Where Text Structure Can Lead You

            In our quest to discover text structure evidence, I felt I was loosing myself, and the kids, time and effort in other reading tasks.  Was I spending too much time on it, was it that important, what was this really about?  Then I opened my eyes!  I saw what I was really teaching them!  So, here it is!

    1.    Key details and support:  When you are looking for evidence for text structures, you are pulling out key details and support for whatever the topic is, in either type of reading.  In informational text, we were defining and explaining the topic through key details.  In fiction, we were pulling out key details and support for each of the characters we were investigating! 

    2.  Main idea:  If you are pulling key details and support, this leads to the most natural learning of main idea.  You have to know what you are reading about to pull evidence and support!  

    3.  Summary!:  Yes, summary!  As we were circling and highlighting and finding and writing, it jumped out!  We were gathering information for a summary!  We could use that information, in order, to write a summary-for either type of text feature!  It was right there, and I couldn’t see it at first!

4.  Character traits:  This comes naturally in the descriptive pieces Roald Dahl writes.  Students were gathering traits about them that they could use to prove that they really understood who the character was and how their behavior impacts the text! 

Awesome!  I was so surprised!  I had it planned that we would work on summary, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about teaching it, how I would target the work for success, and it was staring at me!   And it all came together through grading a homework assignment.

            For homework, the kids have been reading nonfiction texts.  They need lots of practice with the basic and these are working.  One of the ones that they read the week I was sorting through all this thinking was Spider Silk.  As suddenly as the skills popped out to me, so did the parts of a spider-as a graphic organizer!  Spider Silk was a descriptive text that they could pull evidence from and practice all the skills above.  And, I was feeling bad about not doing a single, fun holiday activity.  So, I came up with a craftivity! Here’s what we did.

            First, I cut off the bottom of the assignment.  I didn’t want the distracted by the questions they got right or wrong.  I passed it back out for them to read and highlight.  Here’s a student using their reading journal as a guide-amazing!!

Next, they chose the 8 most important facts and wrote them on black strips of paper.  These strips could be arranged in an order that allowed them to group ideas together. 

Then they went to work on writing a summary.  I had gone through what a summary is and made a chart.  This is a copy of a chart I found on Pintrest. 

 (Sorry of the bad pic-no phone today!)

Once I approved their summary, they wrote it on the body of the spider.  Then they glued the 8 legs in the order that they used them in their summary.  The final touch was to add eyes to a head and write the main idea on the head! 

(Here's I built to show the kids)

I feel like this is what text structure really can do for kids!  It can answer so many questions and thoughts and wonders.  It is not just about what is on the page and why. It is about all this, and more.  We have two more to look closely at-compare and contrast and cause and effect!  I have questions now about how these will impact real learning, what I can do with them, and the effect it will have on the kids, and I am truly excited to find out.  And, there may be a turkey craftivity in my future!

Descriptive Text Structure: Way More than I Ever Expected to Discover!

            In an earlier post, I explained how I have been focusing on text structure.  We have been hard at work looking at descriptive text structure.  We followed a similar fashion of learning about sequential text structure.  We glued in our two guiding pages into our reading journal.  Why two you ask?  In Florida, we can never do what the rest of the world does-we have to make our own standards and rules.  The rest of the educational world knows this text structure as descriptive, but for the FCAT they need to know it as define and explain.  This actually works out ok, because there is some foundational learning by using that terminology.  Anyways, here’s how we rolled out learning about the descriptive text structure.

First, we examined our Science books.  Our first, in the book, chapter starts out with this very text structure.  We used the graphic organizer to break down the information found in the text.  This was relatively easy.  It was descriptive AND IN ORDER!  We were able to look at how important each term was to the MAIN IDEA of the page.  What we took away was that this descriptive/define and explain model helped us to understand what groups of plants are.

Next, we hit up our mentor text, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  In our reading journals, we built a model of the graphic organizer.  Students charted one of the characters, Veruca Salt, from one of the chapters.  It was rather obvious that this was a descriptive chapter-Roald Dahl does an excellent job at switching back and forth between the two at the beginning of the text.  The students gathered all the evidence they could to support the definition of descriptive texts.  Here are a couple of samples of what they came up with. 

From this, we were able to determine, yet again, that it was IN ORDER!  There is a fine line between these two text structures.  They both organize themselves, but, as a student pointed out, descriptive is SUPER organized so that the description overpowers the sequencing.  Very interesting.  Yes, the author has to be SUPER organized to get their point across when they are writing in the descriptive style.   Amazing learning!

