reading high interest informational and literary nonfiction...

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Do not duplicate. For copies, visit our website: readingandwritingproject.com DRAFT 2013-2014 © 1 Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014 Unit Two Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely Mid-October to mid-November (Level 3 Reading Benchmark: Q) At the heart of this unit is the notion that teaching kids to notice the underlying structures of texts will help them to hold onto the main ideas and key details of these texts. Much of the unit relies on the book Navigating Nonfiction from Units of Study in Teaching Reading, Grades 3-5 by Lucy Calkins and Kathleen Tolan. You will note that we’ve added new instruction in specific areas, and we’ve refined the unit to make it exactly aligned to grade- level expectations. We have also added further lessons to help students identify and describe the structure of texts and to interpret informational texts. The unit highlights the importance of text structures and channels students to focus in on texts of a particular structure for a bit, noting the ways that structure teaches readers. In Bend I, then, students will closely read expository informational texts--focusing in on text structure. In Bend II, you will channel students to look closely at narrative nonfiction, pushing them to transfer and apply all that they already know about literary and Welcome to the Unit Overview Essential Question: How can I read all kinds of nonfiction, paying attention to the structure of each particular text and the way the text is written, in order to figure out what is important in the text and to help me organize and hold onto my thoughts about the subject? Bend I: Summarizing with Structure in Mind How can I read expository texts, noticing the various ways that authors have structured those texts and using the specific text-structure of a piece to help me organize my understanding of that piece? (approx.. 1-1.5 weeks) Bend II: Navigating Narrative Nonfiction How can I apply what I know about reading literature to the job of reading narrative nonfiction? (approx. 1 week) Bend III: Making Inferences and Building Theories How can I reread to find important ideas and questions in my notes, and then use my own notes and my rereading of the text to help me build theories about what is said, and what is suggested, in the text?

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Page 1: Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closelyk164.weebly.com/uploads/8/5/5/4/8554966/fourth_grade... · 2019. 11. 11. · Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth

Do not duplicate. For copies, visit our website: readingandwritingproject.com

DRAFT 2013-2014 ©

1

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely Mid-October to mid-November (Level 3 Reading Benchmark: Q) At the heart of this unit is the notion that teaching kids to notice the underlying structures of texts will help them to hold onto the main ideas and key details of these texts. Much of the unit relies on the book Navigating Nonfiction from Units of Study in Teaching Reading, Grades 3-5 by Lucy Calkins and Kathleen Tolan. You will note that we’ve added new instruction in specific areas, and we’ve refined the unit to make it exactly aligned to grade-level expectations. We have also added further lessons to help students identify and describe the structure of texts and to interpret informational texts.

The unit highlights the importance of text structures and channels students to focus in on texts of a particular structure for a bit, noting the ways that structure teaches readers. In Bend I, then, students will closely read expository informational texts--focusing in on text structure. In Bend II, you will channel students to look closely at narrative nonfiction, pushing them to transfer and apply all that they already know about literary and

Welcome to the Unit

Overview

Essential Question: How can I read all kinds of nonfiction, paying attention to the structure of each particular text and the way the text is written, in order to figure out what is important in the text and to help me organize and hold onto my thoughts about the subject?

Bend I: Summarizing with Structure in Mind How can I read expository texts, noticing the various ways that authors have structured those texts and using the specific text-structure of a piece to help me organize my understanding of that piece? (approx.. 1-1.5 weeks)

Bend II: Navigating Narrative Nonfiction How can I apply what I know about reading literature to the job of reading narrative nonfiction? (approx. 1 week)

Bend III: Making Inferences and Building Theories How can I reread to find important ideas and questions in my notes, and then use my own notes and my rereading of the text to help me build theories about what is said, and what is suggested, in the text?

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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

informational reading to glean large concepts and key information from these texts. In Bend III, students will use all that they know about interpretation and building theories from reading literature and begin to apply that work to reading nonfiction. This third bend is extremely important and we highly encourage you to allot enough teaching time for it. We envision that at the same time they are engaged in this unit, your students will be writing essays during writing workshop on topics of their own choice, getting much practice in planning and thinking in “boxes and bullets” frameworks. The work they do in writing workshop will directly bolster what they do in reading and, of course, the skills your students gain in reading informational texts and using texts as evidence for thinking will support them as writers. To help guide your planning of this unit, it is expected to extend until (but not past) mid-November (around the 15th). This unit addresses multiple standards, including standards in reading informational texts, reading literature, foundational skills, but there are a few that we especially want to highlight. The first is that this unit will address students’ abilities to determine the main idea of a text and summarize the text, including how key details support the main idea. This is work that is expected by standard RI 4.2. In addition to work on determining main idea, this unit places a strong emphasis on supporting students’ abilities to make inferences and grow ideas, always grounding their ideas in text evidence, work expected by Standard 4.1. The unit will also work to support students in describing text structures of texts or parts of texts, the work of Standard 4.5. Students will consider how to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words, work that will move them toward Standard 4.4. If you are able to gather any texts on the same high interest topics (wolves, sharks, baseball, and so on), then students can not only compare and contrast the information learned from these texts but also integrate what they have learned in order to speak and write knowledgeably, work expected by Standard 4.9. (If you do not have these topic sets, do not fret because students will get the opportunity to do this work later in the year.)

CCSS/LS Standards Addressed in the Unit

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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Here are some tips to help you get ready to teach this unit:

Gather high interest texts (print and digital) Choose your read alouds Group some of your texts into topic sets, if possible

Gather high interest texts (print and digital) It is impossible to overstate the value of ascertaining the interests of your students, especially of those whose engagement in reading is at risk, and of making sure that you provision students with magazines and books that are engaging. Of course, it is to purchase tons of new materials each year so as to address the topics that are especially interesting to that year’s class, but it is possible to make a trip to a library and to track down books that can attract specific readers. If possible, you’ll want to separate your expository nonfiction from your narrative nonfiction. We suggest that you ask students to read expository nonfiction during the first bend, narrative during the second bend, and a mix of both during the third bend. In addition to high interest books, here are some other suggestions of kinds of texts to engage your readers:

digital sites magazines (Cobblestone, Scholastic News, Sports Illustrated for Kids, ASK, National

Geographic for Kids, Discover Kids, Storyworks, and Super Science. Super Science subscribers have access to video clips on the website that can be paired with the cover article for that month)

audio informational texts in your listening center (A listening center with audio books will support students in continuing to develop their fluency and vocabulary and help them to meet Foundational Skills Standards in Reading (RF 4.4). This will be especially helpful for your ELLs and speech and language students as these recordings provide models for fluent reading of nonfiction texts. Audio books also give students the opportunity to access topics and text levels that they may not have otherwise read on their own. You’ll want students to be listening to the audio books at the same time as they are following along with a print version.)

