Norms for today’s PD

1. Norms for today’s PD • Participate • Cell Phone • Side-bar conversations

2. Robertson County Middle School Reading Block Jennie Justice, Middle School Reading Coordinator Jennie.justice@rcstn.net

3. Comprehension • 30 minutes daily • 1/3 Literature (basal, novel, book clubs), 2/3 Content area text (nonfiction material such as social studies or science materials, book clubs, poetry) • Teach Comprehension Strategies: Connecting, Predicting, Clarify/Monitor, Questioning, Summarizing, Inferring, Visualizing, Evaluating • Provide a variety of before, during and after reading strategies • Arrange flexible and purposeful groups especially for the “during-reading phase” of the block • Work to embed grammar SPI’s whenever possible

4. Comprehension Research • Both NRP and Duke and Pearson (2002) agree that explicit teaching, including an explanation of what and how the strategy should be used, teacher modeling and thinking aloud about the strategy, guidedpractice with the strategy and support for students applying the strategy independently are the steps needed to effectively teach any comprehension strategy.

5. Three Segments of Comprehension • Before Reading Strategies • During Reading Strategies • After Reading Strategies

6. Before Reading Strategies • Before beginning a selection, students must: • access or build prior knowledge • make connections • make predictions • identify the purpose for reading

7. During Reading Strategies • While reading, students must: • question and monitor what they are reading and thinking about • make inferences • visualize • continue to make connections • continue to set predictions

8. AfterReading Strategies • After reading, students must follow-up their predictions, connections, and purpose. They may need to: • summarize • identify important information • evaluate or apply the information from the text to a specific problem or situation • engage in conversations • create a written response to reflect their thinking

9. Tools to Consider • Bookmarks, Sticky Notes, and Highlighters • ERT – Everyone Read To…Find out / Figure out (Big Blocks p. 116) • Story Maps (Big Blocks p. 150) • T-Charts (Big Blocks p. 111) (graphic p. 149) • Students write an entry from the text in the left column and respond with their connections in the right column. • Predicting – Guess Yes or No/Anticipation Guide (Big Blocks p. 112) • GIST (Big Blocks p. 113) Use for Summarizing

10. Informational Text Graphic Organizers to Consider • KWL (Big Blocks p. 122) • Feature Matrix • Informational Web (Semantic Web) (BigBlocks p. 119) • Data Charts • Timelines • Venn diagram (Compare & Contrast) (Big Blocks p. 118 & 120) • Cause and Effect – Causal Chain (Big Blocks p. 121)

11. Comprehension Anchor Charts

12. Quick Write • A quick write is a brief activity, usually 3 minutes, that allows the students to stop and reflect in writing on what they are learning. • A quick write can also make use of word wall words to ensure students knowledge of words. • A quick write can also be used as a way for students to analyze their own metacognitive thinking process.

13. Working with Words • 15-20 minutes daily • Word Walls • Greek-Latin Words http://quizlet.com/ • Prefixes-Suffixes (Big Blocks p. 195) • Spelling patterns, high frequency words (BigBlocks p. 192-194) • Tennessee Academic Vocabulary http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/vocab/ • 12 Powerful Words http://sbcusd.k12.ca.us/index.aspx?nid=4652

14. Why Direct Instruction? • Direct instruction offers our students a powerful, comprehensive approach to learning. • Direct instruction creates or buildson schema. Frontloading is important! • Vocabulary strength is strongly related to reading proficiency in particular and to school achievement in general.

15. What Words to Teach? • K-2 vocabulary growth comes more through oral language and books that are read to the children. • As kids progress in school, emphasis turns to academic vocabulary, that is, to vocabulary words that pertain to specific disciplines or domains – but they still need that enriching vocabulary, too! Beck and Marzano

16. Three Tiers of Vocabulary • Tier 1: Basic words that rarely require instructional attention: clock, sad, shoe • Tier 2: High frequency words that appear across a variety of domains. Because of the large role they play in language, rich knowledge of words in Tier 2 greatly impacts language functioning. Strive to teach 400 a year! Crunch: when you eat, walk, work with #s • Tier 3: Words best learned when the need arises, such as introducing peninsulaor isotope during a geography or science lesson. Beck, I., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002)

17. Criteria for Identifying Tier Two Words: Go for Milage! • Importance and utility: words of mature language users that appear across domains. (Ex: dread vs. brackish) • Instructional potential: Words that can be used in a variety of ways and build connections to other words and concepts. (sad – sorrow – grief) • Conceptional understanding: Words for which students understand the general concept but which provide more precision. • (Ex: distracting, annoying, bothering vs. Go away! Stop!) Beck, I., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002)

18. An Easy Way to Introduce Words Select the word, then • Teacher gives the definition in student-friendly terms. • Use the context of the story as a basis for discussing the words. Talk about their applications in the story. • Draw a picture of the word. • Examples of the word. • Word Wall it!!

