Hello colleagues, In this morning's class, I explained what it means to cite evidence from text. I posed text-dependent questions for students to respond to through close reading of a complex text. According to the Pearson Maturity Metric, which is an easy online tool that measures the level of a text, the short text we are using on the topic of heat-related illnesses is at about level 9 or10. The students in my class are reading on TABE between levels 3 and 5.
An essential aspect of close reading is reading a text several times for different purposes. Students had read the text several times before I posed today's questions; today was day three for this particular text. The first time they read the text quietly and then told a partner at least one thing they understood about the text. During the second reading, they were encouraged to add comments and questions in the margins. After reading, they talked with a partner or in a small group to ask and answer each others' questions. I was available to address questions, too.
Since the students in my class are English language learners, they listened to me read the text aloud and then read the text aloud a couple of times with a partner, so we could addressed any pronunciation questions. We have also been targeting academic vocabulary explicitly through interactive activities (e.g., focus, maintain, potential, environment, occur, exposure) as well as some specific points of academic language. For instance, the students reviewed the text looking for modal verbs, i.e., can, may, will and must, and examined how these verbs were used in the text. We'll be looking at adverb clauses next, which are pervasive in this complex text.
At this point, the students were ready for the text-dependent questions. I posed the questions and made sure everyone understood them. Students read the article again to find the evidence in the reading that answered the questions. I wanted them to be able to both cite the evidence from the text and be able to respond to the questions in their own words. If they are able to explain the answers in their own words, then I know they really understand. Students worked with a partner to share their responses and then we debriefed as a whole class.
I welcome your comments and questions on this lesson. It would be great to hear how other teachers are teaching Reading Anchor 1, close reading and citing evidence.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, CCR CoP
Comments
How do you teach students to paraphrase information in their own words? I have a few (native English speakers) who can reliably find an appropriate phrase or sentence from the text to answer text-dependent questions, but who struggle mightily with restating ideas. I think that sometimes it has to do with less-than-perfect comprehension and possibly limited vocabulary, but I think something else is going on, too. Do you have any advice for teaching this skill?
Hi Rachel and all, Asking how to teach paraphrasing is a great question. This is something I am working to refine in my own teaching, so I hope to hear ideas and suggestions from other teachers. I am very committed to having students work with partners and/or in small groups as much as possible in my class --since we are always working on Listening and Speaking standards. One idea related to paraphrasing is something I found online recently at the BusyTeacher website. The blog at this site focuses on avoiding plagiarism, which is, of course, an important aspect of paraphrasing.
The tip I appreciated the most is about having students work in pairs or small groups to work on paraphrasing. I did something similar to this in my class this week. Before doing the "group paraphrasing" I showed the students several models, and then we worked on some paraphrasing as a class. Here is the tip on "group paraphrasing."
"One of the activities that works well to illustrate the challenges of paraphrasing well is to create an activity in which students work together in groups to write paraphrases of short excerpts from texts and then give them to another group of students in the class to “paraphrase the paraphrase.” The second group can give it to a third group, and so on. The activity can get time-consuming, and three rounds of paraphrasing should be sufficient. At the end of the activity, the class can compare the final paraphrase with the original and check to see if the meaning of the original has remained intact. If the meaning varies greatly, it’s important to direct students to review the progression as the paraphrase was forwarded to each group. This will help to illustrate errors, which can be used as a valuable opportunity for learning."
What does everyone think about the group paraphrasing idea. We didn't do all three rounds in my class because that would have taken too long.
Looking forward to reading members' thoughts!
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, CCR CoP