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?

Teaching Teachers About Close Reading

Andrea Reichenberger contributed today's post. More of Andrea's thinking can be found here.

After reading fellow blogger, Carrie Sand’s post  Rethinking Professional Development Options  in January, I thought seriously about the professional development we have been designing for staff members in our district. Recently,we hired a new technology coach, my new office mate, whom I fondly refer to as “The Greg.”  In other words, I have been blessed with another great opportunity to learn. With his help, I decided to take a risk with a new approach.

One of our school wide goals is to work on close reading.  Close reading--not to be confused with reading closely-- is the teaching strategy that involves reading a complex text, annotating, having collaborative conversation, and re-reading based on increasing levels of text dependent questions created by the teachers.

Our first session was in January. We broke the PD down by first explaining why we were taking this approach.  The teachers had some time to dig into our school data as well as the standards and skills required of our students. We learned that we are not asking our students the right questions in our assessments nor are we creating the appropriate level of tasks. On this same day, we also spent some time reviewing the primary features of close reading as well as introducing its 4 phases using Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Book Text Dependent Questions Grades 6-12.  

For February, our focus during our half day session was to dig into literal level (What does the text say?) and structural level (How does the text work?) questions. Our plan was to model activities and instruction we’d like to see implemented within our classrooms.  Teachers were arranged into small groups and then assigned readings from the text to investigate and discuss with their peers. They were then directed to apply what they learned about how to create these levels of questions to a complex text they planned on using as part of their instruction. All of the activities, texts, samples and instructions were placed on Google classroom and allowed the groups to work together at their own pace.   We also introduced Read & Write Google as a method for teachers to annotate a digital text.  

After some reflection on the day, this is what we noticed: