Quotes of the Week

“Don’t let their brains turn to mush!”
Tagline in an advertisement for a publisher’s summer reading program in Reading
Today, April/May 2009 (Vol. 26, #5, p. 18)

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
Percy Shelley (quoted in item #9)

“It sounds weird, but I feel like we’ve done something important after a good conversation.”
A fourth grader after intensive training in academic conversations (see item #3)

“It gets the shyness out of you.”
A Missouri sixth grader on a social studies lesson in which groups worked on discrete
tasks and then presented to the class (see item #4)

“Closing the door to your classroom is no longer an option. Collaboration is a necessity if our students are to succeed.”
Gabrielle Nidus and Maya Sadder (see item #6)

“Good leaders praise, but they also push, prod, and let teachers know when their performance isn’t satisfactory.”
Thomas Hoerr in “The Rule of Six” in Educational Leadership, April 2009 (Vol. 66,
#7, p. 83-84; available at
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/apr09/vol66/num07/The_Rule_of_Six.aspx

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1. Grim Statistics on Teen Pregnancy and Ideas for Prevention

In this sobering American School Board Journal article, researcher/writer Susan Black highlights the recent 3 percent rise in teen pregnancies in the U.S. (after a 15-year decline) and asks what we are doing to help prevent unplanned teen pregnancies from affecting young people and the society. She starts with some statistics from the 2006 National Vital Statistics Report, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Guttmacher Institute, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation:
- By age 15, 13 percent of teens have had sex; it appears that most young teens are delaying sexual activity.
- By 19, 70 percent have had sexual intercourse.
- Likelihood of teenage pregnancy: 53 percent among Latina girls, 51 percent of African-American girls, 19 percent for non-Hispanic white girls.
- Native-American teens have the highest birth rate; Asian-American teens have the lowest (with the exception of Hmong and Laotian subgroups).
- The first time they had sex, 74 percent of female teens and 82 percent of male teens used contraception.
- Sexually active teens who don’t use contraceptives have a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant (or becoming fathers) within a year.
- About 750,000 girls 15-19 became pregnant in 2006.
- 85 percent of teen pregnancies are unplanned.
- About 29 percent of teen pregnancies end in abortion.
- About 442,000 teens gave birth in 2006.
- Pregnant and parenting teens are more likely to drop out of school and live in neighborhoods marked by persistent, concentrated poverty.
- 78 percent of children born to unmarried teen mothers who dropped out of high school live in poverty; this is true of only 9 percent of children born to married women over 20 who graduated from high school.
- Teen mothers who smoke, have poor nutrition, or use drugs are likely to have low-birth-weight babies who often suffer from developmental delays and chronic health problems; many infants in this situation are abused and neglected and some end up in court-ordered foster care.
- Children born to teen mothers are more likely to drop out of school, become runaways, and get in trouble with the law; many become teen parents themselves.
- The net social cost of teens giving birth at 17 or younger (versus 20-21) is at least $8.6 billion a year.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s National Campaign and Plain Talk Initiative urge the following measures to prevent teen pregnancies:
- Allocate resources to the teens at highest risk of becoming pregnant, particularly those in low-income communities and those with a single mother or a sister who had a teen pregnancy.
- Focus on preventing first-time teen pregnancies; about 20 percent of teen mothers quickly have a second child.
- Foster “family connectedness.” Teens with strong emotional ties to one or both parents and close supervision are less likely to become sexually active at a young age.
- Ensure that teens have kinship ties, friendship networks, and strong cultural bonds, all of which can protect girls from early pregnancy.
- Provide informative, timely, and realistic sex education that stresses sexual safety and personal responsibility.
- Work with adults to encourage straightforward discussions with teens about sex, pregnancy, and parenting.
- Create community action plans to prevent teen pregnancy, including reproductive health centers that give access to contraception and counseling for sexual abuse and coercive sex (which often result in teen pregnancy).

“Children Having Children” by Susan Black in American School Board Journal, May 2009 (Vol. 196, #5, p. 40-41), no e-link available

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2. Is Single-Sex Education a Silver Bullet?

In this article in Principal, researcher Nancy Protheroe gives a thorough report on the efficacy of single-sex schooling. She starts by cautioning that there are several built-in reasons why it’s difficult to get definitive findings on this issue:
- Most single-sex experiments have not been running for very long.
- Single-sex schools and classrooms are programs of choice, so random assignment is impossible, ruling out “gold standard” studies.
- Many studies don’t look at what goes on inside single-sex classrooms, so we don’t know whether gender separation is the factor affecting results, or something else that could be replicated in coeducational classes.
- Much of the research has been supported or interpreted by supporters or opponents of single-sex schools, raising questions about selection bias and ideological advocacy.
Because of these factors, research findings are murky. A 2005 review on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education gathered 88 quantitative studies of single-sex schools and found that virtually none of them met the criteria of the What Works Clearinghouse. Loosening the standards a little, the researchers looked at a subset of 40 studies but still found deficiencies and called their findings “equivocal.” They said was there was “some support for the premise that single-sex schooling can be helpful, especially for certain outcomes related to academic achievement and more positive academic aspirations.”
However, a 2006 study comparing single-sex and coeducational classes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. found no consistent advantages or disadvantages. There are excellent coeducational schools and excellent single-sex schools, the authors said, and “they are excellent for reasons other than that they separate, or bring together, the sexes for their education.”
A 2005 study looked at single-sex classrooms within coeducational schools and found some positive effects because some boys and girls felt more comfortable learning with same-gender peers. But the study also found that some boys were less comfortable in single-sex classrooms and some teachers found all-boy classes difficult to teach.
Other researchers have focused on the impact of single-sex classrooms for disadvantaged students. One 2002 study said there were significant benefits for low-income and working-class students, particularly African Americans and Hispanics. However, California’s experiment with single-sex public education in the 1990s was largely viewed as unsuccessful.
A 2003 study looked at a single-sex initiative that produced higher test scores but didn’t fully address the needs of boys and girls because of “inadequate staff development, inexperienced teachers, and a school mission that was more focused on raising standardized test scores than consciously addressing the specific educational needs of girls and boys.”
The bottom line: if anyone tells you that “all the research says” single-sex education is good – or bad – you’re not getting the truth. The jury is definitely still out on this issue!
Protheroe closes with advice to principals considering a single-sex program. “Education leaders should take special care when responding to requests for and against single-sex programs that, while couched in educational terms, may have as much or more to do with ideology,” she says. Here’s her advice:
- Think through why you are setting up a program. What are the desired outcomes, the philosophy, and the theory of action?
- Gather disaggregated data on your school’s male and female academic achievement, behavior, and class participation and have a discussion with your colleagues on what the data show. Are there particular grade levels or subject areas where the gender gap is most serious?
- If this analysis reveals particular problems, consider a single-sex program as only one possible option; others might include professional development on differentiating instruction.
- Visit schools with single-sex classrooms and talk to educators with experience in this area.
- If you decide to proceed, plan carefully; take the time to gain the support of key constituencies (teachers, parents, students, the community) and recruit and train teachers.
- Think through whether teachers will be able to opt out of the program if they believe the concept is unsound.
- Be sure you are in compliance with the 2006 U.S. Department of Education regulations on single-sex education (if you are in a public school or any other school covered by Title IX).

“Single-Sex Classrooms” by Nancy Protheroe in Principal, May/June 2009 (Vol. 88, #5, p. 32-35), http://www.naesp.org/resources/2/Principal/2009/M-J_p32.pdf; Protheroe can be reached at nprotheroe@ers.org.

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3. Teaching ELLs the Art of Conversation

(Originally titled “How to Start Academic Conversations”)
“English learners need to produce meaningful linguistic output to develop oral proficiency,” say California mentor teachers Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford in this Educational Leadership article, “but most whole-class discussions limit the amount of time each student gets to talk, and responding in front of many others often intimidates ELLs.” What can teachers do? Think-pair-share and vocabulary games help, say the authors, but they are “short and shallow.” How can students learn conversational skills and engage in extended exchanges of academic ideas?
The authors analyzed the features of substantive, interesting conversations and came up with six key features. Then they created prompts, visual symbols, and hand gestures to help students remember how to initiate each feature and respond to it in a conversation. The visual symbols (see the link below) compare building a conversation to building a house – for example, the symbol for building on or clarifying another person’s ideas is bricks placed on top of each other; the hand gesture is layering hands on top of each other and building up. Here are the six features, along with suggested prompts:
- Initiating a worthy topic – Prompt: Why do you think the author wrote this?
- Elaborating and clarifying the topic – Prompt: Can you elaborate?
- Supporting one’s ideas – Prompt: Can you give an example?
- Building on or clarifying another person’s ideas – Prompt: Do you agree?
- Connecting or applying ideas to life – Prompt: If you were…
- Paraphrasing or summarizing – Prompt: How can we sum up?

