Literacy Tip Archives

Reading for Information: Text Structures and Cues

Once students have "learned to read," they are quickly expected to "read to learn."  As they move through the grades, texts become more challenging.  Reading instruction needs to happen K-12.  We need to teach our students,  in every grade and class, how to read to learn their classroom texts.

Informational text   is organized with internal text structures :

     Description: Listing information about a topic, event, object, person, or idea. This information is           usually includes facts, characteristics, traits, or features
     Cause/Effect: Showing how facts, events or ideas happen because of other facts, events, or                ideas
     Comparison/Contrast: Pointing out Likenesses and Differences
     Problem/Solution: Showing the development of a problem and the solution to the problem
     Sequence:   Putting facts, events or ideas into an order;  tracing the development; listing the steps in a           process.
     Question/Answer :  Provides information through a question-answer format

Common Signal Words that are cues to the structures include the following:
 

Literacy Tip #16 (April 27, 2006)

Welcome back! And welcome to the last quarter of the year!

We still have a lot of time to make a difference in our students' literary lives.
Here is a literacy tip for this quarter:
Questioning the Author

In this 21st century of information overload, we need to help our students question the world around them: in print, in the media, in the world of advertisement that drives the media, and in everything they see, read, or hear.  We can start in our classrooms by encouraging our students to Question the Author.
This works especially well for nonfiction text, and increases reading comprehension.

Students fold a paper in half lengthwise.  On one side of the fold, they write questions for the author. and on the other side they   infer  answers and draw conclusions.  They should write questions for the author as they read.

First, model some questions, such as the ones that follow. Urge students to add some of their own.

     What is the author trying to teach me?
     Why did the author organize the information the way he or she did?
     Why does the author use this ____________________(word, event, detail, etc.)
      How does this fit with what I already know?  
     What point is the author trying to make?
     Where did the author get his ideas?

( They won't find these answers right there in the text. They need to look for clues and  infer answers.)

Finally, ask them to write on the back what the author's purpose was and how well it was met.

Another time, take this strategy to the next step with questions about messages in the media...after all, that is where most of our students' reading occurs.....
(You can adapt the questions slightly as shown below):

1.     Who created this message?

2.     What techniques are used to attract my attention?

3.     How might different people understand this message differently from me?

4.     What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?

5.     Why was this message sent?

NOW, you have moved from literacy to "Media Literacy"  - the newest of literacies, for the 21st Century!

"Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound. It is the skillful application of literacy skills to media and technology messages. As communication technologies transform society, they impact our understanding 
of ourselves, our communities, and our diverse cultures, making media literacy an essential life skill for the 21st century.
(The Alliance for A Media Literate America, 2000)  

Start preparing students for 21st Century literacy by helping them learn to question whatever they read, see, or hear!

Literacy Tip #15 (April 12, 2006)
Check out this website for a poem a day - another great resource for reading aloud to your students. Also gives suggestions for HOW to read a poem.


http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Literacy Tip # 14 (April 3, 2006) Literacy Checklist:

Time to pause and reflect on the things you are doing in your classroom to support LITERACY in your content area....

Do you read out loud, from your textbook or some materials in your content area, so your students hear fluent text?

Do you give students opportunities to extend their learning, elaborate their thinking, or make critical judgments about the content you teach?

Do you provide your students with strategies for understanding what they read in your content area, and ways to monitor whether or not they are understanding what they read?

Do you help them apply what they already know to understand new ideas?

Do you use more than one kind of text, such as a news article to support a textbook chapter's main idea, so that your students see more than one genre of text in your content area?

Do you ask your students to think about their purpose for reading or writing something before they begin?

Do you try to help your kids believe in themselves that they can be good readers?

If you answered yes to any of these questions,

 you are supporting the NAEP goals for reading, that drive the CMT

you are helping your students become independent readers

you are supporting the Sedgwick Literacy Initiative 

Literacy Tip #13

PURPOSES FOR READING
Whenever you assign reading, remember to assign a reading purpose.

"Okay class, you know your homework is to read chapter 2. What is your purpose for reading chapter 2?"

General Purposes:
A. Reading for the Literary Experience (for fiction)
B. Reading for Information (nonfiction)
C. Reading to Perform a Task (nonfiction)

"Setting a Purpose" includes taking time to get ready to read, which is what good readers do.

