Instructional Move 4: Close Reading

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Three years ago, as I started my first work around close reading, Google searches revealed almost nothing. There were a couple of videos and some books but none of these were created specifically for a K-12 audience. Now, of course, there is no shortage of books, videos, trainings, webinars, conference workshops, and print materials that describe this instructional approach. Before you blow through your modest budget on any of these items, consider learning about the move through a number of free and well-vetted materials.

David Coleman did not invent close reading but he certainly brought it to a lot of people’s attention when he described it at a PARCC conference three years ago. Watch from minute 4:08 through 8:12 as Coleman contrasts “typical” reading instruction to close reading.

Dr. Stephen Gehrke worked with teachers in Washoe and generously shared his materials (here) to help contextualize what close reading is and a method for doing close reading with students.

Dr. Louisa Moats, contributing author to the Common Core State Standards, explains close reading here.

Tennessee has created a Guide to Close Reading that answers the following questions: What is close reading? Why is close reading important? and How is close reading done?

The Aspen Institute published “Implementing the Common Core State Standards: A Primer on ‘Close Reading of Text’” (here). Coauthored by Sheila Brown and Lee Kappes, the primer defines close reading, provides strategies for its implementation, and connects this instructional approach to the standards.

Those of you who are employing the close reading strategy in your classroom may find this Standford news article interesting (here).  Researches are demonstrating that close reading increases neural activity and “how cognition is shaped not just by what we read, but how we read it.”

You can view the close reading strategy, matched to Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, with students. Part One and Part Two.

You can find close reading exemplars here and here. You can find over 40 social studies/history close reading exemplars by joining an Edmodo group here.

The Aspen Institute posted a close reading exemplar of Russell Freedman’s The Voice that Challenged a Nation here.

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Instructional Move 5: Teaching Conflict & Characterization

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Jon Corippo, Apple Distinguised Educator and Google Certified Teacher, describes how he teaches students to identify the five types of conflict within text. Begin watching Corippo’s explanation at minute 9:55 for full context or at minute 12:25 if you simply want to see the strategy (here) and see how Corippo uses an engaging and rigorous method to get students proficient with this outcome.

Further into the video, Corippo describes a process helping students with characterization. Corippo has generously shared the lesson plan and graphic organizer that accompanies the exercise with us. The video is great and the lesson moves teachers from modeling, to guided practice, to independence. The lesson can be downloaded here.

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CCSS Instructional Practice Guide Coaching, Released

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

The Instructional Practice Guide: Coaching tool is for teachers, and those who support teachers, to build understanding and experience with Common Core State Standards (CCSS)-aligned instruction.

Designed as a developmental tool, the coaching tool can be used for collaboration, coaching, and reflection. It is intended for use in non-evaluative observation to facilitate instructional coaching conversations. The Shifts in instructional practice required by the CCSS provide the framing for the coaching tool. You can access the free resources here.

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Instructional Move 6: Four Corners

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

If you have taken part in a Core Task Project training, then you know we typically start with the Four Corners activity. The website www.facinghistory.org does a nice job summarizing the move as follows:

A Four Corners Debate requires students to show their position on a specific statement (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) by standing in a particular corner of the room. This activity elicits the participation of all students by requiring everyone to take a position. By drawing out students’ opinions on a topic they are about to study, it can be a useful warm-up activity. By asking them to apply what they have learned when framing arguments, it can be an effective follow-through activity. Four Corners can also be used as a pre-writing activity to elicit arguments and evidence prior to essay writing.

7th grade teacher Melanie Thomas explains how she uses Four Corners as a means of formative assessment. At minute 2:40 in the video, you can see Thomas use Four Corners with her students.

Maria Worley explains Four Corners here.

The West Virginia Department of Education outlines the approach here and links to several resources.

You can download a Word document of the approach from the Center for Teaching and Learning here.

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Instructional Move 7: Quiz, Quiz, Trade

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a learning strategy that that has students working with multiple partners to review key learning outcomes. The move allows for practice with a large problem set and for students to use each other to problem solve and coach.

Expeditionary Learning has posted a 4th grade example here.

High school teacher Brett Addis outlines the approach and narrates an example here.

Stefanie McKoy’s 3rd grade classroom demonstrates the move here.

You can read through the instructional move here

And Here are student directions in a PowerPoint.

