Goal-directed Instructional Design Plan - Adolescent Literacy in the Content Areas
Author - Melissa Brooks-Yip
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With Common Core State Standards requiring literacy in all content areas, teachers will
need to solidify their understanding of disciplinary literacy and reading for understanding.
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-Teachers will read and understand the Common Core State Standards for literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects.
-Teachers will solidify their understanding of the “Big Five” of adolescent literacy.
-Teachers will create a lesson plan to incorporate one a reading, writing, speaking, or listening strategy into their content area literacy.
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Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practice Reading in the Disciplines Webcast on Adolescent Literacy The role of content area teachers in literacy Content area teachers share tips on literacy instruction Review of professional development sessions on adolescent literacy: Vocabulary Comprehension Comprehension 2 Engagement and Motivation Text Dependent Questions After reading the articles, webcasts, and reviewing the professional development presentations, teachers will create their own lesson plan incorporating one of the elements into a lesson in their content area. | |||
-Teachers may deliver the lesson to their students and video tape the teaching. A follow-up lesson will be to watch and reflect upon the lesson with their TLT partner (Teachers Learning Together). | |||
Adlit.org Classroom Strategies ReadWriteThink | |||
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Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Adolescent Literacy in the Content Area
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Parent Teacher Conference Resources
Sharing Data with Families
To share, or not to share? Choice Literacy has advice on if, when, what, and how to share data with parents, and it isn't just from standardized tests or screeners, but your own classroom data.Parent Guides to Student Success
I sent this out last year, but thought it was worth repeating as conferences come next week. The National PTA provides Parent Guides to Student Success and education on the CCSS. To download and print these PDF files in color or black and white, see their website. This is for all grades.
Reading Resources
Families:
If you are looking for ideas to share literacy resources and opportunities with parents at conferences, Reading Rockets has materials to create Reading Adventure Packs.
Teens:
Teen Read Week is THIS WEEK. The third full week of October marks Teen Read Week. Encourage teens to read for the fun of it and access the library for magazines, e-books, audiobooks. There will be special event aimed at teens in libraries this week.
There's an App for That!
Trading Cards
ReadWriteThink's Trading Card App helps kids in grades 3-8 share understanding of topics, study for school, and create their own fictional characters.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Professional Development Reminders for October!
MCTE Fall Conference 2012
Policy, Practice, and Power: Upholding Our Convictions in Demanding Times
October 19, 2012
Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
Speakers: Jim Burke – teacher and author of almost twenty books, including The English Teacher's Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession and What's the Big Idea? Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking. |
 Dr. Anne Ruggles Gere, Professor of English, Professor of Education, President of The James R. Squire Office of Policy Research in the English Language Arts, Director of the Sweetland Writing Center at the University of Michigan, and author of Writing on Demand: Best Practices and Strategies for Success. |
Topics:
- The challenges of differentiating instruction in your classroom.
- How best to address issues of diversity, identity, and social justice in the classroom
- How best to guide students toward critical, multi-faceted views of the English Language Arts.
- Creating engaging lessons while attending to Michigan Content Standards and/or Common Core Standards Ways you and your colleagues are working out the new core content standards to improve education.
- Young Adult and Children’s Literature.
- The implications of Web 2.0 and/or incorporating New Media into the classroom.
Register at http://mcte.info/page/fall-conference-2012
2012 MSU College of Education Technology Conference
The 29th Annual MSU College of Education Technology conference will be held on October 27th, 2012 on the campus of Michigan State University in Erickson Hall from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm. The theme of this year’s conference is open and networked education. This year’s conference will be FREE OF CHARGE to all attendees, but you will need to register on the site.
Ingham ISD
As always, check the Ingham ISD site for their October offerings related to literacy, math, RtI, and special topics of interest and importance to you.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Creating Text Dependent Questions
A Guide to Creating Text Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading
Text Dependent Questions: What Are They?
The Common Core State Standards for reading strongly focus
on students gathering evidence, knowledge, and insight from what they read.
Eighty to ninety percent of the Reading Standards in each grade require text dependent analysis;
accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of
text dependent questions.
As the name suggests, a
text dependent question specifically asks a question that can only be answered
by referring explicitly back to the text being read. It does not rely on any particular
background information extraneous to the text nor depend on students having
other experiences or knowledge; instead it privileges the text itself and what
students can extract from what is before them.
For example, in a close analytic reading of Lincoln’s
“Gettysburg Address,” the following would NOT
be text dependent questions:
·
Why did the North fight the civil war?
·
Have you ever been to a funeral or
gravesite?
·
Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to
the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important
value to promote?
