Context Clues with Gatsby and STAAR

     

     So. Vocabulary. I saw a worksheet for the Great Gatsby. (And you know how I feel about those.) Students were given words from the chapter, the definitions, and asked to write sentences using one of the types of context clues that came from another worksheet. I started playing around with going back into the text to see what Fitgerald was doing with this word: tentatively. There's a lot here with this one word, especially in light of what happens later with a car. Perhaps a tentative approach to driving and life would have been warranted as well. In going back into the text to analyze the sentence and what the words were doing and how they were related to each other, we can see a lot more about Fitzgerald's meaning. Analyzing and naming the types of context clues in this sentence and the text around it really flesh out the kind of thought processes successful readers use to marshal all the surrounding text, plot elements, literary techniques to understand not just the individual word meanings, but also the author's message. See image one. 

     Yet, this examination and annotation still is not enough. Do students really know how to compose a sentence that reveals their understanding of the words? Can they use the words in their own writing? In one approach, I explored ways to imitate. A second approach involved imitating one of the common context clue structures. 

     For imitation, I played with two options to help students apply their understanding of the words. In option one, students find a place in their writing where the term might apply. In option two, I played around with another way to re-enter my own writing to imitate Fitzgerald's grammatical structure--   his syntax. 

     For context clues structures, I composed a sample and annotated it to identify the context clues that I created to help the reader (and myself) understand the word.

     A few days later, I was working with Sarah Nutter, from Dalhart. We were analyzing data and found this question: 

     Notice that 21 percent of the students in the state chose the wrong answer. WHY? Next, we consulted the text and the TEKS connected to this question. 

     At first, I thought the misconception arose from a faulty test taking strategy and incorrect understanding of context clues. Most students read the question, find the underlined word. Read the sentence, and then make a decision about what it means. They read like a seek and find menu from Chili's. Sometimes, students will read the sentence before and the sentence after to help them understand the word. In this case, it looks like students looked at the sentence BEFORE the text for evidence. That's definitely a strategy that we teach kids in previous grades that negatively impact performance with text becomes more complex and nuanced in later grades. 

     The students appear to look at only the plot points before the word and not after them. One could infer that the merchant was ignoring the merchant. That could be true. But there is no evidence in the text that connects the word "ignored" to the merchant's next action: "He quickly departed." In addition, does the student clearly understand the pronoun reference? Who exactly does "he" reference? Which "he" is departing? Students must read to understand the whole passage and how the words connect to the characters and the plot. Context clues are not just a matter of seek and find and then matching words that seem to fit. This kind of approach bypasses thinking and meaning and comprehension. We must teach students to read and understand the passage as a whole, not as isolated cherry-picked sections of text. It is not until the next column to we have more evidence that supports the actions of the merchant, when he is called to return and appear before the prince again.

     In addition: look at the TEKS that focus the instruction for fifth grade: 

     This TEK asks students to identify clues within the same sentence. The word "ignored" is not in that same sentence. Did students (or the teachers) understand that "in-sentence restatements) were a focus for vocabulary instruction for this grade level? This particular example also preludes perfectly the cause and effect text structure comparisons required in the next level: the merchant had departed, therefore, he had to be called to return.

     Teaching context clues correctly involves much more than worksheets, focusing on types of context clues used. It requires a close connection to how one makes meaning of the entire text and the author's purpose.