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“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
In a previous blog I shared how my colleague read aloud The Impossible Rescue (Sandler, 2012) to fifth graders. The students wrote letters about their thinking regarding main ideas in the text – “what struck me” or “what impacted me” and I wrote back in response. Instructional threads emerged as I read through and responded to …Read more
My colleague, Andrea, who reads aloud complex nonfiction texts to her 5th grade students, spends about 30 minutes a day engaged in this practice. She reads aloud, but also stops to use mind maps (see image above) to help the students keep the information organized cognitively. In The Impossible Rescue (Sandler, 2012), there are several …Read more
Yesterday I conferred with a second grader who was reading The Moon by Deborah Eaton (written at a late 2nd grade level). When I approached her, I started by saying, “What are you reading about?” She responded with “the moon.” I followed by asking, “What have you learned about the moon so far?” This question …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