Y'all. I started a Facebook fight. I didn't mean to. But the exchange just points out WHY the post was needed in the first place. Practitioners that I know - the ones that read and employ research - had some nice things to say:
... Thank you for this post...
And then things went south. One of my former students even weighed in. Ermergersh. That was cool.
This was from a former student. Pretty proud as punch of her. She's even been a Teach for America award winner.
So History of English class is NOT what teaches us how to TEACH spelling.
And I'd like to point out that Terry Howell is one of the smartest people I know. He's an engineer and has presented and published ALL OVER the WORLD! And he understands the bugaboos of spelling complexity.
And then the post below. I was going to be quiet and just let it go. Y'all - I love all of these people. I don't want to hurt their feelings or call them out. But we are perpetuating BAD pedagogy to future generations! STOP IT.
And then there's THIS: Yes. we KNOW better. Let's DO better.
Doctor: It looks like you have the flu. Google your symptoms and treatment. WebMd is a good site. Be sure to check out with the front desk.
Patient: Thank god for health insurance copays.
Telling kids to look up their misspelled words in the dictionary is the equivalent of a doctor asking you to google your symptoms. Actually it's worse. Some kids don't KNOW they misspelled the words in the first place.
People, the dictionary is NOT a spelling book. You kinda need to know how to spell to use the dang thing.
Let's have some solutions in place for kids to help them.
During Drafting Phase:
Hearing and representing sounds with slow articulation: Help kids stretch the words out slowly, chunking them into the parts that they can hear. (Sometimes, you'll realize that they don't hear the words correctly because of dialect - "probly". Then you know that their problem isn't spelling, probably.)
Placeholders: Help kids know that they can do their best to get the word started and then draw a line for the rest or circle the word so they can come back to it later.
DON'T ask them to spell everything correctly while drafting. DON'T. Let them get their ideas on the paper first.
During the Editing Stage:
Conference with the child to see discover their most persistent patterns of errors. Help them know the "rule" so they can know how to fix it. Let them focus on mastering that one rule and show you their evidence.
Help the kids learn how to slow track through the whole word - beginning to end - to make sure all the sounds are there. Sometimes it helps to do this starting with the last word and reading backwards.
Teach kids to ratiocinate for the 8 basic spelling rules with codes and solutions. These lessons usually come with a list of exceptions that they can look for.
One of the things you have been concerned about is student
engagement with your content. The best way to do that is to select strategies
that create opportunities for 50%+ of the students to be involved cognitively
or verbally at one time.
Traditional questioning involves the teacher posing a
question to the class, calling on one student, and then evaluating the answer.
In a class of 30, the percentage of engagement for that strategy would be a
very low engagement rate. I don't do math. Sorry.
Let’s eliminate that call and response model and experiment
with these 5 basic protocols. A good rule of thumb is to use one of these
strategies every 10 minutes.
Process Partners:(50% engagement)
Step One: Have students complete the front of the folder with interesting facts
about themselves. Step Two: Have students open the folder and select
partners for each type of question.They share the fun fact and write the name of the partner they will
talk with when you ask for that type of question. You sign your name too.
Step Three: Pause your instruction periodically to pose questions to
students. Have them get up out of their desks and meet with their partners
to discuss. Step Four: Debrief the discussions with the whole class to
reteach, refine, or extend their responses.
Think Pair Share: (50% engagement)
Students think about their response to a question, discuss answers in
pairs, and then share their own or their partner’s answers with the class.
Think-Pair-Square is an adaptation where students share with their team rather
than the whole class. (This is a Kagan stragegy.)
Talking Chips (25-50% engagement):
Get some poker chips or tokens. Students receive a certain number of
chips. Students place their chips in the center each time they talk. They
cannot speak again until all chips are in the center and redistributed to
the members of the class or group. (This is a Kagan stragegy.)
Numbered Heads Together: (25-50%
Engagement) Students huddle to make sure all can respond to a question. A
number is called. The student with that number responds. (Groups of Four.
You call the number 1-4 first. Those kids stand. They can check with group
members to make sure they can answer. Then you call the group number and
that person answers. Keeps all kids thinking.) An adaptation is Paired Heads Together: Students in
pairs huddle to make sure they can both respond. An A or B is called; the
student with that letter responds. Another adaptation is Traveling Heads Together: Students
in Numbered Heads travel to a new team to share a response. For example,
you call a 1. All the 1’s have to go to a new group to explain their idea.(This is a Kagan Strategy.)
Option: If you HATE talking chips,
try this one: Inside Outside Circle:
(50% engagement)Students
sit in concentric circles face to face. A teacher asks a question, or asks
students to read or write something. They work with that partner to
complete the task. Then students rotate. (This is a Kagan Strategy too.)
Option: don’t forget the
Lead4Ward
app for quickchecks. Those are good too. The engagement rate depends on
how you employ the questions.
Look
at the Instructional Strategies Playlist for ideas. See attached. I’d say
that ONE of these per day would transform your classrooms and the depth
of instruction. https://lead4ward.com/playlists/
Facebook counts as professional development. Right? I was scrolling through the other night and this video of Roy Wood Jr. performing on Jimmy Fallen comes up. I give it a listen. I'd been working with some students about their expository and persuasive essays. They were having a hard time with elaboration and development of ideas. The teacher employed a pretty common strategy - use a personal example, give an example from history, or include something from a book or movie. Well, the kids did that. They even wrote them down on their prewrting graphic organizers. On the drafts, it lasted about one sentence. Didn't quite count as a fully developed reason, point, paragraph, whatever. Just turned into a list. But Roy Wood? Look what he does to develop his ideas for this comedy routine. Oh, he gives a personal example and examples from the news... but what he does inside those examples shows the true genius of elaboration and explanation.
Funny stuff. Part of what makes it funny is the organizational strategy of comparison and contrast. Part of what makes it funny is the call back to the implied racism of cops at the end. (Not that racism is funny. At all. But call back and framing are good strategies for conclusions.) And part of what makes it funny is all the details he adds. Can you name all the moves this comedic genius makes to develop his ideas within the examples? (I took his text from the closed captions on YouTube and added paragraphing, some punctuation, and a tagline.)
I have a child. I have a child:he's two, and I love him, but I have now found out
that the feeling is not mutual. Took this boy to a fire station. He run off; start
kicking it with all the firefighters. I get it now; I get why cops don't like
firefighters. They got all this charisma, firefighters. They got all this
charisma. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. This is how much we love
firefighters.
Firefighters get the same amount of hero love as cops, but none of
the scrutiny. No sign of -- you've never looked at a firefighter and wondered if he's one
of the good ones. It's never happened. Hey…you want to be a good cop? You got
to hand out free ice cream. You got to go to the hood and dance with children. You
want to be a good firefighter, all you got to do is take your shirt off and make
a calendar. That's it. You win the game. You can't be cooler than a
firefighter.
Only person cooler than a firefighter is a forest firefighter. That's
next level, 'cause they ain't got no equipment. They just out in the woods with
a chainsaw and a shovel. That's all they have. A chainsaw and a shovel,
chopping trees -- It's basically CrossFit. That's what that job is. It's the X
Games of firefighting. Like a forest fighter would say to a regular firefighter:
“Oh, you like fighting fire? Well, can you do it without a truck or water?” And
if that doesn't work, the only thing the forest firefighters have as backup is
a helicopter flying overhead just drizzling something on top of the fire. And
I'm sure --I'm sure it's doing something. I'm sure it's helping; but I'm watching
from the house, and I see that helicopter with the bucket, and it drizzles. I'm
like, “That didn't do anything at all. You need more helicopters.”
Only person cooler than a forest firefighter is a volunteer
firefighter. That's the next level,
'cause they ain't getting no money. No money. To just fight fire on
the side. They already have a job. They have a job; and then every now and
then, "Hey, man, I'll be at work, but let me know if something
burning. I'm happy to swing by." Who
you know run into a burning building as a side hustle? You've got to respect
volunteer firefighters. Everybody loves volunteer firefighters. Yeah.
Nobody loves a volunteer police officer. In fact, there's nothing
more scarier than a volunteer police -- Even the police don't trust a volunteer
-- That's why they call them vigilantes. I have two cops in my family, and I
know that one advantage that cops for sure have is that they get to do their
job off duty.
Off-duty cops. Off-duty cops -- that's the only time you hear
somebody's occupation inserted into a news story. You do something amazing, and
it's one of us, we're just a regular --
you're just a good Samaritan. You ain't no off-duty accountant. But if you're a cop, and
you're a cop when you didn't have to be a cop, you're now an off-duty cop. And
it's always a superhero story from an off-duty -- "In other news today, an
off-duty police officer, he pulled a school bus from a tornado by himself.The
tornado has been taken into custody." Off-duty cops, 'cause cop is the
only hero job that you can do without
equipment. All you need to be a cop is courage.
You can be an off-duty firefighter. Absolutely. You can be an
off-duty firefighter. Pull up to the fire. But if you do not have your
equipment, you are just a person standing outside of a fire. You are a
bystander. That is what you are right now. You are a bystander. You have no
truck. You have no water. You at the wrong fire. You should be in the
forest.
I get it. I get why these cops are jealous of firefighters, man. You
got all this police reform going on. There hasn't been a single firefighter
misconduct video. No firefighter misconduct. Plus, as a firefighter, it's got
to be hard to be prejudiced as a firefighter. Half your job in the smoke: you
can't see who you're saving. You don't know. If you a firefighter, you trying
to be prejudiced, that means you got to pat around --you got to listen for
race. You got to hear it.
You got to say -- "Fire Department, call out. Fire
Department, you in here? Fire Department --"
"I'm over here, cuz. Save me, bruh."
"This floor is all clear, headed upstairs.”
Thank you to the first
responders.
For more, go to
roywoodjr.com, everybody.
You see, what I find is that teachers and test taking strategy suggestions are really good as suggesting shallow, formulaic responses to developing ideas. But when it comes down to it, list making really doesn't work. Roy's routine would NOT have been funny if he'd simply listed examples.
Look back at that paragraph about the forest fighter. Let's NAME what he did as a comedic writer:
Only person cooler than a
firefighter is a forest firefighter. - establishes acontrast
That's next level - use of a colloquial reference to gaming to quantify the contrast
'cause they ain't got no
equipment - gives a reason for the "cooler" contrast
They just out in the woods
with a chainsaw and a shovel - specifically labels the types of common equipment they have and names the setting
That's all they have - emphasizes the insufficiency of the equipment
A chainsaw and a shovel,
chopping trees - provides imagery for the reader to visualize; specifically repeats the names of the tools
It's basically CrossFit - gives a real world analogy that his audience would connect to of how strenuous this work is
That's what that job is. uses repetition, varies sentence length for emphasis
It's the X Games of
firefighting - uses another cultural real world reference to compare how strenuous the work is - and how "out there" these kind of firefighters are.
Like a forest fighter would
say to a regular firefighter: sets up an imaginary dialogue
Oh, you like fighting fire?
Well, can you do it without a truck or water?” has the forest fighter issue a challenge with attitude and confidence; and further describes the contrast of the firefighter and forest firefighter by specifically naming the tools the regular firefighter has
And if that doesn't work, the
only thing the forest firefighters have as backup is a helicopter flying
overhead just drizzling something on top of the fire. - sets up an example that the opposition might bring up as an opposition; uses a word like "drizzling" to minimize the effect on the fire
And I'm sure --I'm sure
it's doing something - concedes to the point; varies sentence length to emphasize his skepticism
I'm sure it's helping - restatement
but I'm watching from the
house, and I see that helicopter with the bucket, and it drizzles - relates a personal experience and his opinion that it's not effective by repeating "drizzle"
I'm like, “that didn't do
anything at all. - shares what he was thinking (reminds me of a Ba Da Bing)
You need more helicopters - helicopters aren't working - refutes the opposition
If we want kids to be able to elaborate, we must be able to NAME how one does that work. And we learn that by looking at how real writers and performers get that done. NOT by filling out a graphic organizer.
BONUS: Try giving kids the transcript and having them add the punctuation. Make revisions and edits for sentence structure, delete lines that are irrelevant, add sensory details that suggest tone in the voice that the text doesn't convey without the performance, etc.
Many teachers have kids practice with fluency passages and folders. Repeated reading helps kids increase their reading rates. Read too slow and comprehension suffers. On the flip side, reading too fast can do the same thing. Something is missing here. Like most things, we stop too short with our instructional practices. We make student activities about doing stuff instead of doing stuff because there is a reason to do so. Fluency is no different. (Ask the kids: Why are we doing fluency practice?) And since fluency is now in our ELAR TEKS all the way up into 8th grade, we'd better get ahead of this before we institute classroom practices and routines (and add more tests) that do harm in the name of standards and assessment. If we have kids practicing fluency passages and graphing their improvements with repeated readings - and that's all we are doing with it - we are teaching rote skills without meaning. Kind of like writing your spelling test words three times each in different colors. Might as well memorize a random list of phone numbers. It's a waste of time.
Fluency is not just about how fast, how expressive, and how accurately you decode and phrase text. Instead, fluency is a TOOL that good readers use to help them make sense of text and monitor their comprehension. Yes, fluency includes: rate, accuracy, expression, phrasing/prosody. But readers USE those four things for adjusting the reading performance: adjusting for purpose and genre, adjusting for decoding and comprehension, adjusting for silent, oral, or performance purposes that include the audience and the delivery of the message. But I think most classroom models for fluency only focus on the first four. If so, we divorce student from how fluency helps us make and communicate meaning. Fluency instruction must include a focus on making meaning, meatcognition, and conscious choices about what good reading requires. If we don't focus on fluency as a tool, then we make reading a mindless think about calling words correctly and quickly. Instead, we make reading about finishing. Fluency is supposed to be about understanding and using text for our purposes as readers and thinkers and doers.
Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark:
Let's go back to the passage I had you read about Bad Dancers. How we go about reading and approaching a text depends on the GENRE. Teachers tell me, "Oh, we do that. When they get their fluency passage, we tell them that it is expository or narrative." Really? How many times to you open an email and people start off telling you that they are writing to persuade you? How many times to the newspaper headlines and magazines start off by telling you that the text is expository? Never. You have to figure that out for yourself. At least you should. Sure, we need to do some explicit modeling with kids and teach them how a good reader goes about diffusing and reading against specific features in each genre. But at some point, kids need to be able to figure that out for themselves and decide how that needs to impact their reading, fluency rate, and comprehension. Fluency passages are the perfect place to practice those skills.
Fear of Impending Doom
Check out this set of bookmarks from Lead4Ward for elementary and secondary. Which of the genre bookmarks fit Bad Dancers?
When I discussed this with a group of teachers, they pulled out three different cards: Literary Nonfiction, Expository, and Persuasive. It was quite a discussion that had us re-entering and re-reading the text purposefully to determine which genre fit the best. Get this straight y'all. We were not merely passing our eyes over the text with the goal of reading it faster and without any decoding mistakes. We had a real reason to reread. Having kids reread stuff for no discernible purpose will NOT achieve our Literacy objectives. They might read faster, but they'll be bored as hell and no thinking will be involved. We're not in the robot business, y'all, yinz, you-uns, you guys, youse guys - regardless of the region you hail from. From which you hail. Whatever.
First of all, we realized that we read Bad Dancers the first time as if it were a narrative or literary nonfiction. Which means we really didn't "get" what the author wanted us to understand. As we looked for evidence in the text to justify our decisions, we realized the text didn't match our purpose or approach to reading it!
We zoned in on the Expository bookmark. (Might I mention that we won't be using that silly term in the new ELAR Standards? We'll call it Informational like the rest of the civilized world.) Soon, we realized that there were some nuanced features of persuasion that didn't match the formulaic way we teach kids to write persuasion with the thesis blatantly posed at the end of the first paragraph. (Bad Dancers isn't five-paragraph-blathering-nonsense either.)
It started to get scary...
...as we realized that the author had a clear perspective and bias about dancing
...as we realized that the author laid out a clear path of logic and reasoning
...as we made discerning distinctions about her opinions and facts
...as we juxtaposed the feasibility of accepting her ideas into our own lives
As we realized these things, we heard ominous music. What if the topic had been less innocuous and more insidious? Our approach to reading the text would have left our minds open to manipulation at worst and at risk for incorrectly answering multiple choice questions at the least.
I am stunned again by the moral imperative of our work and service as literacy professionals. We must go further than teaching kids to practice fluency as a rote and isolated skill divorced from meaning and thinking.
Probably preaching to the choir. So what can we do to beef up our fluency passage work? Because I'm not asking you to stop fluency like I am asking you to stop with the Spelling-Test-on-Friday nonsense.
As Plain as the Nose on my Face
The genre places demands on our fluency. When the teachers and I read the text again, we used the genre bookmarks to help us ask questions about the text to guide our more critical purposes for reading the second time. We realized...
....a need to make a decision about what we believe about bad dancers. Are there bad dancers in the world or not?
....a need to see if this idea is feasible: In the way we see and live life, do we realistically see the truth in the author's perspective? What would this idea add or take away from our life choices?
...a need to trace the author's path of logic and reasoning purposefully laid out for us. How is the author presenting the ideas? Are there any red flags (logical fallacies) that we should note?
...a need to see the author's perspectives, facts, opinions, and biases. Do we know the differences between those things? Which facts warrant further research to verify? What hidden biases and motives might be driving the author to communicate these points? How do I respond emotionally and intellectually to these assertions?
Don't we want students to read like that?
When Throwing a Monkey Wrench into the Fray is a Good Thing
Fluency practice isn't necessarily a bad thing. But we definitely need to throw a monkey wrench into what most of us are doing with fluency practice. We need to interrupt the mindlessness. Here's a suggestion for a more literate, principled approach.
Students then pull out the genre bookmarks to discuss and decide which genre the text best fits. They should highlight text features and evidence to justify their decisions. (If you want to have a quick check for students working independently, write the genre on the back of the passage. They can self-check and adjust before moving on to the next step.
The Lead4Ward genre bookmarks list the demands each genre places on the astute reader. We can use those demand to guide our purposes for reading! Students discuss those purposes and turn them into questions to guide their reading. (You can use the ones we composed from Bad Dancers listed in the previous section.)
Student reread the text again, using their questions to guide their purpose for reading. Students time the reading and chart the results. They should change their rate at times to make sure they are attending to sections of the text that warrant closer inspection. (Of course, this will have to be modeled during Read Alouds and Shared Reading time in the Reading Workshop block.) Students can discuss the questions and ideas with their reading partners.
Students conduct a third re-reading to practice the basic elements of fluency (the first four) and to bump up their reading rates up to grade level expectations. They can chart and compare the results over the three readings. Or you can throw those out the window and let the kids create a Reader's Theatre, Choral Reading, or Dramatic Reading of the text. You might even have the kids complete the final reading at the guided reading table to offer final support and feedback for where they could head next or to resolve problems that remain.
With their partners or during the whole class debrief at the end of Reading Workshop, discuss the experience. In your second reading, what adjustments did you make? Why? What impact did that have about your understanding and reasoning about the text?
... Thank you for this post...
