Guiding Students

To guide students so that they can understand what they are reading at a deep level will require systematic,, explicit, authentic, and lively instruction (S.E.A.L.) over a significant period of time, from one to two semesters depending on the student's skills and motivation and the teacher's knowledge and time commitment.  Given grade appropriate texts, to successfully understand, students  will need to know what each of the 6 major reading comprehension tasks entails, will need to have at least one effective strategy for each task that they can apply independently, and will need to be able to integate this knowledge and these strategies. 

S.E.A.L. stands for:

Systematic:  Carefully moving students from one step to the next, starting with "where the student is" and systematically working toward the final goal:  in this case, reading and understanding grade appropriate texts at a deep level.

Explicit:  Making sure that the student understands what the task is/tasks are and how to accomplish it/them with an appropriate stratey.  This will entail students understanding the vocabulary of learning to read with comprehension, including words like strategy, knowledge-base, elaboration, cuing, etc.

Authentic:  Using materials that students recognize as relevant to their school lives and beyond.  Formulating tasks in such a way as to allow the student to see when and where what they are learning is applicable and valuable.

Lively:  Ensuring that the student plays an equal, if not leading, role in learning decisions and effort.  This will entail helping students learn to be meta-cognitive so that they can "manage" their own learning.

To get a sense of the scope of the learning necessary to read with deep understanding, look at the color coded text below.  For each color, the student has a task to perform using an appropriate strategy (which the student should have already learned with easier material), and, at the same time, students must integrate the content and strategy use throughout the text.  If students are aware of the tasks, how well they are understanding, and using task appropriate, effective strategies, they are managing their own reading.  That is what constitutes Self-Management.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                   Exploring the Last Frontier*

Humans have climbed Mount Everest.  They have crossed the Sahara Desert and even lived at the South Pole.  But one place on earth that remains unconquered is the floor of the ocean.  Scientists know more about the moon and Mars than they do about the bottom of the sea.  The ocean abyss is truly Earth's last great frontier.  Do you wonder why it hasn't been explored?

Just how deep is the ocean?  On average, it is about 2.3 miles deep.  But some places are much deeper than that.  The Mariana Trench lies under the Pacific Ocean.  It is a 1,584 mile-long crevasse, or deep crack, in the ocean floor.  The deepest part of the trench is called Challenger Deep.  At more than 36,000 feet down, it is the deepest spot in the world.  That's a depth of nearly seven miles--a mile and a half deeper than Mount Everest is high.   Highlight the green words and make sure you know their meaning. 

People once thought that the ocean floor was flat and dull.  Now they know better: the bottom of the ocean is much rougher than dry land.  It has huge canyons, some of which are deep enough and large enough to hide the Rocky Mountains.  The ocean floor also has its own mountain ranges.  They are massive; one such range is more than 31,000 miles long.  Circling the globe, it makes its way through all four of the world's oceans. How do you think scientists measured that range?

Can you describe what you learned about the ocean so far in a short sentence?

The ocean has kept its secrets well.  In some ways, it is harder to explore the seas than to explore outer space.  One reason is that a human being, without help, can dive down only about 10 feet. Beyond that depth, pressure starts to build on the lungs and inner ear.  Do you have any idea what that pressure might feel like?  In any case, even the best diver can't hold his or her breath longer than two or three minutes.

Today, of course, divers can go much deeper than ever before.  Those who use scuba gear can go down more than 100 feet.  Scuba divers rarely go below 150 feet, though, for there is too much pressure.  Coming back can cause the bends.  A bad case can be fatal. Wearing a pressurized suit, however, a diver can go down about 1,400 feet.  From that point to the deepest part of the ocean is still a long distance. Do you think it takes a lot of training to become a diver?  Stop and record:  pressure, bends, and fatal.

In 1960, Donald Walsh and Jacques Piccard climbed into a small metal sphere. It was a bathyscaphe--a watertight cabin used for deep-sea diving.  Named the Trieste, the cabin carried nothing but the two men.  It has no cameras to take pictures or arms to collect objects.  The question was simple:  could the two men go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and come back alive?

It took Walsh and Piccard an hour and a half to descend 10,000 feet.  Two hours later, they had gone down 32,000 feet.  Pressure at this depth was immense--almost 14,000 pounds per square inch.  After another hour, Walsh and Piccard were just 250 feet from the bottom of the ocean.  Very slowly, they dropped down to the ocean floor.  They had made it.

That event happened a long time ago.  Science has made great progress since then.  Yet no one has ever duplicated Walsh"s and Piccard's feat.  No one has even come close.  The reason is money--the trips are too costly.  What would make the trip too costly? Stop and Record:  Costly to explore.

In addition, some people aren't sure that exploring the ocean is worth the effort.  Robert Ballard is the scientist who found the wreck of the Titanic.  "I believed that the deep sea has very little to offer," he says.  "I don't see the future there."

Jean Jarry, a top French ocean scientist, agrees. He doesn't feel that people should go below 20,000 feet.  Only about 3 percent of the ocean is deeper than that.  "To go beyond that is not very interesting and is very expensive,"  Jarry says.

Others, however, disagree.  Greg Stone, of the New England Aquarium, wants to go all the way down.  He says, "We won't know what the ocean floor holds until we've been there." Stop and List pros/cons of exploring.

Do you think the author should have given more detail about why these people were in favor of or against exploration?

The Japanese also want to explore the ocean abyss.  In 1995, they sent an unmanned ocean probe named Kaiko to the bottom of Challenger Deep.   Kaiko sent back pictures of things that were hard to believe--animals able to live at that depth.  When they were there, Walsh and Piccard said they had seen a fish, but at the time few people believed them.  Most people felt that nothing could live at such a depth.  But now there is information that such life is possible.  Why would knowing that "life is possible" make it worth the cost and danger of exploring the depths of the ocean?

  Stop and write a brief summary using the words and notes  you highlighted or recorded.

Color Coding Key:  Pink: Purpose, Blue: Organization, Green:KnowledgeBuilding, Purple: Elaboration, Red: Stop & Record

Copied with permission.  Fry, E. B. Reading Drills, Middle Level, NY (2000) with SPOKES modifications.:

          Possible Strategies:  Purpose, Organization, Knowledge Building, Elaboration, Stop and Record