Primary documents: Reading strategies and Excerpting

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Helping students read primary documents

• Pre-reading strategies• Strategies to use during reading• Post-reading strategies

Why do students struggle with reading?

• Decoding• Comprehension• Interest• Fluency

Pre-reading strategies

We need to help students establish a purpose for reading the document.

Preview the text: look at the title, author, date, headings, subheadings, pictures, captions under pictures, bold-face print and other graphics

After previewing the text, activate prior knowledge. Think about what you already know about the topic and the time period.

Predict what might happen in the text. Develop initial questions about the text.

Tools for purpose, previewing, activating and predicting….

Advance organizers: Advance organizers are pre-reading activities to activate prior knowledge and to show students the connections that exist among the key concepts in a document.

Analogy graphic organizers: helps students link new information to familiar concepts. It can be used with elementary through high school students to introduce a topic, guide comprehension while reading, or extend the learning after reading (Buehl, 2001).

Time to practice……New Concept: Women’s rights movement (suffrage)

Familiar Concept: Abolitionist and early Civil Rights movement

Similarities Differences

Summary of new concept:

Strategies to use during reading

Example #1:• Visualize: create mental images• Make connections: link ideas in the text to prior

knowledge and experiences• Question: use self-questioning, revise predictions,

make note of your thinking• Make inferences: look for information not directly

stated• Clarify word meaning: use context clues and

knowledge of words• Monitor understanding: re-read, adjust reading

rate, read ahead, skim text,

• Good readers:– Look at pictures/word clues– Slide through the whole word– Skip hard words and then go back– Reread: Does it look right, sound right, and make

sense? If not STOP and go back. – Spell the word out loud – Thinking of a rhyming word you know. – Chunk it: look for smaller words hiding inside

Let’s try a “during reading strategy”

Use the SMART (Self-monitoring approach to reading and thinking) strategy while you read The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony, 1873

Post-reading strategies

• Venn diagrams• Fact or opinion• Different perspectives• Summarizing• Discussion web• Discussion questions

• Discussion Webs (Alvermann, 1991) encourage full class participation in the discussion of a topic. This strategy incorporates all language arts areas: reading, writing, speaking/signing, and listening/watching and can be used with upper elementary students through high school.

Modifying primary sources: how do I know how much and what part of the document is necessary?

• Before you start excerpting:–What is the purpose/reason for

choosing the document?•What is the document’s significance?•What can/should we take away from

the document?

–Read the document and mark key phrases/sentences/passages that address the identified purpose of the document. • Once you identify what the document’s

purpose is, you need to identify where that message lies.

– You are ready to start cutting:• Look at the portions of the document that you

did not identify as being critical to the overall message. • Block out a passage and re-read the document

to see if the context is still appropriate. • It is critical that you don’t de-contextualize the

document or its key ideas. • You need to keep enough of the document to

ensure students will get the “big idea,” but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or unwieldy.

Let’s practice excerpting a document:

• Go back to our original document, The United States v. Susan B. Anthony, and decide which parts of the document can be excerpted but still maintain the document’s integrity.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpvq6B62u_Y

For next time…..

Please read a primary document and decide what part(s) of the document to excerpt.

Group 1Hamilton vs. Jefferson

Praveen Bannikatti Brent Wooters Phil Carlson Karen Wickiser

Group 2Cult of Domesticity

Archie Cook Pat Williams Amber Davison Joshua Wager

Group 31950s and social, political, and economic conformity

Jason Danielson Tim Dowler Canada Snyder Patrick Mambu Erika Ramirez

Group 4Steps to the American

Revolution

Casey Dunley Terry Gioffredi Alex Hammer BJ VanVleet

Group 5Westward expansion and

the issue of slavery

Rachel Finken Steve Hanson Mike Neary Diane Fox

Group 6Stopping the spread of

communism

Don Heese Dominic Iannone Sue Pille Kirk Stevens Dave Mahler

Group 7Reconstruction

Mike Shaw Chris Kannapel Sherry Poole Kevin Klimowski Maureen Murphy

Group 8Literary movement of the

1920s

Paul Sams Deb Peterson Brian Koch Greg Marshall Michele Mead

Using Primary Sources

Group 1 Praveen Bannikatti Brent Wooters Phil Carlson Karen Wickiser

Group 2 Archie Cook Pat Williams Amber Davison Joshua Wager

Group 3 Jason Danielson Tim Dowler Canada Snyder Patrick Mambu Erika Ramirez

Group 4 Casey Dunley Terry Gioffredi Alex Hammer BJ VanVleet

Group 5 Rachel Finken Steve Hanson Mike Neary Diane Fox

Group 6 Don Heese Dominic Iannone Sue Pille Kirk Stevens Dave Mahler

Group 7 Mike Shaw Chris Kannapel Sherry Poole Kevin Klimowski Maureen Murphy

Group 8 Paul Sams Deb Peterson Brian Koch Greg Marshall Michele Mead