Does what I’ve read differ from the way I was taught?

                That’s a pretty good question.  I often find myself, asking the same thing.  Is how I was taught any different than how I am currently being taught to teach?  Personally, I’m a simple character.  I follow a philosophy that says, “Water doesn’t taste any different knowing it’s composed of hydrogen and oxygen. (Robert M. Moore)”  In my opinion, too much of this pin-pointed skill and strategy teaching weakens the teachers creativity in a similar fashion to the Knowledge is POWER!!! post from a few posts ago.  I assume that If teachers aren’t allowed some slack in the teaching department, they’ll lose what makes them memorable, genuine teachers.  That said, if all my beloved teachers were being told to practice specific methods of teaching and there was no freedom in the units back then, would I even have known?  I doubt it.  But I suppose I’m prattling on now.

                I don’t believe that this much emphasis was put on vocabulary when I was a pluckier, younger lad.  I remember have a group of 10 -21 words (depending on which grade I was in).    They were introduced on a Monday, we would be assigned some repetitive homework assignments each night, and then we would take a test on Friday.  I would normally fail and have to get my tests signed by a parent or guardian.  I specifically remember the “one” time that I got 100% on a spelling test, the teacher gave me two stickers.  A peer of mine was jealous and asked the teacher why I received two stickers.  She answered because I don’t normally do as well as I had done.  I didn’t appreciate being put on the spot like that, I hate stickers, and I’m a terrific speller.  That said, I believe what helped me the most was when a mentor (I think it was a teacher) told me a trick to memorizing how to spell right before the text.  I learned it well.  Then, I learned that if I practiced using large, sesquipedalian words in my writing assignments, I could essentially BS… ahem… I mean articulate my way into anyone’s favor.  That’s when I fell in love with vocabulary, rhetoric, and formal writing (At least until I realized how much more fun it is to write informally.  No one ever became famous for following the rules, you know?).  So yeah, I was taught to memorize words until I grew to love what I did well, memorize and use words…

                I know I keep going off topic here, but that how I learned vocabulary.  But there was probably a word wall or two in the mix.  Learning vocabulary was easy.  If someone tells you what a word means and then begins using it in sentences verbally and occasionally on a worksheet, you will learn it!  Spelling is a maybe.  But you will definitely learn the vocab.  Key words seem incredibly easy to learn, if a student needs to be told what that word means four or seven times, whatever.

                I do apologize if this post has some less than stellar wording and content.  Honestly, I’m pretty tired.

                So, one of my professors asked me to check out some articles.  But not one of them appear to be letting me read anything besides the abstract…  So, let’s work with that!

                We’re working with: Get All “Jazzed Up” for Vocabulary Instruction: Strategies That Engage by Melissa A. Gallagher and Blythe E. Anderson, Using Academic Word Lists to Support Disciplinary Literacy Development by Christine Joseph Picot, and Developing Academic Language: Got Words by E. Sutton Flynt and William G. Brozo.  One of the main consensuses is that vocabulary is important but hardly given its fair amount of credit.  Gallagher and Anderson’s article goes over a professional development session for fifth-grade teachers.  During this powwow, they learned of two, research supported strategies that usually lead to satisfying conclusions.  The strategies were the Graffiti Wall and the Picture Word Wall.  They’re seem both simple and easy to include into the average classroom.  I would definitely look into this!  There unfortunately wasn’t too much to learn from Picot’s abstract.  I will admit that I was surprised to read that a mathematics coach was getting in on the action though.  Regardless, she insists that using academic word lists can support a student’s disciplinary literacy development.  I see no reason to doubt this.  If anything, it likely could be considered yet another strategy for weaving vocabulary instruction into the curriculum like in Flynt and Brozo’s article.

Explorations in Developmental Spelling: Foundations for learning and teaching phonics, spelling, and vocabulary

                That is a mouthful…

                But what does it mean?  Let’s find out.