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Instructional Move Number 8: Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

In this move, student pair up with other students in the classroom to do two things: 1) share an academic problem they have been working on and 2) work on the problem their partner shares with them. Naturally, there are a number of advantages to this approach including the fact that when done well, teachers have set conditions for learning, which is an important part of Social Emotional Learning and a prerequisite to doing Common Core well. In the links below, you can see the move in action with teachers explaining how to set it up and why it promotes student learning.

6th grade teacher Amanda Hicks explains the approach and viewers can see it in action.

The directions are listed here.

And in this Kagan Training video, students work with the move for the first time.

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Instructional Move Number 9: Keep It Or Junk It

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Two years ago I posted on a move titled, Keep It or Junk It. The approach has students identifying vocabulary from a text they feel is relevant to answering a focus question instead of the teacher prioritizing words for the students. In the video linked here 5th grade teacher Jennifer Brouhard describes the move and viewers are able to watch its application in Brouhard’s classroom.

Following the initial post in August of 2012, Dr. Pete Cobin shared his thoughts on Keep It or Junk It for English Learners:

There are two things in particular that I noticed.

  1. The emphasis on “What are you thinking? How do you use this information?” requires students to grapple with how to use language to express their ideas.  This leads students to struggle with how to be more informative, and challenges them to go beyond staying on firm ground where they feel comfortable.  The result is that students are using language that is rather complex, and the text serves as a model for how to use this more complex language.
  2. The “Keep It or Junk It” activity begins with learning vocabulary and extends to discussing and arguing how the vocabulary relates to the main ideas.  As a result, the amount of paragraph level oral language shown is quite high.  The progression of language functions–from identifying vocabulary, to repeating it, describing it, making an example with it, explaining it, arguing about it–forms a nice WIDA-like strand across the range of proficiency levels.

You can learn more about how other classroom teachers are using Keep It or Junk it in the links below.

5th Grade Students work with the question, Why Did the British settle in Jamestown and what happened as a result. You can view part 1 here and part 2 here.

Raye Wood blogs about using the strategy here.

www.teachinghistory.org outlines the strategy here

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Instructional Move Number 10: Cold Call

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

“Cold Call” is outlined in Doug Lemov’s book Teach Like a Champion. The move involves calling on students whether they have their hands up or not. The technique has the advantages of keeping the pace of the class moving, increasing the number of students a teacher can call on and elevating the level of student engagement. To be clear, it is important to normalize the routine in your classroom so that the Cold Call does not become stressful. You can see the move in action and read more about it in the links below.

Doug Lemov annotates a teacher using the move here.

Kindergarten teacher Jennifer Shaffer explains the Cold Call and shows what it looks like in her classroom.

A 2nd grade example here.

You can read a thorough description of the Cold Call here.

Boyd County Public Schools summarizes all 49 Teach Like a Champion moves here, including the Cold Call.

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Instructional Moves to Help you with the Common Core

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Over the course of the last three years, as teachers asked for assistance with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, three questions consistently came up:

  1. What is the research that governs why we are being asked to shift instruction?
  2. What curricular resources will support our move to the CCSS? and
  3. What instructional moves are well matched to the CCSS?

The first two questions have answers littered throughout this blog as well as our parallel space, www.63000resources.com.

Judging from the number of emails I’ve recently received, however, the how is not being adequately addressed. That is, teachers—you—want more lesson demonstrations and pedagogical moves that are well matched the expectations of the CCSS and/or creating the conditions for Common Core learning. Consequently, this blog will take the next few weeks to promote 10 lesson demonstrations for teachers interested in instructional techniques that allow access to the standards by attending to vetted moves to promote student learning. Further, the links will all be to free resources so any educator can take full advantage of what is listed.

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Social Emotional Learning and CCSS Presentation Materials

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

As part of an effort to bridge the Common Core State Standards and Social Emotional Learning, district educators worked to find classroom examples and instructional techniques that addressed both outcomes simultaneously. This was part of the SEL Site-Based Implementation Training. Teachers focused on using the Instructional Practice Guides to annotate lesson demonstrations that attended to SEL and CCSS. Likewise, the outcomes promoted were buttressed with research from Seligman, Dweck, Willingham, and McKenna.

PowerPoint on CCSS and SEL Integration–SEL Site-Based Implementation Training

 

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