Critical Litercy in Science

Have you ever saw a subatronic spectacle of matter collapse on itself? This is probably not a question you would normally ask of yourself. Let me ask you this then, have you ever looked down from a somewhere far off the ground such as ledge or on top of a tall building and wondered "How far is it to the bottom"? One way you can find out is by dropping a stone and counting how long it takes. This can simply be done by using this equation: vertical distance is equal to half the gravity multiplied by the square value of time or otherwise known as y= 1/2 x g x t^2. Gravity is measured as 9.8 meters per squared second.

Try and see how far these guys have been fell.

If you have an answer more or less 45158 meters than you are right. In real life this may not be completely accurate, but you were able to come to a value or an answer.

Literacy in science is about doing things. I never completely understood this phrase until recently. Literacy is science is all about asking questions and finding your own answers based on what you know. It is about looking for evidence and testing to find results. Its all about problem solving and translating your knowledge into your reasoning and exploration to discover the truth. 

Thus, brings me to another idea. Is everything we know to be true. Is there such a thing as global warming and are we to blame? This topic has been a political debate for over a decade. While searching for the answer you will find discrepancies from scientific findings, where one party is biased toward one idea. So you have to wonder, how is the findings distorted? Who are they targeting? and for what reasons is there distortion if any?

In the following article you can find that there is a push towards global warming when the data is not there to support it.
How We Know Global Warming is Real

Common Core

Since the adoption of Common Core there has been praise and criticism that followed. The aftermath of the failed No Child Left Behind Act prompted liberal legislators to create state standards that provided equal opportunity to minority, low-end economic, and high economic areas. Once credited by Arne Duncan as the future of education and the biggest academic achievement since Brown vs. Board of Education, such standards have been met with criticism and the repeal in multiple states. However, criticism is now generated from both conservative and liberal politician as Governor Cuomo of New York dubbed Common Core, "flawed" and is planning to restructure how is state adopts standards.

Educational reformer Diane Ravitch who is a proponent of educational legislation and standards discusses her criticism below:

Aside from criticism is the anomaly, Massachusetts. As our New York times article we are discussing tomorrow states, "Yet he staunchly defended the effort, saying Massachusetts went through the same pains two decades ago after it adopted new standards, and now consistently scores as high as the top countries do on international measures." However, this took two decades to achieve, and the standards taught today face many issues such as educators who are unaware of how to teach standards effectively, the acquisition of technology, textbooks, and materials that will prepare each student equally for standardized testing. Critics of Common Core advocate this is simply impossible and students will continue to be considered inadequate, especially in lower-income areas where access to materials and technology is limited.

I feel as though the adoption of standards is necessary in order to close the achievement gap between high-income and low-income areas. It goes without saying that students are given more opportunity in high-income areas, than those in low-income areas. It is simply impossible to meet achievement standards with some of the problems these areas, families, and schools face. Furthermore, educators are not equipped yet to teach in alignment with Common Core, and we are seeing students fearful of mathematics and other disciplines. There is a great issue with Common Core, and states such as Oklahoma have already repealed the standards and implemented their own. I am not sure what the real solution would be, but Federal control of education and the equal distribution of funds is a plan that could provide students equal opportunity. Additionally, it is unfair to lower-income areas to meet standards and receive funding if they are not properly prepared to teach Common Core. Common Core in my opinion has done nothing but perpetuate an already existing problem in education, and the legislation was passed almost in secret without the public fully understanding the implications. 

Common Core

Ever since they were brought to the public's attention in 2010 the common core state standards have faced strong opposition from the right, but the standards are now beginning to lose some of its support from the left. The opponents claim that the new standards will hurt students already at a disadvantage and that the standards for math will actually cause more students to become uninterested in the subject. They also believe that rolling out the new standards is hurting districts performance. The supporters of the common core state standards claim that these new standards will help disadvantaged students by leveling the playing field, and it will help make the United States competitive in global market.The two videos below will help to illustrate these points. 

The Colbert Report
Colbert Report Episode Guide,  More Colbert Report Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

Many administrators, government officials, and parents are beginning to claim that actually implementing the standards are creating problems for districts. Many of the teacher required to teach these new standards have not yet received proper training or materials, and it is causing the test scores within those districts to drop. However, I believe that this is only temporary. The New York Times article from the readings this week states that Massachusetts faced many of these same challenges when it adopted new standards about two decades ago, but it now scores as highly as top performing countries do on international scales.

Those opposed to common core also claim that the standards will put students who are already at a disadvantage in a worse position because of the increased amount and difficulty of the work they are expected to do. However evidence shows that overall standards are beneficial for disadvantaged students. Education analyst John Chubb has stated that, "student achievement has grown much more rapidly in the last decade...than during the 1990s, especially for the lowest achieving and most-disadvantaged students in the nation." and since 2000, "The bottom 10% had gained far more than the national average..."

Lastly, many of the critics of common core say the standards for math will create a generation of students who are uninterested or fearful of math because of the complex word problems and the advanced subject matter. While I agree with the critics about the problems with the standards for math presented in common core, I believe that the standards for literacy are essential for preparing students for college. The skills that are presented in the standards are students should read and analyze rigorous texts, see the link between content and comprehension, and it emphasizes their close reading skills. Which are all skills that I use in my daily life as a college student.

Oral Language: Literacies, Languages, and Chicago

In the article, "Literacies and Ethnolinguistic Diversity: Chicago", a major theme that was discussed was the different ethnolinguistic and literacies that make up, and even define, the city of Chicago. For the majority of Chicago's history, the city has been known as a crossroads of trade and (more importantly) a crossroads of ethnicities and linguistics. From Native Americans to today, Chicago has seemed to always be the place where various people from various ethnicities and/or who speak a different language come together to trade, work, or live. A great statement that accurately sums this up is, "thus both historically and currently, ethnolinguistic practices in Chicago are inextricably linked to events, people, and institutions in their places of origin" (278).

Although this article continues to talk about the difficulties that many ethnicities have had to overcome in order to establish an identity from their original country, I think a bigger "take-away" from the article is thinking about how our students are reacting to this environment. For the most part, not all of our students are going to come from the same ethnolinguistic background, and one of the problems that our adolescent students will face, especially the ones in high school, are establishing an identity for themselves based on their domestic cultural and linguistic upbringing and the culture(s) and linguistic(s) they experience around them. This can be extremely difficult enough for our students, but what can make this even more challenging for them is not allowing them to develop their identities in schools (and I guess in this case it would be high schools) by shoving academic language and literature down their throats for seven to eight hours, five days a week.

There needs to be a balance and a connection between academic ethnolinguistics and the cultural ethnolinguistics for our students during school. Many students dissociate cultural ethnolinguistics from their academic subjects because they do not see how the two worlds connect. I think that it is very important as teachers to connect what we are teaching to our students' ethnolinguistic background so that they can have a better understanding of the importance of the material being taught to them and how it helps them in developing their identities. A simple solution to this is allowing our students to speak in their ethnolinguistic preference to one another in the hallways, before class begins, or to help them think of an answer, and to not have (or show) a negative label on our students for it. By creating this respect, teachers can create a classroom that is open for all students to learn and to not worry about being judged based on who they are.

Another important statement in the article was, "The world's languages and dialects, used alone and mixed with each other or English, create vibrant communities with range of oral and written genres" (278). Because of the way technology has advanced and mixing of ethnolinguistics, our usage of slang has increased and advanced. Instead of trying to completely cut it out of schools though, we should allow our students to speak in their own way to help them understand academic material.

Oral language in the classroom

 As future educators, we will encounter students with diverse backgrounds and languages. We should support and empower our students' voices. This week's reading by Marcia Farr, was insightful and put into perspective how the literacies and enthnolinguistic diversity in Chicago shapes identities. The relationship between language and culture encompasses ethnic/racial, gender, class, and other identities. Farr argues that individuals create identities around the verbal styles that characterize them. Thus, it is an integral part of one's life. Chicago is a prime example of a multicultural and multilingual city. Our students' languages are an inherent part of their identity. We should acknowledge the importance of their language and encourage and teach them academic language. However, oral language in our classrooms can both hinder and support learning in our classrooms.

How can oral language hinder our students? As a former ESL (English as a Second Language) student, (I say former because nowadays I mostly speak,write, and read in English than Spanish, even though I try to keep a balance.) I struggled with literacy, especially reading. I came into kindergarten speaking only one phrase, "I need to go pee pee!" I took ESL classes until 5th grade, when I started learning a third language, Italian. I flourished in my Italian class because of its resemblance to Spanish. I owe much of my success in English to my teachers and parents. I had very supportive and thoughtful teachers who encouraged me and provided extra help with reading or with vocabulary. English language learners (ELLs), for example, may need more help with vocabulary and grammar. As teachers, we may need to modify texts for those students or have students work in groups. Discussions are effective because students can take part in rich and structured conversations. Also. hearing and listening to their peers will help them learn English. In my elementary school, I never spoke Spanish but I think it helped me learn English faster because no else was speaking Spanish. 

