Literacy

1. Literacy The Key to High School Success: Ideas from NASSP & NCTE

2. Adolescent Literacy School Improvement Cycle Committed Instructional Leadership Strategic, Accelerated Intervention Informative Formal and Informal Assessments Increased Student Achievement Highly Effective Teachers On-going, Job-embedded Research-based Professional Development The student is the heart of the Literacy Improvement Cycle

3. Why Should Literacy Be Integrated into the School’s Improvement Plan? • Six million students in grades 6-12 are at risk of not graduating, or find themselves ill-prepared for college and career. • Thirty percent of U. S. students are not graduating from high school; 50% of African American males do not graduate • 75% of students with literacy problems in third grade still experience literacy issues in ninth grade. • NAEP eighth and twelfth grade scores remain flat or have dropped since 1998.

4. Adolescent Literacy: A Critical Need • Not all students who read narrative text well can read and comprehend expository and non-fiction text (Snow, 2001) • American children are imperiled because they don’t read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough to ensure comprehension in their content courses in middle and secondary schools (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 98) • About 33% of secondary students have withdrawn from active participation in class and are reading below grade level (Joyce, Hrycauk, & Calhoun, 2001)

5. KEY Elements Needed to Improve Adolescent Literacy Instructional Improvements • Direct, explicit comprehension instruction • Effective instructional principles embedded in content • Text-based collaborative learning • Motivation and self-directed learning • Strategic tutoring • Diverse texts • Intensive writing • A technology component • Ongoing formative assessment of students Infrastructure Improvements • Extended time for literacy • Professional development • Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs • Teacher teams • Leadership • A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program Biancarosa, G. & Snow, C. E. (2004) Reading Next- A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy: A Report from Carnegie Corporation of New York.Washington, DC: AEE

6. All Teachers Are Not Teachers of Reading, but… Featuring Doug Fisher

7. Highly Effective Teachers: The Essential Ingredient Content teachers are the best source for providing students with explicit instruction on how to critically read and think about text. Abromitis, 1994; Campbell, 1994, Kamil et al., 2000

8. Explicit Instruction • Teacher models critical reading strategies • Scaffold instruction • Students internalize strategies to become strategic readers Explicit Instruction Modeling of Strategy by Teacher Practice & Use of the Strategy by all Students Shared Responsibility n Gradual Transition of Responsibility

9. Effective Readers(Before Reading) • Activate Prior Knowledge • Understand and Set Purpose for Reading • Choose Appropriate Comprehension Strategies

10. Effective Readers(During Reading) • Focus attention • Monitor comprehension • Use fix-up strategies • Use context clues • Use text structure • Organize and integrate new information

11. Effective Readers(After Reading) • Reflect on what was read • Summarize major ideas • Seek additional information from outside sources • Feel success is a result of effort

12. The research suggests… • lessons should include activities/strategies before, during, and after reading; • instructional practices help students recognize that reading is an active process before, during, and after reading; • reading instruction and student understanding take place at multiple points (Graves, 2001).

13. A SCHOOLWIDE APPROACH TO CONTENT LITERACY STRATEGIES

14. What if we changed our thinking… From all teachers are not teachers of reading to… We all must create an environment where the strategies we teach are both transportable and transparent.

15. 1. Building Background • KWL • Discovery • Anticipation guides • Questions • Demonstrations

16. 2. Read Aloud/Shared Reading • Good selections • Connected to the class • Access to text? • “Every day, every class” • Modeling thinking

17. 3. Modeling • Why? • Humans mimic or imitate • Students need examples of the type of thinking required • Facilitates the use of academic language

18. 3a.Modeling Comprehension • Inference • Summarize • Predict • Clarify • Question • Visualize • Monitor • Synthesize • Evaluate • Connect

19. 3b.Word Solving • Context clues • Word parts (prefix, suffix, root, base, cognates) • Resources (others, Internet, dictionary)

20. 3c.Using Text Structure • Informational Texts • Problem/Solution, Compare/Contrast, Sequence, Cause/Effect, Description • Narrative Texts • Story grammar (plot, setting, character) • Dialogue • Literary devices

