Literacy Now

Our school district officially made the jump to the Common Core State Standards this school year. With that jump came an increased focus on vocabulary development and higher expectations for rigorous grade-level texts. In the past, students practiced vocabulary based on words pulled directly from texts that were being studied and all students were expected to learn the same words, at the same pace, in the same way. This method was clearly ineffective. Over the last eight years, the student mastery of vocabulary and reading comprehension has been declining as fewer students learn, retain, and use new vocabulary taught in the classroom.

With the increased focus on vocabulary development in Common Core, I needed a way to support student achievement and mastery of difficult and unknown words. This was not only a necessity in my regular classes but also in my Advanced Placement classes. To that end, I found vocabulary.com.

I spent the summer researching online programs that responded to student learning needs, adapted to progress, and provided a rigorous learning experience. Vocabulary.com offered everything I needed and more. I am able to track student progress, assign lists, custom build learning goals, and create class challenges.

The most effective method for my students with the program is the class challenge aspect. The students enjoy competing against me in our 100 Words a Week Challenge. Part of the success of the challenge is they are competing against me, we have to complete the same requirement. For instance, in the grade book I hold them accountable for 100 words a week. If they finish all 100 words, they get all 100 points out of 100—unless I don't complete 100 words. Then their score is 100 out of whatever number I did complete (if I complete 20 and they completed 100, they earn 100/20). This allowed them the opportunity to potentially earn bonus points and to taunt me about my progress.

My students participated in the Vocabulary.com monthly challenge and won for the month of August. The students won by mastering more words than other schools—almost 11,000 around the world—who are also working hard to build their vocabulary skills. By winning in the month of August, it made us competitors for the Vocabulary.com yearlong Vocabulary Bowl. The competition is ongoing and other schools are still welcome to register!

Competition aside, my students love the flexibility of Vocabulary.com game. They can practice words from any subject they want at any time, complete an English assignment, and prep for a biology test all at once. They like being in control. They like that they can do it anywhere. One student rides the bus to and from school and she said this keeps her busy.

I can already see an increase in their engagement with new words. They are using the words they are learning, making reference to new words, and asking questions. They like feeling successful and this program does just that for them. It makes them successful.

Jennifer Johnston is a 10-year teaching veteran at Rialto High School in Rialto, CA. She holds a bachelors degree in English Literature from Cal State San Bernardino and has a secondary teaching credential. She holds a masters degree in education from the University of LaVerne with a focus on curriculum and development.

photo credit: suswar via photopin cc

Like many of you, I try desperately to balance a variety of roles. I am a mommy and a teacher (in addition to wife, daughter, sister, friend, house keeper, cook, personal shopper, general contractor, small business owner, blogger, writer, photography dabbler, gardener, librarian, and organizer extraordinaire. Oh, and I also occasionally enjoy sleeping.)

So with that reality in mind, I have an announcement to make. Ahem.

I recently started reading for pleasure again. I will pause as you grasp the enormity of this personal triumph. I have read (almost) an entire book over the course of the last week without falling asleep after every paragraph! Huzzah! And I am loving it!

Maybe it sounds silly, but I just about forgot what it feels like to think about a book during the quiet moments of my day, to look forward to jumping back into my book as I brush my teeth or to think about quick minutes where I can sneak in another page or two. I have missed this part of myself—the reader.

Regardless of my current time-crunched reality, I consider myself an avid reader. As a child, I made weekly visits to the library with my mother and read every night before bed. I curled up with a book without being told I had to and discovered all sorts of authors and series on my own. I read with my mother, my friends, and my teachers. I read alone. Bottom line? I read a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And, if I may toot my own horn, I am a good reader. While I may not balance doing the dishes, getting to the gym, sending emails, and planning lessons all that well every day, I do manage to read emails, professional articles and books, blogs, and books to my kids all on a daily basis. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I read a lot. I love to read. I consider myself a reader. I fight for time to read.

What about those students in our class who are not reading a lot? Those who don't go to the library, read at home, have examples of avid readers in their lives and possibly only read during the time allotted to them at school? Sure, some of them will jump through the necessary hoops to be considered "proficient" and some of them will not. But fast forward a few years, when all the tests are behind them, are those same kids still reading? They might be proficient but are they really reading? Do they fight for reading time, wonder about topics they care about, imagine the characters from their books or balance a variety of texts each day? Are they readers?

