Literacy Links

In the Harvard Educational Review, Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Shanahan write about the struggle that middle and high school teachers have with teaching literacy across the content areas. They argue that the idea that “all teachers are reading teacher” hasn’t panned out, nor has the “use a few specific strategies” school wide equated to higher achievement.

The current idea is that developing strong reading skills in primary grades should lead to high achievement in the more specialized content of middle or high school. However, the specialized skills required to read in history, math, and science require the explicit instruction of how experts in that field read. When teachers aren’t aware of the direct instruction needed to impart a specific strategy they often leave students to grasp at straws. The example given was that in math, students must read using close reading and re-reading strategies. That utilizing a summarizing technique or skimming will actually increase a students errors.

The final message of the article was that combining effective teaching with explicit strategy instruction required for the content is more effective than utilizing several strategies school wide.

Peninsula’s writing curriculum, Units of Study by Lucy Calkins, is a series of units centered on a variety of writing genres.  This curriculum allows students freedom within their writing and gives teachers the tools to teach developmentally within a writing workshop.

Students in Susie Hughes’ first grade class at Minter Creek are excelling with their writing during the poetry unit.  They have examined published poetry, are looking at the world with poet’s eyes, know what a line break is, and are creating poems that describe something in a unique way.  Here is some of their work:

A Belly on a Penguin by Shyan

A belly on a penguin

sitting

on the ice

round and

fat.

Suddenly

it

jumps

in the water

to get

some fish

to eat.

  Cats by Lillie

A cat

purrs

by my legs.

When he is done he

creeps

out the door.

Pounce in the green grass

to catch

a

mouse!

The Flying Bus by Jared  

The flying bus

has wings

and jets

that make it

fly

quick in the sky

with the

birds

and the

clouds.

Last month’s Educational Leadership focused on Assessment. One article by Robert Sternberg caught my attention. In it he discusses the need to assess thinking, not just the factual knowledge gained by the student. He argues that many traditional tests measure memorization and recall. He encourages teachers to assess what he calls “WICS” Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity and Synthesis rather then factual knowledge. His discussion is compleling for any of us who have struggled with demonstrating our understanding on tests such as the Praxis or CBEST. Did passing those make us better teachers?

In the article he suggests that teachers assess students using open ended prompts intended to demonstrate thinking skills about concepts taught, not only factual recall. One example is :

In English, we might assess understanding of a novel such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by asking (1) How was the childhood of Tom Sawyer similar to and different from your own childhood (analytical)? (2) Write an alternate ending to the story (creative); (3) What techniques did Tom Sawyer use to persuade his friends to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence (practical)? and (4) Is it ever justified to use such techniques of persuasion to make people do things they do not really want to do (wisdom)? (Sternberg, 2008).

The DRA is a diagnostic tool that provides us with information on Fluency, Accuracy and Comprehension. Once we have administered the DRA, what is our next step with the child?

A document from Penn Elementary in San Diego can be very helpful in identifying next steps for students at each DRA level.

It’s available on our website at this link.

At times the conventional wisdom of what makes a fluent reader can be reduced to a simple number - how many words correct a child reads in a minute.  Although the rate of reading is important there is so much more to fluency!  A recent article in “Reading Today”, a publication of the International Reading Association, outlines what it means to be a fluent reader and compares the reading fluency of three historical icons known for their prose.

In “Explorations of Fluent Readers” authors Timothy Rasinski and Lisa Lenhart describe that reading fluency includes both rate and expression.  Their definition of expression includes intonation, volume, emphasis, phrasing, pausing and adjusting the pace.

 I encourage you to follow this link to the article “Explorations of Fluent Readers” to learn more about fluent readers and learn about the authors’ examination of the reading fluency of Martin Luther King Jr., John F Kennedy, and Franklin Roosevelt.  It is interesting stuff!

This Education Update article reports on Jay McTighe’s (creator of backwards design teaching model) major points in an October 2007 speech. Classroom assessments can enhance learning, said McTighe, if:

-         They include clear, worthy learning targets – desired performances and understandings;
-         They are accompanied by rubrics showing the criteria for excellent work, and exemplars against which students can compare their own efforts;
-         Teachers pre-assess to see what students know before instruction (“Don’t lay good knowledge on bad knowledge,” advises McTighe);
-         Assessments require students to explain what they have learned (i.e., support, justify, theorize, or defend);
-         Teachers follow up with specific, descriptive feedback to students;
-         Students have several opportunities to make revisions and improve their work before final grades are given; 
-         Assessments measure achievement and improvement.

For every 100 girl babies born there are 105 boy babies born.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/vitstat.pdf

For every 100 girls diagnosed with a special education disability 217 boys are diagnosed with a special education disability.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls expelled from public elementary and secondary schools 335 boys are expelled.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_144.asp

For every 100 girls who graduate from high school 96 boys graduate
(NCES, unpublished tabulation.)

