Things I Have Learned

Through this RSS and blog project, I have learned about multiple ways to help teach reading and literacy.  Some of these things were electronic, with varying levels of ability and able to track progress and print reports, but some others were just about getting back to basics and the power of everyday materials. In some schools, reading is incorporated into all classes and eliminated as an individual subject.  All of these advances are to try to improve students reading scores in a variety of ways, utilizing multiple intelligences and trying to find something that works for them. I wonder if this boom in reading technology has to do with NCLB and trying to raise scores…

 

Something I have learned overall this semester, through this class and my other education classes, is that I am more cut out to teach at the college level.  It’s not that I think making lesson plans are too hard, or too much work, but my teaching style is as a facilitator.  And with NCLB, most teachers feel they are teaching to a test.  Well, with what I want to teach, that wouldn’t be measured on the test.  I don’t want the stress of wanting to teach one way, but being forced to teach another because of the test.  Also, I want to teach more in a specific content area, just literature and not have to go over grammar and stuff like that.  I want to be able to help students really dive in to a text and argue over it, then assess them how I want to.  It might sound kind of whiny, but I don’t want to have to yell at my students to get their attention and deal with discipline problems.  I’m not a confrontational person.  But I don’t think my education classes were a waste because I learned so much that I can apply in a college class, too.  I guess it’s better I figured this out now instead of when I am student teaching.

Bright Ideas Review

During her keynote speech, Jacqueline Woodson gave lots of advice to writers.  She suggests you should take it “bird by bird”, paragraph by paragraph when you are writing and not thinking about how much left you have to do.  She also discussed how with her poetry, she had to practicing reading it out loud until it sounded how she wanted it to. As teachers, it is our responsibility to value and teach students to value their own voice.  Jacqueline also believes that fear is not allowed when writing, whatever happens to come out, comes out and you need to make time to let writing happen.  She also touched on the theory that it is dangerous to ask yourself, “What is this about?” because it limits the story.  Instead, ask you should ask yourself or your writing students, “What is it trying to say?”  Her method is to have someone read it and tell you it’s good.  The next time the person reads it they will think of 3 questions to ask you about the story, then the third time, they can to tell you what’s wrong with the story.  Just going in to what is wrong with it would destroy it in the “embryonic stage.”  Finally, she suggested beginning writing with vignettes because they are less intimidating in class.

 

For the first session I went to “What does it mean to educate the 21^st century media consumer?”   In this presentation we learned about using Wikis, YouTube, and advertising in our classrooms.  It began with a discussion on how the news is now pop culture (i.e. The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) and anyone with the internet can report anything on Wikis or YouTube.  News media consumption has increased and there is more access to information not restricted by journalistic ethics.  However, media in an English class isn’t restricted to only journalism courses.  You can use news media with the curriculum, focusing on skills that would be taught anyways or reinforcing ones already taught.  Wikis can serve to teach students why online news sources may not be legitimate or relevant.  Everyone can contribute and you can’t trust the editing. YouTube allows students to question the “authority” voice and its motives for exclusion or inclusions.  This is good for showing perspectives on controversial topics that are skewed in media reliability.  As a teacher, I could use a novel that has a questionable authorial voice (i.e. Holden Caulfield) and compare it to the biased media.  Posters can also be used, such as looking at print ads then having students create their own posters.

 

The second conference I went to was “macBeth.”  The two teachers taught Macbeth and had their students connect them with something current. They made a really good point that texts aren’t sacred; they can be messed with. Some of the students created their own TV shows such as The Real World or Jerry Springer.  Other classes created MySpace pages for the characters in the story.  But since MySpace was not allowed on the school’s web server, the students used a template on PowerPoint. The teacher then linked the pages together, creating “friends lists.”

 

Overall, I learned some great things I can use in the classroom, regardless of what grade I end up teaching.  I am at the point where I am debating teaching high school or college.  I definitely would like to continue attending this conference and stay for more next year!

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Barack’s Potential Bid

Give Students Power

An Editorial on Book Banning

Is Desegregation Just a Myth?

To Teach or Not to Teach?

Inequality

Reading Skills Drop

Innocent Racism?

Can Socioeconomics be a Factor on Student Performance?

“What’s Black and White and Read All Over?”

