Lucy Calkins with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

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1 Lucy Calkins with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Units of Study for Teaching Reading A Workshop Curriculum Grade-by-Grade, K 5 Grades K 5 Series Overview u STATE-OF-THE-ART TOOLS AND METHODS u RESPONSIVE, DATA-BASED INSTRUCTION u EMBEDDED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

2 I couldn t be more delighted to be sharing this work with you. It is an understatement of a lifetime to say that Units of Study for Teaching Reading grows out of years of work in thousands of classrooms. The series actually grows out of decades of work, and out of the greatest minds and most beautiful teaching that I ve seen anywhere. To write this, we have done what teachers throughout the world do all the time. We ve taken all that we know the processes, sequences, wheels, continua, books, levels, lessons, methods, principles, strategies, the works and we ve made a path for children, a path that draws all we know into a cohesive, organic progression; a path that brings children along to the place where they can make sense out of text and can live together as joyous thoughtful readers. SERIES OVERVIEW CONTENTS About the Author...1 The 10 Essentials of Reading Instruction...2 Why Chooose Units of Study for Teaching Reading?...3 What Does the Series Contain?...4 A Quick Look at Primary Reading Development...6 A Quick Look at Intermediate Reading Development...8 Unit Summaries, Grades K Reading Workshop Framework Minilesson Conferring and Small-Group Work Share Trade Book Packs Reading Aloud, Grades K Shared Reading, Grades K Teaching Tools for Literacy Development Assessment Yearlong Planning Reading and Writing Connections Pilot Teachers Report Dramatic Results Professional Development L u c y C a l k i n s

3 ABOUT LUCY CALKINS, Author and Series Editor Lucy Calkins is the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University. For more than thirty years, the Project has been both a think tank, developing state-of-the-art teaching methods, and a provider of professional development. As the leader of this renowned organization, Lucy works closely with policy makers, school principals, and teachers to initiate and support schoolwide and system-wide reform in the teaching of reading and writing. Lucy is also the Robinson Professor of Children s Literacy at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she co-directs the Literacy Specialist Program. Lucy s many books include the seminal texts The Art of Teaching Writing (Heinemann 1994) and The Art of Teaching Reading (Pearson 2000), as well as Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing, K 8 (Heinemann ). ABOUT THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT The mission of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project is to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers. They accomplish this goal through research, curriculum development, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with students, teachers, and school leaders. The organization has developed state-of-the-art tools and methods for teaching reading and writing, for using performance assessments and learning progressions to accelerate progress, and for literacy-rich content-area instruction. 1

4 THE 10 ESSENTIALS OF Reading Instruction Just as Don Murray argued that writers need three things time, choice, and response readers also need three things access to books they find fascinating, time to read, and expert instruction. To make real progress, students need all three. No matter how expert your instruction, if kids don t get enough time to read, or don t have enough books to read, they won t progress. In the same way, if they have lots of books, but no one teaches them explicitly or confers with them about their reading, introducing them to new challenges and guiding the work they do, they won t maximize their potential as readers. Neither untouched independent reading, nor expert teacher talk alone will shift readers adequately. These ten essential tenets of reading instruction are woven throughout the Units of Study for Teaching Reading workshop structure. 1. Above all, good teachers matter. Learners need teachers who demonstrate what it means to live richly literate lives, wearing a love of reading on their sleeves. Teachers need professional development and a culture of collaborative practice to develop their abilities to teach. 2. Readers need long stretches of time to read. A mountain of research supports the notion that teachers who teach reading successfully provide their students with substantial time for actual reading. 3. Readers need opportunities to read high-interest, accessible books of their own choosing. Students need access to lots of books that they can read with high levels of accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. They need opportunities to consolidate skills so they can use skills and strategies with automaticity within fluid, engaged reading. 4. Readers need to read increasingly complex texts appropriate for their grade level. A consensus has formed around the resolve to accelerate students progress so they can read increasingly complex texts. Teachers can find ways to scaffold instruction to provide students with access to these texts when they cannot read them independently. 5. Readers need direct, explicit instruction in the skills and strategies of proficient reading. The National Reading Panel strongly supports explicit instruction in comprehension strategies, suggesting that the teaching of even one comprehension strategy can lead to improved comprehension, and that teaching a repertoire of strategies can make an even larger difference (National Reading Panel 2000). 6. Readers need opportunities to talk and sometimes to write in response to texts. Talking and writing both provide concrete, visible ways for learners to do the thinking work that later becomes internalized and invisible. 7. Readers need support reading nonfiction books and building a knowledge base and academic vocabulary through information reading. The strength of a student s general knowledge has a close relationship to the student s ability to comprehend complex nonfiction texts. Students who read a great deal of nonfiction gain knowledge about the world as well as about vocabulary. 8. Readers need assessment-based instruction, including feedback that is tailored specifically to them. Learners are not all the same, and learners do not all need the same things to progress. Teaching, then, must always be responsive, and our ideas about what works and what doesn t work must always be under construction. 9. Readers need teachers to read aloud to them. Read-aloud is essential to teaching reading. Teachers read aloud to open the day, using stories and poems to convene the community and to celebrate what it means to be awake and alive together. They read aloud to embark on shared adventures, to explore new worlds, and to place provocative topics at the center of the community. 10. Readers need a balanced approach to language arts, one that includes a responsible approach to the teaching of writing as well as reading. The National Reading Panel s recommendations in 2000 supported the need for children to have balanced literacy instruction. Pressley and his colleagues conducted research in balanced literacy, seeking out examples of exemplary teaching in the primary grades and studying the approach to instruction. In every case, whenever they found a classroom with high literacy engagement, they found balanced teaching in place (Pressley et al. 2002). (From A Guide to the Reading Workshop, primary and intermediate editions) 2

5 WHY CHOOSE Units of Study for Teaching Reading? Set High Expectations The Units of Study for Teaching Reading series encourages you to hold conversations with colleagues, especially those teaching at your grade level, so that you settle on some shared expectations The units make for how students entire school experience translates into expectations. For it crystal clear to kids that when they apply example, at what point are readers strategies, work hard, revise expected to realize that even if a their first understandings, and nonfiction text is presented as the get help, their reading will truth, it actually is that author s get visibly and dramatically truth, seen from that author s perspective? At what point in a child s better, right before their eyes. development are you helping the child become aware of the difference between her opinion and the author s opinion and what are the small steps readers can take toward that awareness? And when does the child in your school go from seeing research as gathering up and synthesizing information with no regard to the nature of those sources, to a process that involves assessing the credibility, bias, and perspective of those sources? The units give kids clear pathways forward toward meeting those and other ambitious goals. Build Students Sense of Efficacy Providing progressions, rubrics, and exemplars that turn elusive standards into concrete, doable behaviors, allows your children to work with a sense of efficacy I can do this, if I work hard. This is nowhere more important than in reading, because all too often, children come to you believing that their abilities as readers are fixed and beyond their control. I m a bad reader, a child will say. My sister is the good reader in my family, but I m bad at it. I can read, a child will say, but I can t get those questions. The units of study send an entirely different message. This series challenges the notion that success in reading is hardwired into a child s DNA. Instead, the units make it crystal clear to kids that when they apply strategies, work hard, revise their first understandings, and get help, their reading will get visibly and dramatically better, right before their eyes. Chart a Path to Success More than this, the Units of Study for Teaching Reading provides you, as well as your kids, with that same sense of efficacy and power. In this world of ours, when kids are being asked to do things on high-stakes tests that are so ludicrously ambitious that we, as educators, aren t sure that we could do those things, it is easy to feel demoralized, overwhelmed, and paralyzed. The Units of Study for Teaching Reading can turn those feelings around by giving you and your colleagues a crystal clear path forward. Lucy Calkins 3

6 WHAT DOES THE SERIES CONTAIN? The series has been designed to provide you with a curriculum to lean on and to adapt, as well as with the professional development that you need to develop a deep knowledge of reading process, and of methods for teaching reading. Each unit of study includes approximately sessions, each representing a day in the reading workshop. Each session contains a minilesson, suggestions for the conferences and small-group work you are apt to do that day, and a possible mid-workshop teaching and share session for that day. Each day s teaching builds on the teaching from the day before, and is capsulized in an illustrated over-sized Post-it note or two that you can combine to create anchor charts. The units also contain extra teaching tools, such as one-day charts, songs and games, bookmarks, cue cards, and scaffolds of various sorts, plus a variety of recommended book lists. 4

