Welcome! text-based answers through journeys 2014 Melinea Rubiano sharon hepburn barb kruger maria lowenstein
Table of Contents Slides 1-2: Housekeeping Slides 3-4: Shift # 3 and CCSS Slides 5-8: Text-Dependent Questions & Journeys Features Slide 9: Tier II Interventions Slide 10: Progression of Text-Dependent Questions Slide 11: Creating Text-Dependent Questions Slide 12: Gradual Release Model of Responsibility Slides 13-14: Close Reading Slides 15-17: Additional Resources Slide 18: Speaking and Listening Slides 19-20: Assessments Slide 21: Final Thoughts Slides 22-23: Closing/Questions and Answers For your convenience in viewing the session, here is a table of contents summarizing the various topics of this presentation.
Instructional Shift #3: Text-Based Answers Through Journeys Today s Focus This session focuses on instructional shift #3, seeking text-based answers using Journeys.
English Language Arts Common Core State Standards The third instructional shift is found in all 4 strands, which include Reading (both literature and informational text standards) Writing, Speaking/ Listening, and Language. Teachers need to be certain that a balance of literary and informational text is used during daily instruction, as well as readily accessible to students during independent reading. This gives students a variety of genres with which to practice finding evidence of text-based answers.
Text-Dependent Questions What Are They? Specifically asks a question that is evidenced by referring explicitly back to the text Relies on the text itself and what is directly stated in the text; it does not depend on information from outside sources Requires an understanding that extends beyond recalling basic facts Text-dependent questions can only be answered by referring explicitly back to the text. They are answered with evidence from the text. Text-dependent questions rely on the text itself and what is directly stated in the text. They do not depend on information from outside sources. Text-dependent questions may begin with literal and must then lead to questions involving analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Text-dependent questions can focus on a word, sentence and paragraph as well as a larger theme, idea or event. These questions can also focus on difficult portions of the text in order to enhance reading proficiency. Text-dependent questions require an understanding that extends beyond recalling basic facts. They can include opportunities for writing and collaborative discussion. Text-dependent questions may include: themes, central ideas, knowledge of vocabulary, syntax and structure.
Journeys Focus Wall On the Focus Wall, at the beginning of each lesson: Teachers can find the Anchor and Paired Text titles, Comprehension Skills and Strategies and Vocabulary Strategies with Targeted Vocabulary. This information can also be found on the Journeys Unit organizers in the ELR CAB conference, as well as through Think Central s Journeys Digital Gateway. Whether using the focus wall or the unit organizers, teachers can see at a glance the various teaching points that will be addressed in the five day plan. If teachers read the suggested lesson and determine that it doesn t fit the needs of their students, they can look at additional resources available to them that would assist their students with a specific skill or strategy. It s important to look at the Focus Wall, because it can aid a teacher when planning text-dependent questions.
Why Use Text-Based Questions? They build a critical foundation of knowledge They increase a student s ability to comprehend They expand a student s capacity to read increasing levels of complex text Text-dependent questions build a critical foundation of knowledge needed for comprehending text. They also increase a student s ability to read with understanding. As students reading skills and foundation of knowledge increase, they expand their capacity to read increasing levels of complex text with understanding.
Journeys Features Anchor Text Paired Text Leveled Readers and Lesson Plans Classroom Conversation Component CCSS requires students to support their answers using evidence from the text, either directly or using inferencing skills. Journeys provides a variety of text, which teachers can use to create text-dependent questions. Each lesson in Journeys contains an anchor text and a paired text. Journeys Leveled Reader and Vocabulary Reader Teacher s Guide is an 8 page lesson plan that contains valuable information a teacher may use when crafting questions, such as the characteristics of the text at that level, introduction of the text, teaching points that require students to think within the text, beyond the text and about the text. The Classroom Conversation component can be used to help facilitate collaborative discussion about observations made through analysis of the text.
tier II interventions Dig Deeper Component Write-In Reader The Dig Deeper component is intended for those students who did not fully comprehend how to analyze text. This resource can be used as a Tier II intervention for remediation. The Dig Deeper component can be found after the Anchor Text, for each lesson. The Write-In Reader is also used to help Tier II students. Lesson plans for the Write-In Readers are found under the intervention tab in the back of each Teacher s Edition. Passages within the Write-In Reader have a lower level of readability than the anchor text and can be used to practice text-based answers with evidence. This can be used to scaffold the strategies needed to understand the anchor text.