On the TCRWP website, we’ve included a leveled bibliography of information texts. Some of these texts are on the list of grade band texts that is offered by the Common Core State Standards. This collection is angled to include books designed to support kids’ volume of reading. The books tend to include lots of text, as well as clear structures. The books on that

Getting Ready

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

list are all available from Booksource—simply ask for the RWP collection. Please contact us with more book suggestions--we rely upon input! A word of advice: Especially if you do not have enough just-right texts for students to maintain their volume of reading during this unit, we strongly suggest that you reserve time every day (at least fifteen to twenty minutes in school and more time at home) for students to continue reading literature at their levels. And, in any case, be sure readers continue to maintain their reading logs so that you monitor the total volume of reading they do during these two upcoming units (as you have been doing all along). You should be expecting that readers are reading what you decide is an appropriate number of chapter books each week—probably anywhere from one to four, more for the readers who are reading lower level and therefore shorter books. That volume of fiction reading will be in addition to the reading they do of information texts. You may question this, thinking that every minute of a reader’s time should go toward reading information texts, but most literate people read a balance of fiction and information texts. Then, too, if you are accountable for your students’ results on your state’s high stakes test, keep in mind that at least until now, there is a tremendous alignment between the level of text complexity that a child can read and his or her results on high stakes tests. The single most important way to accelerate students’ progress up the ladder of text complexity is to be sure they are reading a high volume of texts they can read with high levels of comprehension and engagement. Choose your read alouds To mirror the work your students are doing, you will want to choose read alouds on high interest nonfiction topics. We are suggesting Wolves, a gorgeous, complex expository text about wolves by Seymour Simon. At Lexile level 970L (Guided Reading Level P), it will satisfy anyone who is sensitive about Lexile levels. We also suggest that you read aloud parts of a narrative nonfiction after this text to mirror your students reading narrative nonfiction. One that we suggest is Face to Face with Wolves by Jim and Judy Brandenburg (Lexile 970L). This hybrid text has many parts that are told in narrative structure. Jim Brandenburg is a wildlife photographer who has observed wolves for years. He recounts what it is like to live near them and study them. Face to Face with Wolves has many similarities in focus and information to Seymour Simon’s book, making them a strong pairing. Students will be able to consider choices of text structure. Group some of your texts into topic sets, if possible If it is possible for you to do so, you will want to gather multiple texts on at least a few of the subjects that interest students, so that you can develop their skills at synthesizing information learned from more than one text that addresses the same topic. By starting your students with easier books on a topic and moving them to more complex texts on the

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

same topic, you help them navigate more challenging informational texts. As students read a collection of texts on a topic, they gain background knowledge, learn domain-specific vocabulary, and develop a context from which to understand other texts on that topic.

For the past two years, Project schools have been using this performance assessment tool developed by the TCRWP to assess students’ abilities to read informational texts and write opinion pieces with text-based evidence. The tool is aligned to the Common Core Standards 1, 2, and 10 in informational reading and Common Core Standard 1 in writing. The tool was revised with successive rounds of input from an academic evaluation team and accepted as a model performance assessment by New York City’s DOE. Over the course of ninety minutes, this succession of tasks asks students to view a video and read two informational texts regarding the contested topic of whether schools should require kids to buy school lunches, write a summary of one article, and finally write a persuasive essay in which they take a stance on the topic and provide evidence for their opinion. This assessment can be found on our website. At the end of this unit, you’ll want to give a summative assessment. The TCRWP has also developed more informal assessments in informational reading aligned to informational reading standards 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 on the CCSS (depending on questions asked during the assessment). These are available to schools who work with the Project closely. These assessments allow for students to read texts independently, then, after reading independently, the assessment involves them in each answering questions designed to address particular standards in the CCSS. The important thing about these assessments is that they also enable teachers to assess students’ abilities to address grade-specific standards even if the student reads at a level which is considered below grade-level. The Reading and Writing Project’s Informational Reading Learning Progression is available to Project schools to help teachers to evaluate student work on these informational reading assessments. This tool can also serve as a teaching tool throughout the year. The Informational Reading Learning Progression allows you to track your readers’ progress from kindergarten through ninth grade on skills which are critical to information reading. The learning progression is comprised of three strands—“Determining Central Ideas and Key Details,” “Analyzing the Relationship Between Authorial Intent and Craft” and “Supporting Thinking With Text Evidence.” These strands have been developed to support key Common Core Standards. Assessing where students fall along the progression of each of these strands will offer an understanding of how well they can comprehend and analyze informational texts.

Assessment

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

In this unit, the major goal is to support students in determining main ideas and key details. Across this bend, students will be working to determine importance and summarize, considering text structures. However, another goal for this unit is to help students build nonfiction reading lives. We have deliberately created this unit as a time for them to read about topics which interest them. So, you might begin this bend by taking a day or two to let students reflect on their nonfiction reading lives. To get started, we suggest that you invite students to investigate their nonfiction lives. You might invite them to browse through the nonfiction library, encouraging them to look for books on topics about which they feel expert and placing these in their book baggies. You can also set out bins at each table full of a variety of high interest materials so students can read these during the workshop if they need more materials. Then after students have collected books and texts on topics that matter to them, they might sit together at tables and talk about why they care about these topics. The reason why we’re doing this is to be able to teach your readers that often they can pause and take stock of their reading lives. You can also let students know that this will be a unit where they get the chance to learn even more about what they already care about and also have a chance to learn about new topics. So, as they listen to their group members talk about topics about which they want to read, students can be considering what new topics of interest they might now be having. As students move off to read the high interest nonfiction they have gathered (that match and stretch them as readers), you will want to watch them carefully to see how they are working. If you notice, for example, many students reading a text then getting up to go find another one (thus losing some reading time), you’ll want to teach students that they can set themselves up to read lots and lots by planning out what they’ll read and gathering a bunch of books or texts so that when they finish one, they can begin another right away. You also may see readers diving into books without pausing to preview and set expectations. If that is the case, on what is likely to be the second day of your unit, you may want to remind your readers that it’s a good idea to rev up your mind to read information texts, and that the way most informational texts are structured allows you to do this well. You might frame a teaching point by saying something like, “Today I want to teach you that every great nonfiction reader reads with energy, with power. One way that nonfiction readers do this is that we rev up our minds for reading. Even before we shift into ‘go’ and read a sentence or a paragraph of the text,

Bend I: Summarizing with Structure in Mind

“Today I want to teach you that every great nonfiction reader reads with energy, with power.