                Okay, so it looks like this is going to be a spelling episode.  This is a touchy subject for me.  I remember being a terrible speller growing up and I wasn’t even an ELL.  That said, after being an ELL tutor and helping students with spelling, I can agree, “Spelling is full of traps!”  There are strange rules and stranger exceptions.  But it gets easier.  You just have to keep at it.  But how do we teach it so that it becomes easier?

                So apparently, “Children’s brains are not cameras.  We cannot “teach” spelling by trying to get kids to take better pictures of words so that their mental images are clear and precise.”  Which is weird, because I’m pretty sure that’s how I read now.  Oddly enough, the older you get the less you break down letters and sounds and just memorize entire words as symbols that may have an “s” or an “ing” at the end to signify a variation.  But I digress…  The goal is to get students to detect, learn, and apply important spelling patterns and features (the text quoted some other texts saying so).  I think that the author said what we’re currently studying is referred to as a word study… or something.  I’m not going to lie; I was slightly lost.

                Moving on, the text takes a minute to explain that the authors are friends.  Honestly, it’s nice.  I appreciate that.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to say.

                Anyway, word study instruction should include spelling, phonics, and vocabulary.  Here, the objective isn’t just to teach words.  The goal is to teach students processes and strategies that help the reader (or writer) examine and think about the words they’re writing.  Those words then… uh… assist in the learning of other… words…  Okay, this explanation is just getting silly.  The article says that there are two broad questions:

• What is our understanding of spelling development, and how does this understanding fit within a broader model of literacy development?
• What are the implications of the developmental model for spelling instruction and word study?

The next few paragraphs are long and somewhat tedious, ramblings about emergent literacy, letter-sound match ups, how children see vowels, etc.  It’s all good stuff, but it’s a little too much to chuck into any one thing I could summarize though…  So I think I’ll stop here for now.  Note: teaching spelling is a lot more complicated than I previously imagined.  Never stop learning.

Beats me?  Sometimes nothing works.  Sometimes everything works!  It seems like somethings work better when they’re taught by other teachers.  Some students are more receptive to different kinds of lessons.  I suppose trying a variety of things is best.

Honestly, leveling seems like a good idea.  I would say you need to cater every book in this exact fashion.  However, it definitely works on a general scale.  Growth is normally triggered by adversity.  If the students are reading books with no challenge, they will not improve, they will only be upholding the status quo.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s far from good.  In addition, text that is too hard doesn’t offer students the chance to satisfactorily overcome challenge.  Thus, they’d hardly be learning and would likely become frustrated and lose their will to continue.  With guided readings, books that are constantly and appropriately challenging the students are being produced.  Hmm… I suppose that it doesn’t make sense to not use these teaching strategies.  Considering that there isn’t a better alternative being held-up at the moment.  That and I’m pretty sure that these strategies work.

Knowledge powers reading, eh?  I’m curious to find out why.  So, anybody that anybody knows that to become anybody you need to read.  That includes textbooks, articles, research studies, and a bunch of other things.  The text even mention that it can help you score well on the SATs.

Side note, I did reasonably well on my SATs.  That was back when I was actually a competent student.  But I lost my scores by time I needed them for later college things…  Life’s pretty funny.

Regardless, the text is telling no lies, unless you’re rich and you know professionals willing to take bribes, “… success in scholastic and professional endeavors requires the ability to learn from the literature of a discipline.”  After spitting some truth, the text continues to say it like it is.  Most nonfiction text simply aren’t designed to attract the reader.  Works of fiction, particularly movies, comics, tv shows, and such are designed to keep you interested.  In regard to most nonfiction texts, it is the responsibility of the readers to interest and motivate themselves.  But I suppose this is primarily a matter of discipline.  If anything, the text hardly continues talking about it either…  That’s weird.

Anyway, I’m am absolutely elated to hear what I hear in the next paragraph.  Finally, someone is arguing for knowledge again!  For years, well-educated buffoons have been saying that in the new technologically advanced age, knowledge serves little purpose.  They claimed that because anything “knowledge” can easily be access online, studying such concepts is now a waste of time.  However, Doug Lemov here casting sources that say otherwise.  This is fantastic!  Finally, someone to quote for knowledge’s sake.  They even admit that having knowledge is important because comprehension, deep thinking, and even creativity all rely heavily on what you know.  I’m definitely a little biased here and even less formal than usual.  But I think this is great.  Finally, people want to teach kids content again.

