Airport SCRI Study Group

Readicide: Chapters Four and Five

2010-01-19T11:19:00.002-05:00

(Page 92) "Hamlet isn’t the problem; the problem lies in how the work is taught.”
(Page 94) “I am a teacher, not an assigner, and my students need me most while they are reading.”

May I go back to high school and have Kelly Gallagher for my English teacher? For all four years? I have seen him present before, so I know he’s good at delivery. (I have seen a professional education author before who was horrible at presenting…she even made the comment that it was the norm to lose half the audience after lunch. Huh?!? That doesn’t happen if you’re good at what you’re doing.) If I had Mr. Gallagher as my English I, II, III, and IV teacher, I think there is a strong possibility that I may actually like the “classics.” I don’t think I’d necessarily become a classic literature a fan on Facebook, but I probably wouldn’t abhor most of it quite so much and would be able to get something from it.

I realize the two quotes I selected pretty much reiterate what I wrote in the final paragraph of my last post, but I suppose that’s because I think how the teacher approaches material is so important. When asked, can we even explain why we teach the particular texts or issues we choose? (I’m talking about things that we aren’t required to teach—the material that we select.) I recently asked a couple of teachers why they were teaching a particular book, asked what they wanted the students to get out of it. One teacher gave me a long answer and the other just basically said, “The same reasons she said.” The second teacher didn’t even try to add an additional thought. I wonder if the second teacher truly agrees with the first or if she didn’t have a clue why she uses the novel. There’s a strong possibility that the second teacher chooses to teach the book because she does think it’s a “good book” and “stuff” is already done for this particular novel—it’s been taught for years so there’s nothing to create for it. It’s so much easier when everything is already done!

The bottom line is good teaching is hard work. Dang hard work. And it takes time. Yes, there are many things that we can use from year to year, but we need to tweak them when necessary. How many times have you done the same lesson multiple times in a day when it went well for one class and bombed for another? We have to make material relevant to students’ lives so it sticks with them. Gallagher made a great point when he said he doesn’t expect every student to enjoy reading the books he uses (page 93), but he does want them to get something out of it. Just because we think a book is good doesn’t mean all of the students will, so we have to have a better reason for teaching something. What is it that we want students to get from it? And how are we going to deliver the lessons so that the students do get something from the material and don’t just “play school” with what we’re teaching?

Readicide: Chapter Three

2009-11-30T22:51:00.002-05:00

(Page 65) “I am not advocating that we allow students to self-select everything they read. If I did that, none of my students would read Hamlet. Every student should read Hamlet.”
I was so thrilled when I read these words from Gallagher (the first sentence, not necessarily the last) because there seems to be some sort of movement by some for teachers not to use one novel with an entire class; the proverbial they think students should be able to choose what they want to read. The thought is that we choose what we want to read as adults, and if we want to develop lifelong readers, we should have them start the practice in school. There was an article on the front page of the New York Times back in August spotlighting a teacher who allowed students complete choice. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?_r=1&emc=eta1)

Y’all know I’m all about some choice for students, but I had wondered if there wasn’t some benefit with kids reading the same text—and sometimes a text that students wouldn’t tackle otherwise. I think Gallagher makes the point when he writes that none of his students would read Hamlet if he didn’t have them read it. I read Hamlet my senior year of high school (in addition to Macbeth…I think my teacher was of the Gallagher thought that every student should read Hamlet, so we got to read two Shakespearan plays). The thing is I actually liked the play, but I certainly would not have read it otherwise. As students, we were even excited when the Mel Gibson version came out in theatres that year and we went to see it (for five bucks in the evening, I might add). And I was much better able to appreciate the Gilligan’s Island episode when producer Harold Hecuba is stranded on the island, so the castaways create and perform Hamlet: The Musical. It's absolutely one of the greatest episodes ever. (God help us all if any of you young chicks have never seen an episode of Gilligan's Island!)

I think the key to all of this (as is the key to most thing in teaching) is the delivery. If the teacher has a genuine interest in a text, I think she can get the students excited about it as well. I swear if the opportunity presented itself, my literacy coach friend Sonya could make me love The Scarlet Letter. On my own, I don’t see that happening. Was I supposed to read it in high school? Sure. Did my American Literature teacher do anything to make the text accessible or relevant to me? Absolutely not. Other than the general symbolism that “everyone” is supposed to know about the scarlet A on Hester’s chest, pretty much the only thing I remember about The Scarlet Letter is watching the movie in class and Pearl (Hester’s daughter) having a meltdown in the woods. So, if we choose to teach a difficult text (read: most classics), we must find that balance of making it understandable to students without beating it to death!

Readicide: Chapter Two

2009-10-09T11:53:00.001-04:00

Do-do-do-do-dooooo. I’m lovin’ it! I swear if I was smart enough to know how to get that McDonald’s theme song playing on here, I’d do it. This book is just awesome!!! I have so much highlighted in this chapter, I’m finding it difficult to narrow a quote down! Let’s just go with this one…

(Page 40) “Novels are not part of the problem; the problem lies in how the novels are taught.”
Who can tell me who Atticus Finch’s first two clients were when he became an attorney? C’mon, most all of us have read To Kill a Mockingbird. Surely, having that information about Atticus is important, right? It gives us information about Atticus’ abilities as an attorney, right? Ugh! WHO CARES??? I think this is the kind of stuff Gallagher is getting at with the problem of how novels are taught. Sometimes we get so caught up in teaching the novel itself instead of the theme or what we learn from the novel. When teaching a particular novel, ask yourself this question: What do I want my students to get out of this book? By focusing on the theme, we can relate it to students’ lives and make the book more relevant (particularly those books written by the Dead White Men who did not write for a teenage audience). Once we know what we want our students to get from the book, we need to make sure our final assessment reflects that. If we want students to realize the signs of abuse when reading Breathing Underwater, then why ask them who Nick’s best friend is? (Sidebar: I’ve read that book at least a dozen times, I can’t think of the name of Nick’s best friend off the top of my head.) Also, by focusing on the theme instead of the details of the book, I think it helps with students who don’t necessarily love the book. It’s not very often you’ll find a book that absolutely everyone loves, so if it’s approached as using it to examine a theme, then it becomes more of a tool for analysis than just reading a book because it’s supposed to be good. Also, with the classics, there needs to be lots of teacher support for instruction. Again, these are not novels that were written for teenagers, so why would we just have them read the pages without much help? Would you want to read a tax code book without any guidance from an accountant???

Oh, and just in case you’re dying to know about Atticus Finch’s first two clients…they were the last two men hanged in Maycomb county. And just so ya know, I’ve read To Kill a Mockinbird several times but didn’t know that about Atticus. I had to break out the book to come up with that question.

