Story and the Brain - Grade 6
This unit consists of two modules, each focused on a single informational text that explores the research on story and the human brain. Together these two short studies provide an introduction to the topic of our brain and story and an orientation to the close reading of informational text. Through them, students are introduced to important ways of working with informational texts as well as to cycles of teaching and learning that feature significant amounts of reading, writing, and discussion.
Table of Contents
Writing Tasks
Title: Leveraging the Human Brain’s Hunger for Story’: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-A
Next, tell students they will have a chance now to identify unfamiliar terms and moments that are difficult, confusing, or unclear.
Take a few minutes to introduce students to the four-column chart shown on the next page and ask them to use it as a template for their own list of unfamiliar terms or confusing moments. They should title the chart “‘Leveraging the Human Brain’s Hunger for Story’: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments.” Although students will be working together in their pairs or trios, each student should create and complete this four-column chart in her or his notebook.
Tell students that during this session’s work period they will be entering information in the first two columns only. They will add information to columns three and four later.
- The first column will indicate the line number in the text where the difficult, confusing, or unclear moment is located.
- The second column will consist of the unfamiliar terms and confusing moments students marked.
Give the groups 4-5 minutes to work on the first two columns of their chart. Use this time to circulate around the room and confer with groups about what they recorded.
Title: Small-Groups: How science explains the importance of following Freytag’s Dramatic Arc
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-C
Next, ask students to return to their trios to reread the third section of this text, and discuss and take notes on their responses to the question below. Once students feel as though they have some notes and a pretty solid (verbal) response, have them write a paragraph response that they can share with others to answer the question.
How does what we learned about science relate to Freytag’s Dramatic Arc? In other words, how does science explain the importance of following Freytag’s Dramatic Arc?
As students are discussing and writing their responses, circulate around the room to listen in on their conversations. Make note of trios who are doing a good job of articulating their ideas.
Reconvene the class for trios to share their responses to the questions above. Begin by asking one trio to share. When that trio is finished, ask another trio to share. Have students listen for and discuss the similarities and differences in responses. If necessary, work with students to return to the text to resolve differences that go beyond mere semantics. Do this as many times as necessary for all students to understand how science explains the importance of Freytag’s Dramatic Arc in telling a compelling and memorable story.
Title: Would you agree with Cron’s statement?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 2-C
- As the discussion is winding down, remind students of the following statement from Cron’s text: “writers are, and have always been, among the most powerful people in the world.” Ask students to take a few minutes to review both texts and the two charts—“What Science Says About Why We Hunger for Story” and “What We Learned About Our Brains and Story”—to write a short response to the following question:
- Given what we know about our brains and story, would you agree with Cron’s statement? Why or why not? Use evidence from both texts to support your response.
- Given what we know about our brains and story, would you agree with Cron’s statement? Why or why not? Use evidence from both texts to support your response.
- As students are writing, circulate around the room to read students’ responses over their shoulders and offer assistance as needed. Support students to incorporate evidence from both texts into their responses.
Title: Writing Across Texts Advice to Fellow Writers
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 2-D
Tell students that before they write this letter, they will spend the first part of the work period working with their peers in small and large groups to flesh out as many ideas as possible.
Working in pairs, ask students to take about 15 minutes to skim the two texts and review all of the relevant charts to brainstorm ideas and evidence to respond to the assignment prompt. At this point, students should list as many pieces of advice and support as they can rather than just the advice they consider most important. Consider providing students with the graphic organizer.
Next, give pairs 2-3 minutes to team up with another pair to share their advice and the textual evidence they gathered. Then, ask them to talk about what from their lists they consider to be the most important things the members of this group need to do in order to write a compelling and memorable story.
Then, engage students in a brief whole-group discussion in which students share what they consider the most important things the members of this group need to do in order to write a compelling and memorable story. Be sure that students provide evidence to support their ideas.
Finally, engage students in a conversation in which they share their ideas for how they might write, structure, and organize their letter
Suggested Student Materials: Advice to Fellow Writers Graphic Organizer
Charts for Discussion
Title: Qualities of Our Most and Least Favorite Stories
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-A
To continue the introduction to this unit, ask students to think about a couple of their most and least favorites stories. These can be stories that they heard as a child or stories that they’ve read or heard more recently. Then ask students to jot down a few responses to the questions below.
Think about your favorite stories. What is it about these stories that you like so much? Try to be specific—is it the characters? The plot? Where the story is set?
