Reading-writing connection and essays

My 5th grade class and I have set out on a new adventure:  we’re writing essays without a net.  No 5-paragraph essays for us!  We’re trying to write essays just like a writer would,colour-your-essays and how many 5-paragraph essays have YOU seen in magazines?

So we paused in the middle of the process of finding possible ideas and pushing our thinking to drill deeper and deeper into possible topics.

Today I handed an essay to each writing pair.  (Most of them were old Rick Reilly essays from Sports Illustrated.  I just love his writing.)  Students were instructed to read like writers and see what techniques the essayist used.  This is the list they came up with:

  • The author used repetition to keep the big idea in our minds.
  • The author wrote about two topics–back-and-forth–and then connected them.
  • The author gave us background knowledge.
  • The author used mini-stories.
  • The author has a clear, focused message.
  • The author used rhyming and alliteration.
  • The author made his message like a puzzle–you had to fit the pieces together to understand it.
  • The author included herself in the essay.
  • The author used a listing technique to organize the essay.
  • The author wrote the essay and directly asked the person questions in the writing.
  • The author varies the size of his paragraphs.
  • The author used a surprising lead.
  • The author used strong word choice.
  • The author used figures of speech.
  • The author’s voice showed generosity.

Each of these observations were accompanied by text evidence!  Now we did have one student who was commenting on the content of the article.  “The author wrote about traveling.”  I was thrilled that she did, because it gave me a marvelous chance to explain that she was reading like a reader (which is great), but that when we read like writers we need to watch for things that writers do, not what they write about.

Does this make sense?

When you click on the Dr. Goodreader chart, you see that the first question readers need to ask themselves is, “Does this make sense?”   Does_this_make_sense_

Good readers subconsciously ask themselves this question as they read.  Other readers need to learn to purposefully question themselves as they read…otherwise they’ll just read words and not enjoy or understand what they are reading.  Yesterday I conferenced with Camila who was reading a “Clue” book.  In the story, the characters were playing charades and acting out clues for one another.  I asked her what one of the clues meant, and she turned pages back to show me Coronel Mustard with a candlestick.  There was absolutely no connection between the two.

It turned out that since Camila didn’t know what charades was, she couldn’t figure out what was happening.  Worse that that, she didn’t stop to ask herself if what she was reading made any sense.  She kind of floated along on a cloud of words that had no substance. 

Some students need their memory jogged, and I often have them put a sticky note in their book to remind themselves to ask the single most important question to reading comprehension.  Some students need to start with every paragraph, others with every page, and some at the chapter level.  If they are at the paragraph level, I try to work with them as often as possible to get them into the habit of asking, thinking about their thinking, and thoughtfully responding.

What are your ideas for having students think about their thinking while they read?

Visualizing: the reading/writing connection

esperanzaHere’s an idea for talking about the reading/writing connection–in the area of visualizing.

Note: We adapted this lesson from one we found in 7 Keys to Comprehension (p. 26) it’s a great idea and works well in reading and writing workshop.

Materials: Transparencies of both snippets are helpful, although not necessary.

Connection: Have you ever read a book and had a difficult time making a picture?  The problem may not lie with you; it may be the writer’s fault.

Teaching point: Good writers write so that we can visualize the scene when we read.

When we write, we use strong verbs and precise nouns and we try to use descriptive details.

We also remember to “show not tell.”  In other words, we don’t write “I was so happy!”  We write “I jumped up and down and giggled when I saw my daddy walking up the sidewalk!” Why do we do these things?  Because they make the writing more interesting to the reader.

Active Engagement: Read the “dumbed-down” version from a passage of a book.  Have students do a quick sketch of the picture they have in their mind after hearing the “dumbed-down” version.  Then read the original snippet and have the students do a quick sketch after hearing that piece.  Discuss the difference. I used a snippet from Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan:

Dumbed-down version

“Do you know that our land is alive?” Papa said to Esperanza as they walked through the vineyard looking at the mountains around them.  “Do you know that you can hear its heart beat?”

“Papi, I want to feel it,” she said.

Her Papa laid down where there was some space and invited Esperanza to lie down next to him.

Esperanza lie down next to her Papa, laughing.

Snippet from Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan p. 1

“Our land is alive, Esperanza,” said Papa, taking her small hand as they walked through the gentle slopes of the vineyard…. “This whole valley breathes and lives,” he said, sweeping his arm toward the distant mountains that guarded them… “Did you know that when you lie down on the land, you can feel it breathe?  That you can feel its heart beating?”

“Papi, I want to feel it,” she said.

“Come.”  They walked to the end of the row, where the incline of the land formed a grassy swell.

Papa lay down on his stomach and looked up at her, patting the ground next to him.

Esperanza smoothed her dress and knelt down.  Then, like a caterpillar, she slowly inched flat next to him, their faces looking at each other.  The warm sun pressed on one of Esperanza’s cheeks and the warm earth on the other.

She giggled.