7 Grades K 2 Grades 3 5 GRADE-LEVEL BOXES CONTAIN: A Guide to the Reading Workshop PRIMARY GRADES u Four Units of Study: Grades K 2 include one foundational unit and three other units to address reading fiction and informational texts. Grades 3 5 each include two units in reading fiction and two in reading informational texts. u A Guide to the Reading Workshop, Primary or Intermediate Grades: Details the architecture of the minilessons, conferences, and small-group strategy sessions and articulates the management techniques needed to support an effective reading workshop. IF... THEN...CURRICULUM ASSESSMENT-BASED INSTRUCTION LUCY CALKINS LUCY CALKINS WITH ELIZABETH MOORE AND COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT u If... Then... Curriculum: Assessment-Based Instruction, Grades K 2 or 3 5: Contains additional units to support and extend instruction and to prepare students for work in the main units as needed. u Reading Pathways, Grades 3 5: Puts a system for assessing reading into teachers hands and into the hands of students. u Online Resources for Teaching Reading: A treasure chest of additional grade-specific resources, including bibliographies, short texts, illustrations to show completed anchor charts, reproducible checklists, pre- and post-assessments, homework (grades 3 5), mentor texts, videos, and Web links. u Large-Format Anchor Chart Post-it notes: Preprinted Post-it notes with summarized, illustrated teaching points help teachers create and evolve anchor charts across each band and unit. u Read-Aloud Post-it notes, Grades K 2: Preprinted Post-it notes highlight possible teaching points the teacher might address during the read-aloud. Grade 2 shown A Guide to the Reading Workshop INTERMEDIATE GRADES IF... THEN...CURRICULUM LUCY CALKINS ASSESSMENT-BASED INSTRUCTION Reading Pathways LUCY CALKINS WITH COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT GR ADES 3 5 Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions Grade 4 shown LUCY CALKINS WITH ALEXANDRA MARRON AND COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT 5

8 G1B3_6541.indd 6 T S PROBABLy HARD TO BELIEVE that the children in front of you are the same children that first appeared at your classroom door in September. Back then, they looked, acted, and read so much more like kindergartners. Take a moment to think back and be proud of just how far they have come. Now think about where you re headed next. To best understand this, you may want to walk down the hall to the second-grade room and acquaint yourself with a proficient second-grade reader. They re easy to spot. They re the ones with their nose in a book, entirely lost in a story. Watch how they take charge of themselves as readers, approaching texts with confidence and enthusiasm. Talk to them and you ll discover that they draw from a deep reservoir of ways to tackle trouble, solving words and confusing parts flexibly and creatively. Listen in to the child read a page and marvel at the way it sounds. And as you talk, laugh, and wonder together, relish their enthusiasm for a great book. Now take these observations with you, all the way back to your first-grade class and use them to help you envision the foundation you ll need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your readers. It will be hard work. And so, your very first order of business in this unit will be to recruit help. I think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class dramatically. I think you re ready for some new and important jobs. And these aren t jobs like being a line leader or a closet monitor. Oh no. These jobs are so much bigger and more important than that. These are the jobs that readers do to read harder and harder books. And here s what s even more special about these reading jobs you are the boss! you are in charge of your reading, not me! This unit, all about the reading process, comes at a time in the year when your readers will need to develop independence to make it to the finish line. While it s commonly accepted that kids have made it as first-grade readers if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish vi line encompasses so much more than a reading level. Instead, it s about the level of processing kids are doing in their reading and the mind-set they have about what can sometimes feel like hard work. Think back to that secondgrader and what you observed. Chances are it wasn t the level of the book that stood out to you, but the way the reader took on the work of reading with joy and independence. This unit sets children up to be able to read increasingly complex texts with accuracy, comprehension, and fluency, all of which require the development of great problem-solving skills. Think of this as the book that helps you dismantle the training wheels. Watch out for the bumps, you ll say, but I know you can do this. Go on! your main goal then, is to help your students realize that they re ready to take on the important jobs a reader needs to do. They have strategies to be in charge of their own reading, to set their own agenda, and to get through the hard parts all by themselves. They can move past the initial impulse to say Help me! when faced with a tricky word or when meaning breaks down and can take a deep breath, have a little courage, and say, I can solve this myself! you ll show your first-graders that they can be the bosses of their reading, solving their own reading dilemmas by drawing on the tools and strategies they ve learned from minilessons and small-group work. And you ll teach them to balance their reading energies between word solving and meaning making so that their experiences with texts are well-rounded and thoughtful, efficient, and meaningful. This is important work, worthy of teaching to your whole class, not just relegated to small-group work. There is something incredibly powerful about sharing learning as a classroom community. Think of the children who one day, in collective astonishment, witnessed a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. Remember? they say to each other months later, recalling their fascinated observations. Learning together builds a sense of identity as a community. So, go ahead, tap into this as you teach about the reading process. When 5/16/15 12:21 PM G1B3_6541.indd 67 you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, monitoring check that their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right. After all, for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the print on the you can t fix up a problem if you don t know there s something wrong. With page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of the group. practice, and as the books they read become more challenging, kids need to Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see themselves as get better at monitoring for sense. At levels E/F, children are still learning to the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve them. And look at all the parts of a word. They may not notice that something is wrong regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that carpet with a in their reading until well past the error. At levels G/H, there is usually less little more independence and a greater willingness to work through difficulty. distance between the error and the correction, and by level I, most readers It s a game changer. are skilled enough at looking closely at words while still keeping in mind the In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping your class meaning of the story that they will usually stop and fix up their reading at T S PROBABLy develop the mind-set HARD TO needed BELIEVE to take that charge the of children their own in reading. front of Children line encompasses the point so of error. much Keep more in than mind, a reading that monitoring level. Instead, one s it s reading about involves the both you are will the learn same to stop children as soon that as first they appeared encounter at your difficulty, classroom draw from door in the strategies they ve Back been then, accumulating they looked, acted, all year and to solve read so a problem, much more and like then check about what meaning can sometimes breaks down feel across like hard longer work. parts Think of text. back your to that readers second- will need to level of processing checking the kids accuracy are doing of in their words reading a reader and the says mind-set as well they as noticing have when September. kindergartners. to see that Take they ve a moment got it to right. think This back portion and of be the proud unit of is just all about how far monitoring grader and know what that you it s observed. their job Chances to read with are it all wasn t cylinders the level firing, of the attending book that closely and they have one s come. reading Now think and initiating about where action. you re It s headed then in next. the second To best bend understand this, focus you on may strengthening want to walk and down expanding the hall to students the second-grade word-solving room strategies, and add- and independence. Once students This unit realize sets children there s a up problem, to be able then to it s read up increasingly to them to do some- that you ll stood out stopping you, but as soon the way as they reader find something took on the wrong. work of reading with joy acquaint ing yourself more with tools a to proficient their toolkits, second-grade and reminding reader. students They re to easy draw to from spot. multiple complex thing texts with about accuracy, it. To do comprehension, this, readers need and to fluency, have a all repertoire of which of require strategies they They re the sources ones of with information their nose in in their a book, problem entirely solving. lost in you ll a story. review Watch some how of the work the development know how of great to use. problem-solving The good news skills. is that Think first-graders of this as the are book collectors. that They they take from charge earlier of themselves units, and as now readers, teach approaching your readers texts how with to use confidence these strategies helps in you spread dismantle out their training sports cards, wheels. their Watch Beanie out Boos, for the or bumps, their Pokemon you ll cards, and enthusiasm. higher-level Talk texts, to them with and longer, you ll more discover complex that words. they draw The from third a bend deep shifts say, the but delighting I know you in can the do number this. Go and on! variety they ve gathered. And so in this unit, reservoir attention of ways to toward tackle monitoring trouble, solving for meaning. words and Children confusing will parts learn flexibly strategies for your main you will goal lean then, into is this to help impulse your and students invite realize them that to spread they re out ready not their to baseball important cards, but jobs their a reader reading needs strategies. to do. Halfway They have through strategies this to first-grade be in year, and creatively. maintaining Listen meaning to the across child large read parts a page of text and as marvel well as strategies the way for it developing an as understanding you talk, laugh, of and new wonder vocabulary together, words. relish you ll their bring enthusiasm the unit to a close charge of your their students own reading, will have to set a beginning their own repertoire agenda, and of to these get strategies, through the and you ll take on the sounds. And for a great with book. the Now fourth take bend these that observations asks your readers with to you, pull all together the way everything back to they ve hard parts reinforce all by themselves. importance They of can remembering move past and the initial drawing impulse upon them. to say your first-grade learned class to problem and use solve them on to the help run you and envision read with the foundation fluency. you ll Help me! when All of faced your readers, with a tricky regardless word of or their when level, meaning will need breaks to down think about and meaning a deep and breath, structure have when a little solving courage, words, and so say, this I is can why solve you ll this start myself! by highlighting need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your can take readers. you ll show these your strategies first-graders in the that unit. they you ll can then be the move bosses to of helping their reading, kids use solving their mation. own reading In the dilemmas beginning by of drawing the school on the year, tools you and taught strategies children they ve to be flexible visual infor- It will The be hard InTersecTIon work. And so, your very of first reading order of business development in this unit will be to and recruit ThIs help. I UnIT think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class learned from with letters minilessons and sounds. and small-group Now you will work. teach And them you ll to have teach even them more to flexibility dramatically. For the I think first time, you re many ready of for your some readers new will and be important able to walk jobs. into And a public balance their in decoding. reading energies They will between face tricky word vowel solving clusters and meaning and will making need to so be flexible these aren t library jobs or like bookstore being a and line realize leader the or world a closet of text monitor. is opening Oh no. up These to them. All that of their with experiences parts of words, with texts not are just well-rounded letters and sounds. and thoughtful, But this adaptability efficient, can be jobs are a so sudden, much bigger they ll and reach more for books important like Hattie than that. and the These Fox are or Little the jobs Critter, and Fly meaningful. challenging for first-graders. With their growing sense of I can do this! can that readers Guy, do or to Henry read harder and Mudge and harder series books. and And be here s able what s read them. even How more exciting! This is come important equally work, strong worthy sense of teaching of There s to only your one whole way class, to do not it! and just if the special about However, these like reading training jobs you wheels coming are the off boss! a bike, you things are in can charge sometimes of relegated be a one to small-group way they know work. doesn t There work, is something they re stuck. incredibly Persistence, powerful then, about is important your reading, little not wobbly me! at first. New challenges arise, and it will be important to understand all the about work the your reading readers process, need to comes do at at this a time stage in in the their year development. when day, in collective draw on astonishment, their collection witnessed of strategies a butterfly and try emerge something from else a chrysalis. when their first sharing learning within this as a unit, classroom but so is community. flexibility. you Think will of need the to children push your who first-graders one to This unit, your readers First, will need it s critical to develop that independence children learn to make monitor to their finish reading line. effectively. Remember? attempt they doesn t say to work. each This other means months that later, your recalling children their will fascinated be working hard to While it s This commonly is nothing accepted new. Since that kids kindergarten, have made your it students as first-grade have readers been taught observations. to orchestrate Learning all the together individual builds strategies a sense they ve of identity learned, as a to community. do them all and do if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish So, go ahead, them with tap into more this automaticity. as you teach about the reading process. When vi AnOrientationtotheUnit vii 5/16/15 12:21 PM A QUICK LOOK AT Primary Reading Development 1_U3_RUOS_C1.indd 1 I Readers Have Big Jobs to Do FLUENCY, PHONICS, AND COMPREHENSION LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR ELIZABETH DUNFORD FRANCO HAVILAH JESPERSEN LINDSAY BARTON An Orientation to the Unit I An Orientation to the Unit Grade 1 Unit 3 4/8/15 11:51 AM Excerpted from GRADE ONE, UNIT 3 Readers Have Big Jobs to Do: Fluency, Phonics, and Comprehension An Orientation to the Unit: The Intersection of Reading Development and This Unit For the first time, many of your readers will be able to walk into a public library or bookstore and realize the world of texts is opening up to them. All of a sudden, they ll reach for books like Hattie and the Fox, the Little Critter series books, Fly Guy, or Henry and Mudge, and be able read them. How exciting! However, like training wheels coming off a bike, things can sometimes be a little wobbly at first. New challenges arise and it will be important to understand the work your readers need to do at this stage in their development. First, it s critical that children learn to monitor their reading effectively. This is nothing new. Since kindergarten, your students have been taught to check that their reading makes sense, sounds right and looks right. After all, you can t fix up a problem if you don t know there s something wrong. With practice, and as the books they read become more challenging, kids need to get better at monitoring for sense. At levels E/F, children are still learning to look at all the parts of a word. They may not notice that something is wrong in their reading until well past the error. At levels G/H, there is usually less distance between the error and the correction, and by level I, most readers are skilled enough at looking closely at words, while still keeping in mind the meaning of the story, that they will usually stop and fix up their reading at the point of error. Keep in mind, that monitoring one s reading involves both checking the accuracy of the words a reader says as well as noticing when meaning breaks down across longer parts of text. Your readers will need to know that it s their job to read with all cylinders firing, attending closely, and stopping as soon as they find something wrong. All of your readers, regardless of their level, will need to think about meaning and structure when solving words, so this is why you ll start by highlighting these strategies in the unit. You ll then move to helping kids use visual information. In the beginning of the school year, you taught children to be flexible with letters and sounds. Now you will teach them to have even more flexibility in decoding. They will face tricky vowel clusters and will need to be flexible with parts of words, not just letters and sounds. But this adaptability can be challenging for first graders. Persistence, then, is important within this unit, but so is flexibility. You will need to push your first graders to draw on their collection of strategies and try something else when their first attempt doesn t work. This means that your children will be working hard to orchestrate all the individual strategies they ve learned, to do them all and do them with more automaticity. 6