Code-switching

 I often refer to my language as Spanglish. I do this a lot especially when speaking with my parents or older family members. But what exactly is code-switching? Well, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as: "the switching from the linguistic system of one language or dialect to that of another." Here's a *funny* example:

 This article lists interesting explanations as to why we code-switch. I know I definitely code-switch when in a classroom. The jargon I use when speaking with a professor, is very different from the one I would use to speak with a friend. Our students will come from different backgrounds so it is imperative that we teach them and guide them to use academic language in our classrooms. However we should be careful not to label their home language as wrong, but rather have them recognize the difference between home and school speech. 

Anchor Standards (Common Core)

"To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of rich, structured conversations—as part of a whole class, in small groups, and with a partner. Being productive members of these conversations requires that students contribute accurate, relevant information; respond to and develop what others have said; make comparisons and contrasts; and analyze and synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains."

These standards are helpful when preparing students for college and careers. 

How do you think code-switching can affect our students' literacy? 
How will you empower students' voices? 

Formative Assessments and Adaptability

This week's reading, Assessments to Guide Adolescent Literacy Instruction, focuses on the use of formative assessments in the classroom and how the information gathered from these assessments can be utilized by teachers to mold their lesson plans to fit their students needs. The reading states that  "Assessments given to obtain information useful for guiding instruction are typically referred to as formative assessments." There are three different types of formative assessments: Classroom based assessment, benchmark assessment, and formal and informal screening and diagnostic assessments." Much of this article focused on classroom based assessments, which are the daily assessments used by teachers to monitor their students progress through out a lesson. The reading later explains that the information gathered from these types of assessments is only useful when the teacher who gathers it is able to adapt to their approach to instruction based on the information stating that " formative assessments are only effective if they are followed by effective instructional responses or appropriate feedback."

I completely agree with this statement, it is extremely important for a teacher to know how to successfully take the information they have gather and use it to adapt their lesson plans to fit their students needs, but it is also important for teachers to understand how to adapt on the spot if the information they have gathered requires it. One example that is given in the reading is of a teacher who was instructing an eighth grade class of children with learning disabilities. The class was learning how to analyze text to find evidence to support an argument. As the teacher walked around the room she noticed that many of her students were not using the correct strategies needed to efficiently find the information that was required to support their arguments, so asked them to explain how they were analyzing it. After the students explained their technique, she adapted to the situation based on the information that she had just received, and created a "mini-lesson" on the spot to teach her students more effective tools and strategies that they could use while analyzing text. After, this she made a note to remind herself to monitor students independent use of the strategies, so she could further assess thief progress. 

The reason I think this example is so important is because it shows how you can effectively use the information gained through formative assessments and quickly adapt your lesson plan to fit your students specific needs. Also, the ability to when know how to take the information you have gathered and improvise on the spot allows you to quickly clear up any misunderstanding in your classroom and allows you and opportunity to provide scaffolding for your students to improve their knowledge and chance of success in your classroom.

Literacy Assements

Testing our students.












This article talks about the various ways,we as teachers, can asses our students to see what their capabilities are and to indicate us, based on their results, on how we should modify our curriculum. The article mentioned one of the most common assessments teachers use today, which is formative assessment.

By definition, formative assessment means, "assessments given to obtain information useful for guiding instruction." If this is the case, then in my opinion, we shouldn't  penalize our students for doing poorly on such test. We should reiterate to them that the results are used to indicate us what their problem areas are. The article mentions the three crucial times students should be assessed to monitor their progress and identify their struggles: begging, throughout, and end of the school year. I think this a great way for teachers to check progress, but in my opinion the scores shouldn't be used as grades.

As great as formative assessments sound, it is my experience that teachers generally do not use their student's test results as a way to shape their curriculum. From the times that I've observed, being in a high school classroom, teachers don't care too much about the scores their students get as a way to form their next lesson plan. The most that I've seen teachers do is a test review, and then they move on to the next lesson. Teachers will suggest that students seek tutors and study on their own time, but I've never actually seen a teacher alter their curriculum based on assessment scores. A lot of teachers have their curriculum planned from the begging of the school year and most of them are set in their ways.
 
In my opinion, that s not the way to go because when a student is struggling in an area that is essential to their learning and it doesn't get the attention that it requires, the student will then have gaps in their learning. As the class get harder and harder the students who did poorly on the assements test will most likely fall behind because they cant advance to more difficult skills without fixing what they previously missed. If student don't know or learn the basics, how can they be expected to master the rigors of advanced material? How do they go from A to Z, when they're having a hard time getting from A to B?

I think this is where students get frustrated the most, because as the class advances, and the assignments get harder and harder, they're going to struggle to keep up. It is here where we see students give up, or have lack of motivation. That's why, I do agree with formative assessments, but I know that a lot of teachers don't practice it. 

