Chapter Twelve

Text Sets

Teachers collect text sets of books and other reading materials on topics for teaching thematic units. Materials for text sets are carefully chosen to include different genres, a range of reading levels to meet the needs of students, and multimedia resources. It’s important to include plenty of materials for English learners and struggling readers.

Mentor Texts

Teachers use stories, nonfiction, and poems that students are familiar with to model the writer’s craft. Picture books are especially useful mentor texts because they’re short enough to be reread quickly. Teachers begin rereading a mentor text and pointing out a specific feature, such as adding expression for strong verbs, writing from a different perspective, or changing the tone by placing adjectives after nouns. Students imitate the feature in brief collaboration compositions in their own writing.

Trade Books

Trade books are published by manufacturers for general audiences. These usually include best-seller books and do not include academic books.

Learning Logs

Students use learning logs to record and react to what they’re learning in social studies, science, or other content areas. Learning logs are a place for students to think on paper. Students use these to discover gaps in their knowledge and to explore relationships between what they’re learning and their past experiences.

Double Entry Journals

Students divide their journal pages into two parts and writer different types of information in each one. For example, they write important facts in one column and reactions to the information in the other.

Quickwriting

When students to quickwriting they write on a topic for 5 to 10 minutes, letting thoughts flow from their minds to their pens without focusing on mechanics and revisions. Teachers use this to activate students background knowledge at the beginning of a unit, monitor their progress and clarify misconceptions during the unit.

Collaborative Books

Students work together in classroom collaborations to write collaborative books. Sometimes students write one page for the report, or they can work together in small groups to write chapters.

Essays

Students write essays to explain, analyze, and persuade; sometimes their topics ar personal, and other times they address national or international issues. Essays are short, usually no longer than two pages. Essays can be personal, comparative, or persuasive essays.

Prereading Plan

Teachers prepare students to read the chapter and nurture their interest in the topic on these ways:

• Activate and build students background knowledge about topic
• Introduce big ideas and technical words
• Set purposes for reading
• preview the text

Anticipation Guides

Teachers introduce a set of statements on the topic of the chapter, students agree or disagree with each statement, and then they read the assigned text to see if they were right.

Question-Answer Relationships

Students use this to understand how to answer questions written at the end of the content area textbook chapters. This helps students understand questions where you can find the answer right in the text and questions that require further comprehension.

SQ4R Study Strategy

This strategy is used for students in seventh and eighth grade. It is a sex-step technique in which students survey, question, read, recite, relate, and review as they study a content area reading assignment. This strategy includes the before, during, and after stages of reading.

Planning a Thematic Unit

Alternative Assessments

Teachers devise alternative assessments to learn more about English learners’ achievement when they have difficulty on regular evaluations. For example, instead of writing an essay, students can draw pictures or graphic organizers.

Semantic Feature Analysis

The semantic feature analysis strategy uses a grid to help kids explore how sets of things are related to one another. By completing and analyzing the grid, students are able to see connections, make predictions and master important concepts. This strategy enhances comprehension and vocabulary skills.

Classroom Application

This chapter gives a lot of information of different activities students can do with and for their learning. I really enjoyed double entry journals and quickwrites. I think well on paper too, just writing down everything that comes to mind. I think this is a great way for students to understand, recognize, and sort their ideas. I would love to use this in my classroom!