CARR’s Spring 2017 guest presenter, Gravity Goldberg, joins forces with co-author of “What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow?”, Renee Houser, to share strategies with us for how to move “beyond blank stares”. Check out this post from their blog- and watch the video, too- you’ll be glad you did.
I recently participated in an Instructional Coaching workshop hosted by CREC. Part of the learning was developing reflective practices to improve instruction and ultimately student learning. One method to accomplish this was using video to help teachers focus on goals for instruction and student learning. There was one excellent training video that could be used by teachers to reflect on their own practices, by coaches to foster conversations with colleagues, or by mentors who are training new teachers. It is titled Using Video to Improve Practice: Do It Yourself! and features Sarah Brown Wessling.
Here is the link for the video from the Teaching Channel: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/improve-teaching-with-video
By Rachel Gabriel
Like a message in a bottle that first crashed on to shore on a wave of reforms – only to be carried out and back in again by smaller waves and currents – teacher evaluation has come, transformed, and settled into the everyday lives of teachers across Connecticut. For those who were involved in the pilot year, this marks the third year under the new policy, which has rolled back in intensity each year since the start. For others, this is the second time around: A chance to consider evaluation more closely and to begin to find ways to use it to support teaching and learning.
As I study teacher evaluation and teach reading specialists, I have heard a wide range of responses to the new policy: from teachers who claim new rubrics don’t leave room for instruction they believe in, to those who have found new ways to engage and support struggling readers as a result of conversations with evaluators and colleagues. The truth is that teacher evaluation policies and rubrics for observation say very little about the nature of reading instruction that qualifies as exemplary. In this article, I am going to argue that this is good news for literacy professionals. The vague descriptions of “good teaching” in rubrics for evaluation and the room for personalization in individual teachers’ goals and measures of student growth leave us room to direct our efforts and evaluators’ attention to what matters the most in literacy classrooms.
Focus on what matters most Reading is the most researched K-12 content area in all of education research. Despite its importance and complexity, decades of research and experience teaching reading tend to converge on the same set of opportunities needed to develop literacy. Teachers can arrange these opportunities within most any framework using literally any set of materials (Taylor, Pressley & Pearson, 2000; Bond & Dykstra, 1967), but without any one of these opportunities, we know literacy development is thwarted. One way to conceptualize these research-based opportunities to develop literacy is as non-negotiables (Gabriel, 2013) that must be part of instruction for every reader every day (Allington & Gabriel, 2012). The four non-negotiables are listed below.
Every reader every day:
We ought to hold these truths to be self-evidence because we have found them to be true in so many different studies, from so many different
perspectives, with so many different goals. When we organize our instruction, professional conversations and goal setting around these non-negotiables, we can use teacher evaluation to focus our work on what matters the most. In the following section, I will briefly describe each nonnegotiable and what it means in the context of classroom observations, goalsetting and professional growth conversations.
We know that time spent reading is necessary-but-not-sufficient for reading growth. It is not sufficient because simply putting in the time does not guarantee optimum (not too much or too little) exposure to new words and text structures, or the engagement and feelings of success required to motivate and sustain reading practice within and outside of school. Students must have high-success experiences with texts in order to solidify skills, build confidence, and leave room for the engagement that fuels comprehension and the motivation to continue reading. When students self-select texts, it dramatically increases the chances that they will find something they can and want to read.
Ensuring every reader has something they can and want to read can be accomplished in a number of ways, but is antithetical to a classroom where every student is always reading the same class text with no alternative. This is not to say that shared reading experiences are not valuable for discussion and that challenge is never a good idea. A balance between shared and individual texts allows the best of both to contribute to literacy development. In fact, English teacher and author Kelly Gallagher would argue for a 50:50 split between whole class novels and independent reading (Gallagher, 2010). For classrooms with many struggling and/or reluctant readers, I encourage teachers to invest even more than 50% of their time doing the independent reading that fuels a cycle of reading success (Gabriel, 2013), and less on the shared texts that fail to match readers by level or interest.