Now think about a story that you didn’t like. What didn’t you like about it? If you found it boring, what about it was boring?
Convene a whole-group discussion. Have students share their responses. Capture what students say on a chart titled “Qualities of Our Most and Least Favorite Stories.” As you’re charting—or after you’ve charted—work with the class to look for patterns (or larger categories) in what they like and don’t like about stories. Work to put these qualities into larger categories such as “character,” “conflict,” etc. Refrain from previewing the content of the unit texts during this discussion. Simply chart what students say, and let them know that they’ll return to the chart later.
Title: What We Learned About Our Brains and Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-A
Facilitate a short, whole-group share where the class collaborates to create a master list of the same type of information. Call on students to share what they learned from reading this text. Students should point to places in the text to support their responses. Capture student responses on a class chart titled “What We Learned About Our Brains and Story.” Explain to students that since this is only their first read, and because they will be given multiple opportunities to reread this text, the intent is just to capture the gist of what they learned. It’s important to note that the pace of this “what we learned” activity is brisk and not at all comprehensive. This chart will be added to in the upcoming sessions. Allow students a few extra minutes to record any additional insights from the master list into their own notebook.
Title: What Science Says About Why We Hunger For Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-C
Engage students in a whole-group discussion using the following question as a guide: “How does science explain the reasons why humans hunger for story?” Support students to use evidence from the text to support their responses and to extend, confirm, and add additional support for each other’s ideas. Capture students’ responses on a chart titled “What Science Says About Why We Hunger For Story.”
Session 2-C
Engage students in a whole-group discussion using the following question as a guide: “How does science explain why humans hunger for story?” Encourage students to use evidence from the text to support their responses and to extend, confirm, and add additional support for each other’s ideas. Using a different colored marker, add student responses to the “What Science Says About Why We Hunger for Story” chart created in Session 1-C.
Title: What to Look For in Ads
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-D
Engage the class in a discussion in which students come up with the sorts of things they should be looking for in the ad they will analyze. Their list should be based on what they learned from this text about our brains and story and be similar to what’s below:
Creates a story.
Story has a conflict that the brand can solve.
Story has characters that we care about, possibly because they face the same sort of conflict we do.
Capture this list on the board or a chart, so students can reference it as they work.
Tell students that you’ll provide them chart paper so that they can share their advertisement and analysis with the whole group.
Before students begin working in their trios, you might consider analyzing one ad as a whole class to serve as an example.
Title: Would you agree with Cron’s statement?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 2-C
Facilitate a whole-group discussion in which students discuss whether they would agree with Cron’s statement given what they learned from both texts.
During this discussion, resist the urge to answer the question yourself. Instead, push the conversation along by doing the following:
Ask follow up questions, including
Requests for clarification.
Requests for additional support for students’ ideas.
Requests for further development of their ideas.
» Constantly draw students back to the texts. Asking “What line?” questions and otherwise referring back to the text are critical if students are to grow accustomed to doing text-based work. Remember that apprenticing students into text-based work is as important as negotiating responses to the question in play.
Be patient, but also be persistent in your quest for responses to the question.
Ask students to talk to one another rather than to or through you. Sup- port students to extend, confirm, or critique each other’s ideas.
Work to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. Establish the expectation that everyone’s idea counts and that people get smarter by working together to explore difficult questions or ideas.
As you facilitate this conversation, work hard to capture and distill the major claims that students are making on the board or a chart. Push students to help you build text-based explanations to support them. This will ensure that students get a glimpse of what it looks like when someone builds an interpretation.
Checks for Understanding
Title: “Leveraging the Human Brain’s Hunger for Story”: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-A
Reconvene the class and facilitate a whole-group share where the class collaborates to create the first two columns of a second master chart titled “‘Leveraging the Human Brain’s Hunger for Story’: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments.”
To create this chart, call on students to share the unfamiliar terms and confusing moments from their group list. Capture these in column two of the class chart. Be sure to include page and line numbers for each term or moment in the first column.
Wrap up the work in this session by asking students to share the one or two things they learned from this text that they found most interesting or surprising.
Session 1-B:
Direct students’ attention to the class version of the “‘Leveraging the Human Brain’s Hunger for Story’: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments” chart that they created during the closing meeting of Session 1-A. Add a third column header to this master list: How can we resolve this difficulty?
Revisit the list, item-by-item, and work with the class to generate ideas for the third column. These third column entries will support the search and study work students will do.
Wrap up the focus lesson by adding a heading for the fourth column: What did we learn from the search and study?
