GRADUAL RELEASE OF RESPONSIBILITY

Jamie Rubin

UCI Writing Summer Institute

July 7, 2011

Garden Grove Unified School Districtin Fountain Valley

Many of the students are from Santa Ana.

76.4% Hispanic 17.5% Asian 3.7% Caucasian .6% African American .9% Filipino .4% Pacific Islander .1% Indian or Alaskan 87.4% on free and reduced lunch

Today’s Presentation

History and research of GRRComponents of GRROverview of full unit -

voice in “Hiroshima” by John Hersey

“To be effective, teachers have engaged students in purposeful instruction designed to meet the needs of individual and smaller groups of students.”

-Douglas Fisher

“Effective Use of the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model”

The Instruction of Reading Comprehension

P. David Pearson and Margaret C. Gallagher

(October 1983) - No, this is not a typo.Began as a study in strategies for reading comprehension

In their reviews of others’ studies, they found the following commonalities for checking for mastery of skills: Almost all teacher-driven lots of questions for students to answer (often low-level

and not central to a thorough understanding of the text) lots of worksheets and workbook pages for students to

complete independentlyApplication was missing.

The Instruction of Reading Comprehension

P. David Pearson and Margaret C. GallagherContinued

Findings:* “Any academic task can be conceptualized as

requiring differing proportions of teacher and students responsibility for successful completion.”

*When the teacher is assuming most of the responsibility - he or she is “modeling” the strategy.

* When the student is assuming most of that responsibility, he or she is "practicing" or "applying" that strategy.

* In between these two is the gradual release of responsibility (also called "guided practice”).

Four Components of GRR

Focus Lessons (“I do”)Guided Instruction (“We do”)Collaborative

Learning (“You do together”)Independent Work (“You do alone”)

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

P. David Pearson and Margaret C. Gallagher“The Instruction of Reading Comprehension”

“Importantly, the gradual release of responsibility model

is not linear. Students move back and forth between each

of the components as they master skills, strategies, and

standards.” -Douglas Fisher

“Effective Use of the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model”

“Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

-Virginia Woolf

Common Core vs. CA Content Standards

Reading Standards for Literature 11 - 12 Analyze the impact of the

author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone

Literary Response and Analysis 11 - 12 Analyze the ways in which

irony, tone, mood, the author’s style, and the sound of language achieve specific rhetorical or aesthetic purposes or both.

Explain how voice, persona, and the choice of a narrator affect characterization and the tone, plot, and credibility of a text.

Common Core vs. CA Content Standards

(Cont.) Reading Standards for

Informational Text 11 - 12 Determine the author’s

point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text

Evaluate the credibility of an author’s argument or defense of a claim by critiquing the relationship between generalizations and evidence, the comprehensiveness of evidence, and the way in which the author’s intent affects the structure and tone of the text

Lesson Summary

“I do” - What is voice? “We do” - Excerpt of “Hiroshima” ch. 1 “I do” - Character timeline and “FB status” “We do” - Character timeline and “FB

status” (2) “You do together” - Character groups -

timeline and “FB status” “You do alone” - Character timeline and

“FB status”

Goals for the lessonReading Goal:I want students to be engaged in the story by “becoming” a character.Writing Goal:I think that students have a hard time finding/creating voice in their

own writing. In order to get them out of the box, I have them create a voice for a character whose experience was related in a 3rd person narrative based on interviews with the actual people - using a medium with which THEY are very familiar (facebook). I want them to be able to give personality and style to characters so they sound consistent.

Isn’t this cute?

(and yet so true…)

“I do”What is voice?

(very confusing)

What it is not:

* tone/attitude

* mood/emotions

This does not mean that these do not affect voice for they do very much.

(Like I said - CONFUSING)

What is is:

* the personality of a narrator or character

shown through word choice and point of view

* the speech and thought patterns of a narrator or character

“I do”In order to understand the voice of a

character, I need to know the following:

1. Background information (education, culture, upbringing, family life, etc.)

2. Something about their personality

3. Attitudes (of whatever situation they are in)

4. Their use of language

“I do”Point-of-view

Students need to understand point-of-view (previously covered) to give a voice to a character.

In this case - first person (I, me, my, etc.)

