Excellent Article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/06/seven-ways-schools-kill-the-love-of-reading-in-kids-and-4-principles-to-help-restore-it/

Parental Support for Common Core Language Arts

As I was searching, I discovered there are several resources to support student learning in language arts for teachers.  The resource that I was immediately drawn to was a support site for parents.  As teachers, we know if we have parental support on our side, it makes our job in the classroom much easier.  Students who have supportive parents who enrich their children's educational experience at home, tend to be more successful in the classroom.

For this reason, I chose to highlight the following resource, provided by Council of the Great City Schools:

http://www.commoncoreworks.org/domain/114

 This resource provides parents with a "ROADMAP" of what to expect from their child's common core education in all subjects and in all grade levels.  

Because I teach fifth grade language arts, I viewed the parental roadmap for this grade and subject.  The roadmap is quite helpful in indicating exactly what students will be expected to know how to do in both reading and writing in fifth grade.  It also provides parents with a scope of expectations in fourth grade and in sixth grade.  This is quite helpful for parents because much of the time, parents seem to be in the dark about what their children are learning about.  

In addition, the roadmap highlights six ways that parents can help their children at home:

1.  Provide a time and place for children to read at home free of distractions.

2.  Discuss what your child has learned in reading:  what has been most interesting or useful, how can this knowledge be helpful in life?

3.  Help children look up the definition of unknown words using the internet or a dictionary.

4.  Keep track of the time your child spends reading and the types of material your child enjoys reading.  Encourage your child to read more of what he/she enjoys.

5.  Ensure that your child has a library card and takes advantages of the services the library has to offer.

6.  Use technology to build your child's interest in reading.  

Although this resources is primarily for parents, I believe that, as teachers, if we encourage parents to follow the guidelines and information featured on the roadmaps, our students will benefit tremendously.

Learning Targets: Classroom Strategy for All

I have been researching teaching reading comprehension strategies.  This week I have been reading from a fairly new book entitled Comprehension Going Forward: Where We Are/What's Next (Keene, E.O., Zimmerman, S., et. al., 2011).  Recently I read about a strategy that I plan to use in my classroom. 

We are all familiar with using objectives.  We use them in our lesson plans and should have them posted in the classroom for students see.  Learning Targets may be considered objectives but, in my opinion, are more specific and are an invaluable strategy that should be used in every classroom. So, what are learning targets and why should we use them in our classroom?

Learning Targets are "student-friendly statements of intended learning" (p. 62).  Learning targets are categorized into two:  Long-term targets and Supporting targets.  Students are aware of the long-term targets because they are posted in classroom.  A long-term target could be a Big Idea or Unit Concept.  Supporting targets are steps or chunks of learning, not tasks.  These supporting targets dictate what will be learned in a single lesson, not a task that will be accomplished.  

Obviously, long term targets should be created first.  The supporting targets should then be scaffolded to lead the learner to accomplish the long term goal.   

Here is an example of both learning targets from a middle school science classroom. I love that the creator of these targets uses the words "I can":

Long-Term Target:  I can analyze a local transportation option for its efficiency and sustainability. 

Supporting Targets:  I can skim my texts to help me decide where to read.

                                 I can use our long-term target to capture what is important from my texts. 

The teacher of this lesson begins daily by having students write a TITLE for their lesson that day. This requires higher-order comprehension skills such as synthesizing.  This requires the students to THINK in order to COMPREHEND the target, rather than just having the teacher READ the target outloud.  

When teachers know what they want their students to know, do, and understand and share with students through daily exposure and reinforcing, metacognitive routines "all students can become the powerful, thoughtful human beings" (p. 61).

Reference:

Cool Technology Ideas to Use with Teaching Language Arts

I read an amazing and enlightening article entitled "Incorporating Technology into the Modern English Language Arts Classroom" by Steven A. Carbone II (2011). 

Before reading this article I tried to think of all the ways I've tried to incorporate technology into teaching language arts and the list came up rather short.  

