Common Core Reading Standard Three: Idea Development cont.

Results 

The results are in for my formative assessment on idea development.  To review, I asked my students to analyze thesis development in Arthur Miller's "Tragedy and the Common Man", and these were the results:

In the last post, I outlined the methods and strategies I used to teach Reading Standard Three.  I then gave them a formative assessment: they were given an article to read for homework, and in class, they completed a chart to analyze how the thesis was developed in the article.  Here are the results:

Next Steps:

The 24% who were not successful all made the same mistake.  They identified sentences of commentary as pieces of evidence.  They all chose many of the same sentences from the article.  These sentences were strong statements of opinion conveyed as established truths or clarifying statements related to the preceding piece of evidence, and my students mistook them for evidence rather than commentary.  

I plan to show a series of sentences through powerpoint, and together as a whole class we will determine if the sentence is evidence or commentary.  I will then break the class into groups and run the same activity with different sentences, and each team can earn points for each correct response--making a game of it.

Together, using a think-a-loud, we will determine common features of evidence, and I will make a list on the board that the students will write in their notes.  

I am confident the follow-up formative assessment will show near 100% success on the reading skill.  Then we will be moving on to Reading Standard 4!   

Common Core Reading Standard Three: Idea Development

My new focus with my English 11 class is Reading Standard 3.  This is the anchor standard for Reading Standard 3:

Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

We were reading "Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller in my class.  I asked students to discuss how Miller developed his thesis over the course of the text.  I scaffolded the process by ensuring that every student understood the thesis of the article.  Here are the results:

A correct response needed to cite at least three pieces of evidence from the text that supported the thesis.  

I was not surprised by the results.  I am not sure I have ever asked them to chart an idea's development.  I think too, that if I had changed the way I phrased the question, more probably would have been successful.  If I asked them to cite evidence to support the thesis, I hypothesize they would have done better.  The standards though use the vocabulary of development, and my students need to understand the concept of idea development and how sequence and type of evidence contribute to development.

Step 1:

I created a unit plan for my students using Myron Dueck's model.  

Knowledge Goals:

I know what it means for an idea to develop over a text.

Reasoning Goals:

I can explain how the idea of dedication develops throughout the Gettysburg Address.

I can explain how the thesis is developed in the article "Brain Candy" by Malcolm Gladwell.

I can explain how themes and ideas develop over the course of the text “Letter from Birmingham Jail”.

I can explain how themes, ideas, and characters develop over the course of the story, “Story of an Hour”.

We will do more with these texts, addressing other reading standards, but I wanted my students to understand our area of focus for this unit.

Step 2:

Working with a group of teachers, we brainstormed the idea of using a flow chart to help students map idea development.

We read the Gettysburg Address in class.  I asked them to chart how the word dedicate develops over the course of the three paragraphs.  

The students worked in differentiated groups of four.  After the question was posed, they were required to put pens down and discuss the question for two minutes.  Then they began creating their flow maps.

Step 3:

I had the opportunity to work with two amazing teachers, Laurel Priesz and Ryanne Meschkat, and we created a graphic organizer to help scaffold the skill of Reading Standard 3.  Students state the thesis on the top, and then they list the sequence of evidence used to develop the thesis on the left column.  On the right column they identify the type of evidence being used.

My students read the article "Brain Candy" by Malcolm Gladwell, and then in small groups they filled out this organizer.  The article claims that pop culture is the explanation for the steady rise in IQ scores over the last hundred years.  The kids really enjoyed it.

The students did great on this assignment.  Every student cited five pieces of evidence used in the text to support the thesis as well as the type of evidence.  They were working in groups though with plenty of discussion and help.  The true test will come on a formative assessment.  

Step 4:

For the formative assessment, students are reading an article published last week in the New York Times: "When Whites Just Don't Get It, Part 5", by Nicholas Kristof .

This Friday students will read and annotate the article for instances of ethos, logos, and pathos, and then they will fill out the graphic organizer seen above.  There will be no help or collaboration with peers.  

My hope is that 100% are successful.  I will post back with the results in a nice pie chart.  

Grading Smarter for the Common Core Cont.

