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>>teacher: This is going to be our starter for this week.
it's called What's in a Name by Anna Anderson.
I wanted to introduce a-
I wanted to get more comfortable and familiar with Common Core.
Depth of knowledge um is an important tool, an important piece of Common Core,
text dependent questions,
um annotating, and close reading.
I tried to figure out a way to put those pieces all together. So the first
day they'll read for comprehension and then do a-start doing a second reading
where they'll-they're annotating and-and just underlining and circling.
What do we circle? William?
>>William: We circle key um, key-uh words that we don't know.
>>teacher: Words or phrases that we don't know.
Only two annotation symbols in today's close reading.
What I always try to do before we uh move on from the starter into
maybe what we're-we're the bulk of our lesson that day, um
I like to have them um, in this case they did a think pair share
where I presented a question to them, um a very low level DOK 1 question where
they were essentially just recalling information, summarizing what the article said
and recalling it.
>>student: This article is about a girl, a fifteen year-old girl, who was trying to sue
the Iceland because she didn't like the name she had.
>>student 2: ...but because the law didn't let-didn't let them change
it, they-they were trying to, they're trying to go against the government.
>>teacher: It was an opportunity for kids that maybe were
really struggling with the text, um to speak with a peer that
uh could maybe give a greater insight on what they were reading.
I'm going to first give you just a couple of minutes
to scan through and look at
the words or phrases that you circled and the main ideas that you underlined.
Maybe just one minute to do that. Okay?
and then I'm going to ask that you continue your annotations,
and today, you're going to add a question.
On Tuesday the students were given
the text dependent question was: Um, what is one justification
for why Iceland uses a name registry. So I would believe that this is
a little bit of a deeper question, having to really dig deep into the text so I
would say it's probably closer to a DOK Level 2 question.
What I was expecting the students to do was not just be able to understand the article,
I wanted them to really be able to go and-and relate the material, find exactly
where the article was stating the position, and then use textual evidence
and explain what that textual evidence means.
I really enjoy doing starters where the students
stand and-and present and um get a chance to work on speaking and listening
because my student demographic, many of them
are-are or were um ELD students. They need the opportunity to speak.
They need to be able to speak in as many opportunities as they can. When the
students were expected to speak and present to the
class um they were not only required to share
in the article where they found the answer, but they were-there and then
required to take the textual evidence and then explain what it means.
How does it apply to that question?
>>student: One reason why Iceland wants us to use the name they
have on list is what if the name is ridiculous as it said in the article.
>>teacher: And... in the article
can you show us where you got that quote from?
We are gonna make connections.
What does it mean when we're trying to make a connection to the text? Melanie?
>>Melanie: You have-it means that you have to connect something
about you to the story.
>>teacher: You have to connect something about yourself to the story.
Alright, thank you for staying on task
until you heard the buzzer. If you're not done
I'll give you just a little bit more time to make your connection but I'm gonna
project two questions today up there. I believe a big piece of Common Core is
um students on a weekly basis using
Tier 2 and Tier 3 academic vocabulary. We're asking about what the word
subjective means. Subjective. So-so think about that.
I'll give you a couple of clues. If you look if you can do me a favor and put a
box around the word subjective. It's in the small column right in the middle
of the text. When you find it,
read the sentences around it. Use your context clues.
I always try to use at least one multiple choice question in the week.
They are not allowed to just right a letter
or letter A because. They have to write it out as an answer
and state why. So they're always being expected to
use textual evidence and or at least justify their answers. I used released
um SBAC questions to formulate the question
with two parts: one what does-essentially what does subjective mean,
and then given the answer that they found with what subjective meant,
how does that definition relate to the text? So what I want you to do
is you're gonna add the exclamation symbol
wherever you found something that surprised you. And then what I want you
to do, is down here at the bottom in this little bottom margin,
I want you to write a statement stating what surprised you and why.
So on Thursday I was-I gave the students another DOK Level 2 question,
It was the opposite side of the argument now. What I was doing was creating a
DOK Level 2 question to kind of explicitly check
on their understanding of the central idea
in the text. This activity really required students to
use textual evidence multiple times.
>>student: My answer is, they want to be able to choose
their names because in the article it says, it seems like a basic
human right to be able to name your child what you want.
>>teacher: Alright, so we're on our last day with our starter
and our article What's in a Name. We have
spent the last four days reading and annotating, do-doing
multiple close readings and annotations on the article.
And today we're going to be given a question that's going to really require
you to think deeply,
not only about what you've read but also about what your opinion is and how
applies to your life and um one of-and then the outsiders and all that reading
right now. Then what they're required to do is really think about it and start
digging through the article, looking at their annotations,
and making an argument based on that
evidence that they found in the text, and then relating it. How does this relate to
my life? How would-how would it relate to me, my friends and family, my peers?
And how does it relate to a-a book that we're reading?
They had to think about multiple sources and to be able to tie those altogether.
>>Paola: In my opinion citizens of Iceland shouldn't
have to choose a name from a government list.
I believe they should get to name a child whatever they like.
If there is supposed to be a law a child would
like his or her name and be comfortable with it.
To me...to me being able to change my name, changed my life and made it easier.
Even though some people can't pronounce it right,
it would be better than a typical name and an unwanted name.
Lastly, this connects to the Outsiders because
because there was Greasers were to have a last name,
they could choose a name from the list, the Greaser names such as Pony Boy
wouldn't be able...wouldn't be able.
>>teacher: Excellent. Excellent.
Uh, what was one of the
what was one of the main things that Paole said about
her opinion and how it relates to her life I thought there was something
really strong that she stated about her name.
In my opinion I feel like regardless of where you
what your- where you're at in your strengths and you're
in the Common Core, um and applying the Common Core and becoming an expert with them,
um I-I feel like this is a kind of a skill that anybody can use.
It's something that the students know that they're going to be expected to do something
that's really enriching and deep and complex. Most teachers do starters
but just a few simple tweaks, and now they're really
engaging and-and I keep going back to it, rich and complex
and they look like what we need to be doing as Common Core teachers.
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