Academic Literacy: Annotations for Fall 2010

Recommended articles:

Making the very most of classroom read-alouds to promote comprehension and vocabulary
Santoro, L. E., Chard, D. J., Howard, L., & Baker, S. H. (2008). Making the very most of classroom read-alouds to promote comprehension and vocabulary. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 396-408.

The authors outline a framework for incorporating reading comprehension strategy instruction with read-alouds. The target audience was first graders. What I liked about the framework:
· its smooth incorporation of well-known strategies and models
· its theory base
· its stress on higher-level comprehension
· its use of authentic texts
· its incorporation of standards
· its practical appeal and clear description
The whole idea is finding ways to incorporate meaning-based comprehension in testing-dominated classrooms. Here, science and social studies texts, both narrative and informational, are used, which is also a strength.My only fear here is that we'll destroy the act of reading just for enjoyment, just for the love of books. The authors recommend we still do that, but I wonder, will we make the time?

Learning to read the numbers: A critical orientation toward statistics
Whitin, P., & Whitin, D. J. (2008). Learning to read the numbers: A critical orientation toward statistics. Language Arts, 85(6), 432-441.

The Whitins show how even very young children can be taught to "interrogate" texts that contain embedded data. Two case studies are presented, one with fifth graders who polled peers on their "least favorite chores," and one with kindergartners who graphed their favorite kinds of apples. In both cases, the children made rather stunning observations and noticed the ways that data may be shaped to privilege some voices and agendas and silence others.Table 1 is an extremely helpful guide to the processes used with the children. In it, seven "Dimensions of the Process" are given, defined, and "questions to consider" at each step are provided. Looking at these seven dimensions underlines the many ways that data may be shaped. It's a lesson that can be learned at all ages, from kindergarten to graduate school, as the Whitins make clear here. As we really start to think about "new" literacies and mutimodal texts, this article adds some useful ideas to try.

A framework for supporting scientific language in primary grades
Honig, S. L. (2010). A framework for supporting scientific language in primary grades. The Reading Teacher, 64, 23-32.

Yes, young children can learn scientific vocabulary and they can comprehend informational text and academic discourses. Honig presents a detailed framework for doing this kind of instruction, with examples of how it worked for science units done with second and third graders.In addition to some detailed descriptions, we get some excellent figures and tables that organize the information well. Figure 1, a graphic organizer that links theory about word knowledge with specific classroom practices, is especially helpful. Teachers will also appreciate Table 6, which outlines four days' worth of activities from a unit on plants. The activities are all easily adaptable to other topics and other content areas. Some activities will be familiar to many teachers, including the venerable KWL, plus "sticky-notes" activities and other that are reminiscent of some of Fountas and Pinnell's comprehension strategies.An emphasis on academic language, information literacy, and multimodal literacy in the early grades is long overdue. For too long, narratives have been privileged and emphasized over other kinds of texts. If we are to develop scientists and social scientists, we must begin early.

Breaking down words to build meaning: Morphology, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the urban classroom
Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2007). Breaking down words to build meaning: Morphology, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the urban classroom. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 134-144.

The generative power of knowledge of morphology has always struck me, and this article provides convincing evidence of that power for fourth and fifth grade urban students (many of them ELL's).I find that the ability to break words into "chunks," both meaning chunks (morphemes) and sound chunks, is a key to developing skill in decoding, especially as children get older and start to encounter more and more multi-syllable words. At that point, the combination of "sounding out" words and using context is no longer completely adequate.The authors here describe a study where knowledge of morphology (defined as the ability to pull a root word out of a larger word) was strongly related to reading comprehension. The recommend explicit instruction in morphology, and provide some helpful guidelines describing what effective morphology instruction might look like.

Effective content vocabulary instruction in the middle: Matching students, purposes, words, and strategies
Flanigan, K., & Greenwood, S. C. (2007). Effective content vocabulary instruction in the middle: Matching students, purposes, words, and strategies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51(3), 226-238.

I like the clarity of this article -- the way the authors lay out their main points in a way that is easy to absorb. They present a four-level framework for teaching content area vocabulary. The framework helps teachers categorize vocabulary words according to the nature of those words and their relationship to both instructional goals and student knowledge. Once words are categorized, appropriate instructional strategies can be chosen, and the authors provide concise tables of suggested strategies for each word "level." Then they provide an example of how a typical teacher might use the framework to build better vocabulary instruction.The key ideas here are that all vocabulary words aren't created equal, that time spent on any word depends on instructional purposes, and that quality vocabulary instruction is better than teaching a large quantity of words.

Morphing into adolescents: Active word learning for English-Language Learners and their classmates in middle school
Keiffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2010). Morphing into adolescents: Active word learning for English-Language Learners and their classmates in middle school. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(1), 47-56.

This is one of those rare "keeper" articles. The authors provide a clear, concise summary of research on the teaching of morphology and its uses to build academic vocabulary. They detail an approach they devised and tested with urban sixth graders. The approach is designed to be effective with English Language Learners, but is meant to be used with all students. The authors describe how they used their approach to teach sixth graders about suffixes, but other types of morphemes could also be targeted.Several portions are especially interesting and helpful. The best part is the segment entitled "What Does Good Morphology Teaching Look Like?" (pp. 50-55) This segment is organized around four basic principles that are theory based, and practical as well.The two tables are also helpful. One gives examples of various levels of difficulty in "decomposing" words (". . .not all morphemes are created equal" p. 52); the other presents a concise scope and sequence for suffix instruction.

A lesson cycle for teaching expository reading and writing
Montelongo, J., Herter, R. J., Ansaldo, R., & Hatter, N. (2010). A lesson cycle for teaching expository reading and writing. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(8), 656-666.

This is a clear summary of a detailed instructional framework for teaching middle school students to understand text structures and use that understanding to comprehend the main ideas and details of expository text, and to write summary paragraphs that capture that understanding.The positives here: Strong evidence is presented that the framework increased student achievement. The target population was summer school students who had failed several classes, which makes the improvement shown extra impressive. Also, this was action research done collaboratively by two university teacher educators and two novice teachers, in an authentic setting, which is a good trend and lends credibility to the findings.The model is very much in the direct instruction mode, though the skills taught are more holistic (on the paragraph level rather than the sentence level) than is often seen. The model is clearly delineated and could be replicated. My only reservation about such teaching is that actual texts may be "messier" than is implied by the discrete teaching of text structures.