Students and indeed many adults have difficulties in test-taking. There is a fundamental problem with reading directions and focusing on what has to be done, and then extracting the necessary information to successfully complete the task. Students need to be able to determine importance both in the directions and in the material to be read before they start to write their essays in a willy-nilly fashion. To be successful, many students need to organize their thoughts before they begin to write their answers. They need to know what they have to do and what material will help them to successfully complete the task.
Students will be able to use a graphic organizer to determine the importance of information they are given for both the directions and reading.
Students will be able to extract information from the documents in order to write an essay.
Students will be able to write an essay about an immigrant's experience in New York City with information extracted from their graphic organizer.
Students will be able to use a rubric to determine what is expected of them in order to successfully complete their task.
Students will be able to use a self-editing tool todetermine whether or not they have completed their task.
Students will use the self-editing tool to redact their essay and improve it before handing it in.
All below included in Supporting Files:
Graphic organizers, Self editing tool, adapted directions from The University of New York Regents High School Examination.
Richardson, Lynda. (2004, June 22). From hardware to Harvard in a few hard years. The New York Times, pp. B1 and B6.
Students will ge given a hand-out and be asked, "What does a sifter have to do with English?" The teacher will then put in a piece of paper in the sifter with the directions for baking an apple pie. After the sifting the directions the teacher will miraculously pull out strips of paper with the steps for successfully baking an apple pie. The sifter helped to determine what was important from what wasn't important. If only test taking was as simple as that, but there are strategies to make it easier to be successful. Students will use a graphic organizer to determine the importance of what the directions tell them they must do. They will then be given a reading from which they will extract more information, using the graphic organizer to determine the importance of information that is necessary to complete the task. The students will be given objective questions about the reading which will also serve as a support for their writing task. Students will be given a rubric that will set the parameters for them to begin their writing task. Students will be given a self-editing tool to help them determine whether or not they have completed the task. They will use the self-editing tool to make changes what they have written before handing in the essay.
A rubric will be used to assess the final written document.
National Information Literacy Standards (K-12)
Evaluates information critically and competently.
National Content Standards (K-12)
Reading