@ksirach asked this question today so I thought I'd elaborate on how I've scaffolded this strategy for my striving readers, supporting them to identify that most elusive of creatures ... the main idea. (1/9)
I have had so many teachers tell me kids struggle with "main idea." This strategy provides scaffolds so kids can be successful. Below, I lay out how I use gradual release to teach this strategy. (2/x)
(It's called "paragraph shrinking" in peer-assisted learning strategies - PALS; "get the gist" in collaborative strategic reading - CSR. They are very similar. I usually call it "get the gist." ) (3/x)
The first part of the strategy is to identify "the most important who or what" in a paragraph or section of text. I usually begin this orally, modeling with think-alouds and giving feedback as kids try it. (4/x)
Paragraph shrinking is often done orally, but I have students write it out, as a simple way to take notes across a knowledge-building unit or longer text.
The second aspect of the strategy is to identify "what's most important about the who or what?"). (5x)
I begin by providing a 3-column table - sometimes with the "who or what" provided, so students can focus on what's important about it. At this phase, students often riff on info from other parts of the text. Feedback and modeling can help them focus, (6/x)
I then have students independently identify the "important who or what" and "what's most important about it" in the 3-column table. (7/x)
At this point, I find that students often spontaneously begin writing main idea sentences in the third column of the table. But if they do not, I add an intermediate scaffold to transfer their work in the table to a sentence. (8/x)
The final step? Students write a main idea sentence without the scaffold of the 3-column table.
If you want to know more about this strategy, check out this link:
My planning has changed a lot over the years, and much of the change is due to the writings of @ReadingShanahan, who has written that reading comp is "the ability to negotiate the linguistic and conceptual barriers or affordances of a text." (2019)
Knowledge building and challenging text in intervention, Part 1: Text Choice
When I started as an interventionist, I wanted to bring more knowledge/vocab building to my students who no longer need an intensive focus on foundational skills. @SoRclassroom #KnowledgeMatters (1/6)
I began to develop units - similar to those in the gen ed classroom. This is our unit on birds.
I begin with simple texts to build general knowledge of the topic. Our first guiding question: What do all birds have in common? (2/6)
For this phase of the unit, we read three texts from Readworks and Newsela, starting with the simplest text at the lower end of the grade 2-3 CCSS Lexile band, and moving to more complex texts. (3/6)
What does it look like to plan instruction while considering the "science of reading" (SOR)? There is a perception that SOR advocates teach only-or mostly-phonics. That's a misrepresentation.
Come along as I explain how I plan instruction for my 3-5 intervention students. (1/x)
Backstory: In response to @ehanford's podcast "Sold a Story," 58 literacy folks gave the critique that the pod focused too much on phonics, neglecting other aspects of literacy. So one might ask: do SOR advocates teach those aspects? (2/x)
Of course! Let's see what it means to consider multiple facets of evidence-based practice. (3/x)
🧵So, I thought I'd share how I came to be an advocate for explicit, systematic phonics instruction as part of comprehensive, evidence-based literacy instruction.
See, at first: I was not a fan. (1/x)
I was a hippie girl who grew up in the woods and didn't really love school. I also learned to read by watching Sesame Street. So when I learned about everything constellated around the term balanced literacy (BL), it spoke to my hippie girl soul. (2/x)
Yes! Surround kids with books and read-aloud and guide them like a coach while reading "just right books." I mean, who doesn't like things that are "just right"?
At my school we had a scripted phonics program. Almost nothing was required at my school except this program. (3/x)