, my school has adopted an intervention period right after lunch. I love it! On three cycle days, I work with students who need help with fluency. On the other three cycle days, I work on word study with an enrichment group. The variety is so much fun and I feel like I can really go far with my groups.

This week, I tried something new with my enrichment group. We're finishing up our work with prefixes, and I was trying to think of a literature link that would be enriching and interesting and appeal to my group's somewhat subversive sense of humor. But I had a deeper motive in mind. As I look at the next few months with my group, I wanted to set a new tone for our work together--something that goes beyond just test preparation and word work.

Luckily, a student had just reorganized my picture book shelf this week, and I had rediscovered the Elephant and Piggie book We Are In A Book. So--what about metafiction?

If you're not familiar with the term, click on the link above for a full explanation and a list of books that show metafiction. Basically, metafiction is just fiction about fiction--books in which the characters are aware that they're in a book.

My group quickly grasped the concept, connecting it to episodes of Phineas and Ferb and The Name of This Book Is Secret (currently making its rounds around the room). But what about the prefix link? Well, I made a chart with the prefixes we had been working on--mis, dis, re, and un--and, as we read each page of We Are In A Book, we tried to think of words with prefixes that could describe the characters or events.

It was a wonderful activity for this group. Working with their basic knowledge of prefixes, they worked to generate new words for each page. Some were obvious, like unhappy and reread. But other pages were hard. (It challenged me, too, which I always enjoy!) We talked about how some combinations of word plus prefix are generally accepted, but others are not. We also looked at how some words with prefixes have "lost" their base words--for example, repeat. But since the word repeat so clearly shows the meaning of "re", to do again, it should count as a word with a prefix.

After we finished, students made their own little metafiction mini-comics, trying to use at least one word with a prefix. And they were hilarious! Even better, students were trying to use new and interesting words with prefixes.

The idea of metafiction is incredibly appealing to the tween reader. Now that my students know the word, they feel like they are in on the secret. I casually set out The Stinky Cheese Man and it was read by 5 students in one afternoon--one even stayed in from recess to finish. :) And techniques of metafiction are blossoming in student journals.

It's nice to have a fairly basic word study lesson become something much more interesting.

Summarizing Rubrics

2012-01-22T20:57:00.003-05:00

Summarizing still amazes me. When you sit down and think about all of the skills that a reader must coordinate to summarize a text, it's amazing that readers can summarize at all. Readers have to understand the text, grasp the structure, distinguish important ideas from less important ones, and synthesize a new way to express the ideas in the text.

For all its fascination, summarizing can also be frustrating. Ten years of teaching summarizing have shown me that there is no quick fix, no one flashy lesson that fixes all of the problems. This is why I feel so strongly that instruction in summarizing needs to be woven into all reading teaching. Activities like choosing the best summary, finding important ideas, or locating "seductive details" that drag the reader away from the main point are all quick ways to build summarizing skills all year long.

With these activities behind us, I'm getting ready to dive into some deeper summarizing with students. As part of this, I've been thinking about assessing summarizing. One way to assess summarizing is to look at a student summary and count the number of important ideas that are included. (I wrote about this method in this blog post.) This is quick and especially good for younger writers.

But this method doesn't assess the other aspects of a good summary, such as paraphrasing and following the structure of the text. To try to get at these aspects, I created this 6-point rubric. The basic structure of the rubric follows the rubric in Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling. Instead of just 4 points, though, this rubric includes 6.

Summary Rubric

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Important Ideas: A good summary should include the important ideas from the text. With this rubric, it's okay for a reader to include a few more details than strictly necessary.

Paraphrasing: I like to be able to distinguish between summaries that attempt to paraphrase, but do so inaccurately, and summaries that just copy from the text.

Structure of the Text: It's this component that led me to write the new rubric in the first place. On the one hand, a summary should reflect the structure of the text--within reason. I like to think of the television show "Lost" as an example of when a skillful summary might deviate from the structure of a text. If you were going to summarize that show--which I so do not recommend!--you would probably rearrange the ideas to make an easier chronology. In nonfiction text, sometimes authors play around with a structure for effect. Some rearrangement of ideas can help to make the summary more clear. In these cases, a highly skilled summary would not necessarily match the structure of the text.

Word Choice: I added "academic language" to the rubric, because it's something that I want to start helping students work toward.

I look forward to trying this out in the next few weeks...I'd love to hear your comments about it!

(Oh, and I also just posted a huge folder of summarizing resources to TeachersPayTeachers...30 files with different kinds of summarizing activities, paraphrasing lessons, and more!)

Teaching Text Structure...Efficiently

2012-01-16T16:53:00.001-05:00

In a perfect world, I'd be able to explore nonfiction text structures over the course of several weeks. But the real world of teaching is often far from perfect! This year, state testing is earlier than ever (thanks, PDE!), which means that I have fewer instructional days to cram everything in.

When teaching text structure, then, what can we safely skip over? My chest constricts a bit at the thought of skipping anything--it's all so important for young readers. But there are times when we need to take a few shortcuts. Choosing what to take out and what to keep becomes important.

DO: Skip the intro
Given large amounts of time, I like to begin a text structure unit with an overview of the different structures. This helps students to see the relationships among the structures and put everything together into a cohesive whole.

However, when time is short, it's okay to jump right in. I like to start with chronological order. Because it mirrors the structure of narratives, it's a good place to begin. As we go, then, we put together the pieces of the different structures.

DON'T: Skip real connected texts
Sometimes it's tempting to treat text structure as a fill in the blanks concept. Hand out a paragraph, find the text structure, move on to the next. But text structures are most interesting to consider when we think about how authors use the different structures to convey meaning. Always be sure to bring the focus back to making meaning. The question is not, "What's the text structure?" Instead, the question is, "How can the text structure help me to understand the text?"

DO: Focus on whole-class lessons
Trying to fold text structure into guided reading can be a daunting task. If you are short for time and preparing for state testing, it's okay to work with whole-class texts and lessons. This can take several different forms. You may want to do a shared reading with a grade level text, and then have pairs of students read leveled texts, with all students looking for the same text structure clue words and using the same graphic organizers. Or you may want to have all students work with grade level text. If testing is approaching, it's important for struggling readers to have some coping skills for grade level text. You can scaffold the task for them by highlighting transition words in a text or giving them a partially-completed organizer. But seeing that grade level text can help students to feel more confident ahead of the test.

DON'T: Skip summarizing
It can be tempting to skip writing summaries in the different text structures. However, this is an important step. You've read the texts--why not summarize? Even if you need to just make a quick choose-the-best-summary task, you'll find that taking the time to address summarizing within each text structure will help you in the long run.

DO: Pre-assess students to see what they already know
If you know that teachers in previous grades address text structure, it may be worth taking some time to find out how much kids already know. A carousel activity is a quick way to do this. Put each text structure on a large piece of chart paper. Hang up the charts around the room. Break up students into small groups and give each group a marker. Have them visit each chart and write down what they know about that text structure. This has the added benefit of reminding students of what they may have learned in the past. It's always funny to see those kids who claim they have never heard of text structure before challenged by their former classmates--"Mrs. X taught us that! You were there! Remember?"

DO: Come back to text structures!
However you decide to structure your unit, be sure to come back to text structures to pick up anything you may have missed. Being able to use and understand text structures helps readers to comprehend nonfiction text. Testing or not, text structure is an important topic to teach.

Planning for Teaching Text Structure

2012-01-07T16:55:00.000-05:00

Getting ready to start teaching a text structure unit? Here are some tips on how to get ready.

Create tabbed binders
My first step this year was to put together tabbed binders for everyone in the grade. This year, I have two new teachers on the team, plus I'm working with two co-teachers. Getting everyone the same basic materials helps to keep us all together.

The tabs on the binder are simple. First, I included copies of the assessments that we'll use. Then I included the text structures that we plan to teach, in order. I like to start with the time-based structures--chronological order, cause and effect, and problem/solution--before moving onto the other structures of compare and contrast and description.

Gather resources

Our next step was to put together our existing resources. Since I've been teaching text structure for several years, I have quite a few texts that I've gotten together. (I've also written quite a few--see the "Text Structure" tab at the top of the page for these.) We also looked at the Scholastic News from this year, issues of Click and Ask magazines, and various teacher resource books. If your state has a state testing resource site, you may find that some of these texts will work.

It's helpful to acquire as many texts as possible. When it comes time to choose and allocate texts, the more, the better. (I also like that rich feeling that I have when I've found tons of great reading selections! I may not use them all, but I like knowing that I can.)

To theme or not to theme?
This is a tricky question. In my grade, we just finished a month-long theme study of Antarctica. Themes can be wonderful because they provide students with opportunities to see the same ideas again and again, and help kids to build strong networks of knowledge.

But the problem with themes is that they might encourage the use of less-than-optimal texts. For teaching text structure, it's best to use the highest quality texts that you can find to illustrate the text structures. Grabbing a text that's okay just because it fits into a theme may not help you in the end.

I like to find a middle ground by using little themelets. For chronological order, for example, I use the "Great Chicago Fire" text from Toolkit Texts. This matches well with the cause and effect "The Boston Molasses Disaster" from Fluency Formula, as well as the "What Is a Tsunami" that I wrote. But a disaster theme can only take you so far. By the time we get to problem and solution, I'm happy to move on to animal-based texts and happier topics.

Don't forget the bookroom!
While you're looking for texts, remember to look at the bookroom. We've been slowly expanding our selection of text structure texts in the past few years, adding titles like A Place for Butterflies and Shopping: Then and Now. If you don't find much, this might be a good way to decide on what to purchase in upcoming years.

Choose core reading materials and guided reading materials
This is the hard part. At this point, work with your colleagues to decide which texts will be for core instruction, which for guided reading, and which for independent center or homework. For core instruction, I look for grade-level texts that are excellent examples of different text structures.

My list of texts changes from year to year. While I do have some favorites, I also like to add new ones related to my students' interests. I do write some texts, especially when I can't find something that's just right. I've made a number of centers for my students as well.

Plan how you will introduce each structure
I've played around with making different Powerpoints (regular, easy)for introducing the structures. I like these because they are so visual. This year, I'm going to use the relevant Powerpoint slides to introduce each structure, and then work with different texts.

Decide on graphic organizers and models
If you are in a co-teaching situation, it's important to decide ahead of time what you want your graphic organizers to look like. Do you want to use the same ones for each structure, or do you want to expose students to different organizers? Making a common poster or guide sheet is helpful for this.

Plan for summarizing as well
As I teach different text structures, I like to have kids work with summarizing within each structure. Sometimes this is a choose-the-best-summary activity, sometimes it's a scaffolded summary, and sometimes it's a summary writing activity. I've found that this distributed approach to summarizing is highly effective.

Enjoy!
I look on teaching text structure as a fun way to help students become better readers. They usually enjoy it as well. From choosing texts to planning graphic organizers, it can be a real adventure!

Introduction to Animal Camouflage

2012-01-03T19:45:00.001-05:00

I'm starting animal adaptations this week! I love this unit because the kids get so excited to learn about animals. We start off by talking about the difference between physical and behavioral adaptations.

Then, we focus on physical adaptations. I love reading What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins. In small groups, students create webs to show how different body parts are physical adaptations of animals. We also read "Swim School", an article in the Toolkit Texts 4-5 book.

But my favorite part is working with camouflage. I've uploaded Introduction to Animal Camouflage to both Slideshare and TeachersPayTeachers. As I researched camouflage, I found that there are several different ways to break down the concept. Because our state standards emphasize understanding how adaptations help animals to survive, I tried to put in lots of opportunities for students to talk about this. Enjoy! (And please let me know if you see any problems...my kids found two different typos in things that I had copied for them today, adding insult to the injury of the first day back from holiday break!)

Animal Camouflage Introduction

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Teaching Text Structure: Spider Magazine

2012-01-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

I'm always looking around for good examples of text structure to share with my students. (And, of course, when I can't find what I want, I write my own.)

As I was browsing at a new bookstore this week, I picked up the latest issue of Spider Magazine. (My youngest son, who used to subscribe, requested Ranger Rick for Christmas this year instead--oh, well!) I went ahead and bought the issue because it includes a short article about polar bears, "The Dark Past of the Polar Bear." I was excited to find several great features in the article:

Action lead: The first four paragraphs of the article introduce the reader to the polar bear by showing the polar bear in action, catching a beluga whale.

The sun rises above the Arctic Ocean, spreading a fiery glow over the pale ice. Across the frozen sea, a white bear lumbers.

Compare and contrast: Four paragraphs in the article compare the polar bear to the brown bear. Words like difference, better suited, and but help to make the differences easy to understand, while also serving as good examples of text structure cue words in real life text.

Cause and effect: Many real-life articles combine text structures. In this article, there are several examples of causes and effects both at the sentence level and the paragraph level. Several sentences in the compare and contrast section show why certain adaptations help the polar bear. At the end of the article, a cause and effect paragraph shows why changes in climate affect the polar bear.

As I'm just about to start teaching about animal adaptations in science and text structure in reading, I'm looking forward to sharing this text with students.

Chronological Order Texts for Teaching Text Structure

2011-12-28T19:21:00.001-05:00

One of the hardest parts of teaching nonfiction is the constant scrounging for text. Finding text with the right level, the right topic, the right text features--it takes time and effort.

For the past few years, I've been working on creating sets of texts for teachers to use. I do have a set of "Text Structure Resources" that I send to teachers at their request. Over the summer, I posted Cause and Effect Texts and Activities, followed by Compare and Contrast and Problem and Solution. All of these files include multiple texts that show the text structure, along with activities and teaching tips. The goal is to minimize the effort of scrounging for text.

But why no chronological order? Even though this is the text structure that I usually start with for teaching text structure, it's taken me time to put together resources for it. Part of the reason is that chronological order can take so many different forms. Procedural text, animal life cycle texts, biographies, historical accounts--all of them are organized in chronological order. If I was to put together a set of chronological texts, I'd have to include examples of all of these.

This was a daunting task! This fall, I started to write. And write. And write. I started out with "Whoopie Wars". When I began the research, I firmly believed that the whoopie pie was a Pennsylvania Dutch treat. I even looked in the old Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks myself (what a wealth of knowledge is available from Google Books!), hoping to find something that others had missed. Alas, no documentation for whoopie pies in Pennsylvania--but a good story. I needed to do some firsthand research so that I could take photos of whoopie pies, so my husband and I spent a Saturday baking whoopie pies with our sons. Research has never been so delicious.

I knew that I would write about monarch butterflies and wood frogs, because I had great photos of both creatures over their lifespans. These articles were easy to write. I look forward to sharing the wood frog article with my students this March, when we bring in some wood frog tadpoles into the classroom.

The biographies, however, proved a little harder. I had originally written "Anthony Wayne" when I was doing an in-service presentation for teachers in Waynesboro. I decided to do some deeper research and spent a few weekends reading letters to and from Anthony Wayne. This gave me the confidence I needed to write "Dolley Madison", which was considerably more difficult--especially because many of Dolley's documented recollections from later in her life were found to be questionable. Writing this short piece took hours of research from multiple sources to make sure that I was including only the best information. I couldn't get the readability on Dolley Madison low enough, so I went ahead and finished out the set with "Lafayette", a text which my husband already plans to use with his third graders.

The finished product, "Chronological Order Texts for Teaching Text Structure" includes 10 texts, 8 with before, during, and after reading activities and multiple choice questions. It costs three dollars, and hopefully will save you from hours of scrounging for texts. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Text Structures: Compare/Contrast and Cause/Effect

2011-12-19T20:12:00.001-05:00

This week, I've found two online texts to complement what I'm teaching in the classroom.

Compare and contrast: We are currently reading about Antarctica as we explore nonfiction texts. I have the MV FRAM Expedition Blog in my Google Reader, and I share it with students. It is well-written and interesting, and the kids are enjoying tracking the progress of each trip to Antarctica.

This post is a nice compare and contrast piece. The picture tells the story, and the text uses parallel structure and longer sentences to explain how the two days were so different. I like having quick little texts to show students as we transition from guided reading to core instruction, or to share during bus time and all of those extra minutes through the day.

Cause and Effect: We've been studying ecosystems in science. Last week, we studied how ecosystems change by reading A Place for Butterflies by Melissa Stewart. Then, we played the Project WILD game "Oh Deer!" to look at how a population can change.

Apparently, 2011 was a bad year for acorns. A lack of acorns will lead to changes in the populations of mice, squirrels, and deer, but may have other effects up the food chain. I happened to come across this article a few weeks ago, and it turned out to be perfect for a discussion of cause and effect. It's a little difficult for my students, so I projected the printable view and summarized it. We made a chart to show the causes and effects

This is a nice counterpoint to the zoo mystery article from a few months ago. In that article, we had known effects, but questionable causes; in this one, we have a known cause, but anticipated effects.

I made a little debriefing sheet to talk about it with my students. Here it is on Slideshare.

Oh deer debriefing

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Problem and Solution Text Structure Lesson

2011-12-17T09:10:00.000-05:00

This week, we've been looking at how ecosystems change. Some of these changes are natural, while others happen because of humans. We talked about how these changes to the ecosystem can impact the animals that live there.

Melissa Stewart's book A Place for Butterflies was a perfect addition to this lesson--and a great way to share the problem/solution text structure. On each page, this book explains a problem that butterflies face, and then shows a way that people have helped to solve this problem.

Modeling
We started by reviewing how ecosystems can change. I showed students the book, and explained that the author explains problems and solutions in the ecosystem.

Then students made their own problem and solution charts. I modeled on the chart paper, and then students created their own by folding a sheet of notebook paper.

I read aloud the first pages and explained how to find the problem and solution. We worked with the main text at first, skipping over the insets for the time being. While there aren't any traditional problem and solution cue words, the text follows a pattern. The problem is presented on the left hand page, with the solution on the right.

As I shared the first few pages, I also showed students that there are more butterflies and caterpillars of each species hidden throughout the illustrations. I have a very artistic class this year, and they loved this little touch.

Group Work

We purchased 7 books over the summer, so students could work in groups of 3-4 to read the rest of the book. Because it's available in paperback, this is a very affordable addition to our science library.

Students quickly scattered throughout the room to work in their small groups. They continued reading and finding problems and solutions. Although this text is listed as an easier book, with some recommending it for K-3, my fourth graders found it the perfect challenge.

As they worked, I went around the room and listened to them. Many groups had problems with the idea that letting natural wildfires burn could be helpful for butterflies! We had talked about natural and human-caused forest fires. Living where we do, though, they had no experience with beneficial forest fires.

Some groups also didn't know what "cattle" were. I coached them to use the supportive illustrations to figure it out.

I chose one group to sit next to the easel to continue the chart that I had started. Of course, this was a highly coveted position!

Differentiation
My students work at vastly different speeds. This book was perfect for us. After they finished the main text, groups could go back and read the insets or find the butterflies and caterpillars hidden on each page. Many chose to go back to the natural wildfires page, because it was so puzzling for them. (I'll have to find more resources for this, since they find it so interesting.)

Discussion and Debriefing
These questions helped to frame our discussion after reading. You'll notice that they are a mix of reading questions and science questions.

-Why was the text structure of problem and solution a good fit for this book?
-Which set of problems and solutions surprised you? Which confirmed what you have learned before?
-How did the illustrations add to the text?
-Which of the solutions have we tried? Which could we try in our area?

Watching "The Nutcracker"

2011-12-11T21:08:00.001-05:00

I love "The Nutcracker"! When I was in seventh and eighth grades, I even got to perform in a community production as a Snowflake and a Flower. The experience was amazing. Even now I remember the magic of waiting in the wings as I listened to the introduction to "Waltz of the Snowflakes."

When my oldest son was just 3, I convinced my husband that we had to go see The Nutcracker. Over the next few years, we went to various local performances. My husband, who had never seen the ballet before, was intrigued by hearing me talk on and on about different Claras and watching for the expressions on the faces of the dancers to see who is jealous of whom and how each production is a little different. He started to enjoy our yearly trips as much as I did.

Although he had never seen the ballet as a child, my husband decided to show "The Nutcracker" to his third graders. It's a great holiday activity that builds background knowledge about performances and the theatre. Over the past few years, I've put together some materials for him--a story, activities, and a guidebook. He's added to the magic by creating a real theatre experience in his classroom, right down to giving the students tickets to attend and having a real intermission with refreshments.

There are some wonderful DVD versions of the ballet out there. My favorites are the San Francisco Ballet's and the London Royal Ballet.

I've posted the items that we put together over on TeachersPayTeachers. It's free for now. I'd love to hear if you try it out and enjoy it!

Nutcracker Activities

http://youtu.be/K65lcuHQn-E?t=13s

Before, During, and After Reading: Before

2011-12-10T15:52:00.001-05:00

Over the past few years, I've come to a comfortable pattern for planning reading experiences. The pattern is simple--before, during, and after. When I have all of this planned and worked out, my task as a teacher is so much easier. Here is how I frame texts to share with my students.

Before Reading

This is a harder list of words from "The Adventures of Isabel"

What will students do before they read the text? I like to make a table with key words from the text. This makes a quick and easy speed drill that we can read together before students encounter the words in the text. I like to read the words aloud to students, and then have them say the word back to me. I change my voice for each word and make it really dramatic, so kids find this enjoyable. As we come back to the text over multiple days, we return to the speed drill each day. (Cute story: We were working on The Adventures of Isabel on Friday. I accidentally called a student by the wrong name, and he looked at me and said, jokingly, "I am really cross with you."

