PoPCast Episode 12 transcript

Travis: Welcome listeners to another episode of PoPCast Reboot. I'm Travis. 

Whitney: And I'm Whitney. 

Travis: The most dynamic duo in grammar, podcasting. And today, we are going to be talking about another installment of the Patterns of Revision. So we're going to highlight for you another element of revision that we focus on in this resource, which is, to remind you, grades three through eight, grade specific. Each grade has its own standalone resource, but there is some predictability across all six grade level resources. In that, we highlight The mnemonic draft, D-R-A-F-T as skills that we can build to enhance our revision. So today we are looking at the letter R. Whitney. Talk to us about R. 

Whitney: Well, r stands for rearrange. And so if we think about when we're writing, when we're reading, order matters, right? We can read a book and like I'm reading The Women right now by Kristin Hannah, for example she begins the book with this elaborate description of the setting of where the main character is currently living before going off into the army.

Other books that we read, we may see the author chooses to begin with dialogue to really set us in that moment. Order matters. The order is still a choice of the author and what effect do they want to have on the reader, right? How do they want to get that set up? So that's what we're going to be doing here in these lessons is really considering the order of our sentences and eventually the order when we're combining the order of the words that we have left over after we delete, after we have deleted repetitive or unnecessary words, we'll have words left over. How will we order those into a sentence that makes sense, but also has an effect on the reader in some way?

Travis: I've gotten really deep into the Instagram kind of food world. And so I'm looking at Instagram recipes all the time. And I've noticed that sometimes there's the format of. Here's the step by step instructions to make this dish and other times people will start with here's the final product. Ooh, isn't this so delicious? If you're interested, here's how we make it. 

So instead of the final reveal, sometimes these creators start with the reveal and have rearranged that order, put that right up top as the most important thing to them and then gone through the process. So as we've been looking at order, thinking about elevating this conversation, it's just really interesting how that is impactful everywhere, right? Everything that we interact with. 

Whitney: And I am going to be expecting the next time I see you, Travis, to make me one of these dishes of something that is going to wow me. That's what I expect the next time I see you. 

Travis: Okay. I've got this really nice dessert that I just tried. It's actually funny. There's a couple things I tried that are like, Oh, this is actually really bad. They just made it look good. But there's one for sure. 

Whitney: They made it look good. It's all about the emphasis of what the author wants you to really focus on and order helps you to do that as a reader. 

Travis: Yeah. And in this chapter specifically, we really want to elevate the importance of order by putting it in front of students and having them really grapple with how we order our ideas together for logical sense for clarity for coherence to make it make the most sense. We're going to discuss and share two examples. Whitney, if you want to start by sharing an elementary example to talk through the process, and then I can weigh in with a middle school example to highlight similarities as well as maybe some differences in the middle school resource. I'd be happy to do that.

Whitney: Sure! Keeping in mind before getting into this, that this chapter is on rearranging, and both of our examples are from the rearranging chapter, meaning that we are looking at the paragraph level. We are looking at Rearranging sentences from a read aloud that we have chosen, and taking the sentences just from a small part of that, and rearranging them for an order that would make sense, that would have an effect, and having conversations around that.

Later, when we're sentence combining, we're going to come back to rearranging again at the sentence level, where we're rearranging those words left over, like I said earlier. So the lesson that I am going to use for the elementary example comes from the fourth grade book, and the text that we are using is such a high- interest nonfiction text for kids.

When I read this with adults, adults are a little grossed out by it, but kids love it. All right, so who doesn't love a little cockroach action? Yes, let's go. The book I'm using is called Body Snatchers. It's a book about zombies, flies, wasps and other creepy crawly zombie makers. It's written by Joan Axelrod Contrada, and it's actually part of the Edge Books series. So if you're looking to purchase this book, check your school library first, because this tends to be one that comes in a pack for school libraries. If you were to buy this one on Amazon, I'm just letting you know it will be a little bit more expensive since it's one piece out of a pack. But here is the small read aloud section for this part.

This is from the chapter called The Zombie- Making Jewel Wasp: 

"In Africa, Southern Asia, and the Pacific Islands, a female jewel wasp stalks her next victim. A fast moving cockroach crosses her path. The cockroach is six times larger than the wasp. But the cockroach doesn't stand a chance. The wasp stings its victim. The cockroach can no longer move. The wasp injects venom. The venom helps control the cockroach. The wasp has turned it into a mindless zombie. The cockroach, normally feisty, becomes calm. The wasp grabs it by the antenna. Then she walks it like a dog on a leash into a burrow. The wasp lays an egg on the cockroach.

Then the wasp fills in the burrow with pebbles. She doesn't want any predators getting to her egg. Soon the egg hatches into a larva. The larva chews its way into the cockroach, then it eats the cockroach alive. Later, the wasp bursts out as an adult. The cockroach dies." 

Isn't it great? It's so great. 

Travis: It is. It's just the right level of gross. It is, right? For our audience.

Whitney: I just envisioned the cockroach being walked by its antenna, you know, that's probably one of my favorite parts of this, just the visualizing that happens as you read this text. What about you, Travis? 

Travis: Okay. So mine is going to be. I'm pulling the example from the sixth grade book and we are going to be looking at, The sport of soccer.

So this is from The Big Book of Soccer. This is written by the team at Mundial. They are a soccer magazine, soccer focused, which they call football. It's more of a worldwide magazine. So soccer we call it that here, but that's neither here nor there. We start with our read aloud that, 

"Soccer hasn't always been on TV and watched by millions of people. But people have played soccer, or something very similar, for thousands of years. Here's how it all began, and how over time it has changed and evolved into what we watch and play today. It all started in China, over 2, 000 years ago, with a game called Cuchu. The ball was made of leather, and it was stuffed with animal hair and feathers.

The goal was as tall as five grown ups standing on each other's heads and as narrow as a child, as you can imagine, with a goal this shape, it was incredibly difficult to score, and it was a very skillful game." 

So a little bit of the history of soccer, its origins , thousands of years ago in China.

So already I love how both of these texts are going to build engagement, just those brief read-alouds, and both kids are going to get a little bit different vibe content wise, but both I think, I want to know a little bit more. That's interesting. So we don't have to be a soccer fanatic to be able to be engaged in this content to want to learn a little bit more.

Whitney: And what I found interesting is we both chose nonfiction texts, but the description within them was pretty heavy. Yes. So I think that's important that To know for students is that they're not going to just use description in narrative text. Sometimes they over describe in narrative text and then their informational texts are sometimes pretty bland. So I think this is also just a nice mentor to show that we can use description in informational text as well. 

So in the rearrange lessons, behind the scenes, what we have done is we've taken part of this read aloud, just a small section of it, and taken a few of those sentences and put them sentence-by-sentence in a random order.

And so what we're going to do with our students during the modeling piece is, cut those sentences up or have them prepared in some way in a random order and say something like, "One thing writers do when they revise is they go back to their writing and they check carefully for the order of their sentences."

Is it logical? Do my ideas progress in a way that I want them to, or is my reader going to follow me okay with the order that I have? So we're going to revisit part of this text with sentences in no particular order and talk about how we might rearrange them for coherence? How might we keep these ideas tightly connected through the order that we put them?

Travis: And if we're analyzing another writer's writing for this purpose, we like to guide students first with some questions to get them thinking along lines that are going to lead them to success. Some questions that we like to pose when we are interacting with these kind of randomized or reordered sentences within a paragraph is, What did these sentences mostly seem to be about? Or what does this group of sentences seem to be about? We're gonna take a look at them and get a broader idea of the topic or the focus of this paragraph. That's our first step. So this, a great crossover for students as they're looking at their writing. What does this paragraph seem to be about?

