If it looks like a STAAR test...

Does the formatting of text disengage students? Cassie Swann and I played around with the formats of a STAAR passage to examine the impact. What do your students think?

STAAR Original:

Pictures Centered: 

Pictures Wrapped: 

Two Columns:

Another Model of a Successful Performance

Today, I'm working in a classroom where the teacher is asking students to begin a project that will require students to compose an original work that includes all of the literary techniques they have studied throughout their school careers. We gathered award winning children's literature texts and spread them around the room. After perusing the covers, students selected a text that called to them and then completed initial analysis of the features of children's literature.

The teacher wanted to make sure that students began with their own reactions to the books, but also add more sophisticated responses after consulting reference materials.

Here's the assignment she posted in google classroom.

But I think the most important part of the assignment was creating an assignment sample that gave students an idea - a model - of what they needed to produce.  As the students worked in the first period class, the teacher worked alongside a student that to produce an example that showed the criteria she was looking for her grading criteria.

Click on the link to see the model. I just can't say enough about how clarity with success criteria and performances makes a critical difference for student mastery of objectives. We can't really ask them to be successful with tasks they have never read or seen in the real world!

Go Beyond the Plot: Example from VEGA kids reading Fahrenheit 451

In this lesson, our goals were to focus on turning more of the reading over to kids as opposed to having them listen to the recording. We also wanted to reduce the cognitive load of reading for plot so that we could really get to how one makes inferences, focuses on how the author develops the character, and how the author uses the plot elements to communicate his theme/message.

Set objective: Tell me what you know about the term "spoiler." Spoiler: on a car - helps you to go faster. That’s what we need to work on in English as well. You need to work on your reading speed so things don’t take you so long to complete. Spoiler: on a movie - someone today is going to have a spoiler about the next section of the chapter. As advanced readers in English classes, we need to be able to read for more than plot, so the activity this morning is going to get you ready to go deeper in understanding the text so you can make inferences, understand what Bradbury is saying about the characters and about life/society. We’re going to read for plot first, then we are going to re-read for meaning.

Model: Read page 107 aloud. Model how to compose the Who/What statement about the plot elements on this page.

Assign students to partners: Partner A creates the document and shares it with Partner B.

Assign students to pages to read aloud. (As you assign page numbers, have them circle, bold, or highlight the pages you have assigned. Otherwise, they won’t remember They read aloud in paris and compose the notes for each page. Partner A reads his section first. Partner B serves as the scribe to record the plot elements. Partner B reads his section section. Partner A serves as the scribe to record the plot elements.

Students meet with other pairs to collect data from other partners. Consider having students line up by page number and then bend the line to gather the plot elements from each group. Then they can shift the line until they have collected data from each page. (Another approach is to have students sit in a circle and go around the group, one at a time, sharing while the pairs add the plot details. We tried this, but there was much less discussion.)

Sample Student Document:

Page

107………...M. About to have his house burnt  B. Knew all along that Montag had books

108……...Mildred raced out the door

109………...B. is fascinated by the fire and burns the house.

110……..Montag begins to burn his home, trying to get rid of his passed.

111 B. And Montag Finish burning the home. Montag is arrested after learning Mildred turned him in.

112…………..Montag burnt his home with a flamethrower, with Mildred still inside. B. tricked Montag into giving up Faber.

113……….Montag then took the flamethrower  and burnt B. alive. Then hit two other firemen on the head with the flamethrower.

114…………..The hound attacked Montag and then injects him. Montag then burns the hound.

115…………Montag leg was burnt while trying to save the books.

116…………..Montag takes books and runs. He thinks B. wants to die and then he does.

117…………….Montag running with books With the city after him. Then Faber gets killed.

118………….Montag is running to Faber’s house because he is worried.

119…………...Montag goes to a gas station to get cleaned up, so he wouldn’t be noticed, then goes to Faber’s home. War is declared

120………..Montag is being chased with a beattle

121………….Still being chased by a beattle

122

123

Discuss: Who has the spoiler? Highlight it.

NOTE: Not all responses will be correct. Remember, students didn’t have all the pieces. Discussion can focus on areas that need to be clarified with rereading or further questioning.

Discuss: Now that you have read for plot, you are ready to go deeper. Let’s re-enter the text to see what we can learn about Bradbury’s craft, characters, or message. As you reread, make sure you revisit the plot elements from each page before. If there are inaccuracies or additions, please fix up those elements as well.

Model: Explain the meaning and deeper inferences that are on page 107. Here are possible things to address:

• Three ring circus - this is a spectacle, going public, dangerous because now the government will have to control and retaliate;
• Beatty realizes that Montag did believe in Clarisse;
• Montag is numb again, he was growing and feeling inside, now he is watching things happen to him again

Students re-enter their text assignments to reread in pairs for meaning and inferences. They discuss their ideas and add key text evidence and inferences using the comment boxes to the side.

