Airport High School

Content Area Writing: Chapter 10

2008-04-29T07:37:00.000-05:00

(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.”

Was anyone else given 20 vocabulary words every week in high school with the multiple choice test on Fridays to make sure you “learned” them? In the hundreds of words I was supposed to learn, I remember one: deluge. Or how many of us loved having the multiple choice and/or matching tests in classes so we could have a shot at getting the right answer so the teacher would at least think we knew something? The fact of the matter is we didn’t get to show any of our learning with those tests. (Hence the problem with Accelerated Reader tests…I would probably fail the tests on some of my favorite books, though I could write intelligently about them if given the opportunity.) Of course, having students write more on tests means they take longer to grade. And we have to grade them ourselves—there isn’t one right answer to where we could get an aide to grade them for us. But if they trade off is that we discover that student actually know something (or don’t know!), don’t you think it’s worth it? Of course, there is the whole issue that students have to take standardized multiple choice tests—EOC, HSAP, SAT, etc.—so they need have some practice with those as well. Maybe a combination approach is best? But if we think about it, in the “real world,” when do we ever take a multiple choice test? The only one I can think we ever take is for a driver’s permit. In the long run, is it better for student to bubble a correct answer or write intelligently on a particular topic?

Content Area Writing: Chapters 7 and 9

2008-04-01T07:30:00.001-05:00

So many projects, so little time. Seriously, it’s obviously not a good idea for a teacher to attempt every one of these projects in a single course. Can you imagine the backlash from students if someone tried that??? I did think there were several great ideas for culmination assignments in these two chapters—ones that do a great job of getting students to write and show their knowledge in the process. Some are more time consuming and difficult (hence they came under the chapter entitled “More Ambitious Public Writing Projects”) but I think those could possibly be modified to a smaller scale.

I asked y’all to read over the different projects and either actually try out one with your students or choose one you think could work well with a class if you’re not a point to where such an assignment would work well right now. Last year in class we talked about the multi-genre paper. I know Christy has used that one with her students. Has anyone else tried it? How did it go? The problem I had when I did it with my students was that I was out on maternity leave, so they didn’t have a ton of guidance on exactly how to do it. They seemed to enjoy the project, but several of them put it all in a Power Point, which wasn’t exactly what needed to be done. It would have been helped to have some examples for the students to see. I’m thinking about getting that Melinda Putz book mentioned since it comes with a DVD showing examples, and maybe I could get some more ideas for the project as well. So…which of these projects do you think would lend itself well to instruction in your class? If you’ve tried using it, how did it go? If it’s something you’re planning on using, what’s your plan for that?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 7

2008-03-21T07:09:00.002-05:00

(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.”

First of all…165 students? Yikes!!! Can you imagine reading that many papers? It makes the Freshman Academy load sound not so bad! Gallagher has so much common sense. Making every student an exceptional writer would be an impossible task, but making every student improve is definitely attainable. This idea supports why we need to do initial assessments with our students. Writing is one of those tricky things to test, so if we don’t have a sample from the beginning, it is difficult to see what sort of gains are made throughout the year (or semester). I like the idea of taking students up a notch (from weak to average, average to strong, or strong to special). Gallagher’s method of conducting the mini-lesson for what students are struggling with—and doing it in three minutes or less—seems very doable to me. I think it definitely makes learning much more meaningful to the students because what is being taught obviously applies to them. Also, the teacher is more likely to have the students’ attention in a small group setting instead of having them getting lost in whole class instruction. I don’t know about your experience, but I’ve also found that students are more likely to ask questions with just a few others around as opposed to an entire room of students. I’m actually the same way myself. I hate asking questions in front of a large group of people unless I absolutely know it will apply to many.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Six

2008-03-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

(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.”

So often kids don’t realize how much they will need to write once they get out into the “real world.” I suppose, perhaps, a person could get by without doing a whole lot of writing, but they could end up with many more advantages with being able to write well. I can’t begin to tell you how many free dinners my sister has received because of complaint letters she’s written to restaurants. One time a bag of mints were 25 cents more at one Wal-Mart than another but the cashier said they didn’t price match Wal-Mart stores. My sister then took to her pen and ended up with at $25 gift card to Wal-Mart…over a quarter! Maybe a lesson in how to write a letter of complaint would seem worthwhile to students because they could possibly “get something” out of it. There are just so many instances of when being able to write well can be beneficial. My goodness, just in the last month I’ve had to write a letter of appeal to the insurance company and a letter to the state benefits office to convince them that a health power of attorney was good enough to sign some disability retirement documents for Mike. If I had no writing skills, I don’t know that things would have swung in my favor. I know we have to get through the HSAP writing with kids (and the SAT writing goes against good writing habits as well) so that kids can graduate, but what service are we doing students if we don’t do more than teach them how to write for a test?

I’ll tell ya, the more I read of Kelly Gallagher, the more I want to just to go out and have dinner with him to talk shop. I think I’ll add him to the list of people I want teaching at my dream charter school.

Winter Literacy Conference

2008-02-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

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. 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.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Five

2008-02-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

(Page 116) Gallagher quotes Laura Robb, “We have a nation of students who can’t write very well. We will not have a nation of students who can write well until they are allowed to write about the things they care about.”

I love this quote because so often as teachers we’re telling kids what to write instead of allowing them to have any input. When I was still in the classroom, I had my students keep a daily journal where they could write about whatever was on their minds, and I would write them back every day. I rarely had difficulty getting students to complete this assignment because they were allowed to choose the topic. (I did always have an “If” question on the board in case they needed something to jumpstart their thinking.) I know some of you do this as well and have had success with it. I was working with a student last spring who didn’t consider himself a reader or writer…he completely discounted the auto magazines he read and the journal he kept in his resource class. He equated writing with the “five paragraph essay.” He actually used those words…ugh. He thought that “real” reading and writing involved things he didn’t enjoy doing. As teachers, we’ve got to make sure that students see the value in reading and writing that they’re currently doing and are good at…not just the scholarly type of stuff. It’s not that we don’t want them to be able to read and write at a higher level, but we’ve got to build some confidence in them first so we can take them to there.

This chapter is chock-full of ideas for creating choice in writing. In retrospect, I probably should have asked y’all to try out one of Gallagher’s ideas and share how it went. Instead, write about which of Gallagher’s writing assignments you like best and how you think you could adapt it for your classroom. Or…share another idea you have for creating choice in writing, so we’ll have something else to add to our toolbox.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Four; Content Area Writing: Chapter Six

2007-11-26T08:32:00.000-05:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 74) “Voluminous reading alone does not make the writer, but those students who are readers come to the writing task with a marked advantage.”
I love the basketball metaphor Gallagher uses to support this thought to remind us that we have to provide explicit writing instruction for our students. Even when I was a teenager I was able to make the connection that people who read a lot write well, though no one ever told me this. I based my scientific analysis on one subject—my sister who was a voracious reader (it amazed me she could read an entire book in two hours) and wrote very well…in fact she and her friends wrote stories just for fun. (Ironically, she was the less scholarly of the two of us, though she has written many a complaint letter and received free meals because of them. Even today she often writes letters to editor, but I digress…) It is interesting that some people aren’t able to transfer all of that reading into writing. I can think of a student I taught who was an avid reader—always had a book in her hand—but her writing left much to be desired. I know of an adult who reads all the time but when he has to put something in writing, he needs someone to edit it for him. I think the point Gallagher makes, though, is that these type of readers-not-so-great-writers will learn more easily when given specific writing instruction because they have so many examples to pull from.

Content Area Writing
(Page 122) “But if they believe (writing’s) main purpose is just to display what they’ve memorized, or worse, to call them out on things they didn’t get, they’ll always play it safe, take few chances, and stick with what they already know.”
This goes along with what we talked about with Britton’s continuum—that when Britton did his research, he found that the majority of students were doing transactional writing, which mainly included taking tests and spitting out the “right” answer to teachers. What are students really learning if they’re just regurgitating what the teacher said? Students (and we) can learn so much more if we widen our criteria and give options for writing. Daniels et al seem to reiterate what we’ve read with Gallagher—model, model, model! I like how this chapter breaks down how content teachers can support the writing process in their classrooms. The whole idea of teaching writing as a process can be scary if you’re not an English teacher (and maybe even to some English teachers), but we’re given practical ways to accomplish the task in this chapter. I like how some of the strategies we’ve explored before for the purpose of reading were twisted a bit to cater to developing writing. There’s definitely a lot covered in this chapter; it’s one to bookmark and refer to in the future.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Three; Content Area Writing: Chapter Five

2007-11-13T06:32:00.000-05:00

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 48) “They don’t need a teacher who assigns writing; they need a teacher who demonstrates what good writers do.”
How many times have we said about a student, “That kid can’t write”? Although we don’t have a definitive answer, what are the odds that same kid was repeatedly taught HOW to write? Just as with reading, we often expect students coming to high school knowing how to write—that’s something that’s taught in elementary school. Or, if it does need to be taught at high school, it’s the English teacher’s job. Just as the English teacher can’t possibly teach every kind of reading, she/he can’t teach every kind of writing. I surely don’t know the first thing about how to write a lab report. The thing is writing isn’t easy and our own work isn’t always pretty, so it makes us nervous to share our own with students—they might think it’s hard for us. But that’s all the more reason to share! Let the kids see that we—college graduates—struggle with writing at times ourselves and show them what we do to get a finished product. Students often think good writers (and especially professional writers) don’t have any difficulty, and a final draft is instantly produced. I attended a panel discussion made up of four writers of different genres while I was at the WIN conference last week, and they were asked how many revisions they make to their work. While they said it varies, the lowest number of revisions by one of the professional writers was 2-3 while the highest was 10-11. How much more approachable does a person become when you discover he or she has difficulty doing something? I find myself walking on eggshells a bit when I think someone is an expert. But if I could have that expert break down the process and show me that things don’t come so easily to him, I can learn so much more from him and am much more willing to show my flaws. Last year we discovered how important it is to model our reading (a la the think aloud); I think we’re discovering it’s just as important to do the same practice with our writing.

