Using higher order questioning to accelerate students’ growth in reading

Peterson, Debra S., & Taylor, Barbara M. (2012). Using higher order questioning to accelerate students’ growth in reading. The Reading Teacher, 65(5), 295-304.

This article describes how elementary teachers in diverse urban schools worked to transform the kinds of talk they did with children about texts, with the goal of raising those students’ thinking to higher levels than had been reached before. The emphasis is on what is called “higher-order questions.” The authors define higher-order questioning as questioning that “requires students to think at a deeper level and to elaborate on their oral and written responses to literature” (p. 297). First, students were taught to respond to higher-order questions both orally and in writing. The ultimate goal, though, was to teach students to generate their own higher-order questions about texts, and then to use their new skills in generating and responding to higher-order questions to engage in student-led, student-centered small group discussions about texts. The article includes several vignettes that capture the kinds of small group discussions the researchers observed.

The authors generated three categories which they used to classify the types of higher-order questions they observed: 1) Theme, 2) Character Interpretation, and 3) Making connections to students’ lives. The texts used with the children were primarily fiction or at least narrative texts. I caught myself speculating on what sorts of categories might have been generated for higher-order questions about nonfiction/expository texts. With the current stress on increasing the emphasis on nonfiction texts, even in the earliest grades, I wondered why the authors chose to focus on narratives. Narrative texts are often thought to be easier to comprehend than expository texts (though I’m not sure I completely believe that is true), and perhaps because this new emphasis on higher-order questions probably was a big change in how reading comprehension was perceived in these elementary schools, working with fiction was seen as the first step. We don’t really get the full rationale for that in this article, though reference is made to an online version of this research report that may contain that information; I plan to check that out.

Other questions raised for me by the article involves my desire for more information on assessments. The students here are described as “making accelerated growth in their reading achievement” (p. 299). On what basis was that assessment made? How exactly was the success of this push for higher-order questioning documented? I realize that this information may well be in the longer online article, but even brief references to the assessments used here would be helpful and desirable, and would have strengthened the article while not necessarily taking up much space or having to go into excruciating detail.

Overall, though, I found the article helpful and hopeful. It provides concrete, authentic examples of what higher-order thinking and talk might sound like in an elementary classroom. Children are portrayed having meaningful and engaging conversations about literature, and that is a breath of fresh air. The recently adopted Common Core Standards may be an impetus toward raising the bar on student thinking, and those standards are referenced briefly in the article. My biggest worry relevant to the push for “higher-order” thinking is that as with any reform linked to high-stakes testing, allocation of scarce resources, and political agendas, there will be the inevitable push toward all things that can be quantified, packaged, and sold. I hope the kinds of change that led to the kinds of student talk that we see in this article won’t ultimately be reduced to formulaic models, scripts, and programs. I worry, but I’m still hopeful that the kind of collaborative work teachers did here to change the way they and their students thought about and talked about texts will be the trend that spreads in this country. The key here was the development of human resources and learning, not the development of materials and models. As long as we as educators keep asking some higher-order questions of our own, we will be on the right track.

Twenty Discussion Prompts:

1. How would you define a “higher-order question”? What makes a question a “higher order” one vs. a “lower-order” one? Give your own examples of higher-order questions. Then give examples of what you consider lower-level questions. What are the differences in the kinds of wording you used to frame the two kinds of questions?

2. Theoretical classifications are sometimes used to label questions as relatively high-level or low-level. Two classification systems that might be used to classify questions are Bloom’s Taxonomy with its six categories and Norman Webb’s four Depth of Knowledge categories. Which of the categories in Bloom’s and Webb’s models could be used to describe high-level questions?

Information on Bloom’s Taxonomy:

http://www.casdk12.net/ghs04/SRB/5-Curriculum/Blooms%20Taxonomy%20chart.pdf


Information on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge:

http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/sia/msip/DOK_Chart.pdf


3. Look at the two classroom vignettes on page 296 of the article. What seem to be the goals of the first vignette? What seem to be the goals of the second vignette? How else do the two vignettes differ?

4. How has reading comprehension traditionally been assessed? How might higher-order comprehension be assessed? How would/should a focus on higher level thinking change the way reading comprehension is assessed?

5. Look at your state’s standards for reading. Which outcomes would you consider “higher-order” outcomes?

For an example of one state’s document, see the Missouri Grade Level Expectations for Communication Arts, which may be accessed at:

http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/GLE/


6. Look at the Common Core Standards that have recently been adopted by many states. These standards have been described as “rigorous” and involving a high level of thinking that students will need for later success in college and careers. Do you think the Common Core Standards represent high-level thinking? Why or why not?

For information on the Common Core Standards, go to:

http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards


7. Look at the Table on page 297 of the article, which lists three types of higher- order questions (Theme, Character Interpretation, Making connections to students’ lives) and gives examples of each type of question. Do you agree that the example questions are high level questions? Why or why not?

8. Discuss how the following kinds of teacher talk suggested by the article’s authors could help scaffold higher-order thinking:

• “If someone were to ask me that question, I might answer it this way . . .”

• “Please tell me more about that.”

