Salient
The same findings report twice: Amir's 1:47 everything-dump — every count, every smell, no recommendation — and the 0:58 version built on one question: what are your salient points? Students diff the versions, learn the emphasize-and-cut machinery (and the one-number slide), then rebuild a data-dump of their own into a report that lands.
Common Core standards covered
- SL.7.4Present claims and findings, emphasizing salient points in a focused, coherent manner with pertinent descriptions, facts, details, and examples; use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.
- SL.7.5Include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points.
- SL.7.6Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
© Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Teacher-facing overview
Big idea: Present claims and findings emphasizing salient points in a focused, coherent manner with pertinent descriptions, facts, details, and examples; include multimedia components and visual displays to clarify and emphasize; adapt speech to the occasion with command of formal English.
Student target: “I can triage findings into must-know, supports, and floor; build a focused report that leads with salient points and ends in a recommendation; and design a visual that emphasizes what my voice alone can't hold up.”
Success criteria: I can diff the versions: cut, kept, promoted, and moved-to-slide. · I can run the salience sort on a fresh dataset and defend my must-knows. · I can explain why 41 beats 114 — salience as action-implying. · I can deliver a sub-60 report with a one-number slide and a recommendation.
Essential question
Amir's first report contained every fact and landed none of them. His second cut half the facts and changed what the school does on Mondays. What is salience — and how does a speaker decide what the audience must still know tomorrow?
Learning target: I can triage findings into must-know, supports, and floor; build a focused report that leads with salient points and ends in a recommendation; and design a visual that emphasizes what my voice alone can't hold up.
Success criteria
- I can diff the versions: cut, kept, promoted, and moved-to-slide.
- I can run the salience sort on a fresh dataset and defend my must-knows.
- I can explain why 41 beats 114 — salience as action-implying.
- I can deliver a sub-60 report with a one-number slide and a recommendation.
Why this matters
SL.7.4's key word is SALIENT — the standard doesn't ask students to present everything they found; it asks them to emphasize the points that matter, 'in a focused, coherent manner.' Nobody teaches the triage, so students deliver Version One forever: complete, honest, uniform, unlanded. This pair isolates the skill: same data, one revision question, and a 49-second improvement that changed what the audience DID. The machinery is learnable — the three-pile sort, the action-implying number, the twelve-word method compression, the recommendation law, the one-number slide doing sustained emphasis (SL.7.5 with an index card) — and the rebuild exercise makes every student run it on a dataset the same period.
Students should already be able to
- The delivery basics (eyes, volume, time) from any prior presenting.
- Findings of some kind — or the provided datasets.
- The register concept (formal English for the occasion).
Where this shows up outside the classroom
Assessment plan
Formative — for feedback during the lesson
- Warm-up — listener wants named precisely.
- Diff circulation — five moves found.
- Build circulation — sorts, shapes, slides checked in that order.
Summative — the graded evidence: The delivered sub-60 report with slide, scored by repeat-back; the 30-second cut and dump rescue rank as extension evidence.
The passage: “Version One — the everything-dump”
An original presentation pair written for this lesson. Version One is every findings report a teacher has ever timed out.
¶1 VERSION ONE — Amir's first run at his sixty-second findings report on the class's lost-and-found audit. Delivered exactly as drafted. Time: 1:47 — forty-seven seconds over.
¶2 Okay so our group did the lost-and-found project. First we got permission from Mr. Torres, which took two days because he was at a conference, and then we counted everything in the lost and found, which by the way smells terrible, on three different days — a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Friday, because Jade said one day might not be typical, which was smart. There were 114 items total. We made categories. There were 31 hoodies and jackets, 27 water bottles, 19 lunch containers, 12 single gloves which is weird because where are the other gloves, 9 phone chargers, and 16 miscellaneous which included one retainer, gross. Also we found that the bin gets emptied to donation every nine weeks. We also surveyed some kids and 68% said they never check the lost and found, and also a lot of stuff has names written in it, we counted 41 items with actual names in them, which is a lot. So yeah. That's basically everything we found. Oh and the chargers still work, we tested two.
🔒 The full text — 3 numbered paragraphs, plus the photocopy-ready handout — ships in the kit. See plans →
The passage: “Version Two — the salient report”
The same data after one question: what must the class still know tomorrow?
🔒 This companion text — 3 numbered paragraphs — ships in the kit. See plans →
The task students work on
The class times Version One aloud, feels the leak, then diffs it against Version Two: what got cut (the permission saga, the smell), kept-but-compressed (the method), promoted (the 41), repositioned (the 68% as the problem), and resurrected (the retainer, now proof). Then the salience sort is taught as a three-pile triage and every student rebuilds a provided data-dump (or their own findings) into a sub-60 report: setup → salient number → problem → recommendation → proof, with a one-number index-card slide. Delivery rounds close it, timer visible.
