Front Matter Summaries

The Front matter Matters!  By starting our planning with the front matter, we narrow our focus to a disciplinary skill.  It is through the development of these front matter skills that students are better able to navigate their classes as disciplinary insiders, as they are taught what it means to think like a mathematician, a biologist, a historian, a musician, and so on.

The front matter can be a daunting read.  We needed to create a user-friendly version, so we adapted the material into graphic organizers, such as this one for social studies, K-12, below.  Please note, these are our interpretations of the front matter.  We would love to hear if you have a different interpretation of any of the content.

All of our front matter summaries can be found on the Black Gold Engaging Students website, at http://engagingstudents.blackgold.ca/index.php/division-ii/front-matter-summaries/

Mentor Think-Aloud Conversations

So much creativity occurs in the thought process, the actual thinking and mental formation of an artistic work, before the artist even touches the medium. 

Quite often, students struggle with this "down" time - they aren't doing anything visible, and so it doesn't seem as though they are working.  How can we get students to: 
                         a) be okay with allowing themselves time to think, and 
                         b) share their thought process with others?

This is the question Mark Templeton, a Film & Media studies teacher, brought to me.  I couldn't help but think of Kelly Gallagher's mentor think-aloud strategy, and purposeful conversations.  

Mentor Think-Alouds
When students see their teachers wrestle with ideas, and listen to them talk through their thinking process as they interpret what they see or experience, it gives them an insight as to how they could work through their own thinking.  Kelly Gallagher, in Write Like This, states that, "no strategy improves my students' writing more than having my students watch and listen to me as I think aloud" (p.15).  The same applies to the creative thinking process; your students will learn from hearing about your struggles to create your own work, or interpret the work of others.  The same applies for hearing the thinking of their peers, which is why we decided to have students work with a mentor in small groups.

Mentor Think-Aloud Process
The following steps offer a suggested format for the use of mentor think-alouds.  Personalize it to fit your own students' needs.

1. While students are in the work-time stages of their projects, call small groups (3-4) to meet you in a quiet area.
2. Determine if you are going to view/listen to/experience something together, or focus solely on their current projects.
3. If you are going to experience something together, choose a text that reflects their current project, or an area of needed skill development (or choose something that has no tie that you can see, and see what the connections the students come up with!)
4. Mark and I created the flow chart below to guide questioning in the small group - the key piece is that, as the mentor, you think-aloud for students, making sure to articulate the struggles you are having as you are creating your own piece, or interpreting the shared text. 

5. Encourage students to use appropriate vocabulary and terminology for your course, to enhance their academic talk.

For additional ideas in this area, check out Kelly Gallagher's Book, Write Like This.  If you use mentor think-alouds in your classroom, please let any of the instructional coaches know!  

By Pam Chromiak:

pam.chromiak@blackgold.ca

MENTOR TEXT: Power From Observation & Conversation

How can we help students connect to—and make sense of—the wide variety of writing styles they are exposed to in the course of the year? 

Grade 6 teacher Chandra, posed that question to me, her AISI Instructional Coach.  I examined potential solutions and brought forward one from author/teacher Kelly Gallagher, a strategy called Mentor Texts.  

What are mentor texts?

Mentor texts are professional, published pieces of work that showcase the qualities toward which we encourage our students to strive. These mentor texts can be anything from a movie poster to an editorial; a Shakespearean sonnet to a Robert Munsch storybook.  Author and high school teacher Kelly Gallagher, in his book Write Like This, tells us that it is “of paramount importance to provide students with mentor texts so they can see how other writers compose…I want them to begin to recognize how a text is constructed.” (P. 20) 

How effective are mentor texts? 

Chandra has seen the potency of mentor texts in her work with Grade 6 students, “The first time we started, (students were saying), ‘Oh, I don’t know how to write a really good narrative.’ So we watched (video clips), we read (published pieces), and then they did it.  So now they’re not so reluctant to write.”  After practicing with narrative mentor texts, Chandra adds that students were able to approach writing a narrative and say, “Oh yeah, it has to have this, this, and this.  And these are the samples we found in the video. And these samples we found in the written work, so this must be what really good authors do when they write a narrative paragraph.”