• Complete the following: “I followed my dream when . . . “

• “Each of you will have a special role in your discussion group.”

• “If you agree with something one of your group members says, say ‘I agree with that because . . . “
• “Remember to follow the four discussion guidelines we have posted here on the wall.”

9. Look at the exchange between Mr. Flemings and Jorge on page 298. Do you think the “coaching” Mr. Flemings provided has actually helped Jorge respond at a higher level?

10. Look at the four “discussion guidelines” from Ms. Mallory’s third grade classroom (page 298). Are these guidelines sufficient? Are they developmentally appropriate? What cultural norms do they reflect? Can you think of examples where these guidelines might conflict with students’ cultural norms?

Kathryn Au’s classic research with Hawaiian students revealed that in some cultural backgrounds, typical response patterns might differ from the kinds of response patterns traditionally honored in most schools, which involve orderly turn-taking. The Hawaiian children in Au’s study were used to response patterns where several group participants might chime in together, and they got in trouble with their teachers for not taking turns. Look at this research at the following link and discuss its significance in light of this article and today’s culturally diverse classrooms.

For an article by Kathryn Au on culturally responsive teaching, see:

http://www.reading.org/General/Publications/ReadingToday/RTY-0912_culturally_responsive.aspx


11. Scan through the discussion among the children called Long, Molly, Khalid, Jack, and Samantha on pp. 298-299. Identify places in the discussion where you think you can spot “higher-order thinking” and explain why those comments caught your eye.

12. Why does a discussion of theme in a text often lead to higher-order thinking? Do you think the children whose discussions are presented here really understood the notion of theme, at least at an appropriate level for their age?

13. Some people believe teachers should not ask young children, or children who are still struggling to acquire basic literacy skills, to engage in the kinds of higher-order thinking about texts that the authors of the article recommend. What might be the rationale behind such a belief? What might be the rationale for building higher-order thinking even if basic reading and writing skills have not yet been mastered? What do you think?

14. The vignettes in the article seem to be mostly about fiction texts; there is one biographical text described, but the text seems to still be a narrative. The three categories the authors used to classify questions (Theme, Character Interpretation, Making connections to students’ lives) seem more suited to narrative text than to expository texts found in various content areas. How would higher-order discussion of nonfiction/expository texts look? What categories might be proposed to classify higher-order thinking about nonfiction texts?

15. Read through the section under the heading “Classroom Examples of High-Level Questioning” (pp. 299-301). The authors show examples of questions in their three classification categories (Theme, Character Interpretation, Making connections to students’ lives). Using a text you use (or might use) with your own present or future students, attempt to generate a few higher-order questions that could be classified under each category. If possible, share your questions with other educators. Critique each others’ questions, and discuss any challenges or difficulties that arose as you attempted to generate your questions.

16. Is it always necessary for a student to identify with a character or to connect a text to prior experience if that student is to fully comprehend and appreciate that text? For what kinds of texts would making such connections be relatively easy? For what kinds of texts would it be a challenge?

17. Teachers in the study reported here made instructional changes with the help of their colleagues. Why was such support and scaffolding so critical to the change process?

18. What kinds of administrative support were needed to make sure the required level of collaboration could occur? What kinds of resources needed to be present, and allocated, in order to make instructional change possible?

19. The project is presented in the article in a way that makes it seem as if all of the teachers involved were fully on-board for the change, but realistically, in most change processes, some resistance may be observed. What kinds of resistance might emerge when a school is working to move students into higher-order thinking? How might that resistance be met with by those supporting the change?

20. Describe the role of the literacy coach in the change process. What were some specific literacy coach behaviors that facilitated the processes of professional learning and instructional change?

Putting fluency on a fitness plan: Building fluency’s meaning-making muscle

Marcell, Barclay (2011). Putting fluency on a fitness plan: Building fluency’s meaning-making muscle. The Reading Teacher, 65(4), 242-249.

This balanced, sensible look at fluency, that controversial “pillar” of reading, comes from an elementary school literacy teacher. It’s a concise, useful piece that covers the history of the emphasis on fluency, including the development of the research base on repeated readings, the problems with current forms of fluency assessments, and some possible ways of getting beyond seeing fluency as only its most quantifiable aspects (speed and accuracy) and making sure the aspects of fluency related to meaning-making (expression and especially comprehension) receive their proper emphasis. Marcell does not recommend throwing out the current literacy assessments that stress only speed and accuracy, as some of those who oppose fluency assessments propose; such assessments are presented here as having usefulness as a screening device, when they are augmented by additional assessments of expression and comprehension.

Marcell proposes an acronym, REAL (Rate, Expression, Accuracy, Learning), and presents two specific assessment tools based upon that acronym. The first tool is a “student-friendly” rubric designed to help students self-assess their fluency on all four fluency aspects (I’m thinking this would be a good tool for teachers and students to use collaboratively). The second tool, called Repeated Readings Revisited, is designed to take repeated readings a few steps further than is often the case, that is, to give them more “meaning-making muscle” than just having students read through a passage orally and looking at correct words per minute. The tool takes readers to higher levels of comprehension on each successive reading. The first reading is for main ideas and details, the second reading is for understanding the author’s purpose and paraphrasing main ideas, and the third and final reading is for telling what the reader found most interesting and why, evaluating the title, and indentifying the author’s intentions. The Repeated Readings Revisited tool does have places to record correct words per minute, but it puts those aspects of fluency in their proper place. Comprehension is the bottom line of reading, and that is clearly illustrated here.

