Summer Reading--Exemplars and More!

Looking for Common Core Exemplar titles for your students' summer reading? Look no further than EMC's Access Editions. You’ll find exemplars such as

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

For your middle school readers, The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) compiled an excellent Summer Booklist for Young Readers. You’ll find many of EMC’s Access Editions also on this list including

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Check out the complete list of EMC Access Edition titles at www.emcschool.com/accesseditions. Your students will have a terrific summer reading great literature!!

 

 

Six Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students

Looking for ways to use scaffolding in your teaching? A recent edutopia.org article provides some helpful ideas.  
6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students 
 

EMC's Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature program has scaffolding and gradual release of responsibility built into the lesson design of each unit in the textbook. Three levels of reading support lead students from guided, to directed, to independent reading. This approach is based on research that supports the practice of using modeling to gradually transfer responsibility and mastery of skills from the teacher and the textbook to the students. 

Mirrors & Windows before-reading activities and guided close-reading models include all six of the scaffolding strategies mentioned in the Edutopia article.

1. Modeling: (Guided Reading Models)
2. Prior knowledge: (Reader’s Context)
3. Time to talk: (Launch the Lesson activities and Mirrors & Windows questions in the Teachers’ Edition)
4. Pre-teach vocabulary: (Preview Vocabulary)
5. Use visual aids: (Use Reading Skills graphic organizers)
6. Pause, ask questions, pause, review: (During-reading guided reading questions and After-Reading text-dependent critical thinking questions)
   
   
    Let Mirrors & Windows do the scaffolding for you!

 

Mirrors & Windows' text-dependent questions build Depth of Knowledge (DOK)

Mirrors & Windows' After Reading critical thinking questions are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. These text-dependent questions ask students to recall basic facts from the text and then apply higher level reasoning skills. Questions are paired to build from literal questions to interpretation through synthesis. The critical thinking levels directly align with Norman L. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels as shown in the chart below. 

Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels	Mirrors & Windows After-Reading question levels
Level 1: Recall and Reproduction Recall of facts information, or procedure	Understand (Find meaning)
Level 2: Skills and Concepts Use of information, concept knowledge	Apply (Use information)
Level 3: Strategic Thinking Requires reasoning, developing a plan or sequence of steps	Analyze (Take things apart)
Level 4 Extended Thinking Requires investigation, thinking and processing multiple conditions of problem or task	Evaluate (Make judgments) Create (Bring ideas together)

Students will have the opportunity to practice cognitive skills and processes at all four levels of DOK after reading every selection in the Mirrors & Windows textbook.