Tag Archives: learning supports

A Teaching Support on Scripted Activity Structure

Posted on January 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s another teaching support as a table of scripted activities structures I grabbed a couple of years ago from R. Keith Sawyer’s (ed.) book The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Before you blow this off like I probably would after reading the adjective “scripted”, let me point out that this isn’t scripted curriculum like the crap that various educational “innovators” or “entrepreneurs” all too frequently shill in our schools, but rather structured methods of inquiry that are, in fact, scholarly in structure.

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A Learning Support on Discussing Books and Reading

Posted on January 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

[You can also grab this as a Word document if you want it that way.]

Some Questions to Ask when Roaming among Readers

 Always:

  • What page are you on?

Mostly:

  • What do you think so far?
  • How is it?
  • What’s happening now?

 And Also:

  • Any surprises so far?
  • How did you feel when you got to the part about __________?

 Main Character Queries:

  • Who’s the main character in this one?
  • What’s the main character like?
  • What’s his problem, or hers?
  • How’s the character development in general? Are you convinced?

 Author Queries:

  • Who wrote this one?
  • What do you think of the writing so far?
  • Do you know anything about the author?
  • Any theories about why he or she might have written this?
  • How is it, so far, compared to his or her other books?

 Critical Queries:

  • What genre is this one?
  • How is it, so far, compared with other books about ______?
  • Is it plausible?
  • How’s the pace?
  • What’s the narrative voice? How’s that working for you?
  • What do you think of the dialogue/format/length of chapters/flashbacks/inclusion of poems/diction choices/author’s experiments with _____, and so on (depending on the book)?

 When It’s A Page Turner:

  • What’s making this a page-turner for you, vs. a literary novel? What are you noticing? For example, is it formulaic—easy for you to predict?

 Process Queries:

  • Why did you decide to read this one?
  • I can’t believe how much you read last night. Tell me about that.
  • Why did you decide to reread this one?
  • Where did you find this book?

When There’s No Zone:

  • Is this book taking you into the reading zone?
  • Why do you think it’s taking you so long to read this?
  • Can you skim the parts that drag—the descriptions, for example?
  • Are you confused because it’s hard to understand the language, or because you can’t tell what’s going on?
  • Are you considering abandoning this book? Because if you’re not hooked by now, that’s more than okay. You can always come back to it someday.
  • Do you want to skim and find out what happens, or even read just the ending, then move on to a better book?
  • What’s on your someday list?
  • Do you know what other book I think you might like?

Excerpted from: Atwell, Nancie. The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers. New York: Scholastic, 2007.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Learning Support: Writing about Reading

Posted on January 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

[You can also take this as a Word Document if you prefer.]

Writing About Reading: Some Openers

  • I was surprised when/angry about/satisfied with/moved by/incredulous at…
  • I liked how the author
  • I noticed how the author
  • I don’t get why the author
  • If I were the author I would have
  • I’d compare this author to
  • This book reminded me of
  • The main character
  • The character development
  • The narrative voice
  • The structure of this book
  • The climax of the plot
  • The resolution of the main character’s problem
  • The genre of this book
  • I’d say a theme of this book is
  • I wish that
  • I didn’t agree with
  • I understood
  • I couldn’t understand
  • Why did
  • This is how I read this book
  • I rated this one _____ because
  • And always: I was struck by/interested in/convinced by this passage: “….” It shows…about this author’s writing.

Excerpted from: Atwell, Nancie. The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers. New York: Scholastic, 2007.

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The Weekly Text, January 3, 2020: A Lesson Plan on the Concept of Solving Problems in Mathematics

Posted on January 3, 2020 | Leave a comment

Let me begin by stipulating that where math teaching is concerned, I leave a lot to be desired.

So, several years ago, when I was tasked with developing a math and science literacy unit for struggling learners, I had little time and few ideas, so I began planning one of my standard literacy units. Fortunately I had a couple of colleagues to coach me on some of the actual math work (and thanks to Nate Bonheimer and Jeremy Krevat for this). I’ve been posting lessons from this unit as I’ve gone along.

