Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater!

Just spent the last 2 days textmapping with my kiddos and I feel confident the adventure was a success. Hope I'm not honking the horn too early, but I guess I'll figure out Monday just how well it worked.

What is Textmapping?

You can click on the link above to search the website for information and tips, but here is a brief explanation from the source.

 

Textmapping is a graphic organizer technique that can be used to teach reading comprehension and writing skills, study skills, and course content. It is practiced on scrolls,  which are an alternative environment to books. Textmapping and scrolls can be used strategically, but they are not strategies. They are enabling technologies - simple, basic tools which can be used for reading and classroom instruction. The same strategies that can be taught in books can be taught more clearly and explicitly by using scrolls  and mapping.

 

Textmapping enables teachers to clearly and explicitly model reading comprehension, writing and study skills in the course of regular classroom instruction.

Textmapping shines a light on the pre-reading process. It focuses more attention on, and spends more time with, the text itself - lingering on the page, delaying abstraction, forcing readers to engage in a more careful in-context comprehension of both the big picture and the details, and enabling teachers to explicitly and systematically model comprehension processes.

It is low-tech, easy to learn, easy to teach, requires no special equipment, and can be adapted easily and inexpensively for use in the classroom. All you need is access to a copier, tape or glue-stick, and colored pencils, markers, or crayons.

 

This is how it all went down...



I referred to the process of textmapping as a way to cheat WITH my permission! Yes, my sixth graders that ate up! Instead of reading the 6 pages of text in our book on Hinduism, we were detectives and found most of the information the students needed to learn without reading every single word on the page. During the lesson, we marked the following text features:

• Section headings &Text chunk
• Sub-headings
• Questions
• Key words (bold, italics) and meaning
• Pictures
• Captions (The only part of the text we read in its entirety).

Using Yellow to mark key words and their meaning

Using the finished product to complete assessment

My Textmapping Tips:

• Be a super model! Before coding, we discussed the text feature we were looking for and its significance. Because it can be overwhelming to look at so much text at once, we always did the first two pages of the text as a group and then  I let the students analyze the remaining pages. With every other text feature, I continuously reviewed what we had previously "marked" and how it all tied together.
• Divide your students into small groups. I made sure to call on all group members and made sure that every student had a chance to mark the text. Make sure each group has their own set of highlighters, markers or crayons. Be sure to print enough copies to make your scrolls. *We used tape instead of glue.
• Key Make a key as you go along so students can easily remember what each color stands for.
• Challenge them! When searching for meaning, ask for an explanation. Show me? Where is it in the text? Why is this important? Look for cross-curricular connections. Did you find all (inset a number)?

At the request of the students, this technique will be included in the rotation. Hope your adventure goes as smoothly as mine!
Happy Mapping! :)