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: Read the selection “Adventure’s Call” and then answer the following question.
Write a summary of the section of the article under the subheading “Call of the Sea.” Use information from the article to support your answer.
(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?
- Ask her, “What do you think is the main idea? What was the author trying to get you to see in this section?”
- Give her more practice in looking at sections of the text as opposed to the whole piece
- Make it clear what is expected by asking for the main idea of the section
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?
- Tell her to pull one idea from each paragraph to help her be more focused
Where would you go next instructionally with the class?
- Look at the structure of the text; pull one main idea from each paragraph to identify the controlling idea and then summarize
- Have them look at the information they pulled and ask, “Is there an overriding idea? What is this section about?” Then have them turn the paper over and write what the section is about.
- Give students a chance to revise their answers
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?
- Go back to the text and ask him to elaborate and explain the things that Jack London did to help himself become a better writer
- Ask him literal questions to see if he could answer them
- Work backwards and ask, “What do you think this author is trying to tell us?”
- Have student read the earlier student’s paper that had done a good job of including the important details in a retelling of the text and ask the student to find the main idea
Where would you go next instructionally with the class?
- Be consistent in telling students that we need for them to identify the main idea and support it with details
- Provide students more opportunities to come up with conclusions, inferences, and important details
- Move students from literal interpretation to critical analysis
- Determine if they were having problems with finding the main idea or was it that they did not know what they were suppose to include
- Assess students again - once everybody is clear on what it is you’re looking for
