Fusion Flyer
October 6, 2014
Books Are Here!!!
Fusion Books Have Arrived!
The books will arrive tomorrow so everyone should have all the books for Thinking Reading soon. Thank you for your patience.
All About Agendas
I see many great examples of items to share as I visit Fusion Reading classrooms. These are examples of agendas from Barbara Turkdamar and Alice Rickel at Northeast and South Charlotte Middle. As I visit, I will be asking for permission to take pictures to share with others. Please say yes!
Notice how Barbara Turkdamar at Northeast incorporates Essential Questions into her agenda. This is useful if posting Essential Questions is a requirement at your school.
Use you agenda to help you as well as your students. Barbara posts the page number in the Thinking Reading book on her agenda.
Use you agenda to help you as well as your students. Barbara posts the page number in the Thinking Reading book on her agenda.
Alice Rickel at South Charlotte includes time and activities in her agenda. She likes the Fusion Reading agenda so much that she now uses it for her math classes also!
Assign daily jobs for students to assist with classroom management. What jobs can you assign on a daily basis to help make your job easier?
Essential Understandings
Remembering pieces of factual information alone is not understanding. We all know this, but how do we transform student learning from knowing pieces of information into a deeper understanding where they can use them? This is our overwhelming task as teachers!
To make sense of ideas and have an understanding of words, students need to put those ideas together in their own minds and in their own ways. This is the purpose of the 7 step vocabulary process, particularly the discussion step. Facilitating student understanding is a daunting task and something that we will perfect as we move through this year in Fusion Reading. To assist in this process, I thought it might help to begin to think in terms of the difference between definitions and understandings.
The following is a list of important understandings that students develop through the 7 Step Vocabulary Process of Fusion Reading. Notice how these are different than definitions and how developing an understanding can help students use information in order to do something with what they know. Doing is understanding.
Important Understandings
This week I observed a Fusion teacher explaining to students that a strategy is a plan. And plans are procedures we use to help us do things. Then she asked students to tell about a time when they had used a plan to do something. This is an example of how we can help students bridge the gap between definitions and understandings.
Definitions are pieces of information, but an understanding allows us to do something with what we know. Something to think about. . .
To make sense of ideas and have an understanding of words, students need to put those ideas together in their own minds and in their own ways. This is the purpose of the 7 step vocabulary process, particularly the discussion step. Facilitating student understanding is a daunting task and something that we will perfect as we move through this year in Fusion Reading. To assist in this process, I thought it might help to begin to think in terms of the difference between definitions and understandings.
The following is a list of important understandings that students develop through the 7 Step Vocabulary Process of Fusion Reading. Notice how these are different than definitions and how developing an understanding can help students use information in order to do something with what they know. Doing is understanding.
Important Understandings
- A root gives the basic idea of a word.
- Adding a prefix to the beginning of a word changes the word's meaning.
- Adding a suffix to the end of a root word changes the word's part of speech.
- Recognizing meaningful parts helps us determine a word's meaning and pronunciation.
- Word context gives us clues about a word's meaning.
This week I observed a Fusion teacher explaining to students that a strategy is a plan. And plans are procedures we use to help us do things. Then she asked students to tell about a time when they had used a plan to do something. This is an example of how we can help students bridge the gap between definitions and understandings.
Definitions are pieces of information, but an understanding allows us to do something with what we know. Something to think about. . .
Ask the Author
Question: Is your book 'Freak The Mighty' based on a real story?
Answer: The idea for 'Freak The Mighty' was inspired by the personality of a real boy. Like Kevin he suffered from a disease that made him very short. Like Kevin he had a big friend who sometimes carried him around. And like Kevin the real boy was highly intelligent, and interested in both language and science. His mother, like The Fair Gwen, was and is quite beautiful. There the similarity ends - the plot of the story is pure fiction.
Find out more information from the author, Rodman Philbrick at:
Comments
Feel free to share comments, thought, or ideas below. These will help me make our Fusion Flyer more useful and interesting for everyone.