There's a definite literacy emphasis this week - as always, it's an artifact of the magazines that happen to arrive. I didn't finish the new issue of The Reading Teacher; more next week from this very solid, practical journal.

As a bonus, here's a YouTube clip of a one-minute version of Romeo and Juliet from MATCH School in Boston.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N442_61BUhA

Happy Fall!

Kim
 

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Quotes of the Week

“If all school was like this, I wouldn’t be so bored. I would like to read more.”
Haley, a third grader taking part in her school’s Poetry Academy (see item #1)

“It makes sense that when students are comfortable and feel success in a task, they are more likely to enjoy engaging in it.”
Lori Wilfong (ibid.)

“It is advisable to use community volunteers for more than just copying and creating bulletin boards.”
Ibid.

“Teenagers don’t like to read a lot on the Web. They get enough of that in school.”
Jakob Nielsen (see item #5)

“The act of setting a goal is an important and necessary step for all policies. The act of incentivizing progress only by counting those who achieve the goal is short sighted.”
Andrew Dean Ho, arguing for measuring all students’ growth vs. just that of students
attaining proficiency, in “The Problem with ‘Proficiency’: Limitations of Statistics
and Policy Under No Child Left Behind” in Educational Researcher, Aug./Sept. 2008,
(Vol. 37, #6, 351-360), no e-link available

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1. Five to Ten Minutes of “Poetry Academy” a Week Boosts Reading

In this helpful article in The Reading Teacher, Kent State University reading specialist Lori Wilfong describes the Poetry Academy, which helped 36 struggling third graders improve their reading fluency, word recognition, retelling skill, and attitude toward reading. The basic idea was repeated reading, a research-proven technique, but Wilfong gave it a new twist by having students repeatedly read short, humorous poems.
To provide the one-on-one attention for students to practice their poems, she recruited five community volunteers and the school’s outreach worker to work with students. The helpers attended a two-hour training session in which Wilfong assigned six students to each adult, explained that they would spend 5-10 minutes with each student once a week working on a new poem, and walked them through the program’s six steps:
- The volunteer reads a new poem to the student (modeling).
- The student reads the poem aloud with the volunteer (listening-while-reading and assisted reading).
- The student reads the poem to the volunteer independently, with appropriate assistance and praise (repeated reading).
- The volunteer goes over the poem with the student, discusses what it means, dissects any unknown words, and chats with the student about how things are going.
- The student takes the poem home and reads it aloud to as many people as possible, gathering signatures as proof.
- The next week’s session starts with the student reading the poem one last time to the volunteer to prove mastery. They then launch into a new poem.
Students were given folders to hold their growing collection of poems and got stickers or small candies for remembering to bring the poem of the week home. At the end of the school year there was a Poetry Café, where parents heard children reading a favorite poem, students received a certificate, and everyone ate pizza and cake.
Each week, Wilfong gave volunteers two poems at different levels of difficulty to accommodate different students. “When selecting poetry,” she says, “I turned to the crude, rude, and funny.” Among her choices:
- “Examination” by Shel Silverstein from his collection, Where the Sidewalk Ends;
- “My Sister Think She’s Santa Claus” by Kenn Nesbitt, from Santa Got Stuck in the Chimney;
- “A Bad Case of the Sneezes” by Bruce Lansky from If Pigs Could Fly;
- “The Dog Ate My Homework” by Sara Holbrook from her book of the same name.

