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It seems like many of the students I work with struggle to explain why or how a detail is supporting evidence for a main/central idea. Does this sound familiar? What I have begun inquiring about in my practice is whether students have enough “language” to explain evidence. Maybe this is the missing piece. So for …Read more
Lesson Experience: Teaching for deep understanding of “perseverance” through close reading, student-led conversations, and argument writing. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of working with sixth grade students on the west side of Chicago. This year they have been engaged in units of study focused on essential questions like “What is culture?” and “How …Read more
A few weeks ago, I had the honor of reading aloud Nic Bishop’s Frogs to kindergarten students on the south side of Chicago. When I visited the school initially, I engaged in an informal reading conversation with three of the students, reading aloud sections of a book about penguins to them and assessing what they …Read more
There are many interpretations of the term “main idea” or “central idea.” In my search for clarity, I have turned to the 1986 text Teaching Main Idea Comprehension, edited by Jim Baumann. (Sadly, this book is out of print.) In the first chapter, James Cunningham and David Moore describe research that revealed the many interpretations …Read more
“What is the difference between the Common Core argument and opinion writing?” I’m addressing this with a group of middle school teachers tomorrow and it seems to be a question frequently asked in the field right now. I’ve been studying the difference for my own professional growth and thought I’d share some of my thinking. …Read more
Here’s a model for displaying nonfiction in your classroom library. Notice how the books are facing forward in baskets – easy to flip through and find a title of interest. Also, if you zoom in, you’ll see the books are categorized and coded – “Transportation NF#5.” The codes are marked on the back of the …Read more
Last year I had the honor of working with two kindergarten teachers who immersed their students in nonfiction author studies. Late in the spring they led a two week author study – week one on Steve Jenkins’ books and week two on Nic Bishop’s books. Monday-Wednesday or Thursday, they read aloud a book and …Read more
So…I’ve been getting a lot of questions about “anchor charts” for “close reading.” I’ve been hesitant because I don’t want students to consider close reading as a lock-step process. Close reading is the simultaneous orchestration of multiple skills, used fluidly and iteratively. BUT there are potential benefits when we use an initial anchor chart as a …Read more
Recently my daughter, a 4th grader, was assigned a short research report on the population of Texas. We went to the library, located books on Texas, scanned the table of contents for info on “population” and then checked out three books. Okay…that takes a lot of skill right there. If we are teaching students to …Read more
Lesson Experience – Even when definitions of vocabulary words are carefully planned for discussion during close reading, these definitions can be problematic… In a blog entry from last December about a lesson experience, I discussed the needs of a specific group of 6th graders I worked with in an urban school. Many seemed to lack …Read more