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Evidence of Character Traits - Writing, Albert Einstein

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Here is day two of the lesson I taught on Evidence of Character Traits.  The English Learners I work with need a LOT of modeling before they make a strategy their own, so I used one of my trait words (imaginative - which was the most complicated of the three) to use for shared writing.  I used the following "formula" to write our claim, and then had them expand on what their trait word means using our definitions. Albert Einstein was ___.  This means that he ______. I modeled how to write this part for them.  I used our recording sheets (the evidence we recorded as we were reading - see previous post !) to provide evidence/examples. Then, I had them speak through their first two sentences ORALLY.  English Learners need opportunities to SPEAK before they write.  Having them speak first also gives me the chance to plant contractions, transition words, and academic vocabulary that might help them expand their utterances and write a more complete sentence...

Evidence of Character Traits - Albert Einstein

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I have been exploring the Comprehension Modules in Chapter 7 of Jan Richardson's updated 2016 version of The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading .  This week, I've been using Module 14 (pg. 271) "Evidence of Character Traits" with my students.  I like this particular strategy because it asks the student to find text evidence while also introducing them to new vocabulary.  I created recording sheets to use in our notebooks where we could record our traits and evidence.  After teaching this lesson, I revised the recording sheets so there is one for when a text has multiple characters, and one for when a text has a single character with many traits.  Since I used this strategy for a biography, we ended up just writing "Albert Einstein" down the left column, and I felt it was wasted space. This strategy worked really well to structure our reading of a biography! Here's how I taught this comprehension strategy: Step 1: Analyze Text Read the te...