Reflections on Adolescent Literacy

Adolescent Literacy is an artisan's toolbox.

image from  http://pinkleafdesigns.files.wordpress.com/

The complexity of adolescent literacy deserves much care; much like an artisan would care for his toolbox. There are so many aspects of literacy that students need to refine in order to become literate in accessing multiple types of texts and making sense from that.

At first glance, all of the tools look familiar-paint, brushes, glue; however, even though the tools are familiar, the user may not know the exact way to utilize the tool. This connects to adolescent literacy because students have learned to read throughout their time in elementary school. They’ve learned all about different strategies in order to understand a text—but when they get to adolescence, literacy shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. Students have to be able to understand which tools they need to use for different texts and they need to do this without a teacher telling them to.

Looking at the image above, it seems as though the toolbox is messy and that there is no method for organization. However, each tool has an intended purpose and the artisan or adolescent reader is fluid in understanding what strategy to use for different types of texts.

The different tools are like the different disciplines in which students need to learn how to access. For example, reading like a mathematician is way different than reading like a historian. Just like using a flat brush will give you a totally different product than using a fan brush. Students need to know what specific tools they need to take out of their toolbox in order to understand what they are reading.

It isn’t just what the tools from the artisan’s toolbox do, but it’s about the process in which the artisan creates a product. Sometimes, the artisan might need to confer with a colleague about what type of technique to use on a piece, much like academic conversations. Other times, the artisan might be combining to different techniques to synthesize into one product, just like having multiple text comprehension.

No matter how long the process takes, there is a masterpiece that is in the making, all because of the tool box. All of the tools work together in order for students to understand any type of text.

What makes a good writer?

Want to know what I think of when I think of my writing instruction as a child? This is what comes to mind:

image from Oriental Trading

I have vivid images of a bright, yellow folder that is "multi-flapped" in which I have to sort my writing into the correct stage of the writing process. Obviously, these folders are a lot more high tech than the folders that I used in the 1990s, but the fact that I remember that part of my writing instruction is telling. As a child, I was a part of a school that agreed with researchers that the writing process was an important part of writing instruction. While I had a positive learning experience with writing, that is not true for many students.

Writing to Learn

This concept is categorized by being short, informal pieces of writing. The idea is that writing is the tool in which students use their metacognative skills to understand content. The following video gives a great overview of how this works within the classroom:


Quality writing instruction

Now that the concept of writing to learn is noted, how can you use this notion to give quality writing instruction? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Biopoems

image from mscali.weebly.com

Have you students write a biopoem about a historical figure that they are researching. It allows students to synthesize important ideas and events that involve that figure as well as lets students understand the components of what makes a person complex. This could be used in a History class for students to synthesize what they know about a historical figure.

Dialogues

image from iTeach1to1.blogspot.com

Have students discuss with each other as they are learning about content. You can use websites like www.todaysmeet.com to help facilitate an online discussion. The image shows a discussion students are having through the written language about literature.

Admit/Exit Slips

image from esc13.net

This is a way to get a good gauge on how your students understood instruction. It allows you to pull back students that did not understand certain aspects, and enrich those who already know the content. www.socrative.com offers an admit/exit slip via the internet, but you can just use paper and pencil as the image shows above.

There are so many components to what makes good writing instruction. I have found that good writing instruction includes many other aspects such as academic journals, integration of reading and writing, and learning how to write in different disciplines (Vacca & Vacca). The goal of our instruction as educators is to get students to see themselves as writers and allow themselves to be motivated to be a life long writer.

Teaching Metacognition

image from keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

I have a sign up in my 4th and 5th grade literacy room that says this...Talk Less and Listen More. Originally when I bought it, I chuckled a bit thinking of how this poster would be a great reminder for my more talkative of students. However, it hasn't been until my fourth, almost fifth year of teaching, that I realize that the poster that hangs in my classroom, is for me.

What a humbling realization.

