Reading Fiction
This unit leans heavily on the “signposts” that are identified by educational researchers Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. In Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading, these authors identify six story events that appear in every fiction genre and which students can use to help interpret text. This approach is valuable because it gives young readers a targeted focus for their reading and annotations. Starting a new story can make any reader feel disoriented. Suddenly, just by the act of opening the book (or the screen) we are expected to embrace unknown characters, settings, and conflicts. This expectation can feel even more overwhelming for emerging readers who struggle to sound out and identify the meanings of words. Beers and Probst refined their list of signposts based on the criteria of being easy to notice, showing up frequently, and offering young readers a hook to relate stories to their own real-life and reading experiences. As the authors explain, “We don’t read for the conscious purpose of finding and labeling a connection; rather, as we read, something in the text triggers a memory or causes us to make a connection…and then we explore the significance of that interaction.”1 Once students have built mastery in noticing the six identified signposts, they will have the skills to recognize other literary patterns and expand their tool kit.
The six signposts identified by Beers and Probst are called: Words of the Wiser, Again and Again, Contrasts and Contradictions, Aha Moments, Tough Questions, and Memory Moment. In this unit, students will begin by working two signposts as they analyze a fable and fairy tale. We will start with Words of the Wiser, which describes story events in which one character gives meaningful life advice to another character, most often the protagonist. The second starter signpost will be Again and Again, which describes an image, word, or situation that is repeated, with growing significance in the story. Working just two signposts and with short texts will help students learn to recognize these signposts more quickly because they can use the whole story to interpret their meaning and they can read several stories in short succession to practice looking for the signposts. At the end of the unit, students will review the rest of the signposts so that they have the complete set available as they embark on a long read. These signposts are also supported by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Literature curriculum that New Haven Public Schools recently began using for grades 1-6 and has secured as a resource for grades 7-8. Thus, for some seventh graders, using these signposts will be activating prior knowledge, while for others, this content will be new.
Reading Nonfiction
This unit will introduce students to the reading stance that Beers and Probst outline in the book Reading Nonfiction. Specifically, it will encourage students to approach nonfiction text by using the questions: 1) “What surprised you?”2 2) “What changed, challenged, or confirmed what you already knew?” 3 The first question helps to encourage curiosity because it invites students to notice what stands out to them in a text. It also emphasizes the opportunity to be impressed and to feel appreciation, and even awe. These emotions open our minds and motivate us to learn. The second question encourages students to connect ideas presented in the text to prior knowledge and opinions, and to use new information to think critically about their beliefs. This represents the application of curiosity and how pursuing new information helps us to broaden our knowledge and awareness.
The unit also will support students by previewing nonfiction readings with background knowledge. Research shows that background knowledge and successful reading have a cyclical relationship: the background knowledge helps students interpret text, which then extends students’ background knowledge. On the Science of Reading podcast, Reid Smith, a teacher and researcher with the La Trobe Science of Language and Reading Lab in Australia described background knowledge as information that readers bring to the act of reading. He explained, “It can also be knowledge and experiences, and other texts that a reader might have read, that they can overlay with their current reading to make meaning of the text that they’re reading at the moment.”4 This unit will scaffold reading of nonfiction texts with videos, vocabulary, and visual previews to promote student success with the texts.
Reading Like a Writer
The reading strategies described above support close reading. Students will use these strategies to notice how writers build stories, and then use the texts to draft a fairy tale, myth or fable of their own. Harnessing the power of narrative to craft stories that are important to them will increase the relevance of the learning for students. Making their own choices relating to character, plot, setting, and theme will help students better understand how these elements fit together as they read and interpret other stories.
