COMIC CENTRAL CENTER!!!!
At this center, you will get a chance to read comic strips and practice your interpretation skills. With a partner, choose a comic strip and read it. After you read this strip, talk with your partner about the comic and try to figure out what a big idea/central message/theme might be and why. You can also try to figure out how the setting clues build mood, what kind of people these characters are, what they want and what their problems are.
Then add on to the comic!
· With your partner, you can add a dialogue bubble to the scene and write the words you think that character could have said in this part.
· With your partner, you can add a thought bubble to the scene and write the words you think a character might have been thinking in this part.
· With your partner, draw/write a scene you think might come next.
· Be prepared to talk with your partner about why you have made these choices and what clues from the text support your choices.
Tips for Teachers:
You’ll want to gather some different types of comics for this center and make a few copies. If you want to be able to reuse these, you might consider laminating the comics and giving students dry erase markers to annotate them.
Here are a few links you can visit to find comics:
· Family Circus
http://www.familycircus.com/
· Archie
http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/comics/archie.html
· Batman
http://studiowell.com/ComicsOnline/2012/03/18/free-comics-batman-shazam-scooby-doo/
· If you see that your students are having difficulty interpreting what the comic says, then you want to teach them to look at the pictures and think about what the pictures are telling them and then synthesize that with what the comic is saying.
· Look at the setting for interpretation and think about what the setting is telling you.
· If you see your students are having difficulty with understanding why the author is having the characters say what they are saying, coach the students to think about the characters’ inner thinking and have them write thought bubbles.
Text Structure Center
Test takers use your close reading skills to read these excerpts from texts. Each example is numbered. Discuss with your partner which text structure best describes the way this excerpt is organized and how you know. Were there signal words that clued you in? Were there particular sentences that let you know?
Text Structures:
Problem-Solution
Chronological
Compare-Contrast
Cause –Effect
Claims-Reasons
Remember to record the information you collect by entering the text number and what structure you think it is on one of the enclosed sheets.
Text Number / Text Structure#1: China's Dust Storms Raise Fears of Impending Catastrophe
by Reggie Royston for National Geographic News June 1, 2001
Earlier this year, an unusually large dust cloud that originated in northwest China drifted across the continental United States and lingered over Denver and other areas, at times obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains.
It isn't the first time a giant dust cloud from East Asia has reached the United States. But concerned observers say the vast sweep and the density of this latest one suggests that northwest China's once-fruitful agricultural land is eroding at an alarming rate, becoming useless desert.
China has mounted various efforts to halt the increasing desertification, which is caused by overuse of the land for farming and grazing. Nonetheless, as much as 900 square miles (2,300 square kilometers) of farmland in northern China—an area more than twice the size of Hong Kong—is blown away by the wind each year, according to a Chinese scientist quoted in a New York Times article last year.
"If they're losing that much, then there is several times that area in various stages of deterioration. Losing it and abandoning it are sort of the final stage before it becomes desert," said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., which recently released an environmental alert on the problem.
#2.
The taunts and teasing are vivid memories for Assata Washington, 12, of Atlanta, Georgia. When she was in third grade, some of the girls in her class called her names because she wore glasses. The situation was so bad, Assata didn't want to go to school. "I used to ask, 'Mommy, why do I have to go?'" Assata says.
Assata was being bullied. Bullying is a constant problem in U.S. schools. At least one third of children in the fourth to eighth grades say they have been bullied, according to recent studies. Sometimes kids miss school to avoid bullies. There are ways to stop bullies. But kids don't always do the most important thing—talk about it. Getting a teacher, parent, or other responsible adult involved is very important. Assata told her mom and her teachers about her bullies. And her teachers kept an eye out for her.
#3.
You made me feel like a zero, like a nothing,” she says in Spanish, un cero, nada. She is trembling, an angry little old woman lost in a heavy winter coat that belongs to my mother. And I end up being sent to my room, like I was a child, to think about my grandmother’s idea of math.
It all began with Abuela coming up from the Island for a visit—her first time in the United States. My mother and father paid her way here so that she wouldn’t die without seeing snow, though if you asked me, and nobody has, the dirty slush in this city is not worth the price of a ticket. But I guess she deserves some kind of award for having had ten kids and survived to tell about it. My mother is the youngest of the bunch. Right up to the time when we’re supposed to pick up the old lady at the airport, my mother is telling me stories about how hard times were for la familia on la isla, and how la abuela worked night and day to support them after their father died of a heart attack. I’d die of a heart attack too if I had a troop like that to support. Anyway, I had seen her only three or four times in my entire life, whenever we would go for somebody’s funeral. I was born here and I have lived in this building all my life. But when Mami says, “Connie, please be nice to Abuela. She doesn’t have too many years left. Do you promise me, Constancia?”—when she uses my full name, I know she means business. So I say, “Sure.” Why wouldn’t I be nice? I’m not a monster, after all.
