Overheard:
“I’m noticing that a substantial number of kids are struggling to distinguish the topic of a passage from the claim that is being made. They seem to know what the reading is mostly about, but they are confusing that general topic with the more specific claim that the author is making it. I wonder why this is happening.”
“Why don’t we ask the kids why they think it’s happening?”
“Do you really think that they can explain why it’s happening?”
“I don’ t know. Their work does a good job of showing us what’s happening. If they can tell us why, what we do to help them might be far more effective than any strategy we come up with by assuming.”
“Yeah, and if they can’t, then maybe we need to think about how to make that happen in the future.”
“Listening to what they tell us and documenting it….that’s data, right?”
“That is data. Right.”
“Huh.”
