Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli also
posts a weekly journal entry from her reading/writing classroom.
This year, Juli will focus on her efforts to integrate subject
matter into her reading and writing workshop approach. In her
first journal of the year, she explains
the rationale behind this move and some of her thinking about
how she hopes to accomplish this goal.
Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here. Links to many of the tools created
by Juli and her colleagues are embedded in these journals. Most
often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin to download.
You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
"Let's get this party started!" Gary exclaims, as
he sits down to research information about dolphins on the Internet.
Something about integrating projects with technology really gets
kids excited about learning.
Gary is one of those kids who never sits still. He's always moving
and singing. He hears music in his head, and he pounds out the
beat as he works. Engaging him is a snap with the Internet. It's
the technology that draws him into the learning.
As we study how to determine importance in text, we're focusing
on locating specific information in informational text and on
the Internet. First, I'm teaching the task. We work together on
the same topic with the same reference materials to learn how
to develop questions and determine importance in text. This will
get us ready for our ultimate goal -- individual research projects.
According to Debbie Miller in Reading With Meaning, locating
specific information is a key skill for determining importance
in text. On page 155, she writes:
Readers use their knowledge of important and relevant parts of text to answer questions and synthesize text for themselves and others.
So off we go. After reading two books about dolphins and doing
the webquest, "Dolphin Safe Tuna," as a whole class
(see Journal # 9), I ask the kids
to write down several questions they now have about dolphins.
One thing I've learned is that in order to create questions about
a topic, kids need to have some prior knowledge. So, I built prior
knowledge before asking questions. When I look at their questions,
I find that, this time, they are able to ask questions with two
parts as well as concept-oriented questions. Here is a sample:
Why do they make tuna out of dolphins?
Why do they catch tuna and they know that they are catching dolphins? Why don't they put the dolphins back?
How do dolphins protect their selfs from sharks?
How do dolphins breathe and eat?
How could they find their food?
How do they find the food? What do dolphins eat?
What do dolphins eat?
What is their prey?
How could they know they are not in danger?
How do they know if they are in danger?
Why do dolphins run away from sharks?
What do dolphins use to protect themselves?
How old do they get until they die?
*How old could they live to? Could they live as old as humans?
How long do dolphins live up to?
How old can dolphins be?
How old is a dolphin?
How old can dolphins live till they die?
How old do they get when they die?
Can you have a dolphin for a pet?
Who is the leader of the dolphins?
What are river dolphins and marine dolphins different?
Why do dolphins go outside the water to spyhop?
What types of senses does a dolphin have? Is echolocation a sense?
Why does a dolphin have to use echolocation?
How do they locate with echolocation?
How do dolphins communicate with other dolphins?
How could they breathe in the water?
Why does the water come out of the blowhole?
Do dolphins sing?
Next we classify our questions, dividing them into categories
like "life expectancy," "feeding habits,"
and "dolphins in danger." It's interesting to the kids
that some of the questions ask for the same information.
I randomly hand out 6 or 7 questions to each student and let them
pick 1 or 2 they want to answer. Then everyone heads off to locate
the specific information they need. Some go straight for the books
while others search diligently on the Internet. All this commotion
is about determining what is important for us to know as we search
for answers to our questions.
In the end, some of us find answers and some of us don't. That's
the way it is in real life, and the kids seem to accept it for
what it is -- a chance to really experience what it's like to
search for information.
As for Gary, he's still out on the Internet busily researching
his question, "How do dolphins know when it's time to go
home?" This one may take a while.
SEE Juli's Curriculum Map for Content Literacy - Unit Two
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Writing/Reading Workshop Index
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