AVReading Newsletter November

Analyzing Dynamic Texts

We continue our examination of  the Common Core State Standards this year, by looking at the third anchor standard which asks students to “analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.”  Again, you will probably observe that this is certainly a different approach to reading or examining a text, at least in comparison to our former model of reading which focused more simply on understanding main idea, inference, and evaluating credibility.  For anchor standard three, students are asked to consider the text as a whole, to consider how things change over the duration of that text.  

 

For literature, this means that readers will have to look at how a given character develops or transforms over the course of a story.  Of course, it assumes that at least one of the characters is actually dynamic, meaning they evolve or change, which is generally true of the texts we choose, but not always.  In cases where the characters are dynamic, teachers will need to help students recognize first how they change and second what causes that change.  To do this, it will mean helping them to re-read and review sections of text to take a second or even third look at what the text says to suggest that change.

For content readings (social studies and science), anchor standard three will ask readers to consider communities, cultures, or systems that evolve or change over the course of the text.  However, you might notice that not all of your readings will lend themselves to this type of analysis.  For example, the DNA chapter might not be organized in terms of a dynamic evolution.  Instead, it might start with general principles of DNA and move into more specific details of how it is structured and how it operates.  In this case, the DNA itself isn’t really changing or evolving, so it wouldn’t really pay to examine the text in such a fashion.  In a broader sense, you might ask students to consider how the text is organized and how it “moves” from broad to specific principles, but that is really the territory of another anchor standard.  

 For this month’s newsletter, I will offer a graphic organizers  that will enable readers to consider how people, events, or ideas interact or change through the course of the text.  One is designed using the language of fiction, while the other is more broadly worded to accommodate a content field.

Find the full newsletter here. 

AVReading Newsletter October

This month, we will continue with our year long goal of examining the Common Core State Standards for Reading and how we can do things within our classrooms to emphasize them.  This month we will look at the second standard, which reads as follows:

“Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.”

Again, I will point out that our conceptualization of reading has become much more complex.  As evidence, the second standard alone seems to cover most of what we used to consider to be reading-- which means that the other nine standards of common core are going to ask readers to do more and understand more of texts.  

Standard two is basically asking the reader to demonstrate three skills:  identifying the main idea or theme, explaining how that idea is developed, and summarizing the supporting details used to develop that theme.  For our purposes here, I will focus helping students determine the main idea or theme and identifying the supporting details that led them to that conclusion.  

When reading fiction, the reader can generally piece together the main idea or theme of the text by simply doing a careful pre-read. For books and novels, a theme is often identified in the closing lines of the book’s summary (found on the inside jacket or the back cover).  For short stories, the theme is often loosely suggested by pre-story marginalia or pre-fabricated questions listed at the end.  Of course, in rare cases, students must do the heavy lifting themselves by first identifying the most important event of the story and drawing a conclusion about why that event happened.  

Finding the main idea in non-fiction is a little less complicated.  It can generally be found in the title and opening paragraph with another reference in the closing lines.  In cases where the main idea may not be immediately evident, readers have to read the text and then back up to take a bird’s eye view to consider, “What was the gist of this text?”  As indicated in last month’s newsletter, one good way of forcing students to ponder the main idea of a text is to remove the text’s title, and ask students to infer it by reading the text and following the author’s argument.  

In both cases (fiction and non-fiction), students should have a fairly good idea of the main idea (or theme) before they begin reading the text.  When they do, they are able to activate background knowledge and be ready to add information to what they already know about the topic or story at hand.  

For the second part of the standard, students are asked to then search for relevant details that support their choice of a main idea / theme.  In this case, they must search for and find textual evidence within (not beyond) the text to substantiate their thinking.  Considering this, it will be important to help students learn how to write good summaries.  This is significant not only for the struggling readers, but for those who are very capable and strong readers.  The ability to succinctly re-state the salient ideas of a text (or speech or movie or story) is critical at every level-- from early literacy practices of an emergent reader to the boardrooms of our biggest corporations and banks.  Doing so accurately ensures that the discussion moving forward can be based upon some mutually agreed upon details and facts that the group will use to make decisions.  

Get the full printable newsletter here. 

