That is my language arts/reading comprehension unit. I have to make it last until the curriculum director comes forth with the next unit... could be a while. Now, it's very nice to ask T/F questions to gauge comprehension... but what is there to it that can take a half-hour a day for several weeks?! Am I missing something? Here's what I've thought of so far: # Avoid jumping to conclusions (faulty inferencing) -- what did the text actually say vs. what you think about it # Increasing awareness of exaggeration, not taking it literally # Be wary of always/never statements, and in speech/writing use only when it's true # Distinguishing between fantasy and reality; identifying absurdities in statements, stories # Identify fact/opinion statements Do you think that's what they meant? What other goals might fall in this unit?
Not sure either but for a game activity you could do a T/F Simon Says... If the answer is T do the activity, if the answer is F stop the activity. Have a list of the activities on the board: lightly clap your hands lightly jog on the spot jumping jacks alternating touch your floor/ceiling etc etc repeat from top of the list. Questions could be worded like New York is the city where the Statue of Liberty is. to be classified as an insect you must have 6 legs. red yellow and green are the primary colors. the kids love it. Mr. Skinner
OK, this is one of the issues that's reallya problem for some of my kids. Any ideas of what I can do to "fix" that? If I ask Y/N, T/F questions, they get it without missing a beat. But if I ask anything even slightly open-ended, they go off on a tangent. For example, if I read a story that says "Goldilocks was walking in the woods when she smelled something delicious coming from the bears' house. She opened the door and went inside to see what was cooking." and then ask, "Why did Goldilocks go to the bears' house?" these kids will begin their answer with "It was snowing, so she didn't have school, and maybe her friend was sick so she couldn't go to his house, and she was bored so she went to build a treehouse in the woods and she got lost so she went to ask the bears to show her the way" instead of simply, "because she smelled something good" as it said in the story. How can I teach them to stick with the facts without putting the brakes on their imagination?
And also... help! This looked like a great list of goals back when, but I'm really running out of steam on them... I know I didn't post it so long ago, but I'd already started by then. The kids are getting sick of T/F questions. Tomorrow I'll see if they have the patience for some more fact/opinion if I find a way to make it fun. Any ideas?
First, see if you get a different answer when you ask why Goldilocks went into the house, as opposed to why she went to it. The story, you see, is silent as to what got her out in the woods near enough to the bears' house to smell anything. Second, you could tell them that when a question follows a passage, that way, it's a kind of code: yes, the question says, "Why did she...?", but what it really means is "What does the passage say about why she...?", and if the passage doesn't actually say, then it means "What does the passage suggest about why she...?" And you can model the thought process: "Okay, so first I have to look for what the passage actually says. Hmm. It doesn't actually say she went in because of something. But it says there was a good smell and then she opened the door. Hmmm. Well, when I'm at home in my room and I start smelling something cooking for dinner that smells really good, I tend to think I should go check it out. Maybe that's what Goldilocks was thinking too. It makes sense, anyway." You probably already knew that, of course. Being cracked tends to make a person sharp, at least at the edges.
