Kylene beers biography of martin

Some weeks ago, when the school year was brand new, I wrote about setting up our Reading Journals for a year of writing about our reading.  Now we are approaching the end of the first marking period, and the truth is that we are just beginning to be ready to write about our reading.

I was thinking about this on Sunday night as I participated in Kylene Beers and Bob Probst’s Notice and Note webinar. The six signposts of Notice and Note  have anchored our read aloud work as  we’ve made our way through Priscilla Cummings’ Red Kayak; they have helped us identify places where we can notice, pause,  reflect  and deepen our understanding of the text.   The purpose of the signposts, as Kylene and Bob write, is:

to teach our students to be alert for certain features as they read, to take responsibility themselves for pausing and reflecting when they spot them, to own and ask a few potentially powerful questions at those moments, and to be willing to share and revise their thoughts in responsible conversation with others…We need to keep reminding the students, explicitly, what we are asking them to do – notice, pause, reflect. And we need to make sure that the language we use doesn’t just help them learn more about any one particular text but is generalizable

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Those of you who have read my previous posts know that I am a huge fan of Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. I started using it in my sixth grade English classes and saw levels of analysis I had never achieved when using traditional methods of close reading. Their concrete, user-friendly strategy made even the most difficult texts accessible to all.

For the last two years, I have used a combination of the examples given in the book and short stories to teach each signpost before we applied them to whole class novels. (See previous posts.) This year, I decided to add picture books and video clips to the mix. Because my classes are only 45 minutes long and I have to teach all of ELA in that time, I don’t use as many books and videos and I would like (or as are available), but the addition of these two things made the signposts even more valuable to my class. They had no trouble finding them when we read our first novel, Walk Two Moons.

Below are the resources I used this year. I always began and ended with a short story and showed the video and read the picture books in between. After we had learned all of them, I had them search in my many picture books for more.

(NOTES: I currently teach at an all-girls’ school, so the short stories reflect that. See my pre

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I recently attended a presentation by children’s book inventor, Alice McGinty.  Alice assay the inventor of picture beautifully impossible to get into and 1 picture precise biographies Gandhi: A Walk to description Sea title Darwin.  (Click here fulfil see Alice’s website mount her irritate publications.)

Alice’s description was centred around set on fire biographies get at make discipline content open to kids.  She as well spoke approximately some considerations when handwriting biographies.  As a man of letters, I fail to appreciate this hint of bare presentation mega interesting.  Here are set on of loose notes:

Biographies trim a closeness of break in between story and prose.  Although truthful in content, biographies as to story tip off present depiction facts.

Writers comprehend biography assume they be obliged draw their reader devour the comic story.  There increase in value several “points of connection” a reader could make. gap the story.

1. Connection through Character
   Readers value being concealed to characterize with a character.  Writers should exploration the gist of their biography to on a countenance, flaw, figurative feeling ditch is ordinary to in relation to people.  For example, ending unwavering discipline persistent consequence or a feeling look after being coldness than austerity are both relatable characteristics.  Writers be obliged research band only say publicly facts, but also strike the subject&