Zwiers and Crawford found that the fourth graders they worked with needed lots of scaffolding to get better at conducting conversations. The authors made cards with pictures of the symbols on one side and responses to prompts on the other and had students memorize basic prompts (for example, “Can you elaborate on that?”). Teachers then explicitly taught and modeled each skill and had students practice, gradually weaning them from their prompt cards and hand gestures. After practice conversations, students self-assessed with a rubric (see
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200904_zwiers_rubric.pdf).
After four months of instruction, teachers saw big improvements. Students were able to have extended academic conversations, making connections to their own lives and using new vocabulary to communicate big ideas. They became more independent thinkers and shaped conversations on their own. Whole-class discussions also improved, with students responding to each others’ ideas rather than depending on the teacher to mediate. And students’ writing improved. One student commented, “It sounds weird, but I feel like we’ve done something important after a good conversation.”

“How to Start Academic Conversations” by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford in Educational Leadership, April 2009 (Vol. 66, #7, p. 70-73); the full article is available for purchase at
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/apr09/vol66/num07/toc.aspx

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4. A Better Way to Teach a Textbook Chapter

In this Reading Today article, rural Missouri reading coach Angela Edgar describes how she and a sixth-grade teacher tried a different approach with a lesson on Egypt centered on a social studies textbook that many students considered “boring.” Rather than following the usual procedure of round-robin reading, the teacher broke students into three groups, each of which had a job:
• Story Mappers read the chapter and then each student added an idea or statement to a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting Upper and Lower Egypt. The group then prepared a chart to present to the whole class.
• Vocabulary Finders chose words from the chapter they thought their classmates should know. Each member of the group wrote at least one word and its definition on a colored index card.
• Summarizers had each group member sum up something important from the chapter and then agreed on an overall summary of the entire chapter.
As the groups worked, the teacher circulated, looking to see that all students were fully participating. She then pulled the whole class back together and each group made a presentation and took questions. The teacher then led a discussion about what was learned.
Edgar says that students were much more engaged in this lesson than in the standard approach to the textbook, and low-achieving students seemed to benefit the most, feeling “empowered and motivated.” The teacher was enthusiastic: “I love it,” she said. “They’re not just sitting there listening to me read or listening to the tape of the lesson. The students are being held responsible for pulling out information and presenting it to the class. This is a great way of assessing what the students know rather than by a pencil/paper assessment.” Here are comments from several students:
- “It’s fun because I like teaching, and you can get up and teach it to the teacher and to the students. You don’t have to sit down the whole time. It helps me better understand it, too.”
- “When we need help, there’s someone in the group who can help us.”
- “It’s a cool way to learn more about stuff. You can pair up and show everybody what you made. Studying together will help you out. Everybody has different jobs.”
- “It gets the shyness out of you.”

“No More ‘Boring’ Textbooks” by Angela Edgar in Reading Today, April/May 2009 (Vol. 26, #5, p. 38), no e-link

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5. Advice for Teacher Leaders Presenting to Colleagues

(Originally titled “How Teachers Lead Teachers”)
In this Educational Leadership article, Washington State University/Vancouver professor Jason Margolis writes about the “subtle dynamics” involved in teacher leaders working successfully to change instructional practices in their schools. Teachers learn best, he says, when they are actively involved, are in a comfortable environment, see theoretical material grounded in classroom examples, and the teacher leader understands that they might feel overworked, overwhelmed, and underappreciated. Margolis suggests that teacher leaders:
• Use humor. This reduces tension, alters the power dynamics, and produces a more relaxed atmosphere for adult learning.
• Work with teachers in all content areas. Don’t limit yourself to your own subject area (e.g., literacy); find ways of applying insights across content areas.
• Be brief. Limit direct instruction to 5-15 minutes and then give colleagues a chance to practice techniques, observe others practicing, and debrief.
• Stress easy implementation. Key phrases include: “Takes no prep time”, “Actually helps us to go faster”, “Adaptable”, “Flexible.”
• Build on teachers’ existing work. Start by asking teachers to share approaches they are using, validate their work, and then ask them to consider how the new ideas might complement what they’re doing.
• Model continual learning. Admit the struggles you’ve had implementing these ideas with students – while showing a hunger for new approaches to address classroom challenges.
• Include samples of student work. You’ll be more successful if you show work your own students have produced.
• Don’t talk too much; shift the focus to participants.
• Don’t focus solely on your own classroom; help teachers find connections to their own classrooms.
• Don’t lecture and then ask, “Any questions?” This is usually greeted by silence.
• Don’t overload teachers with too many strategies.

