The Testing Adventures Have Begun!

     I can’t believe it is almost February!  It is amazing how quickly the year is going.  I really have a feeling we may have missed the winter weather.  I hope I didn't just jinx our luck.  

     As we move into the next few months, we will begin to prepare for our new standardized test:  PARCC.   The PARCC tests are high quality, computer-based K-12 assessments in Mathematics and English Language Arts/Literacy.  They are carefully crafted to give teachers, schools, students, and parents better and more useful information on how we’re preparing our kids for their futures.  

     In March, our 3^rd-5^th grade students will be completing the performance based assessment part of PARCC.  In May, they will complete the end of year assessment.  

Please visit the PARCC website to learn more about the assessment.

**Stay tuned for more exciting information about our new testing adventure!**

Determining Importance

Last month our focus was non-fiction reading strategies, and we continue this discussion with how students determine what is important in the text.  Determining importance is a strategy that readers use to distinguish between what information in a text is most important versus what information is interesting but not necessary for comprehension. The strategy enables students to distinguish between the most and least important information presented in textbooks and nonfiction reading.  While reading fiction texts, students will be inferring the bigger idea or theme.  In nonfiction texts, students will use determining importance to gain information, acquire knowledge, or use features and text clues to help build deeper comprehension of the text.  We tell students they need to become detectives and search for the most important points of the text. We remind them that along the way there will be distractions, or less important information, given to make the selection more interesting or clearer to the reader. This information, however, is not essential to understanding the point of the nonfiction or fiction text. 

The main questions students use to determine the important information is: 

©    What is my purpose for reading this text?

©    What is the author’s purpose for writing this text?

©    Identify the key ideas.

©    Use text features (discussed in last month’s blog) to help identify important ideas, concepts, and details.

You can help your child at home by using the following sentence starters to deepen their comprehension of the text:

    ©     “The most important ideas are…”

    ©     “So far, I've learned that…

      ©      “This paragraph/selection is mostly about…”

Non-Fiction Features

When students are reading nonfiction texts, they not only have to be able to comprehend the information, but they have to analyze the different features within the text.  This month we will discuss these features and their purpose.

Nonfiction Feature #1: Charts and Graphs allow the reader to analyze data visually by comparing it with other information in an easier to read format.	Nonfiction Feature #2: Headings/Subheadings are a signal from the author about important information.  They are usually bigger, bolder font and say:  PAY ATTENTION!	Nonfiction Feature #3: Labels are word tags next to important pictures connected with arrows.  Labels often identify smaller parts of a bigger picture.
Nonfiction Feature #4: Sidebars are bullet points of information off to the left or right of the main text area.  They are usually short pieces of information which add to the main idea of the article.	Nonfiction Feature #5: The index is also found at the end of the book.  It lists words in alphabetical order, and gives the page numbers where the information can be found.	Nonfiction Feature #6: The glossary is a special dictionary containing important vocabulary words from the book.  It is usually found at the end of the book.
Nonfiction Feature #7: Pronunciation guides help students with vocabulary words they may not be familiar with in the text.  They spell out the word phonetically inside a set of parentheses.	Nonfiction Feature #8: The table of contents, found at the beginning of a book, allows you to start reading where ever you want in a nonfiction text by giving you a preview of the section’s contents.	Nonfiction Feature #9: Nothing helps the reader more than photographs/illustrations and captions.  The caption helps to give meaning to the photograph or illustration.

Synthesizing

Connecting the Dots to form the BIG Picture

     For the month of January, our strategy focus will be “synthesizing”.  Now, it really sounds like something you would do to make music, but when applied to reading, it involves taking all the pieces you know and putting them together with the new information you gather from reading.  It is kind of like making cookies.  You start the cookie dough with the things you have to have like eggs, sugar, and flour and then add the ingredients which will make the cookies unique.  After you have been making cookies for awhile, we might change our minds and decide to make a different variety then we always do, but we will still end up with fantastic cookies. 

     When strong readers read, they not only read the words on the page, but they listen to the “inner voice” that thinks about the meaning of the story.  Strong readers use their background knowledge, make connections, and use other experiences to form new ideas as they read.  Strong readers know the answers are not always found in the book but may be formed in their own imaginations.  A reader who is synthesizing incorporates the details and inferences from a story into their own ideas and opinions. 