Then second, our next question, which sentence or sentences make the most sense as a starting point for this paragraph? Let's take a look at them. How might we start if we were in this writer's shoes? This is a way to really play with which sentence makes the most sense as the beginning. And then, finally, we ask, do you notice any sentences that would make sense arranged close by or next to each other?

I think this is a great way to really elevate that progression from one idea to the next, that oftentimes one sentence would not make sense without another before or after it. So sentence order is incredibly important here, and this is a great way for students to get a real cue into the reasons why. Is there a word from this sentence that I see in the next, in one that could be close by? Or does this idea lead to an understanding of another idea so that it makes sense for one to be ordered, Next to another. 

Whitney: And the reason why we pull the sentences directly from the read aloud that we just read was to really we needed that read aloud to build the context. If we're going to talk about the order of these sentences, they really need to have the context around the content of the sentences in order to think about a progression of those ideas. So it is important that we share the read aloud, but we don't leave that text up in front of them when we're rearranging because we're taking sentences directly from that read aloud.

And I know in our fourth grade lesson, during the modeling piece, for this lesson, there's only three sentences that we're pulling because we're really introducing the rearrange piece. When we move into the collaboration through conversation part of the lesson where students are working with partners or in small groups, we've added more sentences into the paragraph for them to rearrange because we want to really elevate those conversations. So the three sentences in the fourth grade lesson are as follows, and this is in no particular order. 

Then the wasp fills in the burrow with pebbles. 

She doesn't want any predators getting her egg.

The wasp lays an egg on the cockroach.

And so if we think about order and we think about those questions that Travis shared with us some things that have come up in conversation that I've had with students is they say, well, you can't really start with the sentence "She doesn't want any predators getting her egg because we don't know who she is. When we're starting with a pronoun, we really need an antecedent prior to that for the reader to have an understanding of this. So those conversations lead to, well then, it would make more sense to have "the wasp lays an egg on the cockroach" before The sentence that starts with she.

So we know who she is. And then the other sentence begins with the word then: "Then the wasp fills in the burrow with pebbles." If it's the beginning of a paragraph, we're most likely not going to start that with the word then. And so we get to have conversations on where would it go here? And remember, when we're modeling, I might try something that doesn't work in front of the students for us to have these conversations as to why doesn't that work? Why? Why wouldn't that be an effective choice? And that really elevates those conversations around meaning and how these ideas do go together. But in order for them to be understood, they have to go in a certain order.

Travis: And what a great confidence builder for students to be able to share their reasoning. Why? Why does this have to go in this certain way? More to make sense as a reader. I think intuitively we know it, but to be able to speak it into the reasoning behind it is really impactful for students and leads to another layer of kind of strengthening their understanding around that.

Whitney: And this just got me thinking too, Travis, completely random thought, but connected to this is so much of our testing now that our students are put through is to share their thinking, their reasoning for their claim or for their why they chose this piece of evidence, and they have to explain why. Really, that's what we're doing here in these conversations, too, is explaining our thinking for why we think this way. 

So I hadn't even ever really thought about the connections there, but by having these conversations with students, we're continuing that work of explaining our thinking that eventually they'll have to do some sort of writing on tests in their future as well.

Travis: Oh, the big academic vocabulary term justification: justify your thinking. Why is that? Explain why? Yeah, this is a great, really great setup and the line of questioning that we share is from the work that we've done in the classroom to really get students to share their ideas to be active participants in this, so that it's not just us up there. Let's think about this together. And here are some questions to be able to help you think about this. 

Whitney: It's important during the modeling that we're modeling what we want the students to do. And what we want them to do is not always going to lead them to the correct answer right away. What we want them to do is think and try different possibilities to see that we do have options as writers. 

Travis: We have also at the end of the modeling lesson and at the end of the collaborating through conversation section of this lesson, we have reflective questions to again, really affirm that there is not one right answer to this. It's not right. These are wrong. Here are the choices that the author made. Let's talk about the choices that you made in your conversations with your partner, a small group. 

