Here’s something that keeps me up at night. More and more schools are getting over 80% of K-3 students to benchmark on various screening measures. And yet these decoding and fluency gains are not translating to better scores on more comprehensive tests–at least not yet.
2nd grade teacher Tara Hess and MS reading interventionist Sara Quinn are worried about this discrepancy too. On May 12th, they presented to a group of educators about one of the things they’re doing to help their students comprehend complex texts: explicitly teaching and then relentlessly practicing “getting the gist.”
In the above video, you’ll learn about what that routine looks like in their classrooms, get to see multiple videos of Sara and Tara’s instruction, learn about common obstacles and challenges for students, and review MAP data.
I walked away from this session with shared several, key takeaways that I wanted to share here:
Gist work should be grounded in meaty, complex texts that are worth reading. This is key.
Model relentlessly. If you think you’re over-modeling, particularly with striving readers, you’re probably NOT. Make your thinking visible and articulate your thinking as much as possible. Don’t assume students will make the same logical leaps that you do.
Practice relentlessly. If students are reading meaty, complex text everyday, they can get the gist everyday. This doesn’t have to be a big deal or take a ton of time, and the more you use this routine, the more efficient you and your students will get.
Everyone talks. Before students complete their graphic organizers and write their gist sentences, everyone talks about what they’ve read. Tara uses frequent, punctuated turn and talks to maximize student thinking and talk time. Sara has a small group of intervention students, so it’s easier to ensure that everyone is talking and thinking. But both educators prioritize this talk time. In their classrooms, oracy is rehearsal for writing.
One big reason I believe Tara and Sara are seeing such good results with this routine is that they are using it in such a way that students cannot avoid thinking about what they’re reading. More on this later, but I’m bullish on other practices that direct student attention to the text and require this text immersion. We want to prioritize routines that do this.
It was a great session! Give it a watch (ideally) or a listen, and let us know what you think. I’m also linking Tara’s and Sara’s slides, as well as a blog Sara wrote earlier this year on the same topic.
And while you’re here, go ahead and sign-up for our next Teachers Teach Teachers event: June 9th at 7:00 ET: The Word Mapping Project