In all the buzz about new forms of technology, we are forgetting how well the old tools worked.  Before there were computers, electronic reading aids, and multiple intelligences, people still learned to read and write.  Should we throw out all old forms in favor of these personal, more interactive programs?  Many schools are facing budget cuts and cannot afford new equipment.  Why not turn to one of the oldest sources of information, the one here hundreds of years before TV, radio, and the Internet, the one that does not require a computer? I’m talking about newspapers.  Although people may argue they cause clutter and aid in the killing of trees, they are cheaper than computers and could be more readily available in a classroom than waiting for computers in a lab or having students take turns.

Newspapers are far from obsolete. Yes, people can now read newspaper articles on-line, but what if a school cannot afford computers? That has not stopped learning and reading in even significantly poor countries.  A website for the program “Newspapers in Education” explains the program and its benefits:

Newspapers in Education programs call for schools to use newspaper contents as teaching aids in their classroom.  In emerging democracies, newspapers are often the only resource a teacher has available.

Studies in both emerging and developed democracies indicate that children who use newspapers in the classroom show improvements on a myriad of important factors: strengthened pro-democratic values, greater tolerance of diversity, greater interest and involvement in political activities.”

World wide subscription statistics show lower-level ability newspaper and magazines have more subscribers. They are usually written at a 9^th grade reading level to reach a wider audience, this includes the widest circulating magazine in the world, the Sun.  However, that does not mean students will not learn anything from them, The Plain Language at Work newsletter states:

Some of the highest selling authors write at a 7^th grade level: John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Frank McCourt, Arthur Golden…

I read McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha for my AP Language class. If these writers are so popular among adults and are seen in secondary classrooms, but are only at a 7^th grade level, newspapers seem they should fit in here somewhere, too! Just because they are shorter and come with big pictures does not mean they are without merit.

Newspapers can be used to teach reading strategies, rhetorical devices, and in some instances, editing.  There are numerous lesson plans on-line discussing how to incorporate newspapers into the classroom.  The Detroit Free Press has a whole web site on activities to do with each week’s paper. One plan from the week of March 26^th deals with politics, writing, and technology:

The Politics of YouTube: U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton was the subject of an unflattering advertisement posted on the popular Web site YouTube. In the video, she was compared to the oppressive government leader who was featured in the science fiction novel “1984″ by George Orwell. The video, whose maker was not initially identified, has already been seen more than a million times. The advertisement is one example of how the Internet makes it possible for regular people to communicate with a lot of people. Look through today’s newspaper for an article about a political issue that is important to you. Write the script for an advertisement that you could post on a Web site that would inform other people about this issue. Talk about whether it is a good or bad thing that anyone can post information on the Internet.

Learning Standard: Using oral, written and visual texts to identify and research issues of importance that confront adolescents, their community, their nation and the world. Examples include using research findings to organize and create texts to persuade others to take a particular position or to alter their course of action with regard to a particular school/ community issue or problem.

This could tie in with reading 1984, using technology, methods of research, and persuasive writing.  If the class did not have access to computers, they could still write on a persuasive topic they found in the paper and come up with a written advertisement.

I have realized I seem to be anti-technology lately in my blog, but I’m not! I am taking Computers in Education right now, along with learning about technology use in this class, but I cannot help but think of the other side. What if schools do not have these things we are learning to use? We will still have to be creative in our teaching methods, and newspapers could help.

“Newspaper Activities for Teaching”-
Detroit Newspaper Partnership

 “Reading & Learning”- World Association of Newspapers. 26 March 2007

“What’s With the Newspapers?”- Plain Language at Work Newsletter. 2 May 2005

Literacy through Reader’s Theater

I have always been interested in drama and thought about minoring in and teaching it, but it is not considered a “teachable minor” for the state of
Michigan.  However, there are ways to incorporate dramatic activities into a classroom.  We have already discovered some of these in the Wilhelm text and know it is an important component to becoming engaged readers.  This could mean having students act out characters or scenes to bring them alive and incorporate their own interpretation.

 

But there is also a series devoted to drama in the classroom with a focus on literacy called “Reader’s Theater.”  It’s not traditional drama where students must memorize the script and stage cues, extensively rehearse, or come up with costumes and props.  In short, it’s all the fun dialogue and interaction that occurs in theater, without the stress of preparation. Also, teachers have a wide range of script subjects, not just English.  When I was in high school, we performed one in my history class about the Civil Rights Movement. 

