Homeless

Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless

Subject Area

Social Studies - Grades 6 - 8

FCAT Connection

Materials

The following materials are need for this lesson

copies of Homeless by Anna Quindlen

Reciprocal Teaching bookmarks

Student Task Cards

Student Scripts for Teacher/Leaders
Teacher/Leader #1
Teacher/Leader #2
Teacher/Leader #3
Teacher/Leader #4
Teacher/Leader #5

Group Worksheets

Procedures

Distribute KWL sheets. Ask the students to complete by writing what they know about good readers and what they want to know about good readers

List on the board what "good" readers do.

Categorize the student responses by the five strategies that are used in Reciprocal Teaching:
Predicting, Clarifying, Questioning, Summarizing, and Visualizing.

Pass out bookmarks.

Define each of the five strategies. Explain that they may come in any order but will be done in order for this lesson.

Pass out highlighters. Students will use them to highlight parts of the essay that need clarification.

Write the word "homeless" on the board and have students write down at least five thoughts that come to mind when they hear that word. What does the word mean? From this title, what do they think the author will discuss in this essay? Write predictions on board/overhead.

Distribute copies of the essay "Homeless."

Remind students that they are to highlight any word or idea that they do not understand or any part that will be a good teacher-like question.

Model Passage One and Passage Two using Reciprocal Teaching strategies.

After completing Passage One and Passage Two, make sure students understand Reciprocal Teaching strategies.

Distribute Student Scripts and Student Task Cards.

Remind students to use their bookmarks as guides.

Ask Teacher/Leader #1 to begin.

After Teacher/Leader #5 has completed his/her part, distribute Reciprocal Teaching Student Group Worksheet.

Explain to students that they will finish the story in groups. They should read the rest of the story and fill out all sections of the response sheet. The Teacher/Leader will be the reader.
Story Ending

This is a difficult problem, and some wise and compassionate people are working hard at it. But in the main I think we work around it, just as we walk around it when it is lying on the sidewalk or sitting in the bus terminal--the problem, that is. It has been customary to take people's pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into an issue, not a collection of human beings. We turn an adjective into a noun: the poor, not poor people; the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in the box or the woman who sleeps on the subway grate.

Sometimes I think we would be better off if we forgot about the broad strokes and concentrated on the details. Here is a woman without a bureau.

There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people who have no homes. No drawer that holds the spoons.

No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything.

After student groups have completed the Group Worksheet, elicit, share, and discuss group responses.

Ask for volunteers from the groups to help summarize the entire story on the overhead or chalkboard.
This story about ________________ begins with ________________, discusses how ________________, and ends with ________________.

Do the follow-up activities.

Distribute the reading comprehension quiz and instruct students to complete.

Assessment

This lesson may be assessed using the following strategies:

Ask students to write a paragraph: If you suddenly became homeless, what single space (room or area) or object in your home would you miss the most? Describe it so that others can picture it in their minds.

Instruct students to make their own strategy cards and color them.

Divide students into groups of four to six. Make posters of reciprocal teaching strategies (predicting, questioning, clarifying questions, and summarizing) from construction paper, glue, markers, scissors and put them around the room.

Choose passages for students to work on in groups of four. Students will take turns being the teacher and work with a reciprocal teaching group worksheet modeling the strategy until they are proficient with it. After students can use the strategies in groups, have them try reading a passage silently, using the Reciprocal Teaching strategy.

Related Pieces

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelli

Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #1

SAY:

Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.

READ:

The following part of the lesson to the class:

I've never been very good at looking at the big picture, taking the global view, and I've always been a person with an overactive sense of place, the legacy of an Irish grandfather. So it is natural that the thing that seems most wrong with the world to me right now is that there are so many people with no homes. I'm not simply talking about shelter from the elements, or three square meals a day, or a mailing address to which the welfare people can send the check--although I know that all these are important for survival. I'm talking about a home, about precisely those kinds of feelings that have wound up in cross-stitch and French knots on samplers over the years.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #1? Was your prediction correct?

SAY:

Who has Clarifying Card #1? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? (If there is more that one word, clarify one word at a time.)

Suggestions:
What does the author mean when she says "big picture" and "global view"?
What are the elements?
What does "three square meals" mean?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a clarifying question?

SAY:

Who has Visualizing Card #1? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.

SAY:

Who has Questioning Card #1? Please ask a Teacher-like Question.

Suggestions:
What is the author telling us in this paragraph?
Why doesn't she tell us more about Ann?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?

SAY:

Who has Summary Card #1? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence.

Suggestion:
This paragraph is about how the author feels about homeless people and how she can't understand why so many people are homeless.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #2? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the lesson?

TOP

Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #2

SAY:

Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.

