Teaching Main Idea and Summary to the Right Rigor

Doing well on Main Idea Questions for STAAR is more than teaching a summarizing strategy. BME isn't going to work for you folks. Especially since that is a structure used for narrative texts. When you look at our released items and our TEKS - we need something that is going to work with EXPOSITORY text. Notice also that our TEKS tell us that the main idea and summary questions will also involve considerations of the overall purpose of the author as well as cultural, historical, and contemporary realities.

Teachers are told to just use good instructional practices and avoid test prep. But if the instructional practices never approach the rigor of the cognitive skill on the assessment, students will not be successful. I think we might actually be practicing the wrong thing. Being successful on STAAR summary questions isn't really about summarizing or identifying main idea at all.

It's about deciphering the logical fallacies that make all the other answers wrong.
It's about choosing the one that matches the text evidence, the author's purpose, and the main message of the expository passage.

Below, We'll analyze the cognitive process to understand the tasks students are expected to complete on the EOCI from 2016. Then we outline a sample instructional practice that you might attempt to resolve this disconnect.

Let us know what you think. Please share what your students do with this information. We'd love to hear from you and have examples that can contribute to the work we are all trying to accomplish.

Sally Heaton, Dumas ISD
Shona Rose, Region 16
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TEKS: "Reading/Comprehension of Informational Text/Culture and History: Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about the author’s purpose in cultural, historical, and contemporary context and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Students are expected to:

English I: 8A explain the controlling ideas and specific purpose of an expository text and distinguish the most important from the less important details that support the author’s purpose.

English II: 8A analyze the controlling idea and specific purpose of a passage and the textual elements that support and elaborate it, including both the most important details and the less important details." 

The Work of the PLC:

1.       Examine the item analysis for the state and for your district.

a.       State: 12% District: 15%

b.       State: 41% District: 45%

c.       State: 38% District: 27%

d.       State: 9%    District: 12%

What was happening? Most people say: Kids didn’t read the passage. But when you examine the other questions on this TEK for this same passage, you see that the kids in the sample district answered at 80% - even better than the state average. They read it. Something else is the problem.

Do the district’s scores differ greatly from the state average? This tells you that something is off – good or bad – from the way classrooms and students across the state are understanding this TEK. What’s causing the difference?

These data tell us that we really need to look carefully at why more kids in the sample district would choose B, a wrong answer, over the correct answer, C. Understanding the logical fallacies and text evidence realities will reveal what the students might have been thinking and lead us to the correct instructional response.

2.       Understand how questions are written.

Think of a three legged stool.

Miss any one of the legs and you'll be on the floor! 

     Questions have three parts too. Without any one of the parts, the stool will fall. Without considering any one of these parts, you will select the wrong answer.
Leg One: Conditions from the stem. Remember the knowledge and skills statement from above? The stem is written with a certain lens in mind “author’s purpose in cultural, historical, and contemporary context.” The passage was chosen in light of that as well. This questions stem places the thinking inside a certain context that must be considered. And that context is directly related to the author’s purpose for writing the piece. This requires the student to understand the passage as a WHOLE.

Next, let’s examine the implications of academic language that house the conditions in the stem. The question is not necessarily written the way we talk as teachers. If kids are going to be successful on the test, they have to learn how tests pose and frame questions. The syntax and diction of test questions have advanced forms that we do not always use in speaking. We must start using these structures orally and in our benchmarks. We must also explicitly teach students how to diffuse the key conditions for which they will find text evidence.

“according to the author” – When looking for evidence in the passage, the students must look for what the author thinks based on their interpretation of the text as a whole. Later, you’ll see a place in the text that gives an answer that another person mentioned in the text things is the reason for Pat Summitt’s behavior.

“Pat Summitt” – Students must look for how Pat Summitt responded. The whole article is about her, so they must read, understand, and consider the whole article.

“learned important lessons” – When searching for text evidence, students should be looking for specific lessons Pat learned. If no lessons are listed in the text for a particular activity, then that can’t be the right answer.

“face difficult circumstances” – Students need to understand which difficult circumstances that author is focusing on as his/her purpose for writing. Many things can be difficult. Which one is the author focusing on overall?

