As I believe I've mentioned, last year I worked in a K-2 elementary school and though I assisted in language arts and mathematics, I was based out of the Literacy Lab. In that room, I was introduced to leveled books, as that was the method by which most of the books were organized. On multiple occasions I would look through a book of one level and compare it to a book of the next, or preceding level. Oftentimes there seemed to be very little difference from one level to the next.
That makes the anecdote from Glasswell's and Ford's (2011) Let's Start Leveling about Leveling all the more surprising. In it, they tell of a child who is denied the opportunity to read a D-level book because he is only at the C-level. Then, at his next assessment, he jumps to E-level books, and thus is still denied the opportunity to read the D-leveled book that he was so interested in. This story serves as the jumping off point to discuss how a good idea - matching readers to appropriate level reading material - can go wrong.
Clearly, one's reading level is not the only determining factor in whether or not a book is appropriate for a student. I myself have failed to read and finish books on multiple occasions, and not because I was a too low a level for the book in question, but rather because I lacked sufficient interest to continue. As teachers, we should always be ready to take advantage of a students desire to engage with a subject matter. Though we don't want our young readers to operate at the level of frustration too often, I would think that an intense interest in a subject might help a student to mitigate some of the frustration they may have from a more advanced text. Additionally, if that text is really too far outside a student's ability, then the teacher ought to try and find a book on the same subject matter that is more appropriately leveled.
However, the idea that the student is denied a book for being one level away from the level in which it is categorized is ludicrous. Reading is not just about levels, but many other things as Glasswell and Ford note. Background experience, vocabulary, motivation, subject knowledge, setting, format, emotional climate and many other aspects can determine whether an engagement with a book will be successful. Basing book selections solely on level is silly.
The authors also note that the manner in which levels are assessed and assigned to books is very complex and requires a lot of arbitrary and vague evaluations of text, thus drawing into question the true difference between one level and the next. Glasswell and Ford express other valuable ideas about leveled books, but through them all, the point is that the teacher needs to be actively aware of their students' interests and needs. Teachers should not rely on levels as the sole or main manner in which books are matched to students.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Naming Strategies
There are a number of comprehension strategies I've become aware of in the course of learning about teaching literacy to elementary children. It had never occurred to me that it might be necessary to teach some of these techniques. The most obvious of which is simply rereading, but other include making connections, visualizing, asking question, activating background knowledge. As an adult, these types of behaviors occur naturally, and I don't recall learning them. However, perhaps if I'd had explicit instruction on them, I would have been a better reader sooner.
It's the manner of that explicit instruction that I'm interested in at the moment. In the book Catching Readers Before They Fall by Johnson and Keier, they seem to suggest not naming the strategies for the students, lest the focus be placed on the strategy itself and not on making sense of a reading. In my previous readings and again, most recently in a chapter on schema from Miller's Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades, there are examples of introducing and talking about strategies by their names.
When, I first read Johnson's and Keier's reasoning, I thought it made sense. However, I also wondered whether it was so wrong to put a name to the strategies we use. I think that though their approaches differ slightly, all the above authors do try and maintain a focus on comprehension rather than the strategy. Johnson's and Keier's example about a heavy-handed approach to introducing visualizing to a class isn't less effective because the hypothetical teacher names the strategy, but rather because the teacher doesn't connect the strategy to meaning-making. Miller, in her example, names the strategy for the students, but she is always clear about how this helps to understand the story. She works with students to distinguish between connections that help understand the story, and those that don't.
That is clearly the point - the manner in which these strategies help to make meaning and aid comprehension. It is possible that naming a strategy can be a part of an instructional technique that incorrectly focuses on the strategy and not comprehension, but it is not necessarily so. Thus, I don't think I have to fear that I'm teaching strategies wrong because I explicitly name them for my students.
It's the manner of that explicit instruction that I'm interested in at the moment. In the book Catching Readers Before They Fall by Johnson and Keier, they seem to suggest not naming the strategies for the students, lest the focus be placed on the strategy itself and not on making sense of a reading. In my previous readings and again, most recently in a chapter on schema from Miller's Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades, there are examples of introducing and talking about strategies by their names.
When, I first read Johnson's and Keier's reasoning, I thought it made sense. However, I also wondered whether it was so wrong to put a name to the strategies we use. I think that though their approaches differ slightly, all the above authors do try and maintain a focus on comprehension rather than the strategy. Johnson's and Keier's example about a heavy-handed approach to introducing visualizing to a class isn't less effective because the hypothetical teacher names the strategy, but rather because the teacher doesn't connect the strategy to meaning-making. Miller, in her example, names the strategy for the students, but she is always clear about how this helps to understand the story. She works with students to distinguish between connections that help understand the story, and those that don't.