So we ask, Why do you think the author put the sentences in this order? After we show the students the author's original version. It might be exactly the same in order, or there might be some slight differences. But we ask, why do you think the author put their sentences in this order? Is there another order that would be effective? And why do you think our order was different from or the same as the author's? So a lot of justifying the work that they did.

So it's not just you. Let's throw our sentences in this order to get done with it. There's a lot of deeper thinking and reflective thought processing happening that's going to lead into the work that they're going to do with their own writing afterwards. 

So to highlight in the middle school version, the first two lessons in sixth grade and the first lesson in seventh and eighth, we, in the same manner as elementary books, we highlight rearranging one paragraph, but then in the middle school books, we ramp it up just a notch, in that there is at least one lesson in each of the books where students are going to be rearranging and then reorganizing into two paragraphs. So really strengthening that thinking around grouping sentences by meaning together and then arranging them in an order that makes sense. 

It's a little bit deeper work that we feel like students are ready for as they move into middle school so that it is just that, at that just right cognitive struggle for them to still feel successful, but things that are going to also cross over into their work as writers too.

Whitney: And as we work on paragraphing in the elementary grades, a lot of this comes up too, because they don't have any paragraphs and they start really looking at the order. They can begin to really see effective places to break it into two paragraphs as opposed to one. So I think this leads to that work as well through conversation as to where all of these ideas go together, but then these ideas go together too. Maybe we can try doing that in two paragraphs. 

So I like how you brought that up, Travis, because I think that is something that we kind of play around with in elementary and then really dive deeper into it with your seventh and eighth grade books. 

Travis: Yeah, it's important. It's important to add in that conversation. I know even middle school students, some students are adept at it and some struggle with just paragraphing in general. I've got my ideas, but I'm not sure where to break from one to the next. So this is a great added bonus within the rearrange section where we can take a look specifically at paragraphing for purpose and looking at how the author has done it. Now let's go into our own writing and add that extra layer. 

 Is there anything else that we want to talk about in the lesson? 

Whitney: I was thinking about apply a little bit. So for the applying revision, of course, our students are going to go back to their own piece of writing and think about the order.

So there's a lot of different ways to do this. And in our lessons, we give suggestions of what you could do. One thing that I have done when I've modeled this in classrooms is we have a shared piece of writing, like a class piece of writing that we have done together. Maybe it's a paragraph. And we talk about what if we took this last sentence and moved it to the top. How would that change if we flip to the last sentence in the first sentence? How would that change the emphasis on our paragraph? Would it still make sense? Would it not make sense? Because if we're really working on keeping our ideas connected, sometimes it's more effective to take their very first sentence in the paragraph and put it down at the bottom. Or they don't have a closing. And when they do that, and they move a sentence around, they can begin to see more of a closing. So that's one way to think about it. 

Another thing is when they're looking at their own piece of writing, if it's a huge piece of writing, we encourage them just to look at a small part of it. They box out a paragraph or a small part, three to five sentences where they're looking at just the order of those before moving on to another part of their text as well. We even have had students write out the sentences, especially like in third grade, their sentences are fairly simple. So they write out their sentences on index cards and physically move three to four sentences to try out different orders manually that way, to really visualize the possibilities that they have. 

Travis: Love that. Yeah, that is the way to be mobile with it and really maybe to extend that. I think all of your ideas hold some great merit in the middle school classroom as well. Maybe just to extend another possibility would be if we're looking at a multi paragraph written piece, giving students the opportunity to write each paragraph on a separate note card and then to be able to move each of those to see, hey, does, is this order originally that I thought about putting my writing in? Does it make sense? Or because it's so easy to move, can I put the last paragraph first? What happens when I do that? 

