Some Final Strategies

Using Writing as a Tool to Improve Reading, Thinking and Learning

As I finished reading Chapter Nine, I realized that the best use of my time would be to link my new appreciation for technology as an instructional resource to the strategies discussed in this text.  So, I leave you with a list of additional strategies discussed in Chapters Eight and Nine.

• Graphic Organizer (Structured Overview, Idea Map, Advanced Organizer): spatially represents the relationships among the most important ideas of a text
• Constructing a Map (Clustering, Webbing): helps to determine a connecting, overarching principle that outlines the relationships among the parts; can include Story Mapping, Listing, and Semantic Maps
• Semantic Feature Analysis (Feature Analysis, Jot Charts): organizes new vocabulary in a matrix by its properties
• Scavenger Hunts: can be used to find vocabulary in magazines, newspapers, etc., and "have the added advantage of attaching words to the physical sensory as well as the cognitive domains of learning"
• Vocabulary Journals: include effective vocabulary instruction, using word origins, paraphrasing of a paragraph or two from a technical term-heavy book, a word-a-day, fill-in-the-blank sentences to put new vocabulary into meaninful contexts
• Learning Log: connects writing and thinking in an informal, expressive way that can emphasize writing-to-learn, the content knowledge itself, and students' thinking processes
• Personal Journal
• Writer's Notebooks
• Reading Response Journal
• Dialogue Journal/Dialectical Notebook
• Project or Research Log
• Real World Application Journal
• Course Log
• Revision Workshops
• Writing Response Groups

Putting it Into Action

Lesson Designs for Text Comprehension

All lessons and units should be designed to ensure student comprehension.  I sometimes get caught up in the planning part of teaching, and not always because I am focused on student learning, but instead, because I am excited by the multiple texts and forms of information I can connect to a unit (songs, movies, pictures, magazine articles).  I am realizing, though, that I must be more purposeful in my unit design, especially since my sequencing of assignments does not always allow for enough focus on pre-reading, during-reading, or post-reading comprehension checks (which this blog post will focus on, although there are many other helpful topics included in Chapter Eight, including determining daily content objectives, designing units around a main idea in the content area, designing units using thematic organization, mapping key terms and key concepts, and learning vocabulary through pre-reading, during-reading, and postreading lessons).

Pre-Reading

Pre-reading preparation can set the tone for the whole day or an entire unit, and it involves a teacher's ability to link students' prior knowledge to the new material.  A quick pre-reading assessment, pre-test, or inventory can help to determine a student's current level of knowledge, and an Anticipation Guide, which contains ten to fifteen statements that reflect one narrow aspect of the material, can help students to challenge commonly held beliefs or begin to make connections to the text itself.  An example of an Anticipation Guide for Of Mice and Men is found here.

Another way of assessing students' prior knowledge is to do a K-W-L chart.  Other ideas include the following:

• Outlining key vocabulary with a semantic map that illustrates the relationships among content words
• Identifying a problem to be solved
• Discussing related concepts in small or whole-class groups
• Showing a film
• Doing a gallery walk using related primary documents, pictures, or short texts to activate prior knowledge about a historical time period or scientific concept
• Setting up situations that require ethical choices

During Reading

Throughout the reading of a text, a teacher should be concerned with extending comprehension by exploring the implications of the unit's main idea, maintaining the level of interest, checking sutdent understanding, and monitoring vocabulary and organization of the passages.  This can be done by asking students questions from all three levels of comprehension and encouraging multiple responses.  To help students to work through a difficult text, Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) can be used as a strategy for "guiding interpretation, fostering prediction, and teaching students how to break material into chunks."  Teachers can also create Selective Reading Guides, which walks students through a text to be read on his or her own, or Text Pattern Guides, which focus on a text's structure and organizational pattern.  Other strategies recommended include the Three-Level Statement Guide, which exposes students to complexities in the material, or summary writing.  The authors are careful to clarify, however, that a good summary follows the following strict guidelines:

1. Must cover only main points
2. Must not include examples, specifics, or arguments
3. Must not use direct quotations, except for an irreplaceable phrase
4. Must use a parallel structure to that of the original
5. Must not allow undue space to a minor point
6. Must add not material to the original and must not contain the opinion of the student
7. Must be concise (rarely more than a page)

Postreading

After completing a text, a unit should focus on extending and refining new knowledge learned through a rich assortment of activities, from field trips to movies to student discussion.  Great ideas for post reading activities include classroom debates, mock trials or television presentations or talk shows, student writing about what they read (reports, rewrites of a chapter, persuasive essays, dialogues or interviews, how-to manuals, book reviews, journal entries), creating graphic organizers of new information (charts, graphs, outlines, maps, List-Group-Label), tests, quizzes, and the list goes on and on.  The goal here should be to evaluate what students have learned and to extend that learning beyond the text and into the upcoming course material.