Is my role as a teacher to give information about varying topics, or is it for me to teach students how to learn? I am realizing it is more of the latter. Educators always say that the reason that we are in this business is to promote lifelong learning...but do we practice what we preach? Are we teaching our students about a topic or how to discuss a topic? As I was reading articles from Clarke (Discussing Shiloh: A conversation beyond the book) and excerpts from Vacca & Vacca's Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, I felt shame in the fact that I am not facilitating discussions, but rather running the whole show while not giving my students self-regulation strategies. While I am disappointed in this fact, this only makes me strive to do better.

Metacognition is the act of thinking about thinking. Sounds silly, but that's really what it is! Numerous studies have been conducted on metacognition in education and all conclusions of these studies show that metacognition is a great stepping stone to all types of learning.

Jim Wentworth of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (my undergrad alma mater...go ILLINI!!) has created a presentation of the research done and commentary on metacognition in college students:

Teaching Metacognition from JimWentworth

It's amazing to me that even in college, metacognitive skills are hard to wrap your brain around! Therefore, it is imperative that we teach our students to make a plan to achieve a goal, monitor their thinking while enacting that plan, and evaluating if they did or did not succeed in achieving that goal.

I say, the earlier we teach our students metacognitive skills, the better.

If you're so smart, how do we do that at the elementary level, Jen? You may ask. This is what I have for you:

Teaching Metacognitive Skills using the Boston Massacre/Riot

Recently, as you can tell by my earlier posts, my 4th & 5th graders and I have been delving into the American Revolutionary War. We recently explored the Boston Massacre...or Boston Riot. (Depends on what perspective you take...American or British! Oh, reading across multiple texts, how well you lend yourself to this lesson!) After students took notes using a synthesis journal on firsthand and secondhand accounts from Patriot perspectives and British perspectives, I had my students stand on a line on the floor (that I made out of tape) and told my students to stand on one side of the line if they felt that the event truly was a massacre or if the British were just acting out of self defense. I then told my students to talk about what they thought with the people around them using evidence from their notes.

Great first try! 

However, if I could do it over, I would embed more metacognitive strategies within the construct of that lesson, which demands more planning on my part.

The use of discussion stems, discussion protocols and discussion webs could have easily been planned into this lesson. Dr. Manderino & Dr. Wickens from Northern Illinois University talk about cultivating academic conversations in an excerpt that appeared in the Illinois Reading Council Journal in Spring 2014. More information can be found here on that discussion. 

Careful planning of use of these instructional resources could enhance this lesson immensely! Instead of just having students talk to the peers around them (who have similar view points if they're grouped homogeneously according to opinion), it could be beneficial for students to have a discussion with vertical articulation (pairing students of opposite view points together). 

This is just one, small example of adding the component of metacognition into a lesson. It's not something that you have to overhaul your lesson with, but can be seen as more of an additive. Yes, there may be more lessons that occur beforehand and after the fact with explicit instruction on metacognitive strategies, but the pay off is that students will be able to think for themselves, defend their own opinion with evidence, and be able to critique (respectively, of course) others opinions.

Building Word Rich Classrooms

**LTRE 511 friends...this is a post I did to make up a class absence...do not post comments to this post for fulfillment of our responses!**

As an educator, I find this to be the most frustrating of topics to learn about and implementing in my own classroom. Not because I do not see the value in it. On the contrary, I find that vocabulary is a super important component of any educational program. In fact, there is a need in our country for vocabulary growth as evidenced by the stunted growth of 4th to 8th graders' vocabulary performance from a NAEP report from  2009 to 2011.

image from NAEP report

There is no convincing of any teacher that vocabulary is important. But how do we, as educators, sift through all of the research out there and determine what exactly is the "correct" way to instruct vocabulary? There are so many schools of thought about how vocabulary should be taught, it's no wonder we're confused! We have the Isabel Becks, the Fisher and Freys, the Hiebert and Lubliners, and the list goes on and on. According to Baumann & Graves's commentary, What is Academic Vocabulary, there are several definitions of what vocabulary is. Let's start with a working definition of the "different" vocabularies that have been thrown around in the education world:

The term academic literacy refers to the language that is used within the broad domain of learning. It could be learning within the classroom or it could be the language used within the "community" of learners. Academic language is language that is specific toward schooling. it is the type of language that is expected for students to engage in during academic encounters. Academic domain knowledge is vocabulary that is used within a specific content area such as math, science, or history.