I also use this opportunity to talk with kids about the words. This isn't a full-blown vocabulary lesson, but a quick discussion of the words. Sometimes we act them out; sometimes I draw a picture; sometimes I show kids how a derived word relates to a base word. In the case of the word cross, I drew their attention to the fact that it is a multiple meaning word.

I've learned that it's best to limit these words to 15-20. I look for words that are important to the content of the text, as well as words that may be difficult for students. Sometimes, these difficult words are short, like "scarce"; sometimes, they are longer words that are related to words they already know, like "professionally".

After we look at vocabulary, I ask kids to use the words to make a prediction. This may take different forms. In fiction, I often have kids sort words according to story elements--which words will relate to the characters? The setting? The conflict? In nonfiction, we often write 3 prediction sentences, with at least one of the practiced words in each one. Sometimes we ask questions--for example, in a recent text, kids were intrigued to find out how the word "powerful" would relate to a text about Antarctica. And sometimes we draw pictures, doing a sketch-to-stretch kind of activity.

The goal in all of these activities is to equip kids with as much as possible before they enter the text. When I have it all planned and copied for kids, we can all immerse ourselves in our preparations for reading. I project it on the board, kids can make notes and predictions on their own copies, and we work together to get ready to read.

Free texts and activities
Adventures of Isabel: Activities to go along with the classic poem. It's a challenge for kids, but they absolutely love it, and it's a perfect choice for repeated readings. You can find the poem online.

Animal Adaptations: Science text and activities suitable for grades 4-5.

Decomposers Article and Activity: I loved reading this with kids. It worked so well to change their ideas of what decomposers are. This text includes an anticipation guide, another of my favorite before-reading activities. Good for grades 3-5.

The Acorn Mystery: I wrote this based on a real experience! It shows how these ideas can be used with fiction stories for younger readers. Good for grades 2-3.

Retelling Nonfiction: This includes a text about how painted turtles survive the winter, with directions for retelling nonfiction.

Meaningful Spelling Homework

2011-11-30T20:41:00.001-05:00

Now that I have two children in school, I realize the importance of homework. For many parents, it's a welcome glimpse into the life of the classroom. When I work on homework with my sons, I can see what they're doing in school.

So I am now careful with the homework that I send home. What do I value in spelling instruction? What do I want to be communicated across home and school? My first step, of course, is to make everything predictable and easy to understand. (As a parent, I love predictability!) I put the spelling list on the front page, along with a list of the assignments. Usually I also include a little note about the list, explaining why it is interesting or important. The rest of the homework assignments are stapled in opposite order, so that pages are easy to tear off and turn in.

But what do I put on those pages? If you're a classroom teacher, you can probably appreciate the challenge the of coming up with homework for each week. I know that generic assignments are easy. However, since so many of my spelling words are vocabulary words as well, I want to make assignments that are content-rich. Helping kids to learn about words and how they work is something that I value highly. Here are some assignments that I use and recombine for each list.

Semantic maps

These take some teaching, but they really work well. I have kids do about 2 semantic maps for each list. They are best used judiciously--I would never want to make kids do a semantic map for each word on a list. I look for words that will lead to interesting conversations, and words that have lots of possibilities for adding prefixes and suffixes. For example, "murky" is not the most common academic word, but it is an interesting adjective, and has many different forms, like murkier, murkiest, murkiness, and so forth. A month later, a few students spontaneously used this word in their descriptive paragraphs.

To make a semantic map, simply make a nine cell table in word. Use "merge cells" to combine the middle three cells, and gray out the middle cells on the left and the right.

After kids have created their own semantic maps, we make class maps together. It's always interesting to hear how different dictionaries and thesauruses list different words. And it's good for the kids to have a use for the dictionaries they were given in third grade.

(More information on semantic maps is included in my Differentiated Spelling file.)

Sentences

It's pretty disheartening to see hastily written spelling sentences. At the same time, I don't really want to spend my entire life grading spelling sentences. I've found that the quality of sentences increases when I give kids two words to use. Sometimes, I offer words that fit together well, like "phantom" and "night"; sometimes, I offer words that will nudge kids toward writing more complex sentences, like "fought" and "but". (These were from a list of gh and ph words) When we share our work, it's always fun to see how everyone used the same two words to create very different sentences.

Comics
These offer the artistic students a chance to shine! I make four panels on the page, and students have to write a comic using a given number of words.

Multiple Meaning Words
No matter what the list, I can always manage to find a few multiple meaning words. These are so important for reading success that I want to give kids a chance to work with them. One easy task is to put two definitions in a box, and then have kids decide which definition is shown in each sentence. Another task is to illustrate sentences that show each meaning of the word. Notice the common theme--I like to give kids the definitions, and then have them work with the words in a meaning-based way.

Affix study

Many of our lists focus on what happens to words when we add prefixes and suffixes. In homework assignments, I try to highlight these aspects. Charts are a great way to do this. You can give kids the base words and suffixes; they can write the derived words and try to use a few in sentences. You can give kids the derived words; they can write the base words. In the chart to the right, students have to decide how to change the spelling of the base word as they add the given suffixes.

Handwriting
Practicing cursive has its place. After all, kids need to be able to read cursive. I practice my cursive skills each week when I make a handwriting practice sheet. But handwriting practice doesn't have to be boring! On the page that I gave students today, they had to circle the illegible writing and find the invisible hamster. (Can you tell that we were examining words with the -ible suffix?) On another assignment, they had to copy and illustrate the sentence "Please refrain from raisin mistakes." Lots of funny discussions there--but they helped kids to build their understanding of the use of the word refrain.

By mixing these different assignments, I can add some variety to each week's spelling list--without feeling like I'm starting from scratch each week. I haven't published any of the lists in this style, but I can send some your way if you'd like. (I'm doing materials for Syllables and Affixes and Derivational Relations this year.) How has your thinking about spelling homework changed?

Science: Understanding Food Chains

2011-11-19T21:57:00.000-05:00

I love teaching science. Last year, I had the chance to pick it up again after a few years away from it. I had forgotten how much I enjoy talking with kids about their science understandings and planning lessons to help them grow.

For the past week, we've been looking at food chains. My students don't have much prior knowledge about food chains and food webs, so I pretty much started from scratch. I created this Powerpoint to introduce the basics.

Introduction to Food Chains

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Another wonderful tool for teaching about food chains is the book Who Eats What? Food Chains and Food Webs by Patricia Lauber. Patricia Lauber is so skilled at explaining difficult concepts in a clear, easy-to-understand way. I used a document camera to project the book for my class. They loved seeing the underwater food chain and thinking about how it related to our lunch that day (fish sticks!)

While I was in college, I worked as a camp counselor and naturalist. It was as a naturalist that I first discovered one of my favorite games for teaching about food chains--Into the Forest: A Food Chain Game. Since then, I have used the game multiple times in both formal and informal situations. It never fails! The kids love the beautiful illustrations. They marvel at the lists of what creatures eat others. "I never knew that skunks eat insects" or "What is a shrew, anyway?" The game works just fine with a whole class, with each kid having 2-3 cards. At first, everyone works to get the high order predators. Who doesn't want to be top of the food chain? But then I add the wrinkle of the energy points at the top of each card. While the owls and the bobcats are really awesome, they only have 1 energy point--while the less exciting plants have 10. The game changes for everyone, and we play another round before we talk about what we have learned. It becomes a favorite for indoor recess.

No discussion of the food chain is complete without a discussion of decomposers. Last year, I had trouble getting together some simple and quick materials to teach about decomposers. I wrote a short article and created an anticipation guide for it. This year, the article and anticipation guide went wonderfully. Kids were surprised to find out that they have indeed seen decomposers--and that decomposers may not be so disgusting after all!

Link to decomposers article and activities (free)

And then I finally got around to setting up an account on PBS Learning Media. This was the find of the week! Short videos on various topics are easy to find and favorite, with none of the horrible ads of those other video sites. With one search, I found a 3-minute video on the food chain to reinforce everything that I wanted students to know. Magical!

I'm actually sorry that our study of the food chain is coming to an end. But I'm excited, too, because our next unit is adaptations--and that is even more fun.

Do you have any great science resources to share?

Troubleshooting Theme

2011-11-16T20:16:00.001-05:00

Teaching theme can be a real challenge. When kids have trouble, here are a few tactics that I've used.

Give kids a list of themes: I can't say it often enough--this transforms your teaching of theme. When kids have a list of themes in front of them, they can understand the abstract nature of the task. Leave some blank spaces on your lists to add themes as you encounter them in text. (You can find a list in Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling, or write to me for a copy.)

Use lower level texts for teaching theme: This year, I had wonderful success with Mole and the Baby Bird. Now, this is a very easy text. We read it three times before we looked at the the theme. First we watched this wonderful video version. Then we read it again and sequenced the events. By the third reading, I had gotten to that wonderful point where the readers felt secure enough to speak up, offering their own inferences and interpretations. This was the time to bring up theme.

When kids only talk about theme in reference to stories that are a bit of a stretch for them, they'll always put theme in that fuzzy part of their brain where they store ideas that don't quite make sense. Using easy stories helps to make theme a little more comprehensible.

Don't just use fables: Fables seem like they would be perfect for teaching theme. But the moral of a fable is a shade different from the theme of a story. Morals are stated, and the point of a fable is to teach the moral. Most stories, however, have more layers of meaning. Sticking to fables can give kids the idea that themes will always be stated, which is not necessarily true. (You can tell that I started my career with the literature teachers in middle school! No one stands around the copier in an elementary school debating the difference between moral and theme.)

When in doubt, use an Eve Bunting book: This makes for easy differentiation. Go to the library and check out a selection of Eve Bunting books. Struggling readers can read Sunflower House, which has a stated theme in a story told in verse. Other readers can work with Train to Somewhere or Gleam and Glow. Compare themes across books. What do you notice about Eve Bunting as an author? What themes do you see repeated? (Patricia Polacco is another author whose works would be good for this.)

Raise the level of concern: So one day I earnestly taught about theme. I showed the Powerpoint, discussed examples, shared a story. At the end of the session, I asked students to write down an explanation of theme, or an example of a theme. Not one kid could.

This started a serious discussion about what was happening in class versus what was supposed to happen in class. It made an impact, because the kids tuned in to our next conversations about theme. They wanted to learn! They knew that it was important! (They didn't want to hear me lecture again?) Regardless of the reason, things improved.

Connect to other media: Kids often know more about theme than they know. Every single episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars starts with a statement of theme. So many kids have some knowledge of theme and how it is expressed in a story. Not that they realize this, of course. "Oh, you mean that screen they show before the episode starts?" they ask. Yes! Other popular shows have strong themes as well.

Tell them a theme: If you're working to have kids try to support a theme, sometimes it helps to give students a theme that goes along with a story, and then have them find reasons to support it. What I love about this is that it often spurs students to come up with a different theme, just to be contrary. If they can support it, that's great!

Keep track of themes throughout the year: Make a poster to keep track of themes that you uncover in stories.

Enjoy teaching theme! It's a wonderful journey!

Teaching Possessives with Greedy Apostrophe

2011-11-10T20:55:00.001-05:00

I love the book Greedy Apostrophe by Jan Carr. In this book, the punctuation marks all take jobs from the Director. But Greedy Apostrophe wreaks havoc in toy stores and magic shops, inserting apostrophes where they don't belong.

This book makes talking about apostrophes so easy and fun! Like many elementary students, many of my fourth graders start to put apostrophes everywhere in their writing. Greedy Apostrophe gives us such an easy and concrete way to address this problem--after we read the book, I can just say, "Hm...I see a greedy apostrophe in this paragraph," and kids know what to look for.

I created the sheet below to help students apply the ideas in the book as I read it aloud.

Greedy apostrophe

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But the best part of this book is that there is more to it than the grammar rules. Kids like to look at how all of the different punctuation marks have been characterized, and many pick up on the punctuation puns that are scattered throughout the book. Some kids even notice the color scheme--"Why does red always mean angry?" one girl wondered, pointing out the fact that Greedy Apostrophe stands out from the rest of the punctuation marks. Another student drew a picture of Greedy Apostrophe in the Punctuation Pen, with a word bubble: "I've learned my lesson! Only use apostrophes to show ownership!"

Understanding Setting

2011-11-08T17:36:00.000-05:00

As fourth grade readers encounter more challenging texts, they need to pay close attention to setting details. Sometimes, these details will help them to discover the setting, as I wrote about last time. But setting details will also help readers to build background knowledge about places and time periods.

This only works if kids are consciously collecting these details, though. Readers who are reading sentence by sentence often just think about the setting in small terms (the bedroom, the playground, the house) instead of taking a broader view. They often don't catch the setting details that build a bigger picture. Over the long run, think about how this impacts their schema and their comprehension!

I created this graphic organizer to help kids think about setting and time details. (Well, okay, I sketched it out, and my husband did the formatting!) On one side, students collect details about the time period in which the story is based. On the other side, students collect details about the place. This helps them to pay attention to the details in both the text and the pictures to help them learn more about the time and place.

What books work well with this? I started with The Librarian of Basra, available on Tumblebooks. (If your school library doesn't have access, try large public libraries.) We read the book together twice. On the second viewing, we started to add setting details. I told them that the book takes place in 2003, as discussed in this newspaper article. Then we mined the text and the pictures for all of the details we could find about the setting. It led to some interesting discussions--one student said that the houses looked like houses in Mexico; a student who has been to Mexico disagreed. We talked about the palm trees in the pictures, and what they meant; we talked about how the story is deeply connected to the setting.

For guided reading, I wanted my group to work with an easy text, so that they would be able to put all of their energy into locating setting details. Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie was my choice--admittedly because there are many copies of it in the bookroom. It turned out to be a good choice for this group. Just like in The Librarian of Basra, the setting contributes to the conflict. It was a quick read, but one that led to interesting discussions. (Just for fun, I also showed them parts of the Reading Rainbow. It's old, but such a great way to build background knowledge!)

Helping students to go beyond just place-based thinking about setting is an important step. But I can't just relax and work setting...because plot is on the horizon. And understanding plot brings a new set of challenges!

Making inferences: Setting

2011-11-01T21:02:00.000-04:00

Well, we're finally moving on to story elements! This year, I'm trying to work on two thorny setting issues--the issue of multiple locations in one story and the issue of understanding time as a component of setting.

Problem 1: Multiple locations
In the primary grades, setting is often described as one location--the barnyard or the house or the playground. As students get older, though, they often have to describe more complex settings. A story might start in one location, and then move. The reader needs to collapse this list of different places into one overall setting.

Today, I started by practicing collapsing lists with my students. We started with easy ones: mango, pineapple, orange, apple (fruit); basketball, softball, golf, tennis (sports); table, chair, lamp, sofa (furniture). Then we looked at how this could work with setting: hallway, cafeteria, library, classroom (school).

To show students how this works with a text, we read the book Earthquake by Milly Lee. I love this book because it tells the story of the San Francisco earthquake in a very simple, powerful way. And "San Francisco" never appears in the main text!

We made a list of the locations shown on different pages: the family's living room, their apartment, the street, Chinatown, Golden Gate Park. Then, we tried to collapse the list. This required them to pull on their background knowledge. (We had read a play about the San Francisco earthquake the week before.) Some groups pulled on this experience, while others used their knowledge of the Golden Gate Bridge. The important thing, however, was that they were able to collapse the list of small locations into one main setting.

I love how simple this lesson was, and yet how important. It brings together the idea of collapsing lists with making inferences with story elements. Wonderful!

Problem 2: Setting as time
Well, the setting is the time AND place of the story. But many readers are a little too literal with their statement of time. Instead of "1906" as the time for Earthquake, a reader might write, "in the night and the next morning." This is a big problem, because a reader who is thinking of time on such a micro-level may not notice important dates and might fail to add big ideas to their schema.

I decided to make a graphic organizer to show a timeline. When I handed it out to students, I didn't explain anything--I just said, "What do you notice?" Working with their partners, they found all of the important elements: that it shows how time goes in one direction, that there are little pictures to show past, present, and future, that it includes words to help you find the time of a text.

What about fairy tales? It's so hard to show how they fit in. I decided to show how they are off the timeline. Fairy tales and fantasy take place in another time, often with elements of the past mixed in.

After we read Earthquake, we talked about how the setting is not just the location, but also the time. Students easily found that it took place in the past--once again, by drawing on their background knowledge.

I love it when things come together in one lesson. And a great book makes it happen even more easily!

Compare and Contrast Text Structure: Cats vs. Dogs

2011-10-29T17:43:00.000-04:00

This neat little book came free with my last Scholastic book order. Now that I have read it approximately 14,000 times to my first grade son, I have come to appreciate how it could be used to teach the text structure of compare and contrast.

As I've written before, it's tough to find entire compare and contrast texts in the real world. Usually authors will use this structure in a paragraph or two to highlight similarities and differences. But it's difficult to sustain over a long text.

This book, however, uses compare and contrast in a contest format. It works pretty well. Questions set up sections of text, such as "Who's got an ear for everything?" Then, the questions are answered in several paragraphs, which usually show the clustered style of compare and contrast. Compare and contrast cue words such as but, too, both, and also are used on just about every page. I didn't find any use of however, which was probably left out in an attempt to keep the reading level down. And it is a fairly easy read--not easy enough for my first grader to read alone, but definitely comfortable for the reader in grades 2-3. For teaching text structure, I like to introduce the structures with easier texts, so this would be just right for my struggling fourth grade readers.

Each section is boiled down to a winner for that section. The book's conclusion deals cleverly with the overall winner--it's a tie! (Not to my son, however--he decided that it's clear that the cat is the winner.)

All in all, this is a very economical book to obtain to teach compare and contrast text structure. I'm looking forward to trying it out this year!

More on compare and contrast text structure
Text Structure Picture Books: Owen and Mzee (blog post)

Text Structure: Compare and Contrast (blog post)

Compare and Contrast (blog post)

Compare and Contrast Texts ($3.00, 7 short articles with activities)

Doing More with Less

2011-10-27T22:00:00.000-04:00

What a great day we had at KSRA! Nicole and I presented on the topic of doing more with less. We enjoyed listening to everyone's ideas and sharing how to do more with less in the classroom. Here were our principles for doing more with less:

Use what you have
At the workshop, we looked at how we could re-purpose cheap and free items to make engaging literacy tasks.

Cup stacking: This idea came from the Third Grade Thinkers blog. Using transparent cups, we can build words with prefixes, suffixes, and base words. First grade teachers also talked about using these for onset and rime!

Cheap calendars: I pick these up for $1 at various stores...then use them all year long. Setting, description, dialogue...all for only $1! (And reluctant writers really love the cute puppy pictures!)

Advertisements: A certain bulls-eye retailer has sent out haiku coupons this fall. I can't bring myself to use them to get discounts--they're too neat. Haiku and persuasive writing, in one tidy mailer. One teacher suggested cutting them apart for students to try to re-assemble.

Any other ideas for doing more with less?

Plugging Away with Making Inferences!

2011-10-24T20:47:00.000-04:00

Just like I wrote about last time, we're working on making inferences in reading class. It continues to be a challenge for my students, but they are so enthusiastic and upbeat that it is a joy to work with them.

I've expanded my search for interesting resources. This week, we sang along with the kids in this video:

To help students see how they make inferences all the time, I showed this commercial favorite. We talked about what was happening in the commercial. How could they tell? What clues could they use? This really got the boys in the class thinking and talking--they were so excited to share their background knowledge!

Other resources
I also realized that I have some items scattered all over the place. Here are some other resources that I've created that may be useful:

The Magic School (story, free)
This story presents embedded questions for students, so that they have to make inferences all through the story.
Using Schema to Make Inferences (Powerpoint, free)
I wrote this presentation to show students how important it is for them to activate their schema before they read, so that they can make inferences quickly and easily.
Character Traits and Emotions: Making Inferences (unit, $3.00)
This includes stories and activities to use to help students make inferences about character traits and emotions.
The Forest AND the Trees (book)
Doing the research for this book helped me to understand how important it is for students to pay attention to small details so that they can make inferences.
Teaching Visualizing (blog post)

Making Inferences

2011-10-15T22:40:00.000-04:00

As I looked ahead at the story elements unit, I realized that I had to do some work on making inferences. After all, telling kids to make inferences about the setting of a story won't make much sense if students don't know how to infer!

But where to begin? With this group of readers, I want some quick success to build their confidence. I decided to start with text-based inferences, taught along with some visualizing. As I wrote about in The Forest and the Trees, text-based inferences are those that depend on a knowledge of how text works. Finding the speaker in dialogue, matching pronouns with antecedents, and using specific clues from a text are all examples of text-based inferences.

Visualizing, on the other hand, is a form of reader-based inference, which depends on a reader's background knowledge. Why is visualizing a form of inference? No author ever tells every detail about a passage. Instead, a reader needs to bring some background knowledge to the text in order to form a visual image.

Critical Facts and Rules
As I researched The Forest and the Trees, I came across an interesting journal article. This article, authored by Philip Winne, Lorraine Graham, and Leone Prock, explains how struggling readers learned to make text-based inferences with the help of some carefully written texts and immediate feedback. The study is on the older side (1993), but I couldn't help but see how the methods described could help my students. Readers don't need a whole lot of background knowledge to make these inferences. And the process forces them to look closely at the details in the text to explain how they make their inferences. Great stuff for my students!

Sadly, the journal article only included one example text. So I wrote a set of my own texts to use with students next week. I chose a spy theme, since the Jack Stalwart books are popular with my readers right now. (If you haven't read these books, they are lots of fun for transitional readers--great gadgets and action, all in a supportive text.)