WHAT GOOD READERS DO BEFORE THEY READ:
They ask themselves:
What do I need to know before I read?
What do I already know about this topic?
How is the text organized to help me?
Are there pictures or headings or maps or titles or italics? What do they tell me?
What does the title tell me?
What is the author's reason for writing this?
What is my reason for reading this?
Am I reading for my own pleasure?
Am I reading for school? If so, should I slow down and pay attention to what my teacher has told me to look for?
If I am looking for information, how should I organize the information I find?

Comprehension is a process, not a product. We don't comprehend unless we draw connections between what we read and our background knowledge.
Help our students set the stage for comprehending - and therefore, learning - by modeling for them how to identify the purpose BEFORE THEY BEGIN TO READ.
 

Literacy Tip # 12 - 3/17/06.

Literacy and Tolerance:  Hand in Hand

This week's Literacy Tip is about "Visual Literacy"   - and about using literacy to build empathy and understanding in our students.  

Thelma sent out a wonderful suggestion about using the   Teaching Tolerance Posters   to build empathy. As an alternative to   reading   aloud   to your students to build empathy, why not take a field trip to view the posters hanging outside the library? - and have the kids write   their reflections.

The sample prompts that Thelma lists from the accompanying curriculum guides would be wonderful for students to reflect on in homeroom.  Ask your students to WRITE their answers first, before you let them discuss.  This ensures that each student does indeed respond.  The don't need to be graded.  But you'll probably want the kids to share them.  

SAMPLES:  

Everyday Conduct  - "Think of a destructive act perpetrated on one community by another.  Would it take one day to repair the damage?"

Closed Fists, Open Hands  - "Can a mind be closed?  What might someone with a closed mind say?"

You Have Been These  - "What do you think it means to be 'tender with the young?'  Why is it important?  How can you, at your grade level be tender with students in grades lower than your own?"

               See the curriculum guides for additional suggestions......

Kids often do their best writing when they write about something that matters   to them.

Literacy AND Diversity ......Isn't it great when 2 initiatives can be addressed at the same time?!  Luck of the Irish!!
 

Literacy Tip # 11 - 3/6/06. Not Just For Children...Picture Books in the Middle School Classroom: Building Empathy With Literature
 
In the last 2 decades, the world of children's literature has exploded and the boundaries of this genre have blurred. What we used to call children's literature, because of the illustrations, we now call "picture books,"  and their intended audience is a debatable topic. Many specialize in serious topics not suitable as bedtime stories. Often, the best audience can be middle school students who readily identify with characters not much younger than themselves.

Picture books provide easy access to sophisticated themes and dimensions of the human experience, thereby encouraging thoughtful reader response. They readily engages our visual learners.  There are picture books that teach mathematics concepts and picture books that teach historical periods, including the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and the Holocaust. They can be used to stimulate class discussion, and to can help to develop aesthetic appreciation.  They are a gold mine for ESOL learners as well.
 
William Kilpatrick  says this about   empathy :

"With some of the characters we meet in stories, we form a much deeper relationship than acquaintance.  W enter imaginatively into their lives.  We form a bond of empathy and even identity...the ability to see and feel things as others see and feel them is the key that unlocks our prison house of self-absorption.
...Children see things from their own perspective, and it takes quite a bit of doing to get them to see things from the point of view of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends...Reading affords us the opportunity to do what we often can't do in life, to become thoroughly involved in the inner lives of others."
                                               Books That Build Character (1994)

Lynne has pulled a number of titles for you in the media center.

Here is a list of my favorites:

Some of My Favorite Picture Books For the Middle School Classroom:
The Holocaust/World War II
Rose Blanche - Roberto Innocenti
Faithful Elephants - Yukio Tsuchiya
Shin's Tricycle - Tatsuharu Kodama
So Far From the Sea - Eve Bunting
Revolutionary War
Katie's Trunk - Ann Turner
Civil War
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt -Deborah Hopkinson
Secret Signs - Anita Riggio
Nettie's Trip South - Ann Turner
Pink and Say - Patricia Polacco
Vietnam
The Wall - Eve Bunting
Multicultural
Grandfather's Journey - Allen Say
Brown Angels - Walter Dean Myers
Lon Po Po - Ed Young
Smoky Nights - Eve Bunting
Native Americans
Sky Dogs - Jane Yolen
Dreamplace - George Ella Lyon
Crow and Weasel - Barry Lopez
Mathematics
G is for Googel - David Schwartz
How much is a Million? D. Schwartz
Anno's Counting House - Anno
Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar - Anno
Math Curse - Jon Scieszka
 

Literacy Tip #10 (2/13/06)

In our tenacious and arduous efforts to prepare our students for the March testing of their writing, reading, math and science skills, let's not forget that it is our students who love to read who are most likely to be successful on any  test. The best February vacation homework you can assign your students is to read something they love.
 
