Over the last year, the work of Nancy Atwell and Vicki Spandell have made a large impact on the way facilitate writing for all students. Matching their discussions on writer's workshop with my knowledge of writing development and the writing process allows me to create a writing program, with instruction and assessment, for all abilities and needs.
I teach mainstream freshmen at all abilities levels, so I see a range of ability and need in my classroom. Writing develop has five stages: emergent, initial, transition, basic, and refinement. However, my students mainly fall into the description of basic and refinement stages of writing development. My students are knowledgeable and capable of various prewriting strategies and are capable of revision and editing. (That's not to say that all students preform these tasks unless I pressure them to do so). My students also tend to write drafts that require several sittings to complete and they use focused questions from me and the writer when they do formal peer conferencing. Most of my students also love to receive feedback on their writing, whether from peers or from me. Many of my honors students exhibit traits of the refinement stage such as writing differently than they speak, writing for many different purposes or from different points of view, and high mastery for grammar and mechanics. Meanwhile other students, usually those not in honors courses, have some traits of transitional development, such as thinking revision is redoing their work, trouble editing, and stories that cover all points of the plot equally.
With such a wide range of students, it is important that I design a program that reaches all students. I've implemented a writing workshop in my classroom and have found that its flexibility meets the range in students needs better than my previous writing program. This program also has the ability to meet the needs of ELL students, although I have not yet had an ELL student in my class.
I see my students for eighty minutes every other day. Using Atwell's suggestion that students are more likely to read at home than to writer at home, I structured my class-time to have a block of thirty minutes of writing time at the end of every period. First of all, this structure created predictable writing time as recommended by Regie Routman in Writing Essentials (2004). My students know that they are expected to write every class, so they easily transition into this activity and are used to the types of activities they can preform during this time. They know they can work on any stage of the writing process of a piece, or they can refer to the menu on the board if they need more specific direction. This helps to meet the different abilities in the classroom. Students can work at their own pace and focus on their own areas of need during writing time. For example, a student who needs extra time to process can take longer drafting a story than a student who needs to spend more time on editing a final draft. Likewise, this class structure allows ELL students the opportunity to do activities such as having stories scribed, tape recording and playing back stories, working on phonics and vocabulary, or using pictionaries, which might otherwise interfere with or stand out in a class where all students were working at the same pace on the same step.
Other than the ten to fifteen minutes of required silent time, students are allowed to talk during our writing time. As Routmen (2004) summarizes: “A community of writers who share ideas and respond helpfully to one another makes it easier and more enjoyable to write.” Often, this social interaction takes the form of conferencing. Some conferences are very informal. I often see friends swap notebooks and read each other's work, more to share an idea or receive affirmation than to ask for deep criticism. Other times, a small group of students will sit discussing one students topic in-depth for several minutes. I've also observed students asking each other for quick help or criticism, such as how to spell a word, a synonym, or to read a line over to see if it “sounds okay.” When I started writing workshop, I was weary of this aspect of the program; I thought no writing would occur and students would always be off task. While there are still talkative students and students who avoid work, from observing my students I've seen that pretty much all students do write every class period and the social interaction provides them with support. The social interaction in the classroom also helps ELL students. These students not only receive greater exposure to language being used, but they can use their peers as a resource; as Routman summarizes Freeman and Freeman (2002), Krashen (2003), and Knapp et al. (1995) in Writing Essentials: “English Language Learners ... are more apt to succeed when they are immersed in a challenging curriculum and give lots of opportunities for scaffolded conversations and shared experiences.” Kagan and Holt also argue that working collaboratively helps to build self-esteem.
During writing time students can also conference with me, which is advocated by Atwell (1998), Routmen (2004), Graves (1994), and Calkins (1994). I typically see two types of conferences: students who want help getting started and students who want help polishing a draft. In general, conferencing allows me to get to know my students personally and as writers. I am able to validate their attempts, respond to their content as a reader, and offer guidance about what next steps to take next. Also, teacher conferencing is a great opportunity for me to individualize instruction for the various ability levels and needs in my classroom. For example, one conference may focus on helping a student notice places in a story where the reader wants more detail and I can talk to the student about exploding the moment, as Barry Lane puts it in After the End (1993). Then the next conference, might focus on word choice in a persuasive essay and helping the writer to see how specific word choice can turn off or sway the reader. Preforming these lessons as a full class would not be as effective as giving the information to individual students through a personal conference dealing with their specific piece of writing. Having time built into class for conferencing with me is an additional way I can support an ELL student. During conferences, I can help build prior knowledge, make connections between new and old information, and classify information about various areas of language depending on the students literacy level in English and their other language(s). Conference time can also be a time where I could scribe for a student who has developed Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, but not yet Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency.
The ability for students to conference with me and peers during their writing time fits into one of the major principles of my writing program, which is also part of our school and state curriculum: Writing is a process consisting of prewriting (or planning), drafting, revising, editing, and publishing (Routman, 2003; Calkins; Graves, 1983). My students have received instruction on the writing process before entering my classroom, but we are always going back to the process to define its steps and discuss how to use them. Where I used to just lecture about the steps, I've since learned that modeling of the steps works better to illustrate how to use them, which Vicki Spandell, Nancy Atwell, Katie Wood Roy, and Linda Rief advocate. Earlier this year, I took my students through the steps I used to write a poem. I shared with my students how I got the idea for my poem while I was driving, so when I got home, I rushed to map out my thinking. I then explained how I zeroed in on one idea and how I decided that a poem would be the best genre to use for my idea. The lesson ended there that day, and I asked students to think about how they narrow down a topic and chose a genre while they worked on their prewriting. Another day I showed my students my first draft of the poem. I showed them how I didn't worry too much about the structure, grammar, or spelling because I wanted to get the ideas down. Still another day, I showed them the changes I made through three drafts of my poem and did some additional revision out loud while they watched, and then we discussed the different types of things one can do while revising a poem. These short lessons on the writing process help students in a few ways. First, they allow them to see how the steps are used on a real piece of writing. Secondly, the students saw my life as a writer, particularly how I choose topics that are from my deepest interests (Graves). Lastly, they allow me to start the gradual release of responsibility process with these writing skills. For example, after the lesson where I shared my revision, I asked students to share in the demonstration and provide their input on what to revise in a different draft.