The overarching problem with these questions is that they require no familiarity at all with
Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them. Responding to these sorts of
questions instead requires students to go outside the text. Such questions can
be tempting to ask because they are likely to get students talking, but they
take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is making. They seek to elicit a personal or general
response that relies on individual experience and opinion, and answering them will not move students closer
to understanding the text of the “Gettysburg Address.”
*Good text dependent questions will often linger over
specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they
help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more
cursory reading. Typical text dependent
questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:
- · Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words
- · Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another
- · Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole
- · Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts
- · Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do
- · Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve
- · Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated
Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading of Texts
An
effective set of text dependent questions delves systematically into a text to
guide students in extracting the key meanings or ideas found there. They typically begin by exploring specific
words, details, and arguments and then moves on to examine the impact of those
specifics on the text as a whole. Along
the way they target academic vocabulary and specific sentence structures as
critical focus points for gaining comprehension.
While
there is no set process for generating a complete and coherent body of text
dependent questions for a text, the following process is a good guide that can
serve to generate a core series of questions for close reading of any given
text.
Step
One: Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text
As in any good reverse engineering or
“backwards design” process, teachers should start by identifying the key
insights they want students to understand from the text—keeping one eye on the
major points being made is crucial for fashioning an overarching set of
successful questions and critical for creating an appropriate culminating
assignment.
Step
Two: Start Small to Build Confidence
The opening questions should be ones that
help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently specific enough for
them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions
later on.
Step
Three: Target Vocabulary and Text Structure
Locate
key text structures and the most powerful academic words in the text that are
connected to the key ideas and understandings, and craft questions that
illuminate these connections.
Step
Four: Tackle Tough Sections Head-on
Find
the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft
questions that support students in mastering these sections (these could be
sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky
transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences).
Step Five: Create Coherent
Sequences of Text Dependent Questions
The sequence of questions should not be
random but should build toward more coherent understanding and analysis to
ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them to a
gradual understanding of its meaning.
Step
Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed
Take stock of what standards are being
addressed in the series of questions and decide if any other standards are
suited to being a focus for this text (forming additional questions that
exercise those standards).
Step Seven: Create the
Culminating Assessment
Develop
a culminating activity around the key ideas or understandings identified
earlier that reflects (a) mastery of one or more of the standards, (b) involves
writing, and (c) is structured to be completed by students independently.
**This is an interpretation and guide of Shift 4 of the Common Core State Standards.
All material and commentary is from the authors of engageny.org, also found on
achievethecore.org
All material and commentary is from the authors of engageny.org, also found on
achievethecore.org
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Student Motivation and Engagement
In August, Kevin Feldman spoke to 7-12 teachers about how to keep students motivated and engaged with classroom texts and discussions. Research on these topics in professional journals has been prevalent the last few years. I've taken two well circulated articles and summarized here for you.
The following is from Best Practices in Motivating Students to
Read by John T. Guthrie, 2011 and Seven Rules of Engagement by Linda Gambrell, 2011. You will find the Gambrell article on our Companion Wikispace.
What is recommended to keep students motivated and engaged?
Choices
The most widespread recommendation for motivation is
providing choices.
These can be mini-choices,
which empower students to increase their investment in learning. When
appropriate, students could do one of the following in every lesson:
- Select
a story (or text)
- Select
a page to read.
- Select
sentences to explain.
- Identify
a goal for the day.
- Choose
three of five questions to answer.
- Write questions for a partner exchange.
Collaboration
Collaboration is not a social break
from learning, or an open discussion, but a scaffolded process of cumulative
contributions based on reading about a topic.
Students can make claims about a text, add to each other’s
interpretations, raise clarifying questions, and attempt to synthesize their
own brainstorming.
Collaboration can occur in every
lesson as a broad plan or a brief event.
Each lesson could include one of the following:
- Have partners read aloud together.
- Partners exchange questions to answer over
text.
- Team summarizes a chapter.
- Literature circles.
- Collaborative reasoning
- Organize a jigsaw.
- Set up peer editing about text.
Emphasizing Importance
Valuing literacy is the
motivational process we attempt to facilitate with the practice of emphasizing
importance. Students need to see how
the text helped them speak effectively with their peers or write effectively.
For each lesson, you can ask
students to show the importance of reading:
1.
Identify the portion of text they used to answer a question.
2.
Identify a text that enabled them to explain a concept in
informational text.
3.
Compare what they learned from a text versus what they learned
from a video on a topic (simple Venn Diagram).
4.
Contrast the content they learned from reading, writing, or
discussing a lesson.
5.
Explain how the content of text could help them in an
out-of-school situation (Why do I need to know this?)
Real World Materials
When it is possible to bring real-world media into
classroom instruction, the text becomes relevant. For example: a
newspaper article on civil rights to social studies class when studying this
topic, pamphlets, creating a Buffet Table of Text for your content area.