9 T S PROBABLy HARD TO BELIEVE that the children in front of you are the same children that first appeared at your classroom door in September. Back then, they looked, acted, and read so much more like kindergartners. Take a moment to think back and be proud of just how far they have come. Now think about where you re headed next. To best understand this, you may want to walk down the hall to the second-grade room and acquaint yourself with a proficient second-grade reader. They re easy to spot. They re the ones with their nose in a book, entirely lost in a story. Watch how they take charge of themselves as readers, approaching texts with confidence and enthusiasm. Talk to them and you ll discover that they draw from a deep reservoir of ways to tackle trouble, solving words and confusing parts flexibly and creatively. Listen in to the child read a page and marvel at the way it sounds. And as you talk, laugh, and wonder together, relish their enthusiasm for a great book. Now take these observations with you, all the way back to your first-grade class and use them to help you envision the foundation you ll need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your readers. It will be hard work. And so, your very first order of business in this unit will be to recruit help. I think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class dramatically. I think you re ready for some new and important jobs. And these aren t jobs like being a line leader or a closet monitor. Oh no. These jobs are so much bigger and more important than that. These are the jobs that readers do to read harder and harder books. And here s what s even more special about these reading jobs you are the boss! you are in charge of your reading, not me! This unit, all about the reading process, comes at a time in the year when your readers will need to develop independence to make it to the finish line. While it s commonly accepted that kids have made it as first-grade readers if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish vi G1B3_6541.indd 6 line encompasses so much more than a reading level. Instead, it s about the level of processing kids are doing in their reading and the mind-set they have about what can sometimes feel like hard work. Think back to that secondgrader and what you observed. Chances are it wasn t the level of the book that stood out to you, but the way the reader took on the work of reading with joy and independence. This unit sets children up to be able to read increasingly complex texts with accuracy, comprehension, and fluency, all of which require the development of great problem-solving skills. Think of this as the book that helps you dismantle the training wheels. Watch out for the bumps, you ll say, but I know you can do this. Go on! your main goal then, is to help your students realize that they re ready to take on the important jobs a reader needs to do. They have strategies to be in charge of their own reading, to set their own agenda, and to get through the hard parts all by themselves. They can move past the initial impulse to say Help me! when faced with a tricky word or when meaning breaks down and can take a deep breath, have a little courage, and say, I can solve this myself! you ll show your first-graders that they can be the bosses of their reading, solving their own reading dilemmas by drawing on the tools and strategies they ve learned from minilessons and small-group work. And you ll teach them to balance their reading energies between word solving and meaning making so that their experiences with texts are well-rounded and thoughtful, efficient, and meaningful. This is important work, worthy of teaching to your whole class, not just relegated to small-group work. There is something incredibly powerful about sharing learning as a classroom community. Think of the children who one day, in collective astonishment, witnessed a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. Remember? they say to each other months later, recalling their fascinated observations. Learning together builds a sense of identity as a community. So, go ahead, tap into this as you teach about the reading process. When 5/16/15 12:21 PM G1B3_6541.indd 7 you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, monitoring for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the print on the page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of the group. Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see themselves as the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve them. And regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that carpet with a little more independence and a greater willingness to work through difficulty. It s a game changer. In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping your class develop the mind-set needed to take charge of their own reading. Children will learn to stop as soon as they encounter difficulty, draw from the strategies they ve been accumulating all year to solve a problem, and then check to see that they ve got it right. This portion of the unit is all about monitoring one s reading and initiating action. It s then in the second bend that you ll focus on strengthening and expanding students word-solving strategies, adding more tools to their toolkits, and reminding students to draw from multiple sources of information in their problem solving. you ll review some of the work from earlier units, and now teach your readers how to use these strategies in higher-level texts, with longer, more complex words. The third bend shifts the attention toward monitoring for meaning. Children will learn strategies for maintaining meaning across large parts of text as well as strategies for developing an understanding of new vocabulary words. you ll bring the unit to a close with the fourth bend that asks your readers to pull together everything they ve learned to problem solve on the run and read with fluency. The InTersecTIon of reading development and ThIs UnIT For the first time, many of your readers will be able to walk into a public library or bookstore and realize the world of text is opening up to them. All of a sudden, they ll reach for books like Hattie and the Fox or Little Critter, Fly Guy, or Henry and Mudge series books and be able read them. How exciting! However, like training wheels coming off a bike, things can sometimes be a little wobbly at first. New challenges arise, and it will be important to understand the work your readers need to do at this stage in their development. First, it s critical that children learn to monitor their reading effectively. This is nothing new. Since kindergarten, your students have been taught to AnOrientationtotheUnit check that their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right. After all, you can t fix up a problem if you don t know there s something wrong. With practice, and as the books they read become more challenging, kids need to get better at monitoring for sense. At levels E/F, children are still learning to look at all the parts of a word. They may not notice that something is wrong in their reading until well past the error. At levels G/H, there is usually less distance between the error and the correction, and by level I, most readers are skilled enough at looking closely at words while still keeping in mind the meaning of the story that they will usually stop and fix up their reading at the point of error. Keep in mind, that monitoring one s reading involves both checking the accuracy of the words a reader says as well as noticing when meaning breaks down across longer parts of text. your readers will need to know that it s their job to read with all cylinders firing, attending closely and stopping as soon as they find something wrong. Once students realize there s a problem, then it s up to them to do something about it. To do this, readers need to have a repertoire of strategies they know how to use. The good news is that first-graders are collectors. They spread out their sports cards, their Beanie Boos, or their Pokemon cards, delighting in the number and variety they ve gathered. And so in this unit, you will lean into this impulse and invite them to spread out not their baseball cards, but their reading strategies. Halfway through this first-grade year, your students will have a beginning repertoire of these strategies, and you ll reinforce the importance of remembering and drawing upon them. All of your readers, regardless of their level, will need to think about meaning and structure when solving words, so this is why you ll start by highlighting these strategies in the unit. you ll then move to helping kids use visual information. In the beginning of the school year, you taught children to be flexible with letters and sounds. Now you will teach them to have even more flexibility in decoding. They will face tricky vowel clusters and will need to be flexible with parts of words, not just letters and sounds. But this adaptability can be challenging for first-graders. With their growing sense of I can do this! can come an equally strong sense of There s only one way to do it! and if the one way they know doesn t work, they re stuck. Persistence, then, is important within this unit, but so is flexibility. you will need to push your first-graders to draw on their collection of strategies and try something else when their first attempt doesn t work. This means that your children will be working hard to orchestrate all the individual strategies they ve learned, to do them all and do them with more automaticity. vii 5/16/15 12:21 PM A QUICK LOOK AT Primary Reading Development Excerpted from GRADE TWO, UNIT 2 Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction An Orientation to the Unit: The Intersection of Reading Development and This Unit The times, they are a-changin. Bob Dylan sang those words a long time ago, but they hold true today. And it is not just the times that are a-changin but the books are a-changin as well. And the skills needed to navigate those books and the readers choosing those books are a-changin and all at rapid speed. Buckle up. Those same readers who started the year on coltish legs are now making their way to more complex texts full of complex topics, vocabulary, and structures. As you shift to this second unit of study, you ll expect most of your readers to be reading levels J/K independently and to be ready to move to up a notch. The jump to levels K and L is a dramatic one. Here s why: there is a noted increase in complexity of text content requiring higher level comprehension. The texts contain longer parts (chapters, sections, and paragraphs), and they require more accumulation of information across the entire book. And it is not just that the books and the sections of the books are longer, but also the sentences are longer and contain complex language structures. Meanwhile the number of polysyllabic words increases dramatically, requiring readers to read across the word, breaking the word into syllables, in order to use parts of words they know to figure out the difficult words. This makes heavy demands on students skills and requires them to reach for new strategies. As second-graders continue to read texts that are longer, they need to learn to navigate text structures that are more complicated and varied for nonfiction than for fiction texts at these levels. As fiction readers, your children have become accustomed to leaning on the structure of stories and on their knowledge of the character to anticipate the plot s typical trajectory. Now that readers are reading nonfiction, they ll learn that nonfiction readers work hard to put key details together to determine the subject s main topic so they can learn what the pages or parts of a book are striving to teach. They ll find, however, that different texts work in different ways. Your students will learn that to do their best learning from the texts, they should use the structure of the texts to support them in organizing what they learn. I Becoming Experts READING NONFICTION you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the p page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see the the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that ca little more independence and a greater willingness to work throug It s a game changer. In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR AMANDA HARTMAN CELENA develop DANGLER the mind-set LARKEY needed LINDSAY to WILKES take charge of their own reading will learn to stop as soon as they encounter difficulty, draw from gies they ve been accumulating all year to solve a problem, and to see that they ve got it right. This portion of the unit is all about one s reading and initiating action. It s then in the second bend An Orientation to the Unit focus on strengthening and expanding students word-solving stra ing more tools to their toolkits, and reminding students to draw fro sources of information in their problem solving. you ll review some from earlier units, and now teach your readers how to use these s higher-level texts, with longer, more complex words. The third ben attention toward monitoring for meaning. Children will learn st maintaining meaning across large parts of text as well as strategies f ing an understanding of new vocabulary words. you ll bring the un with the fourth bend that asks your readers to pull together everyth learned to problem solve on the run and read with fluency. AnOrientationtotheUnit Grade 2 Unit 2 The InTersecTIon of reading developm and ThIs UnIT For the first time, many of your readers will be able to walk in library or bookstore and realize the world of text is opening up to t a sudden, they ll reach for books like Hattie and the Fox or Little Guy, or Henry and Mudge series books and be able read them. Ho However, like training wheels coming off a bike, things can some little wobbly at first. New challenges arise, and it will be importan stand the work your readers need to do at this stage in their deve First, it s critical that children learn to monitor their reading This is nothing new. Since kindergarten, your students have bee 7