One way that nonfiction readers do this is that we rev up our minds for reading. Even before we shift into ‘go’ and read a sentence or a paragraph

of the text, we read the title and subtitles, look over the chunks of the text, and we think, ‘I think

this book is mostly about..., and it might start with..., and then it will also tell...’”

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

we read the title and subtitles, look over the chunks of the text, and we think, ‘I think this book is mostly about..., and it might start with..., and then it will also tell...’” To demonstrate this work, you might show how you get yourself ready to read Wolves by Seymour Simon. “Oh, this looks interesting,” you might say as you open Wolves and begin to skim through the text and full page photographs. “Before I just dive in let me get myself ready to learn what this text might teach me. I want to give myself some energy to read this book. Let me rev up my mind. I wonder if this text will have the usual categories of information that I’ve come to expect in animal-texts: the animal’s body, eating habits, predators, habitat, and so forth....” In this case (as in other instances when nonfiction becomes more complex), there are not any headings or bold words. You can place the text on the document camera and point out to students how some words are in italics and they seem to be the full name for the species. “Hmm...” you might say. “I think we’ll need to use the photographs to get oriented and set some expectations. Maybe they give us some hints about what we’ll learn. So right here, on page 14, there’s a photograph of a wolf running, so I definitely think we’ll learn about how wolves run--maybe how fast. Yes, right next to the photograph it says ‘Wolves can run for miles with tiring when they are hunting....’ Okay, so it seems like the photographs sort of match the texts in some cases. I’m thinking what I already know about the topic of wolves and I’ve heard a lot of scary stories about them and read a lot of fairy tales where they are the bad guys. But you know what? I don’t see any photographs of wolves attacking or doing anything dangerous. I see them playing with each other, sleeping, running. I’m thinking maybe this book is going to help me learn about wolves--how they sleep, eat, live with other wolves-- but not make me afraid of them.” (You can see the teaching in session I of Navigating Nonfiction for further support of this teaching.) You may give your children actual phrases to use as they talk, such as: “This heading says ______, so I think this page is mostly about ______,” or “I looked at this (picture/caption/graph) and saw ______, and this (picture/caption/graph) and saw ______. If I put them together, I think these pages will be about ______.” You might teach readers to scan across the page, part-by-part, and point to or circle the aspects they are paying particular attention to with a finger. Their partner should give them feedback and adjust or revise what the first partner said. It might sound like this: “But look at this (picture/caption/graph) where I see ______. So now I’m thinking that maybe ______.” As students preview, set expectations, and read, you may see that they stick with their same expectation even when the text does not match that expectation. You’ve undoubtedly worked with students on this in your last unit of study, where readers may have gotten an idea about the character on page five, then stuck to that idea throughout the text. You taught those children to read and revise their thinking, adding new information, synthesizing it and developing a new theory about the character. It’s likely the same will be

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

true in informational reading. If you’ve taught your children to get ready to read a page by noticing the headings and features, and then to anticipate what specifically they’ll learn, they’ll then need to read on and check that thinking. They’ll need to revise their thinking by considering: “I was right about the topic of these two pages—it is about whales—but I was wrong about the main idea. This part is actually mostly about how fishermen are a danger to whales in the Arctic, not just where whales live.” This flexibility of thinking, although challenging, is an important goal to take on! After what is likely to be two days or so, students will be engaged in reading high interest expository nonfiction. You should see them spread out across your room, poring over magazine articles and thumbing through books on sharks, baseball, the moon, and so on. You’ll be expecting to see them using what they have already learned about reading informational text. Last year they learned to determine main ideas and take notes and you’ll be looking to see if they do that work now. If not, you’ll want to do some re-teaching. And of course, as your students are likely to be reading more complex texts this year, you will more than likely need to demonstrate how to determine a main idea and summarize a text which is slightly more complex. As you’ll want students to be practicing on a text which you know will support this work, we suggest that for the next session or two, you might have the whole class trying out this work on articles which you know to have clear structures. Having students read the same text will allow them to share their thinking on main idea and key details and challenge each other. We are suggesting they might read “Polar Problem”--an article included in the Appendix to this calendar. You might remind students how expository informational texts often contain a main idea followed—or surrounded—by supporting evidence. This boxes and bullets structure will allow students to determine main ideas and key details. You might start by offering a teaching point which might sound something like, “Nonfiction readers read with a pencil. We don’t just use a pencil to doodle palm trees around the words. We use a pencil to help us pay attention to the main ideas, to note the way those ideas are developed, and to make those thoughts and ideas visible.” You might demonstrate this work on “Polar Problem,” showing students how you read a chunk of the text and then pause to recall content in summary form, boxes-and-bullets, using your hand as a graphic organizer. So you might invite the students to think along with you and consider what the “box” or “main idea” might be and then what the key details which support that main idea would be. You might read just the first paragraph and pause, “So, I’m already thinking of what our box, or main idea might be, aren’t you? It seems like maybe the main idea might be that polar bears are

“Nonfiction readers read with a pencil. We don’t just use a pencil to doodle

palm trees around the words. We use a pencil to help us pay attention to the

main ideas, to note the way those ideas are developed, and to make those

thoughts and ideas visible.”

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

in danger because they are not getting enough to eat. So let’s keep reading and think about what key details are in this text. We can ask ourselves if those key details support this main idea or if we need to revise the main idea

‘On Thin Ice Polar bears travel over sea ice to hunt for food. The problem is that this sea ice is now melting earlier in the year than it used to.’

“Hmm...So a key detail seems to be that the sea ice is melting earlier. How does that fit with what we learned so far and what we were thinking the main idea might be?” Students can turn and talk and you’d be hoping to hear them notice that the text said that polar bears travel over the sea ice to hunt for food. You might give the students a second active involvement on this day, reading another chunk of text and asking students to list key details and then explain how those key details fit with what they have already learned. Then you might hold up your hand and remind students that it is important to try to keep summarizing what the text is about as you read. So you might demonstrate patting your hand and tapping your fingers as you summarize what the article has been about so far. “So far I think the article is about how polar bears are in danger because they are not getting enough to eat in the winter. Polar bears are not getting enough to eat in winter because sea ice is melting earlier in the year than it used to so polar bears can’t walk on the ice to get to seals, their main food source.” You can send students off to continue to read the article, determining key details and summarizing the text as they read. You can continue to coach into their work, by reminding them to use their hands as a tool to help them list key details and by helping them to take notes through boxes and bullets (see page 46 of Navigating Nonfiction for some great examples of students’ boxes and bullets note taking.) Remind them to continue reading their own high interest expository nonfiction once they finish reading the article and try out the same work with their own texts. In what is likely to be the share that day, you can ask students to share their summary of the text then have them to go off and write those summaries. Reading what they have written will offer you insight into how well students are grasping this work. Students can assess their own work against the Informational Reading Learning Progression and consider how to improve their work. Over the next two or three days, you will want to continue to support students’ working to determine importance. Students can return to reading their own high interest expository nonfiction (or you might give them another chance to practice all reading the same article). Across this time, you might also set students up with reading goals, for how they can

