Hands-On Experiences and Reading Comprehension: Building Motivation

    We all know those readers: the ones who voraciously devour every book, who love finding new details about the topics that they love, who read and read and read.
    As a classroom teacher, it's easy for me to identify these students and build a classroom to support them. I love to use flexible assignments so students don't have to waste their time with busywork; I build a wide classroom library with texts on many topics; I make time in the classroom for students to share their lives beyond school.
    But I don't want to stop there! I want to turn every reader into a motivated reader. This is more easily said than done, however. How do we create engaged readers?

Stream Study Flip-Flop
    This fall I took students on a field trip that included a stream study. In previous years, I had made sure that students were well prepared for the stream study ahead of time. We read texts about the biotic index, we practiced identifying stream creatures, and even did practice inventories.
    What made this year different? I focused a bit more on watersheds at the outset, which meant that the stream study readings would have to take place after the field trip. I was even a little annoyed at myself at my poor timing when I realized this!
    When students jumped into the text after the field trip, however, I realized that something amazing had happened. I used a text from my Problem and Solution Text Structure packet called "The Biotic Index."
     In past years, students have had trouble moving beyond the topic of the text (macroinvertebrates) to be able to think about the structure of the text. This time, though, they showed far deeper comprehension. As I walked around the room to listen in on their partner discussions and see their graphic organizers I could see evidence of stronger connections and more effective analysis. What was happening?

Stimulating Tasks

As I thought about my observations over the next few days, I remembered a line of research into stimulating tasks. I found these journal articles while researching my details book (The Forest and the Trees: Helping Readers Identify Important Details in Texts and Tests, which was so much fun to write but which only 2 people have ever read.)  Shortly after I finished the book, the curriculum pendulum shifted to common core, and discussions of reading motivation faded into the background as everyone clamored to talk about text complexity and textual analysis.
    The article in question, "Influences of Stimulating Tasks on Reading Motivation and Comprehension" discusses how building situational interest in students can improve their reading comprehension by building motivation for reading. The process described in the article turns around traditional classroom practices by putting the stimulating task before the reading experiences. In this arrangement, the hands-on activity (like dissecting owl pellets) happens before the students read. What happens next is a cascade of good things: kids are interested in the topic, so they read more; as they read more, they are motivated to unlock the meaning of the text; as they unlock the meaning of one text, they gain the keys to unlock more. The authors of the article put it best:

 
    They have a sobering picture for students who don't get to experience a classroom with opportunities for situational interest: "Likewise, students who have fewer experiences of situational interest in reading will have fewer opportunities for experiencing competence in gaining valued information, fewer occasions for directing their learning, and fewer interactions with peers."

    So my mistiming of the macroinvertebrate readings turned out to be positive...especially because it led me back to a line of research and thinking that I had half-forgotten. It's helped me to realize that the goal of creating engaged readers is not so elusive after all. When I feel pressure to conform and just assign the worksheets like everyone else, it's journal articles like these that keep me planning the crazy field trips and buying the stacks of books at the used bookstore.

Exploring Author's Point of View in Expository Text

   
Identifying Point of View
    I think that many teachers have struggled over the past few years to expand their teaching of "point of view" beyond the traditional first and third person narratives and into identifying an author's perspective. There is a gradient of expository texts, from objective texts in which the author's point of view is faint and difficult to hear, to biased texts dripping with the author's opinions. As I explained to my students, most texts exist in a middle territory in which the generalizations and main ideas of the text do most of the work of conveying the author's point of view.

   As we started to identify point of view, I found that my students needed the academic language necessary for this task. I designed this resource to give students help as they work on defending their claims about the author's point of view.

Link to Google Doc



Supporting Point of View
    At this point in the year, many of my sixth graders are writing lengthy text quotes as evidence for their claims. I adapted a chart from the EngageNY materials to help them find the best evidence for their assertions. In the photo you can see the chart we filled out together based on the "Columbian Exposition" text from my Paraphrasing and Summarizing materials over on TpT.

     This chart worked wonderfully with students, especially the "Word Choice" column. Even students who struggle with identifying the point of view can find the author's words that carry the point of view. A nice way to mix it up is also to show students text evidence and have them infer the author's point of view conveyed by that text evidence.

    Link to Author's Point of View chart


 
    Helping students to listen for author's point of view in expository text is important! What successes have you had?

Meaningful Multiple Choice

Answering multiple choice questions doesn't have to be drudgery! In fact, multiple choice questions can have a place in an engaging ELA classroom. Getting kids to talk more about multiple choice questions helps them to move beyond "right/wrong" thinking and into looking more deeply at the text.

Reflect on the process of answering. Which questions were hardest? Easiest?
This is a great place to begin. I like to have students put a star beside the one that they think would be hardest, and a circle by the one that they think is easiest. Now here's the interesting part: Why? Listening to students talk about their choices reveals so much about their thinking.

Working in groups to answer questions
This works best with the really tough multiple choice questions, and when students feel comfortable with each other. As my students did this last week, I enjoyed circulating to listen in on conversations. In one group I heard a student timidly offer a (correct) answer, only to be overruled by the group. I called the student aside about a seemingly unrelated issue--and then I said, "You were right for #1! Why didn't you stand up for your answer?" It was neat to watch how the student returned to the group and re-started the conversation!

Some kids hated the questions in the item sampler, and it was easy to see why. Listening to them grumble good-naturedly about the wording of the questions was kind of fun for me.

Have students write their own multiple choice questions to reflect deep thinking about the text
The second part of this is the most important, because it is what provokes discussion. What is "deep thinking"? And how can we craft questions to reflect it?

In last week's groups, this led to some conversations about "tricky" versus "deep". The students were reading a version of Stone Soup from the PSSA Sixth Grade ELA Sampler. The man in the story asked the woman for several different food items. A question that presents lists of these items and asks students to choose the correct list would be tricky...but would it be deep? For kids, this was a satisfying and purposeful conversation as they grappled with where such an answer would be found. (Interestingly, the argument centered on how a reader would have to scan the text to find the information in question.)

Summarizing Nonfiction...Again and Again and Again

It's been nine years since I wrote a book about summarizing, and I keep feeling like I learn more and more. This year, as I've moved back into sixth grade, I decided to start the year with frequent summarizing tasks. I'm teaching summarizing, but I feel like I'm the one who is learning lessons!