We were ready now-ready for a bigger challenge.  At this point, we dug out our reading journals, we grabbed our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and we added to this a blank piece of construction paper!  Construction paper!  Yes, it was time for a construction paper challenge.  On the construction paper, students created two boxes.  At the top, they wrote, “Sequencing:  Chapter ___ Evidence.”  On the other side they wrote, “Descriptive:  Chapter ___ Evidence.”  Then I pointed them to chapter 9 and 10!  Their mission-discover which one was which and provide at least 4 pieces of evidence- it was amazing!  They dug in and searched through each chapter to find the evidence.  They used key terms and the facts columns to justify their selections.  If they got off the scent, it was easy to point them back.  In fact, I had a table of 4 where 3 were going in the wrong direction and one of my struggling students could justify and explain why to them!  Here are a few samples of the end product.

We also made a chart of our discoveries.  This chart included the sentences the students found and some of our own discoveries about how the lengths of paragraphs impacted the type of text it was as well! 

Even with all this learning, I was beginning to question myself-was I spending too much time on this, was it important enough to spend this time on, was there enough here to keep going?  Boy, did I discover what I was really teaching!  I’ll be posting again tomorrow, because I don’t want to get too close to Halloween because it involves a fun “readcraftivity” opportunity to try with a descriptive text!!!

Looking, and Finding, the Answer to Conceptual Grading

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!

It's All About Text Structure!

      October is Text Structure month!  No, really, it is!  At least in my class!  I had planned on looking at this much earlier than this, but we’ve finally gotten there-and I’m kind of glad it took this long!  Here’s what’s been going on so far!

         Way back in September (last week!), we started to look at sequencing.  I think we, as teachers, assume that kids really know this structure naturally.  I know I did.  Well, was I surprised, for a second year, that my students couldn’t order their knowledge in a way to be able to write about what they’ve read IN ORDER!  Students were writing, but in random order of events.  So, we backed up to basics.  I began by having the kids reread just the beginning of the story and then write about that.  And it worked!  They were able to break down the very simple parts of the story and put them in chronological order.  However, it took 3 days!  This is way to long for kids to be able to write a simple summary. 

         Now, let me back up even further.  This summer, when I was breaking apart the Test Specifications from the state, I discovered there were very specific expectations for text structure.  Questions were given that targeted the WHY of having specific structure in texts.  Yet, everything we use, including sample tests, DOESN’T have questions that target this information.  That led me to start to BUILD structures to guide my teaching-and an extensive search to FIND them too!  It was quite a search.  And a lot of work! 

         There isn’t a whole lot out there is what I discovered.  When I did stumble upon things, they were usually things for the teacher to use or basic worksheets.  So, the lingering question for me was, “What do I do for my kids, right now.”  I also wanted to use my reading journals more this year.  I have used reading journals successfully in the past, but last year it sat on the back burner frequently.  The kids are not really capable, at this point, to add lots of information to their journals.  I started to think about premade notes for them.  And that’s what I’ve done.  I made premade pages for them to put into their reading journals.  I also looked at the graphic organizers that I found throughout the professional materials that I examined. I tried to create a basic organizer for kids to use with each type of structure.  I added a basic question for completion after the first use and for after creating a replica organizer and filling it out.  Here’s how it looked in lesson format.

         First, I passed out the student page.  I had to shrink it to fit their journals (86%) and trim off the edges.  They glued it in and then I had them come over to meet.  We discussed the information on the page.  I’ve included the definition, the facts, signal words, questions to ask yourself, and a place for examples. Then I had them hit the books.  We had completed the first story in the reader, a chapter excerpt from Because of Winn Dixie.  I sent them back into the story to search and find key words and phrases that signal it is a sequenced text.  

Before I knew it, they were asking me questions about words and phrases within the families given on the list.  We had a discussion about before and begin and how they were connected.  They were writing like crazy and finding tons of evidence.  Evidence, the key of what I was hoping for.   It was actually happening!  And then, IT happened…someone asked if sequencing was about moving through time!!!  Oh, how it made my heart sing!  I made them stop, I made this child ask me again, with all kids looking, and I repeated my answer!  I also went over to our chart that we are using to show text structure types and wrote it on there!

A shift through time.  It was a magical moment!  I could see into our reading and writing future and know that I could go back to that moment to use the term over and over.  That’s what it’s supposed to be all about by the time they get to this level.  It had happened!  We were ready for the next step.

         The next step was looking at our informational text, which happened to be our science series big book that is used for the nature of science lessons.  In that text, we meet Luke Dollar, a scientists studying the fossa.  I passed out the graphic organizer and together we filled in the information.  That did take a while, which was fine because it really set the kids up on what they had to do.

