Strategies that Work Non-fiction strategies

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Strategies that WorkNon-fiction strategies
Workshop 8
Debbie Draper, Julie Fullgrabe Sue Eden
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Overview of session

• Engaging with the concepts and activities to do
  with
• Determining importance in texts
• Summarising
• Synthesising

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Determining importance and summarising-not
really very different at all

• But synthesising is.

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Some important reminders

• Much of what adults read are non-fiction texts so
  students need to be taught strategies to use them
  just as much as fiction
• The internet provides mammoth amounts of
  non-fiction reading to all users.
• How do we find what we are looking for and what
  is important?

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Real life not determining importance

• Have you ever been with someone who has
• Given you a blow- by blow version of the dinner
  they ate last night?
• The never ending holiday snaps?
• What happened on the way home from work?
• HORROR!
• What can you do to help that person (or yourself?)

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• Readers of nonfiction have to decide and remember
  what is important in the texts they read if they
  are going to learn anything from them.
• Harvey Goudvis

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What evidence to look for when teaching
determining importance- outcomes

• Students gain importance from text and visual
  features
• Students sift and sort the important information
  from the details and merge their thinking with it
• Students learn to make a distinction between what
  they think is most important and what the author
  wants them to take away from the reading
• Students use text evidence to form opinions and
  understand big ideas and issues.
• Harvey and Goudvis 2007

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And evidence for summarising and synthesis

• Students summarise information by retelling
• Students become aware of when they add knowledge
  to their knowledge base and revise their thinking
  as they read
• Students synthesise information through writing

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On-line determining importance

• Do your students know how and where to look for
  online information?
• And do they know how to sift through the
  information for what they are really looking for?

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The New Literacies Of Online Reading
Comprehension

• Read to identify important questions
• Read to locate information
• Read to critically evaluate the usefulness of
  that information
• Read to synthesize information to answer those
  questions and
• Read to communicate the answers to others.
• (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Cammack, 2004, p. 1570)

The new literacies of online reading comprehension
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An example of the reading process
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Unrefined search- what do they want to know?
Using the ideas of the previous slide to
demonstrate how a student may look for
information for research
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Sponsored links
Blog about book
wikipedia
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Government websites
ALP website
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Interesting distraction- her website has been
modelled on the US president. Can be found at
pm.gov.au
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Finally found some biographical information
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Discuss

• What are the online searching techniques of
• You
• Your students
• Any one else of interest

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Reading online is dynamic interplay between
reading comprehension and information literacy
strategies

• Skim
• Snatch and grab
• Use prior knowledge of content and medium
• Summarize
• question

• Infer
• Hypothesize
• Identify purpose
• Analyse point of vire
• Gather and organise data
• Assess accuracy

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What Will Be Required?

• A focus on higher-order thinking skills
• Increase in problem-based learning experiences
• Higher expectations
• Integration of online reading comprehension
  throughout the entire curriculum
• New assessments
• Large investments in professional development
  teachers and school leaders.
• Changes in teacher education.
• Donald J. Leu

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Read The House

•   Step one
• Record what you feel is important about the
  text on a sheet of paper. 
• Step 2.
• Take a perspective of either the boys, a real
  estate agent or a burglar.
• Highlight what would be important to that
  character in the text. 
• Step 3
• Compare the two readings with another participant
  and discuss how setting the purpose made a
  difference to what they determined was important.

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Decisions about importance are based on

• The readers purpose
• The readers schema for the text content - ideas
  most closely connected to the readers prior
  knowledge will be considered most important
• The readers sense of the aesthetic - what he or
  she values or considers worthy or beautiful

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When highlighting goes bad.

• You were asked to highlight the most important
  parts of the material.
• How many of you highlighted almost the entire
  page in your distant past?

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A bout of Mad Highlighting Disease (Harvey and
Goudvis 2007)
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When students highlight or mark text in
nonfiction materials, they should keep the
following guidelines in mind

• Look carefully at the first and last line in each
  paragraph.
• Highlight only necessary words and phrases.
• Dont get thrown off by interesting details.
• Try not to highlight more than half of a
  paragraph.

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• Make notes in the margins.
• Cue words will be followed by important
  information.
• Nonfiction has many features that signal
  important information.
• Pay attention to surprising information. You
  may be learning something new.

