RTI for Adolescents- Part IV (CD2M Introduction)

Last week, I attended High Impact Reading Interventions for Secondary Students with Deborah K. Reed at the ESC Region XI center.  She closed out the session by discussing a strategy that I'm extremely familiar with, because we use it at my school in all English classes.  So, instead of using her language to describe it, I'll use the conventions and coding I'm used to.  Here's an image of the poster I have hanging on my wall to remind the kids of the parts of this strategy:

We use the term CD2M with the kids to indicate that this is the strategy we are using.  This stands for Connect Device to Meaning.  It highlights the parts of the text that help the reader with comprehending what the author is trying to convey.  At the beginning of the year, we explain to students why it is important to be able to analyze text in this way.  We tell them that once they start to recognize the parts of the sentence, and the moves that the author makes to build their argument, it will help them to understand meaning.  There is also the writing benefit, that when students understand the mechanics of a successful piece of writing, they are more likely to be able to mimic that style or use those strategeis in their own writing.  It is important to note that students need to understand that with any strategy, once they learn how to do it, they must decide if it is helpful to their ability to answer questions before spending time on it during a test.  If they are overwhelmed by the strategy, don't use it.  If it  helps, then pull it out of their toolbox. 

This is a multi-step strategy, one that needs time to teach.  It would be a bad idea to hand students a text and a worksheet with all these parts, for example, and tell them to annotate the text.  Instead, the teacher should model each individual part and then build to where they can do all parts of the strategy independently on one piece. 

B? and L? is used to indicate student questions on the text.  What do they not understand?  What does it make them think about?  When they mark the paper with a B or an L, it is a signal to them to go back and think about the text.  It is also a signal to the English teacher that these parts might need to be focused on as a whole class. 

In Texas, students are asked to write open-ended responses (OERs) on their state assessment.  We spend a good amount of time trying to get students to where they can answer these questions by using text support and explaining their answer.  Questions are meant to be expanded on, and the best answers include key evidence from the text.  I usually tell students their answers should be 3-5 sentences for OER.  The best way to answer can be described in a number of different formulas, but the easiest one I can provide is:  1) Turn the question into a statement to indicate the answer, 2) Provide a detail from the text to prove why that answer is correct, 3) Explain how that detail supports the answer.  We also sometimes ask for a more complicated answer which would be: 1) Background, 2) Answer, 3) Detail, 4) Explanation, 5) Concluding Statement.  Either model can work for writing an effective OER. I've also used the Jane Schaeffer Writing technique to teach kids to answer OER's.  Use whichever one works best for the kids that are in the class that year. 

I'll continue my explanation of the CD2M strategy with a focus on diction in Part V.