Needing a Nap, Questioning Strategy, & Determining Importance in Text

    The week before last was one of those weeks that left me in need of a nap. And by nap, I mean the kind bears take... also known as hibernation. For me that would look like a dark room, cool temp, comfy bed, and blissful silence except the subtle whirring of the fan.... All drama aside, we have all had those days (or weeks) at school. I think it's good to admit we need the break, but not good to actually take that break in class and let the kids down. I did not have a well planned week of solid, focused instruction.   Every time I teach staff development on classroom management, I reiterate how important the actual planning is and the role it plays in making life easier and more productive for the teacher. Obviously it is best for the student! But - we are human. We all have things outside of school that interfere with our ability to be our best. I recently had a situation just like that. A situation that threw me for a loop, totally out of my control, and throwing my A-Game out the window. I endured three days of poorly planned instructional time, and it left me frustrated, exhausted, and needing to hibernate. Aka: Avoidance. So, if I felt that way, imagine what the kids felt like! I wasted their time. Not easy to admit. Shameful, really. But remember: Teachers are also human. I noticed their behavior was worse (of course - they weren't engaged!), the days seemed to go on forever, and they noticed I was preoccupied. I heard: "Are you okay? What's wrong? Did something happen? Want me to beat somebody up for you? (yes, they asked me that...)" And as much as I tried to hide it, laugh it off, smile, and act like all was right in the universe, they knew. And it affected every aspect of the longest three days of school this year. So at the end of those three days, I came home and reevaluated. I went ahead and planned the last two days of the week with some solid lessons and vowed to make the next week count. Back on my A-Game. And of course, this week was much, much better. I guess it's good to revisit those lessons we all know every once in a while. It keeps us humble, accountable, and makes us refocus. And reminds me that I am way too old to let school make me that tired....
     This week, I want to share what I taught on using Questioning as a strategy to support comprehension and Determining Importance in text. I once again took ideas from Tanny McGregor and adapted them for high school and my students specifically. I started by asking the students if they had ever started reading an assignment, highlighter in hand, and at the end realized that they had highlighted everything in the reading. Of course, they laughed and admitted they had all done this and basically still do. I explained that determining what is important when you read helps get rid of extraneous information that takes up valuable space in your brain. I told them about when I was little and had to put away folded laundry. I hated doing it. I'm not sure why, especially considering how OCD I tend to be, but I would open the drawer, and cram - I mean cram - those clothes in there until it took all my might to squeeze the drawer closed, edges of shirts and balls of socks bulging out the top. I literally had drawers that the bottoms had come apart from my attempt to cram things in there. As an adult, I would look at that and say: Do you really need all those clothes? Do you even wear them all? Do you need bigger drawers? Can you leave some of those things out and make the drawer a more productive use of storage? Basically, prioritize what's important.
     I started the lesson by letting them listen to the song Smile by Kirk Franklin. I asked them to tell me what the song was about by giving examples of lyrics they thought were important (clues). They did a great job of filtering out repetitive information and getting down to what was important. I did not get a picture of the list they generated. Oops. Next, I defined the objective and had them add it to their journal. We then read an article together and practiced answering the stems I had offered on the board by highlighting information that fit them.

     After modeling the skill and discussing how it worked, I gave them each a copy of the Scholastic magazine for the week and asked them to choose an article and highlight the important information. I let them work with a partner. They recorded their facts on chart paper, shared with the class, and justified why they chose what they did as being important. This is how they turned out:

     I also had a partner. This is a particularly reluctant learner at times, and lately I have seen a crack in his tough shell. He asked me to be his partner, and I eagerly agreed. One on one instruction without them knowing = PRICELESS!!! Ours looked like this (he chose me as the recorder), but he chose the facts. Nicely done, Sir.

     You will see me use Scholastic magazines in class a lot. I paid for the subscription myself just so I could have solid text to use for them to practice skills I teach in class. You've heard me say it before - finding appropriate text for high school readers that actually read on early elementary levels is a daunting task. These articles are also short enough to keep their interest,usually  relevant to their lives, and leveled appropriately. 

     I revisited Questioning by showing them the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes. I asked them to tell me what they thought as they read the poem. We then recorded their questions. 

 

     We discussed how the questions caused us to dive deeper in to the meaning of the text and make us think further than what is explicitly written. For independent practice, I gave them a graphic organizer and an article from Scholastic. They had choices on which article to read, but I knew each of them would generate a lot of thinking and questioning. Here are some examples of what they turned in to me. 

He read an article on banning Rainbow Bracelets. He asked:

Is this even worth fighting about in school?
Why don't they just tell the kids to put them away?
Why do they let kids bring them anyway? This is school!
Does every school have his problem?

He read an article about a child who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness for Muscular Dystrophy.
He asked:

Is he doing this for people who have Muscular Dystrophy to get money?
Is this for somebody he knows or is he just a good person?

She read an article on segregation. She asked:

Why couldn't they attend the same schools?
Why weren't the conditions the same?
Why did the girl have to walk so far and her not be allowed to ride the bus?
Why did she go to that school if it was worse?
Why did the US Supreme Court say "separate but equal" if they never went to a white school and a black school to see if they were equal?

      You can see by these examples that the questions they are asking themselves will lead them to think more deeply about the text. It's a work in progress, but I really hit questioning a lot. It leads to some of their best thinking. We also did a lesson on how those questions get answered and that sometimes - they don't. More on that later. 

     I leave you with a picture of a basic lesson that many elementary school teachers have taught. I forget that sometimes these basic skills are lost on my students in this class. It started when I sent a student to get a book from the Media Center. He returned and I asked what he had chosen. He said, "I don't know. Some book, I think it is about baseball or something." Wow. Talk about a book he was excited to read.... NOT! I asked him how he chose a book. He said he goes to the shelf, looks to see if there is one with a baseball or sports picture on the side, and checks it out. Hmm. And I wonder why I have never seen him finish a book. I open it up, and I kid you not, it was on coaching strategies of college bowl game contenders. The type was microscopic, the dust cover almost put me to sleep, it had vocabulary in it that even I had to really think about (no schema on coaching strategies and maneuvers/drills!), and it was published in 1997. I said, "I think I want to do a lesson on how to choose books that you may actually read and enjoy." From the other side of the room, my reluctant learner said, "Yeah. I need that. I'm for real!" Thank you once again, Reading Gods. I'm for real, too. 

Have an amazing week, friends. 

Mrs. Beck