10 G1B3_6541.indd 6 T S PROBABLy HARD TO BELIEVE that the children in front of you are the same children that first appeared at your classroom door in September. Back then, they looked, acted, and read so much more like kindergartners. Take a moment to think back and be proud of just how far they have come. Now think about where you re headed next. To best understand this, you may want to walk down the hall to the second-grade room and acquaint yourself with a proficient second-grade reader. They re easy to spot. They re the ones with their nose in a book, entirely lost in a story. Watch how they take charge of themselves as readers, approaching texts with confidence and enthusiasm. Talk to them and you ll discover that they draw from a deep reservoir of ways to tackle trouble, solving words and confusing parts flexibly and creatively. Listen in to the child read a page and marvel at the way it sounds. And as you talk, laugh, and wonder together, relish their enthusiasm for a great book. Now take these observations with you, all the way back to your first-grade class and use them to help you envision the foundation you ll need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your readers. It will be hard work. And so, your very first order of business in this unit will be to recruit help. I think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class dramatically. I think you re ready for some new and important jobs. And these aren t jobs like being a line leader or a closet monitor. Oh no. These jobs are so much bigger and more important than that. These are the jobs that readers do to read harder and harder books. And here s what s even more special about these reading jobs you are the boss! you are in charge of your reading, not me! This unit, all about the reading process, comes at a time in the year when your readers will need to develop independence to make it to the finish line. While it s commonly accepted that kids have made it as first-grade readers if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish vi line encompasses so much more than a reading level. Instead, it s about the level of processing kids are doing in their reading and the mind-set they have about what can sometimes feel like hard work. Think back to that secondgrader and what you observed. Chances are it wasn t the level of the book that stood out to you, but the way the reader took on the work of reading with joy and independence. This unit sets children up to be able to read increasingly complex texts with accuracy, comprehension, and fluency, all of which require the development of great problem-solving skills. Think of this as the book that helps you dismantle the training wheels. Watch out for the bumps, you ll say, but I know you can do this. Go on! your main goal then, is to help your students realize that they re ready to take on the important jobs a reader needs to do. They have strategies to be in charge of their own reading, to set their own agenda, and to get through the hard parts all by themselves. They can move past the initial impulse to say Help me! when faced with a tricky word or when meaning breaks down and can take a deep breath, have a little courage, and say, I can solve this myself! you ll show your first-graders that they can be the bosses of their reading, solving their own reading dilemmas by drawing on the tools and strategies they ve learned from minilessons and small-group work. And you ll teach them to balance their reading energies between word solving and meaning making so that their experiences with texts are well-rounded and thoughtful, efficient, and meaningful. This is important work, worthy of teaching to your whole class, not just relegated to small-group work. There is something incredibly powerful about sharing learning as a classroom community. Think of the children who one day, in collective astonishment, witnessed a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. Remember? they say to each other months later, recalling their fascinated observations. Learning together builds a sense of identity as a community. So, go ahead, tap into this as you teach about the reading process. When 5/16/15 12:21 PM G1B3_6541.indd 67 you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, monitoring check that their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right. After all, for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the print on the you can t fix up a problem if you don t know there s something wrong. With page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of the group. practice, and as the books they read become more challenging, kids need to Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see themselves as get better at monitoring for sense. At levels E/F, children are still learning to the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve them. And look at all the parts of a word. They may not notice that something is wrong regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that carpet with a in their reading until well past the error. At levels G/H, there is usually less little more independence and a greater willingness to work through difficulty. distance between the error and the correction, and by level I, most readers It s a game changer. are skilled enough at looking closely at words while still keeping in mind the In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping your class meaning of the story that they will usually stop and fix up their reading at T S PROBABLy develop the mind-set HARD TO needed BELIEVE to take that charge the of children their own in reading. front of Children line encompasses the point so of error. much Keep more in than mind, a reading that monitoring level. Instead, one s it s reading about involves the both you are will the learn same to stop children as soon that as first they appeared encounter at your difficulty, classroom draw from door in the strategies they ve Back been then, accumulating they looked, acted, all year and to solve read so a problem, much more and like then check about what meaning can sometimes breaks down feel across like hard longer work. parts Think of text. back your to that readers second- will need to level of processing checking the kids accuracy are doing of in their words reading a reader and the says mind-set as well they as noticing have when September. kindergartners. to see that Take they ve a moment got it to right. think This back portion and of be the proud unit of is just all about how far monitoring grader and know what that you it s observed. their job Chances to read with are it all wasn t cylinders the level firing, of the attending book that closely and they have one s come. reading Now think and initiating about where action. you re It s headed then in next. the second To best bend understand this, focus you on may strengthening want to walk and down expanding the hall to students the second-grade word-solving room strategies, and add- and independence. Once students This unit realize sets children there s a up problem, to be able then to it s read up increasingly to them to do some- that you ll stood out stopping you, but as soon the way as they reader find something took on the wrong. work of reading with joy acquaint ing yourself more with tools a to proficient their toolkits, second-grade and reminding reader. students They re to easy draw to from spot. multiple complex thing texts with about accuracy, it. To do comprehension, this, readers need and to fluency, have a all repertoire of which of require strategies they They re the sources ones of with information their nose in in their a book, problem entirely solving. lost in you ll a story. review Watch some how of the work the development know how of great to use. problem-solving The good news skills. is that Think first-graders of this as the are book collectors. that They they take from charge earlier of themselves units, and as now readers, teach approaching your readers texts how with to use confidence these strategies helps in you spread dismantle out their training sports cards, wheels. their Watch Beanie out Boos, for the or bumps, their Pokemon you ll cards, and enthusiasm. higher-level Talk texts, to them with and longer, you ll more discover complex that words. they draw The from third a bend deep shifts say, the but delighting I know you in can the do number this. Go and on! variety they ve gathered. And so in this unit, reservoir attention of ways to toward tackle monitoring trouble, solving for meaning. words and Children confusing will parts learn flexibly strategies for your main you will goal lean then, into is this to help impulse your and students invite realize them that to spread they re out ready not their to baseball important cards, but jobs their a reader reading needs strategies. to do. Halfway They have through strategies this to first-grade be in year, and creatively. maintaining Listen meaning to the across child large read parts a page of text and as marvel well as strategies the way for it developing an as understanding you talk, laugh, of and new wonder vocabulary together, words. relish you ll their bring enthusiasm the unit to a close charge of your their students own reading, will have to set a beginning their own repertoire agenda, and of to these get strategies, through the and you ll take on the sounds. And for a great with book. the Now fourth take bend these that observations asks your readers with to you, pull all together the way everything back to they ve hard parts reinforce all by themselves. importance They of can remembering move past and the initial drawing impulse upon them. to say your first-grade learned class to problem and use solve them on to the help run you and envision read with the foundation fluency. you ll Help me! when All of faced your readers, with a tricky regardless word of or their when level, meaning will need breaks to down think about and meaning a deep and breath, structure have when a little solving courage, words, and so say, this I is can why solve you ll this start myself! by highlighting need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your can take readers. you ll show these your strategies first-graders in the that unit. they you ll can then be the move bosses to of helping their reading, kids use solving their mation. own reading In the dilemmas beginning by of drawing the school on the year, tools you and taught strategies children they ve to be flexible visual infor- It will The be hard InTersecTIon work. And so, your very of first reading order of business development in this unit will be to and recruit ThIs help. I UnIT think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class learned from with letters minilessons and sounds. and small-group Now you will work. teach And them you ll to have teach even them more to flexibility dramatically. For the I think first time, you re many ready of for your some readers new will and be important able to walk jobs. into And a public balance their in decoding. reading energies They will between face tricky word vowel solving clusters and meaning and will making need to so be flexible these aren t library jobs or like bookstore being a and line realize leader the or world a closet of text monitor. is opening Oh no. up These to them. All that of their with experiences parts of words, with texts not are just well-rounded letters and sounds. and thoughtful, But this adaptability efficient, can be jobs are a so sudden, much bigger they ll and reach more for books important like Hattie than that. and the These Fox are or Little the jobs Critter, and Fly meaningful. challenging for first-graders. With their growing sense of I can do this! can that readers Guy, do or to Henry read harder and Mudge and harder series books. and And be here s able what s read them. even How more exciting! This is come important equally work, strong worthy sense of teaching of There s to only your one whole way class, to do not it! and just if the special about However, these like reading training jobs you wheels coming are the off boss! a bike, you things are in can charge sometimes of relegated be a one to small-group way they know work. doesn t There work, is something they re stuck. incredibly Persistence, powerful then, about is important your reading, little not wobbly me! at first. New challenges arise, and it will be important to understand all the about work the your reading readers process, need to comes do at at this a time stage in in the their year development. when day, in collective draw on astonishment, their collection witnessed of strategies a butterfly and try emerge something from else a chrysalis. when their first sharing learning within this as a unit, classroom but so is community. flexibility. you Think will of need the to children push your who first-graders one to This unit, your readers First, will need it s critical to develop that independence children learn to make monitor to their finish reading line. effectively. Remember? attempt they doesn t say to work. each This other means months that later, your recalling children their will fascinated be working hard to While it s This commonly is nothing accepted new. Since that kids kindergarten, have made your it students as first-grade have readers been taught observations. to orchestrate Learning all the together individual builds strategies a sense they ve of identity learned, as a to community. do them all and do if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish So, go ahead, them with tap into more this automaticity. as you teach about the reading process. When vi AnOrientationtotheUnit vii 5/16/15 12:21 PM A QUICK LOOK AT Intermediate Reading Development Reading to Learn GRASPING MAIN IDEAS AND TEXT STRUCTURES Grade 3 Unit 2 Excerpted from GRADE THREE, UNIT 2 Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures An Orientation to the Unit: The Intersection of Reading Development and This Unit This unit is one of many in this series that supports students in developing a rich life of nonfiction reading, along with the skills to do that reading well. In fact, this unit could be titled, Foundational Skills of Nonfiction Reading because it addresses skills that are essential to reading nonfiction and that were, until recently, overlooked by many. even though your students are not expected to be able to describe the overall structure of a text until next year in fourth grade (by both the Learning Progression and the CCSS), we have taught into text structures in these third-grade nonfiction units, both to support students in better discerning main idea(s) and also to prepare them for that major expectation of fourth grade. I LUCY CALKINS KATHLEEN TOLAN An Orientation to the Unit I An Orientation to the Unit All too often, children come into your class, expecting that it is okay to read nonfiction and pull from it cool facts and juicy tidbits whether or not those are important to the text. Being able to read an informational text in such a way that you can turn around and teach the main idea and the supporting points to someone else is a foundational skill. Without this, it is hard for a reader to compare texts, to think critically, to apply information learned. You ll see, then, that this unit places enormous emphasis on helping third-graders determine the main idea(s) of texts. To do the work of discerning the main idea(s) and key details, it helps enormously to pay attention to the underlying structure of the text. If one notices that a text first describes a problem and then offers two possible solutions, e.g., problem/solution text structure, that can help the reader to better figure out what is most important and what the main idea(s) might be. Thus, 8