“from her time spent” – Students need to be looking for which activities the author presents that directly impact Pat’s ability to face difficult circumstances. These two critical elements in the stem are directly connected and must be directly considered as related as the student determines the answer.

Leg Two: Text Evidence. Many of the problems students face in answering questions is that they rely on personal schema and experiences. I used to tell my students, “You are ____ years old. No one cares what you think. Get over it. This is a reading test not a Gallop survey about your feelings or opinions.” And really, it’s not fair to ask my Burmese student about the Olympics. You wouldn’t want the test makers to ask a student to rely on their experiences.

Leg Three: The Answer Choices. Here’s the game changer. The cognitive rigor from questions on STAAR comes from the logical, cognitive process the student uses in selecting from FOUR answer choices. One of the choices will represent an accurate path that considers the stem, the text, and the correct logical conclusion. Three of the choices will represent logical fallacies or inaccuracies that are not supported by the text or one of the conditions listed in the stem.

“A playing on the 1976 Olympic team” This is a reasonable, logical answer. Playing on an Olympic team in 1976 should be something that would help a person learn lessons that transfer to other difficult live circumstances. That meets the conditions of the stem. 15% of the kids in the sample district stopped there. It was a plausible answer based on what most of us know and have experienced. But, as an answer to a multiple choice test question, it’s wrong. Scan the text: can you find any lessons listed that Pat learned from playing on a team in the Olympics? No.

Some people might cite the evidence that Tara gave in a quote that sports gave Pat the background to deal with her illness. The conditions in the stem don’t ask what Tara thought. It asks about the author.

“B dealing with her Alzheimer’s diagnosis” This is the answer I chose before and after I read the passage. And in the sample, almost half of the kids did the same thing! All of us are using incorrect logical reasoning. Consider first, the conditions of the stem: it specifically asks about facing difficult circumstances. Overall, of what difficult circumstances does this author focus? Alzheimer’s.  Logically, it doesn’t make sense to say that Pat learned important lessons from dealing with Alzheimer’s to deal with Alzheimer’s. It has to be something else. In addition, the text does not list a single lesson Pat has learned from Alzheimer’s. Not one. She died. Pretty sure that’s not a lesson or the focus of the author.

In fact, the author gives us plenty of evidence that Pat approached her disease just like she approached everything else. Go back and read paragraph 10. She already had something in place about her character that gave her strength. Look at paragraphs 7 and 8 which talk about coaching. She already had the capacity to face these difficulties.

“C working on her family’s farm” Check out paragraph 6:

Even if students are not able to understand that the answer is specifically stated in the first sentence because of the vocabulary of “stoicism and determination”, they should be able to count the lessons she learned growing up on the farm:

• ·         “chopping tobacco” – sounds like hard work 
• ·         “bailing hay” – more work
• ·         “sunup to sundown” – working for a LONG time
• ·         “chores” – responsibilities
• ·         “while her father admonished” – dealing with criticism and someone pushing you while you are trying to work
• ·         “Cows don’t take the day off.”  - people are relying on you
• ·         “Basketball games were played at night” – having to delay gratification to have fun and play
• ·         “with three older brothers” – she’s a woman and her competition was from her male older brothers – that had to make her tougher than if her competition were her peers

“D Losing games as a new coach” When examining the text for the conditions mentioned in the stem, there is no mention in the text about what specific things Pat learned from losing games. In fact, quite the opposite – Pat already had what she needed to face that challenge.

   3.       Prepare instructional materials.

As a team, create a blank sentence stem that could be applied to another text. Remember, students need practice with the academic language and syntax of the questions.

“According to the author, ________ (person/character) learned ____________ about how to _______________ from ________________ -“

Now you are ready to name the logical fallacies that govern the way the answer choices are written.

Wrong: A. Lists an activity that the character/person completed but is not related to or causing the lesson the person learned about the topic.

Wrong: B. Lists an activity or reason related to the main conflict by does not reflect the character’s background, preparation, or solution.

