Each teacher was asked to bring three papers to the discussion — one in the top of the class performance, one in the middle, and one in the bottom of the class performance. Papers were chosen before the team defined proficiency. After defining proficiency, teachers often changed their minds about how they ordered their papers. The online discussion will make that clearer.
Question:
Write a summary of the article “Persistence”
(Acrobat)
Top Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
- Understands how to state the main idea; connects back to the main idea when he restates it more clearly at the end of the response
- Was able to look at the childhood events and relate them to persistence in both the details about the car and rocket races; made connections by relating that to Paul Richard’s ability to succeed in his career
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What does the student still need to learn?
- Needs to include more details to explain how Paul Richard’s goals were achieved at the outset; “we have to infer what the goals are until we read the end of the response“
- Needs to clarify his understanding of ‘persistence’ by including the other race in which Paul Richard lost
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
- Talk with the student and ask, “How did this particular detail support the main idea?”
- Look at the topic sentence with the student
Where would you go next instructionally with the class?
- Look at the criteria that should be included in a summary
- Talk about how to find the main idea of an article in order to encompass what it is trying to teach
Middle Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
- Understands the main idea; develops the main idea by including details about events throughout the life of the Pennsylvania boy
- Understands how to separate out each of the races to show the impact these events had on Paul Richard’s ideas about persistence
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What does the student still need to learn?
- Needs to learn to exclude less important details; did not need to say Paul Richard’s was from Pennsylvania or give the name of the Derby
- Needs to learn how to transition better from the car race to NASA to avoid missing a piece of information
- Needs to integrate ideas
- Needs to learn how to separate ideas that don’t go together and supply a transition that would help the reader better understand the flow of ideas
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
- Determine if the student understood the connections by asking, “What is the relationship between these two details and persistence?”
- Plan an extension lesson and incorporate writing
Bottom Classroom Response
What did the student understand?
- Understands some of the details
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What does the student still need to learn?
- Needs to work on what to include in writing summaries
- Needs to understand how persistence is connected to the childhood experiences
- Needs to make connections
- Needs to know how to identify important details; all of this information doesn’t come to the conclusion that Paul Richards worked hard and he won; even though it includes all of those details, it doesn’t build up to the idea of persistence
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Where would you go next instructionally with this student?