This year's summaries are based on a set of four expository texts about water. Each text has a similar structure and text features. My goal was to build on repeated experiences and frequent feedback to level up my students' summarizing skills.

Here are some of the things that I have learned (and re-learned!) so far this year.

Provide limited space for the summary

    Conscientious sixth graders want to do well! In many cases, this means that they write summaries that are almost as long as the original text. There are two different profiles for the writer of the long-winded summary. On the one hand, you'll see kids who are proficient readers and have a large working memory produce these summaries. They just have a big capacity for details, and they understand everything in the text. On the other hand, some kids who are struggling but conscientious will create these summaries. They're not sure of which details are most important, but they want to please the teacher and so they put them all in.
    My problem when I get these summaries? I'm too soft-hearted! These kids have obviously worked hard, and at the start of the year it's tough for me to hand them back for the kids to redo.
    When I provide limited space for the summary, though, I let the lines do the heavy lifting. "Make sure your summary fits in the space," I say, and when kids ask for extra paper, I give them a small sticky note.
    How much space should you provide? A good rule of thumb is to think about how much room it would take to write a sentence for each paragraph, and then add 3 or 4 more. This gives kids with big handwriting enough room to write a good summary without going overboard.

Teach students to chunk the summary process
    Some students look at the article and think, "I can never summarize that!" In many texts, though, kids can use the headings to guide them through. This is especially helpful for chunking a summarizing assignment for students with learning disabilities. "Don't worry about the whole thing today," I tell students. "Let's just do this first chunk."
    This also helps students who tend to summarize in a knowledge-telling fashion. These students write everything they remember about the text, in the order in which they remember it. A summary written like this tends to sound like a list of random facts instead of an organized summary. By reminding students to go back to the text, you can give them an anchor for their thoughts.

Beware the "about" summary

    Around about the third summary I start to see the topic-based summaries creeping in. Students are becoming more efficient with their summarizing and decide to take a shortcut.
    These are actually signs of good progress. Usually, I end up writing about twenty times: "Don't say what the article was about--actually include the information!" Once kids see the difference, they realize that the 'about' summary is quite empty of actual facts.

Look for growth over the long haul
    The development of summarizing skill is a long process. As readers grapple with more and more complex texts, they need to see how they can wrestle ideas to the page to write a summary. Students won't necessarily become strong summarizers after one lesson, or two, or even three. However, the good news is that repeated summarizing can build comprehension as well. I like to think of teaching summarizing as test-prep I can live with!

Scaffolding Independent Research

This year, I've been working with providing more time for independent research. This research has grown from the center explorations of early in the year, and then expanded into contracts and experiments.

I really love it. There are no grades for these explorations; students are doing them because they really like learning. Seeing what students create and listening to their conversations is a daily affirmation, a reminder to me to stay the course in the face of standardized testing.

Timing
I start each reading class with 15-20 minutes of independent reading time. On several days out of the cycle (mostly based on when I can get the mobile computer lab), this time can also be used for independent research. 

This has worked out fairly well. At first, about half of the students chose not to do any independent research, and used the time for reading. Excellent! As they have seen their classmates' presentations, many students have chosen to move into their own projects. Students who work quickly have gone through two, three, and even four contracts, sometimes taking a break for additional reading time in between projects.

Start with research notebooks

These are very simple--just large pieces of construction paper folded over about 5 sheets of notebook paper. Each page is a sub-topic within the student's research. It takes about 5 minutes to talk to students about how to set this up.

And here is the beautiful part...the students then teach each other. A student who researched golden-bellied mangabeys taught a student researching narwhals about what topics to use: "Well, you can think about where they live, and what they eat, and how they raise their young."

Technology lessons
As with the research notebooks, I don't teach each student individually! This is why it works out so wonderfully to have staggered entry into independent research. I taught the students in the first groups, and then they took on the role of teaching each other. Sometimes there is some good-natured squabbling: "You want me to show you how to get pictures again? I just showed you yesterday!" Even better, students learn multiple ways of doing the same thing, from keyboard shortcuts to using Finder.

Presentation forms
Lots of different kinds of presentations have been going on, from posters to Keynote presentations to plays. (Fourth graders love making Keynote presentations!) Some students have written out essays by hands, imitating the formal style that we are learning in writing class. Words like introduction and conclusion are finding their way into their everyday conversations.

Feedback
I use Learning Notes to provide feedback for students. Each day between 1-3 students present.
During their presentations, I write a narrative to explain what the student accomplished, interpret their accomplishments, and suggest next steps. 

"Next I'm going to..."
Kids are already planning out their ideas for their next contract, and the next. Some students are collaborating together, which is wonderful to watch. The biggest problem is that they do grumble a bit when independent work time is over and the lesson for the day begins...

...which is a pretty positive outcome.

You must have a really small class
Not at all! I have 30 students in my first class. In my second reading class, which I co-teach with the ESL teacher, I have 27. In fact, I find independent research easier to manage and use for targeting individual skills than guided reading. (But that's a post for a different day.)

Supporting character traits

If it's September, I must be teaching about story elements. This week, we have been taking a careful look at character traits. I had to do some quick edits to the classroom version of my Character Traits Powerpoint to delete the pictures of my son--after all, I can't embarrass him by having him on the screen during a lesson!

Traits vs. Emotions
One of the big lessons of fourth grade is getting students to see the differences between traits and emotions. As I was planning for the week of teaching, I was disheartened to see how much misinformation is floating around regarding character traits. A YouTube video started with the example of happy as a character trait. A case could be made that a character who is always cheerful is happy. However, most students apply this word as a fleeting emotion. It muddies the waters to start with such an example! As I teach traits, I try to make sure that students see that character traits are generally stable and unchanging. While emotions come and go, traits usually stay the same. (In stories for children, exceptions to this are highly explicit in how the character's traits change, and make the change in trait a huge factor in the story.)

Finding Traits
I started talking about traits about a week before we really worked with them in details. During our read-aloud, we talked about the character traits that we could apply to the main characters in the books. (With one class, I'm reading Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children; with the other, I'm reading The Talented Clementine.)