AVReading Newsletter September 2015

Like many other educational policies that have been legislated or mandated, the Common Core State Standards have met with considerable skepticism and resistance. There has also been a good deal of misinformation about what they are, how they were created, and how they are being used. Regardless of how one might feel about these standards and the way they have been rolled out, it is necessary to recognize the tremendous influence they have had on our schools, not only in terms of how we teach reading, and how we define literacy, comprehension and text, but how we teach and how we assess students.

Because of the wide-reaching impact of Common Core, and because it plays such an important part in how our students (and by default) our schools and teachers are evaluated, my AVReading Newsletters this year will focus on these ten standards. Each month will spotlight a different standard (starting in this issue) by first, analyzing what the standards say; second, highlighting how they are reflected in the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs); and third, offering classroom strategies that can specifically address them.

Even if you have not the slightest interest in the standards, I encourage you to follow the newsletters as they can offer you lessons and activities that will be helpful to you as you work to create a more engaging, interactive, and thoughtful classroom environment where you strive to release more responsibility for learning back onto the shoulders of students.

Read the full September Newsletter here. This month's newsletter includes an article on the services I provide as a reading coordinator, a look at Common Core Standard #1 (close reading), and some reading tips for students.

Collaborative Discussions

Creating the right environment for group work takes a good deal of effort.  Teachers are sometimes hesitant to take on small group discussions for a number of reasons:  they are not always efficient, students may get off task, and the quality or depth of the discussions make it feel less productive than other methods.  Never-the-less, the benefits of collaborative discussions can be significant.  One of which, is the ability for students to collaborate over complex texts to make meaning together.  

These academic discussions don’t happen naturally, however. They require a lot preparation and scaffolding early on with regular coaching over the course of time.  As Fisher and Frey (2012) write, there are four predictors of good group work:  group tasks that require students to work together, discussions that require academic language, grade level appropriate work, and the opportunity for “productive failure.”  

While small group discussions can require a good deal of set-up in the early days of a class, once students become accustomed to the expectations and processes, they become a little less labor intensive for teachers.  Here are a few helpful hints that might guide your thinking in designing and implementing collaborative discussions for your.  

• Mix up your grouping techniques.  A heterogeneous group for these types of discussions work better than homogeneous groups.  The ratio suggested here is often two lower functioning students to one higher functioning student (which might seem counter intuitive, but is generally suggested).
• Create scaffolded sentence frames for students who might need help developing their academic language.  Here are some examples taken from Rigorous Reading.  I disagree with __ because ___.  The reason I believe __ is __.  The facts that support my idea are __.  In my opinion, __. One difference between my idea and yours is __.
• Have a clear goal for the group, and indicate “roles” that each student should take-up to participate.
• Vary accountability measures from group to individual.  Sometimes, it could be a simple “sharing out”.  Other times it could be a written response.  Other times it could be a Discussion Roundtable  form, which would look divide a sheet of paper into equal parts for each group member.  Individuals fill out each part of that paper (include one for themselves) of the ideas that the group member contributed to the discussion.  A circle in the center of the sheet would be designated for a summary of the group’s findings.  On the backside of this month’s newsletter you will find a template for this.  

See the full newsletter here.  

Gates

Login into Gates Test Here. 

Media Studies Activity

Reality Television Documentary

NHS Titles

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Maze Runner by James Dashner
The Leading Indicators:  A Short History of the Numbers that Rule Our World by Zachary Karabell
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Jack Reacher Series by Lee Childs
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder
Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind by Osagie Obasogie   
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Dangerous Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle,  Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War by Michael Shaara
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl 

AVReading Newsletter April 2015: Open Space Technology

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Open Space Technology is an educational learning experience that allows groups to choose an area of interest, explore that area, and report out.  The very nature of the experience makes it very useable within the classroom environment, but it has also been used in community, corporate, and leadership settings.  It can be a completely open process, with no thematic commonality between the areas of interest, or it can be more focused.  

Though it is not a literacy strategy per se, it is quite fitting for our school building push towards engagement and inquiry. So for this month’s newsletter, I will write a little about how Open Space Technology works and why it might be a unique experience for your classroom.