Okay, so why is knowledge so cool?  That’s easy, because knowing things helps.  We’re given a comprehension example regarding baseball.  Not exactly my sport.  But if you bring up American Football or Japanese Judo, I’m your man.  Regardless, the author’s point is that have a deeper understanding is better than inferencing.  Being able to recall information based on past knowledge often out trumps having a rough idea about something you know nothing about.

However, this leads to the next segment of information, it is generally believed that if students understand how information is presented, they will understand what they read.  A lack of emotional or intellectual connection can often hinder learning.  To combat this the author discusses the technique of a colleague.  Sometimes when teaching a book, you’ll discover that your students are not quite as invested as they could be.  Often, this is because each generation of students is born more distant and detached from the text (and history) they are asked to learn.  That said, the curriculum is what the curriculum is.  To deal this, the author’s colleague, while in the middle of reading a novel, would occasionally switch to articles that produced information that could potentially help the student better relate to the novel they must eventually finish.

The next segment basically says to do some interactive read-aloud work, but we’ve already covered that before.  That said, don’t forget to gage the knowledge of your students before setting up certain parts of the lesson.  You never know what you don’t have to emphasize on.

In conclusion…  I’ll just quote the text, “The ability to build knowledge by reading and to learn from text is a crucial driver of student success.  It is crucial to equity because man students’ lack of background knowledge causes them to fall further and further behind… try the three strategies described here: embedded nonfiction, text-based questions, and the use of writing early in the lesson cycle.”

“Guided reading is an instructional approach that involves a teacher working with a small group of students who demonstrate similar reading behaviors and can all read similar levels of texts.”  Okay, that sounds neat.  The text should offer some challenge so that the students can practice and improve, however, they should also be capable of reading the material fluently.  Students should be able to read roughly 90% of the book hassle free.  This is important because students are provided with the opportunity to read independently.  In addition to the reading independence, students are given the opportunity to practice the reading strategies they’ve learned on semi-difficult words.  Even as adults, we occasionally come across words we aren’t the most familiar with.  The opportunity to practice an unfamiliar word may be a fun yet mild experience for the average adult.  However, for young practicing readers, it’s an invaluable experience that builds upon the foundation of their reading ability.

                So, when is a child ready for guided reading?  According to the text, a child seems like appears to be suitable for guided reading once they have a solid grasp of reading strategies.  I’m assuming this ranges from sounding things out to using context clues.  Above all of this is what seems to be the best indicator, whether a student can realize if they’ve read a word incorrectly.  While it may be easy for a student to realize that they don’t know a word, it’s even more impressive for a student to believe they have read a word correctly and then realize that they may have been incorrect.  Although, that last bit is just my opinion. 

                The text then repeats itself for a while until we reach a section dubbed Advantages of a Leveled Book Collection.  So far, I, an educator in training, feel that I have little part in the process of guided reading.  That said, the responsibility of finding, organizing, and seeing that students are reading the appropriate level of book falls upon the teacher.  Which takes us back to the advantages of a leveled book collection.  Apparently, and I quote, the advantages of having a set like this include:

• Providing experience with a wide variety of texts within a level.
• Making it easier to select books for groups of children.
• Lending itself to flexible grouping.
• Providing a way to assess children’s progress.
• Providing a basic book collection that can be expanded over time.

If I’m being honest, I thought this was about to become a sales pitch.  I was prepared to be asked for my credit card information and everything.

The text then sheds some light on how we can level books.  I think it would be silly and time consuming to go through all of this, but I’ll run down a few interesting ones.  When leveling a book, consider how long it is, the genre, its content, the language and literary formats, possible graphical elements and visuals, ideal vocabulary, and so on.

What’s the deal with interactive read-alouds?