One of the most important elements of my writing workshop design is choice as endorsed by Atwell, Graves, and Routman. For me, reading Vicki Spandell's chapter on “The Right to Choose a Personally Important Topic” in The Nine Rights of Every Writer (2005), helped me to see why choice is so important for students while still explaining that there a balance still exists between choice and necessary content writing. Now, my students chose their own topics and to try different genres. For most students, the choice is their favorite part of my class. These students are excited to work in their favorite genres and to try new ones, or they have a wealth of subjects to explore through writing. However, there are many students who find such choice overwhelming. I often conference with these students about how I choose a topic. We discuss what they know a lot about or if there are important life experiences they want to share. Or, we might begin by looking at the list of genres posted in the room and seeing if one sounds more interesting than the others. Choice is another element that supports writing for ELL students. Allowing such students to chose a topic about which they already have knowledge can make writing much less daunting than processing new material and writing in a new language at the same time. Also, just as with other students, choice can be a motivator.
The writing workshop easily matches many of the elements of my school curriculum. For example, I can easily work on grammar and conventions with students individually, or when I see a persistent problem with all students, as mini lessons for the whole class. These items of the curriculum easily fit into the local, state, and national assessments we participate in such as the NWEA, the SAT verbal section, and local assessments that evaluate student writing. Another large area in the freshmen curriculum is achieving deep revision versus surface revisions, and is highly supported by Donald Graves and Barry Lane. The workshop format allows students ample time to rework their pieces alone and with support from peer and me; additionally, I am able to give multiple mini-lessons on the topic and foster gradual release of those skills.
However, other aspects of the writing workshop do not directly address our assessments. So, there are times when I must suspend student choice for us to work on types of writing they will need to do for assessments. The timed essay portion of the SAT and literary analysis essays needed for AP courses are perfect examples. Students do not elect to do these types of writing on their own; in fact, most of my students have never done them before. So, at certain points in the year, we suspend choice and the students work on these types of writing. However, as much as possible, the rest of the structure of writing workshop is kept the same. For example, students still use social interaction while writing their lit analysis essay and I still model the steps of writing a timed piece.
The writing workshop also allows me to foster the connection between reading and writing that Allington and Richard Gentry promote. Not only do my students receive time to read and writer every class period, but there are several other opportunities for them to connect being a reader and being a writer. I encourage students to emulate the craft of the writer's whose work we read, such as using the literature and poetic devices we study in our class discussions of literature in their own writing. But perhaps the most common connections is when a student asks me about trying a new genre. Many students wrote children's books this year, but were unsure of how to start since they hadn't read one in years. Similar situations happened for students writing book or movie reviews, pamphlets, sports articles, or various types of poems. When students come to me with these concerns, my first advice is to look in the classroom library for examples of the type of writing they want to try and read them critically. I tell them that those examples are the templates and directions for trying that genre on their own. The ELL student is also helped by the connections formed between reading and writing through using a workshop design. Having time to read at the beginning of class as well as allowing reading as part of processing for writing increases ELL students exposure to print.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Reading Failure
The best way to reconcile conflicting points of view when designing effective reading instruction for all readers is to realize that multiple factors are always at play when dealing with humans, and so no one answer will work for all children. Different types of practitioners and researchers find the root of the reading failure in different areas because of the focus of their study. Those who believe that reading is a series of developmental stages believe the cause and solution for reading failure can be found in those stages; meanwhile, those who focus on neurology or school structures find the problem and answer in those areas. I believe that these areas often overlap. First of all, in any given classroom, students' causes for reading failure will come from different factors because of their individual experiences and make up, thus it is a foolish idea to try to have one solution solve all reading failure. However, sometimes it is often a combination of different areas in one student that creates the reading failure, so it is also wise for the teacher to try multiple approaches toward individual students as well as the class as a whole.
There are five stages of literacy development: emergent (preK - K), initial (1-2), transitional (2-4), basic (4-6), and refinement (6 and on) (O'Donnell and Wood). As a secondary education teacher in a school that provides pull out services for students who are below a third grade reading level, I do not encounter students in the emergent or initial stages. However, I do often encounter students stuck in the transitional stage; in fact, this is the stage students in general most often get stuck. These students are able to read independently and know many sight words and word identification strategies, but still need to work on fluency and comprehension. These students are often good at “fake reading” as Tovani calls it in I Read It, But I Don't Get It (2000); they manage to get by without reading. Other high school students become stuck at the basic stage. While these students can read fluently and read a wider range of materials than transitional readers, they still struggle with comprehension, deeper vocabulary understanding, and metacognition. In my classroom, often these students are “word callers” who can read out loud beautifully, but have little understanding of what the passage means. Or, these students may not know how to tell when they are stuck or get unstuck while reading.