Readicide: Introduction and Chapter One

2009-09-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

I’m so excited that you all wanted to continue with the professional book blog. And I’m even more excited that we’re reading more of Kelly Gallagher! Seriously, how fabulous can one person be? McDonald’s words best describes my feeling about Readicide: I’m lovin’ it! As usual, Gallagher packs so much punch into a small space that I had a hard time choosing just a couple of quotes to pull. I didn’t want to use more so I wouldn’t steal what someone else wanted to bring to light. I ran into Christy last week and she wants to get together just to talk about the book! So, keep that thought in the back of your mind…we may have to have a study group reunion and chat! It won’t have to be at school. This reading is by all choice—no grades or anything attached—so we can go somewhere fun if y’all want! On to the text…

Introduction
(Page 2) “Today, more than ever, valuable classroom time presents the best opportunity—often the only opportunity—to turn kids on to reading.”
I think I’ve told y’all before, but one of the things I miss about being in the classroom is getting to read for 90 minutes every day. (3 classes x 30 minutes of SSR each day = 90 minutes) Life outside of school is busy—for teachers AND students. How many students do we have who have to take care of siblings after school? Work to help pay the bills? Involved in extra-curricular activities? Just deal with crazy drama at home? All of that other stuff can make it difficult to have time to read. By giving students that time at school (hence school-wide SSR) we are introducing students to the world of reading just for the heck of it. My only concern about school-wide SSR is the teachers who don’t value the time, and the students don’t value the time as a result of teacher behavior. I’m not saying everyone needs to read a novel—that’s not realistic real world reading. But how can we get the teachers who are not so excited about SSR to realize that they do actually read—be it the newspaper, magazines, et cetera—so they can translate to students that reading is important?

Chapter One
(Page 21) “Less than 14 percent of low-income students are reading at grade level.”
Alright, let’s think about this for a minute in terms of Airport. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of our students on free and reduced lunch. Free and reduced lunch is an indicator of poverty. That means roughly 840 of our students are low-income students, so when going by the statistic Gallagher provides, we’ve got about 720 students who do NOT read on grade level at Airport High School. If around half of our population are not able to read on grade level, why in the world would we assign them textbook reading without any guidance? Why would we have them read classic novels—that were written for an adult audience—for homework and expect them to understand what they read? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t set high expectations for students and not utilize the resources. (Well, okay, maybe I wouldn’t mind skipping most of the classics!) What I am saying is that if we are going to use these materials, we’ve got to provide MUCH support IN class, so that students can get something from it. Are students learning how to think from the material we’re using, or are they just “playing” school? Are we just dispensers of knowledge, doling out what we think students should know, or are we letting students discuss readings with their peers and the class so they can THINK and discover new knowledge?

Content Area Writing: Chapter 8 and Final Thoughts

2009-04-23T23:31:00.001-04:00

(Page 188) “Fact is, we struggle with coverage versus depth every day. We can tell ourselves we must get to it all for the standardized test, but if the kids don’t learn from a quick buzz-through, they still won’t do well on the test.”
I think the breadth over depth issue is one of the biggest problems we have to tackle. It always seems like more and more is added to what we’re expected to teach, and we don’t have time to get it all in. But are the kids really learning anything just because we can say we went over it? I once heard a presenter say, “Oftentimes when we cover the standards, we cover the standards.” He meant that we end up smothering what it is that we’re supposed to be doing—TEACHING the kids! I think the writing workshop concept can sound a bit intimidating to do in class, but Daniels et al did a pretty good job of breaking it down, so that it can be very doable. It definitely provides an atmosphere where students are supported in their writing and have the opportunity to get some feedback. If mastery is our goal, as we talked about when we read Wormelli, then doesn’t it seem obvious that something is going to have to give? I don’t think we’ll ever have enough time to effectively teach every single standard in our given subjects, but what we can do is teach effectively so that students can benefit from our instruction even after they leave our classrooms.

I know you all are broken up that this is your final blog post for SCRI. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with y’all, and I hope you have enjoyed the study group just as much. As you reflect on the last year (or two or three), what do you think has been most beneficial to you in regards to being a part of our study group?

I came up with an idea this evening, and thought I’d throw it out there to y’all to see what you think. I promise my feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t like it or aren’t interested. Since I’m sure some of you will go through withdrawals not having to write a blog anymore (I’m sure they’ll be as bad as the ones for not having to complete SCRI surveys), is anyone interested in reading a professional book next year and just blogging about it? I was thinking perhaps we could do Gallagher’s new book or maybe one of the ones we looked at during the book pass. Obviously, school money is going to be tight, so everyone would have to purchase their own books, but I’d be happy to order them all and get a new blog going if you’re game. Granted I won’t be at Airport, but I would be happy to do it as a community service project. Let me know what you think.

Teaching Adolsecent Writers: Chapter 7; Content Area Writing: Chapters 7 and 9

2009-03-30T14:04:00.005-04:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 142) “…the goal for each student is the same: everyone improves…it is unrealistic to think I am going to make every one of my 165 students a strong writer. It is realistic, however, to begin each year with the goal that every student of mine, regardless of ability, is going to get better.”
I love this thinking—it’s achievable for both the student and the teacher. (Claire, I know you love it because it reminds you of the movie Summer School…did I just reference that movie two blog posts in a row?!?) The thing I especially love is that as usual, Gallagher doesn’t just tell you this theory; he give you some strategies to use to put it into practice. Does it require some extra work? Certainly. To show that you’ve made improvement with each student means you have to know where the student was to begin with and what his weaknesses were. Otherwise, how will you know he improved and in what specific areas? Keeping this type of data on students can be powerful. While mid-to-late year a student may realize that he still isn’t a terrific writer, how great would it be to show him how far he has come?

I do want to mention one thing on Tenet #6 that Gallagher writes about on page 150-152 with the Independent Correction Sheet (Figure 7.5). When I heard Gallagher speak in December, he said he has slightly modified the form from the example in the book. If you look at the figure, you’ll notice that in the first column the student writes the sentence where the problem occurred. He no longer has students do that because it seems to just reinforce bad habits…they’re once again writing a sentence incorrectly. Instead, the student simply writes the sentence correctly and notes the problem he originally had.

Content Area Writing
Two of the writing projects I liked featured in these chapters are the newspaper front page and multi-genre project. I like the newspaper front page because I think students can get as creative with it as they would like and show clear understanding of text read. I like how Daniels et al provide an evaluation checklist on page 179, so the student can see if they have elements of a real newspaper. I must say that I’m not too impressed with the MS Publisher template and student sample shown on pages 180-181…I think it leaves a bit to be desired.

I’m also a fan of the multi-genre project. The only time I had my students do it was when I went out on maternity leave. They didn’t have any face-to-face instruction from me, so their final products weren’t exactly exemplary, but I could tell they put some work into them. While the book suggests having students complete the multi-genre unit on a topic, I had my student do it on a book they read for SSR. This allowed students to look at the book from a variety of perspectives. That was the last quarter I was in a classroom, so I didn't have a chance to try it out with another group of students where I was able to guide them through the process better.