When an evaluator enters an effective literacy classroom, they should see evidence that students sometimes have the opportunity to read something they have chosen at or near their individual level. They should witness students actually reading at some point in a full period, and they should be able to interview students who will describe what they’re reading now and what they will read next. These indicators suggest that the teacher has invested in high-success reading experiences and organized instruction that promotes reading motivation, engagement and success.
We know that reading and writing are reciprocal processes, which means that growth in either supports the other (Graham & Hebert, 2010). In fact, sometimes writing is a way into engagement with reading (Calkins, 1994), especially for students who struggle to learn to read (Dostal & Wolbers, 2014). Like time spent reading, simply investing more minutes writing is not enough. Students need to be writing to an audience, for a purpose, in order for writing instruction to be meaningful. Like reading for a purpose, writing for a purpose increases engagement and stamina, but it also provides an authentic reason to pay attention to conventions and skill work (e.g., spelling, punctuation, grammar, style) in context.
Marie Clay famously referred to reading as “a meaning-making, message-getting process,” (Clay, 1991), but too often, writing is either avoided altogether, or taught and practiced without attention to its meaning or message. That is, students are taught to write formulaic paragraphs, brief responses, and journal entries that are only ever seen by their teachers. In other words, they write, but are not taught writing as an agentic linguistic process of composition (Kiuhara et al., 2009). Moreover, they are writing in formats that do not have any real referent in the outside world, and therefore fail to transfer to meaningful writing tasks. When students are asked to write in class, they must be writing to someone for some reason. Rather than writing a paragraph that a teacher will grade, students can write to their classmates, students in other grades, or school papers. They can create copy for a class website, a how-to book, a warning sign, a petition, set of directions or menu of options.
Evaluators should see students’ writing to an audience for a purpose that they can articulate at some point during every class. Even if the writing is short and informal, without an audience and a purpose writing tasks cannot add up to meaningful practice. Audiences give young writers a reason to internalize conventions in order to ensure clear communication. Writing for a purpose gives young writers a way to make choices about structure and formatting in order to create a text that can accomplish something in the world. Investing in instruction and assessment that include writing to an audience, for a purpose ensures opportunities for students to develop both as readers and writers.
We know that literate talk is an important part of literacy and language development. Students need to use words in order to learn them, and will see the impact of their words, as well as the importance of their stories (written or read) in conversation with one another. Classrooms where students have time to talk with each other about what they are reading and writing demonstrate growth in both reading and writing achievement (e.g. Applebee et al., 2003; Cazden, 1988)
Teachers are often unwilling to allow time for students to talk because they are afraid of what they will talk about, and assume time spent talking is wasted time. Perhaps this is the reason that students have so little practice or opportunity to engage in literate talk. Classrooms that support discussion and provide time and reasons to talk about text show significantly higher achievement, engagement and participation than classrooms where teachers do all of the talking, or only involve students in echoing or filling-in-the-blank of predetermined answers (see Nystrand, 2006 for a review).
Evaluators should expect to witness students talking with each other about text in every classroom, every day. The old idea that a quiet and compliant classroom is a high quality classroom has been thoroughly debunked by the research. Students need to use language to learn language. They need conversations as reasons for reading and writing, and spaces for considering what they’ve been reading and writing. This talk about text means that students must have experiences with texts worth talking about and shared experiences making sense of texts they have written or read.
We know that access to experts’ reading processes and strategies is invaluable for developing readers. This is especially true when reading in content areas where discipline-specific texts present unique challenges for readers such as unfamiliar formats, sentence structures, purposes for reading, and multiple meaning words (Fang & Coatam, 2008; Moje, 2008; Shannahan & Shannahan, 2008). Reading, like other complex and invisible multipart processes (swimming, driving, riding a bike) requires modeling – not of the outcomes of reading, but the very moment-tomoment thinking that leads to reading with understanding.
Even (and especially!) in the upper grades, time spent reading aloud to students increases exposure, engagement and expertise when reading discipline-specific texts for discipline-specific purposes. Though students may have had the benefit of years of stories being read aloud in school or at home, few have been able to watch an expert approach the kinds of texts students use in math, science, theater or agriculture classes. As a secondary teacher, you may be their first and best model for meaningmaking in your discipline.
