Hi Diane, I can't speak for Michelle, but here's how I would answer your questions:
(1) Using white out: It depends on your purpose. You can leave the entire text unmasked, or you can mask selected features. If your purpose is to simply have your students survey and comprehend the text, it makes sense to leave the text unmasked. If you want to work on summarization or determining importance, you might mask every heading in a textbook chapter, and then ask your students to read each section and come up with appropriate headings on their own. If you want your students to focus first on illustrations -- to do a picture walk -- you might try masking everything but the illustrations. I'd include page numbers in this. Mask everything and then have the students come up with their own questions, connections, inferences and predictions based on what they see in the illustrations. When they've run out of steam on the picture walk, you can then remove the sticky notes and start a whole new round of conversation. This works real well. You will be surprised at how far this can take the class into thick questions and deeper thinking. (2) Length of text: What text will you be working with? Choose that. If it's very long it can be hard to handle, so practically speaking there are limits, but I wouldn't shy away from the longer texts. In my workshops, I regularly work with texts in the 20-50 page range, and for my own reading I commonly will scroll books in the 200-400 page range. It takes about a day for me to scroll a 300-page book, but the work pays off for me since I can really move quickly through the book after that. So I guess my larger point is, the length of the text "is what it is". If you can accommodate a 30-page scroll in your classroom, and you have such a text that you would like to scroll, go ahead and do it. My experience is, there is a real pay-off to practicing MOT strategies on a scroll. It helps bring everyone in the class along. (3) Type of text: Any kind. Textbooks and other non-fiction, magazines, picture books, fiction, short stories, poetry and music -- all can be scrolled. Whether you do it depends on what you hope to accomplish with your students, and what their needs are as learners. (4) Same text: If you want small group conversations to spill out into the class, or if you want to have a discussion with the whole class after they have done their mapping and strategies work, use the same text. You may find that the whole-class discusssion will begin on its own, as students begin to reach out to the other groups and discuss what they see. This is hard to control, and I'm not sure I would try. Your room will be much noisier if they all use the same text -- and this isn't necessarily a bad thing! On the other hand, if you want them to stay focused in their small groups, use different texts. Having small groups share their insights about different texts does not seem to work too well -- the rest of the students in the class, not having read the text being discussed, tend to get bored. I hope this is helpful. Thank you for your interest, Dave Middlebrook The Textmapping Project A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction. www.textmapping.org | Please share this site with your colleagues! USA: (609) 771-1781 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Diane Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:09 PM Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Thanks Dave! Textmapping is Great! Hi Michelle - thanks for your post...just a few quick questions if you don't mind. Did you white out the page numbers, and/or the the features for them to fill in on their own, or were the copied pages exactly from the text? Also, how long of a text did you choose? Was it an instructional text or informational? and one more question...did all groups have the same text? Thanks you so much!! Diane ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Michelle TeGrootenhuis Sent: Wed 9/17/2008 10:00 PM To: 'Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group' Subject: [MOSAIC] Thanks Dave! Textmapping is Great! Just wanted to publicly say "Thanks" to Dave Middlebrook for sharing his textmapping project with everyone via his website at www.textmapping.org. I wrote about it and shared some pictures of the process on my blog at http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blog/list?user=ujmo7mw58i1a My kiddos LOVED it and they will definitely remember how those nonfiction features help them read and understand the text. THANKS DAVE! -Michelle TG This message sent from the home of Scott and Michelle TG www.mrstg.com _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. > > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. 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