What were the results? On a curriculum-based assessment given at the beginning and end of the program, Poetry Academy students made significantly greater gains than control-group students. There were also major improvements in Academy students’ attitudes toward reading. “It makes sense that when students are comfortable and feel success in a task, they are more likely to enjoy engaging in it,” says Wilfong. “The Poetry Academy helped readers create that comfort and success toward academic reading.” Here’s what some of the students said:
- “It helped me not be embarrassed to read in front of everybody.”
- “It helped me understand more words.”
- “It helped with the stuttering.”
- “It helps you figure out words.”
- “Mrs. W., it didn’t seem like school. I knew the whole time I was reading and learning, but it felt like spending time with a friend. If all school was like this, I wouldn’t be so bored. I would like to read more.”
Teachers were also enthusiastic about the program. One described a shy student blossoming into a “little actor.” Another said, “There was a ‘light’ that students had when returning to the class after meeting with their volunteer.”
The volunteers also had positive reactions, noticing increased reading speed, fluency, accuracy, and confidence – and reporting that students were sometimes reluctant to return to class. Wilfong feels especially good about the role of these helpers. “It is advisable to use community volunteers for more than just copying and creating bulletin boards,” she says. “The volunteers in this study were grateful to be used in a constructive manner and worked hard when given a concrete goal.”
Why did the program work? Wilfong thinks the key elements were good reading materials, one-on-one support, the use of community volunteers, repeated reading, and family involvement. Her ideas for improving and spreading the program include:
- Finding appropriate space for volunteers to work;
- Doing more intensive training for volunteers;
- Increasing parent communication;
- Carefully choosing poetry topics.

“Building Fluency, Word-Recognition Ability, and Confidence in Struggling Readers: The Poetry Academy” by Lori Wilfong in The Reading Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 4-13), no e-link available; the author can be reached at lgkrug@kent.edu.
 

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2. Nurturing Independent Writers in the Primary Grades

In this NJEA Review article, New Jersey kindergarten teacher Peggy Campbell-Rush shares her wisdom on good writing instruction in primary-grade classrooms. “The goal is to get students to be independent writers with the teacher’s guidance along the way,” she says, and believes students learn best with a combination of three formats:
• Demonstration writing (I do it) – The teacher composes and writes in front of the class, explaining the process, sounding out words, thinking out loud, adding punctuation, making corrections.
• Interactive writing (We do it) – Students are actively involved in composing and writing a piece, sharing the marker as each member of the class contributes letters, words, or punctuation.
• Independent writing (You do it) – Children write journals, stories, letters, or observations on their own, with the teacher helping, teaching, encouraging, and editing as needed.
Campbell-Rush then shares ten teaching tips that can apply to one, two, or all three of these formats:
- Labeling the room – She has students work in teams to create labels for chairs, doors, tables, blocks, etc. Students start with drawings, then progress to first and last letters, then to conventional spelling.
- Pen pals – A class collaborating on a single letter to another class works well for kindergarteners, says Campbell-Rush. Older students can graduate to individual letters. Writing to students in far-away places is wonderful, but she says that it’s good to start with someone with whom students can have human contact.
- Crazy word of the day – Campbell-Rush introduces a new, long word every day, pronouncing it over and over again with students and having them call out the sounds and letters they hear. She then looks up the word in a dictionary to find its meaning and students begin to guess how it’s spelled, getting better and better as the year progresses.
- Writing the room – Students take a clipboard around the room writing down anything they see – numbers, sight words, poetry, letters, etc.
- I’m stuck – To help students who are having trouble getting started with their independent pieces, Campbell-Jones suggests: (a) Story-starters such as sentences, photographs, a topic generated by classmates, or a monthly theme; (b) Students walking around the classroom to see what other students are writing about; (c) Keeping index cards on events in each child’s life (like losing a tooth) to provide ideas; (d) For perfectionists who don’t like writing on paper for fear of making a mistake, have them write the word on your back or in the air first; and (e) For students who keep writing the same simple story (“I love Mom”), write the word “because” after their words and invite them to continue.
- Sign language alphabet – Campbell-Rush teaches her students the sign-language alphabet and can silently signal a word across the room while helping another student. She also carries a powerful flashlight and shines it on words on the wall when students ask her for a word.
- Leaving spaces – To help students remember to leave space between words, Campbell-Rush gives students tongue depressors on which they can draw funny faces, glues two Popsicle sticks together decorated with fake fingernails, or has students trace two of their own fingers onto Post-It notes and cut out the shape to use as they write.
- Writing opportunities – Campbell-Rush suggests having students write down class routines or rules, rewrite favorite books with new characters (e.g., The Very Hungry Principal), and write thank-you notes to custodians, guest readers, parent helpers, etc.
- Stretching it out – Campbell-Rush uses a Slinky to model sounding out a word, slowly pulling it apart to hear all the sounds. As the year progresses, she brings in a small and a large Slinky and asks students which she should use for each word.
- Note of the week – Every week, Campbell-Rush sends a question home (for example, “What is your favorite color?”) and students write the answer in a full sentence with no help from family members.

