There are days when I think I should begin awarding certificates for “long jumps” – some of my students excel at jumping!
Jumping to conclusions, that is.
This ability of theirs manifests itself in many varieties, but I’ve chosen to focus on one particular issue and create a new “Visual Lesson” with a companion worksheet.
“Line numbers” in reading comprehension questions are “eye catchers” for students. They can help the students find the correct answer or lead them astray if they don’t read the entire question carefully.
Quite a few of my Deaf and hard of hearing high school students would rather practice “long jumps” than read entire questions carefully…
Some questions are easy, such as these two:
According to lines 11-12, why was David surprised?
What do we learn from paragraph 1?
The answers can be found exactly where the line numbers indicate they will be.
Students are happy.
The teacher is happy.
That is, until the students encounter a question such as this one:
“According to lines 11-12, Tammy chose to work in a profession
that was different from the one she studied at the university.
Why did she do that? Base your answer on paragraph II.”
Where will the answer be?
Students don’t let the fact that the answer cannot be found in lines 11-12 stop them from trying to contort the words in those lines into an answer…
The same goes for “refer to” questions, as in:
What does the word “This” (line 6) refer to?
Do you also have students blithely extracting irrelevant chunks appearing in line 6 to answer the question?
So…
Time to whip out a new VISUAL LESSON!
Why do I call it a visual lesson?
The students see the explanations, read and HEARS them.
Yes, you read that correctly, “hears”.
Many of my hard of hearing students like having what is written narrated. I believe that students without hearing problems will aprreciate this as well.
So here’s the link to the self paced slideshow:
Click on the words below to download the worksheet.
I hope you find the material useful!
***** As the intial feedback to adding narration has been positive, I plan to add narration to my previous Visual Lesson, on Essay Writing,