During each reading session, a student sits in the "place of honor" beside the large picture of the character and records the character traits that we develop during the reading. As you can see, Sparkler is clever, brave, curious, and protective. These were traits that students already knew and suggested on their own.

Collecting Textual Evidence to Support Traits
After our preliminary readings to test the waters, I was ready to introduce character traits more formally. I used my (edited) version of the PowerPoint to introduce traits and supporting traits with examples. I gave students a list of character traits. Then, we read more about Sparkler in the Tollins book. I modeled how to use this simple chart to record examples of traits and actions.

Writing Justification
Notice how this has the start of textual support, but is missing a key element: the rule, or the justification. The rule goes beyond the textual support to show how the text detail supports the inference. In the case of Sparkler, we had this information:

-Sparkler copied down every word and picture from the human medical books
-This shows that he is persistent

In our justification, we have to show how the two pieces of information go together.
Rule or justification: Someone who is persistent works hard and doesn't give up. Copying the books was hard work for Sparkler, but he didn't give up.

I showed students the response frame that includes a place for the character trait, character actions or word, and justification. After I introduced the task, I differentiated by student choice. Students who were ready to work on their own could go work quietly wherever they wanted in the room, while students who still needed some help could stay at the front with me. This was a very productive time for students.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead
This process requires a level of thinking that is tough for fourth graders! However, breaking the process down into the three different tasks was very helpful. It was also helpful to begin this tough level of thinking with shared, engaging text. Students could move through working with evidence, trait, and justification. While I would love to say that everyone got it perfectly after just one attempt, anyone who has actually been in a classroom knows that it is a long process. But it is a fruitful one--teaching students how to justify their text evidence in this particular case is easily transferable to other situations.

Considering Reading Homework

I've always had mixed feelings about homework, but over the last few years I've gotten into a workable groove. In fact, reading homework has solved some thorny problems in my classroom.

For several years, I didn't give any reading homework at all. But parents actually asked me for something more. "I can say to go and read as much as I like, but when you give homework, he takes it seriously," a parent told me. I heard the same kinds of comments over the next few years--that many students liked a homework routine, and enjoyed doing something that connected home and school. As my own children started school, I started to see value in a meaningful, well-planned homework routine.

So I created a weekly homework assignment for students. I thought, "What do I want this to be?" and made a set of materials that combine fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary with engaging reading selections. At first I scrounged in best reading-teacher fashion to find texts from a variety of sources. This works in the short-term, but it was hard to find enough texts to be a long-term solution. So I commissioned myself to write my own. (The author side of me: "What? Four texts per month for nine months? That is 36 texts!" The teacher side of me: "Yup. Get writing.")

As I created the homework assignments, these were my guiding questions.

Does the homework provide some element of choice?
I love having choices! On my homework assignment, I make a table of nine options for independent reading each week. Kids could just read in their independent reading book each night, but there are also possibilities for writing, reading picture books aloud, or researching topics. (Kids especially love the "Follow directions to make something" option--some hit the recipe books and spend time cooking in the kitchen!)

Is there flexibility for varied schedules?
I strongly believe that fourth graders shouldn't have more than 1 hour of homework per night (if that). I structure the reading assignment so that kids can do it over several nights. I find a Monday-Monday routine to be very family-friendly.

Can students do the assignment with a minimum of support?
Several years ago I received an email from a parent of a student several states away. This child had homework that was so taxing that the parent was emailing an unknown teacher (me) for help! I certainly don't want to put anyone in this situation, so I try to make the assignments straightforward. While individual questions may be difficult for students, I make it clear that it's no big deal--just do your best! Of course I never grade homework. 

Can I provide effective support for students in the classroom?
While many of the parents of students are wonderfully supportive, there are some students who get little home support. If this homework is worth doing, then I need to make sure that everyone does it--even those students who don't get homework done at home. I use arrival time, dismissal time, and other odd moments in the day to help students who have trouble completing assignments. Sometimes it's as simple as asking a sixth grade tutor to come and help a student each afternoon. For other students, I make sure that I listen in and offer support.

When an extra adult has time to volunteer in the classroom, helping students with the weekly packet is a perfect activity. It requires very little explanation from me and the kids are thrilled to get some more individual attention.

Often, working on reading homework is offered as a choice during quiet moments or when other activities are finished. Some students take advantage of this and choose to work on the homework with other students in the room, turning it into a social reading activity--which is great! I do have some students who like to do the work at home--"My mom does it with at night" or "I think my dad will like this text, so I'm going to read it to him."

Is this homework part of classroom instruction?
I think every teacher has assigned homework that then gets put aside, never to see the light of day. But this should be a rare occurrence! I've decided to dedicate Mondays to working with the homework texts, both in discussing last week's work and introducing a new passage.

This is a big time commitment, but I feel that it is worthwhile. Remember how I said that the homework solves a problem? In my case, the problem is the expository/narrative/drama/poetry problem. We might be studying narratives for two months, but I still want students to be exposed to other kinds of text. With the weekly passages, we can take little side trips to other kinds of text even while in the middle of a bigger unit. Kids especially enjoy the procedural passages...the "Fairy Bread" passage was listed as one of the highlights that students remembered at the end of the year.

I'm amazed at how often connections come up between homework passages and what we happen to be studying in class each week. At first I thought, "Oh! Lucky coincidence!", but now I know that there are connections everywhere. My weekly packets include five vocabulary words, many from my master word list. These words really pop up all around us!

A thoughtful plan
Whatever you decide to do with homework, it's important to consider your school and your community. What can you handle? What can your students handle? By thinking about these questions, and the questions above, you can create a homework routine that works well for everyone.

The packets
Several users are saying that they use them for small group instruction instead of homework--a great idea! Writing 36 unique texts that didn't all sound the same was quite a challenge, but was very rewarding throughout the year.

September Reading Homework
My favorite part of this packet is the procedural text--caramel apple floats are totally delicious! Also included is a folktale, an informational text, and a persuasive text. These are so helpful for introducing different kinds of text early in the year.

October Reading Homework
In October, I added the weekly open-ended responses to our routine. This was so important! This month's texts include an informational text about pumpkins, a narrative, an interview with a woolly bear caterpillar, and a text explaining idioms, adages, and puns. Can you guess which one the students liked best?