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Practice determining importance

• Read the article with a highlighter keeping in
  mind the checklist provided.
• Share your highlighting with another person and
  compare what was important to each reader

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Leaving students to it in non-fiction reading
is dangerous

• Why?

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Introducing summarising with the Canadian
Literacy Secretariat
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Teacher Modelling
Teachers should model thinking aloud about their
own process of determining importance during
reading.
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V.I.P. (Very Important Points)

• Students cut sticky notes so there are slim
  strips of paper extending out from the sticky
  edge.
• As students read, they tear off pieces to mark
  points in text they feel are significant.
• After reading, students compare the points they
  marked. They must justify their answers. I chose
  to mark this point because

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Coding

• I Important
• L Learned something new
• Interesting/important
• Aha! Big idea surfaces
• S Surprising
• S!!! Shocking
• !!! - Exciting

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Anticipation Guides

1. Prepare a list of true / false statements about a
   subject that is about to be read.
2. Have the students make a true or false prediction
   about the statements BEFORE reading.
3. Have the students read the article or text.
4. Tell the students to answer the same set of true
   / false questions as they can now verify their
   answers from the reading.

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Using newspaper articles to determine importance

• Discuss with students
• the titles,
• bold headings,
• pictures,
• charts,
• timelines, and other text features that hint at
  what might be important information.

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Scanning grid with newspaper article
What else can you use articles for?
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(No Transcript)
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This works well from a diagram also
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Word counts

• Many of the suggested activities for summarising
  work on word counts, so students are obliged to
  keep extra words out.

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One word summary

• Summarizing a topic into just one word can be a
  daunting task for students. 
• When students are asked to develop a one-word
  summary, they must apply their critical thinking
  skills to investigate, read about, and analyze
  the topic. 
• After they have chosen their word, students must
  be able to defend their word choice with a valid
  reason. 
• It is not their choice of the one word that
  makes this a powerful strategy, but the
  development of the rationale for defending that
  choice.
• This strategy can be used as a classroom
  assessment for learning as students evaluate
  their own justification for word choice. 
  Teachers can quickly tell who has mastered the
  learning target.
•  

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(No Transcript)
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Activities to try with non-fiction big books
Choose one or more of the following activities to
try with the non-fiction text you have brought
along.
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Determining importance Activity one- questions
and answers

• Develop questions that you think are important to
  ask about the text
• Seek to answer them and determine whether they
  were in fact important

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Determining importance activity 2Cross out
strategy

• Read text with class, cross out words that are
  not important ,
• Leave in nouns, proper nouns and verbs
• Use the remaining words to compile a summary of
  the text
• Try this with nonfiction big book you have
  brought- cut up sticky labels or pencil for today?

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Activity 3 summarisingGetting the Gist

• The group will write a summary in 20 words.
• Explanation The GIST of something is the main
  idea. Sometimes we dont need to
• remember all the details but read just to get the
  GIST of the material.
• Procedure
• Draw 20 word sized blanks
• After reading a short section of text (one-two
  paragraphs), the students will assist the
  teacher in writing a 20 word summary to give the
  gist of what they read.
• Now, read an additional section of text (one-two
  paragraphs). Information from both sections must
  be incorporated into a new 20 word summary.
• It is possible to read a third section and
  condense the summary one more time.
• Take from pp 130-131, Developing Readers and
  Writers in the Content Areas k-12, Third
• Edition, (Moore, Moore, Cunningham, and
  Cunningham, 1998)
• A summarization

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Activity 4- Summarising use THIEVES with whole
non-fiction text to summarise all ideas
T H I E V E S
Title heading introduction Every first sentence in paragraph Visuals and vocab End of chapter questions summary
Summarising acronymn- THIEVES, useful for text
books
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Activity 5 determining importancePredict and scan

• Before reading a non-fiction text identify
• 6 verbs
• 6 nouns
• 6 adjectives
• That may be in the text
• Determine those words importance and then seek
  them out.
• If not there, discuss importance of those words

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Reader of the Rocks article

• http//beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/
• Online magazine website that combines science and
  literacy
• Contains pdf booklets and articles to do
  activities about.
• Determining importance article and guide
• Variety of activities- interesting vs importance
• Try one of their suggested activities

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Feedback on activities
Have a break

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Synthesising
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Original Terms New Terms