READ:

The following part of the lesson to the class:

Home is where the heart is. There's no place like it. I love my home with a ferocity totally out of proportion to its appearence or location. I love dumb things about it: the hot-water heater, the plastic rack you drain dishes in, the roof over my head, which occasionally leaks. And yet it is precisely those dumb things that make it what it is--a place of certainty, stability, predictability, privacy, for me and for my family. It is where I live. What more can you say about a place than that? That is everything.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #2? Was your prediction correct?

SAY:

Who has Clarifying Card #2? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand?
Suggestions:
What does ferocity mean? Can you think of another word that looks like it? Have you heard another word that sounds like it?
What does the author mean when she says, "a ferocity totally out of proportion to its appearance or location"?
What do certainty, stability, predictability, and privacy mean? How can you figure them out without looking them up in the dictionary?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a clarifying question?

SAY:

Who has Visualizing Card #2? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.

SAY:

Who has Questioning Card #2? Please ask a Teacher-like Question.

Suggestions:

How does the author feel about her home?
Does she think everyone feels that way?
Do you feel that way?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?

SAY:

Who has Summary Card #2? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence.
Suggestion:
This paragraph tells the author's definition of what a home is and how much she loves her own home.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #3? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the essay?

TOP

Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #3

SAY:

Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.

READ:

The following part of the lesson to the class:

Yet it is something that we have been edging away from gradually during my lifetime and the lifetimes of my parents and grandparents. There was a time when where you lived often was where you worked and where you grew the food you ate and even where you were buried. When that era passed, where you lived at least was where your parents had lived and where you would live with your children when you became enfeebled. Then, suddenly, where you lived was where you lived for three years, until you could move on to something else and something else again.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #3? Was your prediction correct?

SAY:

Who has Clarifying Card #3? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand?

Suggestions:
What does "enfeebled" mean? How can you figure it out?
What does the author mean when she says, "we have been edging away from gradually..."? What is the era that the author is describing?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a clarifying question?

SAY:

Who has Visualizing Card #3? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.

SAY:

Who has Questioning Card #3? Please ask a Teacher-like Question.

Suggestion:
What is the author saying about today's society?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?

SAY:

Who has Summary Card #3? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence.

Suggestion:
This paragraph is about the contrast between today and long ago.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #4? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the essay?

TOP

Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #4

SAY:

Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.

READ:

The following part of the lesson to the class:

And so we have come to something else again, to children who do no understand what it means to go to their rooms because they have never had a room, to men and women whose fantasy is a wall they can paint a color of their own choosing, to old people reduced to sitting on molded plastic chairs, their skin blue-white in the lights of a bus station, who pull pictures of houses out of their bags. Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #4? Was your prediction correct?

SAY:

Who has Clarifying Card #4? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand?
Suggestions:
What does the author mean by saying: "Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate."?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a clarifying question?

SAY:

Who has Visualizing Card #4? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.

SAY:

Who has Questioning Card #4? Please ask a Teacher-like Question.
Suggestion:
To review, who is Ann?
Can you describe how Ann might look?
How do you know?
Why would painting a room be a fantasy?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?

SAY:

Who has Summary Card #4? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence.
Suggestion:
This paragraph is about what it means to be homeless and says that today homes are not personal places, they are just places to be bought and sold.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #5? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the lesson?

TOP

Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #5

SAY:

Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.

READ:

The following part of the lesson to the class:

People find it curious that those without homes would rather sleep sitting up on benches or huddled in doorways than go to shelters. Certainly some prefer to do so because they are emotionally ill, because they have been locked in before and they are determined not to be locked in again. Others are afraid of the violence and trouble they may find there. But some seem to want something that is not available in shelters, and they will not compromise, not for a cot, or oatmeal, or a shower with special soap that kills the bugs. "One room," a woman with a baby who was sleeping on her sister's floor once told me, "painted blue." That was the crux of it; not the size or location, but pride of ownership. Painted blue.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #5? Was your prediction correct?

SAY:

Who has Clarifying Card #5? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand?

Suggestions:
What does the word "compromise" mean?
What is a cot?
What does "pride of ownership" mean?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a clarifying question?

SAY:

Who has Visualizing Card #5? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.

SAY:

Who has Questioning Card #5? Please ask a Teacher-like Question.

Suggestions:
Why might some people not want to go to shelters?
What happens in shelters?
How do you know?

SAY:

Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?

SAY:

Who has Summary Card #5? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence.

Suggestion:
This paragraph tells why some people choose to be homeless instead of going to a shelter. It ends with an example of one woman who dreams of painting one room blue.

SAY:

Who has Predicting Card #5? What do you think is going to happen next?