                This week, we’re diving into Instructional Interactions: Supporting Students’ Reading Development Through Interactive Read-Alouds of Informational Texts.  Reading aloud doesn’t take up too much of the average teacher’s day.  However, what teacher would pass up on a tip towards helping their students?  I’m sure it’ll be a riveting experience.  These articles even come with the option of being read to you.  That’s great for chumps like me who can only read for so long.  Anyhow…

                We stepped into Ms. Jones’s class…  Okay, sidebar.  I could have sworn that if you needed to show ownership with a name that already ends with an “s,” the rule was that you just throw an apostrophe at the end without adding an additional “s.”  If anybody reads this and can correct me, I would appreciate it.

                Okay, where was I?  Oh yeah, the very beginning…  So, Ms. Jones’ (Jones’s) 3^rd grade class was about to read a cute little story about Lions to her class.  But this is no traditional read-aloud.  This is an interactive read-aloud!  Before even reading anything, she asks the class what they can infer about the story based on the cover alone.  This is a good way to practice because it activates your students’ minds.  Active readers are better than passive readers, that’s a no brainer.  Additionally, it gives younger students a good chance to recall and practice with concepts and terms like nonfiction (which just so happens to happen in this hypothetical classroom).  The teacher than pulls out a sticky note with some good back pocket questions which she uses to get the students even more social and engaged.  So far, this seems like the ideal way to start a lesson.  Apparently, the author of the text agrees.  Ms. Jones has, quoting the text, “… encouraged students to think about what they know about informational texts and consider what they already know about the topic.”  This seems pretty epic so far.  It only gets better with a quote from Rosenblatt which reads, “reading is a transaction, a two-way process, involving a reader and a text at a particular time under particular circumstances”.  Awesome quote, awesome mentality!

                Stringing together some of the more important lines of the text:

• Interactive read-alouds are a way to engage students in experiencing this transaction while learning more about the reading process and various reading strategies through ongoing interactions with texts, peers, and the teacher (Barrentine, 1996).
• A defining feature of interactive read-alouds is that the teacher and students have conversations about the text throughout the reading rather than saving conversations until after the entire text is read.
• The goals of interactive read-alouds are to expose students to a wide variety of texts, model fluent reading and meaning-making strategies, encourage discourse to facilitate understanding, lift the level of student thinking, and demonstrate behaviors students will be able to use independently in texts.
• … teachers frame questions and talk in such a way that promotes thinking beyond and about the text in an effort to extend students’ thinking (Fountas & Pinnell, 2017)

For speed’s sake, I’ll cut down the analysis to just the important parts.

• When designing an effective read-aloud, plan to utilize informational texts.  In the example given, once her students had moved beyond word solving, maintaining fluency, and summarizing, Ms. Jones saw fit that the text caused her students to make inferences, synthesize, analyze, and critique what they’ve seen.
• The text selected should match the reader’s needs and intent of the instruction (duh?).  “Strategically selecting materials and planning facilitative questions can encourage students to express their personal understandings and perspectives in ways that enrich the discussions while supporting and challenging the ideas of their peers (Hoffman, 2011; Pantaleo, 2007; Wiseman, 2011).
• Use think-alouds and interactions to scaffold student thinking.  Get students to occasionally talk amongst themselves and remember that as they learn new information from the text and graphics, they need to think about how this new information supports or contradicts their ideas about the text and graphics, they need to think about how the authors have presented the information.
• Remember to utilize mentioned prompts during the interactive read-aloud.
• Facilitate supportive interactions (again, duh).
• Facilitate whole-class conversations after reading.  As students share their various perspectives on the text or topic, other students may be challenged to think differently or shared their own insights, which can become a springboard for additional discussions (Maloch & Beutel, 2010; Wiseman, 2011).
• Interactive read-alouds capitalize on students’ inquisitive nature by offering authentic and challenging learning opportunities driven by students’ interests and academic strengths and needs.
• PAUSE AND PONDER
  • What information can I use to determine which reading behaviors to support during whole-class read-alouds? How will I scaffold this support in a way that leads to student independence?
  • What are the benefits of using multiple interactions throughout the reading of a text?
  • In what ways can I encourage students to share their perspectives, interpretations, and opinions?
• TAKE ACTION!

