LONG TERM GOALS
- When reading nonfiction, readers deliberately draft a learning plan to scaffold background understanding.
- Readers persevere with challenging reading material through flexible thinking and researching a topic from various sources that they determine to be reliable and valid.
- Readers note, reread, and analyze nonfiction based on its structure because structure connects to the author's purpose for the text.
- Readers synthesize their new learning across multiple sources to develop deeper understandings about a chosen topic.
BIG IDEAS Students will understand . . .
- that readers of nonfiction build their background understanding on a chosen topic by choosing to read easier books first before progressing to texts that are harder to comprehend.
- certain parts of nonfiction texts are more important that others.
- complex nonfiction gets challenging when it comes to the main idea which is often implicit as opposed to directly stated.
- texts are built following a particular structure --from sentence level to the structure of the entire piece-- and that those decisions about structure are deliberately made by the author to convey ideas to the reader.
- readers often write to help make sense of what is being read.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS - Students will keep considering . . .
- How can readers accumulate knowledge on a topic by synthesizing information from multiple nonfiction texts?
- How can readers apply knowledge from nonfiction reading to inquiry projects?
Students will know . . .
- how to locate information from multiple print and/or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or solve a problem efficiently.
- select how to identify and use text structures to navigate through nonfiction text.
- employ knowledge of text structures to enhance comprehension.
- synthesize background knowledge of nonfiction topics.
- develop researchable questions.
- report on a topic, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant descriptive details to support the main idea.
- sift through nonfiction texts focusing on the most important ideas.
- use writing to help deepen understanding of what is being read (as opposed to listing "cool" facts).
Students will be able to . . .
Sessions 1-9: Readers utilize a variety of strategies to understand increasingly complex, and challenging texts.
- orient themeselves to complex nonfiction to form initial ideas, and be prepared to revise these initial ideas as they read on.
- identify multiple main ideas that are now more often than not implicit in the text.
- apply a variety of vocabulary solving strategies including looking around the word, and looking within the word to determine the meaning of unfamiliar, technical words.
- consider the structure of of an overall text, the shifting structures within parts of the text, and the structures of sentences as they make meaning in challenging texts.
- notice when comprehension breaks down and rely upon a toolkit of strategies to help themselves.
- lift the level of their summaries incorporating mulitple main ideas, how these ideas relate to each other, and the most supportive key details.
Sessions 10-19: Readers will apply and further develop their growing repertoire of nonfiction reading skills in Inquiry Projects.
- conduct primary research projects using a variety of sources.
- discover patterns and main ideas that are significant to their topics.
- carry what they have learned about a topic as they read across sources.
- synthesize across subtopics and explain how one part or parts are important to the whole text or to the topic.
- write in ways that help them understand what they are learning.
- write about reading in ways that seemlessly shift from writing about specifics to writing about big ideas, themes.
- question the text in critical ways.
- synthesize information across texts while comparing and contrasting both the content and the presentation of the content.
- pay attention to the author's perspective, and how, if at all, the author is trying to sway the reader.
- consider the trustworthiness of sources.
- change the way they think, and feel about their research topic.
LEARNING OUTCOMES Students will be able to . . . Students will be skilled at . . .
- approach nonfiction texts with their knowledge of genre in mind.
- orient themselves to nonfiction texts by having an initial idea and revising that idea as they encounter new information while reading.
- determine how complex nonfiction gets challenging when it comes to determining main idea.
- use strategies to identify implicit main ideas.
- use context to determine the meaning of vocabulary in complex texts.
- use word morphology to tackle tricky vocabulary.
- study and consider the structure of a text at many levels.
- monitor their own comprehension, using a toolkit of strategies when comprehension breaks down to get themselves unstuck.
- summarize complex texts, drawing on previous learning about main idea to lift the level of their summaries.
- learn from a variety of sources using reading skills to make meaning.
- conduct primary research to learn as much as they can about their topic.
- approach texts differently after having done some primary research on a topic.
- ask questions at different levels- from basic to those requiring in-depth exploration.
- synthesize information across subtopics, both within a single texts and across texts.
- write about reading moving back and forth from specific details to big ideas.
- pay attention to how authors portray topics in similar and different ways then compare and contrast those ideas.
- pay attention to an author's perspective.
- allow research they've done to change their thinking/feelings about a topic.