Foundations For Inquiry - Grade 10

This two-part study is designed to help teachers accomplish three basic and essential things:

Launch the course’s independent reading project. The sessions in Part 1 are dedicated to helping teachers lead students through essential pieces of this work, including finding new and interesting texts to read, building “Books I’d Like to Read” lists, and setting goals.
Re-orient students to close reading and text-based interpretive work. In Part 2, students will work closely with two texts: “Snow,” a short story by Charles Baxter, and “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” a piece of literary nonfiction from Joan Didion’s book Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Create classroom cultures in which students participate as active members of a community of readers. The work and interactions of the two parts of this study are specifically designed to help teachers provide students with regular opportunities to share and collaborate, to think, and discuss texts. This means that students will have opportunities not only to read, but to read and think better due to the frequency and quality of their regular interactions around independent reading and careful text-based work.

Text Audio

Day 1 Showing, Not Telling

Title: Day 1 Showing, Not Telling

Teacher Manual Instructions:

Session 2

Have students write for 5-10 minutes.
After the writing time has ended, explain to your students that one way of keeping track of progress is to count how many words you were able to write. Explain that this is one of the easiest and most effective means by which to track growing fluency. Because they are focusing on skill building, their interest, for now, should be in the quantity of words and pushing themselves a bit more each time they write. Have students take a moment to count the number of words they’ve used and write it on the page. If they have written a lot, show them how to find the average words per line.
Allow a moment for one or two students to share some strong “showing” sentences. Focus on encouraging students through the process and express confidence that they will see their word counts increase over time, as well as their ease in getting started and staying engaged with putting words down on the page.
Sift through student work afterward to see where students are in their fluency at this starting point.

Day 2 Showing, Not Telling

Title: Day 2 Showing, Not Telling

Teacher Manual Instructions:

Session 3

Have students write for 5-10 minutes.
Afterward, have students begin to chart their word count in the back of their journals. (See Developing Fluency in Writing for simple instructions on creating a word count chart.) Allow a moment for one or two students to share some strong showing sentences.

Day 3 Showing, Not Telling

Title: Day 3 Showing, Not Telling

Teacher Manual Instructions:

Session 4

Have students write for 5-10 minutes.
Afterward, have students begin to chart their word count in the back of their journals. Allow a moment for one or two students to share some strong showing sentences.

Day 4 Showing, Not Telling

Title: Day 4 Showing, Not Telling

Teacher Manual Instructions:

Session 5

Have students write for 5-10 minutes.
Afterward, have students begin to chart their word count in the back of their journals. Allow a moment for one or two students to share some strong showing sentences.

Day 5 Showing, Not Telling

Title: Day 5 Showing, Not Telling

Teacher Manual Instructions:

Session 6

Have students write for 5-10 minutes.
Afterward, have students chart their word count in the back of their journals . (See Developing Fluency in Writing for guidelines on charting progress .) Allow a moment for one or two students to share some strong showing sentences.
Have each student select one “Showing, Not Telling” journal entry that they especially want you to read and respond to.