I’m telling ya…if I had had a the internet, a computer, and an inkjet printer when I was in high school along with these types of projects, I would have been completely loving life. I love creating stuff like that!

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 6; Content Area Writing: Chapter 10

2009-03-22T09:02:00.004-04:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers

(Page 122) “When students understand the real-world purposes for writing (instead of simply writing to meet the next school assignment) they begin to internalize the relevance of writing, and more important, they develop an understanding that writing is an important skill to carry into adulthood.”

There are tons of different types of writing people use in the real-world, and there are some things we’ve just got to teach students to do or else they’ll be at a huge disadvantage when the graduate, particularly since so many of our students go into the workforce directly after high school. What if all senior English teachers taught the art of writing a thank-you note? How relevant would that be for seniors as they are receiving graduation gifts at the end of the year? It’s also an opportunity to teach them some etiquette—believe it or not, some people don’t know that they’re supposed to send thank-you notes for baby or wedding gifts. How many of you have seen the movie Summer School with Mark Harmon? (Other than Claire—I know it’s one of her favorites.) The gist of the movie is that a PE teacher (Harmon) is required to teach remedial English in summer school. He doesn’t know how to teach them but does find that relevance makes a difference, so he has the students all write complaint letters to companies they’ve had problems with. He teaches them how to write that letter and the language they must use—including using their real names instead of nicknames. (One student was named Francis, but everyone called him Chainsaw.) In the end, Francis received free sunglasses for his letter in regards to his faulty ones. What a great lesson! How many of us have ever been dissatisfied with a product or service? Teaching students how to properly write a complaint letter (i.e. including telling them that using the word “sucks” is not a good idea!) could benefit students tremendously once they graduate. Goodness only knows how many free dinners and gift certificates my sister has received because she knows the art of complaining in writing!

Content Area Writing

(Page 253) “Some tests encourage teachers to race through content never slowing down to help students think deeply about the material, thus encouraging endless data bytes promptly forgotten once the test is over.”

Anyone else, besides me, cram for tests in high school the night before, make a good grade, and don’t remember a dang thing from it? I remember those wretched vocabulary workbooks all too well. Twenty new words on Monday, complete the “exercises,” during the week, and test on Friday. I think I remember two words (deluge and prelude) from my four years of completing those books. What’s the point??? On a side note, I heard that if a student is given 20 vocabulary words a week every week from 1st grade through 12th grade and actually learns every one of them, it only makes up for 6% of the student’s vocabulary…he gets 94% of his vocabulary from other means, i.e. everyday conversations. Paul Thomas from Furman is the one I heard that from, but he didn’t cite a source, so I’m not sure if he’s the originator.

Anyway, we’ve got to teach students to think. We don’t need teach them to think like us…we just need to teach them to think! Many years ago, Paulo Friere equated teaching to bank depositing. Teachers give students information (deposit it) and expect them to spit that information back. What good is it, really, if students just regurgitate everything we tell them? Wouldn’t it be better for them to be able to learn how to think about our class topics and apply that information to other situations? If we just teach them random facts and want them to tell us that information on the test, very little of that information will be retained. But if we teach them how to think and analyze and give them those sorts of questions on the test, then they’ll “get it” and be able to apply that understanding to other things.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapters 10 and 11

2009-02-26T16:13:00.001-05:00

(Page 136) “If we’re basing our decision on the ‘real world’ outside of school, then the answer is clear: Allow students to redo work.”
I’m really thinking we all will like this chapter because it doesn’t tell us that we ALWAYS have to let students redo work; it is at our own discretion. We’ve had the conversation before about students in the elementary and middle school just automatically being able to retake a test—they often don’t study because they know they’ll get another chance to do better. I think Wormelli makes it clear that we aren’t required to give students a retake if we think they’re taking advantage; we offer the option when it’s the fair thing to do. This is where the ART of teaching comes in to play. While you may do different things for different students, you still have to be able to justify it if it becomes necessary. We can’t arbitrarily refuse to let students redo work, but if we can explain why we wouldn’t let Johnny redo a test even though we allowed another student to do so with good reason, then there will be no problems. Making such decisions is like good teaching—you know why you’re doing what you’re doing!

I must admit that Chapter 11 did get a little wordy for me. I suspect you mathophobics were really thrown with all that number talk early on. I see the point of not giving a zero, but I don’t know that I’m completely sold on the “just give ‘em a 60” idea either. I think I could live more with giving a 50, but I’m thinking that would have to be at my discretion much like the idea of providing the opportunity of the redo. Wormelli gives the example of the kid who does nothing and gets all 60’s still ends up with an F. Well, that’s if the kid does absolutely nothing. What about the kid who is smart but lazy, so he has half A’s and half F’s? That child isn’t going to get an F. Again, I think the whole things deals with the art of teaching. For some students, they do deserve a 0, but others deserve the 50 or 60. I’m definitely one who believes in giving a kid hope. If a student has a horrible grade first quarter that is mathematically impossible to bring up to passing, I absolutely believe that he should be given the opportunity to redeem himself and that number should be adjusted if the student is willing to do a turn-around. What are y’all’s thoughts on this issue?

Content Area Writing: Chapters 5 and 6

2009-02-11T08:39:00.001-05:00

(Page 126) “Content-area teachers will rarely have time to teach all the aspects of composition; we’ve got our subjects to cover! Still, the more we understand the writing process and the qualities of good writing, the more we can help our students.”
These chapters cover lots of components of writing, but I think the authors do a good job explaining that every teacher doesn’t have to teach everything about writing. To me, it gets to that whole depth over breadth notion. Sure, you could whiz through everything and say you “taught” the writing process, but did anyone really learn anything? It’s sort of telling students every fact that could possibly be on the EOC just so you can say you covered all the topics, but did the kids really learn anything? By choosing just one or two of the steps to focus on and spending a substantial amount of time on them, then students come to understand and retain how to do different components.

I particularly liked the “Four Corners” strategy discussed on page 128. I think the use of this one is not limited to writing—it could be used with a variety of things. In fact, we may have to do this in class one week before the year is up! It’s a great way to find where people stand on particular subjects why keeping them from just sitting in their desks. It also forces students to come up with a response instead of being lethargic and not participating at all. Even if students don’t say a word through the entire process, you still know what they think. So, based on what you teach, what parts of what Daniels et al wrote about do you think you could use in your classroom?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 5; Content Area Writing: Chapter 4

2009-02-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 91) “Choice generates a welcome chain reaction: it creates student buy-in, which in turn generates writing motivation, which in turn causes students to write better.”
Imagine that—giving students choice in writing actually has the same effects as giving students choice in what they read—they’ll actually want to do it! On page 90, Gallagher makes an excellent point in that we often have students do the type of writing they’ll neither do nor often see in the real world. Yes, yes, yes, I haven’t forgotten that we have those standardized tests looming over our students’ heads, but if someone is just a plain good writer, they’ll be able to do fine on those standardized tests. But if a student can only generate good standardized test-style writing, how is that going to benefit him after he graduates? I will go on record as saying the one thing I liked about our old exit exam versus HSAP is that the old one offered students a choice in their writing; they were given two prompts and had to choose one. However, with the HSAP, the scoring of it is not as rigid as the old one—there is not as much emphasis on conventions, so students have more leeway in how they write. Yes, they have to have a beginning, middle, and end, but they don’t have to necessarily format that into three or five paragraphs.

