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By: SSPP Reads,
on 3/13/2013
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The recent issue of Educational Leadership (March 2013 Vol. 70 No. 6) is chock-full of articles that challenge the way we think about learning and technology. I was especially drawn to Marc Prensky‘s article, Our Brains Extended. He asks,
Is the human brain still the smartest thing on the planet? When enhanced by technology, it is. . . Wise integration of our evolving and powerful technology demands that we rethink our curriculum.
And, I agree with him. I think the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a stab in that direction. Prensky challenges us,
We need to start teaching our kids that technology is, in a great many cases, the best way to learn something, not just a new way to do old things. Would you maintain an expensive horse in the barn in case your car breaks down?
Ask yourself: Are students engaged? Marzano‘s research tells us that student engagement is strongly influenced by what teachers do in class. I’m not talking gadgets, but 21st century education. So, here we go:
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Graphic from Flickr Creative Commons by Henriksent
By: SSPP Reads,
on 3/13/2013
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SSPP Reads
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Common Core State Standards,
Edutopia,
CCSS,
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International Reading Assoc,
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ASCD,
Educational Leadership,
Edudemic,
ISTE,
Learn Zillion,
NETS,
Smart Exchange,
Science,
STEM,
Add a tag
The recent issue of Educational Leadership (March 2013 Vol. 70 No. 6) is chock-full of articles that challenge the way we think about learning and technology. I was especially drawn to Marc Prensky‘s article, Our Brains Extended. He asks,
Is the human brain still the smartest thing on the planet? When enhanced by technology, it is. . . Wise integration of our evolving and powerful technology demands that we rethink our curriculum.
And, I agree with him. I think the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a stab in that direction. Prensky challenges us,
We need to start teaching our kids that technology is, in a great many cases, the best way to learn something, not just a new way to do old things. Would you maintain an expensive horse in the barn in case your car breaks down?
Ask yourself: Are students engaged? Marzano‘s research tells us that student engagement is strongly influenced by what teachers do in class. I’m not talking gadgets, but 21st century education. So, here we go:
Related blogs:
Graphic from Flickr Creative Commons by Henriksent
By: SSPP Reads,
on 5/16/2012
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By: SSPP Reads,
on 4/25/2012
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In a recent issue of Educational Leadership (Vol 69 No 6), a publication of ASCD, the focus was on reading, the core skill. Richard L. Allington and Rachael E. Gabriel, in their article “Every Child, Every Day”, outlined six research based elements for effective reading instruction. Allington, a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, researches and writes about reading difficulties. ”Despite good intentions, educators often make decisions about instruction that compromise or supplant the kind of experiences all children need to become engaged, successful readers.” Here are six elements of instruction Allington and Gabriel outline that children should experience daily:
- Every child reads something he or she chooses. The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have they choose what they read.
- Every child reads accurately. Research shows reading at 98% or higher accuracy is essential for reading acceleration, below 90% accuracy doesn’t improve reading ability at all.
- Every child reads something he or she understands. Research shows here too, that remediation that emphasizes comprehension can change the structure of struggling students’ brains. It takes lots of reading and rereading of text that students find engaging and comprehensible to enable the brain to develop the ability to read.
- Every child writes about something personally meaningful. Writing provides a different modality within which to practice the skills and strategies of reading for an authentic purpose.
- Every child talks with peers about reading and writing. Research has demonstrated that conversation with peers improves comprehension and engagement with texts in a variety of settings. Even small amounts of such conversations can improve standardized test scores.
- Every child listens to a fluent adult read aloud. Listening to an adult model fluent reading increases students’ own fluency and comprehension skills, as well as expanding their vocabulary, background knowledge, sense of story, awareness of genre and text structure, and comprehension of the texts read. Teachers should spend a few minutes a day reading to their students.
So, how to do this? Allington and Gabriel give us two easy suggestions: First, eliminate almost all worksheets and workbooks. Second, ban test-preparation activities and materials from the school day. Eliminating both provides time and money to spend on the things that really matter in developing readers.