Those that believe developmental stages can diagnose all reading failure believe students become stuck in a stage for a variety of reasons, all of which relate to the students prior experience or knowledge. One of these reasons is socioeconomic factors, such as described in Lawrence Hardy's article “Children at Risk” (2006). Students who live in poverty often have reading failure. One reason is that students living on limited means are not exposed to as many life experiences. For example, a student who lives in poverty might not go on outings to zoos, parks, or museums that other children do. Similarly, children living in poverty may not go on vacation and thus would not know about other places, be them geographic locations such beaches, farms, or cities, or other states or countries that wealthier families could visit; impoverished children would also lack on knowledge about travel such as how an airport works or what a passport is. Furthermore, students who live in poverty may also not get the direct literacy instruction from their parents that other children receive. Such students' parents might not have the money to afford books, the resources to go to a library, or the time to spend reading to or with their children. The lack of these experiences can affect a student drastically once he or she enters the classroom affecting his or her readiness to read or his or her ability to understand the content of what is read.
Poverty is not the only way that students might lack prior knowledge. As Mary Pipher explains in her book Middle of Everywhere (2003), students from other cultures, primarily immigrant families, can lack cultural knowledge that affects their developmental stage in literacy. While language is a barrier, cultural knowledge extends even further. For example, if a students comes from a country with a different climate, that child might not understand have trouble understanding books in a unit on seasons changing or snow. This can extend to all sorts of aspects of culture including how a story is structured because different cultures share information with different organization. While in America we usually tell a story chronologically or share information in a direct fashion, other cultures are elliptical or work backwards. Lacking knowledge about American culture thus can also cause a student to become stuck at a developmental stage until these gaps in understanding are closed.
Another aspect that can affect a students progress through the developmental stages can be the values held in the students home, which could be due to a different culture or not. If parents or other families members do not value education or literacy, then it is very probable that these values will pass to the children in that family even if not directly taught. In my practice, I see this most often through male students who don't see the value in reading because they intend to enter the family business such as farming, lobstering, or mechanics. These students lose interest in reading after the novelty wears off and the reading gets more difficult.
There is also an emotional component to literacy. Years of failure can create emotional problems for students as Tovani describes in the first chapter of I Read It, But I Don't Get It entitled “Fake Reading.” She describes all the negativity that her students bring to yet another class designed for poor readers. Furthermore, in “Emotions, Cognition, and Becoming a Reader” Carol Lyons explains the affect that emotions have on learning and reading. She describes that there are chemical reactions in the brain that occur based on our emotions and those reactions then affect our learning. Ultimately, negative emotions can chemically prevent ideal conditions in the brain for learning, including reading (Lyons, 1999). Gerald Coles in his article “Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain” agrees that emotion is an important part of literacy instruction, but he asserts that students struggle because our instruction is void of emotion. We still teach children the Puritan work ethic that hard work is more important than happiness and then expect students lacking in confidence and motivation to sustain their own learning (Cole, 1999) Alfie Kohn (2005) explores emotional factors of teaching in an article entitled “Unconditional Teaching” discussing that we teach children that they are accepted only if they do well academically or behaviorally. All of these discussions suggest that emotion can play a large role in a student's prior experience with school and reading causing a student to stall at a developmental stage.
However, one of the biggest factors that has affected a students prior knowledge and experience upon arrival in my freshmen classroom is experience with school and teachers. While some practitioners believe that teachers and schools can be the root of reading failure, I believe that it is more accurately put that teacher methods and school structures can negatively affect a students' experiences and knowledge base thus causing that student to become stuck at a stage for one or more of the reasons stated above.
There are many teaching methods and school practices that can negatively affect students. One huge problem with teachers is a lack of necessary training. When I think of my own undergraduate education, I did not receive any instruction on literacy in terms of metacognition, assessment, writing process, ELL, and many other areas that directly affect my daily instructional decisions. Poor teacher training can lead to any number of methods that could lead to reading failure including relying on only canned prepackaged reading programs or not reading research data critically. Another problem steaming from school can be a lack of balance. Schools might not offer enough choice in reading materials, causing students to become unengaged with texts they can't relate to. Or, a school might spend too much time preparing students for assessments such as standardized tests instead of providing reading time or authentic literacy experiences. Schools might put too much attention on phonics or whole language instead of balance of the two as recommend by Gerald Coles, Marie Clay, and recently the National Reading Panel; thus only some learners reached, leaving others behind. The use of tracking or pull out classes could emotionally affect students. I can remember knowing I was in the lowest reading group in first grade how that felt. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been to pulled out of story time, music or art to get further reading instruction.
Sometimes the belief that neurological factors are the root of reading failure leads to some of the poor teaching practices listed above. Psychologists and medical doctors often believe that reading failure comes from problems within the brain that cause the student to have difficulty with word recognition, decoding, or spelling. In her book Overcoming Dyslexia (2005), Sally Shaywitz explains the differences between a dyslexics brain versus an average reader. To overcome these problems, she focuses strongly on a phonics approach asserting that there is a one best approach to phonics (unlike Patricia Cunningham in Phonics They Use (1995)). While Shaywitz also discusses other ways to help dyslexics that include approaches found in whole language practice, schools can read Shaywitz push for phonics done a certain way as a solution to reading problems and create imbalanced programs. From my own experience with dyslexia, I know that it was not phonics instruction that made me the reader I am today. Quite the contrary, a combination of the phonics instruction at my school coupled with strong value education in my family, frequent trips to town and school libraries, and frequently being read to by teachers and my father kept me interested and invested in reading more than any phonics solution alone could. So, teachers and schools must be careful to read research critically to avoid implementing imbalanced programs which negatively affect students school experiences.
