Hi Stylish Readers and Patterns of Power fans!

These Reading Applications focus on complex sentences For Middle and High. Throughout these lessons, students study the use of subordinating conjunctions and their functions. Complex sentences can be found in all kinds of texts, but can be particularly well suited for nonfiction.  As many of our clauses are conditional and one cannot exist without the other, discussion calls for consideration of logical structures and lends itself to nonfiction design, especially persuasion.  

For anyone unfamiliar with the POP process, go to the Blog post called POP Reading: Fragments (or POP Reading: Compound Sentences) to get a better idea of the process and how to use these with students.  

Here is a brief teaching guide to support a complex sentence reading connection.  When using these consider the level and needs of your classroom.  Complex sentences dovetails with the concept of placement as well - using commas to off set an opener, interrupter, or closer.  Students may find it overwhelming to discuss the function of numerous subordinate conjunctions AND placement.  The lesson can be broken down to focus only on openers, or only on subordinate conjunctions that deal with time.  The assumption of the teaching guide is that openers, interrupters, and closers have been taught prior to complex sentences.  

Hello my stylish friends!

On my campus, we're finding that kids are really struggling with organization - for both analysis of nonfiction and in their own writing.  When writing, they can fill in a graphic organizer, but have little patience or know-how when considering the authentic progression of ideas.  As for reading, they can see the larger structures when it is teacher led, but struggle to answer questions about why certain ideas are in a certain order or why an author uses structure for impact.  

I wanted to share a lesson idea (full lesson cycle doc is linked below) that uses documentary trailers as a scaffold for analyzing how and why author's organize their writing for a certain effect.  The scaffolds here are similar to the scaffolds in the Visual Media Post, but looks at the movement of ideas across the entire work and how that creates purpose or message.  

It starts with the trailer for Trashed. Students examine the organization of the information in the visual, then use the same process and apply it to text.  

I chose this documentary trailer because there are numerous ways to discuss its structure and it gets students talking.  It also has text on the screen to help students chunk the information in the visual.  For example, students may have a variety of answers after they watch the trailer few times, list what they see in sequential order, and then look for patterns across.  I have always been able to get kids to see the problem-solution organizing structure. They also always note that things look pretty at first, then get uglier as the camera comes closer to Earth, but many times - as they do with their reading - struggle to take into account the end - where the concept of change and a bright future come back around. Possible student answers are:

​IDEA 1

• Beginning - pretty pictures of space/animals/etc. - perception
• Middle - trash and pollution - reality
• End - people saying we can fix it - pretty pictures again - Hope for the future

IDEA 2

• Far away from the problem - Space
• Down right next to the problem - lots of trash
• Focus on the solution to the problem - people saying it’ll be ok and more nice pictures of nature

IDEA 3

• PAST - the world looks unpolluted
• PRESENT - the world is ultra polluted
• FUTURE - we can fix it if we try

The lesson cycle has students first analyze visual media, then shifts to text. This particular lesson cycle has students go from a trailer directly to text. If you wanted to add a layer that integrates visual and text, The website American Rhetoric, has numerous movie speeches that have the text and the film clip.  If students need further scaffolding, adding in this layer is easy for a more gradual transition to texts.  

I have used a clip and text from The Girl in the Cafe with students to add in this layer, when needed.  Students use the same questioning strategies as the documentary trailer, but have the addition of being able to annotate and refer back to the video and text during the process.  

Happy Teaching! 

Hi Friends!  If you follow me on Twitter, you have probably seen our videos showcasing new model sentences that we have found in our reading.  I created this post to add the videos as the come out so they are easy to access.  Each one provides a book suggestion, new models sentences, and suggestions for teaching.