Solidify Content Knowledge Using Summarizing and Writing to Learn Strategies

1. Solidify Content Knowledge Using Summarizing and Writing to Learn Strategies for High School Science

2. Expected Outcomes Participants can and do: • Understand how practicing reading strategies can solidify and enhance learning in science. • Understand how to teach students to use the summarization strategy.

3. Lexile Text Measures 1600 1100 700

4. 2009 NAEP Proficient Reading Level Eighth-grade students performing at the Proficient Level should be able to: • Provide relevant information • Summarize main ideas and themes • Make and support inferences about a text • Connect parts of a text • Analyze text features • Fully substantiate judgments about content and presentation of content

5. What does this mean for my content?

6. Common Core State Standards

7. Common Core Instruction LESS MORE Think alouds, modeling, students processing information actively Short whole group time with small group time to process info Opportunities for practice, discussion in pairs/small groups before assigning independent work • Teacher lecture • Whole group • Assigned seat work with little opportunity to practice new learning

8. Explicit Instruction

9. Where do I begin? • Determine what students need to know and be able to do. • What key concepts are to be learned? • What will students be expected to read, discuss, write, and present? • Determine tools to use for learning.

10. CLONING

11. Summarizing • Is not: • Retelling • Long • Full of a lot of interesting details • Is: • Process of identifying salient information • Concise and specific • Reinforcing and consolidating the many processes involved in learning from text

14. Summarization Model Lesson

15. Animal Clones: Double Trouble? While Reading Handout: • Stop after each section • Highlight what you think is key to understanding the text • Write a few words about the most important information

16. After Reading: • Share with neighbor what you highlighted/annotated. • Add to key points or delete information after discussion. • Write a summary in 15–25 words using the key points.

17. Summarization “It’s easy to make things look hard but hard to make things look easy.” --Helene Lagerberg

18. Prerequisite Skills • Determine importance • Delete unimportant information • Condense information • Categorize terms into specific groups • Transform condensed information into writing

19. Summarization Substitute subordinate terms for lists Select or invent a topic sentence Delete trivial and redundant material

20. GIST Gist is a strategy used to determine the main idea of a text in as few words as possible. Tools for Teaching Content Literacy, Janet Allen

21. Possible Framework • Set objective/relevance - 2-3 minutes • Hook – video clip, article, question, picture – 5 minutes • Mini – lecture (Content based) – 8-10 minutes • Focused Reading Assignment – 10 – 12 minutes • Writing Task modeled and assigned – 5 minutes • Students work on assignment – 10 - 15 minutes • Wrap-up learning – 3-5 minutes

22. Design a Lesson

23. Jaywalking

24. Writing To Learnin High School Science

25. “If students are to make knowledge their own, they must struggle with the details, wrestle with the facts, and rework raw information and dimly understood concepts into language they can communicate to someone else. In short, if students are to learn, they must write.” -Vartan Gregorian President, Carnegie Corporation

27. Expected Outcomes Participants will: • Model Writing to Learn as a tool of thinking and reflection • Use various Writing to Learn strategies to increase student engagement and learning

28. With your table group, list eight types of writing that you use in your science classroom. • Place each type on a separate sticky note and place on the wall.

29. Writing To Learn Writing To Learn • Short • Spontaneous • Exploratory • Informal • Personal • One draft • Unedited • Ungraded Formal Writing • Substantial • Planned • Authoritative • Conventional • Audience centered • Drafted • Edited • Assessable Content-Area Writing, Harvey Daniels, et al

30. Writing To Learn Can: • activate thinking • help us collect and synthesize thoughts • help us to sort ideas • help us notice and hold on to our thinking • help us make connections • enhance discussions • help us set, assess, and evaluate learning goals

31. Writing To Learn is not: • Copying notes from the teacher • Answering questions at the end of the chapter Content-Area Writing, Harvey Daniels, et al

32. Writing Break Procedure • Students stop and reflect in writing on the activities or information being presented. • Quick sharing with partners or whole class follows this writing. • Duration: 2 minutes • Writing Breaks can consist of words, phrases, questions, confusions, connections, distractions, etc. Content-Area Writing, Harvey Daniels, et al

33. Minute Paper Significant Points Unanswered Questions WOW’s for Application

34. If students are not questioning, they are not comprehending.

35. The process is more valuable than the outcome. Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines, Sorcinelli, et al

36. Consider this • Poor writing skills cost businesses $3.1 billion annually • Only one out of four twelfth-grade students is a proficient writer Writing to Read

37. Did you know… • Low education is a significant factor for Alzheimer’s disease and all other forms of dementia. • Reading habits between the ages of 6-18 appear to be crucial predictors of cognitive function decades later. Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher

38. Common Core State Standards • Designed to “Complement and Enhance” the content • Designed to help students become “college and career ready”

39. Design a Lesson

40. Assigning Grades • Not graded for grammar or spelling • Writing to Learn instead of Learning to Write • Participation Content-Area Writing, Harvey Daniels et al

41. Raymond What is the message of this clip as it relates to teachers and teaching?

42. Slips • Can use index cards • Spend 1-5 minutes at the end of class • Offer students 1 prompt or several options • Diagnostic • Categorize/Deal the cards out in stacks to address the next day Content-Area Writing, Harvey Daniels, et al

43. Writing to Learn Strategies • SOAP • Writing Break • Minute Paper • Exit Slip

44. Our Gift to Students • Helping them become strong readers, proficient writers, and critical thinkers • In helping them develop, we give studentsoptions. Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher

45. References: • Content-Area Writing, H. Daniels, S. Zemelman, N. Steineke, 2007. • Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, Doug Buehl, 2009. • Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher, 2003. • Writing to Read • Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines, M. Sorcinelli, P. Elbow, 1997.

46. Reflection As a result of this training, what do you plan to do differently in your classroom? Which elements of this training were most effective for you? What do you still hope to learn about scientific literacy? If you are interested in a classroom visit next year, please provide your contact information.