INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Microcourse Close Reading of Informational and Literary Nonfiction Texts Unit 1

Bias and Assumption in ResearchGrade 11

MICROCOURSE | CLOSE READING OF INFORMATIONAL AND LITERARY NONFICTION TEXTS

UN

IT 1

BIAS AND ASSUMPTION

IN RESEARCH

GRADE 11

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TEXTS U

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MicroCourses are short courses that provide

an alternative to the drudgery of textbooks and

the excess of “comprehensive programs.” IBD

MicroCourses are focused on critical aspects of

the Common Core State Standards in English

Language Arts and support students to gain the

knowledge and skills they need for success beyond

high school. All MicroCourses feature complex

texts and significant amounts of close reading,

text-based writing, and collaborative discussions.

This unit takes approximately two weeks to implement.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Bias and Assumption in Research

Introduction

Bias and Assumption in Research—the first unit in Inquiry By Design’s grade eleven Microcourse for Close Reading of Informational and Literary Nonfiction Texts—consists of two modules, each focused on a single text that explores the role that bias and assumption plays in scientific research. When one is consulting research to make a decision or take action, it’s important to understand some ways to evaluate its quality and accuracy. This unit sheds light on how to view research through a more thoughtful, critical lens instead of just merely accepting research findings at face value and to see reports on research as arguments people make based on evidence rather than as extra-human statements of pure truth.

The first text, “The Order of Things: What College Rankings Really Tell Us,” is an article by Malcolm Gladwell, which first appeared in The New Yorker. In the article, Gladwell analyzes the bias and assumption that underlies U.S. News and World Report’s popular and influential college ranking system. Gladwell explains how heterogeneous rankings—where “unlike” things are being compared as “like” things—are inherently problematic. The work with Gladwell’s text serves as an introduction to this eye-opening topic and, as such, will help teachers and students establish the basic and essential cycles of teaching and learning.

The second module in this unit focuses on an essay by the popular, late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. In “Women’s Brains,” Gould argues how the misinterpretation of data in controversial studies con-ducted in the 19th century were unabashedly aimed at establishing the inferiority of women and other groups of people. Gould also touches on the ramifications of what happens when data is used to prove what one already believes. This text is, in many ways, more complex than Gladwell’s, but the work students experienced in the first module will prepare them to meet the demands it poses.

Together these two short studies provide students with an intensive orientation to the close reading of nonfiction. Through them, students are introduced to important ways of working with informational texts as well as to cycles of teaching and learning that feature significant amounts of reading, writing, and discussion. In the final session of the study, students will have the opportunity to work across these two texts and synthe-size what they have learned.

This short study is not intended to be a comprehensive exploration and analysis of bias and assumption in research. Teachers can easily extend and deepen this study by reading additional sources that provide other perspectives on this topic.

A Note on Language and MethodThe sessions in this unit are best viewed as illustrations or sketches. They are offered to help teachers

visualize how instruction might unfold in time. Teachers will find in the Appendix a session-level planning template designed to aid their individual efforts to organize and prepare for the teaching and learning that will occur in their particular classroom. In addition, the design of each unit incorporates large margins and a generous amount of white space to encourage and allow teachers to revise and customize the text as they work through the curriculum. It is important to keep in mind that any course of study is, when properly used, a tool for teaching students. The moment we make instructional decisions that lead us to choose “coverage” over the delivery of appropriate and timely instruction to individual students, we have erred. It is in the spirit of appropriate and timely instruction that the following sessions and template are provided.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Bias and Assumption in Research

Common Core Connection

Common Core State Standards addressed in this unit of study:

Reading Standards for Informational Text

Reading Informational Texts 1 — Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Reading Informational Texts 2 — Determine a central idea of a text and analyze 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.

Reading Informational Texts 3 — Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them.

Reading Informational Texts 4 — Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

Reading Informational Texts 5 — Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text.

Reading Informational Texts 6 — Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and ana-lyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

Writing Standards

Writing 2 — Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

a. Introduce a topic and organize ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multime-dia when useful to aiding comprehension.

b. Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.

c. Use appropriate and varied transitions and sentence structures to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and concepts.

d. Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the complexity of the topic.

e. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and con-ventions of the discipline in which they are writing.

f. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).

