Comprehension Strategy Lesson Plan Demonstration Reflection

Last week for class I demoed ten minutes of the first lesson plan in a series of two that we will write up for our key assessment. For this demonstration we were just supposed to pick a comprehension strategy and model it for our fellow classmates using material we would teach in our respective content areas.

 

I am a future English teacher so I chose a strategy that would work with ninth graders. The comprehension strategy I chose was developing images. I chose this strategy because in an English classroom it is very important that students understand what they read and one way to help them get a better understanding of what they read is through visualization. Furthermore, if I fit this strategy into the two lesson plans for our key assessment I would act like my unit was on descriptive language as I hope many of us experienced in ninth grade. I remember an entire two months spent on grammar. This strategy is particularly useful for struggling readers who can use the visuals they create to help them get an understanding of the text. The strategy is simple: read a passage from a text and pick out the descriptive language in order to create a picture. I tweaked it for my class and had them pick out any sensory details – not just the visual ones.

 

So this reflection is aimed for looking at what went well, what we would change if we could present this lesson again, and what the future of this strategy would look like in my class.

 

I think the modeling of this strategy went very well. I spent a lot of time scaffolding this part of my lesson so that it was a gradual release of responsibility and followed the typical I do, we do, you do format. The passage I selected was a few paragraphs from the first chapter of Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford (a young adult novel full of descriptive language and just a non-academic text for some fun exploration). I did the first paragraph on my own, modeling what language I would pick out and what I would visualize from this language. Then the class and I did the second paragraph together. I read it and asked them what they would pick out, giving hints along the way. Finally, the students did two paragraphs on their own and when they were done they paired up and shared what they found in those two paragraphs. I only had ten minutes so I couldn’t scaffold to complete independence, but I think the initial scaffolding went well.

 

If I could change something about this lesson I might change my materials and give them the copies of the passages with my modeling already on the page so they could see what I did. I think that visual would help them rather than just trying to follow what I say – they would hear it and see it. I might also preface the text more and explain why I chose that particular text more because I got some crazy looks from my classmates when I said where these paragraphs were from.

 

I really liked using this strategy and I think it could be manipulated many different ways. I could have the students pick out the descriptive language and then actually draw what they see, create comic strips, etc. I could make it into a more hands on and artsy project for the students. I could have the students act out what they are seeing in the passage and get them moving around. I could scaffold all the way to independence and have them scan entire chapters to get as many examples of descriptive language as possible. I think there are many different ways to use this strategy and I could make it really fun and engaging for my students.

Writing and Tests

This week we read two chapters from our textbooks Content Area Writing: the first “Public Writing” and the second “Writing for Tests and Assessments.”

 

These chapters look at going more in depth with student writing. Earlier, I posted about short writing assignments called Writing to Learn. Today, I am moving away from that subject and on to the bigger writing assignments. However, not all bigger writing assignments are research papers or literary analyses. Students also need to learn how to write for the tests and assessments we give them. This means how do we teach writing for essay tests not only within our classrooms but also on Standardized Tests.

 

First we look at this idea of Public Writing. So far we have looked at the private, unedited, spontaneous Writing to Learn assignments that are not graded. What about Public Writing is different? Well, this kind of writing has the following qualities:

• Substantial – longer, more in-depth pieces
• Planned – intentional writing with a focused purpose
• Authoritative – writing that argues a point or gives information in a confident manner
• Conventional – writing that strives to reach its audience by conventional writing standards
• Composed – writing that has been drafted and revised a few times to make sure it is polished and clear
• Edited – writing that pays attention to the pesky details of grammar, punctuation, and spelling
• Graded – writing that will be evaluated

 

Now Public Writing is a great idea, but many times it can be daunting for students. How do we as teacher make Public Writing more accessible and less daunting for our students? Well, we can work on giving students choice. If students have a choice on topics about which they can write, then we are making our assignments relevant and engaging. It is often easier for students to approach an assignment they had a choice on rather than getting forced to write about one specific topic. Besides choice, we can give the students time to write in class. If we make students do all their writing outside of class, many students can fall behind or get confused, but if we allow time in class to write we can provide the support and modeling they need throughout their writing process. Furthermore, we can respond to the student’s writing. Our feedback during the writing process can greatly enhance the student’s writing and give them more confidence when writing alone for tests and assessments. Quelling students’ fears about big writing assignments can be easy if we model good writing and turn our writing assignments into processes that slowly move from step one ‘til the end with plenty of support and feedback along the way.