Learning to Question

Principles of Comprehension and Learning: Processes that Enable Divergent Readings in the Text

As has been discussed in previous posts, there is no one "right" reading of a text; every reading transaction involves the text, the reader, and the meaning that the reader creates, and instruction across the content areas must account for that varied text comprehension by being student-centered with a focus on language immersion, critical thinking, problem-posing and metacognition.  The transactional model of teaching advocated by the authors encourages students to construct knowledge for themselves through active problem posing, interactive strategies, collaboration and reciprocal teaching and learning. 

Here is a jarring fact for teachers everywhere:  "Linguists speculate that the average adult increases his or her vocabulary by a third after leaving school."  Imagine!  All those vocabulary quizzes and written definitions, yet the way that we best learn new vocabulary is through the natural processes of being immersed in meaningful activity.  If students are given a reason for learning new words or concepts, then the student will be better able to make meaning of it, for after all, "words have the power to express our thoughts and manipulate our ideas."  A large part of this learning process involves schema theory, and the reorganization of what we already knew to incorporate what we now know.  One strategy to help in this process includes List-Group-Label, in which students are asked to brainstorm words and create groupings using those words, then revisit their categories in order to create more meaningful relationships between the words.

Critical Thinking & Question-Asking

Many of us are familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, which is sometimes criticized for its hierarchical approach to ways of knowing or its lack of affective response, but it is still a valuable tool.  An associated idea is cubing, an activity that asks students to define an object using multiple perspectives.  For instance, consider asking health education students to examine the "cardiovascular system" using each of the following steps:

1. Describe it.
2. Compare it.
3. Associate it.
4. Analyze it.
5. Apply it.
6. Argue for or against it.

This activity could be made into a game using a die with each side labeled with one of the steps and could be used in any content area (consider using this strategy as a review game before a unit test).

Related to these approaches is Herber and Vacca's three levels of questioning, including the literal level, the interpretive level, and the applied level.  Encouraging students to learn how to ask their own questions at higher levels of thinking is helpful in developing metacognitive strategies, and can also help students to study using either SQ3R (outlined below) or PORPE (Predict potential questions, Organize the information, Rehearse through recitation and self-testing, Practice through writing, Evaluate for accuracy).

Students can be encouraged to ask questions using whole-class discussion, small groups, think-pair-share, individual journal writing, conferences with one or two students, student projects where students ask their own research questions, and student-run debates.

No Child Left Untested

Assessing Students' Reading Abilities, Needs, Attitudes, and Interests in the Content Classroom

A serious topic, testing is, but I simply cannot help myself.  The authors themselves maintain a strained relationship with the concept of over-testing students (cautioning against a "barrage of tests" and arguing, "Unless the pervasive inequalities implicit in traditional school structures--tracking, testing, and traditional patterns of teacher-dominated instruction--are changed, students from diverse backgrounds are likely to be prevented from achieving high levels of literacy.").  Yet, I also recognize the importance of formative, ongoing assessments of student learning in order to guide and improve instruction and interventions (which is not to say that I am an advocate of high-stakes testing).  

 Informal assessments, which range from daily observations (formative) to final exams (summative), are teacher-created assessments which can inform classroom planning so that a wide range of students can be effectively served.  Formal assessments, which are often norm-referenced, are best exemplified by standardized tests.  These tests scores are often destructive, resulting in (and sometimes reflecting) unequal educational opportunities for students of color, English Language Learners, and low-income students, and portraying underperforming schools in a negative light and creating ever-increasing pressure on schools. 