Content Area Writing
(Page 118) “The lesson here, as we think about content-area writing, is that kids need examples, models, templates, samples of what good writing in the field looks like.”
If we rely on the English teachers to teach all writing, we’ll end up with students who only know how to respond to literature or the HSAP rubric. Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. We have to give students plenty of examples of good writing in our content so that they have a variety of models. The writing requirements on SAT and AP are tied more to content, so we all need to make sure students are learning how to write like historians or scientists.

I assigned this chapter as introduction for producing public writing. I realize there aren’t a ton of different ideas to respond to within this chapter, but I think it gives a good overview of writing in the classroom.

Jim Trelease

2007-10-31T15:23:00.000-05:00

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.

Content Area Writing: Chapter Three

2007-10-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

There’s not really a quote for me to start off with from this chapter, since the chapter is made up of seven different quick writes that can be implemented in the classroom. As with Subjects Matter, I do like how Daniels and his colleagues set up the explanation of each strategy by giving a general description of it, when it can be used, how to use it, and telling the reader just what can go wrong. I think just about any student could easily use these strategies. I’m betting even those students who tend not to be visual (read: Claire and Pam) could successfully complete the one that seems to be more visually based (Drawing and Illustrating). Hmmm…perhaps that shall be an experiment for our next study group meeting! J

I’ve asked each of you to try one of these strategies with a class and to share with the rest of us how it went. I will share my comments about the Exit Slips I have y’all complete at the end of each class. The Exit Slip provides me some good feedback on the class. It’s always interesting to see that different parts of class and strategies strike a cord with different teachers. Sometimes one teacher will love a strategy and can’t wait to use it with his/her class while another didn’t like it at all. That just goes to show why we have to have a toolbox of strategies to use with kids because not all strategies will work well with all students. The Exit Slips are also helpful in letting me know when I haven’t done such a hot job of presenting something. (Can we say Britton’s Continuum?) By having y’all complete the Exit Slip, I realized that I needed to go back and revisit the Continuum (on more that one occasion!) so that y’all could have a better understanding of it. Had y’all not written about your confusion, I would have just gone on with other topics during the year, and there really would have been mass confusion when you had to turn in your portfolios at the end of the year that include writing samples from each end of the spectrum! So, please keep up the honest feedback…it helps me tremendously!

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

2007-10-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

Content Area Writing
(Page 24) “For now we’ll just tell you flatly: the intensive correction of student papers does not work; it has never worked and it never will work. Kids’ writing does not improve when teachers cover their papers with corrections, no matter how scrupulous and generous that kind of feedback may seem.”
It does seem like we, as teachers, would have figured this out a long time ago. I am just as guilty as the next teacher of collecting my students’ share of final drafts, making corrections on them, and giving them back, expecting that the students would improve their writing based on my comments. But let’s flashback to our own high school (or possibly even college) days and think about papers we turned in to the teacher. Upon getting the paper back with lovely marks all over it, did you ever once decide to take their suggestions and revise the paper, so that you’d have a better final draft? Did you make note of the grammatical corrections and from that point on never make that mistake again? Of course not! If you were like me, you just read through the comments and stuck the paper in your notebook, never to be looked at again. This idea of waiting until the final draft to give students feedback does seem a bit off base when you think about it. Wouldn’t it more beneficial for students to get extensive feedback after the first (and/or second) draft, so they can actually improve their writing? This is a concept we’re going to explore even more in the weeks ahead. I know this chapter is on writing to learn, but I just wanted to touch on this idea of making endless comments on student work that the authors write about in the shaded section…I know y’all will have lots to say about the idea of writing to learn.

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 29) “What good is a curriculum that is a mile wide an inch deep?…Shouldn’t we concern ourselves a little less with getting students to recite facts and figures and concern ourselves more with helping them develop these cornerstone skills they will need to lead literate lives?”
Finally, a well-respected person puts this thought in writing! I think students are missing out on some great instructional opportunities because there’s so much material to cover that teachers feel like they don’t have time for some activities because they need to get to all of the standards. I think Gallagher brings up a really good point that reminds me of that “30 years from now no one will care what clothes you wore…” poster. We’ve got to make sure our students can read, write, and think, so they can be productive citizens in the world. One of the main things I remember Elin Keene (Mosaic of Thought) saying when I attended her best practices seminar was that kids who think well, test well. Maybe if we focus on teaching our kids to read, write and think, the test will just take care of itself!

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

2007-09-17T00:17:00.000-05:00

Both of these texts were just published this year, and I read over them this summer without highlighting, just to get a feel if they would be good options for our class. As I reread and highlighted them to compose my post for our blog, I realized that I did indeed make good choices for our class. I’m loving these books! I have so much highlighted in each of the chapters, but I’m going to narrow it down to just one thing for each, so you’ll have plenty to choose from to write about yourself!

