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 “Persistence” (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?
- Check our whether the student made the connection between each of the childhood events by asking, “What is the relationship between this part of the article and this part of the article?”
- Use student responses that have been recorded on an overhead transparency. Ask, “What was this student trying to say?”
Where would you go next instructionally with the class?
- Model the component parts of a summary. Explicitly explain the main idea and how to choose supporting details.
- Make sure they are making connections during reading
- Demonstrate for students how you take what you read and understand and get it on paper so that you can show others that you understood what you read.
- Monitor student understanding throughout the reading lesson by probing their thinking and doing spot checks.
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?
- Determine if the student understood the connection by asking, “How does persistence help Paul Richards become an astronaut?”
- If he could answer the question, he just needs to include it in the summary.
- If he didn’t get the connection, then he didn’t understand the text well enough and needs to work on showing the connections between important events in the article
- Revisit the main idea; make sure the student can state the main idea
- Differentiate instruction for students who are at the retelling stage and those who are ready for summarization
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?
- Provide small group or one-on-one guided reading instruction during which students develop and practice comprehension strategies
- Focus discussion on unlocking the meaning of the article and then creating a summary
- Have student relate what he understands to the main idea
- Model strategies for becoming a strategic reader
- “This is about persistence. What do you need to be thinking about while you read it?”
- “When you stop after each column, what are you thinking about?”
- “Okay, you just read something. You know the author is trying to tell you about persistence. How does this fit into that?”
