Navigate reading mastery and the science of reading to create meaningful instruction for young readers.
This is the first installment in our Science of Reading series
In the realm of reading instruction, fluency acts as a foundational cornerstone, shaping the way readers interact with written language. Often hailed as the bridge connecting decoding and comprehension, fluency plays an instrumental role in molding a reader's overall understanding. This article takes a comprehensive look at the concept of fluency, delving into its significance, practical implications, and its alignment with the science of reading, with a particular focus on the role of guided reading.
Defining Fluency: Beyond the Basics
Fluency in reading goes beyond just being able to read words correctly. It involves reading in a way that is smooth, precise, and with expressive intonation. It also includes accuracy in understanding the text, maintaining a suitable reading speed, and paying attention to prosody, which refers to the rhythm and melody present in language. When all of these elements come together, they transform reading from a basic recognition of words into a skill that allows you to effortlessly comprehend the deeper significance of a text.
Why Fluency Matters: Bridging Decoding & Comprehension
Fluency acts like a bridge that connects two important parts of reading: decoding and comprehension. Decoding is the process of breaking down written symbols into recognizable words, while comprehension involves understanding the true meaning of the text. When a reader becomes fluent, it means they can decode words effortlessly, which in turn frees up mental energy. This newfound mental capacity can then be directed towards better understanding the content of the text. Research has shown a strong connection between fluency and comprehension. Readers who have developed fluency are not only able to grasp complex ideas easily, but also engage in critical analysis of the text. This skill in turn helps them develop a genuine fondness for reading. This dynamic relationship between fluency and effective reading instruction is a central focus within the science of reading.
Guided Reading: A Path to Proficiency
In the array of strategies aimed at promoting fluency, guided reading emerges as a standout approach. Within a guided reading context, small groups of students engage in shared reading experiences, guided by their teacher. The strength of guided reading lies in its ability to:
Guided Reading in Action: Effective Approaches
Elevating Fluency: A Reading Journey
Fluency goes beyond a mere skill; it's the foundation of satisfying, meaningful reading. Guided reading plays a key role in nurturing this skill, supporting capable readers, and fostering a genuine passion for reading. As educators embrace the principles of guided reading and other fluency-centered approaches, they empower young minds to confidently navigate texts. This involves actively connecting and interlinking various elements within the text, much like weaving threads into a fabric. This journey blends the art of reading with the science of effective reading instruction, resulting in a community of skilled and enthusiastic readers. If you are interested in exploring guided reading further, join me at Best Practices for Guided Reading, which will provide you with an opportunity to experiment with designing and implementing guided reading lessons of your own!
Four pieces of advice to keep in mind as you settle into your classroom.
Dear Math Teachers,
I hope you’re entering your classroom rested and relaxed. I am going to start this letter by thanking you. Thank you for everything you have done in your previous years of teaching. Thank you for everything you will do this year. If you are open to it, I would like to share some advice with you as you continue to navigate what works best for your students this school year.
Come to peace with lack of time
I want you to remember that you will never have enough time, and that is okay. We allow time to really grab hold of us, tangling us in a sense of urgency unfulfilled. I see teachers stress so much about time; not enough time to cover all the content, not enough time to do this fun activity, not enough time to explore something students care about. Find a way to accept that you will never have enough time and free yourself from this immense pressure.
Embrace curiosity
Curiosity was what made me fall in love with math; I always wanted to know why something worked. Unfortunately, we are so stressed about covering as much content as possible that in math classrooms we are often ignoring our curiosity. If a student has a question or wondering, stop the previous plan and engage in it. Did a student come in talking about a car they really like? Let’s learn everything we can about this car. How fast does it go? How did they figure that out? How much would it take me to save up to get it? Is the price of the car unreasonable? What about student’s favorite musicians — how much do we think they make? How do they use patterns to make their music? The best way to prepare a future mathematician is to grow their curiosity; take advantage of every opportunity to do this in your class.
Find your community
Teaching can feel isolating to many lately. Find a community that sustains and supports your practice. It doesn’t even have to be in your school; community can take on many forms. Find some accounts of math teachers on social media that are interesting or inspiring to you. Subscribe to some websites that have shared resources you enjoy. I learn a lot from the newsletters and resources at YouCubed and Math Medic. I also love following Howie Hua. Find those who make you feel seen and inspired.
Make room for joy
Take a moment to think about what brings you joy. Ask your students what brings them joy. Now add those things into your class. Dance to music with your students. Make silly jokes. Play games. Gholdy Muhammad in her recent book, Unearthing Joy, says “Joy is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning, not test prep or graduation.” The lessons we truly learn, the moments and memories that we never forget, are centered around joy. We have to make sure we have room for them in our lessons.
I am excited for the journey you and your students are embarking on in your math classroom. Let go of the stress of time, fumble through curiosity, find your people, and have so much fun.
Keep up the great work! You’ve got this! With lots of love and support, Victoria
Amplify small group instruction and strategic student grouping with this interactive approach.
Three years ago, we were quickly shifting our classrooms to online platforms as instruction was going remote for an indefinite amount of time. We tried to keep teaching throughout the pandemic and survived the snafus that happened throughout the day. (Remember that time you thought you were muted, but you weren’t? Bleh!) Our learning curves for online teaching grew exponentially, and many of us have incorporated the most promising practices into our classrooms today, such as using Google Docs for group projects or editing and commenting on a student paper in live time.
Although there is an educational app for just about everything, we suggest resisting the urge to default back to solely online learning (even while in person), and instead consider the unique benefits of being together in time and space. Let’s design opportunities for students to collaborate, and embrace the physical classroom by creating learning opportunities that take students away from the Chromebooks and into a live setting. Characterized by movement, interaction, and small group learning, station teaching is one of the six established co-teaching models that takes advantage of being together within the four walls of a classroom. As with all models, station teaching comes with its own unique benefits, challenges, and logistics — let's walk through this method in an effort to support you and your co-teacher in planning and facilitating this meaningful approach to learning.
What is station teaching?
Station teaching is when content and instruction are divided into distinct components or strands. Students are divided into equally sized, typically heterogeneous groups. Each teacher teaches a specific part of the lesson/content to different groups of students as they rotate between teachers. Students also rotate through center(s) where they complete an independent task.
What promises does this model offer?
Station teaching provides an opportunity for smaller group instruction and strategic student grouping. One of the more obvious benefits of station teaching is that teachers have an opportunity to work with a small group of students, thus allowing for more responsiveness to individual questions, preferences, and needs. Stations also allow us to leverage the benefits of strategic student grouping, where teachers are intentional in the way that students are grouped together in service of the learning goal. Typically, heterogeneous groups, in which students with a variety of learning traits and needs work together, work best for the station teaching model; at the independent stations in particular, students have the opportunity to learn from and teach each other. Station teaching allows for exploration of a topic or skill through multiple perspectives, entry points, and modes of expression. In Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework designed to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities, one of the guiding principles is that learners differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them. Therefore, it is essential that teachers provide students with multiple means of representation of content. Stations easily allow us to provide representation of a topic in multiple ways; each station could focus on a different text, visual, or audio source. Similarly, each station can allow students to express their learning through a different medium or modality; another important principle of UDL. Station teaching allows the opportunity for natural “brain breaks” and movement. Research has shown that regular, short breaks in the classroom can help students increase their focus and reduce stress. With shorter “chunks” of academic engagement and clear, natural transitions between tasks, the station teaching model inherently incorporates breaks for students. The time it takes for students to travel to the next station could be leveraged to provide students with the physical or social engagement they might need to sustain focus: perhaps you play a song that students enjoy, or invite them to do a particular stretch. Station teaching can help strengthen a co-teaching relationship by providing the opportunity for shared ownership of planning and facilitation. Anyone who has co-taught before knows that it can be difficult to find a groove in which both teachers are easily and equally sharing the workload of lesson planning and facilitation; obstacles like lack of common planning time, unclear goals, and difference in teaching styles and preferences can often get in the way. If you and your co-teacher are finding yourself in a stage of your team development in which roles feel lopsided or undefined, a stations lesson can be a helpful way to help redistribute some responsibility. The ways in which content and instruction are divided in station teaching offer a clear path for delegating planning and teaching duties; each teacher can be responsible for the designing and facilitation of one station (with coordination and communication, of course!).
What are some potential pitfalls?
Noise level and space limitations can create challenges. With several groups of students working on different tasks simultaneously, some students (and teachers!) might find the level of noise and movement in the room to be an adjustment. Preparing students for this might be helpful; you might say something like, “Today’s class may be a bit louder than our typical class, but there will also be quiet moments at the end of the stations so you can collect your thoughts via writing.” It’s also helpful to think strategically about where each station is set up in the room; having the two teacher stations as far away from each other as possible is often the way to go, since teachers often have the loudest voices in the room! Careful attention must be paid to pacing. In contrast to learning centers, where students are moving between learning engagements at their own pace, station teaching is often characterized by coordinated rotation, where everyone moves on to the next station at the same time. This means that all stations need to take roughly the same amount of time, which can be challenging to anticipate in planning. All stations should have flexible tasks that can be shortened or extended with enrichment options or additional discussion questions, depending on how quickly a particular group engages in them. Not all content is well-suited for stations. One of the trickier dynamics of station teaching is that not all students will begin their learning in the same place; some will begin at the independent station, while others will begin at the station led by co-teacher A, while still others will begin at the station by co-teacher B. Because of this, it’s important that the topics or tasks at each station are non sequential — that one station is not a necessary prerequisite to engage with another. Therefore, stations are not ideal for topics or skills that require a specific or strict sequencing of tasks or texts. It’s also not ideal for tasks that require deeper and more sustained investigation or attention, since time spent at each station is relatively brief compared to a full class period. Rather, stations work great for topics that are broad with multiple strands, perspectives, or approaches, or for introductory explorations or final reviews.
How can independent work be structured?
Recent research has highlighted the benefits of letting kids do things on their own, and station teaching offers the opportunity for practicing independence. We have generally found independent stations should be built on familiar territory: a concept, graphic organizer, or task directions that students have seen before. Be sure to have all of the supplies ready at the independent station, and try not to overcomplicate the directions (this sounds obvious but can be challenging)! Here are just a few ideas for independent work:
What can this model look like in action?
