Teacher to Teacher

I am presently attending a training on the 21st Century learner.  Today the trainers shared three short videos that humorously demonstrated the difference between a “student” and a “learner.”  The videos can be found below.  I’ll share more information from this training in future posts.  Feel free to share any thoughts you might have about the messages found in the videos.

If YouTube is blocked in your school, you will be unable to view these videos.  Blocking sites opens up a whole other can of worms I’ll bring up in future posts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM2Iv5D10Bs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by_eUi2C_g8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Should the teacher also be a learner?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hENtGSrOj5Y&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

The following information was sent to Nebraska administrators on March 20th.  Nebraska educators are encouraged to comment on the new standards.

“A draft of the revised Mathematics Standards is available for review and input March 23 – April 3.   Over the past several months, 100+ educators from across Nebraska have been working on a draft of revised Mathematics standards for grades K,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and High School.  We invite you to review and comment.  Please go to the following website http://www.nde.state.ne.us/math/documents/StandardsSurveyHomepage.html

“There are several helpful components on this web site:

• An introduction video detailing the organization of the standards document and corresponding rationale
• A PowerPoint accompanying the video including several key questions for survey participants to answer as they review the document
• The K-12 draft standards document
• The link to the electronic survey to provide input

“All schools are encouraged to participate.  Participants are able to comment as an individual or as a group.  Please remember this survey is to provide input on the content of the standards themselves – not on the statewide assessment.  Those pieces will come later.”

We all know the importance of being intentional in addressing vocabulary in our classrooms.  Part of this intentional process is selecting the appropriate words to specifically teach.  Some words are more important to learn than others.  But how do we decide?

Fortunately, there is some guidance for us as we make these decisions.  Archer (2003) suggests we select words that:

1. Are unknown to students,
2. Are important to understanding the text, and
3. Are likely to be encountered in the future

Beck, McKeown, & Kucan (2002) have created a three tier model to help us think about which words to teach.  These three tiers do not coincide with the RTI three tier model that we’ve been discussing with our teachers, so don’t confuse the two.

Tier One words are basic words that are frequently encountered in life (i.e. clock, bed, radio, come, see).  Most students have the concept of these words and don’t need any specific instruction.  If a student is unfamiliar with a word in this tier, it is usually sufficient to just provide the definition or an example rather than explicitly teaching the word.  Not much time is spent in teaching Tier One words.

Tier Two words are also known as the “mortar words.”  These are the words that are high frequency academic words found across a variety of content areas and knowledge domains (i.e. fortunate, absurd, facilitate).  Tier Two words should receive instructional emphasis.  Language Arts teachers should include many Tier Two academic words in their instruction.  Language Arts teachers should not necessarily rely on the words chosen by the reading textbook publisher as the words with the most utility for students.  Many of the vocabulary words suggested in a reading textbook are rare words that can be expected to occur once or fewer times in a million words of school texts (Hiebert as cited in Lehr, Osborn, & Hiebert, 2004).

Tier Three words are low frequency words that are usually specific to a particular content area or knowledge domain (i.e. tundra, isotope, lathe, lava).  These words don’t generalize well to other content areas.  These are the “bricks” held together with “mortar” of the Tier Two, or academic, words.  Although content area teachers will spend more of their time teaching Tier Three words, they should also include some Tier Two words that generalize across subject areas.

Tier Three words are often easier to identify than Tier Two words.  Textbook publishers identify many of the content specific vocabulary (Tier Three) necessary for students to successfully comprehend the material.  Selecting Tier Two words is not as clear cut.  The suggested vocabulary in most reading textbooks is not always the best resource.  A better resource for finding high frequency academic words is Coxhead’s Academic Word List.  It consists of 570 word families which occur frequently over a wide range of academic texts.  Teachers  should use Coxhead’s list to begin dividing the instruction of these academic words across subject areas and grade levels.

Don’t leave vocabulary learning only to chance.  Teach the important words that matter today AND tomorrow.  Teach the words that drive comprehension of the key big ideas and provide an academic toolkit for long term academic proficiency (Feldman, 2009).

References

Archer, A. (2003).  Dr. Anita Archer: Vocabulary development.  Retrieved March 19, 2009 from http://www.fcoe.net/ela/pdf/Vocabulary/Anita%20Archer031.pdf

Feldman, K. (2009).  “Response to intervention and older struggling readers:  Special education reform as part of meaningful school improvement.” Educational Service Units Professional Development Organization.  Kearney, NE. 18 Feb. 2009.

