Reading Tools for the SBP Literacy Toolbox

After doing a large amount of reading over the summer, I have gathered the framework for a possible Literacy Toolbox for use by SBP teachers.  The framework begins with understanding that literacy instruction (that is: reading and writing instruction) is a responsibility that can be embraced by all content-area teachers, and not just those of the English department.  By incorporating literacy instruction in all the content areas, we can work to meet our Middle States student performance objectives of increasing the writing skills and the critical reading skills of all our students at SBP.

In Critical Reading, we ought to include in the framework the four ‘anchor standards’ that we have adopted (from the Common Core) as our definition of critical reading.  By laying out what ‘we’ mean as critical reading, we can all better understand what it is that we would like our students to be able to do in the area of critical reading.

Next, we should include the realization that the ability to read words (called in literacy research as “decoding”) is not the same as the ability to create meaning from those words (in research, this is called “comprehension”).  The ability to create meaning includes the reader’s ability to make inferences (using evidence from the reading), the ability to understand the author’s viewpoint and to question it (called “dialogue with the text” in research), and the ability to use the new knowledge gained from the reading (called “integration” in research).  This is a more detailed definition of reading comprehension, and this definition is expanded by the anchor standards we have adopted.

Within the framework of the Toolbox, critical reading must be acknowledged as a process that is continuing throughout the time that a student is in school.  We cannot rest on the notion that the high school student has “already” learned this, or perhaps “should have learned this” before they arrive in high school.  Teachers must accept the research-based evidence that comprehension (as defined above) develops even (and especially) during high school, during adolescence.

It's time to assemble our Literacy Toolbox.

The SBP literacy toolbox will contain the instructional routines that will allow teachers to incorporate more reading into their respective content areas.  The toolbox will also contain routines for allowing more writing in the content areas.  These routines may already be familiar to some teachers, while they will seem foreign and strange to others.  But just as one may be bewildered upon entering a craftsman’s workshop and seeing all the various tools, it is with familiarity with those very tools, careful instruction in their use, and in seeing wonderful products that one’s bewilderment can be turned into satisfaction.

Please read my full post here.  "Building A Literacy Toolbox for SBP" 

Show them how you became a good reader.

Of the books that I have read so far during this vacation, I have been most struck by the thoughts of Cris Tovani, a reading specialist and classroom teacher who wrote I Read It, but I Don't Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers.  I knew it was going to be a good read; this is one of those rare cases where the good cover and title were as good as the content of the book.  Her writing is easy to understand, as she shares her personal experiences in real classrooms, describing students who we will easily recognize in our own classes.

This is a relatively short book, with its 107 pages that bring excellent lessons without being too 'preachy.'  Each chapter starts with a short vignette, followed by a thorough review of the comprehension strategies used in the scenario, and then capped by a summary of specific techniques and suggestions for their use.  The introductory pages and the final chapter lay out Tovani's particular beliefs (beliefs which are supported by scientific evidence in numerous scholarly studies on reading comprehension):

"Teachers don't have to be reading specialists to teach comprehension strategies.  Teachers simply have to be aware of their own processes as readers.  They can notice their own thinking as they read, determine what they do to make meaning, and pass these techniques on to their students"

We can learn how. We can learn.

I am grateful for the amount of research that exists about strategies/routines that have been shown (backed by scientific evidence) to help improve reading skills in adolescent learners.  Several authors have taken advantage of the research to write guidebooks that teach the teachers how to employ these strategies/routines in their classrooms.

A few years ago, as SBP teachers prepared to transition to block scheduling, we sat through an in-service presentation where certain strategies were demonstrated by a public school administrator who had helped other schools make the successful transition to block.  The presentation involved the strategy called 'jigsaw', where groups of students were asked to read different articles written about the general topic being discussed; each student within a group read a different article.  After reading, the group members shared what they had learned with the rest of the students in the group.

I wrote in my notes that day: "where did these articles come from?" since I was amazed with the positive feedback that the students offered about their participation in the demonstration.  This week, I found a book that describes the process of finding appropriate articles for such a learning routine.  It even goes one step further: the book contains reproducible articles that can be used as 'starters' for classrooms looking to improve reading and writing skills.  Learn more about the book after the jump.

Reading shoud be Fun, -damental

Thanks to Latest News from the New York Times available on my Kindle, I read about a game played perhaps by well-read adults, something that the author would have done to pass summer nights by the shore.  He describes 'the paperback game', where a player reads the sensational description on the back of a book, then the other players write on slips of paper what could be the first sentence in the book.  The slips are collected, then players vote on which one they feel is the 'correct' one.  A player receives one point every time their 'sentence' receives a vote.  (Click this link/sentence to read the NY Times article.)

It would not be difficult to believe that such a game could be played by certain populations of people.  I leave it to your imagination to decide what that population looks like.  To me, it seems a summer pastime that I hope some of our students might be able to play someday, and to enjoy.

This 'game' is a variation on a reading strategy that is described in some of the books that I've been reading this summer.  The strategy is called "Anticipatory Guides", where prospective readers discuss among themselves before reading a selection what they anticipate they will learn from doing the reading.  Research has evidence that such a reading strategy improves understanding/comprehension of the selection, and with consistent use also bolsters reading skills.

I wrote earlier that I never took courses that would teach me how to be a teacher.  Part of my growth in this profession is to engage myself in that kind of learning.  As much as I owe it to my students, I owe it also to myself.  It was enjoyable to see how some of the routines that I'm learning about can actually be made into a form of fun.  Some might argue that making learning fun is a gimmick to get students to do what a teachers is asking of them.  Gimmick? Strategy? Routine?  Get them reading, whatever it takes.