Adolescent Literacy Instruction

As I read this weeks assigned reading Assessments to Guide Adolescent Literacy Instruction, a few points resonated with me. This article, specifically the 20 pages or so assigned provides empirical evidence as to the success of formative assessments within the classroom on not only learning, but student achievement of state standards. As the article states, " To be maximally effective, both instruction and classroom formative assessments should be aligned with state standards." This statement does not sit right with me to say the least. I understand formative assessments are only as successful as the instruction provided however, if aligning our assessments with state standards has proven successful why are students still underachieving? Isn't the entire reform of public education thus far been to promote achievement following the failure of No Child Left Behind and the currently controversial Common Core? Isn't it possible that higher performing schools have an easier time adopting assessment and instruction to their curriculum than lower performing schools? This article states the common trend that lower performing schools according to Langer tend to use test preparation strategies to teach rather than formative assessments. However, what does the data tell us when lower performing schools incorporate differentiated instruction and formative assessments?  I have a difficult time accepting that formative assessments and differentiated instruction are as successful in achieving standards as this article states.

Furthermore, the article suggests instruction is more important in regards to student achievement, "evaluations of classroom-based formative assessment are as much an evaluation of the instructional adjustments resulting from the assessments as they are of the assessments themselves." I think this article demonstrates the instruction we as educators provide as essential to achievement rather than the assessments themselves. Feedback and gauging where students struggle is effective when altering lesson plans and focusing on improvement. Essentially, I disagreed with the first 10 pages or so of this article, but I found the section dedicated to proper instructional strategies and formative assessments intriguing.

If we are doing formative assessments, but nothing is done with the assessments in terms of instruction they assessments become pointless. Offering pre and post assessments as this video states is a way of understanding the achievement of where the students are struggling and need improvement. However, if nothing is done in terms of instruction following assessments, the students fail to learn accordingly and nothing changes. Incorporating rubrics prior to assignments is a point this article makes early on. From my experience I firmly believe this is a useful assessment when preparing for large assignments such as essays and projects. Moreover, the use of group discussion as a means to improve reading and comprehension is something we see on a daily basis in higher performing high schools. I find the instructional strategies provided in this article as useful for us as future educators, but the alignment of standards and assessment is still something I feel is difficult to do successfully.

Do you believe if all states provide nationwide formative assessments we can successfully achieve standards? The video above provides examples from Michigan as educators collaborate to study formative assessments and effective instruction, and is quite informative on this entire process.

Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Today's young people are often referred to as the "selfie generation." Today's technological advances have made it possible for us all to stay connected and even a little narcissistic. Technology is ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives'. Why shouldn't that be the case in our classrooms as well?

This week's article provides insightful strategies in which we can teach digital literacy to our students. Brianna Crowley uses The New York Department of Education definition for digital literacy: “having the knowledge and ability to use a range of technology tools for varied purposes.” If an individual is digitally literate, they will have the skills to strategically find and evaluate information. This is especially important in the discipline of history. Our students will need to develop research skills in order to write coherent and argumentative papers. 
The links provided within the article are extremely helpful resources. As educators we should provide guidance, instruction, and practice so that our students understand what it means to be positive and productive digital citizens. We have to teach our students how many things online are not real or accurate. We must teach them the "benefits, dangers, and opportunities technology provides." 

One resource Crowley mentions that has been very beneficial in the classrooms I have been observing, is Google and YouTube. 

We can help our students become efficient searchers. In all subject areas our students will need to be able to find and access information. Whether it be for projects or research papers, they can use resources like Google Search. 

"A Google a Day" is a great way to teach our students essential research skills and engage them to go deeper into exploration. 

As we are teaching our class how to use the internet for research purposes, we must also incorporate ways to make sure that the information we are gathering can be trusted or accurate. If our schools are fortunate enough to have the resources, we should teach our students how to take full advantage of them. Here at UIC, for one of my History classes, I really appreciated learning about the UIC library's services and collections. I felt more confident in my ability to research and gather the support needed in my paper. 

Social Media
As 21st century learners, our students will probably be very excited to use social media as part of an assignment or project. (I'm even using it currently for my HIST 255 "History of Chicago" class. We are suppose to take "selfies" at the museum/neighborhood we will report on. And of course this class!)

Here's, a great article on 7 ways we can use social media in the classroom. 

The Time article, Crowley presents, argues that society's response to kids with devices has been "fear-based and reactive." I find this true because I'm sometimes hesitant to let my daughter use my phone or ipad. I believe in teaching the parents how to monitor and use social media. The internet is a powerful tool, so we must be able to keep up with it and guide each student to use it responsibly. 

