Making connections

According to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), students at this level "should be able to make inferences, develop interpretations, make connections between texts and draw conclusions; and they should be able to provide some support for each"--clearly what we've been working on all year in our PBL assessments and our writing assignments. Students are clearly doing this in their oral arguments this marking period, but it's also interesting to mix it up a little and include a "text" that is a little more fun! Next Wednesday, students will write about Fahrenheit 451 and Wall-E, the 2006 Pixar movie. Students will do thinking map notes on each text--and they'll use them to write their response.So even though it might seem like fun and games, the purpose is to have kids "make connections between texts and draw conclusions; and ... provide some support for each".