Winning the Hearts and Minds

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Winning the Hearts and Minds of Adolescent
Learners Using fascinating texts and formative
assessment for comprehension strategies
instruction in middle and high schools
Maryland Assessment Group, November 15, 2007
Neale Pitches, ONZM, Med Admin (Hons), BA, Dip
Tching
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IntroducingNeale Pitches

• Thirty-seven years in education
• English and history teacher
• Library teacher, English head,
• vice principal!
• High school principal (grades 8 through 12)
• Founding Chief Executive of Learning Media,
• a New Zealand-based, global education company
• Executive Chair, South Pacific Press, and Lift
  Education, Wellington, New Zealand

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Literacy issues for adolescentand middle years
students?
The research evidence regarding adolescent and
middle years learners details a challenging
mix of cognitive, affective and instructional
needs impacting on students, teachers and
schools. (See for example, Biancarosa, Gina, and
Snow, Catherine E. 2006. Reading nextA vision
for action and research in middle and high
school literacy A report to Carnegie
Corporation of New York. 2nd ed. Washington, DC
Alliance for Excellent Education.)
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What issues do you see regarding literacy
learning for adolescent and middle years students
and their teachers?
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Todays agenda

• Today I want to focus on three interrelated
• issues
• How to engage middle years learners, using short
  texts (including in the content area)
• 2. How to explicitly instruct all students in
  comprehension strategies
• 3. How to use formative assessment to achieve
  metacognitive goals with adolescent / middle
  years learners

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Issue 1 How to engage our students?
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Your view - the importance of engagement in
literacy instruction
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The Research Evidence

• Reading engagement is more highly associated
  with
• NAEP reading achievement than demographic
  variables
• that represent traditional barriers to
  achievement
• John T. Guthrie (2004) in Brozo, William G.
  (2005)

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The Research Evidence

• Engagement is a merger of motivation and
• thoughtfulness
• Engaged readers seek to understand they enjoy
  learning
• and they believe in their reading abilities
• John T. Guthrie (2004) in Brozo, William G.
  (2005)

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Engagement and texts

• Texts need to
• Enlist active participation
• Capture interest, imagination
• Provide students with tools for controlling
  their
• own academic destinies

John T. Guthrie (2004) in Brozo, William G. (2005)
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Using fascinating, short texts
we have found short text to be the most
effective type for teaching comprehension.
(Harvey Goudvis 2000, p.43)
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Using fascinating, short texts in the content
area
students of all ages from elementary to high
school, have difficulty comprehending the
structure of informational text. (McGee, 1982
Meyer, Brandt and Bluth, 1980 Taylor, 1980, in
Block, Gambrell and Pressley, 2002, p9)
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Using fascinating texts in the content area
Overall, content educators in a wide variety of
disciplines and secondary literacy educators
recommend that teachers develop the types of
learning environments in which students are
expected to use reading, writing, and discussion
to solve problems, conduct research, experiment,
and learn in a particular content area
(Alvermann, Boyd, Brozo, Hinchman, Moore, and
Sturtevant, 2002)
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(No Transcript)
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Engaging students with fascinating texts
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Issue 2 - How to explicitly instruct all
students in comprehension strategies
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Your view the importance of comprehension
strategies instruction?
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Why comprehension strategies?

• Comprehension is critically important to the
  development of childrens reading skills
  Indeed, reading comprehension has come to be the
  essence of reading.
• ..readers derive meaning from text when they
  engage in intentional, problem-solving thinking
  processes
• Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000

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Why comprehension strategies?

• Comprehension strategies are specific learned
• procedures that foster active, competent,
  self-regulated,
• and intentional reading.
• (Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002, p.177)
• ...explicit or formal instruction in the
  application of
• comprehension strategies has been shown to be
  highly
• effective...
• (Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000, p.17)

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Why comprehension strategies?
children who are reading up to grade level in
the primary grades do not automatically become
proficient readers in later grades. in short,
they middle school students must be taught how
to comprehend. (2004, p.1) (Biancarosa Snow,
cited in International Reading Association, 2006,
p.1)
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The Research Evidence
comprehension is an extremely complex problem,
and the longer we let these kids go the more
serious the problem becomes... The problem
exists because after 3rd grade we stop
providing reading instruction, and the
instruction we do provide is not what they
need. (Kamil, M, as cited in Manzo, 2005, p.38)
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The Research Evidence
The bottom line is that readers who are
given cognitive strategy instruction make
significant gains on comprehension compared
with students who are trained with conventional
instruction procedures (Trabasso and Bouchard,
2002, p.177, citing Pressley, Johnson, Symons,
McGoldrick and Kurita, 1989 Rosenshine and
Meister, 1994 Rosenshine, Meister, and Chapman,
1996,)
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The Research Evidence
Reviewing 17 multiple-strategy instruction
studies (other than reciprocal teaching)
Trabusso and Bouchard reported these
multiple-strategy studies showed this procedure
is very powerful in teaching comprehension
skills. Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002 in Block and
Pressley 2002, p184.
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Effective instruction yourviews?
How would you describe effective
instruction? Whats the basis of the research
and other policy advice to teachers regarding
effective instruction? Is effective instruction
differentiated instruction? What do you consider
to be the essential elements of differentiated
instruction?
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The Research Evidence

• As a result of painstaking research in New
  Zealand
• involving a uniquely-detailed process of
  classroom
• observations using video and audio recordings,
  Graham
• Nuthall and Adrienne Alton-Lee have come up with
  two
• vitally important findings
• If the appropriate number of learning experiences
  occur, without significant gaps between them,
  learning occurs regardless of the ability level
  of the students.