That is clearly the point - the manner in which these strategies help to make meaning and aid comprehension. It is possible that naming a strategy can be a part of an instructional technique that incorrectly focuses on the strategy and not comprehension, but it is not necessarily so. Thus, I don't think I have to fear that I'm teaching strategies wrong because I explicitly name them for my students.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Alphabet knowledge and emergent reading
When I worked at a K - 2 school, I and a couple colleagues worked regularly with a small group of kindergarteners who were behind their peers in the categories or letter ID and letter sounds. So, we explicitly taught them the shapes, names, and sounds of the letters of the alphabet - particularly the ones with which they struggled. Though at times, the work we did could be monotonous and felt like drill, we did try to make the activities as entertaining as we could. We created games, watched videos, created coloring sheets, and more.
A podcast I just listened to, from the Voice of Literacy featuring Dr. Shayne Piasta, discussed alphabet learning and early literacy. She suggested that in addition to explicit instruction, alphabet learning can take place as a part of other literacy learning, like phonological awareness. If I could go back, I would have liked to have tried to take some of the drill out of our instruction.
Another aspect that was touched upon was the instruction parents can incorporate as a part of their time reading to their children. Parents don't usually include instruction on letters and print features when they read a story, but it is suggested they could without diminishing too greatly the enjoyment of the book. As a soon-to-be parent and teacher, I excited to learn so much about early literacy!
A podcast I just listened to, from the Voice of Literacy featuring Dr. Shayne Piasta, discussed alphabet learning and early literacy. She suggested that in addition to explicit instruction, alphabet learning can take place as a part of other literacy learning, like phonological awareness. If I could go back, I would have liked to have tried to take some of the drill out of our instruction.
Another aspect that was touched upon was the instruction parents can incorporate as a part of their time reading to their children. Parents don't usually include instruction on letters and print features when they read a story, but it is suggested they could without diminishing too greatly the enjoyment of the book. As a soon-to-be parent and teacher, I excited to learn so much about early literacy!
Monday, February 3, 2014
Appreciating the developmental process
It is hard, as an adult so far removed from the earliest levels of language learning, to appreciate the successes of young children when they make so many mistakes. At this point in our adult lives, language and our use of it seems like such second nature, it is difficult to celebrate the incremental gains, and not just see all the misspellings and grammatical errors.
This topic of conversation came up in an article I read entitled Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing by Kate Foley Cusumano. Many parents express concern about their own child's early writing ability based upon the mistakes their child makes. Cusumano uses anonymous examples of student work and, in conferences or workshops, teaches parents and community members what is the normal range for children and how best to support them.
While reading this article, I was reminded of an exercise from a methods course in teaching mathematics in which we worked with numbers and problems in a base 5 system, rather than base 10. That exercise really drove home for me how much we take for granted knowing our number system as adults, and how becoming uneasy with a different system can help us to better help emergent learners. It a similar situation with reading and writing.
If all we do is focus on the mistakes that young learners make, and if we do not celebrate their successes, then we risk making that subject which is the focus of our critical gaze, into something that the child dislikes and feels frustrated about. I'm reminded of anecdote I heard years ago, in which a young child's creative writing is criticized for the errors it entailed. Subsequently, the child was able to create writing that had fewer errors, but was also much less creative. As educators and adults in children's lives, we want to encourage an enjoyment of learning behaviors and activities first and foremost. We want to celebrate what is great about what children are doing, and then bit by by address concerns of writing convention, for example. Understanding that there is a process to learning, students will make mistakes along the way, and encouraging enjoyment of the learning will lead to much better outcomes.
This topic of conversation came up in an article I read entitled Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing by Kate Foley Cusumano. Many parents express concern about their own child's early writing ability based upon the mistakes their child makes. Cusumano uses anonymous examples of student work and, in conferences or workshops, teaches parents and community members what is the normal range for children and how best to support them.
While reading this article, I was reminded of an exercise from a methods course in teaching mathematics in which we worked with numbers and problems in a base 5 system, rather than base 10. That exercise really drove home for me how much we take for granted knowing our number system as adults, and how becoming uneasy with a different system can help us to better help emergent learners. It a similar situation with reading and writing.
If all we do is focus on the mistakes that young learners make, and if we do not celebrate their successes, then we risk making that subject which is the focus of our critical gaze, into something that the child dislikes and feels frustrated about. I'm reminded of anecdote I heard years ago, in which a young child's creative writing is criticized for the errors it entailed. Subsequently, the child was able to create writing that had fewer errors, but was also much less creative. As educators and adults in children's lives, we want to encourage an enjoyment of learning behaviors and activities first and foremost. We want to celebrate what is great about what children are doing, and then bit by by address concerns of writing convention, for example. Understanding that there is a process to learning, students will make mistakes along the way, and encouraging enjoyment of the learning will lead to much better outcomes.
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