Given the promises and potential pitfalls of this co-teaching model, we can determine the kinds of lessons and learning objectives that will be best suited for this instructional approach. Here are a few examples: 3rd grade ELA Students engage in stations that support them with the skills of determining the main idea of a text. At one teacher-led station, students are creating titles for chunks of text. At the second teacher-led station, students are reading a short text and asking: what is this story mostly about? At the two independent stations, students are sorting pictures into categories, or listening to an audio book and answering multiple choice questions. 7th grade Math To begin a new unit, students are engaging in an opening inquiry around the question: Why are surface area and volume important concepts in everyday life? At one teacher-led station, students make observations about water displacement when an object is dropped in a glass of water, and make predictions on whether the tray will be able to catch the displaced water; at another, students are tasked with wrapping a present; at another, they must choose the best tupperware container for leftover “food.” After visiting all the stations, students reflect on the guiding question and discuss with their peers. 11th grade US History Historians often teach an era through a variety of lenses, such as the culture, the key events and figures, and the different perspectives of an era; this approach lends itself easily to a station lesson. When studying the Progressive Era, for example, students can investigate: How did the growth in industrialization and urbanization lead to positive and negative changes in American society? At one teacher-led station, students can look at images from the time period (from photojournalists such as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine) and notice the subjects and stories these photographers may be trying to tell about urban life in the early twentieth century. At an independent station, students can define key terms, such as “muckraker,” “progressivism,” “industrialization,” “modernization,” and The Gospel of Wealth. Students can look up these terms and record what they learn in the form of Cornell Notes or a Frayer Model. At another teacher-led station, the teacher can facilitate a reading of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or The Story of Ida B. Wells, and ask students to make meaning of the text, and take notes on what the text conveys to the reader. After visiting all three stations, students can compare their notes and discuss the positive and negative impact of industrialization and urbanization during the U.S.’s Progressive Era.
The devil is in the details
The more you and your co-teacher can plan in advance for the logistics of station teaching, the more successful your lesson will likely be. How long will students spend at each station? How long will they be given to transition between stations? Which teacher will be responsible for keeping time and cuing the students? How will students know where to go next? (We suggest a slide or poster indicating the direction of rotation for that one!) Preparing all the materials in advance and having a clear and brief set of directions at each station is crucial (particularly at the independent station).
Practice pays off
While this article details the logistics of station teaching with an eye on co-teaching, we cannot overemphasize the importance of designing opportunities for students to interact with each other and with the physical space of the classroom in all classrooms. We know that students missed years of face-to-face interactions due to the pandemic; we suggest being proactive and creating moments for students to embrace a shared space and interact with each other in a low-stakes way. With all these dynamics and logistics, your stations lesson might not go perfectly the first time; don’t give up! We encourage you to reflect on the challenges, tweak it, and try it again. Stations might be a bit of a learning curve for your students as well, but as with any classroom protocol or routine, station rotation and engagement are skills that can be explicitly taught, scaffolded, and practiced. It’s our opinion that the work pays off, as we’ve found this approach to be an interactive and engaging way to punctuate particularly compelling topics in a curriculum.
Four ways to cultivate student connections through stories, personalities, and interests.
It’s the first few weeks of school. New students are entering our school’s hallways and sitting in our classrooms. Fresh paper, pencils, and (hopefully) charged computers are perched on desks. Awkward glances and shuffling feet and uncertain pauses fill the air. As teachers, we are faced with this challenge: how do we begin to build a learning community in our classroom, one that invites trusting dialogue and encourages intellectual curiosity?
I often received one, seemingly simple answer: “find a good icebreaker.” An icebreaker is an activity or engagement task designed to get people talking and learning about one another — in other words, a task to “break the ice” of social awkwardness. A fellow teacher in my school swore by “Would You Rather?” as the icebreaker that had withstood the test of time, asking students to answer a series of extreme either-or questions like, “Would you rather fight a bear or a shark, and why?” I don’t think there’s one best icebreaker for all students or for all teachers. It’s difficult to know definitively what will resonate with your particular students. With that said, I knew that it was possible to find an icebreaker that invited students to get to know each other in a meaningful, personal way. Below you’ll find four activities that will help you “break the ice” with your new students and begin creating genuine connections within your classroom community.
The Neighborhood Map
Discovering & Writing About a Memory This first activity, invites students to make a memory map of their childhood bedroom, apartment, house, or neighborhood. Then, it asks students to look for stories they can share, inspired by places marked on their map. The memory map was developed by Stephen Dunning in the early 1970s and later articulated in his book Getting the Knack (1992). His workshops led to other educators across the country creating various versions of this practice, including by members of the South Coast California Writing Project. Ask students to draw a birds-eye view map, then “walk” a partner or small group through descriptions of the places on their maps. After doing so, students number and label these “story places” on their maps and choose one story to write about further. Students are invited to share their written story in a partnership or in a small group. For younger students, I encourage using some sentence starters to scaffold the sharing process, such as “This place stays in my mind because…” or “The important thing about this story is…” A possible set of directions are included here and here, but I encourage you to develop directions that will work best for you and for your students. For those who may not feel comfortable drawing their own memory map, perhaps imaginative or fictional map drawing could accomplish a similar goal of learning about your students. If writing is a central component of your classroom, consider transforming this activity into a writing benchmark for your students at the beginning of the year to gain insight into their writing abilities. This activity can work in an elementary, middle, high school, college, or even adult-education setting, and is especially inclusive for English language learning students, given the opportunity to tell stories through drawn visuals.
The Cultural Tree
Getting to Know Yourself and Your Students In this activity, students are asked to create a “cultural tree” that represents their culture. Originally envisioned as part of Zaretta Hammond’s work in Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain, the drawing of cultural trees asks students to identify three levels of their culture: surface level — aspects of culture you can see like food and dress, shallow culture — aspects less explicit, like concepts of eye contact and personal space, and deep culture — unconscious beliefs and norms like concepts of fairness and spirituality. My colleague at CPET, Lauren Midgette, has used Hammond’s work to write and to reflect on the possibilities it has for getting to know students, but also ourselves, better in the classroom this school year. Midgette makes the point that the drawing of cultural trees — and the discussions inspired by them — provides a healthy soil to help our students grow. Each level of culture — surface, shallow, and deep — is visualized on the tree as leaves, trunk, and roots, respectively. For younger students, I don’t think the framing of the tree as “cultural” is necessary for the activity to be an effective tool for discussion. Students could certainly label a tree with aspects of who they are that are surface (easily seen by others), shallow (not as easily seen), or deep (entirely unseen).
Telling a Story Through An Object
This third activity requires slightly more teacher preparation than the first two, but is one that I have found particularly effective with students of all ages. I created the directions to facilitate this activity — linked here, but the premise was inspired by fellow educators: objects, even the most simple ones, are imbued with our stories. First, find an ordinary cardboard box. Label it “mystery box.” Next, fix it with a bunch of objects — they can be commonplace things like birthday candles, hair ties, or chewing gum — or more particular objects, like sports paraphernalia or local fruits and vegetables. Lastly, close it and place it in a very visible place in the classroom and say nothing about it to your students until you begin class. Explain to students that inside the box are a bunch of objects that you will pull out one at a time. As soon as students see an object that reminds them of a story, memory, or experience, encourage them to start writing that story. The final thing that I pull out of the box is a slip of paper that says, “the object that you were hoping I was going to pull out.” It’s a catch-all invitation for students to write about an object close to their heart that you may not have been able to acquire. Invite students to share their stories with one another after they have written them. In my facilitation of this activity, I found that students often worried that their story wouldn’t be “good” or “significant” enough. I explicitly invite ordinary stories from students, which have never been “ordinary,” but rather extraordinary insights into the students and their backgrounds and interests. As the year progresses, I invite you to experiment with this activity in the reverse: invite students to bring in their own meaningful objects that have a personal story attached to them to add to a classroom box. They can share their objects and stories before placing them into the box.
Beginning With A Two Sentence Story
The fourth icebreaker requires no teacher preparation and the prompt for students is incredibly simple: write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day today. This activity, as well as these questions, were introduced to me by Professor Ruth Vinz at Teachers College, Columbia University. Invite students to write in the present tense as a means to place themselves back in the moment they are writing about. Remind students that the purpose is not to assess their writing skills, nor to write the most significant story possible. The story starter can be simple, so long as it is about some event from their day. This icebreaker would work especially well for an afternoon class. Alternatively, the prompt could be modified to read, “write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day yesterday. Even though the story happened yesterday, please write in the present tense, as though you are living the story at this very moment.” After writing their two sentences, invite all students to read them aloud in no particular order and without any further explanation. Next, invite students to consider how their stories might be threaded or connected together. Consider these facilitation questions:
Dive a Little Deeper Under the Ice
Icebreakers can be wonderful ways to start connecting with new students — they alleviate nerves and provide an entry point for relationship building. This year, I invite you to not only “break the ice,” but also to dive a little deeper under the surface, creating ways for students to connect in genuine ways through their stories, personalities, and interests. Please modify these activities — they are intended to be transformed for you and your classroom. And the best part? These activities can be used at any point in time to learn something new about your students.
Three essential questions to explore as you navigate connecting a curriculum to your classroom.
As the start of the 2023-24 school year approaches, many K-8 educators will find themselves faced with the challenge of adopting a new curriculum. This task can feel overwhelming, leaving teachers and school leaders uncertain about where to begin. To help navigate this process, we can examine three powerful questions that can serve as entry points for understanding and evaluating a new curriculum, helping educators to gain valuable insights needed for making informed decisions that align with their goals and values.
Does it align with school mission & vision?
When introducing a new curriculum, it is essential to ensure alignment with the school’s mission and vision. Consider how a new curriculum reflects the core values, educational philosophies, and goals set by the school. Evaluate whether it supports the desired educational outcomes and adequately prepares students to meet the school’s vision for the future. A curriculum that aligns with the school-wide mission and vision contributes to a cohesive and purposeful educational experience for all students. Evaluating alignment can provide valuable information to inform a school’s decision-making process regarding the adoption of a curriculum and the necessary adaptations and revisions.
Does it support differentiated instruction and diverse learner needs?