November Reading Homework
November includes an informational text about Veterans Day, two fables, and a text about Pilgrims. The fables were fun to read and discuss with students.

December Reading Homework
In December, I added "Focus on Complex Text"--an additional lesson to go along with each passage. Students were fascinated by the text about Pearl Harbor, and also liked the script.

January Reading Homework
This packet includes a poem, a procedural text about fairy bread, and two informational passages. Of course the fairy bread was the biggest hit from this month!

February Reading Homework
"Can we learn more about Greek myths?" was the question in my classroom, so I wrote "Theseus and the Minotaur" for them. (Wow, that is a tough myth to tell in one page and keep appropriate for elementary students!)

March Reading Homework
By March I had spring on the mind! The two frog poems in this packet were perfect to introduce our spring peeper investigation. Students also enjoyed debating the merits of Daylight Savings Time and learning about the vernal equinox.

April Reading Homework
At some point I learned that many of my students were not familiar with great blue herons, which are common in our area. I used the interview format to write about great blue herons for this month's texts. Also included is an informational text, a poem, and an introduction to persuasive text.

May Reading Homework
"We want more food texts!" the students said, so I wrote "Some More S'mores, Please!" and then we made the indoor s'mores in the classroom. How awesome! Later, while we read "Androcles and the Lion", we acted it out in class. Again, and again, and again, with different students taking different roles.

Paperless homework?
Several of these assignments are available on Frolyc as well! Keep checking as I'll be adding more over the next few weeks. If students have iPads at home, they can read the texts and do some of the activities on the iPad. Of course, these texts would also work for in-class instruction with school iPads.

-Adages, Idioms, and Puns (November)
-Daylight Savings Time (March)
-Happy Australia Day! (January)
-Remember Pearl Harbor (December) Note: This includes some more challenging questions than the paper homework activity, so it is listed as a grade 6. I have so much trouble pinning things down to a grade level because it really depends on the level of support that readers will get and the background knowledge they have!

Teaching Paraphrasing

Waaayyy long ago when I taught seventh grade, I had a folder in my filing cabinet called "Paraphrasing". I had a few worksheets in the folder, things that I would use to try to teach paraphrasing, but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't really see the purpose.

Now, of course, I realize that teaching paraphrasing is at the heart of all learning. To paraphrase is to put someone else's ideas into your own words--which is what we do all the time when we are learning new ideas, seeing new images, gathering new experiences. When we teach students how to paraphrase, we teach them how to make information their own. Paraphrasing doesn't just live as a lesson or two in a research unit. Paraphrasing is in everything we do.

Teaching paraphrasing can be far more interesting than dusting off some worksheets! Here are some activities that help students recognize the importance of paraphrasing and learn how to do it.

Paraphrase across genres
Translating images to words (and vice versa) is a good way to help readers to think about how ideas are conveyed. For example, my youngest son and I had a great time at the National Gallery looking carefully at the images and paraphrasing what we saw. Turning a picture into a sentence encourages readers to consider words and explore relationships.

Explain the basics of paraphrasing
At the writing level, paraphrasing comes down to two processes: replacing words in the target sentence or text with synonyms, and/or changing the structure or order of ideas. (You can find more on this in my book, Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling.)

Paraphrasing skill, then, requires that students be able to replace words with synonyms. Students also need to be able to figure out how rework and rearrange sentences. This is tough! I've had students tell me, "That sentence cannot be rearranged"--when of course it can. Playing around with sentences and their arrangement can help students to improve with paraphrasing.

Show examples of paraphrasing
Showing students examples of two sentences that convey the same idea in different ways helps them to see how paraphrasing works. I like to use a card match activity in which each student has a sentence, and then they have to find the person who has the paraphrased version of their sentence. Partners then look at how the two sentences are similar and different. Which words can be replaced? Which words cannot be? For example, one student has the sentence Jane enjoys hiking through the forest on crisp autumn days while another student has the sentence During the fall, Jane likes hiking through the woods. Autumn can be replaced with fall, but the word Jane must stay as it is.

Help students to find examples of paraphrasing gone awry
We've all read examples of bad paraphrasing--a student who misinterpreted a word or misjudged an author's meaning. I like to show intentional cases of bad paraphrasing, especially examples with the copy-and-delete method. Can a reader just take out words here and there? How does the meaning change? This approach can be more fun than ordinary paraphrasing, especially if you create amusingly bad versions of your classroom rules.

Share lots of related texts
When students ride texts on similar topics, they naturally find and notice examples of paraphrasing. These natural examples help readers to build awareness of how ideas can be expressed in different ways. It can be helpful to make charts to show how important ideas are stated and restated in different ways. Intermediate students are often quick to notice how some beginner texts state ideas in simple terms, but lose some meaning in the process.

Paraphrasing and Summarizing Lessons: Available on TeachersPayTeachers

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Notes
-Text structure assessments are now available on Frolyc. These assessments are designed to be easy to publish to student iPads. I'm looking forward to paperless assessments! You can find the Grade 3 assessment here and the teaching guide here.

Synthesis and Writing from Sources, Part 2

Writing from sources doesn't happen overnight. Students need support, modeling, and scaffolding as they learn how to gather information, connect ideas, and synthesize new products.

In this second part of the presentation, several different low-stakes activities are suggested. Like lead-up games in physical education class, these activities help students to develop the underlying skills for strong synthesis. These activities also happen to be highly engaging for students, and they strengthen and develop critical thinking skills.

Writing from Sources, Part 2 from Emily Kissner

Which activities do you think would work in your classroom? What other activities have you tried to help students learn how to synthesize ideas?

Synthesis and Writing from Sources

On Tuesday I had the privilege of presenting a workshop about synthesis and writing from sources for my colleagues. We gathered around tiny kindergarten tables in the quiet school to share stories, information, and ideas. What fun!

I've been intrigued by the role of synthesis in student learning for a long time. How do we synthesize? How can we help students bridge ideas between topics and texts? Not only is synthesis required for writing from sources, but it is also the whole point of what we are doing in the classroom. Students will take the pieces of what we give them and what they gather to create something entirely new.

I decided to track down some of the key processes for synthesis. (Of course, gathering information, reading texts, and putting together the ideas into something new is synthesis. So meta!) Here is the first part of the presentation:

Writing from Sources Part 1 from Emily Kissner

So, what do you think?

