Transcript

The UNRAVEL strategy is a test taking strategy that is actually used throughout the district. So it is not one that is my own, but I've actually modified it, where it works well for my students. Each letter stands for a different set of directions. And this is to help them on their district tests, to be able to dissect the paragraphs or the passages that they're actually having to read. Sometimes a passage to a child can see overwhelming, so the UNRAVEL strategy actually breaks that down. 

Now I modified it in a way that works a little bit better for my students. The original version is kind of wordy, so what I did was, knowing my students, I took a lot of the words out to hit just main points. For Underline, I make sure that the first thing that they do is they underline the title as you can see here. And underlining the title actually encourages my students to read the title, because when we're reading they will start on the first line of the story and they'll totally leave out the title and I'll have to remind them the title gives you a lot of information. It can answer questions for you, it can help you predict, it lets you know what the story is actually about. A lot of your information can actually be found in your title. 

With the N it's Number the Paragraphs and the way that I help them with that is a lot of times you're asked to find something in paragraph four, now if those paragraphs are already numbered it a quick flip back and you don't waste so much time going back to dissect the paragraphs and it also helps me, on the other hand, know if my children can identify a paragraph. 

With Reading the Passage, with the original version it actually asked them to skim the passage, but as fourth graders I really feel like they get the most out of reading the passage. You do not want them to skim at this point, especially if it is something that is unfamiliar to them, so I took out skim through the passage, and it's Read the Passage. Then you're going to Read the Questions, and I actually require my children most of the time to read the questions first, but, here I just kept it in order. You're going to hear Read the Questions, because sometimes a lot of the questions are background knowledge, or prior knowledge or something that is not necessarily found in the passage. 

Circle your Important Words, and I actually go through and box it in and show them exactly how to do that. Important words could be your clue words, they could be your transition words, any words that stand out that are going to help you find the correct answer. Put an X on the Wrong Answers, now in my class we have something a little bit different, there's incorrect answers, and there are wrong answers, and you eliminate those but we actually have a different twist to ours. 

We know that they will trip you up with the test, so we know that we actually have the good answer, we have a great answer, we have a dumb answer, and then we have a stupid answer. When we read something I was like, "Now we can automatically eliminate D, why, because that's the stupid answer." You know, and so they really, really love that, so we Put and X on all of the Wrong Answers. And at the bottom we have sentences where you can find the answer, basically that's asking them to justify. One of the things that I did to modify is, each one is color coded, and with colors, that stands out. 

Over here is kind of what the finished product would look like. Here they've already underlined, they've numbered the paragraphs, they've circled important words. And here we've actually gone through and we've underlined a couple of adjectives because sometimes that helps them be able to connect with a question that is actually being answered. So this is what the finished product would actually look like. I don't have the questions here, but in their questions you would actually be able to see where they have probably put paragraph four or paragraph three because justifying is actually really, really important when they are reading and answering.