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

improve their nonfiction reading. You might involve your students in looking over the work they have done at the very start of the unit—looking, for example, at their Post-its and notebook work—in order to self-assess the extent to which they have drawn on all they were taught previously. You might put up a chart of all that your students have already learned from third grade. You might have them set goals and mark these on Personal Goal Charts, creating and revising action plans to reach these goals. Some teachers have their students tape these charts to their desks, others make bulletin boards with them. The important thing is not that the goals are posted but rather that they matter enough to students that students can discuss those goals and talk about ways they intend to work toward them. Remind your students to look back at goals from earlier in the year and reflect on their progress, keeping track of their goals not just for this unit, but across all units. You may notice some predictable concerns and want to coach into those through minilessons, small group strategy lessons, and one on one conferring. One such concern might be that this work of scrutinizing paragraphs for main ideas and key details may slow students’ work down to a crawl. When you pull up to a student to confer, you may notice that the student’s log shows a dramatic drop in rate and volume of reading. If this is the case for the majority of your students, you may want to teach a lesson where you help support students in reflecting and monitoring how well they are choosing books and pushing themselves to read with stamina. You might begin by saying something like, “Today I want to remind you that as we learn new stuff, we need to add the new stuff onto all that we learned earlier and then draw on everything we’ve learned as we carry on. It’s like the new tools get added to our existing toolkit.” (You can see Session III of Navigating Nonfiction to further support your teaching of that work.) At this point, you’re likely to be three or four days into the unit. If this bend is, say, seven sessions long, students might spend one more day or so on focusing on determining main ideas of slightly more complex texts before moving to think about the ways that authors set up texts to convey those ideas. If your whole class needs to consider how to determine the main idea of slightly more complex texts, you will need to teach and then often remind students that readers to ask themselves, “What is the one big thing that this text is teaching and how do all the other details connect with this?” You might frame a teaching point which sounds

“Today I’m going to teach you that reading nonfiction is like taking a course in which a

person is told a whole lot of new and detailed information. Instead of trying to memorize all

that information, it helps to create larger categories to organize that information. That

way, as we read, we sort the little bits of information under bigger points, creating a

boxes-and-bullets outline that matches the text. It is almost as if, as we read, we write headings

for the texts that don’t have any.”

“Today I want to remind you that as we learn new stuff, we need to add the new stuff onto all that we

learned earlier and then draw on everything we’ve learned as we carry on. It’s like the new

tools get added to our existing toolkit.”

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

something like, “Today I’m going to teach you that reading nonfiction is like taking a course in which a person is told a whole lot of new and detailed information. Instead of trying to memorize all that information, it helps to create larger categories to organize that information. That way, as we read, we sort the little bits of information under bigger points, creating a boxes-and-bullets outline that matches the text. It is almost as if, as we read, we write headings for the texts that don’t have any.” You might now involve students in studying Seymour Simon’s Wolves along with you, considering how you might determine the main idea and key details and summarize the first parts of this text (which has no headings). Across the next few days, your small group work and conferring may still need to continue to address main idea work. Here are some other ways that readers determine main idea(s) and key details in nonfiction that students might try:

Readers can be on the lookout for a “pop-out sentence” as they read, knowing that often one sentence summarizes the content of a paragraph or a passage. This sentence will often be broad and sweeping and feel like it needs key details to support it. Sometimes this sentence is the first or last sentence--but not always!

Readers read, always pushing themselves to think about how new information fits with what the text has taught them so far. They read, pausing to ask themselves ““What is the big thing this part teaches me? How does this fit with what’s been said so far?”

Readers sometimes identify key details first. They pay attention to what important details they are learning and then ask, “What the big idea these details are trying to show or support?” To help them do this work, readers might mentally or physically cut up an article and study the different parts to ask themselves what those parts add up to show (____ + ____ + ____ = ?)

You might also introduce the following questions that students can ask themselves and others to support this work:

How would you summarize this (paragraph, section, part) of the text? What is the main idea of the entire text? Which detail would be most important to include in a summary of the text?

As students are beginning to determine importance and figure out main ideas and key details, you will want to give them opportunities to synthesize what they have learned. You might ask kids to prepare for partner talk by rehearsing how they’ll explain important information they’ve jotted on their Post-its—they might use the text’s pictures and charts, an explaining voice, an explaining finger and gestures. We at the RWP suggest you teach that when partners meet, instead of just saying what they have learned, they might:

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Point out the details in the pictures or diagrams that highlight what they’re saying. Link previous learning to the new information that they just encountered by flipping

back and forth to show pictures that build off of one another and by explaining how those pictures go together.

Add gestures to their explanations and use their voices to emphasize what’s important.

Act out what they learned and invite their partner to join in. For example, if one partner is explaining to his partner that owls don’t flap their wings like most birds, but rather they glide, he could have his partner put out his arms and flap them like wings. Then, he could instruct his partner to sway his body and keep his arms out and still to illustrate the difference between gliding and flapping.

(To view a lesson on this work, you can refer to the DVD which accompanies the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, 3-5 series.) Students can also practice teaching each other during read aloud. So, if you are reading aloud Wolves, you may involve students in practicing this work after reading the section on wolves that talks about howls and then gives details of how wolves howl, why they howl and when they howl. You may even encourage students to enact parts of the text, pushing their heads back, pointing their noses to the sky, mouths open wide, as they teach their partners about how wolves look like when they howl. On what is likely to be your final day or two of teaching in this bend, you might help students to see that authors deliberately organize their texts to convey ideas and make points. You might begin by saying, “Today I want to teach you that authors deliberately use different types of structures to connect the ideas, events, and concepts in their texts. Paying attention to what structures they have chosen to use can help readers to figure out how authors are making points.” To demonstrate this, you’ll want to show a clear example of a text structure. This is not always easy to find so know that you may not always be able to use your read aloud. Seymour Simon often has very clear examples of different types of text structures in his texts so that is another reason we suggest reading his work. In this case, we suggest that you might show a page from his book Dolphins which has a very clear example of compare and contrast (and the last two pages are great to show problem/solution later in the unit). You might begin reading the section on how dolphins and porpoises are similar and different, then stop immediately, showing students how they can notice key terms to figure out how a section has been set up. For example, students might notice words like “Just

“Today I want to teach you that authors deliberately use different types of structures to connect the ideas, events, and concepts in their texts. Paying attention to what structures they have chosen to use can help readers to figure

out how authors are making points.”