Academic vocabulary has been defined in two ways, according to Baumann & Graves (2010):

1) Domain-specific academic vocabulary or the content-specific words used in disciplines like biology, geometry, civics, and geography
2) General academic vocabulary, or the broad, all-purpose terms that appear across content areas but that may vary in meaning because of the discipline itself

Phew. Confused yet?

The following image shows a progression of how academic vocabulary is tiered (hence the name, tired vocabulary). For all intensive purposes of this blog, academic vocabulary can be considered synonymous with tired vocabulary.

image from learningunlimitedllc.com

Domain-Specific Academic Vocabulary

When referring to the above image, this would coincide with Tier 3. Famously made famous by Marzano's Academic Vocabulary lists, domain-specific academic vocabulary are words that are very precise to the content that is associated with the vocabulary. This can be referred to as technical vocabulary, content-specific vocabulary, tier 3 vocabulary, technical terms, and so on. These are words that do not generally occur in texts, unless it is specific to a content. For example, the words vegetation and rising action are specific to the contents of science and literature respectively.

General Academic Vocabulary

This term refers to the "Tier 2" part of the image. This is exactly how it sounds, general vocabulary. However, not as general as you think. These can be words like itemize, falter, or misfortune. The words are not specific to a content, but are more specific than words like list, struggle, or bad luck. The occurrence of these words appear more often than domain-specific academic vocabulary, but this is thought to be the "key" to understanding more complex vocabulary. There are varying definitions from different researchers such as Fisher and Frey, Harmon, Wood and Hedrick and Hiebert and Lubliner.

Okay, Jen. So...how do I teach vocabulary?

Graves, Fisher and Frey and Marzano and Pickering suggest different approaches to teaching vocabulary explicitly. The concept that all researchers have in common is the process in which vocabulary for instruction is chosen. This includes comparing words to vocabulary used in class and choosing words that correlate well the to technical vocabulary used in a specific unit.

You can use semantic feature analyses in which the reader categorizes vocabulary.

image from fcit.usf.edu

Concept vocabulary maps break down a vocabulary word into illustrations, a broad definition, comparisons, etc.

image from rit.edu

The Frayer model is similiar, but uses a different format.

image from teachingandtapas.com

Dr. Kimbery Tyson has a plethora of suggestions (dos and don'ts) about vocabulary instruction. For more information, visit an article here. Also, there are great articles on a blog called vocabulogic that can be found here.

Regardless, vocabulary is a component of literacy that should be attended to. The way in which we do that "the best way" is yet to be determined. In an article from usatoday.com Francie Alexander of publishing house Scholastic asserts, "results show that developing a rich vocabulary 'can become a huge task for students,' one that schools must take on 'beginning in the earliest grades and continuing through high school'. This reiterates the fact that vocabulary isn't just important in the school setting, but sets up a student for a path to success in life.

Multiple Text Comprehension in the Disciplines

image from oursmartweb.com

Naturally, our brain gathers information from multiple sources ALL the time. We are constantly getting information that contradicts itself, especially in the education world. Think about the evolution of a balanced literacy workshop approach. That stemmed from the movement from whole language to solely phonics instruction and evolved into a balanced approach. Every day, someone is publishing an article or writing a book that states what the latest and greatest instructional strategy is in the education world (Common Core, Close Reading, etc). So, it is only natural that we use multiple texts on the same topic in our classrooms. I find it hard to keep up with the latest trends in education because of the amount of research available with claims of ‘this is the next big thing in education’.

It doesn't matter what academic area or profession we are discussing or examining, in regards to reading and writing they are ALL reading and writing multiple texts in the same topics they study. If we are preparing students to be college and career ready, then it is our job to prepare students to be ready for their professions (whatever they choose). If professionals are expected to read and write multiple texts, then we should have students immersed in multiple texts in the classroom. 