 

Step Two – let’s look at what kind of writing students will be doing besides the big papers. Let’s look at what writing students will be doing for tests and assessments. Now tests are supposed to assess what students learned; however, there are limitations:

1. We have taught students to write for an external reason. They write for a grade. They do not write to persuade or inspire. They write simply to regurgitate the information we fed to them.
2. Tests do not have a large audience. The student either writes for the teacher or an anonymous test grader they will never know. There is no connection or desire to want to reach people through their writing.
3. Our questions we pose for them to write about are limited themselves. We get what we ask for and nothing more. Students do not elaborate. They answer the question in as basic terms as possible and move on.
4. Students only get one chance to write their answer. They are given a fixed amount of time and no way to add in the writing process of drafting and revising.
5. Tests only look at one moment in time. They do not show how a student progressed throughout a unit. What you get in an essay could be what they learned or it could be what they already knew. Tests do not allow for overall assessment of how that student learned.

 

So now that we know how limited tests are – how do we fix it?

 

We design better essay tests. We ask better questions. We focus on the big picture and long term meaning rather than the specific, tiny details the student will forget the second the next unit is started. We use tests throughout the unit that focus on writing and create a process the student can really learn from.  We give students more time to write their essays either in class with fewer questions or use take home tests.

 

We prepare students to respond to questions in a variety of ways. We give them examples and we model for them. We teach them how to look at a question or testing situation and approach it logically. We teach them how to take essay tests and by extension standardized tests.

 

There are three strategies to do this:

1. Keep students writing year round. Give them assignments that have them explain their ideas, elaborate on them, and connect them to other ideas. The more comfortable they become with this process – the easier the tests will be.
2. Make sure the students know the expectations about what is supposed to go in their answers and how they present their answers. They need to be able to look at a question and decipher what it is asking and how to give their answer.
3. Relate test taking to what they know: video games. Teach them that test taking is all about being ready to engage, being alert, using strategies, thinking over modes of moving forward, and deciding the best route to take.

 

By preparing students for writing on tests, we can help them improve their overall learning in every area as well as improve how they approach other problems in life once out of school. We no longer need to “teach for the tests” because we can learn to use the tests to really teach for the kids.

Building Student’s Vocabulary

Chapter 8 of Content Area Reading looks at developing a student’s vocabulary. Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz write “teaching words well means giving students multiple opportunities to develop word meanings and learn how words are conceptually related to one another in the texts they are studying” (CAR, 235).

 

Why is this important? Why do students need to have a better vocabulary?

 

To improve their reading comprehension. If students know the words they are reading on the page then their reading comprehension will improve.

 

However, how do we as teachers define vocabulary?

 

There are three distinct types:

• General – everyday words with well known meanings
• Special – words from general vocabulary that take on specialized meanings when adapted to different content areas
• Technical – words that are only used/applied in one specific area

 

To teach vocabulary it is important to know when to preface a reading and teach certain words, when to give a list of words for students to keep in mind during their reading, and to have a list of words students should discuss after reading.

 

To begin this process it is vital we look at the term “concept.” Many students learn in terms of concepts and every concept has its own hierarchy of relationships. To teach a concept it is helpful to look at this hierarchy of relationships, oftentimes through a graphic organizer.

 

To create a graphic organizer that explains the hierarchical relationships of a concept it is helpful to follow the following six steps:

1. Analyze the vocabulary and list the important/key words
2. Arrange the list of words in terms of a hierarchy from most important to related
3. Add in example words for your vocabulary list that you believe the students already know to help clue them into the meanings
4. Evaluate the organizer and make sure the relationships are correct
5. Discuss the graphic organizer with the class before doing a learning task
6. After learning task relate discussion back to graphic organizer and add more words if needed

 

However, before graphic organizers can be used in the class it is helpful to work with students before learning new vocabulary to activate their prior knowledge. Have them write on what they already know about the words with Word Exploration activities. Put the students in groups and have them brainstorm related words to the given vocabulary words.

