Reaching Our Goals: Literacy Assessment

As educators, and particularly as Reading Specialists, we need to ask ourselves:

• What do we need to know to make sure students are learning what we are teaching them? 

• How do we implement effective and meaningful assessments in an effort to improve student achievement?

     As can be seen in the news all the time, there is constant debate over educational assessment: How much is too much?  Are the assessments valid?  What are the assessments really showing us about our educational system?  About our students? A lot of pressure is put on policy makers, educational professionals, and most importantly on students, because of assessments.  

    The first thing that needs to be kept in mind when discussing assessments in education is, what is the true point of education?  What are we trying to teach students?  What is the goal here?  You need to have clearly defined goals in order to assess if you are them.  As is mentioned in the webinar by the Wisconsin DPI: Leading a Balanced Literacy Assessment System: Conducting a Literacy Assessment Review, the true purpose of literacy education is not "to teach kids how to pass a test."  The purpose is not for your school to get high scores on standardized testing.  Education is supposed to help people  gain the knowledge and skills to become positive contributors to our world, and no one is changing the world just because they scored highly on the PARCC exam.  

      There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle when  talking about literacy assessment in our  education system today.  There are policy  makers, administrators, curriculum  coordinators, language arts teachers, content  area teachers, special education teachers,  reading specialists, parents, students, and the  list goes on.  An important step to making  sure students are learning what we are  intending to teach them is to get a unified  plan with all the people involved.  This may  take some work, but the Webinar from  the Wisconsin DPI  is a great guide for getting the ball rolling.

     Getting all the important people in a room together, with a plan to discuss assessment is imperative.  This will make sure everyone is on the same page as far as what the literacy education goals are and how to assess if those goals are being reached.  This will get a sense of cohesiveness in the academic setting and prevent redundancies in assessment from occurring.  Redundancies in assessment may cause student burnout, and complacency in teachers and students.  In the assessment review process those involved can help each other.  For example, administrators can allow time for a reading specialist, special education teacher, language arts teacher and content area teachers to  work together to come up with instructional practices and assessments to use across the  curriculum, or with particular students, that meet all the demands put forth by policy makers, administrators etc.        

     Once clearly defined, agreed upon, literacy goals are in place, teamwork is still needed to achieve these goals and make sure students are learning what we are trying to teach them. Content area teachers may need some assistance teaching literacy because students in middle school seem to struggle with content literacy the most, because of the shift in the type of text they are expected to read. Students are no longer learning to read, but expected to read to learn.  There is a shift from mostly narrative text to expository text: 

"The structure of middle and high school texts also presents challenges for struggling readers. Expository text is the most prevalent text structure in most middle and high school texts. In contrast with narrative text, students have had less exposure to expository text and, more important, have not been taught comprehension strategies within the context of expository text" (Jetton & Alexander, 2001).

     Again everyone needs to work together, because of these gaps in literacy instruction as students move from mostly narrative texts in elementary school to mostly expository texts in middle and high school.  These gaps need to be addressed so that students can succeed and meet the goals that have been set for them.

     When literacy instruction is based on agreed upon goals and assessments, communication of assessment data is also important.  Assessment data is important for everyone in the educational setting (including students and parents) to understand.  If students are not succeeding, people need to start talking and changes need to be made to make sure students are learning.  Assessment data will help identify gaps as mentioned above.  The problem needs to be identified and adjustments need to be made.  The problem could be in the instructional practices, the assessments, policies, or an issue with an individual student (just to name a few culprits).  Sharing good assessment data is key to continuing evolve and improve our education system and to making sure of achieving out overall goals for students, to make them positive members of our world world community who are life long learners.       

References:

H. (2015). Leading A Balanced Literacy Assessment System: Conducting A Literacy Assessment     Review. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uruFu6f-kg0

Power Writing in Content Areas

      As discussed in my earlier blog, Whose Job is it Anyway?  Teaching Content Area Literacy, all teachers are responsible for teaching students literacy.  It is not just the Language Arts teacher's job to teach students how to read and write.  Once students reach middle school, content area teachers need to be content area literacy teachers.  Content area teachers need to show students how to read and write to learn, and to read and write in a way that prepares them for college and the workforce.

 The Common Core State Standards have been developed to increase student literacy in the content areas.  There are specific standards for Grades 6-12 Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects.  For example in middle school students are expected to "Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content"  (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.1).  Content area teachers need to get their students to read and write content specific text, but how?