Two things we need to teach in our classrooms are how to search for the proper information as well as using credible sources. With the overabundance of information that is at our students’ finger prints, we need to educate them how to analyze multiple texts and credit or discredit the information they obtain. We also need to make sure students are finding appropriate evidence for their claims or ideas that are developed through reading and writing. The world they are growing up in consists of them blogging, updating their statuses, or texting. All of these modes take away from students engaging in the formal writing process and creates writers who are immature. By having students write about the same topic in a different way, we are working towards developing those formal writing skills so many of our students lack.

Students should be reading multiple texts on the same topic that vary in reading complexity. I agree with an assertion made by Cynthia Hynd Shanahan in her article Reading and Writing across Multiple Texts that sometimes we worry about the level of a complex text instead of teaching students the strategies to navigate through a complex text. If we present various levels of text to our students and teach them how to read them with different lenses, the students will be better equipped to comprehend a wide-variety of texts. Students need specific strategies taught to them in order for them to comprehend complex text they will encounter. They need to be taught where to go when they encounter a tough vocabulary word. Students need to be taught how to build background knowledge on topics and to read multiple texts to help build that knowledge base. They need to understand the importance of looking at both sides of a topic before forming an opinion. They also need to know how to navigate through specific genres. They will be able to comprehend and take more away from an article if they have been taught the basic skills of how to change their reading lens based on the genre they are reading.    

The idea to have students read like historians fits in with the curriculum we have in my district. The students are charged to participate in a research project centering on our social studies content. Students are asked to read a wide-variety of texts and to synthesize this material to form their own thoughts and ideas. The majority of my students seem to use the computer to search for information instead of reading books published on the topic. The process historians’ uses (validate a source, contextualize the author/time written, and corroborate with other sources) is a great process to teach students when researching. This process needs to be taught and broken down for students in the classroom. They cannot be expected to know how to research and pull together all the pieces on their own. It is important that we have students participate, practice, and learn how to read across multiple texts in the classroom.

The process laid out in the article is one that we can use in any academic area. The students need to read a general article that builds background knowledge about the topic that everyone has access to in regards to reading level. Then, students need to study a second text (harder in text complexity). After that, they read a third text and study that as well. When they have read the three different texts, the fun begins. This is the time for students to compare and contrast the information presented in the three different articles and synthesize the different information. If we routinely did this in our classrooms, we would be raising critical readers and writers.

We want students to be able to read text and know that there is more information about there. Ultimately we are creating life-long learners who need to be able to find information on their own. As teachers, we are constantly reading and finding more information on new and more effective ways to instruct our students. We want students to be empowered to do that. In order for them to synthesize all of the information, we need to lay the foundations for how to do this.

Our goal is to have students be more critical when reading informational or literature. We want students to be able to synthesize the information learned from multiple sources to form their ideas and have an opinion about it. 

Text Complexity

In 2009 when David Coleman, William McCallum, Jason Zimba and Susan Pimetel sat to create the ELA Common Core Standards, one large focus was on text complexity. The ELA Anchor Standard 10 for Reading states:

Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

So much power is put into so little words!

One of the big debates in education is making complex text available to all students: those that excel, those that are striving readers, the whole shebang. While the focus of this post is not to go into the debate at length, it is important to know that reading and comprehending complex text is expected of all students. If it interests you, Dr. Freddy Hiebert discusses this topic and need for complex texts in the classroom in this webinar and you can also check out her website in which she explores many topics on the Common Core. 

In this post, I am going to explain the different stages of determining text complexity (according to the Common Core). 

image from teachingthecore.wordpress.com

There are 3 different ways in which you can determine text complexity: qualitatively, quantitatively, and relating to the reader & task. In short, evaluating if a text is complex or not is determined by the following factors:

Quantitative: Determined by algorithm - a numerical product of looking deeply at number of syllables in sentences, word length, word frequency/uniqueness, etc.

