Storytelling and Critical Reading in Content Areas

[Day 5 Notes from Kathleen Tolan's Session]

Agenda:
Centers
Storytelling
Critical Reading


Summarizing:
You write the same amount of words about a small summary as you do about a summary of the whole book.
Summary: Just focus on boxes

Valley Forge a safe headquarters

•     high ground •     easy to defend •     woods to build huts for shelter

Storytelling: 

Take the box and bullets and create a little story/vignette around the box and bullets.

Tell the story of "Daniel" who lives in Valley Forge. Kids LOVE this!

Events make for the best storytelling.

• Take major events, and have kids get into storytelling circles to tell the events.
• At first, you want to start with just bare-bones of a story for the kids. (You don't want to intimidate kids about storytelling)
• Don't storytell only once! Retell over and over.

In storytelling, what would you want kids to hit, in a barebones-skeletal way, during storytelling.

It has to sound like story, not a summary!

Create a picture storyboard

As kids get to know the story better, they cut the pictures out, add other pictures/sketches.

Don't let is sound expository. It needs to sound like story.

Read another source to give a different perspective.

Ex: Read "Riding for Freedom" (the story of Sybil Ludington)

Now update the storyboard. Do you need to add anything?

Why is Sybil left out?

...and now we've lead kids into critical reading!

Who is left out? Why is that?

Critical Questions to Teach Children:

• Who created this image?
• Analyze the different  perspectives one can take from viewing this image?
• What perspective does this text offer on an issue or experience?
• Who was the image created for and how does it affect the viewer?
• What did the image creator want people to believe?
• Might the image have been exaggerated? If so, how? And why?
• Whose voice is heard?
• Whose voice is missing?
• Whose story is it? Who benefits from it being told this way?
• Who has power in the text? Why does he/she have it?
• What social norms do we see in the text?
• What values are upheld in this text?
• What values are challenged in this text?
• What experience does this text describe which we may be unfamiliar with?

Image created by Paul Revere to show people. He had an agenda with the creation of this image. This image outraged the people.

An image that shows a different perspective of the same event. (Probably more accurate)

...and now we've considered perspective and point of view!

Critical reading is easier to teach in history than in fiction.

[Center Activities]

Share out:

Share an occasion where a study carries information from one center to another.

Push your kids: What can you bring to your center that you can share with the other people at your center?

Assessment:

Little projects where kids create posters or projects

Museum: What big things have we learned during this unit?

Act out something they learned/storytell

Sign up for different ways kids want to show their learning

Collect and evaluate notebooks

Create a writing project (informational book)

Make a PowerPoint about a subtopic (i.e. Colonial Clothing)

Writing About Reading

[Day 5 Notes from Mary Ehrenworth's Session]

Reading Notebooks
Writing about reading:

1. Just like with writing notebooks, if there isn't an audience for the reading notebook, kids won't continue it.
2. Have kids start playing with challenging writing WAY ahead of time. Ex: WAY before teaching an argument unit in Writing Workshop, kids are doing many argument protocol experiences (like the Giving Tree example from Day 2) in their reading notebook. 
3. Creating an environment of innovation

The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

7 Survival Skills:
1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration and leading through influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
5. Effective written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination

Quality of Play:
Let kids figure out what works better for kids to write. Will they write more if they write in pink sparkly gel pen? Will they write more if they write on a whiteboard and take a picture of it? What really matters: The writing or the material?

Sometimes you might ask kids to "publish" a reading notebook page.
Sometimes you might do some small writing on post-its, then move it into the notebook.

Are you building an atmosphere of compliance, or are you building an atmosphere of innovation?

Notebook: Do lots of play with thinking. Put the pieces together to come to new thinking.

Awesome book: What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything? by Avi


Launching and Sustaining Innovative Writing About Reading
Don't focus on the tool! Reading notebooks might be on the iPad, in a notebook, or tattoos on your body!

• Gather some samples (Just having kids look at what other readers are doing can help)
• If you need samples, just collect some during a shared reading
• GREAT book: The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron
• Develop rituals for sharing 

• Maybe have "gallery walks" on Fridays (Protocol: 2 different post-its- A compliment post-it, and a goal post-it "What did someone else do that I want to try?")
• Publishing "By next Friday, can you gather some notebook pages that show some innovative work. Post on a wall.

• Demo ("co-author") during lesson/ small group/ conference
• Keep your own notebook (Model your own notebook. It doesn't always need to be real)
• Don't ask your kids to do something you wouldn't do

Resources Mary created that will help with argument work:

http://readingandwritingproject.com/resources/classroom-libraries/text-sets.html

What about letting kids research online? Think about this: Even in college, students are given resources by the professor. Rarely does a professor say, "Ok, go research. I hope you learn about psychology. Off you go!"

How to Get Argument Going:

Start with Reading Workshop (picture book) repeatedly

Then get book clubs started- Students create their own questions that are debatable and juicy

Then get it going in Social Studies and Science

Doubling Down on Strategic Reading: A Closer Look in Grades 3-8

[Notes from Stephanie Harvey's Keynote]

Thinking-Intensive Learning: Close Reading and Viewing for Understanding

The only way we can get information out of complex text is we have to be more strategic.

Comprehension at the Core

• The more complex the text, the more complex the thinking must be
• The tougher the text, the more strategic the reader must be

We teach kids to use strategies so they can hurdle the background knowledge gap. We don't teach strategies for strategies' sake. We don't need to make a kid the best connector in the the room.

"We teach kids to think so they can acquire and use knowledge"

Kids can only turn information into knowledge by thinking about it. We can't do that thinking for them.

Must-Reads:

Choice Words by Peter Johnston

Opening Minds by Peter Johnston

We can't teach kids to think. Kids are born thinking. We can teach them to be aware of their thinking.