Content Area Writing
(Page 3) “Teachers often say that kids hate writing. But maybe what they hate is the kind of writing we make them do.”
I really like how the authors note all the writing that kids do today that never used to occur—texting, instant messaging, e-mailing, blogging, MySpace, chatrooms, etc. We often do complain about students’ writing, but at least they are communicating and writing something! I think the problem we see as teachers is that kids convert their technology short-hand into formal writing and don’t necessarily see where there’s a problem with that. I believe one of the keys is going to be bridging their style of writing into our classrooms and then teaching them when certain types of writing are appropriate. How cool would it be for students to create a MySpace page for Abraham Lincoln or a character in a novel they read? Or what if they had to write out an IM conversation between Romeo and Juliet? We would certainly learn if the student knew the material! After creating “their” type of writing, they could then convert it into a more standardized form of writing as well to work on their "professional" writing skills.

Teaching Adolescent Writers
(Page 2) “A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth century England. (Wurman 1989).”
(Page 4) “The ability to write well, once a luxury, has become a necessity. Today, writing is foundational for success."’
The thing I love about Kelly Gallagher’s books is that they are always chock-full of statistics…and interesting ones at that! Because so much is technologically based now, our students do need to become more proficient writers to be successful. Yes, there is the “slang” writing they all use for recreation, but we also use technology for formal purposes as well. I know I prefer to be able to e-mail a company or another professional a question rather than call them about it. What does it say about the sender if they can’t send a coherent message? How many messages have we received over e-mail where we couldn’t believe the grammar used in it? (Even if we didn’t fall into the executive pay scale for our grammar skills!) The fact of the matter is that there is a time and place for different types of writing, just as there is a time and place for different types of talking. We’ve just got to make sure kids realize this, why it’s important, and how to do it!

The Reading/Writing Connection--Chapter One

2007-09-04T13:59:00.000-05:00

(Page 15) “Inexperienced readers and writers are just that—inexperienced, not incapable. It is the teacher’s responsibility to make visible what it is that experienced readers and writers do when they make meaning from or with texts…In addition, teachers need to introduce these cognitive strategies to students in meaningful contexts and provide enough sustained, guided practice that students can internalize these strategies and ultimately, perform complex reading and writing tasks competently and confidently on their own.”

Can we say model, model, model? I think writing tends be one of the hardest things to teach students because so often we don’t feel confident in our own writing, so we’re often hesitant to share pieces that we’ve written. But sharing our writing with students is going to be one of the best ways to show them what goes through our minds as we put our thoughts onto paper. Students tend to think that good writers just spit out their best work off the top of their heads—they have no idea the amount of revision a professional writer does to his or her work. It’s easy to blame (especially at the high school level) all the teachers students had at the elementary and middle schools for not teaching a student how to write well, but we have to ask ourselves: What are we doing to make the student a better writer? So, I think we have to meet them where they are and make as many improvements while we have them. Otherwise, we’re churning out graduates who are lacking a fundamental skill.

Final Thoughts

2007-04-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

I am so glad each of you decided to join Airport's first 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. Whether you realize it or not, you all have been pioneers by participating in this blog. We are the first SCRI study group to ever use the web to share our thinking!

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

2007-03-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

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 strategy. 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. Before even knowing she was going to read this section, Rita mentioned in class the other night the idea of having students complete an exit slip to have them reflect on the day and what they learned. 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

2007-03-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

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. So how do we convince teachers the value of this, that reading isn’t just a waste of time, and that kids really will read if you put something worthwhile in their hands? We’re exploring the possibility of implementing a school-wide SSR next year that is built into the school day. What do you think it will take to convince the faculty who are not a part of this study group that this 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: 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. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my husband read a book, but he reads 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; Subjects Matter: Chapter 7

2007-02-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

Why Teachers Must Become Change Agents
(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 issues with my daughter 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.

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 only as isolated individuals.”
Daniels and Zemelman stress the importance of building community and having a rapport with kids in order to increase student achievement. We talked about this with Beers’ book last week. The authors have given lots of different examples of how to accomplish this in our classrooms. Rather than just writing about what the authors have shared, I’d like for you to share one or two things you do with your students to build community, so we can learn from each other. It may be something that’s included in the chapter, or it may be something completely different that we haven’t read about. Tell us what you do and how you think it makes a difference in your classroom!

Freedom Writers

2007-02-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

Wow. Wow. Wow. What an AMAZING movie! I hope you all enjoyed Freedom Writers as much as I did. I think the movie goes hand-in-hand with what Beers wrote about in Chapter 13 on the importance of building community and setting high standards. I can’t imagine being an educator and not seeing the value of having a relationship with the students after seeing this movie. There were so many powerful scenes! One that really stood out to me was when Eva finished reading The Diary of Anne Frank and fussed about it to Ms. Gruwell then Jamal jumped in and gave his two cents. How many times do you think either of them ever discussed a book before? (Heck, how many times do you think either one of them ever read an entire book before?) They both clearly connected with the text and it had an impact on their lives. That is the power of reading. I think it goes along with Teri Lesesne’s thought of finding “the right book for the right kid at the right time.” Gruwell found the right book for these kids and made it relevant to their lives. If we examine Gruwell’s practice, we discover she didn’t just hand the kids the book and tell them to read it. She did a lot of frontloading to build that background knowledge so the students had some information about the topic as well as developed an interest in it. How do you suppose the students would have reacted to the book if they had not been to the Holocaust museum or learned anything about the Holocaust beforehand?

