Using Exemplar Texts to Highlight Text Features – Grade 6 English Language Arts (REL Pacific)

Key Takeaways

this classroom video is designed to support teachers learning about the what works Clearing House secondary practice guide recommendation integrate writing and reading to emphasize key writing features and in particular use a variety of written exemplars to highlight the key features of texts the video shows instruction at the beginning of a lesson sequence on writing policy arguments about student online monitoring sixth grade students in monicaa Kias English language arts class are using color coding to identify key elements of policy arguments the text features help the reader make sense of what they are reading and are the building blocks for a text structure key text features are to non-fiction what story elements are to fiction policy arguments include text features such as a claim summary statements evidence and commentary in this video the teacher models how to locate text elements in Exemplar text small groups practice locating text elements in another Exemplar text students discuss the text elements they found and the location of these text elements elements students reflect in writing on what they learned about effective arguments I'm going to model for you how to locate items in the text and then annotate them the text elements we're looking for is claim everybody repeat after me claim claim evidence evidence and commentary com commentary good job we have four text elements to look for we have four highlighters the first one is the writer summary in this case you can think of it as an introduction they're summarizing everything for the reader and there's a couple introductory sentences in there too okay then our green highlighter hold up your green highlighter beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful green thank you our green highlighter is going to show the writer's evidence and this is what I added in for you information that comes from other sources so anything you see with a quotation mark or somebody else's name is going to be evidence evidence is also facts and figures figures such as percentages okay blue highlighter hold that one up you can put it down blue highlighter is to show The Writer's commentary and that's the writer's thoughts on the evidence it's really easy to remember the writer is commenting on the evidence and then usually usually it's going to be after the evidence okay so they're commenting on it and then finally purples I already got up very good very good very good the purple highlighter is to show The Writer's claim and that's the main argument the writer is usually making work with your tablemates ask them questions one person already got evidence now color coding is one way to emphasize and help students identify text features in argument writing um third parag College administration workers are using Google 35% of College administration workers Google app something bad could that's green right [Music] 25% oh and also at the bottom here this could be a blue Lon here I think after the bottom paragraph once it is one more minute we'll just do one more minute what and we could do the yellow for this locating text elements Elevate students knowledge about the connection between reading and writing Liam what did you notice the summary came before very nice the summary comes before the evidence usually not in this paragraph but in the other paragraphs good job um our reflection has a sentence started that says when I think about effective arguments I now think so what you're going to do is you're going to think about where the text elements are placed you're going to evaluate whether or not you think they were placed in good spots was it helpful to strengthen the argument okay think about all these three questions though any questions about your reflection let's start with 3 minutes 3 2 1 go the student's written reflection says when I think about effective arguments I now think that they always start with a summary to hook the reader then they show or give the evidence then they would give a claim and then here and there they would put a commentary this classroom video showed the following practice guide recommendation in action integrate writing and reading to emphasize key writing features the class used a model practice reflect cycle to learn a focus strategy the focus strategy was using color coding to identify key elements of policy arguments recommendation two in the practice guide includes additional strategies and activities for supporting the integration of writing and reading to emphasize key writing features like demonstrating that key features of exemplars vary by Form purpose and [Music] audience