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Angela Johnson: Everyone Has a Story to Tell / Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week (1/8/10)

 

Dear Community,

Subject: Angela Johnson: Everyone Has a Story to Tell / Schoolwide's Lesson of the Week (1/8/10)

What stories can your students tell? How do you help them take their own or their families' stories and turn them into evocative writing? In this week's lesson, famed children's author Angela Johnson tells us how she brings these stories to life.

Learn how to:

• Take family stories and make them powerful;
• Help students discover compelling facts about their own community; and
• Build students' confidence in their writing skills by demonstrating how everyone is good at something.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  
  

 

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Highlights

Lesson Title: Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Subject: Writing Workshop / Generating Ideas

Audience: Grades 4-8

Description: Stories are all around us, and many are passed down through each generation. Angela Johnson explains how the people in our lives are sources of intriguing stories to tell and write about.

Share: Create a common tool for your entire school or school district by sharing the Lesson of the Week and using it to provide consistency. Please contact me at ldavies@schoolwide.com and I will be glad to assist you with this process.


Thanks so much for your participation. Read. Learn, Enjoy! 

Schoolwide’s Holiday Lesson: Inspire With Writing (12/16/09)

What makes your students special? How do you help them use their special talents to inspire others through writing? In our final lesson of 2009, literacy consultant Ilene Cohn tells us how to transform talent into evocative writing that inspires happiness.

Explore the spirit of sharing the holiday season by learning how to:

• Use Amy Hest’s book Jamaica Louise James to illustrate the power of emotive writing;
• Help students “share from the heart” to create compelling narratives; and
• Build students’ confidence in their writing skills by demonstrating how “everyone is good at something.”

Look for a new lesson the first week of January 2010.

Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year from the entire Schoolwide Team.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.

More...

Yetta Goodman On Testing Pressures & Professional Motivations

 

 

I think that what I was saying {in earlier posts} link here about the teacher who knows a lot about reading and learning and who has a strong belief system also goes for teachers who have other motivations like:

"I need to stay in this classroom because this is my job and I have to work so I'm going to do what I'm told to do. I'm not going to question very much.  If somebody gives me a text book and tells me that somebody at the university of Oregon wrote it, I'm going to assume that it's a good textbook and I'm going to use it."

More...

Testing as a Genre Study - I’m not so sure!

I’ve been working with a group of teachers putting together a curriculum map comprised of units of study for reading workshop. One of the units that came up was a “Testing - Genre Study”. I’ve come across this in other curriculum maps as well, but I never had an opportunity until now to have a conversation around what exactly that genre study would look like. If the unit includes having students examine the structure and format of the Language Arts test they are expected to take, or have students learn to pace themselves during a timed-testing session, or even using a scan tron sheet, then I see the importance of putting testing into a curriculum map.  If however, for example, it involves teaching students how to possibly recognize and then answer certain types of questions, or how to figure out an unknown word in a reading passage by using context clues, then I don’t see a “Testing- Genre Study” being placed as a unit of study for a month or so in a yearlong curriculum calendar. To me, it would be like putting a “Thinking – Genre Study” in a reading workshop curriculum map.  The skills and strategies that kids need in order to be effective test takers are linked to the skills and strategies needed to be an effective reader. If we agree with this thinking then test taking strategies and skills need to be taught alongside all the reading strategies and skills units we introduce across the year. For example, if you are modeling which clues in a read aloud text helped you to determine the main idea of a text, or what the author wanted us to know the text was mostly about, then it is a great time to say, “If I was answering a test question about main idea which asked me what the passage was mainly about I would use the same strategies and skills I use as a reader to answer the question.  I would look at the clues in the passage and decide if what I think the main idea of this passage is matches one of the choices.” I’m thinking that the essential elements necessary for getting kids ready for a test may be embedded in the great teaching we do, but I think it needs to be extracted and the application of that thinking needs to be explicitly taught during all the units of study. This philosophy is the backbone of the Testing Fundamentals units of study. The lessons in the units explicitly teach kids how to become effective test takers by applying what they are learning in reading workshop to test taking situations. Becoming an effective test taker is not about answering the question correctly, but about knowing and being able to explain how you derived at the answer. This kind of thinking can’t be neatly wrapped up in a month long unit called a “Testing- Genre Study”

Tricky? Or most probably not

Why do the state test developers continually confuse the kids by changing or asking questions in a difficult way?  I’m repeatedly asked this question both at large workshop sessions and in the direct test preparation work I do in schools.