In case you haven't heard, Erin Gruwell is going to be at the WIN (Writing Improvement Network) conference November 7-9 this year.

When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 13

2007-01-25T10:37:00.000-05:00

(Page 260) “Though we can say (and should say), ‘You can do it!’ on a daily basis, the reality is that unless students believe us, they won’t do it, won’t even attempt to do it. And students won’t believe us unless we create opportunities for success.”
I whole-heartedly agree with Beers when she basically writes about building community with kids. We’re never going to get kids to reach their full potential if they don’t think we have a genuine concern for them. Having a rapport with students is essential for them to be successful in class. Think about it: which teachers in school did you work the hardest for? I suspect it’s the ones you thought cared about you. I really like that Beers explains that just because students feel valued in class doesn’t mean we have to lower our expectations. I think if we have an environment where students feel safe, that’s all the more reason to RAISE our expectations—they’re going to be more willing to work for us, so we have the opportunity taken them to new heights!

(Page 274) “We suddenly also understand why young adult literature, with characters like the readers, will appeal more readily to students than adult classics.”

Amen! Perhaps if my teachers in high school had given me some YA literature, I would have actually read a book instead of the Cliff’s Notes. (Not that Cliff’s Notes are available for YA lit—another advantage of using it!) I really enjoyed reading about the stages of literary appreciation. I was able to reflect on students I’ve taught in the past and think about the stage they were as they were reading. What really got me thinking was the fifth stage of reading, “often not ever seen, but usually not seen before the college years.” Under the implications section, Beers notes that students at the fifth stage gain enjoyment from literary devices. Perhaps this is why so many of our students struggle with figurative language and other lit devices while reading. While they’re able to identify them in isolation, I think they have a more difficult time with them in general reading. If they’re only on the second or third stage of reading, they may not really be able to identify these things with much ease. I guess we just have to ensure that they read LOTS so that they can get to all of the stages!

Winter Literacy Conference

2007-01-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful time at the Winter Literacy Conference! If you're able to leave a conference with at least one new thing you can turn around and use in your classroom, then it was worth it. Since we all went to different breakout sessions, take a few minutes to share something you learned that will be useful for your classroom. If there's something from the keynote speaker, Nancy Akhavan, that you found especially helpful, share how you will be able to use that information.

I attended the "Making Vocabulary Connections" session and discovered the book Les Trois Cochons by Sheila Herbert Collins that can be used to teach students how to use context clues to determine meaning. (It also shows how background knowledge is important in determining word meaning as well.) This book is a version of The Three Little Pigs with some French words tossed in every now and then. Students are able to use their background knowledge of the original story, look at the stems within the words, and use the rest of the sentence to determine meaning of the French words.

And kudos to Jamie and Christy on a great job with their book club session. If you missed their session, be sure to ask them about book clubs in their classrooms. They've been having great success with them!

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

2007-01-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

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?

Be thinking about these strategies and which one you’d like to use with your new book club. The role sheets we used last time were intended as a training ground of the types of things you should be thinking about as you read. I was going to choose the Post-It note strategy for us all to do with our next book club, but after further reflection, I think I’ll let y’all decide as individual groups which strategy you’d like to use. Be sure to bring your textbooks to class, so you can refer to them in your groups!

What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read a Lot

2006-11-21T14:13:00.000-05:00

(Page 36) “More recently we found the volume of reading students did during school to be one of the important differences between children’s experiences in more and less effective classrooms.”
I can’t imagine reading this chapter and not realizing the importance of having students read during school. I’m one who used to think that teachers who had students do independent reading in their classes were just wasting time because they didn’t want to teach, or the teacher had too much other stuff to do, so they had the kids read. (And I realize that is the reason some teachers do independent reading, but if done correctly, it is invaluable.) But the thing is if kids (especially the lower-level ones) don’t read at school, chances are they aren’t going to do it at home either. Some of them just rather do something else at home while others really are too busy to read. (How many of us know kids that work every night to help pay the bills at home? How about the kids who are pretty much in charge of taking care of their siblings?) Many of y’all know that’s one of the things that I miss most about being in the classroom—getting to read for 90 minutes every day with my students. I love to read, and I still have a hard time finding the time once I leave school. By giving students the time to read at school, they can learn the joy of reading while improving their skills simultaneously.