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The Research Evidence

• 2. What they the students learn is not
  dependent upon ability but upon the ways in which
  they engage with classroom tasks and activities
• (1997, p.8).
• Further, Nuthall stated that to learn a new
  concept,
• students needed three to four relevant
  experiences in a
• short period of time, so that emerging new
  learning isnt
• lost from short-term memory. (Nuthall, 1993, 2007)

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Time for a paradigm shift?

• How can we support all learners in diverse
  classrooms?
• Fascinating texts to sponsor engagement
• Technology to support learning digital and
  audio
• Peer interaction
• High level questions for all students
• Its differentiated instruction, but not as we
  know it!

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Effective Literacy Practice involves Reading
and Writing To With and By
Reinforcing
Modeling
Guiding

Reading/ Writing to students
Reading/ writing with students
Reading/ writing by students
Explicit, differentiated instruction
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Effective Literacy Practice involves Reading
and Writing To With and By
Reinforcing
Modeling
Guiding
Reading/ Writing to students

Reading/ writing with students
Reading/ writing by students
Involving literacy teams content teachers
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Technologies to support effective, differentiated
instruction
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Comprehension Strategies Instruction
The interactive whiteboard is fast becoming a
tool for fostering learning community in middle
years classrooms. Teachers and students
interchange at the board, reading, thinking and
writing on the board together as they read, think
and write, interpret, code and comment on texts
of all types that can be displayed on the board
from the PC.
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Digital interactive texts with embedded glossaries
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Technologies to engage and instruct
In a 2006 research report presented to the
American Educational research Association (AERA)
Gillen et al came to the following conclusions
about the use of such technology in the
classroom The IWB seems to facilitate a speedy,
smooth presentation compared with earlier
technology. It clearly enables teachers to use a
combination of innovative styles. It allows
images and texts to be selected, displayed, moved
and modified in ways that conventional classroom
display technology cannot (ALearning
Revolution? Investigating Pedagogic Practices
Around Interactive Whiteboards in British Primary
Clasrooms, Julia Gillen et al Paper presented at
the AERA Conference, San Fransisco, USA, 2006)
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Audio

• Audio texts supply students with good models of
  fluent
• reading. Chomsky (1978) and Samuals (1979)
  reported,
• Modeled reading may be especially beneficial for
  
• struggling readers
• (Chomsky, 1978 and Samuels, 1979 cited in Worthy
  and Broaddus, 2001-
• 02, page 338).

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Audio

• Regarding ELL students, Roser (2001) supported
  the
• provision of fluent models of English to ELL
  students,
• contending it helped students learn to read in
  their
• second language of English
• (Roser, 2001, in Johns and Bergland, 2002, p.35).
  

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Pedagogy to support effective, differentiated
instruction
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The importance of higher-level questions
when teachers tend to ask literal questions,
their students tend to focus on literal reading
and recall of texts, rather than critical,
higher-level, or interpretive readings (Almasi,
2002, p.230).
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Interactive learning communities in the
classroom are essential
At any grade level there are important benefits
to having the students interact, through reading,
thinking and talking with the teacher and with
each other (Vygotsky, 1978 Dowhower, 1999). In
the middle school years its vital Active
participation in learning isextremely
important (Robb, 2003, p12)
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In literacy its about before, during and after
reading writing

• Evidence strongly points to significant benefits
  to
• students when teachers provide specific
  instruction
• before, during, and after students read The
• process helps students link new ideas to what
  they
• learned previously, remember what was read, and
  think
• critically. (Sturtevant, 2003)

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Issue 3 - How to use formative assessment to
achieve metacognitive goals with adolescent /
middle years students?
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Formative assessment what do you understand by
the term formative assessment?What do you see
as its importance in teaching and learning?
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Formative assessment
Effective teachersmonitored progress In reading
through the use of informal assessments (Block,
Gambrell and Pressley, 2002, p.44) In the
foreword to Assessing Comprehension Thinking
Strategies, Ellin Keene says, teachers not
only have to teach comprehension strategies but
also to discuss how the strategy works to deepen
comprehension. (2006, p.6)
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Formative Assessment

• Share learning goals / learning intentions with
  students
• Discuss success criteria with students
• Involve students in self-assessment
• (Black and Wiliam, Assessment Reform Group, 1999,
  p4)

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Formative Assessment

• Provide feedback which leads to students
• recognizing their next steps and how to take
• them
• Underpin instruction with confidence that every
• student can improve
• (Black and Wiliam, Assessment Reform Group, 1999,
  p5)

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Summing Up - Rich Learning Model (caution
viewing this diagram could be harmful to your
health but good for your instruction!)