AVReading

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Reading Complex Texts Do you sometimes worry that your curriculum has been watered down to meet students where they are at? Do you worry that if and when these students make it to post secondary courses, they will be unprepared to meet the demands of school? This is perhaps my most regular and persistent concern in teaching. It feels like I am constantly tacking between assignments, tasks, and expectations that are too rigorous and those that are not rigorous enough, constantly searching for that sweet spot, that almost mythic and generally elusive Zone of Proximal Development where students get into that “productive struggle”. On occasion, I will steal some of the assignments my son-- Jacob-- has from college. I might post a writing prompt or an excerpt from one of his readings for my 9th graders to see. I show it to the students and ask them to reflect in writing for a little while. What do you think of that prompt / text? Would you be able to tackle it? What do y...

     As we move to more of a workshop model for our classes, we need to continue promoting classroom habits that enable students to become better at independent and small group tasks.  When it comes to small groups in particular, our goal is to both help them use their time wisely, to make meaning as a collective team, and to grow their language of school.  While students can develop and practice their academic language in writing and in full group activities, it is probably most meaningful to help them do so working in small groups.       It isn’t always easy for teachers to hand over responsibility to students for small group work.   And for good reason.  How many times do we designate learning or activities to small groups, and then realize that a number of the groups just don’t function well?  Either they are completely off task or one participant does all of the work.  Or worst of all, the...

In continuing our study of Jeff Zwiers Building Academic Language,  this month we will focus on how to create environments where students can develop their academic language through whole class discussions.     To start with, Zwiers points out how important it is to get students involved in classes.  And though this has been generally accepted by the community in theory, in practice this does not seem to be the case.  Zwiers offers research that found 85% of our class time today is devoted to lecture, recitation and seatwork.  Part of the problem stems from the very structure of our environments, where we try to “cover” content and material within a given timeline.  Class discussions take time, and they often aren’t easy to control so they might shoot off into unrelated tangents.  Teachers aren’t always comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with open ended classroom dialogue, preferring to ask quick, low-level qu...

With a better understanding of what Academic Language is and why it is important to develop (see September and October issues), the next step is to examine how we can foster environments where academic language can be developed.  As a brief reminder, academic language is more than just the words we use to talk in classes. They also include the way we formulate our ideas and even how we formulate them.    Modeling     Modeling academic language is an important starting point.  Teachers who demonstrate how to state and express their thoughts in academic language, in addition to showing students how to decode and interpret that language is important.  However, merely using academic language is not enough.  Simply using the jargon and language of your content field without pointing it out or showing how you use it, may only frustrate the problem.  Instead, Modeling it might mean using the language, but then having...

--> Making the Invisible, Visible One of the mystifying aspects of school for some students is the “unwritten” and largely “unspoken” code of education.  For many of us, we assume that students know the language or protocol of school.  It comes out in a myriad of small choices throughout the day.  Knowing when blurting out is okay versus formally raising your hand.  Knowing how-- or when-- to just think aloud and free associate thoughts.  Knowing how-- or when-- to re-state a teacher’s ideas or how to expand and develop ideas.  This code is largely socialized into some students, but we can’t assume that everyone has had that same experience.  Building academic language is a way of making some of those unwritten codes more visible.  Let’s start with a good definition of academic language. As Jeffrey Zwier writes,  academic language is “the set of words, grammar, and discourse strategies used to describe complex ideas, higher-order thin...

The last common core anchor standard is perhaps the most controversial of the anchors. It reads as follows: Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently. On the surface, it doesn’t seem too inflammatory, but the debate / discussion has centered around the qualifier “complex”. Literacy and English teachers voiced a few concerns about this standard: what is considered complex and second how do you ensure that everyone is reading in their level of productive struggle? First, many have expressed concerns over the actual definition of complex. Some feared that teachers would apply an overly simplistic definition and rely solely on reading formulas (like Lexile scores) to determine what would be considered as sufficiently difficult. They argue that some texts -- like Hemingway for example-- are quite rigorous in form and content, but measure really low in readability (since he is known for short, declarative sentences with a low frequenc...

"Comparing Texts" Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take. Common Core Reading Standard #9 is another indicator of how our standards for reading have become more complex. Whereas traditional reading has emphasized the comprehension of a single text as a “stand alone,” today’s standards are asking students to read “across” texts to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate ideas. The good news is that this practice challenges students to think more deeply about their readings. The bad news is that it requires a considerably more complex cognitive task-- namely that readers will have to hold two ideas in their heads at one time: the text they are currently reading and the text of the other reading. For the struggling reader, this will be pretty difficult, and teachers will have to help them navigate between the two texts. So the question is how can we do this? For starters, reader...

"Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence." This month, our focus will be on Common Core Standard #8 (above), which asks readers to not only identify the argument made within a text, but also the specific claims (or supporting details) used to defend that position. Additionally, students are asked to assess the validity of that reasoning. In other words, they need to explain the strengths or weaknesses of this reasoning, regardless of their own personal beliefs on the issue. You might think that this pertains to only persuasive writing, those usually associated with editorials or political blogs. However, as some have pointed out, all texts are to some degree arguments. Even those that pretend to be informative or descriptive in nature are posing the argument that this text is worthy of the viewer’s or reader’s time and attention. So our...

Reading Across Texts Common Core Anchor Standard Number Seven is perhaps the most non-descript of all the common core standards. Here is what it says. “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.” It doesn’t really indicate much direction in terms of how to integrate and evaluate content, or explain what types of diverse media are most important, so it can be interpreted rather broadly. Here is my take-away. Challenge student understanding of text by asking them to read across texts (preferably from different mediums, like print and video or print and visual etc). English The classic example would be to read a scene from Romeo and Juliet, and then to show them a staged version of that same scene. Students then should discuss the differing interpretations of that text, as well as how the visual representations use specific elements (ie. lighting, camera shots, sound, music, make-up, pacing) ...

As it is written, Common Core Standard #6 is perhaps the most difficult for students to grasp, and for teachers to teach.  The standard asks students to “Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.”  Again, this is a fairly significant shift from the old way of teaching reading.  At most, we might ask students to determine the point of view or purpose of a text and provide evidence of that.  In this era, readers are expected to not only identify the point of view or purpose of a text, but to explain how that point of view or purpose has shaped the text.  Like Standard #5, it asks readers to consider an author’s choices.  The difference is that for this standard, students have to explain an author’s choices in relationship to their purpose, which is much more specific than just their general choices. For many texts, this will be difficult, largely because either the purpose or point of view are difficul...

--> Looking at this month’s Spotlight Common Core Standard #5, you begin to see the complexity of our new notion of reading.  As mentioned before, our new conceptualization of reading moves beyond just “what the text says” and “what the text suggests” to “how the text is constructed” and “how the construction of the text affects the meaning.”  This requires a great deal of analysis and thought.  It first implies that students understanding the literal and inferential meaning of a text, and now must examine it for how the author put it together.   The fifth standard reads, “Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.” For the most part, I believe this standard will belong to the realms of English and Language Arts classes, where the close reading of texts is more of the predominant focus.  That’s not t...

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 ...

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 dete...

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 a...