About 3 weeks ago, we had an
inservice at our school that answered my question, finally! Or, at least in my mind, it did! I’ve been having this ongoing conversation
about what conceptual grading looks like and acts like, with many questions
still lingering. One of the lingering questions was, “How does this look for
each skill?” I mean, I had examined my
practice and figured out what I was doing, but I couldn’t pin it down for EACH
SKILL! Then, bam, the inservice hit!
So, here’s what went down! Our district is still looking at training
intermediate teachers in Common Core.
This particular inservice dealt with how to determine the success of a
student based on learning ladders and continuums. At first, I was skeptical. I had never heard of either, and I’m out
there a lot! I pin, I read blogs, I
follow multiple teachers on Facebook, I’m out there! We discussed the rigor and the purpose, and
that’s when I began to believe. The
purpose behind a ladder or continuum is to:
1.
Establish the clear and concise expectations for
a skill. During our inservice, it was
support for the text.
2.
To provide a clear and concise example of the
expectation to the students.
3.
And, if determined ahead, to provide a starting
point for evaluating a student on the skill to be taught over a period of
time.
It was like hitting the mother load! I
started to see the realities of what could be done with a tool like this! I saw the connection between these tools and
Marzano’s Rubric for Learning. This is
what I’ve been searching for! Can you
tell I’m excited!!??
How would
this look in a classroom setting was my next thought-bam, answer provided! There was a cool
video about how to work with them.
The teacher had a small group of students with her and they had provided
answers to a question she had asked in class on a post-it. The kids then shared their answers and worked
with one another on the continuum. They
had to agree on the placement with each other before the post-it could go on
the continuum. My thought, “I could
TOTALLY do this!” I completely believe
that if you are going to teach a child how to do something, they need to know
how to self-evaluate to be successful.
Many children do not go through elementary being able to do this very
thing. They have only been shown what
teachers think of their work, and that is how they answer questions-to provide
what the teacher wants. Many of the
open-ended questions we ask have multiple answers with none of them being
wrong. We need to be sure we begin to
support our students in the skill of self-evaluation! It is, after all, a life skill.
Now, to get
to the transition from inservice, to classroom use. During the inservice, I had already targeted
a skill-author’s purpose. My teaching
partner and I had determined through assessments that students really only
“got” author’s purpose on the very basic level- to entertain, inform, or
persuade. They did not, and, as the case is, many cannot get it on a conceptual level.
From this need of conceptual understanding, I developed a power point
about Roald Dahl. Here is a page from
it.
Through this power point, we targeted Author’s Perception,
the deeper part of author’s purpose. As
you research this, you will discover that the two are very separate, but are
placed under the title of author’s purpose.
Our goal with the power point was to show them how important an author’s
life and understandings are to the text.
Here is another example:
Roald Dahl was Charlie in so many ways, and that’s what this
slide represents. Imagine having the
President of Cadbury bring you chocolates to try! How would that torture you through your
entire life! How did Charlie feel about
chocolate? That’s a pretty good example
of the perspective Roald Dahl brings to the text, isn’t it!
The kids were really getting it! They could see, with their own background
knowledge of the text from the movie, that this was important stuff!
Next, to
bring a deeper thought development to the process, we assigned a thinking
map! Thinking maps are used to help kids
use their own thought processes to develop understanding. By not giving too much information or
requirements, you can begin to see the child’s understanding emerge, or not.
Each time they read, they can add to their understanding. The more they share, again, the more
understanding, or lack of it, comes forth. To be honest, I have some struggling
readers making some deep insight into author’s purpose because of this. I have some stronger readers with fewer
insights. It is my plan to go back to
these and really examine them to determine who needs additional practice and
who may, simply, need to learn how to transfer their thinking to question
format.
After
starting this process, I introduced the Author’s Purpose continuum.
This is in kid friendly language. I shared what each level looked and sounded
like. Then I let the kids get to work
using one of the characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then I let them work with their team to
decide what level of author’s purpose they were on. I was amazed to see them bring points out
about each entry and how they felt each other did. It showed up in two ways- in their oral
discussion and in their reading journal entries.
For the entry, I had them put their post-it in their
journal, record what their team said, and, then, I responded with what I
thought. Most were right on! The next step is to do this activity.
The students will write in their reading journal “how” to
get to a higher level on the continuum.
From this experience I discovered that most kids want to write about the
“who” of a character. Who they are, what
they do, etc. Author’s purpose is
really more about they “why”-why the author included them, why the author made
them behave a certain way, why did the outcome occur. This is where the impact
is.
I am really excited to see where we
go with this study. I will share more as
we go. If you have any great ideas for
author’s purpose, I’d love to hear about them.
Feel free to leave me a comment or a website that you have had success
with!
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