Her students are also seeing the power of mentor texts in their own work. One girl reports, “I know I 

am a beter (sic) writer.  The examples really help espeshily (sic) if we talk and think about it for a while”.   Another student added, “I like watching the clips and reading the examples because it helps me understand what the paragraphs are about and how I should write them.  They also help me with details that are important and that I should include.”  Students also report that they see their own skills improving.  One student noted, “The mentor text affected my writing, reading in a positive way + I have a better nolage (sic) of writing + reading.” One young man adds, “it is more easyer (sic) to write better paragraphs and it helps me to get better topic sentences.”

How can you use mentor texts in your class? 

The following steps offer a suggested format for use of mentor texts.  Personalize to fit your own students’ needs.

1.   Source excellent examples of the finished type of work you want students to strive toward. Be critical that you choose clear, concise works that highlight the most essential features you want in your students’ writing. These might be published stories, newspaper articles, textbook entries, movie/book reviews, etc.

2.   Copy/type each onto a simple 2-column chart: left side is the mentor text—perhaps chunked into boxes for ease of reading; right side is blank, titled ‘Tips and Tricks’. Make copies for students (see Figure 1).

3.   1^st Mentor Text: Read through the entire piece- with the class, and then ask them to notice what they like about the piece. Together:  

a.   Students annotate the original text and then add notes on the right column, noting interesting techniques the writer used. 

b.   Students share ideas with the class, teacher records on a chart paper (to refer back to.)

4.   2^nd Mentor Text: Once completed, have students repeat the process with a second example, this time with increased independence, to see if the new author repeats similar tips and tricks as the first.  As well- does this second mentor text offer any new insights?

5.    Once the two are completed, the teacher can give proper names to particular features.  

For example:  “You noted that ‘In addition’ was a strong way to link ideas.  This is an example of a transition word; let’s write that down beside that word. We will look for others.”

6.    If there are important features students did not find on their analysis, the teacher can add them through this discussion, explaining why these features stand out to him/her.

Following the analysis, students are better equipped to practice writing pieces that mimic the world of professional mentor texts. One of the Grade 6 students sums up the power of mentor texts, “I think I write much stronger paragraphs this year than last year and Mentor Texts has lots to do with it and I like it a lot.”

For additional ideas in this area, check out Kelly Gallagher’s book, Write Like This (2011).  If you try this strategy out, contact any of our Instructional Coaches and share your thoughts!

By Steve Trueman steve.trueman@blackgold.ca 

Getting Kids Talking!

In AISI Cycle 5, Black Gold is working to enhance our students' disciplinary literacies -- that is, their abilities, attitudes, and skills that help them to navigate the disciplines, make meaning of content knowledge, and communicate critically within each disciplinary community.  Discussion skills are a critical part of being able to communicate ideas within a discipline. 

In my own grade 8 classroom, I would often set students off to small or whole group discussion.  Sometimes the discussions were invigorating and successful, and other times...well...not so invigorating.  Many of my students lacked the capacity to keep each other accountable to the conversation -- few were skilled question-askers, and even fewer felt comfortable dealing with difficult conversation.  When I decided I wanted to try discussion-based book clubs with these students, I knew something had to change.

Enter discussion skills.  Together as a class, we observed book club discussions in a fishbowl configuration and created discussion criteria based on what we observed.  Students came up with ideas they could use to deal with a group member who was off-task or shy, and also general expectations for discussion.  Although I suspected they might ignore these expectations, my students proved me so wrong.  This criteria essentially changed the way my students engaged in academic discussion because they actually used it.

*****

If you are interested in supporting your students to learn discussion skills, have a look at our three-part discussion skills framework.  The framework includes the climate criteria lesson I just described, as well as many fleshed-out lesson plans and resources for divisions 1 through 4.

By Terra Kaliszuk

terra.kaliszuk@blackgold.ca