-Which of the skills of connecting, organizing, and selecting do you see as most difficult for your students?
-How does this help you to plan for successful writing from sources?

In the next part, I'll share some low-stakes classroom activities to build up these key skills. These engaging activities help to build a culture of synthesis in the classroom--and will make the task of writing from sources much more friendly for students.

Notes
-If you're looking for an easy-to-implement writing from sources task, try this Under the Sea nonfiction text set. A synthesis task is included. Introduction to Text Structure could also be used for writing from sources tasks.
-September Reading Homework is revised and ready for the new school year!
-Daily Sentence Writing 1 and Daily Sentence Writing 2 are both complete.


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Writing from Sources

These are materials for the workshop presented on June 17, 2014. If you are interested in the folder of items on Google Drive, simply email me from your Gmail account.


Discussion of the Common Core Shift

Primary source sets from the Library of Congress

Kindergarten writing from sources: How do you say hello?

Animal video observation form

Taking notes from a video: Animal observations from Emily Kissner

Animal cam links


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Formal Academic Writing + Student Creativity

The Common Core expectations are high for student writing. Students in third, fourth, and fifth grades are expected to write formal informational and persuasive pieces, using introduction and conclusion paragraphs. As a teacher, I appreciate the need to help students write longer and more complex pieces...but I also want to help them expand their creativity! To teach some of the basics of formal essays, I love to use the genre of expository fiction.

Expository Fiction
    Expository fiction is text written using expository text structures, but with fictional details. Your students are probably reading these books without even realizing it! Star Wars: Epic Battles is one common example--this book explains the epic battles from the Star Wars universe in an informational way. Fictional battles, expository structure. Many of the Pokemon handbooks are the same way, as are books like The Care and Feeding of Sprites.
   Expository fiction is fun. The details are interesting and imaginary, but the structure is real-world and businesslike. What better way to introduce the conventions of academic writing?

Design A Land

 

 I first started doing this project years and years ago, and I've refined it over time. The basics are simple: Students create their own imaginary country, and then write an essay to describe it.

   But this simple description can't capture what really happens during the experience. Students go deeper with their details, collaborating with each other to dream up new ideas. Students try out different genres, writing narratives to tell stories about their lands and travel brochures to invite tourists. Students learn new vocabulary words as they describe the features of their lands and how they came to be. It is the perfect extension of early childhood play into middle childhood academics.

    Even better, this project also helped to integrate some important skills and concepts into language arts. Middle level writers are still struggling with capitalization of place names (for example, Chocolate river is a common transcription) and this project lends itself to repeated practice with this skill. Students write the place name on their maps, on their outlines, and in their rough drafts...I remind them to capitalize both words over and over and they get instant feedback.

    This also helped students to become more interested in landforms. During the mapmaking process I walked around with copies of United States maps to demonstrate landforms. "What is a bay, really?" was a common question, and I showed bays on the map. I also spotted a major misconception about rivers--students thought that they went from ocean to ocean--and we were able to look at some maps and talk about how rivers flow.


Fashion-A-Fish
    This activity from Project WILD (you can find one version of the lesson plans here, although there are many others if you search) is another fun project for expository fiction. Students create their own fish by combining characteristics. Different characteristics are best suited for different habitats and habits, and students then dream up more details to describe their fish. When I did this project several years ago, students pretended that they were biologists who had discovered a new species of fish and wanted to share their discovery with the world.

The Writing Lessons
    Throughout the entire process, my lessons focused on aspects of expository writing, such as topic sentences, transitions, and introductions. Because students had a deep understanding of their topic (it was their own creation!), they had more processing power to focus on these aspects of writing. Of course, they were motivated to write a strong piece of writing. I told them, "You are the only expert on your land! If you don't write about this, no one will ever know these details."

    Expository fiction is a wonderful way to engage young writers in formal writing. They can experiment with the forms and conventions of this kind of writing in a fun and engaging way.

Design-A-Land: Introducing Formal Essay Writing with Creativity is available from TeachersPayTeachers. It includes lesson plans, troubleshooting guides, and handouts to help students write strong essays.


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Learning from Videos: Animal Observations

When I started using Antarctica as a theme for teaching nonfiction back in 2008, I used mostly print resources. I had a sometimes-functioning LCD projector, no Internet access to the LCD (the cord wasn't long enough!), and limited computer lab access.

So much has changed. This year, half of those print resources that I so carefully accumulated in 2008-2010 ended up staying in the box. It's not that I'm against print resources--it's just that I can be much more selective now that I have so many digital resources at hand.

How to scaffold students to use these digital resources? I decided to start by watching students as they engaged with videos on their own. What were they doing? What were they noticing?

What I Saw

-Lots of talk: Watching videos does get students engaged in talking. Many students would cluster around a laptop to watch a video--"Look at that!" "Ew!" "What's that animal?"

But...

-Not much use of content-specific vocabulary: For all the talking going on, students weren't using much content-specific vocabulary. Listening to their conversations, it was impossible to tell what they were watching or what they were learning from it. Their comments were mostly reactions, not elaborations or statements.

My time watching the students helped me to consider what my next steps would be. How could I help students to watch video purposefully? The availability of firsthand video means that students learning about a remote location don't have to depend on other people's words or generalizations--they can view video and create their own ideas. But this kind of purposeful watching doesn't come naturally to young learners.

Next Steps

So what can video do that my text resources cannot? Extended, minimally produced animal videos are my favorite video resources. They are a great use of technology because these videos give students an experience that they would not otherwise have.

Students can learn a great deal from these sources. Consider this video of the Antarctic icefish:



What can students learn from watching this? There are so many interesting details about the icefish! I made this observation form to help students focus their observations:

It will be interesting to see what students do with this. Will their conversations change? Will they be able to weave details gleaned from a video into their writing? Will they be able to create their own observation forms?

I'm also interested in seeing if students consider the sources of the videos. How was the footage obtained? Is this typical of the animal? This kind of learning will be essential for our students as they encounter more and more video resources.

If you are interested in trying this with your students, here is a YouTube playlist that I created of animal footage:

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Three ways to move beyond "I'm going to tell you about..."

    When I taught seventh grade, I couldn't believe how many students used this phrase as a topic sentence. Was someone teaching this?