The great Donalynn Miller writes to us about reading volume, citing the sheer amount children read on a regular basis will not only improve their ability to read, but has the potential to instill a true love of reading. Isn't this the goal? Think about your day, are you providing your students with enough time to feel what it is like to truly sink into their reading and linger in a book? Are our classrooms centered around developing a love of reading and the habits of a true reader? Do we sneak in extra reading minutes, extra read-alouds, extra time to chat about books because we just can't help ourselves? Or are we dutifully and mechanically checking a box, taking care to ensure our students have read the prescribed number of minutes a day?

I know most of you value the importance of developing true readers who have an active reading life. But, if you take a hard look at your day, is that core value reflected in your daily schedule and the way you use time in your classroom?

Despite being asked to, we can't do it all. We really can't do it all in a single school day. However, across the weeks and months, we can be sure that our time in the classroom reflects what we care about most as teachers. How are you ensuring that your current lovelies will grow to be future nerdlies who continue to triumph as readers?

Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. She's the author of the upcoming Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name.

This summer I heard about the International Reading Association’s partnership with NASA in which they highlight and promote the International Literacy Day. While reading IRA’s activity kit for the literacy event, cross-curricular projects caught my eye, such challenges can provide a great way for teachers to incorporate reading and writing into their classroom. As a teacher I am always trying to get the most bang out of each minute students spend in the classroom.
The literacy day event is one of those great bang-for-your-buck events. Particularly because it falls in early September, that time of the school year when you are looking to build independent reading and writing stamina. By adding great real-world importance to our daily reading and writing activities, the students put a great emphasis on the learning process and incorporate the lesson that much easily. Any way to highlight reading and writing this early in the year is a win, so I signed my class up for the ILD activity kit.

After accepting the challenge, my first task is to see what resources I can bring to bear for my students. Typically, I reach out my families as well as blog about the upcoming challenge. In order to reach the widest audience, I often tie my blogging into my Facebook and Twitter accounts to spread the word.
For this year’s International Literacy Day this approach worked wonders, a parent in my class responded to inform me that astronaut Paul Lockhart was a personal friend. Of course Mr. Lockhart would be the perfect person to celebrate with if our class could keep up with the challenge for 60 days.

Starting with the finish in mind, I made a semantic map brainstorming possibilities to keep the momentum going during the campaign, including the ILD14 Pinterest page and the IRA activity kit. Then, I examined the resources in my classroom and school that would be good additions. My school makes iPads available, so I decided to gradually release apps promoting authentic reading and writing as well. Free apps like Croak It, Chatter Pix Kids and Pic Collage greatly help.

I searched for authors I could “bring” electronically into the classroom to help foster literacy and found two great authors willing to assist with both writing and reading. Max Kornell and Jennifer Ward provided an ideal environment for my eager learners. Both authors focused on the writing process and highlighted the inspirations for their stories. Max’s session told us the story how he gathers ideas from his family. Jennifer’s session lead us on a virtual tour of her backyard where she told us that she watched animals closely to get ideas for her nonfiction and fiction books. That both authors discussed the difficulties of the writing process and helped all of my students to recognize the writing process is, at times, a difficult process and persevering through the difficulties has merit.

A number of days into the ILD challenge, I am able to recognize the importance of learning which happens outside of my classroom. One example of this organic learning comes from our third grade class (a class buddied with my primer class). During our first buddying experiences we discussed how animals interact in their environment. The students took to the lesson given by their peers and promptly headed to the library to check out books on their animals of interest. Not only did the students come back with a book on their animal they insisted on reading the book in that day’s reading workshop.

I want to encourage any educator to sign up for this challenge. You will simply be amazed at the enthusiasm and engagement that comes with fostering reading and writing skills.

Allison Hogan is a primer teacher at The Episcopal School of Dallas in Texas where she teaches kindergarten and first grade. She holds a bachelors in communications from the University of North Florida and a graduate degree in education from Southern Methodist University where she specialized in reading and English as a Second Language. She has been recognized as a Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader and a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future. She can be found on Twitter at @AllisonHoganESD or @PrimerESD.

Brown Girl Dreaming. (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014)
By Jacqueline Woodson
Grades: 5-12

Brown Girl Dreaming is Woodson’s memoir in verse of her early life. However, it is so much more than this—it is the record of how a young girl discovers her voice through writing and grows to become a beloved author for children and young adults. Later, she uses her voice to reach out to others and to speak for the underrepresented.