“Ten Strategies to Improve Writing Instruction in the Primary Grades” by Peggy Campbell-Rush in NJEA Review (published by the New Jersey Education Association), spotted in Education Digest, September 2008.
 

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3. A Study of Florida Middle-School Literacy Coaches

A recent RAND Corporation study looked at middle-school reading coaches in Florida and reached the following conclusions:
• Diffused use of time – Coaches spent their time on a variety of activities, including formal work with teachers, informal coaching, administering tests, data analysis, and non-coaching duties. Less than half of coaches’ time was spent one-on-one with teachers; coaches tended to focus on reading teachers and not spend time with other teachers of other subject areas. Some teachers chose not to work with coaches.
• Variations in quality – Some coaches were first-rate, especially if they had administrative support, but others were less impressive. Some administrators found it difficult to locate coaches with the right mix of experience and interpersonal skills.
• Uneven impact – Most teachers and principals believed the coaches had a positive impact on the quality of reading teaching. Coaches had a small but significant positive impact on student achievement in 2003 and 2005, but they did not have a significant impact in 2004 and 2006.
• Working with interim assessment data – There was a small but significant impact on student achievement when coaches worked with teachers analyzing and following up on interim assessments.

“Florida’s Middle-School Reading Coaches: What Do They Do? Are They Effective?” by the RAND Corporation, September 2008 (spotted in PEN Weekly NewsBlast, Sept. 12, 2008)
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9374/index1.html
 

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4. What Produces High Student Engagement in Middle-School Classrooms?

In this Elementary School Journal article, researchers Lisa Raphael, Michael Pressley, and Lindsey Mohan report on their study of student engagement in nine sixth-grade classrooms. The authors defined engagement as students being on task and doing thoughtful assignments, and found that three of the teachers had very high engagement (90 percent of students engaged 90 percent of the time), three had moderate engagement, and three had very low engagement (fewer than half of students engaged less than half of the time). The low-engagement classrooms were characterized by:
• Low expectations for success:
- Attributing student outcomes to ability versus effort
- Publicly calling attention to differences in student performance
- Fostering competition among students
• Decreasing the value of tasks:
- Discouraging student interest by focusing only on quiz or test performance
- Not placing positive value on learning for its own sake
• Providing ineffective rewards:
- Putting an emphasis on extrinsic rewards
- Providing ineffective or unclear feedback
• Lack of monitoring or scaffolding:
- Not providing stepping-stones for students who don’t know key facts
- Not checking for student attention and understanding
• Activities that don’t challenge students:
- Asking low-level questions from a hum-drum textbook
• Negative classroom environment:
- Expressing frustration with students
- Conveying a negative tone (“Why are you guys being so obnoxious? Just zip it.”)
- Lack of connection with students (“I’m not singing but you can sing it.”)
• Negative and inefficient classroom management:
- Using threats and warnings
- Not using routines and procedures
- Scolding, punishing, and excluding
- Poor planning, for example, students finish early and have open time for misbehavior

