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close reading informational text

Noticing an Author’s Purpose Can Lead to Transformative Understanding

Noticing an author’s purpose helps us 1) determine what’s important in a source, 2) begin to think critically about the information in a source, and 3) remember what we read. What follows are a few recommendations for teaching “author’s purpose.” Integrate WHY into your discussions of author’s purpose The WHY of noticing an author’s purpose …Read more

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Thinking Aloud for Students – The What, Why, How & When

When we realize a student does not understand a complex chunk of text, we may need to stop asking questions for understanding and “think aloud” for the student, modeling how to make sense of the text. What follows is an excerpt from a middleweb.com column “Letting Go is Messy” that I co-wrote with Julie Webb …Read more

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Don’t neglect connectives like “even though”

BUT. DESPITE. WHEREAS. ALTHOUGH. IN CONTRAST. INSTEAD. HOWEVER. YET. WHILE. NEVERTHELESS. NOTWITHSTANDING. Our students may gloss over these words as they read, not realizing how powerful they are. Words like these signal a causal relationship that is in opposition to what a reader might have expected. These words are a BIG DEAL. Technically they’re called …Read more

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Three-phase plan for learning

Below is a guide I’ve developed for planning and teaching with informational sources. Each “phase” can be one or more lesson periods (20-40 minutes) based on the needs of your students. My hope is to make teaching with informational sources (texts, video, infographics, etc) more manageable. There’s so much we can do with these sources, …Read more

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Can they explain the main idea statement?

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 time to unpack the main idea.  A few suggestions for helping students unpack a main idea statement: 1. Ask them …Read more

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Do our students notice “definitions” & “examples”?

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

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Three Phase Lesson – Explaining Supporting Evidence

Do your students ever need help with explaining how key details support a main idea? Here are a few thoughts and artifacts from a three-phase lesson I gave. Phase One – Meet the Source The students read the article entitled “Tortoises battle it out with Marines for the right to stay put.” Suggestion – Before …Read more

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NEWSELA–I like this site but beware…

Just be careful. NEWSELA is a great site for short informational articles for students to read. The  content is usually worthy of student-led discussions and writing about in response. The beauty of NEWSELA is that the same article is available at different Lexile levels. (When you click on an article, check out the blue bar …Read more

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Complex sources? Give students a head start with THIEVES

Teaching students to use the mnemonic THIEVES (Manz, 2002) to preview a text is an easy way to nurture students’ sense of agency as they tackle feature-dense nonfiction sources. The poster below (created by a colleague!) reveals the details of this strategy–students preview, predict & then summarize their predictions. A FEW TIPS Create THIEVES bookmarks …Read more

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Quick way to review text & content before close reading

I tried something new–I provided a list of “key details” from a section of text as a way for students to review content before engaging in close reading of a more difficult section of the text. During a previous lesson, the 3rd grade students had read an article about Dolores Huerta (in the McGraw-Hill Wonders …Read more

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