Extending Probable Passage to Multiple Genres

Probable Passage is a POWERFUL before reading strategy developed by Kylene Beers. You can read more about it on pages 87-94 in When Kids Can't Read What Teachers Can Do.

In a recent session for Struggling Readers, I shared the lesson with teachers, adding some elements to support struggling readers with decoding and extended the activity to address multiple genres.

I had the teachers fold the paper into thirds to create the organizer. (I could have printed the blackline master, but who has time to go to the copy machine? I'd rather have the kids make it and save that time at the copy machine to go to the bathroom. LOL!)

We began with a splash sheet for the vocabulary. This is what it looked like at the end.

• As I wrote each word, I had the participants say the sounds as I wrote them. 
• Notice for /plover/ that I practiced showing them how to break words into syllables by writing them vertically to decode them. 
• For the word bird, I drew the shape first and had them predict what word might be there. Then I filed in the b and d. Then the r. 
• For jagged ivory bones, I first wrote them down separately. Kids placed them on their mats separately. At the end, I drew the box around them and said, "You might need to cross those out on your mat to revise your thinking. These words appear in the text together and will need to go in the same box." 

Next, I let the participants use those words to write the gist statement. When they didn't know what the words were, I let them look them up or view google images. 

Then, I said, "What if I told you that this text is not a narrative? What would you have written for the gist statement if this was an encyclopedic or informational text?" I had the participants turn over their papers and revise their thinking to restructure the text into a nonfiction format." Wow. Blew their minds. I realized that kids would need more support for understanding the genre characteristics. Lead4ward's genre characteristics cards are excellent resources. 

Here are some examples of student work. 

Finally, when I showed them that the source text was a poem? They freaked out and started talking about poetry characteristics, craft, and digging into the poem to see how it matched their predictions. When the teachers took this back to class, the kids asked if they could have more time to write about their stories and articles. I don't know about you, but I'd love to hear more about the character named Jagged!