This is what I've tried in the past:

Storybird.com--This website allows students to create a story centered around professional illustrations

Edublog-I created an edublog for my classroom. I have students comment about their AR books that they have been reading.  You can't imagine how anxious and excited the students get to post their reactions!

So, onto this pretty cool article, which I will add was written in 2011, meaning there are probably several more current technological ideas that could be added to this list.  

Here are some of the ideas the author offered:

Literary Remix:  Carbone (2011) uses this term to refer to the traditional process of reading, comprehending, writing.  Putting a new spin on this process in which students build on their own connections of the reading material to regurgitate their understanding. Typically this is done on a piece of paper in which the student writes responses to the reading. 

ICT Instruction:  ICT standards for using contemporary activities that involve information and communication technology.  This replaces the use of paper and pencil texts and writing.   

Carbone offers some new ways to do this involving technology. 

-Comic Life: a software program that allows students to create a fictional, comic-book-style dialogue between themselves and one of the authors. 

-Digital Tools: students can easily mix text, sound, video, and images, to create an original, multimodal text. 

-Wiki Pages:  Students organize information about summaries, vocabulary, and characterization on these pages.  Because these pages are public content, students tend to put forth more effort in designing, creating, and posting content than they would on traditional worksheets or packets. 

-Text Messages:  This is one of my favorite ideas.  Carbone offered the example of a teacher having his students create text messages between Romeo and Juliet.  This idea can be carried to any book or set of characters. 

-Video Montages:  iMovie, Animoto, or Photostory are just a few of the options out there that allow students to create quality videos honoring, introducing or reacting to a story or book with the use of photos, music, and video.  The results can be quite powerful and students put forth great effort to produce quality results.  These videos can also be used to promote digital storytelling. 

-Writing Screenplays:  While this technique does not necessarily employ technology, it does focus on the academic and creative aspects of storytelling and can be highly engaging. 

Ultimately, these methods don’t try and fight against the technology that the digital natives that exist amongst our students are using on a daily basis outside of the classroom.  Rather these methods embrace this technology and welcome it inside the classroom to motivate and engage students. 

Reference:

Carbone, S. (2011). Incorporating technology into the modern english language arts classroom,
         Student pulse, Vol. 3 (No. 1), p. 1-3.

Most Important for Readers

This chapter was an eye opener for me.  I was struck with an "a-ha moment" as I read the strategy "Important to Whom?".  Recently, the reading skill I have had to teach in my 5th grade classroom and test my students on is Finding the Author's Purpose.  I have found this chapter and particular strategy to be immensely beneficial in explaining just how to find the Author's Purpose. 

Based on the strategy, "Important to Whom?", this is the new way I have been explaining/teaching Author's Purpose to my students:

First, I have asked them "What is the MOST IMPORTANT thing that should happen when we read? I get various answers like, "We should be able to read the words", "We should make connections", "We should understand what we read".  The answer I have given them follows this advice from Harvey & Goudvais (2007):  "We want our kids to know that nothing matters more than their thinking when they read" (p. 167).  I explain to them that the most important thing that should happen while they read is that the text should have MEANING to THEM!  I go on to explain that only when the text has meaning to them, will they understand what they are reading. 

Then, I continue to follow direction from Harvey & Goudvais (2007) who state, "We teach our kids to make a distinction between what they think is most important to remember and what the writer most wants them to take away from the article" (p. 107).  Helping students understand the difference between what the article means to them and what the article means to author is invaluable!  Especially, when taking a standardized test.  Since standardized testing pervades our students' reading experiences, I found that helping students to understand this concept of "important to reader vs. important to author" gives them the necessary tools to help them be successful on standardized tests. 

Harvey and Goudvais go on to say, "we can't forget to let kids know that when they are taking a standardized test, the only answer that counts is the one that reflects the author's main idea" (p. 107).  Once again, I had never thought of teaching students to make the distinction between what was important to them and what was important to the author.  It seemed I only focused on what was important to the author.  But validating student meaning, and then helping them understand or shift their thinking to that of the author's, was quite a remarkable idea for me and for my students.

