Thinking about Key Details

As the first cluster of standards for both literature and informational text fall under the umbrella of key ideas and details, it is clear that they are important concepts. But what exactly are the key details students should adhere to? In literature, the elements of narratives are delineated for primary grades, along with questioning. However, aren’t the details students need to highlight relative to the task? If students are trying to unpack the characters, then perhaps the most significant details would be different from those that depict the setting. And while significant plot points should reveal elements of the character, they may not give a complete picture. This got me thinking about how to teach key details so that we understand the gist of what we read, but also have clarity in dissecting different elements of what we read. Although the standards do not mention minor details, students must also be able to distinguish between the details that represent the crux of what they are examining and the cursory details that enhance the story. Perhaps we can examine stories with a whole-part-whole approach. What are the key details that disclose the plot? What details illuminate the characters? What details paint the setting? Which details support the theme? Were these details related to the plot, characters, setting, or all? Can we pull from those key details to determine the theme? Which details are key to answering text-dependent questions? Perhaps through our process of close reading, we can read for each purpose, map out the important details for each area, and then analyze how they cross over. Perhaps then, we could all develop more clarity! Below is an idea of how to organize a class chart examining these different elements. Of course, there are still key details to think about for informational text, but I will save that for another day!

Examining Key Details

Title of Story:

Focus	Plot/Events	Setting	Characters	Theme	Questions
Key Details

Unless…

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” – The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I have been thinking about the Lorax a lot lately. It is my son’s current favorite movie, and while he enjoys the music and finds humor throughout, I find myself mulling around the inherent messages of the movie (and the book) and how it could be used in the classroom. I love the complexity of the Once-ler in the movie.  As we watch the film, my son wonders if the Once-ler is bad. In the book, that seems a little more clear cut, but the movie offers background information of the Once-ler as a dreamer, a victim of his family, and one who endures despite the odds. However, he does indeed become “bad” as he become engulfed in the greed of money. Through contrition he sees redemption. We are also offered the comparison character of Mr. O’Hare, who creates an entire city deprived of the most essential element of life, air, so that he can profit. How do we define evil? When does someone cross the line? Can someone be both good and evil? How would you characterize the Once-ler in the movie vs. the book? Why do these perspectives vary? One of the greatest goals of Common Core is to get students to think deeply and analyze from multiple perspectives. Why not use movies to support this goal? I am not saying most lessons should entail film clips, but they are an engaging way of drawing students into the world of cognition. And, while we need to consider complex texts, the use of the arts (including paintings and music) can be equally intriguing. It seems to me that the appeal of the movie could work at multiple levels.

“Which way does a tree fall? A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.”
– The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

“Are they sad?” This is the question my three-year old consistently asks as the animals and the Lorax mourn the loss of the tree that the Once-ler just cut down. Although he can’t articulate how he knows they are sad, older students (such as first and second graders) can. As the Once-ler hums along pulling the tufts off the tree, lying about his acts, it is clear that he feels very differently than the animals. What clues do we see and hear that tell us how the different characters feel about the first Truffula Tree being cut down? (Text-dependent question) How and why do their points of view vary? (Understanding Point of View RL 6) How does your point of view of an event affect how you behave? (Big Idea Question) In the movie, the dialogue, music, and words used to convey their thoughts reveal how each character feels. This small five-minute clip could easily be viewed several times to analyze these questions from multiple perspectives. (Close Reading)

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Contemplate this quote for a moment. What do you connect it to? What are your thoughts? What comes to your mind that needs change? How does this relate to our daily lives? Our current climate? How does this relate to history? Who do we know that worked to make “it” better?  The Lorax provides a lens for upper grades and beyond to delve into big ideas about change and making a difference.  What historical figures cared about transformation? How did they show that they cared? Does caring always lead to improvement? (What about those who care about negative changes?) How will you make a difference now? What issues affect your current lives that you can make better or change? (Bullying?) What are the consequences of not getting involved?

Before I exit my post for the week, I would like to leave you with one last quote to think about Common Core and –  in the spirit of The Lorax – our lives: “It’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.” 