“I do”The Stepsister Speaks Out

It isn’t easy being the ugly stepsister. Everybody always feels so sorry for poor little Cinderella, but what about me? I deserve a little sympathy, too. Does my fairy godmother ever turn up with a magic wand? Does the prince ever dance with me at the ball? Not on your life. The best I can ever hope for with my pumpkins is a decent piece of pie. And as for the rats, well, rats are rats, with their sneaky eyes and skinny tails, nibbling and gnawing at the garbage. I never saw one yet who turned into a coachman.

If you ask me, that Cinderella is weird. Certainly, she isn’t normal. Besides the fact that she has naturally curly hair and wears size 4 1⁄2 shoes, she is so good-natured that it’s downright sickening. If you had to dust and sweep and clean all day long, would you go around singing to the birds? Of course you wouldn’t. No sensible person would.

A lot of people think I’m jealous of her. Maybe I am. And with good reason. I subsisted on seven hundred calories a day for three whole weeks before the ball. I did my leg-lift exercises faithfully. I got a perm and a facial and a manicure. I even bought a new gown. Blue velvet. Designer label. I mean, I was ready. Princey, I thought to myself, here I come!

And what happened? Little Cindy, who has never seen the inside of a health club in her life and who doesn’t know the caloric difference between a carrot stick and a chocolate eclair, whips together a dress out of some old curtains from K-Mart, waltzes off to the ball and snags the prince.

It isn’t fair! It really isn’t fair!

“I do”I will answer the following questions in order

to understand the voice of this character:1. What seems to be the characters background?

Spoiled by her parents (in this case her mother)Gold-digger (not well-educated)Seems to think she can (and should) get anything (or anyone) she wantsWhen she doesn’t get her way, she whines….A LOT.Focuses on looks and not on inner-beauty

2. What can you note about her personality?She is a snot-nosed spoiled little brat. She acts very much like a child when she doesn’t get her way.

3. What is her attitude toward the situation?She has a victim complex. It’s not her fault that the prince wasn’t attracted to her. It was Cinderella’s fault for showing up where she didn’t belong.

“I do”Voice questions continued

4. What are her language acts?Although she isn’t well-educated (she seems to have been groomed to be married), she knows how to put together a sentence. She knows how to argue her point (no matter how flawed). At times she is a bit cocky by demeaning the Prince (“Princey, I thought to myself, here I come!). And then she just becomes a child stamping her feet screaming “It isn’t fair! It really isn’t fair!”.

5. Whose point-of-view is this?This is the point-of-view of the evil stepsister who is acting very much like a child. (1st person)

“We do”Prince Charming

Attachment on page 13 As we read, think about the following questions:

(Yes, you will be answering them) What seems to be the character’s background? What do you know about his personality? What is his attitude toward the situation? What are his language acts? Whose point-of-view?

Share out your answers and write what we discuss on page 14

“You do together”The Evil Stepmother

Now it’s your turn!

Create a voice for the Evil Stepmother.

First, discuss the questions with your tables.

Second, decide on the part of the story you want to focus on with your group.

Third, write a BRIEF paragraph using the voice of the Evil Stepmother giving her spin on that situation.

“I do”Character Info. And Passage from

“Hiroshima” by John Hersey

Hatsuyo Nakamura

survivor of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima

“Hiroshima” by John HerseyHatsuyo Nakamura

Passage #1 At nearly midnight, the night before the bomb was dropped, an announcer on the city’s

radio station said that about two hundred B-29s were approaching southern Honshu and advised the population of Hiroshima to evacuate to their designated “safe areas.” Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, the tailor’s widow, who lived in the section called Nobori-cho and who had long had a habit of doing as she was told, got her three children - a ten-year-old boy, Toshio, and eight-year-old girl, Yaeko, and a five-year-old boy, Myeko - out of bed and dressed them and walked with them to the military area known as the East Parade Ground, on the northeast edge of the city. There she unrolled some mats and the children lay down on them. They slept until about two, when they were awakened by the roar of the planes going over Hiroshima.

As soon as the planes had passed, Mrs. Nakamura started back with her children. They reached home a little after two-thirty and she immediately turned on the radio, which, to her distress, was just then broadcasting a fresh warning. When she looked a the children and saw how tired they were, and when she thought of the number of trips they had made in past weeks, all to no purpose, to the East Parade Ground, she decided that in spite of the instructions on the radio, she simply could not face starting out all over again. She put the children in their bedrolls on the floor, lay down herself at three o’clock, and fell asleep at once, so soundly that when planes passed over late, she did not waken to their sound.

