Task 1: Jetton, T. L., & Shanahan, C (2012). Adolescent Literacy in the academic disciplines. Ch. 1 & 2 pp. 1-68 (Essential Question A)
Pre-Posting -- Reviewing what you read on Learning from Text: Adolescent Literacy from the Past Decade & The Challenge of Reading Disciplinary, Chapters 1 & 2, think about the theoretical underpinnings for each chapter’s concepts AND think about how the role that written and oral texts need to play in the learning of your specific discipline. (Disciplinary literacy is perhaps in many respects a reconceptualization of what it means to teach an academic subject. Disciplines are organized ways of thinking about the world, and learning within a discipline involves more than becoming merely knowledgeable. Learning must also encompass how scientists, mathematicians, historians, and others read, write, and think. This is the difference between covering a subject and teaching a discipline.)
I strongly recommend having the readings read by Tuesday, November 12
Postings: Reading your reflections and interactions about the readings is the only direct way I have of assessing the quality of your understanding of — and engagement with — the assigned readings. See the expectations that follow for the more directed kinds of responses you would make according to the role you are assigned for this week.
Roles:
There are 4 people in each conversation group. You only respond to those in your own group.
Day 4 (Second online meeting day)
Group
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Initiators
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Summarizers
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Responders
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Illuminators
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1
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Ian Gorton
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Michael Gillis
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Karin Logerquist
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Molly Nelson
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2
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Laura Mayo
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Nicholas Gaudette
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Jesse Vavreck
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Nancy Nair
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3
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Jonathan Reeves
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Kaylee Wiens
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Kris Latcham
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Paul Garlock
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4
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Sean Johnson
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Sara Stein
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Erik Krueger
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Michelle O’Connor
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Initiators start the conversation. They must do the reading immediately and get their entries in during the first day or two so others have material to respond to. Grading will be based on the quality of questions, speculations, and thought-provoking prompts that will get people really considering the ideas presented in the content. You must include your own responses to the ideas as well. If another Initiator has already posted his/her ideas, the next Initiator to post must enter new ideas. In other words, don't repeat what's already posted.
Initiators posts are due: Wednesday, November 13 before 5:00 PM
Responders directly address and extend the ideas that the Initiators have thrown out for consideration as well as adding your own unique responses to the readings. It is not enough to say, "I agree", or "That was a nice idea." Responders need to enlarge the conversation, make connections to their own experiences, and draw from other material in the readings to expand on the conversation. Responders need to get their ideas in at least 48 hours before the due date so the Summarizers can do their work (below).
Responders and Illuminators posts are due:
Friday, November 15 before 5:00
Illuminators teach, guide, edify, and enlighten. They take their own and other people's ideas beyond surface statements to broader and deeper ground. They pull from other sources, such as pertinent internet sites, they have encountered to shed light on questions or confusions. They clarify. Illuminators add their contributions after the Initiators, before or after the Responders, and before the Summarizers (i.e., before the last day).
Responders and Illuminators posts are due:
Friday, November 15 before 5:00
Summarizers pull together and consolidate all the key ideas from the group. They are the last to make their entries, probably best done in the evening of the deadline day. Every participant (except fellow Summarizers) should be named, and the contributions of each acknowledged in the summary. Summarizers should be organized and concise. Capture the essence. (If there are any group members who have not submitted by 8:00 p.m. of the deadline day, you do not have to wait for them — just summarize those who have submitted up to that time.)
Summarizers posts are due:
Sunday, November 17 before 5:00.
Respond to another member in our group. This response is due: Sunday, November 17, 11:59 PM
As we saw in chapter one of "Adolescent Literacy in the academic disciplines" Jetton, T. L., & Shanahan, C (2012), there is an increasing level of complexity and specialized discipline language in the secondary levels of education and this comes with higher than average dropout rates and because of this, we are obligated to find better ways to reach students through differentiated literacy methods. In the text, we saw the importance of "activating prior knowledge", teaching summarizing skills and inferencing/prediction skills. By teaching students to activate these skills, we are helping them access not just higher levels of learning in your specialized content area, but you are teaching them to be self sufficient in there reading and ultimately self sufficient their learning. This will also give them the skills to go to college and not give up when a lack of comprehension poses some real challenges. What strategies do you believe helped you become the successful reader and student you are today?
ReplyDeleteAnother strategy addressed in chapter one that I have found useful is explicit instruction of content and strategy modeling. In these methods, teachers can help students by showing them how to make predictions and infer meaning through context, even when the language is highly advanced. Personally I have used both of these methods in my teaching service experiences and I have found them to be extremely productive and helpful to students. What experiences have you had regarding modeling prediction and inferring meaning from context? What do you think the challenges are within your specific content area and what do you plan on doing to address these challenges?
