Literacy Now

Here in Hartselle City Schools in Alabama, it is our responsibility to prepare every student, regardless of ability. After all, college and career readiness is about more than which school or profession a student might choose after high school—it is about community readiness, too. Literacy is a key part of that.

When the state of Alabama enacted tougher standards for all students, we knew we had to change as well. The challenge was that, despite our best efforts, many of our students with special needs continued to perform about two or three grade levels behind their peers in general education.

So our district formed a reading task force for students with special needs. I served on the task force along with special education teachers from each of our six schools, and we began looking for a new intervention. Since then, we have made tremendous progress narrowing the achievement gap.

Building foundational skills

At the time we launched our task force, we were using a reading intervention program that provided instruction in word study, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, writing, listening, and speaking. Although we could see some improvements, we were missing something. After evaluating several programs, we decided to try the neuroscience-based Fast ForWord. My school, F.E. Burleson Elementary, was the first to sign up to pilot the program in our district.

We began using the online reading intervention program with our students with special needs during the 2014–2015 school year. Unlike traditional interventions, the program starts with cognitive skills including memory, attention, and processing speed. It works from the bottom up to address underlying difficulties that keep struggling readers from making progress. It also targets phonics and phonological awareness, grammar and vocabulary, listening comprehension, and following directions.

This approach resonated with me. As a psychometrist, I test a lot of children who have poor working memory skills, which directly affects their ability to learn to read. The Fast ForWord program helps build foundational skills children need to become successful readers.

When we began, we placed students on the program 30 minutes a day, three to five days a week. In one semester, we saw a 25% increase in students’ reading abilities. At the end of the year, we saw improvement in students’ ACT Aspire scores as well.

Taking a structured, intensive, multisensory approach

Two or three days a week, we also break into small groups—with a maximum of three students per group—and provide intensive intervention using the Orton–Gillingham approach to reading instruction. Students begin by reading and writing individual letters and connecting them to sounds. Then they blend these letters and sounds into syllables and words, building on these skills over time.

This is multisensory. For example, students use drill cards, letter tiles, sensory boards, hand and body motions, and songs to build their skills. Tapping into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning modalities helps students reinforce and remember what they are learning.

In addition, we use the Barton Reading and Spelling System, which uses color-coded letter tiles to help students connect sounds with letters. Like the Orton–Gillingham approach, it is a structured, sequential program using all the senses to help children make connections between sounds and words. 

Achieving measurable gains

In 2015, while many schools struggled with Alabama’s new standards, our school had gains on every benchmark and made the most improvement among schools in the Decatur area. On the ACT Aspire, which includes students with special needs (unlike Alabama’s previous standardized test), our third graders had a 22-point improvement in the percentage of proficient readers and fourth graders showed a 26-point gain.

As a result, the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS) selected F.E. Burleson Elementary to be one of 14 CLAS Banner Schools for 2015. The program recognizes schools providing outstanding services for students to serve as models for other schools.

In 2016, our students continued to achieve gains, once again improving their performance on the ACT Aspire.

Seeing the effort our students put into our programs and how much they are improving is gratifying. Our teachers are pleased, too, because students are now ready for their instruction. We are very excited about our results, and our teachers and students are looking forward to what this year holds.

Tara Hamlett is a special education teacher and psychometrist at F.E. Burleson Elementary, a Title I school in Hartselle City Schools in Alabama.  

For more than 60 years, generations of teachers have used Bloom’s Taxonomy in their planning and teaching.

The taxonomy is a means of categorizing the level of abstraction, specificity, and complexity in the questions and tasks we pose to our students. There are six levels in the taxonomy: Knowledge/Remembering,  which is the lowest level and is characterized by simple recall of facts. Next is Comprehension, which includes inference, compare and contrast tasks, and understanding information. The third level is Application, solving problems and using knowledge. Analysis asks students to look for patterns and organize parts. Synthesis is where new learning takes place, using existing knowledge and ideas to formulate new ones and to bring together knowledge and facts from different areas. The final level, Evaluation, is assessing what has been learned, including one’s own ideas.    

Although all six levels are important, my experience as a mentor teacher, plus discussions with colleagues, revealed that many teachers concentrate heavily on the first three levels (i.e., knowledge/remembering, comprehension, application), neglecting the last three (i.e., analysis, synthesis, evaluation).

This is unfortunate, because learning does not take place in the first three levels, but in the last three. One reason for this neglect is that many teachers find it difficult to incorporate the entire taxonomy into their planning and teaching. Yes, it can be difficult initially, but if we want to facilitate new learning, using all six levels is critical.