I first came to Open Space Technology in a leadership conference.  There were about forty of us from a wide variety of fields:  architecture, public health, food sciences, politics etc.  We were told, as a
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full group, to generate topic ideas that we would be interested in discussing with other professionals.  They could cover any imaginable idea.  Blank sheets of paper were spread throughout the room.  We had some thinking time to post an idea on a blank sheet.  And then we were brought back together as a full group.  Anyone with an idea for a group came forward and the sheets (now with discussion topics on them) were posted around the room. The ideas included everything from violence in video games to our crumbling infrastructure to race and identity.  We were specifically told, that we held our own professional development within our hands. That we should submit ideas we were curious about and that would be meaningful to us.   Once the discussion topics were posted and briefly explored, rooms / spaces and discussion leaders (who may or may not be an expert on the topic) were assigned to each.

For the next 45 minutes, we met in those groups talking about the topic.  None of us were experts, but each of us could contribute something to the discussion.  We were told that if we did not like the direction of the discussion or wanted to move onto another group, we should exercise the law of two feet and leave.

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At the end of the 45 minutes, we reconvened as a full group and each of us shared out one important interesting idea we took for that discussion.

The advantages of Open Space Technology include engagement, capitalizing on the given strengths of a group, and releasing responsibility of learning to the community.  I’ve had lots of positive experiences with this format, with both adults and students.  

This last week, I did a digital version of Open Space Technology.  In my media studies class, we are studying social media.  So, the class brainstormed seven or eight topics related to social media (dangers of social media, privacy and social media, brain science and social media).  Within Google Classroom, I created a document for each topic and shared them with the entire class.  Students then chose one of those topics, visited the corresponding document, researched it, and contributed one or two pieces of information to the page.  Once they had contributed something, they were told to read the pieces submitted in that document by others from their group.  On day two, students returned to the classroom and shared one interesting, important or unique idea they had learned from the experience.  

If you are considering an Open Space Event, here is really all you need.  

Open Space Technology:  Social Media Topic

Open Space Technology- a forum of discussion and learning where a community generates topic ideas, divides by those topic ideas, analyzes them in groups, and shares out their findings.

Laws of Open Space:

1. Generate an Idea of interest to you.
2. Be present for your group and topic.  (Contribute)
3. Law of two feet.  If you don’t like the direction of your group, move to another one.  

Mission:  Generate topic Ideas, Move to online space, Find links that relate to your topic idea, Share out your findings to the class.

 

Read the full newsletter here.  (Includes Hot Reads and Reading Tips for Students for April.)

Sr. Speaker Materials 2015

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Guidelines for Writing a Commencement Address

The draft you write for consideration does not need to be a final version, but should give the panelists a clear idea of what you plan to say in your speech.  The traditional commencement address has had content which reflects back on the class's experiences and also gives advice or guidance for the future.  The tone should be one which inspires and motivates the listeners.

Although the Commencement Address is directed at the graduating class, the message needs to be meaningful and appropriate for the adult audience present as well.  Content, language, or style which parents or grandparents might find offensive is not suitable for a Commencement Address.

Humor can be an effective minor element of a Commencement Address.  The predominant message, and consequently the predominant writing style, should be serious, thoughtful and inspirational. 

Format:  This might be helpful.  It is an all purpose formula.  It is not required.  Feel free to be creative.  But as a starting point, you might want to observe the following steps.

Introduction--

* Attention getting anecdote

* Establish a theme -- Past speakers have used themes likethe qualities of Eagles or the symbolic importance of bridges

* Set purpose or message

Body--

* Reflect on events of past 4 years

* Reflect on present status

* Reflect on  where things are headed

Conclusion--

* Re-emphasize message

* Closing thoughts and anecdotes

A few helpful suggestions:

Though you may want to fill your speech with inspirational quotations, and heartfelt thoughts of hope, be careful of overusing clichés.  Because they have been used so often, clichés do not always hold much power within a text and tend to be easily forgotten by an audience.