1.  Select texts:

* Think about the strengths and needs of your students.

* Think about the current units and themes.

2.  Select teaching points:

* There is always a lot to teach, so be selective about what you will highlight.

* Think about what types of support you can provide with this particular text. For example, identify several teaching points:

* “Based on information I have about them, my students need support in relating important ideas in the text to each other and to ideas in other texts. They also need help with using specific examples or evidence to support statements or conclusions.”

* “My students also need support in noticing how writers organize informational text and use specific vocabulary to persuade the reader to feel a certain way about the topic.”

3.  Mark the following in the text:

* Where can you demonstrate the reading behaviors selected? Write what you will demonstrate and how you will demonstrate the behavior.

* [Ask yourself…] Where can you prompt students to try out some of the selected behaviors? Write what and how students will respond.

                Yeah, this was mostly copy and paste, but time was limited.  My apologies.

Have you ever wondered how to Implement a Digital Reading and Writing Workshop Model for Content Literacy Instruction in an Urban Elementary (K-8) School?  I have!  I doubt I phrased it that way though.  Anyway…

                The times they are a changin’!  Is a good Bob Dylan song, but who cares!  Digital tools have come and changed the game.  More content is within our grasp than ever before.  How lucky are today’s children to be born with it already at their fingers?  But fear not, after years of administrators coming out of their burrows, seeing technology, and running back outside, the school systems are reading to spring into action.  That’s right the media specialists, curriculum planners, and other unknown, low-level bigwigs have finally decided to stop banning and avoiding technology opting to instead take this bull by the horns!  Now is the time to utilize and control these phenomenal, digital tools!  This begs the question, “How can digital/electronic texts possibly be used?”  Luckily, we’ve got this article.

                Unfortunately, before the positive aspects of the change is addressed, the text decides to give us the bad news first.  As if the hardcore traditionalist teachers that refuse to accept and apply electronic literacy wasn’t difficult enough to deal with, the studies are showing that most of the teachers, many of whom are for implementing electronic text, have received no real training on how (according to their research from Calkins & Tolan, 2010).  Even less surprising was that the teachers working in schools with higher socioeconomic stats received notably more of said training than their more socioeconomically challenged counterparts.

                This led to the text expressing its motivation for the professional development workshop.

• … to assist the urban elementary school teachers with the workshop model through the facilitation of teacher learning as an actual workshop,
• … to increase the teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK; Koehler & Mishra, 2009),
• … to assist teachers in integrating a digital workshop model in their content literacy instruction.

The text that follows primarily consists of statistical data that I personally find to be little more than something to keep in the back of your mind.  This is likely because it honestly doesn’t matter to me how many teachers took a survey at Luna Charter School and I consider myself very comfortable with technology and could likely use it within a classroom with as few days of professional development required.  I’m not bragging.  I’m just young.  I grew up surrounded with technology.  The text lists some decent websites to use, but most of them I’ve already heard of and/or used.  In addition, I apologize if I didn’t read very carefully, but most of what I’ve read contains either the author telling me what they’re going to have their guinea pig teachers do or them patting themselves on the back for obtaining data they’ve collected.  The actual information on how I can use technology better is far and few in between!

But it’s not all bad.  I happen to like this quote very much, “As teachers strive to make students critical consumers and producers of technology in the 21st century, they are seeking instructional applications of technology tools to build literacy capacity in their students. To support our students’ experiences with Web-based and digital resources, we must interact with these resources and texts. Teachers cannot just read about Web-based and digital resources; they must begin exploring these resources for themselves.”  I feel that this summarizes the spirit of the entire document.  Not to mention, it’s incredibly true.  If what we desire is well-rounded, well-informed students, we need to push technology into more elements of classroom teaching!  (I also believe that establishing a love for non-tech resources is important too, but that’s an argument for another time.)