What Digital Literacy Looks Like in a Classroom

What Digital Literacy Looks Like in a Classroom

The Wonders of Technology

In the article, "What Digital Literacy Looks Like in a Classroom", author, Brianna Crowley, shares how she uses the technological advances of today into her classroom to make the connection between education and how to use technology in the classroom to further the education of our students. She addresses the question, "what does it mean to "digitally literate"?" and answers it with the definition of the New York Department of Education definition of, "having the knowledge and ability to use a range of technology tools for varied purposes". Because of the technological advances, everybody is familiar with the internet, smart phones, laptops, tablets, computers, etc, and in some way it is hard not to say that people today are not affected by technology in some way.

A great statement Crowley makes is when she says, "many of us wrestle with how technology is shifting they way kids learn" because it is true. The way younger generations learn has been affected by the way technology has advanced and their high amounts of usage with it. So why not create a classroom with digital literacy where we are using apps that many students are familiar with to relate to their learning in the classroom? In her article supporting digital literacy, Crowley goes on to talk about the various ways she incorporates apps such as Twitter, Google A Day, Instagram, etc into her classroom and the difference she has seen with her students' behaviors towards learning, and she highly encourages for all teachers to create digital literacy in their classroom.

However...

To be honest, I really disagreed with the article on numerous points made. Although I agree that teachers should use more technology in the classrooms, especially with younger generations growing up in a world of advanced technology, I don't think that teachers need to centralize their curriculum around the use of technology. There are many reasons why I believe this, but in short here are the three main reasons why teacher's shouldn't centralize their curriculum around technology:

1. Not all schools have the funding to support a technology-rich curriculum.
2. Not all students have the necessary technological tools to use in the classroom.
3. Creativity in the curriculum will begin to disappear.

As I was reading the article and came across my first reason and second for not liking it, I was pleased to read at the end that someone commented on the same concern I had. I don't know who Ford is or what their background in education might be, but I think they are absolutely right when they say, "Until we ensure that every student has equal access opportunities to technology, every day, digital literacy goals will not be realized by everyone". Even though it is hard to imagine someone without the daily access of a smart phone, laptop, computer, tablet, etc, There are still many students in low-income communities nation-wide that don't have easy access to the internet and their only way is to go to their local public library after school or on the weekends. Schools in low-income areas struggle with funding for basic materials like textbooks, and having to fund enough technological tools (i.e. computers, laptops, and/or tablets) for students is pretty much out of the question.

Another concern that entered my mind as I read the article came after Crowley was explaining how she brings digital literacy into the classroom by saying, "I've used Google A Day challenges to teach my students advanced search strategies". Although it seems that Google A Day is a great app to use, the statement made me think of what future lesson plans will look like. Using technology can be very creative in a curriculum, but after a certain point are teachers really going to be thinking of different apps to use for activities and projects or will everything be copy and paste from the internet? Will the actual lesson plans be individually created by the teacher, or will there be one app that teachers can go on and pick and choose what activities they want to use in their lessons and which outlines and/or presentations to use for their classrooms? The internet is great because so much information and ideas are accessed globally, but too much information can lead to mindless copying and pasting ideas, methods, strategies, etc into a lesson plan to the point where the teacher doesn't need to think of what they want in their curriculum.

I'm not saying that we, as teachers, shouldn't try to find ways of bringing technology into the classroom, but I don't believe that our entire lesson plans should be entirely centered around it. Along with that, a final question came to my mind after reading the article that really bothered me at the end when Crowley asks, "Are you preparing students to use devices and technology successfully?" My final question; Is it every teacher's responsibility to teach students how to use technological devices? Should it?

Matching the Author to the Reader

In this weeks reading, I really enjoyed learning about how we make connections to text. Buehl raises some interesting points about how much our prior knowledge and general interest on a topic affect our satisfaction in comprehension when reading texts. When students read a text, they might know the meaning of certain  vocabulary words, where some places are located, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll understand what the text is talking about. They can read and re-read a passage and still not comprehend it because they don't have any prior knowledge on the subject. According to Buehl, we bring three types of knowledge to a text:
Text to Self Knowlege- Direct knowledge occured from ones personal lives and experiences.
Text to Text knowledge- Indirect knowledge resulting from ones reading and study.
Text to world knowledge- Vicarious based on our impressions  of how things are, often obtain secondhand.

I think this is certainly true, if the author of a text doesn't necessarily speak to me I am so quick to blank out and my mind will start to wonder. However, if I identify with the authors stance and I have a good amount of prior knowledge on the topic, then I'm all in. To quote Buehl "When a reader is well matched with an author, it seems that the reader is exactly whom the author had in mind when writing the text." To add to that, when authors and readers are matched comprehensions seems like it occurs naturally. However, when we don't know much about the text, and were not interested in the topic, we're saying "BYE FELICIA"

For those of you who haven't seen Friday, "Bye Felicia" means I don't care about your existence or purpose.

