Comprehension Focus Groups: Looking at Child Labor with a Focus on Word Choice

Heather Zimmerman contributed this thinking. Click here to read more of Heather's thinking about Comprehension Focus Groups.

If you read my post about managing your learning, you might recall I decided this year I would have a stack of go-to texts.  With all my new learning, I sometimes feel I do not end up applying the learning in a consistent and strategic way.  I created a stack texts that would be my go-to for my lesson planning this year.  I have found this to be a successful way to manage my new learning.

One of my go-to texts is Chris Lehman’s book Falling in Love with Close Reading.  I read this book last summer and a co-worker friend of mine told me how wonderful this book is.  I decided I had to make sure to use this in a Comprehension Focus Group (CFG) this year.

The time came when I looked back at Lehman’s text to see if it could guide my student’s learning in a CFG for my 8th graders.  My school uses Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Writing and my 8th graders would soon be working on the informative unit and starting letters on an important issue.  I decided to get the ball rolling.  I found texts about child labor that centered around a book my students had picked from our classroom library that they wante to read- Iqbal by Franceso D’Adamo.  After digging back into Lehman’s books and thinking about my students’ needs, I decided word choice would be a powerful next step.  I also wanted to incorporate some open journaling on the topics they read about regarding child labor with a focus on their own word choice while they wrote.  

I was very happy with how this unit came together.  I felt this gave them resources for their literacy class if they chose to use the topic.  It also got them thinking about how word choice can show the purpose and tone, which can make an impact in their writing.  

Here is the outline to the CFG if you are interested:

CFG- Word Choice (Child Labor focus)

Do you or your intervention teachers tie the intervention work to other classes?  What classes do you usually connect the work to?