High-engagement classrooms were the mirror opposite. Here is what the researchers found were the characteristics of teachers in those classrooms:
• High expectations of success:
- Teachers expressed confidence in student capabilities and provided constant reassurances;
- They emphasized the importance of hard work and attributed outcomes to effort, versus innate ability;
- They emphasized student mastery and progress;
- They explicitly and consistently expressed high expectations.
• Boosting the value of classrooms tasks:
- Teachers gave students the rationale for learning material;
- They cultivated student value for learning (“Isn’t it great to know?”)
- They emphasized the importance of what was being learned;
- They provided authentic material and activities.
• Tangible rewards:
- Teachers gave informative praise;
- They used extrinsic rewards appropriately.
• Connecting to students’ world outside school:
- They made links between what was being learned and activities of interest to students;
- They forged personal connections to students;
- They encouraged students to talk about schoolwork with their families.
• Encouraging students to be self-regulated learners:
- Teachers gave students choices;
- They encouraged academic and behavioral self-regulation;
- They emphasized individual accountability;
- They treated students as purposeful learners.
• Monitoring and scaffolding students’ learning:
- They kept an eye on the whole class and on individual students;
- They modeled work for individual students and led them step by step to mastery.
• Modeling and supporting strategy use:
- They explicitly taught and encouraged the use of strategies;
- They walked students through problem-solving and thinking.
• Challenging student thinking:
- Teachers stimulated higher-level thinking with How and Why questions;
- They encouraged students to take risks and be independent thinkers.
• Providing clear explanations and academic expectations:
- Teachers previewed class material;
- They gave clear directions and explanations;
- They seized on teachable moments to give appropriate mini-lessons;
- They broke complex tasks into component parts;
- They made abstract material more concrete.
• Creating a positive classroom atmosphere:
- They modeled enthusiasm (“Sometimes when we have great energy, we get so involved!”)
- They encouraged a positive tone and used humor;
- They showed that they cared about students, both academically and personally.
• Using positive classroom management:
- They had a positive management style (“Remember how we use nonverbal communication!”)
- They treated students as responsible learners;
- They treated students fairly.
• Supporting students’ social goals:
- They encouraged student collaboration;
- They encouraged student participation;
- They treated the classroom as a community;
- They encouraged pro-social behaviors.
• Assuming responsibility for student learning:
- Teachers believed that it was their job to make learning happen (“Does that make more sense? I apologize for not making it more clear.”)
- They conveyed that themselves were also learners;
- They cared about student understanding.

“Engaging Instruction in Middle School Classrooms: An Observational Study of Nine Teachers” by Lisa Raphael, the late Michael Pressley, and Lindsey Mohan in Elementary School Journal, September 2008 (Vol. 109, #1, p. 61-81), no e-link available; Lisa Raphael can be reached at lisamraphael@yahoo.com.
 

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5. A Theory on Why Computers Aren’t Helping Student Achievement

In this thoughtful Chronicle of Higher Education article, Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein shares his theory of why the massive investment in computers in public schools in recent years has yielded such disappointing student-achievement results. The reason, he says, is that students bring to the classroom a very cursory way of “reading” computer screens that they picked up using digital devices outside school. Bauerlein cites a study by Jakob Nielsen of eye movements when scanning a computer screen. Only one in six people reads computer material linearly, sentence by sentence. Everyone else skims, looking for key words, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. Their eyes move down the screen following the pattern of a capital F: at the top of the screen, they read all the way across; then they speed up and narrow their focus; halfway down the screen, they read part-way across, and then they narrow down and move to the bottom. “F is for fast,” says Nielsen. “That’s how users read your precious content… ‘Reading’ is not even the right word.”
Teenagers are the worst, says Nielsen. They “have a short attention span and want to be stimulated. That’s also why they leave sites that are difficult to figure out… Teenagers don’t like to read a lot on the Web. They get enough of that in school… They race across the surface, dicing language and ideas into bullets and graphics, seeking what they already want and shunning the rest… [S]tudents have spent thousands of hours online acquiring faster and faster eyes and fingers… and they like the pace.”
Bauerlein believes that heavy exposure to this kind of reading explains why the number of U.S. adolescents reading at the Proficient level fell from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003. Even strong students are struggling with “slow reading” tasks. The F-style of reading has its uses, of course – browsing, blogging, IMing, Twittering, and Facebooking – but it ill prepares students for the kind of steady focus and close reading required in most middle- and high-school classrooms – and, of course, in college. “I continue to believe in the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes,” says Nielsen. “I just don’t believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let’s praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire – or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector. We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets – so long as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to make sense of the facts.”
“Students need to decelerate,” concludes Bauerlein, “and they can’t do it by themselves. Pencils, blackboards, and books are no longer the primary instruments of learning, true, but they still play a critical role in the formation of intelligence, as countermeasures to information-age mores… So let’s restrain the digitizing of all liberal-arts classrooms. More than that, given the tidal wave of technology in young people’s lives, let’s frame a number of classrooms and courses as slow-reading (and slow-writing) spaces.”

“Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind” by Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 19, 2008 (Vol. LV, #4, p. B10), no e-link available
 

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6. Should Elementary Students Rotate to Different Classes – or Stay Put?

In this American School Board Journal research report, writer/researcher Susan Black examines the efficacy of self-contained versus rotating elementary school classes. She quotes the arguments that Kennesaw State University (Georgia) researchers Tak Cheung Chan and Delbert Jarman make for rotating classes:
- Teachers can focus on the subject they prefer and know best;
- Teachers have fewer preparations;
- This can improve job satisfaction and retention;
- State standards can be covered more thoroughly by more specialized teachers;
- Students can be grouped by achievement in different subjects;
- Moving from class to class prepares students for the transition to departmentalized middle schools.
But Tennessee researchers James Rust and Carole McGrath found that rotating fifth and sixth graders did less well on tests than those in self-contained classrooms. Students in rotating classes took “significantly longer” to transition from subject to subject (although the amount of instructional time in the two systems was about equal). Mississippi State University researcher Sarah Catledge-Howard reached the same conclusion in her comparison of achievement in self-contained and rotating classes, saying that most students do better in self-contained classes and achievement goes down when elementary schools shift to departmentalization.
Black visited two elementary schools that had experimented with rotating classes in their upper grades. In the first school, teachers reportedly became “more stingy with time,” pushing students to pay attention and behave and leaving them frazzled by the end of each day. Teachers in this school missed the flexibility that self-contained classes gave them to vary the pace and allow students time to “wiggle and chatter” in cooperative lessons toward the end of the day. Rotating classes also meant it was harder to accommodate assemblies, band practices, vision tests, and other activities, with the result that some students kept missing the same classes. Theft and vandalism increased due to a “lack of ownership” in any one classroom, and without daily classroom meetings, there was an increase in bullying, racial problems, and social cliques, with a number of marginal students beginning to misbehave. On the positive side, science and social studies instruction improved compared to self-contained format, and students who enjoyed those subjects had a chance to shine. One teacher concluded that rotating classes “worked very well for some, decently for most, though terribly for many.”
In the second school, Black sat in on a meeting in which the principal presented her fourth- and fifth-grade teachers with some pertinent data after two years of rotating classes: a sharp increase in the number of students failing classes and repeating a grade; a major increase in discipline problems; increased teacher absenteeism; parent complaints about students feeling harried and unhappy; and student complaints about too many rules to remember and too much homework. Some teachers agreed that the experiment had failed, noting that they were spending too much time drilling students on rules and telling them to sit still, listen, and take notes. But most teachers wanted to continue rotating classes to “prepare students for high school.”
Black quotes approvingly from a Nebraska Department of Education document on elementary school organization, which advocates:
- Students spending most of the day with one teacher in self-contained classes;
- Taking advantage of the self-contained format to teach interdisciplinary lessons mixing science, social studies, health, and the arts with core instruction;
- Integrating computers and the library into homeroom instruction;
- Making time for recess every day.