Anyways, how do we apply this to our history students? Well Buehl has a few pointers. In order for our students to make sense of the text we give them, they need to have a general knowledge on the topic. We cant give them a text and expect them to make sense of it right away. We need to teach them what's going on, what time period we're talking about etc. After we spend some time talking about the context then, they can read the text with the knowledge they have built up and hopefully come to a better understating of the meaning of the text.

So much of what students know about history is through what they've seen in movies, and as teacher I think we need capitalize on that. We can use that to our advantage to build knowledge. However, we also need to let our students know and remind them that the representation of historical events that movies offer do not necessarily tell the whole story accurately (e.g dramatization, over-acting) 

Frontloading

When reading and learning from an academic text, it requires the reader to have a certain background knowledge. Every lesson plan will have the students to acquire an assumed knowledge or vocabulary. Such as learning geometry requires you to know the soh cah toa or what a trapezoid is. The revolution war would require students to know about colonies. As for physics, most students are expected to understand how to solve an algebraic equation.

The fact is, there will be students who lack the background knowledge for the lesson plan. Students that lack a background for a reading assignment will become much more difficult for them to understand the text.

Teachers will compensate for this in two way. The first is when student don't do the reading or don't understand it, teachers will then usually present the key material. The second is when teachers avoid readings all together and teach with what is on the board. These two methods will eventually teach students that careful listening will help them gather all the information that they need.

This brings on an evolution, lesson plans should revolve around building academic background so that when a student read an academic text that they will learn new information. This method is presumed to be Frontloading.

There are three situations when Frontloading and they are:

• With much knowledge
• With Diverse knowledge
• With insufficient knowledge 

Having much knowledge usually fall in the scenario of changing a lesson plan and students forgetting the previous material. Teacher will have to refresh the students memory with an activity that quickly helps students recall information such as a quick writing prompt or a knowledge latter.

Diverse knowledge is when students come with a partial knowledge on the subject that may or may not be correct. Providing key words or vocabulary and having them make a connection based of their knowledge is one method that help.

Students with insufficient knowledge will usually need frontloading in the form of relatable or simple text such as that of a video or sections in a book rather than a whole chapter.

Along with this you will need students to actively learn outside of academic texts,  one suggestion from the text book is that have your students write what the know and what they don't and have them look it up on google or however they wish to (Buehl 157). This can bring them into another discipline and have them learning more than the subject matter.

Writing Next

The Writing Next article basically addresses eleven elements that help adolescent students become better writers. These elements are:
1) Writing Strategies                7) Prewriting
2) Summarization                     8) Inquiry Activities
3)Collaborative Writing            9) Process Writing Approach
4)Specific Product goals         10) Study of Models
5) Word processing                11) Writing for Content Learning
6) Sentence Combining

Each element has a specific purpose and goal for aiding students in the writing process. It's important to remember that these elements are not in a particular order nor do they constitute a curriculum. Meaning that, students don't have to fallow every element one after the other. However, the more elements the student includes in their writing process the better the result will be. According Graham, "The elements should not be seen as isolated but rather as interlinked...A mixture of these elements is likely to generate the biggest return." This reiterates the idea that the elements correlate and intertwine with each other and the more elements students use the better their results will be.

 But what do these elements tell us? Franky, it tell us that our students need a lot of help when it comes to writing. According to Writing Next the percentages of students who need writing assistance are cause for concern. These are just some of the statistics.

Seventy percent of                                             

students in grades 4–12

are low-achieving writers

Every school day, more

than 7,000 students drop out

of high school

Only

70% of high school

students graduate on time

with a regular diploma,

and fewer than 60% of

African-American and

Latino students do so

The numbers don't lie, many students are low achieving writers. Many of the student who fall somewhere in these percentages enter college not writing at basic college level and therefore, have a difficult first year. As teachers we need to prepare our students as much as we can so that when they do enter college they wont fall behind or feel daunted by the work load.

I really liked Graham and Perin's strategies for supporting students in writing. For me personally, writing has always been an intimidating process. To this day, I sometimes still struggle to put my thought into a cohesive well-written essay however, I have used some of the elements mentions above and they actually do work.  The thing that I will mentions is that writing takes time, hard work, patience,  focus, and discipline, which adolescents sometimes don't care about. 

Along with that, it's important to remember not to procrastinate; I know I'm guilty of it a lot. The first thirty seconds of the video describe exactly how I feel when I'm writing a paper that I'm procrastinating on or that I'm just not that interested in doing. 

