Text Citation or Link	Rationale for Choosing	Text Frame(s)	Strategies Used and Resource
Engagement Example	Studying how climate affects biodiversity	The article emphasizes the affects that climate and human changes have on biodiversity. The article explains how advanced mathematical calculations provided an understanding of an investigation that could not be measured before.	Cause/effect Compare/contrast Problem/solution	Quick-Writes (Buehl book)

           

Quick-Writes is a reading strategy that allows students to have a certain amount of time to quickly gather their thoughts together regarding some aspect of a course study. It represents informal writing. The advantages of using Quick-Writes is the following: students are encouraged to reflect on their learning, writing is used internalized to help students practice what they are studying, students realize that learning does not happen in one step and must sometimes come back to it using different material, students receive regular prompts in order to express learning through their own words, students receive continued practice to create meaningful summaries based on simplified information of what they have learned, and teachers are provided with direct feedback and insight to help with understand what and how their students have learned the curriculum with the difficulties that are encountered. Quick-Writes meets the standards by performing the following: reading and rereading of the author’s message, discerns main ideas and summarizing, examine interrelationships of details or ideas, interpret word meaning, analyzes text structure, tracks the author’s perspectives and purpose, supports arguments, compares and contrasts using other sources of knowledge, mentors the reading of complex literacy and information texts, and encourages collaboration and conversations to develop expressing and defending thinking. This helps students draw evidence in order to analyze and reflect. With attention to word relationships, vocabulary development occurs. It is a strategy that builds writing fluency.

            Quick-Writes is a strategy that follows some ground rules, which are the following: students are informed about time parameters, students are expected to begin writing immediately and use the time period that is given, students quickly capture thoughts as they respond to the writing prompts, students should not be concerned about their writing form, and students may be asked to share their Quick-Writes with a peer. In order to perform Quick-Writes the first step is to establish a purpose of using Quick-Writes in the curriculum with the students. These can be collected as class learning logs or considered as journal entries, which can become an integral component of interactive notebooks. A timer can be used to help students’ transition into their thinking and help each student understand that extended writing is not an expectation. The time depends on the students and nature of the topic. The next step is to consider using a stimulus in order to introduce the Quick-Writes, which helps encourage students’ thinking regarding an important aspect in a unit of study and to provide some focus. A read-aloud can be an option to encourage student thinking. Sometimes a portion of a class text can encourage Quick-Write for students. As each student listens this helps guides students to rehearse what they are thinking. After this step, teachers should be aware that Quick-Writes could be open ended to allow students to write down their thoughts as they respond to the stimulus. But Quick-Writes can also be constructed based on specific types of thinking. Teachers can use the following to frame their thinking: “This reminds me of,” “I wonder what/if/why/whether,” ” What seems especially important is,” “I was interested in,” “I feel that,” or “I think that.” Next, Quick-Writes can be expanded or applied in order to encourage students to dig deeper into their learning of the content area. Quick-Writes is a great strategy to help students understand and explore new vocabulary. It also helps with summarizing the students’ reading.

There is an extension of Quick-Writes known as Learning Logs, which is a strategy where students record their thoughts and ideas while they explore and evaluate the information they have learned. To perform learning logs a teacher must emphasize that Learning Logs are ideas and thoughts that help evaluate the learning of each student. It is important to establish the role that this strategy plays with their learning. This strategy helps students explore their thinking before they have to present it to their peers. Next, the importance of the Learning Logs needs to be highlighted. Learning Logs should be used as an integral part of the routine within the classroom. Another extension of Quick-Writes is Admit and Exit Slips, which helps students reflect on their learning. Students will write down their thoughts, questions, confusions, or key ideas on index cards or small pieces of paper, which will be collected at the beginning or end of class. Admit Slips can be assigned as homework. Exit Slips are better for at the end of class for students to summarize what they have learned. This strategy is also helpful to the teacher by providing feedback regarding what information needs further clarification or discussion. As for a more structured form of Quick-Writes, students would use Template Frames. Template Frames help guide increase elaboration in student writing to create 5-10 minute response or short essay responses. This helps transition Quick-Writes into well-structured written responses. The first step is to share exemplary models with the students that show them what is expected. Then the students should be provided with a template that provides them with key elements of a paragraph that allows the students to use as an outline for a writing task. This helps organize the written responses. The following words are emphasized: comparison, contrast, concept/definition, problem solution, proposition/support, cause/effect, and goal/action/outcome. It is important that students understand that the Template Frame is not a fill-in-the-blank exercise. Each extension has a great opportunity to encourage student thinking.

I will use this strategy to help build reading and writing skills within my classroom. Quick-Writes will be a routine assignment that students will perform every day in the classroom. Based on the topic I will have students quickly write in a journal an answer to the drill question of “Why do you think climate affects biodiversity?” I will inform the students that they have five minutes to perform this activity. This is a Lesson Log to help students get an idea of what they are about to learn. Once the students have completed the Lesson Logs they will partner up with a peer to share their ideas to the class. The students’ will then read the article with their peer, which I provided called “Studying how climate affects biodiversity.” Students will gain an understanding that there is a debate on whether climate causes an occurrence and distribution of species, which is a hard debate to answer considering there is no information about natural variation of species abundance. There is a human influence towards climate variation causing threats to biodiversity. Today, researchers can provide us with a detailed picture of natural variation. Once the reading has been completed the students will perform a Template Frame individually to provide me with a short essay based on their reflection of what they have learned from the text. Students will be provided with a template to use as an outline. Students will emphasize their learning about biodiversity and the affects climate and humans has on it. They will also example why it is important to understand genetic variation of the genomes. Once their short essay is completed they will get back into their groups to share the new information that was learned. At the end of the class students will write on a piece of paper what they learned from the assigned reading and what they have difficulties with understanding and submit it as an Exit Slip.

I feel like Quick-Writes is a great strategy to help understand the prior knowledge that students have regarding the topic and expand on it by encouraging student thinking. It provides an opportunity to initially help students write what is on their mind in a given time frame through Lesson Logs. Then students have the opportunity to expand on their writing skills by using a template to outline the expectations of the writing assignment. This helps develop well-organized writing fluency. Students also have the opportunity to provide Admit and Exit Slips to discuss what they are going to learn and what they have learned to provide the teacher will feedback and guidelines to incorporate in the curriculum. I believe this is a strong strategy to engage students in the classroom.

Work Cited

Buehl, D., (2014) Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, 4^th ed. International Reading Association.

Uppsala Universitet. (2015, April 16). Studying how climate affects biodiversity. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 20, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150416132038.htm