0 Comments on Effective Reading Instruction as of 4/25/2012 1:26:00 AM
Let’s look at Word Walls for interactive learning developing comprehension both in language arts and in curricular content. Robert J. Marzano in his book, Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, offers six steps to effective vocabulary instruction:
- The teacher explains a new word, going beyond reciting its definition
- Students restate or explain the new word in their own words
- Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the word
- Students engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new word
- Students discuss the new word
- Students play games to review new vocabulary
This works! Check out Georgia Scurletis Wordshop on ThinkMap. And, you can use it with the Step Up To Writing program and with your classroom Word Walls. Certainly the primary grades make good use of Word Walls for developing sight words and patterns in word families. But, is it time your Word Wall becomes a tool, not just a decoration? The Word Wall though can be effectively used for content vocabulary. In the International Reading Association‘s bimonthly membership magazine Reading Today (Vol. 29. No. 4) Katherine Hilden Clouse and Jennifer Jones Powell of Radford University advocate using the Word Wall “strategically and effectively.” Here are their suggestions:
Primary Classrooms:
- When organizing the Word Wall based on sight words word families, beside each sight word placed a red dot indicating to students that it is an important word used in reading and writing but can’t be “sounded out”
- Start with high utility word families which equip students with patterns that can be applied to new words
- Here’s some Word Wall Activities from Teaching First and Scholastic
- And, interactive word wall ideas
Upper Elementary:
- Focus on content words
- Categorize words might be color coded based on the content area in which the words are predominantly found
- Here’s some content word walls (math, social studies, science)
Use and model the displayed words:
- Teacher instruction, to be effective, must be direct and systematic
- Use the word wall during classroom down time
- Use the word wall during reading and writing instructions
- Play with words rather than drill and kill students with word lists
- Try word banks
Build a conceptual base
Bridget Dalton and Dana L. Grisham wrote a fantastic article in the February 2011 issue of The Reading Teacher, a journal of research-based classroom practice, published by the International Reading Association. The article, eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary, “highlights ten strategies that hold promise for improving vocabulary learning in intermediate grades.”
Here they are:
- Learn from visual displays of word relationships as pictured above (check out Wordle)
- Take a digital vocabulary field trip (check out TrackStar)
- Connect fun and learning with online vocabulary games (see Vocabulary.co.il and Vocabulary.com
- Have students use media to express vocabulary knowledge (haul out PowerPoint and use it for creative expression)
- Take advantage of online word reference tools (Visual Thesaurus and Dictionary.com)
- Support reading and word learning with just-in-time vocabulary reference support (see Word Central and Yahoo! Kids and specialized picture glossaries like NASA’s Picture Dictionary)
- Use language translators to provide just-in-time help for English Learners (see Babelfish, Google Translator, and Bing Translator)
- Increase reading volume by reading digital text (Time For Kids, Weekly Reader, National Geographic Kids are a few)
- Increase reading volume by listening to digital text with a text-to-speech tool and audio books (free TTS tools are CLiCk, Speak , NaturalReader, Balabolka, and Microsoft Reader)
- Combine vocabulary learning and social service such as the free online vocabulary game Free Rice. The United Nations World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to countries in need for each correct answer.
Lots of possibilities! This post first appeared on SSPP Reads on 02/23/2011.
0 Comments on Wordle Makes Vocabulary Fun as of 1/1/1900
Graphic organizers are great tools for students to use in all subjects and for all grades. Using pictures in Kid Pix or Kidspiration to writing out ideas, formulas, thoughts, data, or information from textbooks, there’s one ready made to fit the need. I especially like to use the Graphic Organizers available through two of SSPP’s curriculum publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Education Place (our Reading and Social Studies K-5 curriculum) and ScottForesman’s PearsonSuccessNet (our K-5 Science curriculum). Step Up To Writing has some available on line, and teachers use hard copy printouts provided with the SUTW curriculum in the classroom.
The NY Times ran an article (01/21/2011) commenting on a Science journal (01/20/2011) published study from Purdue University challenging the value of graphic organizers, specifically concept maps,
Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently.
The research concluded that, “Retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science.” It got some reaction, pro and con. One notable reaction came from Howard Gardner, the father of multiple intelligences.
Educators who embrace seemingly more active approaches, like concept mapping are challenged to devise outcome measures that can demonstrate the superiority of such constructivist approaches.
So, we’ll see if those outcome measures will be developed, but, in the meantime, the graphic organizers do help break down the information to give students a fighting chance to learn the material and integrate it into their thinking and understanding of content. Perhaps the assessments can be better designed to determine if the students actually remember what is being taught.
Graphic from Boise State.
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Francis Pleasant Robinson in his book, Effective Study (Harper & Row, 1946) developed a reading strategy for college students to help students improve their comprehension of textbooks. Swarthmore College still offers a link through their Office of Learning Resources today as does Ohio’s Columbus State Community College. I often come across the SQ3R strategy–Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Recall– in my work as a Reading Resource Specialist. It’s recommended to help students improve their reading skills, one of those tried and true strategies (not the only one!) I found a fun SQ3R interactive you might want to try from the Oswego City School District of New York. They put together a website, StudyZone.org, to help students and their teachers prepare for state tests in English/Language Arts, Math and Social Studies.
A few other links of interest are here on SSPP Reads–Interactive Learning and Writing Skills. There you can find links to our writing program, Step Up To Writing, the template for MLA style research papers, Wordle, Houghton Mifflin Graphic Organizers, Build A Word for Kinder and First Graders, and more.
Graphic from Peer Resources Tutoring at Columbus State Community College open source.
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