I offer here a research/writing project, suitable for fifth grade and up, that effectively incorporates all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  The following are the guidelines I gave my students.

Giraffes in Hawaii

There are giraffes in Africa but none in Hawaii. You live in Hawaii, and you’ve always loved giraffes. You decide you are going to bring giraffes to live in the wild in Hawaii, but you realize you can’t just go out and bring over a bunch of giraffes. There are many things you have to know, many questions you have to identify and answer first. Once you have the answers to your questions and the knowledge you need, you can decide whether your project will work. Here, then, is your assignment:

After researching giraffes and Hawaii, write a comprehensive report stating whether you believe healthy giraffes brought from Africa will survive in Hawaii. “Survive” here means three things: they will remain healthy, they will reproduce, and their offspring will remain healthy and reproduce.

Step 1: Make a list of all the questions you need to answer.
Step 2: Research “giraffes” and “Hawaii” to answer the questions.
Step 3: From your research, draw conclusions about the possibility of giraffes surviving in Hawaii.

Remember: There is no right or wrong answer in this assignment. You will be graded on three things: the quality and completeness of your questions, the quality of your research (these two account for half your grade), and how well you support your final conclusion, that giraffes will or will not survive in Hawaii.

Compare this kind of task with simply assigning students a report on giraffes or on Hawaii. Either one of these addresses only the first three levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, and application. True, the assignment will sharpen research skills and may add somewhat to the student’s overall body of knowledge, but it does nothing to require or even encourage original thinking. Postulating the survival of giraffes in Hawaii, however, requires students to think at all six levels of the taxonomy. They have to know, comprehend, and apply what they know, organize it, relate knowledge from different areas to help them draw conclusions and, finally, assess their conclusions. Even the first step in the assignment, making a list of questions to be answered, requires all six levels. Questions about food, climate, terrain, and predators all require a student to organize information so as to make comparisons between Africa and Hawaii.

Without question, of all the hundreds, if not thousands, of reports I’ve read as a teacher, “Giraffes in Hawaii” were the most interesting and the ones that demanded the most of my students.

David G. Gardner is an education professor at Antioch University located in Seattle, WA. 

How we approach teaching language arts writing is affected by the influence of the digital era. On the one hand, there is the unprecedented importance placed on writing as a means of connecting, sharing, and relating among people.  On the other hand, the fast-paced nature of our times often results in writing that looks more like a blurry snapshot than carefully crafted art.

It is no longer enough to teach strategies like the five-paragraph essay for writing success: an introduction, a conclusion, and three body paragraphs, connected by a general idea expressed concisely in a thesis. Students need to gain awareness and understanding about writing and their own role as writers.

To offer our students an opportunity to access their own thinking about writing and to do so in a multiage setting to garner deeper insight, we embarked on the Writing Argument Project—a multimedia exploration of the changing nature of writing.

The project

Eighth-grade language arts students and second-year college students who enrolled in Freshman Composition entered a video dialogue to produce a series of 12 short videos about the role of writing in today’s world and their own lives.

To make this project important to students, part of their overall grade was assigned to the Writing Argument Project portfolio and participation in video production. The portfolio included written reflections, video contributions, and artifacts that captured students’ attention.

Every video explored one important question related to writing. As a class, students brainstormed and selected this question, followed by discussions in smaller groups to further assess complexity and decide which specific aspect of the question to include in a video. For example, one video explored the question “What is good writing in the digital age?”Subcategories selected by groups were truth, ethics, speed, and clarity.

There was minimum direction as to how groups should produce their 20- to 30-second clips. Some groups had each member introduce his or her artifact, some groups selected a spokesperson who combined the ideas from the entire group, and some groups opted to act their ideas out. Clips were recorded by either the instructor or students and then assembled into one video that was shared with their partners.

When a video was received, it was viewed in class and discussed according to these prompts:

• How is it similar to the ideas we explored?
• What new angle/perspective does it bring?
• How is it allowing us to build our argument further?
• What question would we want to explore in the next video?

The format of short videos, without a lot of room for elaboration, encouraged students’ thinking to focus. The multiage setting added to the experience: The college students were amazed by the younger kids’ energy, enthusiasm, and fresh look on things, and the eighth graders benefited from a sense of responsibility to self and others.

Growth

As the project progressed, students were getting increasingly excited to both receive a video response from their partners and to create one of their own. Their portfolio reflections captured a shift in both groups’ dispositions towards writing (with certain similarities and differences, most likely due to their ages).