TOP

	Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless
Subject Area	Social Studies - Grades 6 - 8
FCAT Connection
Materials	The following materials are need for this lesson copies of Homeless by Anna Quindlen Reciprocal Teaching bookmarks Student Task Cards Student Scripts for Teacher/Leaders Teacher/Leader #1 Teacher/Leader #2 Teacher/Leader #3 Teacher/Leader #4 Teacher/Leader #5 Group Worksheets

Procedures	Distribute KWL sheets. Ask the students to complete by writing what they know about good readers and what they want to know about good readers List on the board what "good" readers do. Categorize the student responses by the five strategies that are used in Reciprocal Teaching: Predicting, Clarifying, Questioning, Summarizing, and Visualizing. Pass out bookmarks. Define each of the five strategies. Explain that they may come in any order but will be done in order for this lesson. Pass out highlighters. Students will use them to highlight parts of the essay that need clarification. Write the word "homeless" on the board and have students write down at least five thoughts that come to mind when they hear that word. What does the word mean? From this title, what do they think the author will discuss in this essay? Write predictions on board/overhead. Distribute copies of the essay "Homeless." Remind students that they are to highlight any word or idea that they do not understand or any part that will be a good teacher-like question. Model Passage One and Passage Two using Reciprocal Teaching strategies. After completing Passage One and Passage Two, make sure students understand Reciprocal Teaching strategies. Distribute Student Scripts and Student Task Cards. Remind students to use their bookmarks as guides. Ask Teacher/Leader #1 to begin. After Teacher/Leader #5 has completed his/her part, distribute Reciprocal Teaching Student Group Worksheet. Explain to students that they will finish the story in groups. They should read the rest of the story and fill out all sections of the response sheet. The Teacher/Leader will be the reader. Story Ending This is a difficult problem, and some wise and compassionate people are working hard at it. But in the main I think we work around it, just as we walk around it when it is lying on the sidewalk or sitting in the bus terminal--the problem, that is. It has been customary to take people's pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into an issue, not a collection of human beings. We turn an adjective into a noun: the poor, not poor people; the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in the box or the woman who sleeps on the subway grate. Sometimes I think we would be better off if we forgot about the broad strokes and concentrated on the details. Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people who have no homes. No drawer that holds the spoons. No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything. After student groups have completed the Group Worksheet, elicit, share, and discuss group responses. Ask for volunteers from the groups to help summarize the entire story on the overhead or chalkboard. This story about ________________ begins with ________________, discusses how ________________, and ends with ________________. Do the follow-up activities. Distribute the reading comprehension quiz and instruct students to complete.
Assessment	This lesson may be assessed using the following strategies: Ask students to write a paragraph: If you suddenly became homeless, what single space (room or area) or object in your home would you miss the most? Describe it so that others can picture it in their minds. Instruct students to make their own strategy cards and color them. Divide students into groups of four to six. Make posters of reciprocal teaching strategies (predicting, questioning, clarifying questions, and summarizing) from construction paper, glue, markers, scissors and put them around the room. Choose passages for students to work on in groups of four. Students will take turns being the teacher and work with a reciprocal teaching group worksheet modeling the strategy until they are proficient with it. After students can use the strategies in groups, have them try reading a passage silently, using the Reciprocal Teaching strategy.
Related Pieces	The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelli

	Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #1
	SAY:	Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.
	READ:	The following part of the lesson to the class: I've never been very good at looking at the big picture, taking the global view, and I've always been a person with an overactive sense of place, the legacy of an Irish grandfather. So it is natural that the thing that seems most wrong with the world to me right now is that there are so many people with no homes. I'm not simply talking about shelter from the elements, or three square meals a day, or a mailing address to which the welfare people can send the check--although I know that all these are important for survival. I'm talking about a home, about precisely those kinds of feelings that have wound up in cross-stitch and French knots on samplers over the years.

	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #1? Was your prediction correct?
	SAY:	Who has Clarifying Card #1? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? (If there is more that one word, clarify one word at a time.) Suggestions: What does the author mean when she says "big picture" and "global view"? What are the elements? What does "three square meals" mean?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a clarifying question?
	SAY:	Who has Visualizing Card #1? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.
	SAY:	Who has Questioning Card #1? Please ask a Teacher-like Question. Suggestions: What is the author telling us in this paragraph? Why doesn't she tell us more about Ann?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?
	SAY:	Who has Summary Card #1? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence. Suggestion: This paragraph is about how the author feels about homeless people and how she can't understand why so many people are homeless.
	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #2? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the lesson?

	Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #2
	SAY:	Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.
	READ:	The following part of the lesson to the class: Home is where the heart is. There's no place like it. I love my home with a ferocity totally out of proportion to its appearence or location. I love dumb things about it: the hot-water heater, the plastic rack you drain dishes in, the roof over my head, which occasionally leaks. And yet it is precisely those dumb things that make it what it is--a place of certainty, stability, predictability, privacy, for me and for my family. It is where I live. What more can you say about a place than that? That is everything.