“Switching Classes” by Susan Black in American School Board Journal, October 2008 (Vol. 195, #10, p. 47-49)
 

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7. What Teachers Should Say – and Not Say – During a Political Season

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, University of Virginia emeritus law professor Robert O’Neil explores the tricky territory of what instructors should handle themselves when political issues come up in class during a presidential election campaign. Several years ago, a Duke University history professor was asked, “Do you have any prejudices?” and responded, “Yeah, Republicans.” Most of the class laughed, but the conservative student who asked the question filed a complaint with Students for Academic Freedom, a watchdog group.
The reality is that students from kindergarten through graduate school are going to ask instructors about their political views – “How do you feel about McCain?” “Do you think we’re ready for an African-American president?” O’Neil has suggestions about each of the following situations:
• A student asks about your political views. “Take care in responding to such a query,” he advises. Glib or snide comments can cause problems, as the Duke professor learned, and even a statement of fact – “I’m a Democrat and strongly support Barack Obama” – can be seen as proselytizing in the power-unequal climate of the classroom. One approach is to invite the student who raised the question to chat after class. Another is to state your political position and balance it with a statement like, “Just because I’m supporting X doesn’t mean any of you should feel constrained to follow. I hope this course will, in fact, make your political views even more independent than before. And, of course, mine may change before the election.”
• A student asks you to comment on a colleague’s opinions or behavior. Proceed with great caution, says O’Neil. Even if you think a colleague is off the wall, it’s probably best not to comment, or at the most, just state your view on the matter without editorializing.
• A student asks for your views on a current political crisis. On the morning of September 11, 2001, teachers at all levels had to decide how to respond. Examples of how not to handle the situation include a New Mexico historian who told his freshman class that “anybody who blows up the Pentagon gets my vote,” or the California English instructor who accused Muslim students of being complicit in the attacks. O’Neil also advises against statements like, “Thank God we have a firm leader like George Bush at times like these,” or “It’s all because of the Bush administration’s disastrous foreign policy.” But O’Neil also believes that it’s a mistake to avoid an important teachable moment. The trick is to invite discussion and allow students to express their views, always seeking to maintain balance and drawing attention away from the podium. It’s important to avoid disparaging students’ views, even if they seem offensive.
• A student asks for your view on a pending issue that isn’t a crisis. For example, a student might ask, “Don’t you find Israel’s position on the settlements outrageous?” If the question is relevant to the class, a teacher might use it to stimulate a discussion among students. If the question is off-topic, O’Neil advises steering the class back to the matter at hand, perhaps offering to talk to the student off line.
• A student wants to know what you “really think” at the end of the semester. The final class might be an opportunity to say more about one’s political views, but if final papers and exams are still ungraded, this could come across as a last-minute attempt to proselytize and make students worried about the teacher’s impartiality.
O’Neil concludes with an appeal to encourage discussion and debate in the classroom, but always respect students’ opinions and avoiding disparagement or coercion. Students are entitled to a learning environment in which they can freely question and challenge their teachers’ views on politics and other matters, he says. Students need to be free to form and express their own views, however much the teacher disagrees with them.
[K-12 teachers should be aware of their district’s or school’s policy on political speech, which may be more stringent than those in universities.]

“What Not to Say in Class During Election Season” by Robert O’Neil in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 19, 08 (Vol. LV, #4, p. A104), no e-link available
 

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8. Short Item: Online college tours

College Week Live has developed a free online tool to allow students to get a look at various college campuses online: http://www.collegeweeklive.com. Each virtual “booth” has full information on the college, including campus photos and financial aid information. More than 200 colleges will have virtual “booths” on November 12 and 13, 2008. Here’s a three-minute virtual tour:
http://www.collegeweeklive.com/virtualtour.html.

Spotted in American School Board Journal, October 2008 (Vol. 195, #10, p. 56-57)
 

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