Transcript Literacy Leaders

Literacy Leaders
High School Teachers Taking
Charge of Their Professional
Learning
Today’s Schedule
• 8:00-10:00 – Session 1: What are some of the
problems students have with
literacy?
• 10:00-10:15 – break
• 10:15-11:30 – Session 2: What are transportable &
transparent literacy strategies
for content area instruction?
• 11:30-12:30 – lunch
• 12:30-2:00 – Session 3: How can I teach literacy?
• Skip formal break?
• Finished at 3:15?
Inspiration …
• Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (2008)
“A Content Literacy Collaborative Study Group:
High School Teachers Take Charge of Their
Professional Learning”
One year of secondary teachers attempting to
integrate literacy strategies & content
instruction
Literacy
How can I
find material
that every
student in the
room can
read?
Video Game Model
• Judy Willis, board certified neurologist and
middle school teacher
Clip from ASCD convention - 2011
Overcoming Negativity with
Motivation
• Work at “exactly your right level”
• Achievable challenge
• “See the change”
But… what if I can’t change the text?
• High school teachers can rarely level texts
Textbooks and
primary source
documents
High School Teachers can…
Model Reading Skills and
Strategies
What is the Difference Between Skills
& Strategies?
• Think about riding a bike…
Differences Between Skills &
Strategies
Riding with ___ __________(is a skill)
• What helped you to get there?
no hands
You learned to __________the bike by shifting your
weight, not by maneuvering the handlebars. balance
The strategy of balancing takes you to the skill (riding
with no hands)
Strategy = the process
Skill = the product
What kind of strategies do adolescent
readers need most?
Comprehension Strategies
What is comprehension?
• Comprehension – a ___________between the
reader, the text, and the context
transaction
• It requires purposeful, _________ _________
on the reader’s part strategic effort
Comprehension Requires…
• a reader who employs strategies to understand a
text
_____________: Anticipate direction of text
(predict)
_____________: Seeing the action of the text
(visualize)
_____________: Contemplate & correct
confusion (clarify)
_____________: Connect what’s in text to what’s
in mind (inference)
Session 1: What are some of the
problems students have with literacy?
• Social and cultural causes of reading problems
• Physical causes of reading problems
Is the brain capable of plasticity?
Can it change itself?
Why Can’t Students Read?
There is no one reason as to
why an adolescent struggles
with reading
There are no single
answers… but there are
answers
Social & Cultural Causes of Reading
Problems
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Absence of literature in the home
Poor parental support
Limited teacher training
Large class sizes
Home language differs from school language
Physical Causes of Reading Problems
• Decoding written text is an artificial creation
that calls upon neural regions designed for
other tasks.
• Reading is so complex that any small problem
along the way can slow or interrupt the
process.
Dyslexia or Reading Disorders
• Not all struggling readers have
dyslexia/reading disorders
• Dyslexia seems to be caused by deficits in the
neural regions responsible for language and
phonological processing or by problems in
nonlinguistic areas of the brain.
Linguistic Causes
• phonological deficits
• differences in auditory and visual processing
speeds
• structural differences in the brain
• memory deficits
Nonlinguistic Causes
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Inability to hear sequential sounds
Impaired sound-frequency discrimination
Inability to detect target sounds
Visual processing deficit
Less motor coordination skills
John Corcoran, advocate for
literacy & author of “The
Teacher Who Couldn’t Read”
Brains Are Not Programmed to Read
• We were never born to read
• Humans invented reading only a few thousand
years ago
• Reading can be learned only because of the
brain’s plastic design
• Changes in the brain take place that are
physiological and intellectual (neuronal
connections)
What happens if the brain systems are
organized differently?
• Brain compensates by utilizing the region
associated with memory and retrieval on the
right side of the brain (amazing plasticity)
• Individuals rely on the retrieval of memorized
words to the exclusion of other methods
• Brain uses less efficient, more time-consuming
neural pathways
Understanding Brain-Based Disorders
Non-disabled readers use more of the
left hemisphere in reading
Disabled readers use both
hemispheres of the brain in reading
Specific Reading Disability aka BrainBased Disorders/Dyslexia
• Definition: A congenital disorder characterized
by unexpected difficulties in learning to read and
spell (generally called specific reading disability)
• Misconceptions: Not a visual disorder (students
do not reverse letters); not linked to low
intelligence
• Indicators: By 3rd grade, students become
frustrated when visual cue memorization is not
enough, guessing based on initial consonant–
weak phonological skills
Emotional Effects of Specific Reading
Disorders
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Have difficulty taking notes
Feel lonely, don’t “fit in”
Resent teachers that don’t understand
Poor organizational skills
Suffer from forgetfulness
Have deteriorating grades
Exhibit behavior problems
Feel loss of dignity
Holistic Approaches to Students
• Convey empathy
• Empower students by involving them to set
targets
• Provide strategies in study skills, examination
techniques, and note-taking
• Acknowledge their strengths
• Engage in using literacy skills such as key
words
Rewiring the Brains of Struggling
Readers?