Take a minute to share with them your own favorite childhood novel or story or poem.  Was there a character you loved?  Tell them who it was. Send them to Lynne Hawkins, who can booktalk them silly with her stunning collection of young adult literature. Never give up on trying to hook them.   Reading is their ticket.  
 
How did we do it?  We were lucky.  Born into a time and circumstance, obstacles didn't stop us. If we didn't love to read, we wouldn't be where we are today. Reading for us was a friend, not an enemy.

  "We danced with the words, as children, in what became familiar patterns.  The words became our friends and our companions, and without even saying it aloud, a thought danced with them:  
I can do this.  This is who I am . "  
(A. Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life , 1998.)  If we can get them to read, they will know who they are.

Literacy Tip #9 (2/06/06)

The new CMT  will test our students' ability to show that they
 
     -have a basic understanding of what they read   (General Understanding)
     -interpret and explain what they read   (Developing Interpretation)
     -connect or associate what they read with their own lives, other things they have read,
      or the world they live in    (Reader-Text Connections )
     -make judgments about the quality and meaning of what they read
    (Examining Content and Structure )
 
Each of you were given a set of  bookmarks , pastel colored, that suggest activities, questions, purposes, and actions to support each of the four elements of comprehension.
 
This week, why not try one in your classroom?  
Start with the verbs that describe the actions they must engage in to be good readers/thinkers.  
Make a chart on your wall for each element, and point out the verb that describes the action required whenever you engage your students in doing it.
 

Literacy Tip #8
A Thinking Exercise (1/30/06)

When you ask your students an important question, have them first write down their answers before they raise their hands.  This ensures that every student thinks about your question before the usual kids' hands go up.  If you don't do this, you can bet that as soon as the eager beavers' hands go up, the rest of the class stops even thinking about the question.  

Take it a step further.  Before everyone is asked to share, have them turn to one classmate and read the other's response.  Then, ask them to write a short comment in response to the partner's writing.  This means that they had to READ  and pay attention to one other student's response beside their own.  

These don't need to be collected - unless  you want to use them for a specific purpose, such as checking for student understanding.  They are thinking exercises.  The more kids think, and show their thinking about what they read and learn, the better writers and readers they become.  The better they read, the better the chance for them to be successful in your content area.  

Parents....you MAY try this at home...a little sibling rivalry, some struggle over the dvd player...these could be great opportunities for thinking/writing exercises.  Ask your son or daughter to WRITE the explanation of what happened, i.e., "Explain what your sister did to upset you!")

No better way to prepare your child for EXPOSITORY writing on the CMT!!
 

Literacy Tip #7

PIC
Purpose - Important Ideas - Connection

This is a prereading strategy to help readers focus on the most important information before they read something.
It helps students to understand and remember what they read.  

It might be helpful, for example, to have them do this with a chapter in a science or social studies textbook.

P	I	C
Put your purpose for reading here	Write 3 or 4 important ideas, words, or concepts here	Write how what you already knew about the subject connected with what you learned

Literacy Tip #6:   CLOSURE
 
By now, the holiday break is probably a distant memory. I hope you had time to seal some of those special memories:
A thank you note for a special gift, a fond goodbye with a mention of something special that happened, a holiday card that you save in a special place....

When we want to remember something, we need closure , a specific act that seals something into our memory forever.  
 
Kids need closure everytime they read, and at the end of every lesson.
 
It can be as simple as writing down the answer to:
What did you learn?
 
or fancier, with a graphic organizer:

     3 Things I Learned
     2 Things I Want to Know More About
     1 Question I Have
 
Unless we ask kids to summarize how their thinking changed, or what they learned, or the main ideas they read, we never know if they actually got it.  
 
Always, always, make time for closure, even if you have to save some of your lesson for the next day.
 
Parents can help kids with closure by asking them to summarize what they did for homework.  Or asking them to name one question they will ask the teacher in class the next day.
 
Closure ensures that we keep it forever....just like your favorite holiday memories.
 
Happy 2006!

This Literacy Tip #5 (12/19/05) will also serve as a last minute shopping idea!........

Post-it Notes  of all shapes and sizes!!!!!!!!!

Post-its are a reader's best friend, when trying to engage with a book or understand something difficult or new.

     I like the 1x2 size for reading.  
     Sometimes the 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 are preferable, depending on the assignment.

Every time you give a student a reading assignment in a text that can't be written in, they need something to engage them.  Hence the post-it note.  Start small, and always give a focused direction :
For example:
"As you read, I want you to mark three different areas where you have a question, and write it on the post-it. "

OR

"Find five vocabulary words that are new to you, and  mark where they are used."