#4
People sometimes think penguins are silly animals that are dressed up in fancy black suits called tuxedos. But looks can be deceiving. Penguins are amazing! When explorers first saw penguins in Antarctica, they thought they were fish. Penguins are actually birds. They have feathers, beaks, and wings. They also lay eggs. There are 17 different kinds, or species, of penguins, but all of them make their home near the ocean.
Even though penguins are birds, they can’t fly in the air. In fact, penguins are amazing swimmers and spend most of their time in the water. Their bodies are built to swim. Penguins have heavier bones than most birds. This helps them dive very deep in the water. They have strong wings and webbed feet like a duck. This helps them swim fast. When penguins dive into the water, they can swim up to 25 miles an hour. Some can
stay underwater for up to 25 minutes!
#5.
If your child is the victim of bullying, he may suffer physically and emotionally, and his schoolwork will likely show it. Grades drop because, instead of listening to the teacher, kids are wondering what they did wrong and whether anyone will sit with them at lunch. If bullying persists, they may be afraid to go to school. Problems with low self-esteem and depression can last into adulthood and interfere with personal and professional lives.
#6
Break Dancing Today
Break dancing is still popular today.
It is on television and in movies.
People still break dance on the sidewalks in some cities.
Have you ever tried break dancing?
Go ahead. Bust a move!
Tips for teachers:
· If you see your students are having difficulty with one particular type of structure, you might want to create more exemplars organized using that text structure for them to look at.
· If your kids are able to figure out the text structures of texts in certain genres but seem to be having problems figuring out the text structures of other genres, you might want to bring out your old charts to show transference and how to apply these skills to texts which are in more unfamiliar genres.
· If your kids have problems identifying structures, you might want to create other exemplars for them to practice figuring out the structure of specific parts to see if determining the structure of certain types of parts give them more trouble than others (between two sentences or across paragraphs or across whole texts).
Questioning Center
In this center, you and your partner will choose one of the envelopes. Take all of the questions out of the envelope. With your partner try to sort the questions that seem to go together and make piles. Then talk about what signal words in each question let you know what kind of question it was. What patterns do you notice about the way questions are worded? You can also talk about what kind of work you have to do to answer this question (is the answer “right there” in the text? Would you have to “think and search?” Would you have to think about the whole text and back up your answer with key details?)
Talk with your partner about which of these kinds of questions seem to go well for you and which are the trickiest. Share tips with each other for how you go about answering them.
Read these tips if you want some extra help:
· Some kinds of questions ask for what the passage/or part of the passage is mostly about
· Some kinds of questions ask about which details best support what the passage is mostly about
· Some kinds of questions ask about what words mean in context.
· Some kinds of questions ask about how/why the author might have organized the text.
· What other patterns and kinds of questions do you notice?
Tips for Teachers:
You can see the attached pages of questions (grade-specific) for some examples of template questions students can sort. We suggest cutting out 3-5 questions per category for students to sort. You can decide which categories of questions are best for your students to sort based on what your data shows about what they need. Another option is to through previous tests for older grades or through Test Ready or other test prep materials and cut out text-dependent questions for students to sort. You also might decide to have students sort a combination of template questions (questions that can be asked of any text) and text-dependent questions (questions that clearly are being asked about a specific text).
· If you see your students are having difficulty through type of question strand, you might want to create more questions around that strand or look at what is getting in the way of students being able to answer that question. You might have a student try answering one of those questions off a passage and ask the student to talk you through his/her thinking so you can figure out what is stopping the student from understanding. What’s the sticking point?
· If you see your students are having difficulty answering certain types of questions in a strand, you might ask yourself, “Is it the way the question is worded?” or “Is it the content of the text that is giving the student trouble?”
· Do the students really understand what questions go together? If they have trouble sorting, you might teach them to look for key signal words in the questions and look for the patterns.
WHAT’S IT MOSTLY ABOUT?
GAME SHOW!
One of you will be the host. The others will form two teams. (Make sure that you keep switching who is the host).
The host will read the excerpt of text to one team. The team will try to figure out what this passage is mostly about (main idea/central message/theme /moral). If they do not figure out what it seems to be mostly about, the other team can try to figure it out. Then the host reads an excerpt to the other team. After the host reads two cards, a new player must become the host.
If you would like to keep score, you can score a team 1 point for figuring out a main idea/central message/theme/moral.
Excerpts
#1
Do you eat breakfast every day? Researchers have found that people who eat a balanced breakfast are likely to be healthier than those who don’t. One reason is that most people eat whole grains at breakfast, and these promote good health. Breakfast also tend to have fewer weight problems than those who skip the meal. People who don’t eat breakfast usually eat too much later in the day. Often, these foods are not healthy and can cause weight gain problems. So, be sure to eat breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day.
People may be healthier if they make sure to eat a nutritious breakfast each day.
#2
When the first train tracks were put into place across the entire United States in 1869, officials had a problem. Each town along the way set its clock by the noonday sun. So, the time was never exactly the same from place to place. It was hard to have a reliable train schedule with this system. So, in 1883, railroad owners, scientists, and businessmen came up with four time zones across the country: Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, and Pacific Time. This new system was called Standard Railway Time. Today, these are the time zones in use across the United States.