Do You Hear What I Hear?

Today I finally used the startegy of Do You Hear What I Hear? (DYHWIH) that I wrote so much about in  my research proposal. As previously mentioned in other posts, I LOVE this strategy and wanted to use it at least once a week...but then I remembered (once I started teaching) that I teach social studies and have way too much content to use a time-consuming strategy so often.

Today I used it with Columbus's journal entry upon arriving to the Americas. Because this is a primary source, the reading level is higher than what most of my students could do independently. I read the journal once while students wrote down only thoughts, feelings, ideas or questions in the appropriate box. The second time I read it (students do not have it in front of them) they were asked to answer the focus question only "How did Columbus describe the Native Americans?" Then they were asked to summarize the main idea in 20 words or less, still without looking at the passage. After they completed the summary, students were then given the passage to read/scan to complete the backside of the worksheet. On the back, one box asks for students to define a given word from the passage using only context clues (this passage I picked aquainted. Used "They had no weapons, nor were they aquainted with them since when they saw the sword, they grabbed at the blade out of ignorance."). Another box asks a content question. I used "Is Columbus's description of the Native Americans accurate? EXPLAIN." The third box asks what the author's purpose is and the final an fourth box asks the students to make a connection to their lives from the passage.

While using this strategy, I had every single student completing each box when they were asked. Everyone knew how to do the box they were asked to complete at each time. By letting the students start with just listening to the passage and writing down feelings, thoughts, or ideas (no wrong answers) before they are asked to think about real content questions seems to set them up for success. By the time they are answering content questions with support from the passage, it has been read aloud to them twice and they have the passage in front of them to scan and reread. They have been frontloaded with information to help them be successful.

Above are pictures of the front and back of the strategy worksheet.