This article sounds like the “voice of reason” on fluency to me, and I hope many classroom teachers and literacy specialists will read it and try what Marcell suggests. The article, short as it is, covers a lot of important ground and is written in an engaging and accessible style. Because Marcell weaves in classroom vignettes that will resonate for many teachers, the article has authenticity and credibility. Yet even though this is an article aimed at practitioners, Marcell’s well-grounded, clearly narrated chronicle of the timeline of research on fluency and repeated readings makes this article credible for researchers and teacher educators as well.

A few concerns arose for me as I read. First, I wondered a little about the “student-friendly” rubric, especially the descriptions for students who are not meeting expectations. Although I believe we must level with students about whether or not they are meeting learning goals (they know anyway), I think some of the wording here might be a bit discouraging for some of the most challenged readers. I could be hypersensitive about this, and many learners might be fine with this wording, but I know children who might have hurt feelings if words like “weird” or “flat” were used to describe their reading. I’d probably make a few tweaks on the wording before using this tool with children.

My other concern is that one of the reasons the typical fluency assessments that count correct words per minute are so popular is that they only take a minute to administer. I worry that teachers and administrators will not want to change the “quick and dirty” but easily quantifiable assessments for those that may take longer and won’t provide numbers and so-called “objectivity.” Let’s face it: If you also assess expression and comprehension as Marcell suggests, that is going to take more time and be a bit less quantitative than only counting correct words per minute. Don’t get me wrong—I think it SHOULD take more than a minute, and with the high stakes placed on fluency assessments these days, assessments really need to look at fluency in its entirety rather than just looking at things that can be quickly and easily counted. Even more importantly, we need to stop teaching children that reading fast and pronouncing words are all there is to reading. As Marcell so convincingly points out, we need to stop sending mixed messages to children about reading. Children will quickly pick up that what is assessed is what is valued in school; assessing only rate and accuracy while also teaching that reading strategies and meaning-making are important may be even worse than sending mixed messages. It may be sending a very clear and definite message about what is REALLY valued, while at the same time teaching that what adults SAY is not important if something different is what actually counts. In sum, I am all for making the changes Marcell suggests, but I worry that quick and quantitative assessments are so seductive in today’s accountability-charged schools that it may be difficult for some educators to let go of them.

The above concerns, however, do not dim my appreciation of this article. I definitely plan to share it with the future teachers in my own preservice literacy education courses, and maybe with my literacy study group. Articles in recent issues of this journal have begun including some nice extras that are helpful for those of us involved in teacher education and professional development, namely, the sidebars “Pause and Ponder” which provides some pithy discussion/reflection prompts, “Take Action!” which suggests ways to link theory/research with practice, and “More to Explore” which provides some resources for those who want to learn more. These sidebars are particularly apt for this article, and combined with Barclay’s assessment tools, form a real “keeper” of an article with a lot of meat in a few pages.

Twenty Discussion Prompts:

1. What makes a good reader? What do good readers do?

2. What is “fluency”? How does fluent reading sound? What do fluent readers do?

3. On page 246 of the article, Marcell outlines his acronym for the four elements of fluency: R = Rate, E = Expression, A = Accuracy, and L = Learning. Obviously these four elements were named and ordered as they were in order to spell out the acronym. What are one-word synonyms that might be used for each of the elements in the REAL model?

4. If you were forced to rank the elements in Marcell’s REAL model in order of importance (without worrying about disrupting the REAL acronym!) how would you rank them? How do you think Marcell would rank them?

5. If you have used current literacy assessments with students (or maybe AS a student who was being assessed!), share your experiences. Have you had an experience like the one the author had with “Amelia”?

6. How is literacy typically assessed today? What aspects of fluency are most emphasized with these assessments?

7. What are problems that can result from stressing only reading rate and reading accuracy? What are the advantages to sticking to those two fluency elements?

8. Students who struggle with reading are the students most likely to experience fluency assessments in school. Why?

9. Assessment can be a powerful vehicle for teaching students what kinds of literacy learning and literacy behavior we think are most important. How can that power be used beneficially? How can it be used detrimentally?

10. Look at some of the wording in Figure 1, the REAL Student-Friendly Rubric (p. 246). Some educators might say in a few spots the wording is unnecessarily negative, and that especially students who struggle with reading might be discouraged or even upset by some of that wording. What do you think? How would you feel if your teacher said your reading was “flat” or “like a robot”?

11. How would you feel if you were told you were reading “below the target rate”? How might knowing where they stand in comparison with others potentially help a struggling reader? How might that knowledge be harmful? What is the best balance here?

12. What are some of the “mixed messages” we send to students about reading? What causes us to send mixed messages? What are the effects of mixed messages on students and on teachers? How can we avoid sending mixed messages?

