What Significant Problem of Practice did Your Intervention Target?
Problem: Students do not read critically and are unable to distinguish between their own thinking and the thinking of the author. They also struggle to distinguish between an author’s voice and the other voices/perspectives/sources the author builds upon and references. As a result, they are unable to make deeper connections and cannot make the leap into effective writing.
Based on reading discussions in our classrooms, we determined reading comprehension to be a problem at all levels. Denise Lambert and Reagan Henderson (myself) also conducted pretests in our classes that measured students’ ability to articulate and/or identify an author’s thesis. The results confirmed our suspicions and led us to craft and test our reading template.
What Common Core State Standards Relate to this Problem and How?
Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
