Focus Instruction Model #4

"CBC!"  as a fellow classmate shared a story about one of her students...I learned "CBC" stood for, "Chill baby chill!"  You can do this.  Once you get the hang of teaching focus instruction, it is a lot of fun!  Here's a lesson you're going to love:

Focus Instruction:  Mentor Text

Julie opened her lesson by reading an article written by Mitch Albom printed in the Detroit Free Press titled:  "Save the Questions for Humans-Not the Phone."  To view the article, click here.  After Julie read the article, she projected it and gave us what she and Jeff Anderson call an invitation to notice.  "What do you notice about the way the article is organized?" she asked.  We noticed:

• the article was written in stanzas
• there were columns in the article
• there was space between the conversation
• the Siri conversation was separated like it was not really conversation
• the author used headings and subheadings 
• these headings and subheadings helped the reader know when a new point was being made
• they give the main idea of the section you are about to read
• readers might skim the headings and subheadings to get an idea about what the article will be about

After modeling what we noticed about the article together, we talked briefly about headings and subheadings.  Julie asked us to find a piece we had written and to try to choose headings and subheadings to interject into the piece to help the reader navigate the writing more efficiently.

I chose a piece that I had just started on.  It was going to be about the advice that my grandma gave me on my wedding day.  Here are the headings and subheadings that I chose for my writing:

Heading:  Keeping Your Husband:  Advice You Never Really Wanted to Know From Your Grandma
Subheading #1:  Your Grandma Did What?
Subheading #2:  The Real Secret:  How the Stories Really Apply to Sustaining a Healthy and Happy Marriage