Ap Bio Chapter 3 Reading Guide

[Griselda Humbarger]

The premise is simple. Grab a book you think students will love, then read a chapter out loud. Then watch as the reading dominos begin to fall. One student reads it, loves it, passes it on, and it travels all year long.

One fun way to keep the FCF energy through a display is to link up some great videos by QR code for early finishers to watch. In the display featured below, students can visit Youtube versions of five popular first chapters anytime they have ten extra minutes in class.

A fun way to save your voice and enrich your reading culture is to bring in guest readers for your program. They can either come to your classroom or record a video from wherever they are that you can play. You could even have someone read over Zoom (the mayor? A famous local athlete? The author?).

By degrees, an enigmatic, brilliant and terrifyingly talented litigator becomes an increasingly broken man. Despite his successful career, his mind and body remain deeply scarred by an unspeakable childhood. He becomes progressively more haunted by what he suspects is a history of trauma he cannot overcome, and that he fears will define his life forever.

Yanagihara was born in California, has lived in Hawaii and Texas, and now lives in New York City. In 2016, she joined the PEN America Board, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times Style Magazine.

JB is a visual artist from Haiti who specialises in portraiture and photography. Described as quick-witted and sometimes cruel, he often uses his friends as subject matter for his work and is desperate for recognition in the art world. Later in the novel, JB battles drug addiction which his friends struggle to help him overcome.

A Little Life heavily uses location to anchor its plot. The novel feels deeply rooted in place, from the characters eating pho in Chinatown to Jude and Willem creating a life together in their Lispenard Street apartment. How does this serve the story? And why do you think these places have now come to mean so much to readers of the book?

The four lead characters, Willem, JB, Malcolm, and Jude are central to the story with a friendship that spans decades. Do you see any similarities in their characters? What experiences have brought them together to form such a closely-knit group with long-lasting friendship?

While the novel is set in modern times in New York City, it is very light on any wider specifics such as socio-political or historical events. Why do you think Yanagihara has chosen to omit such detail? Is there a benefit to this?

Jude is legally adopted by Harold and his wife Julia. As a thirty-year-old grown man, much of this is symbolic. What is Yanagihara trying to depict here? What is the purpose of the adoption and how does it affect Jude?

On Twitter, readers shared their thoughts, detailing how deeply the book had affected them. On Instagram, fans posted pictures of themselves holding up the book in front of their own face, the grimacing face on the cover replacing their own. On TikTok, people uploaded video diaries of themselves reading the book, concluding with their heartbroken and tearful reactions once finished.

Next, came the award nominations. In July of 2015, A Little Life was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and went on to make the shortlist. It was shortlisted for numerous other prizes that year, winning the Kirkus Prize in Fiction.

More merchandise popped up on Etsy, and beyond. Memes of the book were shared on every platform. Fan art of Jude and Willem became a mainstay on Tumblr. Obsessed readers even got tattoos of the chapter titles.

Guided reading is a small-group instructional context in which a teacher supports each reader's development of systems of strategic actions for processing new texts at increasingly challenging levels of difficulty. During guided reading, students in a small-group setting individually read a text that you have selected at their instructional reading level. You provide teaching across the lesson to support students in building the in-the-head networks of strategic actions for processing increasingly challenging texts. Through guided reading, students learn how to engage in every facet of the reading process and apply that literacy power to all instructional contexts.

A small group of students who are at a similar point in their reading development are seated across from you at a small kidney-shaped table. Each student reads, softly or silently, the same text individually. You guide a discussion of the text meaning and make teaching points based on your observations of the students' reading strengths and needs.

Becoming an effective teacher of guided reading takes time and effort; but the benefits are worth it. As you teach students, you will have the satisfaction of seeing them apply today what you taught yesterday; you will notice behavioral evidence that they are taking on new understandings; and you will see them expand their competencies and move to higher levels of texts.

Vygotsky was particularly interested in the ways children were challenged and extended in their learning by adults. He argued that the most successful learning occurs when children are guided by adults towards learning things that they could not attempt on their own.

Guided reading is a practice which promotes opportunities for the development of a self-extending system. When readers are guided to talk, think and read their way through a text, they build up a self-extending system, so that every time reading occurs, more learning about reading ensues (Ford and Opitz, 2011).

Students are organised into groups based on similar reading ability and/or similar learning needs determined through analysis of assessment tools such as reading conference notes and anecdotal records.

EAL/D students learn about the grammatical features as they arise in authentic texts. For example, learning about the form and function of passive sentences when reading an exposition text, and subsequently writing their own passive sentences.

The teacher selects a text for a guided reading group by matching it to the learning needs of the small group. The learning focus is identified through observation of the student reading, individual conference notes or anecdotal records.

In this video the teacher leads an after reading discussion with a small group of students to check their comprehension of the text. The students re-read the text together. Prior to this session the children have had the opportunity to read the text independently and work with the teacher individually at their point of need.

It is important that the teacher reads the text before the guided reading session to identify the gist of the text, key vocabulary and text organisation. A learning focus for the guided reading session must be determined before the session. It is recommended that teachers prepare and document their thinking in their weekly planning so that the teaching can be made explicit for their students as illustrated in the examples in the information below.

Students need to have access in the classroom to the full range of genres we want them to comprehend (Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2011, p. 59). A variety of authentic text types as well as decodable texts addressing the students current reading need and the identified instructional purpose, need to be to be read and explicitly taught.

During the reading stage, it is helpful for the teacher to keep anecdotal records on what strategies their students are using independently or with some assistance. Comments are usually linked to the learning focus but can also include an insightful moment or learning gap.

There are a number of points during the guided reading session where the teacher has an opportunity to provide feedback to students, individually or as a small group. To execute this successfully, teachers must be aware of the prompts and feedback they give.

It is important to note that guided reading is not the same as round robin reading. When students are reading during the independent reading stage, all children must have a copy of the text and individually read the whole text or a meaningful segment of a text (e.g. a chapter) quietly aloud to themselves while the teacher listens and observes individual students reading.

Providing opportunities for teachers to learn about teaching practices, sharing of evidence-based methods and finding out what is working and for whom, all contribute to developing a culture that will make a difference to student outcomes (Hattie, 2009, pp. 241-242).

When there has been dedicated and strategic work by a Principal and the leadership team to set learning goals and targeted focuses, teachers have clear direction about what to expect and how to go about successfully implementing core teaching and learning practices.

One way to monitor the growth of teacher capacity and whether new learning has become embedded is by setting up peer observations with colleagues. It is a valuable tool to contribute to informed, whole-school approaches to teaching and learning.

The focus of the peer observation must be determined before the practice takes place. This ensures all participants in the process are clear about the intention. Peer observations will only be successful if they are viewed as a collegiate activity based on trust.

To improve the practice of guided reading, peer observations can be arranged across Year levels or within a Year level depending on the focus. A framework for the observations is useful so that both parties know what it is that will be observed. It is important that the observer note down what they see and hear the teacher and the students say and do. Evidence must be tangible and not related to opinion, bias or interpretation (Danielson, 2012).

It's through collaborative reflection and evaluation that teaching and learning goals and the embedding of new practice takes place (Principles of Learning and Teaching [PoLT]: Action Research Model).

For those who are reading along, here are some reflections questions from Chapters 10-18 to guide us in critical self-reflection as we do the important work of becoming antiracist. Part 1, with questions for Chapters 1-9, is available here.

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