Thus, instead of taking one approach to reading failure, teachers and schools must be prepared to deal with multiple causes. Developmental stages can be affected by teaching methods, and teaching methods can be dictated by beliefs on neurology. Schools must realize that reading failure has no panacea and teachers should be trained to attack it on all front. For this to work, teachers must be well trained in literacy and then must get to know their students. Teachers need to use a variety of assessments that allow them to know their students on multiple levels so that they can decided what the cause or causes of reading failure could be, because there is no one cause for all children. This preparation coupled with principles presented in question one such as student engagement through time, choice, and social interaction with reading; using gradual release and the principles of comprehension; and enthusiastic teachers who share their literacy lives and create rich print environments will create reading instruction where all students succeed.
There are five stages of literacy development: emergent (preK - K), initial (1-2), transitional (2-4), basic (4-6), and refinement (6 and on) (O'Donnell and Wood). As a secondary education teacher in a school that provides pull out services for students who are below a third grade reading level, I do not encounter students in the emergent or initial stages. However, I do often encounter students stuck in the transitional stage; in fact, this is the stage students in general most often get stuck. These students are able to read independently and know many sight words and word identification strategies, but still need to work on fluency and comprehension. These students are often good at “fake reading” as Tovani calls it in I Read It, But I Don't Get It (2000); they manage to get by without reading. Other high school students become stuck at the basic stage. While these students can read fluently and read a wider range of materials than transitional readers, they still struggle with comprehension, deeper vocabulary understanding, and metacognition. In my classroom, often these students are “word callers” who can read out loud beautifully, but have little understanding of what the passage means. Or, these students may not know how to tell when they are stuck or get unstuck while reading.
Those that believe developmental stages can diagnose all reading failure believe students become stuck in a stage for a variety of reasons, all of which relate to the students prior experience or knowledge. One of these reasons is socioeconomic factors, such as described in Lawrence Hardy's article “Children at Risk” (2006). Students who live in poverty often have reading failure. One reason is that students living on limited means are not exposed to as many life experiences. For example, a student who lives in poverty might not go on outings to zoos, parks, or museums that other children do. Similarly, children living in poverty may not go on vacation and thus would not know about other places, be them geographic locations such beaches, farms, or cities, or other states or countries that wealthier families could visit; impoverished children would also lack on knowledge about travel such as how an airport works or what a passport is. Furthermore, students who live in poverty may also not get the direct literacy instruction from their parents that other children receive. Such students' parents might not have the money to afford books, the resources to go to a library, or the time to spend reading to or with their children. The lack of these experiences can affect a student drastically once he or she enters the classroom affecting his or her readiness to read or his or her ability to understand the content of what is read.
Poverty is not the only way that students might lack prior knowledge. As Mary Pipher explains in her book Middle of Everywhere (2003), students from other cultures, primarily immigrant families, can lack cultural knowledge that affects their developmental stage in literacy. While language is a barrier, cultural knowledge extends even further. For example, if a students comes from a country with a different climate, that child might not understand have trouble understanding books in a unit on seasons changing or snow. This can extend to all sorts of aspects of culture including how a story is structured because different cultures share information with different organization. While in America we usually tell a story chronologically or share information in a direct fashion, other cultures are elliptical or work backwards. Lacking knowledge about American culture thus can also cause a student to become stuck at a developmental stage until these gaps in understanding are closed.
Another aspect that can affect a students progress through the developmental stages can be the values held in the students home, which could be due to a different culture or not. If parents or other families members do not value education or literacy, then it is very probable that these values will pass to the children in that family even if not directly taught. In my practice, I see this most often through male students who don't see the value in reading because they intend to enter the family business such as farming, lobstering, or mechanics. These students lose interest in reading after the novelty wears off and the reading gets more difficult.
There is also an emotional component to literacy. Years of failure can create emotional problems for students as Tovani describes in the first chapter of I Read It, But I Don't Get It entitled “Fake Reading.” She describes all the negativity that her students bring to yet another class designed for poor readers. Furthermore, in “Emotions, Cognition, and Becoming a Reader” Carol Lyons explains the affect that emotions have on learning and reading. She describes that there are chemical reactions in the brain that occur based on our emotions and those reactions then affect our learning. Ultimately, negative emotions can chemically prevent ideal conditions in the brain for learning, including reading (Lyons, 1999). Gerald Coles in his article “Literacy, Emotions, and the Brain” agrees that emotion is an important part of literacy instruction, but he asserts that students struggle because our instruction is void of emotion. We still teach children the Puritan work ethic that hard work is more important than happiness and then expect students lacking in confidence and motivation to sustain their own learning (Cole, 1999) Alfie Kohn (2005) explores emotional factors of teaching in an article entitled “Unconditional Teaching” discussing that we teach children that they are accepted only if they do well academically or behaviorally. All of these discussions suggest that emotion can play a large role in a student's prior experience with school and reading causing a student to stall at a developmental stage.
However, one of the biggest factors that has affected a students prior knowledge and experience upon arrival in my freshmen classroom is experience with school and teachers. While some practitioners believe that teachers and schools can be the root of reading failure, I believe that it is more accurately put that teacher methods and school structures can negatively affect a students' experiences and knowledge base thus causing that student to become stuck at a stage for one or more of the reasons stated above.
