Writing Lesson: Using Signal Phrases To Introduce Evidence

This mini-lesson is one in a series of upcoming lessons on teaching students to write arguments that integrate evidence from multiple sources to support their claims.

Taking It Says, I Say, And So Strategy On-Line

I discovered a brilliant idea today in a classroom walkthrough of Mrs. Harmon's English 10 class. She was using the It Says/I Say/And So strategy with Google Docs. Here's what she did and why I think it's brilliant.

What, exactly, did Mrs. Harmon do?

Her students, since last week, have been reading three one to two page texts (one an image) all related to 9/11. They've been reading each text closely and discussing. Today, she had students generate questions--thought-provoking, meaningful questions (another lesson she's taught previously on the three levels of questions) that would stimulate conversation and lead to writing topics. She arranged students in groups with the texts in hand, pointed each group to a Google Doc with a three-column table inserted in each with headings It Says, I Say, And So. Each group had to generate meaningful questions, pull evidence (in the form of short quotes) from the text, and then add commentary in the And So column (she's preparing to teach them next how to embed textual quotes in their own sentences). As groups worked, she projected the Docs on the LCD, switching from group to group, pointing out strong questions/evidence/commentary, and prodding students to improve their work. She questioned one group's evidence, pointing out that they had not quoted directly from the text but had paraphrased. She asked another group to elaborate on their "And So" statement, using questions to spur them to think deeper.

Why is this brilliant?
First, the students are doing what we as a faculty (and Schmoker) are trying to have our students do more of--they're reading closely (annotating, underlining, re-reading), thinking, discussing, and writing about texts. Next, they're using a graphic organizer as a strategy to harvest evidence from the text. By putting the organizer online, students can see lots of models, judging their own ideas against their peers, and Mrs. Harmon can use the organizer as formative assessment, reading--right in class--what students are writing, giving them immediate feedback and judging whether students are understanding the concept of formulating strong questions, pulling specific related evidence from the text, and adding thought-provoking commentary.

Bravo for Mrs. Harmon and for all of you who are having our kids READ CLOSELY, THINK, DISCUSS, WRITE about texts. If you have a strategy or activity you're using, I'd love to share it with everyone. We can be much more effective sharing our ideas, working as a team than being isolated in our classrooms.

Literacy PreTest Student Exemplars

Check out these student writing exemplars from the August 2011 Literacy Pre-Test (Download the show). If that file type doesn't work, you can access the PDF version (audio narration won't work in PDF).



See student exemplars from the 2011 Literacy Pre-Test.

 Students, use these examples to improve your reading, thinking, and writing skills. Teachers, let students analyze the exemplars in class to see models of different levels of thinking and to make explicit the three components of a solid inference: 1) point (inference or conclusion, 2) textual evidence, 3) explanation.

We all learn from each other, reading and noticing how others think and write.

Did you PEE in your paragraph?

Students are not likely to forget this acronym! It's a simple strategy to teach students how to structure their ideas in response to a text.

This strategy works well to address a couple Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading and Writing (I've paraphrased.):

1. Read and determine what the text says and make logical inferences; cite specific text evidence to support conclusions drawn from text.[Reading 1]
2. Draw evidence from literary and informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. [Writing 9]

PEE Strategy Resources

• Hand out for students (includes explanation of strategy, samples for literary and informational texts, rubric) 
• Graphic Organizer (Google Docs template (Give link to students: they click "use template" and type in organizer.) 
• Model Lesson using the strategy 
• Model Paragraphs
• Draw a conclusion from an infographic about STEM:  Model Paragraph

QR Quite Radical

I'm in love  with QR (Quick Response) Codes.
What's a QR Code you ask? Watch the video below:

To access codes, follow these steps:

1. Get the free ScanLife ap for your phone or snap a pic and email to SCAN@SCANLIFE.COM (They'll email you a link.)
2. If you have ap on phone, you just open ap and center QR Code on screen: it does the rest. Like magic!

Imagine how we could use QR's in the classroom! 

Watch this student-produced video: these kids share several really cool ideas.

Twitter for Educators

Watch the slideshow below to learn how to create a Twitter account and get started Tweeting at the 2011 Arkansas ASCD Conference.

Wanna Tweet?

View more presentations from Lisa Huff

Still need more help? Check out the tutorials at Twitter.