The Core Six Essential Strategies for Achieving Success with the Common Team Building Activity-Part One

This will be a six part series discussing each of the six strategies discussed in the book.  I will also post my lessons using these strategies as I create them.  I hope to update the posts once I actually teach the lessons after school resumes.  

This past school year our Literacy Team began looking at ways to improve writing instruction in our K-5 elementary school.  Our principal gave us several excerpts from Core Six Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core by Harvey F. Silver, R. Thomas Dewing, and Mathhew J. Perini.  After reading just the section on writing, I knew I had to read more.  I’ll define each strategy, provide the reasons the authors state for using this strategy, steps for implementing, and then how to use the strategy with written arguments.  There is so much great information that I can’t possibly include it all in a single post.  I highly recommend this book so you can learn the strategies in greater detail and how they match up each of the strategies with the Common Core standards.  In addition, at the end of each chapter are sample lessons.

Reading for Meaning

• Previewing and predicting before reading
• Actively searching for relevant information during reading
• Reflecting on learning after learning

How does Reading for Meaning address the Common Core?

• Text complexity
• Evidence
• The core skills of reading

“Because Reading for Meaning uses teacher-created statements to guide students’ reading, teachers can easily craft statements to address any of the Common Core’s standards for reading.”–Harvey F. Silver, R. Thomas Dewing, and Mathhew J. Perini

Seven Steps  for implementing Reading for Meaning in the classroom.

1. Identify a short text that you want students to “read for meaning.’
2. Generate a list of statements about the text.
3. Introduce the topic of the text and have students preview the statements before they begin reading.
4. Have students record evidence for and against each statement while (or after) they read.
5. Have students discuss their evidence in pairs or small groups.
6. Conduct a whole-class discussion in which students share and justify their positions.
7. Use students’ responses to evaluate their understanding.

One of the steps I’ve been thinking of incorporating more is step six.  I love to have my students participate in discussions where they must justify their response.  They did a pretty good job last year, but I want to go deeper.  I am thinking about using the Socratic Seminar method.  I was just introduced to it at my district’s Leadership Summit.  Click here to access my Pinterest board where I’ve begun gathering resources.

As with any strategy that you try, there are quite a few things to consider.  The authors provide several considerations in the book, but I picked out a few that hit home with me.

Planning Considerations

• What standards do I really need to address?
• What kind of hook will I use to grab their attention or capture interest?
• What article, document, or passage needs emphasis and intensive analysis?
• What questions can I develop to engage my students in a discussion throughout and after the lesson?

For those of you familiar with Dave Burgess and his book Teach Like a PIRATE, his strategies for hooking students into a lesson would fit perfectly when planning your lessons.  Beyond the textbook, or even novel, there are other texts readily available for your students to use for Reading for Meaning.  Some of my favorites are ReadWorks, DOGONews, DOCS TEACH, and  newsela.  Just click on those for some free texts to use with your students.

The final section of the chapter is a writing extension using written arguments.  Use a statement either from a “completed Reading for Meaning lesson or you can always introduce a new one.”  The authors stress that that “either way, the statement should sit at the center of the content, tie back to your instructional objectives, and require students to draw heavily on the text to make their case.”  This would definitely increase the amount of meaningful and relevant writing for my students.  Also, it would provide them with experiences in coming to a discussion prepared.

Almost anything can be “Read for Meaning.–Harvey F. Silver, R. Thomas Dewing, and Mathhew J. Perini

I’ll be working on lessons using the Core Six Essential Strategies and will create a separate page and update the post in order to share these lessons. I hope you’ve found this post helpful.  Again, I recommend this book to any teacher trying to meet the Common Core Standards in a deeper, more meaningful, and accessible way.

The next post in the series is on Compare and Contrast.  I thought I knew this strategy until reading the chapter.  It was not what I expected, but turned out to be one of my ah-ha moments.