        

         The next day I had them pull out their reading books again and complete the same organizer in their reading journals.  This way they have the sample in their reading journal and a completed product to help their thinking along.  They used the chapter excerpt from Lewis and Clark and Me to make the graphic organizer.  Than I had them work together to answer the questions of “How did this tool help me?"  They were able to see more clearly that both texts were sequenced even though they were two different types of writing!  Awesome!  I’m pretty excited about how well this worked!  I also think it is foundational to start with sequencing.  This is the most familiar text structure to the students.  It builds the blocks needed to go to the next step, descriptive! 

         I’m almost ready to go to descriptive and I will share how I’m doing it and how it goes soon!  In the mean time, I’ll be sharing some information on author’s perspective in the next few days! 

The Shouts and Whispers of Context Clues

           During a reading activity, I discovered something about my 4^th graders.  Most of them had no idea what to do when they came to words that they didn’t understand.  This, to me, was very surprising.  Surprising, because I know that they did receive instruction, but because it doesn’t stick.  That’s what’s been bugging me so much about returning to the upper grades after a number of years away-why isn’t instruction sticking the way it used to!  How come kids are not independent on strategies when they enter the next grade?  I have a number of ideas as to what it is, but that’s not for now. Right now we are talking context clues-so back to the topic!

            While we were investigating how text features work through our science focus of the nature of science, I introduced key words.  Key words are usually bold face, italicized, and/or colored.  In this particular text, they were colored.  We recorded our text feature in our reading journal, talked about what to look for, focused on the fact that these words WILL show up on tests, and talked about how, in the content area they must retain them because they will be expected to know them forever without review.   Then I got back to focusing on what to do with them.  I informed them that I was going to read the information after the key word and they were to let me know what the definition of the word was.  I read, I stopped, and I heard crickets when I asked what the definition was.  Crickets, nothing but crickets.  Most were looking at me like I had asked the hardest question in the world!  INTERVENTION TIME!   So, I asked, “What context clue do you see here?”  Crickets, again!  MORE INTERVENTION TIME!  Being the wise owl that I am, I jumped into my large, and I mean large, supply closet (Oh, trust me, you’d be VERY jealous.  I’m very tempted to write a post on it, but I think I’d get hate mail!) and pulled out my context clue signs.

I’ve had these for years, and they are showing it.  We turned our page in our reading journals and began to record the information.  

The kids obediently did so.  We returned to the book, repeated the same, and….crickets. Yes, at this point, I couldn’t figure out what to do, and then it hit me.  There are two types of context clues-whispers and shouts. 

            Kids need novelty. Brain research says that it helps them to remember and learn.  For some reason, I realized that these obvious, right-there context clues shout at us.  So, I began to explain that there was a word from our list on the page, and it was shouting to us.  I would shout when I got to the word, and that would signal the definition.  Every time I said shout, I shouted!  In fact, since then, I shout when I’m talking about shouting context clues.  It’s driving them nuts-but it’s working.  It’s really working.  It’s helping them pay attention when we are reading materials that have key words in them.  This is what I mean by how context clues shout-they are right there, on the page, giving the definition. 

            Next we moved onto the whispers of context clues.  When Scholastic had their awesome $1 sale, I thought it was worth the risk of buying a set of books on direct reading topics.  I picked up this one:

What I did was I ran copies of the teaching page for my kids at 86% reduction, making it small enough to fit their reading journal. 

On the teaching page are the whisper clues for words they don’t know.  That’s what I called these, the whisper clues.  And I whispered.  The novelty is there, again.  Whisper when you teach them; shout when you teach the others.  So, whispering, we moved on to learn about how to handle these.  This starts with identifying a word you don’t know.  You see, I know up until now, most kids have been just skipping over the words they don’t know.  They are almost doing context clues in reverse.  They skip the word they don't know, and use the context to build understanding.  But that won’t continue to work on the harder texts that they are reading.  They need to begin to pay attention to words and what’s around them-and to use the clues to figure out the word.  Once we learned the whisper clues, we started to practice.  This book comes with 18 opportunities to practice the skill.  We have been practicing!  What’s great about this, is it will help kids to move to questions like this:

1. Read the sentence below from pg. 25:

             “That man’s dotty!” muttered Grandma Josephine.

       In this sentence, what does dotty mean?

This question is styled like the FCAT 2.0 questions are written and, more than likely, how most of the Common Core assessments will be written as well.  This is a little sample of questions I’m working on for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  This is how the kids need to be able to handle context clues.   And, if you notice, the book also includes figurative language, and, yes, they are found on FCAT 2.0 and within the Common Core standards.  Is this worth the investment of time and effort to really teach and make the kids independent with-yes, it is!  Not just for FCAT 2.0 or other assessments, but because it’s a life skill for any reader!  Isn’t that what we are really striving for.  We might practice the style of question we need them to learn, but these skills are for life.  I want my students to walk away understanding that words matter, and to take the time to begin to understand them.   They need the shouts and whispers of context clues to do that! 