Lehr, F., Osborn, J. and Hiebert, E. (2004).  Research-based practices in early reading series:  A focus on vocabulary.  Retrieved March 19, 2009 from http://www.prel.org/products/re_/ES0419bw.pdf

I am gathering some resources for an upcoming presentation and came across these videos from YouTube in which a teacher uses a technique very similar to the one I described in yesterday’s post about scaffolding academic discourse.  However, in this video she is using the technique to teach a vocabulary word to her middle school students.  One problem I have with this particular example is the teacher’s model sentence, which sends the students down the path of practicing non-examples of the target word rather than examples (“not productive” for the target word “productive”).  If your school has blocked YouTube, you will not be able to view the videos.  The video is divided into two parts.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA44RP-70YE

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPwv-mjB6pg

To see Dr. Anita Archer using a similar technique with Kindergarten and Second Grade students, visit Dr. Archer’s Video Series.

Here are the pdf files that accompany Dr. Archer’s two  vocabulary videos:

• Kindergarten Vocabulary Lesson
• Second Grade Vocabulary Lesson

In my previous post, I suggested discontinuing the practice of hand raising as a way to structure classroom discussion.  Eliminating this practice helps ensure that every student, rather than just a few volunteers,  is engaged in the discussion.   However, Dr. Feldman cautions:

“Merely tossing out provocative questions to the classroom stratosphere and inviting responses will not support these fragile readers and language users in responding competently and confidently.

“In secondary academic settings, unstructured discussions characteristically elicit learner passivity, default conversational register, selective listening and off-task behavior…all of which keep the status quo…” (Feldman, 2009).

In order to mitigate these problems, teachers can provide a scaffold for classroom discussion.  Here’s a model for preparing students for “academic discourse”:

• Provide students with the language tools (vocabulary, grammar & syntax) necessary to competently discuss the topic.
• Pose a question to the students about the topic.
• Model for the students what a response to your question might sound like.  Use a sentence stem that the students will also use.  Examples of sentence stems would be:
  • “One consequence of the invention was a rise in _________.”
  • “One trait of a mammal is ___________.”
• Have students repeat the model sentence chorally BEFORE rehearsing their sentences with a partner.
• Using the sentence stem, each student shares his or her individual response to the question with a partner.  For additional practice, students can also write their responses before or after sharing with one another.
• Finally,  the teacher calls together the whole class and elicits a response to the question from several of the students.  Remember, the students do not raise their hands.  It is now fair game to randomly call on any student because they’ve had a chance to rehearse their responses.

There are several benefits to this structured thinking and partner rehearsal BEFORE engaging in class discussion:

• It increases the number of students actively “doing the doing” of learning.  They are actively responding.
• All students get feedback/clarification/support from their partners.  Students are not practicing errors.
• The additional time to think and rehearse encourages reflection and thoughtfulness.
• Students are more likely to be confident and willing to share with the group.
• All students are provided the scaffolding in order to confidently utilize the target academic language (vocabulary and syntax).
• The partner practice increases the odds that students are attentive and engaged in the instructional conversation.
• The teacher has written or spoken “evidence checks” of learner engagement.
• This model provides the teacher with informal assessment.  The teacher can listen in or “dip stick” two or three pairs. (Feldman, 2009)

What are some other tasks you’ve scaffolded in order to help ensure student engagement and learning?

Reference

Feldman, K. (2009).  “Response to intervention and older struggling readers:  Special education reform as part of meaningful school improvement.” Educational Service Units Professional Development Organization.  Kearney, NE. 18 Feb. 2009.

Stop structuring classroom discussion via hand raising.

This admonition came from Dr. Kevin Feldman during a February presentation to a group of Nebraska educators.  He suggested that discontinuing this practice is one of the first steps a teacher can take to increase student engagement.  Many times, students who are already engaged in class discussions are the ones raising their hands to volunteer.  Many of the other students do not engage with the discussion for a variety of reasons.

As you may recall from last week’s post, Dr. Feldman would like students to make a concrete response to instruction every 2 to 10 minutes.  One reason to stop the practice of hand raising is to provide additional opportunities for ALL students to make concrete responses during classroom instruction.

Another reason to stop the practice of hand raising is to “increase the academic miles on the tongue for EVERY student EVERY day” (Feldman, 2009).  The students who are raising their hands are getting many opportunities to use academic language, whereas the other students are receiving very few opportunities.