The texts that I wrote (on a sunny Saturday, when I should have been doing math plans) set readers up to make text-based inferences. A rule is presented early in the text. Then, the character is faced with choices, along with a good deal of distracting information and a hidden critical fact. The reader needs to match the rule with the critical fact to make an inference.

I plan to teach Mission #1 on the whiteboard, showing students how to make the inference using the rule and the critical fact from the text. Then, they'll work on Missions 2 and 3 with a partner, with a lot of supervision. Finally, they'll work on Mission 4 on their own.

This kind of inferencing is a great first step for transitional readers. Once students get good at finding these text-based inferences, they'll be ready for the next step into more open, reader-based inferences. And--hopefully--ready to have some brilliant discussions about finding the setting in a story!

If you try these mission files with your class, I'd love to hear how they work!

Text based inferences

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More on Multiple Meaning Words

2011-10-11T17:51:00.000-04:00

As I was planning for this week, I realized that I need to change my approach with multiple meaning words. In the past, I've looked at teaching multiple meaning words as teaching kids how to use the context of a text to figure out which meaning of a word is being used. In this way of teaching, I've assumed that the kids know the multiple meanings--what I'm teaching them is how to tell them apart.

With this year's students, however, I need to do more. These students really need work on understanding the different meanings of words. Just matching definitions to sentences isn't enough. I need to build their vocabularies by adding new words. To this end, I created this graphic organizer:

Multiple meaning graphic organizer

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The idea is that I'll take a multiple meaning word that has an easy-to-visualize core meaning--for an easy example, run. The core meaning of run is to move quickly over the ground. Students will write this meaning and illustrate it. Then, I'll introduce 3 other meanings: run as in to compete in an election, run as in to flow over the ground, and run as in the name for a stream. Students will write sentences to show these different meanings.

My plan is to teach a new word each week. Words that I plan to use in the future include many words that cross our content areas:
-space
-line
-environment
-revolution
-source
-contract

If you're planning to try this with your students, make sure that you choose multiple meaning words that come from a common source. For example, the meanings of revolution are all related. However, the meanings of wind/wind are not. If you use an online dictionary, you can find the etymology to see if the different meanings come from the same source.

We'll see how it works! I'm looking forward to helping students to see how different meanings of words can be related.

Thoughts on Multiple Meaning Words

2011-10-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

I've been working on multiple meaning words with my students. For struggling readers, multiple meaning words can be very difficult. I wish that I could just buy a book or show a Powerpoint and have it all make sense. (I have bought the book, and I have shown the Powerpoint.)

Multiple meaning words

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But confusions remain. I've realized that this is because understanding multiple meaning words goes deeper than just matching definitions. In fact, I'm beginning to realize that this problem with multiple meaning words is linked to why my readers are struggling in the first place.

What are multiple meaning words?
Multiple meaning words look the same, but have different meanings. Sometimes this occurs when 2 words enter the language from different paths. For example, the bat used in baseball comes from the Middle English bateren, which meant to hit. The word for the flying mammal bat, however, came from Scandinavia. These two words look the same, but have completely different meanings. Knowing one won't help you figure out the other.

Polysemous words, on the other hand, share a common core meaning. Take the word spring. Its core sense is an old, old word meaning "to leap". The other meanings of spring all relate to this core meaning--the season spring, the water spring, even the coiled piece of metal. Knowing one helps you to know them all.

Visualizing and multiple meaning words

When I ask students to do common tasks with multiple meaning words--match the way that a word is used in one sentence to another sentence, for example--they often resort to guessing. What's going on? For one thing, these activities often happen outside of a connected text. Readers who are used to sucking up information from pictures or previous pages have little to pull from. So these activities bring out a very real problem that these readers have with creating visual images.

When I changed my instruction to have students draw a picture of each sentence before they tried to do the matching task, I saw a huge improvement. The simple step of adding boxes spurred readers to visualize, which helped them to see how the words showed different meanings. Readers who are spontaneously visualizing probably don't need this step. However, this experience showed me that my readers are not spontaneously visualizing--definitely a useful piece of information! The problems with multiple meaning words only served to highlight a deeper reading issue.

Teaching Core Meanings
An interesting journal article by Marjolijn Verspoor and Wander Lowie found that L2 learners do better when they are taught the core meanings of words. One of the examples in the article is the word nugget. The core meaning is the kind of nugget as in a gold nugget. An understanding of this meaning helps a reader to understand the figurative uses of nugget as in a chicken nugget or a nugget of information.

Since I have many ELL students in my reading class, I found this very interesting. Now, I try to help students see how the core sense of a word relates to the other uses. How do the different meanings of wild relate? What about the multiple meanings of shop? Often, these students have trouble with the uses of a word that are within one part of speech, such as the meanings of bold.

It's a process! Hopefully, helping readers to visualize sentences and build their awareness of core senses of words will help them to better understand multiple meaning words.

Here's a funny story about Aidan and multiple meaning words.

More Books for Teaching Text Structure

2011-10-04T20:59:00.000-04:00

My youngest son, a first grader, loves big cats. I'm embarrassed to admit that, three years ago, I would have had trouble distinguishing a picture of a leopard from a picture of a cheetah. Well, no longer. After a year of watching Big Cat Diary every morning and reading book after book about big cats, I can now easily rattle off the differences between leopards and cheetahs.

Of course, I can't just read the books. I'm always looking for good examples of text structures! When I found Face to Face With Cheetahs, I knew that this book would be perfect to add to my classroom library. Like Face to Face With Lions, this book starts with a personal narrative. Each successive chapter shows a different text structure. "Fast Cats" shows the causes and effects of how a cheetah's body is built for speed--and how these features can have drawbacks. "Racing for Survival" shows the problems that cheetahs face, and how some scientists are working on solutions.

While the book has many text features, it isn't as busy as other nonfiction books. Best of all, the text is quite cohesive and hangs together well. I could see taking paragraphs out of the text to look at in more detail; working with different chapters to talk about how the different text structures can work together; or exploring how the text features add to the information in the text.

Other text structure posts and items
Picture Books for Teaching Text Structure: Blog post with link to a list of picture books that show different text structures
Text Structure in Primary Grades: Blog post
Cause and Effect Activity and Texts: Short texts and activities for looking at the cause and effect text structure.
Problem and Solution Texts for Teaching Text Structure: Short texts with the problem/solution text structure.
Compare and Contrast Texts for Teaching Text Structure: More short texts! These have the compare/contrast structure, the most difficult to find in whole texts.

Caterpillars, Summarizing, and Friendship

2011-10-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

Here is a link to a blog post I wrote over at Teaching Tolerance:

http://www.tolerance.org/blog/caterpillars-teach-lesson-friendship

This story happened two years ago, and it still makes me smile. I've kept the poster with all of the summaries and the pictures that students made. Definitely one of the best lessons that I've learned!

On a related note: We haven't seen many woolly bear caterpillars this year. Lots of buckeyes, but no woolly bears? Has anyone else noticed this?

However....

2011-09-30T20:59:00.000-04:00

I just love this word. It says that what one might think just isn't true. It prepares the reader for a sentence to come, a sentence that might not match what you are expecting.

For my fourth graders, though, this word is one that they often skip. They haven't read much academic text, and they don't have a sense of the power of the word "however." They can miss a great deal of missing for want of a simple word.

So I like to find occasions to use it and highlight its meanings. Thursday was my chance. On the morning message, I wrote:

We are supposed to have music today. However, instead of music, we'll have PE.

After we read this part of the chart, we talked about the word and what it means. Then students went around with their own "however" constructions. (I steered them toward talking about younger siblings or cousins.) Here were some that they came up with:

-My little sister looks cute. However, she bites and kicks.

-Everyone says my cousin is adorable. However, he can be mean sometimes.

-My little brother looks quiet. However, he can wreck my room in five minutes.

We all practiced saying however together, and pausing for the comma. Our next step will be to see how "however" works its way into student writing. Often, students make some small mistakes as they try to write with it--using it in run-on sentences, using it for situations where it doesn't fit. However, with time and continued practice, this word will work its way into their writing and their reading.

Continuing on with a great year! However, judging from their comments in class, I'm a little nervous about upcoming siblings...

Independent Reading Triage

2011-09-23T19:24:00.000-04:00

Even though the general tone in my reading class has settled into quiet reading, there are still problems that I need to deal with. My time is limited, so I have to triage. Right now, there are three main sets of readers that I am looking at: the quiet readers, the information book readers, and the "flitters".

Quiet readers
In every class, there are some students who just seem to love reading. They have their books every day, sit quietly, and never misbehave during independent reading time. So, what's the problem? There are some of these readers who are not building a cohesive mental model of the text. That is, they read a page, and may understand some parts, but they are not really understanding the narrative from beginning to end. A book like Dragon Slippers is one that these readers are often drawn toward. There are entertaining bits on each page...but a struggling reader might not be able to put these entertaining bits together into a whole story.

These readers do not announce themselves. In fact, they are sometimes hard to spot. After all, they love books! But I need to find them and work with them. In order to do this, I try to check in with 3-4 of the quiet readers each day. These are brief, chatty talks in which we talk about the book. Over the course of several days, I can usually figure out if the readers are building a big picture of the book, or just going image to image. Then, on the next library day, I try to make sure that we browse together to find a book that has a nice, easy to understand storyline. Kids who are drawn to complex fantasy books that they can't yet totally understand will often enjoy reading The Secrets of Droon or The Spiderwick Chronicles. Both of these have a single storyline that readers can easily comprehend.

Information book readers
I have several students who lug around books filled with information. I've talked with them, and I'm satisfied that they are doing a decent job of understanding one paragraph at a time. But I want to get them to be able to find success in a chapter book. As fourth graders, they need to be able to follow a story over multiple pages.

These readers often need a lot of support. Today, I sat down and read the first chapter of a Horrible Harry book with a student who said that he didn't like chapter books. I read a paragraph, he read a paragraph. Then we talked about what happened. I glanced ahead a few pages and gave him a goal for reading. "In the next part of the chapter, you're going to learn about stub people. I want you to find out who the stub people are." Because he's not quite at the stage of finding a whole story interesting, I had to give him a tangible goal to get him through the next two pages.

While he read, I did two quick check-ins, and then came back. "Who are the stub people?" I asked. We talked about it. It was the end of reading time then, and time to get on with the lesson, so I told him, "Let's keep that book in a safe place. Next time, we'll read together again." Keeping these kids engaged in a book requires a lot of close interaction. They're used to a new topic on every page, and the slowly unfolding nature of a narrative seems dull to them at first.

I like the Horrible Harry series a great deal for these students, because it is so funny and easy to understand. Dan Gutman's My Weird School series also works well for these reluctant readers.

"Flitters"
Flit, flit, flit. Every time I turn my head, it seems that these readers are up. "I finished this book," or, "I didn't like it," or "It was boring."

These readers require a different approach. Unlike the information book readers, they haven't yet shown much engagement in any text. So I like to use picture books to help them. Last time, I wrote about how much my students enjoyed the Diary of a Worm books. But I have to be careful with the picture books. On the one hand, picture books are great, with their interesting plots and lush artwork. On the other hand, I want kids to choose picture books, not just read them because they don't know how to read other books.

So I push kids toward deeper picture books, like fairy tale retellings and historical fiction. I happened to pick up Anansi's Party Time on sale last year, and it's been making the rounds in my classroom this fall. This is a fairly easy text, but as a trickster tale it can become a good background knowledge book for kids. Later in the year, when we talk about genre, I can pull this off the shelf and kids can say, "I've read that!"

I also like to keep a good selection of books that are similar in topic or plot. For example, I've acquired three different versions of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Reluctant readers often like to read each version and then talk to me about which they liked best and why.

Independent reading time is always a challenge. But I love being able to use this 15 minutes every day to help students discover the world of books. By thinking carefully about my readers, I can make sure that this time is used well.

Independent Reading: From Chaos to Contentment

2011-09-17T15:20:00.000-04:00

I think that providing time for independent reading is one of the most important things that a classroom teacher can do. This is time for students to learn about new genres, time for them to apply the strategies they learn in the classroom, time for them to develop background knowledge on a variety of topics.

It can also be a time to drive a teacher crazy. :)

I've learned that I need to embrace the chaos in the first few weeks, and to work tirelessly to get everything settled. Here is how the first three weeks usually end up.

Week 1: Any book will do
At the start, as I'm watching kids, I let them choose any books from the shelves. I have a good collection of the fun pop-up books, including Pirateology and Egyptology, that even reluctant readers like to peruse. I also have almanacs, guides to superhero toys like Bionicle, and world record books. While kids select these books, I watch their choices and take note of what they like to read. I also spend this time at the bookshelves trying to match kids to books.

Week 2: Let's be more selective
In the second week, I start to encourage kids to move away from the glitzy fun books and into books that have more substance. The pop-up books get put aside for use during homeroom and bus time. Books like Diary of a Worm are immeasurably helpful during this time. Diary of a Worm is very appealing to reluctant fourth grade readers, yet still has a connected storyline. Diary of a Fly and Diary of a Spider are also very popular.

I like to gather books that I think will be good matches to the class and put them in a crate at the front of the room. This helps to spread out the browsers, as well as steer kids toward good books. I also keep small boxes of the books that are popular with beginning of the year fourth graders, like Magic Treehouse, Horrible Harry, and A-Z Mysteries.

This is the time to tread very lightly, however. There are some kids who feel that they cannot read, and will do anything to keep this a secret--from me and from the rest of the class. These kids are often flitting back and forth to the basket where I keep my high-interest books. Sometimes they just pick up a book and look at the pictures. These kids need more support to make independent reading beneficial.

Week 3: Formal recordkeeping begins!
By Week 3, the classroom has settled enough so that I no longer have to be on my feet during the entire independent reading time. I use this time to start writing down what I notice and spending longer periods of time per kid. I have a page for each student in a binder, and I write down very quick notes about what I see and what we talk about.

My interactions are different for different students. With one student, I spent about 5 minutes partner reading Tornado Alert. He had been trying to read the more difficult Lightning by Seymour Simon. I steered him toward Tornado Alert, and we read together, sharing our thoughts aloud on each page and talking about the storm of the previous evening. (I am such a huge fan of Franklyn M. Branley's writing--he makes even difficult science ideas easy to understand. His books are easy to find at used book sales and make great additions to the classroom library.)

On the other side of the room, I listened to a student read parts of Fudge-A-Mania aloud, taking a quick Running Record on the page that I have for her in my binder and talking with her about what was happening. Next to her, I helped another student find a book similar to Owen and Mzee, as we talked about why she liked animal nonfiction so much.

In this week I noticed that there were several students who were still flitting from book to book. I decided to address this during guided reading time. With my group of 10 kids (I know--10 is a huge guided reading group! Don't get me started), I started reading Moongobble and Me, a very engaging, supportive chapter book. I like this book because it has a page with pictures of every character, but still gives a bit of challenge. Working together, I'm trying to show students how a chapter book unfolds slowly, and how a reader needs to put the pieces together throughout the text to make meaning from the book.

On Friday, we talked about multiple referents. I realized that the students didn't realize that the old man, the magician, and Moongobble were all the same person. We talked about how we could figure this out and why it's important to know this. By working on these topics in guided reading, I'm giving readers what they need to make better choices in independent reading time. (There's a chapter about multiple referents in The Forest and the Trees if you'd like more information.)

Week 4:????
Next week is our fourth week. I'm hoping that it will bring even more contentment to our independent reading time. I'm going to try to move the Diary of a Worm contingent to some longer, more connected texts, as well as check in with some of the students who have been reading their own books from the start. One thing that I've learned is that every group of students is different, and every year unfolds in a different way. But I do know that sticking with time for independent reading yields great rewards.

September Read-Alouds

2011-09-10T11:09:00.000-04:00

Well, this September has not been so hot as 2009--although we could have done with less rain! Even though it's been relatively cool, choosing read-alouds for September is always an important task. I want to choose books that are engaging, books that are quick to show their gifts of enjoyment and pleasure. This isn't the time for the subtle and slow books. I have about 15 books behind my desk, all great candidates...but when it comes for the actual read aloud, I think and re-think about my choices. Here are the ones that worked out wonderfully!

Face to Face with Lions
by Derek Joubert and Beverly Joubert
I chose this book to use for modeling thinking about text. The opening section is a gripping personal narrative about an encounter with lions. (I admit that I left out the "mating lions" part as I read it aloud. It worked fine without it.) It was a great choice for this purpose. The text is exciting nonfiction, and it gave us many opportunities for questioning, predicting, and connecting. I also had the opportunity to talk with my reluctant readers about thinking about what's in the text, instead of just looking at the pictures.

Toys Go Out

Emily Jenkins
This book is a gentle story about toys. I love the way that readers are pulled right into the story, wondering along with the toys where they might be going. The writing style is lyrical and rolls right off the tongue, with just enough silliness to keep readers listening. My readers figured that the toys were going to school, which gave us a chance to talk about making inferences and understanding text clues. In the next chapter, the character "Plastic" tries to figure out what she is. The answer is on the cover of the book, but most of my students didn't notice this until the solution is revealed. Then we were able to go back and trace through the clues that added up to Plastic's identity. (I read this aloud to my own two boys--12 and 6--over the summer, and they both listened eagerly and asked me to keep going!)

Dr. Xargle's Book of Earthlets

by Jeanne Willis
Get this if you can! It's not currently available to buy new, but it's probably at a local library. I used this one to help students to understand the rubric for the trait of ideas. One of the characteristics of a 6 on the rubric is that the piece of writing helps you think about things in a new way, and goes beyond "common knowledge". Well, the idea of common knowledge is tough for fourth graders. This book was a great tool to use. We talked about babies and what they already know. Then we read this book, which is written from the perspective of an alien professor. Even though we knew a great deal about babies ("I know way too much, especially about diapers," moaned one fourth grader), the details in this book were still fresh and interesting.

The Year Begins!

2011-09-03T13:50:00.000-04:00

Well, that was tiring. Three days down, a whole bunch more to go!

The beginning of a new year is exhausting and exhilarating all at once. It's exhausting because, in those first few days, I have to teach so many routines and procedures. It's exhilarating because we are making something completely new--a class of individuals that has never existed before. It's so neat to watch it unfold. Already we have our first class jokes and shared annoyances. (Joke: The closets go to another dimension after homeroom, so you can't get anything from your backpack during the rest of the morning. Shared annoyance: The pencils that won't sharpen evenly.)

We had fun going on a world tour (remember, my tables are continents) and learning how to track hurricanes. I consciously tried to make those first few days content-rich, with lots of detailed pictures and real-time data. Each day at 11 am we've enjoyed looking at the updated information from the Hurricane Tracker.

I've been trying to get everything situated for the new year. This weekend, I've found some items that I started working on last year, formatted and tweaked them, and posted them to share.

Revising and Editing Checklists: This is a collection of checklists and activities for making clear the differences between revising and editing. Four sets of checklists (perfect for copying back to back), some editing practice, a list of revising strategies, and a revising activity. ($2)

Nouns and Word Choice: I'm trying to tie grammar instruction to the 6 Traits. This one shows how nouns can help with specific word choice. (Free)

Beginning of Year Lesson Plans for Reading: This explains how to begin your reading class and set up reading journals--5 days of lesson plans, blackline masters for the reading journal, and a fun get-acquainted activity. (The get-acquainted activity is in the free preview, so feel free to download it and use it!) Last year, this reading journal worked so well and we're already off to an impressive start this year. It's so nice to have those first few days figured out and taken care of. ($3)

I'm also teaching social studies for the first time...how exciting!

Cause and Effect Text Structure: Zoo Animal Mystery

2011-08-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

I'm taking a break from classroom decorating and planning for the first day of school!

The behavior of animals at the National Zoo before this week's earthquake has puzzled many scientists. Here is a link to the Washington Post article about the phenomenon:

Zoo Mystery: How did apes and birds know quake was coming?

This article uses a cause and effect text structure pattern, but with several twists. First, the effect is presented before the causes. From a writer's point of view, this makes sense. After all, the effect is the interesting part that will intrigue readers into wanting to read the rest of the article. Chronologically speaking, of course the causes happened first. But writers can play around with time to show ideas in the way that makes the most sense for readers.

Another twist on the usual cause and effect pattern is that this text shows possible causes. The writer uses many words that show the lack of a definite answer--speculation, mystery, lore, suggested, unresolved. When teaching cause and effect text, it's important to show students how authors signal the degree of certainty with causes and effects. With persuasive texts, unscrupulous authors often avoid these uncertainty words to make their cause and effect relationships more convincing.

How would these ideas be presented with a graphic organizer? Even though the text plays around with chronological order, I'd show the causes and effects as they happened. Here's my attempt:

For students, I'll encourage them to use a question mark, as well as the headings "possible cause" to show that we just aren't sure if these causes lead to this effect. If students are drawing graphic organizers, wavy lines or different colors could also be used to show uncertainty.

It's often interesting to see how different writers present the same ideas. Here are some other articles about the same incident. How are they similar? How are they different?

National Zoo official press release (Notice how this states only the effects, with no mention of possible causes. Why do you think they did this?)

Live Q and A with zoo keeper (Great for comparing firsthand and secondhand accounts!)

Live Science article (This one includes only a very short paragraph to guess at causes. Based on the National Zoo info, would students agree that the animals "went berserk"? Why might the author have chosen this heading?)

National Geographic article about 2004 tsunami (This article discusses similar incidents before the 2004 tsunami, and discusses a possible "sixth sense" that animals have. How is this description similar to the Washington Post article? How is it different? How has scientific thinking changed?)

