Both, Alike, Different? The Struggle with Comparison

This post is meant to serve as the entry for KA and KB presentations of the Dreyer and Gray article, which will support our conversation about introducing text frames to elementary thinkers and framing Alvermann and Buehl's big ideas concerning reading to learn expository text. 

Please find Erika, Yvonne and Chastity's dialogue journal for this week below:  

“Text frames describe a set of questions that reflects how authors organize their writing” (Buehl, 22).	The different frames of texts can help students to organize concepts in a way that will be easier to file in their schema.  Cause/Effect-what happened?  Compare/contrast-what is the same/different, what is being compared? Sequence-is their a specific order?  Description-what is being described, what are the characteristics?  Problem/solution-What has happened, how can the problem be solved?
‘Research has shown that early experiences with instruction in the use of informational texts support student’s comprehension of these types of texts” (Dreher & Gray).	When we teach students using diverse text frames they learn to read and comprehend using these expository structures.   Educators give these students the tools to actively read the text books which will be an essential part of their learning as they go through school.
“The compare/contrast structure may be more difficult for students to navigate” (Dreyer & Gray).   There is a particular vocabulary associated with this text frame.  Common words that cue a comparison are:  “both, alike, different, same, similar, compare, tell apart, resembles” (Dreyer & Gray).  More signal words are available for other text structures in figure 5.2 (Alvermann & Al, 84).	Because compare/contrast is difficult for students to read educators must model this text feature.  This is a wonderful opportunity to introduce new vocabulary associated with comparing and contrasting texts.   Teachers can model their thinking to teach strategic reading of texts as well as create lists of comparative words to cue students of this kind of text.  Through the introduction of these academic words students begin to learn text language.
Compare/contrast bridges the gap between what students already know and new content” (Dreyer & Gray).  This connection is especially helpful when teaching ELL students.  These language learners possess a prior knowledge different from the typical English speaking student.	When we compare and contrast we think about what we already know about a topic as we gather new ideas.  We learn similarities and differences of this new concept to an old concept which allows us to classify the new information.  This organization of thoughts makes it easy to file new knowledge in our schema.
Text frames provide the “internal road map that guides readers to discern the relationships that stitch together details and information to produce a message” (Buehl, 25).	It is often difficult for students to find the main points of a text.  They are bogged down with irrelevant information.  Text frames allow students to clearly see the author’s purpose.

“The organizational structure of a text serves a similar purpose of the structural features of a building:  the frame, the floor joists, and the roof trusses work together to provide structural support for the whole building” (Alvermann & Al, 80).	The comparison of these two concepts reminds me of the building scaffold as well as the scaffolds of education.  Each level is meant to serve as an essential step in the process.  A visual scaffold is present in certain text structures, the steps act as SHAPE poetry, the new idea is presented through words and image.
Teachers should use examples students can relate to in order to introduce particular structures.	Examples:  cause/effect-experiments, compare/contrast-look at two flowers, Sequence-recipe, description-shape poetry, problem/solution-mathematical problems.
Linear frames and narrative text	I sometimes forget that linear frames are text structures as well.  Modeling the structure of a paragraph can also explain organizational strategies in reading and writing.

In response to Erika, Chastity and Yvonne’s dialogue journal, I hope you’ll allow me to share some additional thoughts on the Dreher and Gray article (along with Erika, Yvonne and Chastity’s views.)  In KB class tonight, I would like to take a little time to use and elaborate on the Buehl Author Says/I Say strategy.  I apologize this didn’t get posted sooner; I hate to offer excuses but we are moving and spent the last few days doing just that! I have been pretty brain-dead tired in my free time as a result! 

Coleen

            Erika, Chastity and Yvonne have shared a preview for you of what the main points are from the week’s reading. I especially appreciate their real-life examples of text frames (sequence-recipe, for example). It was also helpful for them to take something large (a text that would fall under a specific frame) and shrink it (a paragraph) to be something that they remind us is also something which teachers should devote time to evaluate the organizational structure with students.