            How do you teach context clues?  I’d really like to have some additional ideas and resources that you use.  I know I will have kids I need to remediate this area in and would love some additional ideas.  Please leave me a comment about how you do context clues!

Thinking Through Conceptual Grading

            Wow, it’s been a while.  Not because I’ve been busy, which I have, but because I don’t know where to start or even go with this one-so, I’m just writing to see where it “goes”. 

            All right, I’ve been reflecting more on conceptual development and RTI.  I started to pay attention to what I do while I am grading.  Most of the following will pertain to written response.  First, I noticed that when I am grading a concept, I develop a list of criteria FOR EACH QUESTION!  Yes, each, individual question has it’s own list of correct pieces of information that belong within it.  Maybe that’s why I dread grading this type of question so much.  It takes a lot of work to develop those ideas and to fully be prepared to know what should fit and shouldn’t.  And with concepts, it’s deeper thinking.  Kids can totally surprise you too, providing deep thinking that you may not even have thought about!  That’s when you begin to really wonder if you hit it right.  But, isn’t that the joy of concepts-you can be taken by surprise!  Ok, back on track. 

            Once each question has an answer developed, then I’m ready to grade.  Where did I get the grade?  Do I just give points? Do I base them on a set of criteria from research?  Do I use a national or state standard?  That’s where it becomes difficult.  State standards no longer exist for written response in Florida.   We haven’t transferred totally to Common Core and, frankly, their rubric is poor at best (PARCC).  That led to looking back at the past and combining it with research.

            Let’s start with RESEARCH!  Oh, yes I am!  And, get ready……Marzano!  Oh, I know, his name is the dread of most teachers everywhere!  Can I tell you, that’s a mistake of every inservice given by someone who hasn’t really understood who and what he did-including me. I had to give one of those lovely inservices once, and I thought I knew something.  Then I actually read some of his actual books-not papers someone gave me at that dreaded inservice-but a REAL BOOK!  I must say, I think he jumped in my brain and pulled out information to create THE Marzano Academic Rubric!  Now, the original is found in Classroom Instruction that Works by Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, and includes the Effort Rubric (5 stars also in my book!)  I will say, I did jazz the original up a little, changing some of the words and using the combination of some of the parts of the Effort Rubric.  This is now a MUST HAVE in my classroom, and I use it for everything!  Since this is a “write it out as I go with no idea of where I was going”, I don’t have a picture.  (I will, however, post it to my Facebook page tomorrow-my shameless plug to push the new, shiny button on the top of the page that says “Like me on Facebook!”)

            Now, let’s look at the old. I must say, the state of Florida did something right a number of years ago.  Back then, students had write to respond answers on their state test that were scored on a 4 or 2 point rubric, depending on the weight of the question.  Here are the two rubrics (Thanks to FCIT for not deleting old material that is still valuable!):

Notice, they are very nonspecific, yet specific! I know that makes no sense. What I mean by that is that they can be applied to any of the conceptual skills that are presented within a written response.  They are, actually, in a format that teachers use within our own thinking!  And, if only I had a picture to compare, they are also very Marzano before Marzano became a thing. These are from the late 90’s, if my memory serves me right!  Once upon a time, long ago, this state did it right. 

           

At this point, I feel like I have an answer to my question, as strange as that feels.  However, it opens twenty more.  Here are a few:

1.  What does this look like for multiple choice?

2.   If kids can write a response, but not pick the same

      response from a list, why is that?

3.  How do you actually transfer an ideas they can write about

     to finding one in the list?

4.  Which is easier?  Which is harder?

5.  What do we do for kids who are being RTI’d because they

     are behind and can’t conceptualize?

6.  How do we close that gap successfully-to the point that it 

     is REAL and not for a test?

Oh, I could go on.  Isn’t that what this crazy thing we call education is all about? To explore these concepts to better student understanding?  I will continue to keep track in my mind things that I notice.  In the mean time, I tried something out that I wouldn’t mind others trying out too!  I created a multiple choice style test for two articles from Time for Kids.  I’m going to offer it for FREE with the hopes that:

1.     It will work for you

2.     I will create more! 

The articles are “They’re Back” and “What’s for Lunch?”  Both of the links to the articles are found in the document.  It is your job to figure out how to get the articles in the kids’ hands-computer, print and share, project, or any other way you can. (I printed them and, once cut down, they can actually fit on one sheet of copy paper!)  If you use it, let me know what you think! 

Have a great week,