Eric

1.17.11 Close reading: Engage NY Discussion of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,”; Com. King refers to MLK text as means to launch into connection to work of CCLS. Preparation for reading a complex text: Talk about it with colleagues/ develop questions Focusing discussion about text and in location of text Consider objectives: Coleman-determined by text (stays close to text to determine purpose). Coleman’s helpful Principles: What can readers draw from the text itself? Working knowledge //What ‘s that?// What can readers NOT pay attention to? Rough understanding. . . What reasonates? Where can we do deeper, or beyond text? What next?

Creating discourse to look at and talk about text (language/ moves, etc.) In classroom; refering to parts of the text( by number)/ taking turns/ building conversation/ agreement/ challenge, attention to author’s moves 1.10.12 The student work I selected to share was based on an assignment which was part of a mini-unit in Social Studies and Language Arts. The Social Studies unit is a pre-study for our grade level unit on government and focuses on the concept of peacemakers and social action. The language arts unit focus is building skills, tools and awareness with the comprehension strategy of determining important information in a text. We have also started a persuasive writing unit and are just beginning to examine argument in writing. This activity is located in the writing arguments part of the CCLS as WA.6.1 Write arguments focused on discipline specific content; section a //Introduce claim with logical reasoning and distinguish the claim form alternate or opposing claims.// We tried out a “language frame” as a means to practice structuring our ideas in the context of an argument, use textual evidence to support claims and include other possible points of view. My question is about the frame itself, which as a scaffold is both supportive and stifling; Is using language frames to practice using language (and assisting structure) appear to be a valuable step?

12.6.11 Video: Building Literacy Skills in the disciplines. Processing text: challenging to take notes with the text (video) and pay attention to ongoing information; keep track of the direction of the text. Could I pause the text to mark my ideas/ challenge the text /ask questions, etc.? In this video- Coleman, King and Garret emphasize looking carefully at texts in the disciplines as a means to promote stronger thinking about and understanding of our world. ( I think that is what they are proposing!?) By taking the time and presenting strategies to help students engage with disciplinary texts, we will deepen student thinking- with the sacrifice being content knowledge. This begs two questions from me: 1) What content is important? 2) What __**strategies**__ (other than modeling reading/writing and think alouds) should we present? What resources can we use to do this work?

Writing to learn- and to process learning. Using writing across the content- What opportunities have I provided my students with writing? Genres? Types within a genre? For example- with the notion of argument, as presented and discussed in the common core language (and M. Sawyer's workshop) enabling student with persuasive writing, opinion writing, argument (logical argument) writing, evidentiary based writing in content areas. ..

12.5.11 Some of the most salient parts of the Bennet/Tovani article about the workshop model and "thinking" for me was the notion of a paradigm shift from "What will I do tomorrow?" to "What will the students do tomorrow?" I feel I am somewhere along the spectrum and think along the lines of "What will we do tomorrow?" and "What is important for us to think about tomorrow?"

11.22.11 Discussion: Which information is important and how do we provide opportunities to problem solve in the process of learning in the disciplines?

Video response: What are grade appropriate texts in the content areas? Where do we find resources to provide students with opportunities to do the "detective work" and "investigative reporting"? Why does the dismissal of "our reaction", "our feelings", and "what we think" as being over visited- and problematic AND unnecessary for a career?

Intro response: Re-reading and asking questions was helpful to make sense of the introduction to the common core in ELA and the content areas. Video is much more clear as to the intent of the CCLS and it's directional movement from our current standards.

4.9.10 Just one strategy I can commit to using based upon our learning is the pre reading "tea party" with some content in social studies. I like the idea of using this strategy with a history section in our text book and having part of the interaction be about predicting a sequence with other group members. Then after the reading, re-examining the prediction and discussing changes. The advantages I see with this strategy are: 1) setting a purpose for reading 2) activating prior knowledge.

In our common text, Reading for Understanding, the think aloud is a piece we use a lot of in fifth grade. We do this in our reading with literature the most and in our explicit look at comprehension strategies. In fact this is a main technique for modeling the comprehension strategies particularly during read aloud and shred reading activities. for the most part, our goal is to help students develop their inner reading voice so that they can notice when they need to be more strategic. What is challenging for us is the translation time for studetns to apply these strategies, at least to express what they are doing verbally or in writing.