Other cause and effect posts:
Cause and effect graphic organizer
Teaching about causes and effects

Games in the Classroom

2011-08-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a blog post that I wrote for Teaching Tolerance:

http://www.tolerance.org/blog/indoor-recess-time-unifying-games

As we get to the first week of school, I think about games a great deal. Games are a wonderful way to start the year. When games help us to build community and give kids a taste of what is to come in the classroom, they become powerful teaching tools. I like to choose about 5 each year that the class will play frequently. I change things up each year to keep things interesting!

Last year at around this time, I wrote about games that we'd be playing in the first week of school. Here's the link:

http://emilykissner.blogspot.com/2010/08/games-for-start-of-school.html

This lovely link from a school that uses the Responsive Classrooms techniques has more lists of great games, as well as greetings in different languages.

...and still more games, this time from a blog post from 2009:

http://emilykissner.blogspot.com/2009/08/first-week-games.html

What other games do you love to play?

Problem and Solution: Honeybees

2011-08-18T10:08:00.000-04:00

If you're looking for some problem and solution texts, here is a link to a short article that explains problems with honeybees and possible solutions:

Natives in the Garden

Mentor Texts We Want to Use

2011-08-16T14:24:00.000-04:00

At our mentor texts workshop, teachers found picture books that they'd like to use in their classrooms and worked on how these books could be used in the classroom. Here are our favorites!

Chameleons are Cool
Use this book to teach about how to make informational text more engaging. Jesus said, "Animal texts can be somewhat dry...this book can show kids how to make their writing more interesting."

Crab Moon
This book gives scientific information in a narrative format. Carole found that it could be used to teach content and style.

Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late

This persuasive book can be used to show kids persuasive techniques. Becky said that this can be used to show voice, as the pigeon goes from whiny to persuasive to enthusiastic throughout the book. There is also interesting word choice, like "c'mon."

The Squiggle
Juanita says, "The author builds content through the imagination of the little girl...the girl uses the string on the rest of her walk to show what she imagines." -This can show how we develop ideas in a picture first, and then transfer that to writing. (Nicole)
-This can also show how an idea can unfold. (Jesus)
-Where was the teacher while all this was going on? (Tina)

My Great-Aunt Arizona

Sue shared, "This can be used to develop content and ideas. The main idea is how reading and dreaming can take the reader to anyplace they want to see in their mind."

More on mentor texts:
Mentor Texts by Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli

Nonfiction Mentor Texts by Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli

Writing Domains Resources

Mentor text lessons from WritingFix

Doing More with Less

2011-08-16T11:56:00.000-04:00

We had a great conversation about doing more with less at today's professional development workshop! First we talked about what we will have MORE of and what we will have LESS of. Then we talked about how we can work with less in our classrooms--by building student accountability, by using what we have, by turning complex routines into simple ones, and by reinventing what we teach.

Teachers had some great ideas--more ways to use a cereal box for instruction than I ever imagined. DVD cases, old magazines, and tourist pamphlets were also turned into imaginative and interesting learning centers. (Sorry no pictures; my computer was just updated and I haven't taken the time to import my photo library)

A librarian showed us how to use our community library databases to get access to high quality texts and pictures. For Adams County teachers, this is the link to the databases that you can get. You will need a library card.

http://www.adamslibrary.org/adamsdatabases.asp

You can also find resources at the Power Library Link on this website. SIRS Discoverer is a good site for kids.

Classroom Decorating for the New Year

2011-08-14T13:21:00.000-04:00

This is my fifteenth year of teaching! So that means that I have had 14 years of experience with getting a classroom ready--and 8 classroom moves.

Classroom arranging always begins with the furniture. My husband is a teacher as well, so we have a nice division of labor at the start of the school year. He figures out the best way to arrange my furniture, and I do the cursive writing for his desk nametags. (I know--I totally have the better end of the bargain!)

This year, I've decided to try something a little different. Instead of putting all of my books together in one classroom library, I'm going to separate the parts of the library into three sections in the room--fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Why will they all be separated? Crowd control! I like to have kids browsing, but 5 kids in a tiny corner doesn't work very well. I hope that by separating the sections, I can have more kids browsing at once. We'll see how it works.

After the furniture is put in place, I attack the paper. Or rather, the paper attacks me. I have a hate/hate relationship with bulletin board paper. In my first seven years, I taught at an open space school with flexible walls. So I had to put paper up every year to cover the dull beige--and I made the place look like a circus with just about every single color of fadeless paper. Now, I stick to just one or two colors on my much more manageable bulletin boards. If I'm really lucky, my husband will do this step for me too.

Then there is the most important decision of classroom preparation--what kind of border will I use? I have to admit that I love border. Lately I've been liking the border with the nature photographs. This year, I have calm leaves, cool forests, and peaceful bamboo. I like border that is not busy with lots of pictures and text. The rest of the classroom will be busy enough.

Then I grapple with a decision--to theme or not to theme? On the one hand, a theme is a fun way to start the year. On the other, a theme can be a thankless pit for energy and creativity. I never want a theme to overshadow the really important work that we'll be doing in the classroom.

This year, having just returned from a trip to Disney World, I decided to give in to the urge to theme. My husband arranged the 27 desks into 7 clusters. Seven groups? Hm...7 themed lands! Although I strongly wanted to have Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and the like, I resisted the impulse and went with a much more teacher-ly 7 continents, which led to a World Travel theme.

I love this because it's filled with learning. As I call tables to line up, I'll be naming continents. It will also give us things to talk about in our first few days--pictures of the continents, characteristics of different places, what we'd take on our journeys. I also made a little suitcase writing prompt that we'll do on one of the first few days.

After I worked a bit on the decorations, I spent some time making labels. I have lots of cabinets in my new room, so I have to label them all or no one will be able to find anything. I also made labels with students' names on them and my classroom checklists. Even though I could have used mail merge, I like to type in the names of my students--this helps me to learn them so that I'll be quicker at matching names to faces on Day 1. (My goal is to know everyone by 10:00!)

Furniture, paper, border, theming, labels...that's about all I've done so far, and I'm still two wonderful weeks out from Day 1.

Science Items

2011-08-11T18:45:00.000-04:00

As I think about the coming school year, I'm most excited about science. Last year was my first year of teaching fourth grade science, and I found it to be a great experience. Maybe it's because I'm kind of a kid myself--I can't wait to ask questions and find out new things!

Here are some ideas that keep me going as I plan for science.

Long-term investigations
I want to always have some long-term investigations going. With fourth graders, these are often whole-class experiments that we all work on together. Kids don't naturally think to gather data and make observations, so this is something that needs to be modeled and taught throughout the year. Here is a potting soil experiment that I wrote last year for the beginning of the school year.

Seed Experiment

Lots of rich text
Our science textbook is somewhat dry. This year, I'm planning to put a large collection of interesting and inviting science texts together in one part of the room. Part of our science class will be "science reading workshop", in which students can choose science books to read on their own.

When I can't find a satisfactory text, I write my own. Below are articles about animal adaptations and cave formation.

Animal Adaptations Article

Cave Formation Article

Visual images
My students love to look at pictures. With Powerpoints, I can show them great images and talk about them. I also like to use the document camera to project books. A River Ran Wild and Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean were student favorites from this year.

Introduction to Food Chains Powerpoint
This is a quick intro to food chains--a topic that shows up a great deal on our state sample tests.

Understanding Animal Habitats
This Powerpoint helps students to understand animal habitats.

Keeping these ideas in mind--long-term experiments, lots of rich text, and strong visual imagery--helps me to plan interesting and engaging science lessons all year long.

Getting Started with Kinds of Text

2011-08-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Last time, I wrote about moving beyond calling every text a "story". As I work on planning my first unit for the school year (yikes!) I'm reviewing and dusting off all of my resources for learning about different kinds of text.

Introducing Narrative, Informational, Persuasive, and Poetic Text
I updated this Powerpoint and posted it. Last year, I wrote it to show how texts with the same topics can reflect different purposes and different kinds of text. It worked very well and gave the students a good starting point for talking about text. These words became some of our first vocabulary words for the school year.

Persuasive and Informational Text
I wrote this blog post last year about how students have such trouble with figuring out when authors are trying to persuade them. (Update on my youngest son's susceptibility to infomercials: Now he is a hardened skeptic, deriding all infomercials as being useless. How quickly they grow up!)

Narrative and Expository Text
Another blog post from last year, this one with Jack and Jill rewritten in different forms.

Readers Theatre
Three scripts to help students learn about author's purpose. (Yes, they're pretty silly!)

What other resources have you found for teaching about kinds of text?

Fiction, Nonfiction, Expository, Narrative...

2011-07-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have to admit it. I hate it when people refer to every text as a "story".

I understand that it's second nature. After all, when I was growing up, our reading class was organized around the basal reader. Every week we read the next story. So I was conditioned to call any piece of text longer than a paragraph a "story".

But not every text is a story. In the past few years, I've tried to be more careful when talking about text with kids. The word "story" does slip out now and again, and I correct myself. It's important to me that kids associate the word "story" with the parts of a story grammar. Using this word to describe an article would send the total wrong message.

Part of the problem, of course, is the question of what else to call these texts. If you look at the literature, you'll see that there are many different ways to refer to texts, just adding to the confusion. Here's a quick rundown.

Fiction/Nonfiction: A Question of Content
The difference between fiction and nonfiction is easy. Fiction texts are not strictly true (while they may contain true events or real people), while nonfiction texts are based on facts. These distinctions are based on what is in the text. Sometimes, a reader has to read very carefully to figure out if something is fiction or nonfiction.

Expository/Narrative: A Matter of Organization
The differences between expository and narrative text are not as well-known (even to other teachers, I've discovered.) Narrative texts tell a story. It's easy to find a beginning, middle, and an end. Usually, narrative texts have characters, settings, conflicts, and a theme.

Expository texts, on the other hand, are structured to explain information. Instead of using the narrative structure, authors of expository text use a host of other text structures. (Lots more on expository text structures here and here and here!)

The tricky part
In the classroom, it's sometimes easy to use "nonfiction" as a shorthand for "expository". It's true--most expository text is nonfiction, and most nonfiction text is expository. But biographical and autobiographical writing is a notable exception. A personal narrative, for example, is a true account of a story from someone's life--a nonfiction narrative.

At the same time, I've seen more and more expository fiction lately. Boys especially like to read the guides to comic book characters. These guides follow an expository structure, but convey fictional information.

This points to teaching students the words expository and narrative, of course. Some teachers don't like to do this because it adds to the overall vocabulary load of students, and I can understand their point. I think that fourth graders can easily handle it. Teachers in younger grades, I'd love to hear your thinking on when these terms can make their way into the language of the classroom.

So what do we call it?
Instead of using the word "story", what should we call texts? Well, I usually fall back on the word "text". (Make sure that you teach this word early in the year. If you work with ELL students, show them the difference between "text" and "test".) I also throw in the words selection and passage, as these are likely to show up on standardized tests.

And, of course, there is much to be said for sending the question back to the students. What should we call this piece of text that we're looking at? What does it remind you of? How is it similar to other texts you've read? Even if they do not know the strictly correct terms, they can often give texts names that will help them to make connections across genres.

"Can I have that book that tells you what different things are?" one kid asked when he wanted a field guide. "You know, it has pictures, and tells you names." Another student, when browsing through picture books, noticed that some had people on every page, while others didn't. Were these fiction/nonfiction? Narrative/expository? It would be interesting to find out.

As I unpack my classroom this August after another classroom move, I know that I'm going to leave my classroom library slightly disorganized. Looking at these kinds of text in the first week of school--and talking about how we can put them in categories--will be a great way to start the year.

Understanding Procedural Text

2011-07-26T10:24:00.000-04:00

Procedural text looks so easy, doesn't it? Short sentences, nice numbered steps...it seems like it shouldn't pose any comprehension problems.

But as anyone who has ever tried to follow directions written by a state department of education knows, easy looks can be deceiving. And helping students to understand procedural text isn't always easy, either.

What do we know about procedural text? Reading to perform a task often results in more developed comprehension than reading with the goal of answering questions or writing a summary (Geiger and Millis, 2004). This isn't surprising to those who have tried to commit a set of directions to memory--when you know that you'll have to follow directions, you're much more likely to put forth the mental effort to visualize and understand each step. However, think about how this impacts students when they read on standardized tests. They know that they won't be following these directions...and reading procedural text without the goal of making or doing is really dull.

For the classroom, this means that we need to give students opportunities to read and follow directions in procedural texts. Once students have strong representations of what a reader needs to understand to follow directions, then we can slide this understanding over to reading for inauthentic purposes. Here are some things that I keep in mind to help students work with procedural texts.

Write directions for classroom activities
This is an easy classroom management tool. When I explain directions, I write them on the whiteboard or a chart. Then, as I circulate around the room, I ask students which step they are on. (This is effective for dealing with misbehavior too--"Which step are you on? Hm, you don't know? What needs to change right now?")

At first, I always used numbered lists. But now I vary the styles to mirror what kids are likely to see in other contexts. Sometimes I use bullets, and sometimes I even write the directions as a narrative. (First, you will....Then, remember to...) Kids do critique me on my steps, and sometimes suggest that I add or change things. ("You forgot to put in where we have to find our partners") I love it when this happens!

Try out different kinds of procedural texts
One of my favorite winter activities is gathering various directions for making paper snowflakes, and then reading and trying to follow them. It's so interesting to look at how different authors have dealt with explaining a set of difficult directions. Other interesting directions to look at include making ice cream in a zip-top bag, making book covers, and sprouting avocado pits.

Share with students the procedural texts that you use every day
Students like to see behind the curtain of teaching. When I teach new games from directions or try out something new, I show students the procedural texts that I am using and talk through my frustrations. (This was especially fun when I was learning to use my new Promethean board!) Even something as simple as the directions for how to line up for class photos can be a teaching tool. And, when I've shared the directions with the students, I'm more likely to remember them myself.

Don't fall into the "explaining" trap
I once had a principal who said, "I never want to walk into a classroom and see a teacher reading directions to students." His point was simple--the kids can read the directions. We need to give them the chance. When students are reading procedural texts, it's hard for me to keep from stepping in and giving them hints and helps. But they need to be able to do this on their own. When they ask for help, I try to send questions back their way:

-What have you tried already?
-Can you find the specific word that you don't understand?
-Which step is a problem for you?
-What comes before ___?
-What do you think you should do next?

I've realized that I am more likely to become an explainer if I'm worried about materials. If I have enough materials for kids to start over if they mess up, then I can be comfortable with letting them feel their way through the directions.

Learn from mistakes
I could write down all of the times that I have failed at following procedural text...but I don't think there is enough room. We've all made mistakes, whether it's not looking at the list of directions, skipping steps, forgetting ingredients, or misinterpreting a step. I have learned so much from my mistakes with procedural texts! In the classroom, I can sometimes feel frustrated when students haven't followed directions. But I've learned to push back that frustration (not always easy!). Epic and funny mistakes become part of our classroom lore. When a student making ice cream accidentally added the salt to the milk, this became a class cautionary tale, a story that the student enjoyed telling.

Visualize following directions
Once we all have lots of experience with following procedural text to perform a task, it's time to look at some isolated texts. I pair this with the reading strategy of visualizing. Even though we won't be making or doing what is explained in the text, I tell students that they can picture themselves following the directions. This helps to keep them grounded in the text and reading each step. We also try to find the most difficult step, the easiest step, and how to mess things up. (This keeps it fun!)

Problem and Solution Text Structure

2011-07-14T19:51:00.000-04:00

One of the problems with teaching text structure is finding the right texts. As I think about what books or articles to use with my students, I'm always thinking about levels, topics, and structure. Which do I consider first? What's most important?

When I'm teaching text structure, of course, the structure is most important. For problem and solution, I like to use texts that are very explicit, using the words "problem" and "solution", as well as texts that are more subtle. Real world problem and solution texts often do not use these clear transition words, and I like to show students how this works.

Once I have the structure, I have topic and level to worry about. I work in a pretty broad range of levels. After all, background knowledge has a huge impact on expository text comprehension. If I can give my readers rich background knowledge and strong pre-reading activities, they have a better chance of being able to understand the texts that I find. I like to use a pretty comfortable and easy text for whole-group reading, and then some more challenging texts for small groups.

What about topic? I hate it when we are all reading about different topics in guided reading. This just feels so fragmented! But sometimes it just can't be helped--after all, I don't have a staff of writers on demand. (Wouldn't that be wonderful?) To help us make connections throughout the year, I try to find texts with topics that relate to science or social studies units for our grade level.

Here is a collection of texts for teaching problem and solution text structure. The cost is $3.00, and it includes 7 different texts. Five texts have before, during, and after activities, with a range of reading levels from 3-6. (Do take these reading levels with a grain of salt. When I write texts, I run them through multiple readability formulas, and then correlate those results with what I see from my students and comments from other teachers. The readability formulas vary widely, often across 2 grade levels!)

A mayfly nymph

Some of the texts may look familiar to those of you who have my former pack of Text Structure Resources--the James River Ferry, Rain Gardens, and Salamander Crossing. But each has new activities and graphic organizers to accompany them.

My very favorite text is about stream study with the biotic index--it was interesting to write about how the biotic index really does solve a scientific problem. And I got to use the cool mayfly picture that I took during stream study last week!

Looking for other books? Here are some links to problem-solution texts:

When the Wolves Returned

A Place for Butterflies

Text Structure Picture Books

Teaching Visualizing

2011-07-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

I love to teach visualizing. After all, there is a whole chapter about it in my book The Forest AND the Trees! It doesn't really work to tell nine-year-olds, "You need to read at the level of your situation model." But when I tell them, "Let's try to use the details to make a picture in our minds," something clicks. They understand how to make mental models. This gets them to that deeper level of reading that's so hard to describe for young readers.

But not all readers visualize in the same way. This makes teaching visualizing even more fascinating--when we talk about what we visualize, we realize how dependent we are on our background knowledge and experiences. As a teacher, I have come to a new appreciation of how the texts and stories I share become situated in students' schemas. Consider what happened last week when I asked a student to visualize "a green tractor in a birthday hat."

"I thought of the book we read yesterday," the student said. "The one with the robin."

This threw me for a loop. How would a book about a robin relate to a mental image of "a green tractor in a birthday hat"? But then the student reached behind me to get the book I Am Going! by Mo Willems. He turned to the page that had Elephant wearing a funny hat--a hat that happened to have a picture of the ubiquitous Pigeon from Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus.

"See?" he said. "I pictured the tractor wearing a hat like that. It was funny."

This is the power of talking about visualizing--this student was able to trace how he used a mental image from a previous book to create a new mental image. This is also the power of sharing great books and background experiences with children on a regular basis! The experiences we share today will become the visualizations of tomorrow.

Here are some resources for teaching visualizing:
Visualizing Activities and Powerpoint
Available from TeachersPayTeachers ($3, because it took me so long to write the three stories that are included!)

Visualizing blog post (6/25/11)

Differentiated Spelling: Revised!

2011-07-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

Back in 2008, I posted a differentiated spelling program that I had created for my sixth grade class. I've revised some parts and added the missing "Assignment #2" for each list. Here's the link to the revised program:

Differentiated Spelling Program

It turned out to be over 75 pages long--enough to get anyone started with spelling for the 2011-2012 school year. Enjoy!

Retelling to Summarizing

2011-06-30T19:27:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been working with some students on how to retell a text. What fun! But it's also given me the chance to think about how retelling is such an important foundation skill for summarizing. Here are some questions that I've been thinking about--and some of my partial answers.

Do readers need to be able to retell in order to write a good summary?

In general, I think that the answer is yes. Consider a student who reads a text and can't produce any ideas from the reading--or only a few scattered ideas, named out of order. Will that child be able to write a good summary? I doubt it. In order to select the most important ideas, a reader needs to be able to envision and work with most of the ideas from the text. Readers who have trouble recalling any ideas at all will flounder with the selection and synthesis that a summary requires.

This doesn't mean that kids who are struggling with retelling shouldn't be exposed to summarizing. In fourth grade, we don't have a moment to spare! But these readers will struggle with writing summaries on their own. Left to their own devices, they might fall into bad habits, like just copying sections of the text.

Instead, pull them into activities like choosing the best summary. Readers of all abilities can learn how to think about what makes a good summary. You could also try writing a group summary. Students provide the ideas or events, and you show them how to put them together into a summary. Another strategy that works well with struggling readers is sequencing events or information from the text. You give them the ideas (remember, this is the part that they struggle with), and they put the ideas in the order in which they appear in the text.

Are there any exceptions?
There are always exceptions, aren't there? That's what makes teaching reading so fun!

There is a small group of readers who will already be summarizing when you ask them to do a retelling. If you were to go by a retelling score alone (on the QRI or DRA), these readers might look like they are struggling. But the content of their retelling is markedly different from that of a struggling reader. When asked to retell, these readers may produce succinct versions of the text that put together ideas from various places into one nice neat package. Their "retellings" show an awareness of the main ideas of the text. (For example, if a student is retelling an episodic story, the student may collapse all of the episodes into one sentence.)

This is why scores and numbers don't tell the whole story. For these students, long and drawn out retellings are probably not necessary. They have already picked up the basics of summarizing by intuition. They would benefit from finding the best summary, sorting ideas as important or not important, and jumping into writing summaries.

Haven't I written about this before?
Um--yes. Quite a lot, as it happens. But with each new reader and new situation I find that I need to relearn and revisit what I already know. :)

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling (my book)

Previous posts
Retelling or Summarizing?
Summarizing a Story
Summarizing Fiction with Elephant and Piggie
What Should a Good Retelling Include?

Help for Word Callers: Changing Visual Images

2011-06-25T22:19:00.001-04:00

Have you ever tried to open a can with a can opener, only to find that the cutting mechanism hasn't engaged? You can turn and turn the crank--but that can will never open. The opener is just sliding along the surface.

