Toolbox
To set the foundation for grade 9 ELA, students have been developing their literary analysis toolboxes. By exploring some short texts together and talking about how to identify and consider intentional choices made by text creators (authors, filmmakers, etc.), students should feel confident in going forward and analyzing texts on their own throughout the year.
We started the week with a classic episode of the Twilight Zone called "Eye of the Beholder." We used this to talk about setting, characterization, and narrative structure. It also led to some interesting discussion about societal norms... After watching this, students worked on reviewing their knowledge of literary elements and devices, working collaboratively to deepen their understanding.
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| Scene from The Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder" (1960) |
Reading Strategies
Find more information on the Talking to the Text reading strategies here!
In class today, we did a mini-lesson on some reading strategies we like to call "Talking to the Text." The focus of these strategies is to encourage students to be more aware of what they are doing while they are reading, and to know how to engage in ACTIVE reading. When reading for school, or for work, or even sometimes for pleasure, it's useful to ensure the time we spend reading is as effective as possible.
Enter: Talking to the Text, or TttT for short!
The 7 TttT strategies are:
- determining importance
- monitoring understanding
- making connections
- questioning
- making inferences
- visualizing
- summarizing
To get a handle on these strategies, students read two current events articles, using highlighters to make their use of the reading strategies visible to them, and me! These articles were focused on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion ruling from yesterday, an important current event. They can be found here and here.