11 G1B3_6541.indd 6 T S PROBABLy HARD TO BELIEVE that the children in front of you are the same children that first appeared at your classroom door in September. Back then, they looked, acted, and read so much more like kindergartners. Take a moment to think back and be proud of just how far they have come. Now think about where you re headed next. To best understand this, you may want to walk down the hall to the second-grade room and acquaint yourself with a proficient second-grade reader. They re easy to spot. They re the ones with their nose in a book, entirely lost in a story. Watch how they take charge of themselves as readers, approaching texts with confidence and enthusiasm. Talk to them and you ll discover that they draw from a deep reservoir of ways to tackle trouble, solving words and confusing parts flexibly and creatively. Listen in to the child read a page and marvel at the way it sounds. And as you talk, laugh, and wonder together, relish their enthusiasm for a great book. Now take these observations with you, all the way back to your first-grade class and use them to help you envision the foundation you ll need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your readers. It will be hard work. And so, your very first order of business in this unit will be to recruit help. I think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class dramatically. I think you re ready for some new and important jobs. And these aren t jobs like being a line leader or a closet monitor. Oh no. These jobs are so much bigger and more important than that. These are the jobs that readers do to read harder and harder books. And here s what s even more special about these reading jobs you are the boss! you are in charge of your reading, not me! This unit, all about the reading process, comes at a time in the year when your readers will need to develop independence to make it to the finish line. While it s commonly accepted that kids have made it as first-grade readers if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish vi line encompasses so much more than a reading level. Instead, it s about the level of processing kids are doing in their reading and the mind-set they have about what can sometimes feel like hard work. Think back to that secondgrader and what you observed. Chances are it wasn t the level of the book that stood out to you, but the way the reader took on the work of reading with joy and independence. This unit sets children up to be able to read increasingly complex texts with accuracy, comprehension, and fluency, all of which require the development of great problem-solving skills. Think of this as the book that helps you dismantle the training wheels. Watch out for the bumps, you ll say, but I know you can do this. Go on! your main goal then, is to help your students realize that they re ready to take on the important jobs a reader needs to do. They have strategies to be in charge of their own reading, to set their own agenda, and to get through the hard parts all by themselves. They can move past the initial impulse to say Help me! when faced with a tricky word or when meaning breaks down and can take a deep breath, have a little courage, and say, I can solve this myself! you ll show your first-graders that they can be the bosses of their reading, solving their own reading dilemmas by drawing on the tools and strategies they ve learned from minilessons and small-group work. And you ll teach them to balance their reading energies between word solving and meaning making so that their experiences with texts are well-rounded and thoughtful, efficient, and meaningful. This is important work, worthy of teaching to your whole class, not just relegated to small-group work. There is something incredibly powerful about sharing learning as a classroom community. Think of the children who one day, in collective astonishment, witnessed a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. Remember? they say to each other months later, recalling their fascinated observations. Learning together builds a sense of identity as a community. So, go ahead, tap into this as you teach about the reading process. When 5/16/15 12:21 PM G1B3_6541.indd 67 you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, monitoring check that their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right. After all, for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the print on the you can t fix up a problem if you don t know there s something wrong. With page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of the group. practice, and as the books they read become more challenging, kids need to Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see themselves as get better at monitoring for sense. At levels E/F, children are still learning to the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve them. And look at all the parts of a word. They may not notice that something is wrong regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that carpet with a in their reading until well past the error. At levels G/H, there is usually less little more independence and a greater willingness to work through difficulty. distance between the error and the correction, and by level I, most readers It s a game changer. are skilled enough at looking closely at words while still keeping in mind the In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping your class meaning of the story that they will usually stop and fix up their reading at T S PROBABLy develop the mind-set HARD TO needed BELIEVE to take that charge the of children their own in reading. front of Children line encompasses the point so of error. much Keep more in than mind, a reading that monitoring level. Instead, one s it s reading about involves the both you are will the learn same to stop children as soon that as first they appeared encounter at your difficulty, classroom draw from door in the strategies they ve Back been then, accumulating they looked, acted, all year and to solve read so a problem, much more and like then check about what meaning can sometimes breaks down feel across like hard longer work. parts Think of text. back your to that readers second- will need to level of processing checking the kids accuracy are doing of in their words reading a reader and the says mind-set as well they as noticing have when September. kindergartners. to see that Take they ve a moment got it to right. think This back portion and of be the proud unit of is just all about how far monitoring grader and know what that you it s observed. their job Chances to read with are it all wasn t cylinders the level firing, of the attending book that closely and they have one s come. reading Now think and initiating about where action. you re It s headed then in next. the second To best bend understand this, focus you on may strengthening want to walk and down expanding the hall to students the second-grade word-solving room strategies, and add- and independence. Once students This unit realize sets children there s a up problem, to be able then to it s read up increasingly to them to do some- that you ll stood out stopping you, but as soon the way as they reader find something took on the wrong. work of reading with joy acquaint ing yourself more with tools a to proficient their toolkits, second-grade and reminding reader. students They re to easy draw to from spot. multiple complex thing texts with about accuracy, it. To do comprehension, this, readers need and to fluency, have a all repertoire of which of require strategies they They re the sources ones of with information their nose in in their a book, problem entirely solving. lost in you ll a story. review Watch some how of the work the development know how of great to use. problem-solving The good news skills. is that Think first-graders of this as the are book collectors. that They they take from charge earlier of themselves units, and as now readers, teach approaching your readers texts how with to use confidence these strategies helps in you spread dismantle out their training sports cards, wheels. their Watch Beanie out Boos, for the or bumps, their Pokemon you ll cards, and enthusiasm. higher-level Talk texts, to them with and longer, you ll more discover complex that words. they draw The from third a bend deep shifts say, the but delighting I know you in can the do number this. Go and on! variety they ve gathered. And so in this unit, reservoir attention of ways to toward tackle monitoring trouble, solving for meaning. words and Children confusing will parts learn flexibly strategies for your main you will goal lean then, into is this to help impulse your and students invite realize them that to spread they re out ready not their to baseball important cards, but jobs their a reader reading needs strategies. to do. Halfway They have through strategies this to first-grade be in year, and creatively. maintaining Listen meaning to the across child large read parts a page of text and as marvel well as strategies the way for it developing an as understanding you talk, laugh, of and new wonder vocabulary together, words. relish you ll their bring enthusiasm the unit to a close charge of your their students own reading, will have to set a beginning their own repertoire agenda, and of to these get strategies, through the and you ll take on the sounds. And for a great with book. the Now fourth take bend these that observations asks your readers with to you, pull all together the way everything back to they ve hard parts reinforce all by themselves. importance They of can remembering move past and the initial drawing impulse upon them. to say your first-grade learned class to problem and use solve them on to the help run you and envision read with the foundation fluency. you ll Help me! when All of faced your readers, with a tricky regardless word of or their when level, meaning will need breaks to down think about and meaning a deep and breath, structure have when a little solving courage, words, and so say, this I is can why solve you ll this start myself! by highlighting need to build, right here and now, at this critical juncture in the lives of your can take readers. you ll show these your strategies first-graders in the that unit. they you ll can then be the move bosses to of helping their reading, kids use solving their mation. own reading In the dilemmas beginning by of drawing the school on the year, tools you and taught strategies children they ve to be flexible visual infor- It will The be hard InTersecTIon work. And so, your very of first reading order of business development in this unit will be to and recruit ThIs help. I UnIT think you re finally ready, you ll say to your class learned from with letters minilessons and sounds. and small-group Now you will work. teach And them you ll to have teach even them more to flexibility dramatically. For the I think first time, you re many ready of for your some readers new will and be important able to walk jobs. into And a public balance their in decoding. reading energies They will between face tricky word vowel solving clusters and meaning and will making need to so be flexible these aren t library jobs or like bookstore being a and line realize leader the or world a closet of text monitor. is opening Oh no. up These to them. All that of their with experiences parts of words, with texts not are just well-rounded letters and sounds. and thoughtful, But this adaptability efficient, can be jobs are a so sudden, much bigger they ll and reach more for books important like Hattie than that. and the These Fox are or Little the jobs Critter, and Fly meaningful. challenging for first-graders. With their growing sense of I can do this! can that readers Guy, do or to Henry read harder and Mudge and harder series books. and And be here s able what s read them. even How more exciting! This is come important equally work, strong worthy sense of teaching of There s to only your one whole way class, to do not it! and just if the special about However, these like reading training jobs you wheels coming are the off boss! a bike, you things are in can charge sometimes of relegated be a one to small-group way they know work. doesn t There work, is something they re stuck. incredibly Persistence, powerful then, about is important your reading, little not wobbly me! at first. New challenges arise, and it will be important to understand all the about work the your reading readers process, need to comes do at at this a time stage in in the their year development. when day, in collective draw on astonishment, their collection witnessed of strategies a butterfly and try emerge something from else a chrysalis. when their first sharing learning within this as a unit, classroom but so is community. flexibility. you Think will of need the to children push your who first-graders one to This unit, your readers First, will need it s critical to develop that independence children learn to make monitor to their finish reading line. effectively. Remember? attempt they doesn t say to work. each This other means months that later, your recalling children their will fascinated be working hard to While it s This commonly is nothing accepted new. Since that kids kindergarten, have made your it students as first-grade have readers been taught observations. to orchestrate Learning all the together individual builds strategies a sense they ve of identity learned, as a to community. do them all and do if they reach the benchmark of reading level I/J/K texts, in reality that finish So, go ahead, them with tap into more this automaticity. as you teach about the reading process. When vi AnOrientationtotheUnit vii 5/16/15 12:21 PM A QUICK LOOK AT Intermediate Reading Development Excerpted from GRADE FIVE, UNIT 2 Tackling Complexity: Moving Up Levels of Nonfiction An Orientation to the Unit: The Intersection of Reading Development and This Unit By fifth grade, the nonfiction texts that your students are reading are becoming more complex. Students who read these more challenging texts will need to be ready to embrace complexity. No longer will students see the whole text working to support one fairly explicit and clear idea. Instead, it s much more likely that they ll need to be open to following different threads as they read an informational text. It is important that fifth-graders approach texts with the expectation that those texts will advance more than one main idea and that they can discern several main ideas in complex texts. This expectation is detailed within the Main Idea(s) and Supporting Details/ Summary strand of the Informational Reading Learning Progression. This is also a critically important skill on the Common Core State Standards and on many other high-stakes assessments. This need to embrace more complexity crosses over and relates to more than just the Main Idea(s) and Supporting Detail/Summary strand. This unit supports essential comprehension skills, skills that fall within the Literal Comprehension portion of the learning progression, and you ll see these strands regularly mention the need for students to be more flexible as they read more complex texts. This need for flexibility will relate to students Orienting work. When fifth-graders preview a text, it s important for them to recognize that the text may contain a long and winding introduction before turning to the focus of the text or might in other ways reveal its focus slowly. Your whole-class and small-group instruction across this unit will support students in the skills of previewing increasingly complex texts. Students will need to carry this flexibility with them to their Monitoring for Sense work, recognizing that they may need to carry unanswered questions as they read, or do significant work to determine how two seemingly unrelated parts fit together. This mindset will also relate to students Fluency work, as the mood and tone of a text may be tricky to figure out at the start (Is the author being sarcastic? Dramatic?), or may shift and change, and readers will need to notice clues and think, How does the author probably want this to sound? Taken together, a major thrust of your teaching across Bend I aims to support students in reading ever-increasing, more complex texts with strong literal comprehension. Your fifth-graders will also need to add to their repertoire of ways to think interpretatively and analytically about expository texts, and your teaching across Bend II will particularly support this work. I Grade 5 Tackling Complexity Unit 2 MOVING UP LEVELS OF NONFICTION LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR KATIE CLEMENTS WITH COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT An Orientation to the Unit you meet on the carpet and teach that all readers read carefully, for when something doesn t make sense or doesn t match the p page or doesn t sound quite right, you make this the mission of Now your readers belong to a community of readers that see the the kind of people that watch out for problems and try to solve regardless of the levels children are reading, they ll leave that ca little more independence and a greater willingness to work throug It s a game changer. In the first bend of this journey, you ll start the unit by helping develop the mind-set needed to take charge of their own reading will learn to stop as soon as they encounter difficulty, draw from gies they ve been accumulating all year to solve a problem, and to see that they ve got it right. This portion of the unit is all about one s reading and initiating action. It s then in the second bend An Orientation to the Unit focus on strengthening and expanding students word-solving stra ing more tools I to their toolkits, and reminding students to draw fro sources of information in their problem solving. you ll review some from earlier units, and now teach your readers how to use these s higher-level texts, with longer, more complex words. The third ben attention toward monitoring for meaning. Children will learn st maintaining meaning across large parts of text as well as strategies f ing an understanding of new vocabulary words. you ll bring the un with the fourth bend that asks your readers to pull together everyth learned to problem solve on the run and read with fluency. The InTersecTIon of reading developm and ThIs UnIT For the first time, many of your readers will be able to walk in library or bookstore and realize the world of text is opening up to t a sudden, they ll reach for books like Hattie and the Fox or Little Guy, or Henry and Mudge series books and be able read them. Ho However, like training wheels coming off a bike, things can some little wobbly at first. New challenges arise, and it will be importan stand the work your readers need to do at this stage in their deve First, it s critical that children learn to monitor their reading This is nothing new. Since kindergarten, your students have bee AnOrientationtotheUnit 9