I love how in his traditional way, Gallagher doesn’t just tell us the problem. He provides lots of options that can be used in the classroom to generate student choice in writing then goes on to give ways to merge requirements with choice. Did anyone try one of the ideas Gallagher wrote about, or have you done something he didn’t mention that would be beneficial to us all?

Content Area Writing
I decided to go with having you all choose four of the eight strategies to read about in this chapter for a couple of reasons. First, I thought some of you may already be familiar with a few of the strategies. Second, I think the way Daniels et al present each strategy makes it easy to skim through the “What It Is” section of each to decide if that’s something useable for your classroom. So, did you have a chance to try out any of these strategies on your students, or how do you think you could incorporate one (or more) into your classroom?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 4; Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapter 9

2009-01-22T09:08:00.003-05:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers, Chapter 4
“Voluminous reading alone does not make the writer, but those students who are readers come to the writing task with a marked advantage.” (Page 75)
It is rare that you have a student who reads a great deal but still has something lacking in his/her writing. (I actually can only think of two people I personally know that have this problem—one I taught and the other is an adult.) As students read more, they begin to adapt what they see in text to their own writings. This is yet another reason why SSR is so important. When students are given the opportunity to read what they want to read then they have writing models that they can learn from. Now, I am in no way whatsoever saying that I come close to the great J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) when it comes to writing, but when I read his book as a teenager—one of only two books I read as an adolescence because I wanted to—I discovered a whole new way of writing, and without realizing it, I started using things in my writing that he does in his. Giving students lots of opportunity to read gives them the “polished” models they need as examples of good writing, but we need not forget to model our own writing process so they can see how messy it is to get to that final piece.

Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Chapter 9
“Is the teacher in the classroom to teach so that students learn, or is he or she there to present curriculum then hold an assessment “limbo” yardstick and see who in the class can bend flexibly and fit within its narrow parameters?” (Page 114-115)
I know this book isn’t nearly as entertaining to read as Gallagher’s, but it does provide a lot of things to think about. I had us complete the anticipatory guide in class last week to get you thinking about some of the ideas in this chapter and to hopefully make it a little easier to read. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with every little thing Wormelli writes (is there anyone you agree with 100%?) but as a result of reading, I will definitely change the way I do some things when I return to the classroom. I definitely have a different view of having students redo work for mastery after reading the second principle, “Avoid penalizing students’ multiple attempts at mastery.” Why should we expect all students to master the same thing at the exact same time? While most will probably fall within the parameters of what we are looking for, we do need to take into consideration those who take longer to develop. I’m not going to say any names, but I can think of a couple of students who took longer than their peers to be able to handle diploma-track classes. In fact, one didn’t pass one of the HSAP subtests until two years after he finished his finished all of his classes. But guess what? Even though it took him longer to get through, he finally “mastered” the test and is now a high school graduate!

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 3; Content Area Writing: The Rest of Chapter 3

2008-11-21T09:38:00.004-05:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 49) “Unfortunately, many students continue year in and year out with the same mistaken notion that writing is easy for some and difficult for others.”
This is the same concept that students have about reading—they just think people are naturally good readers and don’t realize that good readers got that way because they read a lot. Just like our struggling readers need us to think aloud so they’ll know what should be going through their minds while they read, our students need to see us start writing from scratch, so they can see how it is developed from beginning to end.

Students seem to think the books they read are just churned out that way. They don’t realize how writers rewrite and edit their work tons of times before it goes to the publisher. With the leak of Midnight Sun on the Internet, author Stephenie Meyer urges fans not to read it not only because she wasn’t ready for it to be released, but also because “the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” The woman who has sold MILLIONS of copies of her book admits to her writing not being very good. (You knew I’d have to get a Twilight connection in there somehow!) So…we need to model, model, model for students, so that they’ll realize that a final product isn’t easy for anyone—it takes much time and effort!

Content Area Writing

The last three writing-to-learn strategies in this chapter seem to be geared for the visual learners. Every time I see stuff about using drawings for understanding, I always think about Jimmy Richardson sharing his students’ “sketch to stretch” drawings when they were studying different religions. I think only Christy and Claire were in his group two years ago when he shared it. My favorite was the student who drew Jesus rising up out of the tomb and someone else looking in it saying, “Yo, dog. He ain’t in there” for his depiction of Christianity. Funny stuff! Has anyone tried any of the strategies from Chapter 3? If so, share how it went!

Content Area Writing: Chapter 2 and 3 through Page 47

2008-11-07T08:56:00.004-05:00

(Page 27) “It is entirely possible for a student to glance through a textbook and copy down these answers without ever reading the chapter, doing any thinking, or ultimately, having a glimmer of recollection—of anything.”
But it’s so eeeeasy to have them answer the questions and give them a grade for it! How many times in your school career did you have to answer the questions in the textbook? The answers could always be found in the order of the questions, and it was pretty simple to skim through until you found matching words. Well, simple for pretty good readers. When I first started teaching, I was amazed at how many of my resource students struggled with this. Part of the problem was their difficulty with reading and part of it was their difficulty with understanding how textbooks work. And so those students would end up with not so great grades. The teachers would then see a clear range of grades on the task and think there must be some merit to it because not everyone made a 100.

Think about how much more effective it is for teachers to use writing to learn activities instead. I like how the authors provide us with lots of examples of how we use such things in our everyday lives. I can’t tell you how many times I swear to myself that I’m going to remember something so I don’t need to write it down only to end up forgetting it completely. The reason I always think I’ll be okay is because the times that I do write something down, I end up not needing to look at it because I remember it. Well, duh! The reason I remember is because I wrote it down. How much more do you think your students would remember things if you just paused and had them write down what you had just discussed in class? Did anyone have the chance to try out any of the WTL strategies discussed in the book? If so, how did it go?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 2; How to Teach Students Who Don't Look Like You: Chapter 2

2008-10-22T15:50:00.003-04:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 37) “But there is another valuable reason why our students should be doing more writing across the curriculum: the act of writing extends knowledge. Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) creates new thinking. The act of writing is generative.”