Academic language is “language used in the learning of academic subject matter in formal schooling context; aspects of language strongly associated with literacy and academic achievement, including specific academic terms or technical language, and speech registers related to each field of study” (TESOL, n.d.).  In other words, academic language is the vocabulary of the content area.

Components of academic language are:

• The content specific vocabulary (e.g. magma) and the high use academic terms (e.g. analyze, variable).  The difficulty here is prioritizing.  What are the key concepts students must have?  What are the non-negotiables?  State standards can help with these types of decisions.
• The syntax:  the way words are arranged in order to form sentences or phrases
• Grammar:  the rules according to which the words of a language change their form and are combined into sentences (Feldman, 2009).

What about the possibility of embarrassing students by calling on them for a response they aren’t capable of giving or prepared to give?  “Virtually ALL diverse secondary classrooms are comprised of many students unequipped for academic discourse” (Feldman, 2009).  We must always scaffold our instruction.  A student doesn’t respond in front of the whole group until he or she has been supported to the point of being able to give a proper response.

My next post will share some of Dr. Feldman’s suggestions about scaffolding for academic discourse.  Look for it later this week.

Comment on how you encourage “academic miles on the tongue” in your classroom.

References

Feldman, K. (2009).  “Response to intervention and older struggling readers:  Special education reform as part of meaningful school improvement.” Educational Service Units Professional Development Organization.  Kearney, NE. 18 Feb. 2009.

TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc). (n.d.) ESL standards for pre-k-12 students: Glossary. Retrieved March 15, 2009 from: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=113&DID=317

In February, I attended a training conducted by Dr. Kevin Feldman of the Sonoma County Office of Education in California.  During the training, he reminded us that RtI is not only an acronym for “Response to Intervention,” but also “Response to Instruction.”  Another possible acronym he suggests is “Really Terrific Instruction.”  Without good initial classroom instruction, we may find ourselves intervening with most of our students rather than just a few.

The first step in providing really terrific instruction is to engage all students in every lesson.  How do you ensure every student is engaged?  By making sure every student makes concrete observable responses during the lesson.  Responses can take the form of written or oral predictions, note taking, sharing with a partner, etc.  No more than 2 to 10 minutes should go by without some concrete response.

No one can keep 100% of the students engaged 100% of the time, but we can come closer by using guided practice followed by independent practice and feedback.  Dr. Feldman suggests using a four step pattern of instruction to help keep students engaged.  It is similar to Madeline Hunter’s lesson model.

1. I do it.  (The teacher provides input or examples or models.  The teacher thinks aloud.)
2. We do it.  (The class, along with the teacher, performs a task similar to what the teacher modeled)
3. Y’all do it.  (Partners practice the skill or learning together)
4. You do it.  (student independent practice with feedback)

To see this in action, visit the iTunes store and subscribe to Dr. Anita Archer’s strategic literacy video podcast.  Download the episode “Structuring Active Participation–7th Grade”  (it’s free).  In this episode, Dr. Archer demonstrates the 4 steps above while also introducing another activity (SLANT) to teach her students how to stay engaged.

Next week’s post will continue with the topic of student engagement.  Leave a comment to share methods you use to keep students engaged in lessons.

After years of using locally developed assessments to determine student progress, Nebraska has joined the rest of the nation in the statewide assessment arena.  The tutorial for Nebraska’s new statewide assessment is now available.

The software delivering the new assessment contains several tools to assist students as they take the test.  There is a highlighter tool for students to use to highlight useful information in the text.  Students can use a guideline tool to help them track along the lines of text as they read.  A striker tool can be used by students to strike out the multiple choice items they think can be eliminated from consideration and an eraser tool allows them to erase their strike out marks and highlights.  I encourage Nebraska teachers to try out the tutorial (be sure to download the testing software before you try the tutorial) and see how the new assessments will work.  Students should take the tutorial before the field test which will begin April 13th and last through May 1st.

In addition to the tutorial, the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) has posted mini-tests containing Nebraska test items.  These mini-tests are available to provide teachers and students with a sampling of what the assessment items will be like.  These mini-tests are made to be printed out rather than taken online.

Tables of Specification and Performance Level Descriptors (PLD) are also available at NDE.  The tables specify the depth of knowledge levels at which assessment items have been written for each Nebraska Standard.  The PLDs are rubrics that will be used to determine at which level each student is performing.