If you have been kind enough to read my rather wonky blog posts up to this point, I feel like you deserve something more practical for a change. This is the first in a series of posts about how to teach fictional narrative reading strategies with Thinking Maps. I hope you will find it immediately useful. For your convenience, I have included all of the resources discussed in this post on my Spotlight Teacher webpage. Just look for the section entitled “Summarizing Resources” at the bottom of the page.
I have been using Literature Circles in my classroom for about twenty years. After all that time, the basic structure has not changed much: four students sitting in a circle, observing cooperative learning protocols, and using reciprocal teaching strategies to discuss the various jobs they have done in response to the book they are reading. What has changed quite drastically is the nature of those jobs; this is in large part thanks to Thinking Maps.
The current version of my Literature Circles routine involves students reading self-selected novels (from a limited set) for three weeks at a time and meeting every other day to discuss the novel and reciprocally teach one of the four, distinct Thinking-Maps-based reading strategy or skill jobs each student has worked on for the previous couple of days. The four jobs are as follows:
- Summary Specialist (Exactly what it sounds like)
- Discussion Leader (Students write questions based on the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy)
- Thinking Map Strategy (One of the four reading strategies not addressed by the first two jobs)
- Thinking Map Skill (A map designed for the analysis of a literary element or device)
Let’s take a look at the first job, Summary Specialist, and the Thinking Maps associated with it.
One day, about five years ago, I was trying to explain the concept of “summarizing major events in a narrative” to my Language Arts class. I would guess that, by that point, I had attempted to convey the same information to about twenty different groups of students over the course of my career. As usual, the discussion was centered around the question of how they were supposed to determine whether an event qualified as “major” and therefore needed to be placed in a box on a digital Summary Specialist flow map. I found myself saying the same unconvincing things about how major events were “important” and that the story wouldn’t make sense without them. This was about as helpful to my kids as asking them if a particular verb conjugation “sounded right.” I began mumbling to myself about how there had to be a better way to explain all of this and made a mental note to research the subject later in the day.
Goodness knows I prefer to let other people do my work for me when possible, but after extensive internet research, I determined that no one had created the resource I was hoping to find, so I decided to make it myself. What I had been looking for was a list of the types of events that could be considered “major” in a narrative. Here is what I eventually came up with:
As you can see, I identified eight categories of major events, as well as prompt questions to help students better understand what each category entails. My technique for developing this tool was to stare off into space for about an hour while trying to imagine every possible important thing that could happen in a story, so it is completely conceivable that I missed something obvious (Please drop any suggestions you have in the comments below!). Regardless of whether it is perfect, this resource has proved quite useful to both me and my students over the last few years.
Applications
Before assigning any Thinking Map strategy or skill activity as a Literature Circle job, I teach it whole-group with a shared piece of literature. I begin with a Focussed Instruction lesson on the strategy or skill and then model how the particular map activity should be completed. I use Google Classroom to assign each student their own copy of the Thinking Map and include instructions and a sample map that I’ve filled out using an anchor text (usually a picture book). Students use the map to analyze specific pages in the novel or selection we are reading together as a class.
Most of the time, the Summary Specialist job involves a “Flow Map of Major Events” like this one (I have included the instructions page and sample map as well):
Click on the images to view larger versions
This is a straightforward activity that requires students to sequence the major events of an assigned piece of reading. Notice there are no small boxes below the large boxes; this is because I want them to focus on the most important information. As I intimated above, before I created the “Identifying Major Events in a Narrative” handout, my students struggled mightily with differentiating between major events and details. The handout provides them with a set of signposts they can use to make such distinctions with more confidence. Above each box is a space for them to specify what type of major event they have identified. I find it useful to require students to classify each event because it helps them internalize the signposts. I reinforce this during Shared Reading by frequently asking students what type of major event we have just encountered.
Teaching Story Elements with the “Types of Major Events” Handout
Another benefit of using the “Identifying Major Events in a Narrative” handout is that it helps me teach literary elements such as character, setting, and plot. The character-related prompts encourage students to differentiate between major and minor characters and consider the feelings and thoughts of the protagonists. The setting prompts remind them to pay attention to where characters are in space and time and how the setting affects the narrative. Obviously, the last four types of major events all deal with plot. Using this tool to summarize stories on a regular basis makes students more aware of devices such as foreshadowing and backstory and drives home the crucial role of conflict in a narrative.
Scaling The Summary
Of course, if students are reading a picture book or a short story, they can summarize the entire narrative in a single Flow Map; I often employ the “Dramatic Structure Flow Map” I shared in a previous blog post for this purpose. When summarizing a novel for Literature Circles, students are often working with a series of pages from the middle of the book (based on a three-week reading schedule they have created on Google Drawings). In this case, it is important for them to remember to “scale” their summary. By this I mean that the importance they place on certain events within a relatively short span of pages will be different than it would be if they were summarizing the entire novel. To help explain this concept to the students, I created the handout below.
One of the many great ideas in the Thinking Maps manual Comprehension Strategies for Constructing Meaning is the “Summarizing and Synthesizing Parallel Flow Maps.” Here, the top Flow Map is used to summarize the story as usual. A second, parallel Flow Map is employed to analyze the events through a particular lens. I use these maps to add a layer of focus and rigor to the Summary Specialist job. I have developed suites of jobs for Literature Circles that all focus on a single literary element such as character or plot or a series of related elements and/or devices such as setting/atmosphere/mood. The advantage of these suites is that they allow all of the students in a group to contemplate various aspects of the same element. The Summary Specialist analyzes how the major events impact the characters, the Discussion Leader asks character-centered questions, etc. Below is the version of this map combination I use for the Character Suite.
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Taking the Maps to Writing
As usual, the maps discussed above are great for planning writing. Obviously, these particular maps can easily be turned into written summaries. The “Summarizing and Synthesizing Parallel Flow Maps'' activity allows kids to add commentary to their summaries, which adds a higher DOK level to the assignment.
I am a fifth grade teacher, so the resources I create and use are geared toward upper-grade students. I do, however, think it’s possible to modify the above maps and handouts so they are more appropriate for younger students. I hope you found something you can use in this post! Please leave any comments, questions, or suggestions below.
Writing Every Day,
Eric Lovein
PS: Check out my video on Circle Maps!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQ9RkXXZcI
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