Bravo to this strategy, as it can then be a segue into teaching main idea, summarizing, and identifying important details. 

Resource:

Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A. (2007).  Strategies that work.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Discussion 6: Summarizing and Synthesizing

Nothing is more frustrating than asking a student to summarize an article or story, only to have the student go on and on and on with frivolous details of the story, or write a one page “summary” of a two page story.  Face it, being able to summarize is a difficult skill for many students.
I especially loved when Harvey & Goudvais (2007) stated that, although the “summarizing and synthesizing” chapter in the book is last, does not mean that it these should be isolated skills taught at the end of the year, but rather are skills taught intermittently as we teach students how to determine the facts of the reading selection, order important events, pick out the most important points from a text, etc.

It really amazes me at times just how difficult it is for students to accurately summarize.  I have found that helping students pick out the most important details of a story or text and then being able to put these details in an order to explain what the story is mostly about, is a helpful skill in teaching students to summarize.  I have practiced this skill with students and it always blows my mind just how difficult it is for some students to pick out “important details”.  A lot of times, I get students writing the first or last sentence of the text.

I especially like the strategy “Writing a Short Summary” in which the teacher has the students create a two column sheet of paper with titles What the Piece is About/What It Makes Me Think About.  After reading a text selection out loud to the students, the teacher had the students record what the selection made them think about, emphasizing that nothing is more important than the reader’s thinking.  After sharing their thoughts, the teacher turns their attention to summarizing the text by orally retelling.  The teacher asks them to consider:  (1) the most important ideas (2) keeping it brief (3) saying it in one’s own words in a way that makes sense.  The teacher then asks the students to tell the most important ideas of the text, as the teacher records them.  What happens next, I believe, is a valuable teaching moment as the teacher sifts through the ideas and helps the students determine which ideas were important enough to include in the summary, which ideas could be combined into one idea, and which ideas didn’t really need to be included in the summary.

Once again, I love how the idea of focusing on the importance of the reader’s thinking is emphasized throughout this chapter.

Resource:
Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A. (2007).  Strategies that work.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Reply

Discussion #5

Determing Importance in a Text

This chapter was an eye opener for me.  I was struck with an "a-ha moment" as I read the strategy "Important to Whom?".  Recently, the reading skill I have had to teach in my 5th grade classroom and test my students on is Finding the Author's Purpose.  I have found this chapter and particular strategy to be immensely beneficial in explaining just how to find the Author's Purpose. 

Based on the strategy, "Important to Whom?", this is the new way I have been explaining/teaching Author's Purpose to my students:
First, I have asked them "What is the MOST IMPORTANT thing that should happen when we read? I get various answers like, "We should be able to read the words", "We should make connections", "We should understand what we read".  The answer I have given them follows this advice from Harvey & Goudvais (2007):  "We want our kids to know that nothing matters more than their thinking when they read" (p. 167).  I explain to them that the most important thing that should happen while they read is that the text should have MEANING to THEM!  I go on to explain that only when the text has meaning to them, will they understand what they are reading. 

Then, I continue to follow direction from Harvey & Goudvais (2007) who state, "We teach our kids to make a distinction between what they think is most important to remember and what the writer most wants them to take away from the article" (p. 107).  Helping students understand the difference between what the article means to them and what the article means to author is invaluable!  Especially, when taking a standardized test.  Since standardized testing pervades our students' reading experiences, I found that helping students to understand this concept of "important to reader vs. important to author" gives them the necessary tools to help them be successful on standardized tests. 
Harvey and Goudvais go on to say, "we can't forget to let kids know that when they are taking a standardized test, the only answer that counts is the one that reflects the author's main idea" (p. 107). 

Once again, I had never thought of teaching students to make the distinction between what was important to them and what was important to the author.  It seemed I only focused on what was important to the author.  But validating student meaning, and then helping them understand or shift their thinking to that of the author's, was quite a remarkable idea for me and for my students.
Bravo to this strategy, as it can then be a segue into teaching main idea, summarizing, and identifying important details.

Resource:

Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A. (2007).  Strategies that work.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.