Writing 4 — Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Bias and Assumption in Research

Writing 5 — Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

Writing 9 — Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Writing 10 — Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Speaking and Listening Standards

Speaking and Listening 1 — Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas.

b. Work with peers to set rules for collegial discussions and decision-making (e.g., informal con-sensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alternate views), clear goals and deadlines, and individual roles as needed.

c. Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that relate the current discussion to broader themes or larger ideas; actively incorporate others into the discussion; and clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions.

d. Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarize points of agreement and disagreement, and, when warranted, qualify or justify their own views and understanding and make new con-nections in light of the evidence and reasoning presented.

Language Standards

Language 4 — Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 9–10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.

a. Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or text; a word’s position or func-tion in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

b. Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of speech (e.g., analyze, analysis, analytical; advocate, advocacy).

c. Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, or its etymology.

d. Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Microcourse Close Reading of Informational and Literary Nonfiction Texts Unit 2

Dealing With DifficultyGrade 11

MICROCOURSE | CLOSE READING OF INFORMATIONAL AND LITERARY NONFICTION TEXTS

UN

IT 2

DEALING WITH

DIFFICULTY

GRADE 11

CLO

SE REA

DIN

G O

F INFO

RM

ATIO

NA

L AN

D LITER

ARY

NO

NFIC

TION

TEXTS U

NIT 2 G

RA

DE 11

MicroCourses are short courses that provide

an alternative to the drudgery of textbooks and

the excess of “comprehensive programs.” IBD

MicroCourses are focused on critical aspects of

the Common Core State Standards in English

Language Arts and support students to gain the

knowledge and skills they need for success beyond

high school. All MicroCourses feature complex

texts and significant amounts of close reading,

text-based writing, and collaborative discussions.

This unit takes approximately two weeks to implement.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Dealing With Difficulty

Introduction

Dealing With Difficulty is the second unit in the grade eleven MicroCourse for Close Reading of Information-al and Literary Nonfiction Texts. The Dealing With Difficulty series was conceived as part of Inquiry By Design’s efforts to ensure that secondary students have regular and supported opportunities to work with difficult texts. Each module at each grade level is an excursion into difficulty that is important in and of itself, but that is also valuable because it supplies a basis for reflection and comparison in subsequent experiences with difficult texts.

For the purposes of this and other Dealing With Difficulty modules, a difficult text is a vehicle for saying something that is difficult to say. And, as such, difficulty in a text is not something unnecessary or annoying—nor is it a sign of failure on the part of the reader—but is, as Mariolina Salvatori has suggested, a beginning. In her essay, “Difficulty: The Great Educational Divide,” Salvatori writes that when she asked her college students to show her moments in a text that they thought were difficult, she realized that “the moments they identified were difficult. They were ‘bumping into’ linguistic, structural, or factual elements that a reader must engage in order to come to an understanding of a text” (p. 85, emphasis added).1 The challenge, she found, was in helping her students “learn to see that their difficulties were not a sign of inadequacy but markers of a particular kind of un-derstanding, reflecting a set of assumptions that might have been inadequate to the present task, or misplaced.” And so it is here in our study: difficulties are things to identify, moments to work with, and the beginnings of understanding.

Each Dealing With Difficulty module is a brief, stand-alone study that a teacher would ideally implement in coordination with her or his peers. In each module, students work with a single text.

The text under consideration in the first module is “Halloween Party” by Lillian Ross, an esteemed reporter and writer for The New Yorker. You can find more information about Ross in the biography contained in Session 1-A of the first module. This deceptively “easy” essay provides a gentle introduction to the work of the unit. Indeed it’s only through a more sustained study that the complexity of the text begins to reveal itself.

In the second module, students will work with a short speech by John Winthrop, which has become known as his “Little Speech on Liberty.” This important historical text poses a quite different set of challenges for students as they work together to “translate” the text, to determine its central ideas, and to analyze how Winthrop develops his ideas over the course of the speech. A brief introduction to Winthrop and his speech is included in Session 2-A of that module.

