Mini-Lesson 2: Deep Reading & Digital Storytelling

EDRD 6150 Mini-Lesson II

Standard:

• ELAGSE11-12RL4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare and others)

Mini-Lesson Objective:

• I am learning to explain how an author’s word choice, sentence structure and writing conventions impact their main theme across emergent platforms.

Specific Literacy Strategy (Name and describe the specific literacy strategy)

• Deep Reading - The driving force behind deep reading is that students need “direct, explicit instruction in reading comprehension” and through scaffolding the higher-order thinking process, you are making students aware of the skills and questions they will need to monitor for themselves when they are reading independently. Deep reading provides a structure for examining the main purpose behind a text, along with how it is impacted by an author’s word choice, sentence structure and grammar conventions.

• Digital Storytelling - This is a platform that students can use to express their thoughts on a subject in an innovative fashion. Digital storytelling is an incredibly visual process, so utilizing it in the classroom can be specifically helpful to visual learners or to ELL students who may benefit from the addition to the reading processes.

• In combining these two strategies, I hope to allow students to expand upon their understanding of a text through explaining their understanding of same in an immersive format. Additionally, I hope to augment the process of learning digital storytelling by allowing students to choose a rigorous poem, text, article, or song to dissect.

• Lastly, as both deep reading and digital storytelling benefit from collaboration and discussion, when presenting this lesson to a class in the future, I would ensure that there was a group aspect as well.

Hook/introduction:

• Teacher begins by asking students to write down what they would do if they were given this list of instructions:

  • Dress the chicken.

  • Dust the living room.

  • Trim the Christmas tree.

  • Hit the nail on the head.

  • Break a leg.

• Students will probably write down things like “Do well in my role for the school play,” “Clean up the living room,” “Put seasoning on the chicken for dinner,” etc.

• Teacher will then ask students if anyone put the following instead

  • Dress the chicken

    • Put clothing on an uncooked chicken.

  • Dust the living room.

    • Sprinkle dust all over your mother’s sofa.

  • Trim the Christmas tree.

    • Shear the Christmas tree down.

  • Hit the nail on the head

    • Find an actual nail to hit square on.

  • Break a leg.

    • Go and break their legs.

• Probably not! The teacher will explain to the class that the reason they understand what each of those phrases means is because they understand how idioms work, and they understand that there can be a different, non-face value meaning behind the words that they read.

• The teacher will then explain that this skill is useful to build upon all through your life. It helps you to understand what someone is really saying and what tools they are utilizing to make their point, and that this is especially in literature. One strategy to utilize to better comprehension is called ‘deep reading’.

  • Deep reading will be explained in context of how it works:

    • First, reading through a text alone.

    • Then, reading through to annotate the writing, looking for connections they can make, understandings they are grasping, or questions they are still grappling with.

    • Next, the teacher will lay out the 4 Deep Reading questions:

    • What is the author telling me?

    • Are there any important or difficult vocabulary words?

    • What does the author want me to understand?

    • How does the author play with language and meaning?

• The teacher will then explain that they will be going over an example of deep reading together as a class.

Step By Step Modeling (Include any text or examples you use):

• The teacher will begin by pulling up the digital book to review with students.

  • https://read.bookcreator.com/MRy6eJrWrhVg7KO3WkVrxnvbx9g2/pLgRWEUTTEKzswpZVbjROw

• The book begins with a video of the poem so that students may get a feel for the piece on their own.

• The next slide highlights the 4 questions that students should keep in mind and be able to answer as they deep read different texts.

• Because this skill does not come naturally to students, the teacher will be using this digital book to walk students through the process of what deep reading may look like.

• The poem has been broken down into different groups of stanzas so that students may focus on smaller sections as the teacher begins to explain the thought processes behind how each section has been annotated.

• Students will also have the sections made visual to them through the corresponding pictures so that they may get a sense for how visualization plays a part in the reading process.

• Though the teacher will be leading this discussion, students will have the opportunity to ask questions or make observations for themselves as the book progresses. There are questions asked on several slides that should be utilized for group discussion.

• After the poem is broken down into sections, the teacher will then go over how they would answer the 4 questions, as modeled in the last few slides. These slides point out observations that have been made along the reading process, but they go further in depth as to why each has been selected as a representative of the answer.

Closing:

• The teacher will explain the project that students will be completing in pairs and students will begin working for the remainder of class.

  • Choose a poem, short story, article, or song

  • First read through it alone

  • Then, on a second read through, begin to take notes of things you notice throughout the piece

  • Begin working on an answer to the 4 Deep Reading questions

1. What is the author telling me?

2. Are there any important or difficult vocabulary words?

3. What does the author want me to understand?

4. How does the author play with language and meaning?

• Work with your partner to create a digital storybook to reflect your reading and your findings.