In a way, this is what reading is like for kids who don't attach meaning to the words in the text. They read and read, skimming along the surface. Yet they never dig into the text and open up the meaning.

Our job as teachers, then, is to help those little can openers engage! When I work with students who show this tendency, I try to think about how I can help the students to move below the surface of the text to open up the meaning.

Previously, I wrote about how teachers can use drawings to help readers make meaning from text, as well as how you can use manipulatives. Today's strategy is quite simple, and yet is very effective with students.

I first saw this in my son's kindergarten class. I'm sure that it has a proper name, and is probably written up in a book somewhere. If you know, please leave a comment.

The premise is simple: Take a sentence from the text that has visual imagery, but is somewhat ambiguous. Before showing students the text, share this sentence with them, and have students draw a picture to show the visual image that they create.

Here's how it worked with students. I was reading "Wings in the Water" with them, from the 2/3 Toolkit Texts book. I chose these sentences to share:

"A huge, flat creature leaps out of the sea. It skims over the water and flips backward with a splash."

The two boys who read the sentences started talking about it right away. What could it be? A penguin? They discarded this idea. One of them said, "I think I know what it is, but I don't know its name. Maybe it's a shark." The other pointed out that a shark really isn't flat. As they talked about these sentences, they were using all of the habits of successful reader--going back to the text (just the two sentences), looking at the meanings of words, trying to wring every single detail from the clues.

After a few moments, I gave them the text, which is about manta rays. "Oh! So that's what they're called," one of the boys said. I noticed the other one going back to his picture and drawing a manta ray. Skilled readers experience that visual flicker of a changing mental image all the time. For less skilled readers, it's a kind of new feeling. We paused a bit and talked about how their ideas of the text had changed. What was it about? Now that they were looking at pictures of the topic, how did they match up with the two sentences they had read?


100+ aquarium pictures, no rays. Oh well!

Students who are word callers often don't dig around in sentences. With this activity, they have to look at each word and connect them to try to build some meaning. When they have built an idea, they may learn from looking at the text that they need to change their ideas--and this is okay. This is what skilled readers do all the time.

What I like most about this strategy is the simplicity of it. It doesn't require much preparation--just finding suitable sentences from the text, and coaching students through the process of drawing what they visualize. And yet the rewards can be worthwhile, getting students to engage with text and make new connections.

While it won't work for every text, it certainly is another good tool for helping students. One more thing to help open up those cans of meaning!

Open-Ended Responses

2011-06-23T20:44:00.001-04:00

Today I had the privilege of presenting a workshop about helping students write open-ended responses. What an amazing group of teachers! I enjoyed meeting everyone and hearing about your classrooms and your schools.

When helping students to craft open-ended responses, it helps to look at the problems that students are having, and plan instruction from there.

Question-Answer-Relationships
For students who are having trouble answering the questions that are given, QARs can help. Here are some nice resources:

QAR posters and instructional materials
This is a great site with nicely formatted materials to print out and use right away.

QAR with pictures

I love this ReadWriteThink lesson that uses Question-Answer-Relationships with wordless books. Two of my favorites are used in the lesson plan--Zoom by Istvan Banyai and Tuesday by David Wiesner. By helping kids to find the answers to questions about pictures, this lesson helps students who may be struggling with finding answers in text.

Students who misinterpret text
These students are trying to make inferences and judgments about text, but are having difficulty. Often, it's helpful to work with these students on the skills of making inferences.

Using Schema to Make Inferences Powerpoint
I wrote this to guide students through the inference process.

Making Inferences
This is a presentation that I created for KSRA last year--it unpacks the skill of inferencing for teachers.

Inference Unit
This web page has many lessons and resources for teaching inferring.

Past Blog Posts about inferences
I write about inferences a lot!
Text Set for Making Inferences
Text-Based Inferences: Who's Talking?
Poetry Picture Books for Making Inferences

Literature Discussion Groups
Discussion groups can help kids of all ability levels to improve with answering questions and finding text details.

Literature Discussion Group Pack
This is a set of resources that I have on Slideshare.

Blog Posts
Lessons from Literature Circles
Discussion Groups: Getting Started

More information about inferences and helping kids to write open-ended responses--including sample texts--can be found in my book The Forest and the Trees.

I hope that these links are helpful! Please drop a comment about something that you like or plan to use.

Solving the Retelling Problem, Part 2

2011-06-21T22:53:00.000-04:00

My youngest son can turn anything into a story. In the grocery store, he would take anything at hand--sponges, pasta boxes, cans of soup--and start making them talk to each other. Stories in our house are told and retold, lengthened and shortened, acted out and rewritten.

This makes it difficult for me to coach some students through retelling. The shorthand, private speech of my everyday life just doesn't translate at first for some kids. To me, using figures to act out a story is second nature. But this needs to be taught to some kids.

For example, take a recent retelling session with a struggling reader. I was taking on most of the work in our retelling of Anansi and the Talking Watermelon; he was just moving around the figures and filling in some events.

"'Then Anansi tricked Possum into thinking that watermelons can talk,'" I read from our list of events. "Can you show this event with your figures?"

The student picked up Possum, Anansi, and the watermelon, and made some mumbling sounds, like fake talking.

This wasn't quite what I was looking for. "Could you act this event out with your figures?" I asked.

"I don't know what they say," he replied.

Oh! I probably would have just picked up Possum and had him say something along the lines of, "Oh, look, an amazing talking watermelon." But this student couldn't get from our events to this level of imagination.

Here was an opportunity to direct the student back to the text. It took awhile, but we looked at what was in the text and eventually got that Possum to talk. I think that this is crucial to retelling--that kids move the figures smoothly along from event to event, being able to show what's happening and engaging in some little addition that collapse the events in the text. ("A talking watermelon? Cool!")

I was kind of worried about the whole interaction, but I felt vindicated when we got to the end. King Bear throws the watermelon, which cracks, and then Anansi is freed. The student showed the watermelon flying in the air, and then said, "Freedom!" He looked at me and laughed. "That's what Anansi would say, 'cause now he can get out."

These are the kinds of comments that show me that retelling is working. To be able to add little bits of dialogue, make the characters talk to each other--this shows an understanding of the story. Something is happening. We still have a long way to go to retelling independence. But these little moments show that we are making progress.

It's not quite at the level of talking sponges and fighting soup cans, but it's a start.

Solving the Retelling Problem

2011-06-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

It happens at the start of every school year--at least three or four students in my class can't retell. They'll dutifully chug along in a piece, reading every word. When I say, "Could you please retell what happened in the passage?" I'll get--nothing.

Or almost nothing. Sometimes these kids will produce a few sentences, sometimes a backwards account of the story. But the retellings are not quite what I hope to see in fourth grade. With summarizing on the horizon, we need to get retelling taken care of quickly! I think that kids need to be able to retell a story confidently before we can accomplish much with summarizing.

Here are some strategies that I like to use to start with.

Sequence events from the story: Working with a fairly short story (the ones in Highlights work well), I put the events from the story on notecards or strips of paper. After the student reads the story, the student puts the events back together in the proper sequence.
Why it's useful: Kids who struggle with retelling often have trouble with putting ideas from a text into their own words. This activity models paraphrasing. In addition, this helps students to review the sequential nature of a narrative.
Good for the whole class? Yes, with modifications. For kids who are not struggling with retelling, you can challenge them to sequence the events, and then decide which are important or not important.

Link to plot interactive with events
http://www.learner.org/interactives/story/sequence.html

Link to "The Acorn Mystery" story and sorting cards (suitable for grades 2-3)
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Acorn-Mystery-Story-and-Activities

Retell with figures: Using pictures or objects to retell can help a student to match events to characters and objects. Give students a set of pictures that go along with a story that they are reading. As they learn the process, they can create their own pictures and figures.
Why it's useful: You can't act out what you don't understand. When kids have to show the action, they are much more likely to build those bridging inferences that help them create and clarify meaning. One of my favorite parts of the retelling lesson is when kids make those realizations--"Oh, so that's why this happened!"
Good for the whole class? Yes! Everyone can benefit from retelling with figures--and have fun doing it.

Link to story with retelling figures
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Using-Retelling-to-Build-Comprehension-The-Magic-Key

Retelling frame: Some kids benefit from a reminder sheet about what to include in a retelling. You can use a story map to help students think of the characters, setting, problem, and solution, or your own frame that includes specific parts of the story for your classroom.
Why it's useful: The frame helps students to internalize the important elements of a retelling.
Good for the whole class? This is one that I save for the students who are struggling. The sooner the kids can retell on their own, the better.

Link to SomebodyWanted-But-So graphic organizer
http://wvde.state.wv.us/strategybank/Somebody-Wanted-But-So.html

Link to my retelling frames (story included, suitable for grades 3-4)
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Retelling-Improving-Fiction-Reading-Comprehension

While these don't produce instant results, with time I see some improvement in retelling. What have you found that works well for you and your students?

Multiple Literacies

2011-06-18T09:46:00.000-04:00

I had such a wonderful time at Friday's workshop--thank you to everyone who attended! As promised, here are the links to more information about multiple literacies.

This is a nice introduction to multiple literacies:
http://www.drawingwriting.com/multlit.html

This site includes links to videos with teachers explaining how they use multiple literacies in the classroom:
http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/Contexts/MultipleLiteracies.html

Here is a discussion of how to use visual literacy in the classroom:
http://k-8visual.info/whatis_Text.html

During the workshop, we looked at how readers process information that is composed of both images and text. I love the Elephant and Piggie books for this--they are an easy introduction to reading pictures. Older students enjoy Calvin and Hobbes. The story doesn't live in the pictures or the print--it exists in the combination of the two.

"Re-composing" means taking information from one modality and transferring it to another. This is a great reading activity, as it requires students to integrate ideas. Last school year, I wrote about how students can do this to build summarizing skills. But re-composing doesn't have to be a formal lesson. On a visit to South Middleton Park last night, my youngest son and I re-composed some of the signs that were posted around the park, putting the information from the pictures into words. (The sign about how dogs must be leashed and cleaned up after was particularly funny!)

Reading visual texts is not necessarily easier than reading print--instead, it requires a different set of skills. Modeling your own thinking as a reader interacting with these texts is an important way to help kids understand how to integrate pictures with text. For our readers who struggle with both decoding and language comprehension, visual texts can be a pathway to helping them to understand making inferences and summarizing stories.

Here is a collection of links related to graphic novels, visual literacy, and multiple literacies.

Graphic Novels in the Classroom (teacher blog)
http://classroomcomics.wordpress.com/category/classroom-practice/

Cartoons for the Classroom
http://nieonline.com/aaec/cftc.cfm

Graphic Novels for (Really) Young Readers (includes a list of suggested titles)
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6312463.html

The Comic Book Project
http://www.comicbookproject.org/index.html

Intertextuality

2011-06-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

This is a term that I've been hearing more and more of lately. At first I discounted it as something that is beyond my students. But the more that I learned about intertextuality, the more that I realized that it is relevant and important for all readers--and pretty fun, also.

What is intertextuality? Simply put, it's the way that readers can make connections between texts. But intertextuality is more than making a chart to compare texts. When we think intertextually, we look for components that go across texts. When my youngest son looks at the Elephant and Piggie books to find the pigeon that Mo Willems puts on the last pages, that's intertextual thinking. When my older son talks about the differences between Egyptian and Greek mythology (as expressed in Rick Riordan's books), that's intertextual thinking. Intertextual thinking can also be looking at patterns of events across stories, or looking at how authors have chosen to convey ideas about the same topic in different ways.

Here is a more exhaustive description of intertextuality:
http://thinkingtesolteacher.wikispaces.com/Intertextuality

If you prefer learning through video, you may enjoy this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6BFeVWb8vc

Intertextuality is really nothing new--it's just giving a name to what's been there all along. But the importance of intertextual thinking means that our readers need to have access to some of the big stories and themes. This year, I'll be thinking about how to equip students with the background knowledge they need to make these intertextual connections.

In the Common Core Standards, fourth graders are expected to "Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures." This is a lot different from the "find one similarity and two differences" that has been the expectation up to now. I'll be doing a lot of thinking about how to build this into my next school year!

Other posts about comparing texts and intertextual thinking:

Comparing Texts

Comparing Texts: Narrative and Blog

Adding Richness to Grammar Instruction

2011-06-12T22:50:00.000-04:00

I've always had a love/hate relationship with grammar lessons. In my own life, I really love grammar. I love the way that one word can change an entire sentence, the way that punctuation has evolved over time (and is still evolving!) and the way that words have entered our language.

But it's never been easy to communicate this love of grammar in the classroom. Few fourth graders really want to hear about how the word sports really is related to import. And not many are up for a discussion about how the rules for commas in a series differ across countries. There are also the practical issues of where to fit in grammar and how to connect it to everything else.

Of course, it's easy for people who are outside of the classroom to say that grammar fits in everywhere. And it does--in a way. It's easy for me to talk about grammar all the time. But for my talking to translate into actual learning, I need to take the time for more formal planning. Just try to get fourth graders to write sentences with adverbial phrases!

While I haven't completely solved the grammar problem, I have developed a general formula that gets me through.

Link to academic vocabulary: This satisfies my desire to talk about new and interesting words. Instead of teaching students with how the word comma entered the language, however, I try to pull out an academic word that links to the grammar content. When I taught about commas in a series, however, it worked perfectly to teach the word series. We looked at how they already know this word (World Series, television series) and connected it to new meanings.

Silly writing: With fourth graders, I have to keep things light and playful. For teaching about commas in a series, I drew some silly pictures and asked kids to write sentences about them. For example, next to a picture of a monster, the question was, "What are this monster's favorite foods?" These kinds of questions provide lots of practice, but are still interesting and engaging. (And kids love teacher-illustrated pages, even when the illustrations are not the best.)

Fun interactives: Grammar is something that lends itself well to computer games. For commas, I found this great interactive site. These sites are a big improvement on the dreadful workbook pages I did as a child! I do make sure that I go through every site, of course, to make sure that the rules in the site are the same as what I am teaching.

Flexibility in rules: I've decided that it's not confusing to students if I show them examples of how usage might be different in different situations. Kids need to see this--in fact, it's more confusing to not address this issue. When we were looking at commas, I found examples of how some writers do not use the comma before the and. When I teach capitalization next year, I'm going to actively seek examples of the changing usage of capitalization.

Real writing application: This is the hardest part, but also the most important. When we were working on commas, students wrote pages for a book about our field trip. Each page included a series of items that we saw or did on the trip. When the book was put together, we had the story of our field trip.

Text Structure Picture Books: Owen and Mzee

2011-06-09T08:38:00.000-04:00

Now that the school year is over, I'm reading to a very demanding young critic--my youngest son, who will be entering first grade. He is currently in an animal loving phase, which means that I'm combing the library shelves for anything that has to do with big cats, snakes, or African wildlife. His desire for information outpaces his independent reading ability...which means that I've been reading aloud a lot of expository text.

As I read many texts that deal with the same topics, it's interesting to see how different authors faced the challenge of writing for younger readers--how they organize information, how they explain ideas, how they keep sentences short.

One of my recent favorites is Owen and Mzee: The Language of Friendship. This is on my list for a read aloud or shared reading with the document camera. You've probably heard the story--a young hippo named Owen becomes friends with a formerly grumpy tortoise named Mzee. (You can find out more at the website.)

What makes the book such a great read is the way that the authors harness and use text structures throughout the book. At the beginning, Owen's arrival at Haller Park is explained through cause and effect. A chronological order structure continues as Owen's friendship with Mzee is explained.

My favorite part is at the end. As I've written before, compare and contrast text structure is sometimes difficult to find in the wilds of real text. But there is a wonderful page that explains why Owen is not acting like a regular hippo. The authors compare and contrast Owen's behavior with that of typical hippos. Then this whole comparison becomes the problem for a problem/solution part of text. It's an easy introduction to the way that authors use multiple text structures to explain ideas.

As I look at books for the next school year, I want to find books that use academic patterns and structures, but have accessible topics. Kids who don't have their own personal readers at home are often unfamiliar with the way that expository text sounds. By finding lots of read alouds, I can help students to learn more about this kind of text.

End of year books

2011-05-23T21:28:00.000-04:00

Well, we're down to eight days. My classroom is being packed up, the kids are hard at work preparing for the end of year field day and talent show, and I'm anxiously sorting through assessments to put in my 50 or so data points for each student on our standards-based report card.

One of the things that always bothers me at the end of the year is that so much student work goes into the trash can. After all, you can't save everything! Take our reading journals. To me, they are special little treasures of all of the thinking that students have done throughout the year. Each one is a neat window into a student's thinking at that particular time. I hate to think of these being thrown away.

In years past, I have avoided talking about what will happen to the items that we have created together. But this doesn't lead to students taking home their school materials to be put in a special place of honor. Instead, the conversation goes like this. "Mrs. Kissner, do we need this anymore?" a student asks, holding up a folder.

Me, thinking about how the next few days are filled with end of year mania: "Um, no, I don't think so."

To which the student says, "Good," and proceeds to throw the item into the trash can.

In years past, I have started to beg them not to throw things out in the classroom. This only leads to kids going into the hallway to make their deposits in the big, wheeled trashcans that our custodians use. It's not that the kids hated our reading class; rather, it's that 9 and 10 year olds, especially boys, do not feel the same attachment to the artifacts of their thinking that I do.

This year, I decided to be proactive. Instead of avoiding the issue of what to do with all of our accumulated classroom stuff, I decided to have the students turn it into booklets that tell the story of our year together. (A booklet! A beautiful memento that is too beautiful to wind up in the trash!) I typed up little titles for each page, telling about highlights: Independent Reading, Thinking about my reading, Topic Study: Antarctica and so forth.

We're using the large 12 x 18 pages of construction paper, held landscape style. Each day, I hand out a new little title. Then students use scissors to cut artifacts from their reading journals. (Allowing them to cut and tear from the reading journals satisfies their thirst for destruction!) I've printed out some photos for students to add to their books as well, and they're adding captions with index cards and scrap paper. We work on the books for about 15-20 minutes each day.

It's been a delight to talk about their learning each day. Students are going back to their reading folders, revisiting old topics, and thinking about our year together. It's a busy, productive activity that gets us all reflecting on how far we've come, even as we know that our time together will soon be at an end. The reading folders are turning into hollow shells of what they once were, with all of their meaningful parts cut out and pasted into our books.

And hopefully, when this is done, we'll have a product that is just too beautiful to be discarded.

Lots of blogging

2011-05-19T21:00:00.000-04:00

I had over 70 comments on my kid nature blog today! (And they're not spam, which is even better.) After I checked to make sure that they were all appropriate, I showed the comments to my students so that we could talk about them and try to figure out who wrote them. It was a great learning experience.

I'm wading through the comments so that I can post and respond to them. Check them out on A Kids' Guide to Exploring Nature. They are adorable.

In other news, I had a blog post published on the Teaching Tolerance website. I'm so thrilled! It was the best news of the day.

http://www.tolerance.org/blog/led-tadpoles-across-social-divide

Help for Word Callers: Using Drawings

2011-05-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

Last time, I wrote about how manipulatives can help readers who can decode words, but are having trouble with comprehension. Drawing can be another way to reach these readers and help them to build elaborate mental models.

For a long time, I felt that using drawing during reading class was--well, cheating. How can something that kids like so much be beneficial? I worried that kids would become so focused on creating pictures that they would not make much meaning from the text.

But drawing is a great strategy for all readers. When readers try to make a picture to represent the ideas in a text, they have to think about those ideas in a new way. Here are some ways to help students--and especially those with poor comprehension--build meaning.

Coach students as they draw
In a review of research on drawing as a learning technique, Peggy Van Meter and Joanna Garner found that strategies that include some instructional coaching are especially helpful. I like to do this with students as we read sections of text that are rich in setting details. Using the Promethean board or a piece of chart paper, I'll show students how I take details from the text and put them into my picture.

As I help students draw to represent ideas from the text, I try to highlight the relationships between items as well as key vocabulary.

Don't put down your own drawing ability!
Once, as I was drawing a sketch on the chalkboard, I offhandedly said to students, "I'm not a good artist." No sooner had the words come out of my mouth than I realized what a mistake they were. I wouldn't want kids to say, "I'm not a good reader," and then quit trying.

So I changed my words. I said, "Wait--that's not what I meant. This picture didn't come out very well. Let me look back at the text, think about the details, and try again."

Use content area texts
Content area texts can be a challenge to readers. Drawing can help them to understand how ideas fit together. When my students were reading about caves, they finished the reading by creating a picture and labeling the formations with vocabulary words from the text. This activity required the kids who had skipped quickly through the text to go back and reread the sentences that described the different formations. The task of drawing caused them to realize that their comprehension was not what it should have been!

Help for Word Callers: Using Manipulatives

2011-05-15T10:18:00.000-04:00

For me, some of the hardest readers to reach are those that seem to decode accurately and quickly, but have trouble with retelling or answering questions. Sometimes these readers are called "word callers". They have often done just fine with reading in the primary grades, when their ability to decode quickly and accurately puts them at the top of their class.

In fourth grade, however, things start to change. As text becomes more complex and readers need to make more inferences, these students start to feel a little lost. They might look around the room and see the other students quickly writing summaries, while they struggle to think of what to include. They might listen to a conversation about the theme of a story, but not understand how stories can show different themes. It's easy for these readers to become frustrated--reading used to be so easy, but now it's so hard.