Recognizing the diversity of students in a K-12 setting is crucial. It behooves schools to inquire about if and how the curriculum addresses differentiated instruction and caters to students with varying abilities, learning styles, and interests. I would advise schools to look for evidence of accommodations for students with disabilities, support for English Language Learners, and opportunities for personalized learning. Evaluate whether the curriculum provides a range of resources, materials, and strategies that meet the needs of all students. A curriculum that embraces and supports diverse learners promotes equitable access to education and enhances students’ engagement and success. In my experience, differentiation is often a shortcoming of most curricula, so these suggestions can be particularly helpful when it comes to identifying the additional supports and materials that will need to supplement the curriculum.
What assessment methods are incorporated into the curriculum?
Assessment is a vital aspect of any curriculum. When it comes to evaluating and potentially adjusting a new curriculum, inquire about the assessment methods and tools used within the curriculum to measure student progress, understanding, and mastery of concepts. Determine whether the curriculum includes formative assessment to provide ongoing feedback and inform instruction, as well as summative assessments to evaluate student achievement at the end of a unit. Additionally, consider if the curriculum incorporates various assessment formats, such as performance tasks, projects, portfolios, and traditional tests that provide a comprehensive view of students' learning. Understanding the assessment methods and measures helps educators gauge student progress, identify areas for improvement, and tailor instruction. Based on this investigation, you can make the necessary modifications or additions to the curriculum.
As educators embark on a journey of adopting a new curriculum, these questions can serve as valuable guideposts for evaluation. By considering alignment to the school’s mission and vision, supporting differentiated instruction, and assessing evaluation methods, educators can ensure that the chosen curriculum reflects their values, addresses the diverse needs of their students, and provides effective means to measure student learning. Embracing these questions will empower educators to make informed decisions that foster a purposeful and inclusive educational experience for all learners!
Three ways to create a supportive environment that nurtures students' academic, social, and emotional growth.
The beginning of the school year presents a valuable opportunity to establish a positive classroom culture and forge meaningful relationships with our students, creating an environment that nurtures learning, collaboration, and student growth.
Let’s start the year headed in the right direction!
Creating your classroom
The design of your classroom space plays a pivotal role in setting the tone for the entire year. One key aspect to consider is your classroom library. In my own classroom, I loved creating a library, as I believe a thoughtfully curated collection of books has the power to ignite a love for reading and literacy. I aimed to select diverse and engaging books that reflected the interests and experiences of my students, and I worked to make the library easily accessible by using colorful baskets or organizers to store the books. By making the library the centerpiece of my room, I encouraged students to explore and immerse themselves in the vast world of literature. To foster a sense of ownership, I also involved them in identifying trends and connections between texts and let them create themed baskets with corresponding titles. Another important aspect to focus on is the arrangement of desks or tables in your room, aiming for a collaborative, warm, and inviting setup that eliminates students feeling isolated or overlooked. Experiment with different configurations in your room, and assess how they feel from a student's perspective — walk around the room, sit in the chairs, and consider the visibility and opportunities for interaction each arrangement offers. Creating an inclusive and effective physical environment contributes to a positive classroom culture where students feel valued and supported.
Understanding your students
Every student brings their unique experiences, interests, and identities to the classroom. Taking the time to get to know them as individuals helps build meaningful connections and can help us tailor instruction to meet their needs. One approach that I love to use is intentionally selecting mentor texts to inspire student storytelling. For instance, I found Sandra Cisneros' "My Name" from her book The House on Mango Street to be a powerful text that encouraged students to reflect on and share stories about their own names. By analyzing the author's writing style and reflecting on their own experiences, students gained a sense of empowerment and ownership over their personal narratives. Engaging students in activities that explore their surroundings can also provide valuable insights into their lives beyond the classroom. Consider asking students to create maps of their neighborhoods, homes, or any significant spaces in their world. This activity can not only foster a sense of belonging, but also encourages students to reflect on their personal histories and connections to their communities.
Getting to know your learners
Understanding our students' strengths, needs, and learning styles is essential for effective instruction. One way to do this is by gathering any available data from the previous year, including academic performance records and input from previous teachers. This kind of information can help you identify areas where students may require additional support or enrichment. However, we know that data alone cannot provide a comprehensive understanding of your students' learning profiles. Prioritize one-on-one conversations with each student within the first few months of the school year. During this time together, ask about their interests, learning preferences, and goals for the year. By building personal connections and listening to their perspectives, you can better connect to their individual needs and aspirations. This knowledge will enable you to tailor your instruction and provide the necessary support to help each student thrive. Additionally, consider using low-stakes diagnostic assessments to gain insights into your students' abilities. Find opportunities to engage students in games and competitions that allow you to understand their skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. When possible, utilize technology to record and/or analyze their responses. These types of activities can help you avoid overwhelming students with tests while still receiving information that can help you grasp their foundational knowledge and strengths.
Creating a positive classroom culture, establishing personal connections, and understanding your students — both as individuals and as learners — all require intentional effort at the start of the school year. By incorporating these promising practices into your teaching approach, you can help to create an inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Here’s to a new school year. I hope it’s one of growth and success!
Understanding your co-teaching partnership through the four stages of group development.
In my work as a coach, I get the pleasure of visiting many co-taught classrooms. Like with all classroom visits, I’m interested in what students are learning, and how, and what teachers are doing, and why. But I’m also interested in the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) dynamic between teachers; I notice the polite smiles and awkward silences; or the shared glances and inside jokes; or sometimes, the eye rolls and cold shoulders. The state of the partnership itself is an important piece of the puzzle to understand how to help teachers — and therefore students — grow.
It makes sense that co-teachers are having a wide variety of experiences with each other at any given moment. Sharing a classroom with another teacher can often feel like living with a randomly selected college roommate in a tiny dorm room; there is potential for connection and camaraderie, and also so much to navigate to make the arrangement remotely functional. And with co-teaching, the goal far surpasses peaceful coexistence in a shared space, as it involves the incredibly complex endeavor of working as a team to help a diverse group of students learn and grow. Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development — a framework developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 and since often discussed, revised, and extended — helps us understand that discomfort and tension are an inevitable part of working with others towards a common goal. The frameworks’ four stages — Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing — can help co-teaching teams understand where they are in the development of their partnership, and what they might do next to grow the team.
Forming
What it is In this stage, team members are focusing primarily on orienting themselves to each other and the task at hand; lots of energy is spent on identifying “the boundaries of both interpersonal and task behaviors” (p. 396). What it may look like in a co-taught classroom
What you can do Teachers in the Forming stage often benefit from additional time and space to get to know each other. These five questions can spark discussion around core values, collaboration, content, communication, and care with your co-teacher. Another option — especially if you are drawn to exploring things visually — is to create and share with each other a co-teaching body biography, as my colleague Dr. Laura Rigolosi and I have invited teacher teams to do in our workshops.
Storming
What it is Storming, according to Tuckman, is “characterized by conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues” (p. 396). This can manifest as power struggles and clashes, confusion, or lack of interest in the group. What it may look like in a co-taught classroom
What you can do If you and your co-teacher find yourself in the Storming stage of your partnership, it is first and foremost helpful to remember that this is an inevitable — and even necessary — stage in becoming a functional team. In order to move through it, reflection, listening, and collaborative problem-solving become key. Dray and Wisneski (2011) have created a mindful reflection protocol to help teachers unpack their interactions with students and examine their own assumptions and biases in order to become more culturally responsive educators. A version of the protocol I have adapted for co-teachers can be helpful in reflecting on the assumptions we are making about our colleagues, imagining alternative explanations for their actions, and hopefully gaining more understanding of where they are coming from before broaching conflict.
Norming
What it is According to Tuckman (1965), Norming is the stage in which “ingroup feeling and cohesiveness develop, new standards evolve, and new roles are adopted.” There might be mutually agreed upon processes and procedures, shared problem-solving, and a sense of belonging to a team. What it may look like in a co-taught classroom
What you can do If you and your co-teacher are beginning to get into a groove, tools that help to concretize and ritualize your collaboration and problem-solving will contribute to growth. Consider adapting or developing a planning template, like this one, to guide your work together.
Performing
What it is In this highly productive stage of group development, roles become flexible and functional, and group energy is channeled into the task. What it may look like in a co-taught classroom
What you can do Teachers don’t often get much of a chance to stop, reflect, and celebrate success, but doing so is so important for morale, for learning, and for transferring learning to new situations. If you and your co-teacher are at the Performing stage, consider engaging in a Success Analysis Protocol to better understand what made a particular practice so successful. Ideally, this would be done with a larger department, so that others can learn from the success as well.
In much of the commentary on Tuckman’s original model, there is an emphasis on the fact the model is not strictly linear; particular events or circumstances may cause a group to re-enter or revisit a stage they’ve already moved through. In the co-taught classroom, it’s easy to imagine these circumstances: you have a new student who exhibits some challenging behaviors, you have a new curriculum you must adhere to, or there is an upcoming high-stakes event like a test or observation. As Judith Stein explains, “The four stages are a helpful framework for recognizing a team's behavioral patterns; they are most useful as a basis for team conversation, rather than boxing the team into a 'diagnosis.'"
WORKS CITED
Stein, Judith. Using the Stages of Team Development. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63(6), 384.
Why simply adopting new programs will not guarantee improved reading scores.
Recently, the chancellor of New York City public schools, David Banks, announced a significant change in reading instruction by introducing three researched-based programs with a focus on phonics. While this shift aims to address the flawed approach to teaching reading, it also raises questions about the shortcomings of the current system and the potential consequences of relying solely on phonics instruction.
In this article, I raise concerns about the new programs, the importance of a balanced approach, and propose investing in professional development to improve existing efforts.
Flawed approach to teaching reading
David Banks criticized the City's approach to teaching reading as fundamentally flawed and failing to align with the science of how students learn to read. However, the exact shortcomings are not explicitly defined. Was it the lack of phonics instruction or insufficient emphasis on it? Furthermore, the effectiveness of the current approach seems to be evaluated based on standardized exam scores, which doesn’t provide a comprehensive picture of student learning.
New programs and concerns
The new programs being offered to schools, such as Wit and Wisdom, Expeditionary Learning, and Into Reading, each have their strengths and weaknesses. Wit and Wisdom emphasizes knowledge building but lacks explicit phonics instruction, requiring schools to adopt an additional phonics program like Fundations. Expeditionary Learning includes explicit phonics instruction, but Into Reading has faced criticism for its lack of cultural responsiveness. It is crucial to recognize that there is no magic bullet. No single program can meet the diverse needs of all students, and simply adopting new programs does not guarantee improved reading scores.