Monday, October 1, 2012
October
Literacy and Technology
iPads in the Classroom:
I'm excited to see more and more iPads in classrooms this year at every level! I'm always looking for effective ways to use iPads in education, particularly related to literacy.
The September Issue of The Reading Teacher, a publication of the International Reading Association, featured a study on the use of iPads for literacy in the classroom.
**Even if you don't read the whole article, check out the apps mentioned in one of the text boxes.
Abstract:
The goal of this investigation was to explore how a teacher could integrate iPads into her literacy instruction
to simultaneously teach print-based and digital literacy goals. The
teacher used iPads for a three-week period during her literacy
instruction and selected apps that provided unique approaches to helping
the students meet their literacy learning goals.
An
explanation of how to develop lessons that meaningfully integrate iPads
is presented, as well as lessons learned from the project.
Considerations for integrating tablets, such as the iPad, into literacy
instruction are provided.
Because iPads
and similar tablets are relatively unexplored as tools for literacy
learning, this work may provide a foundation for teachers and leaders
making decisions about whether mobile devices such as these can be
useful in literacy classrooms.
Apps to Check Out
Book Retriever: This app is from the Classroom Library Company for managing book borrowing between students, teachers, and parents.
Find the best books and media for teens, as selected by library staff and educators across the United States! Search for books by title, author, genre, award, or list; create a reading list with the favorites button; share what you’re reading on Facebook and Twitter; and find a copy of the book in your local library, all from one screen!
YALSA's App of the Week: Check out the blog of the Young Adult Library Services Association for weekly apps focusing on literacy, science, math, and staying organized as teachers and students.
2012 MSU College of Education Technology Conference
The 29th Annual MSU College of Education Technology conference will be held on October 27th, 2012 on the campus of Michigan State University in Erickson Hall from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm. The theme of this year’s conference is open and networked education. This year’s conference will be FREE OF CHARGE to all attendees, but you will need to register on the site.
Apps to Check Out
Book Retriever: This app is from the Classroom Library Company for managing book borrowing between students, teachers, and parents.
Find the best books and media for teens, as selected by library staff and educators across the United States! Search for books by title, author, genre, award, or list; create a reading list with the favorites button; share what you’re reading on Facebook and Twitter; and find a copy of the book in your local library, all from one screen!
2012 MSU College of Education Technology Conference
The 29th Annual MSU College of Education Technology conference will be held on October 27th, 2012 on the campus of Michigan State University in Erickson Hall from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm. The theme of this year’s conference is open and networked education. This year’s conference will be FREE OF CHARGE to all attendees, but you will need to register on the site.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
September
Supporting Engagement and Thinking
Last Thursday, secondary teachers listened to Kevin Feldman present on motivating and engaging adolescent learners around content area learning. Supporting reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking is the responsibility of all -as Dr. Feldman says, "Everyone does Everything."
To further support that work, here are some teacher talk stems and metacognitive questions teachers can use while discussing content with students. These talk stems help to get students thinking rather than simply acknowledging an answer as right or wrong.
These particular stems originated through work with RAISE (Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Education):
What did you mean by that?
How does that work?
Can you explain that?
Tell me more.
What did your partner say?
Does anyone have a different idea?
What makes you think that?
Any other details about…..?
Where did you see that in the text?
How did you figure that word out?
Are you making a prediction?
How do you know that?
What was your process for figuring that out?
Talk to me…elaborate.
Did anyone else have an idea about that?
How did you figure that out?
Clock Buddies for Partnering
Feldman's presentation also involved a great deal of partner work with strategies such as Think-Pair-Share. As a former English teacher, I frequently partnered students for discussion and peer editing. One thing I used consistently and found very useful was the Clock Buddies organizer. Clock Buddies is meant to be a quick and easy way to create pairs for partnered activities while avoiding the problem of kids always having the same partners. It begins with a clock face, with slots for names at each hour. Each student has his/her own copy of the clock to make "appointments" with 12 different classmates. See the whole description on this site, and download a copy of a clock.
Interactive Writing
contributed by Shari Person
contributed by Shari Person
It's often difficult to plan for conventions instruction in the classroom. Shari has provided three articles on Interactive Writing for your consideration in writing instruction. What is interactive writing?
From Interactive Writing Beyond the Primary Grades, by Heather Wall:
In an interactive writing lesson, the teacher guides the students through the process of writing a text. Typically one student holds the pen and writes while the teacher and students negotiate phonetic,structural, and semantic rules to compose the message. Students take turns writing one letter, word, or sentence at a time, with the teacher able to individualize instruction by purposely selecting particular students to write certain sections. The intent is for the end product to be free of spelling and grammatical errors, which requires that time be spent on discussion of phonics, grammar rules, and spelling
patterns. Interactive writing can be done with whole classes or small groups of students. See the articles HERE on our Companion Wikispace.
