Reading for Meaning

1. Reading for Meaning Presented by Kathy Marks

2. Reading for Meaning • Helps students overcome reading difficulties and build quality, evidence-based interpretations of texts • Builds students' critical reading skills • A technique that can be used independently • Process: • Introduce the text and statements. • Predict and make initial responses to statements. • Read text actively and find evidence to support or refute. • Discuss, share, and revise. • Complete a synthesis task to apply what was learned. • RFM is a strategy that works with all kinds of students—the difference is the depth and complexity of the statements you use as the triggers. Great for ESOL and special education students too!

3. Example: Gettysburg Address • Read the following statements. Decide if you agree or disagree with them by marking an “A” or “D” in the box. Then read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and find evidence to support or refute the statements. After you have collected your evidence meet with a small group of other students to decide if you believe Lincoln would have agreed or disagreed with the statements based on your reading of the text. • Lincoln believes the Gettysburg soldiers have died in vain. Predict Before: Agree or Disagree?

4. Lincoln sees a linear relationship between past and present. Predict Before: Agree or Disagree? • A good slogan for the Gettysburg Address would be, “We can work it out.” Predict Before: Agree or Disagree? • Lincoln wants to make Americans feel guilty about the war. Predict Before: Agree or Disagree?

5. Find Evidence For or Against Each Statement November 19, 1863 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

6. Discuss • Share and discuss the evidence for each statement. Revise as necessary. Be ready to share with the class. • Discuss with the class. Revise evidence and predictions as necessary.

7. Synthesis • From the perspective of a soldier, write a summary for your family or a response to President Lincoln.

8. RFM Brainstorm • How can you use this in your classroom?

9. Resources • Silver, H.F. & Strong, R.W. (2006). Sample lessons: Reading for meaning. NJ: The Thoughtful Education Press. Retrieved from: http://www.thoughtfulclassroom.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=99 • Silver, H.F. & Strong, R.W. (2006). Reading for meaning in the classroom. NJ: The Thoughtful Education Press.