	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #2? Was your prediction correct?
	SAY:	Who has Clarifying Card #2? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? Suggestions: What does ferocity mean? Can you think of another word that looks like it? Have you heard another word that sounds like it? What does the author mean when she says, "a ferocity totally out of proportion to its appearance or location"? What do certainty, stability, predictability, and privacy mean? How can you figure them out without looking them up in the dictionary?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a clarifying question?
	SAY:	Who has Visualizing Card #2? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.
	SAY:	Who has Questioning Card #2? Please ask a Teacher-like Question. Suggestions: How does the author feel about her home? Does she think everyone feels that way? Do you feel that way?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?
	SAY:	Who has Summary Card #2? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence. Suggestion: This paragraph tells the author's definition of what a home is and how much she loves her own home.
	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #3? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the essay?

	Reciprocal Reading: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #3
	SAY:	Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.
	READ:	The following part of the lesson to the class: Yet it is something that we have been edging away from gradually during my lifetime and the lifetimes of my parents and grandparents. There was a time when where you lived often was where you worked and where you grew the food you ate and even where you were buried. When that era passed, where you lived at least was where your parents had lived and where you would live with your children when you became enfeebled. Then, suddenly, where you lived was where you lived for three years, until you could move on to something else and something else again.

	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #3? Was your prediction correct?
	SAY:	Who has Clarifying Card #3? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? Suggestions: What does "enfeebled" mean? How can you figure it out? What does the author mean when she says, "we have been edging away from gradually..."? What is the era that the author is describing?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a clarifying question?
	SAY:	Who has Visualizing Card #3? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.
	SAY:	Who has Questioning Card #3? Please ask a Teacher-like Question. Suggestion: What is the author saying about today's society?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?
	SAY:	Who has Summary Card #3? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence. Suggestion: This paragraph is about the contrast between today and long ago.
	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #4? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the essay?

	Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #4
	SAY:	Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.
	READ:	The following part of the lesson to the class: And so we have come to something else again, to children who do no understand what it means to go to their rooms because they have never had a room, to men and women whose fantasy is a wall they can paint a color of their own choosing, to old people reduced to sitting on molded plastic chairs, their skin blue-white in the lights of a bus station, who pull pictures of houses out of their bags. Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate.

	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #4? Was your prediction correct?
	SAY:	Who has Clarifying Card #4? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? Suggestions: What does the author mean by saying: "Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate."?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a clarifying question?
	SAY:	Who has Visualizing Card #4? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.
	SAY:	Who has Questioning Card #4? Please ask a Teacher-like Question. Suggestion: To review, who is Ann? Can you describe how Ann might look? How do you know? Why would painting a room be a fantasy?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?
	SAY:	Who has Summary Card #4? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence. Suggestion: This paragraph is about what it means to be homeless and says that today homes are not personal places, they are just places to be bought and sold.
	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #5? What do you think is going to happen in the next part of the lesson?

	Reciprocal Teaching: Homeless

Student Script: Teacher/Leader #5
	SAY:	Please highlight any word or phrase that you do not understand as I read this part of the lesson.
	READ:	The following part of the lesson to the class: People find it curious that those without homes would rather sleep sitting up on benches or huddled in doorways than go to shelters. Certainly some prefer to do so because they are emotionally ill, because they have been locked in before and they are determined not to be locked in again. Others are afraid of the violence and trouble they may find there. But some seem to want something that is not available in shelters, and they will not compromise, not for a cot, or oatmeal, or a shower with special soap that kills the bugs. "One room," a woman with a baby who was sleeping on her sister's floor once told me, "painted blue." That was the crux of it; not the size or location, but pride of ownership. Painted blue.

	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #5? Was your prediction correct?
	SAY:	Who has Clarifying Card #5? Is there a word or phrase that you did not understand? Suggestions: What does the word "compromise" mean? What is a cot? What does "pride of ownership" mean?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a clarifying question?
	SAY:	Who has Visualizing Card #5? Please tell what picture came to your mind when I read this part of the lesson.
	SAY:	Who has Questioning Card #5? Please ask a Teacher-like Question. Suggestions: Why might some people not want to go to shelters? What happens in shelters? How do you know?
	SAY:	Does anyone else have a Teacher-like Question?
	SAY:	Who has Summary Card #5? Please summarize this part of the lesson in one sentence. Suggestion: This paragraph tells why some people choose to be homeless instead of going to a shelter. It ends with an example of one woman who dreams of painting one room blue.
	SAY:	Who has Predicting Card #5? What do you think is going to happen next?