“How Teachers Lead Teachers” by Jason Margolis in Educational Leadership, February 2009 (Vol. 66, #5, online only); Margolis is at Margolis@vancouver.wsu.edu; article available at:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/feb09/vol66/num05/How_Teachers_Lead_Teachers.aspx

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6. Evidence-Based Coaching of Teachers

(Originally titled “Learning from Student Work”)
In this Educational Leadership article, literacy coaches Gabrielle Nidus and Maya Sadder describe their work with teacher teams at a preK-8 school on Chicago’s South Side. They say that teachers tend to identify a problem their students are having – not using rich and descriptive vocabulary, for example – talk about what they’ve already tried and how it hasn’t worked, and throw up their hands in frustration.
This dynamic changes, say Nidus and Sadder, when teachers look at their own students’ work – journals, responses to questions, graphic organizers, and verbal responses – and figure out what’s keeping students from doing better. This is much more productive than discussing a teacher’s personal opinions about an instructional approach.
Teachers sometimes find analyzing student work mind-boggling; there’s so much information embedded that it’s hard to know where to begin. That’s where coaching and protocols are helpful. Here is the authors’ Quick Sort Protocol:
- Describe the assignment: Purpose? Standards covered? Individual or group work? Scaffolding? Differentiation?
- Describe the criteria: How will the work be evaluated? Rubric, checklist, exemplar?
- Sort students’ work: Below standard, on target, above standard?
- Analyze one pile: Strengths? Weaknesses?
- Reflect: Does the assignment evaluate knowledge and skills? Do students understand its purpose? Know the evaluation criteria?
- Plan: What type of instruction does this group of students need?
- Repeat: Repeat the last three steps with the other piles.

Nidus and Sadder present an actual dialogue with a teacher who was struggling to get her students to use more adventurous vocabulary. The teacher saw that some students trying to use new vocabulary were using words incorrectly. She noticed that these students did well on multiple-choice vocabulary quizzes but weren’t able to apply what they knew in their writing. Why not? asked the coach. Probably because of insufficient practice and reinforcement. Solutions? Having students practice thinking of sentences and saying them out loud to each other. Great idea! And what else? Encourage students to take risks trying new words in their journal entries.
A few weeks later, the coach followed up with this teacher, and another batch of student papers showed marked progress. But some students still weren’t going beyond simple words. What was going on? The teacher’s hunch was that they were afraid of making spelling mistakes – or perhaps they didn’t understand the rationale for using more challenging words. The coach suggested individual conferences to get more information.
When teachers look analytically at their students’ work, conclude Nidus and Sadder, they become researchers, asking “How did students respond to a specific method of instruction? For which group of learners was this method successful?” The authors say this kind of coaching has changed the way they conduct large-group professional development. It’s now based on needs from students’ work. The coaches also try to build bridges between classrooms. “Closing the door to your classroom is no longer an option,” they say. “Collaboration is a necessity if our students are to succeed.”

“Learning from Student Work” by Gabrielle Nidus and Maya Sadder in Educational Leadership, February 2009 (Vol. 66, #5, online only); article available at:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/feb09/vol66/num05/Learning_from_Student_Work.aspx

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7. Tips to Get Students Writing

In this Reading Today column, author Margriet Ruurs suggests some ideas for jump-starting children’s writing:
• What if…? is a great device for sparking fictional stories, says Ruurs. Here are some of her ideas:
- What if… your dog could talk?
- What if… your bicycle could fly?
- What if… your teacher was an alien?
- What if… you turned out to be a princess?
Students might make their own list of “what if” ideas and then choose one to write a story or poem.
• Surprise! Think of a time you were very surprised and try to remember the details, who was there, and how it felt. Now make up a fictional person, make up details (name, age, etc.), and write a story in which that person is involved in your surprise, complete with details on when and where it happened and how the character feels.
• Story starters – Ruurs has these three pump-primers; students choose one and write the rest of the story:
- “Jason knew he shouldn’t be waiting for Greg. He knew that the bell was about to ring. Mrs. Jackson would be mad if he came in late. But he just had to find out why Greg had gone into that alley. And why hadn’t he come back yet?”
- “‘Stacey Jacobs!’ The teacher’s voice was loud. Stacey was startled out of her daydream and back into the classroom. She had no idea what he had asked her, but all the children were staring at her. She took a deep breath and said…”
- “The dog came out of nowhere. It ran across the square, in between two parked cars, and then straight toward me. I didn’t know what to do. If I didn’t pretend this was my dog, the cops would catch it and take it to the S.P.C.A. And then what would happen to him? So I didn’t think much, I just…”

“Write Away! Story Starters: Yeast for the Imagination” by Margriet Ruurs in Reading Today, April/May 2009 (Vol. 26, #5, p. 38), no e-link

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8. Books to Put in Children’s Hands for the Summer

