Code Name: Verity
Espionage, Courage and Friendship
Wrapped in History
CTC@NEIU’s
Young Adult Literature Conference
October 25 and 26, 2013
Mary Massie, Ph.D., Senior Literacy Specialist,
CTC@NEIU
Sharon Hartrich, Educational Consultant
Session Objectives
✍
Frontloading Code Name: Verity – Use Floor storming
to access prior knowledge, to visualize, to develop
inferences, and to share thinking
✍
Inquiry: Use fiction as a Springboard to Inquiry,
History and Primary Source documents.
✍
Drama: Increase students’ ability to visualize from text
and to make connections with characters and events
✍
Writing and Speaking: Use Save the Last Word to
practice close reading, cite textual evidence, and
use academic language
✍
Assessments: Use features of Performance Tasks to
assess student learning
Just a bit of information . . .
There’s one object per group of desks
Examine it collaboratively and decide how it
could be a link to Code: Name Verity
Be ready to share your conclusion with
everyone.
Do you have sufficient information to
prepare you for reading?
Dual Coding Theory
Sadoski & Paivio (2001) provided convincing
evidence that comprehension requires creating
sensory images along with verbal concepts.
Visualizing is the primary sensory system we
recognize as essential to comprehending text,
but cognitive scientists consider imagery as
pertaining to all the senses. A given text might
cause us to imagine feeling chilly as we picture
an icy mountain.
Imaging is Vital to Comprehension
Highly engaged, successful readers picture
details of texts in their minds.
Creating erroneous images can lead readers
astray, and they need to check that their images
match the text, to the greatest extent possible.
As a text delivers more details, readers need to
adjust their images to match the new information
Floorstorming
An engaging frontloading activity – a
variation of Brainstorming – BUT. . .
Images are the basis for reasoning
Materials: Pictures that relate to the text ,
enough space for comfort, and a means for
gathering responses
Procedure
Remove the colored chart from the left side of
your folder. Each table has the same picture
With a pen in your hand, look carefully at each
of the four pictures, make notes as you go
Begin a conversation with your tablemates:
Notice commonalities or links between objects
Continue your discourse and share your
observations
Choose a spokesperson to report your findings.
Let’s collect your
observations
History Timeline
✍ will get augmented or filled in by the
students
✍ helps keep facts and time straight
✍ Is a tool for differentiated instruction
✍ increases awareness of this story’s place In
history
✍ prompts thinking and seeing a bigger
picture.
Revolving Role-Playing
Drama can help students feel and understand unfamiliar
experiences and characters better.
Save The Last Word. . .
provides a cooperative group format to
develop readers who are thinkers
Performance and Understanding
How do you assess how students are understanding the
content? What opportunities do students have to
demonstrate understanding?
Use these sentence stems to write a “Note to Self”:
Students in _(your course)__demonstrate knowledge of
the of the content by ___________. I can assess their
understanding of the material by ____________and by paying
attention to_____________________.
Features of Performance Tasks
• Measure something important
• Require higher-order thinking
• Are clear and unambiguous
• Address CCSS Standards
• May be answered in more than one way
• Require construction of a response rather than
selecting answers from given options
•
But . . . not all tasks are performance tasks. Why not?
A Task – is this a performance task?
Reading Standards for Literature ( Key Ideas and Details)
Grades 9-10
Standard:
3. Analyze how complex characters (e.g. those with
multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the
course of the text, interact with other characters, and
advance the plot or develop a theme.
Task:
Is Maddie or Julie the most complex character in Code
Name: Verity? Be sure to explain giving textual
references.
What is wrong?
The question does not deal with the standard:
✈ It asks the writer’s opinion
✈ It doesn’t ask about a character’s development
✈ It doesn’t ask how the chosen character
interacts with other characters to advance the
plot.
Now is it a performance task?
Analyze how Julie’s character is developed over the course
of the text. Consider her ongoing relationship with Maddie,
even when separated, and how Julie’s actions advance the
plot and develop the themes of friendship, courage, and
women’s strength.
RL 9-10.3
Performance Task
Students analyze in detail the theme of friendship
between Maddie and Julie and how that develops
over the course of the text, including how it
emerges and is shaped by specific details.
RL Grades 9-10. 2
Anchor Standard and Competency
RL 9-10.2 Key Ideas and Details
Determine a theme or central idea of a text,
and analyze in detail its development over the
course of the text, including how it emerges
and is shaped and refined by specific details.
Provide an objective summary of the text.
Anchor Standard and Competency
Craft and Structure RL 9-10.5
Analyze how an author’s choices concerning
how to structure text, order events within
it( e.g. parallel plots), and manipulate them
(e.g. pacing, flashbacks) create such effects
as mystery, tension, or surprise.
Performance Task
Analyze how Elizabeth Wein’s choices
concerning the structure of Code Name
Verity create the effects of mystery, tension, or surprise
through flashbacks, pacing and parallel plots. Discuss the
effect of the separate accounts by Julie and Maddie in
contributing to these qualities. RL 9-10.5
Close Reading
Tip # 1 Key Verbs
You must look closely at all the Key
Verbs in the document and decide
the meaning for instruction and
assessments.
What do the verbs mean?
Verbs in a Performance Task
RL 9-10.3
Analyze how Elizabeth Wein’s choices
concerning the structure of Code Name
Verity create the effects of mystery, tension, or
surprise through flashbacks, pacing and parallel plots.
Discuss the effect of the separate accounts by Julie
and Maddie in contributing to these qualities.
Close Reading
Tip # 2 Noun Phrases
Look closely at Noun Phrases.
They are the big ideas of the
content. Students have to
notice them well.
Nouns in a Performance Task
Analyze how Elizabeth Wein’s choices
concerning the structure of Code Name
Verity create the effects of mystery, tension, or surprise
through flashbacks, pacing and parallel plots. Discuss
the effect of the separate accounts by Julie and Maddie
in contributing to these qualities.
Close Reading
Tip # 3 Key Qualifiers
The qualifiers, adjectives and
adverbs in the noun phrases will
be the key criteria and we will
turn them into rubrics
Performance Task RL 9-10.5
Analyze how Elizabeth Wein’s choices
concerning the structure of Code Name
Verity create the effects of mystery, tension, or surprise
through flashbacks, pacing and parallel plots. Discuss
the effect of the separate accounts by Julie and Maddie
in contributing to these qualities.
Introducing your students to Performance Tasks
 Choose one Standard and practice it for a
week or two Use it in your oral language in
class, in class work and homework assignments.
 Demonstrate the color coding, or importance
of verbs, nouns, adjectives so that kids
understand the expectations.
 Reflect on the impact your planning has on the
students.
Backward Mapping: Create a Performance
Task for your next assessment and bring it to
meeting to share. Note Standard and Grade
Level.
Session Review


We frontloaded the novel with Floorstorming

We developed research topics through pictures,
quotations, conversation and timelines

We used timelines to indicate historical content
and allow for personal and global connections

We clarified and deepened understanding of
characters and experiences with drama

We practiced close reading and collaboration with
Save the Last Word

We explored the expression of CCSS in
Performance Tasks
Contact Information:
Mary Massie, Ph.D.
[email protected]
312-563-7138
Sharon Hartrich
[email protected]
312-550-0903
PARCC: www.parcconline.org
CCSS: www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy