Would a clearer purpose help?
Posted on February 2, 2021Share This Content
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Teaching from a distance doesn’t mean we have to give up core beliefs about how our students learn to read. I’m still going to engage students in reading high-interest, complex texts. I’m still going to demonstrate strategic thinking for students. I’m still going to gradually release responsibility. I’m still going to have private reading/writing conferences …Read more
Nurse Moxi shows families around a children’s hospital in Austin, TX. Nurse MEDi distracts children with toys while they get a flu shot AND Nurse Tommy is helping patients with the coronavirus at a hospital in Italy! Down below you’ll find a set of on-line sources on this hot topic and a cheat sheet with …Read more
Entomophagy is the human consumption of insects as food. While we were in Mexico last summer, my husband and I tried avocado toast with crickets at La Gruta, a restaurant near Teotihuacán, Mexico. There tasty! This week’s sources for remote learning (during COVID-19 pandemic) are on this high interest topic. Geared towards 2nd-5th grade. I’ve included …Read more
With COVID-19 and school closures, we need easy access to well-structured, on-line informational sources, huh? This blog is the first in a series that provides two sources & quick notes. My first recommendation is asking students (grades 2-5) to compare two animals on the San Diego Zoo Kids site. What students need to notice: The …Read more
Kids FALL IN LOVE with reading multiple sources on a topic–once we introduce them to the idea. So how do we get them hooked? In a way that’s manageable for us? Could it be as simple as these three steps and a set of 2-3 books on the same topic? (Attached as a word doc …Read more
During conferences, while I do listen to what students are saying, I also listen for what they are NOT saying. This is why. Frequently when you ask a student to tell you what they have learned from a complex informational source (or a part of a source), they will talk about content they understood without …Read more
“Why can’t I just highlight?” Ever heard that from a student? A few weeks ago I had the honor of teaching a class of 5th grade students with the objective of convincing them that annotating is a powerful way to make sense of a source–I did this by helping them realize the value of annotating …Read more
If students are reading multiple sources on a topic, thinking about the purpose of each source can help students remember the content in the source AND notice the similarities and differences between sources. What follows is a sample set of sources (on recycling) for students to explore a set of sources (each with a different …Read more
Recognizing an author’s purpose (or purposes) for writing or creating an informational source can help a student determine what’s important in a source, remember what they read (or heard in a video or saw in a graphic), and begin to think critically about the information in a source. Last week I had the honor of …Read more
If your students struggle with determining what’s important or they think “it’s all important!” make sure they have a clear purpose for reading. A purpose stated as a question is even better. Questions like “What is the author’s point of view? What are details in the sources that make me think so?” or “How did …Read more