Content area teachers need some strategies in order to teach their students how to read and write in their disciplines.  One quick and easy strategy recommended by Fisher and Frey (2013) is Power Writing.  "Power Writing is a method for building writing fluency through brief, timed, writing events" (Fearn & Farnan, 2001).  The fact that the writings are brief (about one minute) means content area teachers can incorporate them into their lessons frequently without feeling they are sacrificing any precious class time.  Teachers can post a content area word or phrase on the board and ask students to use that in their one-minute timed writing.  Students should write as much as they can, as well as they can.  Quality should not be abandoned because of the time constraint. (Fisher and Frey, 2013).

Power Writing could be used in any content area
class.  For example in a 7th grade Earth Science class, students learn about the Rock-Cycle.  The teacher could write the word "weathering" on the board.  The students would then have one minute to write incorporating the word weathering.  When time is up, students are to count and record the number of words they have written.  Next students are to re-read what they have written and indicate any mistakes they find (spelling, grammar etc.).  The teacher would then repeat this process 2 more times throughout the lesson using words like "igneous rock" or "sediment."  Students should indicate the highest number of words written in one minute that day.  Repeated writing practice like this serves several purposes.  First, it improves writing fluency.  By tracking their word counts students will be motivated to increase number of words (Kasper-Ferguson and Moxley, 2002).  Second, students will be writing about content which means students will be thinking about content.  Students will need to understand the content in order to write about it.  Third, because students are writing about content, teachers can use Power Writings as a form of assessment.  In this example teachers can assess if students understand "weathering," "Igneous rock," and "sediment" within the Rock-Cycle.  Lastly, because students have highlighted their mistakes, teachers can look for patterns and target the most common errors.  Teachers can then create lessons to address those common errors (Fisher and Frey, 2013).Teachers can also look for errors that students do not even notice and create mini-lessons on those issues as well.  This would be a great opportunity for the Science teacher to link up with the Language Arts teacher for some cross curricular activities addressing popular student writing errors.

Power Writing is a great strategy to get a lot of bang for your buck when it comes to writing in content area classes.  It does not take a lot of time out of class because it is short.  Students have already self-corrected some mistakes and counted the number of words so, content area teachers do not need to spend hours every week grading long essays (the Language Arts Teacher's nightmare!).

Power Writing gives students an opportunity to self-assess as well.  It is difficult to write about something if you do not understand it.  Sometimes it takes putting pencil to paper to really know if you understand something. Fisher and Frey (2013) note that "We have had more than one student tell us, 'I didn't know what I thought until I wrote it down." Writing will help students organize their thinking.  Through Power Writing students will realize what they do know and what they do not know.  Their teachers will also have a quick way to see if students are grasping content. Both parties can use the Power Writing samples to adjust their learning and teaching.

References

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). A Range of Writing Across the Content Areas. Read Teach The  Reading Teacher, 67(2), 96-101. 

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Teaching Content Area Literacy

"This is a story about four brothers named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry with that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done."

-Unknown Author

                At this point in my teaching career I have a somewhat unique view on secondary school literacy. Currently I am teaching 7th and 8th grade Language Arts/Reading AND 7th and 8th grade Science. That's correct, I am a middle school Language Arts teacher AND a content area teacher.  I have seen both sides of the challenge discussed on Vanderbilt University's The IRIS Center Website (The IRIS Center, 2012).  The main challenge is that content area teachers do not think it is their job (or do not know properly how) to teach literacy skills in their given subject area AND Language Arts teachers are overwhelmed enough by the amount of content and skills they have to teach already in their own class to be bothered teaching content area literacy.  So the challenge is: whose job is it anyway?

As a middle school Language Arts teacher I can see that side of the challenge.  I am expected to teach reading comprehension skills, writing, grammar, literature etc. in five 45 minute periods per week.  I have trouble fitting all that in, never mind worrying about my students' literacy skills in their content area classes.  On the flip side, I teach Science.  I believe I have a great advantage over my content area colleagues, because of my literacy education background.  I can understand why someone whose specialty is Science education, would not be concerned with, or more likely would not be aware of, what they could do to help their students reading comprehension in Science.  As teachers it makes sense that if you specialize in a content area, it has become easy for you to read text in your area and comprehend it easily.  This can create a professional blind-spot for teachers.  Sometimes we cannot see where our students are struggling, because for us it has become second
nature.  This is why content area teachers need more training in literacy education. 

