Showing posts with label complex text in social studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label complex text in social studies. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Out Loud

Do you have a loud class? One that never shuts up? Especially this week before spring Break?

Some kids need to talk. Some kids never shut up. Some kids who are normally more quiet are loud this week  as they prep for Spring Break. Believe me, I feel for them. It’s probably no surprise that I was one of those kids. (sorry, again, to all of my teachers when I was a kid!)

I know you probably think this is a weakness of that group. And, in many lessons, that’s true. But could we turn it into a strength?

I think there are ways to teach that are more open and helpful for these types of kids. We can harness the energy of the shout-out kids. (It’s true!) It’s not a complex reading strategy and it requires little, if any, preparation.

It goes like this:
  1. Teacher and students all have copies of the same reading.
  2. Teacher reads aloud, pausing strategically at certain words (you might underline or highlight those words on your TEACHER COPY ONLY ahead of time so you know what words you want to make sure they get)
  3. When the teacher pauses, the kids say (shout?) out loud the word that goes there.
  4. The teacher continues reading the selection out loud, pausing at the words he or she wants the students to say (or shout) aloud.

Now, why would I WANT to have my kids shout out loud during reading? I have a couple of benefits I can notice...

  • It helps them stay engaged with the reading.  
  • It helps kids who normally “tune out” during reading to stay with it.
  • It helps with fluency of struggling students.  
  • It helps me-the-teacher to chose important terms and make sure the kids stay with me for those.
  • It’s more fun.
  • It helps use that LOUDNESS for good reasons and not for off-task reasons.

It’s not hard and requires less than a minute of preparation. How can you use this strategy to keep your kids engaged and to emphasize important terms?

As always, let me know how it goes! I love to hear from you all!

And I hope you have an awesome Spring Break full of whatever you like to do in your free time! WE’re ALMOST THERE! HANG IN THERE!!! Enjoy the beach, or your TV, or your beer, or your kids, or your gardening, or your gym, or whatever you get to do!  :)

-Tracy

Monday, November 26, 2018

A Tale of Two News Shows


I know YOU know that people are often judged based on their choice of news outlets. “I don’t believe the liberal media” or “he heard that on Fox News”.

Did you know that this isn't new? Before the US Civil War, there were separate mailed newspapers that went to people with different political views. This whole Fox News vs. MSNBC thing isn’t new. There were entire newspapers devoted to journalistic obliteration of Andrew Jackson and entire newspapers devoted to supporting him. Often the separate newspapers were actually funded entirely and openly by political parties!

There are always multiple views on any issue, particularly on political and social “hot topics”.. There are always different ways to look at an issue or an event.

Just ask four different kids about the most recent campus fight and you will get four different stories. Add in the AP or nearby teacher or hall monitor and you have another set of stories.


Then, wait a week and ask about that fight again. Chances are, with time and perspective, that you will have some slight variations on that fight.

Then, ask someone’s mom. Or a student from another school. And you will get yet another side to the story.

Finding the middle ground between multiple sides of the story is what CORROBORATION is all about.

Corroboration is about establishing what is most probable by comparing the documents together. It recognizes disparities between accounts.

How can I teach my kids to look at corroboration between documents and accounts?

Here are some good prompts/questions to use to help kids dig into the corroboration...
  • What do other documents say?
  • Do the documents agree? If not, why?
  • What are other possible documents?
  • What documents are most reliable?
  • The author agrees/disagrees with . . .
  • These documents all agree/ disagree about . . .  
  • Another document to consider might be . . .

This is, again, a Civic Literacy skill. It’s a reading skill. It’s what Common Core asks for. It’s what the LAFS ask for. It’s what the FSA asks kids to demonstrate. It’s what we want our voters to do. IT’s what we want ALL citizens to do -- not just the “advanced” kids or the “magnet kids” or the college-bound.

We want ALL kids to understand and master the skill of corroboration!

How can we continue to give kids intentional practice corroborating? As always, I love to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Cut. It. Out.

Doc Strips.

No, this blog hasn’t gone “blue”. This is not about a person named “Doc” who does anything NSFW (not suitable for work). Instead, this is a strategy for digging into a document. It’s not like Chicken Strips.

So, there are a lot of ways to get kids to dig into a historical document. We can use Doc Analysis Sheets, we can use PERSIA, we can do “I See I Think I Wonder”, we can use “Looking 10x2”, and on and on.

Well, here’s another tool for your tool box and it’s great for struggling readers or high achieving readers.