The diff ledger — where every V1 fact went. Cite both versions.
| The fact | In Version One | In Version Two | The move: cut / compressed / promoted / repositioned / resurrected |
|---|---|---|---|
| The permission saga + the smell | |||
| Three counting days (Jade's idea) | |||
| 41 items with names | |||
| 68% never check | |||
| The retainer |
Anticipated student strategies
Leak marking first — the audience's experience as evidence. The effort-attachment resistance addressed mid-sort with the compression move. Action hunting last as the portable triage test.
- Leak marking. The student marks the exact sentences in V1 where their attention left, then checks what V2 did at those coordinates.
The intended entry — attention is the audience's data, and the leaks map precisely onto the cuts. Share first.
🔒 2 more anticipated strategies with select-and-sequence guidance are in the full lesson. See plans →
Lesson script
Collect the wants: is it good? should I see it? the one wild thing, no spoilers. Name the pattern: listeners want the salient points — the two or three things that survive until tomorrow — plus the option to ask for more. The everything-teller isn't wrong; they're untriaged. Today: the same report twice, and the machinery between them.
Listen for: Avoiding — telling everything skips the hard work of deciding what matters. Salience is a decision; dumps are decision-refusal. Hold this; it's Amir's whole diagnosis.
Both versions are in the workbook and the handout. Poll the leak-marks (they cluster at the permission saga and the mid-list uniform droning) and note the tragedy: the 41 was IN Version One — buried, unflagged, at the same volume as gloves. Then the diff ledger with its five moves: cut, compressed, promoted, repositioned, resurrected. Land the two structural findings: V2 has a shape (setup → number → problem → recommendation → proof) where V1 has a sequence (what-we-did in order); and V2's slide holds the 41 up the whole minute — sustained emphasis no voice can produce.
- Leak-marks are audience data — the cuts map onto them.
- Five moves: cut, compress, promote, reposition, resurrect.
Listen for: Uniform emphasis is no emphasis — a list delivers every item at equal weight, so the audience keeps none. Salience is differential: something must be louder, which means other things must be quieter.
Listen for: 114 describes a situation; 41 implies an ACTION (read the names, hand them back). Action-implying facts are salient because the audience can do something with them tomorrow — which is the must-know test.
🔒 The remaining 4 steps — fully scripted with teacher-says lines, discourse questions, look-fors, and interventions — are in the full lesson. See plans →
Misconceptions and how to respond
- “Cutting facts makes a report less honest.” V2 misrepresents nothing — every claim survives, sized honestly, and the floor pile stands ready for Q&A. Dishonesty is misstating data; salience is deciding emphasis. The dump was less honest in effect: it hid the 41 in plain sight.
- “The most impressive number should be the star.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
- “Slides should carry the full findings so people can read along.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
- “We worked two weeks on this — it all deserves airtime.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
🔒 Every misconception ships with a tested classroom response. See plans →
Scaffolded practice
The workbook follows gradual release rather than a page of blank prompts: 2 fully worked, 2 partially completed, then 4 independent.
- I doLiteral first — the shapes. Outline both versions' structures and name the difference in kind.
🔒 7 more prompts across all three release tiers are in the full lesson. See plans →
Worked solutions and scaffolds for every prompt are in the downloadable kit, included with membership. See plans and pricing.
Exit ticket
- Name the five diff moves with one V1→V2 example each (abbreviated).
🔒 2 more exit-ticket questions are in the full lesson. See plans →
Worked answers, the completed answer tables, and the scoring rubric are in the downloadable kit, included with membership. See plans and pricing.
Printable handouts in the kit
All handouts are in Printable_Handouts.pdf inside the kit download.
Materials and classroom resources
Student experience
Students enter through a low-floor prompt, build or sketch a model, test a strategy, revise their thinking, collaborate, and present a final solution. The task remains accessible while allowing for sophisticated reasoning.
Detailed facilitation notes
- Step 1: Hear/read Version One; feel exactly where attention leaks away. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 2: Read Version Two; diff them — what got cut, kept, promoted, and SEEN. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 3: Learn the salience sort: must-know / supports / floor. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 4: Rebuild a data-dump into a sub-60-second report with a one-number slide. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
Differentiation and inclusion
Support: The provided datasets let every student practice triage without needing their own research; extend with the Q&A-as-strategy analysis and the wrong-number slide critique.
Language support: “I started by…”, “My model shows…”, and “I know my answer is reasonable because…”.
Extension: Require a second solution, alter a condition, or have students write a challenge for another group.
Accessibility: Manipulatives, enlarged visuals, oral response choices, partner reading, and reduced-copy student pages.
Assessment plan
Formative checks: Strategy choice, accuracy, representation, collaboration, and explanation.
End evidence: One completed salience sort (a dataset triaged into must-know / supports / floor) plus a delivered sub-60 report with its visual.
Mastery: The student completes the task accurately and explains the strategy with limited prompting.