Ideas for Educators
  • Home
  • Idea Blog
  • Bring Anne to Your Site
  • Books & Videos
  • Free Resources

Developing Student Reasoning Skills to Choose Text Evidence

11/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Like teachers everywhere, my co-teachers and I have been working on trying to develop students’ ability to find text evidence that supports a claim. The more we work with this, the more we recognize that there are some underlying reasoning and thinking skills that are missing. 
​
Thinking at Every Desk by Derek Cabrera and Laura Colosi is an excellent, quick read that explains the four basic thinking skills that students need – Distinctions, Relationships, Systems and Patterns. The authors use the Yin Yang symbol to capture the interrelatedness of these four categories. 
Picture
Today’s lesson plan focused on Making Distinctions. I created Distinction Pockets for students so that they could practice sorting a variety of items, discussing their reasoning.
How to:
  1. Buy heavy duty page protectors and cut off top third. 
  2. Draw a line down the center with a permanent marker. Mark one side “not.”
  3. If desired, print sticky labels of the YinYang symbol and stick this in the middle (see photo.)
  4. Provide students with a variety of items to sort by making distinctions. As you can see from the full lesson plan, we began with pictures, then moved to words, then to text evidence strips. Each time, have students use a dry erase marker to write on the left side of the pocket whatever the distinction or characteristic is that they will sort by. 
  5. Circulate in the room to monitor what students are placing in each pocket. Because the pockets are see through, the learning is very visible.​
  6. Students can store their pockets in a three-ring binder to use in future lessons. 
Picture
Picture
You will see from the lesson plan, that we also added a challenge component. After explaining what the YinYang symbol represented, we gave a few students the challenge of developing an alternate symbol. In this photo, Ethan created some word art that represents the whole, with the parts as being distinct (I was so impressed with his thinking that I chose to ignore the fact that he left out a letter.) 
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Anne M. Beninghof

    Anne's mission is to improve instruction through collaboration and the sharing of creative, practical ideas for educators.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    October 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    Accessibility
    Accommodation
    Acquisition
    Activator
    Attention
    Automaticity
    Collaboration
    Connections
    Cooperative
    Co Teaching
    Co-teaching
    Differentiation
    Engagement
    Higher Order Thinking
    Inclusion
    Literacy
    Math
    Memory
    Metaphor
    Movement
    Multi Sensory
    Multi Sensory
    Multi-sensory
    Novelty
    Organization
    Planning
    Questioning
    Reflection
    Review
    Special Education
    Special Education
    Summarization
    Technology
    Visual Supports
    Visual Supports
    Vocabulary

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.