 

This technique seems to be a good approach because it causes the actors and the audience to use their imagination while listening to an oral reading.  This same strategy of imagining is used when reading silently, which will help students on an individual level. It also makes participants pay attention while reading to look for action or emotional cues in the text.

 

To convert this into writing practice as well, one site I found suggest having students read a sample Reader’s Theater script focusing on the form.  Then, the students could use a piece of literature read in class or one of their choice to make into a RT script to then present. Gregory Brown, teacher at

North
Drive
Elementary School, found a way to differentiate in RT. He wrote the script his class used and has each character represent a different reading level.

‘You can assign the parts without them actually knowing what they’re getting as far as reading level,’ he said. 

 

The biggest benefit of that, he said, is to give students a bit of confidence.

Practicing oral reading is one way to become a better, and this allows him to personalize each student’s RT experience. Brown also states that although students can invite people to watch, it is not ultimately about the audience, but rather the reader.

 

Teacher publishes new “reading script”

Goldsboro News-Argus

Febuary 26, 2007

 

Reader’s Theatre Basics

Hypertext vs. Annotated Paper Text

A few weeks ago in class, we discussed different varieties of digital text. One type was hypertext, where students may click on an annotation to take them to another site with more specific information. I thought it could be beneficial in the quest for knowledge if students used it properly; I could also see it used as a tool in the quest for distractions. I am not saying that the information on those sites is not important to the text or anything, but some students keep clicking and clicking until they are so far away from the chapter to be read, they get tired of reading and feel they have done enough for the day.   

 

As an ultra-book person (and employee at a bookstore), I think teachers could take advantage of the wide range of newly annotated titles. If you are reading something and come across a helpful annotation, it is much easier to think about it, then apply that new knowledge in relation to the text if you can get right back in to it. With hypertext, there are other links, each placing another page between you and the original text.

 

People from another school of thought are the novel purists. These people believe that any form of annotation detracts from the original story. I do not think it does. William Grimes of the New York Times puts it nicely in his article “You’ve Read the Novels (Now Read the Footnotes)” when he says:

The reader who does not know a farthing from a guinea, it is safe to say, will nonetheless grasp the great drama of attraction and repulsion that plays out between Darcy and Elizabeth. The cut and thrust of their conversation is timeless. Generations of young women who do not know the first thing about an entailed estate or a quadrille will recognize in Austen’s heroine a kindred spirit, a contemporary, a valued ally in the eternal war between the sexes.

Ultimately, I think annotations are a good thing, but it would depend on the class I was teaching at the time whether I would use a book or hypertext. If I thought the class would use the hypertext as a complement to the reading, and I could find the text online, it would work. Also, when I typed in “annotated fiction” at bn.com, almost 1,000 titles showed up from Alice in Wonderland and Cat in the Hat, to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ulysses. This tells me I probably have a greater chance of finding what I want to teach in print. Regardless, teaching with annotations will allow the reader to,

…insofar as such a thing as possible, read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as it was read and understood at the time of its publication, with all the period details in place and correctly interpreted.  

William Grimes

“You’ve Read the Novels (Now Read the Footnotes)”

New York Times, March 16, 2007

Electronic Reading Assistants

Today in class we learned about incorporating the digital canon into our classrooms. The one method that seemed to allow the most interaction with the text was hypertexts. This allowed students to click on other areas of interest and gave access to additional information. However, I do not know if these would really help improve the process of reading itself. It would create more engaged readers, but what about those who are struggling to read period?

Soliloquy Learning, Inc. believes they have found the solution. Their relatively new program, called the Soliloquy Reading Assistant, is an advanced speech recognition program that will provide individualized support for students from elementary school all the way to adult education. The student reads an e-book aloud to a computer using a headset and microphone. Through speech-recognition technology, the program follows the reader through the text and provides help when needed. Throughout the reading, there are invisible “trigger points” that allow “comprehension queries” to pop up. These questions reinforce essential information and terms, are open-book, and must be answered correctly before the student can move on. The students do not know when the questions will appear. As a result, the reader must think while reading, “just in case.” At the end of sessions, readers are presented with progress pages, citing problem and fluency areas, as well as providing comprehension evaluations. The areas of difficulty in the text are then highlighted, making it easier for the reader to review. This information is continually updated and accessible to the teacher.