• Evaluation
• Synthesis
• Analysis
• Application
• Comprehension
• Knowledge

• Creating
• Evaluating
• Analysing
• Applying
• Understanding
• Remembering

(Based on Pohl, 2000, Learning to Think, Thinking
to Learn, p. 8)
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BLOOMS REVISED TAXONOMYCreatingGenerating new
ideas, products, or ways of viewing
thingsDesigning, constructing, planning,
producing, inventing. EvaluatingJustifying a
decision or course of actionChecking,
hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting,
judging  AnalysingBreaking information into
parts to explore understandings and
relationshipsComparing, organising,
deconstructing, interrogating, finding Applying
Using information in another familiar
situationImplementing, carrying out, using,
executing UnderstandingExplaining ideas or
conceptsInterpreting, summarising, paraphrasing,
classifying, explaining RememberingRecalling
informationRecognising, listing, describing,
retrieving, naming, finding 
Higher-order thinking
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What is the difference between summarising and
synthesising?

• Synthesis
• An advanced reading technique.
• Pulls together information not only to highlight
  the important points, but also to draw your own
  conclusions.
• Combines and contrasts information from different
  sources.
• Not only reflects your knowledge about what the
  original authors wrote, but also creates
  something new out of two or more pieces of
  writing.
• Combines parts and elements from a variety of
  sources into one unified entity.
• Focuses on both main ideas and details.
• Achieves new insight.

• Summary
• A basic reading technique.
• Pulls together information in order to highlight
  the important points.
• Re-iterates the information.
• Shows what the original authors wrote.
• Addresses one set of information (e.g. article,
  chapter, document) at a time. Each source remains
  distinct.
• Presents a cursory overview.
• Demonstrates an understanding of the overall
  meaning.

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So to summarise.

• Synthesising
• assimilating all the information in order to
  create one cohesive document that demonstrates
  your understanding of the concept

• Summarising
• re stating what the
• author is saying

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A joke to share and demonstrate differences
(amusing to 8 year olds)

• There once was a possum who went into an ice
  cream shop and asked the shop assistant, "Do you
  have walnuts?"
• "No . Sorry. We're out of walnuts today."
• The possum went away, but came back an hour later
  and said, "Have you got any walnuts?"
• The shop assistant looked at the possum angrily.
  "I told you. We don't have any walnuts now get
  out of here."
• The possum went out the door, but in an hour came
  back again. "Have you got any walnuts?" he asked
  the shop assistant.
• "I told you we don't have any walnuts. Listen
  here. If you come back here one more time I'm
  going to glue your tail to the floor. Now, get
  out! "
• The possum went out again but, sure enough, an
  hour later he was back. "Have you got any glue?"
  he asked.
• The shop assistant look surprised. "No. I don't
  have any glue."
• "Great!" the possum said. "Have you got any
  walnuts?"

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differences
Summarising Reducing ideas to main points only,
no interpretation
Retelling Repeating joke to another, Possibly
slight changes
conclusions
Generalise
Synthesising combine the ideas gained by reading
with own knowledge, and create new ideas,
perspectives or opinions, and a personal
understanding of the text.
opinion
patterns
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• Synthesizing is a reader's final destination. On
  their journey, readers pass familiar places, and
  as they travel on uncharted roads, they get new
  perspectives, create a new line of thinking,
  discover original ideas, and achieve insight. As
  they reach the end of their journey, they realize
  that their new strategy for learning and thinking
  will take them all the places they could ever
  want to go.

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Suggested ideas to use for synthesis
CreatingGenerating new ideas, products, or ways
of viewing thingsDesigning, constructing,
planning, producing, inventing. HIGHER ORDER
THINKING SKILLS 

• How can the information from this selection be
  presented visually?
• Which graphic organizer would you use to present
  the information in this selection?
• What parts of this text can you use to create new
  ideas or products?
• How would an artist illustrate the details from
  this selection?
• How can you use the facts youve learned to write
  a persuasive letter?
• How would you use the facts in this selection to
  write a readers theater script?
• How would you use the facts in a dramatic
  presentation?

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Synthesising ideas using texts
Facts found in text
Thoughts, questions about the text
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To finish

• Synthesising is the culmination of all the
  reading strategies we have learnt about.
• It is interpretation, adding what we know to
  content and then creating

In other words- what YOU do each time you come
to one of the sessions and share what you have
learnt with your site.