immersion literacy

Let's solve world hunger: It's easier

Content Reading...Let me be clear about something.

Any solution offered to improve reading achievement scores during this era of accountability must be met with a great deal of skepticism. Whether it’s a politician or curriculum specialist who is making their case, most observations that I encounter are so off base as to be laughable. I have come to learn that the problem of reading proficiency (as measured by any standardized test) is so complex as to stump nearly everyone who dares to discuss it. Of course, I include myself as I too have struggled for years in my honest endeavors to tackle this great social and pedagogical dilemma. Why is it that kids can’t read well? Why is it that kids can’t test well?

Of course, I work in the high school ranks where the struggles are greater and the pressure to make achievement gains are more pronounced. As I begin yet another summer with my books, some quiet “thinking time,” and a training or two to attend, I have at least come closer to understanding where the problems lay (even if the solutions seem further and further out of reach). Like most matters, the debates about reading proficiency and “gains” on standardized tests are issues of definition and of degree.

What I mean is this: To determine how to solve the problem we have to agree on what the problem is. I submit that reading struggles, and therefore testing struggles, are related to four related concerns:

• Can I read the text?
• Can I read the text with the benchmark in mind?
• Can I answer a multi-step test question related to the benchmark?
• Am I motivated enough to care?

I came to these conclusions amid some recent study around Florida’s standardized test – the FCAT – that measures student abilities in reading, writing, math and science. Though all schools are different, it’s fair to say that most schools in Florida struggle mightily with the reading portion. It’s also what frustrates students and their parents the most. Why? Because everyone involved makes false (or rash) assumptions and reaches inexact (or rash) conclusions about the test’s structure and its results. It’s easy to say that if a kid doesn’t pass the reading portion that he probably can’t read and that a reading class is the obvious solution. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if the problems and solutions were that simple we would have fixed this whole thing a long time ago.

Though many students in Florida – let’s say in high school – don’t pass the reading portion the first time around, we can’t assume the problem is related to reading deficiencies. We can’t even assume that the problems are related to testing deficiencies. In fact, the struggles of any one student may be related to both or neither of those. It may be, in fact, that the kid reads just fine. He’s just doesn’t give a flip about the test or what the results mean for his or her graduation or the school’s reputation. Let me take each one of the above conclusions and explicate a bit further:

·     Can I read the text?

o    The first order of the day is to figure out if a reading problem exists – phonics, fluency maybe? If so, the solutions to remedy this problem are obvious. We certainly have a place to start. Let’s call this a “reading” problem.

·     Can I read the text with the benchmark in mind?

o    Even if a student can read at or near grade level – per a fluency measure, let’s say – it could certainly be true that he or she can’t comprehend well enough to recognize the main idea of the text or the author’s purpose in writing it. This is a more complex problem and harder to fix. Let’s refer to this as a “comprehension” problem.

·     Can I answer a multi-step test question related to the benchmark?

o    This gets even more complicated when we think about kids who certainly can read. If a student reads relatively well, and let’s say he or she can relay the main idea of a passage most of the time, we cannot assume that the same student won’t be tripped up by the challenging, multi-step questions that are found on most standardized tests. For the purposes of this commentary, let’s view this as a “testing” problem (or maybe a “thinking” problem).

·     Am I motivated enough to care?

o   This one is obvious to anyone who has been around young people, especially teenagers. Whether we’re dealing with a struggling reader or an advanced reader, motivation to do well is a part of this reading / testing conundrum. What might appear to be a reading problem to some might be fully related to the student’s unwillingness to try (which begets a series of related issues – home life, school attendance, a variety of disabilities, etc.) This is clearly a “motivation” problem that must be addressed. 

So what’s an educator to do with this mess that we find ourselves in? First, we must be honest with each other that the problem is complex and not easily solved. It’s this realization that must be considered, chewed on, debated…and owned.

It’s obvious, I think, that we have to know what the problem (or problems) are with each student – or each group of students. For example, if we find that a group of students in a reading class are struggling moreso with testing/thinking skills then with a reading deficiency then we need to address the problem that’s there, that’s real – not the one that is perceived. In fact, we should ask ourselves whether the student should be in a reading class in the first place.

I think another obvious solution is to ask more folks to help in the remediation of the skills / deficiencies addressed herein. While a reading teacher might have a great deal of confidence in improving a student’s fluency, he or she does not have to be the only one focusing on motivation or author’s purpose. That’s where our content teachers come in and it’s why we need their help if we’re going to face this reading dilemma head-on.

Whatever we do, please, please let us not be so foolish as to suggest a simple solution to this incredibly complex riddle. I know this much: We’re not going to solve this by simply using more graphic organizers. We’re not going to solve it by placing all kids in reading classes and counting on those teachers to work miracles. We’re not going to solve it by having kids practice the test over and over in hopes that something – anything -- will stick. Whatever we do, let’s agree on that much. It’s a starting point but let’s hope we can agree on that much.

Stop and Smell the Poetry

Content Area Thinking...

It was golfer Walter Hagen who first asked us to “stop and smell the flowers.”

Much as it is in life outside of school, life inside the classroom is much too rushed for my tastes. Everybody seems to be racing from one lesson to the next in an effort to “cover everything.” I’m not sure why everybody is in such a big damn hurry.

I understand that a certain amount of material must be mastered in order to proceed from one grade to the next – even from one course to the next. Still, for the most part, this is only true in courses like math and world languages as the content in those classes builds upon itself from year to year. This is certainly not the case in English, social studies, science and most elective courses (where the curriculum is more spiraled).