As I wrote about in January, these readers may not be building elaborate mental models. A mental model is a reader's impression of a text and understanding of the main ideas. Dr. Gary Woolley's article, "Developing Reading Comprehension: Combining Visual and Verbal Processes" is an excellent introduction to helping students to build mental models.

One of the ideas mentioned in the article is the use of manipulatives for reading. While much of the research about this focuses on manipulatives for early readers, I've found this strategy to be useful in the intermediate classroom as well. When readers have to move around pictures and objects, they have to make more meaningful connections between ideas in the text. It's not enough to just read a sentence and blunder on to the next--the reader needs to stop, find the relevant pictures, and show how they carry out the actions in the text.

Why is this strategy not used more often? I think it's a question of materials. Materials for retelling and acting out text with manipulatives are simply not widely available, especially at the intermediate level. (In some of the original research, they referred to using Playmobil toys, with texts written especially to fit the toys that they had. Playmobil did make some fairy tale sets, but they're becoming hard to find.)

I've tried to create some items for my classroom, using simple illustrations for the manipulatives. Once students are familiar with the process, they are eager to create their own retelling figures. This is a great activity, because it harnesses both drawing and manipulative use to enhance comprehension. While I started using this activity to help the word callers, I found that all of the readers in my room enjoy this.

If you haven't tried manipulatives with your readers, the end of the year is the perfect time to try it out. Kids find this strategy inherently motivating, while you can do some "kid-watching" to see how all of your readers--and especially those who show word-calling tendencies--react to this kind of activity. Here is a very simple text with pictures.

Retelling nonfiction

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Upcoming Workshop

2011-05-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

I'll be presenting a full-day workshop called "Reading Refresher" on Friday, June 17. As I've been looking through the journals, there are so many interesting ideas that have a real value to our everyday classroom practice...yet these ideas often get overlooked in professional development. If you don't have time to read journal articles, but would like to get some fresh perspectives, this is for you! (And, as with all of my workshops, the emphasis is on practical classroom use.)

They day will include:

Talking about those readers who puzzle us
The "simple view" of reading, and how this relates to our teaching
Helping students to use multiple strategies to build meaningful mental models
Working with multiple literacies
Making all of this work with the Common Core Standards...in a way that keeps our classrooms fun and engaging!

The presentation will be at Biglerville Elementary. York and Adams County teachers can register through the LIU:

https://act48.iu12.org/login.asp

If you are not teaching in York or Adams County, but would like to attend, please contact me.

Literature Circles: Adding the Spark

2011-05-10T20:30:00.000-04:00

As our literature circles have moved from fiction to nonfiction, some of the conversations have been getting--well, flat. This is to be expected with any classroom activity. When creative and imaginative activities become routine, they lose some of their effectiveness.

So it's up to me to try to recapture the excitement! I wasn't really thinking about this, though, as I was picking up my students from lunch today. But I soon got dragged into a heated discussion. "Mrs. Kissner, Mrs. Kissner!" two boys called. "Which one is stronger--a bull shark or a great white?"

This is not a question that I have considered often. So I absentmindedly answered, "Great white, I guess." This set off a new flurry of comments and whispering, all as we were walking down the hallway and back to the classroom.

The disagreement didn't end there. "The bull shark is the most dangerous, because it can go in shallow water and that's a bad place for a person to be when a shark is around," Wyatt said. More kids starting to chime in, from the boys who had originally started the conversation to the others who were clamoring to figure out what was going on. Claims were made, details offered, counterarguments shot back.

A thought was slowly forming. This was the kind of passion and spark that our literature circles were missing! Later, as we talked about the literature circles for the day, I brought up this conversation. "What made you so interested in talking about the two kinds of sharks?" We picked it apart--how all of them at the lunch table had some shared knowledge about sharks, but some different ideas. None of the boys had read which shark was most powerful or dangerous. Instead, they were making inferences and claims based on the details they knew.

"That's just the way it is with literature circles," I told the students. "You've all read the same book, but you have different ideas. This week, as you talk about the questions you've prepared, try to have an interesting disagreement! How are your ideas different? How can you support them?"

When I put it like this--that literature circles are supposed to be about some amount of disagreement--it added some new zip to their conversations. I saw more students going back and opening up their books, pointing to phrases and photographs, sharing their ideas.

But I still feel like I have some unfinished business. Because, while I was watching their literature circles and walking around, I felt an irresistible urge to go to my computer and do some research. And I couldn't get rid of the nagging question. Which is more powerful--a bull shark or a great white?

Comparing Texts

2011-05-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

As the year draws to a close, I find myself teaching more and more about comparing texts. This is the perfect topic for the end of the year, as we have so much shared history and shared readings.

Why do we compare texts? Sometimes the process of comparing helps us to think more deeply about texts, finding details that we didn't know were there. And sometimes the process helps us to see how texts that seem quite different have many things in common, and how there are common themes and ideas that come up again and again in literature. For my fourth graders, just starting to think at a higher level, comparing texts is a great way to open up their thinking about the great world of literature.

Here are some things that I've learned can really help kids to compare texts effectively.

Share lots of high quality books: The books that I read over the last few weeks for inferring work perfectly for comparing. When kids have read a variety of books that share common themes, the task of comparing is easier--and lots more fun.

Teach students to generate criteria: I started my lesson by showing kids a terribly written paragraph that compared two stories based on insignificant criteria--the number of words in the title, the number of letters in the character's names, etc. Students recognized right away that this paragraph was pretty silly! Then, I gave students cards with different criteria written on them. They sorted the cards based on "significant" or "not significant". For example, "genre" is significant, while "use of the letter r" is not. (Kids appreciated this one!) Some, like "animals in the text" could go either way--it depends on what is being compared.

We ended up sorting the cards three times over the next week, reviewing what made the different criteria significant or not. The students had so many experiences with looking at how texts can be compared that they easily came up with significant criteria on their own.

Make it a game! If you use a Texts We've Shared Wall, start off a conversation by asking kids to browse the wall and look for two texts that would be easy to compare. Why? Then, look for two texts that would be very hard to compare. Why are these two so different? Can anyone find any significant similarities? This task helps kids to think more flexibly about comparing texts, looking at it as a fun challenge instead of a chore.

Put transition words in front of students: Give students the words they need to write compare and contrast text. Words like on the other hand, however, both, also, similar, and different...these words make comparing and contrasting infinitely easier. A page with different compare and contrast transition words will help students to write better paragraphs.

Weave in the editing: This is the perfect time to address finer points of which titles get quotation marks and which get underlined. Because students will be going back and forth between talking about the different texts, they have a real reason to use this punctuation.

Comparing texts is a great end of year activity...and it can be lots of fun!

Books for Literature Circles

2011-04-23T22:16:00.000-04:00

The right book can make all the difference for literature circles. I certainly can't go out and buy the latest and greatest titles all the time, but our bookroom has a nice selection of titles. Some are newer, some are older. Here are some that my students are enjoying.

Frindle: A favorite of multiple groups! This book works well because it is engaging, and yet easy to read. Changing character emotions and attitudes are easy to see.

As groups have finished this, some have wanted to move on to other Andrew Clements books, like The School Story and The Report Card.

Bunnicula: This book has great word-of-mouth appeal among kids. As they have shared their activities or looked at displays, I've heard quite a few impromptu discussions. Do check in with groups as they are reading this, as the narration is a little tough for some readers.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing: I remember reading this in my elementary school days! But the group that chose it is still enjoying it, and some have even picked up the sequel on their own. I think that Fudge is just such a funny character that kids can't help but be pulled into the story.

Dear Mr. Henshaw: There have been years in which I have been totally unable to get kids interested in this book. So I feel pretty pleased that a group has selected this one! I think that a very supportive introduction makes the difference. I showed students the first two letters, introduced them to the format of the book, and showed them where it changes to a journal format. This helped them to navigate the letter style of the book.

Because of Winn-Dixie: This book can be a good pick for boys and girls. It has a quieter pace, and students in this group had a little more trouble finding the main problem and the theme. But they enjoyed all of the doggy details, and their conversations were always lively.

...and I've put together a collection of the materials that I've been using with literature circles. You can check it out below, or download it here.

Literature circle materials

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Lessons from Literature Circles

2011-04-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

As the year winds down to a close and state testing is complete, I like to pull kids into reading with literature circles. Here are some things that I keep in mind as I work with literature circles:

Start with a sociogram: Sociograms are fascinating instruments! Try asking your students, "If you could talk about books with someone in the class, who would it be? Write down 3 names." Then, collect their responses and put them on a map. Use arrows to represent student selections. It's easy to see which students are isolated, which cliques only work with each other, and which kids easily cross social boundaries. This information helps me to think about my groups in a way that goes beyond reading levels and interests. (Note: Be careful with your sociogram. It certainly wouldn't be something that you would want to share or leave lying about.)

Limited choice: I went to the bookroom and selected about 7 titles. On our selection day, students had about 2 minutes to look at each title, and then wrote down their top 3 choices on slips of paper. Then, I moved around the slips of paper to form groups. I used the sociogram to help me think about how to form groups.

Social conversation: On the first day that groups meet, encourage them to spend about 10 minutes talking about non-book topics. I write some topical questions on the board, from low-risk questions ("What's your favorite breakfast food?") to ones that require more sharing ("What would you like to change about yourself?") If students are going to have meaningful book discussions, they have to be comfortable with one another.

Generic questions: I've heard from some teachers who have tried to make questions for every book, every week. This makes me tired to think about! I use generic questions that fit for every book. (I'm working on posting a master list of questions that I've used...until then, write to me if you'd like a list.)

Independent practice: As I make my questions and plan my lessons, I think of the literature circle questions as the independent practice. So, I usually teach a concept with the whole group in the week before that appears on the literature circle questions. For changing character emotions, for example, I taught the character change map with Shortcut and our shared reading ("Juggling" by Donna Gamache), and then students answered questions about changing emotions and could make their character change maps for their literature circle books the next week.

It's a process: I don't expect brilliant discussions in the first week, or even the second week. As students meet, I walk around and take note of what they are doing--are they looking back to their books? Are they following up on questions and ideas? Are they listening to each other? Then I try to address those issues before the next meeting. I know that things are working when students start challenging each other. "But that happened at the beginning of the book!" one student told another. "What about in the part we read this week?"

Things get messy: As a fast reader, I always hated when teachers wouldn't let us read ahead. (I always did it anyway!) So I encourage students to read ahead if they like. We talk about "spoilers" and managing the conversation so that you don't reveal things that others don't yet know. Luckily, the kids who read ahead are also able to handle this more flexible thinking.

When students finish their books early, I try to pull them from their group and form a new group of fast finishers with a new book. It gets messy, but the kids are eager to read new books and talk with new people.

How long? Well, I was going to do only a 4-week session, but so many kids wanted to continue that I'm now about to start Week 6. Once the students understand the process, it can become a good background activity that coexists well with other classroom activities.

Disclaimer: If you're thinking, "This wouldn't work for my class," don't despair. I have to admit that I have about the best reading class ever right now. They are a dream class--hardworking, friendly, talkative, and kind to each other. I have had years in which literature circles did not go nearly as well.

Changes in Character Emotions

2011-04-12T18:53:00.000-04:00

As students work on literature circles, I try to introduce ways of thinking about a text that can apply to multiple novels. One fun chart that we've been using lately is a chart that shows changes in a character's emotions. This kind of chart creates a neat visual summary of the emotional journey of a book. (Note: I didn't come up with this idea. I totally forget where it came from! I couldn't find any charts online, so I made a new one)

First we read the story Shortcut by Donald Crews. If you don't have this book on your mentor text shelf, it's certainly worth it! It works on many levels--as a personal narrative, a model of creating mood and suspense with sentence variety, and, as in this activity, a quick read aloud.

Then we went back through the book and talked about how the children might be feeling at different points. Students went back to their emotion word charts to do this! We created a map that showed the different emotions of the children in the book. (A few students decided to illustrate it during indoor recess.) If you've read Shortcut, you'll see that this really represents what happens--the kids start out happy and playing, are terrified as the train approaches, and end up relieved and subdued.

After we practiced with the read aloud, students used the chart to map out the main character's feelings in the short story "Juggling". Finally, they tried it out with their own literature circle books. The results were tremendous. Not only were students finding more specific emotion words, but they were also matching story events to emotions in a very visual way.

You can download the initial chart for Shortcut, as well as a blank form for any story, here at Slideshare.

Text Set for Making Inferences

2011-04-02T20:14:00.000-04:00

Don't you love it when everything just comes together? This week, as I reached for good picture books for teaching inferences, my choices happened to come together in a way that helped students to think about broader issues.

I picked up Tight Times at our library's used book store. I remembered it from watching Reading Rainbow as a child (ah, Reading Rainbow!), and I knew that it was a bargain at $.50. Even though it is meant for younger readers, it worked nicely for making inferences. We stopped and talked about what "tight times" means, how we could use the illustrations to make inferences about the parents' feelings, and what we could figure out about the narrator. (The narrator of this book, who is not named, wants a dog, but his parents tell him he cannot have one because of tight times. Things get worse when the father loses his job. But then the boy finds a kitten in a trash can, and the boy's parents decide that he can keep him.)

"But I didn't like the ending," Mandy said. "The book was so sad at parts, and then it just ended with something funny. I didn't like that." What a great observation! I turned back to the last page and we talked about the ending. (In a way, I have to agree with Mandy.)

When we looked more closely at the last few pages, though, we saw that the illustrator was telling us a little more to the story. "Look! The dad is looking at the newspaper!" Michael noticed.

"What do you think he's doing?" I asked.

There was some puzzlement as students talked about this with their partners. Some students obviously knew about want ads and the classifieds; others did not. "Maybe he's just reading a comic to cheer up?" Keith guessed. This is a classic example of how inferences depend on background knowledge. Luckily, other kids spoke up. "There are lists of jobs in the newspaper," Favia said confidently. "He's probably looking for a job."

On the next page, students noticed that the parents looked happier, and guessed that maybe things were better. "Sometimes the illustrator tells you things that the author does not," I said.

The Gardener by Sarah Stewart, a perfect book for teaching inferencing, worked beautifully with Tight Times. I explained that it was told in letter form (I love stories told this way) and asked students to talk with their partners about these words:

Lydia Grace
1935
Mama and Papa
train
Uncle Jim
windowboxes
bakery
the gardener

"Which words might relate to the setting?" I asked. We talked about the bakery, and the train, and students' guesses about who the gardener might be. "What's a windowbox?" asked Luke. We talked about what a windowbox is and how it related to the story.

This book leads to some great opportunities for making inferences. I was modeling an inference chart (three columns--inference, story clues, background knowledge) and this book was perfect. We weren't three pages in before students started buzzing about how this book was similar to Tight Times. I know that things are working when they start naturally comparing texts--without questions, without probing, without my intervention. "Yes, but the boy in Tight Times didn't have to go live somewhere else," I overheard. "I'd hate to do that!" someone else whispered.

My class this year is very visual, and they helped me to notice some new details in The Gardener--like the way that Lydia is always shown in the light, and how that matches her character so perfectly. "There were things like that in the pictures in Tight Times, too," Maura said. "Like how the dad was looking in the newspaper. And there are cats in both of the books."

Next week I'm going to expand the inferring into theme, and I've already picked out Those Shoes as a good read aloud for this. What has worked out so well is that, even though I've been officially working on making inferences, these books have given us a chance to dive deeper into making connections and looking for broader themes in text.

Text-based inferences: Who's Talking?

2011-03-27T20:04:00.000-04:00

As we move past state testing and into the last months of the year, I like to have students work in literature circles. Literature circles are a great way to get kids talking about their books and engaging with text.

For my transitional readers, though, the literature circle books I've chosen present some new challenges. In Misty of Chincoteague and Bunnicula, there are exchanges of dialogue in which the speaker is not identified. While I'd like to believe that all of my students have mastered the ability to pick their way through tricky dialogue, I know that this is not the case.

To help them work through the dialogue, my student teacher and I tried this simple activity. After talking about ways that we know how different characters are speaking, we gave students a short snippet of a story and directed them to use colored pencils to underline the dialogue of the different characters.

What a revealing activity this is! Identifying the speaker in dialogue is, after all, a kind of inference. This inference is text-based--that is, it pulls on the reader's background knowledge of how text works. As I talked with students about their work, I was able to gain some insight into how they thought about text. "How did you know that this was Robert?" I asked one student.

"Oh, well," he said. "There were already two people in the kitchen, and then someone else came in. So I pictured him coming in, and then I just knew that he had to be the older brother." Here, I could learn much about how this student was processing the text--he was visualizing the setting, and tracking the movements of the characters. These are the skills he needs to be successful with understanding a story.

But I learned about problems as well. One student underlined the entire first five lines. "But, ___, why did you underline so much? There are no quotation marks," I asked, a little puzzled.

He answered, "Because she's the one who's telling the story, right? So she's talking." Oh! In this case, the student had mistaken the narration of the first-person narrator for dialogue. Think about how this changes his perception of the time of the story and how it unfolds. I grabbed a new copy of the page and tried to explain. "She's the one telling the story, yes. But it's not the same as dialogue. Look, the dialogue is down here--see, with the quotation marks? That's how we know that different people are speaking."

He dutifully took the colored pencil and underlined where I had shown him. But I could tell that he still wasn't convinced. And I was falling down the rabbit-hill of teacher-thinking: trying to figure out how he was building his mental model of the story, and how the time of the first-person narrator was different from the story-time, and how perhaps I should have used a third-person text for this activity, but that maybe it was better to have a first-person text, because now I knew this was a problem, and how this would impact teaching the writing of first person narratives, and maybe this was why some kids were so resistant to adding dialogue to those narratives--because they thought they were already using dialogue.

Lots to think about there! And that, to me, is the hallmark of a great classroom activity--situations like this that get me thinking about all of those spaces between what we think we teach and what kids are actually thinking and learning.

If you'd like to give this activity a try, check it out below or download it here. (And there is more about teaching these kinds of text-based inferences in my book The Forest and the Trees, if you want to know more.)

Dialogue activity

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Using New Vocabulary Words

2011-03-20T13:20:00.000-04:00

As I work with students on summarizing, character traits, and character emotions, I try to convince them to use more specific, detailed words. Many of the words that work particularly well in fiction are not in our everyday speaking vocabularies. It can be a challenge to help students to learn and assimilate these words.

One of the best tools that I've found is a list of related words for a specific purpose. I give students the list, often on brightly colored paper so that it stands out in their reading folders. Instead of going over the words one by one, I present them with situations that might encourage them to try one of the new words.

For example, with character emotions, I give students this list (originally published in The Forest and the Trees). Then, we act out various situations and talk about which words would fit the situation. Curious kids will ask--"What is the difference between perplexed and bewildered?" Once they've asked the question, it's the perfect opportunity to help them understand the meanings and uses of these words.

By arranging the words in categories, students can use known words to help them understand unknown words. For example, "indignant" must mean something along the same lines as "upset." (The example I used with this was a great-aunt asking a fourth grader if they were in kindergarten yet. That always gets an indignant response!)

The list of words for summarizing dialogue works in the same way. After I gave out the list, I had students act out simple situations that lend themselves to the words on the list. We talked about how we could summarize the long conversations into just one or two sentences using these words. Once again, including known words with the new words helps students to figure out the shades of meaning and how these words relate to each other.

What else could you use lists of related words to teach? I think there are many possibilities! Next year, I'm going to pull this over to math class to help students describe their mathematical thinking.

Summarizing Dialogue

2011-03-13T22:10:00.000-04:00

As I wrote last week, we're in the final stretch of test prep, and so we are brushing up on story elements and fiction summarizing. The students did a nice job of summarizing the story "The Goose in the Blackberry Patch". However, they had some trouble with the story "The Mystery Eggs".

Why? The stories are both fairly short. On the surface, they seem to be somewhat similar. However, it didn't take me long to realize the problem--"The Mystery Eggs" contains much more dialogue.

And it is the dialogue that's so tricky for students to summarize. Many of my capable readers wanted so earnestly to provide a faithful accounting of the events that they tried to explain the characters' conversation. It sounded something like this--"Melanie said the eggs were bird eggs, and Clara said no they are not." Some of them ran out of room before they were able to explain all of the events and tell how the problem was solved.

What to do next? For testing, I am not too concerned...as long as students get the key events (and most did), they should be fine.

But I now have a wonderful direction for instruction once testing is over. We had already planned to begin literature circles. I'm going to continue to work on summarizing that tricky dialogue. I've created a list of words to use for summarizing dialogue, and some practice activities. As students read their literature circle novels, they'll try to find pages that are heavy in dialogue, and summarize those pages.

Summarizing dialogue

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You can find the story "The Mystery Eggs" here, under the Grade 4 Reading Sampler for 2008-2009. It's a really fun one that kids always like, despite the fact that I use it for test prep.

Summarizing A Story

2011-03-06T20:13:00.000-05:00

Here is a Powerpoint that I wrote a few years ago to help students learn how to summarize a narrative. It introduces students to the bad strategies that they may have picked up, explains the characteristics of a good summary, and then has them choose the best summary to the story "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".

Why this really simple book? Not only is it widely available and easy to track down in just about any school, but it has lists to collapse and is a quick, engaging read.

Summarizing A Story

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As I prepare for state testing this week, this presentation will be a nice review. Then, students will practice summarizing with the story "Goose in the Blackberry Patch" from our state's released sampler items.

You can find Pennsylvania's testing samplers here. Many of the stories and nonfiction pieces are nicely written and can be useful in the classroom even beyond test prep. "Goose in the Blackberry Patch" can be found in the grade 4 2005-2006 reading sampler.

