First of all, be shocked that I am writing a science post. I know that I'm shocked. In case you didn't know, I will be teaching science for the first time in sixteen years. That is also a shock, but it will be fine. I hope. Anyway...
I recently took my daughter to a STEM day at a local business. They had two really great hands-on activities that I wanted to share with you.
The first activity involved making a DNA model with licorice, colored mini marshmallows, and toothpicks. {Here is a link to the materials.}
The way that was suggested was not the way my OCD daughter chose to do it. The intended procedure was to do one side in a particular sequence. Each color of marshmallow stood for either C, T, A, or G. Then they were it identify the paired chemical and complete the other side. My daughter did the correct pairings, just did a patterned sequence.
The other activity asked my daughter to use colored beads to create her name in binary code. At least part of the materials came from {this website}.
Once she got the code for each letter, it was time to count up how many beads were needed in each color. They used Perler beads for this activity.
Then it was time to string them up! She chose pink for the Xs and purple for the blanks. The dark blue are the spacers between each letter.
Easing into Close Reading
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
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Here is how close reading looks in my classroom.
On the first day, I have the kids do a cold read and annotate the text. If I'm using my close reading texts, then there are four different versions of the text being read throughout the classroom, but that's okay because they all of the same information. Students write questions, make connections, and otherwise interact with the text. I prefer to have them write directly on the paper, but if you're using a textbook, novel, or whatever, that obviously isn't a good idea. So if I'm using a story from Wonders, I hand out small Post-It notes students can use instead. Or sometimes I'll photocopy the selection from the book, like maybe just the page about Harriet Tubman. And I saw this really cool idea on Pinterest. Genius.
Notice that I'm not spending hours on this every day. This is why my students don't mind coming back to it day after day. This is also why it's so important to have an interesting selection (which is why I don't do it with every chapter in the textbook). In my opinion, it's also why close reading is so flexible in that you can do it whole class, in small groups, or even as homework.
Here are some free close reading topics that you can do with your students if you want to try close reading without having to come up with your own text selections and questions.
Here are my paid close reading products if you want to try it for a month or longer.
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