This post continues a thread I started a week ago, Grading Smarter for the Common Core, as part of a review for Myron Dueck's new book.  Myron's blog can be found here: http://myrondueck.wordpress.com/

I started by showing the evidence of effectiveness in my English 11 class. 

The pretest on analyzing a text for thesis and purpose.

To the Post Test, after changing the way I communicated with my students and the way I assessed.

Not only did I institute Unit Plans, but I changed the way I graded the assignments.  I used Myron's model of the CARE approach as my guide.

Here were the rules for the thesis and purpose assignments:

1. If you achieve the goals in the unit plan, you receive full points.
2. If you attempt but are not successful meeting the goals of the unit plan you do not lose any points or gain any points
3. If you do not attempt to achieve the goals (not turning in the work) then you will receive an incomplete, and you must come in at lunch to complete it.

I wanted to create a motivating environment.  I did not want to continue penalizing students who were trying, but who were not yet grasping the concepts or were still unable to perform the skill.  I wanted to reward success, foster participation and effort, and curb and eliminate non-participation.  The zeros in my gradebook were mainly due to missing assignments, and it was obvious that the zero was not a motivating force for those students to turn in their work.  Losing their lunch was much more motivating, and the number of missing assignments dropped substantially.  

This is a radical shift for me in my grading, and I have not made the shift with all of my assignments.  I experimented with this on the thesis and purpose tasks, and the results were encouraging.  I still don't see how I can grade all my assignments in this way.  Not every assignment lends itself to right or wrong answers, and when there is variation of quality and depth, then a rubric is necessary.  With a rubric, students will inevitably score lower than other students.  I will continue to give an incomplete for missing work rather than a zero, and students must come in at lunch to make it up.   

It was through this type of formative assessment, with a clear unit plan, and positive grading that students were able to master the skill of analyzing text for thesis and purpose.  A big thank you to Myron again for his book and the his ideas. 

Grading Smarter for the Common Core Cont.

One idea that really struck a cord from Myron's book, Grading Smarter Not Harder, is the concept of using Unit Plans to communicate learning outcomes to students.  After the first quarter, I was not pleased with the results of the first two pie charts from the previous post.  The first thing I changed was presenting my students with a unit plan.  I broke the goals down into knowledge goals and reasoning goals.  

Knowledge goals:

1. I understand that an author’s purpose is an action they want the reader to do.

2. I understand that an author's thesis is the main argument or claim of the text.

Reasoning goals:

1. I will be able to identify the thesis and purpose of the article "How to Get a Job at Google" by Thomas Freidman
2. I will be able to identify the thesis and purpose of the article "You Can Grow Your Intelligence" by Mindsetworks.com

It was a simple set of goals.  I then showed the students the first two pie charts from the previous post.  One student remarked, "Why didn't you tell us?  If I had known this was your goal, I would have tried harder."  Others students echoed his thoughts.  Too often, we keep kids in the dark as to our own purpose for lessons and methods.  I had told them we would be working on thesis and purpose, but I had not told them I was up at night trying to find ways to help them see purpose in writing.  I had not communicated that this was not just a lesson we had to do but my number one goal for the quarter.  Now that they knew, they changed.

There commitment to the concepts of thesis and purpose improved.  At random times throughout class I would yell, "Purpose is . . .!"
And they would yell back, "Action!"  

We watched a set of television commercials and analyzed thesis and purpose.  Students came in over the following days asking me to pull up commercials on Youtube that they had seen at home, so they could show me the purpose and thesis.  The "Creepy Rob Lowe" commercial seemed to be a big favorite.  

An analogy that struck a cord was when I asked them what their purpose would be for writing a love letter.  I asked, "is it to inform the other person that you like them?"  

A student responded, "No, it is to motivate the other person to like you back."  They were beginning to understand that purpose intends for there to be an action on the part of the reader.  

The unit plan changed their level of engagement and motivation.  Too often students suffer from learned helplessness as they believe they are not good at a particular subject.  Unit plans combat this belief system by outlining specific steps and goals for students to follow.  Students know that if they can accomplish this set of skills and tasks, then they will be successful.  There is no ambiguity.    

Not only did I change the way I communicated with my students, but I also changed the way I graded and assigned points.  My next post will explain those changes.