And still we rush. We rush as if the curriculum police might move in at any moment and whisk away those teachers who spend too much time on lesson and not enough on another.

In some parts of the country the pressure to cover more material is made more difficult with end-of-course exams that are created by the state or district. These tests tend to be content-heavy: You know, “Who fought in the War of 1812?” – that sort of thing. Of course, this should make us all quite nervous.

In an immersion literacy environment, knowing who fought in the War of 1812 is not nearly as important as knowing how to “think” about wars, conflict, nation-building, rhetoric, propaganda and revolution. Though there is some key information that an intelligent and active citizenry needs to know, so much of what we teach in schools is so specialized as to border on trivia (and not knowledge). 

I would submit that intelligence is not about how much we know. It’s about how much we know about how much we know. Let’s look at science for one example. My son, who is in second grade, has been getting a little bit of science instruction at his school. A few months ago, he told me that they were studying the different types of rocks (igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic) and he could recite with great confidence what was unique about various rock formations, etc.

Now, let’s fast forward a few months to this past week. A retired lady who likes my son a lot always brings him back a gift from her travels around the world. This time it was a couple of really cool rocks that she found along her route. There was a note attached that said they were sedimentary rocks. Of course, I asked him what that meant and, as you might have guessed, he didn’t know. “But didn’t you study that in school this year?” I asked him. “Oh, yes, but that was months ago. I don’t remember much of it anymore.”

Let’s let that sink in for a minute.

This brings me to the Carnegie unit. It’s the way high schools and colleges marry the number of classroom hours to number of credits earned. It’s all a bit absurd, really. If, for instance, a student needs one school year to master biology, he or she is in luck as that is exactly how long biology must be before we can award a “credit” in the course. But, alas, if a really bright student needs only a half a year to master biology, he or she is out of luck as biology is a year-long course and that cannot be altered. On the contrary, if a student needs more than a year to master biology, he or she again is out of luck. Everyone must master biology (and chemistry and geometry and most other core classes) in 182 days between August and June. By the way, drama and chorus are also year-long courses and are given the same amount of time to master as algebra and geometry.

This is not the time or place to call upon changes that seem out of reach – doing away with the Carnegie unit or even providing some flexibility to states or school districts to revisit how much time each course is afforded.

    Instead, my argument today is about priority. It’s about what’s possible and what really matters.

So I say we teach them to read, write and think.

In science, I say we teach them to read, write and think about science. In social studies, I say we teach them to read, write and think about history and current events. In English, why not just teach them to read, write and think? 

I’m asking this because it’s been troubling me since I first started this blog more than a year ago. In light of this, allow me to repeat some of what I pointed out in that first blog post months and months ago.

I’m reminded of a line from Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. As the ultimate scientist in wont of answers, she is sent into space in search of life among the stars. As she floats weightlessly in the darkness of space, she cannot find the words to describe her experiences. “They should have sent a poet,” she says.

Indeed, they should have sent a poet. 

I say all of this because I believe that the science of learning too often trumps the poetry of learning. It seems that we’re in such a rush to teach content, to feed information to kids, that we don’t take the time to teach students to think. We don’t see it as our first priority to teach kids to question, to reason, to defend their own thinking, to write and speak in passionate and articulate ways. That’s because most of us are teachers of our content first and teachers of all that other stuff as time permits. In fact, we are much more likely to ask students to memorize and than to theorize. I wish it were not so.

    My point is that reading, writing, thinking and speaking are life skills. The other stuff – the formulas, names and dates – are not. In fact, most of us can’t remember a tenth of what we learned in school. Today, if I need one of those names or dates, I hop on the computer and find it in seconds.

I, for one, want more for our kids. The fully learned adult can appreciate and capture what Harvard professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot describes as “the art in the development of science and the science in the making of art.” She also points out that John Dewey made a similar plea for schools to do more in support of context and deep thinking. In his classic text Art as Experience (1934), he called for education to be more artful – beautiful not merely pretty, creative not merely competent, discovery not merely mimicry.

Of course, beauty cannot be rushed. Art cannot either.

Here’s hoping we find a way to slow down a bit and find some poetry among the stars.

Read Or We Will Hurt You

Content Reading...It seems that all this emphasis on reading has created a sense that reading is an end unto itself, as if the act of reading is a cure-all for struggling readers. The idea even sounds logical: The more that struggling readers read, the better readers they will become. They might even grow to like reading, to be less reluctant. For the first time in my life as an educator, I’m suggesting that this may not be true in all cases.

            I want to be careful here. I have spent much of the past year blogging about the need to read more in all classes. I have gone on to suggest that reading more will breed better readers, build their vocabularies and improve their fluency. To be sure, studies show that struggling readers struggle because they haven’t read enough and the best remedy is to have them read more.

            In fact, the whole notion of immersion literacy calls for kids to be reading a lot, everyday, in all classes. Still, I feel like I must temper this solution in light of what I’ve seen in some classrooms and in response to an excellent essay that I just read by C.S. Lewis. This summer, I read a superb collection of essays that deals with a number of issues related to spirituality, intelligence, power and culture. The ones by C.S. Lewis are smartly written and deftly reasoned. They are the types of essays that make you question what you know, what you believe and why you believe it.

            Though most of his essays deal with faith, he often writes about the broader issues of belief and culture. In his essay entitled Lilies That Fester, Lewis covers a lot of ground (too much to discuss in one blog post) and I’m not sure that I will do justice to comment on his thinking for fear that I might have missed the point. Still, in the very least, he makes the case that doing religion (like going to church) is different than being religious (like reading your Bible and leading a Godly life). He adds that doing culture (visiting a museum to learn more about art) is different than being cultural (visiting a museum because you enjoy art). To be sure, this is a chicken-and-egg debate that is difficult to reconcile.