Text Structures and Features

When I was growing up, there was little thought to the type of text we were reading. I followed assignments, read the stories in the primer, and answered questions. It did not occur to me that we should read differently for different types of text. To be honest, this thought did not occur to me until I became a teacher, and more specifically, when I first taught third grade. I remember doing a STAR practice test the week before doomsday (the actual STAR test), and my students performed horribly on an informational passage. The questions seemed really difficult unless you read the passage for the structure of expository text. Once you pulled out the supporting details each paragraph detailed about the topic, the answers were clear. This required the reader to identify the type of text, understand how the text was organized, examine the relationships within and among the paragraphs, and then relate them to the questions being asked. From then on out, I made understanding genres part of my reading instruction along with learning to distinguish among them, and determining what types of organizers would help the reader unpack the text. Common Core has clearly identified the need for students to understand diverse genres and their elements. This emphasis seems very appropriate to me given my experiences with working with students. While the fact that we have two separate categories of standards to elucidate the importance of explicitly teaching types of text, today I want to look at standard 5.

Craft and Structure: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard 5:

Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. (CCSS)

Students are expected to know how different types of texts are organized, distinguish among types of genres, and determine how the separate parts relate to the whole. When examining standard 5 for grades K-5 for literature, the types of texts mentioned include stories, poems, dramas, and prose. Traditionally, these categories were easily distinguished by stories/prose being in paragraph format, poems being written in stanzas, and dramas including a speaker before the sentence. Modern writers certainly blur these lines and can make classifying text more challenging. However, for the elementary classroom, teachers can easily select text that keeps these categories clear to build basic building blocks. The venn diagram  examines some of the basic features that distinguish poetry and narratives. Dramas are similar to narratives except that the organization is related to the speaker rather than paragraph format and that white space may be used to signify the change in characters.

Standard five for informational texts specifically examines text features and structures. Students are expected to differentiate among the different types of texts as early as kindergarten. Throughout the grade levels, students increasingly become more responsible for understanding the structure of texts, the significance of their impact on the development of the text, and the dissection of the relationships between parts, wholes, and the text progression. The set of differentiated task cards to the left support instruction and independent practice of expository text features for primary grades. These skills are essential building blocks since students in fourth and fifth grades need to be able to identify the type of text organization or structure– i.e. cause and effect, problem/solution, comparison, etc). Although some literature standards do not examine the relationship between narratives to expository text, this distinction is later made in the informational texts standards. Therefore, it is critical that students understand the features and structures that distinguish different types of texts from a basic to more complex level throughout the grades.

So how does standard 5 impact our instruction in the classroom? Students need to analyze texts from an early age, identify features that genres have in common. Primary teachers may begin the year by having students sort books as they read them aloud, then delve into the library and examine how the books can be sorted by genre. Text identification should become part of every story that is read. Perhaps instead of scaffolding the story before reading, the class can examine the text structures and features to determine what they are reading for. What type of organizer would work to keep track of our thinking about a text? What can we expect to find in the text? Thinking about comprehension strategy instruction, this relates to predictions. Rather than just predicting events, readers can predict the type of text they will be reading. Readers of all grade levels will benefit from examining texts closely to understand and determine the features and structures to improve comprehension. And, as with all vocabulary, the language of the discipline needs to be part of their every day discussions so that it becomes how they articulate their ideas.

Splitting Hairs: Language of Common Core

Upon setting out to unpack ELA Reading standard 2, I found the language, which seemed so normal at a glance, to be unclear. The more I dug into the nuances of the words within the standards, the less consistency I found. When examining the terms of recount, central idea, central message, lesson, moral, and theme, I found conflicting ideas, and ultimately, had to make my own assertions. I must thank two of my sisters for helping me think through this one, as they both have literature backgrounds. I would love to hear your thinking on the topic.

The second College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard (CCR) standard for reading reads as follows:

Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

This overarching standard, which is to represent how students should think about both narratives and expository text, uses the terms central ideas or themes.

Within the grade levels, the language progression within Reading Literature Standard 2 is as follows:

   1st Grade           2nd Grade                   3rd Grade       4th Grade   5th Grade
central message  central message,       central message       theme             theme
or lesson              lesson, or moral          lesson, or moral

Common Core was developed with both an increasing of complexity of concepts throughout the grade levels, as well as a mirroring of concepts between literature and informational text standards. The CCR standards are meant to envelope diverse types of text. Therefore, when the CCR standard uses the term “central idea,” I believe this refers to the main idea, which is the gist of what the author is saying. In narratives, the main idea could be thought of who, did what, and how or why that was important. In expository, the main idea is the topic. The central idea/main idea is bound by the text. On the other hand, the grade level specific terms transcend the text. At first glance, these words seem like the same ideas, however, since the standards were created to increase as we progress through the grade levels (as seen below), then there must be nuances in their application.

