Literacy Lesson: Idea Principal

Los estudiantes determinarán la idea principal de un texto. 

Anytime I wrote those words as the objective of my lesson plan, I couldn't help but shudder. Main idea always seems so hard to teach to primary students. We are supposed to help them focus on what is important and not what is interesting. Yet, if you have ever spent any time trying to teach anything to a seven or eight-year-old, you know that interesting always wins out!

Several years ago, I was asked to model a reading lesson for a brand new teacher. As the bilingual facilitator for my district, modeling lessons was a major part of my job and I was getting more and more comfortable at walking into a room of unknown students and teaching a lesson. However, all of my confidence flew out the window when I read the reading goal for that week in second grade. I had to teach about main idea to a group of students with whom I had no shared background knowledge. It was time to get creative!

While I usually like to anchor my reading lessons in a book, I decided to anchor this specific skill in something a little more concrete. I decided to spend some time identifying the main idea of photographs before we made the transition to text. I selected some photos from clipart that contained both interesting and important elements. Using a photo from a baseball game, the students and I made a list about what we thought was interesting about the picture. Then we discussed the following standard "Get the Gist" questions.

We went back to our list of interesting things and determined that interesting things are not always included in the main idea. I passed out a new picture to small groups of students and had them work through the Registro de lo esencial handout one question at a time. I kept them on the rug near me while they worked with their groups so that I could easily listen in to their conversations. Some groups needed a little more guidance than others but I could hear a growing understanding from all of the groups.

You can download the pictures and handout I used for free here. What is your favorite way to teach main idea? Here are some photos I captured from a dual-language second grade teacher's classroom in Mesquite.  I though it was a creative use of those Scholastic magazines!

¿Cuál es? - Working on Multiple Meaning Words in Spanish

STAAR is the name of the new standardized test that debuts in Texas this year.  We have very limited information about what it will look like and teachers and publishers alike are scrambling to come up with anything to permit students to practice for this unknown assessment.

Almost ten years ago, we were in the same boat with the debut of the TAKS test.  It was also my first year to teach third grade, one of the dreaded "tested grades".  I had looped with my second graders up to third grade so I had the wonderful advantage of really knowing my students and all of their strengths and challenges.  Yet, our school had thrown away all of the test prep materials from the previous TAAS test so we had zero materials to use in the months leading up to the test.  Our only resort was to create our own and we tried to embed the test prep into our daily literacy routines.  I was still a fairly new teacher at the time but I knew enough to know that I didn't want the test to take over my classroom.

As we began to work on the objectives that were going to be tested, I discovered that my students really struggled with multiple meaning words and identifying which of the dictionary definitions matched the context of their reading.  With that awareness of a need, I began paying attention to multple meaning words that we encountered in the chapter books that we read aloud.  Every time we came across one, I would mark the page with a sticky note.

One night, I took home all of the chapter books we had been reading and typed up paragraphs from those pages marked with sticky notes.  I created a Powerpoint with multiple choice answers taken from the dictionary definitions.  In the weeks leading up to the first TAKS test for my third graders, we would occasionally try another multiple meaning word question.  My students gradually got better and better and they loved seeing their favorite books used for this type of practice.

You can download a free PDF file of this Powerpoint here at Teachers Pay Teachers if you would like to practice with your students. 

Whatever test you find looming in the horizon for your students, I encourage you to not put too much faith in the test prep materials out there for purchase.  Instead, consider what you are already using and enjoying with your students.  How can you lift those resources out in order to highlight a specific skill that your students need to be developed?  I promise it will be so much more enjoyable for you and your students and more effective too!

Poetry...it's not a joke anymore!

I am the worst joke-teller alive and that is one of the many things I learned about myself in college. Recognizing my weakness in this area, I decided to learn to tell one joke really well. And I did. It is awesome. But, it requires motions so it must be told in person and I won't risk my one good joke failing here in writing!

When I spent the summer before my senior year of college in Spain, I decided that I needed to be bilingual in my joke telling. The other joke is a play on the English langauge so it would not work in translation. My good friend, Jimmy, taught me this joke, "¿En qué se parece un tren a un plátano? El tren no espera y el plátano no es pera."

Okay, I will wait for you to pick yourself off of the floor from laughing so hard...

My jokes may be really bad but I am a sucker for playing with language. In fact, this is my favorite radio show and I believe it should be required listening for all teachers of English language learners but that is for a whole other post!

Historically, poetry and related language play have been reserved for the final six weeks of the year in most curricular scope and sequences.  In part, because it was not tested and, in part, because it is often misunderstood, poetry has been one of those extraneous genres that was often skipped or treated very superficially.

While poetry may not seem as "meat and potatoes" to the reader's diet as realistic fiction, poetry develops that elusive skill of inferring that we are constantly seeking to develop in our students.  Poetry, by its very nature, makes us look more closely at the text with the presupposition that there must be another layer of meaning that we as the reader must search out. 