• Can the human brain be rewired for certain
tasks?
Yes!
• Neuroscience shows that as a result of reading
interventions, students can rewire their brains
to more closely approximate the reading
circuitry of typical readers, resulting in
accurate and fluent readers.
So Who Is a Struggling Reader?
1. Close your eyes and conjure up an image of a
struggling reader.
2. Now sit like that reader would sit in your
room.
What did you discover
about the struggling
reader’s appearance in
the classroom?
Textbook Activity
• Choose a textbook from a content area that you
do not teach
Textbook Activity Reflection
How far back can you remember?
The Issue Isn’t the Struggling
• Anyone can struggle given the right text…
The struggle isn’t the issue; the issue is
what the reader does when the text
gets tough
Indicators of Struggling Readers
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Sarcasm
Intimidation
Let’s shock the teacher
Let’s keep the class laughing
What is reading?
How the Brain Learns to Read
• For 50% of children, reading is a formidable
task.
• For about 20-30%, it definitely becomes the
most difficult cognitive task they will ever
undertake in their lives.
• The human brain is not born with the insight to
make sound-to-letter connections, nor does it
develop naturally without instruction.
Reading Comprehension & Memory
• As reading progresses, the meaning of each
sentence in a paragraph must be held in
memory so that they can be associated with each
other to determine the intent of the paragraph and
whether certain details need to be remembered.
• Working memory must then link paragraphs to
each other so that, by the end of the chapter, the
reader has an understanding of the main ideas
encountered.
Reading Comprehension & Working
Memory
• With extensive practice the working memory
becomes more efficient at recognizing words
and at chunking words into common phrases.
• As a result, the child reads faster and
comprehends more.
Reading Demands
• An adolescent using a book with advanced
vocabulary words will have trouble with
comprehension because:
so much memory capacity is being used trying
to decode unfamiliar words.
Being a Skilled Reader Means…
• You do not read each word individually.
• Your eyes do not move from word to word
until they read the end.
• You scan the text searching for patterns that
will make the task of reading easier
Activity #2: Being A Skilled Reader
• Packet activity
Results: Most spot the “P” but miss the “O”
“P” violates the pattern, but “O” closely
resembles it
Activity #3: Being a Skilled Reader
• Packet Activity
Being a Skilled Reader
• We become so adept at recognizing common
words that we can do it even if the word is
significantly misspelled
Being a Skilled Reader
• The brain has an amazing ability to sift
through seemingly confusing input to establish
patterns and systems
Fake Reading
• Strategy – an intentional plan that readers use
to help themselves make sense of their reading
Fake Reading is similar to this game of fake
playing
Fake Reading: Students’ Strategies
1. Reread
2. Skip words
3. Read slowly
• This is a very small set of strategies.
Additional Fake Reading Strategies
Used by Students
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Listen to music while reading
Don’t read for fun
Fall asleep
Daydream
Fake-read
Forget what I read
Read the words without knowing what they mean
Read the back of the book instead of the whole book
See the movie instead of reading the book
Ask people what the book is about so I don’t have to read
Read without paying attention
Read too fast
Start books and never finish them
Just look at the words
Lose my place
A Shared Badge of Honor
• “Some kids are born good readers and some
kids aren’t. I’ve always been a bad reader and
I always will be. It’s too late for me.”
When the text gets tough…
• Independent Readers – figure out what’s
confusing them.
• Dependent Readers – Depend on an outside-ofthemselves source not only to tell them what to
do– but to do it for them.
• We want to teach students to struggle with the
text
Activity #4: Independent vs.
Dependent Readers
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Stop
Set goals for getting through the reading
Appeal to the teacher
Figure out what is confusing them
Dependent Readers
• They expect the text to provide everything.
• They think they’re job is, at most, to decode
print.
• After that, if the meaning isn’t immediately
apparent, they stop reading or ask us to
explain.
Disarming the Defenses
• By ninth grade, many students have been defeated
by test scores, letter grades, and special
groupings.
• Struggling readers are embarrassed by their labels
and often perceive reading as drudgery.
• They avoid it at all costs.
• Reading has lost its purpose and pleasure.
The Realities of Reading
Why are so many middle and high school
students struggling to read well?
• Many believe that reading is merely sounding
out words. They don’t stop to consider what
sophisticated thought processes are involved
and that reading becomes more demanding as
students get older.
