Panel 1

Features

Background info embedded in the text

Links that provide just-in time context and subject-matter support

Customizable reading questions

Teacher-customizable prompts to guide students through close reading and deeper analysis

 

Highlights, notecards, and tags

Annotation tools that support reflection and connection

Problem-solving organizers

Graphic representations built on domain concepts help students construct deeper understanding of the text

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Panel 2

Units

Create your own unit using the SenseMaking Unit Design Tools, or adapt an existing unit.

Literature

Unreliable narrator
Using a popular folk tale to elicit students’ understanding of the unreliability of narrators, students then apply criteria for determining unreliable narration to two short stories.
  • “Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
Symbolism
Using popular song lyrics and short clips from TV programs, students develop criteria for detecting when details are symbolic rather than simply literal— then use these criteria to examine multiple sources of symbolism in short stories.
  • “Damballah” by John Edgar Wideman
  • “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker
  • “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier
Archetypal Character Type
Using texts from multiple cultural traditions, students identify characteristics of messiah figures across different societies— then use these criteria to examine the significance of the protagonist in the short story.
  • “Damballah” by John Edgar Wideman

 

 

History

Chronological reasoning and historical corroboration
Students examine multiple primary source documents, each documenting different explications of when Africans arrived in the Americas.
  • Africans in America
Historical Reasoning
Students examine in chronological order different legal documents (U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 2:  14th Amendment; Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision; Brown v Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision) in which conceptions of equality are articulated as public policy.  Students are supported in close reading to identify differences in the evolution of legal criteria for what constitutes equality and to hypothesize what influenced these changes.
  • Equality in America
Document Analyses
Students read primary source documents created during efforts to de-segregate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas in order to identify key players and what roles they played, what dilemmas they faced, and what political tensions were at play in the efforts to de-segregate.
  • School Segregation
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Panel 3

Recruiting Teachers for a Research Study

We are recruiting teachers to participate

  • Research study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences
  • Use existing units or work with us to collaboratively design new units
  • 3-5 Week implementation
  • Remote or in-person instruction
  • Stipends available!

To find out more, Contact us.

Participants will receive the following professional development opportunities:

  • Reading in the content areas of literature and history
  • Analyses of text complexity
  • Argumentation
  • Discussion
  • Writing
  • Assessments in reading and argumentation

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Panel 4

Conceptual Background

Why Reading in the Disciplines?
Why Argumentation?

Common Core Standards and Current Assessments call for students to be able to read critically texts in the content areas.  SMD focuses on critical skills required to examine literary and historical (primary and secondary sources) texts.  These skills include both generic skills but also discipline specific skills and strategies.

Flexibility of the SMD Tool

SMD is an authoring tool, meaning teachers can create their own content.  This includes differentiating texts for students with different reading levels but still interrogating the same substantive content and conceptual challenges.  Teachers can also automatically monitor student progress in the system.

SMD Framework

  • Focus on essential questions for which there are not simple right or wrong answers.
  • Select text sets that provide students’ access to interrogating essential questions.
  • During and at the end of units, students engage in dialogic argumentation, creating products representing their claims and evidence.

Design Process

  • Analyze sources of text complexity
  • Design (using templates provided by the system) organizers with heuristics to guide students’ reasoning
  • Identify hyperlinks in texts for prior knowledge and vocabulary

Instructional Practices

Students move from interrogating questions based on close text analyses within the SMD tool and then work outside of the tool in small and whole group dialogic discussions and then to produce written artifacts embodying their arguments.

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Testimonials

Sensemaking allowed me to offer controlled support to my students as they negotiated the disciplinary practices associated with Literature.

From a teacher’s perspective, I appreciated the ability to embed hyperlinks that defined key vocabulary/concepts links or provided important contextual information (i.e., author biographies, genre, historical events, etc.). Through patterned questions across sections, students built robust graphic organizers across the text without even realizing it.

I found Sensemaking really lived up to its promise: it provided a dynamic space for students to make sense of and grapple with complex texts.

– Rick Coppola, Chicago Public Schools
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About us

SenseMaking in the Disciplines is a literacy project funded by the Institute for Education Sciences to support the continued development of the digital tool  SenseMaking in the Disciplines (SMD).  SMD is a tool to support close reading and argumentation in the disciplines of literature and history.  SMD is also an authoring tool, meaning teachers can input their own texts and content.  We have several demonstration units available for review.

SMD was originally developed under a previous IES grant as part of Project READI (www.projectreadi.org) . Under the current funding, we have further refined the tool and are currently field testing in middle and high school classrooms.

SMD is designed as a digital tool to be integrated into a larger pedagogical framework for teaching reading comprehension and argumentation in the academic disciplines.

Project Team

The SMD Project is led by nationally recognized education researchers, literacy specialists, and software designers.

  • Dr. Carol D. Lee, Professor Emeritus Northwestern University
  • Dr. Susan Goldman, Professor of Learning Sciences, Department of Psychology and Department of Education, and Co-Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Dr. James Buell, Project Manager
  • Adria Carrington, History Consultant

The SMD Software was designed and produced by Dr. Matthew Brown and Dr. Ben Loh of Inquirium.

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