I never took a course in Pedagogy

Pedagogy  is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. 

I suppose that one of the 'benefits' of teaching at a Catholic high school is that I don't necessarily have to be certified like the teachers working in public schools.  During my trip to Barnes and Noble yesterday, I had a chance to take a peek into what it might mean to have gone to college for a degree in secondary education.  The reason I love going to that particular branch of B&N is that one gets to browse through textbooks.  I have not forgotten how expensive textbooks are, but yesterday's trip reminded me about the reality of buying books for school work.

In an expensive ($170) textbook about teaching routines, I encountered the terms that I've been reading about in the first (trade) book that I bought yesterday: Teaching Reading in Science.  In the college textbook, the discussion about these routines is much more involved than in the book I decided to buy, and I imagine that the coursework allows the prospective teacher a chance to fully examine and evaluate the routines being described, the routines that they are asked to learn while they are in 'teacher school.'

Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas

One of the most enlightening reports that I read recently was Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement.  This report was published by the Alliance for Excellent Education in response to the crisis of adolescent literacy.  Their recommendation, which I believe is the direction that SBP should take, is to include literacy instruction in the content areas.  Simply speaking, teachers in content areas (whether it be History, Science, Math, English, and so on) should also be teachers of reading (and writing).  [Read my other blog about my anxiety about this.] 

The report makes reference to scientific evidence pointing to the effectiveness of certain teaching strategies.  As a scientist, this is the sort of data that I would be interested in reading before trying a strategy in the classroom.  But, who am I kidding?  I don't have a degree in teaching.  I never took classes in pedagogy.  Whenever I read about a teaching strategy, it's all new to me, albeit I may have tried some of these strategies (or a variant thereof) in class without specifically knowing (1) the evidence behind the strategy's effectiveness; (2) the actual steps of such a strategy; (3) the background knowledge about why such a strategy works; and (4) the name of such strategies.


Well, I may have heard some of these 'names' before: K-W-L, Reciprocal Teaching, RAFT Writing, Jigsaw.  We once had a brief in-service about some of these strategies as SBP prepared to move to block scheduling.  I didn't get an in-depth training about these strategies, much less understand the evidence behind their proven effectiveness.  So, I'm doing my own 'professional development.'  I'm doing this by reading, and during my next few blog entries, I'll explain some of the strategies I've learned from the books I've been reading.  And I will be sending the receipts to the Middle States Planning Team.


I haven't had this much fun from reading since med school.  I'm so thankful for the time to be able to do it.

My Summer Reading List, part 2

Don’t think that I stopped there.  Given my new Kindle (Thanks, mom!), I have become voracious again with my reading.  (Is there a adjective for reading that is stronger than ‘voracious’? I would use it).  It’s like I am on a reading binge.

Please don’t take this as a boast.  But here’s what I’ve consumed so far, and yes, I read each one of these reports, and this one book (which I had to buy as a paper copy at Barnes and Noble.  What’s the budget for Middle States goals?)

How many books for your summer reading?

And how can you avoid paying for them?  Since my mom gave me a Kindle as a birthday gift, I haven’t had to pay for books (well, I did buy a physical book last week).  There’s a good set of free books that deal with education on the Amazon site, and the ones I have loaded onto my Kindle have been very good reading.

The mother lode that I discovered recently is a set of reports commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation, which has a funded program for Urban and Higher Education.  The reports are available free (as pdf versions) and are located here.  Click to see the Carnegie Corporation publications.

It all started when I chanced upon a report called Reading Next, which was published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which I suppose receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation.  The Reading Next report is one of the resources I listed in my previous post for the members of the Critical Reading committee.

It turns out that the Alliance for Excellent Education also published another report called Writing Next, and this is also listed in the resources I posted previously.  This document is a terrific read, and offers scholarly evidence for strategies that improve writing skills in secondary schools; it is also reported that writing improves reading skills (and this is welcome news for us involved with the Middle States performance objectives!)

Digging deeper into the trove of publications by Carnegie Corporation, I discovered a report that I wish (I wish!) we could have found earlier. 

Resources for our "Summer Reading"

During this time off from classroom teaching, we hope not to intrude too greatly into your chance to recharge and recover from a very busy school year. Perhaps when you have some time to read, please look over these resources that might assist us in learning more about what others have done to improve their students' reading skills.

Building Reading Proficiency

The first resource is located here:

Building Reading Proficiency

This is a pdf file, and if you right-click the link above, you can save the file onto your computer, so you can read it at your convenience. Here's my description, from an email sent in April when we first thought about looking at this document to help us with critical reading at SBP:

The original paper was published in 2000 by Southeast Developmental Laboratory, and here is a short description of their ‘mission’ as quoted from their website: “SEDL partners with educators, administrators, parents, and policymakers to conduct research and development projects that result in strategies and resources to improve teaching and learning.”

This paper describes reading PROGRAMS and reading STRATEGIES. I actually became more interested in the STRATEGIES that were described starting on page 74 of this pdf document. (The document is in the attachment on this email).
1. Background Knowledge Strategies
2. Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)
3. Dictated Stories/ Language Experience Approach (LEA)
4. Fluency Strategies
5. Generative Vocabulary Strategies
6. Independent Reading Strategies
7. K-W-L-Plus Strategy
8. Literature-Based Reading Instruction