Now they do and I completely attribute it to the conversations we had with Sentence Unpacking. I’ll be reading a book they’ve never seen, and they make a reference to the sentences we unpacked from prior text, which I could never get them to do before. I started to hear them have conversations about those texts on their own – when they’re writing, when they’re talking with their friends. You don’t do Sentence Unpacking with a new text, so we used several books that we had read prior. I’m seeing them get there more naturally now. Before, I was always trying to drive, to ask those leading questions where you basically give them the answer. I think the biggest thing I’ve seen with my students is their increased ability to make connections across text. Have you observed any impact on student’s language and literacy skills?ĭefinitely. Sentence Unpacking brings all of those features to the forefront and really helps me to dig really deep into the rich text that I’m already using in class so that students don’t miss all of this meat. I was naturally a good reader in school, so there are a lot of features of language that aren’t naturally illuminated for me. Sentence Unpacking allows us to attend to so many features of language and features of language that I don’t realize anymore because I’ve been speaking and reading and writing in English for so long. It’s been interesting to see more of a level playing field for the native English speakers and the English Language Learners because they’re all working on text that is more complex than their usual reading level. So they’re all working towards a stronger command of this language, how to read, how to write, whether it’s your native home language or not. I consider all of my students to be English Language Learners because we’re Early Ed. Once Rita explained Sentence Unpacking, I was immediately in love with it. Some of my biggest takeaways were about the children’s ability to have really high-quality academic conversations about text, and around complex text. We’re a very learning-centered school, even for staff. Then, we moved into classroom implementation and finally rounds of observations and feedback. All of the teachers first participated in intense learning to get our sea legs with the new content. Rita came back to do another six week Professional Development cycle just around Sentence Unpacking. This year in meeting with the ILT, we decided to focus on just one strategy because last year people were overwhelmed with too many options. Last year, Rita Pope came and did an ELD cycle for us where she introduced several strategies and Sentence Unpacking was one of them. How did you first learn about sentence unpacking as a strategy for your language learners? Thanks to this strategy, her students are not only spontaneously making connections between texts, but are also building a deeper understanding of the way complex language works. Mac” teaches first grade at Madison Park Lower and is seeing exciting results using Sentence Unpacking for complex text. Logan McWilliams, known to her students as “Ms. A cross post from the amazing folks at the ELLMA office.
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