So, let's get back to our question, whose job is it to teach content area literacy?  The answer is ALL TEACHERS.  As the IRIS website states:

"Many content-area teachers believe that reading instruction is not their responsibility. They did not receive the relevant training and generally feel it is someone else’s role to teach reading skills. Although reading specialists and special educators might in fact provide instruction for students who struggle with basic reading skills such as decoding words and reading fluently, it is nevertheless important for content-area teachers to integrate literacy instruction into their classes" (The IRIS Center,2012).

All teachers need to work together to build student literacy across the board. Content area teachers need to take responsibility with Language Arts Teachers, Reading Specialists, and Special Educators.  Integrating content literacy into their instruction will help not only students' literacy but their content knowledge as well. 

Unfortunately, a lot of content area teachers have not been given the proper training to help build their students content literacy skills.  The IRIS website gives some excellent resources for content area teachers to help their students build their literacy skills.  One strategy in particular that I learned from the IRIS website is teaching vocabulary using the Frayer Model .  This is a great strategy to teach vocabulary that should be fairly easy for a teacher to implement into their instruction.  It is a much better strategy than just having students copy and memorize definitions from a glossary (which, doesn't really work according to research).

Content area teachers and Language Arts teachers need to all work together to build student literacy.  In their research on improving student literacy across content areas from elementary school through secondary school McDonald, Thornley, Staley, and Moore found that the most important thing for students is consistency: "This process has made clear that routine is a critical element of the approach and that this must extend across lessons, texts, tasks, and content areas if we are to be successful in raising achievement" (McDonald, Thornley, Staley, & Moore 2009).  Teachers need to really work together to find strategies work that work for them and their students, and make literacy skills a consistent and routine focus across the board.

References

The IRIS Center. (2012). Secondary Reading Instruction: Teaching Vocabulary and Comprehension in  the Content  Areas. Retrieved from   

            http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sec-rdng/

McDonald, T., Thornley, C., Staley, R., & Moore, D. W. (2009). The San Diego  Striving Readers' Project: Building Academic Success for Adolescent Readers.Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(8), 720-722.

Literacy Autobiography

     When I was very young my mom was a single working parent.  I spent most of my time at my grandparents’ house.  My grandmother was, and still is, an avid reader.  I remember my grandma always sitting in her big brown 1970’s recliner, with her glasses on, reading some huge book.  My grandma knew all the answers to all the questions.  I would watch Jeopardy with her, and I couldn’t even understand the questions (or was it the answers?) but my grandma knew them all.  Growing up I never understood why she wasn’t on Jeopardy and told everyone if I was going to be on Who Wants to be a Millionaire she was my number one life-line (she still is metaphorically speaking).  Simply put, my grandma was a genius.  She was smarter than anyone else I knew.  When I would ask her how she got so smart, she would always tell me she read… A LOT.  My grandma was wise, elegant, well mannered, and virtuous.  I wanted to be like her.  I wanted to read all the time just like her.   In contrast I did not want to be like my mom.  My mom did not seem, to me, to have all the qualities my grandmother had. Things must have skipped a generation.  My mom told me she “hated to read.”  That was fine, because I spent most of my time with my idol, my grandma.  Thinking back, my grandma was an excellent reading model for me, and I owe most of my success in reading and in life to her.

Me with my first teacher, Grammy

                I remember my grandma reading novels I thought were HUGE.  She especially liked mysteries and would tell me about them.  She had Reader’s Digest delivered to the house.  She had magazines like People delivered to the house.  My grandfather was a reader too.  I remember he would read the newspaper religiously.  He would always talk to my grandma and me about what he was reading in “the Journal.” 

                                    

 I remember my grandma reading to me at a very young age, definitely before I started pre-school.  My favorite book to read with my grandma was a Little Critters book named Just Grandma and Me.  The book was a little critter telling the story of a day at the beach with grandma.  I remember loving the book and especially the illustrations.  I think I liked the book because my grandma took me to Point Pleasant in the summertime, so I could relate to the story.  That had to be a book I “pretend read” with my grandma until I could really read it on my own.  I still have my original copy today.  My grandma also taught/modeled for me that books were something to be taken care of.  Bent pages and ripped covers were a no-no.  My grandma has given me books as a gift often, from when I was very young until today.  If I wanted to read it, she would buy it.  She always encouraged me to read.