Maintaining foundational reading practices
I am not against explicit phonics instruction; however, I want to advocate for the preservation of foundational reading practices, such as read-alouds, independent reading, and shared reading — all of which promote fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary development. While phonics instruction is necessary, it should not overshadow these essential practices that nurture a love for reading and promote student autonomy when it comes to book selection. It is concerning to me that the science of reading is being equated solely with decoding and phonics, which I believe will lead to an overemphasis on this aspect of instruction. Given the limited time available for reading instruction during the school day, other important reading activities may be deprioritized or excluded altogether. This narrow focus could have negative implications for teachers, students, and their overall reading experiences. To teach reading comprehensively, it is essential to consider the interplay between different reading skills. Chancellor Banks highlighted five essential skills reflective of a competent reader:
But these skills are not sequential. They are interconnected and should be taught in a way that recognizes their interdependencies.
Investing in professional development
Rather than perpetuating the narrative of a reading crisis and introducing new programs in haste, I would urge us to invest in professional development for teachers and leaders. This approach would enable them to delve into the science of reading, understand its implications, and identify the most effective ways to teach reading skills. By focusing on all aspects of reading development — phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension — current efforts can be improved, specific curricula can be adapted, and supplementary strategies can be identified.
Engage students in rich mathematical tasks that honor the process more than the solution.
I was recently sitting with a high school algebra teacher — who was preparing a lesson about translating sequences into functions or equations — and trying to encourage him to use this archive of visual patterns with his students. We discussed matching different groups of students to different images and asking them to try writing an equation for the pattern. As the teacher started practicing on his own, writing equations for some of the patterns that were offered, this picture came up, and we both began to struggle.
Neither of us could figure it out.
Other teachers started coming by to join: “There has to be an exponent in there somewhere...” “But just an exponent wouldn’t make sense…” “Are we multiplying the exponent? Or maybe multiplying and adding?” This had started with only one teacher, but soon there were five teachers huddled around this image, trying to find a solution. One teacher got out a marker and began writing possibilities on the board. Another started running through calculations in their head, shouting out theories. Finally, one teacher said, “Oh, it’s a quadratic!” The algebra teacher who had started with me stated, “see I can’t do this with my students, we couldn’t even figure it out”. But I had the complete opposite reaction. I was surprised at how many had engaged in our puzzle. We were all trying out different methods, debating and discussing throughout our process. This is what a math classroom should look like every day.
Making room for authentic engagement
As math teachers, it can feel scary to introduce a problem to students that doesn’t have a clear and simple solution. But how else is authentic math engagement supposed to happen in the classroom? In our example, even if we had never arrived at a solution, all the math thinking and practice we did to try and get there would have been worth the struggle. Even if a student never achieved a correct equation or solution, they still would have stretched their thinking and understanding of patterns and functions just by trying to work through the task. The inspiration for this task came from Jo Boaler’s work on Mathematical Mindsets. In her book, she reminds us how beautiful and rich mathematical thinking can be, and offers advice on how to bring that into your classroom. This task we were testing out among teachers includes many of the suggestions she offers for making rich mathematical tasks. Boaler describes these tasks as having multiple entry points, visual components, and options for inquiry and debate. As you incorporate these elements into the math tasks in your classroom, consider the following questions as you shift into a richer mathematical lens:
Our original task starts with a visual component and includes multiple methods of entry. Students have the opportunity to make sense of the visual in any way they see fit — maybe they prefer to focus on the numbers, or maybe they want to look at the way the shape of the image is changing. There are no clear steps to follow to solve this puzzle; students have to play and engage in multiple ways before they can predict patterns and solutions. Another great aspect of this task is that students of all math levels can participate and still walk away learning something from the experience. Maybe some students will leave noticing there is not a constant amount of change between the pictures. Maybe some students will consider the way addition and multiplication look different in patterns. Maybe some students will write a quadratic equation and then be able to predict future images. The possibilities are endless.
When we provide math problems that have very clear and explicit steps, we may lead students to the correct answer, but we also limit the creativity they can experience. We teach students that there is a right and wrong way to do math. We contribute to the negative feelings and attitudes many students already have about math. And lastly, we take away the fun.
Making room for rich mathematical tasks that have multiple entry points, opportunities for debate, and visual components can help make every student feel like they can one day be a real mathematician. It can help students of all levels rediscover the fun in math.
Encourage students to expand their repertoire of ways to read and respond to literature.
As someone who loves to read and write, one of my favorite things to do is annotate texts — whether it be a few scrawled words in the margins of my most beloved hardcover books or endless questions written on sticky notes falling out of flailing paperbacks, my annotations capture the spirit of my hyper-personal engagement with a text.
When I became an English teacher, I knew that I wanted my students to learn how to annotate, in part because I wanted them to capture their noticings and wonderings as they engaged in their own distinctive reading process. In “Literature as Exploration” (1995), Louise Rosenblatt wrote that every person has a unique, transactional experience when they read a text, in which they “live through” something special. I think of annotations like mementos of this special reading experience because they capture a moment in time in the transactional experience that would otherwise be lost. Every time we read a text, even if it’s one that we’ve read hundreds of times before, we encounter a new transactional experience. As we annotate and re-annotate texts, we leave behind a trail of our reading experiences: our questions, thoughts, and wonderings. I desperately wanted my students to develop that experiential, transactional trail of their reading processes.
The Traveling Text
Imagine my surprise when I discovered, as a new teacher, that my students often responded to my call for annotations with, “I don’t know how to annotate!” or “Can you tell me what to annotate for?” or, worst of all, “I hate annotating. It’s a waste of time.” I can recall my naive shock when I heard my students respond in this way. In a desperate attempt to show my students the value of annotating, I began tirelessly modeling annotation strategies and my own methods of annotation, but doing so yielded little success. With time, I developed an incredibly simple strategy for teaching my students to annotate. Essentially, I stopped teaching my students to annotate through direct instruction and, instead, encouraged them to teach one another. This instructional strategy was, in my teaching, a solution to the problem of students feeling like they “don’t know” how to annotate or that annotating has “no purpose.” I call this strategy The Traveling Text (download here). The Traveling Text is simple, requires minimal teacher preparation, empowers students, builds community, and teaches annotation skills. And implementing this strategy with your students only takes four steps.
The impact of The Traveling Text
In my teaching experience, here are some of the impacts of this strategy on my students and our classroom community:
Teaching students to read for meaning (and for pleasure) is a daunting task. Often, our students come to us already feeling like they don’t know how to read and annotate literary texts in the “correct” way, one that highlights what a teacher or evaluator might be looking for.
The Traveling Text creates possibilities for students to expand their own repertoire of ways to closely read and respond to literature. But, even more importantly, the strategy encourages students to experience a sense of intellectual community and belonging with their classmates as they share with one another written artifacts of their own transactional reading experiences.
Six practical co-teaching strategies that remain effective even in the absence of co-planning.
If you are a special education teacher and you are co-teaching in multiple subject areas, you may be running from classroom to classroom, with a cart or a crate of supplies, adjusting to your co-teacher’s teaching style and your students’ changing attitudes towards particular classes. Day after day, this can be exhausting and challenging! It is not uncommon for special education teachers to feel overwhelmed trying to stay on top of all of their classes, at all times. Throw into this mix co-teaching a new content class or one that is particularly unfamiliar to you, and it can feel impossible to stay afloat or to co-teach with confidence.
According to the NYCDOE, the purpose of co-teaching, or the Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) program, is for the general education teacher and the special education teacher to “work together to adapt materials and modify instruction to make sure the entire class can participate.” For this to happen effectively, co-teachers need time to meet, think, plan, and reflect on their instruction together. But what can you do when that co-planning time isn’t possible?
Persevering in the absence of co-planning
This year, I am working in high schools where co-teachers do not have common prep periods to plan or debrief, or the special education teacher is co-teaching in five different content classes, so juggling between different classes and co-teachers is a real issue. Yet I have found that a special education co-teacher who was not able to participate in the planning of an ICT class can still be an effective and essential teacher in the room. There are ways that a co-teacher can continue to support students in a circumstance where co-planning is not an option.
Let me be clear: I am not advocating for this type of co-teaching model where one teacher is not prepared for class (due to lack of common planning time or other reasons outside of their control). Ideally, co-teachers are receiving professional support and have time built into their schedules to meet and plan together, and even discuss which of the six co-teaching models makes the most sense for each particular lesson.
If they do not have regular time to meet together, the content teacher can still prioritize delivering materials and lessons with adequate time for the special education co-teacher to make modifications, or create groups based on students’ needs. But even when these options aren’t possible, there are ways that a co-teacher can play an essential role in the classroom in the absence of adequate planning or prep time. By remaining active in class — as a learner, notetaker, or observer — the special education co-teacher can raise the level of instruction and thus ensure all students are benefiting from having two educators in the classroom.
Opportunities for engaging students in end of year reflections.
Reflection can be a powerful tool. It provides students a way to analyze and connect to their experiences, which can lead to better memory and increased confidence. However, when you Google “end of year reflection for students” you’ll see articles that link to a multitude of questions and activities. While having a plethora of resources can be helpful, it can also be overwhelming to sift through all of these options.
The first step is to figure out what exactly you want students to be reflecting on. Would you like the reflection to be more focused on academic learning? Or perhaps you’d like to provide the space for your students to reflect on their personal growth. Luckily, regardless of the goal you have in mind, there are plenty of multimodal ways you can reflect with your students.