On the other hand, the most memorable speeches are those that tell some type of story.  Typically, speakers will use either brief anecdotes or longer narratives to convey their message.  As opposed to citing bland clichés that are easy to forget, stories tend to stay with people and carry a stronger emotional and intellectual impact. 
Here are some samples of past commencement addresses.
2013
2012 

MCA Online Testing Materials

Tutorial Video 
Item Sampler

Writing about Reading

We generally think of writing and reading as two discrete language processes, but doing so overlooks the important relationship they have to each other. Asking students to write about their reading provides at least two fundamental benefits. First, those writings become an indicator of what students have learned from the texts. And second, those writings enable students to make meaning of those texts.

For starters, short writing activities (and I emphasize short, especially for those who work with struggling students), can be a good indicator of what students have understood of the text. It isn’t the only or even the best indicator. But, it is a good indicator none-the-less. It can be as simple as a “quick write” in student notebooks, or perhaps a more developed, formal essay. The writings (depending on the prompt and the essay requirements) can indicate if they are reading for “gist” or “meaning”, or whether the student is capable of inference and evaluation. With the help of carefully chosen prompts, you can even help students to read beyond the text to make comments about how it is structured or even what it might be missing. Student writings can help teachers assess the general needs of individual students and entire classes.

Secondly, writing prompts enable students to make deeper meaning of texts. When teachers provide writing prompts before readings, they help students to determine what might be important in that text. Writing opportunities also encourage students to return to texts to re-read, and possibly re-think their understandings. They also reinforce the practice of supporting their own claims with specific evidence from the text, which again generally means going back into the text.

This month’s newsletter is dedicated to a series of writing activities that can help students interact with texts. They are all generally quick and low-maintenance (meaning they don’t require much time to set-up or assess). While many of these activities have been around for awhile, I have taken them from Frey and Fisher’s Rigorous Reading as well as NCTE’s Read, Write, Think.

Read the entire newsletter here.

The Art and Science of Asking Questions

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As teachers we ask a lot of questions.  In fact, we do so frequently without thinking about those questions.  We believe it might be a good way to check our class’s understanding of what has been covered, or a way of getting them involved in an otherwise uninvolved lesson. 

However, as it has been generally documented (Rothstein & Santana, 2012), teachers generally don’t ask the right type of questions, relying heavily on low-level recall over more complex questions of synthesis and evaluation, questions that take a considerable amount of energy and time to answer. We also tend to ask questions that require students to “guess what is in my head.”  We want them to evaluate something and to ultimately come to the same conclusion that we have come to.  But the very nature of deep and meaningful questions means that we should not really know the answer to the question before we ask it.  That seems like an odd concept when we think about our traditional role of teacher, as disseminator of information and truth.  But today, we need to think about other roles we can play, like guide, coach and mentor, where we allow learners to struggle with questions and answers, to come to their own conclusions, and to offer them assistance when the frustration becomes too much.

This is hard for numerous reasons. First, it means that we need to re-think our practice of developing questions on the fly. Typically, these are the questions that serve as mini-quizzes to see if anyone can recall, or admit recalling what has been learned.  Second, thick questions take more time.  They require time for students to reflect. And time for them to converse about their thoughts.  Finally, they require time for them to process as a whole class and maybe even some post-discussion time to write.  Third, these questions don’t have clear and predictable answers. Teachers have to learn to hold questions versus answering them.  They have to accept sometimes ambiguous conclusions and monitor when it might be necessary to table the question and when to press students harder.  For teachers teaching multiple sections of a class, this can be difficult.  One class might really struggle with the question and not get very far.  One class might be able to answer it quickly and move on. 

One class might have a rich, deep discussion that takes on a life of its own.  This is hard, because we often try to re-create discussions from earlier classes by imposing ourselves more firmly in those discussions versus letting them take their own direction. 

 This month I’ve chosen a few reading strategies that not only help you to utilize meaningful questioning practices in your classes, but also to help students develop the art of asking good questions as well. First, you will find some guidelines for asking thoughtful questions in class.  Second, you will find a hand-out entitled “Thick Questions” which can be useful to use with students to show them how to ask good questions as they read. And the third is a vocabulary activity based around asking questions of the word.

Find the full newsletter here.  In it you will find

-->Teacher Tips for Developing Strong Classroom Questions, January Reading Tips, Thick Questions, and Word Questioning.