Poetry Picture Books for Making Inferences

2011-03-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

When teaching poetry, it's often easy to just break it down into small bits. This bit is personification, this bit is alliteration, this bit is a simile.

But poetry is more than these small bits. Instead, readers need to try to figure out what the author is saying. This process requires a reader to make multiple inferences--sometimes in very few lines of text. Teaching poetry goes hand in hand with teaching inferences. Readers need to use their background knowledge to reach for the meaning of the poem. While the figurative language is important, it's only a piece of the puzzle.

Where to find good poetry for kids? I've had tremendous luck at discount bookstores, like the ones that you find at outlet malls or vacation spots. I have also had luck with combing the shelves of used book sales at libraries. These two sources have opened my eyes to some great books of poetry that I may not have otherwise found. (Plus, they're often inexpensive!) Here are some of my favorites--and the ones that I've picked up for my classroom are all from discount or secondhand sources. While you may not be able to buy them directly anymore, you may still be able to get them from libraries.

Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart: This is a story told in poems. I love the title poem for teaching character traits. Author Vera B. Williams tells us these traits right off the bat, and then supports them with specific details. Throughout the rest of the book, the story of the sisters and their situation unfolds. The copy that I picked up had a different cover, so I think there may still be older editions floating around that you can get for cheap!

Once Around the Sun: This book goes through the year with a poem for every month. The poems are filled with personification, alliteration, and similes...but even better, the poems are about kid-friendly, concrete topics. The colors of the illustrations evoke the feelings of the seasons. The poems are wonderful for helping students to see how they can take a poem apart to find the different kinds of figurative language, but put it back together to look for a main idea. Definitely a must for your classroom library.

Black Earth, Gold Sun: I love gardening, and this book of gardening poetry is one of my favorites. I bought it as a discard from a library. Just today I read the first poem with a previewing group, looking at how the author uses a simile to compare the freshly dug earth to a chocolate cake. (What an image!) The poems have nice specific vocabulary words to stretch the students' understandings, with supportive pictures help them to put the pieces together.

Hey, You! Poems to Skyscrapers, Mosquitoes, and Other Fun Things: I bought several copies of this over the weekend, and then promptly turned them over to other teachers--so I haven't had much of a chance to explore it much. Hopefully I'll get my copies back.

Trailblazers: Poems of Exploration: This book makes a wonderful history connection. Bobbi Katz writes poems from the points of view of various explorers. She chooses a diverse bunch, going beyond the obvious people. Definitely worth looking for, especially if you teach social studies.

Inference Assessment

2011-02-24T21:33:00.000-05:00

As I look ahead to working on inferring skills in the next two weeks, I want to find out more about what my students can do. Here is a simple inference assessment that gives me some useful information.

The inference in this assessment is a very simple kind of text-based inference. Students need to use information from one part of the text to answer a question at the end of the text. While it seems easy to adults, I'm always surprised at how students approach the task!

A question like this helps me to pinpoint which students are having trouble with putting aside their prior knowledge as they get new information, or see which students can make an inference but cannot find the specific details to support it. Each year, I've also found a few kids who do not know what a "hermit crab" is...this only highlights the importance of background knowledge for making inferences.

Inference assessment

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Vocabulary Work: Looking at Related Words

2011-02-23T20:29:00.000-05:00

For a period of time, my youngest son thought that "chicken" was a multiple meaning word. There was the chicken that was the animal, and the chicken in chicken nuggets. In his little toddler brain, these obviously were not the same things! At around 3, he inquired, "Why are they called chicken nuggets?" He thought for a moment, and then said, "Do the chickens help to make them?"

I thought of this last week as I prepared to teach students about the word relationship. This is an important academic word, and kids have a lot of knowledge about it. But they don't always connect their knowledge in ways that make sense. For example, the most common idea that kids have about the word relationship is that it's a romance. (Giggle, giggle.) But this won't really help them to answer a reading question about the relationships between ideas, or the relationship between two numbers in math.

In order for kids to realize that they know many words that are related to relationship, I used a multiple meaning word web. We looked at how the word "relate" has many different meanings, and they are--heh--related! (Some of the kids found this meta-talk very funny!) We looked at the word relative and talked about their relatives. Then, we practiced relating to one another by listening and trying to understand one another. We talked about how ideas can be related, and finished by sorting words that could describe relationships between people. (This sort was made by my fabulous fourth grade colleague, Colleen.)

Hopefully, my students now have a better idea of how the words relative, relate, and relationship are connected. Instead of seeing them as isolated words that happen to have similar sounds, they see them as a word family.

And my youngest son? I worried about how to break the news to him that there only was one kind of chicken. But he figured it out for himself as we were eating rotisserie chicken one night. "Is this the animal chicken?" he asked.

"Um...yes?" I replied, worried that he would be upset, or refuse to eat it. But I had underestimated his zeal. He pumped his fist, chortled, and crowed, "Yeah! I'm eatin' chickens!" The multiple meanings of chicken, united at last.

How are students using context clues?

2011-02-21T14:58:00.000-05:00

Recently, I wrote about using a cloze to find out how students are using context. The results were so interesting! As I flipped through the student responses, it was easy to see what students were thinking as they read. Here are some things to look for as you score a cloze:

Global Reading: Younger readers tend to read sentence by sentence, linking each idea only to the one right before it and right after it. In a cloze, readers sometimes have to take ideas from one paragraph and connect them to ideas from another paragraph. In the salamander text, for example, students needed to remember the idea "rainy March nights" from the first paragraph to fill in a blank in the second paragraph.

By checking to see which readers were able to do this, I could learn a lot about my students. Students who filled in "days" instead of "nights" had not made this connection between paragraphs. They might not be taking a global view as they read.

Going back: There are many readers for whom reading is a one-way activity. They go forward, and that's that. But skilled readers often will look back in the text, often to clear up a problem. Cloze activities are a perfect opportunity to model the benefits of looking back in a text. In the second paragraph of the salamander text, readers can use the given word "driving" to fill in the missing "roads" in a previous sentence. Some of my students were able to do this. Others did not. This gives me a good chance to model going back in a text to show that reading is not just a one-way street.

Tricky words: In the last paragraph, students had great difficulty with this sentence: "In one town, people have ___built a tunnel!" Only one student had it correct (even) while about four put in words like "actually" that would fit in the sentence. But many others left it blank.

This shows me that they probably need help with understanding and using adverbs. As fourth graders move into more academic text, adverbs are used more frequently. But can students understand them? If they can't come up with even or actually to fill in this sentence, a word like however is probably beyond them.

Cleverness: Okay, so this isn't a technical term. But three of my students had the most adorable response. They put the word "cloze" in a blank. At first this troubled me. Where was this coming from? Then I thought about it from a reader's perspective. The top of the page reads "Salamander Crossing Cloze." These students didn't realize that cloze was the name of the activity. Instead, they thought it had meaning for the text, and were wringing every clue they could from the title. Clearly a "cloze" must have something to do with the salamander crossing!

This is why I like looking at what students put in the blanks--each time, I can learn something new about my students and what they are thinking. The "Salamander Crossing" cloze is embedded below. Download it here to try with your students.

Salamander Crossing Cloze

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Scaffolding Summarizing, Teaching Text Structure

2011-02-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

For the last few years, my text structure instruction has looked fairly similar:

1. Give an overview of what structure means
2. Help kids to understand the thinking behind the text structures
3. Work with students to use graphic organizers to depict information from different text structures
4. Help students to use text structure to ask questions and generate predictions

This year, though, I've been adding a step. While we work in each text structure, we've also been looking at how to summarize that text structure. For example, when we looked at chronological order text, we talked about how a summary of needs to reflect the chronological order structure. For cause and effect, we looked at how successful summaries include both the causes and effects.

But I can't think of anything worse than having students write a summary of every text, every day! To make the endeavor more interesting, I've been using a variety of scaffolds.

Choosing the best summary: This is a simple activity, but so effective! After we read a text, students have to choose the best summary, usually out of a choice of 4. The less successful summaries generally reflect errors that I see in my students' writing--summaries with the "copy and delete" method, summaries that include personal opinions, and summaries that just mention the topics instead of the actual information.

When students choose the best summary, they gain experience with the academic register of summarizing. I can also see what implicit rules they are using for summarizing and can correct any misconceptions. Luckily, kids find this a pretty interesting and engaging activity. Today they worked in groups of 3 to choose the best summary, cut it out, mount it to a piece of construction paper, and explain why it was the best summary.

Summary Frames: A summary frame is a skeleton summary. You provide the students with the introduction sentence and the framework. Students fill in the details from the text. These are especially helpful for students who might be able to pick out the important ideas from the text, but struggle with writing. To help these students to synthesize the text details with the framework, have them read the summary aloud to a partner or rewrite it.

Group Summaries: Try asking 2-3 students to work together to compose a summary and write it on a piece of large construction paper. As they get started, position yourself nearby. The conversation is fascinating! "How do we start?" one kid will ask, and then they'll take turns sharing the rules that they've generalized for how to start and then how to proceed. Sometimes, yes, they will squabble, but the disagreements are often productive in that one child will convince another to abandon an unworkable strategy.

What to do with groups that seem stuck? I'll usually go over with a marker and help them with a sentence. Often this is enough to pull them ahead and solve their problem.

What's been helpful is that students have had the chance to see how the different text structures are reflected in summaries. And we've had fun with different texts along the way!

Causes and Effects

2011-02-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

This week, I switched our focus from looking at chronological order text to looking at cause and effect text. Students often confuse these two text structures, and with good reason. After all, cause and effect text usually uses elements of chronological order. Causes come before effects!

As I was thinking about how to introduce causes and effects, I remembered the frog Powerpoint that I made two summers ago. I made a quick little "cause/effect" table for students to fill out as we looked at the different pictures. Because we had just learned about physical adaptations, the frog slides helped students to see a content area connection. In addition, they learned that "result" is a synonym for "effect".

Cause and Effect Text Structure: Causes and Effects with Frogs

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After we looked at the frogs, students generated their own causes and effects. Some of them were definitely inventive! We used the "give one/get one" activity to share our causes and effects. Students walked around the room and shared their causes and effects with one another. Then, once we got back together, they nominated their favorite causes and effects to be shared on a group poster.

Of course, learning causes and effects is lots of fun. But we do have to apply this knowledge to text. Our next step will be to look at a short text about the Boston molasses disaster, and use the idea of cause and effect to represent the information with a graphic organizer. (If you are looking for cause and effect text, natural disasters are often a good bet!)

Context Clues and Cloze

2011-02-08T19:14:00.000-05:00

How do readers understand context? If you really want to see what your students can do, try a simple cloze activity. Take 200 or so words from a text that you'll be reading together. Type that text, removing every 7th word. Then, ask students to read the text and fill in the missing words. What do they do? Watching the students and reading their responses is fascinating!

(If you don't want to type in the text, you can try this cloze generator tool. For more on cloze, read this article. If you'd like a cloze passage to try, write to me--I have several that go along with texts that I use.)

Being able to complete a cloze passage is all about understanding the context of words. As I teach about context, I know that I want students to understand the word context. I also want students to be able to generate the words to fill in blanks, like on a cloze assessment. But state tests are coming up, and I know that students will need to use context clues to answer synonym questions on the test.

That's a lot of instruction to remember! To help myself keep it all straight, I created this Powerpoint.

Context Clues

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Comparing Texts: Chronological Order

2011-02-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

Today we finished our Chronological Order centers. Hooray! Interestingly, the kids liked the historical text (The Great Chicago Fire, from Toolkit Texts), the animal life cycle texts, and the procedural text. The biography--well, not so much. I'm still thinking about why this genre is such a stretch for kids.

Our last step was comparing two chronological order texts. Students worked with a partner to complete a chart with criteria such as topic, text structure, transition words used, and text features. Students could choose which texts they compared, and the classroom was filled with the quiet noise of engaged talk. "Why doesn't this one have any transition words?" one girl asked, pointing to the procedural text. "Good question," I replied. "Why do you think they're missing?" Working with her partner, the girl was able to recognize that a set of directions, organized in steps, doesn't need the same kind of linking words as a text written in paragraphs. Wow!

I had two reasons for moving into this activity. Our fifth grade teachers have commented that students have trouble comparing texts across topics. By looking at two texts with the same structure, I could help them to see one important criteria for comparison.

My other reason for having students compare two chronological order texts was as a kind of pre-assessment. By watching students work in pairs to complete the comparison chart and turn it into a paragraph, I could easily see what they knew about comparing and contrasting. Could they use any transition words? Could they craft a topic sentence? When I teach about compare and contrast text structure next week, we'll have a shared experience on which to build our learning. Hopefully, students will be able to remember the problems that they grappled with as they wrote compare and contrast text, and then examine how authors solve those problems.

Building a Mental Model: Help for Reading Comprehension

2011-02-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I dive into the depths of ERIC to find new information and new ideas. I have a folder full of journal articles! Some I just look over briefly, others I read slowly, and still others help me to understand my classroom in a new way.

My latest find is this article by Gary Woolley. Woolley looks at past research and explains a variety of strategies that can be used to help students who read with fluency, but don't seem to comprehend as well as they should.

I'm so interested in this because it explores helping readers to build a mental model. A mental model is a reader's impression of the text, synthesizing what is in the text with the reader's prior knowledge. Successful readers build elaborate, complex mental models, pulling on many ideas. Less successful readers...well, we can't go inside their heads to see what their mental models look like, but we can guess that they are underdeveloped.

Drawing
Drawing ideas from the text can help students to build better mental models. As students try to portray the details, they might need to go back to the text to fill in the details. Drawing helps students to understand how they need to combine the words in the text with the ideas and images from their minds. (You can find more on visualizing in The Forest and the Trees. Here is a free visualizing practice page that can help readers to see how they need to change their mental models.)

Using manipulatives
Another way to help readers build a mental model is through the use of manipulatives. When students have concrete pictures or toys to move around, they can better imagine how characters and objects move through space. In this retelling nonfiction activity, for instance, students move around baby turtles to show how they hibernate in the winter.

For example, today I helped students read a text about the Great Chicago Fire. (This was one of the groups in the chronological order centers.) It quickly became obvious that the students were not building a developed mental model. Oh dear! For tomorrow's groups, I'm going to give students a map of the city and some markers to help them track the progress of the fire through the text. By giving them a concrete visual, I hope to help them build a stronger mental model.

Helping students to build mental models--and understanding how the process works--is the task of a lifetime. I'm fascinated by the chance to watch it happen!

The Many Sides of Chronological Order Text

2011-01-30T18:35:00.000-05:00

Well! I'm hoping for a full week this week, because we're working on chronological order text structure. Snow, stay away!

Last year, I wrote about questions to ask of chronological order text. This year, I'm going one step further to look at the different sides of chronological order text. More so than any other text structure, chronological order comes in great variety. This makes it important to help students see all of the different permutations of chronological order nonfiction so that they can use this structure effectively.

Here are some of the texts that we'll be looking at:

How-to/Procedural: This kind of chronological order exists in an almost hypothetical time. Instead of telling about an event that has already happened, how-to texts look to the future to events that can happen. A great way to help students see different kinds of how-to texts is to look at directions for paper snowflakes. How are the different sets of directions similar? How are they different? Why is it important that directions are written in chronological order? What text features does the author use?

Biography: Biography fits into an interesting category, straddling expository and narrative text. But these are great to use to look at chronological order. Often, biographies will start with an event from the middle or end of a person's life, and then go back and tell the story in order. Look at how biographies link events and show the passage of time. It's interesting to get several biographies of the same person and look at how the authors played around with time in each one. How does the author show the passage of time? What parts does the author skip? How does the author show the chain of events? Is there a timeline that puts it all together?

Animal Life Cycle: This sub-genre of informational text is popular with kids! These texts show how an animal grows and develops. Often, they include the familiar cycle diagram that shows how one life stage leads to another. John Himmelman writes many lovely books that show the life cycles of different animals. Others can be found in Toolkit Texts or on the shelves of the library. How does the author connect the events? Is there a diagram that summarizes the life cycle? How are these texts similar to other chronological order texts?

Historical Events: These texts can tell about an event over time, or show how something has developed and changed over the years. These are often more difficult for students, and are a kind of text that they are less likely to pick up and read on their own. But understanding how chronological order is shown in these texts is essential for students who need to understand content area texts. Why are these texts written in chronological order? What is the time span of the event?

To help my students understand these different kinds of texts, I've made a set of centers that show the different kinds of chronological order texts. We'll see how it works--if the storm stays away!

Chronological order centers

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Creating a Nonfiction Summarizing Assessment

2011-01-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

As a group of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers planned for interventions for next year, we decided to try some work with nonfiction summarizing. One of our first tasks is going to be to create some assessments.

This isn't as daunting a task as it might seem. In fact, making your own summarizing assessments is much easier (and cheaper) than buying an expensive set from a publisher. And, while a summary is a useful indicator of reading comprehension overall, the very act of summarizing encourages students to think about important ideas and may actually improve comprehension. An assessment that instructs--just what every teacher needs!

Here's how you and a team of teachers can create your own assessments:

1. Find a suitable text. I consider length, readability, and topic. The best texts are about a page long for younger students, maybe 2-3 pages for older students. You can run it through this tool from Intervention Central to find the readability. As far as topics go, I like to find something that I know will have moderate familiarity--maybe something that is related to a topic that we have studied in science or social studies. If a text is too familiar, some students might be tempted to skip the reading and summarize based on their background knowledge.

2. Find the important ideas. For this part, you need a team of 3-5 people. Each person should read the text silently and write down the most important ideas. Then, compare your lists. By working together, you should come up with a list of about 7-10 ideas for a one-page text. It's so helpful to have multiple people working on this, as you will find that each person has slightly different ways of putting the information. It can provide you with some insight about how hard it is for kids to summarize! If you can't come to an agreement on important ideas, discard the text and try a different one.

3. Give the assessment. I usually just hand out notebook paper for students to use for their summaries. When I make pages with lines, I'm giving students an indication of how long I expect the summary to be. I want to see what they think.

4. Create your scoring guide. The most basic scoring guide can just be a listing of the important ideas from the article. As you read a student summary, check off the important ideas that are included in the summary. Gather the team of teachers back together to read summaries and set performance levels. What do you want to call a proficient summary? An exceptional one? Be prepared for some interesting discussions as you look at the summaries.

You may also want to consider how to score the summaries that go way overboard and include too many details. An extra box at the bottom of your scoring guide is an easy way to do this.

Over time, you may want to look at other finer points of summaries--putting the ideas in the order of the text, reflecting the text structure, or using key words from the text. Be cautious, though. Sometimes adding too many parts to your scoring makes the process too overwhelming. (I know this from exhausted experience!)

5. Use the results. What do your students need? Based on your results, you might make groups of students who need help with locating the important ideas from the text. You might also have students who write too many details, or students who include only topics from the text.

Creating your own assessments is a great way to find out about where your students are. Give it a try!

Writing a summary of nonfiction

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Science Reading and Learning

2011-01-20T19:09:00.000-05:00

While I'm working on teaching nonfiction in my reading class right now, I'm still muddling along in science. This is our first year of working through the curriculum, and it's hard. Teaching the concepts requires a deep and well-developed knowledge--I often find myself reading and researching in the evenings and weekends!

Our textbook is glossy and beautiful. However, it is not always the best resource for my students. Often it defines words using other difficult words. Most pages breeze quickly through important content.

I've been working, then, to find other good resources. Reading A-Z.com has a few projectable books that fit in with our curriculum, and we have some choices in our bookroom. When I can't find what I'm looking for, I create things for my classes. This "Animal Adaptations" text is an example of a short article that I wrote. At the start of a unit on animal adaptations, it's vital that students know how to pronounce the word "adaptations"! I wanted students to read a text that uses the word repeatedly, over and over. This would give them the schema they would need to find success in the rest of the unit.

Sometimes, I do create a Powerpoint to illustrate the content. I don't like to do this for every concept, because I want students to have to cope with content area text. But some topics just lend themselves to teaching with bright, intriguing photos! The Behavioral Adaptations presentation below is an example. As we go, I encourage students to use the vocabulary as often as possible. Luckily, the room in which I teach science has tables, so students can talk with others and share their ideas. This makes the presentation less of a lecture and more of an interactive discussion.

Behavioral adaptations

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Working on new topics is never easy. But at least it's interesting!

Teaching Text Structure in the Primary Grades

2011-01-15T21:38:00.001-05:00

Recently, several teachers have written to ask me about materials for teaching text structure in grades K-3. I've been thinking and reading about how to help these youngest readers to understand text structure. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Focus on using text structure, not identifying text structure
Those of us in the intermediate and middle grades often focus on helping students to look at a text and figure out the structure. One reason for this is the proliferation of text structure questions on state tests. Another reason is that older readers often have to cope with unfriendly content area text. Being able to find the text structure is a good coping mechanism for struggling readers.

But young readers have to learn how to use text structure. When they are told that a text shows causes and effects, they need to be able to find those causes and effects. Younger readers need lots of work in taking ideas from a text and showing them on a graphic organizer. Identification is not as necessary for younger readers.

Easy centers for teaching text structure can be found here.

I created this compare and contrast projectable book for my son's kindergarten teacher.
Polar Bears and Black Bears

Don't expect a great deal of transfer between the text structures
Joanna Williams has done a great deal of work on text structure and primary readers. One of her findings is that young readers don't really transfer the use of text structure from one structure to another. This means that teaching students how to use the text structure of cause and effect will not lead them to an understanding of compare and contrast. Each text structure needs to be examined on its own.