Here we have a couple examples that show how students started to identify themselves as writers in the 21st century:

“In this century almost everyone writes every day. It may be a book or an essay for school, but it’s also in the emails we send, the text messages and even just the captions on pictures for Instagram. I might not have a big role in writing in this century, but I do still have one, however small it is.”

“You don’t have to publish books or even be a gifted writer to be heard and understood. I believe that this is a very good thing—voices are being heard and just about anyone can hear them. Just as anyone can speak, anyone can listen.”

Furthermore, both groups came to the realization that writing can be a powerful tool for change in the 21st century. However, younger students attached more meaning to writing as a way to affect change than did their college counterparts. As one student recorded, “Writing is a very powerful and effective tool. It can be used for many things, such as starting a local article to bring changes to your town or city.”

College students, on the other hand, showed a larger shift in their thinking about the writer’s ability to clearly deliver a message to the reader: “This project made me think about how what I write communicates to the reader and gave me more appreciation for the art of writing: to think more, to go more in depth.”

The Outcome

The Writing Argument Project made students recognize that no matter how big or small the contribution, it matters. Whether composing an essay for a class, writing a speech to deliver to the United Nations, or simply sending a text about spaghetti noodles, their writing matters. Above all, it is their voice that matters most, and writing is a way to make that voice heard.

Arina Bokas, Ph.D., is the editor of Kids’ Standard Magazine and a faculty member at Mott Community College in Flint, MI. She is the author of Building Powerful Learning Environments: From Schools to Communities and a producer of The Future of Learning TV Series. Connect with Arina on her website. Jessica Cleland is an eighth-grade Language Arts teacher and a Culture of Thinking coordinator at Clarkston Junior High School in Michigan. She has presented at professional development conferences around the world.

Recently I took a trip to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, and some friends told me about this Polar Bear experience I just had to have while on the island. They would not tell me much about it, but the warmth with which they described this experience convinced me it was something to try.

The Polar Bear experience has been taking place for more than 60 years at the Inkwell, a beach on Martha’s Vineyard with strong African American ties. It opens the fourth of July and closes Labor Day weekend. According to the Vineyard Gazette, there are three types of Polar Bears who meet at 7:30 a.m.: swimming bears, nonswimming bears (“bear-watchers and talkers”), and the exercise bears.

I met my friends early in the morning to be an exercise Polar Bear. We walked to the Inkwell, and there were people, mostly African American women, holding hands, making their way into the water. As I approached the water, one of my friends said, “Let me hold your hand,” and we proceeded into the water to join the others.

Instantly, I felt part of the family. From holding of hands, songs, chants, and movement, to the engaging leaders who seemed to truly “see” all of us, I felt like I was part of this family.

I thought, “This is a perfect example of culturally responsive teaching that can used in classrooms all across the United States to reach all students, but especially those who have been marginalized by society and those who come from communal backgrounds such as African American and Hispanic students.”

Here are the Polar Bear lessons we can take into our classrooms:

Create community in the classroom

Oftentimes we tell students, especially high school students, to work independently. However, many of our minority students come from communal backgrounds, and we thrive and grow when we can help each other. With the Polar Bear experience, the more experienced were helping the new bears, instantly creating a sense of community. At one point, the new Polar Bears were asked to move to the middle of the circle. Being new, I was reluctant, and an older Polar Bear took my hand and went with me to the middle of the circle. Even I, a grown woman, needed this gesture to ease my anxiety.

Establish routines and rituals

People thrive off of routine, and they work in any classrooms along with norms that help students to feel they belong. Whenever I start singing, “Started from the bottom, now we’re here,” my students instantly join in and know that we would be referring to Bloom’s taxonomy. The Polar Bears sang their same songs, at the same time, and there was a sense of comfort in my next visit, because I knew exactly what to expect. Oh, the joy I felt in being able to help new Polar Bears.

Celebrate individuality

It is important that students are viewed not only as individuals but also as part of the group. It is important to celebrate differences in the classroom: culture, family dynamics, race, religion, gender, and so forth. Near the end of the Polar Bear session, there is a chant. People are called upon to call out a dance or move for the group to do. This is the part of the routine where individual personalities are highlighted and celebrated. Because a sense of community and trust was established, this was the time when people took risks and allowed their “little light shine.”

I had been on vacation and looking forward to lots of rest and relaxation, but because of the sense of community I felt at the Polar Bear experience, I got up most mornings to attend those 7:30 sessions. When we create community in our classrooms, establishment routines, and celebrate individuality, our students will continue to want to come back home—to our classrooms.