13. Look at some of the fluency benchmarks proposed by literacy experts for students at various grade/age levels. How useful are such benchmarks for teachers? For some good information, go to www.readingrockets.org and enter the word “fluency” into the search engine. To look at norms for fluency, try this article: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/31295/ Some researchers claim that students’ scores on measures of “correct words read per minute” DO predict their scores on reading comprehension assessments. Logically, why might fluency predict comprehension?

(NOTE: It is important to remember that when we talk about scores on one measure predicting scores on another, we are talking about determining correlations. A correlation coefficient does NOT signify that one factor CAUSES another; it only means that movement on one factor is related to movement on another factor—either in the same direction or in opposite directions. That is, two factors may rise together, fall together, or one factor may rise when the other factor falls.)

14. What is meant by “barking at print” (p. 243)? What beliefs underlie the use of this metaphor to describe what some students do when they read? What beliefs underlie the use of the term “word callers” to describe some students’ reading behavior? How do such metaphors originate?

15. What barriers might there be to discourage or prevent adding the improvements to fluency assessments that Marcell proposes (i.e., extending the reading, adding comprehension probes, adding self-assessments, error analysis, corrective feedback, strategy instruction) ?

16. How do ‘repeated readings” work? Why does research show they improve fluency? What is the logic behind those research results? What aspects of fluency from the REAL model would you expect repeated readings to develop the most? The least?

17. Look closely at Figure 3, Example of an All-Encompassing Graph (p.247). Look at each element of fluency that the graph assesses, and how it is captured and documented. How valid is this assessment tool (Do you think it measures fluency)? How reliable would it be in use (Would two or more reviewers score the same reader similarly)? How practical is it for the classroom, and how likely to be used consistently? Would you use it with your students?

18. What is the main difference between the way Rate and Accuracy are measured in Figure 3 and the way Comprehension (which Marcell calls “Learning”) and Expression are measured? What does that tell us about those two pairs of fluency elements?

19. Marcell reports that some good results have been reported for using poetry and Readers Theatre to build fluency. What is Readers Theatre? How might it be beneficial for students needing to build fluency? The www.readingrockets.org web site has much good information; simply enter “Readers Theatre” into the search engine. One article to start with is: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/39/

20. What is prosody? How is it related to comprehension for those who listen to a reader? How is it related to comprehension for the one who is reading?

TECHnology and literacy for adolescents with disabilities

King-Sears, Margaret Elaine, Swanson, Christopher, & Mainzer, Lynne. (2011). TECHnology and literacy for adolescents with disabilities. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(8), 569-578.



At first, I thought to myself, “Uh-oh. Here comes another article describing a decision making model with a cute acronym.” With that in mind, the article started slowly for me as the acronym’s four steps (the letters in TECH stand for Target, Examine, Create, and Handle) were outlined and described. Up to that point, I was still thinking, “Yeah, yeah, another acronym, another model.” Then I got to the good part (luckily in this journal length restrictions keep that from happening too late in most cases!). The authors made the TECH model come to life by taking readers through not one but two authentic examples of how the model was used to make decisions about what technologies to use with specific students and how to use those technologies. The two examples are both interesting, and are quite different from each other. The first case is a male seventh grader with a written language disability; the second is a female tenth grade with Asperger’s syndrome. These two cases are similar to those that many teachers encounter every day. For both cases, the authors work their way meticulously through the four TECH steps, and in the process, share the real-life stories of these two young people and the teachers who worked with them. Then after the cases, which are the heart of the article, we get to the gravy: Table 1. That table provides a short list of eight types of assistive technology. Then for each type, we get actual names of products, and even web sites we can visit to find out more. I’m definitely going to visit some of those sites. This table will definitely become dated in a year or two as even newer technologies become available, some of which we probably cannot even imagine now. For now though, I plan to share this table with my students and colleagues (and hopefully the whole article with some). It can provide a beginning for our thinking about how we can use technology to adapt instruction to better meet students’ needs.



A final note: I fully appreciate the authors’ clear and complete discussion of what makes a technology choice an “assistive technology” and when something is simply “classroom technology”. Along with that, I appreciated the authors’ sensitivity to the issues raised when certain technology is used only with “special needs” students. In both cases given here, the desire not to be embarrassed by conspicuous use of assistive technology was an issue for the students. Not only that, it is probably desirable to make such technology available to ALL students if we possibly can. Multiple ways of “reading” and “writing” for all students would seem valuable in any classroom, whether they qualify as “assistive technology” or not.



Discussion Prompts:



1. What do the authors mean by “multimodal teaching and assessment” (p. 569)? How would that be different from the kind of instruction that is typically seen in K-12 classrooms?



2. What are some arguments that people might make against using some of the technological tools described in this article in the classroom? How might you answer those arguments?



3. The authors make a distinction between assistive technology and classroom technology. What is that distinction, and how would such a distinction mean in practical terms in a classroom?



4. What factors will affect whether or not technology is used in a productive way in the classroom?



5. Why do the authors stress that the TECH decision-making process “begins and ends with a focus on the targeted learning outcome” (p. 570)?