Evaluators should expect to witness teachers talking about their thinking in every classroom every day. Students should be able to articulate how they approach, make sense of and fix their understanding of texts that represent the range of types and purposes required for the discipline. This means that a look around the classroom should show a range of text types, as well as some evidence or reminders of conversations about how they are read.
Under new teacher evaluation policies, rubrics for observation and student learning objectives (SLO’s) define what counts as good teaching, and what evaluators should focus on during feedback and coaching conversations. Thus, rubrics for observation and guidelines for writing SLO’s are general enough to apply to every grade level and subject area. They therefore say very little about what kind of literacy instruction should count as good teaching, or what administrators should pay most attention to when observing and supporting literacy instruction. As literacy professionals, we have a responsibility to be able to articulate exactly how the general descriptors of rubrics, and criteria for goals apply to our visions of excellent literacy instruction. For example, Table 1 includes descriptions from the “exemplary” column of Connecticut’s Rubric for Effective Teaching third domain (instruction) next to descriptions of what this might translate to in a literacy lesson.
Table 1. Generic rubric language and literacy-specific “look-fors”
Students are writing to a real audience, and will deliver their written products to that audience.Students are reading in order to do something: act, build, create, write, communicate, and are thus responsible for selecting texts that matter to them.
We have to be ready to articulate literacy-specific versions of good teaching with evaluators so that we can keep observations, feedback and conversations focused on literacy instruction. Similarly, we have to be ready to suggest goals and measures that mirror our visions of literacy instruction so that SLOs and IAGD’s do not promote a limited version of reading. Table 2 includes sample SLO’s from the state’s website (www.connecticutseed.org) along with the versions of reading they imply, as well as some alternatives.
Table 2. SLOs, measures and implied importance
When setting SLOs and selecting IAGDs, we have to be ready to suggest and explain the goals and measures that support the kind of literacy learning we believe in, in order to avoid narrowing the focus of instruction to whatever is easiest to measure.
In this second year of teacher evaluation reform in Connecticut, we can no longer leave evaluation’s impact on reading instruction to chance. We have to be ready to make evaluation work for us by linking our goals, conversations and instruction to the aspects of literacy instruction that matter most for students. This means
making explicit connections between the vague aspects of literacy instruction that matter most for students. We have to be ready to make evaluation work for us by linking our goals, conversations and instruction to the aspects of literacy instruction that matter most for students. This means making explicit connections between the vague descriptions on evaluation rubrics and specific literacy practices. It also means setting goals and choosing assessment measures that focus on opportunities to develop powerful literacies – rather than contrived or isolated skills.
Allington, R. & Gabriel, R. (2012). Every child, every day. Educational Leadership, 69 (6), 10-15.
Applebee, A., Langer, J., Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A. (2003). Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research Journal 40: 3, pp. 685-730.
Bond, G. L., & Dykstra, R. (1967). The cooperative research program in first-grade reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 2, 5-142.
Calkins, L. (1994) The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Cazden, C. (1988). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Clay, M. (1991). Becoming literate: The construction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Dostal, H. & Wolbers, K. (2014). Developing language and writing skills of deaf and hard of hearing students: A simultaneous approach. Literacy Research and Instruction. 53(3), 245-268.
Fang, Z., & Coatoam, S. (2013). Disciplinary literacy : What you want to know about it. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(8), 627-632.
Gabriel, R. (2013). Reading’s Nonnegotiables: Elements of effective reading instruction. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Graham, S. & Hebert, M. (2010) Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. New York: Carnegie Corporation.
Kiuhara, S., Graham, S., Hawken, L. (2009) Teaching writing to high school students: A national survey. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(1), 136-160.
Moje, E. B. (2008). Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy teaching and learning: A call for change. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(2), 96 107.
Nystrand, M. (2006). Research on the role of classroom discourse as it affects reading comprehension. Research in the Teaching of English, 40, 392–412.
Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40- 59.
Taylor, B.M., Pressley, M.P., & Pearson, P.D. (2000). Research supported characteristics of teachers and schools that promote reading achievement. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, Reading Matters Research Report.
By Ann Marie Mulready, Ph.D.
