Time, Talent, and Treasure: Lessons Learned about ABC

 Each week, I will be donating one day of service to a local school district. I have been given so much and want to share in my blessings. Working in a district - where teachers have to make all the acronyms of public education meet the "rubber of the road" in the classroom - are different that the "theory" of best practices. There are so many adjustments you have to make in responding to how kids think all of that means as they do their work. 

Here's a simple report of what Micah taught me during STAAR bootcamp. The curls peeked out from his rose bucket hat as we sat together while he described his reasoning process in selecting an answer for a question. 

He reviewed A and the evidence to discount A. I didn't necessarily agree, but listened to his process as he shared his thinking. Same for B and C. Once he had removed those as possibilities, he immediately circled D as the correct answer without reading the stem. 

I asked, How do you know that is correct?

Micah: The others are wrong. 

Me: But why is D right? Do you know? 

Micah: Uhhhhh. 

Aha for me. The kids don't necessarily understand that one question is three questions. They don't know when their reasoning is off. 

Solution: I need to model a think aloud about a similar reasoning error. Here's my rough draft of the think aloud of the reasoning process. 

Lesson Title: Reasoning through ABCD multiple choice answers.

TEKS: Author's Purpose, Main Idea, Summary, Inference, Text Evidence, Argument

Objective: I can use reasoning strategies to determine author's purpose. I can evaluate all answer choices before selecting an answer. I can change my original thoughts after considering the collective evidence and lack of evidence to justify the correct answer. I understand that just because I have considered A, B, and C, that D is not automatically the right answer. 

Step one: I need to find the main words in the stem to guide my thinking. I'm going to underline 14 so I know where to look. I'm going to underline infer so that I know that I have to use the text evidence to make a decision. I'm going to highlight author to help me understand that I'm going to be thinking about the author's perspective or purpose and not mine or a character. 

Step two: Now I need to process the answer choices. I'm going to highlight the words to help me focus on the verb and the distinctive details. In "enjoys reading books by international authors," I'm focusing on enjoys reading because I need to look and see if the author enjoys reading. But that's not enough. The important detail here is "international authors," so I'll focus on that. I'll do the same with all three answer choices. Here's what my question looks like now.  

Notice how c is a choice that asks me to compare printed books to e-books. We have to look for those kinds of thinking charges as well. 

Step three: Now I am ready to process each question with each choice. 

A - Here's what I found in the paragraph. There are two international countries mentions. But it doesn't say that the author LIKES to read them, just that you find them in the LFL. So I think this one is wrong.

B - Here's what I found in the paragraph. 

The passage discusses finding something depending on what neighbor's like. But that's not really the same thing as discovery is it? I think this one is wrong too. 

C - So this is the comparison of topics between ebooks and printed books. The text mentions topics for printed books, but doesn't say anything about the topics on the e-books. This has to be wrong. 

Now, I'm tempted to to say that D is the right answer because I've already done a lot of work. But that would be a mistake. I'm not totally sure that my decisions were the right ones. I know that often there is a good answer and a best answer. I won't know until I see that D is best or wrong. If it's obvious that I am wrong, I've made a mistake in my reasoning. I still have to look at D even though I don't want to. 

D - I'm supposed to look for limitations of a free library. So I'll look at each sentence and see if it is talking about limitations of a free library. 

"Though they owe their spread largely to the internet" that's a concession about how they spread, but really is not a connotation about something that is lacking. 

"Little Free Libraries serve as an antidote to a world of Kindle downloads and data driven algorithms" So I have to translate this into words I know. What the heck is an antidote? After looking it up, I can rephrase the sentence to see if it matches limitations. "LFL are a solution to a disease of ebooks and technology." Solutions to a disease has a positive connotation. That can't be a limitation. So D is wrong. 

Step Four: That means I need to re-see my previous thinking. ABC might be right. I'm reminded that the Title helps a lot with Author's Purpose: "The Low Tech Appeal of Little Free Libraries." So this author priorities/favors printed books because they are low tech. So his focus isn't really about liking international stuff. I can disregard A. 

As for B, the line in the text that uses antidote to Kindles matches the contrast with the ebooks. He also talks about "refreshingly human" and being "physical." That fits with the title in being better than high tech. Serendipity - had to look that up. It's a happy chance. That fits with "appreciates the opportunity" in the answer choice language. Now I just need to find a match for "discovery". I'm wondering if "neighbor's taste" and "dictates what you find" match the serendipity because you just don't know what you will find. The topics are a surprise. B is sounding like a better answer than I originally thought. 

Now I just need to make sure to reconsider c. There is just no evidence that the topics are the SAME for both ebooks and printed ones. C is still wrong. 

So, after further reflection and testing my original reasoning with text evidence that supports or refutes the answer choices collectively, B is the best answer.

Bottom line learning: I cannot rely on making a decision about the right answer before I consider all answer choices in light of the text evidence about all the choices. And I have to be willing to change what I originally thought. 

*Note that if students were using the fact tracker and understood that this passage was argumentative in nature, they would have noticed that this paragraph is a major reason that LFL are superior to ebooks. It is a critical paragraph that supports the thesis implied in the title low tech appeal and in the thesis statement in the first sentence:  The “take a book, return a book” boxes are catching on even in places where Kindles and brick-and-mortar libraries abound.  We noticed that kids using their strategies did MUCH better on inference questions than those who did not. I'll explain why in future posts.