I'd like to share a strategy that has worked well for me in the past,
especially with nonfiction. Has anybody ever heard of an Information
Walk? In a nut shell what you do is chunk the text you are working with
into sections or by subtitles, and assign groups of 2-4 students to be
responsible for each passage. The students collaborate in creating a
poster with the information required by the teacher. Fpr example the
class I work in we recently did this with main idea. We had students
make a 4 square on their posters and one square was labeled Main Idea,
Supporting Details, Important vocabulary, and Visualization.
However, the fun starts when you hang them around your classroom or an
empty hallway. Each student is given 3-4 post it notes and a set of 4-5
stickers or stars. As they roam around and learn from each other they
have to leave post it note comments, and stickers next to new and
interesting information that they acquired from one another. It really
fosters student to student learning, and they are so excited to get
their poster back to see what the others wrote.
I have done this same activity for Determining Importance. Instead of 4
squares a I have them make 2 columns one titled Important Information
and the other Interesting. You can adapt this to almost anything, and
even use this to activate schema for prior knowledge or as a post
reading activity.
And of course the big question should always be " Why is this
important?" ....thank you Renee for that!
Earlier todayI tried to send my pics with this email but it bounced
back to me. If anybody would like to see a photo of the finished product
just email me personally and I will send it to you.
This activity has been very successful, and as you well know the
enthusiasm when you hand students post it notes and stickers is
overwhelming. Also, I love setting it up outside of the classroom....for
some reason the different environment adds to the excitement when
students go on their Information Walk!
Donna
Intervention Gr3/4
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Renee wrote:
I would say that determining importance is important in getting to the
main idea, and establishing the main idea is helpful in determining
importance. Big help, huh?
Kids need to know both. Determining importance helps them remember and
retell stories. But knowing the main idea is useful in recommending
books to other people; it reduces things down to one or two sentences.
Renee
On Feb 19, 2012, at 12:03 PM, evelia cadet wrote:
Are determining importance and finding the author's main idea the
same thing? If they are not, are they related? How? HELP!
Evelia
Sent from my Windows Phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Palmer, Jennifer
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 9:23 AM
To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Determining Importance
It's the testing culture Renee. We test low level and that drives
instruction. Think about main idea ... And it's relationship to what
we are talking about. Determining importance becomes a game to guess
what test authors feel is important...
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 19, 2012, at 12:01 PM, "Renee" <phoenix...@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
I wonder what would happen if we just asked a student, "Why is this
important?" I'm thinking in a context, for example, of my own
lesson, when the student asked how Washington's face got on Mount
Rushmore. These were third graders. I can easily imagine a student
ansswering, "it isn't" and I could also easily imagine a student
giving a reason, maybe something like, "well, because he was so
important that they put him on a mountain so how did that happen?"
I think it's a good question: Why is this important? It has that
lovely open-endedness that helps us learn what's going on the mind
of a student.
And by the way.... in my substituting travels to various
classrooms, I am finding every year that it's harder and harder to
get kids to answer open-ended questions with any kind of
confidence. That frightens me.
Renee
On Feb 18, 2012, at 1:49 PM, Palmer, Jennifer wrote:
I agree Renee. What I often do is spend a little time talking
about our purpose for reading first and letting that guide the
discussion ... I think it was Kylie Beers that uses the example of
a text that is a description of a beautiful home. An interior
decorator, a real estate agent and a thief, all would find
different things in the text to be important because their
purposes for reading would be quite different.
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be
entirely uneducated.
~ Alec Bourne
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Public Education:
It's a right, not a race.
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