12 UNIT SUMMARIES Kindergarten We Are Readers LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR NATALIE LOUIS Super Powers READING WITH PRINT STRATEGIES AND SIGHT WORD POWER LUCY CALKINS AMANDA HARTMAN ELIZABETH DUNFORD FRANCO WITH COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT Grade K Unit 1 Grade K Unit 2 UNIT ONE We Are Readers The most important message in this, your children s first-ever unit is that yes, they can read! You ll know that this unit has succeeded if, by the end of it, your kindergarten students declare, We are readers! Early in the unit, you ll invite children to read information texts and later, you ll add storybooks to the mix. Because children won t yet have the stamina for sustained independent reading, shared reading, readaloud, and word study will be especially important to this unit. Of course, most children will be doing emergent rather than conventional reading, which doesn t mean that their skills won t develop in leaps and bounds they will. Children will develop concepts of print (that is, an understanding that books are read from cover to cover, left to right, top to bottom), phonemic awareness (learning to rhyme, to hear component sounds in a word), phonics (learning letter names and sounds), and the knowledge necessary to use story language to support their approximations of reading. UNIT TWO Super Powers Reading with Print Strategies and Sight Word Power This unit glories in children s love of play. You ll dramatize the idea that to read, people call on super powers, just like superheroes do, thus imbuing this unit with a spirit of fun and accessibility. Instead of conveying, Let me instruct you in how to read, you ll say, Oh my gosh, we have to use our powers to read this book! Equally important will be the message that Superheroes don t give up in a jam! At the beginning of the unit, you ll spotlight pointer power, helping children point as they read, tapping each word just once, checking that their reading makes sense, and anchoring their pointing by noting the words they know in a snap. Then, you ll add to students repertoires of super powers (strategies), teaching them to search for meaning, use picture clues, and use the sound of the first letter of a word to help them read. At the end of the unit, you ll invite students to draw on all of their super powers as they work to make their voices smoother (fluency), and to communicate their understanding of the text (meaning). Partners will share favorite parts of books during book talks. 10

