I’ve written several times here about Sensitivity Analysis questions and how valuable I think they are at helping students develop an ear for complex text. Yesterday while reviewing lesson plans for The Magician’s Nephew with curriculum writer Emily Badillo, I came across a new example Emily developed that I thought was worth sharing. It comes…
I’ve blogged about Sensitivity Analysis a couple of times before (here here and here). It’s a Close Reading activity that involves asking students to read a very short passage from a text carefully and then compare it to a similar version in which the teacher has made small changes. To understand those small changes and…
Last week, as part of our development process for our new curriculum, I taught one of our Esperanza Rising lessons to a group of fourth graders. One of the toughest moments for me came when I tried to teach one of my favorite activities: a ‘Sensitivity Analysis’ question. Sensitivity Analysis is a close reading tool…
One of the activities at our Reading Reconsidered workshop today asked participants to draft Text Dependent Questions about the first two paragraphs of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, on which Colleen had taught an amazing close reading lesson. We gave people this chart describing types of Text Dependent Questions (TDQs) at different level Out Zoom In…
Here are the first three paragraphs of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron”: HARRISON BERGERON THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was…