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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

like...” or “Different than...” to notice that the author is likely setting up two sentences that compare and contrast information. After reading the section in Dolphins, you might then show students page 6 of Seymour Simon’s text Wolves to have again study a section which is set up using comparison and involve them in noticing key terms and summarizing the information they have learned. For your mid workshop or share that day, you might show students a different type of structure. You might review work students likely learned last year (when they studied connections between sentences), by reminding them that authors use cause-effect structures to connect what happened (the effects) with what made them happen (the cause(s). You might show a sentence like: “As a result of the Earth’s turning, there are four seasons,” and ask students to discuss the author’s point. What is the author trying to show happening and what is the author saying is the reason for it happening? Students can notice phrases like “as a result of” to realize that the first part of the sentence is naming an effect and the second part of the sentence is naming a cause. Students should begin to see that a book can have an overall text structure or different parts can have text structures and so can different sentences within a part. Some key terms of which you might teach them to be aware:

Comparison: “Just like...”, “Different than...”, “Alike...”, “Both...” Cause/Effect: “As a result...”, “Because of...”, “This brought about...”, “The effect of

this was...”, “This changed...” “Therefore” Problem/Solution: “Threat”, “Challenge”, “Obstacle”, “Problem”, “Resolution”,

“Overcame” Chronological: “First,” “Second”, “Next”, “Afterwards”, “Years Later” Question/Answer: “Who”, “What,” “Where”, “Why”, “When”, “How”

You might guide students to consider questions like,

What best describes the main text structure of the entire article? Why does the author start/end the article with a question, quote, etc.? What best describes the text structure used to connect the events told this text?

In addition to helping students notice these sorts of signal words, you’ll also likely see that you need to help them deal with other kinds of vocabulary. When reading books on unfamiliar subjects, as is often the case when children take on informational texts, children

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

will encounter many new words. It is wise for a unit of study on informational reading to contain several minilessons designed to help readers tackle challenging words. Students need to notice the vocabulary that is specific to the topic on which they are reading, determine the meaning of terms and transfer and apply this learning by using the terms themselves when writing or speaking about the topics. In addition, they need to transfer academic words across units and across the curriculum. Tier Two words such as “brief,” for example, can be carried across and discussed in each area of the curriculum. Because you will be building on strategies previously taught to your readers, you might first involve your students in an inquiry to allow them to remind themselves and each other of strategies which they know. You might say, “Readers, you have been studying word solving skills your whole school career so now you are like experts. Today we’ll do an inquiry into how we can transfer and apply the word solving work that we have done to our new work. You can use all of the resources and learning you have about determining the meaning of words to help you. As you go off to read today, will you be thinking about the question, ‘How can I use what I know about word solving to help me read informational texts with power?” In this way, you will be involving your students as invested owners in their learning rather than reiterating strategies of the past. As you watch your readers tackle this work, you may see that they are not transferring and applying strategies learned earlier in the year as well as strategies learned in previous grades, and you will know where your teaching needs to begin. You might gather small groups or do lessons to help readers hold onto the meaning of the text, such as “substitute the hard word with a synonym and then read on.” You might also remind readers of decoding strategies you’ve introduced in other units of study, such as: “Break up the word into its root, prefix, and/or suffix and use your knowledge of those word parts to try to figure out what the word might mean.” You can put up charts from previous units and help your readers to see that strategies live across a RWP unit and across grades. You will likely need to support readers in transferring and applying these strategies and others to tackle unfamiliar words within these more complex texts. Since authors of informational texts often use technical or content-specific words a casual reader isn’t likely to know, it’s important for readers to use strategies that help us persevere and attempt to figure out those words. Understanding these new words is often integral to understanding the content. When these words appear in the text, the author often will define the word outright and explicitly in a marginal glossary feature, or in the glossary in the back of the book. Other times, the word that the author wants us to learn is illustrated or pictured on the same page. By looking to the text features on the page for support, a reader can often determine the meaning of these new content-specific vocabulary words. For example, an illustration that accompanies text that introduces “baleen whales” to a reader will likely have a visual representation of what baleen looks like. Children need explicit instruction to

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

learn to “read” illustrative portions of the text carefully (e.g., photographs, quotes, timelines, charts, and maps). For third-grade nonfiction readers, it’s helpful to teach concrete ways to notice where in the text the definition is likely to appear. Many writers of nonfiction texts leveled J–O will define the word explicitly in the same sentence in which the word appears, or in a nearby sentence. Consider the following lines from The Yangtze River by Nathan Olson—they are typical of one way expository texts tend to go: “The Yangtze flows north and then east into a series of gorges. Gorges are deep valleys with steep, rocky sides.” As you may have noticed here, the new word is repeated in the second sentence with a definition, “______ are . . .” Another common way that authors define words in context is to offset a synonym in a parenthetical clause within the same sentence in which the word appears. Consider this sentence from Life Cycle of a Shark by Bobbie Kalman:

“Most sharks have streamlined, or sleek, bodies.” Other times, the definition will actually come in a sentence before the word, like in this cluster of sentences from Volcanoes by Seymour Simon. Sometimes, like in this sentence, the new word will follow “This is called ______”:

“Volcanoes are formed when magma pushes its way up through the cracks in the Earth’s crust. This is called a volcanic eruption.” Even when the text makes overt efforts, in context or in text features, to give young readers direct accessibility to unfamiliar vocabulary, children may often resist adopting the new words they see in print. Technical vocabulary, with its infrequent real-world usage, unconventional spellings, and vague pronunciation, is not the easiest or most natural for children to incorporate into their own language. You’ll need to urge children to actively adopt the technical lingo of whatever subject they’re reading about, but you will also want to create a classroom environment that encourages this—ask children to think of themselves as teachers and topic experts and create space for partnership conversations around these topics so that children may have the chance to verbally use new content-specific words in a real context. Encourage your students to make word banks for themselves and keep these nearby when they are discussing or writing about their learning. It takes repeated experience with a new word to learn it—people need to hear or read the word, understand what the word is (synonyms), what it is not (antonyms), put the word in their own meaningful context, and use the word in their own speech or writing. You’ll also want to teach children to choose flexibly from a variety of strategies and use