13 UNIT SUMMARIES Kindergarten UNIT THREE Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles At this time of the school year, your kindergarten readers are moving from rereading mostly familiar texts to attempting more difficult books with greater independence. Some readers will be approaching levels where they must use meaning and syntax, and check the beginnings and endings of words to understand what is happening. With all of this learning to do, it s not only the children who have their work cut out for them! At the start of the unit, you ll prepare readers for the new work they need to do as readers. You ll equip them with strategies for tackling breaks in patterns, and you ll teach them to use their pattern power to think more deeply about what a book is really saying. Then you ll rally students around the work of using their knowledge of letters and sounds their sound power to read tricky words. The last part of the unit supports students in orchestrating all the strategies they ve developed to read more complex books with accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. You will also emphasize the importance of thinking and talking more deeply about books. UNIT FOUR Becoming Avid Readers This unit bookends the first unit, We Are Readers, as once again you help your youngsters role-play their way into being the readers you want them to become. At the beginning, the rallying cry was You are readers! Now it s You are avid readers! Early in this unit, you ll move your students further toward independence by helping them explore what it means to be an avid reader. They ll set goals for themselves as they read fictional stories, paying close attention to characters, setting, and plot. The next section parallels the work you ve done earlier in the unit, but now you ll support children in becoming avid readers of nonfiction texts. They will become experts on a chosen topic as they read alongside others in reading clubs. The last part of the unit has a celebratory feel as students explore poetry, play with rhyme and rhythm, and innovate on existing poems and songs. All the while, they ll be developing their fluency as they continue to read alongside others in their clubs. Your children will end kindergarten believing they are avid readers as they play and learn their way into a powerful reading identity that will help them transition to first grade. Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles LUCY CALKINS KATIE M. WEARS REBECCA CRONIN ANGELA BÁEZ Becoming Avid Readers LUCY CALKINS MARJORIE MARTINELLI CHRISTINE HOLLEY Grade K Unit 3 Grade K Unit 4 11

14 UNIT SUMMARIES First Grade Grade 1 Building Good Reading Habits Unit 1 LUCY CALKINS ELIZABETH DUNFORD FRANCO Learning About the World READING NONFICTION LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR AMANDA HARTMAN Grade 1 Unit 2 UNIT ONE Building Good Reading Habits The start of first grade is a time for dusting off the skills and habits that children learned during kindergarten. The theme readers have good habits unites all the various reminders you will be giving kids so these reminders are more easily remembered. At the start of this unit, you remind readers about the good habits they already use at the beginnings, the middles, and the ends of books. For example, you ll remind them to preview books so their word work happens with an awareness of the entire story. First graders must become more efficient and flexible word solvers. Later, you will emphasize word solving as you teach your students to draw upon good habits for getting unstuck as they read. Once students begin to develop those good habits, you ll establish ability-based partnerships that tap into the social power of peers working together to help each other become more strategic as readers. UNIT TWO Learning About the World Reading Nonfiction In this unit, you ll appeal to children s natural curiosity. You ll explain, We re going to learn about the world. We re going to swim with sharks. We re going to travel back in time. We ll hold baby monkeys and crystals in our hands! Then, you ll unveil a new section of your classroom library, filled with nonfiction books. It s early in first grade, so to support continued reading growth, this unit balances support for nonfiction with support for reading processes. You ll teach children strategies to get smart on nonfiction topics, but you ll also be teaching comprehension strategies such as previewing, predicting, noticing text structures, and synthesizing information from multiple sources (the picture, the print, the text boxes). You ll spotlight word solving and vocabulary, helping first graders develop the flexibility they need to make extraordinary progress over the course of this year. Later in the unit, you ll shift your emphasis to building fluency and studying craft, teaching students to reread, to sound like an expert, and to notice craft moves. 12

15 UNIT SUMMARIES First Grade UNIT THREE Readers Have Big Jobs to Do Fluency, Phonics, and Comprehension This unit, all about the reading process, sets children up to be able to read increasingly complex texts with fluency, accuracy, and comprehension, all of which require the development of great problem-solving skills. Many first graders are avid collectors; in this unit, you will invite them to gather the reading strategies they ll need to have at their fingertips when the going gets rough. You ll begin the unit by helping your readers develop the mind-set to take charge of their own reading. Children will learn to stop as soon as they encounter difficulty, draw from the strategies they ve been accumulating all year, and then check to see that what they ve done makes sense. Then you ll focus on strengthening and expanding students word-solving strategies, reminding them to draw from multiple sources of information. The unit then shifts the attention toward monitoring for meaning. Children will learn strategies for maintaining meaning across large parts of texts, as well as for understanding new vocabulary. To close the unit, you ll help readers put their learning together to problem solve on the run and read with fluency. UNIT FOUR Meeting Characters and Learning Lessons A Study of Story Elements As you are getting ready to send your first-graders off into the rest of their lives, the best gift you can give them is the knowledge that books can lift them off their feet and set them down in new places, new times. After a sequence of units focused tightly on reading process, now you ll spotlight story elements and the skills that are foundational to literal and inferential comprehension. This unit teaches empathy, imagination, envisioning, prediction all comprehension skills that add up to engagement. The first sessions invite readers to track story events and to make predictions grounded in the text. You ll also teach strategies for holding onto longer and more complex stories and for determining importance. Later you ll shift to a closer study of characters. You ll teach children to draw from text details to grow ideas about characters and to read in a way that brings them to life. At the end of the unit you ll pave the way for interpretation by teaching students to consider the messages in stories. You ll teach that stories contain life lessons, that cracking open a book is like cracking open a fortune cookie and finding a message hidden within. 1_U3_RUOS_C1.indd 1 Readers Have Big Jobs to Do FLUENCY, PHONICS, AND COMPREHENSION LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR ELIZABETH DUNFORD FRANCO HAVILAH JESPERSEN LINDSAY BARTON Meeting Characters and Learning Lessons A STUDY OF STORY ELEMENTS LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR ELIZABETH DUNFORD FRANCO Grade 1 Unit 3 4/8/15 11:51 AM Grade 1 Unit 4 13