Asking text-dependent questions will not ensure that students automatically develop the ability to read and understand text. Teachers need to explicitly teach how to read deeply and how to respond with evidence from the text. Teachers need to model how they think about texts and how they look for evidence in the text when responding to questions. Let s focus on the types of questions useful in ensuring students have read the text. General Understandings questions are used for students to grasp the overall view of the text. Depending on the type of text, general understanding type questions may ask the sequence of information, the main idea with evidence and the gist of a given text. Text-dependent questions, within Key Details, require that students pay attention to the details within the text. For Vocabulary & Text Structure text-dependent questions you may focus on the real words within the text, in reference to knowledge of vocabulary, syntax and structure. These questions help students focus on how the text structure supports students in determining the meanings of unknown words. For Author s Purpose questions the genre helps the reader understand the author s purpose. Most students have been explicitly taught how to identify author s purpose, however, with the CCSS we are going beyond that, in order to deepen their understanding by analyzing point of view and reliability of narrator. Text-dependent Inference questions allow students to review the information provided and then make informed conclusions from the text. This goes beyond simply making predictions about what s going to happen next in the story, which is not actually inferencing. Opinions, Arguments and Intertextual Connection questions should follow discussions that encourage students to consider logic and composition. These should include appeal based on character of the speaker, logic or reason, or emotion. Teachers should use a variety of resources, including print, video and audio sources.
The process of creating text-dependent questions begins with Step 1, identifying the key insights that you want your students to understand from the text. For this step we focus on the major points, in order to construct appropriate questions. Step 2 includes questions that help orient the students to the text and are specific enough for them to answer, so they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions later on. Step 3 is to locate key text structures and the most powerful academic words in the text. These words are connected to the key ideas and understandings. The crafted questions should make these connections for the students. In Step 4, we find sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that help support the students in understanding these sections. Step 5 includes sequencing the questions so they build toward a more coherent understanding and analysis of the text, to ensure that students learn how to stay focused on the text. This will bring them to a more gradual understanding of its meaning. In Step 6, we need to notice what standards are being addressed in our questioning and decide if there are additional standards needed, or better suited, to bring focus to the text. In Step 7, the last step, we develop a culminating activity around the key ideas or understanding of the text, which we may have identified earlier in our questioning. Completion of the activity should reflect mastery of one or more of the standards. This activity may involve writing and/or speaking and listening, to be completed by the students, independently.
Instructional Shift I Do We Do You Do Scaffolding enables all students to access the complex text directly, rather than reduce the complexity of the text as was done in the past. Teachers need to follow the instructional sequence of the Gradual Release Model of Responsibility, I Do - We Do - You Do. I Do is when teacher models, We Do is when students work in groups or pairs, with shared responsibility, which could include teacher or peer collaboration and You Do is when students work individually.
close reading How Implement a Close Reading of Text 1. Introduce text, set purpose, read 2. Read with your pencil! 3. Turn and Talk 4. Teacher reads again and students listen closely 5. Teacher leads discussion about text 6. Students record information Close Reading encourages students to read and reread deliberately, empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details, enables students to reflect on meaning and ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole. Close reading supports literacy development across the content areas, while preparing our students for college and career success.
Journeys through close reading Gone are the days when the teacher introduces a lesson by explaining to the students everything he/ she knows about the topic and what the students are going to learn. Through planning, WE need to determine what needs to be explicitly taught and what we want the students to discover. During planning, if you preview the Anchor Text and find it to be too complex, you may refer to Scaffold Close Reading on Day 1, in the teacher s edition, under the heading Read the Anchor Text. This strategy may be used to assist students in tackling text-dependent questions.