In this Reading Today article, David Richardson and Susan Dove say that giving students access to good books is key to reducing the loss in reading proficiency that happens every summer (particularly for low-SES children). According to Richard Allington, by the time struggling readers reach middle school, the accumulated summer loss amounts to a two-year handicap in reading achievement. Richardson and Dove recommend the following recently published books:
- Mercy Watson by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen (Candlewick), ages 7 and up; adventures of a lovable, clueless pet pig;
- Secrets of Dripping Fang by Dan Greenburg, illustrated by Scott Fisher (Harcourt), ages 8 and up; giant ants and other odd creatures in the swamps of Cincinnati;
- The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley (Amulet) ages 9 and up; mystery and madness in a hidden town where fairy tale characters have gone to live;
- Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Marla Frazee (Hyperion), ages 8 and up; an inquisitive, mischievous third grader with a knack for trouble;
- Sluggers (formerly Barnstormers) by Loren Long and Phil Bildner (Simon & Schuster) ages 10 and up; baseball tales about great teams and stadiums of the past;
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (Amulet), ages 9 and up; unique, humorous world of middle-school student Greg Heffley;
- Traces! By Malcolm Rose (Kingfisher), ages 12 and up; teenage forensic scientist Luke Harding hunts dangerous criminals in a future world;
- Pendragon by D.J. MacHale (Simon & Schuster), ages 10 and up; a reluctant hero, Bobby Pendragon, must save the world, and it’s not the world he thought it was;
- Skunkdog by Emily Jenkins (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), ages 3-7; a lonesome dog with no sense of smell befriends a skunk;
- Stinky by Eleanor Davis (Little Lit Library), ages 6-8; a graphic novel about a monster trying to get rid of a boy who builds a tree house in his swamp;
- Garmann’s Summer by Stian Hole (Eerdman’s), ages 5-10; a picture book about a boy nervously anticipating school;
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins, 2008), ages 11 and up; a spooky story about a boy raised in a graveyard after his family is murdered;
- Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (Scholastic/Levine), ages 12 and up; Strangely beautiful words and images in 15 parts;
- Guys Write for Guys Read by Jon Scieszka (Viking, 2005), ages 12 and up; humorous collection of essays, short stories, poems, drawings, and reminiscences for children by male authors.

“Stave Off Summer Reading Doldrums” by David Richardson and Susan Dove in Reading Today, April/May 2009 (Vol. 26, #5, p. 18), no e-link

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9. Children’s Books with Rhythm and Rhyme

In this Reading Today article keyed to National Poetry Month, Illinois public children’s librarian Susan Dove Lempke quotes Percy Shelley (“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds”) and recommends some books filled with rhythm and rhyme:
- Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney (Viking, 2009), ages 2-5; a llama faces the challenges of the first day in school and masters then;
- Peter and the Wolf by Chris Raschka (Atheneum, 2008), ages 5-8; the classic tale retold in lyrical words that recreate the rhythm and themes of the Prokofiev score;
- Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange (Amistad/Tegen, 2009); ages 5-10; a free-verse recounting of the life of Coretta Scott King;
- The Swamps of Sleethe: Poems from Beyond the Solar System by Jack Prelutsky (Knopf, 2009), ages 8-12; rhyming poems about outer space that are creepy and funny;
- Minn and Jake’s Almost Terrible Summer by Janet Wong (Farrar Straus Giroux/Frances Foster, 2008), ages 10-12; sixth graders Minn and Jake interact over the summer in this illustrated, free-verse book;
- Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam, 2009), ages 10-13; a foster child struggling to be a poet (an unkind teacher sneered at his efforts) writes about his various complex relationships;
- Side by Side: New Poems Inspired by Art from Around the World, edited by Jan Greenberg (Abrams, 2008); ages 11 and up; a collection of artwork and linked poetry from around the world; some of the poems are presented in their original language and then the English translation;
- Well Defined: Vocabulary in Rhyme by Michael Salinger (Wordsong, 2009); ages 12-16; this book presents SAT-type words defined as a personality in poetry (e.g., “Extenuating brings a note from his mom…”); regular definitions are at the bottom of each page.

“Playing with Language, Rhythm, and Rhyme” by Susan Dove Lempke in Reading Today, April/May 2009 (Vol. 26, #5, p. 24), no e-link

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10. Short Item: Subgenre booklists

University of Texas/Arlington professor Nancy Hadaway provides this link to lists of books clustered by one particular author or by subgenre. Choosing multiple titles across genres is an excellent way to develop ELLs’ skills in English, she says.
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200904_hadaway_booklist.pdf

“A Narrow Bridge to Academic Reading” by Nancy Hadaway in Educational Leadership, April 2009 (Vol. 66, #7, p. 38-41); the full article is available for purchase at
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/apr09/vol66/num07/toc.aspx

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