Day One: Pre-Reading and Annotation
To begin our lesson, I called the class
to gather on the carpet with a pencil
and something on which to write.
Each student was also given his or her
own copy of the text. I chose a text that was on-grade level, yet complex. We had already learned about force, drag, and friction. In keeping with this topic, the text I chose to read went into greater detail about push, pull, and gravity. To start, we numbered our paragraphs. This helped the students when they needed to refer back to the text.
Then I read the entire text aloud to the students. This ensured that each student had heard and understood the text before they were asked to read it on their own. We started with the section of the text on push and pull. The students read the text silently to themselves and annotated the section as they read. Annotating a text is a familiar skill we had been using throughout the school year. This skill had previously been modeled and practiced by the students. The second grade students had three responsibilities when annotating a text. They were to circle unknown words or phrases, underline important details, and write notes in the margin. These annotations were the basis for the discussions that followed the reading.
The discussion began
with each student
sharing with their
partner what they
thought was impor-
tant. Then I called on several students to share with the class. One student said, “I underlined strength because you have to use your strength to push or pull something.” Another student said, “I underlined toward because it tells the direction the object moves.” A third student said, “I underlined push and pull because it was a bold word. I knew it was important because it describes a force.”
Those responses led to the main idea of our reading for the day. To enable the students to discover the main idea on their own, I gave them a question to think about: “What is the difference between a push and a pull?”
The students were instructed to go back to the text to find details to support their answer. Students then shared their findings. One student responded with “Pushes and pulls move objects.” I asked the class if they thought that was the difference. One student replied by saying that pushes and pulls both move objects so that was how they were similar, not how they were different. This shows that both students were on track with their thinking, but not quite where they needed to be. I posed a follow up question: “In what direction does a push move an object?” The student replied, “In paragraph 2 it says ‘when a force moves an object away from it, that is called a push.’” To another student I asked, “What about pull?” This student replied, “It says that, ‘When a force moves an object toward it, that is called a pull.’” I responded with, “Let’s combine our knowledge of the directions pushes and pulls move objects to find out how they are different.” The student said, “Pushes and pulls move something in different directions. A pull will bring the thing closer. A push makes the thing move away.”
To wrap up our discussion for day one, I asked the students to think of examples of pushes and pulls in the real word. The students shared their examples with their partners before sharing with the whole class. One student shared that an example of a push was when her friend helped her get started swinging at recess by pushing her. Another student shared that a pull was when she opened the door to school that morning. She had to pull it to get it opened. I left the students with a thought for them to wonder about before the next day: "Tomorrow we are
"Students were to circle unknown words or phrases, underline important details, and
write notes in the margin. These
annotations were the basis for discussion."
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