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase, using known root words as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word with the same root. In this second part of the unit, you may decide to teach students to read narrative nonfiction with the same attentiveness to structure, using story grammar to synthesize and determine importance across large stretches of text. These texts typically follow a chronological text structure. Once students recognize that most narrative nonfiction focuses on the goals and struggles of a central character—that the text conveys an underlying idea, and that many nonfiction narratives culminate in an achievement or a disaster—they will be able to make sense of such texts, following the events and details on the pages, and holding onto the information in such a way that it is memorable. In this bend, you’ll want to read a narrative nonfiction (or parts of one). We suggest reading from Face to Face with Wolves which has many parts that are chronological and others that are more expository and similar to the structures in Seymour Simon’s text. We suggest starting off this bend by asking students to investigate how they can transfer what they know about reading narratives to read narrative nonfiction. By starting this bend with a lesson that asks readers to draw on all they have learned about reading narratives, rather than explicitly teaching them what they should remember, you’ll be placing a higher cognitive demand on your students and moving them to the highest level of Webb’s DOK. You might choose to frame the lesson as an inquiry lesson, one which involves your readers investigating and coming back to share discoveries. “Readers, you have been reading stories and narratives your whole school career so you are experts at reading stories. One of the exciting things about narrative nonfiction is that you can transfer everything you know about reading stories to help you read narrative nonfiction. You can apply everything you know about reading stories—and draw on all of the classroom charts and tools you have that helped you read stories—as you now read narrative nonfiction. I’m going to watch you go off and read, and I’m going to research and evaluate the extent to which you can apply everything you’ve learned about reading stories to help you read narrative nonfiction. Today you will do an inquiry into how you can use what you know about reading stories to help you read narrative nonfiction. So as you read, will you be thinking about the question, ‘How can I use what I know about reading stories to help me read narrative nonfiction?’ When you come back to the rug later today, we’ll discuss our thinking around that question.”

Bend II: Navigating Narrative Nonfiction

“Today you will do an inquiry into how you can use what you know about reading stories

to help you read narrative nonfiction. So as you read, will you be thinking about the question,

‘How can I use what I know about reading stories to help me read narrative nonfiction?’”

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

As you watch your readers transfer what they have learned about story grammar—character development, setting problems and solutions, theme, and so on—to their reading of narrative nonfiction, you will be able to assess what exactly they have learned and you will see where your teaching needs to go next. The chart titled "Narrative Nonfiction Readers Notice and Think About:" on page 13 in Volume II of Navigating Nonfiction can serve to help students that there are similarities between reading narrative nonfiction and reading fiction You’ll expect to see your readers realizing that just as in fiction, narrative nonfiction texts are about subjects who have traits and motivations, and as they interact with each other and their environments they come to face challenges or obstacles that the story highlights, which they usually overcome. In narrative nonfiction, the overcoming of obstacles tends to create the story of why a famous person is famous, what he or she achieved, and why these achievements matter. If children need more support in doing this work, you’ll want to refer them back to the prompts that helped them develop theories in the character unit, asking “What does this character want/wish/hope for? What stands in his or her way?” You might say, “Today I want to teach you that you can use what you know about getting to know characters in fiction texts to get to know characters, or people, in narrative nonfiction texts. You can develop theories about the people in the narrative nonfiction texts by asking, ‘What does this person want/wish/hope for? What stands in his or her way?’” Your students will already know from reading fiction that it is helpful to pay attention to the important events and decisions in a character’s life; you’ll also want to remind them that a character’s response to those events often reveals his or her traits. Remind them to draw on specific details from the text to “describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story” (RL 4.3). During this part of the unit, you can also reinforce your teaching of literary devices. You’ll want to help your students to notice how metaphors enhance the setting or really allow you to envision the characters and their complexities or similes that help you compare the characters in a deeper and often more picturesque way (for example, in A Nation’s Hope--Joe Louis’ hands are clearly more than just hands. They are symbolic of his determination and are central to understanding who Joe Louis is and why he is able to accomplish what he does). By analyzing these devices, students gain the opportunity to envision and live in the story in a different way and see writing techniques in action which they can transfer and apply to their writing across the curriculum as well. (See Session VII in Volume II of Navigating Nonfiction to support this work.)

“Today I want to teach you that you can use what you know about getting to know

characters in fiction texts to get to know characters, or people, in narrative nonfiction

texts. You can develop theories about the people in the narrative nonfiction texts by asking,

‘What does this person want/wish/hope for? What stands in his or her way?’”

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Next, you will want to teach your readers (if necessary) to develop generalizations about the famous characters or groups of characters they meet in narrative nonfiction, formulating ideas about how certain traits might lead to a character’s ability to overcome difficulty and achieve something meaningful—something so big that it has been recorded in a book. Session IX, Volume 2 of Navigating Nonfiction demonstrates how to expand the definition of a main character to apply to the main presence in the book, as in a meerkat colony, or “the Pilgrims.” You will remind your students that narrative nonfiction contains underlying ideas—and that it is the role of the reader to seek those ideas. Your readers are used to activating schema about characters—now you want to activate their schema for realizing that these stories, like all complex narratives, also teach ideas. The story about meerkats probably teaches something about community survival techniques. That story about the Pilgrims probably did too! Moreover, the books the students are reading are undoubtedly about more than one idea. You might frame a teaching point around this work by saying something like, “Today I want to teach you that narrative nonfiction texts, like the fiction texts you read, contain underlying ideas—and it is the role of the reader to seek those ideas. You can do this by keeping track of our ideas by jotting notes, and then talking with your partners to grow our ideas.” If your students need more support in doing this work you may teach them to keep track of ideas, using that same boxes-and-bullets structure, jotting Post-its as they read, talking to a partner, expecting their books to teach them important ideas and information. Having opportunities to teach a partner will be just as important in this part, as it was in the first part of the unit. After you remind readers to use their narrative expertise to read narrative nonfiction, you’ll also want to teach them to simultaneously draw on their new expertise in accumulating and summarizing nonfiction information and ideas. Students must be prepared to read, expecting that a nonfiction book of any sort will teach them something new about the subject. At times, students read narrative nonfiction considering the narrative elements to the exclusion of all else and not gleaning all the information that a text has to teach. You will want to help your readers to realize that when reading a biography, for example, they can be gleaning key information about a time period or a specific condition such as blindness or a particular activity, such as flying an airplane. The critical thing for students to learn is that narrative nonfiction tells a story that teaches both information and ideas. (Refer to session IX in Volume II of Navigating Nonfiction to inform and support this work.)

“Today I want to teach you that narrative nonfiction texts, like the

fiction texts you read, contain underlying ideas—and it is the role of the reader to seek those ideas. You can do this by keeping track of our ideas by

jotting notes, and then talking with your partners to grow our ideas.”