    Moving to fourth grade gave me a new perspective. As I worked with younger writers, I saw how "I'm going to tell you about..." develops, and why some teachers may let it slide now and then. Some young writers jump right into the details of a topic, without any introduction or preface.

   Writers with a stronger sense of audience awareness know that they have to do something to introduce the topic. "I'm going to tell you about" is then a logical way of beginning a paragraph. Like many young writers, this structure is terse and to the point. When it first appears in a student's writing, it represents a valid way to solve a problem. As a fourth grade teacher, I feel a grudging respect for what I despised so much in seventh grade.

  While I acknowledge the utility of "I'm going to tell you about," I know that I need to help students move forward. Here are three ways to help students move into more sophisticated expository writing.

1. Use writing frames
I love writing frames because they help students to see the language of academic writing. When students have to write to respond to reading, they often fall into an "I'm going to tell you about" pattern because they have trouble generating the abstract language they need. A writing frame can show students one way to enter a response.

Of course, the risk develops that students will see a writing frame as a simple "fill in the blanks" activity. When I introduced the frame to the right this past week, I had students read it aloud together, inserting the word "blank" at every blank. It was fun. Then we highlighted the topic sentence and talked about how it worked for the paragraph. (This activity is part of January homework and texts if you are interested.)

2. Write topic sentences together
  We are currently working on a month-long (decade-long? It sure feels like it with all of the snow days!) writing project. Students are designing their own island countries, and then writing an expository essay to describe it. So many different skills intersect in this project, from the art of creating the maps to the writing of the essay.

  Often, the writing of an essay becomes independent classwork or even (gasp!) homework. I never send writing home for homework. Sometimes students love to write and want to write at home, which is awesome. But the writing of topic sentences, especially for students in grades 4-7, is too important to send home. Students need lots of models and lots of support for this.

  I model the writing of a topic sentence with sample details. Here is one that we tried on Friday.

  I designed it so that the space for us to write our main idea is above the details. This matches the way that main ideas are usually at the beginnings of paragraphs.

  I read the details aloud to students, and then asked, "What do you think this says about the weather of Delphinium?" I asked students to work with partners to come up with one word to describe the weather--awesome, horrible, dreadful, bananas, delightful, and so forth.

  After this, I called on a few students to share. One said, "The country of Delphinium has interesting weather." This is a very basic topic sentence, but it is a step beyond "I'm going to tell you about.." The next student arranged ideas in a different order: "Delphinium's weather is pretty unusual." Having students come up with one word was very helpful.

  Some students have resisted this--"Isn't that an opinion? A teacher told me I shouldn't write opinions." I'm pretty sure that no teacher has ever said this. After all, writers take positions and then support those positions. A piece of writing that is only facts would be very dry indeed.

  ...And this process takes longer than you may ever dream possible. The more examples, the more opportunities to talk through details, the better. As we research Antarctica, students will use the same process to write about their research. Over time, the topic sentences break out of the "____ is interesting" mold and become more lively.

3. Showcase mentor texts
  Showcasing mentor texts also helps to speed up the process. Choosing texts, however, requires some care. Often the expository picture books that get published and publicized are the ones that mix up the traditional format. Where are the topic sentences? Where are the paragraphs? While these are great to read and share with students, some nice mid-level models are helpful too. The books of Franklyn M. Branley are excellent, as are articles from Ask and Muse.

   While sharing these texts, I like to talk about them in terms of problems and solutions. How did the author deal with the details? Where is the topic sentence in the paragraph? How does the author move from one paragraph to the next? After these discussions, students often start to experiment with their own topic sentences. By the end of fourth grade, a few of them are using pretty strong transitions between paragraphs, and using the topic sentence to move from one idea to the next.

Integrate all of these strategies
   All of these strategies can be used concurrently! Last week we created main ideas in the morning and wrote to a writing frame in the afternoon. Next week we'll look more at mentor texts while students will be creating their own main ideas. The more that students see and talk about main ideas and topic sentences, the more likely they will be to internalize this kind of structure and move beyond "I'm going to tell you about."

Notes
-If you're looking for more on main ideas, you may like this: Main Ideas and Details in Nonfiction Text.
-This slideshow about Topics and Main Ideas can help students to understand topics and main ideas in reading.

Going back, back, back to the text

This year, I'm really focusing on helping my readers to return to the text to find answers. Intermediate readers often have a once and done philosophy--"I've read it, I'm done, let's move on." But returning to the text is often essential for deeper reading and thinking tasks.

How does this skill develop? Like summarizing, it's not something that we can just tell students to do. There are two main ways to help students learn to return to the text. The first way is to help them navigate through a text, so that they realize they can find answers efficiently. The second way is to give readers meaningful literal tasks that require them to return to the text.

Navigating a text

This is the first page from a collection of
Problem and Solution texts.

As soon as we start with nonfiction, I coach students to find their way through a text. At first, this is very directed. "Put your fingers on the second heading," I'll say, or "Use your pencil point to touch the third paragraph under the first heading. What word do you see?" It's easy for me to see who is using the headings and who is not.

After a first silent read of a text, I also like to have readers partner-read a text by sentence. Many struggling readers do not notice sentence and paragraph boundaries. When they read sentence-by-sentence, these boundaries matter! "Hey, it's my turn!" a partner will say indignantly.

What if you only have texts that don't have headings? Use different texts for instruction. For example, many popular Seymour Simon books have neither headings nor page numbers nor captions. These are fine to have in my classroom library, but not very useful for instruction. It takes a long time just to get everyone (literally) on the same page.

Finding words in a text

Readers often scan for specific words in a text. Simple vocabulary activities can be engaging and help students to become better at finding specific words. In the activity above, readers had to make predictions for how a word might be used in the text "Research Stations of Antarctica". Notice that I gave them the definitions.

Before they read, students had to make a prediction for how the words would be used. "Dormitories" was a word that they had learned in a previous text, so many predicted that the text would show that researchers or scientists sleep in dormitories in Antarctica. "Souvenirs" was a new word. Many students predicted that students would take rocks or ice back to their homes as souvenirs of Antarctica.

