Issue 48: May 18, 2009 Connections Newsletter

Reading Comprehension Strategies Scheduled Reviews

Carol Brewer
May 18, 2009

Many schools have found great success by teaching their students the Reading Comprehension Strategies. It is known as "The Strategy of the Month". A suggested resource for this instruction is the Reading Assignments Flipchart. This flipchart consists of comprehension strategies that are arranged in order according to a "natural" transition from one strategy to the next. For example, Main Idea and Detail should be modeled and taught first to give the students the strategy of finding key points or details of what is read, heard, and viewed. Text Elements follows and if the students are proficient with finding the Details, they can apply this strategy to locate the Text Elements (Literary Elements and Text Features). The following is the suggested order of instruction:

  • Main Idea and Detail

  • Text Elements

  • Sequencing

  • Cause and Effect

  • Inference

  • Compare and Contrast

  • Fact and Opinion

A suggested Scheduled Review for these strategies is to combine them to strengthen the understanding. For example, after teaching sequencing and cause and effect, students are given the event of a story on an index card. Together, with their group, they identify the cause and effect of the event. The reporter of the group stands up and shares the event for the class to sequence. The group arranges themselves according to the sequence and shares the cause and effect of the event. 
 
Teachers can use this idea during grade level meetings to start a brainstorming session for Scheduled Review. Think of the strategies that have been taught and how to combine them to strengthen the understanding.

See Reading Comprehension 2-5 and 6-12 in the LEARNING-FOCUSED Literacy Collection.

 



Setting Goals with Feedback

Barbara McSwain
May 18, 2009

As the final quarter of the school year approaches, a question a district/school or classroom may want to ask is, "What are our goals for next year?"

Mike Schmoker (1999) notes, "Goals themselves lead not only to success, but also to the effectiveness and cohesion of a team" (p.24).

It is imperative that 2-3 goals be set yearly. High expectations for all students, regardless of their backgrounds in receiving supplemental educational services, are paramount in the school effectiveness research. The literature has consistently stated that students rise to the occasion when we set the bar high. These high expectations with clear goals should be communicated to the students at the very beginning of the school year and repeated throughout the year. It is important for students to be a part of this process. Students need to set learning goals. They need to be accountable for their part in the learning process.

One of my favorite memories of last school year was a walk-through visit at Dixieland Elementary in Polk County, FL. The principal, Debbie Henderson, is an outstanding leader. Dixieland was recognized in the Spring of FY 08 as a LEARNING-FOCUSED Preferred School for Leadership, with an emphasis on support, monitoring, planning and classroom application.

I was joined on the walk-through by district personnel, academic coaches, the principal and the assistant principal. As we stepped out of one classroom, a student stopped the assistant principal, Mary Dwight, and whispered a question. Dwight smiled and whispered an answer, and the student responded with a nod.  Immediately, outside the classroom, Henderson asked what the child needed. Dwight responded, "She wanted to know if you were still going to meet with her regarding her goals today. She is worried that you will not have time because we have visitors in our school."

I was not surprised when Henderson said to Dwight, "Please continue with our classroom visits. I will catch up in a minute. I need to reassure her that I will meet with her today!" This is the type of leadership and focus that is needed for goal setting. Everyone is involved in the process, including students. Researched-based instruction, with goals and feedback, serves as the primary focus every day! 

Students must receive feedback throughout the learning process. Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, Kulik, & Morgan's research has referred to this as formative assessment as opposed to summative assessment that occurs at the end of a learning period. In the United States, summative assessments are conducted yearly. Often, results are not received until much later and the teachers no longer have the same students. Very little is done with these summative results to change instruction. Many researchers feel that the appropriate and systematic use of formative assessment holds the key to greatly improving student achievement.
 
LEARNING-FOCUSED assessment prompts distributed throughout the unit/lesson design serve as formative assessment(s) that allow for immediate feedback to the students. In 1999 Schmoker referred to "rapid results" as critical to providing a foundation of success on which to build within the first year. Schmoker recognized that school improvement takes time. However, he also realized that students, teachers and administrators who are accustomed to failure need to know what success "looks" and "feels like." Goal setting with feedback is essential to that process!
 