 On a more positive note, informal reading assessments can be helpful in determining students' attitudes and interests in a subject area (by having students write a subject-specific autobiography with their prior experiences in math, for instance, or completing group surveys, checklists, or interest inventories) and assessing students' strengths and weaknesses in your content area (using cloze reading tests or Content Area Reading Inventories).

The best assessment practices across subjet areas are:

• formative, not summative
• descriptive or narrative, not scored and numerical
• student-centered, involving students in record-keeping and in evaluating their own work
• approached from several angles, including observation, conversation, products, and performances
• part of everyday instruction instead of separate from it
• ongoing, flexible, and varied
• focused on building from strengths rather than pointing out deficiencies
• sensitive to processes as well as products

Accordingly, "the multifaceted assessment processes currently advocated provide teachers with the many kinds of information they need about students for effective curriculum planning, and also give students feedback that will help them grow as learners."  Three promising assessment practices include the following:

1. Authentic assessment, which is "based on observing, collecting and evaluating data from the ongoing daily activities that students engage in as they learn."  This includes teacher journal entries, notes from teacher-student conferences, drafts and final products, lab reports, response journals, written discussion of math calculations, reports and reflections on collaborative learning, rubrics for presentations and dramatic readings, and student self-evaluations.
2. Observation, or "naturalistic assessment," involves ongoing documented teacher observation about student progress.  This type of assessment (think about observing facial expressions when a student is approaching a task or assignment) can really inform how and when a teacher provides additional instruction or support.
3. Student portfolios are a highly recommended form of effective, authentic assessment, and can be either inclusive (containing a majority of the student's work collected over time to indicate growth) or showcase (containing only the student's best work or to document specific skills or abilities), depending on its purpose.  These portfolios can be used in any content area, as evidenced by the suggestions for using portfolios in a math class: students are encouraged to include written descriptions of the results of investigations, descriptions and diagrams of problem-solving processes, statistical studies and graphic representations, responses to open-ended questions, group reports and photographs of student projects, and many other authentic assessments.  Portfolios encourage students to develop the metacognitive skills required in charting out their own progress by looking back at their own learning and reflecting on it.  This process makes them active participants in their own learning. 

Broadening the Horizon

Selecting, Assessing, and Introducing Texts and Materials

Because I've never been on a textbook adoption committee (I'm not sure how many of my readers have been), and because I likely never will be, I will leap over the first half of Chapter Five, which focuses on evaluating texts for classroom use.  Many teachers have little say over which textbook is used in their classrooms and a whole lot of say over how the textbook is used.  So, let's skip to that!

The authors provide two suggesting for introducing a text to a student, including a text preview (a collaborative approach where students answer questions about the text using guiding questions about the text's author, table of contents, glossary, index, bibliography, appendix, organization, graphic images, and overall functionality) and a treasure hunt (a specific list of ten to twenty-five questions that can be found using the text and to introduce students to some of the ideas that will be covered over the course of the semester).  Both of these approaches sound like excellent activities for the first week of school.

Often, a school's textbook does not necessarily cover all that a teacher would like to cover (or, more likely, covers too much at the expense of depth of information) and most of the time, textbooks do not reflect the needs, interests, abilities, and voices of diverse learners.  Teachers are encouraged to add additional reading materials beyond the core text in order to add focus and depth, fulfill personal interests, provide for individual reading and learning abilities, add a multicultural dimension, stimulate independent thinking, and promote the sheer love of a subject.  Texts can include fiction, poetry, nonfiction, biographies and autobiographies, works by and about women or people of color, newspapers and magazines, reference materials and encyclopedias, art and music, or videos and films.  These texts can be incorporated easily into almost any content area class using oral reading; assigned reading; independent reading combined with a performance, presentation, or report; collaborative or independent projects; and reading workshops.

Struggling to incorporate supplemental texts into your curriculum?  In addition to keeping an organized folder for articles or resources for different genres or course topics (including torn out pages, catalogues, newspaper clippings, bibliography lists, or printed website resources), consider the following resources for your school subject area:

• Art and Music--School Arts, Music Educators Journal, Art Education
• Business--Balance Sheet, Journal of Education for Business, Journal of Business Education, Business Education Forum
• English--English Journal, Journal of Reading, The Reading Teacher, Language Arts
• Foreign Language--Foreign Language Annals
• Mathematics--Arithmetic Teacher, School Science and Mathematics, Mathematics Teacher
• Physical Education--Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance
• Science--The Science Teacher, American Biology Teacher, Journal of Chemical Education, Science Education, Journal of Biological Education
• Social Studies--Social Education, The Social Studies
• Vocational Education--VocEd

Other texts that should be considered are online technologies, including word processing programs and professional publication software, online instructional technologies, and websites.  I am particularly fond of Discovery Education, PBS, and Scholastic for media resources, lesson plan ideas, and primary documents.