Whitney: I love that too. Even at the elementary level, when we're, we even have three paragraphs or we have an intro body and conclusion and a lot of them are typing now. So let's print that out, cut it up, move things around. Maybe we take the intro and just look at the sentences with the, in the intro, or we look at our entire body. And even if we have two paragraphs in our body, we decide, Ooh, which paragraph is going to be more beneficial first, according to what we have in our intro. 

Travis: Then that creates some maybe necessity for revision of our ideas that can be an extension piece like, Oh, if we want to move this around, do we need to change up some of how we've organized our intro, for example.

Whitney: And there's a chart on pages 18 through 20 ish. I think in all of the books, they're in the similar area. Remember we talked about chart when we talked about delete, but this chart has all of the lessons of the entire book in one place for you and a goal focus.

And with these, we also are thinking about using time order words. When would we use those time order words? So we have some lessons that are really focused on that piece, on using time order words to think about a logical progression. So when students are going back to their own writing, and you're doing that sentence on time order words, there might be some places where they decide to add in some time order words. Even though this isn't an adding lesson, we still encourage students to revise with these other strategies as well. So even if we haven't taught an adding lesson yet, if our students realize during this time of ordering that they need some words to help with the order, by all means, we're going to encourage them to add those in.

Travis: Love that. And that's, I think, some of the work that we do while we're playing within the author's example, their writing. We see the importance of some of those words, how we can connect an idea from one sentence to the next. That logical progression is going to cross over into their own writing. 

Whitney: And structure of text as well. So we might have one that's focused on like a paragraph of main idea and details and how that would look. Or a narrative paragraph where it's going to be probably more of like a chronological order. So I think the way that we order text also comes into the structures that we're using and we vary those as well with our lessons. So as a teacher, you can choose a focus. 

Travis: As you are working alongside students, as we move into application. A great visual for them to have access to is the rearrange chart that can be found at the beginning of the rearrange chapter. Right after the introductory matter, we have the rearrange chart.

It's also accessible on the publisher's website. I'll link that in the show notes as well so that you have access to the PDF of that , but we have broken it down for you as well as for students to take a look at rearranging at the sentence level and rearranging at the paragraph level. 

What does that look like? What are some examples? What's the process of doing that? 

Just so that there is an extension from the great work that we're doing in the class with directly teaching this to letting the reins loose a little bit for students to do this work, how to support them. 

Whitney: And that rearranged chart that's online is both in English and in Spanish. So I just always like to mention that as well. We do have the charts in Spanish online. 

Travis: All right. Any final thoughts here? 

Whitney: I don't know. I keep thinking about the dessert you're going to make. 

Travis: Uh, yes. Okay. 

Whitney: It's been hard for me to focus because I've just been thinking about the desserts and what hooked you. I want to know the order that that author use that you have the dessert in your mind. What order did that author take that kind of hooked you to think, Hey, I want to go ahead and make this or was it 

Travis: it was, it was the order was definitely a hook. So it was, here is A beautiful dessert right, like, right in your face. And then it was, Oh, how do I make this? The creator answered that right away. 

"So here's what you do. You do a little bit of this and a little bit of this." 

And it's, yeah, it was kind of like a Larabar. So, like dates and almonds as a base and then pistachio cream above that. And then you freeze that, cut it up into like bars and dip it in melted dark chocolate, let that freeze. And then it's a little, like, healthy.

Whitney: That sounds amazing. And anything with dates, I am all for it. 

Travis: You got it. Next time we're hanging out, I'm bringing dessert. 

Whitney: Awesome. And this just reminds me too, as a reader, you had questions and then the author turned around and answered them. And I think that comes into our order-work with. students as well as writers are as we're writing. We also think what questions might they have and the order in which they read it is going to probably prompt some other questions that we can answer as well. 

So true. And I love it. Oh, I'm excited for that.

Travis: We hope that this episode got you hungry for more information and some good food. 

Whitney: Yeah. Yum. I can't wait. 

Travis: Hope that this was enlightening and we look forward to sharing more content around patterns of revision with you soon.

Whitney: Yeah. Have a great day.