Finally, the text actually asked the reader a few questions.  That’s a little heavy handed, but whatever.  I mean I would have subliminally hidden these questions in the text so that the readers would have been asking themselves that as they were reading, but whatever.  Anyway, a question that sticks out is “What does it mean to be a teacher of writing and reading in the 21^st century?”  Honestly, I think it means the same thing it meant in the 20^th century.  You have a passion for opening the minds of your respective disciples.  Doing so means reading and writing along with your students.  As far as I’m considered, the difference in centuries only adds a few screens in the mix.

It may be to soon for me to say I’ve developed a literacy mantra (as a matter of fact, I’m confident somebody must have said this one already).  If I had to workshop something in two minutes, I’d probably go with, “Read, Reflect, Repeat.”  Why?  Because I love alliteration.  More specifically, because I find that those three words work on every level of a reader’s development.  Reading is an important practice for even non-scholars.  If you want to know what your mail is telling you, you must read.  If you to fill out unemployment, you’ll have to read.  If you want to enjoy playing an imported Japanese videogame, you’ll most likely have to read.  Students who want acceptable grades, to better themselves, or have multiple degrees that lead to high paying jobs will likely have to read as well.  Furthermore, those who fail to reflect on what they have read will often miss the deeper meanings to what they have read.  All too often when we read, do we only take what’s on the surface of the text.  Reflecting gives readers, the opportunity to truly decode what the writer has encoded.  Only when we reflect on what we have read do we internalize or perhaps assimilate the direct and indirect value the text possesses.  Finally, repetition is the key to long term learning and development.  Whether you’re repeating the pattern of reading and reflecting or occasionally (and literally) reading something again, repetition works.  Not to mention, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve learned something different or found a new appreciation for a book simply because I happened to read it again.

Critical Race Theory sounds complicated.  I’m not sure if it’s my cup of tea.  That said, I do understand its importance and see why we should understand it.  I’m far to young and inexperienced to throw in my 2 cents on the matter, but as much as I appreciate being able listen to a group of scholarly characters chat, I’m unsure if I’m the correct audience.

Now here’s were you may have questions along the lines of, “How is Lazy Rob trying to get out of learning material now?”  Trust me on not, as uninvested as I am, I’m very interested in topic at hand.  I do understand that minorities are becoming the majority.  I have seen firsthand as an English Language Learners tutor what kind of difficulties a young Mandarin or Arabic speaking child may face in school both academically and socially.  I completely agree that there’s artistic and educational merit to graffiti, rap, and other forms of expression deemed less reputable by society.  Also, I’m saddened to hear that some senators don’t see the value of helping public schools.  But I’m just not sure if we’re the audience.

This isn’t an argument as much as a rhetorical question.  Am I, mid 20s goofball, with a yearning to help children grow and discover their passions, going to benefit from this discussion on Critical Race Theory?  That probably sounds like a resoundingly dumb question.  Of course, I am!  My other question is, what can I do about any of this?  At this point in the game, there’s little more that I can do outside of keeping this stuff in mind from now until… forever…  Which is fine.  But I’m not sure if it necessarily benefits many.  I’m sure cooler characters than yours truly are far beyond this.  But this big ole’ group chat needs to go to the higher ups.  This conversation should be heard by the people who… I don’t know… make the budgets or create the curriculum.  To the average teacher or teacher in training, what can I do outside of trying to make my students feel more comfortable?  This information needs to reach to top brass before it ever begins to trickle down to the hip, young educators, right?  For the most part, we’re bound by common core standards.  We’ve been shown what that leaves out.  But are we free to cater to that and add the undress issues in?

Call me idyllic and optimistic but should the street level teacher just concentrate on teaching with an open mind and open arms?  Accept and respect their students’ respective differences and histories and work from there, right?  At the end of the day, the average teacher only has so much power over what they teach.  They merely do their best to teach what they must their own way.  This is obviously easier said than done.  But I just can’t help but throw that out there.  Hopefully, I’ll be proven incorrect and given a more active mindset in the future.  Again, I don’t disagree with what I’ve heard.  I’m just not sure what I’m expected to do with this information.  So, for now, this is how I’m responding.

Also, Professors Allison Skerrett and Greg McVerry say, “… um…” a lot.  That’s pretty funny.  I’m more a stutter myself.