            Let me put it this way: Does one become cultured by first visiting the museum and later learning to appreciate what the museumholds? Or does one have to first be cultured (to appreciate art, for example) to enter the museum in the first place? More important to this discussion is this question: Does visiting the museum over and over help someone to become cultured? If so, what if I drag someone kicking and screaming into the museum every weekend for six months? Would a more cultured person emerge on the other end?

            Of course, I ask these questions because (in schools) the same can be asked about reading. We all agree that reading more will help students become more learned. But what if we drag struggling readers (or reluctant readers) into the books day after day? What if we make them read, even if every part of their being is set against it? In truth, the reading that I see in many classrooms isn’t far removed from that. Worse than that, the idea of force-feeding books to kids is really much of what we hear preached at professional trainings and conferences. Read more, read more, read more. While I cannot argue that struggling readers should read less, I do want to caution that struggling readers (in fact, all readers) should be asked to read more of what they want to read and when they want to read it.

            To put this all another way, allow me to be more pointed in my comments. I’m beginning to question reading as an assignment. Let me use my son as an example. He is 7 years old and an excellent reader. He certainly likes to read. Still, he hates doing his reading homework. Why? Because it is assigned and graded. In that setting, at the dining room table, he is no longer reading for enjoyment. He is reading for fear that he might get in trouble if he doesn’t.

            It seems like we have pushed kids to read so much and held them accountable for their reading to such a degree that our efforts sometimes make reading in school sound more like a threat and less like a promise. Allow me to loosely quote from Roland Barth’s excellent book Learning By Heart. We have turned our message from “Read or you will hurt yourself” into “Read or we will hurt you.”

I’m not pointing this out because I don’t think we should assign reading anymore. I’m not even suggesting that we read less (God, forbid). I’m just wondering aloud if there might be an alternative approach to all the higher-pressure reading assignments that make reading sound like work or something that people only do in school.

Even if we are successful in reading more and more in the content classrooms, all this progress will be for naught if we end up frustrating kids and having them view reading as nothing but a bore. Though reading something (like a textbook) that is necessary but boring is something that comes with life, so is teaching kids that reading is also something that is pleasurable.

The answer, of course, is easy. Have students read more things that they enjoy and give them time to read when no assignment is in store. Our students will be better readers as a result and they will leave us with a greater appreciation for the joy of reading. Somewhere along the way we have made reading a subject and, alas, the joy has been lost. Here’s how C.S. Lewis puts it: “Those who read poetry to improve their minds will never improve their minds by reading poetry. For the true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end. The muses will submit to no marriage of convenience.”

I say we have a lot to learn from the muses.

Thinking Otherwise About Literacy

    Content Reading...There I was the other day, strolling through the courtyard outside the science wing at my high school. I was on my way to the portables to visit some classrooms. The school was quiet, the sun was bright and the skies were clear. That’s when a group of kids exited the building with novels in their hands. They were on their way to the courtyard to read for a bit outside, enjoying the sun and their books. It was the perfect setting for a literacy lesson. As they passed me, I said: “You guys heading out to read?” “Yes,” they told me. Then I said: “English class?” “No,” several muttered. “Biology.”

Biology? A novel in biology class? I reflected for a few moments about how far we had come as a school. I ask you to stop for a moment and reflect with me. How many times have you seen a group of high school kids reading a novel in science? Now, how many times have you seen them outside, under the sun – as if the novel was the lesson? I mean, even if a content teacher dares to tackle a novel, he or she typically does so during “free reading” time or as part of some school-prescribed DROP (drop everything and read) program. In fact, I have probably never seen a teacher of any subject (other than English and reading) actually use a novel as the key ingredient to a lesson. I’m not saying that they don’t exist; I’m just saying that I’ve never seen one.

Despite our best attempts at content literacy during the past 30 years, we have seen only the occasional “read aloud” from a novel or newspaper or maybe, maybe the use a novel as an enrichment activity that is adjunct to the true lesson (which in science is typically a lab or in social studies is some sort of project or video around government or history). By the way, when I say novel, I would also include any type of creative non-fiction texts (which have excellent ties to content classrooms).

At the moment that I saw those students there, reading along with their biology teacher, I harkened back to my first days as an assistant principal. It was three years ago when I first arrived on campus and found that our school’s reading scores were so bad that we were in real danger of receiving an “F” on the state’s accountability rubric. At the time, we had received three “D” grades in a row – based largely on our poor reading scores. When I first met with our principal to discuss our steps for improvement, she talked about a school-wide reading strategy or program that could excite the staff and engage the students. To her credit, she was (and still is) a mover-and-shaker principal who is willing to try new things.

Still, I knew what she meant as we tossed around “school-wide reading” initiatives. I knew that she meant well. She mentioned the read-aloud program that had begun the year before (which I really liked), a “word of the day” sort of event on the morning announcements, or maybe a common novel that everyone in the school read. Though all of these ideas were great and certainly would help, they simply would not go far enough (or deep enough) to impact struggling readers. And the ideas that we kicked around that day were not what I call “real literacy.” They are close-to, but not quite “immersion literacy.” Why? Because none of the ideas above places literacy in the “middle” of the lesson. Again, they are examples of the “fringe literacy” that I do not support.