16 UNIT SUMMARIES Second Grade Second-Grade Reading Growth Spurt LUCY CALKINS SHANNA SCHWARTZ Becoming Experts READING NONFICTION Grade 2 Unit 1 Grade 2 Unit 2 UNIT ONE Second-Grade Reading Growth Spurt In this unit, you ll spotlight your students movement from a little-kid focus on print to a big-kid focus on meaning. A main goal is to rally your students around the work of outgrowing themselves as readers. At the beginning of the unit, you ll teach that to grow, readers need to take charge. This portion of the unit highlights the importance of goals and the magical combination of fluency and comprehension. Then, you ll let your children know that grown-up readers don t wait around for others to help them with the hard parts, that they draw on everything they already know to figure out hard words. You ll teach your children that every time they react in their books every time they giggle or gasp or sigh it s because the author did something in the writing to evoke that reaction. Throughout this unit and this year, you ll invite readers to share their opinions, to debate with each other, to figure things out together, to prove their points to collaborate. UNIT TWO Becoming Experts Reading Nonfiction By the time you start this second unit of second grade, your writing workshop will be off and running. As this unit begins, you will tell your students they will shift from reading fiction to reading nonfiction. You ll set readers up to read many different books on different topics. You ll challenge them to live wide-awake lives, to learn more about familiar topics, and to grow understanding of new topics. As the unit progresses, you ll begin teaching resourceful word solving and vocabulary development. Here, one of the challenges for your readers will be to zoom in and pause to solve a challenging word, while not dropping their grip on the larger ideas in the book they re reading. Later, students will be ready to choose a topic to read about and to compare and contrast information across texts. In this unit, you are teaching your students that they can learn about a topic in the world through reading, that books can be their teachers. LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR AMANDA HARTMAN CELENA DANGLER LARKEY LINDSAY WILKES 14

17 UNIT SUMMARIES Second Grade UNIT THREE Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power At the start of this unit, you ll inform your readers that researchers have found that second grade is a time for readers to experience enormous growth. This is an important message to communicate, because as expectations on third-graders skyrocket, it has become especially important that second-graders maintain a steady growth curve. Each of the three parts of this unit focuses on an important foundational reading skill. In the first part, the focus is on fluency what researcher Tim Rasinski refers to as the bridge between phonics and comprehension. In the second part, you ll help children explore figurative language. You ll teach them to read closely and to monitor for sense so that when they reach figurative language passages, they ll stop to ponder the author s intent. In the third part, you ll teach comprehension strategies to help your students capture what has happened in one part of a text and carry that forward as they read on in longer, more complicated books. Finally, children will choose reading goals for themselves and will work with a club in pursuit of those goals. UNIT FOUR Series Book Clubs Your second-graders have blossomed into almostthird-graders, and will be tackling series books in this last unit. You ll invite children to slow down, study texts carefully, and think more deeply about messages found in texts and about author s craft. Students will begin reading a series with a partner, collecting information about the main characters of their books. Then, you ll form clubs by joining sets of two partnerships to continue to study the series together. In discussing books with their clubs, your students will develop bigger ideas than they would have developed on their own. Later, students will start rereading a book in their series and engaging in inquiry, thinking about the craft the writer employs. They ll study ways authors use word choice, figurative language, punctuation, and even patterns to construct a series and evoke feelings in readers. At the end of this unit, you ll teach students to invent ways to share their books with others. You ll also teach them to hold debates inside their clubs as another way to share and grow ideas about books. Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power LUCY CALKINS LAUREN KOLBECK BRIANNA PARLITSIS Grade 2 Unit 3 Grade 2 Series Book Clubs Unit 4 LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR AMANDA HARTMAN WITH COLLEAGUES FROM THE TEACHERS COLLEGE READING AND WRITING PROJECT 15

18 UNIT SUMMARIES Third Grade Grade 3 Building a Reading Life Unit 1 LUCY CALKINS KATHLEEN TOLAN Reading to Learn GRASPING MAIN IDEAS AND TEXT STRUCTURES LUCY CALKINS KATHLEEN TOLAN Grade 3 Unit 2 UNIT ONE Building a Reading Life This unit launches not just third grade, but also your kids lives as upper elementary school readers. Your students will collaborate with each other and with you to turn the classroom into a good place for reading, devising systems for book recommendations and organizing the classroom library. As your children begin to read up a storm, they ll use performance assessments and learning progressions to accelerate their skills in visible ways. You ll build children s love of reading as you read aloud Stone Fox (or another book of your choice) and your children read within-reach fiction books they ve chosen. Students will learn ways to check their comprehension and use fix-up strategies when they ve lost the thread of the story. You ll provide kids with strategies for tackling multisyllabic words and figurative language, and you ll also provide the fluency support they need to tackle more complex sentences. The unit also supports envisionment and prediction two foundational skills that allow readers to walk in the shoes of a character. As they read, kids will anticipate and co-construct the story line. This unit will help your students learn to keep in mind both the page at hand and the entire book to read with their minds on fire! UNIT TWO Reading to Learn Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures This unit supports students in developing a rich life of nonfiction reading by addressing essential foundational skills. You ll teach youngsters that skilled nonfiction readers read with fluency, taking in long stretches of text, and pausing when necessary to grasp what the author highlighted as especially important. Readers then construct mental summaries of the text, complete with big ideas and supporting information. Early in the unit, children learn to read expository nonfiction with eagerness, interest, and fluency, identifying the main ideas and supporting information, and recognizing the text infrastructure. Then they go further to compare texts, think critically, and apply what they have learned. Children learn to read differently, knowing they will participate in conversations, and you ll help them know they can have those conversations in their minds as well as with others. Finally, you will help children navigate narrative nonfiction texts. You ll be amazed at how your children s grasp of biographies improves when they stop recording isolated facts and instead use their knowledge of story structure to help them determine importance, noticing their subject s traits, motivations, challenges, and ways of overcoming challenges. 16

19 UNIT SUMMARIES Third Grade UNIT THREE Character Studies This unit begins with a close study of characters. Talk to any avid reader about the book he or she is reading, and that reader will tell you about the characters. Characters lure us into books and keep us reading. In the first bend, children will study characters deeply, investigate patterns that reveal deeper traits and motivations, and articulate evidence-based theories. Readers will use those theories to make predictions as they follow their character on a journey that takes the shape of a predictable story mountain, considering the big lessons that characters learn and how those lessons relate to the larger message a story conveys. This unit continues to support students in the foundational skills that were front and center during the first fiction unit of the year. You ll assess your students abilities to be resourceful word solvers, and to envision and predict, and you ll ask students to assess their predictions against the learning progression. Finally, students will learn to do important compare-and-contrast work. They will compare and contrast not only characters, but also the problems characters encounter and their reactions to those problems. They ll think, also, about ways setting and themes in similar books are the same and different. UNIT FOUR Research Clubs Elephants, Penguins, and Frogs, Oh My! This is more than a unit on information reading it is a unit on research. The work your kids undertake in this unit will be challenging, but has the power to change their lives, because they will learn to learn perhaps the single most important academic skill you can offer your students as you send them out into the world. To begin, kids form clubs to study an animal. They ll preview a collection of texts on their animal, then each club member will read about a subtopic across several books, developing background knowledge first by reading easier texts, then progressing to more challenging texts. You ll teach club members to synthesize and organize what each of them is learning individually, using the learning progression to ratchet up their skill levels as they read for the main idea and engage in cross-text synthesis. At the end of the unit, clubs transfer what they learned into the study of a second animal. Eventually you ll teach children to compare and contrast across animals and apply their newly acquired knowledge to solve real-world problems. C haracter Studies LUCY CALKINS, SERIES EDITOR JULIA MOONEY KRISTIN SMITH Research Clubs ELEPHANTS, PENGUINS, AND FROGS, OH MY! LUCY CALKINS KATHLEEN TOLAN Grade 3 Unit 3 Grade 3 Unit 4 17

20 UNIT SUMMARIES Fourth Grade Interpreting Characters THE HEART OF THE STORY Grade 4 Unit 1 UNIT ONE Interpreting Characters The Heart of the Story UNIT TWO Reading the Weather, Reading the World LUCY CALKINS KATHLEEN TOLAN Reading the Weather, Reading the World Grade 4 Unit 2 LUCY CALKINS EMILY BUTLER SMITH MIKE OCHS In fourth grade, you ll help students delve into complex texts and see significance in details. They ll go beyond simple character traits to study the complexity of characters, seeing complications and flaws, and they ll build on their ideas about characters in order to also explore the themes those characters advance. They ll trace a theme through different parts of the story, and grow skills such as inference and interpretation. Setting their own goals, they ll learn that with deliberate, goal-driven effort, they can form interpretations supported across a whole text and find meaning in recurring images, objects, and details. You will teach them to draw on their knowledge of fictional genres to read actively and intensely from the start. For a mystery, they ll try to collect clues so they solve it. For a fantasy, they ll expect to learn about a quest. Whatever the genre, this unit will help your students become more alert to even nonsequential story structures. This unit engages students in the nonfiction reading work highlighted in every iteration of twenty-first-century standards. Students begin by reading far and wide in nonfiction texts, moving from easy texts to more challenging ones. You ll teach them that when expository texts are organized into text structures such as problem/solution or compare-and-contrast, they can use their knowledge of structures to figure out what is and isn t important, becoming readers who, by distilling the main ideas and important points, are able to summarize. Later, children form research teams to delve into topics about extreme weather and natural disasters. You ll help teams to research a topic, reading across source material to learn about causes and effects of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and other disasters. You ll teach them to alter their reading when tackling dense scientific texts. You ll teach cross-text synthesis, channeling kids to think about how new information can add to or challenge prior knowledge. Then at the end of the unit, students consolidate and apply all they ve learned as they explore a related, but different, topic. Students study authorial tone and craft, and practice close reading, comparing and contrasting, and evaluating sources to determine credibility. 18

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