Jacqueline Stallworth is a high school English teacher in Northern Virginia and the writer of a literary blog, The Big Sea. She is also the founder of Stallworth Educational Consulting Team, a company committed to having school curriculum reflect the diverse world in which we live.

It is vital that future teachers understand research-based strategies and methods that will best serve their students, especially today, when there is a shift from how we teach a text to what text we are teaching. Literacy research has moved from a content area reading approach to a disciplinary reading approach in which strategies that are unique to specific disciplines are used to help students comprehend discipline-based texts. In fostering this shift, we must not move away from encouraging students to make connections in disciplinary literacy.

Content vs. disciplinary

Content area literacy focuses on techniques that readers use to comprehend content area texts; disciplinary literacy shifts the focus to the way that readers need to critically think, understand, or engage in the reading of a specific text to construct and convey meaning in an academic subject. Research has documented reading strategies that good readers use, and these can look similar across disciplines; however, they tend to neglect specific information necessary for discipline-specific comprehension. Consequently, literacy instruction must shift from general reading strategies to more specific ones that can be uniquely used, in order to make sense of texts in specific academic disciplines. This means that the student must read like a historian, mathematician, scientist, and book critic. 

Read like a historian

This type of reading engages students in historical inquiry through analysis and interpretation, involving critical literacy and inquiry-based learning. The strategies used in this discipline involve corroboration, analysis of multiple perspectives, questioning historical claims through evidence, determining importance, contextualizing sources, and summarizing and sequencing events.

Summaries would include the important social, political, economic causes or consequences of a historic event. Reading like a historian requires students to think critically and provide evidence from their reading. Students must be encouraged to make connections in this discipline in order to recognize how the ideas in the text connect to their experiences, beliefs, happenings in the world, and their knowledge of other texts.   

Read like a mathematician

This type of reading focuses on abstract concepts regarding numbers and space. Mathematical texts are written in compact form, containing many concepts wrapped in a sentence or paragraph. Students must learn to analyze, reason, formulate, interpret, and solve a variety of problems.

Strategies in this discipline include visualizing and conceptually understanding mathematical language, drawing conclusions and determining importance, analyzing and communicating ideas effectively, interpreting and formulating procedures, investigating the reasoning and arguments of differing opinions, transcribing detailed mathematical arguments, and evaluating data. Students must be encouraged to make connections in this discipline by relating mathematical content to real-world situations. Project-based learning and meaningful learning experiences engage students and make mathematical learning relevant to students’ lives.

Read like a scientist
Strategies in this discipline include making predictions, asking and answering questions, defining the problem, contrasting fact from opinion, reevaluating, reviewing, and reflecting. Students need to make connections in this discipline in order to engage in real-world problems and science-related issues that affect their world and other human beings. These connections empower and engage students to discuss and debate relevant issues such as global warming, access to clean water, and renewable resources.    

Read like a book critic

The study of literature involves critical literacy and analysis of texts that contain artistic uses of language and literary techniques used by authors to capture the human experience. In this discipline, elements of fiction and devices such as tone, foreshadowing, mood, and irony are explored, requiring the student to read critically in order to gain the most meaning.

The strategies used in this discipline include predicting, clarifying, drawing inferences, visualizing, analyzing text from differing viewpoints, questioning, examining story structure, leading discussions that include author’s purpose, and using summaries to identify the central issue, raise questions, identify literary approaches, and include characters’ emotional responses. Students must be encouraged to make connections in order to explore characters, scenarios, and viewpoints in an effort to explore questions involving purpose and meaning in their own lives.

Teaching literacy with a disciplinary literacy approach requires students to be immersed in the language and thinking processes of that discipline, learn the content in each discipline, and understand how and why reading and writing are used in each discipline. Connections are required in order to engage students in relevant and purposeful activities, which lead to engagement and motivation in everyday life. Engagement and motivation should remain our focuses in today’s classrooms in order to foster deeper comprehension and better learning in all disciplines.

Vickie Johnston is the program coordinator for the MEd Curriculum & Instruction Program in the College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University where she teaches literacy and teacher education courses. Karen S. DiBella is an assistant professor and director of the Reading Center at the University of Tennessee at Martin and teaches graduate and undergraduate reading methods and foundations courses, content area literacy, children's literature, and adolescent literature courses. After 14 years as an elementary and middle school language arts teacher, Cynthia Dawn Martelli is an assistant professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Culture at Florida Gulf Coast University.