  • Your book should include clean images;

  • Helpful wording;

  • Multimedia tools (such as audio or video);

  • Respond in detail to the 4 Deep Reading questions referenced above.

Review (1-2 sentence overview of the strategy and how it works):

• The process of deep reading works by engaging students actively in the literature they are consuming. Students do not naturally understand how this process should look, though it will be needed throughout their academic and post-graduation careers, so this lesson is aimed at modeling the deep reading process to students.

• Additionally, the lesson will show students an example of how to utilize digital storytelling, even though they may need additional direction or various ideas as they go about creating one of their own.

Insights and/or reflections on the process:

• Utilizing a digital storybook in order to model deep reading can be a helpful resource because it allows for a greater opportunity to demonstrate the visualization and annotation processes to students. Students will be better able to understand a body of text and the mission it aims to accomplish if they are able to create a mental image of the events being described and explain the reasoning behind word choice and arrangement an author has used. Deep reading is a tactic against shallow, face value reading, so demonstrating this process helps explain how to go about looking for more meaning in reading for students.

Mini-Lesson Example: SCAMPER

EDRD 6150 Mini-Lesson

Name: Kathrin Saxton

• Standard

  • ELAGSE9-10RL2: Determine a theme and/or central idea of text and closely analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

• Mini-lesson objective

  • I am learning to point out the theme of a text and can recognize the plot points and character developments that create that central idea.

• Specific literacy strategy

  • The SCAMPER literacy strategy is meant to get students to think about the characters, plots, themes, and events in a given story with fresh eyes. SCAMPER asks students to imagine a text as it may have happened, had components of the story been different. SCAMPER is an acronym for first substituting a person, place, time, or situation, then combining or synthesizing ideas, situations, or contexts, adapting or adjusting a problem or concept to suit a new purpose, modifying, magnifying, or minimizing the size, traits or dimensions of the concept or problem, putting the story in a new context, eliminating a feature of the concept, story or problem, and lastly, rearranging or reversing the sequence of the story, concept or context. The idea is that students will come up with a new question, related to the given text, for each letter of the acronym then try and imagine what the story would be like were that question true. This strategy works best in the middle or ending stages of a unit or text.

• Hook/introduction

  • The teacher should begin class by asking students what would have happened if Cinderella’s slipper had fit her evil step sister? Students should begin to generate ideas of alternatives to the happy ending that we all know. The teacher walks students through a refresher on the importance of the theme in an author’s writing and how it impacts all the characters, settings, times and events that the author chooses to portray.

• Step by step modeling

  • The teacher then introduces students to the SCAMPER strategy and goes over what each letter means. Then, the teacher will announce that the class is going to review an example of this strategy as applied to the fairytale, Cinderella, which might look like the following:

    • S: substitute a person, place, time or situation

      • How would the story be different if the story was told from the eyes of the wicked step sisters?

  • The teacher then answers the question themselves. “Maybe the audience would feel sorry that the stepsister had lost her one true chance at making her mother proud of her.”

  • Then, the class would walk through the other letters together with the teacher leading the conversation using Cinderella as the example. This may look something like:

    • C: combine or synthesize ideas, situations, or contexts

      • Potential question: What would the story look like if the original Cinderella met the Cinderella from the Hillary Duff version?

        • Potential answer: Cinderella and Duff’s character, Sam, might have banded together to escape their families, leaving the princes lonely.

    • A: adapt or adjust a problem or concept to suit a new purpose

      • Potential question: How would the story change if Cinderella had asked her Fairy Godmother to grant her a different wish?

        • Potential answer: She might have kicked her step-family out of her house and the Prince would have felt bad for the step-sisters and fallen in love with one of them instead -- leaving the evil step-family to have the last laugh.

    • M: modify, magnify or minify the size, traits, or dimensions of the concept or problem

      • Potential question: How would the story be different if Cinderella had human friends?

        • Potential answer: Maybe she would not have felt as discontented at all. She may have made peace with the life she was living.

    • P: put to other uses or contexts

      • Potential question: What if the main lesson the story wanted to teach was the importance of telling the truth?

        • Potential answer: Since Cinderella lied to her step-family about being at the ball, maybe the author would have punished her in the end by kicking her to the curb instead of allowing her to find the Prince.

    • E: eliminate a feature of the concept, story, or problem

      • Potential question: What would happen if there was not an Evil Stepmother.

        • Potential answer: Cinderella may have led a quiet but peaceful life living in her family home. Though, she may have grown so happy with her life among her animal friends that she forgot to go out and look for love.

