Focus

As teachers become experts in their field it is easy to want to include all topics and as much information as possible into the content curriculum.  It becomes difficult to expect students to remember and read everything that we know is important.  We need to remember what it is like to be the student and what its like to read a new piece of material.  Teachers can become so involved in the content that they "don't know what to leave in and what to take out." (Tovani)  To prevent information overload we need to focus our instruction and narrow down the purpose for a text. "start with the essential then add the details."  (Tovani)  Focusing our instruction allows us to get focused information from the student. 
Tovani gives the following for "What is your instructional purpose?"
1.  Decide what students should know after reading the piece.  Focus on essential information only.
2.  Anticipate what might cause student difficulty.  Are students lacking background knowledge?  Will difficult vocabulary interfere with meaning?  Will difficult concepts need to be explained further? Is the text about challenging subject matter?
3.  Model how you would negotiate difficulty.  Try thinking out loud at one of the places where you anticipate students will experience difficulty.  Give them a tip on how to negotiate the next part.
4.  What do you want them to be able to do with the information once they have finished reading? How will they hold their thinking so they can return to it later to use in a discussion, a paper, or a project?
5. Model how they should hold their thinking and provide tools.  Should they mark text, use sticky notes, complete a double entry diary?
These five points of instructional purpose points, are created for each class by each teacher to give students a clear understanding of what is expected of them to learn from the text. "A clear instructional purpose can greatly improve a readers comprehension because the reader has an indication to what to read for." (Tovani) Having a clear focus on what we want our students to learn gives them a better understanding of the text.  It also makes it easier for the teacher so that you don't have to plan to cover every detail and have lots of confused students.  Focused instruction provides focused feedback.  Then the teacher can decide what the class needs to know or if repetition is necessary and discuss other topics without losing the main purpose(s).