Let’s examine each term individually, and then examine how they are related:

Theme

According to Griffith (2011), the theme expresses ideas about the real world outside of the text. Symbols, patterns, and problematic situations within narratives are some clues that help readers determine the theme. The theme is not the subject of the story, but rather, the commentary about that subject. While Griffith states that the theme must be a developed sentence, others believe the theme may be expressed in a word or phrase. Kirsner and Mandell (1994) examine themes as words, phrases, and sentences that depict human emotion, conflict, and experiences such as jealousy, loss of innocence, disillusionment of adulthood, and the beauty of love. Themes can be implicitly or explicitly stated, and stories may have multiple themes (Barone, 2011).

Central Message/Lesson

Students begin looking for the central message or lesson in first grade, which indicates that it is a concept that is less complex than theme. When we think of a central message or lesson, we can formulate our lesson around the question, “What can we learn from this story?” or “What does this story teach us?” These questions are simpler than theme, and while they do require a level of analysis by drawing conclusions and synthesizing the text, it does not require the reader to examine the text in the same depth as theme. There can be overlap between lessons and themes, but in general, themes go beyond lessons. (Barone, 2011)

Morals

The moral of a story is related to the lesson. Morals deal with issues of ethics or general truths. Often morals are found in fables, although they can also be found in other tales as well. At times the moral is explicitly stated at the end of a fable. This is called the maxim.

Morals are mentioned in the third grade standards, which makes sense as fables are also introduced at this grade level. This is more about a progression of explicitly expanding the types of narratives students read as they progress through the grade levels.

Tying it all Together

Based upon the individual analysis of terms, these are my conclusions:

The Central idea is the same as main idea. The central message is a lesson, which could be the theme. A moral is a specific type of lesson, most often found in fables. The theme is less concrete than lessons. To find the theme, readers must draw conclusions and infer based on a variety of evidence as found through recurring events, patterns, symbols, and underlying conflicts. The theme goes beyond a lesson, although there can be overlaps. Figure 3 is one visual interpretation of how these concepts can be viewed.

Therefore, in the story Cookies from Frog and Toad Together, the central or main idea could be Frog and Toad keep moving their cookies out of sight to show willpower, but they keep finding the cookies hard to resist. Within that story, they keep hiding the cookies from their sight, and keep finding that does not help because they always have access to the cookies. They learn (lesson or central message) that temptations are hard to resist, or that willpower takes more than putting something out of sight. The theme is based on recurring patterns. If we look at the collection of Frog and Toad stories, there is a focus on friendship. What does this story particularly say about friendship? Although Frog keeps helping Toad (and himself) by hiding the cookies and then ultimately feeding the birds, Toad ends up going back home to make more treats. Therefore, a theme at its most basic level could be friendship, or could be expanded to although we can help our friends, they ultimately must help themselves. As you can see, the concepts may align or cross over between what is bound within the text and what transcends the text.

References

Barone, D. M. (2011) Children’s Literature in the Classroom: Engaging Lifelong Readers. The Guildford Press. New York, NY.

Griffith, K. (2011). Writing Essays About Literature A Guide and Style Sheet. Eighth Edition. Wadsworth Cengage Learning: Boston, MA.

Kirsner, L. G., & Mandell, S. R. (1994). Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Harcourt Brace & Co: Fort Worth, TX.

Lobel, A. (1999). Frog and Toad Together. New York: HarperFestival

Answering the Question: Common Core

It’s time again to revisit the ELA Common Core standards. In case you haven’t spent much time yet exploring the standards, let me clarify its organization. There are six categories of language arts standards: Literature, Informational Text,  Foundational Skills, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language. Unpacking the Common Core standards is continuing to prove to be a complex feat. When unpacking a standard, I  examine it from Kindergarten-5th grade. Since the standards build upon each other by grade level, I must really examine what the purpose of the standard is at each level, and how that builds toward upper grade.

This week, I decided to explore the literature and informational text standard 1 about questions, answers, and key details. This standard seemed straightforward at first, but since it is in two types of genres, I soon realized there was a lot that needed to be clarified. For this standard, students need to understand the difference between narrative and expository text, be able to identify features and structures of the text, determine importance in order to identify key details, and develop their questioning strategy. Furthermore, students need to understand the difference between topics and main ideas, and how main ideas vary by genre. Also, as you explore the category of key ideas and details, the standards delve further into features and structure.  Although this seemed very convoluted at first, I slowly dug my way out of the abyss to find some clarity. Below is one way you could map out this unit using a whole-part-whole philosophy. This unit will imbed a variety of reading standards and two comprehension strategies (determining importance and questioning).