Recommendations: Literacy for Empowerment

Influences on Language and Literacy Development & the Teaching of Reading

While the first half of Chapter Four focuses on the principles of literacy development (including discussion of direct phonics instruction, emergent literacy and print awareness, dialect variation in oral language, and dialect miscues), I found the section on cultural patterns, cultural discontinuity, differentiated instruction and school policies to be most helpful in considering my own classroom.  While space here will not allow for a more in-depth discussion of these ideas (and how they are connected to ideas of power, privilege, and possible change), I will instead focus on the great recommendations outlined in the last half of the chapter.

After discussing the issues of power dynamics between students and teachers, the authors offered the following ideas to help empower students:

• Integrate multicultural literatures into literature classes, not the token poem or novel written by a minority person but the inclusion of significant pieces of literature from a wide range of cultures.
• Give more than a token nod to the history of various ethnic groups in this country in history classrooms.
• Discuss invenstions by women and minorities in social studies and science classrooms
• Affirm differences rather than ignore them.
• Provide opportunities for all students to become critically literate, to use their language and literacy resources to critique the society that exercises the power.  Only when students feel that their literacy can be used for critical as well as for economic power will they see its full value in their own lives.
• Allow full disclosure and discussion of the limits of literacy--that literacy is no guarantee of power and that literacy can fetter rather than liberate if it is misused and granted only to certain segments of society.

Then, the authors provide the following "best-practice" approaches to integrating literacy acquisition for students of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds in the secondary classroom:

1. A reading/writing workshop. Use mini-lessons on reading and writing strategies and processes, provide classroom time for reading or writing, and use one-on-one or group conferencing to assess student needs, strengths, and necessary interventions.
2. Personal anthologies.  Students love to tell their own stories, but they also love to share the stories that are meaningful to them.  Have students compile personal anthologies using multiple genres, multiple authors, and multiple topics.  Students can complete personal reflective pieces on the process and on the texts themselves.  This strategy can be used in science classes (including journal articles, magazine articles, newspaper clips using topics such as ecological issues or medicinal herbs), math classes (have students collect information on architecture, statistical trends, the economy) or art classes (students can investigate a particular time period in art based on an artistic movement's current influences or relevance in modern times).  These portfolios are great ways to motivate students with topics they have chosen.
3. Skinny books.  Don't feel so tied to the textbook!  Consider making your own skinny books, or files with several accessible articles written about your unit's topic.  With a government class, use current newspaper articles and don't be afraid to include more difficult texts, as students may begin to access them once they have developed a stronger prior knowledge base.
4. Experimenting in the discourse of the discipline.  Teach history?  Teach your students to use the cause-effect discourse patterns used by historians!  Teach poetry?  Teach your students how to write using the poetic forms of literary critics!  Teach science?  Teach your students how to present information using the analysis and classification of scientists!  Those patterns, or codes of discourse structures, will definitely help students to make new knowledge more explicit and predictable.

Finally, the authors suggest a whole language framework for developmental reading programs for struggling readers based on the principles of reading as as a psycholinguistic process.  These suggestions, taken with the above recommendations, are important for me especially, as I tend to work most often with the struggling, "at-risk" students.  Their suggestions include the following:

1. Use self-selected, independent reading.  Students should be allowed time each week to devote to reading that mirrors reading in the real world, including reading appropriate magazines (no High Times, high school students!), nonfiction, young adult novels, mysteries, pamphlets, manuals, and other self-selected text.  I had a student who brought his Bible to class, tattered and torn, who read next to a student who was reading The Golden Compass.  Incredibly, they would leave class on reading days debating with each other, but were always respectful to one another.
2. Sustain independent reading.  Before having independent reading, have discussions to help students engage in the independent reading.  Topics might include the reading selections and recommendations, myths and misconceptions about reading, problems students may have in reading (followed by mini-lessons for strategies), or current issues in education related to reading (what harm is there in talking with your students about the political and social implications of the SBA or school report cards?).
3. Read aloud to students. There is no age limit on this!  Students of all ages love to be read to, and a good story read aloud can provide a great time to model questioning, summarizing, or identifying important sections.
4. Use writing rather than worksheets and short-answer drills.  Make written responses to reading meaningful!  More about this topic will be covered in the next blog post...
5. Rewrite texts.  Students should put material into their own words.  Many students enjoy re-writing the end of a story, or even re-writing the story from a different character's point of view.  In a science class, consider having students re-write an article about a scientific concept for a younger audience.
6. Encourage self-expression.  Student responses to reading should come in many forms, including painting, scrapbooks, book jackets, writing stories, group activities, organized interest-based reading groups, or dramatic activities.

Recommended Reading
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers.html
http://www.sojust.net/
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml
http://www.teachingforchange.org/

The Reading Process: Who's in Charge?

"In collaboration with the text, the reader is in charge.  The reader must be." (p. 40)

Now, I know that if you are reading this, then you are likely a fluent reader.  Like myself, you have likely developed a variety of Discourses in which you are fluent (or at least can mushfake, or fake it 'till you make it) depending upon the various contexts in which you must call upon those Discourses (the PTA meeting, your Graduate Assistantship, the "teacher talk" you must assume when you are with colleagues versus the "teacher talk" you use to establish yourself to a new class at the beginning of the year versus the "teacher talk" you use in Professional Learning Communities with your English Department colleagues... or Art teacher friends or Science teacher co-workers).  Doubtless, you can read.  Yet, like me, you are still developing and revising your theories of reading, just as beginning readers use their home and school experiences to constantly inform their own reading theory development.  And, as an educator engaged in the co-construction of knowledge, your own theories of reading (shifting though they may be) are informing your students' own theories of reading.  Is reading active or passive?  Political or neutral?  Interpretive or didactic?

Chapter Three investigates the complex processes involved in reading, primarily through the psycholingistic and social constructivist perspectives.  The authors focus on these approaches because the behaviorist model of reading is simply too-outdated to remain helpful, and because it is extremely difficult to "observe the behavior" of comprehension.  As we saw with Jeremy in the Mosaic of Thought excerpt, students may be orally fluent while still struggling with comprehension.  In the behaviorist model, there is only one right answer, but as we know, meaning is constantly negotiated between the text, the reader, and the context of the reading.  Psycholinguistic theory offers a more complex approach in which the reader must take an active role in making sense of the text.  The authors offer the following model by Goodman, Watson, and Burke (1996) to better explain a psycholinguistic model of reading:

Through this model, meaning is continuously constructed through experience, knowledge, and a reader's own understanding of the text.

Reading as a Linguistic Process
The authors outline a number of important levels of knowledge necessary for comprehension, including understanding grapho-phonic (letter-sound) information, syntax (the relationship among words in a sentence, including word order), morphological information (word endings like -ed or -ly that imply how the word is used), and semantics (knowledge of the word and its relationship to the world).  They remind us that meaning is constructed through the reader's levels of knowledge and the context in which words are used.  For instance, "He was struggling to get out of the bunker" means two very different things within the context of a golf magazine or a WWII short story.

Context, Prediction & Schema
Great readers usually draw upon their own schemas, or "structured knowledge about the world," in order to make sense of new text and to predict what the text may be about.  As has been widely discussed, this means that prior exposure to an idea helps readers to predict how new information is related to that old idea.  For instance, a student who lives in Seattle may be more apt to understand the concept of tidal waves than a student in Albuquerque, who may have had little exposure to the movement of large bodies of water.  Accordingly, "readers select the most salient features of letters, words, phrases, and sentences, depending on the background knowledge they bring to the reading, as the basis for sampling, predicting, confirming, or correcting" new knowledge.  The authors further argue that "readers whose knowledge of text organization and rhetorical structure is strong will use that structural knowledge to negotiate meaning and will need to do less 'wandering around' in the text in an attempt to make sense of it." 
Three Tips for Teaching Reading

First, it is important that texts are accessible to students at every level (elementary and secondary).  Early readers may benefit from the predictable nature of familiar stories, poems, and rhymes so they can make predictions about the text, while secondary students will likely benefit from "materials to which they can relate, materials with enough familiar concepts and familiar styles of writing, materials that help them connect their own expeirences to those being represented in the text."  If the text is inconsiderate or unfamiliar, the teacher must work hard to help students fill in the background knowledge they might need to comprehend more fully (audio-visuals are often helpful in this regard).