There are many teaching methods and school practices that can negatively affect students. One huge problem with teachers is a lack of necessary training. When I think of my own undergraduate education, I did not receive any instruction on literacy in terms of metacognition, assessment, writing process, ELL, and many other areas that directly affect my daily instructional decisions. Poor teacher training can lead to any number of methods that could lead to reading failure including relying on only canned prepackaged reading programs or not reading research data critically. Another problem steaming from school can be a lack of balance. Schools might not offer enough choice in reading materials, causing students to become unengaged with texts they can't relate to. Or, a school might spend too much time preparing students for assessments such as standardized tests instead of providing reading time or authentic literacy experiences. Schools might put too much attention on phonics or whole language instead of balance of the two as recommend by Gerald Coles, Marie Clay, and recently the National Reading Panel; thus only some learners reached, leaving others behind. The use of tracking or pull out classes could emotionally affect students. I can remember knowing I was in the lowest reading group in first grade how that felt. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been to pulled out of story time, music or art to get further reading instruction.
Sometimes the belief that neurological factors are the root of reading failure leads to some of the poor teaching practices listed above. Psychologists and medical doctors often believe that reading failure comes from problems within the brain that cause the student to have difficulty with word recognition, decoding, or spelling. In her book Overcoming Dyslexia (2005), Sally Shaywitz explains the differences between a dyslexics brain versus an average reader. To overcome these problems, she focuses strongly on a phonics approach asserting that there is a one best approach to phonics (unlike Patricia Cunningham in Phonics They Use (1995)). While Shaywitz also discusses other ways to help dyslexics that include approaches found in whole language practice, schools can read Shaywitz push for phonics done a certain way as a solution to reading problems and create imbalanced programs. From my own experience with dyslexia, I know that it was not phonics instruction that made me the reader I am today. Quite the contrary, a combination of the phonics instruction at my school coupled with strong value education in my family, frequent trips to town and school libraries, and frequently being read to by teachers and my father kept me interested and invested in reading more than any phonics solution alone could. So, teachers and schools must be careful to read research critically to avoid implementing imbalanced programs which negatively affect students school experiences.
Thus, instead of taking one approach to reading failure, teachers and schools must be prepared to deal with multiple causes. Developmental stages can be affected by teaching methods, and teaching methods can be dictated by beliefs on neurology. Schools must realize that reading failure has no panacea and teachers should be trained to attack it on all front. For this to work, teachers must be well trained in literacy and then must get to know their students. Teachers need to use a variety of assessments that allow them to know their students on multiple levels so that they can decided what the cause or causes of reading failure could be, because there is no one cause for all children. This preparation coupled with principles presented in question one such as student engagement through time, choice, and social interaction with reading; using gradual release and the principles of comprehension; and enthusiastic teachers who share their literacy lives and create rich print environments will create reading instruction where all students succeed.
Creating a Program of Studies
As a high school English Language Arts teacher, I am responsible for creating a literacy program for my students. Underlying principles guide my choices on instruction, materials, assessments, and organization / environment. I teach high school underclassmen who range from the transitional to refinement stages in their literacy development. My school practices heterogeneous grouping for all students except those considered “advanced,” so my class periods are made up of individuals with a variety of needs. The principles that guide me in creating and maintaining my literacy program allow me to meet the needs of all these students.
One of the most important principles that guides my instruction is the concept of gradual release as described in Regie Routman's Reading Essentials as the “optimal learning model” and also called “zone of proximal development” by Vygotsky. Gradual release, which is also supported by Debbie Miller, starts with teacher demonstration, then moves to demonstration shared by teacher and student. Next, students partake in guided practice where the teacher assists the student before moving on to independent practice, the final step where the student preforms the skill alone. I use this principle to guide my instruction often with reading and writing. For example, even though my students are older, I still preform read alouds to illustrate how I make meaning from text or how I take notes on a text. During the writing portion of my class, I often share with my students how I gather ideas, form a paragraph, or revise. After modeling, I can then ask students to collaborate with me by adding their input while I lead and explain as necessary. Then it is time for the students to try this work on their own. As they work, I move around the room observing and helping. Most recently, guided practice in my classroom focused on finding subjects and predicates in sentences. I often redirected students when they asked for affirmation by asking questions like “Can you do that word? Is it an action?” or by re-explaining how compound subjects and predicates are linked together with “and.” After guided practice, my students are ready for independent practice, but the length of time it takes to get to this stage varies from student to student and skill to skill. By using flexible grouping during class work time, students are able to work on different stages of gradual release simultaneously (Tomlinson, 1995, 1999).
Gradual release has two important benefits in my classroom. First, it allows me to support my students as they gradually make skills and concepts their own. Before I learned about this method, I would often move from a lecture straight to independent practice that would be assessed for a grade. Only the students with natural talent in ELA or who had learned the content before would be successful. Now, I introduce my content giving ample time for students to explore and experiment with the material and get assistance before they are assessed on their own. With models from me and fellow students and many sessions to practice together and alone, far more students are successful. Secondly, gradual release allows me to work with students at varying levels of mastery. Students who understand quickly from my demonstration lead during shared demonstration while others who still need more modeling can watch. Later during practice, students who struggle can receive more attention during guided practice, while those who feel confident can move into independent practice at varying levels of complexity or begin to receive guided practice on a different skill.