Common Core ela exemplar resource Teachers can find the Common Core ELA Exemplar Resource in Think Central, through the Teacher Gateway, under the Teaching Aids section. This resource was developed to provide instruction for the exemplars found in Appendix B of the CCSS for ELA. Remember these exemplars are organized by grade level bands (K-1, 2-3, and 4-5). This resource may be used to scaffold instruction when analyzing text through text-dependent questions.
Reading Science Reading Science is an additional resource, also found in Think Central, through the Teacher Gateway, under the Teaching Aids section. It may also be used for close reading and analysis of informational text through Science content. It includes reading, writing, speaking and listening instruction. Comprehension strategies are used throughout this resource as well as vocabulary strategies dealing with prefixes, suffixes and Greek and Latin roots, to help students tackle the difficult domain-specific vocabulary. These strategies can be used to craft text-dependent questions. The lessons also include classroom collaboration and performance tasks to monitor the students progress.
Reading adventures Reading Adventure Student Magazine is the text for Unit 6 whole group instruction. It has all the components that were included in Units 1-5. This magazine is another collection of texts that may be used in writing text-dependent questions. Unit 6 provides a great opportunity for students to begin the practice of writing their own text-dependent questions, as the teacher has modeled this practice in Units 1-5.
speaking and listening Speaking and listening is an important strategy when seeking text-based answers. Teachers must establish a routine when asking text-dependent questions, give students think time, establish a clear language expectation when sharing out, and provide a question/task that is developmentally appropriate. Speaking and listening is most effective when student responses are randomly elicited and connected to the learning objective. Discussion should allow students to engage in purposeful talk. Speaking and listening activities can be found within your Journeys teacher s edition, Grades 1-5. These activities can be found in the Day 5 plans, under the heading Extend the Topic.
Journeys Features Progress Monitoring & Assessment Many questions have been raised dealing with assessments. You can find an assessment chart that shows the various assessments provided by HMH in the ELR CAB conference under HMH Journeys Common Core. The document is titled HMH Journeys Assessment Options Matrix. Using the Assessment Options matrix, schools need to have conversations about which assessments will be used to gather data that will help guide classroom instruction. We do not recommend using the Weekly Tests as this assessment mainly tests listening comprehension and memorization since it is tied to the anchor text and the text has been discussed numerous times over the course of the five day plan. Even though the Cold Reads provide more accurate data on skills students have mastered, this assessment consists of only 3-4 multiple choice test items and a short response in Grades 2-5 (which will not give teachers a more comprehensive picture of mastery). It is our hope that teachers are using more authentic assessments that relate to the CCSS. We have provided HMH Formative Assessments that teachers can use to help students become familiar with upcoming assessments. These can be found in the Assessments for Literacy CAB conference folder under HMH Formative Assessments. These assessments involve reading, writing, speaking and listening skills that provide a more authentic picture of a student s ability. The assessments include a teacher script, graphic organizers, articles and any other materials required during the assessment.
Final thoughts There is no one way to have students work with textdependent questions. Providing for the differing needs of students means using a variety of scaffolding techniques. This does not mean asking easier questions or substituting with simpler text. Listening and speaking should be built into any sequence of activities along with reading and writing. Re-read it, think it, talk it and write it. The Common Core requires all students to read and engage with grade appropriate, complex texts, regularly. This requires new ways of working in our classrooms. Upwards of 80% of CCSS Reading Standards in most grades require that students provide evidence from the text in their responses.
Change is possible. Change requires three things; a vision, a plan, and effort. It requires changing bad habits to good habits. It requires effort even when we don t feel like working. It requires one step at a time. Santa Clara University http://www.scu.edu/character/subscribers/cbl/quarter-2/ Change is happening now as we move towards the CCSS. It is going to take hard work. Start small where you feel comfortable. Work collaboratively to create text-dependent questions. Above all, let students do the work.
Q and A Teachers can find a Journeys Frequently Asked Questions and Answers document in the Elementary Literacy Resources CAB conference. Thank you for your time while learning more about text-based answers through Journeys.