Stop. Evaluate. & Listen!
How many times a day do your students evaluate things? I would have to say about a million… “That’s funny” “This is too hard” “That shirt is awesome” “Recess was too short!” “That book was boring/ amazing!” “I am too tired to play kickball” “My pencil isn’t sharp enough” “He was mean to me”. Usually their “evaluations” can sound like complaining, but they are constantly deciding and sharing opinions with you! Turn that way of thinking into strategic evaluation of a text and you have one really strong reader!!
Opinions and judgements are an important part of engaging with a text. You should be emotionally invested and reacting to the characters’ actions to participate in the journey of reading the book. Evaluating is such a fun reading strategy to teach kids because there is no right or wrong way to evaluate something! It is their opinion and they LOVE getting to share that.
Engage Students in Evaluating
During my shared reading time, I use Comprehension Crew characters to model reading strategies for my students. Then we read interactively as they practice implementing the strategies themselves. Read more about that below!
Evan The Evaluator
Evan The Evaluator is a judge who is an expert at gathering information, considering perspectives, and then forming on opinion. He loves to teach students how to do this too! A big part of Evan’s strategy is considering perspectives and synthesizing the information to make an informed judgement. Often considering perspectives is a difficult part of evaluating for students because they just compare the situation as if it was them (which is also an important skill!). I often teach inferencing before evaluating, because readers usually need to make inferences about a character in order to evaluate them. The best way to teach students gather the information to evaluate is to model it for them.
What is the Comprehension Crew?
Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, song, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in life and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading.
Modeling While Reading
Using Evan’s tips and tricks, I read a picture book across 5 days during shared reading. I pause after a character action or event and model using Evan’s sentence frame to form my evaluation. After students have seen it done a few times, we do interactive practice where we will pause for them to share their judgements as I am reading. Students love using Evan’s gavel to announce their opinions! It is so much fun! The most important part about guiding students in forming these evaluations is to ensure their sentence includes the BECAUSE. They must have a reason to support their evaluation just like judges do (most of the time).
Practicing With Pictures
In my Evan The Evaluator resource pack, there are task cards for students to practice evaluating. There are photograph task cards and short paragraphs on cards to practice. It is important for students to practice evaluating on a small scale to gain understanding and confidence in the skill. Often an entire text can be overwhelming, especially for younger students because judgements can change go quickly as the story continues! Differentiated passages on worksheets with scaffolded graphic organizers and questions are also included to help your students break down how to evaluate!
Click here to read about the mentor texts I use to teach evaluating!