 

If there is one word in particular that stands as a word beneficial for the student’s long term vocabulary, have them work with that one word. Have them categorize it, define it in their own words, brainstorm their own comparisons, illustrate what they think it is like, anything really that gets them using their own words/experiences to learn this new word will help commit it to their long term memory.

 

Other activities for long term memory include:

• Semantic Feature Analysis – create a chart of similar words and have students determine which properties go with which word and which words have overlapping properties
• Categorization Activities – create activities to help students explore the relationships between words
• Concept Circles – help students describe a concept by looking at relationships of concepts in circle

 

However, when faced with an unknown word while reading it is helpful if students have activities they can use to help unpack an unfamiliar word. Helping them learn how to use context, word structure, and the dictionary will help students learn unfamiliar words on their own.

 

Context offers three clues that will help students learn an unfamiliar word. The first clue is typographic and this clue can be found in footnotes, italics, bold, parenthetical explanations, pictures, graphs, etc. They are the visual aids included in text books meant to help explain an important concept, and teaching your students how to use these helpful clues will improve their reading comprehension. The second and third clues are syntactic and semantic clues – the clues hidden within the text. Learning how to unpack a sentence and write it in the most basic words will help student discover the meaning of words they don’t understand.

 

Word Structure can help students decipher an unfamiliar word too. The smallest unit of words, morphemes, will help students predict the meaning of a word. Teaching your students about well known morphemes, suffixes and prefixes, compound words, etc. will help prepare students to figure out a word while reading.

 

Finally teaching students how to use a dictionary may seem trivial, but most students don’t know how to approach the dictionary. Emphasizing the “best-fit” option for definitions will help students find the correct definition they are looking for in relation to what they are reading (a relation that can be helped by knowing the context of what they are reading.) it is important when asking students to use a dictionary for an assignment to use it sparingly. Have the students learn a few big concept words really well instead of overwhelming them with every descriptor word you can think of. (And a helpful side note is to teach students about the pronunciation keys and how to decipher the symbols and translate them into sounds.)

 

Vocabulary may seem like a trivial, memorize and go topic, but vocabulary is vital for a student’s reading comprehension. The better their vocabulary – the better their reading comprehension – the more they learn!

Writing to Learn Demonstration Reflection

This past week we were asked to do a five minute Writing to Learn (WTL) demonstration. I did mine on Point of View Guides (POVGs).

 

To begin preparation for this I looked at the description of POVGs in our text book. I read about them. I found out that POVGs are used to look closer at a theme/idea/concept to get the students deeper into the text. POVGs use role play to give a situation and pose interview-like questions to which the students respond. They get students speculating and elaborating on ideas, and they are great at relating the text to the personal lives of students because there is no way for students to role play and not include their own experiences. Besides learning about POVGs for my own knowledge, I read the examples. I thought of different examples teachers could use in different content areas. I got myself comfortable with the concept behind POVGs and with trying to explain them to people who have no clue what they are (my roommates). And finally I chose a POVG I wanted to work on: “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

 

When it came to actually doing the lesson, I worked a lot on scaffolding. I had the students pair up and work with the title, discussing a time they took the road not taken. After that I handed out half sheets of paper that gave a situation and posed questions for the students to answer. They were given time to write their answers and afterwards (if we had time) we would have discussed the answers and actually read the poem. I tried to structure a slow entrance to the world of the poem, starting with the title and then moving to the main idea, before we actually read it. And I feel like that whole scaffolding worked really well.

 

I think my classmates took away that slow entrance approach. One of the Pat on the Backs said she liked how I built curiosity. I worked on getting the students personally related to the poem and I think that personal meaning really stuck. Before we began the activity I gave a bit of background knowledge of POVGs and I spoke about how versatile and adaptable this WTL activity is. I think my classmates were able to see how they would use this activity in their own content areas.

 

However, if I could do this differently I would most definitely address the modeling part. I do not know how that slipped my mind, but unfortunately I did not model this activity for the class. Next time, when scaffolding out the instruction I would make sure to interject my own examples so that the students would have an idea of where to go.