After reading, students went back to the text to find how the words were actually used. (I gave students the choice of whether to do this as they did their initial read, or whether they wanted to just read first and then look for the words; most students chose the latter.) Some of the words were in bold print, while others were not. It was fascinating to listen to them talking with each other about how to find the words! In some cases, they needed to read the sentence containing the word and the previous sentence to figure out how the word was used.

This activity is good for intermediate readers because there is a clear goal, and because they can judge their success (Did I find the word or not?) fairly easily. This provides a foundation of searching skills for students to use as they encounter more difficult tasks in text.

Other updates
Introduction to Text Structure: I've posted a new collection of text structure texts. This includes five texts about chinstrap penguins, five texts about peregrine falcons, and two assessments. My "Text Structure for Young Readers" PowerPoint is also included, along with a study guide that includes all of the texts in the PowerPoint.

Writing a Summary of Nonfiction: This PowerPoint is available free once more. (It is also included in Paraphrasing and Summarizing Lessons.) I took it down a few months ago in frustration at how my free things have been showing up re-posted under other people's names on docstoc and authorstream. However, I've gotten a few emails inquiring about it, so I'll give it another try. Case in point: My entire Understanding Text Structure PowerPoint is on Prezi, with new graphics, under someone else's name. Sigh.

Spelling: New spelling units are done. If I've been sending them to you, drop me a line at elkissn@yahoo.com and I'll send them your way.

Planning for a Nonfiction Topic Study

As I've watched my sons develop into readers, I noticed how they both started to delve deeply into a preferred topic in second grade. My older son read about airplanes and the physics of flight, while my younger son has read everything about cats. Watching these two readers has helped me to think about how topic knowledge is inextricably linked to reading skills. Their background knowledge about a topic helped them to attack and read increasingly more difficult texts.

It seems logical, then, that we should try to replicate this in our classrooms. But topic studies have gone in and out of style. When I started teaching (in the 90s! imagine!), thematic units were popular. But they weren't really structured. The idea--at least as it was communicated to my inexperienced teacher brain--was to gather as many resources as you could on a topic or theme, and then have students create some big project related to the theme.

As time passed and guided reading became popular, themes fell out of favor. Leveling was everything. I was told that trying to gather resources on a topic was useless. We'd never be able to afford to get every book at the levels we'd need, and it was far more important for kids to be reading texts at their levels than it was for them to study a topic. I got around this by starting to write my own texts, apologetically at first. But the more that I watched my own children become readers, the more I realized that seeing the same topics over and over was really important.

Now, topic studies are in style again. Yay! What I like about topic and theme studies as discussed in the Common Core is that they are to be structured with increasingly complex text. This mirrors what I see with Zachary and Aidan...the facts they learn from the easy text become necessary background knowledge to help them comprehend more complex text.

As I plan for this year's version of the Antarctica nonfiction unit, I've tried to be more conscious of how students are building their knowledge. I'm hoping to marry certain concepts about Antarctica with concepts about nonfiction. Here is the plan.

1. Choose your nonfiction skills to teach.
This year, I'm starting with paraphrasing. Then I'll move on to topics and main ideas, text features, and finally synthesizing. In the past, I did text features first. But this year I decided to change it because I want students to see how text features help to convey topics and main ideas.

2. Choose core texts.
I'm a weekly planner, so I choose texts for each week. At the beginning, I'm using some texts that I've written. This will help to build up the background knowledge that kids will need to get to the ideas in the more complex texts. But I'll also be using Trapped By the Ice, texts from Beyond Polar Bears and Penguins, and the LTER blog. As you choose texts, it's important to consider how ideas appear again and again. What are the most important concepts you want to wring from the topic? How are these concepts represented in texts?

3. Create a unit anticipation guide.
I love anticipation guides for a unit. Many details about Antarctica are counterintuitive--for example, the fact that polar bears don't eat penguins, and that summer and winter in the Southern Hemisphere are the opposite of here. The anticipation guide is a concrete way for learners to recognize what they have learned from reading and how their ideas have shifted. Presenting learners with opportunities to "rewire" their background knowledge is vital for learning. (For more information on this, see the research by Graham Nuthall...his articles have been so influential to me!)

4. Gather guided reading and auxiliary texts.
This process may take a few years. I pick up books wherever I can. It becomes a sort of "stone soup" situation--everyone working on the unit has a few things to contribute. Surprisingly, even texts that seem only tangentially related often offer kids some little gems of knowledge that they can weave into their schema.

5. Create a list of unit vocabulary.
This year I've started to be much more intentional with my vocabulary teaching. What words do kids need? Which words show up again and again? I do a weekly homework packet in my classroom, and I've included five vocabulary words (along with a related text) in each packet.

It all sounds like a great deal of work, and it is. But it is so worthwhile to hear kids sharing ideas and reflecting on what they've learned across texts. Whether topic studies are in style or not, they are a wonderful way to help students learn.

I'm hoping to put together what I've done with the Antarctica unit into a file. Until then, write to me if you would like any samples. (Please include your email address if you leave a comment! Otherwise, it's tough to figure out how to respond.)

Core Reading with Struggling Readers

Early October brings a mix of emotions in the classroom. On the one hand, there is the elation of feeling that we have finally come together as a class. The mix of personalities has settled into a cohesive culture with its own inside jokes, traditions, and routines. (My class this year has taken to making up imaginary students to sit at the empty desks, complete with name labels and supposed personalities. And they have taken on the stuffed toy lobster, which has sat unnoticed on the shelf for years, as a special mascot. I just love to watch these things happen.)

But by early October, I also have a very clear picture of the task that I must accomplish by the end of the year. Looking at the DRA scores of my struggling readers, it was easy to feel daunted by the expectations of the Common Core to get these readers into grade-level reading selections. "How can I do this?" I asked my husband. "How can I get someone at a DRA 18 into a level 40 book?"

My husband, who teaches third grade, was a little calmer than I was. He also has a longer memory. He said, "Didn't you write a whole chapter about that in your book?"

"But it's--" I started, ready to argue, and then I stopped because I realized that he was right. There it was, in The Forest and the Trees, a long section about giving different kinds of support to readers as they work with grade level text. Right.

So I do know how to do this, I thought. As I planned for the upcoming weeks of instruction, I considered my readers carefully. The notion of before, during, and after has helped me to frame my lessons.

