Week 6 - Video Assignment

Grappling with Complex Informational Text - Common Core Literacy

Teacher: Andrew Hossac

Grade 5 - ELA

Analyze Teaching: Hossac's style allows students to think for themselves by guiding them and giving the proper tools for success.  By giving the students purposeful, relevant text he allows for learning to become personal. He gives his students the opportunity to speak and has created an environment that promotes discussion. In one scene you see students using questioning techniques and others adding to the questions. The environment immerses all learning skills by promoting perseverance through a differentiated learning approach. He keeps allows students to move freely by using his classroom as a tool for instruction, this allows students to learn while feeling comfortable and engaged.

Instructional Procedure:

• Instructional Goal:  Students are exploring culture through various case studies about the Indigenous people of western New York
• • Lesson designed to see the connection between important details and main idea.
  • What is the Gist? What is it about? 
  • • Important Words: Main Idea or Big Idea
  • Criteria for Text Selection:
  • • Worth reading 
    • Related to a unit of study 
    • Complex enough to push students
    • • New academic vocabulary
        
• Close reading process:
• • Read entire text without stopping
  • • just to get the flow of the text (students read it on their own for the first time, help perseverance)
  • Read and circle important and unfamiliar words. Write the gist for each section or paragraph in the margin.
  • • Get the gist in small sections
    • Students jot their initial sense about what the text is mostly about.
    • This helps with differentiation because students can break the text down into manageable sizes for their level.
    • • The teacher will break down text into smaller portions so they do not see all of it at a time. This helps them not get overwhelmed with a large piece of text. "Dividing the text into smaller chucks helps students persevere."
  • Read and record important details.
  • • Students jot the main idea down based on their notes.
    • Students go deeper by discussing the details in the text.

Assessment:

• Teacher works with students to make sure they are jotting notes.
• Teacher posts details on interactive white board and discusses with students.
• Teacher posts details around the room on chart paper.
• • Students use it post-its to write a response to the detail and determine it's value in the connection to the main idea.
• The class shares their thoughts with the class in order to synthesize information.