For every 100 American women who earn a master’s degree from college 62 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_265.asp

While these statistics seem alarming, it is important to note, that what once what was a female issue in some of the above categories has now reversed itself and become a male issue. The fact remains however that the male population is being impacted by changes in our society and some of those changes have to do with school. This is a national problem. Curriculum in schools has changed. More emphasis is placed earlier on literacy skills and less on competition and physical activity.

How can we ensure that both boys and girls have opportunites to achieve their full potential? There is hope. acccording to Thomas Newkirk, Ph.D., Professor English.

“With the exception of the slow start boys get, I doubt that there is any fundamental biological reason why almost all of them can’t become proficient readers and writers. I just feel we can’t give up on them; we can’t accept the idea that they just aren’t naturally good at language (any more than we can accept the claim that girls aren’t good at math — they’re proving now that they can do just fine).” At times, the problems for boys in school seem insurmountable. Fortunately, simple, practical strategies have been offered by the same experts who criticize the ways things are. Their suggestions apply to boys in preschool, elementary, and middle school and may be helpful to teachers and parentsLet them play. Read aloud to boys and have them read aloud to you.

Allow boys to write about what interests them instead of what interests you

Allow discussion of topics boys may want to talk about (but teachers and girls may not).

Allow boys to express humor in appropriate ways and at appropriate times.

Let them choose books that interest them.

This month’s issue of Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy has several articles on Critical Reading or Critical Thinking via English and/or Social Studies Text.  The article Current events as empowering literacy: for English and Social Studies teachers by Christine Pescatore, fine tunes the idea of how we guide our students to read and respond to text critically.

 Critical reading asks students to engage actively in the text, go beyond surface comprehension to think about message, compare the message with previous knowledge and synthesize information from many sources to make meaning. The author points out that critical literacy goes beyond this. It is based on Freire’s (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970) notion that for social change to occur, citizens must not only think critically about what they read or view, but they must react to transform the world because of it.

Pescatore argues that critical literacy is fundamental to being a thoughtful participant in a democracy and therefore a component of our instructional obligations to students.  She utilize current events, articles from the newspapers, editorials, on-line comments or blogs, podcasts and essay to teach student to analyze text and guide them in developing critical literacy skills.

The key questions listed on her board are:
Whose viewpoint is expressed?

What does the author want us to think?

Whose viewpoints are missing, silenced, or discounted?

How might alternative perspectives be represented and/or found?

How would alternative perspectives contribute to your understanding of the text?

What action might you take on the basis of what you learned?

Students are encouraged to answer these questions about text they read or view. They mark their text with answers, more questions and discuss their ideas about the current event pieces put before them.

She finishes with an argument that because of standardized tests in her state (New York) students are often taught surface information or are asked to prepare formulaic responses to questions. She encourages the use of critical literacy instruction to deepen their responses.

The site MathVIDS is a component of the Virginia Department of Education. The site provides demonstration lessons for teachres seeking to differentite instruction in math, and address students’ learning barriers.

Important features of MathVIDS include:

• Video models of real teachers in real classrooms using research-supported effective mathematics instruction for struggling learners
• Teaching plans that describe how these instructiional practices can be integrated to teach important mathematical concepts
• A special section on metacognitive learning strategies for mathematics
• Accommodations and instructional modifications for specific types of learning difficulties

The site includes general good teaching practices such as cooperative learning strategies, grouping strategies, lessons for teaching students to make connections, how to read word problems. The videos show explicit teaching and the lesson plans are well written.

In a recent Journal of Staff Development article, McREL consultants Jane Hill and Kathleen Flynn suggest “tiered questions” as a way for teachers to actively engage English language learners and improve their content knowledge and language skills.
The first step in tiered questioning is knowing students’ stage of language acquisition and the “just right” questions appropriate to each stage.  The levels of language acquisition are:
• Pre-production – The student has minimal comprehension, does not verbalize, nods “yes” and “no”, draws and points. Teacher prompts: Show me…, Circle the…, Where is…? Who has…?  
 • Early production – The student has limited comprehension, produces one- or two-word responses, participates using key words and familiar phrases, and uses present-tense verbs. Teacher prompts: Yes/no questions, either/or questions, who, what, and how-many questions.             • Speech emergence – The student has good comprehension, can produce simple sentences, makes grammar and pronunciation errors, frequently misunderstands jokes. Teacher prompts: Why…? How…? Explain…, questions requiring a short sentence response.    
   • Intermediate fluency – The student has excellent comprehension and makes few grammatical errors. Teacher prompts: What would happen if…? Why do you think…? Questions requiring more than a one-sentence response.        
  • Advanced fluency – The student has near-native level of speech. Teacher prompts: Decide if…, Retell…
The second step in tiered questioning is asking students higher-level questions.  Using question stems from bloom’s taxonomy, teachers can map out appropriate questions for the rage of langauge abilities in their classroom.This technique engages all students in meaningful use of language at their level.