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Finally, you’ll want to teach students to use what they’ve learned from focusing on expository texts in isolation, and then narrative texts in isolation in order to tackle any part of a text that includes narrative and expository sections. Some texts like this begin with a story, a letter, a diary entry, or a mini-biography and then move into expository text structures. Because texts structured this way often can’t be broken down into boxes-and-bullets, the RWP suggests that you teach readers instead to treat them like photographs and quotes, asking, “What is this letter or story teaching me?” and “How does it fit with what I have been learning?” You may teach students to synthesize all the information on a page or in a section by determining how all the parts of the text fit together. It is essential then to teach your students to assess a text using what they now know about expository and narrative text structures and then to evaluate which are the most appropriate strategies to synthesize and interpret parts of text and the whole. You can also teach readers to stop at the end of a text they’ve read and to reflect on what they have learned. You can teach them to try to answer these questions: “What do I know now that I didn’t know before reading this book/text?” or “How is my thinking different from reading this text?” As students are working to read hybrid texts, you might support them in reading more closely and paying attention to how authors deliberately choose text structures by putting up a part from Face to Face With Wolves and a part from Wolves by Seymour Simon to study and compare and contrast the text structures the authors have chosen to organize information about the same topic. Face to Face with Wolves, Jim and Judy Brandenburg p. 6 “When I arrived on Ellesmere Island, just west of Greenland, I saw my first pack of seven white arctic wolves. I followed them as they headed toward an iceberg. The leader of the pack was the first to see me. He looked at me without fear, letting me know there was no way I would sneak up on him.” Wolves, Seymour Simon p. 19 Wolves live in packs, but that is just a name for a family of wolves. Packs are usually made up of a leader male and female wolf and their young along with some close relatives. An average wolf pack has five to eight wolves, but packs can have as few as two or three, or as many as twenty-five wolves. Students can notice how the first text is a first-hand account, written from the point of view of the author while the second text is a third person account. Students might say that this makes the first text more emotional, perhaps more reliable because it is based on direct observation. Yet, you might also point out that this could mean that the account might also be more biased. Students could also discuss how one author has chosen to use a

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

chronological structure perhaps to take the reader right inside the story of what happened--to draw the reader in and let you walk in the author’s shoes. Perhaps the author might even have been trying to place the reader into a dangerous, climatic situation to grip the reader’s attention. The first text offers us the author as a character--what words might you use to describe him? Brave? Daring? Reckless? In contrast, the second account is organized in a boxes and bullets way--with main idea and supports. Students might consider why Simon may have chosen to write in this way. Remind students they can ask themselves and others questions, such as:

Why does the author start/end the article with a question, quote, etc.? What text structure has the author chose to organize information? Why might

he/she have made that choice? Which structure was easier to learn information from? How do you read each type

of structure differently?

Once your readers have worked at becoming more adept at learning from expository and narrative texts and at teaching others the information and significant ideas of those texts, a logical next step is to respond personally and intellectually to what the text teaches. Your fourth graders are expected to draw inferences from the text (RI 4.1). In this bend, students will draw on all they have learned about building theories about characters in reading literature to help them build theories and interpret information texts. One way that you could encourage this kind of independent, inferential thinking about the text is to situate partnerships for conversations around the books they read. Positioning a reader to locate a big idea in the text and then talk back to that big idea to a partner enables collaborative response to texts, but you want to take care to ensure that these conversations are actually responses to and not reiterations. To this end, it will make the world of difference to introduce conversational thought prompts that might help students phrase responses to the text. For example, thought prompts such as:

“But I wonder . . .,” “I used to think that . . . but now I am realizing . . .”

will structure and channel more complex responses to the text. They are also great scaffolds for facilitating talk, allowing students sure and predictable ways to pilot their ideas off the text. For a more detailed list of conversation prompts and for guidance on instruction that incorporates these, you might visit Session VII in Volume I of Navigating Nonfiction (or of course, create your own).

Bend III: Making Inferences and Building Theories

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

You can look at the document in the Appendix, Teaching Towards the Demands of the Common Core to see more of the kinds of questions students should be able to answer about inferences by the end of the year, such as:

Which sentence from the text best supports the inference that________? What does the author mean when he/she says “___________”? Which detail from the text best supports the idea that_____? Based on the text, which is most likely true about _________?

By now your students will have developed valuable skills that will carry them forward as they begin this new part. Now they will synthesize their thinking about their books and push themselves to develop big ideas that they can support with inferences they have made earlier. Your students’ notebooks and books will be bursting with jottings and Post-its. You might want to begin with a session on pausing in the midst of reading to organize one’s thoughts. Children might sort Post-its into piles that are about one particular aspect of a topic, event, or concept in a book. You might then teach your students that they can look for patterns and new ideas within this stack of related Post-its. You might say something like, “Today I want to teach you that when readers look at a series of ideas about a book (or set of books) they ask themselves, ‘What do these have in common? What is different about these ideas? and then they use the answers to create a theory.” Once children have developed a couple of theories, they can revisit earlier parts of the text in light of their theories. They can also read forward, gathering more evidence to support their theories, making individual theory charts. You might demonstrate this work through the class notes taken off of the read aloud--notes on the main ideas and key details found in the text. You might show the following jottings from Wolves:

Wolves

Wolves have different personalities.

Some are leaders of their packs Others are social Others are loners

Wolves’ legs are made for running for great distances when they are hunting large prey.

They have strong muscles in their legs Their legs are long so they can take long steps so they can run fast

“Today I want to teach you that when readers look at a series of

ideas about a book (or set of books) they ask themselves,

‘What do these have in common? What is different about these ideas? and then they use the answers to create a theory.”

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Wolves’ teeth and hearing help them catch and eat their prey.

Canines are used for grabbing and holding Incisors used to pick meat off bones Carnassials slice food into small pieces Hear howling up to 4 miles away Can locate mice squeals when covered in snow

Wolf packs function by each wolf having a rank which helps prevent fighting.

There is a female and male leader that is called the alpha and they are the largest and strongest.

Less powerful females and males are called beta. Lesser ranking wolves give up if there is an argument by rolling over, flattening its

ears and putting its tail between its legs. You may want to demonstrate sorting and building theories off of these jottings. As you look at these Post-its together, first help students to sort this list further, looking for ideas the text forwards that go together. Your children will notice that the second Post-it and the third seem to be about the same thing, as do the first and the fourth, and so on. Then, you can coach your students to think about what these combined ideas are showing us about the topic--in this case, wolves. Students might say something like, “This is showing me that wolves’ bodies are exactly suited for helping them to get food and find prey. Their bodies are like killing machines. No wonder they are portrayed as evil. Their bodies make them seem scary.” Some possible new theories students might make from these jottings: Wolves might be portrayed as evil because their bodies are made for hunting. Wolves have relationships with each other in similar ways that people do. You can push your students further by having them focus not just on new ideas that they have about their characters, but also on what larger lessons the book might be teaching about nature (or history or art or sports or science, and so on). By asking themselves, “What lessons might the author be teaching about not just wolves but about nature?” students can, by standing on their strong inferences, begin thinking about big lessons readers can learn from the text. In this, they will be very close to studying themes.