Y’all correct me if you think I’m off base here, but I think that many non-English teachers are hesitant about including writing in their classes because they aren’t very confident in their own writing and don’t think they know how to grade student writing. The thing is that teachers don’t have to be great grammarians to incorporate writing. Writing across the curriculum isn’t meant to make sure every student knows how to write an essay with no errors. As Gallagher points out in the quote above, writing helps students think, and isn’t creating good thinkers important? I think as we continue to read Gallagher’s book and the Content Area Writing book (if we EVER get it—did I mention I’m not responsible for ordering that one?) that we’ll discover tons of ways to incorporate writing into our class to extend learning.

How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You
(Page 18) “The key to building the critical mass of students goes back to relationships. If you have a good relationship with your target students, you can begin to build a critical mass of students to focus on achievement goals.”
Don’t y’all think that our relationship with students is at the crux of everything we do with them? It seems to me that everything goes much more smoothly in the classroom if you take the time to get to know kids and show a genuine interest in them. Heck, if they know you care about them and you screw up something, they’re much more forgiving of you. I think that by getting to know them as individuals, you can get a better understanding of their cultures—and if they even adhere to any of the typical traditions within their cultures.

Content Area Writing: Chapter One; Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter One

2008-10-02T17:06:00.001-04:00

Content Area Writing
(Page 4) “But for now, we need to admit: We are not tapping kids’ vast out-of-school authoring experience.”
I have been reading so much lately about the “Digital Divide” between students and teachers these days. The Digital Divide notes there are two kinds of people: Digital Natives (those—students and probably some of you younger teachers—who have always been around technology) and Digital Immigrants (those of us who are a bit older, haven’t always had the technology, and are learning it—okay, some of us are learning it). The problem is we Immigrants aren’t acknowledging just how important of a role technology plays and are losing lots of opportunity for good teaching because of it. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t know how to text (nor can I understand how quickly kids can do it), but how cool would it be to have students write a text message conversation between two characters? What about creating a MySpace page for a historical figure? Or even have students create their own blog pages related to class? Kids do a whole lot more writing than we give them credit for, and we’ve got to start incorporating that into our lessons. Do they need to learn how to write traditional things like essays, resumes, etc.? Of course they do. But I think we can use the Native style of writing as a tool in our classrooms to extend learning as well.

A bit of extra commentary about this: Nicole, I think you are a Digital Native. I remember last year when we went to see Jim Trelease for a class, he used overheads for his presentation. I didn’t even give it a second thought, but I remember you commenting that you wished he had used something more updated like PowerPoint!

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 6) “…between 1998 and 2002, the scores of twelfth grade students declined, with lowest performing students showing the greatest declines. Only seniors writing in the 75th percentile or higher showed any growth from 1998; all other twelfth-grade students declined.”
This is one of my biggest concerns. I feel like we do a really great job on getting our students prepped for HSAP in ninth and tenth grades then once they finish, sometimes the attitude of “Okay, they passed, so they can write; we don’t need to spend any more time on that” takes over. The thing with HSAP is that just because you pass it does not mean you’re a great writer. HSAP writing is just one genre of writing and we need to make sure kids understand that. I’ve seen some pretty high scores for the HSAP with students who were not the most fabulous writers. So, how do we stress the importance of good writing beyond the tenth grade?

On another note, since Gallagher brought up the whole NAEP test and the State Department has just released AYP information, I wanted to make sure that y’all are aware of what the NAEP test is and its significance. NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) is a standardized test that is given to random schools across the country. Subtests are given on a variety of subjects including reading, writing, and math, among others. You know how we in South Carolina are constantly getting slammed about our lousy test scores, we have too many kids failing PACT and HSAP, blah, blah, blah? Here’s the thing that most people don’t get: South Carolina has some of the highest standards in the country and our definition of what basic, proficient, and advanced on our state tests are higher than what other states set for their tests. So, when our students take the NAEP tests, the ones who scored proficient and advanced on our state tests score about the same on the NAEP test. MANY other states have an inflated sense of what is proficient and advanced performance. Their students may score proficient or advanced on the state test, but when they take NAEP, they’re bombing out and scoring much lower…their students are really no different their ours; they just have an easier grading scale, so to speak, on their state tests.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: The Rest of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4

2008-09-09T09:58:00.004-04:00

(Page 35) “Always err on the side of substance, not fluff.”
I love projects. I mean actually doing them myself, making something. I did a fabulous job last year on Ava’s “All About Me” project for her pre-school class. I’ll even go out on a limb and say it was the best one in the class. (Okay, that’s not really going out on a limb—some of the projects didn’t show the effort of any 3-D effects at all…they were just simply colored with Crayolas.) So what did I learn by doing, I mean helping, Ava with that project? (Other than cute cloth at a fabric store is really expensive.) Not a whole lot. While I do think the project is valid for pre-schoolers to do, when we assign projects in our class we have to ask ourselves, “What is the student going to learn from this?” or “How will this further the student’s learning?” I’ve seen some neat projects in my time but have wondered what the student learned in the process. Just because students are making some nifty project doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily learned anything. Don’t think I’m not guilty—I’ve certainly assigned pointless projects in my time. I think it’s Maya Angelou whom Oprah gives credit for saying, “I did then what I knew then. When I knew better, I did better.”

On another note, I like how Wormelli goes into detail about rubrics and how to design them (pages 44-48). After reading it, I definitely realized that the HSAP rubric is analytic—hence the reason why students can get different scores when different people score the responses. I also like how he suggested not to have five levels on the rubric because students tend to automatically think of the A-F scale. I had never thought about that, but it does make perfect sense. I think our clapping engagement in our first class reiterated the importance of giving the rubric to the students before they actually start the assignment.

Fair Isn't Always Equal: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 through Page 32

2008-09-02T14:14:00.001-04:00

(Page 13) “According to Nolen and Taylor, ‘…there are two ways to obtain sufficient evidence of mastery: 1) multiple assignments, and 2) tracking the progress of a few important works over time.’”

While it certainly is a whole lot easier, is it really fair to use one assessment to determine a student’s knowledge of material? Y’all know I’m not a big fan of EOC’s to begin with, but when I think about those exams and their high stakes, I always reflect back to a crew I had taking the Math Tech II EOC. I’ll protect the innocent (or is that guilty?) and spare names, but I had Student A who was failing MT2 out the wazoo and didn’t have a clue what was going on. (He shouldn’t have gotten credit for MT1, but that’s another story.) Though he failed the class overall, he ended up passing the EOC. Then I had Student B who was a pretty good MT2 student. The afternoon before he took the EOC, one of his good friends died in a car accident, so he wasn’t very focused on the exam and ended up failing it. Though he passed the class, the required exam did impact his final grade. Do you think it was fair that that test counted for 20% of each student’s final grade?