    • R: rearrange or reverse the sequence of the story, concept or context

      • Potential question: What if the story began with insight into the Evil Stepmother’s life up to that point.

        • Potential answer:We might have seen how horrible her upbringing had been, and how everyone had looked down on her. Her cruelness may seem a justified chip, and we may view her eventual demise with much more sadness.

  • The teacher would refer back to what had been said earlier about the importance of theme in writing.

  • The teacher would then ask students to think back to the stories related to the American Dream we have read in class (Listed below) and to split into small groups of three and choose one to SCAMPER for themselves.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

• Students may use various sources to refresh their memories on certain characters or major story events

  • The Great Gatsby graphic novel

  • The Death of a Salesman film

  • The Great Gatsby character review

  • The Death of a Salesman character review

• Closing

  • Students share with the class some of the highlights they found. Spokesperson from each group stands to give a short summary of some of the ideas on how their stories would have turned out differently had key elements been altered.

• Review (1-2 sentence overview on strategy and how it works)

  • The teacher sets students up for success by outlining how to use SCAMPER and by reminding students about the topic of ‘theme.’ Then, the students recall knowledge on previous readings in class in order to complete the SCAMPER activity.

• Insights and/or reflections on the process

  • SCAMPER is great for getting students to think critically about the stories that they are reading. For some students, asking them to point out the key points that move the author’s theme along will be easy to do at face value when reading the story. Though, for other students, learning strategies like SCAMPER will help emphasize the relationship between each component in a story in a new and more meaningful way. By asking students to find ways to break the flow and sequencing in the story, you are also indirectly asking them to identify what aspects are so integral to the story that altering them would change the work entirely. SCAMPER can be used as a tool to see how well students are able to grapple with the author's purpose and create a new, related sequence of events.

Welcome to my Classroom as a Newroom

Welcome to the newsroom! In my classroom, students will become reporters as they learn how to grapple with literature while gaining experience communicating those revelations to diverse audiences. In my class, students will sign up to be a part of different ‘beats’ each week where they will take on different genres of writing from narrative, journalistic, persuasive, academic or poetry. Within these beats, students will choose what they would like to write about and will spend almost half of their class time every day working on perfecting their pieces. At the end of the week, students will have the opportunity to publish their work to the school-wide news site.

In case our news site is new to you, we recently launched this website for students as an outlet for them to connect to the surrounding community through reporting on issues and events, and reading about those their peers have researched, that are happening right in their backyards. Each English Language Arts classroom contributes pieces that fit the traditional newspaper breakdowns such as Current Events, Essays, Opinions, Sports, Education, Technology, Science, Arts, and Economy. Though, what makes our site so special, is that the topics of each piece appearing on our site are uniquely chosen by the students who write them. Giving students autonomy, community and experience is at the heart of this ongoing, school-wide project.

In addition to reporting on current happenings, students will also submit works about the literature that they read in class. There is no better way to build strong writers than by inspiring voracious readers. So, each class period that students spend in my room, they will be reading books that they have chosen. We want to encourage students to read and that begins by retaining their interest at the stage of learning they are in currently. Students will have a wide variety of texts to choose from, but they will also consistently be pushed to read works that expand their understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Below, please find my answers to some questions that are no doubt in your mind:

1. How will this help my student foster a lifelong love of writing and reading beyond this classroom?

• My plan for a communications based classroom will lead students to a greater love of reading and writing because they will become active participants in the conversation. Being a part of a ‘newsroom’ will allow students to bring their own sets of interests and knowledge of their community into the work they are doing in class. Making reading and writing an extension of their daily lives is my goal with this classroom structure, but at the same time I am hoping to prepare students for a world that needs good communicators who understand how interconnected we truly are. Regardless of what field students enter into after leaving high school, they will be expected more than ever to make their work translate across diverse audiences. Students will be encouraged to learn that their backgrounds and their interests are needed and valuable, and they will also know that learning how to write well is a tool they can use way past the walls of my classroom.

2. My child does not enjoy how disconnected classrooms can feel from work they see taking place in the real world. How is your newsroom set up any different from another ‘role’ students are asked to play?

• Based on what I hear from my peers who are currently teachers, one of the biggest things students crave is an understanding of how things they learn in class may be applied to skills needed in the real world. Framing our classroom around mass communication could help do just that. No matter what students are writing about, they will be able to write it in a way that connects with others and prioritizes joining into broader conversations. Additionally, the newsroom is a real-life experience. We will publish students’ work to a real website that is really accessible to the community outside their classrooms. However, it is also a priority of mine to provide students in my class with opportunities to expand their horizons through writing competitions, social action initiatives, and I am more than happy to help them tackle any other real-world application of writing that they would like to incorporate into their daily work.

