Principles of Sequencing

1. Principles of Sequencing

2. Principles of Sequencing • Move from easy to hard; close to home to further from home • Visual and visually supported to purely textual • Oral to written • Short to long/lots of repetition • Concrete to abstract • Directly stated to implicit meanings • Collaborative to independent • Scaffolded to independent • Build a heuristic - a problem solving repertoire - through repeated practice

3. What is a “heuristic”? • A simple transportable thinking tool • E.g. the 5 W’s + H in journalistic writing • E.g. the five kinds of knowledge • E.g. five themes of flow that foster engagement • E.g. what makes you say so- so what? (Toulmin’s notion of argument) • E.g. If anything is odd, it’s probably important (in a literary text)

4. Reading for Main Idea heuristic • Identify the general subject of the text (the topic, which is what all the details have in common) • Identify the key details • Identify the pattern or underlying structure of all key details and the implied connections • Identify the main idea or generalization expressed by this pattern of these details

12. The Shark, By John Ciardi • My dear, let me tell you about the shark • Though his eyes are bright, his thought is dark. • He’s quiet, that speaks well of him • So does the fact that he can swim • And though he swims without a sound • Wherever he swims he looks around  • With his two bright eyes and his one dark thought • He has only one, but he thinks it a lot • And that one dark thought he can never complete • Is his one dark thought of something to eat • Most anything does, and I have to add • That when he eats his manners are bad • He’s a gulper, a snatcher, a ripper, a grabber • Yes, his manners are bad, but his thought is drabber • That one dark thought he can never complete • Of something, somewhere, somehow to eat • Be careful where you swim, my sweet.

13. Several lines in the poem develop the topic . . . . • of the shark’s keen eyesight • sharks’ dark thoughts about things to eat • sharks’ capacity to swim without making a sound • The central focus/main idea of the poem . . . • sharks have terrible manners • The bright eyes of the shark increase its ability to see it enemies or prey • Swimming is dangerous • Watch out when swimming in shark infested waters because the shark has a voracious appetite.

14. PICTURE MAPPING DIRECTIONS • Identify the topic of your reading - symbolize the topic with a visual (no words allowed!) • As you read, mark or list each key idea about the topic • Symbolize each key idea with a picture or a symbol - do this as simply as you can! • Show the relationships and the patterns of the key details • Show the central focus and/or implied actions that follow from this trajectory of these details

22. Principles of Sequence in your class Familiar to unfamiliar Visual to textual Immediate to imagined Short to long Oral to written Scaffolded to independent Collaborative to individual

23. Principles of Sequence across classes/types/genres • By complexity • By type • Within type

24. Some Thoughts on Sequence • Sequence by complexity Autobiographical account of discrete experience Themed autobiography Memoir or Fable Hero-quest Coming of age story

25. Sequence by type (e.g.,) Arguments of judgment Arguments of policy Arguments of extended definition Arguments of analysis

26. Sequence by complexity within type Students likely to know evidence already Students draw on single text Students draw on range of secondary sources Students draw on range of primary sources Students generate new data through inquiry

27. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.