For literacy professionals, the most important development at the Connecticut State Board of Education (CSBE/SBE) this year is the K-3 State-wide Reading Plan. The plan is required by Public Act 12-116, An Act Concerning Education Reform, and requires monitoring at the beginning, middle, and end of the year of all K-3 students with instruments that measure phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
In March, 2014, the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE/SDE) conducted a round table review of the proposed K-3 plan. Several members of the CARR Board, including Agnes Burns, our president, attended those sessions and expressed concerns regarding the outcomes of the meetings.
In response to these concerns, Aggie Burns, Dr. Darcy Fiano, our dissertation prize recipient, and I addressed the Connecticut State Board of Education (CSBE) over the course of the April, May and June meetings.
In summary, we pointed to,
The SDE presented a list of 19 assessment instruments in May, though the final recommendation limited that number to 7. At this point, the Observation Survey (Clay) is not included as it was on the first draft of the plan. This is despite the fact that the United States Department of Education (USDE) afforded it the highest technical ratings of any of the included assessments. The DIBELs was included despite the USDE reporting its validity as “partially convincing” and the Office of the Inspector General objecting to the “clear conflicts of interest of those who were charged with validation,” and evidence that the companion program produced a large negative effect on comprehension.
The other recommended instruments are AIMSweb Tests of Early Literacy or Reading, mCLASS with DIBELS Next, Edcheckup, STEEP, NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and STAR.
The SDE could not recommend a vocabulary assessment given the lack of an instrument that can measure vocabulary achievement in a standardized, efficient fashion. And comprehension is not directly tested, again due to a lack of availability of an efficient, standardized measure.
The Reading Plan policy also provides for a transition period from the use of the DRA2 as a screen for the 2014-2015 school year, a change in exit criteria for K-3 English Learners (ELs), assessing students in dual language programs, an assessment reporting table to be submitted to the CSDE, and a biennial, open review period. While priority districts are mandated to report the number of students who are performing below the cut point, other systems are not held to the same reporting requirement.
Lastly, the use of the mandated screening instruments does not preclude the use of other diagnostic measures, including the DRA2. They may be used in addition to the mandated instruments.
The most critical issue for the last legislative session has been the reports on and initiation of investigations of the F– USE charter organization that is responsible for Jumoke Academy/Milner School in Hartford, and the Dunbar School in Bridgeport. Commissioner Pryor directed the Department staff to review the existing rules concerning oversight, public transparency, completion and reporting of background checks, and student performance and equity in all charter schools.
Commissioner Pryor also reported the work of the Common Core Task Force. The Task Force has five recommendations:
The Commissioner is being asked to allocate $2 million to fund special training days for teachers, and to create a grant advisory committee to formulate mini grants for teachers and parents to develop CC aligned resources in the classroom and community.
The SBE also approved adoption of Praxis II for new cut scores for certification in Middle School English Language Arts, English Language Arts: Content and Analysis, and Mathematics Content Knowledge. Further, the cut score for certification in the ELA was raised from 168 to 173 on a 200 point scale, one conditional standard of error above the multi-state standard. The availability of candidates in the ELA was cited as the rationale. A position statement regarding Social Studies education has also been adopted.
It is incumbent upon all of us as literacy professionals to remain informed regarding literacy policy at the state and national levels and to observe the outcomes of those policies. The unquestioned emphasis on fluency by NCLB is an example. The speed and low cost with which fluency can be measured has resulted in a great deal of student time spent developing rapid reading as an end in itself. The rationale from the instrument developers for this has been that there is a correlation to word recognition, automaticity, and comprehension. But the question has not been asked about whether the observed comprehension, dependent on oral language development and background, is in fact the condition that is supporting the fluency. Further, the measures do not incorporate the other elements of fluency—prosody, expression, and appropriateness—that are essential to its use as a comprehension support. These are the questions that organizations like CARR can ask. We are all volunteers and are beholden only to our members and our mission. This makes your support of the organization vital to continuing the work. To that end, we may request information in the coming months on your districts’ use of the tests listed above. And now more than ever, renewal of your membership is essential to accomplishing the CARR mission.