3. How will my child actually grow their reading and writing skills?

• Whether they are working alone or are conversing on a project for their ‘beat,’ students will be immersed in the projects they are researching and creating. Students will be given a lot of autonomy when it comes to writing and reading in my class, so they will need to spend as much time as possible preparing work that is meaningful and relevant to their growth. I firmly believe that the best way to become better at writing and reading is to do just that: write and read. This classroom will spend a vast majority of its time working on original writing projects and self-chosen reading assignments. I trust that my students know or can find where their interests lie in these subjects, and I know that individual taste is important to nurture in order to keep students’ interest and curiosity.

4. Will my students be expected to read books that they are not ready for? Will those texts be required for the class?

• My course will be able to adapt to the needs of students because they will be in charge of choosing literature, novels and writing topics that they are interested in and can connect to. The majority of my class is based around the need for students to write and read consistently. So, while each child’s job may look very similar, the actual content they will be diving into will differ and offer flexibility for each child. I want my class to meet students where they are, but to hold them to their highest standard of excellence regardless of where they are academically.

• Though, that being said, we will do plenty of reading as a group -- we just may not spend an entire novel doing so. Reading short stories and poems as a group in class will help me to demonstrate best writing practices to your children. I will use these texts in order to give students a working example of topics such as tone, grammar conventions, repetition, point of view, persuasive appeals, etc. These readings will let students see the point I am making over a short period, so that when they are away reading their own books, they will be able to recognize these same tools over a larger body of text.

5. With all of the time my child will spend doing work on their own, how will you know what they need in order to give effective feedback?

• As the Editor-In-Chief, I will work with students as a group and individually to ensure everyone is growing and hitting important mile-markers. I think taking on the role of EIC will remind students that while they are free to write whatever they would like, they still have a figure that is there to guide them, offer them help where they need it and that is expecting their best work. As students are working on their individual projects, I will come around the classroom to have short and frequent conversations with them about the work that they are doing, where they are needing help, what they would like suggestions on, how their book is coming along, what are they learning, what connections to in-class lessons they can make, and any other aide that they might need at that point in time. Because this model of teaching enables me to be “hands-off” on what students read and write, it gives me much more room to know what my students are working toward and where they are in relation to that goal. In this way, I can tailor my lessons and advice that I give them to their individual needs.

6. How does your classroom stay with the standards?

• Structuring the classroom as a newsroom is incredible because it focuses on end-products, leaving more space to learn and incorporate the standards as we go along. I will only be grading summative assessments, which means that students will have greater opportunities to show what they truly know through the major projects they take on. Our standards offer a reasonable set of overlapping goals, and I plan to use them in order to be the foundation of my lessons and rubrics for students. Additionally, I feel like my class design will hold more credibility with my peers and with parents because it is so linked to the standards.

7. How will you teach grammar and spelling in the context of real writing?

• The best way to learn grammar is by reading it, listening to it and then mimicking it. Because creating media packages will be on display for real audiences, students will need to understand how to best communicate their ideas and grammar is part of that. I want my students to see grammar as a stepping stone towards success and not a roadblock they have to somehow overcome. Using grammar in practice is the only way I ever really learned grammar in my highschool career, so I think beginning with that approach will help students get to the heart of writing faster. In addition, I want my students to be able to envision their work. What does this mean? All the best writers can make their audiences feel like they are in a movie because the words feel so visceral and real to them. This is my goal for my students. We will approach grammar as a set of tools to help add more details to the painting and will take each new technique in the context of real work.

8. Are other teachers part of this class design too?

• I would love for other teachers to join in! We could create an entire network of newsrooms and dive into how different organizations communicate with each other and how stories are shared, built upon and evolve the more people read them. Though, if other teachers are not as interested in joining my news network, I think they should at least let me try this out for several reasons. First off, self-directed learning is at the heart of my classroom design. As we’ve learned in class there are a lot of studies that prove the effectiveness of adding autonomy into your courses, and going further, my idea for the newsroom addresses specific assets that students, colleges and employers alike want - communication skills for the modern age. Regardless of profession, understanding how to tell a good story is crucial. Ability to take responsibility for work products, independence in choosing research topics, and confidence in asking questions, listening intently, and summarizing in audible and written manners are just some of the additional benefits of learning in the environment of a newsroom.

I am so lucky to have the opportunity to work with you and your child as they prepare to enter “the real world!” With this end goal in mind, I hope you will find that each of my expectations from students guide them toward a greater understanding and finding a deeper joy in the things they write and read.

Love,

Ms. Saxton