“The Reading Assistant was originally designed to help elementary school children with their reading fluency,” said Jon Bower, CEO of Soliloquy Learning. “The next logical step was to try to develop more advanced content for older students and adults so that they can continue to develop fluency, while broadening their vocabularies and learning to comprehend from informational texts.”

Right now this is mainly used in science and social studies and involves content-area reading and learning in Grades 5-11. These texts were chosen because they coincided with the state and national science and social studies standards. Therefore, the questions in the “comprehension queries” are most likely in the realm of recitation and memorization because there are “correct” answers. This would not help the active learner approach that is ultimately more effective for students. A truly great software program would continue the reading evaluations, and then ask open questions at the end to test for comprehension. This could work if the questions were general and similar on each reading, then emailed to the teacher for evaluation.

However, this type of program could be beneficial in some ways because it provides instant feedback to the students and forces them to consciously think about what they are reading. Also, it evaluates students on the basis of their fluency when reading and could act as a personal tutor during reading. It gives the students individualized attention to specific needs. Furthermore, it integrates at least two subjects, and could be used in a program similar to my last blog topic.

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Teaching Reading in Other Classes

All of us are pursuing a career that involves reading instruction since it comes with the territory of teaching English. We assume it is a staple in the curriculum, much like math and history.  Students even have designated “
Reading” portions of standardized tests.  With all of this in mind, I was completely stunned to read the article “Questions greet new reading proposal” from the Argus Leader On-line newspaper. 

 

A
Sioux Falls middle school has decided to make all classes longer, get rid of the reading program:

 

“The change means middle schools will convert in 2008 to a schedule that drops reading as a stand-alone course but combines it with language arts and also spreads it to science, math and social studies.”

 

The thought is to reinvigorate a strategy that pushes literacy skills into every corner of school curriculum.  Proponents believe this would “saturate” the curriculum with literacy and comprehension and the students will stop perceiving reading as just something that occurs at a specified time. This move would now make all teachers in charge of reading and writing.

 

The new schedule would allow 55 minutes instead of 40 for the core subjects, the school day would remain the same length, and there would be no change in mentoring and electives.  

Obviously the teachers are extremely divided on this issue.  Some believe direct reading instruction is still an essential part of the day and trying to teach enjoyment of literature in science and math would take away from those subjects.  Others believe would revolutionize the reading programs, since direct reading instruction that was “not all that productive.”  One woman believes students may be better able to learn grammar if it was not taught in isolation, but as something everyday and everywhere. 

Besides having to learn how to teach reading in different disciplines, teachers are reacting to having more time and thinking about how to fill that time. To address this, the school district is having workshops and training sessions. However, teachers are already recognizing literary or communicative aspects in their classrooms.  

Easter was impressed that one sixth-grader, Ty Barringer, knew 5.92 percent is the tax rate in Sioux Falls, and that Laura Stevens-Chopin knew that Minnesota does not tax food or clothing. 

“That’s where learning takes place – discuss, think, justify, explain,” Darryl Walker, the school’s assistant principal, observed from the hallway. 

 

This will cause all subjects to revaluate what questions they ask and the answers they require.  The biggest challenge is going to be how to handle it, but once that is accomplished, Easter believes, “In the math curriculum, it’ll be wonderful.”Read full article

 

Reading Comprehension Technology

       I found an article in the Washington Post about a relatively new program called “Accelerated Reader.”  This program, active in over 60,000 schools, quizzes students on over 100,000 books that the students can pick themselves.  AR attempts to test reading comprehension and “assigns a readability formula that determines grade level and difficulty.”  Longer works score higher points, intrinsically encouraging students to read longer works.  It has also created a new categorization of reading levels because many of the ones on the back of books vary by publisher and often do not take in to account difficulty of text or content, only the difficulty of the words.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would be rated “exactly equal” on readability formulas if the exact same text were read backward, according to the report.  

      “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” would be equivalent to: “Equal created are men all that proposition the to dedicated and liberty in conceived, nation new a continent this upon forth brought fathers our ago years seven and score four.”