What to Consider When Planning a Lesson and Writing to Learn Activities

The two chapters we read for this week’s post dealt with planning lessons and different Writing to Learn activities. At first I did not understand why these two chapters went together, but as I read further I realized how integral Writing to Learn activities are in lesson plans. But before I get to Writing to Learn activities, it is important to go over what to consider when planning a lesson.

So with lesson plans, teachers need to look at how students are going to learn during their lessons. Teachers can use something called instructional scaffolding which helps students learn how to learn from texts. It involves the teacher modeling how to read texts, what to look for in texts – basically everything necessary to know of how to use texts to their best degree and then letting the students go for it. This type of instruction is better for the students with the use of explicit instruction which not only teaches students what strategies to use to learn the content, but also the why, how, and when to use those strategies.

The key components of explicit instruction are:

• Awareness and Explanation – tell students about the strategy and why you are using it for this particular activity
• Modeling and Demonstration – walk through the strategies step by step and model it for the students
• Guided Practice – let the students practice the strategies and assess them afterwards for what problems they ran into/what went well/etc.
• Application – let them know when to use this strategy and make sure they keep it as a useful skill

Once teachers know how their students will learn during their lessons, then they can get to planning their lessons.

Questions to consider when planning lessons are:

• Standards – What local/state/national standards are being addressed?
• Instructional Goals – What do you want the students to know by the end of the lesson?
• Eessential Questions – What are the big questions that will prompt good discussion/thought?
• Instructional Strategies and Activities – What are you going to do during the lesson, instructional?
• Materials and Resources – What do you need to gather before the lesson that your students will be using?
• New Literacies – What technology can you bring in that will help aid the lesson?
• Assessment – How will you assess what your students learned?

A great summation of a few of these questions is called B-D-A instructional framework. This B-D-A system looks at what a teacher does during, before, and after reading. A closer explanation of B-D-A:

• B – establish the purpose of reading the text, motivate the readers to read the text, build any prior knowledge needed for the text, introduce key vocabulary and concepts needed in order to understand the text, and provide direction for reading for meaning
• D – guide an active search for meaning in the text and help the students learn how to read texts in order to get the most meaning out of them
• A – extend and elaborate upon ideas found in the text and encourage students to talk about meanings they found

Now that we know a little bit more on lesson planning we can look into more instructional activities and mostly – Writing To Learn activities. Writing to Learn (WTL) are short, informal writings that are centered on exploring ideas and clarifying thoughts about certain concepts found in reading.

But in order to use WTL effectively, the students (and you) need to know why writing is so closely linked to reading. There are two main umbrella connections: composing processes – both construct meaning, both involve purpose and working with ideas, both deal with audiences, etc. , exploration/motivation/clarification – reading provides meaning while writing helps students figure out what that meaning is.

The chapter we read provided five WTL activities:

• Microthemes – mini essays that work on synthesizing, analyzing, summarizing, and taking a stand on a text
• POVGs – point of view guides that are responses to questions posed like an interview, encourages speculation, inferential thinking, and elaboration using role-play, gets students’ own experiences involved in the writing process
• Unsent Letters – uses imagination, interpretation, and evaluation of texts, connects reader’s thoughts to specific audiences
• Biopoems – synthesizing a large text into a small poetic format, a structured reflection of a text
• Admit/Exit Slips – allows teacher to check where students are before or after a lesson

Besides these five WTL activities there are also academic journals. Academic journals help students to log their ideas and feelings on certain topics in readings as well as their own personal lives. It creates a personal connection between the student and what they are reading. There are three types of academic journals: response journals – feelings/thoughts recorded as students interact with texts, double-entry journals – dual entry records that are conceptually related, learning logs – records of learning as it happens in the lesson.

I personally love the academic journal route for WTL. I remember my freshman year of high school, my English teacher gave us journal prompts every day that were either directly related to whatever we were learning that day or were just fascinating questions he wanted us to think about. When I first decided to become a teacher I knew I wanted to use these in my classrooms so I was really excited to read about them and learn that they are actually effective for the whole class and not just the one random student (me).

I think that any opportunity teachers have to get their students writing informally is one they should jump at because there are so many benefits to writing that mostly go unnoticed. I know it is a change from how we learned in “the good old days,” but I think this is one change we really need to push for.