Woodson starts from her birth and traces her family and life up through fifth grade, when her teacher Ms. Vivo says to her, “You’re a writer.” Although she was born in Ohio, Woodson didn’t spend much time there, but rather her life was punctuated by years, and later summers, in South Carolina with her grandparents and life in New York City. Her time in Greenville, SC, brings her face-to-face with the civil rights movement and life in the post-Jim Crow south. Life in the North, in New York City, brings Woodson experiences of diversity, including a Puerto Rican best friend, Maria.

Woodson writes of her brothers and sister, her grandparents, her aunts and uncle, her mother and her father, who has not been a part of the family since she was very young. She tells of her time spent in Kingdom Hall and going from door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness spreading the message of salvation. Woodson shares her struggles with reading and the comparisons made between her and her sister, who was an avid reader. She reveals how the telling of stories or the creation of songs came to her easily and how she felt a comfort and rightness in the space between the words she put together.

Cross-Curricular Connections: Social Studies/History, Geography, Biology

Ideas for Classroom Use:

The “Roots” of Stories in Life Experiences

Readers of Brown Girl Dreaming who are familiar with Woodson’s books will make many connections between her life and the experiences described in many of her books. Woodson states on her website, “My work is not always physically autobiographical. But it is always emotionally autobiographical—every feeling my characters have had is a feeling I have had. The small and big moments in my life aren’t necessarily my life once they reach the pages” She even provides examples of three books, Locomotion, Coming On Home Soon, and Behind You, that are “emotionally autobiographical,” with explanation on how.

In this activity, gather as many of Woodson’s picturebooks as possible (We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past, The Other Side, Our Gracie Aunt, Visiting Day, Pecan Pie Baby, This is the Rope: A Story From the Great Migration) and ask students to identify the “roots” of the books in Brown Girl Dreaming. A list of potential picturebooks to use in this activity are provided below. As an extension, ask students to look at their own lives and what experiences could serve as the “roots” of stories for them.

The Origin of Names

In the poem, “A Girl Named Jack,” Woodson explains why she was named Jacqueline. Her father’s name was Jack and he wanted to name his second daughter after himself. Woodson’s mother resisted Jack or Jackie and wrote in Jacqueline on her birth certificate. In this activity, students will research the origin of their own names by asking family members how they came to be named as they were. Students should be encouraged to talk to several family members as the viewpoints and stories may vary. Students can then write a poem or a story about their own name.

The Impact of “History”

Throughout Brown Girl Dreaming Woodson references historic events and figures that parallel and impact her life. The possibilities of this activity are numerous and can be expanded or contracted based on need and desired outcome.

• Woodson’s Timeline: Students can create a timeline of Woodson’s life along with the historic events and figures she mentions in Brown Girl Dreaming. This can be extended by having students add additional historic events to the timeline. Students can also write about the impact of these events and people on Woodson’s life as evidenced in Brown Girl Dreaming, other sources or as speculated.

• Personal Timeline: Students can create a personal timeline that features events in their life as well as important events and people during their lifetime. This can be extended by having students select some events or people to write about in regards to the impact on their lives.

• Researching Historic Events or People: Students can be divided into groups and assigned people or events mentioned by Woodson in Brown Girl Dreaming to research. To extend the use of timelines, one can be created for an historic figure or event tracing how the person came to be “historic” or what led up to an event.

Family Features

Several times in Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson refers to physical or personality characteristics shared by family members. For example, the gap between front teeth shared by many in her family, including Woodson and her younger brother, Roman. In this activity, have students trace a physical or personality trait amongst family members. For older students, this could be used in a biology class to discuss genetics.

Family Map

Woodson describes a great deal of traveling between parts of her family, particularly between New York City and Greenville, SC. In this activity, students can create a map of Woodson’s family instead of a family tree, which Woodson already provides at the beginning of Brown Girl Dreaming. This activity could be extended by having students create their own family maps.

Name Graffiti

In the poem “Graffiti,” Woodson describes getting caught by her uncle as she starts to spray paint her name on a wall. She describes how graffiti names don’t have to be your real name and how they are often stylized to represent personalities. In this activity, students can create their own graffiti “tags” that represent them.