Two Types of Struggling Readers
• Resistive Readers – can read but choose not to
• Word Callers – can decode words but don’t
understand or remember what they’ve read
Resistive Readers Traits
• Avoid reading
• Fake reading
• “I sit in the back of the classroom and wait for
one of the smart kids to answer the teacher’s
questions.”
• “If no one talks, the teacher gives us the answer.”
• Many resistive readers survive by listening to the
teacher and copying the work of others.
Word Callers - “I Read the Words but
What Do They Mean?”
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Have mastered decoding
Often choose to read
Can be fairly good students
Don’t understand that reading involves thinking
Go through the motions to pronounce words–
don’t understand or remember what they have
read
• Feel powerless because their only strategy for
gaining meaning is sounding out words
Seven Strategies Used by Successful
Readers (Pearson et al. 1992)
• 1. They use existing knowledge to make sense of
new information.
• 2. They ask questions about the text before, during,
and after reading.
• 3. They draw inferences from the text.
• 4. They monitor their comprehension.
• 5. They use “fix-up” strategies when meaning breaks
down.
• 6. They determine what is important.
• 7. They synthesize information to create new
thinking.
Brain Researched Strategies Handout
• Provided a double-sided, color copy, laminated
• Referred to it throughout the year with
students
• (See packet)
Reading is Thinking
• Decoding is only a part of the process
• Understanding concepts and subtleties of text
is crucial
• Determining what is important and connecting
one’s own knowledge and experience to what
one reads is important
Six Cueing Systems Readers Use to
Comprehend Text (Rumelhart 1976)
• Surface Structures (primary grades)
1. Graphophonic - letters
2. Lexical cues - words
3. Syntactic cues – order of words in sentences
• Deep Structures (middle & secondary grades)
4. Semantic cues - meaning
5. Schematic cues – prior knowledge/experience
6. Pragmatic cues - importance
Cueing Systems Like an Orchestra
• When all systems are operating, readers are able
to understand fully what they are reading
• If one or two systems shut down– much of the
meaning is lost
Important to Know: Decoders
• Readers who focus solely on surface structures
decode words but don’t remember what
they’ve read.
• To observers, they seem to be good readers,
and they think they are too, but they are not
constructing meaning– and they are not
comprehending.
Why Text Becomes Inaccessible to
Students
1. Don’t have the comprehension strategies
necessary to unlock meaning.
2. Don’t have sufficient background knowledge.
3. Don’t recognize organization patterns.
4. Lack Purpose.
You Don’t Need a Master’s Degree in
Reading to Help Students Read Better
• 1. Become a passionate reader of what you
teach.
• 2. Model how good readers read.
Literacy Leaders
• Don’t reduce reading opportunities for
students because they’re having difficulty
• Teach strategies that will help students read
assigned material
• Be confident you are the expert reader of your
content in the room
Session 2: What are transportable &
transparent literacy strategies for
content literacy instruction?
• Transportable – students can take them from
one class to another
• Transparent – because they are part of
students’ thinking, they are automatically
applied
Content Literacy Instruction Strategies
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Using Big Ideas or Themes
Anticipatory Activities
Read-Alouds & Shared Reading
Graphic Organizers
Marking the Text
Structured Notetaking
Vocabulary Instruction
Writing to Learn
Reciprocal Teaching
Is Every Teacher a Teacher of
Reading?
No!
• Teachers are teachers of learning which
requires:
-reading
-writing
-speaking
-listening
-viewing
Bibliography
• Beers, K. (2003). When kids can’t read: what teachers can
do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
• Fisher, D. et al. (2009). In a reading state of mind: brain
research, teacher modeling, and comprehension
instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading
Association.
• Gray, E. (2008). Understanding dyslexia and its
instructional implications: a case to support intense
intervention. Literacy Research and Instruction, 47, 116123.
• Ivey, G. & Fisher, D. (2006). Creating literacy-rich schools
for adolescents. Alexandra, VA: ASCD.
Bibliography
• Long, L., MacBlain, S, & MacBlain, M. (2007). Supporting
students with dyslexia at the secondary level: an
emotional model of literacy. International Reading
Association, 51, 124-134.
• Odegard, T., et al. (2008). Differentiating the neural response
to intervention in children with developmental dyslexia. Ann.
of Dyslexia, 58, 1-14.
• Sousa, D. (2005). How the brain learns to read. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
• Tovani, C. (2000). I read it, but I don’t get it: comprehension
strategies for adolescent readers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse
Publishers.
Bibliography
• Shaywitz, B. (2000). The neurobiology of reading and reading
disability (dyslexia). In M. Kamil (Ed.), Handbook of reading
research, volume III (pp. 220-249). New York, NY:Routledge.