            In their post, they shared, “Text frames allow students to clearly see the author’s purpose.” This really got my gears turning. Lately, I have had to devote a lot of planning time to meetings about data-driven instruction. Based on my students’ test performances in weak areas, I have found some areas of instruction that I will need to spend a great deal of time on in order to help them show improved results in taking the SOL test. This will require some “teaching to test” and all opposition I feel towards the very idea will have to be put aside for now! Back to Erika and Chastity’s thoughts: one of the weak concept areas that students in 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grade struggle with is Author’s Purpose. Reading the Dreher and Gray article and the ladies of our KA class’ statement made me wonder if Text Frame instruction and assessment is really a more useful way of evaluating texts.

            Allow me to simplify the current instructional focus of Author’s Purpose: Students are asked to determine an Author’s Purpose. Did the writer write to Entertain, Inform, or Persuade? Two purposes that often get confused are Entertain and Inform. It would seem that those would be different as night and day, but, if you think about it, you’ll realize that sometimes informational texts could be misconstrued as entertaining. Authors will try to make things interesting for readers. Suddenly, you have a confused student that can’t determine whether it’s information or whether it is entertaining! This is not to say that Author’s Purpose does not serve a great purpose in the education of readers and writers; however, I feel that the instruction of Text Frames will be much stronger instruction of Author’s Purpose. What is the author’s goal in the way the text has been created? Thank you, ladies, for helping me find a solution in my own classroom! Teaching Author’s Purpose through Text Frames instruction will provide more meaningful literacy instruction and me meet the required data-driven goals I must set.

            What were some of your own thoughts about the Dreher and Gray article? Did you nod your head the whole time or did you perk up your chin and shake your head, at times, like I did? I know that I will be so curious to hear your own thoughts in class! I might have just been grumpy from moving, but I was left with more questions than answers after I read what the authors presented.

            For many reasons, the Dreher and Gray article presented some meaningful ideas. I have so little experience with ELL students that I am not quite sure I’d be able to describe their general needs in comparison to other students. I appreciated the clear method of Compare/Contrast strategy instruction and the information the authors presented about the Compare/Contrast Text Frame. I can see this instruction being meaningful not only to ELL students but all students. Last, the Venn diagrams did seem a perfect graphic organizer to use with this text frame. From this point on, though, I feel the article missed many opportunities.

            I will be sharing my thoughts tonight—with KB class, especially. For everyone, though, I would like to present a few questions for discussion:

Was the opening example of ELL students with Insects/Arachnids a purposeful example? Were you able to evaluate, by the article’s end, why the original text or instructional approach did not work? Did you, like me, wish they would revisit the original example?

"Compare and contrast texts can be used to build ELL student’s background knowledge and
tap into knowledge and experiences they bring to school.” (Dreher and Gray, 141). The authors make that statement towards the end of the article, but I wonder if they really could make that claim based on what they shared with readers.

"What other statements would you have added if you were the authors? What was missing from this text, in a discussion of text frames like Compare/Contrast?

I really look forward to tonight’s class. I have really enjoyed your presentations, and, as a former student of the class, I’d like to share a few thoughts. Many of you will soon be preparing your Reflective Synthesis. In the process of gathering articles, strategies, and arguments that you will use to defend the use of Inquiry in your own classroom practices, you’re going to do much more than summarize texts you’re including in the paper. You’ll need to be critical, thoughtful, and surprising. Many of you have done a great job with that in your discussion board posts and your presentations, but some are heavy on the summarizing. We are all reading the same texts each week and we’ll all get so much more out of it if we hear your arguments or take-aways, I personally love to see novel techniques or strategies, and I prefer the unexpected over the tried-and-true. Show us your personality and leave us with more questions—leave us all thinking! Tackling your presentations in a more critical way will make it easy for you to feel like an expert on the topic, and this will  easily transfer to being a reliable resource for you to use in your Reflective Synthesis.