Let me put it this way: If there were a way to judge the amount of literacy gained – a literacy scale of some sort – as the result of any lesson, how much reading improvement would come from a 3-minute read aloud at the beginning of a class? Of course, the answer is some. By the way, I think reading aloud is an excellent way to build good reading habits, fluency, even vocabulary (especially in the earlier grades). But…what if the rest of that day’s lesson is unrelated to true literacy (such as a lab or video or poster project), then literacy ends after the opening three minutes. Of course, I understand that learning content is key to building background knowledge and that (in turn) supports literacy growth, but the primary reason we are in this mess is that kids are not reading and writing enough.   

Now take the lesson that I observed in the courtyard. The teacher and students were not just “doing literacy” as part of some artificial, school-wide initiative. It was no gimmick. They were not just reading in fear that the principal might walk in. What I saw that day was the integration of reading and writing as the primary part to the lesson itself. The students, by the way, were reading Code Orange, a book about a boy who is doing a research paper on infectious diseases and then is kidnapped by bioterrorists. It’s a fun read and the teacher was connecting it to a lesson on viruses. Of course, there are lots of ways to study viruses, many of which involve literacy and many which do not. I’m simply applauding this teacher (and the kids) for finding ways to teach and learn science and improve their reading and writing habits.

I’m not sure how long they read that day, but it was much longer than three minutes. On the literacy scale that I talked about, this novel activity would be off the charts in its ability to help kids become more literate. Of course, I called the principal to the courtyard and asked her to witness what I had just seen. As we walked away, I whispered to her: “Now that’s what I mean when I say: ‘Real literacy.’”

I can’t help but think of Roland Barth’s most excellent book Learning By Heart and his call for educators to think out of the box about the problems that we face. He quotes an old definition of educators as those who “think otherwise.” What he means is that we have to dramatically shift our paradigms if we are to dramatically change our kids. Our literacy struggles in America will not be solved by school-wide reading initiatives that are more gimmicks than they are solutions. The problems we share run much deeper than that and the solutions we seek will require all of us to think otherwise. 

What to Teach? What's the Point?

         Literacy Musings...Sometimes I’m tempted to ask every teacher and every student the same question: “So what?” The more I teach and the more I study the art and craft of teaching the more I question why we teach what we do. My latest quest for answers took me to a book that most would find terribly dense and boring: The Struggle for the American Curriculum from 1893-1958 by Herbert Kliebard. It’s a book for those curriculum nerds like me who want to understand why we teach what we teach. It’s a short history of the key curriculum changes in American secondary schools during the early 1900s.

Kliebard begs to explain why we do what we do and he names the men (very few women voices were heard in the 1920s and 30s) whose philosophies shaped what was (and is) taught in American schools. This list of thinkers includes John Dewey, G. Stanley Hall, Charles Eliot and others. While I would not recommend the book to the casual reader (it’s certainly not a page-turner), I would suggest it to anyone who is thinking about tinkering with curriculum standards in any school or district.

The text brings to light a long-standing battle over what should be taught in schools and what kinds of citizens (and thinkers) we’re trying to craft for the next generation. This relates to immersion literacy is many ways, specifically in the areas of reading and writing. It brings us back to one of the key questions surrounding content literacy in schools: What’s the point of learning all of this history, science and literature if it doesn’t serve to make us deeper thinkers and better communicators?  In other words: “So what?”

So what if I know the policy of the Jacobin party during the French Revolution? So what if I know that it was Mark Antony and not Brutus who gave the last funeral speech in Julius Caesar? If we do what Covey (and many others) ask and “begin with the end in mind” we force ourselves as curriculum leaders to wonder aloud about the things that kids are learning in school and whether they are critical to our end-goal of informed citizens who are critical thinkers and readers – a highly literate faction who can write and speak with a command of the language and a knowledge of the world around them.

Let’s make something clear. I would never advocate that young students not have an understanding the French Revolution or other key events in history. Nor would I support excluding the reading of Shakespeare from our schools. Still, I would support the exclusion of the trivial details that our students are asked to memorize for tests and I would replace all that instructional time with a greater inclusion of cross-curricular connections that help students see their studies as sense-making activities that are pieces of a “great picture.”

That phrase – “great picture” -- comes from a report that is referenced in Kliebard’s book (p. 235). In 1935, the National Council of Teachers of English issued a report titled A Correlated Curriculum in which the council members argue for greater correlations between English and other subjects. “The failure to correlate the various subjects of instruction leaves the student unaware of their connections as related parts of the scheme of life.”

Kliebard’s book also spends a great deal of time addressing the key recommendations (and squabbles) among the Committee of Ten, a group of thinkers who in 1893 issued a report that was designed to standardize what was taught in schools. In its report, the committee tackles the teaching of history and social studies and includes a number of value statements that serves to “broaden and cultivate the mind” and to “prepare the pupil in eminent degree for enlightenment and intellectual enjoyment in after years” (meaning the years after formal schooling ends) (p. 239).

Of course, most that kind of lofty thinking was rebuffed and replaced with a more pedantic list of content specific names and dates. David Snedden (1917) was one of the most outspoken critics of the “memorization of highly concentrated facts and generalizations of almost encyclopedic extent and variety.” As Kliebard puts it: “For Snedden, it proved diffcult to imagine how facts and generalizations in history would function in the future lives of students” (p. 240). Unfortunately, there were (and still are) too few David Sneddens with too little clout.

Even today, most middle schools and high schools suffer from too much teaching of too much stuff – and nearly all of it is loosely connected or disconnected from what is taught in the classroom across the hall. That is why I make my plea for teaching less stuff well. And that is why this blog exists – to provide a philosophical base for those who want to deepen their curricula and to offer a few pedagogical steps in making that happen. 

In a report issued by the Yale University faculty in 1828, the professors there made an impassioned plea for a system of education that focused on two things: “the discipline and the furniture of the mind” (original papers, 1829, p. 300). In short, they were referencing the powers of the mind to think critically and the content knowledge that was needed for students to function in society (Kliebard, p. 5). The balancing of those disparate missions continues today with the furniture winning out in most schools on most days.

            I say it’s time for a little more mental discipline whilst the furniture be paired down to only what’s necessary and the rest taken to the curb and sold at cost.

The 3 Rs -- Reading, Writing and Rigor: A Content Example

Content Area Writing and Thinking...When a teacher of social studies or science begins to view their content through a literacy lens, the blending of the 3 Rs (reading, writing and rigor) becomes a natural extension of everything they do. That is why we must move beyond literacy as an “add-on” in content classrooms. Content teachers often view literacy as something “extra” that a reading teacher, reaching coach or principal has asked them to do. That’s because a novel, magazine or writing assignment is something that is “added on” to the lessons they’ve already written (which sounds like more work for the teacher).

In an immersion literacy classroom, the lesson infuses literacy in more natural and meaningful ways. Here are our options: We can simply ask content teachers to read a novel or write a little more here and there (which would be a huge step for many teachers) or we can serve our teachers and students in more lasting ways by asking content teachers to lesson plan around the 3 Rs. In this way, literacy is not more work but is simply a different way of work.

I work in a school where the content teachers are open to new ideas around literacy, though it has taken months (even years) to convince some of them and gain their confidence. I point this out because change is difficult, especially in high schools that tend to move slowly and with much trepidation (like turning a cruise ship). If I’ve made any mistake as a literacy leader in my school (and I’ve made many of them), it’s that I’ve tried to move too quickly or endeavored to do too much. I’ve learned much from those mistakes.

Still, our steadfast efforts to infuse literacy are beginning to pay off. We are seeing more and more novels, magazines and newspapers in our content areas. We are seeing more read alouds and shared readings. We are seeing more writing of all sorts, especially perspective writing and creative writing. And we are seeing more rigor as a result. An example that I created for my social studies teachers is attached here. This is not a lesson that a teacher designed (though I have some of those as well). This is one that I designed as a training tool, to stimulate their thinking about their own lesson planning.

The attached lesson is meant to infuse the 3 Rs. It’s actually a bit over the top as a lesson but that was by design. I wanted to show teachers the myriad of possibilities that are available to them. I have been in many classrooms (including in my own school) where a social studies teacher was asking his or her students to research something (like a country or a famous person) and report out to the class in some typical way (such as making a poster or a Powerpoint presentation). I certainly have no problem with this type of assignment. Still, it’s an assignment that (on its face) is a content-driven lesson that has little ties to what I call “real literacy” or “real thinking.” Why? Because the goal of the lesson is simply to learn more about the content, about a country or a person. Again, there is not really wrong with that. It’s just a different view of things and a far cry from real literacy. In fact, it may be true that the student learns a great deal about the country (say India or France) only to forget most of what they’ve learned by the time the next unit rolls around (or by the time the next grade level rolls around).

The attached lesson goes further. It has a dual purpose: content AND literacy. The end goal is that the students learn more about the content (in this case, the United States) and more about writing. How so? By making sure that the questions related to the project are rigorous and tied to big picture objectives (“real thinking”) and that all lessons have a natural literacy tie (“real literacy”). In this case, the lesson incorporates two writing assignments. You will note that the writing assignments in this lesson are graded for BOTH content knowledge and writing ability. This is a hallmark of “real literacy” and is a key aspect of immersion literacy. Of course, this can only be done if the content teacher is comfortable with teaching writing and is well trained.

The questions presented in the attached lesson are meant to be rigorous and are intended to help students hold onto their content knowledge longer (beyond the next test). Immersion literacy is tied to curriculum mapping and any type of lesson planning that begins with the end in mind (that end being life-long learning). To me, life-specific knowledge about social studies and science is where our focus should be – like knowing about our country’s system of checks and balances or why the Middle East is such a volatile region in the world. Of course, learning to read and write and think are lasting skills as well – the bases for everything.

        The writing assignments in the attached lesson incorporate a viewpoint around literacy that is rarely found in content classrooms. 1.) The idea of grading writing for its creativity and voice (and not just for its information) and 2.) The addition of writing options that goes beyond the typical academic essay. You will note in the lesson two fresh approaches to content area writing: perspective writing and extended metaphor (or analogy). I would love to see our content teachers use these approaches more in an effort to give students a chance to show off their content knowledge and their creativity as writers.

        That’s what happens when we begin to see all learning through a literacy lens. It’s certainly a different way of work and, I think, a refreshing one.

The Teacher as Student...The Student as Teacher...

            Content Area Writing…I’m convinced that one of the reasons that content teachers shy away from writing is the fear of grading. Two issues are at hand for teachers of social studies, science and other subjects: 1.) If I assign more writing I’ve got more writing to grade and more late nights ahead of me and 2.) I have no idea how to grade the papers in the first place. Though most content teachers are quite willing to try more writing assignments with their students, they first have to overcome the above concerns or risk falling into the trap of doing more and more of the same. To be sure, there is no way that schools are going to grow student writers in profound ways without involving content teachers. That starts with asking for their help and “holding their hands” until they are comfortable with literacy as a way of work.   

The Teacher as Student: Like anything else that’s new, writing in the content areas is possible (even likely) as long as we meet all teachers halfway. I have always found teachers of all subjects open to literacy, especially writing. Their only concern is around the “types” of writing that best fit their classrooms and, even more importantly, how to “grade” the writing. Unfortunately, most teachers of social studies, science, math and electives view writing the way our students do -- as boring essays that are graded around thesis statements, spelling and grammar. I’m not sure when this happened but, somewhere along the way, we’ve stopped writing much outside of language arts classrooms and we’ve nearly done away with writing that isn’t a 5-paragraph essay or research paper. Worse yet, most of the writings that I see in schools today are graded on structural and mechanical items like: length of the paper, thesis statements, spelling, grammar, and (gasp!) notecards. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t want our students to turn in papers that are littered with spelling mistakes. I also value a well written thesis statement. Still, there is more to writing than that, right? Where’s the style? Where’s the nuance? Where’s the voice? Is anyone valuing that anymore?

As a way of changing the way teachers view writing, I would ask that all teachers consider adding a variety of writing assignments to their classrooms (including creative writing) and to grade writing with a much wider lens. To this end, I’ve worked with a number of colleagues in my school to develop a new rubric that outlines what we “value” in good writing – with a little more emphasis on “voice” and “word choice” and little less concern for number of paragraphs and mechanics. Why? So we might help our students to become more confident, stylistic writers (which at present they are not). That rubric is attached here for your perusal. Keep in mind that the rubric is a working document and it may soon change (again). We’ve already tinkered with it dozens of times. While I’m not suggesting that having a rubric makes a student a better writer, it does create a common “language” that our students and teachers can use to talk about writing. A shorter, half-page version is attached here. It’s a statement about what we value with regards to writing. It also is the beginning of “teaching” content teachers about what we value about writing. At my school, I hope we can use the rubric as a training tool with teachers to show them that there’s more to good writing than spelling and mechanics.

The Student as Teacher: Of course, this conversation with teachers about writing must (at some point) lead to a conversation with students about writing. If not, we’re just wasting our time. So what does that look like? Like many writing coaches, I propose that we teach students in the only surefire way we know: through modeling. Once we help all teachers become more confident “graders” (or, more accurately, critics”) of writing, we can help students in the same way. Students are quick to grasp the concepts of voice and tone and word choice when we “show them” what that looks like. Instead of having the teacher grade each paper individually, I suggest that we show students examples of good writing and having them edit (or grade) their own papers until they become their own teachers (their own editors). In the end, the students become lifelong learners when they become their own critics. It’s the only way I’ve seen it work. And, trust me, I’ve seen it work.

Practical Grammar: An Example for Content Teachers

Content Area Writing…Grammar is often a dirty word, especially among content teachers. It’s not that we don’t all agree that students should write in proper mechanical forms and with adequate grammatical structures, it’s more that the teaching of grammar is typically so rote and dry that content teachers avoid it at all costs. I certainly don’t blame them, especially if they view grammar as the workbook exercises that many students are exposed to in language arts classrooms.

While I offer this advice at great risk to my own safety, here it goes: I believe it’s imperative that all teachers (no matter the discipline) introduce students to certain grammatical truths that will help young people to become better thinkers and writers for all time. One of those practical grammatical applications is around parts of speech and the roles they play in helping students add detail and voice to their papers.

While many content teachers who teach writing ask their students to add “detail,” they are typically referring only to evidence or artifacts as a way of adding that detail. For example, a social studies teacher who is teaching American History may want his or her students to write a paper about a famous battle. The “details” that he or she are looking for are likely the dates and names surrounding the battle, the statistics about the soldiers and numbers of deaths, the key factors that led to victory or defeat, etc. While those items may help the social studies teacher determine whether or not the student has learned social studies, there is no (or little) connection between knowing that information and good “writing.” What’s missing in papers like these is “voice.” It’s the thing that’s missing in most academic papers. It’s the reason that most of the papers in American History or any class all sound the same.

One practical way of adding “voice” and detail in any paper, for any subject, is with strong nouns and verbs. I emphasize nouns and verbs because most people think of adjectives as the most obvious way to add detail. This is a common mistake.

For example, a student might write: “The battle at Appomattox was one of the important events of all time. It ended with General Lee and General Grant meeting to discuss the terms of surrender.”

There is nothing wrong with those statements. They are even slightly interesting. Still, I’m not spellbound as I read them. As a teacher of writing (and not just content) I might ask the student above to add even more “detail.” The student will typically do so in one of two ways: 1.) By adding more facts or maybe even an anecdote or 2.) By adding adjectives.

If he or she adds adjectives, the above sentence might read something like this: “The long and brutal battle at Appomattox was one of the most important and compelling events of all time. It ended with General Lee and General Grant meeting to discuss the long-sought terms of surrender.” Again, there is nothing wrong with these statements and the adjectives certainly help.

Still, if you carry this technique through to the end, you will find that adding more and more adjectives will often add words without adding detail. Wordiness, by the way, is one of the key weaknesses in student writing. The last thing we want students to do is add words simply for the sake of adding words.

That’s why I join with other writing coaches in suggesting a third way to add good detail and voice: 3.) By adding stronger nouns and verbs. For any teacher of writing, this is not new information. Still, most teachers rarely focus on it (even English teachers). That’s too bad.