19. Let’s Try It! Through the glass floor of the Elevator, Charlie caught a glimpse of the huge red roof and the tall chimneys of the giant factory. They were plunging straight down onto it. • Charlie caught a glimpseof the factory. Can you say “glimpse” with me? • What do you think glimpse means? (response) • Right! Glimpse means “a quick look at something, kind of a peek.” So Charlie was just getting a quick look at the roof and chimney as the Elevator fell…. • Can you think of a time when you glimpsed something? • Super. Now, what’s the word we’ve been talking about? Beck, I., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002)

20. You Try it!! • With a partner, use the Angry Bird article and read the first four paragraphs. • Find two words that are likely to be unfamiliar to students or that are possible Tier 2 words. • Analyze: which are Tier 2 words? Which are needed for story comprehension? • Which words will you teach? Which need brief attention, and which need more elaborate attention?

21. Learning Academic Vocabulary • State the term and work through it orally. • Provide a description, explanation, or example of the term. KEY: SCHEMA. • In their journal, students write the word and restate the explanation of the term in their own words; they rate their understanding of the term. • Students provide examples of the term in their journals (and an example of what is not the term). • Students create a non-linguistic representation of the term – this is key for ELs and struggling learners. • Word Wall it! • Engage students in activities that reinforce and add to their knowledge of this vocabulary. USE IT!

22. Direct/Intentional Vocabulary Restated more simply • Students discuss and restate the term in their own words in their journals: • Rely on background knowledge and experience (you may need to create this!) • Use description, examples, explanations of their own, what it is, what it isn’t • This helps form links between new term and those already known • Students rate their knowledge of the word  

23. Word Walls • AmazingWords/Word Wizard wall (or whatever you want to call it) for the enriching words. • Rotate the words! A good wall is in constant motion! Kids can reach it and touch it. Use it to establish weekly review, enliven writing, and promote conversation. • You decide how your walls will look. Key: for kids to love words and to participate actively in the creation and maintenance of the walls!

24. Word Sort Video • http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=606

25. Word Walls

26. Quick Write

27. Writing • 25 minutes daily • **Teach grammar SPI’s • Mini-lesson on grammar skills from pacing guide (10-15min.) This can be used as a bell-ringer, etc (Big Blocks p. 58-60) • Examples of mini-lessons (Big Block p. 90-96) 1. Writing Handbook (Big Block p. 61-62)

28. Mini-lesson on Sentence Observation • Choose an interesting, well-crafted sentence from a text. • Write the sentence on a piece of chart paper before the lesson. • Begin with “What do you observe about this sentence?” • Once the conversation gets started, the teacher will record the class’s thinking on the chart. • Colored markers are recommended for this activity. • http://choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=149

29. Student Writing/Conferencing • Student choice • Focused writing (Big Block p. 62-65) • Conferencing regarding writing (during SSR) (Big Block p. 72-75) • Sharing of writing (optional) (BigBlock p. 81-82)

30. Quick Write

31. SSR/Data • 15 to 20 minutes daily • READ ALOUDS from different genres, topics, authors (5-8min.) • Student-selected reading • Goal Setting for books?? • Reading log (Big Block p.37-41) • Conferencing-REQUIRED (Big Block p. 35-36) • DATA SHARING • STAR, Thinklink, common assessments, TCAP, mock writing, etc.

32. Classroom Libraries http://swap4schools.swap.com/ http://classroom.booksource.com/

33. Classroom Libraries Plastic Gutters

34. SSR/DATA Pictures Genre List Response Log

35. SSR/DATA

36. Jennie’s Podcast Information • Please refer to your handout with directions to my podcast. • http://podcast.rcstn.net/rla • http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=170

37. Books worth reading