Second, reading fluency does not indicate comprehension (as we remember from the example of Jeremy in Mosaic of Thought).  Following any oral reading, it is important to check for comprehension by having the reader retell the story or summarize the main ideas in his/her own words for a quick comprehension check. 

Third, texts cannot be taken as infallible; rather, students should be encouraged to question textual authority by learning to read the subtext and to develop critical literacy skills.  "Readers must learn to separate their own views from the author's.  Lessons on bias and opinion, on implicit and explicit expression, on taking a skeptical stance, and on setting criteria for making judgments are therefore crucial to effective critical reading strategies.  Only then will readers see themselves as participants in the construction of knowledge, not as mere recipients of someone else's views."

A Contested History

The History of Reading Movements in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Two outlines the ongoing division between the two most widely-accepted approaches to reading instruction in the twentieth (and now twenty-first) centuries:  the behaviorist model and the psycholinguists and whole language approach.  At stake here is the answer to the ultimate question: How do students learn most effectively?  The first model, the behaviorist model, was exemplified by graduated readers, recitation, drill, and mastery, in which the teacher is the holder of knowledge and the student must have that knowledge "drilled" into them through routine activities.  We see elements of this model throughout our schools still today, not only in timed reading comprehension assessments, but also in the nation's commitment to standardized testing.  A key theorist in this approach was Edward L. Thorndike, who applied his stimulus-response theory to education, arguing that "all learning is a matter of habit formation," and that rigorous training and discipline was key to everything from civic and moral education to penmanship to reading speed (p. 10).  This approach to learning views a student's abilities as innate, or natural, and essentially unchangeable (an approach we see often used in justifying tracking).  Other elements of this approach involve focusing on the development of phonemic awareness regardless of word meanings; the phonics approach so popular in the 1990s and early 2000s was driven by the mass marketing of this behaviorist, repetitive, skills-driven approach.

The second model, the whole-language, meaning-centered, social constructivist approach, has its roots in theorists such as John Dewey and E.B. Huey.  Dewey, whose educational philosophies on education were fundamentally based on incorporating a student's lived experience into the classroom (and beyond), advocated an "inquiry-based lesson" which presents problems to be solved by students who are encouraged to think and question and interact.  This focus on building knowledge around the child's own experience marked a major shift in the more authoritarian, behaviorist approach to learning (and, as we know thanks to James Gee, better incorporates the student's primary Discourses by developing lenses through which a student can transfer new knowledge of their secondary Discourses).  According to Dewey, the student is at the center of the learning process and are active co-constructors of knowledge.

Huey, whose seminal book The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading (1908) may be worth taking a look at (but who is so widely-cited that I likely will simply keep my eyes open for what the major relevant takeaways are), found that it takes longer for us to read unrelated letters or words aloud than it does for us to read words combined into meaningful units.  This is an important early finding in reading education, as it shows us that the instruction of nonsensical sounds (such as isolated phonemes) is more difficult, and that students would be better taught to read using meaningful words. 

Other advocates of the meaning-centered approach include whole language philosophers, such as psycholinguistics researchers and Noam Chomsky, who emphasizes that the deep structure of a text is connected not to the reader's own knowledge and to the rest of the text.  These advocates continue to remind us that "reading is not word-centered but meaning-centered, a transaction between the print and the reader" (p. 18).  Further, social constructivists remind us that "knowledge is always in the process of being negotiated," especially through our development of new Discourses and identitity development.

Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts: Reading in the Secondary Content Areas

I chose to read this theoretically-driven approach to teaching reading in the secondary content areas not because of its original cover design (see below for proof that I try hard not to choose a book by its cover) nor because of the first author's first name (someone with the first name of Reade must be a literacy expert!).  Rather, I chose this book because our school, like others across the nation, is beginning to implement the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, and I (like many other English teachers) am excited about the fact that all content area teachers will be incorporating reading and writing into their instruction.  After all, by the time students are in middle and high school, they are no longer learning to read (although they do continue to develop as readers throughout their lifetimes), but are instead reading to learn.

