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I’ve given up calling on one student at a time during whole group instruction. A few weeks ago I was walking down the hallway in an urban school and stopped to ask a fourth grade student for directions. She knew where I needed to go, but she struggled to tell me. “Like…well, it’s down there…like …Read more
Last week I taught several demonstration lessons for students on how to use the mnemonic THIEVES (Manz, 2002) and as I taught the same lesson over and over, I made some surprising and significant shifts in how I use this activity based on the needs of the students and the pitfalls of the texts. THIEVES …Read more
Emergent and early reader texts are frequently about animals and include action words like swim, hop, and jump. The trade books we choose to read aloud to students can serve to build, reinforce, and expand this type of vocabulary. For example, in Nic Bishop’s Frogs (2008), frogs wriggle, grip, burrow, climb, catch, swallow, blink and …Read more
As we ask transitional level readers to engage in close reading, let’s be aware of tricky details. Below I share my analysis of one informational text that is very similar to other texts we use in our classrooms. A few weeks ago, I taught several second grade “close reading” lessons with informational texts from the …Read more
Last week I had the honor of visiting multiple schools and giving demonstration lessons in 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. For each lesson, there were 10-15 teachers observing. Afterwards we debriefed about methodology and evidence of student learning. Some amazing insight was gained – as well as a sense of affirmation for what they are …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
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
Recently I was asked to teach a lesson to second grade students with an informational text on magnets. As I read through the text, I began thinking about how many of the students I’d be working with may not have had many language and hands-on experiences with magnets or magnetism or the concept of force, …Read more