A handful of y’all attended Tim Rasinski’s seminar last week on “Effective Teaching of Reading: From Phonics to Fluency.” On the first page of his handout he had a list of factors that discriminate the highly effective schools and less effective schools in literacy achievement. This was an international study involving over 30 countries. From over fifty factors, numbers two and three on the list were amount of reading done at home and amount of reading done in school. (Number one was parent involvement.) How ‘bout that? It doesn’t matter where in the world you live—reading is the primary thing that will increase a person’s literary achievement. I wonder if that would work in sports? (Excuse the sarcasm.) Do you think if a person practices more they’ll actually improve their athletic skills? Did you know that Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school varsity team? But he went home and PRACTICED and he got better at basketball. (I put that in there just to aggravate you, Pam!) If we give students time to practice reading in school, they will get better at it.

NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform

2006-11-06T08:07:00.000-05:00

(Page 8) “…the academic achievement levels of students who are taught by good teachers increase at greater rates that the levels of those who are taught by other teachers…well-prepared teachers raise the achievement of all students, not just those who were already doing well.”
While I don’t necessarily agree with the No Child Left Behind definition of a highly qualified teacher, I do believe agree that it’s the teacher that makes the difference in student learning. Even though my daughter isn’t even close to being in school, I’m all concerned about how I’m going to make sure she has the best teachers once she does go. Sure, I’ll do my job at home, but I don’t know that that can make up for a poor teacher.

So what makes a good teacher a good teacher??? I have my thoughts, but I’d like to read yours first! In addition to the response you planned, please write a little more about what you think the qualities of a good teacher are.

(Page 8) “Without additional training, teachers at the secondary level remain largely unable to take up the task of enhancing adolescent literacy.”
I’m sure all of us took the one required reading course in college, but how many of us can say that that course prepared us for teaching students how to read our course content? Even as a special education teacher, I left school not really knowing how to teach students to read. For my ONE reading course for SpEd certification, it was a K-12 class, and the professor focused on reading at the elementary level because that is what she had taught. I can remember thinking, “If they can say the words, they can understand what they’re reading. How is that any different than listening to someone talk? And how can they get to high school if they can’t say the words?” Oh, my ignorance! It wasn’t until I started taking classes, going to workshops, and hearing the same thing over and over that I began to figure out how to teach my students how to read. I honestly used to think that teachers who did SSR in their classes just wanted to keep the students quiet and not have to do anything else. I can’t imagine teaching resource without SSR now. I thought I was doing a good job in the classroom because my students liked me and I was able to help them get through all of their classes and graduate. But were their skills really any better after they graduated than before? I wish I could get them all back and really teach them!

Subjects Matter: Pages 99-113; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 6

2006-10-12T07:02:00.000-05:00

(Beers, pages 73-74) “Dependent readers are dependent in part because of their passive reading. The challenge we face is to get them thinking about the selection and how they will read the selection before they begin the text.”
I tend to think of pre-reading strategies like the trailer to a movie. Do we ever plop down $7 to see a movie that we know absolutely nothing about? I know I’m too frugal for that! Even on the rare occasion that my husband wants to see one, I at least find out what it’s about before I go. I some sort of connection. The trailer is designed to get us interested in the movie and think about what might happen, so that we’ll want to see it. We aren’t shown the minute details or resolution of the film…just enough to pique our interest. That’s exactly what a pre-reading strategy is meant to do—get students interested and thinking about the text before they actually read it. If we don’t get our students involved in the text before they actually begin reading it, then how can we expect them to be remotely interested in the text itself? Yes, there are times that I’ll go see a movie just because who is in it (can anyone say Matthew McConaughey?) but that’s kin to liking a favorite author…how many of our struggling readers have a favorite author? Not many…which is why we have to get them interested in reading the text some other way! Using a pre-reading strategy is the first step into making students active readers! Once we get them started, we have to keep them going…we’ll talk about that on another thread!

Okay, the readings this time are chock full of pre-reading strategies. What would really be cool is if you try one of the strategies mentioned by Beers or Daniels/Zemelman with your students and write about the experience. That is, of course, if you’re a classroom teacher!

Subjects Matter: Chapter 3; When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 3

2006-10-02T07:20:00.001-05:00

Subjects Matter
(Page 40) “They (textbooks) are intentionally ‘content-overloaded’ with facts, dates, formulas and taxonomies. They introduce vocabulary and concepts at a blind rate. They are overly structured and highly orderly, packing information into labeled slots, as densely as possible.”
Amen! When we’re familiar with the content, the textbook doesn’t seem that difficult to read. But have you tried picking up a textbook lately from a content area that you’re not very familiar with? For the last two instructional moments I’ve done for the faculty, I’ve grabbed some textbooks from the bookroom so that that I could show how the strategy could be used in various contents. It was certainly no picnic! I had a very hard time reading some of them, and by most people’s definition, I’m a pretty good reader! There was vocabulary that probably would be considered basic to the content area, but I wasn’t completely sure what some of the words meant, so I had a difficult time making sense of what I was reading. Can you imagine what are students who aren’t such great readers go through when they’re assigned pages of the textbook to read???