I used www.readabilityforumulas.com to calculate the quantitative results. I have interpreted the results using the Fry Readability Graph.

Qualitative: Determined by humans - how is the text organized, what are the deep meanings of the text, etc. In this evaluation, I will look at the quality of text using the following wordage:

Slightly Complex
Moderately Complex
Very Complex
Exceedingly Complex

I used rubrics from http://achievethecore.org/ in order to look at qualitative complexity. This is a great website that looks at the Common Core and gives resources in order to help make the standards comprehensible.

Reader & Text: Determined by teacher - how the teacher can use the text within the classroom

I will go through one of the units I am currently teaching my 4th and 5th graders and demonstrate how I determine text complexity for the mentor texts that I am using.

Social studies is integrated into my literacy curriculum, so at the moment I am teaching through the lens of the American Revolution. My students and I are currently tackling the causes of the revolution and looking at the essential question: What causes change? Through this topic, I have been teaching point-of-view, author's purpose and text structure.

Book #1: The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble, Illustrated by Robert Papp
Type of Text: Historical Fiction Literature

at amazon.com

Reader & Task: 
I use this book to teach about perspective and point of view. The little girl in the book is a Patriot and devises a plan with her brother to spy on British ships in the Boston Harbor. I would recommend this book to teachers who are interested in teaching how author's play with language. There is a lot of good figurative language that is very rich and if a student were to read this in the intermediate levels, he or she may need teacher supports.

Quantitative Results:

Quantitatively, this picture book is at the 9th grade level. This may surprise some as picture books are often thought of as an "elementary" text. This book has complex words in it like "tradesfolk", "glistening" and "rebellion". This is to be expected, however, since there is a lot of domain specific vocabulary unique to the American Revolutionary war. 

Qualitative Results: 

Text Structure: Exceedingly Complex -- The structure includes subplots, time shifts, point of view of a patriot girl, and has multiple, complex characters.

Language Features: Very Complex -- Language in this text is very specific to the American Revolutionary War; therefore, the vocabulary is very domain specific.

Meaning: Exceedingly Complex -- There is a subtle, overarching theme relating to the cost of war which is very ambiguous.

Knowledge Demands: Exceedingly Complex -- There is a lot of knowledge about life during the 18th century that needs to be known, especially how allegiance was classified during that time.

----------

Book #2: The Split History of the American Revolution: A Perspectives Flip Book by Michael Burgan
Type of Text: Informational Text

     

at amazon.com

Reader & Task:
This book is a part of a series that shows two perspectives to the same topic in history. In this particular book, one side of the book details the British point of view while the other side looks at the Patriot point of view. This text acts and looks like a typical social studies text but in a picture book form. I use excerpts from this book to teach about the Boston Riot/Massacre (wording depends on who you ask!) and the incidence of bias within historical accounts. To use with a class, use excerpts as a read aloud and analyze perspective and bias.

Quantitative Results: 

This book is considered to be at the 9th grade level, although it is "teetering" on the 10th grade side. Domain specific vocabulary that is showcased in this book includes "representatives", "smuggling" and "molasses", very discipline specific vocabulary.

Qualitative Results: 

Text Structure: Moderately Complex -- The structure is what to be expected in a "typical" informational text. It is in chronological order, has graphics that relates to the text, and is clear about the history of the American Revolutionary War. It does have two perspectives; therefore, making the text a bit more complex.

Language Features: Very Complex -- Language in this text is very specific to the American Revolutionary War; therefore, the vocabulary is very domain specific.

Meaning: Moderately Complex -- Meaning of the content is laid out explicitly with having two perspectives of the American Revolutionary War.

Knowledge Demands: Exceedingly Complex -- There is a lot of knowledge about life during the 18th century that needs to be known.

----------

Book #3: Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Type of Text: Historical Fiction/Informational Text Hybrid

at amazon.com

Reader & Task:

This novel gives a fictional historical account of a boy who is caught in between the American Revolutionary War. It is a hybrid because before every chapter, there is a small informational passage that gives real, historical context about the war to craft the setting in the book. I use this book as a read aloud and we analyze the organization of the text. This is important because the students learn how to navigate a hybrid text.