6. Go online and do some research on autism. One good site is http://www.autismspeaks.org/, but entering the term “autism” into a search engine will produce many sources of information. After reading about autism, think about why computer-assisted instruction might be especially helpful for students with autism. Also, what problems might arise?



7. One of the more “traditional” ways of using technology in the classroom is as an alternative way of presenting information. Many of these ways of using technology are not very interactive and really are just electronic ways of presenting the same type of teacher-centered instruction that was done in the past, just with more “bells and whistles.” Technology that can really make a difference for students will need to be interactive and student-centered. What might such technology look like in a classroom? Think in terms of specific content and skills students learn at various levels. How might interactive technology take students to higher levels of learning than “traditional” instruction (even if that traditional instruction is presented using technology)?



8. Access the website http://web.teachtown.com/ and explore some of the product information there. How might the resources on this site help students? What potential problems do you see with it?



9. Look at the case study of “Brian” beginning on page 572. What strengths does Brian exhibit? What are his biggest challenges?



10. Why might keyboarding devices like AlphaSmart (see this web site for information: http://www.neo-direct.com/intro.aspx ) be less than satisfactory options for some students?



11. What possibilities do state-of-the-art cell phones present for instruction? What might be some barriers to their instructional use?



12. What changes in society have occurred in recent years that make assistive technology use less stigmatized than it was only a few years ago? How have those changes shaped classroom instruction for all students?



13. One of the leading sellers of speech recognition software is a company called Nuance. Explore their web site at http://nuance.com/ . How feasible do you think this kind of software will be for schools? Should it be made available to all students?



14. What is “support anonymity” (p. 574) and why was it so important for “Brian”?



15. Look at the case study of “Michelle” beginning on page 575. What strengths does Michelle exhibit? What are her biggest challenges?



16. What conflicts are behind “Michelle’s” comment that “Only babies use toys (her word for manipulatives) to do problems”?



17. Go to the following two web sites, both of which were used with “Michelle.” How might you use these two web sites, which provide free resources, to help students? How did using the web sites address the problem that Michelle had with using manipulatives?



http://www.mathplayground.com/



http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html



18. What do you think about the usefulness of sites used with “Michelle” such as http://www.studyisland.com/ and http://www.skillstutor.com/hmh/site/skillstutor/Home, which provide practice keyed to tested standards for individual states? Also look at the free web site, http://www.purplemath.com/, and evaluate its usefulness.



19. What will convince various educational stakeholders (policymakers, administrators, teachers, families, students, and others) that “the opportunities afforded by adoption of devices and software outweigh the constraints” (p. 577)?



20. Explore some of the web sites given in Table 1, Technology Choices Matched to Literacy Learning (page 573). Which of these options do you think offer the most potential for students you work with or plan to work with?

“My mom says I’m really creative!”: Dis/Ability, positioning, and resistance in multimodal instructional contexts

Collins, Kathleen M. (2011). “My mom says I’m really creative!”: Dis/Ability, positioning, and resistance in multimodal instructional contexts. Language Arts, 88(6), 409-418.

This is a story about how miracles can happen when we focus on children’s strengths in the classroom. Collins makes a strong case for looking critically at our notions of what is ability and disability in classrooms (hence the term Dis/Ability) through a sociocultural lens. Such a lens should assist us as educators in “moving beyond the assumption that abilities and disabilities are located solely within learners” (p. 409). The case presented here shows that what is considered ability or disability (i.e., deficit) always is constructed within the framework of what is valued in a particular context. In schools, certain kinds of behaviors and abilities have been traditionally more privileged than others, perhaps in an attempt to preserve a certain status quo. Print literacy is often at the top of the hierarchy in schools, and just below that, oral literacy. If you are not strong in those modalities, you may be seen as “deficient” and even disabled, and in the worst cases, you’ll be labeled and segregated, all in the name of “meeting needs”, as Collins observed in her three years of data gathering in the school described here. You may be strong in other modalities, like the visual arts or kinesthetic activities like sports or dance, but those are less valued in schools, and probably are not assessed or seen as strengths.

The focal student described here, “Christopher”, was an African-American male second grader who was seen as “a shy child” and “emotionally disturbed” because he would not participate in oral and written activities, and when pressed to do so, would retreat underneath his desk. He was on the road to becoming a “special ed kid”. It was only after Collins, who was a researcher in Christopher’s classroom, together with Christopher’s teacher, discovered Christopher’s ability in art and his self-identification as an artist (fueled by the encouragement of his family) that they were able to use that strength to set up a context (a play in which Christopher was costume designer and “chief set designer”) in which Christopher’s strengths could emerge and be recognized and valued. As the teachers began to value Christopher’s abilities rather than seeing him as disabled, so did the other children and Christopher himself, and a near-miraculous transformation is described.


I am deeply in agreement that we need to look at, value, and nurture children’s strengths. I also agree that children should not be marked as “disabled” just because their particular strengths differ from what the white, female-oriented, middle-class culture of many elementary schools (even those schools populated with non-white children and even in the classrooms of nonwhite teachers, because school values reflect the “dominant” culture in most cases) think counts or does not count as ability. What I am wondering about is how we can get the current view to change. In recent years, the status quo has seemed to strengthen rather than weaken, and children like Christopher often aren’t as lucky as he was to have someone willing to discover his strengths. How can we reach all the unreached “Christophers” out there before it is too late?