Create the questions
If academic learning is the reflection goal in mind, you might be looking for students to answer the following questions:
If personal learning is the chosen reflection goal, you might be looking for students to answer the following questions:
Consider the structure(s)
Just as you’ll want to guide your students by offering them specific reflection questions, you’ll also want to consider how they respond to the questions, while also leaving room for creativity. Audio/Video Production Asking students to reflect on their learning in an audio/video format allows students to rehearse, re-record, and make use of other visuals that can support them depending on whether or not they want their face or voice in their recording. For academic reflections, students can compile interviews, informational videos, reels, photos, and/or documentary clips that focus on a certain topic. Students can pick learning that was meaningful to them or you can assign students different topics in order to ensure each unit/theme is represented in the videos. Another idea is to ask students to create “commercials” for the class, introducing some of the learning topics and “pitching” the course to their peers. If your class is an elective, you could share these commercials with your school community, and if your class is required, you might want to consider sharing these videos in the first week of the next school year as a way to get new students excited about the class. Encourage students to get creative! For example, if they are focusing on personal reflection by describing a moment that made them proud, you can give them the option of creating a storybook and recording a read-aloud. Artistic Offerings Artistic visuals can be timelines, collages, posters, or any other type of visual students might want to create. If students prefer more structure for their visuals, consider providing them with concept maps to make connections between the learning topics/units they experienced throughout the year. Although reflection questions might lend themselves to a traditional essay format, there are many other artistic writing genres that students can explore. For example, if a student found the Bubonic Plague interesting, consider asking them to write a diary entry from the perspective of someone living through that pandemic. Students might also write a newspaper article comparing the Bubonic Plague to the Covid-19 pandemic, enabling them to connect, compare, and contrast. Add in the options of narrative writing, a collection of poetry, a script, etc., and these artistic writings can be used for personal reflection as well!
Some possible resources for creative work
Need technology to help house videos, presentations, or posters? Some platforms that are free and user-friendly are Canva (templates, videos, presentations, and flyers), Flipgrid (video responses to discussion questions), and Animoto (videos). Don’t forget printed images! For students (or teachers) who want to get away from technology, collect magazines in your community and provide poster boards for students.
Looking ahead
After students are given the opportunity to reflect, create, and plan, you might want to consider how these reflections can be shared with the community, whether that means the school community or wider community. Partner up with other teachers who are asking their students to reflect and think about ways you might be able to showcase student learning during an end-of-year event in the cafeteria or gymnasium, or even in a virtual gallery housed on Google Classroom. It is also important to be aware of students who might be reflecting on personal growth and may want to keep their responses between you and them. Be sure to ask students if they feel comfortable sharing these reflections with others in order to determine how, or if, you might want to host a wider reflection event. Happy reflecting!
Promising practices for assessing and adjusting your instruction to meet students' needs.
Data is often thought of as comprehensive spreadsheets consisting of numbers, graphs, and charts, representing scores from end of unit tests or standardized exams. It’s often analyzed to determine whether or not students have mastered content and skills, rather than inform instruction or translate into timely teacher moves in the classroom.
Quantitative data has its place; however, it alone does not suffice. In addition to charts and graphs, teachers need qualitative data to inform and adjust their instruction along the way — throughout the unit, and within particular lessons. So, what are some of the ways teachers can gather this kind of data and make use of it? What can it look like?
A portrait of practice
In a recent visit to a school in Georgia, a colleague and I had the opportunity to perform walkthroughs of select classrooms. One teacher I witnessed — a seasoned math teacher facilitating a lesson on solving equations with decimals — was doing a fantastic job of taking the pulse of her classroom and assessing the needs of her students throughout her lesson. I want to share what I observed as I think it can be a useful case study to help us answer the above questions. She posed a question for the do now, and after circulating to assess how her students were doing, she addressed the class: “Okay y’all, I want us to stop for a minute. I’m noticing that what is tripping us up with this problem is rounding, and I would hate for this small detail to result in us getting these types of problems wrong!” From there, she asked students to look back at their problem, particularly to see if they rounded correctly, while she prepared the next step of the lesson on her computer. After a few more minutes, she asked the students to go back to their seats, and informed them that they were going to engage in a Kahoot, to provide more practice with rounding. (Kahoot is a wonderful tool for not only offering practice, but also for gathering data quickly and accessibly. After each question, Kahoot offers a chart indicating how many students selected which answer and whether or not it was the right answer.) This was a simple and effective way to gather and use data in the moment, in order to shift the plan for the day’s instruction. Rather than push forward, she took stock of what was needed, and responded intentionally. And it didn’t stop there. As the lesson progressed, she continued to gather data while students were working, and made shifts based on what she observed. I watched her create a few different groups based on the information she had: one for students that needed more rounding practice; another group that focused on the original practice problems for the day; and another group that was pushed with some more challenging questions based on their strengths. This case study offers some promising practices for gathering and analyzing data, and making in the moment adjustments to instruction. In addition to the practices I described, I want to offer a few more that I utilized while I was leading my own classroom.
Turn and talks
Turn and talks are an effective means of assessment that I leaned on heavily during my time as a classroom teacher. Given my large class size, turn and talks allowed me to check for understanding with more students than I could if they were working independently. I often used turn and talks as part of a do now, where I would pose a question and then have students talk to a shoulder partner while I circulated and listened in on their conversations. Additionally, I liked to use turn and talks as part of a guided practice where I would model a strategy and then have students try it out with a partner while I listened and observed. I sometimes used a checklist to make note of which students seemed to be getting it and which students might need some more support, to inform how I might group my students for the lesson and inform who I might need to conference with individually.
Conferencing
Conferencing is another powerful formative assessment that can be very instructive for both teachers and students. Conferences, when executed effectively, involve looking at student work, asking some clarifying and/or probing questions to determine what a student needs, in the moment, as they practice a new skill. Based on this investigation, the teacher identifies a high-leverage strategy that can advance student learning, often models it, and then observes while students give it a try.
Collecting and sorting student work
Lastly, collecting and sorting student work is an effective means of assessment that can be particularly informative for sequencing instruction. As an elementary teacher, I would make it a point to collect student work once a week, whether it was students’ writing notebooks, their reading post-its, their drafts of writing, etc. I would look closely at the work to try and determine strengths and struggles, and then identify any common trends that could inform my grouping as well as the goals I should set for these groups. For example, if we were working on a writing unit focused on non-fiction essays, I might review student work and notice common challenges related to students supporting their thinking with evidence, using proper citations, analyzing the evidence to make connections to their claims, etc. I would sort the challenges, and attempt to narrow them down to three or four that would form my groups, and then identify a teaching point for each that I would implement the following week. It often felt like a lot of work, but when I did it, I always found it enlightening and I appreciated how it pushed me to ensure I was catering my instruction to what my students truly needed. (A twist of this for middle and high school teachers could be to collect and sort exit tickets, as they are likely more manageable than collecting drafts.)
As teachers, we need to understand and address our students' needs as they arise, as they engage in the learning process and acquire new skills. In doing so, we can reflect on and improve our instruction before it’s too late. What I hope I have provided are meaningful and manageable ways to gather qualitative data and make use of it in the moment and beyond.
Envision contextualized, meaningful grammar instruction that links to authentic reading and writing.
When I began my first year of teaching English Language Arts, I was expected to teach my students skills that fell under three large umbrellas: reading, writing, and language. I quickly learned that “language” encompassed the teaching of vocabulary, punctuation & capitalization rules, and, you guessed it, the “teaching of grammar.”
In my teacher education program, I took no classes on the teaching of grammar. I felt somewhat confident about teaching reading and writing, but completely lost when it came to the teaching of grammar. I didn’t even have my own experiences of learning grammar as a student to fall back on; my only formal grammar instruction was a series of SchoolHouse Rock videos and long-gone worksheets from elementary school. In an effort to increase my confidence and improve my own practice, I began to read about the history of grammar instruction. I discovered that I was not the only one who felt an overwhelming sense of uncertainty about the teaching of grammar. The question of grammar’s importance has vexed people for centuries and continues to vex people today: what to teach, how to teach it, why to teach it. So, where did the practice of teaching grammar come from? And what could grammar instruction look like in the 21st century classroom?
A very brief history of teaching grammar
In the eighteenth century, the study of grammar was perceived as an exercise in mental discipline, intended to train the mental faculties of memory and reason (Applebee, 1974; Scholes, 1998). Grammar study focused on the learning of rules and their application. By the early nineteenth century, studies in specifically English grammar became a prerequisite for higher studies, not to be continued in college. Lindley Murray, often referred to as the father of English grammar, published Murray’s Grammar in 1795 and established many rules of “proper” use of the English language. Grammarians like Adam Smith, David Hume, Lord Kames, and Hugh Blair advocated for grammar instruction connected with the expressions of rhetoric: diction, style, figurative language, and so on. By the end of the nineteenth century, grammar continued to have a place alongside rhetoric, literary history, oratory, and spelling in schools and in colleges. In the early twentieth century, many scholars at colleges and universities abandoned grammar instruction because they did not believe in its “scientific value.” Simultaneously, grammar underwent a revival in school classrooms because teachers thought it would be a useful technique for studying literature and for acquiring foreign languages. In the latter part of the twentieth century, grammar instruction transformed. Rather than teach grammar skills in isolation from grammar books, scholars argued that the teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students, and that it does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing for the majority of students (Applebee).
The research: spotlight on a grammar case study
In “Examining A Grammar Course: The Rationale and the Result” (1980), Finlay McQuade conducted a qualitative research study of his own course entitled “Editorial Skills.” McQuade humbly admitted that he had read research papers that argued against the discrete instruction of grammar skills, but that he continued to teach an elective course for high school juniors wholly devoted to the practice. In the study, McQuade discovered that his students' scores on a grammar post-test were actually lower than their scores on a grammar pre-test for the course. He concluded, after this first-hand experience, that formal, discrete grammar instruction is ineffective and should be abandoned as a classroom practice. Citing McQuade, Constance Weaver, the author of Teaching Grammar in Context (1996), argued that we should teach aspects of grammar that are most relevant to writing, such as subject-verb agreement, sentence combining, and punctuation. Significantly, Weaver asserted that the most effective grammar instruction must arise organically from students' own writing: “teaching grammar in the context of writing works far better than teaching grammar as a formal system.” The main takeaway from McQuade and Weaver’s research is that grammar instruction must be contextualized and meaningful within students’ reading and writing. Grammar instruction should not be the discrete learning of grammatical “rules” because these rules do not translate into a superior command of language or communication.
Recommendations for 21st century learning
These recommendations derive originally from Constance Weaver’s writings (1996) that were then expanded upon recently by Jeff Anderson, a disciple of Weaver’s work (2017; 2021). They strive to make grammar instruction both contextualized and meaningful.
In the early 21st century, the question of how best to teach a standard English grammar shifted away from methods. Instead, scholars began to question whether a notion of “proper grammar” should exist at all. In “Why Revitalize Grammar?” (2003), Patricia Dunn and Kenneth Lindbloom argued that the teaching of a standardized grammar reflects a discriminatory power system that excludes other dialects and cultures. They believe our classrooms should be spaces of multiple literacies, celebrating a diversity of dialects.