It’s called Document Strips.  And it’s fairly simple to prep for.

Just Cut. It. Out.
The papers, I mean. Cut out the papers.

Strategy: Doc Strips

Why? To get kids to dig further into a text, to pique student curiosity, to help them read more closely.
What? Simply cut your documents into sentence (or phrase) strips. Then, have the kids use context clues to assemble the document back together!

How?  
1.      Choose a document that the kids can tackle (mostly) by themselves. Be sure to define or pre-teach any terms that might give the kids too much struggle. We don’t want them to give up because they come across an indecipherable word.
2.      Then, split the document into sentences (or phrases), one per line. Cut the strips and put each set in an envelope. Try not to give them clues!
3.      Give each group of students (partners work best, but 3s or 4s are ok) an envelope and instruct the groups to try to read the sentences and put them in order.
4.      Go around to the groups and check to see if they got the sentence (or phrase) strips in the correct order. If not, ask them WHY they put the sentences in that order. Often, they will either find their mistakes or they will have compelling evidence that shows solid thinking.

Why would this help? Well, it helps struggling readers to have to dig into the text and work to make sense of what they’re reading. It also helps to slow down your speed readers and keep them really understanding the text (as opposed to the strategy of scanning for answers that many readers have mastered). It also is a little more fun than reading without Doc Strips or than writing. It “looks” easy (even if it isn’t).


Pro Tip:  Keep an “answer key” uncut for yourself  to quickly check answers as you walk around the room.

How do I know if they got it? Have them do a quick formative assessment to check whether they understood the document. Ask them to tweet the doc, hashtag it, summarize it, illustrate it, etc. Let them put what they learned in a different format to show you that they “got it”.

All you have to do is Cut. It. Out.

This is an oldie but a goodie! Do you use it? Will you try it? As always, I love to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Teaching Hacks, The Look, and Monitoring



Teaching Hacks, The Look, and Monitoring
Image result for teaching hacks

Y’all know that I love Teaching Hacks! You know what I mean? Those Pinterest-y ideas for quick fixes in the classroom?

Here are a few of my faves ...
  1. Turn and Talks. All day, every day. Makes kids process learning and therefore RETAIN learning
  2. Having kids use Whiteboard markers to write ON the desks. And then baby wipes to remove. (so much more fun than paper!)
  3. Using Plickers to formatively assess in under 2 minutes. Because time is EVERYTHING to teachers. (except today they introduced a pay system?)
  4. Bathroom pass on a lanyard (because, ewww, where does the pass go when they’re using the facilities?)
  5. Written directions for everythingeverythingeverything. Every activity, assignment, everything with written directions on the board or screen. Helps ESE kids, ESOL kids, kids who have auditory processing issues, kids who just weren’t listening, kids who are flakey, and kids who are all over the place. If you write the directions down, half your management improves!

Ok, I’d like to add a new Teaching Hack to your list.

It’s so simple, but so rarely used.

It’s called “Read student work WHILE they’re working”

No, really. Stay with me!

Kids will trick you all the time. They can’t help it. They’re kids.  One favorite trick of most students is The Look.

This is different from the Teacher Look, the Mom Look or  The Administrator Look.

The Student Look is an “I’m innocent look”, maybe an “I’m thinking deeply look”, or even an “I am on task” look.

They use it all the time

Kids are great at looking busy. I used to happily walk around my classroom and monitor my students. I loved to walk around and do what  I THOUGHT was monitoring.

“Thanks for being on task, Destiny!”
“Let’s start our work, Carlos!”
“Brittany, you don’t have any work done! What have you been doing?”
“You’re almost done, Austin! Great job!”

What was wrong with those? I was monitoring for compliance, not for comprehension.

What’s the difference? I used to monitor to see if my kids were DOING their work, not if they were LEARNING what I wanted them to learn!

A kid can write stuff on paper all day but have no idea what we’re learning. They can be compliant by copying their friends’ words, they can be compliant by copying some things out of the book/packet, or they can be compliant just staying quiet and making wild guesses.

Kids can be tricksy. They can definitely LOOK busy but be missing the point.

I was constantly surprised AFTER students turned in their work and it was waaayyyy off, super wrong, or missed the point of the assignment/question entirely!

So how can we monitor for LEARNING? What’s the Teaching Hack here?

It’s so easy. Just read what they write WHILE they’re writing it.

I know we think we’re all already doing it. And maybe it was just me. But I see and hear lots of teachers monitoring around the room talking to kids about DOING work, not about WHAT they’re writing.