As a postscript, little tidbits about Christopher’s family intrigued me. He is quoted as describing a picture painted by an uncle—is this a family of artists who provided some important modeling and support? Also, it is noted that Christopher’s parents resisted special intervention (that would have probably ended in a special education placement). Many of us know of cases where children are known as two completely different people at home and at school. I myself was a child who was considered quiet and shy at school, but definitely was not at home. Was Christopher’s parents’ resistance a form of support for the boy they themselves knew as able, or even a protest against exactly the problem outlined here—a conception of difference as deficit, often resulting in labeling and educational inequity? Christopher’s family seems more important here than may initially meet the eye, and I’d like to know more about that important piece of the picture.

Discussion Prompts:

1. What kinds of evidence were used by the different people who spoke about Christopher in this article? What do the different views of Christopher tell us about assessment?

2. Do you know a child like Christopher who is viewed differently in different contexts and by different people? Who views this child positively? On what basis? Who views this child negatively? On what basis?


3. What are the values and assumptions that might lead to a child like Christopher being described as “deficient”? What are the values and assumptions that might lead to a child like Christopher being described as “creative”? (Note: Think of a “value” as a belief about what is “good”. Think of an “assumption” as an accepted belief about what is “true.”)

4. Reread the account of Christopher’s experience with the fables unit on pp. 413-416 of the article. Write a short script for a conference at which the following people are present: Christopher, Christopher’s mom, the artist-in-residence who worked with the children, and Ms. McSweeney (Christopher’s second grade teacher). Use the comments at the beginning of the article and expand upon them. Assume for the moment that each of these people has a valid point of view supported by evidence, and try to really put yourself in that person’s place. Try to really “hear” and understand each person’s point of view without making right/wrong judgments.

Group activity variation: Split into four small groups, and let each group develop the viewpoint of one of the above stakeholders in Christopher’s education. Then role-play the conference. This could be done in two ways: 1) elect one person from each group to play the four roles, enact the conference with everyone else observing, and then debrief as a whole group, OR 2) present the role-play “Jigsaw” fashion, forming new groups with one person from each viewpoint in each group, enacting several versions of the conference in small groups simultaneously, and then debrief as a whole group. If you are responding to the blog and try this group variation, please report on how it went in your blog entry!

5. What kinds of answers might be formulated for the question, “What is this child capable of?” How would the answers to the question “What is this child capable of in this context?” be different?

6. In what contexts are you personally viewed as “competent”? In what contexts might you be viewed as “deficient”? Most adults tend to seek out situations where they can be seen as competent, and avoid situations where they might be viewed as less than competent or even deficient. What if you were required to spend a lot of time in a situation where you were viewed as not competent or deficient? If you have experienced this at some time in your life, describe your feelings, actions, reactions, responses, etc.

7. Why do you think the “deficit” view is so common in school settings? What are the effects of this view on children who are viewed as “deficient”?

8. Think of a typical, everyday kind of language arts/literacy activity (reading, writing, speaking, listening or any combination of these) that you have observed or experienced in some way in a classroom (any level). What kinds of abilities are privileged by this activity? How could the activity be expanded and/or adapted to honor a wider variety of abilities?

9. Think of a typical school topic taught in elementary or secondary schools (any content area). List as many “modes of meaning making” (or “multiple semiotic modes”, as Collins puts it) as you can think of for that topic. How many ways could a student communicate understanding of that topic? Do not censor your list; include both the more “traditional” ways of meaning making along with some more “out of the box” ways. How many ways can meaning be expressed and communicated?

10. How do we reconcile the need to build on and honor children’s strengths with the pressures to teach to standards and to raise student test scores that prevail in most classrooms today? How can we meet accountability requirements and still focus on student strengths?

11. Respond to the following statement Collins makes on page 411 of the article:

“It is well documented that teachers’ assessment and interpretation of students’ use of various oral and written forms of literacy are influenced by the degree to which students’ primary discourse differs from ‘standard English,’ and that these assessments influence the ways in which schools position children in marginalized or ‘low-performing’categories.”

What evidence does Collins use to support her claim that school assessments and the educational placements of students that can result from these assessments may often function in discriminatory ways? What do you think? In what ways can placements meant to meet “special needs” be discriminatory? Is discrimination inherent in the way special education is delivered in the U.S., or can it be delivered in nondiscriminatory ways? How would special education that is nondiscriminatory look?
12. Why don’t we actually hear the voices of Christopher’s family members directly in this article? How could actually hearing their voices help us understand Christopher’s story better? What factors could have affected whether family members’ voices were or were not heard in the context described in the article?

Why do you think the parents put the Student Study Team process (which could lead to special placement) “on hold”?

13. It would be easy to criticize Ms. McSweeney from what we read in the first part of this article. Why should we resist that kind of reaction? What factors may have influenced Ms. McSweeney’s response to Christopher? Put yourself in her place. How would you have responded to the kinds of behaviors Christopher displayed in Ms. McSweeney’s classroom?

