2Q2T

This morning we talked about how to help our students write good theme statements. Our presenter called her process 2Q2T or Two Questions to Theme.

First question:

What is this (story, poem, letter, speech, play, piece, etc.) about?

Here students generate a list of topics for whatever it was they read. We read the poem "Dandelions" by Deborah Austin. Some of the topics we generated for this poem were

• war
• flowers
• weeds
• gardening
• warfare

The answer to the first question is plugged into the second question where it says topic.

Second Question

What is AUTHOR trying to say about TOPIC?

If I choose to talk about war then my question looks like this:

What is Austin trying to say about war?

In "Dandelions," Austin is trying to say that in war situations, soldiers never give up.

From here, students answer their questions, which becomes the claim sentence for their claim-evidence-commentary paragraphs.

Below, my notes. Glean from them whatever you can.

Reading and Lines: Guiding Students to Question

The student who answers questions is passive. The student who writes/asks questions is active.  That being said, how do we get students to ask questions that are meaningful and thought-provoking?

Teach them how to write leveled questions.  What are leveled questions, you ask? They're questions that are on the line, between the lines and above the lines. That is...

Level One: (on the line): Questions answered with facts from the text. You can put your finger directly on the answer.
ex.  In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which bowl of porridge did Goldilocks eat?

Level Two (between the lines): Questions that require an inference to answer. You can put your finger on the evidence that supports the answer.
ex. What kind of person is Goldilocks?


Level Three (above the lines): Questions that are open-ended and draw in our own schema as well as evidence from the text.
ex. What different kinds of reactions can people have if someone breaks into their house?

Some uses for the questions students generate:

• Socratic seminar
• Fishbowl discussion
• Games

We've talked in workshop about student involvement. If we want students to engage with the texts we're asking them to read, they have to take some ownership of the material and the learning process. I'm willing to bet that they'll care more about the answer to a question they've written than an answer to a question I've written. 

It's not enough to want kids to question everything. We have to show them how.

Scaffolding Writing

In our district, we use the RACE rubric for writing:

R: Restate the question
A: Answer the question
C: Cite evidence
E: Explain how evidence answers the question

It's not a bad format for struggling writers, just to give them a starting place and formula to plug their information into. I don't think it's a terrible scaffolding tool, however it's so formulaic that writers that aren't struggling can't grow or develop voice. The presenter for the workshop I'm attending this week, the Advanced Placement Summer Institute offered different words for the same type of writing formula:

Intro - which includes context, an interesting statement, or foreshadowing what's to come.
Claim - the statement that the writer is trying to prove
Evidence - a pithy statement one that contains the most meaning
Commentary - from your own head -- explain how your pithy statement proves claim

We started yesterday's session with interviews. Participants then took comments from those interviews, then built a claim-evidence-commentary paragraph around whatever comment participants saw as pithy. (I didn't get to participate because I came in late.) I was listening to people read their paragraphs, and I heard the thing that was lacking from RACE paragraphs. Voice.

I write RACE paragraphs and often feel like they're lacking that tongue-in-cheek type tone that my mother hates.

We brainstormed purpose/use of claim-evidence-commentary way of responding and here's what we came up with:

• helps pinpoint ideas
• for literary analysis - focus on one piece of evidence
• helps express voice
• use for rhetorical analysis
• if every response is framed as an argument, the idea of "claim" works
• helps refine thinking
• format not limited to questions

The AP teacher in the midst of participants likes this format. She says that it gets them ready to do the kind of literary analysis students will have to do when they get to the 11th and 12th grade.