While having multiple assignments may add a little more to our plate, it definitely gives a better picture of what the student does or does not know. I think back to an undergraduate class I took at USC where we were supposed to read a novel each week and discuss it in class. Our grade in the class, however, was based solely on our written responses to only two of the books; one counted as the mid-term and the other as the final. Guess how many books I read for the class? If said two, you win the prize. Looking at my transcript you would see that I had a B in African-American literature and would probably think I’m pretty well-versed on such novels; if the professor had assessed me on multiple assignments, she would have quickly found out I neither read nor knew squat!

How many of know of great teachers who had a really tough time passing the Praxis or NTE (for us old-timers) to become certified? Or know of some not-so-great teachers who breezed through the test? Even though the ADEPT process seems quite daunting to those of us who did not have to go though it, I think the idea of it is much better at assessing new teachers than the old APT checklist. (Did I get my humor point in this post?!? )

Okay, so I think I’ve made my case for the support of multiple assignments. What are your thoughts on the topic and/or other parts of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3?

Final Thoughts

2008-04-29T08:15:00.000-04:00

I am so glad each of you decided to join this year’s SCRI study group. It has been a great experience working with each of you this year; I have loved facilitating our classes and sharing in professional discussions. I just wish I could have been on campus more often so I could work with y’all more in your classrooms. In the famous words of Gamecock fans, there’s always next year!

As you reflect on the year, consider the following questions...

What has been the most valuable part of this course for you? Is there something in particular you learned that has been helpful in your teaching? Has your approach to teaching text changed at all? Have your views on reading and writing changed at all? Any other thoughts you have?

Subjects Matter: Pages 124-143; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 8

2008-03-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

Ahhhh…after reading strategies. I think this is the area we’re most familiar with when it comes to before, during, and after reading strategies. Of course for some folks (not any of us, of course!) the after reading is often limited to quizzes and tests. But what about the kids who can understand but struggles with the traditional tests???

Daniels and Beers give us a plethora of ideas to check for understanding as alternatives. We’ve seen some of these strategies before and some are new. And, as usual, Beers goes into much greater detail in describing the strategies. We’re all now familiar with exit slips in our study group, but has anyone tried using them in class to see how they’ll work with your students? Not only do exit slips give the students time to reflect, but it can help you become aware of problems the students are having with the work and what you may need to go back and reteach. Or, it may just confirm that you did a great job at executing a lesson!

So were y’all able to try to incorporate some of these after-reading strategies in your classrooms? Do tell!

Subjects Matter: Chapter 8; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 14

2008-03-07T12:00:00.001-05:00

Subjects Matter

(Page 184) “…to grow the community of lifelong learners around our schools, part of every school day must be devoted to independent reading. Period.”

I think we’ve established in class the importance of having students read every day at school, and some of y’all are having your students read even on non-SSR days. While all classes are supposed to be participating in SSR on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, I have heard through the grapevine that there are a few teachers who are not doing it. What do you think it will take to convince the faculty who are not a part of this study group daily reading really will improve student learning and make students more successful in all of their classes?
For those of you who do SSR in your classes outside of the school-wide variety: What do you do while the students are reading? In this chapter the authors suggest having conferences with students about their reading, but I always had difficulty keeping students focused on their own reading if I wasn’t doing the same. I found my students to be most engrossed in their books if I was reading along with them. This also gave me the time to read lots of YA literature and be able to make recommendations. Has anyone tried the conference thing with success?

When Kids Can’t Read
I love how Beers gives all of the features struggling readers like to find in books. Perhaps if my teachers had known this when I was in high school, I would have read some books. There always seemed like there were a million words on a page of those classics and there was practically no margin! I think students have been given so many books that carry no interest for them for so long that they tend to lump all books into one category: boring. The world of YA lit has exploded over the last several years and the choices are endless. I’m amazed at how much the section has grown at Barnes and Noble; it has doubled in size over the past few years. I think we also need to remember that just because a kid (or adult) doesn’t read a book doesn’t mean he’s not a reader. There are so many other types of material out there. How many of us know people who never pick up a book but read the newspaper every day religiously? How many of us read magazines? It’s important to recognize different types of reading. Does it really matter if a kid doesn’t read a novel if he reads tons of other informational text?

Why Teachers Must Become Change Agents

2008-02-21T13:10:00.001-05:00

(Page 3) “Mastery involves strong initial teacher education and career-long staff development…There is a ceiling effect to how much we can learn if we keep it to ourselves.”

To me, so much of this article supported Airport’s mission in becoming a professional learning community. As educators, we’ve got to be able to admit that there’s always room for improvement, and we need to continue to learn new things (kudos to all of y’all for already doing so by taking this course!) and work together. Think about how much we’ve learned from each other in this class by having the opportunity to share our successes, concerns, and strategy spotlights. And how much have we accomplished by having time to work with our colleagues during delayed start? I don’t think there ever comes a point to where we don’t need to take another class because we already know it all. How would we feel if our physicians took this stance? Would we want to go to a doctor who was doing things the same way he did 15 or 20 years ago? What if he didn’t use any of the latest practices in his work? We would think such a doctor was outdated and couldn’t possibly serve us appropriately. When my husband and I were having all sorts of medical issues with Ava and she didn’t seem to follow the textbook on a diagnosis, I was thrilled when my pediatrician (who is absolutely wonderful) told me that he spoke with a few of his colleagues about her case to try to see if there was anything he was missing. By using that same method in education, we can become even better teachers and take our students to the next level.

Winter Literacy Conference

2008-02-12T09:35:00.000-05:00

I hate I couldn’t be there with you all, but I hope you had a good time at the Winter Literacy Conference. Generally speaking, if you can take away just one thing from a conference to use in your classroom, it was worth your while. Obviously, everyone couldn’t attend all sessions, so with this post, share something you learned in one of the sessions you attended. That way others may be able to pick up something cool to use in their classrooms from a session they weren't able to get to. This post will serve as your exit slip for the conference since you didn’t have to put your name on the one you completed there.

When Kids Can’t Read: Pages 127-137; Subjects Matter: Pages 114-122

2008-02-08T15:24:00.000-05:00

For me, the during reading concept often seemed to be the trickiest of the before, during, and after reading options. With before reading, you’re setting up the reading and providing the background information needed to make sense of the text. After reading, you’re checking for what they understood. So what’s up with this during reading stuff? If you stop and have students do something while they’re reading, wouldn’t that technically be considered an after reading activity since they had to stop reading? It all eventually made sense to me…with during reading process, we’re responsible for teaching the students HOW to read the text. On page 137 Beers writes, “Students often don’t know how to do all this thinking. For too long we’ve told them to ‘think carefully’ about what they’ve read without showing them how to do that thinking.” When using during reading strategies, it’s more of a formative assessment, so we can see where student thinking breaks down. If students aren’t using good reading strategies, they’re going to have difficulty understanding what they’ve read. The problem is that many students don’t know what they should be doing as they read, so it’s our responsibility to show them. And of course this goes back to why all content area teachers are teachers of reading—most English teachers would not be very proficient at explaining what thoughts should be going through one’s mind when reading a lab report or a word problem, just as the math or science teacher would probably struggle to analyze a poem or piece of prose.