Prior knowledge is another principle that guides my instruction, and is supported by David Pearson and Debbie Miller. I first read about activating prior knowledge through Chris Tovani's Do I Really Have to Teach Reading (2004). I later learned that prior knowledge is just the first step in the principles of comprehension, which also include connecting new and old information together and organizing or classifying information to improve recall. In my classroom, I often check or activate prior knowledge before starting a larger lesson or text. For example, when I used to teach Ann Rinaldi's A Break with Charity about the Salem Witch Trials or Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, we would often complete a KWL chart about the Puritans prior to starting the book to help students gather and remember the historical information they would need to understand the text. Sometimes, I would need to build prior knowledge because students would know very little about the Puritans; we would do further reading on the subject such as completing a jig saw using their American History textbook, reading aloud the children's book The Spinner's Daughter by Amy Sugarlittle, or discussing Anne Bradstreet's poem “Upon the Burning of Our House.” Then, as we read the assigned text, we would connect the factual information in these historical fictions back to the earlier readings and KWL. This would help the students to connect the new information they learned about Puritans to the older information they new from history, movies, or our readings, and thus they were able to recall it later more easily. Implementing this principle in my instructional decisions made a huge impact on my students. First of all, I stopped assuming that all my students knew the historical information in a text. By taking inventory of their knowledge before we started, I was able to support their reading instead of always back tracking when they were confused. This principle has helped with all sorts of topics that involve background knowledge, including grammar, writing, and research skills.
Chris Tovani also taught me about metacognition in her book I Read It, But I Don't Get It (2000). Previously, I assumed that high school students would know how to read. However, when two-thirds of my non-honors students were failing my first year of teaching, I realized that they all did not experience reading the way I did. I soon learned to reflect on my own reading to see what good readers do and then pass this on to students, like Nancy Atwell and Richard Allington in their workshops. Thus, I adopted the principle that reading involves complex thinking. My students in my middle level classes who struggled often thought like Tovani did as a teen (2000). They believed being able to say the words would ensure meaning. Or, they would reread multiple times expecting the meaning to magically come to them. These students didn't know how to monitor their reading to determine when they were stuck, and then apply fix-it strategies like questioning, connecting, or using print conventions. Now, I base a lot of my instruction on the concept that reading is complex thinking that makes meaning.
After I started to use these three principles in my instruction, I then started to work on the materials and environment in my classroom. First, I worked on creating a classroom that is rich in literacy experiences. This started with an extensive classroom like Nancy Atwell, Regie Routmen, and Richard Allington encourage. While funding prevents me from getting the optimal number and range to my library, my library still contains about four hundred texts ranging from a few children's picture books, to texts better suited for transitional readers like Gary Paulsen and Judy Blume, to best selling adult fiction, to canonical classics. However, students rarely looked at my classroom library until I made a few more changes. First, I used Routmen's Reading Essentials to help me organize my library in an inviting way. Then, I added to my instruction and organization three key elements: choice, time, and sharing (all backed by Atwell, Allington, and Routmen). Adding choice, time, and sharing to my instruction has been so important because of the increase motivation and engagement it provides for students both in reading and writing.
I started the 2008 school year with free choice reading being the norm instead of an occasional reward. I really took to heart Atwell's belief that “free choice reading of books should be a young person's right – not a privilege granted by the teacher.” Students at all levels were instantly more interested and engaged with their reading. Next, I added twenty minutes a class period for reading time. With out rotating two day block schedule of eighty minute periods, this equalled between forty to sixty minutes of in class reading time a week for students. Where homework used to be a prescribed chapters, it changed to reading thirty minutes a day out side of school adding an additional three and a half hours of reading time a week. Coupled with choice to read anything they like, students were completing their reading homework and flying through books. Even students who claimed to dislike reading or had failed the course the year before because of not reading were reading silently and sustained for the twenty minutes every class period.
To keep up the momentum once the novelty wore of, I added sharing of reading. Sometimes I shared with students my experiences with reading through book talks. At other times in the year, students shared their favorite books or books that influenced them. About once a month, students posted a on a web forum letter essay, designed after those Atwell uses in her students journals, to allow students to read about each other's reading and respond. Recommendations from peers and me inspired many student choices in reading. And, I always allowed a couple of minutes after silent reading time's conclusion during which I hear students excitedly sharing and recommending their books.
At the same time I introduced time, choice, and sharing in reading, I did the same in my writing curriculum. Highly inspired by Atwell's In the Middle and Vicki Spandell's book The Nine Rights of Every Writer (2005), I devoted the last thirty minutes of my class periods to writing time. Students were allowed to choose their own topics and genres for writing. During writing time, I conference with students and encourage them to conference with each other both formally and informally about their topics and ideas as well as more conventional areas like grammar and spelling. (I know a literacy program includes writing, but to save on repetition I'll explain the rest of the design of my writing program in question 5's answer below). Overall, the introduction of choice, time, and sharing into my writing curriculum, which used to be made of teacher chosen essays, greatly increased the number of writing assignments that were completed and students' enthusiasm to complete them.
When I introduced choice and time to read and write in my class every day, my biggest concern was that there would be less rigor in my class. However, when I read Alfie Kohn's article “Challenging Students ... And How to Have More of Them,” I adopted the principle that rigor does not come from a text choice I make or a creative project I plan. Instead, rigor can come from me letting go of all the control and authority of “being the teacher.” Kohn explains that students can be reluctant to think for themselves, especially when a teacher is there to give them “answers.” However, teachers can create rigor by helping students become critical thinkers. He suggests “taking children backstage” to show them how we solve real problems in our content. To take it even further, he states that “every lesson included chances to wonder, to argue, to criticize, the text and what the teacher has said.” This component of fostering students who challenge what they read in texts and question the status quo is rigor that is more important for the real world and fits well with the freedom of reading and writing workshops.
