Thinking and Discussing at Higher Levels in the Literacy Block

Thinking and Discussing

at Higher Levels

in the Literacy Block

Jennifer Jones Lake Myra Elementary

WCPSS March 2012

Why Higher Level Thinking?

Research Based Professional Text

Guided Reading

"The ultimate goal of guided reading is to help children learn how to use independent reading strategies successfully."

-Fountas and Pinnell

Purpose of Reading Print Reading Story

Read & Understand

Comparison of Guided Reading Models

What stands out to you?

Read Silently.

Discuss together.

Share out.

Setting the Stage for Thinking Deeply & Critically

“…a young string musician playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with excellent

posture, bowing, dynamics and so forth with eventually surpass a student of music who is focusing on stretching to meet the short-term demands of getting through a challenging piece. The student working on

process and simple music develops a feel for the whole, integrated effort, and this process becomes automated.” (PMR, p.33)

“It is not uncommon for students reading

successfully within “just difficult-enough

texts”(Clay 1993 p. 53) to make leaps of

multiple levels between benchmark

assessments.” -Preventing Misguided Reading p. 39

Strategy #2 Describe Guided Reading as a Session Rather than a Lesson

• Teacher support enables students to

problem-solve, connect and discover

• Session is conversational in format

• Students read a lot

Thinking Deeply About Story: Even for Our Emerging Readers

“Our exercises in comprehension tend to be limited (e.g.,

who are the characters in the story?), which may actually

develop readers who attend to story superficially.”…”So, our

challenge becomes teaching beginning readers to decode

while teaching them comprehend rather than inadvertently

teaching them to decode instead of teaching them to

comprehend” (Preventing Misguided Reading, p. 72).

Strategy #15 Engage All Students, Regardless of Instructional Reading

Level, in Thinking Deeply About Story

•Beyond a series of questions

•Beyond “Today I want you to make

a prediction.”

•Beyond story retelling

•Beyond details of the reading

process but active in all of it

•Meaning at the text level

The Language of Teaching Comprehension Instruction Deeply

Little Questions Big Questions

What houses did

each pig build?

How are the pigs’

houses different?

Why did the writer

have the third pig

build the brick house

instead of the second

pig?

What did the wolf say

before he blew down

the houses?

Why did the wolf say

the same thing at

each house?

What happens at the

beginning, middle

and end of the story?

What did the pigs

learn from their

experience?

A Conversational Stance

“Conversations about inferences students

must make to understand the text deeply

push students to approach the work

actively, giving them a purpose for their

reading that prompts integration of

information. This active stance supports

students as they think about the text in

sophisticated ways and begin practicing

the thinking work we want them to

habituate and carry into the rest of their

lives”. (Preventing Misguided Reading, p.76)

A Where is Your Level of Thinking?

Lower vs. Higher Level Thinking

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

Critical Thinking Rubric

The Magic Word

…followed by our opinion, it tells others the rationale for our thinking.

Thank You!

Jennifer Jones jjones2@wcpss.net

Helloliteracy.blogspot.com