So…questions, questions, questions. Which of the during reading strategies from Beers and/or Daniels did you try? What material were you using as your anchor text? How did your students do with it? Do you think it was helpful? What would you do differently next time?

What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read A Lot

2007-11-25T14:59:00.000-05:00

(Page 35) “…volume (of reading) is linked to attaining the higher order literacy proficiencies.”
(Page 54) “…one of the greatest differences between college and high school was the sheer volume of reading and writing that was expected in college compared to what had been required in high school.”

I realize the voice of this chapter isn’t nearly as enjoyable as the other texts we have been reading, but I felt the information Allington provides is important for us all to know. I think this chapter would help anyone who doubts our school-wide SSR to understand the importance of the program. Many of our lower-income students have so many responsibilities outside of school that they don’t have time to read; I know I’ve taught those who have to work to help pay bills around the house or have to tend to younger siblings once they go home. But those same students will read if they’re given the time to do so at school. I know I’m guilty of not reading as much since having children (other than picture books, of course) because there’s just so much I’ve got to get done once I get home. I definitely used to be one of those people who thought that teachers who incorporated SSR in their classes were just trying to keep the students busy so they didn’t have to get up and teach something. Boy, was I ever wrong! When implemented correctly, SSR is invaluable; I can’t imagine not having it as part of my regular class routine. My only fear (okay, not my only one, but one of them) about the school-wide SSR is that some teachers will cut SSR out of their classes because they feel like the students have already done it for the day. I think we can see from this chapter that we can’t have students read too much! I remember last year a student coming back from his first year at college (I won’t reveal any names, but this was not one of my resource students—he was an honors/AP student) who said he didn’t feel like he had been prepared to college. Perhaps if as a school we increased our reading and writing expectations, our students will feel more than prepared when going to college. I remember my senior year in high school I had to turn in an extensive essay every two weeks to my English teacher. He told us we would hate him for it at the time but would appreciate it when we went off to college. Boy, was he ever right! (Nicole—did you have this same teacher at Northeast??? He’s still there.) I was extremely appreciative that I had him for a teacher and felt bad for those who didn’t. If only all of my high school teachers had been more demanding of reading I would have done much better my freshman year of college. I was pretty overwhelmed by all I had to do. I’ll save you the abysmal details, but on the bright side I wasn’t put on probation. :-) Do y’all have any ideas as to how you think we could raise the reading and writing requirements for our students throughout the school?

Subjects Matter: Chapter 6; NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform

2007-11-08T22:11:00.000-05:00

Subjects Matter
(Page 146) “…as we look at our textbook, we need to be asking: what are the really big ideas here, where are the places to slow down, dig in, and “uncover” ideas, not just cover them?”
As I listened to Erin Gruwell (the teacher behind the book and movie Freedom Writers) during the keynote this morning, she reminded us that any teacher that really made a difference with students didn’t just teach the content, she taught the student. One of the keys in teaching the student is relating the material his/her life. If we can take the big ideas from our textbook and relate them to the students’ lives and how they impact them, then the concepts will stick. On the other hand, if we just plow through the book for the sake of getting through it, have we really taught the students anything they’ll remember after leaving our classrooms? Think back to your high school classes…what are the lessons you most remember? Were they the ones where you had to answer the questions at the end of the chapter? Or were they the ones were the teacher made them relevant to you?

NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform
(Page 8) “Traditionally teacher preparation programs include little (if any) course work in literacy, so it is possible for teachers to be identified as highly-qualified even though they were not prepared to address the challenges of adolescent literacy.”
I think we all had that one obligatory education course in reading in order to get our teaching certificates. Because I was in a K-12 special ed program, most of the content was geared toward elementary. There wasn’t much of a focus on the high school student, the kids I was planning to teach. I, in all of my ignorance, thought that if the student got to high school, he had to be able to say the words in front of him and if he could say the words, then he could understand what he was reading. After all, if I told him something, he could understand it, so what was the difference??? (Yes, you regular ed folks are reading correctly—most special ed programs only require that one reading course as well—there are no secrets that we were taught and you weren’t.) But the problem isn’t just with special education students. All of us are struggling readers at some point. Think about it: can you pick up ANY text and understand it? I can get through a young adult novel in a breeze, but I’m a struggling reader when it comes to tax documents and technical manuals. That’s because I’ve never had an expert in those fields teach me how to read the material. The skills I use in reading a novel are not the same ones I need when completing my tax return. Because we are the experts in our content areas, we are the experts in reading our particular contents. We just have to build our toolbox of strategies, so we know how to teach our students how to read our content.

Jim Trelease

2007-10-31T16:18:00.000-04:00

I hope you all enjoyed Jim Trelease as much as I did (even though he said I’m now classified as a stalker since it was my third time seeing him). One thing that really stood out for me that I haven’t heard Trelease mention before is that seven percent of incoming kindergarteners from poverty score the same on tests as students from high income families, and that is the exact same percentage of students from poverty who are graduating from college each year. I think we’ve all known that income level has a great impact on student achievement (hence the reason why a neighboring district always scores so well on standardized tests), but do you think there’s anything we can do to increase the number of poverty level students going on to college and graduating? What can we do at the high school level to promote lower income families to become more literate? For this post share any ideas you have to answer that question as well as one thing that you learned from Trelease or something that you found exceptionally interesting.

As a side note, if you look under the links on this blog page, you’ll find one to Jim Trelease’s website. He basically has his entire Read Aloud Handbook posted on it.

Subjects Matter: Chapters Three and Nine

2007-10-16T15:42:00.000-04:00

Chapter Three
(Page 40) “School textbooks belong in the same category with encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses…textbooks are designed to inventory huge amounts of information that can be looked up when needed.”
Y’know, when I read these sort of statements, it just makes me want to knock myself upside the head and say, “Duh!” This really is such a common sense thought, but having gone through school the “traditional” way, I never thought about it because the textbook was the curriculum. How much better prepared would our students be if we relied on the textbook very little and used an abundance of other resources, so students could discover different way to find information since they won’t be given textbooks at different points in life? (They certainly didn’t give me a baby textbook after giving birth when I left the hospital a few weeks ago. That would have been helpful, but I’m having to rely on other sources to get information.) When I first started teaching in a learning disabled resource class, I was very frustrated because there was no textbook for me to use, so I had to go out and find things on my own to use to teach the students. But it certainly ended up helping me in the long run because I was able to pull a lot of different resources for class. Of course in hindsight, some of things I used weren’t so great, but some of the things were.

Chapter Nine
(Page 202) “Book Clubs help…differentiate instruction in (the) classroom…by using temporary kid-driven forms of grouping and re-grouping.”