      Synthesizing is creating something new by bringing together many different ingredients and continually changing the thinking depending on the new information gathered.

 

Making Movies in Our Heads

 Visualizing is the reading strategy known as “Making Mental Images or Creating Mind Movies”.  It creates images in the mind as the student reads, processes and recalls what has been read.  Visualizing allows the reader to organize their ideas, to see the relationship among the ideas, and to make meaningful connections with them. 

Visualizing helps students to:

©      use personal prior knowledge to aid in comprehension

©      check their mental images with the text to gain a better understanding of the text

©      connect to what is being read

Graphic organizers assist students to build the relationship between what they are reading and what they are seeing in their heads.  They are the best ways for us to teach children how to organize information and make their thinking visible to others.  Making these connections to the text activates a student’s prior knowledge and aids in their visualizing ability.  Remember as you are using this strategy at home that everybody’s mental image may be different and that is okay because we all have different pieces of prior knowledge we are using to build our mental images.

 

Questions, Questions, Questions!

      When a child uses questions while reading it helps them clarify ideas and deepen understanding.  Asking questions-even those that are unanswerable-enriches the reading experience. Remember when your child was 3 or 4 and every other word was “why”?  In a child’s quest to make sense of the world, they become master questioners. Why is the grass green? Why do we dream? What happens when we eat? Frequently, parents have no idea how to answer these endless questions. We had the tendency to just say “because” due to not knowing the answer ourselves, but we need to encourage our children to ask these questions and become little researchers to find the answers.  This constant curiosity keeps their imagination going like a well-oiled machine.  They are able to make sense of the world around them and begin to form their own opinions and new ideas based on the information gained from the answers to these in-depth questions.  Questions also allow, you as the parent, to engage with your child in discussions and deeper thinking. Begin to encourage your child to ask questions about what they read.  These questions can be divided into four different big categories:

Thin (right there) and Thick (think and search) questions.

Thin questions are important to understanding the story elements or facts about a piece of text.  These answers can be found explicitly in the text.

Thick questions provide the child with a quest.  They have to search for an answer or use their inferring strategies to deepen their understanding of the text.

 

Below are some question prompts you may find useful when asking your child “Thick” questions:

What if …? How did …?

Why did…?

What would happen if …?

What caused…? What might…?

How would you feel if you…?

What character traits describe _______?

Why do you think…?

Why is…?

 

The other two important categories for questions are Author and Me questions and On My Own questions.  The Author and me questions focus on information provided in the text but the student is required to relate it to their own experience. Although the answer does not lie directly in the text, the student must have read it in order to answer the question.  On My Own questions are questions which do not require the student to have read the passage but he/she must use their background or prior knowledge to answer the question.

     When you read with your child and model your own questions it allows your child to see how reading can be an exciting adventure.  Below are some additional resources for you to use with your child at home to encourage their natural curiosity.  Happy Questioning!

 

Becoming a Reading Detective Using the Inferring Strategy

Inferring is being a detective!  Use what you see plus what you know to figure out what the author is trying to tell you.

We use the strategy of inferring all day long, similar to “reading” people or “reading” a situation.   An example is if it has been raining outside and some cars have water on them and some cars do not, we infer that those without water have been parked in the garage. Inferring is often explained as, “reading between the lines” where the answers are not clearly stated. Inferring is like stopping and asking yourself “I wonder what the author meant?” Inferences are more open-ended and often don’t know if you are correct in your inference.  Students are using their prior knowledge to determine what is going to happen next in a piece of text.  When students use the strategy of inferring, they are making meaning of the text. They are adding pieces to a puzzle that are not in the text.  Inferring is simply like ripping out a page of a book and determining what happened on the missing page by thinking about what has happened so far and what they know about the characters and situations.

Some common sentence frames to use with your child, which will aid in their ability to infer, are: 

I think that...because...

Maybe it means...because...

My clues from the text are...

It could mean...because...

Within our classrooms, teachers commonly use what is called “Picture of the Day” to instruct students on the strategy of inferring. 

                                                                                                            Created by jenny Jones

If you go to the following blog, a more detailed description of “Picture of the Day” is provided for you.
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/08/observing-describing-inferring-with.html