With that said, the reality is that many teachers are expected to teach — or want to teach — their students “grammar.” Perhaps their rationale for doing so is similar to reasons from the past: it builds “mental discipline” because students have to learn and apply linguistic rules; it shows that one comes from a certain educational background, one that encompassed the learning of Standard English Grammar; it helps students to acquire new languages and to closely study literature. I think it’s important to note this tension between research and practice when it comes to the teaching of grammar. Since the 20th century, scholars like McQuade and Weaver have argued against the discrete teaching of grammar rules in the classroom, arguing that they are entirely ineffective and possibly detrimental to students’ learning. Yet, in practice, many teachers, including myself, are expected to teach grammatical skills. Without dismissing or diminishing this tension, I hope that these recommendations will aid in-service teachers as they continue to envision what grammar instruction can look like in the 21st century classroom.
How to recognize patterns in student performance as you take your next steps toward strategic instruction.
Analyzing data from high-stakes exams is:
Answer: D — All of the above While promising practices for using data to inform instruction are well intentioned, the process and impact often misses the mark. It can become an overwhelming and confusing experience that can pull educators into sinkholes that produce unreliable conclusions and eat up valuable time and resources. How can we yield the benefits of data analysis and avoid these drawbacks? Analyzing data is valuable because it helps us zoom out from individual results to recognize the patterns and trends in performance, so that we can make choices in the future that will benefit our students. But depending on the type of data we’re analyzing, and the purpose, how we approach the analysis and the conclusions we draw can change dramatically.
Where did the data come from?
Let’s start with the basics. When analyzing data, we want to be clear about where the data came from, and how it was produced. We can draw different conclusions and take different action steps if we’re analyzing a task we designed, or analyzing results from a national diagnostic. For example, when analyzing an in-class assessment, if the teacher realizes that most of their students missed question #3, they can look at question #3 and realize that it’s confusing and rewrite it for a future exam, or eliminate it from the students’ grades. However, if they’re analyzing question #3 from a state test, they have no control over the question or its wording and they can’t eliminate it from their students' grade. Knowing where the data comes from, who designed the task, how the task was scored, and the stakes connected to the data will help us determine our purpose for the analysis and the usefulness of the data.
When was the data collected?
Another key factor we want to be aware of is the time between when the data was collected and when it’s being analyzed. If the data has been collected and analyzed in real-time (within a few days or weeks of the assessment) the results of the data analysis may be immediately applied. This is most commonly seen after analyzing in-class formative assessments, exit tickets, or in-class tests or quizzes. Teachers can use the findings of their analysis to identify the needs that emerged and course correct for their students in real time. It’s not uncommon for data analysis to take place well after the assessment was completed. This is especially true for state tests, national diagnostics, or other formal assessments. When several months or more have passed, the data becomes more like an artifact from the past, rather than real-time information of what specific students know and can do. Artifacts can be extremely insightful and help us to see patterns and trends that might have been obscured at the time the assessment was taken. When looking at data collected in the past, we can use it as a snapshot of a specific point in time and consider what is the same and what has changed since the data was collected.
Whose data is it?
Next, we want to consider whose data we’re analyzing. Are we looking at current students in our class, who we’ll see in person within the next week? Are we looking at former students who’ve left our class and have moved on to their next learning experience? Are we looking at a larger picture of students we’ve never taught before and aren’t likely to encounter personally? When thinking about the “who” of data, we want to consider the students whose performance generated the data, who we’re teaching now, and how understanding the data will help us refine our practice for our current students, even if we never taught the students whose data we’re analyzing, and we never will. A helpful paradigm for this might be, data from... and teaching to…
Analyzing multiple choice data
Once we are grounded in the basics — when we understand where the data comes from, when it was collected, and who our instruction is targeted towards — we’ll have some direction and purpose for looking at multiple choice results. To make sense of the data, and to use the information strategically, we can consider our next steps based on the following scenarios:
75% or more students answered a question correctly
DATA FROM...
Whether it’s a spreadsheet of numbers or infographics that reflect the data in charts or other visual models, one of the first trends to examine emerges with questions that most students (75% or more) answered correctly. These questions help us to identify the key content or skills that are present in the curriculum, and were taught so effectively that most of the students in the cohort were able to answer correctly during the exam. CRITICAL QUESTIONS When we’re analyzing the data to inform our future curriculum mapping and instruction of students in the future, we want to reflect on where and how these concepts show up in our curriculum and put a star next to them. We may examine the instructional methods that were used here and see if we can expand these practices to other topics in the course. As we review these correct answers we can ask ourselves:
TEACHING TO... If we’re analyzing data from current students, in preparation for these students to take the same or similar exam again in the future, we’ll also want to take a close look at the students who got these questions wrong. Narrowing down that <25% of students who answered the questions incorrectly, when everyone else in the class answered correctly, helps us to identify students who are in need of an immediate intervention. These questions reveal that while everyone else was able to learn and apply the content taught in class on the test, this group of students continued to struggle. These concepts won’t be a good use of class time to review for all students, but with the data we can identify the specific students who will benefit from some increased support and reflection on their learning.
75% or more students answered a question incorrectly
DATA FROM...
After reviewing what most students answered correctly, we can then turn our attention to where most students answered incorrectly. When 75% or more of our students got the answers wrong, it does point to a potential gap in our curriculum or instructional methods. CRITICAL QUESTIONS As we review the incorrect answers, we can ask the same questions as before:
Our answers to these questions will reveal topics that perhaps we didn’t cover but needed to, or places where maybe our instruction was rushed or hurried and students didn’t have a memorable experience to take with them into the exam. When we analyze the data to inform our future curriculum mapping and instruction, these questions will help us better understand where we need to make revisions to the learning sequence, pacing, or focus in our future instruction. They may reveal instructional strategies that were less effective, or a change in the assessment expectations that can be translated into curriculum planning. TEACHING TO... When analyzing the data to inform current instruction for students who can retake the exam, these questions reveal the topics or skills that the whole class would benefit from reviewing or re-learning. More specifically, when we examine the specific answers the students gave (did everyone choose the same wrong answer? Did they choose different wrong answers? What does their response tell us about their misconception?), we can identify misconceptions and use that information to focus our instruction moving forward.
50/50 split between correct/incorrect answers
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The third step for analyzing multiple choice data is to examine the questions that split our class into two groups. When around half of the class got the question correct, and the other half got the question incorrect, the question highlights content and skills that often mark the difference between students who are just barely passing or just barely failing. Since we see that at least half of the students answered the question correctly, we can have some assurance that this content was taught, but that not all students were able to internalize the concepts or recall them on the day of the test. CRITICAL QUESTIONS When we encounter these questions we can ask:
TEACHING TO... When analyzing the data for current students who have an opportunity to retake the assessment, it is useful for students to reflect on their responses and have another opportunity to resolve misconceptions. When analyzing the data for future students, these questions are triggers for content that needs more time, differentiation, or strategic instruction. These questions are key for seeing the tipping point between students who are meeting exam expectations and students who are close to doing so, but can’t quite make it yet.
When we take time to analyze student performance on an in-class assessment, state exam, or national diagnostic, we’re really taking the time to invest in our own learning. The more we can identify, recognize, and even predict the patterns and trends in student performance, the more we have to work with when we’re in the planning process.
Beyond simply helping us develop more effective curriculum maps and instructional methodology, data offers us the opportunity to use this information with current students who will be retaking the exam in the future, building a blueprint of concepts and skills they need to develop in order to meet their target goals. Examining the data from all three vantage points gives us the perspective we need to make strategic choices in the future.
A four-step process for jumpstarting your analysis.
Picture this: you just learned that you have access to your students’ test scores, or the standardized tests they took last year, and you are tasked with “analyzing the data.” You know your goal is to use those scores to inform your instruction, but what do you do? And where do you start?
Don’t panic.
Starting your analysis
As a doctoral student, I always appreciated understanding analysis in this way: “all analysis is basically sorting and lifting” (Ely, Vinz, Downing, and Anzul, p. 162). This visual of sorting and lifting helped me to take action, and not feel stuck or paralyzed by mounds of data that just sits there and does not analyze itself. Enter The 'Tions, a reflection tool that offers a pathway for making meaning out of a data set. With this resource, users can begin to navigate complex information they are charged with analyzing, by exploring four categories:
Using The 'Tions
While there is no single, prescribed way to use this tool, one recommendation is to begin in the top left quadrant — Confirmation — as a way to acknowledge one’s perceptions prior to diving into the data. This not only allows existing assumptions or hypotheses to surface before entering the data, but also nudges the user to begin thinking about the work and tap into prior knowledge. The Inspiration quadrant is a natural next step, as it encourages a fresh way to look at the data. If your data set is not particularly “inspiring,” consider identifying areas in the data that highlight strengths. As you make your way to the Revelation quadrant, don’t be surprised if this reveals similar information that you entered in the Confirmation section. This section will be most meaningful if you can remain open to taking a new perspective on the data at hand. Finally, use the Application quadrant to take into consideration your next steps after looking at the data. Consider how you will use your Inspirations and Revelations to inform practical next steps in your work. What’s a small step that you can take that would make the biggest difference?
Using The ‘Tions as a tool for reviewing data is a start, and can support the user as they begin to lift and sort the information before them. While The ‘Tions will not solve all of your data analysis issues, it will help you get unstuck and begin the important work of looking at data through specific lenses.
Breaking down the science of reading to identify specific skills & supports for emerging readers.
Many people are talking about the science of reading — a term that is certainly not new, but has been gaining some serious traction recently, and prompting some heated debate. This debate largely stems from how this term is being interpreted and what this means for the students in our classrooms. What is truly meant by the science of reading?
After doing some of my own research, I’ve come to understand the science of reading as a comprehensive body of cross-disciplinary research conducted over the last 20 years that deepens our understanding of how the brain learns to read, including what skills are involved, how these skills are connected, and which parts of the brain are responsible for our reading development. The research seems clear, but because the term has become so loaded, I believe we are losing sight of what our young learners really need to become strong, capable readers.
What makes a skilled reader?