Ah, the magic word: differentiate. Book Clubs really are an easy way to achieve differentiation in your classroom. The key is that the students get to choose what they want to read, so they can’t complain about it too much! It’s generally a bit easier to get kids to do things when they’ve had some say in it. Even though the students are reading different texts, you’re still able to cover the same concept and all of the students are able to get something from it, not just those who always do their work. If you’ve never used book clubs in your classroom before, I think you’re going to enjoy experiencing one for yourself and seeing how they operate.

Devising the groups for book clubs can get a little tricky. You want to give everyone his or her first choice, but this is rarely possible. In dividing y’all into groups, I wasn’t able to give everyone his or her top pick, but everyone did get either their first or second choice. During our next class, y’all will get together with your group and decide what method you want to use lead your book club discussion. Different methods are mentioned on page 207 of this chapter and we’ll discuss them in class. Here are your groups and the book you will be reading:

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things: Ruth Anne, Cheryl, Karen, Anna

The First Part Last (Group One): Nicole, Bill, Stefanie

The First Part Last (Group Two): Lisa, Rachel, Amanda, Deborah

Now don't be one of "those" students who goes and gets the book and finishes it before our next class! Besides, you'll end up having to go back to reread anyway, because you won't know which method of response your group will use.

Subjects Matter: Chapter Two; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter Three

2007-10-04T10:58:00.000-04:00

Subjects Matter
(Page 32) “In short: understanding what we do now, we will teach reading, not just assign it…”
I love how Daniels and Zemelman use all of the different reading examples in this chapter to show us what a difference a little background information makes when reading text. I think one of the things we run into as teachers is that because reading something related to our content comes pretty easily to us, we don’t realize how daunting it can be for our students. I would be interested to know if our social studies and science teachers were able to understand the sample passages with their first readings…I know I was clueless when it came to reading these excerpts. It’s so easy to think that it’s the English teacher’s job to teach student to read, but they have their own content to cover: language and literature. There’s no way they could possibly teach how to read everything—lab reports, maps, primary documents from different disciplines, manuals, etc. Besides the fact that they don’t have the time to do that, they’re not experts in all of the subject areas, so they’re not the best resources in teaching kids how to think like scientists, historians, car mechanics, etc. I think Daniels and Zemelman are showing us that while reading is very complex, there are some not-so-difficult things we can do to make text much more understandable for students.

When Kids Can’t Read
(Page 36) “…we can’t fix the reading problem by buying a particular program; instead, as teachers, we must learn how to teach students to comprehend texts.”

There have been times when people have asked me what program they can use to help their students become better readers. It certainly would make things easy if there was a magic program that we could administer to all of our students to make them great readers, but that just isn’t going to happen! If that were the case, everyone wouldn’t be in a tizzy about making sure all students are proficient by 2013 per the NCLB mandate. The key is that teachers need to be knowledgeable about best practices in teaching students how to read and write. Once a teacher has a toolbox of resources, they can decide which one will work best with certain students and topics. Not every strategy will work with every student—I think we’ve seen that in our class; we all haven’t necessarily liked the same strategies. One of the key words Beers uses in this quote is “how.” So often students are just told to read something but they’re never told HOW to read it. Or, they’re given a practice HSAP or SAT test and told to do it and given their scores, but they’re not told HOW to solve the problems. It would sort of be like giving me a test for medical school. I could take it 50 times and get my scores back (failing miserably each time, no doubt), but until someone explains to me HOW to solve the problems, I won’t do any better. There’s nothing that can replace the teacher. A program may have some great features, but it won’t know the student like the teacher does and can’t make judgment calls based on a student’s ability.

Subjects Matter: Chapter 7; When Kids Can't Read: Pages 258-269

2007-09-16T23:28:00.000-04:00

Subjects Matter
(Page 167) “We need to make the classroom a community, a place where students feel safe to take the risks involved in learning where they see it connected with their lives, and where they help and learn from one another instead of working as isolated individuals.”
As I reflect back on my freshman year of college, I realize just how important community is. As I sat in class with 150-200 people (and 500 others in geology) in my freshman-level-everyone-has-to-take-them courses, I just went through the motions. I showed up to class and took notes, but I really didn’t feel like I belonged there. The fact that I lived at home instead of on campus (the deal being with my parents that I could stay home and they would pay for it, or I could go off somewhere and pay for it myself) made me feel like I belonged even less. While in high school I made all A’s and B’s, that was definitely not the case my first year in college. I know my less than desirable grades were a direct result of not knowing anyone in class and not feeling like I was a part of anything when I was sitting there. In my upper-level courses where the classes were much smaller and the students actually communicated with each other about course material, I performed much better…because I felt like I could take risks (I would have NEVER asked a question in front of 100+ people in fear of the question sounding stupid) and I learned not only from the instructor but my classmates as well.

When Kids Can’t Read
(Page 260) “And students won’t believe us unless we create opportunities for success…social and emotional confidence almost always improves as cognitive confidence improves.”
Boy, did I ever get a reminder dose of how it feels to be a struggling reader/learner this summer! I participated in an alternative assessment workshop in June for special education where our job was to set the cut-off scores for SC-Alt, the alternative state test for students with disabilities. While I taught special education—LD resource—while I was in the classroom, I participated in the workshop because of my English certification and knowledge of ELA standards. I had never given a true alternate test for special education (my students always had to take HSAP and EOC just like everyone else; they could receive accommodations, but they weren’t completely different types of test…with SC-Alt, we’re talking about tests that have to be administered one-on-one). I was one of many educators there to be able to help with the interpretation of ELA standards. The man leading the workshop apparently did not get the fact that those of us who had never given alternate test were completely confused about how the test was administered and it truly seemed to make no sense—he told us the questions become progressively more difficult though the test, but I found the exact same questions on pages 24 and 96. What?!? My frustration level was rising and I just wanted to leave. None of it was making any sense to me. Had I not committed to being there for three days, I would not have returned. I must confess my attitude was not very pleasant. There was a very nice special ed teacher at my table who had given the test, and she helped me understand it a little better, though I was still a bit confused. When I sat through this workshop and became increasingly frustrated, I kept thinking this is how some of our kids feel in our classrooms every day! How in the world do they stay motivated to even come to school? I couldn't handle it fo one day. How do they do it day in and day out? No wonder some of them drop out when they’re 17 if no one takes the time to get to know them and do everything they can to help them understand the material!

As you reflect on these two chapters, share some of things you do to build community in your classroom. It may be something that is mentioned in the text we read or it may be something completely different. What kind of results have you seen with these practices? If you’re new to the teaching field and are still working on building community in your classroom, what kinds of things are you trying (or what would you like to try based upon what we read in our texts)?

Welcome!

2007-08-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our SCRI Study Group blog! I had a great time in our class on Monday and am looking forward to working with you the rest of the year.

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