Ms. Frick's Teaching Portfolio

Say-Mean-Matter charts are a comprehension and analysis approach that I had heard of in the past but had never seen put into practice. I was excited to have the opportunity to make up my own versions of this helpful activity which was so well connected to the unit objective of using textual evidence to support interpretations of the novel. The "say" column contains a quote from the text, the "mean column calls for a literal interpretation of the excerpt, and the "matter" column prompts students to draw conclusions about the significance of the quote to the event/character/overall story. I used these charts a handful of times during the unit as a successful formative assessment tool; after the students had gotten the gist of the strategy, I created some with the "say" column blank but the "mean" or "matter" column filled in, which challenged the students to find their own quote which exemplified the ideas already noted.