WHOLE: Genres
Narrative vs. Expository: The depth of this lesson would depend on the grade level. Perhaps K-2 would just define the difference as stories and informational text, and further define narratives by their story elements and expository by topic and key details. In this lesson, teachers would examine short pieces of both types of text and chart similarities and differences. This could be through modeling, or textual analysis as a class. Students may need repeated experiences with this lesson.

PART: Narrative Structure & Features & Author’s Study

Make a unit chart to add on to for each book that you read. On this chart include: title, genre, structure, features, main idea, and key details. The structure and features will repeat as long as you are in narrative, but this repetition is intentional for students to notice what changes and what does not.

• Author Exploration: Choose an author or two to study. Explore the author. Choose resources about the author for the students to get to know the author and what motivates that author as a writer. (Tie in with Point of View standard as well.)

• Determining Importance: Key Details vs. Minor Details – Use the comprehension strategy of determining importance to help decide what is most important in the story and what is not. You can story map each narrative on your unit chart in the structure & features column. When you get to the events parts, stop and examine key vs. minor details. One way of approaching this is to have the students retell the story and you type down each sentence. In collaborative groups or as a class, you can sort the details as key or minor. As you are building this sort examine what each detail tells us about the story. How do we know if this detail is important or not? What is important in the story? I read online that a student once likened determining importance to a pot of pasta. When you strain the noodles (or the details), all the water goes through (the minor details), and what is left is the pasta (key details). Another comprehension strategy that I strongly encourage you to embed and read up about it synthesizing. Elements of synthesizing require determining importance and lead to inferential thinking about the text. Debbie Miller discusses synthesizing in Reading with Meaning and Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis discuss synthesizing in Strategies That Work.

• Other Story Elements: Each grade level has increasing complexity of examining story elements in Literature Standard 3, from  simply identifying characters, setting, and major events (K-1)  to  examining the interaction between the characters and the events (2-3), to deeper examination of these elements (4th), and comparison among texts (5th). You can also embed Literature Standard 2, which is related to themes. I recommend using the same text for a week or two to explore in depth. Therefore, you may spend 2-3 days on determining importance, and then further explore that text for the story elements, mapping out their thinking based upon your grade level standard.

• Main Idea: For 3rd grade on up, examine the main idea of narrative. This is the point of the story. Often determining who, did what, and how or why that was important and summing that up in one sentence, will offer the gist of the story. This is important for developing summaries as the children get older. It also serves as a platform for comparing main idea in expository text.

PART: Expository Structure & Features

Continue your unit chart from earlier to add-on to for each book that you read. As students progress through the grades, the type of  text structure should change so students become familiar with the six formats (Description, Sequence, Compare/Contrast, Cause & Effect, Problem/Solution, and Question & Answer).

• Text Selection: Some possible resources for this section include your social studies or science texts,  guided reading books, content readers, and/or primary sources.

• Text Structure & Features of Text: Examine text such as Time for Kids. How is this structure e a narrative? How do we need to prepare our brains differently? Where do we start? Does it matter? Identify features of expository text (headings, subheadings, captions, illustrations, photos etc).

• Determining Importance: How are these key details going to be different from in narratives? Think about organization (structure) of the text. We are looking for a topic and supporting key details. If you are familiar with step-up to writing, I have used this in the past to break down expository text. If not, model how you would determine the topic and key details. Examine key vs. minor details. How do we determine what is most important. Think about the hierarchical organization of the text.  Here is a great resource for lessons I found online for examining different types of expository text and determining importance.

PART: QUESTIONING

• Based on your grade level’s standard and objectives, scaffold lessons to teach the strategy of questioning. Follow the gradual release of responsibility. Use both narrative and expository texts. Focus on asking relevant questions about key details and finding the answers to their questions.
  

WHOLE: REVISITING CONCEPTS

• Reexamine and chart what they have learned about the difference between narrative and expository, their structures and features, how they as readers approach each text, how they determine importance, and questioning. Reexamine how the approach to reading is both similar and different for the two genres.

Teaching with the Common Core standards is much like teaching with differentiation. You don’t throw out everything you know, but rather, carefully examine what students need to know, be able to do, and understand. Then look at your resources to determine next best steps, and research new resources for what you don’t have. Instead of starting with your  planning time with lesson plans and files, you finish with them.