I remember going into school being ahead of the other kids.  Thinking back now I know I have grandma to thank for that.  She is the only “reading teacher” that I remember from my early childhood.  I know I had reading classes early in school, but I don’t remember much about them.  I probably don’t remember that much because I was bored most of the time.  Once I was in about 4^th grade I was put in the Enrichment (gifted and talented) class and I got to read books that were more challenging for me.  Thinking back on this, I can see how important differentiating instruction is.  If it’s too hard kids don’t like it, if it’s too easy kids don’t like it.  Besides Enrichment, I also remember being motivated to read by incentive programs like Book It.  I am a competitive person, and if there was a prize to be won, I was going to try to win it.  Book It was sponsored by Pizza Hut.  If you read a certain amount of books (extra books on your own in addition to homework) and did book reports on them you would get a certificate for a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut.  I remember, once again, Grandma always taking me there for dinner to cash in my Book It certificates.  Not only was this a reward because of the pizza but because of the “just grandma and me time.”  Again, I can see how incentive programs would motivate a kid that can already read and is good at it, it may not really work for a struggling reader who “hates” reading.

            

     My grandma truly instilled a love of reading in me.  In school reading or language arts was always my favorite subject.  I am not sure if I liked reading because I was good at it, or I was good at reading because I liked it.  I think it was a little bit of both.  I remember reading for pleasure since I was young and still do today.  I remember liking to read at an age when it wasn’t considered cool.  At sixteen most people do not think reading is as cool as when they are in their thirties.  My dad still talks about once when he called me to see what I was doing.  I was in high school.  I told him I was laying in my room reading.  It was a Friday night.  He was amazed.  He always tells me he knew then I was definitely going down a different and probably better path than he took.  Somewhere around 4^th grade I LOVED to read the Goosebumps books.  I would read entire books in one day, which was a feat when you’re in 4th or 5^th grade.  I remember loving the suspense.  Almost every chapter of those books ends in a cliffhanger.  I needed to know what happened.  I still do.   I enjoy suspenseful books today.

                I also enjoyed writing from a young age and loved making up my own stories.  I remember people telling me I had a good imagination.  I’ve heard that if you want to be a better writer, read more.  I think this is true.  I feel like my imagination and writing ability grew the more I read.  My grandma would always help me with little “projects” I did like writing my own stories or making my own book in addition to my regular homework.  The only part about writing that I hated was penmanship.  In the primary grades my handwriting was awful and I remember this was my only deterrent in school and writing in general.    

             

           The teachers I really remember helping me with my literacy development were in middle school and high school.  I feel like these are the first “reading” teachers that stand out because this is when they started teaching things I might need to try harder at.  Deeper meanings were being pulled from the texts we were reading.   I had two fantastic English teachers in high school (my freshman and senior year).  I would credit the fact that I wanted to become an English teacher partly to them.  They were eccentric, funny, entertaining, enthusiast, and in my mind, brilliant.  I was never bored in their classes.  They made even learning vocabulary a theatrical event.  Reading classical texts with them seemed more "adult" and sophisticated than anything I had done in school before.  They challenged us to read between the lines, to really read for deeper meaning for the first time.  I do not remember a lot of reading in my content area classes, except for History.  I always liked History classes as well because it was like reading the stories of the past.  It was always easier for me to figure out and remember what I was reading, it was always much more difficult for me to figure out an equation in Math or Science.  I do remember being offered extra credit for reading in some Science classes, such as doing a report on books about Charles Darwin (which I did of course being an English-geek/bookworm).  

    In middle school into college is when I started having those light bulb moments in English classes.  I loved trying to solve the puzzles in literature, what was the author really trying to say?   I remember reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth in high school and loving it (it may have helped that I had already heard the famous quote "Out damned spot!" a few times from none other than Grammy).  Trying to figure out what Shakespeare was saying and everything that went behind his words was like solving a math equation for me.  This prompted me to take a few Shakespeare classes in college.  The classes were difficult at times but this was when I really started to become amazed with what someone could do with words, from the form and function to the feelings they could evoke.  

  

                One thing I have notice throughout my literacy development is that now, the older I get, the more I read on my own for informational purposes and not just pure entertainment.   Today with the internet being so easily accessible when I am interested in something or what to know something I can just pull out my iPhone.  I no longer have to go with grandma into the attic and look it up in her brown paper bag covered set of Encyclopedia Britannica.  I am still just as competitive as when I was reading books to win free personal pan pizzas.  The Good Reads app/website has inspired me to read more for pleasure as an adult.