Powerpoint for Young Readers

Problem and Solution Texts

Be explicit in your teaching
This article from Sylvia Read and others outlines a way to teach chronological text structure. Start by showing students the book and the text structure. Then, show sentence strips with main ideas from the text, arranged out of order. Ask students to predict the order of the ideas. Introduce the sequence words as well. As you read the book, have students rearrange the sentence strips to reflect the order of ideas. At the end, discuss how the book shows the text structure. Students can practice with the book and the sentence strips during independent time.

A list of picture books with different text structures

National Geographic for Little Kids has some great sequenced text in every issue

Even very young readers can learn how to use text structure. Most importantly, young readers bring their natural curiosity and enthusiasm to the task. When they are excited to learn about a topic, they'll understand that text structure is a tool to help them learn more.

More with Text Features

2011-01-13T19:53:00.000-05:00

Here is a very simple Powerpoint that I used for teaching about text features.

Text features

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As you can see, it's simple, but I found it pretty effective. Having students look at text features across multiple texts helps students to see all of the different ways that text features can be used.

Thank-You Notes, Part Two

2011-01-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

Earlier I wrote about a unit that I planned for teaching students how to write thank-you notes. Now that I've started the unit, I am so happy with how it's going! Parents responded enthusiastically to the letters that I sent home asking for addresses and stamp donations.

And students enjoyed reading about letters from the past. I pulled out some of the old letters that I have on hand (read here about how I used them to teach about inferences). We looked at the letters and talked about how some features have stayed the same, while others have changed. Why do letters still have greetings? Why do we not use hot wax to seal letters anymore? (Thank goodness.)

When it was time to write, students jumped right in. Some of them struggled with the form of letters--we'll work on this in the next few days! Others, though, struggled with the rhetorical task of letter writing. How to express greetings to a grandmother you see every day? How to start out a letter to someone you hardly know?

At the end of class, we shared their writing challenges and successes. For students who were frustrated, I told them, "You are joining a long line of letter writers, through the centuries, who have had trouble with getting started writing a letter." There is something that is so neat about joining a club of writers!

Text Features

2011-01-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

This week, we're taking a look at text features in reading class.

From an early age, readers have to learn how to screen out information that isn't important. For example, when my kindergartener brings home copied Reading A-Z books, he knows not to read the reading level information on the front cover. My fourth graders, however, sometimes take this screening too far, skipping over headings and captions that carry information.

Teaching about text features requires that students understand what features are. Once this is done, students can start looking for features in text--and thinking about what they mean. As I teach this, I try to move beyond just identifying the text features to helping students understand how to use text features. Here are some of my big teaching points.

Text features can look different across texts
One of the difficulties for students is that text features can look very different in different texts. So I pulled together a large selection of nonfiction from the bookroom. Together, we looked at the different parts. How is the title written? What does this tell us about the text?

What do headings look like? We discovered headings that are in bold print, headings in italic print, headings that are larger than the main text, headings that are written in different colors, and so forth. But they are all examples of headings. Kids need to see this variety in order to cement the idea of the heading in their minds.

Text features are choices made by the author and publisher
Why do authors use text features? At first, students had trouble with this question. (They seemed to believe that books appear from nowhere in a puff of air.) But then we started having an interesting discussion about why authors might choose some text features over others. The book The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal is decorated with illustrations, not photographs--why? Some books have questions for headings. How is this helpful to the reader? Why might the publisher of a book choose to have many photographs?

Text features can be helpful--or not
After a day of looking through the books, students chose one to read with a partner. It was interesting to hear their conversations. "Mrs. Kissner, this one has made us ask a lot of questions, but it doesn't really have any answers," one student said. He was right--the book was one of the high-interest/low readability books that looks glitzy and exciting on the outside, but doesn't have much information.

Another student noticed the cartoon pictures that decorated the margins of a different book. "It's like they're using fiction to tell us nonfiction," she said. She and her partner decided they didn't like the combination of cartoons and nonfiction.

Text features serve different purposes
Text features have many different functions in text. They can highlight main ideas, show important details, or explain information. When students think about the jobs that the text features are doing, they can use the text features to help them understand the text.

After we looked at all of the different books, students had the chance to choose one to read on their own or with a partner. The Text Features page below helped to give a structure to their reading.

Text features

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Writing Thank-You Notes

2011-01-02T09:02:00.000-05:00

Thank-you notes are one of my least favorite writing genres. I always struggle with expressing my true appreciation in a way that does not sound stiff and over-formal. It's not surprising, then, that I often put off this rhetorical chore.

But thank-you letters are an important genre for students to learn. Even as other forms of writing become less formal, thank-you letters are still required in many situations. I decided that a quick dip into thank-you notes would make a nice transition back to school from the holiday break.

But, given my own problems with the genre, I decided to do some research before I created the assignment. Why are letters put together as they are? How is the form changing?

I did some searching and found a treasure trove of old letters--the Paston letters, from five hundred years ago. These letters are from various members of a gentry family in England. Margaret Paston, even though she couldn't physically write, still composed many letters to others in her busy household, sharing news, asking questions, taking care of business. Letters from her children had much in common with what children ask of parents today. They are fascinating to read.

After reading some of these letters, and commentary about them, I knew that I had to share these interesting details with students. I wrote a short article to explain to students how these old letters are similar to the letters of today, and how they are different. My fourth graders wouldn't get very far with the irregular spelling and archaic language of the letters, but I included some snippets of the texts so that they would get a feel for what this kind of writing sounded like.

I didn't stop there. As I was reading the Paston letters, I started thinking about levels of formality in writing. When students write thank-you letters, getting the right tone is essential. Tone is easy for kids to hear in speaking, but harder for them to notice in writing. The correct tone for a thank-you letter to Grandma is going to be different from the tone to use as a thank-you for an interview. To help students start to notice this, I wrote a few example letters using appropriate and inappropriate tones. By the time I was done, I had an entire mini-unit with a writing checklist, compare and contrast article, examples for students to rate, and a rubric.

I posted the entire unit at TeachersPayTeachers:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thank-You-Letter-Unit

Paths to Paraphrasing

2010-12-20T19:42:00.000-05:00

Last week, as part of our nonfiction study, we looked at how to paraphrase sentences. Paraphrasing is the process of putting ideas from the text into your own words. It's an important skill, one that is used across the content areas as students write summaries, take notes, and answer questions about text.

But teaching paraphrasing is tough! In order to paraphrase, readers need to have two basic skills:

Being able to replace words with synonyms-This means that readers need to have a wide range of vocabulary. When paraphrasing nonfiction, readers especially need to understand general academic vocabulary.

Being able to rearrange sentences-Readers need to be able to change the order of sentences and ideas.

Both of these are hard for fourth graders. Our first step is to look at how we can rearrange sentences. I showed students a sentence with an underlined prepositional phrase.

At the South Pole, no plants can grow.

We looked at how we could move the prepositional phrase around the sentence. Then we tried one that was a little longer:

The seas around Antarctica are filled with tiny plants called phytoplankton.

Of course, just moving around a prepositional phrase isn't paraphrasing. So then we looked at how we could replace words with synonyms:

The United States operates three research stations in Antarctica.

What words could we use to replace the word "operates"? Students came up with several that work--runs, keeps, has. Then we looked at what words we couldn't change in the sentence, like research stations. This phrase has a very specific meaning with no real synonyms. This also highlights the role of background knowledge in paraphrasing. When kids have well-developed knowledge about the topic, they have a better idea of what can be replaced and what needs to be kept.

Finally, kids tried to put it all together to paraphrase a few sentences. It takes some time to teach, but students respond well to the instruction. When we work on summarizing after the holiday break, our task will be much easier.

Looking for help with paraphrasing? Here are some ideas:

1. Work with students to develop their academic vocabulary. The Academic Word List by Averil Coxhead is a great resource for this.

2. Show students how to move ideas around in sentences. This could fit in during writing instruction or even handwriting time.

3. Work with sentences that relate to content. Kids need to have some background knowledge about the topic in order to paraphrase successfully. In fact, when readers are having trouble paraphrasing, that's a good indicator that comprehension just isn't happening!

Paraphrasing Powerpoint

Cause and Effect Text Structure

2010-12-15T19:55:00.000-05:00

In the text structure of cause and effect, an author explains one or more causes, and then explains one or more effects. Young readers can have many different problems with this structure.

The underlying thinking: Kids have many problems with understanding causality. If students are having trouble finding causes and effects in real life, they will also have trouble with causes and effects in text.

Multiple causes, multiple effects: Depending on the topic, there can be multiple causes and multiple effects. Readers need to be flexible in their thinking as they read.

Tricky graphic organizers: If you are teaching students to map out ideas on a graphic organizer, cause and effect may lead to some problems. You may need to customize a graphic organizer for a text, matching the number of boxes to the number of causes and effects. Or you may want to have students draw their own depending on the text. If you use a generic organizer, be ready to tell students, "You don't have to fill in all the boxes" or "You may need to add some boxes"--over and over and over again.

Changing order: In real life, causes come before effects. But authors sometimes start a paragraph with an effect. For example, in Extreme Animals, author Nicola Davies often describes the inhospitable environment that an animal can live in--the effect--and then explains the adaptations that the animal has to live there--the causes. The cause is that the animal has many adaptations; the effect is that the animal can survive.

Picture Book for Teaching Cause and Effect
Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems

Here is a great little book that uses a clear cause and effect text structure. On each spread, the author describes an invasive species, explains how it arrived in the new habitat, and outlines the effects of the invader. Working in groups or at a center, students could map out the causes and effects on each spread.

Reading Nonfiction: Dealing with Faulty Prior Knowledge

2010-12-12T20:28:00.000-05:00

Reading about Antarctica creates the perfect situation to help students learn more about how to change their prior knowledge. In general, readers don't like to change their ideas. With students, this means that they often cling to faulty prior knowledge.

Kids have many faulty ideas about Antarctica. Most of them think that polar bears do eat penguins, that lots of snow falls in Antarctica, and that there's no need for sunglasses or sunscreen. How do I help them to change these ideas while reading nonfiction?

Back when I was doing research for The Forest and the Trees, I came across the work of Graham Nuthall. He was an amazing researcher, taking hours of classroom footage, coding it, and interviewing students weeks and months later to find out what they remembered and why. In a 1999 article, he explained the kinds of activities that students need to engage in to make rich connections:

"This evidence suggests that tasks need to be set up that model and give students practice in activities that involve making connections between related pieces of information and identifying implications and potential differences and contradictions. As students practice these activities and become expert in the habits of mind involved in the activities, these habits become internalized and an unconscious but automatic part of the ways their minds deal with new experiences." (Nuthall 1999)

So I can't just sit the kids down and say, "Hey, kids. Guess what? Polar bears don't eat penguins." Instead, I need to build situations that create an internal mismatch in students' schemas, so that they experience the feeling of resolving this conflict. Our Antarctica readings are perfect for this.

Is it working? Listen to what a student said on Friday: "I know that there aren't any plants at the South Pole. And if there are no plants, there can't be any animals, right? So why is there a research station there? What would they study*?"

This student was putting together related bits of information and identifying the conflict. What great thinking! This is the payoff from reading multiple texts on the same topic--kids have the time and space to think about what fits, and what doesn't.

*We'll be reading about the South Pole this week. While there aren't any animals, there is some interesting research...

Teaching Nonfiction: Antarctica

2010-12-10T20:02:00.000-05:00

As the cold winds begin to howl, I like to bring an assortment of texts about Antarctica into the classroom. Antarctica is a great fit for fourth grade for several reasons:

Shared knowledge building-My students don't have much prior knowledge about Antarctica. As we learn about it, then, we can experience the feeling of adding to our schemas together. It's fascinating to see how kids pick up on new words and share their experiences. For example, the word "skuas" came up in two different texts. A skua is a kind of bird that lives in Antarctica, but most students had never heard of it before. When one student found a picture of a skua in a book, the others were eager to see it--I overhead one say, "Oh! A skua is a bird!"

As we read multiple texts, then, we all can experience adding to what we know. Students filled out an anticipation guide at the beginning of the unit. Then, after each text, we go back to see if our thinking has changed. Sometimes, what we find is surprising, like the fact that visitors to Antarctica need to wear sunglasses and sunscreen!

Interesting texts-In the Toolkit Texts from Heinemann, there is a nice nonfiction first-person piece about doing research at Palmer Station, as well as a map of Antarctica. (By the way, the map is available as a free sample on the website.) These texts started my unit. Since then, I've found additional books. Jennifer Owings Dewey's Four Months at the Bottom of the World is a nice example of personal journal text, while the Magic Treehouse Penguins and Antarctica book gives kids a thorough introduction to the continent.

Online resources-This blog is documenting the LTER Cruise that is about to begin for the new season. LTER means Long-Term Ecological Research, and these scientists return to the same places each year to see how things have changed. At this link, you can find other resources. And there are plenty of videos as well. When I have written to researchers with questions, they have responded...how neat!

Penguins and other cool animals- My students are fascinated by penguins each year. They like to pore over the encyclopedia of penguins that I check out of the local library, look at the names of the different types, and find out where they live. Not all penguins live in Antarctica, which is surprising for many of the students.

Antarctica is also home to some interesting invertebrates, like sea spiders and carnivorous sponges. (My students this year are especially intrigued by the carnivorous sponges. One said, "That's like my worst nightmare come true! A meat-eating sponge!")

My interest-When I started working with this topic, I knew very little about it. This helps to keep me interested! I admit to following the research season to try to learn more each year. I've learned all about the IceCube project at the South Pole and figured out how to tell the different kinds of penguins apart. This year, I want to try more of the resources from PolarTREC.

No matter what the topic, reading a series of interconnected texts helps students to make sense of nonfiction. Next week, kids are eager to read more about Antarctica--and I'm eager to help them!

Picture Books for Teaching Text Structure

2010-12-09T22:37:00.000-05:00

Text structure picture books

View more documents from Emily Kissner.

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a project to put together a list of books to use for teaching text structures. The list is finally finished! I've posted the document on Slideshare.

One of the hardest parts was finding books that have a common theme. After all, text structure is linked to content. The structure that an author chooses is connected to what ideas the author wants to convey. Using a scattered array of books, then, might not help students to see how ideas connect across texts.

But texts with similar topics can help to bridge the different text structures, and even help students consider similarities of texts within a structure. Two of my favorites for this are A Puffin's Year by Katherine Zecca and Nights of the Pufflings by Bruce McMillan. Both are organized in chronological order, and both detail how puffins come ashore to lay their eggs and raise their pufflings. However, each book explains the steps differently, and Nights of the Pufflings adds a slight wrinkle of problem and solution. Teaching the two of these books together can yield great results in both content and structure. (Plus, pufflings are really cute!)

Text Structure: Description

2010-12-07T20:26:00.001-05:00

The text structure of description can go by various names. Some resources call it description; others call it statement and support; still others call it main idea/detail. Whatever it is called, this text structure is based on making a statement, and then supporting it with details.

Example:

The buttonbush is a plant that can be found along many rivers and streams. Although it can reach 15 feet tall, it usually only grows a few feet. Its flowers, about the size of a ping-pong ball, bloom through the summer. The flowers are replaced by brown, ball-like fruits in the autumn.

In the past, I've found description to be the easiest text structure to find,whether in textbooks, trade books, or magazines. One especially nice series is published by Peachtree. The latest one is About Raptors.

About Raptors
written by Cathryn Sill
illustrated by John Sill
Peachtree Publishing

All of the books in this series are written in a simple style. Each page contains only one sentence. There are about three main ideas in each book, supported by details. This book is an easy read, but the pictures and specific information make it worthwhile for read alouds even up through sixth grade. If you're looking for a place to start with description, these books would be a strong choice.

Problem/Solution Text Structure: When the Wolves Returned

2010-12-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

While it's been tough to find good books that sustain the compare and contrast text structure, I've found some great problem and solution books. One that is easily available is the title When the Wolves Returned.

Why do I like this book? Like many recent nonfiction books, it's written on two levels. Simple text is included in white boxes, while the author goes into more detail in a longer paragraph. This two level readability makes it a good fit for most classrooms.

I also like the way that the author interweaves causal relationships within the problem/solution structure. This is the way that text usually works. Problems don't just appear overnight; they have causes. The relationship between the causes and effects--and how they fit with the problem and solution--are very clear in this book.

The first half of the book explains how wolves were eliminated from Yellowstone, and the effects of this elimination. This is the problem. Then, in the second half of the book, the author describes how bringing back the wolves has been a solution to the problem. Of course, to show how the return of the wolves is a solution, the author needs to explain the effects of the wolves' return.

I can see this book working well as an introduction to the text structure of problem and solution. Even better, the endpages show an interconnected web of animal photos, with a caption inviting the reader to recall the effects that the wolves' return has had on each species. Pretty neat!

Teaching Main Ideas

2010-11-27T22:43:00.000-05:00

In a way, it was the prospect of teaching students how to find main ideas that first led me to researching journal articles. It was 2000, I was teaching reading for the first time, and I realized that I didn't know enough about what happens when reader meets text. All I could remember were my own experiences with reading the SRA cards as a student and learning how to make good guesses about main ideas. And that wasn't enough to help the sixth and seventh graders I was facing each day.

In the years since, I've learned a great deal about readers and main ideas. But even though I have read the journal articles, worked with hundreds of students, and even written chapters about finding main ideas, each year is still a challenge. Because, in the end, finding main ideas is not about what I know in my head, but about what I can help my readers to experience and learn.

Here are some of the big ideas that I keep in mind as I plan for my classroom:

Start with topics
The topic of a paragraph is the word or phrase to which all of the other ideas refer. Even though I thought that sixth and seventh graders could find the topics of a text with ease, I learned that this was not always the case. Sometimes, readers will circle the most concrete or tangible idea, not necessarily the one that is the topic. If the topic is more abstract--like watersheds, or succession, or forms of government--students will often fail to identify it.

Find paragraphs with the same topic, but different main ideas
When students confuse topic with main idea, this is the best way to show them that there is a real difference. You can do this with two opinion paragraphs that state vastly different opinions, or simply two paragraphs that communicate information about the same topic in different ways. Like the discrepant event in science (an activity that forces students to reconsider their prior knowledge), looking at these two paragraphs can help students to rethink the rules they've formed for what a main idea can be.

The first sentence is not always the topic sentence
My work with the SRA reading packets, back in my student days, taught me one important rule--the first sentence is usually the topic sentence. Right? Well, in real text, this is not always the case. Newer digital texts often have main ideas partially stated in headings (like this list you're reading right now), stated at the end, or even left unstated. Make sure that your examples reflect the real-life world of text, even bad text.

Finding main ideas is hard!
Young readers often read at the "local" level in a text, relating each sentence to the one before it and after it. Older readers often adopt a more global reading habit. Main idea is often a tough concept for third, fourth, fifth, and even sixth graders. As text becomes more complex, so do the main ideas, and a reader's task is even more difficult. Combine this with the fact that there is a great deal of poorly written, incoherent text floating around, and it's easy to see why readers have problems.

While I was gathering together items for my own unit on main ideas, about to begin next week, I put together this collection of texts, worksheets, and Powerpoints.

Text Structure: Compare and Contrast

2010-11-25T09:20:00.000-05:00

As part of a project for a children's literature class, I'm working on compiling a list of high quality picture books that show different text structures. But I've run into a problem with one particular structure--compare and contrast.

Many of the compare and contrast books that I've tracked down have been ones comparing similar animals. What's the Difference Between an Alligator and a Crocodile? is a good example of this kind of book.The author tells about alligators and crocodiles, how they are similar, and how they are different. What's the Difference Between a Frog and a Toad?, by the same publisher, approaches the topic in the same way. (A problem with the frog and toad book, however, is that toads really are frogs, in a technical sense, and the author throws this idea into the middle of the text in a somewhat confusing way.)

Which--okay, it is useful to see how these animals are similar and different. But aside from these, there are not many other books that exclusively use the text structure of compare and contrast. Why not?

I think it's because compare and contrast is a difficult structure to maintain over a whole text. In the real world of text, a reader is much more likely to see compare and contrast used in small amounts throughout a longer text. In a book about habitat loss, for example, a writer might use a bit of compare and contrast to show how a forest has changed over time. In a book about an invention, an author might compare and contrast previous attempts to solve a problem. In both of these situations, the compare and contrast text would help to explain the bigger point or structure of the text.

One nice example of this is in the book Sea Soup: Phytoplankton by Mary Cerullo.The overall structure of the text is a question and answer format. However, within the answers, the author uses the text structure that fits the information. An answer to the question "Are they plants or are they animals?" leads to a section in which phytoplankton is compared with plants and animals. The comparison is somewhat implicit, signaled by the sentence, "Some phytoplankton behave like plants, some like animals, and some like both." This is the case with a great deal of real-life compare and contrast text--although we teach students to look for compare and contrast cue words, many authors use a more implicit style.

What does this mean for classroom instruction? Well, I definitely will be checking out my library's copy of What's the Difference...? when I am working on the compare and contrast text structure. But I will also help students to find examples of this structure in longer texts, and to look for less obvious examples of compare and contrast.

Writing a Summary of Nonfiction: Powerpoint

2010-11-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

Helping kids to summarize nonfiction is hard. Not only do kids have to read and understand the text, but they also have to figure out what's important, how to put ideas in their own words, and how to organize the summary. No wonder kids have so much trouble!

This Powerpoint can give you a place to start. (Some people watch late-night television when they're up in the middle of the night with a cold; I write Powerpoints!) It's short enough to do in just one class period, and can be either an introduction or a review. This slideshow presents four rules for summarizing, explains them, and models how to put them into practice with a short text.

And there are lots of pictures of butterflies, too.