GRADE 9: Moving from SEEing to THINKing

Moving From SEEing (analyzing) to THINKing (interpreting)

        TO          
                                 



Today students used images to understand the difference between seeing something and thinking about it.  We recognized that we need to look closely at something several times before we begin to understand it.

This the more complicated the text the more purposefully we must examine it before we truly understand the author's intended message.

Students used the chart below to read images and move from SEEing to THINKing about what items in the image mean.

We used "The Surrender" by Griffith to practice.

We know that we can't truly understand a text until we've "read" it 2 or 3 times.  Then we can begin to understand what the author's claim is or what the message is.

Some of our THINKing is recorded below:

Students wrote a paragraph using their thoughts.  Mrs. Anderson provided a sentence starter for a topic sentence.  We will discuss our ideas next class.

Next, we looked at a poem, "My Education" by James Kenneth Stephen and we clarified and summarized ideas together.  See some of our typed up ideas below:

Our Last step is to write what we think the author's message is.

We need to think about the main idea and then record what the author is trying to tell us about it.

The main idea of this poem is his education.  Specifically learning throughout his life.  So we ask ourselves:  "What is the author trying to tell people about learning throughout life?"

Students write using evidence from the poem to back up their interpretation.  See the incomplete model below:

Next we went back to Suli Breaks poem to improve upon our understanding of the poem.  We will examine it using the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd draft readings of the text.

Sharing our ideas with our group members, we will make sure we fully understand the poem before we present our ideas to the class.