Our Goal for Today:Understand Principles of

Sequencing and Approaches to Designing Frontloading Activities

Students can meet any challenge in their ZPD •IF they are learning in a meaningful context•AND•Are given the proper assistance over time

Types of FrontloadingOf reading strategies (task-specific)

Setting a PurposeMaking Connections (self-text, text-text, text-world, etc.)PredictingVisualizingSummarizingMonitoring ComprehensionEtc.

Of genres—content and form of. . .(text-specific)Expository textsPlaysNews articlesTextbooksMysteriesEtc.

Of literary concepts (task-specific)CharacterizationPoint of viewNarratorSettingEtc.

In the service of inquiry, framed with essential/existential questions (text and task-specific)Preparing students to address the essential questionConnecting to the essential question   

Principles of SequencingIdeas for sequencing from Wilhelm, 2007; Smith and Wilhelm, 2003; Wilhelm, Baker and Hackett, 2001

Provide extended practice in miniature to help students gain practical expert knowledge, especially through meaningful social activity:    -Easy to Hard         -Immediate to Imagined    -Close to Home to Far From Home    -Familiar to Unfamiliar    -Oral to Written    -Short to Long    -Scaffolded to Independent    -Collaborative and Socially Supported to Individual    -Concrete to Abstract    -Visual, visually supported to purely textual

Articulating Goals“Many studies in cognition highlight the reason it’s so important for students to realize why we ask them to do what we ask them to do. The purpose of an activity drives our motivation and engagement in the activity.”(Smith & Wilhelm, 2010)Essential Question:  Is progress always good?

Desired Understandings:  Students will understand. . .The complexity of scientific progress.Reading a text involves, observation, inferencing and drawing conclusions based on patterns and distinctions.

Procedural Goal:  Students will have the ability to. . .use clues in the text to make inferences about characters, events and author’s purpose (theme) 

Reading Focus: Making inferences, reading for theme

Frontloading

“Research provides evidence that a reader’s experience with a text is enriched when prior knowledge is activated before engaging with a new and unfamiliar text. One way to understand the need for frontloading is to explore schema theory. A schema is a rich set of understandings around a particular topic. If students do not possess or do not activate the appropriate schema, they will not comprehend a text.”(Wilhelm, Baker & Hackett, 2001)

Frontloading and Sequencing

• Text-specific=genre, background, content, desired understandings

• Task-specific=reading strategies/skills• Essential Q specific=activating background

knowledge, connecting to task

1.  The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.  2.  Terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.   3.  If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet 4.  It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

VisualizationReading is Seeing, Wilhelm, (Scholastic)

-Visualization Strategies:    *motivate and engage readers    *help students connect the known to the new    *build background knowledge    *increase the ability to visualize and elaborate on  characters, scenes, actions, etc.     *improve comprehension      *make complex reading processes more accessible

before internalizing them for use more abstractly

-good readers create visual images and mental models to organize and store their experience and evolving understandings-struggling readers benefit from strategies that help them do what expert readers do

     

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Visual Technique - Pattern Seeking Across Pictures (Reading for Theme)1. What do these pictures have in common? (general subjects)2. What is the most specific thing that these pictures have in

common? (specific subject/focus)3. What is the theme of these pictures? (comment on specific

subject)

Visual Technique - Pattern Seeking Across Pictures 1. What do these pictures have in common? (general subjects)2. What is the most specific thing that these pictures have in

common? (specific subject/focus)3. What is the theme of these pictures? (comment on specific

subject)

Galileo - Heliocentric model of the Solar System

Andreas Vesalius - investigations of human cadavers, modern anatomical studies

Charles Darwin - evolution

Rosalind Franklin - early DNA research

J. Robert Oppenheimer - one of the developers of the atomic bomb

Harry Griffin- cloned Dolly the sheep

Harry Griffin - responsible for the first "test tube"baby

Dr. Byron Peterson - stem cell research

Student Example—Pattern Seeking Across Pictures

1.old, drawn, beards, astronomers? Scientist?2.Darwin, evolution, biology, human advancement3.Nuclear war, radiation, technological

advancements, good vs. evil, advancement, Manhattan project

4.Stem cell research, doctors, science discovery5.Are we selling our morality in exchange for

technological advancements?6.Theme: Often science and religion are at odds

with each other.

Some Frontloading Possibilities• Journal writing • Anticipation Guide (Opinionnaire) • Visual Analysis—photos, ads, political cartoons, art • Drama—role playing situations that will be dealt with in work • Character quotes • Tea Party • Scenario Ranking • Think-Pair-Share • Four Corners Discussion • Secret Prompts • Share Artifacts—related to essential question/topic • Floor-storming• Probable Passage (Beers, 2003) • SCALES • Analysis of Photographs • Video Clips • Analysis of Ads • Controversial Quotes