The lesson here is to plan your writing a head of time. Meaning that, students should write outlines and plan accordingly to avoiding cramming and  procrastination and meet deadline

Writing Next

Writing Next

In regards to education, all we hear today is how the education system in the United States is horrible and how education needs to be reformed, especially in regards to adolescent reading and writing skills. Yes, the education system in the United States is absolutely horrible with seventy percent of students in fourth through twelfth grade being labeled as low-achieving writers, with more than seven thousand students dropping out of high school, and with almost one-third of of high school graduates not being "ready" for college-level English composition. As statistics continue to show that low number of students rank on standardized exams as proficient, a question may arise to ask why. Why are reading and writing scores so low? Why in an information-rich world are the majority of students not scoring as "proficient"? And, what can be done to improve this?

In Writing Next, Steve Graham and Dolores Perin come up with eleven, researched strategies that fall under the theory of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is defined as, "a particularly powerful way of synthesizing and permits the calculation of effect sizes", and these effect sizes help determine how much a strategy using meta-analysis has impacted someone or a group's learning. By using the meta-analysis, researchers developed the eleven elements of current writing instruction that help adolescents with learning and writing. The eleven elements include: 

 







After reading the research on these eleven elements, I realized that these eleven elements are just various strategies that one could use in the classroom to help students in being proficient writers. As stated multiple times in the research, these eleven elements are not a curriculum for teachers, but rather are different strategies teachers can incorporate in their classroom to help students that are not "proficient" in writing so that by the standardized exams' scores these students will show that they are "proficient" in writing. However, as I was reading about these wonderful eleven elements that have shown to help students improve on their writing skills, I could not help but notice how these elements (strategies) revolve around the idea of universal design in that they can help different learners with their writing abilities. Although it is impossible to include all these methods of writing in one writing assignment, it is possible to offer students all of these elements and having them maybe use a few as they are doing a writing assignment for class to help them meet the "proficiency" level.

Although the statistics show that the majority of students in the country are not proficient writers or even readers, that does not go to say that students today are not reading and writing. A statement that I had a problem with in the article was, "it is obvious that if today's youngsters cannot read with understanding, think about and analyze what they've read, and then write clearly and effectively about what they've learned and what they think, then they may never be able to do justice to their talents and their potential". Students today are reading and writing more than they have ever done in the past, but they are not (in this case writing) expressing their thoughts in an academic way because they are so use to writing non-academically, such as text messages and comments on Facebook. Nonetheless, the thoughts are there, and if teachers could focus on transitioning those thoughts from the non-academic writings to the academic writings, then perhaps the number of students that are "proficient" in writing will increase as well.

By using the eleven elements in the classroom, I think that the transition from writing non-academically to academically can be done with the various learners present in the classroom. Statistically speaking, these eleven elements are golden and have shown to help "non-proficient" students increase their writing skills. However, not all elements are going to relate to how a student learns best, and instead of trying to use all of these elements at once for all reading assignments, I think that they should be present for students to pick a couple to help guide them in their writing. Although I disagree with having to teach students specifically on how to pass standardized exams, I do agree that students should be able to be proficient in writing academically, and if students can feel more comfortable with knowing how to practice this in the classroom with being able to choose which strategy helps them the best, then perhaps our future students can help raise the "proficiency" numbers in writing.

Complex Texts

 Reading is an activity that envelops almost every facet of our lives. It is a skill that we use not just to interpret written text in to language, but to analyze many different forms of information that we are receiving while working with texts. Whether the text is in the form of an image, a film clip, a song or speech, or written words, students need to be able to draw upon their literacy skills to take a deeper look into the possible meanings and information buried in it. A large step in students developing these skills is the transition from, as Buehl puts it, “learning to read, to reading to learn” as they enter into middle and high school. The reason middle and high school are important times for this transition is because that is the time period where most students start to receive more complex texts.

What I mean by a complex text is, a text that requires the reader to become more active and also challenges their literacy skills because of the skills required to accurately interpret it. A complex text also has six key characteristics outlined by The American College Testing Program. According to these characteristics a texts relationships between ideas should become less obvious, the richness if details in the text should increase, such as, the introduction of visual text integrated with written text, text structure that does not directly express the argument or ideas of the text to the reader, the style of the text is written in a more mature style, the vocabulary becomes increasingly more difficult, and lastly the reader must be made to interpret the author's purpose. Some examples of complex text that might appear in the classes a typical high school student attends could be a journal article in his or her science class, a primary source document in his or her history class, or a classic novel in his or her english class. Each of the texts would definitely cover each of the six key characteristics of a complex text and require that the student to participate more actively in the process of reading; however each of these text would also present their own set of potential problems for the student because each text has its own discourse. 