One of the leading researchers of early language development and its connection to later literacy, Dr. Hollis Scarborough, developed in 2001 what she termed the Reading Rope, which helps us articulate the specific skills readers need to have in order to be proficient. The rope consists of lower and upper strands, with the upper strand focusing on language comprehension, and the lower strand emphasizing word recognition. All these micro skills start to work together through practice and repetition, so that these skills can become instinctive. Ideally, over time, language comprehension becomes more strategic and weaves together with word recognition to produce a skilled reader.
I have greatly appreciated Dr. Scarborough’s work, and recognize connections to how I have and continue to talk about the reading development in my coaching work. Despite using a few different terms, we have similar meanings. What she describes as literacy knowledge, I have described as concepts about print. Similarly, we talk about comprehension as consisting of micro skills including vocabulary and background knowledge — the skills needed to make sense and meaning of a text.
However, I have gone a bit further in my explanation of what emerging readers need and have developed the Reading Wheel, which is based on my understanding of research and my experience as a childhood educator, teaching students how to read.
You’ll see that, in addition to phonological awareness, I include alphabetic awareness, which is defined as “knowledge of letters of the alphabet coupled with the understanding that the alphabet represents the sounds of spoken language and the correspondence of spoken sounds to written language.”
I also discuss the importance of good reading habits, which include what Dr. Scarborough describes as verbal reasoning and a few others. Good reading habits are those often taken for granted skills that proficient readers use when reading — predicting, evaluating, questioning, clarifying, and monitoring for meaning, for example. In my work with teachers, I try to have them engage in the reading of a text, and then reflect on some of the moves they made while reading, to help reveal the habits they utilize most, and how these might be incorporated into their teaching. I also include a specific focus on stamina, which I define as the skill of being able to read for longer and longer periods of time, and the willingness to keep reading, even when it feels hard.
What support do readers need?
To me, all these skills are equally important. The problem arises when we place more value or importance on certain skills over others — e.g., word recognition over language comprehension, which has often resulted in phonics instruction, all the time! Phonics instruction has its place when it comes to helping children learn the relationships between the letters of written language, the sounds of spoken language and supports their phonemic awareness and decoding skills; however, phonics instruction alone would not suffice. Emerging readers need opportunities to recognize the word patterns and letter blends in context, as they show up in books. If we look closely at both Dr. Scarborough’s Reading Rope and the Reading Wheel, we’ll see that they underscore the importance of being able to read words AND make meaning, evident by the weaving of the individual threads of the rope and the circular nature of the wheel. Students need explicit instruction when it comes to developing comprehension skills, in order to support them in thinking critically, making connections, and developing their identity as readers. Young readers need differentiated instruction and in the moment feedback as they work to progressively read more complex texts. This often happens during readers' workshops, or small group instruction, such as guided reading. Lastly, children need opportunities to engage in independent reading and participate in read alouds, to gain exposure to a wide range of texts aligned to their needs and interests, to grapple with different topics and content, to help foster a love for reading, promote stamina, and learn meaningful habits from a skilled reader — their teacher. My students loved read alouds, and often begged me to read more, so they could find out if Clover and Annie end up as friends in The Other Side, or find out if and how the teacher will respond to the class making fun of Chrysanthemum, or find out the connection between Kissin’ Kate Barlow and the Warden in Holes.
As Diana Townsend states, “If we really care about teaching kids how to read, we need to focus on creating space and time for teachers to enhance their professional knowledge." They need time to explore the research around reading development for themselves and engage in conversation with colleagues about how it should inform their instructional strategies and approaches, rather than relying on a packaged curriculum or reading programs to do it for them.
Furthermore, there needs to be meaningful and ongoing inquiry, where teachers can try things out, and then reflect on what’s working, when, for which readers, and why, as we know it takes time and patience to get things “right.” At the end of the day, Townsend reminds us that, “no one is going to ‘win’ the reading wars and children will always be the losers.”
Help students build stamina for homework by creating a consistent, meaningful structure for assignments.
While there are a range of positions on the benefits and drawbacks of out-of-class learning (aka homework), many teachers recognize that learning outside of class can benefit students as they develop new skills. Research shows that student engagement and performance increases when students engage in meaningful, relevant, out-of-class opportunities aligned with the in-class curriculum. Additionally — and especially in high school — out-of-class learning is important for students to gain valuable college-ready study skills, move through content at a faster pace, and develop personal responsibility and executive functioning skills.
While many teachers see the value of out-of-class learning, the challenges around homework are so overwhelming that assigning any homework at all can feel like a lost cause. We often assign homework as a way to build healthy academic habits for students to develop independence and personal responsibility. But building habits takes time and consistency. This means that in order to create a learning community where students regularly and reliably complete their homework, it must also be assigned consistently. Whether it’s assigned on specific days of the week, or in a set pattern, establishing homework routines and sustaining them for long periods of time is essential for developing the habit forming behaviors that students need to engage in their learning outside of class. Consistency is critical — but consistency without purpose can lead to its own set of challenges. In an effort to create routines for homework, we sometimes fall into the trap of assigning homework for the sake of assigning homework, rather than for engaging students in meaningful practice. But when students can’t find the purpose or the relevance between their homework and the classwork or their own interests, they will lose a sense of purpose and their participation will begin dropping off. Homework should build a bridge between students’ lives and content topics in the classroom. Disconnected tasks have no impact on students’ understanding of the content, engagement in the course, or in developing the long-term characteristics of independent learners. When out-of-class learning is disconnected from the in-class content, it loses its value both to the student and the teacher.
Creating consistency & meaning
There are four types of meaningful homework assignments: Practice When students apply a concept or skill learned in class. Practice assignments engage students in reading, writing, or problem-solving tasks that they’ve learned in class and can apply through different examples. Practice tasks help students internalize the concepts and skills, and encourage them to think through a variety of applications. Common practice tasks may be reading with a graphic organizer or notetaking protocol, completing a problem set, or strategic vocabulary building. The benefit of practice tasks is that the reinforcement helps students internalize content they’ve learned in class, which should better prepare them for new content in follow up lessons. Extension When students take something they’ve learned in class to a new application or new context. Extension activities take in-class learning to a new level, stretching students to think about the concepts in different contexts. This might look like extending an application task in class to an analysis level or to a synthesis level outside of class. It may be asking students to make relevant connections between class content and their own lives, or drawing real-world conclusions on a given topic. The benefit of extension activities is that they help students see their classwork as relevant or important in the real world. Preparation When students engage in learning that prepares them for in-class content. Preparation activities provide students with the prior knowledge, skills, or context to prepare them for future classwork. This might look like including a pre-reading activity, or review of prerequisite information needed for the in-class task. When developing preparation activities, consider what types of tasks will help students engage in future tasks, avoid creating in-class learning that is 100% dependent on completed homework. Creative When students use personal expression to respond to in-class content or other learning goals. Creative tasks are activities that go beyond recall or critical thinking and invite students to synthesize, reflect, or create a response to the topic being studied. These types of activities might include independent reading with a reading journal, personal reflection, drawing, or modeling a concept through multiple modalities.
Creating a structure
If it’s been difficult to establish a learning environment where students regularly engage in completing tasks outside of class, it can feel pointless. Unclear how to make a culture shift for our students, we can feel really defeated and give up even trying. But if we’re serious about cultivating these skills in our students and we know it will be better for their learning long term, we can make strategic choices to help our students develop important habits over time by leaning on some of the principles that drive athletic trainers to help people develop healthy physical habits. In the sample homework sequence below, we can see how it would be possible to take students who haven’t done any homework all year through a process that would build to 30 minutes of homework within 8 weeks, using six principles that provide structure for a goal-oriented routine, and translate from physical habits to academic habits.
Creating the right conditions for change
Periodization We respond to patterns and cycles that help to structure consistency & variety. In athletics, periodization may look like alternating weight training with cardio to develop a balance of strength training and heart health. In teaching, periodization is about creating a balance of interesting and relevant activities so that students don’t get bored or burnt out after a few days of practice. Creating a schedule, routine, or pattern for homework tasks is a great way to build in periodization. Reversibility Our practice will reverse if we’re inconsistent. When engaging in skills-based activities, consistency is critical for establishing healthy habits and meeting target goals. When we’ve established healthy habits, the tasks are easy to complete and bring satisfaction. When we are inconsistent, our skills atrophy, and it can take a lot more mental energy to get back into the habit. The same is true for homework practice. When we’re inconsistent in assigning homework, students will fall into reversibility, and it can set their progress back to the beginning stages. Consistency is critical for success. Specificity We can maintain interest and balance by rotating through a variety of tasks. If we went to the gym every week and lifted 2.5 pound weights, we might see a jump in our strength in the beginning, but if that’s the only exercise we ever do, we’re likely to see those early gains fade away. Just like the body gets used to the same physical activity, the brain gets used to the same mental activity — and it loses its potency after a period of repeated use. This is tricky because we know we need to engage students in consistent practice, but that consistent practice must include a rotation of different thinking routines in order to maintain interest and balance. Progression We need to evolve our training needs over time to keep a consistent level of challenge. Similar to specificity, progression is about ensuring a consistent challenge. In physical fitness, this means that as we get stronger, faster, or more agile, we move the target to increase the challenge. Similarly, with our students we want to ensure that as their skills improve over time, we continue to increase the intellectual challenge so that students’ interest, curiosity, and skills continue to increase over time as well. Overload We will benefit from instances of “maxing out” or a” big stretch”. For athletes seeking a physical target, they create opportunities for overload, to periodically see how far they can stretch their skills. The concept of “maxing out” is about going as far as one can go to measure the extent of progress. Maxing out is not advised as a daily or even weekly routine, but rather as a periodic test designed to assess progress and set up parameters for a new training routine. The same can also be valuable in pushing students to new levels in their academics. Engaging students in progressively challenging content, texts, or problem-solving activities can stretch what students thought they were capable of and paint a picture of what’s next in their learning. Overload doesn’t just create a stretch for the next training level — it also changes our perspective. When an athlete routinely lifts 25 pounds each workout, and then maxes out to 50 pounds, lifting 30 pounds the next session will feel lighter. Similarly, when students engage in reading a complex text or completing an intense multi-step problem and then return to a text at their level or to a problem with a recognizable solution, their own confidence and perspective also shifts. Individualization We each respond to challenges differently. While we can recognize that there are some workout patterns that can be a helpful guide, everyone is unique and responds to stress and challenges differently. Whether they’re physical or intellectual challenges, we need to consider and plan for meeting students’ individual needs. This comes with talking openly and directly with our students about the tasks, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it can help them reach their own goals. Additionally, it comes when students engage meta-cognitively in their own practice. How are we engaging our students to reflect on their challenges, their fears? How are we helping them develop tools that can empower them to strive toward their goals? We strengthen our students when we engage them in action planning, personal goal setting, tracking progress, and celebrating small and large successes.
