Lesson 2: CCSS
Holly Farnsworth, Shadle Park High School
Introducing Levels of Questions/Annotations: Not only do students need to be convinced of the value of annotating, but they also need guidance in what and how to annotate. To help students maintain consistent focus, we use WHAT, HOW and WHY to guide our work.
ii.When told to annotate the text, 100% of students did at least some annotating.
iii.Student comments reveal that annotating “is just busy working” and “breaks the flow of the reading.”
Holly Farnsworth, Shadle Park High School
Introducing Levels of Questions/Annotations: Not only do students need to be convinced of the value of annotating, but they also need guidance in what and how to annotate. To help students maintain consistent focus, we use WHAT, HOW and WHY to guide our work.
- Levels of Questions: Have students practice both writing and responding to the 3 levels of questions to understand each level and the type of thinking involved, as we want them, as readers, working at each of these levels.
- Levels of Annotations: Using their understanding of the levels of questions, students will annotate with 3 levels. Each level is explain and modeled, as well as a rubric provided to help students evaluate their own performance.
- Purpose of Annotating: Each level of annotation contributes to a different purpose, so once students understand and can use the 3 levels, we focus on the purpose they have for reading the text, or what they are going to do with the text, to inform what and how to annotate. Level 1 ensures comprehension; Level 2 serves analysis well; Level 3 helps broaden our understanding of the world, making thematic connections across texts. Students should consider purpose and end goals before they launch into reading/annotating.
- My experience:
- Students practiced the 3 levels of questions/annotations during their summer assignment. Their work revealed a heavy reliance on the literal level as well as personal text-to-self connections. Therefore, my intervention focused heavily on Level 2 Interpretive questions to focus more on author’s craft and analysis as well as discussions about broader connections to be made from this text to real world issues to improve their understanding of the purpose of Level 3 questions/annotations.
- I had students write a rhetorical analysis essay before the intervention, using just their own understanding/annotations from the summer work, and then do a second rhetorical analysis essay on that same book after the intervention with focus on Level 2 and Level 3.
- I hoped to see students applying this knowledge to other readings, so I used AP multiple choice packet readings/questions for further data collection.
ii.When told to annotate the text, 100% of students did at least some annotating.
iii.Student comments reveal that annotating “is just busy working” and “breaks the flow of the reading.”
- With guided focus, student analysis/understanding of text improves (as evidenced by improved essay scores); however, this does not necessarily aid them in independent use of the skill. Students are compliant and will “annotate” when assigned to do so, but don’t necessarily see value or purpose to annotating and therefore it is not actually a tool to their learning which led to investigating growth mindset.