All-Learner Curriculum for Reading Documents

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All-Learner Curriculum for Reading Documents
Mark Newman, Xiuwen Wu, Costas Spirou,
National-Louis University
Meeting the needs of all learners is a growing
concern in education. While many strategies
exist, most highlight the use of visuals as
learning resources. While the Teaching with
Primary Sources (TPS) project focuses on using
primary sources as texts to improve student
content mastery and skills, it stresses visual
images. It also emphasizes employing graphic
organizers as instructional aids. The TPS
All-Learner curriculum combines ideas from
primary-source-based instruction, visual
literacy, and universal design for learning. The
goal is provide teachers with easy to implement
strategies that will help improve the document
reading skills of all students, including second
language learners and those with special
needs. The curriculum focuses on reading a
document and has three stages as shown in the
chart to the right. While the chart divides
identifying important information and making
inferences into two distinct steps, the activity
and graphic organizer combine these two stages.
Teachers have the option of dividing or
combining. Either way, students can improve
content learning while building important
literacy skills.
All-Learner Curriculum
Identifying Important Information Guided by
questions, students identify and highlight
important information in the document and on a
graphic organizer
Making Inferences Guided by questions and
information identified in the document, students
make inferences
Summarizing Learning Guided by questions as well
as information and inferences identified in the
document, students summarize what was learned
from the document relating that learning to the
topic of study
The All-Learner curriculum has been created as a
PowerPoint file so that teachers can customize
the materials to meet the individual needs of
their students. We recommended that teachers
model and scaffold learning based on student
proficiency.
For more information, contact Mark
Newman mnewman_at_nl.edu Xiuwen
Wu xwu_at_nl.edu Costas Spirou cspirou_at_nl.edu
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Reading a Document Identifying important
information

• Introduction
• The first step in using a primary source document
  to increase content knowledge and literacy skills
  involves reading to identify pertinent
  information. This exercises focuses on having
  identify pertinent context and content
  information in the text of a document and demark
  that information by various means on the document
  itself.
• An important note is that this process focuses
  solely on identifying information. It does
  include general reading strategies and has been
  developed for use with those strategies as
  needed.
• Generally documents have two type of information
  students need to identify
• 1. Context title, creator, place of creation,
  date of creation.
• In some instances, the context information will
  be incomplete. The teacher can decide whether the
  missing information is needed or not, providing
  it to students or having them conduct research to
  find it. Often, missing information is just
  that, missing and cannot be found.
• 2. Content important items relevant to the topic
  of study.
• Reading to identify content information requires
  guidance so students know what to look for in the
  document. Having students answers pertinent
  questions about the document and the topic of
  study facilitates the identification process.
  Typically, the questions cover the relevant four
  Ws and 1 H who, what, when, where, and how.
  In some cases, not all these questions are asked.
  For some exercises, the why is also asked, but
  that question is not included here and can be
  added by the teacher as needed. To help all
  students in their reading, a series of icons
  are provided that students can use to demark
  information that answers the questions as
  follows
• Who
• What
• When
• Where

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Reading a Document Identifying important
information

• Introduction
• Using the questions below, identify how the song
  on the accompanying page describes the first
  Battle of Bull Run. For the context questions,
  write your answers on the spaces provide. For the
  content questions, use the iconsprovided to
  highlight your answers on the song sheet itself.
• Context
• What is the name of the song? The Retreat of the
  Grand Army from Bull Run
• 2. Who is the composer? Ernest Clifton
• 3. Where was it published? Baltimore, Maryland
• Content
• On the song sheet, highlight all the information
  that answers each of the following question,
  using the icons provided. In some cases, the
  information is in more than one place on the song
  sheet.
• 1. Who was involved?
• Identify all the people involved by drawing a
  circle around their names on the song sheet. If
  their names appear more than once, just circle
  the name the first time it appears.
• 2. What happened?
• Identify what the people involved were trying
  to do at the battle and what happened at the
  battle, by drawing a rectangle around the
  appropriate lines of the song.

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Reading a Document Organizing information
Old Lincolns Grand Army Abe Lincoln McDowell The
Bull
They all ran away
The Retreat of the Grand Army from Bull Run
Ernest Clifton
Baltimore, Maryland
Unknown
Manassas, Virginia
Sunday
Lincoln blamed McDowell, Lincoln superseded
McDowell McClellan new leader Grand army in bad
state
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Reading a Document Organizing important
information and making inferences

• Introduction
• Depending upon student ability, it is possible to
  connect the organization of information and the
  making of inferences tasks.
• Making Inferences is an important step in reading
  a document. An inference is a conclusion that
  students reach based on information obtained from
  the document and their own reasoning. The task
  involves students using the information they
  identified and organized from the document as
  well prior knowledge to state what they think
  about the documents content.
• The organizer on the following page has students
  perform several tasks
• They organize the context of the document
  including the title, creator, date of creation,
  and place of creation.
• They organize the information identified from
  reading the document by writing their answers to
  teach question in the appropriate place.
• They make an inference about the answer to that
  question.
• Setting up the making inference exercise
• Make sure the students know what an inference is
  and how the process of making one works. The
  teacher might stress the need to base an
  inference on information form the document, prior
  knowledge, and their own thoughts. An inference
  is not just opinion, but informed opinion.
• Instructions
• These instructions refer to students completing
  the Organizing important information and making
  inferences graphic organizer on the following
  page
• 1. On the lines below What does the document
  say?, copy the information highlighted on the
• document to answer each question.
• 3. On the lines below What do you think?, make
  an inference regarding who was involved, what
• happened, and the effect of the outcome on those
  involved.

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Reading a Document Organizing important
information and making inferences
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Reading a Document Summarizing what was learned
Instructions Referring to the Organizing
important information and making inferences
graphic organizer, write a summary of what you
learned from the document about the topic you are
studying.
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Organizing important information and making
inferences graphic organizer template
Where did it happen?
When did it happen?
Who was involved?
What does the document say?
What do you think?
What happened?
What does the document say?
What do you think?
How did the outcome affect those involved?
What does the document say?
What do you think?