and weekly assessment that the best teachers do. Spot the kids who need a small-group reteach; spot the child who needs one-on-one support. Spot the students who you suddenly see would work really well together on some aspect of reading and writing. This wise, informed “seeing” of kids’ written work (and verbal work for that matter) leads into the fourth and final facet of integration I want to point out—bringing an even greater degree of intention to integrating reading and writing.
Think Intentional Teaching
Teach with intention is another bit o’ wisdom that talking heads in education use, and as a practicing teacher of twenty-nine (!) fourth graders, my response is often an eye roll and followed by “Well, duh!” said with the perfect pitch intonation of a ten-year-old. Like we’re gonna just go in and wing it without plans and hope students pick up a few skills by spring? It’s all the more ironic, then, that I actually think highly enough of the concept of integrating more intentionality into our days to give it a real presence in this book. But my brand of intentionality is really, really concrete, even mechanical. You will see it show up in two ways in these sequences. Well, maybe three.
The first way is the sequence itself—the very notion of purposely linking reading and writing in a day, connecting it to the work you and students do with language, grammar, and so on.
The second way intentionality makes its mark is the If/Then Chart provided within the Next Instructional Steps section that follows each sequence, where I show you the things I tend to assess and evaluate—and then what I do with it in terms of going forward. All of our teaching—and really, all of our life—is one big If/Then—but here, with the If/Then Chart, I’m highlighting the process of intentionally evaluating students’ learning in order to respond and intentionally, incisively, plan subsequent lessons and conferences.
The third way I help you think about intentional teaching is through the three-week unit calendars provided for each sequence at www.corwin.com/commoncorecompanion. As I mentioned, each sequence is a week or two of instruction; the exact duration is up to you. You can dive in to any of these sequences, do them start to finish, and call it a day. Or, you can begin by looking at the more ambitious four-week unit plan, and use it to help you try units of study for the first time or deepen them. Then the sequence tucks within the unit. The reality is, any one of these sequences can springboard into a longer unit of study. The minute you combine worthy standards, rich texts, interesting questions, relevant writing ideas—well, it’s like Mentos in a cola bottle. Expect a fizzy explosion of further questions, information, additional texts, and discussion. By planning a unit of study, you take command of the line of inquiry, and you guide students in ways that better ensure you use the weeks wisely and address key skills and content along the way.
Flip back a few pages to the sectionBooster Lessons, At a Glance. There, you get a visual tour of the recurring features of the sequence and its purpose. This will give you a vivid sense for how lessons connect to each other, and how all the ELA standards meld together in a seamless whole.
Intentionality. Use this guide to fit your needs and more importantly your students’ needs. Mark it up, take the parts that work for you—but remember best practice. Keep an eye on the core practices and think of how you’re implementing them. But most importantly keep this one thought at the forefront—are you teaching your students to read, write, and think—and to love doing it?
To Wendy Murray, my dear friend and editor extraordinaire! This book is as much yours as it is mine. It would make our fathers proud.
Lesson Sequence 1 Integrating Opinion Writing With Evaluating Argument
In this lesson sequence, students look at craft and structure: what authors do to make a piece of writing hang together. To read critically, students need to be able to read with an eye to discerning the author’s purpose, and the point of view at work. To write convincingly, writers need to know how to make a case. I feature fourth-grade lessons; however, it is easily adapted for third and fifth grade (see pages 22–24).
This sequence is best done at the beginning of the year. It sits most naturally within a reader’s and writer’s workshop but can be imported into any curriculum.
Task
After you have read a traditional fairy tale and the “fractured” version, write a compare/contrast piece. Make sure to include point of view and examples from the text.
If you are a teacher using a basal series, this sequence can augment a study on compare and contrast, author’s purpose and point of view, or character traits and literary terms. The question to ask yourself is what do you need? For example, does your class need a “booster shot”—a quick injection to get kids acquainted with point of view (POV)? If that’s it, start at the sequence’s beginning on page 4. Or, if you want to build the POV lessons into a unit of study on craft and structure, visit www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion to map out a three- to four-week unit and then circle back to start.
Core Connections
Focus Reading Standard 6
Reading Standards 1, 4, and 5
Writing Standards 1, 5, 6, 9, and 10
Speaking and Listening Standard 1
Language Standards
This sequence can be replicated throughout the year using different genres and increasingly more difficult texts. While this sequence focuses on literature, and fairy tales in particular, you can adapt the unit to focus on compare/contrast and POV lessons using informational text, and in any content area. In addition, you can use the framework here to add POV lessons to other units—asking students to think about all characters’ points of view—not just the main character’s.
What Teachers Guide Across the Week
What Students Do Across the Week
Throughout the week—and beyond—students open up the hood on the texts they are reading and writing to discover the points of view that make the texts power forward. Students in the intermediate grades are developmentally ready to understand point of view, and it’s a skill that goes beyond texts to reading the world; point of view, after all, is the vantage point from which each one of us evaluates people, current events, and just about everything in the physical emotional landscape.
Lizzie Jo fills out her graphic organizer comparing and contrasting two fairy tales.
So just what is involved when we ask students to engage in this sequence? It begins with reading. In the first reading lesson, you guide students to see that spotting the point of view in texts is about looking at what authors and characters say and what they don’t say and considering the ideas, beliefs, and agendas that are in and above the text.
Then, in the companion writing lesson, ideally done the very same day, we “flip it” and students use what they have noticed about POV as they write. In addition to writing in response to reading (in this case, students compare and contrast), students begin to learn how to write opinion and persuasive pieces from their own point of view.
The next day? Back to reading! You’ll see that in all, you and students move back and forth between five reading/literature booster lessons on point of view and