Example for Page 107:

Have students complete the section for homework and be prepared to discuss their findings at the beginning of the next period.

Possible additions: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/fluency-norms-chart Discuss fluency norms and setting goals to increase fluency to grade level expectations or above.

Kelsey Ansley

Shona Rose

Create a Model of a Successful Performance

Students need to know what it is that we wish them to accomplish. Sometimes, this means composing a draft before class, writing with them in class, or modeling a process in front of them.

Below is the paper I composed to model how syntax can help communicate the author's purpose and meaning. The revision is in yellow.

Link to Rough Draft Original
Link to the Lesson Sequence  - 4 -6 days of reading and writing instruction

Quicklist:

1. Kathryn and the green rags
2. The time I cussed, self control
3. hooky/church, dread/stop

Theme: What does this anecdote communicate about what I think is important?

Peace is important to me.
Relationships are important to me.


I'm not sure what started it. Doesn't matter. The essence of it was this: two naked, wet and spitting angry 8 year olds slipped and sloshed in the bathtub, smacking and slapping each other with wet washrags. Kathryn, my sister, could roll up the thin cotton terrycloth and snap it against my skin. On the other hand, I only managed a full flat flop of the rag against her back or arm.  Snap! Pop! Sharp shocks! Loud cracks! Her rag was a whip while mine was a soggy saturated wet lasagna noodle flying limp against her arm and sliding harmlessly away. Like a boxer, jab and sting, she peppered my body with red, bloody whelps. Not landing any significant returns, I just became more frustrated. About the time I decided to rush her and slam her to the tile floor, mom slammed open the door. "What. is. going. on!?"

My parents banned me from my best friend. Imprisoned me in solitary confinement. Alone. Bored. Separate. The long summer days waking to take the change from the mason jar, pedaling barefoot to Toot-n-Totum for a Big Gulp and Zero bar before heading to Southwest pool until dusk, finishing with stories and laughter until mom and dad threatened for the last time for us to go to sleep...all gone.

Devastatingly empty. Not worth it. 

When the wardens finally let us out for PT, we made a pact in the corner of the garden. Pinky Promises of blood sisters: We. Will. Never. Fight. Again.

I'm 49. And we haven't. 

Students took markers and underlined every other sentence to examine their own sentence lengths. Then they chose a place in their writing where they thought playing with sentence length might help communicate their message better.

Finally, we had small group sharing of their revisions and discussed this question: Look back at your theme: How did that revision help you communicate your meaning more clearly? I explained that by adding the short sentences with onomotopoeia, I hoped to help the reader feel the sting. It also helped me make a big contrast with the ineffective sloppy way I was hitting. Exploring the contrast helped me emphasize the break in our relationship that needed to be repaired.

And if you haven't read it before, here's what a student writer composed. 

Asking Comprehension Questions ISN'T Teaching Comprehension

"What are you planning?"

Teacher" "We are reading Fahrenheit 451."

"Why?"

Teacher: "We have copies of this novel, and that's a freshman text." 

"What are you teaching? What standards are you focusing on?"

Teacher: "Well, comprehension." 

"What elements of comprehension do you wish to address?"

Teacher: "..."

"Let's look here and see which ones seem important to you http://www.benchmarkeducation.com/best-practices-library/comprehension-strategies.html"

Teacher: "These look good: Determine Text Importance—Readers (a) distinguish between what's essential versus what's interesting, (b) distinguish between fact and opinion, (c) determine cause-and-effect relationships, (d) compare and contrast ideas or information, (e) discern themes, opinions, or perspectives, (f) pinpoint problems and solutions, (g) name steps in a process, (h) locate information that answers specific questions, or (i) summarize."

"Great! So which ones seem most relevant to Part One?"

Teacher: "Cause and effect, themes. Making connections and predictions about what is going to happen next."

"Good ones to select. I think visualizing is also a good one to add at the beginning of the novel because it helps the kids get into what they are reading. Let’s add this one too: Visualize—Readers make the printed word real and concrete by creating a “movie” of the text in their minds. You can write these words on your board to explain your objectives."

Teacher: “Ok, great!”

“So let’s talk about how you are going to teach comprehension. They are listening to the book aloud today. How are you going to teach them to use cause and effect relationships, predict, or to visualize in order to comprehend the text?”

Teacher: “I found these comprehension questions online.”

“Great, so how are you going to teach this?”

Teacher: “…”

“Let’s take the first question: How are the books that are being burnt described? I think most kids could go directly to the text, highlight the words, or copy them to answer the question.

“Does this recitation of text evidence demonstrate comprehension, cause and effect relationships, visualization, or understanding of what Bradbury is doing here?”

Teacher: “Well, not really. I never thought about it that way. This is how my teacher taught us this book.”