Link: Remember for the rest of your lives that good writers write so that readers can “see” the setting, characters, and actions in their mind’s eye.  Today in independent reading, I’d like you to choose a passage that springs to life in your eyes and draw a quick sketch of the scene.

Share: Have a few students share their passage and drawing. Discuss if all students can make a picture in their heads with that passage or if you have to use background knowledge to be able to see the movie.

A word about artistic ability: It is necessary to model sketching for visualization in a totally non-threatening way.  My degree is in art education – and the education part was only done due to the insistence of my parents.  (Funny how things work, isn’t it?)  I can draw well.  I make this point with the students, but when I demonstrate I use stick figures if character description is not an important point.  We are looking for thinking made visible from our students.

More about building background knowledge

I teach my students how to use the Internet to build background knowledge.  When Salvador  read The Thief Lord, we looked up photographs of Venice so he could visualize the city.  We found maps so he could picture the actmetion.  We could have gone to Google Earth and gotten a birds’ eye view of the city.

When we read a book that the students “get” but really don’t have much background knowledge about–like The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which we are still working through–I have them make quick group PowerPoints to build their background knowledge.  They love it and I hear cries of, “I found the most beautiful picture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” and, “Ohhhhhh, that’s what an automat is!”  Although I only mentioned putting photos and titles in their PowerPoints, the students are crafting chapter synopses as we move through the book.

I love anything that builds background knowledge, as it will affect all reading and understanding.

Photo credit:  www.cs.yale.edu/…/Metropolitan/124_2485.JPG

Building background knowledge

I teach at an international school in Guayaquil, Ecuador.  My students come in with incredibly varied levels of English and of background knowledge of the world.  I have students who’ve lived all over the world and students who have never left Ecuador and whose families do not have a culture of literacy.

I’ve found that the easiest way to help students build background knowledge is to create a short PowerPoint to show them before each classroom read-aloud.  I’ve found I can throw something together in about 15 minutes that will work, although The_Sign_of_the_Beavera well-crafted PowerPoint takes me about an hour.  Here are some examples of both extremes:

Sign of the Beaver ppt

Stone Fox ppt

Esperanza Rising ppt

Hope Was Here ppt

It’s fun to find good images and saves a lot of student confusion.  The PowerPoints also help the students visualize the story as we read it.

I know the argument that students should be free to create their own mental movies, but I always remember the student who drew a picture of me roller blading in a bathing suit when I had told a story about ice skating in layers of clothing.  She just did not have the background knowledge to visiualize the story.

Fluency practice with the added bonus of visualization practice!

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I believe in careful planning.  I plan out my year, my units, and my lessons well in advance.  After I do all that, I give myself permission to deviate from the plans in accordance with the needs of my class.

The other day, I was reading The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler to my class.  From the looks on their faces and the questions they asked, I realized they were not following well–mostly because they were not visualizing the scenes as they took place.  I teach in an International school and many of my students are ELLs.

The Mixed-up Files has two main characters with many passages of  pure dialogue punctuated with minor description.

I asked one of my students, who is an excellent reader, to try something with me, and we read a portion of chapter one where Claudia is trying to convince her younger brother, Jamie, to run away with her.  We modeled reading just the dialogue, but acting out the descriptive parts.  Then I divided the class into pairs and each pair read the section.  They really seemed to get a glimpse into the characters, plus understood the story better as they visualized while acting it out.  It was good fluency practice, too.

We’ve continued doing this at the end of each chapter.  The students loved it, and I can circulate and take informal notes on who needs more fluency practice.  At the end of the book, we’re going to put together a presentation with each pair reading a portion of the book.  This works well with my goals in independent reading where we are working on how authors introduce and develop characters. At the same time we can work on fluency and visualization–both important skills.

Photo credit:  dicampbell.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/basilb…


Become your own doctor

No, I don’t recommend this for your physical health (although I do admit to being a tad compulsive about researching meds and diastethoscopegnoses), but I definitely recommend it when it comes to your reading.

Dr. Goodreader can help you comprehend what you are reading–be it “Cat in the Hat” or quantum physics. Learn to diagnose your reading “clunks” and help students self-diagnose as well.

If you are a good reader, you are probably automatically doing these things, but some students must be explicitly taught each reading strategy and when to use it. It’s actually pretty easy. Just click on the Dr. Goodreader diagnosis chart, for a start.  Dr_ Goodreader’s Diagnosis Chart

Photo credit:  blogs.seattleweekly.com/…/stethoscope.jpg

Clunks–We all have them.

potholeLast night I was reading along clickety, clickety, clickety, clunk.  I fell into a pothole.  I was confused.  I backed up to see why and (aha) it was a simple matter of misreading a word.  Off I went again, clickety, clicking along.

Often our students don’t know what to do when they “clunk”.  We teach them reading strategies, but students aren’t sure when to apply them.  They rummage around in their reading toolbox aimlessly.  Dr. Goodreader aims to help us teach our students what strategies to apply when with a simple flow-chart approach.  Using this approach, we can teach readers how to be their own reading doctors and skillfully choose the right tool for the job.