CRA Conference October 2015

Just the Facts: Close Reading and Comprehension of Informational TextsKeynote Speaker: Lori Ozckus 10/23/15

For many years, Lori has been coaching us teachers with fun ways to incorporate Reciprocal Teaching into our classrooms.  

Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity in which students become the teacher in small group reading sessions. Teachers model, then help students learn to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting.

In true Lori fashion, she helps us tackle the elephant in the room, which is, teaching children to Read Informational Texts with appropriate grade level comprehension.  This is a tough job, considering that by the fifth grade, students are now expected to read and understand informational texts and synthesize those texts which incorporate the following multiple text structures.

She points out that there are 4 text structures our students will come across when reading nonfiction texts.

1. Description, which simply means main idea, detail, detail, detail, detail…
2. Sequence, which is merely a logical sequence of facts or events developed in a linear fashion: 1-2-3-4-

   3 and 4.  Problem/Solution and Cause and Effect which have the same visual       structure:

          -

           -

She continues the presentation with some new strategies that she finds successful in for us to take away and use in the classroom. 

She calls this the Reading Vitamin:

Pillowcase lesson-bring a pillowcase full of NF text examples from home to show your students how NF texts are a big part of our lives.

Gavel and 2 fingers-I think because...putting their gavel down with their fingers pointing to their text evidence.

Flip it-Take a sentence in a passage and turn it into a question.

Karate Chop-Pause on difficult words, rewind, clarify.

10 Finger Summary

Sticky Notes

Finger Scan

Grab a Word

Summarize in Teams

Key Word Dance

Lastly, she reminds us of Marzano’s research which says that nonlinguistic representations are powerful to use with our students.  Any time you can act out or have a gesture which represents a skill, our students have a greater chance of remembering it as well as applying it to their group discussions.

~Melissa West
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