Closing Meeting
Once the small groups have completed their search and study work, reconvene the class and work as a group to share findings and negotiate entries to add to the fourth column: “What did we learn from the search and study?”
To do this, move one-by-one through the unfamiliar terms and confusing moments listed in column two of the master chart. Call on students to share their search and study findings. Be sure to “test” findings publicly by displaying a copy of the text for the class to see. Encourage other students to push back on errors or to make contributions that further develop or offer a more nuanced explanation for each entry. Consider using a timer to ensure that you’re spending no more than 90 seconds on each moment. During this time, students should be refining, correcting, or even adding new entries to their own chart in their notebook.
Wrap up the search and study work by asking students to reread the text again given their new insights, which have been entered in the “What did we learn?” column of the master chart.
Title: What We Learned About Identifying and Resolving Unfamiliar Terms or Difficult Moments
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-B
Finally, ask students to reflect on the search and study work with a discus- sion of the following two questions:
What more did you learn about this text from doing the search and study? Add relevant responses to the class version of the “What We Learned About Our Brains and Story” chart.
What did you learn about working through unfamiliar terms and confusing moments from doing the search and study work? What did you do to tackle some of the most challenging moments? Capture responses on a new chart titled “What We Learned About Identifying and Resolving Unfamiliar Terms or Difficult Moments.”
Session 2-A
Finally, have students turn to a partner and talk about what more they learned about the process of identifying unfamiliar terms or confusing moments. Ask a few students to share and add any new responses to the chart that was begun in the previous module titled “What We Learned About Identifying and Resolving Unfamiliar Terms or Difficult Moments.”
Session 2-B
Finally, ask students to reflect on the search and study work with a discussion of the following questions:
What more did you learn about this text from doing the search and study? Add relevant responses to the “What We Learned About Our Brains and Story” chart.
What did you learn about working through unfamiliar terms and confusing moments from doing the search and study work? What did you do to tackle some of the most challenging moments? Add relevant responses to the chart created in the previous module: “What We Learned About Identifying and Resolving Unfamiliar Terms or Difficult Moments.”
How can this information help you as you read texts in the future?
Title: “Brain Secrets”: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 2-A
Reconvene the class and facilitate a whole-group share where the class collaborates to create the first two columns of a new master chart titled “‘Brain Secrets’: Unfamiliar Terms and Confusing Moments.”
To create this chart, call on students to share the unfamiliar terms and confusing moments from their group list. Capture these in column two of the class chart. Be sure to include line numbers for each term or moment in the first column.
Once the first two columns have been completed, add a third column header: How can we resolve this difficulty?
Revisit the list, item-by-item, and work with the class to generate ideas for the third column. These third column entries will support the search and study work students will do in Session 2-B.
Session 2-B
- Direct the students’ attention to the class version of the “‘Brain Secrets’: Un- familiar Terms and Confusing Moments” chart created during the closing meeting of Session 2-A.
- Explain to the class that this session’s work period will be dedicated to a round of search and study work where students will collaborate in small groups to solve the difficulties identified on the chart.
- In preparation for the search and study task, work with the whole class to refine any entries in column three that are too general.
- Wrap up the focus lesson by adding a heading for the fourth column: What did we learn from the search and study?
Independent Reading
Title: Reading Log
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Independent Reading
As you transition to independent reading, discuss how students can keep a reading log. Show students how you would like them to set up and use their reading log to record their independent reading this year. An example of one way a reading log could be set up is provided nearby. You may choose to have students create a table in their notebooks, use a pre-made sheet, or a digital format.
Explain to students that they should make an entry in their log only after they have finished a book. You will need to negotiate with students how to handle the entry of magazine readings (for example, entire issues versus individual articles).
After students have set up the log, including proper headings, creating the grid, etc., show students how to make an entry.
Answer any questions students have about the reading log.
Begin independent reading.
Consider conducting individual reading conferences with students as they are engaged in independent reading. In No More Independent Reading Without Support, Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss (2013) suggest that during early conferences, you should listen to students and work to build trust: Ask students how they view reading and how they think of themselves as readers; ask what they are interested in. Over time you can ask more about what they are reading and about how you can help them or what they are struggling with. Use what you learn from these conversations to guide additional instruction with groups or with the class.
Title: Independent Reading – Individual Planning Sheet
Instructions:
Title: End of Marking Period Self-Assessment
Instructions:
Unit Resources
Title: Writing Across Texts Advice to Fellow Writers