DRP & The Value of Text Deconstruction

Melanie HalsteadInstructional Coach

Handout – Think about how you determined your answers.

How did you choose your answers?

Do your students have the same skills you just used?

What’s the purpose of D.R.P.?

Measures the process of reading not the product of reading (main idea and author’s purpose)

Measures how well students understand the meaning of the text

Memory and personal experience on a particular topic do not help students with the D.R.P. test

Value of Text Deconstruction

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to

be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be

answered that one should wish to be both, but,

because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it

is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the

two, either must be dispensed with.

It may be answered that one should wish to

be both, but, because it is difficult to unite

them in one person, is much safer to be

feared than loved, when, of the two, either

must be dispensed with.

Teacher Think Aloud

Refers to the two opposing ideas: 1) It is better for a leader to be loved than feared. 2) It is better for a leader to be feared than loved.

Does not replace another noun. Just acts as the subject of the sentence.

The underlined part refers to “what may be answered.”

Fascism was a new, militant political movement that emphasized loyalty to the state and obedience to its leader. Unlike communism, fascism had no clearly defined theory or program. Nevertheless, most Fascists shared several ideas.

What two things are being contrasted?What do we learn about fascism?Do we learn anything about communism? If so, what?What is the role of “nevertheless”? What is the relationship of that information it introduces to the information stated previously in the text?

Unlike communism, fascism had no clearly defined theory or program. Nevertheless, most Fascists shared several ideas.

Unlike COMMUNISM,(What is implied?)

FASCISMhad no clearly defined theory or program

NEVERTHELESS, (signals a surprise, goes against idea above)

most Fascists shared several ideas.

The Fascist State organizes the nation. It takes away pointless or harmful freedoms, and preserves those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides what freedoms matter, but only the State.

What might a text deconstruction of the underlined sentence look like and sound like?

Text Deconstruction - Math

Find the area of a trapezoid whose parallel sides are 12 and 23 centimeters respectively.

At 11:00 a.m., John started driving along a highway at constant speed of 50 miles per hour. A quarter of an hour later, Jimmy started driving along the same highway in the same direction as John at the constant speed of 65 miles per hour. At what time will Jimmy catch up with John?

Text Deconstruction - SCI

The two cells produced by meiosis I now enter a second meiotic division. Unlike the first division, neither cell goes through a round of chromosome replication before entering meosis II.

If two sodium atoms gave up electrons to one chlorine atom, the chlorine atom would have nine valence electrons, which is not a stable number resembling a noble gas.

Text Deconstruction - HSS

“And as all other republics have different classes under different names, so Venice is divided into gentleman and commonality, and the former have all the offices and honours, from which the latter are entirely excluded…” - Macciavelli

The Fascist State organizes the nation. It takes away pointless or harmful freedoms, and preserves those that are essential. It cannot be the individual who decides what freedoms matter, but only the State.

Beyond Teacher Think-Alouds to reveal how English works

SHIFT THE COGNITIVE LOAD to STUDENTS: Provide a DRP-like paragraph WITH the blanks, but

w/out the answer choices (use released samples).

Students generate as many words possible that could complete the blank logically.

Students then discuss in pairs>groups>whole class why words would/would not work – great value in discussing why certain words would NOT work.

Teacher asks “How do you know?” which forces students to refer back to text to justify the word choice.

NEXT STEPS

Be watchful for rich, essential sentences that could be deconstructed.

Incorporate these routines into lesson plans. Consider doing a sentence deconstruction from a

text you are working from with your class at least once/week. Model your thinking and mark up the text – REVEAL to your students HOW ENGLISH WORKS.

Have students try brainstorming for the blanks and discuss (w/out the multiple choice answers being provided)

Bottom Line….

There are resources that inform us of what we can we do differently than what we have done in the past.

Those 256 students depend on us to intentionally set out to improve their literacy and language development in a targeted way.

USE ME as a resource! We are all learning.