Our lessons continue to begin with our learning goals and the Minnesota Standards. If someone were to walk in the classroom and ask, "What are you learning about?", every students should be able to look in the front of the classroom and answer with the learning goal and the standard.
We are developing strategies for students to find one that makes the most sense to them. The strategies are recorded in the Flex Journal (also known by fourth graders as "duct tape" journal.
Next, we read the articles together. We are model the skills. For nonfiction, we are using main idea to help us determine the important details to summarize. We look at:
- the title
- repeating words and phrases and their synonyms
- the first and last line
- pictures and captions
As we read and reread the text for each step, we are able to see "overlapping" details ... words and phrases that repeat, are the first and last lines of the text, and mention in the title ... these must be important, because they have notes for each feature ...
We practice the same strategy the following day for nonfiction text, using main idea and details:
In Summary, ideas that repeat are important supporting details. For students who are struggling with these sills on our unit assessments, we continue to practice, model, and apply in class daily.
Our papers should be filled with notes in the margins and throughout the texts. There isn't time to doodle or color in pictures. This learning is difficult to reteach or replicate when students are absent. We rely on whole class participation and discussion to develop our learning.
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