Responsibilities, Lesson Formatting, and Text Selection

1. Responsibilities, Lesson Formatting, and Text Selection Some guiding principles and gentle reminders

2. Your Responsibilities as Participants: • Successful completion of 5 lessons (6 if you are in a group of 3 people) • Hard copy AND electronic copy (e-mail or disk) of lessons that are properly formatted and handed in WITH APPENDICES on August 4, 2005. • Lessons that evidence integration of the principles and content of the workshops and institute. • Lessons that reflect “change over time,” one of the “big ideas” of the conference • Lessons that evidence the expectation of teacher collaboration (another big idea of the conference.)

3. Final Evaluation • Lessons 4, 5 (and 6) will be weighted most heavily for those who are taking the course for credit • Lessons should evidence a sincere effort to address the methods instructors’ feedback. • Lessons that are acceptable (“B” level or better) will not need to be resubmitted. • Lessons that are below a “B” must be revised before payment is delivered (The power of positive peer pressure)

4. Lesson Format • In order to preserve Fran’s good nature and my sanity, please follow these guidelines when formatting your final lessons. Me Fran

5. Rule 1: Follow the Lesson Format on the Website!!!!! • Make sure to put numbers on lessons. • Shade/highlight areas of lessons that you changed in response to comments (This will help us to see that you responded to feedback) or, even better…. • You can use the “comments” feature of word to highlight changes.

6. Using the comments feature (a good writing strategy for peer editing of writing, by the way!)

7. When you are done with all your lessons…. • Page 1: Please have a title page which includes all group members’ names and READHistory 2. • Page 2: Please have a “table of contents” page that includes the lesson descriptions that are included in the packet (feel free to cut and paste from the lessons themselves). • Page 3 onward should be your 5-6 lessons.

8. And Now…the main event… Text Selection and Evaluation!

9. Evaluating Text from Both A Historical and Literacy Standpoint

10. Why do we need to do this? • Text is often the main vehicle through which we accomplish our lesson objectives. • But…Some text can be REALLY bad!!! • Each text has a particular structure and comprehension challenges.

11. Let’s take a look at some of the historical standards for choosing and evaluating text….

12. Let’s take a look at text from a literacy perspective….Some problems…. • Everyone is doing a great job at getting to the “big ideas” and the vocabulary to express these ideas. • However, many of us are focusing our lessons on the “forest” and are forgetting about the “trees”…the specific texts we are using to get at these big ideas. The tree of indvidual texts The Forest of Big Ideas

13. What we need to be doing… • Identify not only the “big idea” vocabulary, but also the specific vocabulary in the text selection that may pose a comprehension problem. • Make sure evaluate text structure as a way to design graphic organizers or other “during reading” activities to help keep students on track while they read.

14. Let’s Review the Text Patterns • Sequence Pattern • Listing Pattern • Descriptive Pattern • Comparison-Contrast Pattern • Cause-Effect Pattern • Problem-Solution Pattern

21. Let’s have some practice….