Before Reading: Building Automaticity
To build automaticity with the words in the grade level text, I've been making speed drills, flash cards, and word sorts. These look different depending on the text and the groups.

For Weslandia, I pulled out one and two-syllable words. One group focused on the one-syllable words. Words like loom, built, and wove are a real challenge for them. With another group, I worked on syllabication strategies. We worked on words from the text like civilization, innovation, and devise. With each of these lessons, I focused on using a decoding strategy that wouldn't just help students with words from this text, but would help them to decode words in future texts as well.

For Molly's Pilgrim, I pulled out all of the compound words. I made cards by separating them (school/yard) and then we put them back together. In this case, I focused on understanding the compound words. Many students had never heard of a "schoolyard" before, so we talked about making sense of the compound word by putting together the meanings of the other words. I included some other words on the speed drill as well, organized by the number of syllables, so that it was easy to listen to tailor the list for different readers and listen to them read the words over multiple days.

With each of these activities, I also used the words that we practiced to build predictions for the text. "In the text we'll read next week, Molly has trouble reading the word Thanksgiving. Why do you think this might be?" Then we shared our thoughts about why this might happen in the story.

Before Reading: Building Background
It's also important to build background knowledge for all readers. While we were working with Weslandia, I wrote a short little passage about the Roman civilization for students to read as their homework fluency practice. This passage got them to say the word "civilization" repeatedly throughout the week. Because we are also starting our study of Greek and Latin roots, this text built some instant connections between our reading and word study.

During Reading: Strong Sustaining Strategies
I am also working this year to give every reader the chance to independently interact with grade level or approaching grade level text. To make this successful, I have to think very carefully about the sustaining strategies that they will use. Where will they have difficulty? What can I do to support them?

The syllabication strategies we practiced before reading become very important here, as readers have to try to figure out words on their own. This goes hand in hand with the "clicks and clunks" that we've already practiced. Identifying where meaning breaks down is a necessary step to better comprehension. If struggling readers aren't aware of what difficulties they are having, they can't utilize better strategies! After we spend time reading silently, we can talk about where those clunks occurred and how we can fix them.

During Reading: Embedded Questions and Reading Road Maps
I also like to use these activities to help readers make meaning in a text. Embedded questions are simply questions that you insert into the main body of the text. They are a wonderful scaffold for helping readers to make inferences as they read. Think about the key ideas that a reader will need to gather from a section, and then write a question that cues them to think about those ideas.

Reading road maps are similar. They are based in the idea that reading is like a journey. Sometimes they are organized as before, during, and after, as this example. I've stopped trying to make mine "cute" and use a simple table design.

After Reading: Notebook Resources
After students have read the text and we've talked about our clicks and clunks, we go deeper into analyzing the story. Struggling readers and ELL students really benefit from having a notebook full of resources to help them answer questions.

For example, consider character traits. A question might ask, "What trait of the main character helps her to resolve the conflict?" A student who needs help in reading will benefit tremendously from having a list of character traits to refer to while answering this question. This list will help the reader to be able to focus on gathering the text details to support an answer to this question. Lists of themes work in the same way. When a reader has a list of universal themes to refer to, identifying and supporting a theme becomes a much easier task.

Getting students who are reading significantly below grade level to comprehend grade level text is a tough task. By planning scaffolding before, during, and after reading, I can help to make the task a little easier.

A note on materials: I've created several Common Core friendly materials for Weslandia and Molly's Pilgrim...if you would like any, please write to me or leave a comment. (Make sure that you put your email address in the comment! If you don't, I don't have any way to reach you. )

Three ways to improve student summaries

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of pulling out my presentation suitcases and doing a presentation about summarizing. I've been presenting on this topic for about five years now, but each time is new and interesting. There are just so many nuances to teaching summarizing, so many things to consider as I try to find that right match between reader and task.

I decided to structure the presentation in a new way this time, looking at several ways that classroom teachers can easily build summarizing skills in students. Here are three that work well for me in my classroom.

Retelling
I love retelling as an instructional strategy for any grade level. For students who seem to be having trouble remembering information from a text, retelling with a partner can be a good place to begin. I especially like having students use pictures or props to retell a text.

Don't neglect retelling nonfiction. Here are some simple directions that I give to students as they retell nonfiction.

Written paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is simply restating an author's words in a new way. This can be a difficult task for students who lack a wide bank of vocabulary words. Working with shorter pieces of text helps to build these skills a little at a time.

I like to project a page or a paragraph from a text and have students paraphrase the events or the information. This is pretty quick, and it lets us talk about the challenges that the text poses. What lists do we need to collapse? How can we find other ways to arrange the sentences? Besides helping students to improve their summarizing skills, paraphrasing parts of texts will also help students to put together text evidence to support their answers to open-ended questions.

(More specifics can be found in my paraphrasing and summarizing unit or in the book Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling)

Scaffolded summaries
A scaffolded summary is like a writing frame. The teacher provides part of the writing, and the students provide the rest. Scaffolded summaries can offer more or less support, depending on student needs. Here is a highly supportive summary that I gave to students as a first step into summarizing. Notice that I combined the summarizing task with a vocabulary task, putting a word bank at the top of the page. (The text is from the fourth grade Fluency Formula book.)

With a highly supportive scaffolded summary, it's important to keep the task from becoming just a fill in the blanks activity. Doing a choral reading of the entire summary can help kids to hear the academic language. (In my classroom, kids like alternating reading with boys reading one sentence, and girls the next. They also enjoy "reading like spies"--reading aloud as if every sentence ends in a deep, dark secret.)

Another way to make this an engaging task is to show students a summary with wrong answers filled in. Why are they wrong? What details from the text can show this?

As students become more skilled in summarizing, the frame can offer less and less support. Here is a scaffolded summary frame for students to use as they summarize chronological order nonfiction text. Notice that this frame is not text-specific, but can be used with any text that goes along with this text structure. (This frame is included in my text structure unit on chronological order. Frames like this are included in all of the other text structure units as well.)

Teaching students to summarize is hard. The most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that summarizing must be revisited again and again. It can't be a single unit that you teach once and then put aside. Instead, students need to see summarizing activities with every text. Whether you are retelling, paraphrasing parts of text, or using a scaffolded summary, ongoing activities will help your students to be successful.