Quantitative Results: 

According to the scale, this book lands at around a seventh grade reading level. The sentences are less complex and shorter. There are not as many multisyllabic words. There are some domain specific words related to the time period, but not as much.

Qualitative Results: 

Text Structure: Moderately Complex -- This book is a hybrid novel that alternates between a fictional historic point of view and informational text that supports the setting. The weaving of the two story lines makes this text moderately complex.

Language Features: Moderately Complex  -- Some language is specific to the American Revolutionary War time period, but the language is conversational. There are some places where language complexity appears.

Meaning: Moderately Complex -- Theme is there and pretty much explicit but there are some subtleties within that theme.

Knowledge Demands: Very Complex -- Paulsen does a great job giving context to the reader about the American Revolutionary War, but there are parts in which a student would comprehend better if background knowledge is presented in order to make the experience more common to the reader.

----------

Looking at the evaluation of text complexity with these specific texts, I would recommend that a teacher use these texts in the intermediate elementary levels only if appropriate scaffolds are in place. I am not suggesting that we over scaffold, but in order to hit the strategies that could be taught with these books such as point of view, bias, etc., it is necessary for some scaffolds to be in place such as read alouds, shared reading, vocabulary support if needed, etc. These books are being used in my classroom at the moment and are embedded into a study of the American Revolutionary War; therefore, students have some experience with the historical time period. 

I was somewhat surprised that my picture book, after evaluation, is considered to be more complex than my chapter book. It's amazing what stigma comes with "types" of text, but this evaluation shows that text can be complex in many different ways!

Comprehension...Do you really "get it"?

image from payscale.com

Strategies, strategies, strategies. I'm going to go ahead and make the over generalization that all teachers have heard this word. 

Reading strategies have been at the forefront since the National Reading Panel (2000) came out with a report outlining the most important aspects of literacy.

image from learningstaircase.co.nz

Among "The Big 5 Ideas" of literacy components that should be explicitly taught is comprehension. Born out of this report, was the idea of 6 reading strategies, famously outlined in the book, Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding by Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, and Donald Graves. Predicting, visualizing, connecting, questioning, clarifying and synthesizing (evaluating) became the big buzz words at this time.

image from edu556jcybulski.weebly.com

The issues that arose from these reading strategies was the way in which they were taught: statically. As Dr. Sunday Cummins argues (at around 42:30 in the video):

I was teaching 3rd grade, and what came out? Strategies that Work, remember? Mosiac of Thought. We were all so excited because David Pearson had done this research and he knew which 7 comprehension strategies to teach, right? And so what do we do? September you teach making connections, October you teach asking questions...chapter by chapter, month by month, and in December we visualize and January you make inferences. I am so darn tired after ISAT, I didn't get to the chapter on synthesis. Oh well, maybe next year...so what happened was our kids were making connections, they were asking questions...our kids were learning about strategies and using them in isolation. 

Here lies the problem:

And really, when you want kids to read a text and get deeper meaning, you want them to synthesize. And making connections is in service of synthesis. Asking questions is in service of synthesis. Visualizing is in service of synthesis. 

So what do the experts suggest can aid comprehension? Digging deeper into domain specific vocabulary. Or in other words...technical vocabulary. 

And here we make a full circle to disciplinary literacy.

Understanding more about the world and using that domain specific vocabulary helps the reader understand the context in which the text is set. 

Daniel Willingham claims:

Use reading materials that teach something about the world!!! Don't neglect other subjects!

These current assertions support the idea of preparing our younger students for a disciplinary literacy approach in which students actively learn how to read a specific discipline's text. The full circle of these instructional "strategies" will only help with a student's comprehension of all texts. 

For more information about how to use domain specific vocabulary into your instruction, please see Jennifer Jones's presentation, Word Up!, on vocabulary instruction in the 21st century classroom.

Word Up! Vocabulary Instruction in the 21st Century Classroom from Jennifer Jones