Creating a culture change with respect to working outside of the classroom can be overwhelming, but it’s not impossible. With a strategic plan that engages students and focuses on building strong habits over time, we can cultivate a community of learners who develop personal responsibility and independence over time.
Set clear instructional expectations that help elicit students' most quality thinking.
There are many excellent reasons for looking closely at student work. We can look at the work to engage in inquiry around particular students and understand their strengths and struggles across classes and content areas, or we can look at the work of a particular class section in order to create strategic student grouping and inform differentiation for upcoming lessons. Sometimes, looking at student work can be a really meaningful way to reflect on our own instructional and curricular design — especially when we’ve recently created a new learning activity or assessment that we’ve never used before.
Recently, I supported teachers at one of our wonderful partner schools in student work analysis for this purpose. Like many schools across the city, rigor is a focus for professional learning this year. For this particular learning cycle, teachers worked on designing rigorous tasks using the Rigormeter, a resource designed by Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang, which re-envisions Bloom's Taxonomy. For this particular session, teachers were invited to bring two different pieces of student work: one that “met or exceeded expectations” for the task, and one that “is not yet meeting expectations.” Here is a snapshot of what they did with those pieces of student work, and how this reflection will inform next steps.
What does success look like?
For the first round of reflecting and sharing, teachers spent some time with the piece of work that met or exceeded expectations. Teachers were invited to engage in individual reflection using an iteration of our What / So What / Now What resource, which offers a process for making low-inference observations, analyzing findings, and identifying a course of action.
In this round of reflection, teachers had the opportunity to consider and articulate the success criteria for their rigorous task, and identify the skills and knowledge required for students to produce work that meets or exceeds expectations. Ideally, we’d like to have a clear vision of the success criteria before we ask students to engage in a task, but when we are trying something for the first time, this type of reflection might be necessary to gain further clarity. Let’s say a Social Studies and ENL co-teaching team is trying out a new assignment in which students are asked to plan an educational tour of Greece for the class. They are asked to choose at least three stops on the map and explain why a particular place or geographical feature is important for understanding the ancient culture of the civilization. A What / So What / Now What-style reflection on a successful student’s work might look like:
What are revisions and next steps?
For the second round of reflecting and sharing, teachers moved their attention to the piece of student work that was not yet meeting expectations. Once again, they engaged with a What/So What/Now What protocol, this time with slightly different prompts:
A sample reflection for that same scenario might be:
Insights and next steps
During our whole staff debrief, one common high-level insight that emerged across departments was that we cannot make assumptions about students’ knowledge and skills before assigning rigorous tasks. Thus, a next step in the group’s professional learning will be to explore the concept of formative assessments and their connections to engaging students in work that is appropriately challenging. The whirlwind pace of teachers’ work does not always allow a beat to critically reflect on planning; often after trying something new, we must take stock as quickly as possible and then shift our attention to the next lesson, activity, or assessment. However, when we can carve out space for intentional reflection (and school leaders and PD coaches support us in doing so), there are undeniable benefits — perhaps the most obvious being that we have much better insight into students’ immediate needs. But also, if we understand student work to be a mirror of our own practice — reflecting back ways to improve our own instructional design — looking at what students produce in live time informs how we will design our next learning activity, or how we revise our design for next time so that it elicits students’ most quality thinking.
What does it mean to be mathematically literate?
Literacy is quite the term. When I started my teaching career as an English educator, I assumed that literacy was my domain. As I continued teaching and studying education, it became clear that literacy is all encompassing. I learned about the ways students could become literate in science, social studies, and more recently, racially literate. For some reason, none of these literacies seemed out of my reach, and then entered math. Math has always been a tough subject for me, and in this conversation, I was able to again sit down with Bob Janes, Secondary Supervisor of Mathematics for East Hartford Public Schools (revisit our first conversation, on equitable assessment, here), and talk about what literacy in math looks like.
How would you define literacy as a math teacher?
Literacy in math is the ability to understand and communicate mathematics in a variety of forms. I typically use the following definition from the The Connecticut Common Core of Teaching (CCT) Rubric for Effective Teaching 2017:
Thinking about the definition as conveying meaning and understanding meaning in a variety of forms, how does that show up in the math classroom?
It shows up in a variety of ways. I’ll go through a few different modalities. Reading Students should be able to read about a scenario or context and apply mathematical understanding to it, often called mathematizing, decontextualizing, or modeling. Students should also be able to read a mathematical text and understand common notations and representations. This includes algebraic notation, tables, charts, and graphs. We call these processes decontextualizing and contextualizing. Writing Students should also be able to justify their ideas in text using the same notations and representations that they are able to read (e.g. sentences, algebraic notation, tables, charts, and graphs). Speaking and listening Students should be able to listen, interpret, and critique their peer’s ideas. They should also be able to share and support their own ideas. Vocabulary Students should be able to recognize and use both Tier II and Tier III vocabulary with precision while reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Connecting representations This one is more math specific than the others. Students should be able to draw connections between different representations and understand when one representation is more advantageous than another. For example, suppose students were analyzing the freefall motion of a skydiver. A paragraph, an algebraic function, and a graph would all reveal different information about the scenario, and taken together, they provide a more complete understanding.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen the opposite of this in many math classrooms, what some might call “plug and chug”. If teachers are stuck providing worksheets and asking students to fill them out to “demonstrate mastery”, how can they change their classroom practices to ensure students are literate in mathematics?
We often shy away from giving our students tasks that ask them to read, write, speak, and listen in math class because we think that they will struggle. We also think that students who already find math content difficult will be completely exasperated by integrating literacy skills. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to build literacy skills in a vacuum. We must start by exposing our students to high-quality, standards-aligned tasks that promote the use of literacy skills. Then, we use literacy strategies to support students within the context of these tasks. There are a number of great resources out there to choose from when selecting tasks. Curriculums that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematical Practice (MP) typically include opportunities for students to read, write, speak, listen, work with vocabulary, and draw connections between representations. My favorite curriculum to pull from is Illustrative Mathematics, and my two favorite instructional routines are Three Act Tasks and Which One Doesn’t Belong. A distinguishing feature of the tasks and routines linked above is that they all give students something to discuss or think about. This includes tasks that give students different starting information, tasks that have multiple solution methods, and tasks that have multiple answers. Robert Kaplinsky calls these approaches “Open Beginning”, “Open Middle”, and “Open Ended” and even has a website dedicated to these types of tasks.
This all sounds fantastic, but what if a high school student was not exposed to this kind of literacy in previous grades? What are some strategies teachers can use to help students develop math literacy?
I’ll talk through a few of my favorites, although there are a number of strategies and routines that are great for supporting student’s literacy skills. It’s important to understand that none of these strategies will cause immediate success. Students who are not accustomed to literacy in math class may struggle at first, but over time they will begin to use these strategies on their own. Reading I like to use the three reads protocol when reading word problems. Different groups have their own tweaks on the protocol (e.g. LAUSD, SFUSD, Kelemanik & Lucenta), but the structure is generally the same. Students read the first time to understand the context, a second time to identify important quantities, and a third time to interpret the problem. Students can also use annotations or highlights as they are reading to identify important information. When working on an interdisciplinary team, I like to use common annotations for text so that students can see the connections between subject areas; however, we can annotate more than text in math class. Tables, graphs, and even visual patterns are great places to make meaning through annotation. Writing Other disciplines have their own response structures such as RACE or CER. Just as with annotations, I prefer to use a common response structure with other disciplines. Speaking and listening I’ve found that talk moves can help students get started when they don’t know what to say. Talk moves can be prompts from the teacher, visuals for students to see, or both. Other educators use similar techniques such as sentence frames or discourse cards, and have created extensive lists of prompts and stems to get students talking. I think it’s up to the teacher to choose what works best for their students. I would be remiss not to talk about Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl. While not technically literacy strategies, I have observed the 14 practices in this book promote more student to student discourse than I have ever seen in a math classroom. It’s worth a read! Listening Many students find active listening and comprehension in real-time challenging. While this is the ultimate goal, technology such as EdPuzzle can be used to slow down videos and provide frequent comprehension checks. Vocabulary Vocabulary is one that I still personally struggle with. The traditional approach is to front-load vocabulary instruction, where a teacher explicitly teaches new vocabulary terms before they are used in context with the thought that students will not be able to understand the subsequent lessons without the vocabulary. However, I have found that many students do not need front-loaded instruction. Instead, many students learn vocabulary terms best when they are introduced only when needed, and when instruction is embedded within the context of the lesson. For example, students are asked to describe different parts of a graph and begin to use informal language. They might quickly discover that their informal language is imprecise and has limits. At this point, the teacher would step in to support students either with formal vocabulary or with an instructional routine that allows students to build their own vocabulary (e.g. Stronger and Clearer Each Time). In my experience, more students are able to attach meaning to the vocabulary using this approach than using the front-loading approach, but it will be up to the teacher to meet the needs of their students. Connecting representations Teachers should spend substantial instructional time for students to use, discuss, and connect representations. In the book Routines for Reasoning, Grace Kelemanik and Amy Lucenta suggest using an instructional routine to allow students to make connections and share them with their peers. Teachers can also be explicit about connections by using annotations to connect specific parts of each representation with arrows.
Is that it? Tasks and strategies?
All of this falls apart unless the teacher gives students specific and actionable feedback. It’s not enough for students to simply complete the tasks and apply the strategies we’ve talked about. Students need to know when they’re communicating effectively, and what they can do to improve. Error analysis routines and exemplars can be helpful in this regard.
What if teachers want to learn more?
There are a few places to visit if you want a deeper dive. The work done by Stanford University’s Center for Understanding Language (UL) is particularly helpful. They have developed a series of design principles and math language routines to support language and content development. Jeff Zwiers is the director of professional development for UL, and his website has even more tools to support authentic communication across the disciplines. More recently, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) created a Student Experience Toolkit for Math Instruction for Multilingual Learners that builds on the work of UL. These resources provide a great next step to learn more about literacy in math education. |
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