Читать книгу Lessons and Units for Closer Reading, Grades K-2 - Nancy Boyles - Страница 24

 Go within as well as across! Like doing a crossword puzzle, students’ knowledge base and “aha!” moments expand when they make connections across the curriculum—while at the same time, they are working “down, ” reading complementary texts that help them gain the disciplinary knowledge needed for more complex, global understandings. To get this rolling, we first need texts that work together. These text sets make it easier to build units that bring coherence along with complexity. Teaching with units is ideal for the primary grades because students can see how things fit together and why. Four-week units provide the space and time for authentic text-to-text connections, and they drive out the lackluster instruction that may build skills but leaves young learners with a school experience that is a string of isolated experiences without high value, like a strand of fake pearls.

 Model, look for, and celebrate exemplary text-to-text connections so all students hear them and know what one is. For example, a student might say, “The first book we read about George Washington told us about his whole life. The second book is just about one part of his life, when he chopped down the cherry tree. The third book was about when he was president. Now I can see why he was a good president: because he was always honest, since he was a young person.”