Each teacher was asked to bring three papers to the discussion — one in the top of the class performance, one in the middle, and one in the bottom of the class performance. Papers were chosen before the team defined proficiency. After defining proficiency, teachers often changed their minds about how they ordered their papers. The online discussion will make that clearer.
Question: Write a summary of the article “Fly High, Bessie Coleman” (Acrobat)
Top Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
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What does the student still need to learn?
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
- Discuss the criteria of a summary with the student
- Discuss strategies for finding the main idea
- Work with the student to find important from non-important details
- Highlight the main idea/topic sentence
- Demonstrate how the supporting details tie back to the main idea
- Write several sentences about a specific topic. Ask the student, “Which one of these is the most important and why?”
- Conduct a discussion of the article before the student writes a summary
- Identify the main idea as a group
Middle Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
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What does the student still need to learn?
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
- Ask students questions to sort through whether or not they understand what they’re supposed to include in a summary
- Generate a discussion using a transparency of a student work sample in which the student’s name has been removed
- Demonstrate how to check a summary to make sure it includes only the most important information and the summary answers the question, “What is the passage mainly about?”
Bottom Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
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What does the student still need to learn?
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
- Take them through the article looking at the headings again
- Provide more structure, such as a framed paragraph or sentence starters to gear them to the big ideas. For example, “The main idea was...?”
- Model a variety of plans for finding the main idea in paragraphs in which the main idea is explicitly stated and those where the main idea is implied.