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

You may want to demonstrate how to start thinking thematically by looking at one of the very same Post-its on wolves that you created earlier in this part of the unit. This time, though, students might view these carrying the question, “What lessons might the author be teaching about nature?” You might push students to generate ideas like, “Animals do whatever it takes to survive,” or “Animals’ bodies are made to enable them to survive,” or even, “Survival isn’t always easy and it isn’t always pretty.”

During the informational reading unit of study, as mentioned, you will want to provide some opportunities to engage with shorter texts. As always you will want to engage students in studying sections of the text closely. You can read sections aloud, ask your students to read together as partnerships and also provide some time to read a bit of text independently, pushing students to refer explicitly to the text for evidence. You can have them reread critical sections, discussing the structure and content of the text and moving students to go from summarizing the text to analyzing and interpreting the text. You will want to read aloud a variety of informational texts so you can provide students with opportunities to synthesize, have thoughts off the text, make connections, activate prior knowledge, and so on. You’ll likely want to start off then, reading expository informational texts then moving to narrative and finishing the unit with hybrid texts. We encourage you to choose some texts on the same topic. Whichever topic you choose, you will want to make sure that the topic offers you many accessible texts of different structures. One note about text structures: certain types of organizing structures are more common than others. The Common Core expects students to know various organizing structures, even ones that are not seen as frequently and so if your students are not coming across all of these structures in their own reading, you will want to take many opportunities to show these different text structures to kids, during close reading. You may want to put up pages on the document camera and engage your students in analyzing the text as a whole class in order to provide practice in describing and analyzing various text structures. Of course, you’ll want to read aloud longer swathes of texts as well as shorter pieces. Thus, you’ll want to choose some grade-level complex texts to read as longer books throughout this unit. Throughout your read aloud you will want to demonstrate all of the skills you have taught happening in conjunction but you will also want to adapt your read aloud to meet the needs of your students. Thus, if your assessment data shows that your students are have difficulty determining the meaning of domain-specific and academic vocabulary terms, you’ll want to be sure to provide plenty of modeling of how readers learn new words from the context clues, from text features, and from glossaries, as well as demonstrate

Read-Aloud

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Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

using word attack strategies. If students need support with note taking, you’ll want to model various strategies, such as how to summarize a text in a boxes and bullets format, adding and revising your notes as you continue to read. To make nonfiction read-alouds interactive, pause at strategic points and offer readers quick opportunities to respond to texts with such prompts as, “Turn and tell your partner...” or “Stop and jot.” You may also demonstrate acting out the information as you explain the part you just read, then give readers an opportunity to act out a part as they explain information to their partner. Having readers stop and sketch what you read, and encouraging them to add details to the sketch as you read on, is another way to push students to synthesize the text. Of course, one of the most important elements of a read-aloud is your own voice. Your intonation alone might clarify the structure of expository texts. For example, as you read, you might use your voice to emphasize main ideas, varying your intonation where support details are suggested. (See Cory Gillette’s lesson on Nonfiction Fluency on Vimeo.com/TCRWP for an example of this work.) You might count out bullets or listed points across your fingers. While reading aloud narrative nonfiction such as biographies or true stories of animals or people, you will want to teach students to turn on their minds to listen for story structure and pay attention to character. Show them how readers of narrative nonfiction expect the text to teach them something, so they can stop and jot after parts of the story about what the story teaches so far. When navigating nonfiction, readers will encounter specialized vocabulary. This makes it an opportune time to use read-aloud to highlight not only how readers determine the meaning of terms but how they take on new vocabulary and incorporate the words into their conversations. You may find it helpful to chart the most important vocabulary from the sections you will be reading aloud that day. You may want to give individuals or partners a word bank. Then, when students turn and talk, or during whole-class conversation, remind them to use their word banks. This way, they are actively using these words not just that day, but across the days that you read aloud that book. If you read aloud many books on the same topic, readers will have repeated opportunities to use and learn these words. (For support with teaching ELLs or students with special needs you can see Amanda Hartman’s close reading of a primary informational text on Vimeo.com/TCRWP to offer you ideas about how to support acquisition of vocabulary through a variety of pathways.) In addition to word banks, you might put other texts in students’ hands during read aloud. You might give students a picture or two that you have copied from the book, so they can label these as you read or a map, or another type of text. Then, partners can meet and explain to each other what they learned, or during whole class conversations, students can

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Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

reference their diagrams to explain, compare, and contrast. (You can see Kathleen Tolan’s close reading of Gorillas by Seymour Simon on Vimeo.com/TCRWP to help you get a vision for how students can do cross text work during read aloud.) Another way to help students to talk across texts is to put students into groups during read aloud, with each group given a different familiar text on the same topic or written in the same structure as the read aloud. Then, as you proceed to read aloud a new text, you can involve the students in making cross-text comparisons and contrasts between the text you are reading aloud and the one in front of their group, analyzing the different and similar ways in which the author of the read aloud and the author of their book structured a section, made important points, used reasons and evidence to support a particular point, and so on. Any of the methods you used to help support students in interpreting fiction (i.e. write arounds, looking for broad life lessons, and so on) can now be tailored to help students interpret information texts. You can immerse students in comparing, contrasting and also integrating information on a topic.

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Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Reading Curricular Calendar, Fourth Grade, 2013-2014

Unit Two – Reading High Interest Informational and Literary Nonfiction Closely

Wolves

(Post-its from Seymour Simon’s Wolves)

Wolves have different personalities.

Some are leaders of their packs Others are social Others are loners

Wolves’ legs are made for running for great distances when they are hunting large prey.

They have strong muscles in their legs Their legs are long so they can take long steps so they can run fast

Wolves’ teeth and hearing help them catch and eat their prey.

Canines are used for grabbing and holding Incisors used to pick meat off bones Carnassials slice food into small pieces Hear howling up to 4 miles away Can locate mice squeals when covered in snow

Wolf packs function by each wolf having a rank which helps prevent fighting.

There is a female and male leader that is called the alpha and they are the largest and strongest.

Less powerful females and males are called beta. Lesser ranking wolves give up if there is an argument by rolling over, flattening its

ears and putting its tail between its legs. Theory:

Theory:

Appendix