Additional Resources and Activities:

Jacqueline Woodson’s Official Webpage

Woodson provides a wealth of information about herself and her books on her official webpage. She is aware many students are assigned author studies and has provided all the relevant information she can here. The pictures of Woodson at varying ages are one of many great aspects.

“Jacqueline Woodson on Being a ‘Brown Girl’ Who Dreams”

This is an NPR piece by Kat Chow for “Code Switch” and played on Morning Edition Sept. 18. Chow spent a day with Woodson and interviewed her about Brown Girl Dreaming. In addition, Chow accompanied Woodson to an author event and listeners get to hear Woodson read some of the poems from her book.

A Video Interview With Jacqueline Woodson

This is a 13-part video interview with Jacqueline Woodson. There are links to the different parts of the interview as well as a written transcript of the interview.

Aimee Rogers is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota where she is a member of the reading faculty and teaches children’s literature courses. Aimee’s research interests include how readers make meaning with graphic novels as well as representation in children’s and young adult literature. She can be reached at aimee.rogers@UND.edu.

Nakeiha Primus felt drawn to education, but studied to be an editor. After realizing shortly after college that she belonged in the classroom, she also dove deep into curriculum and now research. She presented some of her ideas at the IRA 59th Annual Conference in May when she talked about what she learned surrounding boys and literature learning. Today, she continues to work on her doctorate of education and is an assistant professor of education at a Pennsylvania college. Her research merges interests in curriculum theory, literary theory, and socio-cultural approaches to learning. Visit her blog, mid/scribble, and follow her on Twitter (@docpr1me).

How did you begin your career, and what led you to your current position?

Ahh...I guess I started my career like many educators. I was the go-to person for babysitting, tutoring, and that sort since early adolescence. I was a camp counselor/director, so I often found myself in "classrooms" of sorts. The truth is, however, I never wanted to be a teacher. I set out as an English major to be an editor one day, but even in college the lure of interacting with students never left. After college and while working with kindergarteners in a New York City afterschool program, I stopped fighting the pull and decided to begin my formal career as a teacher.

How long have you been a member of IRA? How has membership influenced your career?

I have been a member for almost five years, I think and my membership has been a tremendous asset to my career. Early on, and as a graduate student, the IRA's Teacher-As-Researcher grant allowed me to refine a dimension of my practice that hadn't always been seen as an asset. Sure, I could teach and I was effective with students, but the grant project allowed me to reflect intensely on my work in a very formal way. I learned curriculum was a type of story worth studying.  With major characters, plot twists, antagonists, and themes all interwoven into the time/space of "our class," I was able to shed light on why I made certain choices and how my students (as co-authors) influenced our learning each day. In addition, IRA has offered great resources, forums for idea exchange, and real support. The IRA membership is definitely a relational one; it allows you to connect and interact often.

What was your experience at IRA’s 2014 conference as a presenter? Had you presented in a setting like that before?

Presenting at IRA 2014 was a great experience. Though I've presented at other conferences, I was able to encourage other teachers to see their work as their expertise. Too often teachers get caught in the mire of the day-to-day and do not see what they do as worthy of serious conversation, acknowledgment, and rigorous research. I had an opportunity to "steal" (as all good teachers do) from phenomenal educators across the United States, and spend time doing nerdy things like read for pleasure. 

How have you balanced a PhD program and a career?

Balancing a career and PhD candidacy has its challenges, but because I've been blessed with administrators/colleagues who value my work and see its direct impact in my classroom, the benefits far outweigh sleep deprivation and juggling workloads. I have great family and friends who read drafts of papers or help me grade. My students eagerly volunteer "to be studied," and often ask, "When are you going to be Dr. Primus?" Each member of my support team prompt me to keep working. Because of them, I know I'll be better able to empower teachers, advocate for students, and improve teacher education.

What are you reading (personal, professional, or even children's/YA)?

 I’m currently reading Half a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Adichie) and Izzy the Indigo Fairy (Daisy Meadows) with my daughter.

What do you consider to be your proudest career moment?

Hmm. That's tough. I think my proudest moment, so far, occurred when I received an email from a former student who told me she'd just started teaching. She was in one of my first classes ever and I was so proud of her. Outside of that, any moment with the boys and Primus Hoops is a pretty good time, as well.

What advice would you give a new teacher that either you received or wish you had?

Don't ever stop looking for the moments your students teach you. Anticipate them, relish them, and thank your students for them.