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Goal

With this funding 125 Walton High School sophomores will have the basic tools they need to master the fundamentals of close reading and critical thinking. Last year, English departments throughout the district were challenged to find, vet, and implement texts and materials that better aligned with the rigor and complexity of the new B.E.S.T standards. As the Walton High School tenth grade ELA team develops and implements lessons from these resources, we must often create and copy pieces of texts for close reading and annotations, graphic organizers, and guided notes. For my students to learn and practice the skills needed to read a text closely and critically, they must physically engage with the pages, writing notes, marking for language, creating visuals, and identifying questions and areas for further exploration. Because the new text sets are not consumables the way the old textbooks were, materials must be copied for each student, and, as you know, paper is at premium for teachers. This grant will allow me to purchase additional paper as well as sticky notes, annotation tabs, index cards, and highlighters so my students can become active and engaged readers and learners.  

What will be done with my students

Research confirms that close reading and annotations deepen students’ understanding of the text. By moving beyond just summarizing or recognizing the central idea of the text, students look for shifts in argument, tone, or perspective, adding their own thoughts, observations, and connections as they read. Furthermore, actively annotating the text provides scaffolding support for struggling readers, validating what they know and observe in the text and “backing them into” analysis. Close reading and annotating also helps students manage their workload. As part of their end of the year, high stakes testing, tenth grade students will be required to write an extended essay using multiple sources. As such, explicit writing instruction is foundational to student success on the year- end FAST test. Close reading and annotation strategies forces the students to do the heavy lifting of analysis before they sit down to write, allowing them to focus on the foundations of good writing.

The paper will be used daily to provide copies of texts or parts of text. The highlighters will be used to help students visually track the organization and movement of ideas, and the sticky notes and tabs will be beneficial when we move into our novel unit later this year. While we have been given a class set of each novel, there are not enough copies for students to read individually. Tabs, sticky notes, and index cards will assist in the organization of their thoughts and facilitate the sharing of ideas across classes.

Sticky notes, index cards, sharpies, and chart paper will be used in various lessons, including silent conversation, pass the problem, and group annotation and writing projects.  

Benefits to my students

Students will benefit from physical interaction with high complexity, rigorous texts that meet the breadth and depth of the B.E.S.T standards. Students can keep their physical work in a portfolio, allowing them to track their progress towards mastery. Eighty-one percent of Pre-Ap “core” level students scored a 1 on the first progress monitoring administration of the FAST test. Providing guided notes, modeling text marking and annotations, and demonstrating how ideas move and shift throughout a text will be critical to moving these students to a qualifying score of three. Paper, highlighters, sticky notes, and index cards are low tech tools that have a high impact on student success. These tools allow me to create lessons that encourage small group conversation, provide opportunity for movement through “pass the problem”, “collaborative conversations” and community paragraph writing

Sixty four percent of my English 2 Honors students scored a three or higher on the same progress monitoring assessment. Mastering close reading and annotation strategies for these students will challenge them to explore the complexity of the text, identify and explain real world connections, and develop a sophisticated writing style. You’d be surprised how a hot pink index card or pastel post note can spur conversation and the exchange of ideas. Again, these are low tech tools that will have a high impact on student success.  

Budget Narrative

These supplies have been sourced from Amazon or Wal-Mart. 

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