The most important factor I find in all of my teaching is balance. With so much to cover in my curriculum as well as local, state, and national assessments to prepare my students for, balancing my instruction has been crucial to the design of my program. I need to ensure a balance in the work students do for enjoyment versus academic work. Thus, I have a balance in choices I make and the students make. The majority of the year, my students chose their own texts to read and own writing topics and genres, yet I must make sure that they cover the content needed for all freshmen, primarily essay writing, literary analysis, and research. So, over the course of the year I have chosen (or limited choice on) three texts that students read and we based three essays and a research assignment off of these texts, but still allowed students freedom on the pace they read the texts and the topics of their essays. This ensured that students learned the difference between reading for enjoyment versus reading for more academic purposes such as to analyze or gain information.
Another huge piece of balance in the design of my program is assessment. As freshmen, my students only take one criterion referenced test, the NWEA. Then they complete two local assessments. Everything else throughout the rest of the year is designed by me. I made sure to include variety, basing a lot of my choices on Atwell's chapter on assessment in In The Middle. I use informal reading and writing conferences. I observe students reading, writing, and working in groups. Students reflect on their own work. Then there are more traditional assessments such as polished writing pieces, prompt writing, quizzes on vocabulary or grammar, and oral presentations. The variety in my assessment is important. For example, a criterion referenced test allows the teacher to see if a student can preform at a certain level; particularly, the NWEA breaks data down into specific standards and skills students have master, need more work on, and should move on to next. But, a test like this doesn't represent a real world reading or writing experience. Thus, assessments like teacher observations and anecdotal notes allow teachers to gather data on more authentic experiences. Providing variety and balance in assessment also allows students to use their strengths as well as improve on weaknesses and allows teachers to get data from a variety of perspectives (student, teacher, more objective from a standardized test).
One of the most important principles that guides my instruction is the concept of gradual release as described in Regie Routman's Reading Essentials as the “optimal learning model” and also called “zone of proximal development” by Vygotsky. Gradual release, which is also supported by Debbie Miller, starts with teacher demonstration, then moves to demonstration shared by teacher and student. Next, students partake in guided practice where the teacher assists the student before moving on to independent practice, the final step where the student preforms the skill alone. I use this principle to guide my instruction often with reading and writing. For example, even though my students are older, I still preform read alouds to illustrate how I make meaning from text or how I take notes on a text. During the writing portion of my class, I often share with my students how I gather ideas, form a paragraph, or revise. After modeling, I can then ask students to collaborate with me by adding their input while I lead and explain as necessary. Then it is time for the students to try this work on their own. As they work, I move around the room observing and helping. Most recently, guided practice in my classroom focused on finding subjects and predicates in sentences. I often redirected students when they asked for affirmation by asking questions like “Can you do that word? Is it an action?” or by re-explaining how compound subjects and predicates are linked together with “and.” After guided practice, my students are ready for independent practice, but the length of time it takes to get to this stage varies from student to student and skill to skill. By using flexible grouping during class work time, students are able to work on different stages of gradual release simultaneously (Tomlinson, 1995, 1999).
Gradual release has two important benefits in my classroom. First, it allows me to support my students as they gradually make skills and concepts their own. Before I learned about this method, I would often move from a lecture straight to independent practice that would be assessed for a grade. Only the students with natural talent in ELA or who had learned the content before would be successful. Now, I introduce my content giving ample time for students to explore and experiment with the material and get assistance before they are assessed on their own. With models from me and fellow students and many sessions to practice together and alone, far more students are successful. Secondly, gradual release allows me to work with students at varying levels of mastery. Students who understand quickly from my demonstration lead during shared demonstration while others who still need more modeling can watch. Later during practice, students who struggle can receive more attention during guided practice, while those who feel confident can move into independent practice at varying levels of complexity or begin to receive guided practice on a different skill.
Prior knowledge is another principle that guides my instruction, and is supported by David Pearson and Debbie Miller. I first read about activating prior knowledge through Chris Tovani's Do I Really Have to Teach Reading (2004). I later learned that prior knowledge is just the first step in the principles of comprehension, which also include connecting new and old information together and organizing or classifying information to improve recall. In my classroom, I often check or activate prior knowledge before starting a larger lesson or text. For example, when I used to teach Ann Rinaldi's A Break with Charity about the Salem Witch Trials or Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, we would often complete a KWL chart about the Puritans prior to starting the book to help students gather and remember the historical information they would need to understand the text. Sometimes, I would need to build prior knowledge because students would know very little about the Puritans; we would do further reading on the subject such as completing a jig saw using their American History textbook, reading aloud the children's book The Spinner's Daughter by Amy Sugarlittle, or discussing Anne Bradstreet's poem “Upon the Burning of Our House.” Then, as we read the assigned text, we would connect the factual information in these historical fictions back to the earlier readings and KWL. This would help the students to connect the new information they learned about Puritans to the older information they new from history, movies, or our readings, and thus they were able to recall it later more easily. Implementing this principle in my instructional decisions made a huge impact on my students. First of all, I stopped assuming that all my students knew the historical information in a text. By taking inventory of their knowledge before we started, I was able to support their reading instead of always back tracking when they were confused. This principle has helped with all sorts of topics that involve background knowledge, including grammar, writing, and research skills.
Chris Tovani also taught me about metacognition in her book I Read It, But I Don't Get It (2000). Previously, I assumed that high school students would know how to read. However, when two-thirds of my non-honors students were failing my first year of teaching, I realized that they all did not experience reading the way I did. I soon learned to reflect on my own reading to see what good readers do and then pass this on to students, like Nancy Atwell and Richard Allington in their workshops. Thus, I adopted the principle that reading involves complex thinking. My students in my middle level classes who struggled often thought like Tovani did as a teen (2000). They believed being able to say the words would ensure meaning. Or, they would reread multiple times expecting the meaning to magically come to them. These students didn't know how to monitor their reading to determine when they were stuck, and then apply fix-it strategies like questioning, connecting, or using print conventions. Now, I base a lot of my instruction on the concept that reading is complex thinking that makes meaning.
