Creating Meaningful Text Sets

Morgan DuntonEnglish Language Arts Specialist

Goals for today

• Explore the various components of building useful text sets.

• Understand the multiple factors which inform or influence decisions about texts including– Text type– Learning standards– Complexity– Cognitive demand– Transfer of learning– Proficiency

WHAT IS A TEXT SET?

Baltimore

This cover of Time Magazine from May 11, 2015 inspired me to create a text set within a unit of study as part of a module.

What are the connections?

A text set is:

• A collection of texts related by topic, theme, style, line of inquiry or other unifying element

• The set is anchored by a rich, complex, grade-level text, hence, the anchor text

• The anchor text is the focus of close reading with appropriate, differentiated instructional support

• Other texts in the set support the instruction of the anchor text by providing stretch texts, practice texts, or opportunity to learn a critical strategy

WHAT FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO DECISIONS ABOUT TEXT SETS?

Critical Consideration: Alignment to Standards

• Are there individual or clusters of standards that are the priority purpose for instruction?

• Are there any individual or clusters of standards not sufficiently represented in your curriculum, instruction, and assessment system?

Instructional Shifts

• Staircase of complexity

• Instruction with both literary and informational

texts

• Text-based questions

• Evidence-based responses

• Development of academic vocabulary

Critical factors to consider:

• Close the gap:– Text types– Text complexities

• Take a deep dive:– Support understanding of complex texts– Climb the cognitive demand ladder

• Foster independence and transfer– Create regular practices that lead to

proficiency: strategies applied independently in a variety of contexts

Closing the Gap

Am I providing students the opportunity to engage with a variety of text types?

•Genres – Do my students understand the qualities of a variety of literary styles and forms?•Modes – Am I providing instruction for accessing fiction, nonfiction, and a variety of informational texts in a variety of formats, digital as well as print?•Models/Mentor Texts – Are my students analyzing the style of writing that I will eventually want them to write?

Closing the Gap

Am I supporting students as they develop fluency and attempt to grow with “stretch” texts?

•Student-level (practice) texts: Am I providing students the opportunity to independently read and analyze texts at their reading level?•Grade-level (instructional) texts: Am I providing instructional opportunities to support all students reading texts on grade level?•Stretch-level texts: Am I providing instructional opportunities to support all students developing fluency with texts above their reading level?

Taking The Deep Dive: Reading Closely

Consistent close reading practices will help students gain independence with complex

texts•Helps students build stamina and persistence•Develops facility with vocabulary strategies•Encourages critical thinking practices•Fosters engagement with short texts or segments of longer texts to analyze authors’ purpose, how ideas are conveyed, key details, arguments and supporting evidence.

Do your texts provide sufficient opportunity for instruction?

Fostering Independence: Getting to Transfer

Qualities of independence: •Student knows how to engage with a particular text without prompting from a teacher•Student can form questions and responses relative to any text regardless of complexity or cognitive demand•Student demonstrates facility with a variety of appropriate strategies when encountering unknown words•Students demonstrate the ability to make meaning of new or conflicting information, synthesizing without prompting

BUILDING A TEXT SET

Begin with a gap analysis

What does your data suggest about student performance with:•Literary text•Informational text•DOK level performance?•Selected response items•Constructed response items

Building a text set

More gap analysis•What are the anchor texts in your curriculum?

– May be a novel, a text book, or any text that is the foundation of a unit

•Have you completed a complexity roadmap for your anchor texts?

– Roadmap (aka placemat) is an organizer for identifying elements of complexity, alignment to standards, and priority instructional strategies

•Have you conducted an analysis of texts by grade, department, school, or district?

Building a Text Set

• Where are your gaps?– Type, complexity, instruction?– What is your plan for filling the gaps?

• What are your anchor texts? – Can you build a set for each?– Do you have an overarching theme or essential

question for all anchor texts?– How can you fill an instructional need with a

related text?– Have you identified a pathway to transfer?

Building a Text Set

A strong text set:•Builds student knowledge about a topic•Makes a meaningful connection to the anchor text•Includes texts that are authentic, rich, and worthy of study•Presents a range of text types (literary and informational) and formats (print, digital)•Offers text complexity levels that support student achievement of the grade-level complexity demands of Maine’s learning standards

Building a Text Set

A weak text set:•Includes texts that are not related or are only superficially connected•Is limited to textbook passages •Focuses exclusively on one genre or format (unless the set is a genre study)•Provides texts of erratic complexity without supporting a staircase of grade-level complexity

Building a Text Set

• Build on a solid foundation – what should/must/will remain?

• Mind the gaps – determine what is missing and map your plan for filling those gaps– Ie. You noticed that all of your existing anchor

texts fall in the low end of the grade band of complexity so you want to update your curriculum by including more texts at the upper end of the complexity band

Building a Text Set

• Identify your anchor text• Review the complexity roadmap• Develop an essential question to explore

across the entire set• Determine a line of inquiry (a set of text-based

questions)for the text• Identify texts that potentially close the gaps and

provide opportunity to explore the essential question

Building a Text Set

When examining texts for potential inclusion: •Does the text make a meaningful contribution to the body of knowledge connected to the anchor text?•Is the text worthy of student time and attention?•Does the text contribute to a range and balance of text types and formats in the overall set?

Building a Text Set

Once you have selected the titles to include:•Identify focus instructional areas (i.e. a chapter or section of the text that might be especially challenging or that is a critical connection to the anchor text)•Determine a few activities you can do with the text that align to grade level learning standards.•Develop a culminating activity to assess learning across the set

Phenomenon Organization

• Essential Question: How are legacies created?• Line of Inquiry:

– What is the connection between the deaths of three public figures in the 1960’s and the current state of race relations in America?

– What legacy did the Kennedy brothers and Dr. King leave? Who is responsible for creating and carrying on those legacies?

– What power is there in words? Has audience impact changed through time and technology?

Sample Text Set

• Anchor: the Robert F Kennedy speech announcing the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a worthy text because it– Is historically significant– Is well written with attention to rhetorical

expertise– references history (brother, Aeschylus) – Foreshadows Kennedy’s death a few weeks

later– Provides opportunity to teach language

standards at the grade band

Related Texts

• Eulogies/death announcements: genre studies– Ted Kennedy speech provides opportunity to

study rhetorical style – JFK study includes eulogy by a Catholic

Cardinal and the chief justice to contrast ecumenical and secular style

• Civil Rights: pillars in history – Letter from Birmingham Jail addressed to

clergy (ecumenical call) April 1963– Article about JFK’s path to civil rights provides

context for MLK study June 1963

Related Texts

• Website: Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights– Through modern technology, students can

explore the legacy of RFK

• Current Events: self-directed exploration – Baltimore, St. Louis, Charlotte, elsewhere

Text Sets

What is courage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVuVu5KXuE •How do you know from the images (as opposed to the words) that the assembled men are moved by Scout?•Explain how both Scout (Jean Louise Finch) and Robert Kennedy demonstrated courage in the face hostility and potential violence.

Text Sets

How Does One Show Respect?Father is passing

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7CX_5D6y6EFear the mom

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G80CapEevGQ

•Explain how both video clips depict acts of respect and what that means to the larger society

What to do with a text set?

• Does the text set lend itself to clustering standards?

• What culminating activity would benefit students and provide an opportunity to achieve transfer?

• How can this set of texts provide a bridge to another?

• Does the text set provide inspiration to explore various lines of inquiry?

The Text Set

What we already:

•do•have•know

Something we:

•don’t do•need

•want to know

Building a Text Set

The texts you use will define the parameters of your instruction.

What you are doing after the session?