The authors of Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts (1997) approach literacy with "the belief that as readers use written language to understand the world in which they live, they learn more about how to read at the same time" (pp. ix-x).  For them, literacy is best approached through a multi-dimensional, complex process that is best supported through transactional instruction, where teachers are facilitators of independent learning and thinking and the teaching of reading is integrated into the students' lives and mastery of the content itself.  The teaching of reading, thus, has important implications for teachers of all subjects.  In fact, the authors argue that "knowledgeable subject area teachers are best able to organize curriculum and instruction that provides the rich background of content knowledge, language, and experience that allows students to construct meaning in response to a range of written materials" (p. x).  Imagine a world where history teachers were not only experts in World War II, but were also helpful reading instructors.  Imagine a biology class where students were not only taught about osmosis and cell walls, but were also assisted in developing strong scientific reports.  Reading and writing are such an integral component of learning in every field that to deny explicit reading and writing instruction in those areas seems catastrophic!

The Foreword and Introduction clearly outline the authors' approach to literacy: rather than take a phonics-driven, word-recognition approach (behaviorist) to reading, they advocate a whole language, meaning-centered view (social constructivist, psycholinguistic).  They argue that students are best supported in knowledge creation when student writing in multiple genres is encouraged, displayed and celebrated; when students are required to write in ongoing inquiry and problem solving journals and complete I-search papers on specific topics; when students are encouraged to work collaboratively on research projects, learning logs, and creative writing; and when reading for understanding is promoted through daily assignments using multiple texts (popular media, textbooks, young adult literature, scholarly journals) in every content area.

Why Blog?

I'm a newbie to this whole blogosphere thing.  In fact, I'm new to the whole idea of writing continuously for myself, and probably wouldn't be starting this tech-journey without the requirements set forth by my summer grad class.  I'm notorious for starting a journal, writing in it for a few days (or less), and then setting it to the side and letting it slip my mind.  I'm no good at doing things for myself (but try to be excellent at doing things really well for others).  So, we'll see what happens to this blog in a month or so.

For now, let me begin by saying that I'm excited about the potential that blogging promises.  As I foraged the endless online writing spaces for ideas, I realized that blogging makes knowledge accessible, makes people's lives real, and has the potential of bringing us closer together.  Consider, for instance, http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/, a blog started by two teachers who are over 500 miles apart.  These women share ideas for teaching writing as well as create online spaces in which others can share ideas and resources. 

I think a good blog is one that can include personal reflection, but also focuses on timely issues.  As an expectant mother and always teacher, I struggle with my concern for teaching "revolutionary love," and transformative ways of thinking about the world.  I know that race, class, gender, sexuality are social constructions, but am also painfully aware of the very real consequences these identities have in schooling and society.  The anti-racist parenting blog, http://loveisntenough.com, highlights issues that are pertinent in today's media, education, and legal news, while including links to primary sources and celebrating positive events and families.  Similarly, www.mochamomma.com shares one woman's experiences as a mother, writer, middle school teacher, and critic.  Another blog, www.racialicious.com, investigates the intersections of race and the media.

The most effective blogs, to me, use the author's point of view to address popular opinion, difficult issues, or personal moments of reflection while also staying committed to intertextuality.  This idea of intertextuality, to me, has to do with the overlap of multiple forms of media and texts (including historical moments, legal issues, young adult literature, other blogs) and how texts inform and create other texts in a dialectic.

Baptism by Blogging Fire

When Dr. Pence asked us to create blogs for an online summer course, Reading Across the Content Areas, I have to admit, I was shaking in my flip-flops.  I'm not the most tech-savvy, but I'm eager to learn, so stay tuned for the trials and tribulations of troubleshooting!

This summer, my blogs will likely focus on how my teaching can be improved based on what I learn from reading Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts: Reading in the Secondary Content Areas (1997), by Reade Dornan, Lois Matz Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson. 

In the fall, I'll hope to continue the journey by celebrating the little victories I might experience while teaching Reading at a local middle school and English II and III at the high school.

The most exciting part of this blog will come early in 2013, though, when we welcome the newest addition to our family!  Do they have professional development for new parents?