14. Go to the web site for Collaborations between Teachers and Artists (CoTA) given on page 412 of the article (http://cotaprogram.org/). This is the web site for the program that Collins was hired to help develop and gather data for. Read the information there (it is concise and will not take much time to read).

What do you see as benefits of this program? What do you see as its biggest challenges? What contextual factors would need to be in place for a program like CoTA to be successful?

Go to the pages under the tab, Workshops. Select a workshop you would be most interested in, and explain why.

The workshops are designed for elementary grade children. How might such an approach work in secondary schools? How would it have to be adapted?

View the slideshow under the tab, Gallery of Student Work. What is your response to the images you see there?

15. What purposes did each of the classroom strategies Collins observed in the second grade accomplish for the children?

Strategy 1: Opting Out

What purposes did Christopher’s “opting out” strategies (hanging back, remaining silent, not speaking, retreating under his desk) accomplish for Christopher in the classroom? Do you know students who enact similar strategies?

Strategy 2: Telling stories

Why were the children eager to tell Collins, a participant-observer in their classroom, their personal stories? What purposes did their story-telling accomplish? Why might the position of a classroom “visitor” like Collins sometimes be conducive to such story-telling?

Strategy 3: Doing it My Way

How did Ms. McSweeney create conditions that allowed children to “do it their way” in the activity on fables? What are ways that teachers can similarly empower children in their classrooms?


16. Collins writes about student strategies serving to “strategically disrupt classroom norms” (p. 415). Many times teachers might think of a disruption of classroom norms as a negative thing. Why might teachers think that? How might a disruption of classroom norms be viewed as a positive thing that contributes to learning? What does such a view require of teachers?

17. Read Christopher’s comments on his favorite part of the fables project on page 416 of the article. What do his comments, and the way he expressed them, tell us about Christopher?

18. What was the most important thing that Margaret McSweeney learned from the events described in this article? In what ways can we expect her learning to transform her classroom practice?

19. What is the difference between asking, “Do you really belong here?” and asking, “How do we support your belonging here?”

Supporting informational writing in the elementary grades

Donovan, Carol A., & Smolkin, Laura B. (2011). Supporting informational writing in the elementary grades. The Reading Teacher, 64(6), 406-416.

Donovan and Smolkin outline a helpful, practical framework for looking at the various kinds of text structures found in informational texts for children. This framework is much more useful than some of the categories of text structures found previously in the literature and in reading methods texts. The typical categories of text structures (e.g., Listing, Time Order, Comparison/Contrast, Cause/Effect, etc.) have been less than helpful for my own teaching because those categories examined informational text structures on too large a scale—a macro level, almost—when in reality informational text is much more complex than that, with multiple smaller structures occurring in any given text. When my students (both children and preservice teachers) looked for examples of the old macro-type text structure categories in informational texts, they often had a hard time finding them. Donovan and Smolkin’s categories CAN be found in typical children’s informational books; I know, because after I read this article, I looked in a number of exemplary children’s informational books and easily found examples of all of Donovan’s categories there. My mind immediately began racing with the possibilities of using these categories instructionally, and I could not wait to try those possibilities out with learners. When a framework creates that reaction in me as a teacher, I know it is a “keeper.”

There are eight categories in Donovan and Smolkin’s framework, and they are arranged along a developmental continuum, with the first category, Labels, presented as the simplest type of informational text at the most basic developmental level, and moving through increasingly “mature” developmental categories. We move from Labels , to Fact Statements, to Fact Lists, to Couplets (often connected by pronouns), to Fact List Collections, to Couplet Collections ,to Single and Unordered Paragraphs, to the most sophisticated structural category, Ordered Paragraphs. The continuum, which is outlined in the very helpful Table 1 (pp. 408-409), along with examples of each category, can be used in several ways. The authors suggest using it as a way of determining children’s informational text writing “levels” and then planning instruction to move the children from one developmental level to the next. For example, if a child has mastered Labels (“This is a bat.”), then he or she is ready to be scaffolded to move on to Fact Statements (“Bats are mammals.”). A Fact List (“Bats are mammals. Bats eat insects. Bats can fly.”) is the next step, and then it is on to the much more sophisticated Couplet structure (“Bats have wings with long fingers. These fingers help the bat move through the air.”). The sequence could move a child through all eight developmental levels over time. The developmental nature of Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum is potentially useful for both pre- and post- instruction assessment, and for instruction, not just in writing informational text as the authors intend, but also for helping children read and comprehend instructional text. Although the authors’ research was done with elementary age children, the categories and the developmental continuum can also be applied to older children in middle school and even high school, and the informational texts they read and write.

A Dozen Discussion Prompts:
1. Why is it important to teach children to read and write informational text from a young age? Why has informational text not been emphasized in the early elementary years until recently?

2. Look at Donovan and Smolkin’s developmental continuum and its eight categories. Find a good children’s informational book by an accomplished author of the genre (Suggestions: Gail Gibbons, Seymour Simon, Sandra Markle, Kathryn Lasky) and attempt to find examples of some of the categories within the continuum. What did you discover?

3. How can learning about informational text structures like those in the continuum help children learn to write informational text?