Correct: C. Lists an activity or reason that directly influenced or changed the character; supported by text evidence; this question focuses on a sequence of events as well as a cause and effect relationship

Wrong: D. Lists an activity or reason that is reasonable, but not supported by text evidence

Now that the team has a clearly articulated understanding of how the question is structured, the correct steps for thinking, and the possible missteps, it’s time to prepare instructional activities.
   

4.    Prepare Instructional Activities:

Model: Prepare questions (with stems/choices) that you can ask orally for something that you are reading in class.  Model how you, as a proficient reader and THINKER, comes to the correct answer. Think aloud. Annotate the text. Make the evidence and thinking visible.

Shared: Prepare written questions (with stems/choices) that match what students are reading together. These are questions that you can discuss as a class.

Conduct the Class Activities: 

Model: Show student how you can compose a question like this for something you are reading.

Shared: With student help, compose a class questions like this for something students are reading as a class or in small groups.

Interactive: In small groups (or lit circles), have students compose a question like the model for the text they are reading. Have students switch and question other groups. (Note: Students may not match the sophistication of the STAAR test in their attempts. That’s ok. They are approximating a proficient model, as Brian Cambourne encourages. It’s not important for them to reach the complexity of items developed by psychometricians and seasoned teachers.)

Interactive: If the class is reading the same text, divide the class into groups and give each group a different question stem. Have them post the questions on chart paper and then rotate the groups to answer the questions of the other groups.

Debrief: Debrief the cognitive moves and thinking processes students discovered in writing the questions and in answering the questions of other groups. Discuss how they can be even more sophisticated next time.

Conference: Conference with groups that are on both ends of the spectrum: strugglers and those who excel. Move them forward.

Independent: Have students compose questions like this independently or for texts they are reading independently.  Have them switch with others reading the same material or discuss with partners.

By following this process, you have massed and distributed practice at the correct linguistic and cognitive rigor – all without a single test prep passage.

I should probably write a conclusion here, but I think you get the picture. I’ll add two more questions from the English I 2016 release for TEK 8A instead.

1.       Item Analysis:

f.        State: 18% District: 25%

g.       State: 4%   District: 4%

h.       State: 14% District: 20%

i.         State: 63% District: 51%

Looks like we need to focus on f, h, and j.  (f) discusses support from her team. High school students probably have a great deal of personal experience and schema about support from teams. That’s probably why they picked this one. (g) isn’t even mentioned I don’t think. (h) makes sense logically. Pat is a coach. She must be in shape. People who are in shape heal more quickly. However, there is absolutely no text evidence for this. (j) was directly stated in a quotation. Looks like students were simply answering from what seemed logical. When they landed on something that made sense, they plopped their graphite circle right down on the first one they came to that resonated with their experience. In this instance, they didn’t check the conditions from the stem that directly pointed to Tara, nor did they read all four answer choices. They stopped too early and didn’t vet the answer with text evidence.

2.       Prepare the materials:

________ (character/person) thinks __________ (another character/person) is equipped to ____________ (do what?) because of ________________?

Wrong: F. Lists an example that most people have experienced, but is not supported by the evidence

Wrong: G. Lists an example that makes sense, but is never a topic in the text

Wrong: H. Lists an example that makes sense with the character’s traits or life, but is not supported by evidence or attributed to the person requested by the stem.

Correct: J. Lists an example that is fully supported by text evidence AND attributed to the character/person identified in the stem

Lead4Ward didn’t have this one posted. Not sure why. Or I just couldn’t find it. That could happen too.

F: District: 8%

G: District: 3%

H: 10%

J: 80%

F – this article doesn’t mention luck; nor is the article all about the importance of finding success. Sounds like 8% were star struck by Hollywood.

G – actually, the text tells us that her parents think she is silly and will grow out of it

H – might be true, but is career opportunities the main focus of this article? I think not.

J – the last paragraph pretty much states this explicitly, but there are pieces of it in every paragraph as well as in the text box to the side

The selection is mainly about –

F – Lists a choice not mentioned or connected/supported by the text evidence or the main point and purpose of the author

G – Lists evidence that is actually the opposite of what the text says, appears only in one place in the text

H – Lists a reason that is true but not the main point of the article; could be an inference instead

J – explicitly stated and fully traceable throughout most of the paragraphs