       However there are some problems with this new scoring method.  Most titles such as Nancy Drew mysteries and books by Louis Sachar score higher Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.  Stated as a tenth-grade reading level, “Macbeth” is given 4 points; Toni Morrison’s Beloved is given 15 points, but is rated at sixth grade. Louis Sachar’s “Small Steps” for third-graders earns readers 7 points although the author intended it for fourth through eighth grade. When hearing this, the author remarked:

“They have a strange formula. Obviously it takes a lot more work to read Shakespeare than it takes to read my books.”

       Parents have realized this inconsistency as well and some are worried that the Accelerated Reading program will phase out classic texts in place of more pop, contemporary ones. Executive Orders by Tom Clancy rates at 78 points, a novel in which most of the federal government is dead and leaders from other countries are trying to come in and take over the United States. The only themes that seem to be present in this novel are harsh and inaccurate stereotypes of other cultures. This would not be beneficial in trying to create an open-minded classroom.  In schools where this program is present, the teachers use it as an incentive for pizza parties or other prizes hoping to motivate students. This could be seen as further perpetuating the “high stakes” testing students already face.

      But another problem could be what kind of questions are asked.  They are probably multiple choice ones asking text-specific questions such as, “Which character went to the store in chapter 5?” The mark of a truly great program will be when it can ask authentic or open-ended questions and the students could type out a response.  Maybe the answers could be sent to the teacher to be read and scored as “credit” or “no credit.”

       I think the idea of this reading program is really good, but obviously there are some scoring problems.  It is a good idea to allow students to choose their reading material and not to discourage reading a text that would not typically be read in a classroom and then answer questions.   

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Soup or “Salad”?

In recent years, the debate to move from the great American “melting pot” to the “salad bowl” has emerged. The original idea was that immigrants coming to the United States should mix in with the rest of us, blending together into the same substance.  In more sociological terms, this is assimilating or absorbing the traits of a new culture, rather than maintaining your own.  This new idea of the salad is that all the different parts come together to make this item, while each carrot remains a carrot, and so on. This debate underlies such issues as ESL vs. bilingual education and celebrating ethnic holidays.  While some classrooms believe they are teaching how to become a salad, they are actually perpetuating ideas of assimilation.

I came across an article in the BBC News feed that really caught my attention on this.  I had never really thought about other countries having to teach diversity (ignorant, I know) or having educational debates on it like we have.  Now, this isn’t apples-to-apples, but I think there are some things from this move in the UK that we could implement.  Over there, schools are going to start teaching more about British history and identity, studying things like free speech, mutual tolerance, and respect for equal rights.  Education Secretary Alan Johnson believes schools are key places in promoting understanding and combating intolerance.  This is a good environment for children to learn to think critically about racial, ethnic and religious issues with a link to current debates and events. Sir Keith Ajegbo states:

“It is the duty of all schools to address issues of ‘how we live together’ and ‘dealing with difference’, however difficult or controversial they may seem”.

Where else should students be able to address those questions if not at school?  Citizenship is another topic to be expanded upon, emphasizing citizen’s roles as Britons. All of the above mentioned topics are addressed as “Britishness” but,

“Britishness does not need to be dominant and certainly not a domineering identity, but it must be a significant common facet that we all can share.  As such it is a key component in developing greater ties that can bind society together.” -Nick Johnson, Commission for Racial Equality.

Opponents to this approach warn these traits of justice and democracy should not be portrayed as “exclusively British” or to imply that
Britain is superior, but used to create an understanding of citizenship, identity, and the pride that can evoke. As I was reading this article, I was thinking of all the different kinds of complaints I could hear parents and administrators making. But I think it sounds like a wonderful idea! I know this goes against the separation of church and state, but I think religion classes should be taught in public schools.  I do not mean to try to get students to convert, but to allow them to understand other religions and give them insight into how other people view things.  In school, we were constantly told to respect other people’s beliefs and opinions, but we never learned or understood those alternate beliefs.  When doing research papers, we are taught to look at all sides of the issue thoroughly. So why is that not being done when teaching controversial but important diversity topics? Why do we still explore culture and issues like turtles coming out of their shell for a day or a week, but then going back to that same shell as before, ultimately unchanged? 

 

Schools ‘must teach Britishness’

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