Strategies for Active Reading:

• Monitor comprehension
• Activate and connect to background knowledge
• Ask questions
• Infer and visualize meaning
• Determine importance
• Summarize and synthesize

How is Lexile measured?

• Length of sentence
• Number of syllables in a word
• Amount of repeated frequency of words that are unfamiliar

Not involved: Interest!

Don't rely to heavily upon Lexile. Use it as a guide!

Lexile = 940:

Harry Potter

The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway (People use this book for their Ph.D. dissertation)

*What makes The Old Man and the Sea complex is what is NOT written

Henry and Mudge: Lexile 460

Sarah Plain and Tall: Lexile 430

*Company saw the study, so they went back and changed Henry and Mudge (Mudge was repeated over and over and over, so computer marked at 460

Use levels as a guide, but do not be a slave to this level. There are some things that human teachers do better, and this is one of them. Use your best judgement!

Don't be a slave to it!

What is Text Complexity?

Our kids need to be thinking intensive readers, thinking intensive listeners and thinking intensive viewers.

• To understand complicated ideas, complex issues, multi-faceted problems and to turn information into knowledge, readers need:
• to think about what they know to understand new info
• to think inferentially to figure out meaning in the absence of explicit information

Infer from images, features, words, actions, figurative language and text.

Inferring is the strategy that allows us to get over a background knowledge gap.

Instead of considering level, kids must consider:

Economic Implications

Cultural Implications

Political Implications

Religious Implications

Historical Implications

Practical Implications

Incredibly Complex Text we need to focus more on: Infographics

There is so much missing from an infographic like this. You need to bring SO MUCH to it to make meaning. This is what we will be reading more and more of.

There is so much work to be done with two sentences!

Must Read:
The Art of Slow Reading by Tom Newkirk

Simple Problems vs. Complex Problems

Simple Problems

• Think aloud and share a simple problem you have had and explain that a simple problem is easily solved.
• Have kids turn and talk about a simple problem they have had or heard about. Have them share out a few of these simple problems.
• Create a two column anchor chart of simple problems and complex problems
• Jot some of the simple problems they come up with on the anchor chart.

Do the same thing with a complex problem

• Create charts together-What makes problems simple or complex

Don't underestimate the power of simplicity!

Making Data Visible: Methods for Using Data with Kids to Rapidly Accelerate Progress

[Notes from a session with Shana Frazin from TCRWP]

What are you doing right now to make data visible to kids?

Rule #1:

(Team meeting room in school-Data Wall)
Every child has a magnet with their name. Each grade is a different color. The graph moves from level A to Z.

Her noticing: We exploded into conversation with lots of noticings and questions after seeing this. When is the last time we reacted that way about data? What about this caused that reaction?

Rule #2:

What does that mean? Use it to plan instruction.

As teachers, we need to reclaim data so we can use it an make it powerful in our own classrooms.

A Data Collection Story: Ms. Puckett's 4th Grade
*Study done around the whole class conversation after a read aloud.

• The set-up
• On-demand: Do your smartest, strongest talk work. The group of teachers around the room are going to listen to your talk.
• The data
• Lens One: Participation
• Who talked? How often?
• Lens Two: Characters We're Studying
• Tally who are they talking about? How often?
• Lens Three: Elements of Story
• What kinds of things were they talking about? Character? Plot? Setting? Movement through time? Change? Symbolism?

• The reveal







• After 5 minutes of study, the data was revealed to students. Then students made plans.
• 
  
• The goals
• Based on the data, make some goals to work on
• Setting goals without data is why kids often struggle.
• Kid Goal samples:
• My goal is to talk in the conversation.
• Talk more about setting.
• To speak more.
• To add more about the people in the story.
• Try to talk more about other characters.
• I should only talk once so others can share.
• The outcome
• HUGE, HUGE growth in 1 day!

Transcribed the conversation to look at it through more lenses:

Reading Skills:

Lens: Retell vs. Idea

Retell	Ideas

Whole class next day, shared quotes from kids from yesterday.  (Ex: Say was injured.)

Class sorted: Is it a retell or an idea?

Lens: Vocabulary

Lens: Citing Text

Based on data, what are 2, 3, or 4 prompts 

• In the text, it says...
• What's another way to look at this? (alternate perspectives)

Develop Systems, Routines, and Structures

(Yearlong charts that are laminated, and changed by using post-its)

• Class Grid: multi-purpose
• Jot Lot with kids names on it
• Track data with tallies
• Characters We're Studying Chart
• Tally who we are talking about
• Words to Think, Talk and Write About... Chart 
• Vocab needed for think, talk, and write about fiction is NOT in fiction. (Ex: altruistic)
• Talk Trail
• Teacher has pad of giant post-its and jots down ideas that kids are having, and putting it up on the class talk trail so kids can see (makes it visible to kids)
• As we add on to ideas, add tallies to post-its so it can be visible
• Fresh, New Phrases
• What are the exact phrases that are going to lift the level of talk from where they are
• Ex: I agree with the idea that _____ because...

Opportunities for Transference

• Fiction --> Nonfiction
• How might this look differently? Subtopics instead of characters? Elements of NF instead of elements of fiction?
• Talking about... --> Writing about...
• This transformed her conference with kids
• Characters
• Elements
• Reading Skills
• Whole Group Conversation --> Partner Work --> Club Work
• Other ways to make data visible
• We're missing the boat if we're the only ones looking at the data

Think about ways you can make data visible to children

Chart she shows to the whole class throughout the year.

How Are We Doing? Studying Reading Levels and Benchmarks
	Below Benchmark	Benchmark	Above Benchmark
September P	25	3	0
November Q
January R/S
March R/S
June S/T

If you're not comfortable doing this with reading levels, what about stamina? Growth?

If we have have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine.

-Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO