I found both articles intriguing.The article"Lead Don't Lecture", brought back many memories of so many years, sitting passively in a variety of classrooms, while the teacher stood at the board filling up our minds with infomation. The information was usually presented in a disconnected manner. I vividly recall many times asking the question,to myself of course,Why am I learning this?This is where so much of the student disconnect takes place. For true learning to take place the students need to be taught the meaning and significance of what they ,through the teachers guidance,are learning,and most importantly, how the learning will serve some purpose in the world beyond formal schooling.For as formal schooling is a terminal process,education is a life long venture.There is no doubt, that students need a foundation of knowledge in any given subject area,however if we look at how many of our current classrooms operate, we continue to find teaching methodologies that lack creativity, and teachers who look at students as passive recepticles of infomation.At the same time ,we see a massive decrease in the attention spans of most students ,who have been brought up in the world of 30 second commercials and video games. The solution must involve more active engagement of students in the class setting,active dialogue between students as well as the teacher. Replace the "sage on the stage" with the "guide on the side" In the "real world" of post school learning, do we sit and passively take notes? No,we usually create dialogue and discussion. We debate issues and in a collegial manner, and create solutions.Some of the best teaching I have observed is the"coaching model" which the academics and educational researchers of today are just starting to embrace .As I think back on my formal schooling journey, many of my best teachers were coaches. People who were able to make each and every member of the team feel valued, who understood the varieties of skill differential,and who most impotantly ,conveyed a sense that they believed each and every one of us would experience success. My best coaches were motivators,who created meaning for us by setting individual and collective goals. I truly feel there is too much of a disconnect in education between the "Ivory Tower" academics and the practitioners in the class room,the teachers.Great teaching is both an art and a science. I feel we need to focus more on the art and less on the science. Comments on reading to follow, Im getting bored....Just kidding.

Linda, you're right-a lot of making a successful team activity work is how you set it up, create expectations and monitor the activities. That is maintaining control.

Stacey, I think you bring up a good point about teachers' having a repetiore of activities to use at their disposal to help their students improve their skills. Coaches could help these teachers develop thier skills by sharing with them best practices and activities that have been successful in other classrooms. I think by helping our students become good readers and writers we are also training them to pass the state-wide tests in ELA. We just need to make sure we don't put too much emphasis on the testing and work with our students to strenghten their reading and writing skills in general. We want to encourage our students to be life-long readers, writers!

Continued appreciation to all the teachers out there who strive(in programs like this) for improvement every day! As a parent of both elem & middle school students, I appreciate the "change" to some group work with a team of students - my kids thrive in it although the weaker students need addl support in my limited experience. I still think that most kids in this age group in my community DO NOT READ enough!! Keep up all your dedicated effforts!!

As a K-12 Special Education administrator, all too often I witness the effects of poor instruction in reading. In my opinion, all students, especially those with a disability, require exposure to a balanced approach to reading and literacy. Building the foundation of skills that allow children to not only decode words, but to gain meaning from text truly requires the use of a common language throughout a school system. Accessibility to resources can be difficult (I work in an upstate NY rural school district/free and reduced lunch rate: 65%), that's where effective teaching comes into play. Actively engaging students in the reading process across all content areas allows students to practice and refine their skills. Literature circles, response journals, read alouds, role playing, peer coaching, etc... provide students with the opportunity to construct their own meaning and gain ownership of their learning. Some students require a systematic approach to reading (we use the Wilson Reading System and Fundations---Wilson for younger students), but I believe most will benefit from a solid, research based curriculum (not the ELA 4/8 exam) and good teaching. Response to intervention is essential, if something's not working, try another approach. Expand your bag of tricks. Too often, professional development consists of isolated exposure to a canned program or the latest "best practice." Teachers require practice, feedback, and the opportunity to reflect, just like students do. Job embedded professional development is something I have been working to consistently institute in my district---unfortunately, so much attention is focused on test scores and school report card data that teachers often lose sight of the exploration of learning. Several new teachers I have hired seem to be drawn to the textbook and feel like spending a couple of days allowing students to engage in active learning will set them back---I can't help but remind them that if they encourage students to truly gain ownership of their own learning, the concepts they are trying to teach will follow suit. However, I believe the concept of coaching in the classroom requires a solid foundation of mutual respect, clear expectations, and the presence of a safe and risk-free environment in order to truly be effective.

I'm out of the loop because I taught pre-computer and dealt mainly with juniors and seniors and freshmen in a community college. Just a few scattered thoughts (really scattered because we're in tornado watch and lightning & thunder are zinging around everywhere)anyway... computers are an advantage in (maybe?) vocabulary building, rote testing, certainly in writing and revising papers/paragraphs, and probably in many more ways as the articles pointed out, but I feel that the big disadvantage is that work is done individually, even in isolation, so that students miss out on the dynamics of community building and social interraction found in the classroom. Group participation in literature classes in the form of class analyses of ideas, acting out scenes, role playing, panel discussions, interprative oral reading, etc. all build reading and thinking skills, but also, an awareness of others. Learning to write also works as a group activity - bouncing off ideas, analyzing theses, and examining arguments make for lively classes and more interesting, better organized papers. (One REAL disadvantage of using computers is SPELLCHECK!)

These kinds of ideas seem to fit into the article which dealt with "coaching." I have found that that kind of teaching works sometimes and sometimes not - and I don't know what makes the difference, except that it's probably the fault of this teacher in not preparing students well enough to take responsibility for their work and in relying on old-fashioned methods of classroom "control."

I don't suppose these ideas are too helpful in the 21st C., but they do reflect my commitment to students, students at work together, in the classroom. Sure, they've got to learn to read and write effectively, but they also have to learn to respect and maybe even to like each other.

Edited by author 04-03-2006 11:42 AM
Perri-
Thanks for your comment. I agree that we need to teach our students how to analyze and critique the books they are reading. One way I have seen this work is through the use of post-its. As students read their Lit. Cirlce books they write post-its which contain their thoughts, opinions, predictions, and connections to the book (text to self, text to text, and text to world connections). The students also know to look for beautiful language and parts in the book that confuse them. Then during their Lit. Circles, students discuss the book and the post-its that they have written. I have witnessed some amazing discussion take place because students have taken the time to write thought-provoking post-its.

Edited by author 04-02-2006 11:08 PM
As a high school English teacher I deal with all levels of literacy skills. Of course I struggle to motivate the weak, reluctant readers, but I also find some literacy problems among the most highly literate students. I find that the strongest students are still reading at a very basic, literal level. In trying to teach them to be active readers, I find quite a bit of resistance because for so many years, they have devoured one book after the other. In order for them to analyze literature and really grasp some meaning, they must slow down and think about what they are reading, instead of reading passivly as if they were watching tv. Since active reading requires them to read more carefully and slowly, they are resistant. They want to be able to read one book after the other. The point is that not only do students need to learn how to read, but they must also learn to think about what they read, otherwise, reading is pointless.

So let's not only teach Johnny to read and comprehend, but also to think and criticize the books he reads. He should wonder, inquire, enjoy, or dislike what he reads and be ready and able to discuss those reactions. By giving Johnny a forum in which he can voice his opinions and findings about what he reads, in a literary manner, he will feel more empowered and therefore more motivated to find literature that moves him.

I have tried to do just this by teaching analytical skills through short stories, then having students apply those skills to their independent books. I have been able to get some of my weakest most reluctant readers finally begin reading because they have the freedom to choose what they want to read. The hardest thing for those students is to figure out what they should read because they have resisted reading for so long that they have no idea what they like.

Edited by author 04-02-2006 09:53 PM
as a parent of one child who loves to read and another who struggled as a beginning reader, i find this topic extremly interesting. i happen to think a passion for reading must also extend beyond the school setting. turn off the tv, ipod, and video games, and read with your children!!!! my children love to sit together and read with me. it was a nightly ritual long before the SFA program at jmmes made it mandatory.

in addition to what I do at home, (ie. reading for pleasure in front of my kids, making quiet time for them to read by themselves, playing games that involve reading and writing, and reading aloud to them) the eh school distric plays an important role in their reading journey.

dedicated teachers fostered a love of reading in my daughter. she was praised for her efforts, challenged to do more and encouraged to grow! by diagnostic testing my sons strengths and weakness were identified at an early age and remediation, tutoring, ais, and the wilson reading program were implemented to provide him with the services he required to bring up to grade level.

i too agree that we, as educators, play a part in creating an atmosphere in our teaching environment which promotes a desire to read in order to succeed. we offer intergrated activities, author/illustrator visitations, liturature circles, monthly schoolwide read alouds, read-in parties, parents as guest readers and a strong professional development program for our balanced literacy program at whb.

Edited by author 04-02-2006 05:22 PM
A great point Gail. Our students have to be motivated. That is why I think programs such as the authors' panel that Meredith set up last week for our seventh graders are so valuable. (Four mystery authors came to the middle school and talked to our seventh graders and then did a workshop session with them.) The students gained so much from this experience and I believe it motivated them to both read and write! Another valuable experience was having my students partner read with kindergarteners at JMMES. The students were able to work with younger students sharing their expertise. I think that by having programs like these we "thinking outside the box" and helping our students by doing more than just teaching to the test.

Providing context prior to reading, fostering connections, mastering new vocabulary, lit circles, et al--all "best practices" espoused in these articles will produce better readers--the studies tell us so--then why, when access to "best practices" is so readily availabe, do schools continue to wrestle with how to teach reading or how to improve reading scores??? Let me suggest that there is more to teaching reading than having a few "best practices" in your repertoire. First, consistency of application of a wide variety of best practices continues to elude us. This is where coaches could be invaluable--get right in there--unify approaches and monitor. Finding and paying effective coaches is key--really, really difficult--but could, and I expect would, over time, make all the difference! Secondly, and not discussed in any of the articles, is the importance of a teacher's passion to excite, motivate, engage students in the process of reading--

Meredith, I just picked up the article on background knowledge yesterday too. I found that it was a natural connection to the topic. One point that I found interesting was about increasing vocabulary gain. Staying with same topic for a few days increased vocabulary acquisition up to four times faster because the verbal content is familiar.

Did anyone read the article on background knowledge in The Spring issue of American Educator? It's very interesting. It talks about an important issue of reading comprehension that has often come up for me as a parent, as well as a teacher: Background knowledge. How much do kids know about the subjects they are reading about? In order to truly comprehend a text, students need to know what it is talking about. For example, 7th graders who read at a top level have shown (in our pretests this year) to score behind 8th graders at a lower reading level when given the same test on the Civil War, simply because they lack the background knowledge.

The author of the article suggests that reading comprehension tests actually teach knowledge more than reading. Although the author disdains process-oriented reading lessons, and I find them valuable, we have all witnessed the student who can read/decode fluently but has no knowledge of what she has just read. This author believes that it's all about the content, and that the new focus on reading (in many school several periods in a row) in lieu of art, science, and other content areas hurts students. It's an interesting thought. I agree with the author on many levels, although I think the process must be taught and focused upon in the reading classroom. Especially when you think about connections -- this is how a student gets into a text. Although the author of this article dismisses process, when we teach connections we are teaching students to activate background knowledge.

Sorry to take up another article in this space, but it seemed relevent. Of course, the current topic of coaching lends itself to students seeking broader content knowledge, so the ideas are not mutually exclusive.

John, thanks for your input as a student - it was very helpful. You're right, one on one coaching is vital to understanding, and you've illustrated just how!

John, I am so glad you came into the conversation to bring us the student angle. It is so important that students see the relevance to what they are learning. Learning from and with your peers is such an important part of life. It is very important for this skill to be practiced in the classroom in order for students to become adept at learning and teaching one another. I am sorry that you have not had more of these interactive learning experiences. Maybe you could talk to one of your teachers about it.

In school most of my teachers just usually put notes on the board, then the class copies them down and we talk about it for about 5 minutes. In certain subjects that works and others like math, at least for me, I need more then just notes, it helps me better if I can ask questions one on one about what I don't get. Just copying notes all day kind of makes school really boring and also makes it really easy to space out.

Edited by author 04-01-2006 06:25 PM
Ellen your point is a good one. After giving the ELA exam on 6 different days this year alone, I then was out grading the 7th and 8th grade exam for 4 more days. This week the math teachers are out grading tests. They also are planning to be out for four days. We need to look into this matter quickly!

I also agree with the importance of coaches, especially to help teachers learn to help their students. I love the idea that all teachers are reading teachers. And that social studies, science, math, foreign language, and special area teachers all have a hand in developing a student's reading ability. This is such a powerful concept and I can see how it really creates a school community.