Planning Around Essential Questions

After working with teachers last week on a curricular plan developed around genres and units around essential questions, one of the teachers emailed me some concerns. Because they are connected to my previous posting, I thought I should respond to these concerns in a public manner.

In his email, the teacher said he was reading Strategies that Work (Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A., 2^nd ed. 2007) where he came across something that made him wonder about a few things. He quoted Harvey and Goudvis work

“…when students practice comprehension strategies in short text of varying genres, they are far better prepared to construct meaning from longer chapter books later."

It seems that this statement seemed to conflict with the planning we did based on genres. These conflicts led my friend to three questions. I am going to address the three questions posed as I go along.

Question #1

Because of what he views as conflicting information he asked:

"Are these authors suggesting that a unit of study should be around a strategy and several genres will be explored in that unit? If so, doesn’t that lead to a skill-based classroom where the knowledge of various subjects is neglected?"

I think the authors are saying that students learn to use strategies with more dexterity when they are given opportunity to apply and practice them across genres. That is different than they are “suggesting that a unit of study should be around a strategy.” I do not believe that Harvey and Goudvis are saying that all units must be focused on skills. Let’s look closer.

While working with the curricular team, I suggested to several teachers to include several genres in their lessons. (Obviously I did not make my “instruction” explicit enough! Sorry.) Although we centered our curriculum plans on specific genres, it is necessary to bring in different genres around the same “essential question”. It IS important for students to compare and contrast the genres and to compare and contrast the use of strategies with different genres. For example, let’s say we are studying “What makes a hero, a hero?” in the context of biographies and autobiographies. In this unit, we might instruct students to question and make inferences while reading about the main “character” of biographies and autobiographies. However, while looking at the narrative nonfiction texts wouldn’t it be enlightening for students to compare the real life characteristics of real life heroes as presented in biographies/autobiographies to Henry Fleming in Red Badge of Courage (Crane, S.) or Paul Revere in Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” Students could still ask questions and make inferences about these characters. The class could compare if asking questions about a character in a poem was different than in a piece of nonfiction. They could discuss if heroes are presented differently in biographies, autobiographies, fiction texts, and poetry.

You might ask: “If we are reading all these different genres of texts, then why do we say the unit is focused on biographies and autobiographies?” That is a great question! It really depends on what we are going to assess. If we are going to focus our assessment on determining if students can identify if a text is a biography or autobiography then the unit IS focused on biographies or autobiographies. Also, the main texts of this unit are biographies and/or autobiographies.

Question #2

My deep thinking teacher also asked:

"Should I remove "longer chapter books" from my library early in the year? How much should I restrict independent reading across genres since early units only deal with a limited number of genres?"

I do not think that longer chapter books should be removed from classroom libraries or that we should limit what students read because of our instructional focus on genres. Because it is our goal for students to use strategies across genres, their varying choices of independent reading books will only reinforce this concept. Let’s go back to our hero unit as an example.

Let’s say that in this classroom the teacher is reading The Lost Garden (Yep, L.) aloud to the class as part of the essential question. In small group instruction students are reading: The Rescuers: Kids who risked everything to save others (Zullo, A.); Snowbound: The tragic story of the Donner party (Lavender, D. S.); The Secret Soldier: The story of Deborah Sampson (McGovern, A.); and Vision of Beauty: The story of Sarah Breedlove Walker (Lasky, K). Remember discussions and guided activities are focused on questioning, making inferences, and characters. Now let’s say that a student is reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Blume, J.) during independent reading. This student could still be asked to write questions and make inferences about the character. Another student in the class might be reading Amazing but True Sport Stories (Hollander, P.). Although this student might not be able to look at specific characters, he could still raise questions and identify when he had to make inferences. What shouldn't happen is to ask these students to identify the genre (with text evidence) of their independent reading book.

Question #3

Lastly, the teacher asked a question that insinuated that he had already come to the same conclusions that I have suggested. He queried:

"Would it be reasonable to reconcile our current curriculum plans with Harvey and Goudvis' "across genres" refrain by saying, stick with the genre, but pull in material outside the genre when it is beneficial to compare/contrast, to point out the use of a strategy or skill in different genres, or to enhance kids' knowledge related to our essential questions or common themes?"

As you see, embedded in this question are suggestions of what I have said previously. He has already answered his own question. Oh, I love that I work with such smart teachers!