Each Dealing With Difficulty module features a general pattern that remains consistent across each module and that requires students to move back and forth between writing and talking about what they are reading. Forums for some of this writing and talk are small (for example, taking notes and discussing a text in pairs or trios), while other contexts for writing and talk are more public (such as when students share the charts they make in small groups with the whole class or when students compose a formal interpretive paper that will be read and evaluated by the teacher). This design is intentional; writing and talk support one another.2 They are reciprocal: Writing ensures more productive, thoughtful discussions; discussion supports development in writing. Cycles of work marked by multiple opportunities to write and discuss help students learn to do better and more careful text-based work.

1 Salvatori, M. (2000). “Difficulty: The Great Educational Divide.” In P. Hutchings (Ed.), Opening lines: Approaches to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Menlo Park, CA:  The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

2 For more details on the writing discussion connection see in particular the conclusion on p. 30 of Nystrand, M. Gamoran, A. & Carbonaro, W. (1998). “Towards an Ecology of Learning” at http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/nystrand/nystrandtowards11001.pdf.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Dealing With Difficulty

The goals of both modules are as follows:

• To introduce teachers and students to the idea of difficulty as a scaffold for understanding via:

» Noticing (and writing down) what you believe is hard in a text.

» Recognizing difficult moments as difficult, as moments to work on rather than as impossibilities to quit over.

» Seeing strange, confusing, and hard moments as places to begin, as moments students can deal with successfully.

• To introduce the idea that there are payoffs for working with difficulty, including a deeper under-standing of what and how one reads, as well as the development of a useful and portable flexibility of mind that can eventually be useful for working through difficulties without the assistance of a teacher.

• To continue to underscore the notion that by “reading” we mean “doing intellectual work.”

A Final WordDifficult texts are less and less a part of students’ experiences in school, and students’ levels of tolerance

for difficulty often reflects the broader culture’s apparent insistence on and aspiration towards convenience and leisure as ends in themselves. As such, we recommend that teachers work hard to maintain an atmosphere of playfulness and inquisitiveness during these studies. A thoughtful process combined with an attitude of “let’s see where this gets us and what this work helps us see and say” is perhaps the best spirit in which to conduct this work. Have fun!

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Dealing With Difficulty

Common Core Connection

Common Core State Standards for grade eleven included in this unit of study:

Reading Standards for Informational Text

Reading Informational Text 1 — Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

Reading Informational Text 2 — Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

Reading Informational Text 3 — Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

Reading Informational Text 4 — Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text.

Reading Informational Text 6 — Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persua-siveness, or beauty of the text.

Reading Informational Text 10 — By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Writing Standards

Writing 1 — Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

a. Introduce precise, knowledgeable claim(s), establish the significance of the claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that logically sequences claim(s), counter- claims, reasons, and evidence.

b. Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supplying the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.

c. Use words, phrases, and clauses as well as varied syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.

d. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and con-ventions of the discipline in which they are writing.

e. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Dealing With Difficulty

Writing 2 — Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

a. Introduce a topic and organize complex ideas, concepts, and information so that each new element builds on that which precedes it to create a unified whole; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.

b. Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.

c. Use appropriate and varied transitions and syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationship among complex ideas and concepts.

d. Use precise language, domain-specific vocabulary, and techniques such as metaphor, simile, and analogy to manage the complexity of the topic.

e. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conven-tions of the discipline in which they are writing.

f. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).

Writing 4 — Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Writing 5 — Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

Writing 9 — Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Writing 10 — Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Speaking and Listening Standards

Speaking and Listening 1 — Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas.

b. Work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision-making, set clear goals and deadlines, and establish individual roles as needed.

c. Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.

d. Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task.

INQUIRY BY DESIGN

Dealing With Difficulty

Language Standards

Language 4 — Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 11–12 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.

a. Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or text; a word’s position or func-tion in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

b. Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of speech (e.g., conceive, conception, conceivable).

c. Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, its etymology, or its standard usage.

d. Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).