In an interactive writing lesson, the teacher guides the students through the process of writing a text. Typically one student holds the pen and writes while the teacher and students negotiate phonetic,structural, and semantic rules to compose the message. Students take turns writing one letter, word, or sentence at a time, with the teacher able to individualize instruction by purposely selecting particular students to write certain sections. The intent is for the end product to be free of spelling and grammatical errors, which requires that time be spent on discussion of phonics, grammar rules, and spelling
patterns. Interactive writing can be done with whole classes or small groups of students. See the articles HERE on our Companion Wikispace.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
August
Renovated Wiki!
My ELPS Literacy Wiki is meant to be a companion to this monthly newsletter. It is a place we can store materials, share materials, and collaborate on our current projects. Since starting it two years ago, I've done some significant work organizing it this summer, in the hopes all will find it useful. Here you will find:
- Materials for our current projects, such as the RAISE grant with ELHS teachers.
- Professional development materials, both K-6 (archived from 2011-2012) and also 7-12 past and present.
- CCSS materials
- Commonly referenced research on reading and writing instruction
- Materials you can distribute to parents and/or students.
International Literacy Day!
Just in time for Back-to-School, International Literacy Day is September 8th. Check out these lessons for grades K-12 to celebrate this day. You'll find lessons for centers, E-pals, literacy in cyberspace, and traditional letter writing. These are wonderful ways for you to get to know your students, students to get to know each other, and to explore literacy with real world application.
Google for Educators
In case you didn't know, Google makes a lot of applications to be used by teachers and students. Google Search, Google Scholar, Google Earth, and Google Quiz are just a few. Check out these Google for Educators Classroom Posters for some great, printable tips on how to use these features.
New Contact Information
I hope everyone is still having a restful summer, enjoying the weather, time with family, perhaps some travel, and of course, reading! For the next school year, I will be working part time in the district as a secondary literacy consultant. I'll be in the district on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm now in room 112 at MMS. I can always be reached by e-mail or 333-7618. I look forward to seeing you this fall.
-Melissa
Sunday, June 24, 2012
July
Summer Reading for Teachers!
I hope you are getting some time to read for yourself. While these aren't professional texts, I love the travel writing and humor of Bill Bryson, so I've continued with his work, and just finished reading Neither Here Nor There. I also managed to squeeze in The Mango Season by Amula Maladi, which shows a great picture of the Indian culture.
What are you reading? (add some titles to the comments section below).
If you need help finding something, this is part of the list generated by teachers when consultant, blogger, and online instructor, Lisa Dabbs asked teachers to share summer titles for her Blog Teaching with Soul.
The New Leaders 100 Day Action Plan by George Bradt
Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators.
The Element by Sir Ken Robinson
Drive by Daniel Pink
Curriculum 21 Heidi Hayes Jacobs
The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives by Peter H. Johnston
A Nation Rising by Davis
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (Smith, 1943)
"Teaching to Transgress" (hooks, 1994)
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher
Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins
Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives by Peter Johnston
Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit
The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller
A Place for Wonder By Georgia Heard
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
You can download the whole list as a PDF on the Teaching with Soul Blog
Looking for Professional Development?
Ingham ISD has sessions this summer on creating SmartBoard lessons, and using iPads in the classroom. Read and register HERE.Friday, June 1, 2012
June
Summer Reading:
Don't forget the summer reading resources from the May Literacy Newsletter. You'll find resources from Scholastic, NCTE, and the New York Times to share with students.
Also, don't forget the Dream Big...READ program for summer reading at any of the Capital Area District Library locations. This is for all ages and includes a free Summer Event and Information Guide you can send to parents on the many activities including magic, critters and creatures, art, music & theater, puppets and storytellers, and teens and tweens!
Also, don't forget the Dream Big...READ program for summer reading at any of the Capital Area District Library locations. This is for all ages and includes a free Summer Event and Information Guide you can send to parents on the many activities including magic, critters and creatures, art, music & theater, puppets and storytellers, and teens and tweens!
Ed Tech Freebie:
The
2012 Free Education Technology Resources eBook is packed with 65 pages of free
applications and tools to help teachers and other educators engage students and
improve learning outcomes, and resources to help enhance administrative
productivity.
Topics include:
- Collaboration & Brainstorming Tools
- Educational Games
- Educational Videos Lectures
- Podcasts
- Facebook in Education
- Interactive White Boards
- iPads in Education
- Picture And Image Editing Applications
- Presentations & Screencasting
- Surveys & Polls
- Twitter in the Classroom
TO GET YOUR COPY Just provide your name and email address in the “Sign Up!” form in
the side bar on the right side of the page.
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