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.”
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! Or, how about if we could just hand students a worksheet and they could do it?!? I think the operative word in Beers’ statement is how. Students can do the work if they understand how to do it. I just met with a middle school administrator the other day who wanted to know if I knew a reading series that one of his self-contained teachers could use with her class. I told him that there really isn’t anything effective where the teacher will just be able to give it to the students and be done with it, but what will work is putting some authentic literature in the students’ hands and have the teacher use best practices with it. Good teaching is hard work! If we want our students to become successful readers and writers, we’re going to have to look at the individual students to see what we need to work on. (Hmmmm…this sounds a little like differentiated instruction!)

Subjects Matter: Chapters 2 and 9

2006-09-19T08:05:00.001-05:00

Chapter Two
(Page 24) “As a mature reader, your mental strategies have become mainly automatic and unconscious.”
Although she wasn’t talking about reading (and we won’t get into what she was talking about!), I’ll borrow a line from Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: “I’m like a robot. I just do it.” So many of us are like robots when we read our content…it just seems to happen without much work. I think this is why it’s so hard for us to teach our students HOW to read. We are so familiar with our material that it’s hard to break down our thinking and what’s going on in our heads when we do read. But think about when you teach something you’ve never taught before. Is it as easy as teaching a book or concept you’ve taught before? How much better to do understand a text after you’ve taught it a couple of times? Or how easy do you think it would be to read a biology textbook? (That would be too scary for me!) We need to remember that even though we’re familiar with our material, our students are not, and we need to break down our thinking for them so that they can understand how to read text in our content. This will help not only in our class but other classes in the same content area as well as those dreaded standardized tests.

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. The key is that the students get to choose what they want to read, so they can’t complain about it too much! 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.

Something for y’all to think about with our class book clubs: Do you want to experience the book club as the students do where you each have a “role” when you come to class, or would you rather conduct it as an adult book club where everyone just shares their thoughts? Or do you want to do a little of both? Think about it! If you have strong convictions about one way or the other, you may want to post it on the blog to help sway your colleagues. We’ll make decisions in our next class!

SCRI Study Group

2006-08-29T12:10:00.000-05:00

Welcome to our SCRI study group! Please respond to this post so we'll know everyone is able to get on. Just click on the "comments" button in the bottom right hand corner and write something to let us know you're able to post. (Feel free to write any comments about our first class together!) If you have any difficulty getting on, just let me know and I'll come by to help you. I enjoyed our first class together...I think it's going to be a fantastic year!

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Chapter 9 and Final Thoughts

2006-05-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

(Page 121) “I think most of us became teachers because we love our content so much…We love this content so much, we’ve dedicated the better part of our lives teaching it to others. I don’t see how we can be teachers of this content without spending at least some of our time with students helping them learn how to read about it.”
I think this statement from Tovani pretty much sums up why, if we really love our content area, we need to teach kids to read in our classrooms. Tovani makes it clear that it is impossible for the English teacher to teach students how to read everything…content area teachers are the expert readers in their subject areas. I really enjoyed this book because it is easy to read and has so many practical strategies that are fairly easy to implement.

I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments on this blog. Thank you for your thoughtfulness in your responses. As your write your last post, please give me some feedback on how the book has impacted your classroom or approach to teaching as well as your thoughts on the blog itself. Is this something you’re interested in doing again? What did you like about it? How do you think it could be made better?

I hope this was a rewarding experience for you!

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Chapters 7 and 8

2006-05-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

(Page 92) “We (did) something called a fishbowl in front of the class…we would sit in front of the students, modeling what we wanted them to see, while they watched and then talked about what they saw.”
I loved how Tovani and her colleague acted as if they were in a group working together in front of the students. The students were easily able to pick out what were and were not good practices while working in a group. It was obvious to the students what was expected in group work after a demonstration and discussion of it. It took me a while as a teacher before I figured out just how important modeling is. There were times when I just told students to do the work but never showed them HOW to do the work. Once I figured out I really needed to model to them exactly what to do, their production greatly increased.

(Page 103) “The aim of assessment is primarily to educate and improve student performance, not merely audit it.”
So often we get caught up in the cycle of teaching the material then testing the students on it, but who does that help? (Other than helping us have something to put in the gradebook, of course.) Really, how often do we have to take tests in the day-to-day activities of being an adult? If we spent more time looking at where kids are performing and how we can get to them to the next level, they will be better served. I heard Ellin Keene (Mosaic of Thought) speak in January, and one thing she said that really resonated with me was “Kids who think well test well.” I think if we really concentrated on finding out where our kids are and teaching them how to think (more modeling!) then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about end of course tests and HSAP because they would be good thinkers and do well on those tests without us freaking out about them.

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Chapters 5 and 6

2006-04-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

(Page 56) “She decides to create curiosity by building some background knowledge for students and explains a few key terms…”
I think establishing background knowledge and creating interest are two of the most important things we can do to improve students’ reading. After all, if a student is interested in a topic, he or she is more willing to read about it. Hence the reason students are so interested in reading the driver’s manual. Do we really think they care about all of those technical rules? Heck, no! But they have an interest in it because they want their licenses. Many of my reading strategies focus on pre-reading because I feel like if we can get them hooked initially in the book/topic, then we can maintain the students’ interest throughout the book or unit of study.