As you walk around the classroom, read what they write WHILE they are writing. Are they on point? Are their answers aligned to your question or are they off in left field? Do their answers read EXACTLY like the answers of the kid next to them? Are they wildly making stuff up? Are they copying some sort of answer out of the book without actually understanding it? Are they jotting down “IDK” for every third question?

And then -- when you see them on task but OFF-TRACK (not understanding), STOP and help them right then.

Don’t wait until kids turn in their work. Help them fix it right away, in the moment.

This takes EXACTLY as much effort as your monitoring for compliance does. You DO have to get up and walk around, just the same amount of steps. But it pays out waaayyyy more in student learning.

Totally worth it. Do mostly the same thing you are already doing but make it work better for you and your kids. Don’t get fooled by “The Student Look”. Monitor for LEARNING not for compliance.

Now that’s a Teaching Hack!!

Thoughts? Questions? Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org


Tuesday, September 18, 2018

If The Kids Can't Read

BTW -- today’s email is NOT for reading teachers. Reading people, you already do al lthis stuff. So feel free to avoid me today.

The Social Studies teachers, though? Today is for US!!

There’s an old joke that a man sees a musician get out of a taxi in New York and asks “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The musician answers “Practice, practice, practice”

It’s old and it’s dumb, but it has truth. If you want to get better at anything, you have to practice.

So, what do we do when so many teachers tell me that their kids “can’t read”?

We have those kids practice, practice, practice.


Seriously, if a kid wants to be an NBA star or a concert violinist or the next Jay-Z or a comic book illustrator or a videogame designer or the inventor of the next Tesla, there’s only one real strategy.

Practice, practice, practice

So, if our kids want to become better readers (or, maybe more accurately, if WE want OUR KIDS to become better readers), they need to practice. Every day that they are in our class, they need to practice.

“But Tracy”, you protest, “They can’t read!”

I’d like to call “BS” on the majority of those that you think “can’t read”.

Maybe they aren’t strong readers. Maybe they aren’t fluent readers. Maybe they aren’t confident readers. Maybe they aren’t on-grade-level readers. Maybe they aren’t voluntary readers. Maybe they aren’t engaged readers.

But very, very  few of them can’t sound out words and get some meaning from many of those words. That’s literally all they do all day for 2/3 of the elementary school and a good chunk of the middle and high school day. ESPECIALLY if they’re in an additional reading class during their day.

They CAN read, some.

So, let’s stop saying they “can’t read”. There’s a pretty huge continuum between can’t-sound-out-letters and voluntarily-reading-college-level-material. There’s a million shades of grey between the two polar opposites. Let’s look at which shade of grey we’re talking about.

Now, let’s go back to Carnegie Hall. If kids aren’t strong readers, how to they become strong readers? There are a million scaffolds and strategies, but it all comes down to this:

Practice, practice, practice.

If you have low readers in your classroom, they need to practice reading Every. Dang. Day. IN YOUR CONTENT AREA (not just in reading class)

Here is what they don’t need:
  • They don’t need the reading broken down for them in bullet points on the screen.
  • They don’t need to be “spared” from reading (even of they don’t love it)
  • They don’t need you to lecture instead of making them read.
  • They don’t need to read ONLY in reading class.

Here is what they DO need:
  • Reading. Every. Single. Day.
  • in Every. Single. Class.
  • Time in front of text.
  • Gradual release
  • Your patience.
  • Think alouds

If your kids “can’t” comprehend your social studies text (or science text or health text or art text), then they need practice in that type of text.


Here’s the easiest way to help with literacy IN YOUR CONTENT AREA.

Gradual release it.
And chunk it.

If kids are struggling readers, start with something small. Start with a paragraph. Heck, if it’s a tough primary source, start with a sentence or two.

Then, model how you read and think aloud and gain meaning from the text.

Then, give them the next sentence or paragraph. Have them work on gaining meaning from the text.

It’s okay if they aren’t AS good at it as you are. Remember, you have a college degree and they don’t, so they won’t do as well as you do. That’s ok.

Chunk the text.

Start small and gradually give them more text until you build their skill and confidence and stamina.

After a week or two, move up to a larger paragraph. Then two paragraphs next month.

Especially with strugglers,  it’s appropriate to start in manageable bites and then gradually challenge them more and more.

Don’t expect them to become better readers by NOT reading. Help them become better readers by having them read something (even small) every day.

What do you have them read daily? How do you move your struggling readers up a level or two? As always, I love to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org