“Yes. That’s true. There’s nothing wrong with a set of questions to prompt and guide your reading – to check for comprehension and monitor student progress. That hits the surface level of comprehension and focuses on the CONTENT of the TEXT. But it’s not the same thing as teaching comprehension in a way that applies to ANY text.  And it certainly doesn’t get to the deeper elements of comprehension involving what the author communicates.

"Remember, you're teaching the TEKS, not Fahrenheit 451. In the end, no one really cares about how the books are described. That's not the enduring understanding we should leave with. 

“One of the best ways we have in teaching is to model our thinking as we use the comprehension strategies ourselves. See if this makes sense:  

• The first thing I do when I read, is I try to make a movie in my mind about what I am reading. Let’s take just this small part of the text that the question asks us to examine. As I read it, I try to see it in my mind: “while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and the lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.” So in my mind, I make a picture of a house and a porch. I see books on that porch and the front lawn. The books are on fire, the white parts turning red and then black. The pages are flapping with the flames and probably the wind too. The wind makes the fire burn faster and the pages move with it as they burn and crumble.

That’s just the first step. Now I need to understand what that means, not just see it.

• Now, I’m going to make some connections. Bradbury compares the books to pigeon wings. What do I know about pigeons and their flapping wings? If you’ve never gotten close to pigeons, here’s a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WulG_eVnwk . It’s kind of a cause and effect relationship: They fly away when they are in danger. They are escaping because they are afraid. These books on the porch and on the grass are escaping – all the ideas and characters inside them are trying to leave…to escape the danger of the fire. But Bradbury tells us that they don’t escape, they die. That means that all those ideas and characters inside the books are dead too. Gone.

• Next, I’m going to think more about what else I know about pigeons. Authors compare nonliving things to living things on purpose to help the reader understand things that would take a lot more words to really explain. When authors compare non-living things to people, it’s called personification. When authors compare non-living things to animals, it’s called anthropomorphism. So I think about the characteristics of pigeons.  Pigeons are wild, uncontrolled, and unwanted pests in most places. They make huge messes. No one can really control where they go and what they do. Now I connect that to what Bradbury gains by comparing the books to the pigeons. By choosing to compare the books to animals that are pests, Bradbury might be showing the reader the very reason the books are being burned! Somehow, the ideas in the books can’t be controlled. Somehow, the people burning the books think of them as pests to be destroyed.

• Going further with that idea, I can think about when people try to ban books or destroy them. When people try to control what other people read and write, that’s called censorship. In a way, that’s a kind of death, too-- one that attacks your personal choices. That the books are being destroyed with fire, Bradbury adds an element of violence and pain into the death of  personal choices and expression of ideas as well.  

So to make sense of what I am reading, I use some tools to help me notice important things that lead me to what the author is communicating on a deeper level than what’s happening literally.

Visualizing

Comparing

Cause and Effect Relationships

Literary Devices (personification and anthropomorphism)

Now it’s time for you to try: Let’s take that second comprehension question about Montag’s job and whether or not he likes it.

“At this point, you would make a decision. Do you want to keep everyone at the whole class level and work through another example? Or do you want to turn them lose to explore the ideas with a partner or small group and share out after they have had time to read, think, and discuss?”

Teacher: “This is overwhelming.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Identifying syntax is a waste of time...

We had just finished a lesson sequence involving several key mentor texts and analyzing how the authors used syntax, dialogue, details, and imagery to express more about a character, develop the plot, or express a theme. Identifying syntax is a waste of time, but understanding why it is used and then asking students to show evidence that they can employ the same strategy in their own writing? Keep reading to see if you agree: 

Clarissa was trying to communicate that "telling the truth is important to me." Watch her writing transform as she applies details and syntax to her message.

Before: “A light bulb appeared. For two reasons, I decided to carve the name Marcus. Firstly because it was easy to spell. Secondly Marcus was just an easy target. After I did the deed I put the box cutter where I found it and left.”

She underlined this sentence: “After I did the deed I put the box cutter where I found it and left.” She explained to the teacher in her group that she wanted to go deeper into how deliberate she was in carving her brother’s name – to emphasize later why it was so important for her to tell the truth about what she did to her brother. 

On her reflection paper, she said that her revision “emphasized when I was carving my brothers name in the bathroom sink.” She wanted the reader to see her complete that act, and she circled that she used details and imagery to accomplish that. Although she didn’t explicitly mark syntax, her revision utilized a long sentence to explicitly draw out each deliberate act:

After: “A light bulb appeared. For two reasons, I decided to carve the name Marcus. Firstly because it was easy to spell. Secondly Marcus was just an easy target. Holding the box cutter in my hand, I carefully carved out the name Marcus, slowly spelling it out in my head M…A…R…C…U…S...once finished I took a step back to admire my work. Satisfied, I put the box cutter where I found it and left.