Teachers feel, as I did, that there seems to be intention on the part of test developers to trick students rather than to measure their comprehension. This is a pervasive feeling on the part of educators mostly because they feel that the questions are worded in such a way that kids don’t recognize what they are being asked and that causes the break down in their ability to choose the correct answer to a question rather than them not knowing the information needed to answer the question.

More...

The Value of the Venn

Several teachers and I were discussing the value of teaching students to use specific graphic organizers to plan a written response to a question that requires them to extract information from 2 pieces of text. Of course, the Venn diagram leaped to the top of the list. 

I have always had a problem with using the Venn just to recognize similarities and differences between texts.  I believe that making text to text connections is a necessary comprehension strategy, but if we want our readers and test takers to stretch and deepen their comprehension they need to learn how to synthesize information and then come to a conclusion based on the evidence they find and use to fill in the sections of the Venn.  

For example, if we read two different versions of Cinderella, after deciding on the similarities and differences between the two fairy tales one conclusion might be:  

Authors can use the same idea to tell a story in a different way.  Another conclusion might be: 

Similar stories exist in different cultures. 

If we take this learning back to the test it will most likely enable our kids to fashion a better response to a question that requires them to synthesize information from multiple sources rather than just recognizing the literal similarities and differences across multiple texts. SOOO a good suggestion from the teachers for increasing the value of using the Venn is to pull out those diagrams sitting in a folder in your file cabinet and under those connecting circles write the word CONCLUSION!

How and When to Use Traditional Test Prep materials (the "Packets")

At a truly enjoyable Schoolwide Workshop at Fordham University a question came up about how and how often to best use traditional test prep material (which are sometimes called “THE PACKETS”) when getting kids ready for statewide exams.

 

My best response is that the problem is not with the practice material itself, but rather with what is done with it. I don’t recommend using the material for independent practice or homework until it has been used for small group scaffolded instruction. The passages themselves provide good short text material across genres for guided instruction.

 

I would cut off the questions on the initial introduction of the passage.

 

After discussion about the passage I would reintroduce the questions without the answer choices (as I suggested in an earlier blog) and have the students write in their answers.

 

In a follow-up discussion I would have kids share their thinking by showing places in the text that provide evidence to back up their responses.

 

Finally they can do the practice material with the choices either independently in class or for homework.

 

I’m very curious about how much and how often this type of practice material is used before a state exam.

 

Multiple Choice Questions - How Do We Get Kids to: Read –Think - Pick

Teachers ask me all the time - “When my kids take a multiple choice test how do I get them to think about the answers to a question?”

 

My advice is that we need to validate their thinking by giving them opportunities to see that what they are thinking about has importance and is helpful in picking a correct response.  How do we do this?

 

Step 1:  When initially introducing multiple choice material white out the answer choices and just present the reading selection and the questions.

 

Step 2:  Have the kids answer the questions and then have them compare their answer to the choices that accompany the questions.

 

Most of them will see that what they thought was the correct answer is most likely one of the choices.

Kids Need Practice Reading the Directions

Sooo many kids do not read directions, especially when they take a multiple choice test.  They think they know what to do. Just read and pick. If we want them to read directions we need to have them practice reading directions.

Step 1- On a clean sheet of paper cut and paste or retype the directions accompanying the multiple choice selections on previous state exams. Do not include the questions.

Step 2-On the same sheet of paper under the directions include the sample chart below.

Step 3-(optional) After completing the chart have students reread the directions, selections and accompanying questions from the test that was used for this practice.

Step 4- Discuss with students how the information on the chart obtained by reading the directions can help answer certain questions on the test.  e.g. Knowing what the selection is “about”  (which may be stated in the directions) can help with a question about the main idea of a selection.

Example taken from N.Y.S. 4^th Grade ELA-2008

Directions

1. Read this article. Then answer questions 1 through 7.

2. Read this poem. Then answer questions 8 through 11.

3. Read this story about a girl who wants to see a movie. Then answer questions 12 through 16. 

Sample Chart

What Am I Learning From Reading the Directions?

Is the selection an article, story, poem, How to…etc.?	Am I reading fiction or nonfiction?	Do the directions have some information about the selection? If yes what is the selection about?	What questions will I have to answer after I read the selection?
1. article	nonfiction	No	Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
2. poem	fiction	No	Questions 8, 9, 10, 11
3. story	fiction	About a girl who wants to see a movie	Questions 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

 

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