One of my favorite writing coaches is Barry Lane, author of Reviser’s Toolbox and other great texts. He makes the case for strong nouns and verbs by using the following example from a student: “I really, really hate school lunches because they are just so disgusting and gross.” Notice how the “detail” of this sentence above is built by adding more adjectives (disgusting, gross) and adverbs (really, really). The problem is this: The sentence is not detailed. It’s just wordy. Notice that using “really, really” doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know, especially since hate is already a word that means “strong dislike” even without the “really, really” adverbs added on. The same can be said for the adjectives “disgusting” and “gross.”  Since the two adjectives mean pretty much the same thing, using TWO words instead of one doesn’t add detail as much as they add words.

Lane improves the sentence by using stronger verbs and more specific nouns as follows: “I don’t eat stale cornbread, ravioli stuff with gray mystery meat, powdered mashed potatoes, doughy pizza, beet cubes, army beans that look like they’ve been through one too many battles, and yellowing vanilla pudding with gobs of cool whip which coat the roof of your mouth like latex paint (p. 54).” Obviously, this sentence is much more interesting than the one in the previous paragraph. One of the key learnings from this example is that “specifics” are critical to good writing. We don’t say that the cowboys were wearing “skin-tight jeans” when we can say that they were wearing “skin-tight Levis.” We don’t say that the widow “walked” through the cemetery when we can say that she “strolled” or “sauntered” away from the crooked gravestone. Or, in the above example, we don’t say “paint” or even “yellow paint” when we can say “latex paint.”

I’ll be sure to explicate this more in future posts, but let me say that this is not a technique that should be reserved only for English teachers and fiction writers. Content teachers can teach this simple technique by modeling for their kids how to edit their own writing in search of stronger verbs and nouns. It isn’t even difficult and should never be confused with exercises in a grammar workbook.

In closing, let’s revisit the social studies assignment about the battle at Appomattox. Here’s how good the sentence could be with stronger verbs and nouns. “The carnage at Appomattox complete. One of the nation’s bloodiest conflicts reached its close as death wafted into the mid-day air.  It ended with General Lee and General Grant, both men weak and exhausted, huddled in close proximity in the house of Wilmer McLean. After two and a half hours, the surrender terms were penned. The war was over.”

The Great Conversation...Continued

Literacy Musings...In the waning months of 1951 a collection of the country’s great intellectuals, mostly men, gathered in book-filled rooms on the campus of the University of Chicago to join in a conversation that has been ongoing since mankind first began asking questions. What do we want to know? What do we need to know? What does it mean to be learned?     

     Those men were compiling a collection of classical readings that they presented as the Great Books approach to learning, a liberal arts education that has endured throughout the history of Western culture. The idea of reading the great writers and discussing their common themes and understandings is not new. Many universities still embrace this approach. Others have ridiculed the idea as an antiquated method whose time has passed.
       

    Those men titled their collection The Great Conversation. You can find the complete collection in many libraries, including my own. As for me, I’ve spent my summer reading Machiavelli and Hobbes in a desperate attempt to fill in the large gaps in my learning. Though I’m not suggesting herein that we completely embrace a Great Books approach in our middle and high schools, I am making the case that we have much to learn from these works. These great writers have all but disappeared from our schools. Even when they are included in our textbooks, we get only a small excerpt or a short summary of their thoughts. As an English teacher for 10 years, I certainly exposed my students to some of those great writers – Shakespeare, Swift, Milton and Melville to name a few. Still, there are dozens of other writers who my students have never read, and never will.

    In the content areas of social studies, science and math, we almost never see these thinkers in play. Yes, we study Newton’s laws but we don’t read Newton. We study political and economic frameworks but we don’t read John Locke or Adam Smith. We teach math concepts and terms but we rarely study the writings of Pascal or Einstein. That’s probably because those writers are not found on standardized tests.

The editor of this impressive collection was Robert Maynard Hutchins, the former president and chancellor of the University of  Chicago. By the way, Hutchins became president of that prestigious school when he was only 30 years old. In the preface, he writes: “We are as concerned as anybody else at the headlong plunge into the abyss that Western civilization seems to be taking.”  And then he adds: “Adults have come to lead lives comparatively rich in material comforts and very poor in moral, intellectual, and spiritual tone.”

He goes on to provide a rationale for a type of schooling that asks more questions than it answers. He warns about an educational philosophy that rejects the older books for the newer ones, writes off the answers of the past as antiquarian and irrelevant and values only that which is modern and trendy.

“We do not think that these books are the only books worth reading. We think that these books shed some light on all of our basic problems, and that it is folly to do without any light we can get.”

What Hutchins is getting at is a broader sense of knowing that isn’t specific to today, one that refrains from the episodic and reactionary curricula that dominates our modern classrooms. He is talking about knowing yourself better by first knowing those who came before you. He is talking about building on what those thinkers have to share and then adding your own voice to this Great Conversation.

To learn to read, think and write is to learn the habits of mind that help our young people do well on standardized tests but also help them when they leave us, when they are without a pencil and a bubble sheet. Those who are concerned that American adults today are uninspired and uninformed should help us to change our schools so that we create young people who can do more than pass standardized tests. Under the right circumstances, we can develop our young persons so they grow up wondering about things, challenging our mandates and forcing change.

Hutchins writes: “A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but they can be bamboozled.”

Shakespeare and others have warned us about this many times. In fact, I’m reminded of the great funeral speeches in Julius Caesar as the townspeople gather and then are easily swayed first by Brutus and then by Mark Antony. They are quick to believe all that these great orators are telling them – mindlessly supporting the man who speaks the most eloquently and, well, last.

Let it be said here that I don’t subscribe to reading the Great Books (or any collection of books) as a panacea. In fact, I don’t even agree with the books that are named on many lists of Great Books. What I’m selling is an idea that reading things other than textbooks are critical to understanding the world around us better – necessary for understanding ourselves better. To exclude the Great Books from our current school conversation is to fashion ourselves “know-it-alls,” more modern than they, smarter than they. I call it the hubris of the present.

To talk among ourselves as if our problems are unique to our times and as though we have little to gain from those who preceded us is naïve in the most dangerous of ways. We are not the only participants in this conversation. Many have preceded us and, let us be clear, they are still talking to us today.  

If you listen closely, it’s a conversation with Aristotle and Copernicus, Newton and Freud, Descartes and Pascal. It’s a conversation with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Cervantes and Melville. It’s also a conversation with Gwedolyn Brooks and Sandra Cisneros and those who we have not yet met.

Whatever you think of those men in 1951 you cannot deny the nobility of their efforts to challenge our way of thinking, to clarify our path to knowing. And you cannot deny that others were there with them during those long days at the University of  Chicago. Virgil was there, and Plutarch and Dante as well. They were there then, just as sure as they are with us today.

Knowing Words vs. Matching Words

Content Vocabulary…When we survey the literacy landscape from the broadest of perspectives, I would argue that vocabulary development is the area that we have failed our students the most. The good news is that it may be the area that is most correctable. Strangely, I don’t blame teachers as the research has taken a long time to catch up to the classroom. When I started teaching 15 years ago, I was never taught about the excellent vocabulary practices that were available to me. In fact, in most of my 10 years as a teacher, I delivered vocabulary instruction like most other teachers. I gave students a list of words on Monday (usually 10 words) and quizzed them on Fridays. I asked students to look up words in the dictionaries, asked them to memorize dictionary definitions and asked them on Fridays to match those definitions to words, complete simple sentences, etc. You get the picture.

Though I was an English teacher, the picture I just painted was (and still is) pretty much the same in other content and electives areas: A weekly list of content vocabulary words, glossary definitions, matching quizzes, etc. To do this day, I have to report that theory and practice are still far apart on vocabulary best practices. Still, we have begun to see the work of the researchers find some favor with teachers as we all search for the answers to the vocabulary gap.

For me (and many others), the work of Isabel Beck from the University of Pittsburgh is among the most exciting in terms of vocabulary development. One of her basic premises is teaching fewer words at greater depths. I couldn’t agree more. Whatever words we’re teaching kids (and that’s an issue for another day), we can either teach kids to memorize them for the test or we can teach them to retain the words for life. Of course, I know that the entire notion of teaching students to “retain” words is much, much harder in practice than it is in theory. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Still, I agree wholly with those who say we should be teaching kids fewer words and teaching them in more lasting ways. Strangely, a good place to start is at the end – with our tests and quizzes. If we consider vocabulary instruction from a “backwards design” model, we would think this way: What we ask students to do on vocabulary tests and quizzes dictates how we teach them the words throughout the week. To this end, I implore all teachers to revisit how they test students as it relates to vocabulary and, in turn, how students interact with content vocabulary throughout the week.

The attached vocabulary quiz is a simple example that I created for my high school faculty. To see the quiz, click here. Keep in mind that most of what I use with my teachers is respectfully borrowed from the researchers and writers I admire. Of course, you may use and adapt this example for your own use.The attached quiz is adapted from ideas espoused in Beck’s Bringing Words to Life (my favorite book on vocabulary). No text is more practical and more telling than this one. It changed the way I view vocabulary instruction and I hope that it will for you.

The attached quiz is just 10 questions and is meant to show a few creative ways that a teacher might format the questions on vocabulary assessments. I choose an English class in this example but I could have easily switched out the words with terms from science, social studies, math, business, fine arts, etc. The rules of good vocabulary instruction are the same no matter the discipline. In this example, let’s assume that an English teacher has already given her students the words and definitions for the unit (say on Monday). By the way, I would NEVER use dictionary definitions. Instead, I would encourage teachers to provide short and easy definitions for more complex words (more on this in blog posts to come). I am assuming here that the students have been working with the words throughout the week (words like proclaim, commend, profound, trudging, etc.). As a teacher, I am attempting to understand if the students really know the words – not simply if they can match the words to a dictionary definition.

Here is one question from the quiz:

Match the word in bold type to the correct situation below:

profound

a. You are deeply saddened by the death of a close relative.

b. You and a friend are bored and decide to play a video game.

This example speaks for itself. If I’m a student and I’m expected to know the word profound, I should know it in both obvious and subtle ways. In this example, I should know that profound is more closely related to the death of someone than it is to being bored on a Saturday afternoon. Being bored is not profound. Dealing with death is profound. That’s what I mean (and Beck means) by knowing words at deeper levels. By the way, we can begin to teach these tactics in schools as early as kindergarten. These types of vocabulary assessments are examples of increased classroom rigor and they help to form our students into deeper thinkers who can distinguish between subtle differences and nuance. This is what I mean by immersion literacy or real literacy.

In the end, teaching students to know words for Friday’s quiz only helps them to know them on Fridays. In fact, let’s not mistake good grades on Friday vocabulary quizzes with learning vocabulary words. There is actually very little connection. Let me put it this way: Have you ever wondered why students seem to do well on vocabulary quizzes and still have lousy vocabularies? Me too. It’s because the quizzes (and the classroom activities during the week) are not asking them to know words but to memorize words. If we keep doing that, our kids will continue to write poorly, read poorly and carry themselves in less articulate ways. That’s all I’m saying.