For someone in the ESL field, I think your greatest challenge is explain content language and context in areas that you may not excel at, which in my case would be math. Yes, you are not really required to teach all content areas specifically, but you must be able to at least address the language used in all content areas and this is because many of the language used to define and explain content vocabulary, is also language that an ELL might be unfamiliar with and this can pose learning challenges when not addressed. That is why for an ELL teacher, you are most successful when you learn as much about other content areas as you can because while every content area is not your responsibility, the understanding of complex academic language across content areas is your responsibility and it's the key to success for many ELLs.
What advice would you give to teachers outside of your content area, when it comes to supporting your content literacy goals in their classroom? How can we best help you meet the literacy needs and academic language goals of your content area?
In FACS, we use vocabulary that can be used in many different subject because we teach so many different types of classes in our area. From budgeting to family relationship to cooking to sewing, and I could go on. There are many math skills that can be used as well as words from English and Social Studies classes as we get into analyzing situations and figuring out meaning behind things. I think that there are a lot of ways that so many of our content areas overlap and we don't even realize it. This is where I can see the benefit of co-teaching with an ELL teacher, especially in some elective classes where there are so many ELL students because they may be more hands on. Even though the classes are hands on, there can still be a lot of different vocabulary that needs to be taught.
DeleteLiteracy as a skill learners need to learn is certainly the bedrock of education. It has long been my opinion that the main goal of teachers K-12 is to teach learners how to learn. The skills necessary to take in information, analyze new information as compared with prior knowledge, synthesize information as needed, and apply knowledge to various problems are all life skills that will serve society as a whole long after our careers have dissipated into the miasma of time.
ReplyDeleteIt is that first skill of being able to ingest the information that we all need to tackle as educators. As was stated by Jetton and Shanahan the books that our students read become ever more difficult to deal with as the students matriculate. Retention has gone the way of the rotary phone, so how do teachers in grades 9-12, for example, bridge the reading deficiencies that have roots in students being promoted beyond their skills? According to a paper written by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Douglas Williams, entitled Seven Literacy Strategies That Work (http://www-tc.pbs.org/teacherline/courses/rdla220/docs/fisher.pdf) test scores and achievement was raised in a San Diego area school that dealt with many levels of socio-economic disparity. With strategies such as read aloud, KWL charts, graphic organizers and others that today seem common place, were able to cut through the lack of skills displayed by their students and grant them opportunities to learn and grow as students.
For me it is always interesting to look back and find the origins of ideas that were cutting edge and have been so firmly woven into our daily lives. But what is the next cutting edge set of ideas that will propel education to the next upper plateau of achievement. One cannot turn on television, open a newspaper, or look at a web site and not be confronted with information on the achievement gap we are facing. How do educators face this next challenge with the vitality needed to break through to the other side and tout the victory so needed for the next generation of learners? Since society is too anemic to tackle the root cause of the problem, solutions will fall to educators to eradicate the achievement gap that has widened over the past several decades.
I don’t have the answer, yet, but I certainly want to be part of the solution going forward in my career as an educator. Literacy, and the skills associated with ingesting information, is and should be number one priority. I had a college professor that said, “Think about a group of hunters out in the field, they come upon a fence. Some members of the hunting party are able to go under the fence, some are able go over the fence, some need a little help, some need a lot of help. Our jobs as teachers is to make sure everybody makes it to the other side of the fence.” Simplistic? Perhaps, but illustrative and illuminating to be sure.
Helping more and more students to understand and negotiate the ever increasing difficulty of disciplinary texts will never cease to be what we, as teachers, need to do. Maybe one of us will find the next break through on how to do it.
I really like your analogy about the fence. I had never thought of it that way, but it completely makes sense. We do have a big problem when we look at all the achievement gaps. I'm with you as far as being excited about the possibility of being part of the solution to help our students.
DeleteSorry folks - I didn't realize our roles were changed. I should have posted by yesterday.
ReplyDeleteChapter one in our readings talks about the difficulty teachers are facing as the texts for students becomes increasingly more complex. It seems hard enough in our own content area to get the students to understand the academic language that we need to learn let alone engaging them in other content areas. By this I am talking about integrating language from other content areas into my own area so students are hearing it in more than one place. In music we often refer to history, math, science, and a variety of other areas. We do not go into specifics and use a mathematical equation or a scientific quote, but we do delve into the more simplistic language aspects. I have read some of the information that my own kids have brought home from their text books or information teachers have printed for them. It kept my interest for a whole three seconds as I realized I had no clue what the text was trying to say. It's becoming more difficult for students as our standards keep raising, and our information gets more detailed and harder to decipher.
ReplyDeleteKris,
DeleteYou make a great point here on not only the texts becoming more difficult, but in our age of mass media and entertainment, we want our attentions grabbed by whatever we are reading. Do you think the textbook companies could do a better job for us?
I haven't seen many e-textbooks in FACS, but has anyone had the chance to look at some of the interactive textbooks in other content areas? I'm curious to know if the interactiveness helps the students learn the content better because it is delivered in a method so many students are accustomed to getting their information in.