Texas's revised ELAR/SLAR standards and new STAAR test are putting a spotlight on poetry:

3.5 Analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding (2008 TEKS)

Figure 19 D

Make inferences about text and use textual evidence to support (2008 TEKS)

In the fall, I saw this anchor chart in development in a third grade dual-language classroom in Stephenville:

We are starting to pay more attention to poetry but, for you bilingual and dual-language teachers, my question is this:  Who are your favorite Spanish poets for children and what are your favorite poems and/or anthologies?

I was in a second grade bilingual classroom last year and observed a group of students practically fighting over several poetry anthologies by Maria Elena Walsh.  I would like to compile a list on this site of more favorite poets.  Please let me know your suggestions!

Literacy Lesson: Textos de no ficción y propósito del autor

From the STAAR Third Grade Reading Information Booklet: Los estudiantes analizan, infieren y sacan conclusiones sobre el propósito del autor en contextos culturales, históricos y contemporáneos, y proporcionan evidencia del texto para apoyar su comprensión.Just the other day, I sat next to a friend while trying to explain to her the basics of Pinterest, specifically the why and the how. Within a few minutes, she was hooked and I sent her pinning merrily on her way.

We all find ourselves at different points on the spectrum of taking on the newest trend in technology. However, most of us are successful with those trends when given a moderate amount of guidance and the opportunity to make connections to what we are already familiar with. As adults, we already have a framework for examining WHY we would want to tackle a new type of media. Will it entertain me? Will it keep me informed? Will it explain how to do something new? Will it try to change my perspective?

Our minds also possess an internal structure for HOW to interpret the new media and understand what is important. We don't exhaust ourselves with reading every single word. We don't necessarily start at the beginning every time and move forward in a sequential order. We also give ourselves permission to abandon the media if it is not meeting the "why" for which we originally agreed to give it a look.

Even with all of this experience, we can still feel inundated at times. Just think about our students! They begin their reading journey thinking that reading is simply about learning the letters and the sounds they make and putting those sounds or sílabas together. They (hopefully) have heard hundreds of stories read aloud to them and retain a framework for understanding those simple narratives.

Yet, we know that the texts of life are not all fictional narratives. Research also tells us that many of our students will fall much more deeply in love with reading if we allow them to explore world of nonfiction. When I first heard about the benefits of nonfiction with my young students, I excitedly began pushing on them all sorts of expository texts. After several weeks of a less than enthusiastic response from my students, I began to question those researchers. It was then that I read Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning about her journey into critical thinking with her first graders.

I realized that my students needed to learn to determine the "why" about the new genres of books they were reading. We created a chart similar to this one I snapped from a Mesquite second grade teacher's classroom. I would suggest adding to explain/para explicar.

I began scavenging for all types of text anywhere I could find it. I discovered that the entrances to grocery stores like Fiesta or Carnival are great places for diverse (and FREE) types of Spanish text. Phone books, newspapers, and tourism pamphlets are typically easy to find in both Spanish and English. These were cut apart and placed in a basket. Many times throughout the year, I would hand a type of text to each student and ask them to bring it up to our chart and sort it according to the author's purpose and why we might want to read more about it.

Those conversations spilled into our library time. As the students would bring their books up to the checkout counter, we would discuss their purpose for reading it based on the author's purpose for writing.

Once the students had a general idea of why we read different types of text, we began to implement what Debbie Miller calls the Nonfiction Convention Notebook. You can download my free bilingual template here. As I observed my students read nonfiction text, I saw them do what I and their previous teachers had taught them to do: just pay attention to the letters and their sounds. I was amazed as they diligently focused on the tiny writing and seemed oblivious to the captions and tables and bolded print. Apparently, I had to teach them to pay attention to those things as well! Go figure!

The Nonfiction Convention Notebook or charts like this one (also snapped from the teacher above) do a great job of helping our students to notice and understand how to approach different types of text. As we point out these features and study them over time, the students' eyes will begin to notice them and recognize their usefulness for reading.

If you are anything like me, your time spent reading fiction is limited to bedtime or the beach. The rest of our day is consumed with nonfiction text everywhere we turn. Aside from the fact that is IS IN YOUR CURRICULUM and ON THE TEST, developing within our students a framework for understanding nonfiction is so much fun and opens a new world of texts to read for the rest of their lives.

So, what are your favorite ways for teaching author's purpose and the characteristics of nonfiction?  As dual-language teachers, this is something that can and should be taught in both languages because there is complete transfer!

Neruda would be proud!

The new STAAR test includes an expectation for students to be able to understand and analyze literary texts including poetry.

This is from the 3rd Grade STAAR document from TEA: Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Poetry. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of poetry and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to (A) describe the characteristics of various forms of poetry and how they create imagery (e.g., narrative poetry, lyrical poetry, humorous poetry, free verse). Supporting Standard
I was in a third grade bilingual class just before Thanksgiving and snapped a picture of this poem that was taped to the white board. Isn't this great evidence of understanding and analysis? I wasn't there for the lesson but it is obvious that the teacher was noting her thinking along with the class's input as they carefully read and analyzed the poetry. This is exactly what we would want the student's poem to look like on the test so it is important that the students see us model this and gradually release the pen over to them. This isn't just the type of work we expect for STAAR, this is college-preparation! Bring on Neruda! Bring on Machado! We are ready!