This week’s Text, therefore, is this lesson on the concept of solving problems. This lesson begins with this extended context clues worksheet on the verb solve (it’s used both intransitively and transitively) and the noun solution. These definitions of solve and solution can serve either as the teacher’s copy or as a learning support. This problem set and comprehension questions serves as the second piece of work for students. Here is one version of the answer key and here is another. Finally, here is the answer-key template if you decide to develop this lesson further and need it.

Let me end where I began: I am not a particularly deft math teacher, so this is not, by this blog’s standards, a superior piece of work. However, it may well work as a framework for a number of lessons on understanding the lexicon we use with mathematics.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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A Glossary of Terms from Martha Stone Wiske’s “Teaching for Understanding”

Posted on December 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

Last week, after reading a few pages each morning with my coffee before leaving for work, I finished Martha Stone Wiske’s (ed.) Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research to Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997); yesterday I finished its companion, The Teaching for Understanding Guide by Tina Blythe (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). From the latter, I cribbed this glossary of Teaching for Understanding terms if you’re inclined to use this planning and instructional framework.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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A Goal-Setting Form for Writing

Posted on December 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

This morning, after reading a few pages a day for a couple of months, I finally finished Martha Stone Wiske’s (she edited) excellent book Teaching for Understanding: Linking Practice with Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). Like the National Research Council’s How People Learn, this book is a road map to the kind of deep conceptual teaching I yearn to do.

I grabbed this goal-setting form for writing from the book’s pages, if you can use it.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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A Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Posted on December 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

I recently started writing a phonics unit based on Denise Eide’s excellent book Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling and Literacy (Minneapolis: Pedia Learning Inc, 2011). In the process of assembling materials for this unit, I typed up this glossary of linguistic terms from the book. It’s probably useful as a learning support for both teachers and students.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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A Lesson Plan on Linking Verbs

Posted on December 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a complete lesson plan on linking verbs. Because sentences with predicate adjectives are one of the most commonly used structures in both English prose and speech, I teach them several times in the course of the parts of speech unit I wrote several years ago (and continue to revise).

Anyway, here is the Cultural Literacy worksheet on intransitive verbs with which I open this lesson after a class break. This scaffolded worksheet on linking verbs is at the center of this lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on the verb to be to help students conjugate this often confusing verb.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Term of Art: Exposition

Posted on December 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Exposition: Exposition, or expository writing, is traditionally understood as writing that aims to transmit information to presumably interested parties as distinguished from writing that aims to persuade the reader. As there will be elements of persuasive writing in expository, so also will there be elements of the expository in persuasive.

In the following discussion, however, the perspective is that of rhetorical analysis, which regards all written communication (including the note on the refrigerator door) as guided by a communicative/persuasive purpose. Exposition is, then, that type of prose writing that attempts to create, in its target audience, the attitude that the writer is objectively presenting the facts relative to a given subject. Exposition thus is not a division of prose discourse according to intent, but rather represents a tone that the writer wishes the reader to accept as ‘factual.’ The writer of exposition cultivates a tone designed to allow (encourage) the reader to think that the writer has no specific interest in, or position in regard to, the subject matter presented.

Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.

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The Weekly Text, November 8, 2019: A Lesson Plan on the Art of Summarizing

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

Alright, this week’s Text is a lesson plan on the art of summarizing which is part of a bigger unit on argumentation that I wrote–but used only once–a couple of years ago.

This context clues worksheet on the verb concede (which is used transitively, but can be used intransitively, according to Merriam-Webster’s, by writing to make concession) opens the lesson. I use this exemplar of a summary, drawn from the book that informs this unit, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (New York: Norton, 2018) as a learning support and model text. This learning support on the verbs used in the rhetorical figures of argumentation supplies students with the vocabulary they require to postulate and write sound arguments. Here are the two exercises for summarizing that are at the center of this lesson. Finally, here is the worksheet for this lesson that contains the full text of the exemplar linked to above.

And that’s it for another week at Mark’s Text Terminal. Enjoy the weekend.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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