What are the goals for your school/district for FY 09? What are the students' goals?  When will you talk about goal setting? When will you schedule time for reflection meetings with feedback? 
 
See the Project Implementation section of the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies Model Notebooks (Parts 1 - 4)  for more information.



Writing to Learn and Assessment Prompts: What’s the Connection?

Cindy Riedl
May 18, 2009

"Writing is not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they know. It is a way to help them understand what they know. At its best, writing is learning." (National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges 2003)

Consider the implications of this quote. If students are to truly learn, they must write in all content areas - but when? Assessment prompts cause us to consider and plan ways to assess learning as we teach chunks of content. Short writes, such as using writing to learn strategies for distributed summarizing during the lesson and clarifying key learning at the end of the lesson, address the need to periodically assess learning for intervention and immediate feedback. This informs us about when to adjust instruction during the lesson and assures that students are internalizing the content as it was intended throughout the lesson.

Now consider what students tend to learn, according to the Learning Pyramid, in terms of active involvement - 90% of what they say and do. Writing is doing 'the real thing'. It directly addresses three of the five most important instructional strategies:  extending thinking skills, summarizing and advance organizers. Schools that have the greatest gains in student performance and achievement are schools where writing is present in every subject, not just in English classes. Assessment prompts scattered throughout the lesson that require a written response hit multiple targets, so why are we not doing it? It takes too much time to stop and write? Think about this - if taking the time means an increase in student learning, does it not make sense to bite the bullet and take the time? The clock is ticking - your clock. Time should not be used as an excuse for not doing something we know has been PROVEN to work. So, let's get on with it!

A little review is in order for those of us who are not familiar with how to develop an assessment prompt. Simply take the Lesson Essential Question and, instead of asking yourself what it will look or sound like when your students answer it, ask yourself what your students need to know and be able to do to answer it. Here is an example. LEQ:  What is the job of an adjective? Students need to know assessment prompt 1: Senses - assessment prompt 2: Describing words - assessment prompt 3: What an adjective is - assessment 4: Uses of adjectives. After instruction of the content necessary to examine our senses and words that we use to describe them, students select a Sentence Stem to write a journal entry, i.e. 'I have just learned ...,' 'If I used the sense of ______, I would use describing words like ...'. Assessment prompts 3 and 4 could be assessed together as students take the role of an adjective and write a letter to a noun to explain the job of an adjective with examples.

Responses to assessment prompts should be short, informal writing during the learning process. The purpose is for students to think about the learning by summarizing, clarifying, explaining, posing questions, building connections, revealing confusion, shaping meaning and reaching understanding. Identifying the assessment prompts, what students need to know, allows the teacher to chunk the content of the lesson. After each chunk of instruction, students could do a Think-Pair-Share (Numbered Heads) to demonstrate what they learned, but Think-Ink-Pair-Share assures greater retention and depth of what they are learning. At least one assessment prompt should be addressed using a written response in a lesson - more is GREAT!

Examples of 'Writing to Learn' and 'Summary Point Writing'

Anticipatory Guide Reflection:  Students revisit their responses from the activating strategy and use new knowledge to write their conclusions and explain why.

Summary Point Writing:  Pause after a chunk of content and ask students to write about the most important information they learned, i.e. summarizing information up to this point.

Q & A:  Ask a question and have students write a sentence that answers the question using information just learned.

Structured Note-taking:  Provide a structure, such as two-column notes. After a chunk of content, have students write a summary, paraphrase or create a question for another student to answer about the content.

Key Word Acrostic:  Write the concept taught in the chunk of content. Student construct sentences that reflect key points taught for every letter of the word.

The Absent Student:  Students explain in a letter to the absent student the key learning they missed or how to follow steps in a process.

R.A.F.T:  Role:  Rain Drop - Audience:  Other Rain Drops - Format:  A travel itinerary - Topic:  Water Cycle

Build A Meaningful Sentence:  Students are given key vocabulary or a concept from the lesson and are asked to "build" a sentence that uses the words and summarizes the learning.

Remember:  Keep it simple and engaging! For more ideas, examine LEARNING-FOCUSED Writing Assignments books in the Literacy Collection.