Two Reasons Why Textbooks Aren’t Enough

You remember textbooks right? The fifty pound giant books doled out on the first day and returned the last day having only been opened twice – once for midterms and once for finals? Yeah those books.

 

Unfortunately the same books I learned fifth grade science from are being used in today’s classrooms and while textbooks provide good guides to the curriculum, they are not enough. Students don’t read them enough. Teachers rely on them too much. They are good books being stretched above beyond their limits.

 

So what do we do? This post will offer two additions to the typical classroom textbook that will improve the learning of your students.

 

First off let me point out the word “additions.” I, along with the authors of Content Area Reading and Content Area Writing, am not suggesting teachers eliminate textbooks entirely. We are strongly suggesting that other materials and methods should be added to a toned down version of the standard textbook teaching.

 

With that clear the first addition is called a trade book.  Trade books are your everyday average run of the mill books found in libraries and bookstores and certainly not those fifty pound monstrosities handed out on the first day of school.

 

So why should we bring them into school?

 

Because students actually want to read them. Or at least want to read them marginally more than other books assigned in schools. Trade books also have several teaching benefits. For example, they:

• Discuss content relevant to the students’ lives in present day
• Are usually written in clearer language that engages students more
• Are great for differentiation and meeting the different levels of every student in the class
• Provide a deeper understanding of concepts found in textbooks
• Most importantly they motivate students to read more (CAR, 360-362)

 

The three types of trade books most commonly used are nonfiction, fiction, and picture books. Each type provides unique assistance to textbooks and concepts being taught in class. Nonfiction books provide the same if not more information as textbooks in writing that is easily accessible to students with plot lines that are relatable (CAR, 363). Fiction books can use fantastical settings to discuss real world, contemporary issues (CAR, 373). And finally picture books no matter what age can provide a visual and simple representation of events, topics, issues, etc (CAR, 369).

 

How do we implement trade books in the classroom?

 

There were several methods listed in Content Area Reading, but the two methods I found to be most interesting and helpful were self-selected reading and teacher read-alouds. Both methods deal with two different ends of the spectrum, but both provide excellent benefits to student reading and comprehension.

 

Self-selected reading allows students to pick texts they want to read. It sparks their interest. It motivates them to read more. Most importantly it gets them reading regularly in school. Appointed reading time creates a nice routine that allows students to have the freedom to choose what they read as long as they read. And it can be anything! It doesn’t have to just be novels. It can be a magazine or a blog site. Anything as long as students are reading. And giving them the freedom to choose gives students a sense of more control over their schooling (CAR, 380).

 

On the other hand, teacher read-alouds are not just for young students. Older students can benefit from these sessions too.  Read-alouds help students to hear the language and absorb it in ways they wouldn’t have had they just read it quietly on their own. It engages readers. It holds their interest. It helps with discussions. I think teacher read-alouds are also beneficial because the teacher can read the text in ways that will transmit the most information possible, for example, character voices, emotional inflection, pauses to explain what is going on, etc. Read-alouds can be used in nearly every classroom for anything from reading passages from novels to previewing the days assignment to providing background information (CAR, 382-383).

 

The second addition to textbooks in the classroom is writing. Writing to learn is such an easy task that I honestly don’t know why it is not part of every single classroom. There are eight criteria for writing to learn:

• Short – quick little bursts of writing, nothing longer than a page
• Spontaneous – do it off the top of your head, no planning involved
• Exploratory – use it to figure something out, to work over a concept on paper
• Informal – no need for big fancy words or elegant sentence structures, be simple
• Personal – no need to share with the world, supposed to be for you
• One draft – self explanatory
• Unedited – who cares about grammar here?
• Ungraded – don’t need feedback on them, no grades necessary, maybe points for just doing it (CAW, 22-23)

 

These little writing to learn tasks are meant to be quick and easy way to not only give your voice a break but also to let students get their thoughts on paper or figure out what their thoughts are. Most importantly it gets students explaining things to themselves in their own words which will greatly help their understanding of the material (CAW, 25-26).

 

Now I am guessing I will learn specific writing to learn activities, and once I do I shall let you know so we can all hopefully start using them.