Month: March 2016

Conceptual Understandings Meet The Work of A Reader/Writer:

I’ve been asked how my persuasive language study fits in with the PYP. The answer to that is not necessarily a quick one, as I believe that the PYP and workshop have so many parallels. The philosophies match, and the preferred methods compliment each other. For my persuasive language study, as with any language study, the conceptual understandings lie in what it actually means to communicate via a certain medium for a given purpose.

There are two things all readers and writers must keep in mind if they want to communicate successfully: purpose, and effectiveness in achieving that purpose. When looking at the craft of writing through a conceptual lens, the big question really is about purpose. Why do writers write? Any time we write, we have a reason for doing so. Most likely, we also have an intended audience. Understanding purpose is the key to developing an ability to use written language effectively. Not to mention an understanding of why we use it in the first place. Once a given purpose is understood, a writer can explore how they can most effectively achieve their purpose.

Similarly, for a reader, the first thing that must be understood is purpose. Why are we reading? What do we hope to get out of it? From there, how are we going to most effectively achieve that goal? As a reader becomes able to recognize the specific purpose for which he or she is reading at any given time, then they will be able to explore and employ strategies to help them most effectively suit that purpose.

This leads us to central ideas for understanding and the lines of inquiry that can help support a reader or writer as they develop.

In a workshop unit of study, we assess what our students need to know around a given genre or purpose and develop the scope and sequence of our lessons accordingly. As the workshop unfolds, we name the teaching and learning goals explicitly for the students as a part of our mini-lessons and conferences. In a PYP unit of study, we do this as well, by sharing and discussing the central ideas and lines of inquiry (as bullet points) for each unit. Below is a version of how I planned out my persuasive language unit through a PYP lens. In this case, I used the central ideas and lines of inquiry to anchor my units and wove the language of the statements throughout the lessons.

Central Idea For Overall Language: People use persuasive language in order to convince others or persuade them to do something.

Central idea for readers/listeners: Readers (and listeners) know that persuasive writing is written from a specific point of view, and they use strategies to help them best understand what that is.

• Reading or listening closely helps us to get to the heart of what the writer/speaker is saying.
• Readers/listeners consider their own experiences and points of view when thinking about a persuasive text.
• Readers/listeners react to an argument by considering all points of view.

Central idea for writers/speakers: Writers (and speakers) use persuasive language when they want to convince their audience. There are strategies that a writer or speaker can use to make strong arguments.

• People write or speak persuasively when they feel strongly about something.
• Having specific reasons to back up an idea makes an argument strong.
• Reasoning with evidence makes an argument more powerful.

We focused on perspective and reflection, which, in this case, lined up with the key concepts being targeted in our unit of inquiry. This gave the students some nice opportunities to make connections across disciplines.

As we navigated these ideas together during the reading and writing workshops, students were able to build their understanding of why people use persuasive language, and how they could be most effective in doing so. The mini-lessons, group work and conferences reinforced these concepts as needed, and focused on strategies and skills that readers and writers use when working with persuasive language. These mini-lessons were taught using the workshop approach and students were able to inquire into how they could use these strategies in their own reading and writing lives as the opportunities to do so unfolded.

Two weeks ago, my fourth graders began an inquiry into the use of persuasive language in our reading workshop. This, of course, as a part of our unit of inquiry into “how we organize ourselves.” Armed with three essential questions for reading or listening to persuasive language closely and critically, we’ve explored print ads, commercials, picture books with persuasive characters, news articles, book reviews and editorials.

The world is filled with persuasive language, and curating a collection which models this type of language in the form of texts and videos is a challenge. One must consider the prior experiences of the students, their reading abilities, and their interests; not to mention teaching and learning goals. I set off preparing for this unit with the goal of having a collection of persuasive language that was large enough and broad enough to meet the needs and interests of my diverse class.

Commercials:

Our first entry into the world of persuasion was with t.v. commercials. I set up a youtube account with a collection of age-appropriate commercials that advertised products in different areas around the world. You can read more about these and the first phase of this unit in my last blog post.

Print Advertisements:

In order to find a selection of print advertisements, I started from scratch. I googled “print advertisements.” This was more successful than I anticipated, but I quickly found that I could search “best print ads of 2015,” and “best international advertisements.” These led me on a path to dozens of fourth-grade appropriate, culturally diverse advertisements. I purposefully chose a selection of ads which had a variety of purposes, ranging from selling goods, to don’t text and drive, to campaigning for the environment. We started off together, analyzing a print advertisement advocating for the ocean environment.

I chose this advertisement as our shared piece for several reasons. First, it was published in quite a few languages-same advertisement, different language. While we discussed the English version of the advertisement, native speakers of Spanish, Italian and Korean were also able to explore it in their mother tongue. Second, there were multiple messages in this advertisement, ranging in complexity. This would allow the students who needed more practice with identifying the purpose a point of entry, while allowing for more deeper exploration for those students ready for a challenge. I noticed more students were participating in the analysis than in previous days, using the three questions. Still, some found this type of thinking to be overwhelming and needed more support-my first strategy group for this unit! After our shared practice, students were sent off with the choice to look at other print ads in the collection I’d created, or going back to look at more commercials on our youtube channel.

Stories With Characters Using Persuasive Arguments:

This was the easiest preparation for me. I already had a collection of picture books from previous years. Some of my favorite titles include: Hey, Little Ant, by Phillip M. Hoose, My Brother Dan’s Delicious, by Steven L. Layne, Earrings, by Judith Viorst, Can I Keep Him?, by Steven Kellogg, and the I Wanna books, by Karen Kaufman Orloff. The kids love all of these books and they serve as powerful mentor texts down the line in writer’s workshop. If you know of other great mentor texts, please let me know!

News Articles/Editorials/Blogs:

My students have already been exposed to book blogs and book reviews from our “Readerly Life” unit. I used a review from this mother and son blog, giving students more exposure to how we use persuasive language, but also letting them see the role of multiple perspectives. I found a bunch of editorials, articles and reviews, mostly by luck and perseverance on the internet. I also trolled Newsela, and made a collection of opinion articles for kids. This is where I got the bulk of my articles. If you don’t know Newsela, I highly recommend you check it out. It’s a free source for news articles for students of all ages. It’s a very user-friendly, searchable site and you can create digital collections online, saving the articles you want to use for a given purpose. The articles are available on multiple reading “levels” so that students can find a just right version to read. There are even more perks to this site, but I haven’t used it to it’s fullest potential yet. (How am I doing with my use of persuasive language in this section?)

I printed out copies of every article I used. My students have access to the websites, but during reader’s workshop I prefer that they can interact with the print, old-school style. I’m not yet convinced that reading online supports close or critical reading, and I like that students can mark up the texts. I’m open to discussion on this, so go ahead and do your best to persuade me otherwise;-).

So, another week has passed, and my readers are becoming increasingly close readers of, and listeners to, persuasive texts. Through mini-lessons and guided practice, they have learned to determine the author or speaker’s purpose, how to identify and consider the reasons the author or speaker gives, and to use their own experiences, knowledge and understandings to think critically about the author or speaker’s perspective or goal.

On Monday, we launch our focus on persuasive language in our writer’s workshop!