OR

"Mark 3 places where the explanation becomes confusing, or you encounter new ideas."

Then, you might have the students move their post-its to a graphic organizer, or a plain sheet of paper, depending on the follow-up activities.  

Many English teachers do this already, but if kids were directed to do this in content areas, it might help them to unravel difficult textbooks.   Post-it notes with a focused direction help students to play closer attention to text when they can't underline or highlight. This becomes a habit and encourages independent reading success.

They come in every color of the rainbow, and fit nicely into stockings.....

Literacy Tip #4 December 12, 2005

The Writing Angle
 
A great support for developing your students' literacy is to give them a chance to write in your subject area.  This does   not   mean that every content area provides instruction in expository or persuasive essays.  It means
brief exercises,   such as having students

* write what they know about a subject
* explain their thinking
* write what they don't understand about a lesson
* summarize findings from a lab
* explain how they derived an answer to a problem
etc.
 
You might call this a "Learning Log"   and have students keep these reflections in a section of their notebooks.
Think of these exercises as stretches before the race....they work the individual muscles!

Does this mean you have to correct piles of student writing, marking every error?
 Absolutely not.  It all depends on 2 things:
  Purpose   and Audience .  
 
The purpose   of a writing assignment, and the audience   for whom the writing is intended, make all the difference in what matters in the writing.  In a learning log, written primarily to clarify thinking and learning, the primary audience is the student himself.  Spelling really doesn't matter.   The student is "writing to learn,"  rather than writing to communicate.
The tone of the writing, the language used, the amount of elaboration all depend on   why the student is writing the piece (purpose)   and for whom the student is writing it (audience.)

The next time you ask your students to write something in your subject area, ask them to identify purpose and audience.   Help them think about their thinking.    If they noticed this in ALL their classes, writing just might start to mean more than responding to a prompt!

Good writers pay attention to language;  good writers are usually good readers too!
 
 "We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."
C. Day Lewis

Literacy Tip #3 November 28, 2005

Making Thinking Visible
 
This week, as you think about your lessons, I am sure you are already planning to incorporate many effective literacy and learning strategies. Perhaps you will emphasize questioning, or predicting the outcome of an experiment. Your students may be inferring to find answers, or synthesizing information to explain their work.  You may be asking them to determine the importance of an event in history, or you may be activating their prior knowledge before you begin a new unit of study.  

Why not simply make this expert planning for instruction more visible to your students?
You might add the strategy as a bonus word to your vocabulary list.  Or you could have a "thinking strategy of the week" on the board.  

Most of us already write our objective for the lesson on the board.  (If you don't, this would be a great literacy support in and of itself!)  When you write it, why not try to incorporate the language of literacy strategies into your objective., (i.e., "Today we will practice inferring information from our reading...."

And then model one for them.  "Here is an example of how I infer...."   (show them how YOU do it! - make YOUR thinking visible to your students!)

When we help kids to pay attention to their thinking processes, they learn to think about their thinking. (Metacognition.)  Better thinkers are better readers, and better readers become better learners.  And so on!

Summary:
So far, we have three, easy-to-incorporate, "don't-even-require-a-worksheet" literacy/learning strategies:

Short read-alouds, read with expression by the teacher, in content area material
Word Walls
Making Thinking Visible                                        

If every teacher in Sedgwick did these three things, imagine the powerful impact on our students!

Literacy Tip #2 November 21, 2005: WORD WALLS!

Many of you do this already. Imagine the power of EVERY classroom in the school having a word wall, a place to post our most important words, the ones that are central to the key ideas we teach. A word wall grows throughout the year, and your students help you to choose the words that belong there.

We talk a lot about kids who come to us with no experiences or background knowledge. They start school behind their peers already, without the enrichment of family trips to museums, being read aloud to, and even being spoken to. The children who are in our achievement gap, according to research, have actually heard thousands and thousands of fewer words than their advantaged classmates. The difference in their exposure to vocabulary as compared to that of their peers actually increases geometrically as they proceed through school.

We can fill that word gap with increased and repeated exposure to words in our classroom. Your students can help you choose the words. It becomes a celebration of language for everyone!

If you post them grouped alphabetically (a column for A-F, G-L, etc.) your word wall becomes a word bank, a place where students can find words they need to know. They might earn extra points by using them when they write. The words on your word wall become visual reinforcement, as well as cues for auditory review.

Ask your colleagues how they manage their word walls….