DeleteI haven't noticed online interactive text books for music. Most of the materials I've seen or have been using are a mix match of the text books in the classroom combined with newer information and fun materials that I've obtained through multiple conferences, classes, and ideas from other classrooms I've visited.
DeleteThe strategy of teaching students about prediction and inferring can be helpful to some students. We need to teach to a variety of learning types and by teaching these strategies, we will be able to pull in a few more students who will comprehend what they are learning about. Other students will indeed need the visuals Paul was talking about as well as hands on activities to reiterate the information. Using KWL charts is helpful to some students as it does help them to think about what they are actually learning. They think about what it is that they really already know which seems to motivate their thought process.
ReplyDeleteAnalyzing and applying the knowledge to life are skills that students will use forever. People are constantly taking in information which becomes 'pre-knowledge'. The more we learn about a simple concept like melody, the more we will be able to add to it later, such as knowing that it contains different pitches, varied rhythms, or maybe we will learn that it can be in a variety of meters.
Our book talks about using paraphrasing the text to determine important information (p.8). The students are taken through a three step process as they read the content, identify the main idea and two details, and then paraphrase in their own words. We do this with our younger students right from the start in our music classes. They listen to the song and are prompted to listen for specific details and then we read the lyrics to see if they can identify the same details they were listening for. Students are then asked if they can tell us what the song is about, and finally we identify specific features of the story. We do the same for high school choirs (and I also do this with my adult choirs). I believe it does help them understand the music better plus with little ones, it's easier to get them to focus when they know the story.
Paul talked about the achievement gap and how it seems to be getting bigger rather than smaller. From all we have been reading and all the articles I have read, it seems our standards are getting tougher and there is much more expected from teachers every day. It is tough to close the gap when the level of difficulty keeps increasing. It seems more and more students are getting left behind because they just cannot keep up. The site 'Reading is Fundamental' (www.rif.org) contains information regarding literacy levels dropping. It talks about how experts are predicting that 40% of the fourth graders in the United States will not achieve basic levels of reading proficiency. This percentage contains children of low income families, ELL children, and children of specific minority groups. Students who fall into this category all the way through life have a more difficult life as they struggle with literacy. As Paul mentioned, every where you look, there is television, computer, books, newspapers, and even cell phones with email, texting, and more. It is our job as educators to do the very best we can to provide the environment that will engage and encourage students to learn literacy. As I mentioned earlier, there are many different learning styles so providing visuals, hands on, discussion, and teaching the many strategies of reading is an enormous task for educators.
I love to see progress in students and nothing makes me feel more rewarded than to see that light bulb go on! As life in the world of literacy becomes increasingly more difficult, I will do my best to come up with new and innovative strategies to help the students that cross my path.
Paul,
ReplyDeleteYou included a great deal of resources that would be helpful for students and one that particularly stands out is your suggest of visual organizers such as KWL charts and maps. I also think you addressed some of the important issues in achievement gaps and how that relates so strongly to literacy proficiency. We often hear about math and science being problem areas, however, ever subject relies on strong literacy skills and when students fall behind in literacy, they tend to struggle in many different subjects--not just the hot button subjects (e.g. math and science).
From the perspective of an ESL/ELL instructor, I find that literacy makes the difference again and again for this community and while literacy gaps are much more pronounced and noticeable characteristics in ELLs, it is clear from my teaching experiences, how much stronger ELLs need to be in literacy to compete with native English speakers. In fact, while I was reading the Freeman & Freeman book, I noticed there were some stats that I had not heard before and I can't remember what page that was, so excuse the vagueness, but essentially it said that ELLs need to make literacy progress of about six times there native English counterparts to even met grade level expectations. In other words, they aren't even staying on top of their work and grade level expectations, if they are acquiring less that six times the vocabulary and language skills of native English speakers. That is crazy! The book also attributes the much higher rate of dropping out by ELLs, to the frustration and helplessness they feel, which is associated with this expectation to be 6 times as fast in learning than native English speakers.
There were definitely a few themes that I found across everyone's different postings. The first one was that we need to find better ways to teach students literacy through differentiated methods. All three of you talked about how we need to, as Paul put it, help our student learn how to learn. Jonathan mentioned activating prior knowledge, teaching summarizing skills, explicit instruction of content and strategy modeling. All three of you mentioned teaching predicting/inferring skills to students and how important this is as a life skill to help our student become life long learners. Jonathan mentioned how as an ELL teacher he needs to learn content specific vocabulary in order to help his students with words that come up in different content areas. Kris talked about teaching students how to do more than just muddle through a difficult textbook. We also need to help our students really understand the text's meaning and to be able to retain that knowledge. Paul's analogy about helping the students get to the other side of the fence is a great way to think about teaching. Some will find it easy, some will struggle, and some will really struggle. Whichever way it is for that student it is our job as the teacher to make sure that we can still get them over that fence.
ReplyDelete