21. 3d.Using Text Features • Headings • Captions • Illustrations • Charts • Graphs • Italics • Table of contents • Glossary • Index • Tables • Margin notes • Bold words

22. What Happened to Phineas? Attend the tale of Phineas Gage. Honest, well liked by friends and fellow workers on the Rutland and Burlington Railroads, Gage was a young man of exemplary character and promise until one day in September 1848. While tamping down the blasting powder for a dynamite charge, Gage inadvertently sparked an explosion. The inch thick tamping rod rocketed through his cheek, obliterating his left eye, on it’s way through his brain and out the top of his skull. Discover Magazine

23. The rod landed several yards away, and Gage fell back in a convulsive heap. Yet a moment later he stood up and spoke. His fellow workers watched, aghast, then drove him by oxcart to a local hotel where a local doctor, one John Harlow, dressed his wounds. As Harlow stuck his fingers in the holes in Gage’s face and head until their tips met, the young man inquired when he would be able to return to work. Discover Magazine

24. Within two months the physical organism that was Phineas Gage had completely recovered - he could walk, speak, and demonstrate normal awareness of his surroundings. But the character of the man did not survive the tamping rod’s journey through his brain. In place of the diligent, dependable worker stood a foul-mouthed and ill-mannered liar given to extravagant schemes that were never followed through. “Gage,” said his friends, “was no longer Gage.” Shreeve, James. “What happened to Phineas?” Discover Magazine January 1995. Discover Magazine

25. Questions • How did Phineas survive this penetrating brain injury? • For how much longer did he live?

26. What question would you have for the author?

27. A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a four-inch nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier. By AP via The Denver Post

30. 3e. Questioning & Text • IRE model? • QAR • QtA • Bloom • Student-generated

31. 3f. Graphic Organizers • Concept maps • Diagrams • Text structure charts (cause/effect, temporal sequence, problem/solution) • Students’ #1 choice

32. 4. Vocabulary • Vocabulary Role Play • Language Charts • Multiple Meaning Word Study • Word Sorts and Making Words • Vocabulary Journals

33. For example, vocabulary . . . • General vocabulary • Words used in everyday language, with agreed upon meanings across contexts (e.g., pesky, bothersome) • Specialized vocabulary • Multiple meanings in different content areas (e.g., loom, in, expression) • Technical vocabulary • Specific to a field of study (e.g., concerto, meiosis) Vacca & Vacca, 1999

34. Catherine the Great, a minor aristocrat from Germany, became Empress of Russia when her husband Peter, the grandson of Peter the Great, was killed. www.picturehistory.com

35. Which word would most Social Studies teachers teach? A. Russia B. Aristocrat C. Minor D. Husband .

36. The word (minor) in the sentence above means: A) a person looking for gold B) a person who is not important C) a person who is under the age of 18 D) a person who is small

37. 5.Notetaking and Notemaking • Cornell notes • Text structures • Main ideas and details • Assessment of notes

38. 6. Writing to Learn • multiple strategies • RAFT

39. 7. Reciprocal Teaching • Students work in groups • Summarize, question, clarify, predict • Zinger questions

40. One last thing … I’ll go back to school and learn more about the brain!

41. 400+ Page text “Somites are blocks of dorsal mesodermal cells adjacent to the notochord during vertebrate organogensis.” “Improved vascular definition in radiographs of the arterial phase or of the venous phase can be procured by a process of subtraction whereby positive and negative images of the overlying skull are superimposed on one another.”

42. Skills Versus Strategies?

43. I don’t know how you’re going to learn this, but it’s on the test.

44. Quick, Build Background!

45. Expand Understanding Through Reading

46. Reading Increasingly Difficult Texts

47. Read “Non-Traditional” Texts • To date, over 100 YouTube videos! • PBS (The Secret Life of the Brain) • Internet quiz sites about neuroanatomy • Talking with peers and others interested in the brain

48. But, the midterm comes 17 pages, single spaced

49. Besides Some Neuroanatomy, What Have I Learned? • You can’t learn from books you can’t read (but you can learn) • Reading widely builds background and vocabulary • Interacting with others keeps me motivated and clarifies information and extends understanding • I have choices and rely on strategies

50. Resources • Available from NCTE