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Do your students struggle to compose sentences about nonfiction topics that make sense or sound right? Do they lack structure at the sentence and paragraph level? Here’s a few tricks I’ve been trying with small groups of late-early and transitional stage readers. Generate key words As part of a conversation generate key words they will …Read more
If students are reading multiple texts on a topic and taking notes on each of those sources, I require that (or strongly suggest) they write notes in phrases–just enough words to help them remember what they learned or what the author was saying or the student’s response to information. In most cases, I strongly encourage …Read more
Can your students explain what their main idea statement means? Is a superficial understanding or misunderstanding of the main idea impacting their ability to identify or explain supporting details? We may need to give students space & time to unpack the main idea. What follows are a few suggestions for helping students unpack a main …Read more
How do we help students have back-and-forth conversations about nonfiction that build understanding? Conversations that include continually returning to their notes and the text to think about what to say next? Demonstrate with a Student-Partner Other moves I make with my conversation partner… And so forth. Critical Moves during the Demonstration Lean in to Coach …Read more
A few weeks ago I visited a fifth grade class of students who’d done some amazing work researching Native American groups. They were planning to meet in groups to compare/contrast the tribes they’d researched. Before they began their discussion, the teacher, Kelli, and I led a quick discussion–we banned the use of the words “same” …Read more
Do you students notice when authors provide definitions and examples? Many nonfiction authors use these and other types of details when they describe concepts like forces, magnets, weather and so forth. Readers need to recognize these types of details to understand these concepts. I was surprised one day to find out the middle grade students I …Read more
When annotating, do your students underline (or highlight 😉 most of what they’ve read because they think “it’s all important”? Maybe they’ve underlined that much because they don’t know how to determine what is important? Below I describe a Phase 2 demo lesson I gave to tackle this issue – focused on helping students identify …Read more
When I ask students if they ever think about lunch or something else while they are reading, most give me a thumbs up! After we get past the “shocked teacher” look, I talk to them about the importance of staying focused and monitoring for whether they are understanding the content in the source. Then I …Read more
Just a few photos from THIEVES (Manz, 2002) lessons as reminders of what we need to think about when introducing this strategy to students. I taught two demo lessons with third and fourth grade students. This was the first time they’d used the strategy and it seemed to take longer than I expected, but when …Read more
Figuring out how to keep students engaged in learning until the last minute on the last day of school? I know you have lots of tricks in your back pocket. Just want to put in a good word for immersing your students in “free reading” of high-interest nonfiction. Below I’ve shared some tips and a …Read more