(Page 84) “I once saw a poster in a middle school classroom that read, ‘Individually we are smart. Collectively, we are brilliant.’”
I love this! When I first read this, I thought of our blog. I think we all are smart people, but we’re able to learn so much more when we get together and share our thoughts. The same holds true for our students. When we have class discussions about what we’ve read, we’re able to get so many more perspectives. There are so many ways to have students do this…they can do it through written conversations (many of you are familiar with this strategy; if you’re not and are interested in learning more about it, just let me know!) or they can mark the text as Tovani describes then trade papers and respond to the comments. Students (and teachers!) get so much more from the text when they have the opportunity to collaborate on what they’ve read.

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Chapters 3 and 4

2006-03-22T08:45:00.000-05:00

(Page 25) “…if language arts and English teachers are the only ones teaching reading, students aren’t going to learn how to read different types of texts.”
I think as we all read this book, we’re beginning to realize that we read different texts in different ways, and it would be impossible for an English teacher to teach a student how to read all of the texts that are out there. How I read a YA novel is definitely not the same way I read the directions of how to put something together. Reading a word problem requires different skills than reading and interpreting a graph. It’s often forgotten that English teachers have their own content (language and literature), and they’re no more trained to teach reading than any other content area teacher. Every class requires some type of reading; as teachers we have to determine what students need to be able to read to be successful in our classes and how we are going to teach them to read that material.

(Page 40) “I also need to remember what it feels like to read something for the first time.”
We teach in our content areas because we enjoy the content itself; texts related to it are generally enjoyable for us and fairly easy to read. We just need to remind ourselves that our students don’t always have that same ease and can have difficulty when we they first read something. Last night I took a sewing class and completely felt like one of my struggling students. Actually, my first struggle came over the weekend when my mother tried to teach me how to thread and use her sewing machine. She told me to make sure I had the directions out and to just follow them. Sure, that’s easy…as long as you understand the parts of the machine and the vocabulary in the text. Bobbin? I thought that was something you did with apples at Halloween! My mother tried to walk me through it, but I was just so overwhelmed…I knew I had made a mistake signing up for the class. Mom would show me the directions in the book, show me how to do it on the machine then she’d let me try it myself. I was getting so frustrated because it was really difficult for me but so easy for my mom. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to do this again on Tuesday for my class. I told my mom I was slow and that they were going to have to have a remedial class for me. She assured me that after I do it a few times, it will be much easier and I’ll get the hang of it. Of course, I didn’t believe her.

When I got to class last night and it was time to thread my machine, I did what any other struggling student would do—I relied heavily on the teacher’s help. I actually had her do it and just watched…I didn’t want to look stupid in front of everyone else doing it myself. Since every machine is different, the instructor read the directions; but she put the thread on with such ease that it amazed me. As she was threading, I did remember parts of it, and thought my mother is right—if I keep on practicing, I think I will get better. And the same is true of our students reading our content. At first some things are going to be really hard for them; they’re going to want to give up and rely on us as teachers. We need to make sure that we give them the guidance (and time) they need to master the reading, so they can be successful when there’s no one around for assistance. Maybe in a few months I’ll be able to thread the sewing machine as quickly as my mother and the class instructor!

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Chapters 1 and 2

2006-03-03T16:23:00.001-05:00

Tovani makes some awesome points in the first two chapters. I’ll just choose a couple of quotes that really stuck out to me and reflect on them.

(Page 5) “One critical concept embraced by both researchers and literacy specialists is that learning to read doesn’t end in the elementary grades. Reading becomes more complex as students move into middle and high grades, and teachers need to help students understand difficult text.”
It’s so easy to think that since kids were taught the fundamentals of reading in elementary school, they should know how to read by the time they finish fourth grade. After that they just need to learn new vocabulary, right?!? Ugh! It amazes me that I used to think that by the time kids got to high school that as long as they could say the words they would understand what they were reading. It’s so much more complex than that. I should have known from my own experience with trying to read tax documents and car manuals that reading is not always easy…even as an adult. South Carolina has really raised the bar—our kids have to tackle some really tough text to get through our standards. There’s no way that one discipline can possibly teach how to read all the different types of text out there. May I be hokey for a minute?!? (Too bad if you said no!) With apologies to Hilary Clinton…”It takes an entire school to raise a reader.”

(Page 12) “It wasn’t their fault that they were making stupid connections. It was mine, because I hadn’t showed them how a meaningful connection could deepen their understanding of text.”
In response to this one, I’ll have to borrow a quote Allison Norwood, whom many of you know, said a couple of weeks ago: “An activity has no purpose. A strategy has a purpose.” Oftentimes we get caught up in having students do something but don’t stop to think if they’re actually learning from it. I think when Tovani started out with the sticky notes, it was just an activity…it gave the kids something different to do. But when she took it a step further and had them elaborate on it, it became a strategy. The students were then able to deepen their thinking. Maybe we should pause before our next assignment and ask ourselves, “Is this an activity or a strategy?”

Are We On?

2006-02-28T11:07:00.000-05:00

Please respond to this post, so we can make sure everyone is able to log on!