In reflecting on her learning from the day, Clarissa proved she internalized the lessons about details, imagery, and syntax: “a longer or short sentence can affect the way you perceive a story.” THIS. THIS child’s work proves that she understands the TEK! She can complete a literary analysis of her own writing as well as utilize author’s craft purposefully to communicate her theme. And I bet, when she enters a published text, she will be successful in analyzing the author’s craft and the reason behind it.

Today, I’m Clarissa’s raving fan!

Essential Lesson Structure: Charting

This one ended up being harder to do than I thought. Aimee Coates and I were working on STAAR test prep again. We wanted to work up these essential lesson structures with Tea Party, Charting, and Card Sort to show how you could use the same passage with any of the structures. When I started to create the materials for this example, I was stumped for a while. And then, the connections started to come. I had already read and explored the passage to develop the Tea Party example, but I hadn't worked all the way through the 25th paragraph. It wasn't until I had all the pieces plotted, and text highlighted that I began to really see the connections. For the purposes of this TEK, examining the influences of the setting on the plot, I think this lesson structure is probably my favorite choice.

Exploration and Gathering Information: 

1. For this activity, it is best that plot diagram has already been taught and students have already read the passage. We used the same text as the previous post. The one on Anne of Green Gables.

2. Students work in small groups and draw the Freytag's Pyramid on the chart paper.

3. Students have one marker per group. The teacher calls out an element or definition (setting, conflict, etc.) while students take turns passing the marker, and plotting the correct term on the chart. Tip: Give each group a different color marker. You'll see the reason when we get to the Refining and Reflecting stage of the lesson.

Consolidating and Collaborating: 

4. Students work in small groups to annotate the chart with the details from the text that belong with each element. Note: I have them take turns with the marker. This information is all in blue on the chart. (I forgot to take a picture before I added the next steps.) For this lesson, I really wanted to focus on what happened in the setting because it is critical in deeply understanding the rest of the text. What happens in the setting, really  - I'm sorry, but  - it sets the stage/scene for what happens next. I created a small character sociogram between Anne and Marilla to tease out the important details and text evidence phrases that clarified their personal conflicts.

As I worked through this process, I realized that this helped me focus more on the main conflict of the story. Many times, kids get an idea in their head and don't adjust the ideas when text evidence presents itself. I was guilty of this as well. Throughout the first reading, I'm pretty sure I did the same thing. I kept focusing on the conflict between the Aunt and Anne and lost some of the influence of how that relationship colored every other relationship Anne would develop. I had totally missed something important about why Diana was so important. More later on that.

Then, I plotted the rising action. It wasn't until this point that I realized that at first reading, I hadn't ever really figured out what the climax was. And I didn't really even consider that the author left us hanging. Sometimes, I think that when we give kids a form, they expect everything to have a space, a blank to be filled. Stories don't all work that way. I loved how this helped kids see where the climax really showed up. (I've had kids ask - when does the rising action end and the climax begin. This excerpt makes that pretty clear.) 

Note also the amount of summarizing and inferring can be done - "Anne does silly things at when she is introduced." 

Refining and Reflecting: 

5. Now students are ready to make the connections between the elements on the chart. Here's what it looked like when I placed it on the chart. 

I kept looking at paragraph 25, wondering what in the heck this paragraph was doing. At first, I thought it was overly done description just added in because it was a classic text. But what was it doing? I went back to the setting and reread the parts about the flowers on the hat and realized what was going on: Anne loved flowers. This garden was a treasure. It was Diana's garden. Maybe Diana would be someone who was more like her - even though her Aunt didn't approve! From there, the connections and similarities just flew as I was able to draw out more text evidence. 

If I were teaching this, I think I would model it first with how the setting influenced and increased the tension for the conflict in the story. Then I'd let the small groups tackle the rest together. We'd see what others discovered. I bet there are more ideas than I listed here. 

Whole Class Debrief: 

At this point, we'd post everyone's ideas and let each group read the posters of other groups. Each group would have a different colored marker. 

• Star: Most Interesting Idea - Groups would be ready to discuss why they felt this way. 
• Question Mark: Confused or Check - Groups would mark ideas they think need to be supported better, explained, or corrected Groups would compose a question on a sticky note they could use in the whole class discussion. 
• Plus Sign: Added detail, quote, information - Groups would add missing detail, provide text evidence, or alternate ideas to consider. 

Using the highlights from the annotations, each group would take a turn bringing up ideas to discuss as a class. 

For independent practice or closure, students would use one of the rehearsal and practice strategies or evidence from learning strategies from the Lead4Ward  I'm leaning toward 3 Way Thinking, One Minute Paper, or Ping-Pong Summary to describe what they have learned about the influence of setting on plot and how a reader can think through those connections.