4. What do you think about using Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum as an assessment tool? How would that kind of assessment actually be done in the classroom? What kinds of data would result, and how would they be communicated?

5. Think about how a lesson designed to move children from one level to the next would look in the classroom. For example, how would you design a plan to move young children from Labels to Fact Statements? Or, select any two levels of the continuum and describe how you might help children move from one to the next.

6. Couplets seem to involve a fairly large developmental leap; literacy research has documented that readers and writers can struggle with the relationships between pronouns and their referents, which is what is involved in couplets. English Learners often have difficulty with these kinds of structures. What might be the best way to help learners understand how they work?

7. Can Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum be applied to students beyond the elementary grades? Why or why not?

8. Do informational texts in various subject areas (science, history, math, etc.) have their own specific text structures? Are any of the categories in Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum more prevalent in certain subject areas? If you are a middle/secondary teacher, think about the subject area(s) you teach. Which of Donovan and Smolkin’s categories are most prevalent?

9. Are there any categories you might add to Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum? Did they leave out any informational text structures that you think should be there?

10. If you work at the middle/secondary level, and you believe the continuum could be extended beyond Donovan and Smolkin’s highest level, Ordered Paragraphs, what would the next level (s) be if you continued the continuum?

11. In what jobs/professions do people need to write informational texts? What kinds of texts do people write “on the job” and what sorts of structures are seen in them? Relate this to Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum if possible.

12. What are some good uses of a developmental continuum like Donovan and Smolkin’s? What are some potential misuses?

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 n 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 Dozen Discussion Prompts:

Directions: Post a comment on any of the twelve prompts below. Please tell us the question number you are commenting on in the first sentence of your post. If you post three or more comments and would like a participation certificate, send an e-mail to klofflin@gmail.com and you will be e-mailed a certificate.

1. Compare and contrast the approach the Whitins used with fifth graders versus their approach with kindergarteners. What are common threads across grade levels in their approach? How does their approach with fifth graders differ from their approach with kindergarteners?

2. Look up your state’s standards or grade level expectations used for accountability and testing. Here is a link to the ones for Missouri: http://www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/GLE/
Attempt to fit the Whitins’ learning activities with both fifth graders and kindergarteners within those grade-level expectations. What standards are met for language arts (called Communication Arts in Missouri) and for math at each grade level?

3. Look up Bloom’s Taxonomy and attempt to place the kinds of tasks the Whitins describe within the levels of that model. Here is one good link:
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/pedagogical/blooms-taxonomy/

4. Look up the Depth of Knowledge model and attempt to place the kind of task the Whitins describe within the classifications of that model. Here is one good link:
http://www.pdesas.org/main/fileview/Instruction_Depth_of_Knowledge.pdf

5. The Whitins list four different roles a reader can take: code breaker, meaning maker, text user, and text critic. The roles form a sort of continuum. What kinds of instruction foster each kind of role? What types of instruction are most common in the elementary school classrooms you are familiar with?

6. What do you think it means to “interrogate” a text?
What kinds of texts are most in need of “interrogation” by readers?
What is risky about “interrogating” texts and teaching students to do so?
What risks do we run by NOT “interrogating” texts or teaching students to do so?

7. Look at a text intended for young children (maybe a story from a published reading program, or a content area textbook, or even a picture book) and attempt to “interrogate” it.
Ask yourself: Whose voice(s) do we not hear in the story? What do you think they would say? What voices or viewpoints are privileged in the text? What agenda or agendas might the author and/or illustrator have had when creating the text?
Describe how you think such a discussion might go with a group of children at the elementary level. Tailor your answer to fit the level where the book would likely be used.

8. Look at Table 1 on page 435. Find a text in a popular publication (newspaper or magazine) that includes a graph of some sort incorporating numerical data. Use Table 1 to “interrogate” that text. Which of the “Dimensions of the Process” did you find most challenging to apply to your text?

9. “We live in an age that is inundated by data.” The Whitins make this statement early in the article. They also state that this is both a “boon and a bane”. What are a few ways the knowledge explosion is a boon? What are a few ways it is a bane? Think of some specific examples of both cases, preferably from your own experience. What are the implications for teachers of this plethora of easily-available knowledge?

10. Whitin and Whitin write about “innumerate” individuals in a way similar to the way we hear about “illiterate” individuals. What do you think it means to be “innumerate”? What is a necessary level of numeracy for an elementary age student? a high school graduate? an adult citizen and worker? a professional person? Address any or all of these numeracy levels.

11. The Whitins describe how both gun-control supporters and the NRA have framed survey questions in biased ways (e.g., “Do you favor cracking down on illegal gun sales?” vs. “Would you favor or oppose a law giving police the power to decide who may or may not own a firearm?” In each case, what are the specific words that tip the question toward a certain bias? If you know of other examples of such biased questions that you have actually encountered in surveys, please share those with us.

12. What kinds of entities might prefer that we NOT teach a critical orientation to texts in our schools? What do these kinds of entities stand to gain by a limited numeracy in the majority of the people in a society? How might these kinds of entities influence public policy to prevent the teaching of a critical orientation?

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.