Every Time

This week, we are studying Trickster Tales. Ms. Leom shares her favorite, "Tops and Bottoms". We learned about the features. We read "Monkey and Crocodile". We read "Anansi and Turtle". We compared and contrasted the two stories as we "made connections" (the name of our practice). On Wednesday, we read "Brer Rabbit and Sis Cow". We are focused in our learning.

Ms. Leom said we are not competing. Learning is not a race. We are all working together as a class to learn and make gains. We may work at individual paces, but we are all working to improve ourselves. In this case, reading. To do this, we all need to be engaged. Five learners leading the class with sixteen others daydreaming and tuning in occasionally isn't going to meet our goal of everybody learns. We all need to be engaged in the text.

 It was fun to watch this "seed" of thought begin to bloom in students' eye, in their actions, and our learning for the day.

Our discussion was looking deeper into the text of "Brer Rabbit and Sis Cow".

First, we searched for "setting elements". We started by thinking about the term, "setting elements". Many of us knew "setting" is the place and time of the story. We may not know what elements mean, but if we look for the setting, the details might help us figure out "elements" later. Our testing does this to us. It gives us unfamiliar terms to common skills we know, and we have to navigate the text. 

Next we reviewed our memory, what was the setting of the story? Often student comprehension ends here. We read a text once. We search our memory, and we selected our answer from the choices. This isn't a successful strategy. We NEED TO go back into the text and find exactly what the text says.

In the case of "Brer Rabbit and Sis Coe", the text has three settings. We found examples that synonyms, "field" and "meadow". 

This strategy, to go back in the text, is important, because in the past, our students would stop at "outside", and miss the details of "in the field", "by the persimmon tree", and "in the briar patch." Often "outside" isn't a test option, and our students are setting themselves up for a larger error. 

Our strategy:

1. Read the text

2. Possibly, for short texts (anything without chapters), reread to become more familiar with the text

3. Read the question and understand it

4. Recall the basic information from memory

5. Use tour memory to go back to the text and find information

6. Make a list / highlight / underline / write in the margins 

7. Simplify / summarize your thoughts

8. Answer.

I know. This is complicated for a fourth grader and for one single test question. These are not the tests or the level of comprehension that was expected of me as a fourth grader. Our communities and the country have high expectations for their students, their future work force. This is an example of what it looks like in Reading.

Our class discussion included summarizing the three key points of the story, followed by determining the meaning of the word, "disguised" from the text.  You can see our notes on the board. 

Everyone in the class needs to be engaged in our learning. Our goal is to improve as readers. To do that, we need to develop out comprehension strategies and go back to the text. Every time.