After I started to use these three principles in my instruction, I then started to work on the materials and environment in my classroom. First, I worked on creating a classroom that is rich in literacy experiences. This started with an extensive classroom like Nancy Atwell, Regie Routmen, and Richard Allington encourage. While funding prevents me from getting the optimal number and range to my library, my library still contains about four hundred texts ranging from a few children's picture books, to texts better suited for transitional readers like Gary Paulsen and Judy Blume, to best selling adult fiction, to canonical classics. However, students rarely looked at my classroom library until I made a few more changes. First, I used Routmen's Reading Essentials to help me organize my library in an inviting way. Then, I added to my instruction and organization three key elements: choice, time, and sharing (all backed by Atwell, Allington, and Routmen). Adding choice, time, and sharing to my instruction has been so important because of the increase motivation and engagement it provides for students both in reading and writing.
I started the 2008 school year with free choice reading being the norm instead of an occasional reward. I really took to heart Atwell's belief that “free choice reading of books should be a young person's right – not a privilege granted by the teacher.” Students at all levels were instantly more interested and engaged with their reading. Next, I added twenty minutes a class period for reading time. With out rotating two day block schedule of eighty minute periods, this equalled between forty to sixty minutes of in class reading time a week for students. Where homework used to be a prescribed chapters, it changed to reading thirty minutes a day out side of school adding an additional three and a half hours of reading time a week. Coupled with choice to read anything they like, students were completing their reading homework and flying through books. Even students who claimed to dislike reading or had failed the course the year before because of not reading were reading silently and sustained for the twenty minutes every class period.
To keep up the momentum once the novelty wore of, I added sharing of reading. Sometimes I shared with students my experiences with reading through book talks. At other times in the year, students shared their favorite books or books that influenced them. About once a month, students posted a on a web forum letter essay, designed after those Atwell uses in her students journals, to allow students to read about each other's reading and respond. Recommendations from peers and me inspired many student choices in reading. And, I always allowed a couple of minutes after silent reading time's conclusion during which I hear students excitedly sharing and recommending their books.
At the same time I introduced time, choice, and sharing in reading, I did the same in my writing curriculum. Highly inspired by Atwell's In the Middle and Vicki Spandell's book The Nine Rights of Every Writer (2005), I devoted the last thirty minutes of my class periods to writing time. Students were allowed to choose their own topics and genres for writing. During writing time, I conference with students and encourage them to conference with each other both formally and informally about their topics and ideas as well as more conventional areas like grammar and spelling. (I know a literacy program includes writing, but to save on repetition I'll explain the rest of the design of my writing program in question 5's answer below). Overall, the introduction of choice, time, and sharing into my writing curriculum, which used to be made of teacher chosen essays, greatly increased the number of writing assignments that were completed and students' enthusiasm to complete them.
When I introduced choice and time to read and write in my class every day, my biggest concern was that there would be less rigor in my class. However, when I read Alfie Kohn's article “Challenging Students ... And How to Have More of Them,” I adopted the principle that rigor does not come from a text choice I make or a creative project I plan. Instead, rigor can come from me letting go of all the control and authority of “being the teacher.” Kohn explains that students can be reluctant to think for themselves, especially when a teacher is there to give them “answers.” However, teachers can create rigor by helping students become critical thinkers. He suggests “taking children backstage” to show them how we solve real problems in our content. To take it even further, he states that “every lesson included chances to wonder, to argue, to criticize, the text and what the teacher has said.” This component of fostering students who challenge what they read in texts and question the status quo is rigor that is more important for the real world and fits well with the freedom of reading and writing workshops.
The most important factor I find in all of my teaching is balance. With so much to cover in my curriculum as well as local, state, and national assessments to prepare my students for, balancing my instruction has been crucial to the design of my program. I need to ensure a balance in the work students do for enjoyment versus academic work. Thus, I have a balance in choices I make and the students make. The majority of the year, my students chose their own texts to read and own writing topics and genres, yet I must make sure that they cover the content needed for all freshmen, primarily essay writing, literary analysis, and research. So, over the course of the year I have chosen (or limited choice on) three texts that students read and we based three essays and a research assignment off of these texts, but still allowed students freedom on the pace they read the texts and the topics of their essays. This ensured that students learned the difference between reading for enjoyment versus reading for more academic purposes such as to analyze or gain information.
Another huge piece of balance in the design of my program is assessment. As freshmen, my students only take one criterion referenced test, the NWEA. Then they complete two local assessments. Everything else throughout the rest of the year is designed by me. I made sure to include variety, basing a lot of my choices on Atwell's chapter on assessment in In The Middle. I use informal reading and writing conferences. I observe students reading, writing, and working in groups. Students reflect on their own work. Then there are more traditional assessments such as polished writing pieces, prompt writing, quizzes on vocabulary or grammar, and oral presentations. The variety in my assessment is important. For example, a criterion referenced test allows the teacher to see if a student can preform at a certain level; particularly, the NWEA breaks data down into specific standards and skills students have master, need more work on, and should move on to next. But, a test like this doesn't represent a real world reading or writing experience. Thus, assessments like teacher observations and anecdotal notes allow teachers to gather data on more authentic experiences. Providing variety and balance in assessment also allows students to use their strengths as well as improve on weaknesses and allows teachers to get data from a variety of perspectives (student, teacher, more objective from a standardized test).
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