“I do”Timeline for character

l-----------------------------------------------------lNEARLY Midnight-August 4, 1945 Hatsuyo woke up her children, walked them to the East Parade Ground, slept until about 2am August 5. After she returned home with her children around 2:30am, the radio was broadcasting a fresh warning. She could not face making the trek again, so she put her kids to bed and fell asleep around 3am.(pages 6-7)

“We do”Hatsuyo Nakamura

Passage #2 The siren jarred her awake at about seven. She arose, dressed quickly, and hurried

to the house of Mr. Nakamoto, the head of her Neighborhood Association, and asked him what she should do. He said that she should remain at home unless and urgent warning – a series of intermittent blasts of the siren – was sounded. She returned home, lit the stove in the kitchen, set some rice to cook, and sat down to read that morning’s Hiroshima Chugoku. To her relief, the all-clear sounded at eight o’clock. She heard the children stirring, so she went and gave each of them a handful of peanuts and told them to stay on their bedrolls, because they were tired from the night’s walk. She had hoped that they would go back to sleep, but the man in the house directly to the south began to make a terrible hullabaloo of hammering, wedging, ripping, and splitting. The prefectural government, convinced, as everyone in Hiroshima was, that the city would be attacked soon, had begun to press with threats and warnings for the completion of wide fire lanes, which, it was hoped, might act in conjunction with the rivers to localize any fires started by an incendiary raid; and the neighbor was reluctantly sacrificing his home to the city’s safety. Just the day before, the prefecture had ordered all able-bodied girls from the secondary schools to spend a few days helping to clear these lands, and they started

work soon after the all-clear sounded.

“We do”Timeline entry #2

l-----------------------l-------------------------------------------------lNEARLY Midnight- August 5 When another sirenAugust 4, 1945 woke her up at aroundHatsuyo woke 7am, she remainedup her children, home due to the advicewalked them to of the head of herthe East Parade Ground, Neighborhood Association.slept until about 2am At 8am, the all-clear August 5. After she sounded. She watchedreturned home with her neighbor tear downher children around his house to make room2:30am, the radio was for fire lanes.broadcasting a fresh (pages 7 - 8)warning. She could notface making the trek again,so she put her kids to bed and fell asleep around 3am.(pages 6 - 7)

“I do”Character questions to lead

to voiceWhat do I know about my

character’s…… background?

*not well-educated*mother of 3*widow

…personality?*caring*rule-follower

…point-of-view?*survivor/victim

…attitude toward the situation?*frustrated and distressed by the confusion

…language acts?(This is where I take all of the above

information and make an educated guess)

*short, simple sentences*low-level vocabulary*asks a lot of questions

“I do”Possible Facebook Status Updated

#1Status Based on Timeline entry #1 and

information gathered through the text:Timeline entry: NEARLY Midnight-August 4, 1945 Hatsuyo woke up her children, walked them

to the East Parade Ground,slept until about 2am August 5. After she returned home with her children around 2:30am, the radio was broadcasting a fresh warning. She could not face making the trek again,so she put her kids to bed and fell asleep around 3am.

Facebook status:August 5 2:30am There was another warning tonight. I took my

children to the East Parade Ground. When we get got home, there was another alarm. I could not take my children there again. I am staying home tonight. I am so frustrated and scared. Will these alarms ever end?

“We do”

Facebook Status Update #2

“You do together”Group Activity

Get together with the others who have chosen the same character.

Read the information and the first passage about that character.

Discuss what kind of voice you think he or she would have and why.

Create the 1st timeline piece for your character.Create a facebook status update based on that

timeline piece in the voice of your character.

“You do alone”Individual Activity

Read the second passage about that character.

Create the 2nd timeline piece for your character.

Create a 2nd facebook status update based on that timeline piece in your character’s voice.

When everyone is finished, share with the group.

Where this eventually leads

Creating an entire facebook page for the character in their voice (see attached template on page 18 - Thank you Jessica Variz!)

In the voice of their character - write a business letter to the “President of the American Red Cross” (me) asking for aid to be sent. (see attachment on pages 19 & 20)

Four Components of GRR

Focus Lessons

(“I do”) Guided Instruction

(“We do”) Collaborative Learning

(“You do together”) Independent Work

(“You do alone”)

Adaptations

write or speak conversations in the voice of their characters

write letters to other family members or friends as their characters

write or create (in this case, re-create) an interview with the person and the author

add as components of a multi-genre project