A discourse is an accepted use of language that typically employs a prescribed pool of vocabulary. (Gee 1996) To put it more plainly, each area of study has a certain set of vocabulary words that are specific to it, and the meaning of words may differ from one subject area to another. For example the word kingdom means two completely different things depending on whether you are looking at it through the lense of a historian or a scientist.Students are outsiders to many of these discourses which tends to hinder the students ability to interpret complex texts, and each discourse contains its own specific set of challenges. I'll use science and history as examples.

While reading science texts students may encounter problems with an over flow of new vocabulary words and previously mentioned terms that they are expected to make connections with, a lack of assumed prior knowledge, the use of academic language which may feel uninviting or complex, and the inability to successfully transition between and combine written language and visual representations, such as graphs, to see the big picture. Many science teachers may avoid the challenge of teaching students to engage with text because they may not understand how to teach it, and the end up just relaying information from the text to their students which makes the student dependent on their teacher for scientific information, instead of the student actively participating in their learning experience. (Buehl 2011) In the video below Shelia Banks demonstrates how teachers can help students can develop their literacy skill in science class.

In a history class, students face similar problems that a student in a science class would, in terms of vocab and prior knowledge, but the main problem with complex texts in a history class room is how students analyze the text and information they are given compared to how a historian analyzes texts and information. When a historian reads a historical text they are looking for how and why a historical event took place, which forces them to read into the material more deeply, and helps them develop their own understanding of an event. When students read a historical text they are usually looking for the who, what, and when of an event. This leads the students to only read historical documents at a surface level and it leads them to see history as a set of facts that need to be memorized instead of a series of arguments and debates. The solution to this problem is to teach student s to read text through the lense of a historian. The video below gives an overview of how teachers can help students achieve this goal.

Reading in The Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy engages with the overwhelming issue of reading and comprehension. As I read this article I could not help but feel that we have covered most this material prior to this reading. Early in the document it is evident that reading strategies used in our CI 414 are demonstrated, such as asking questions, predicting, and summarizing while reading (Lee 3). However, these are characteristics of general strategies that are applicable to various types of literature, and not the disciplinary literacy that must be emphasized in our classrooms. As an aspiring history teacher I found Buehl's analysis and Lee's to be analogous in their perspectives of how students must read historical documents. This emphasis on disciplinary literacy and how students view and analyze texts is reoccurring as history, "necessitates that readers shift into a particular disciplinary lens, in this case, reading like a historian" (Buehl 59). This aspect of reading like a historian is imperative when confronting dense textual evidence and formulating arguments and opinions. But how do we as educators properly teach students how to approach texts, no matter what their discipline may be? I reference history consistently because I have almost no prior knowledge of any science or mathematics courses, but it is evident that in order to succeed in a discipline an individual must possess skills and tactics that are not only demonstrated in detail, and evaluated by educators. This applies to all aspects of education, in order to become a master in your discipline, you must master the general strategies of reading and comprehension which, according to these texts is failing in our school system.

This video demonstrates the key strategies used by educators when attempting to provide students with the skills and tools to analyze history. This breaking away from the textbook and the use of primary and secondary sources is a strategy that is embedded continuously in our minds throughout our courses at UIC. It is evident that these educators are attempting to have their students question every detail, and formulate arguments and opinions as a historian would. 

Unfortunately, this is how most students feel when stuck in history class because they're lecture based courses that bore students to death. This experience is something that most of us are familiar with in any course though. There is an issue when it comes to how educators formulate lesson plans in any class, and this video as vulgar as it is perfectly describes how education desperately needs reform. 

The development of reading and comprehension skills is a complex and difficult process that I do not believe has an efficient and effective guideline. As demonstrated with this article, students who are performing lower than their colleagues are often placed in courses that offer easier alternatives to reading and comprehending material. Rosa, the 9th grade student offers insight into her classroom as, "you didn't have to read. It was something that you could like slide by without them knowing. I don't know if they cared or not, but that's the way everybody did it" (Lee 17). This excerpt proves that there is an issue in our school system, and I couldn't agree more. Aside from reading for a specific discipline, it is without a doubt more important to demonstrate general strategies for reading and writing, as well as to challenge those that need the most help. Following the Lee and Sprately article, I felt hopeful because the issue was at least being raised, and the article provided evidence of school reform. However, can every student achieve success through the use of Content Enhancement Routines? Is the Disciplinary Literacy Project at LRDC as successful as this article portrays it? Just by questioning the article, I've proved I can at least apply one characteristic of a general reading strategy demonstrated in this article and our class. This gives me hope that maybe I can one day demonstrate these skills to students, and then hopefully teach them how to analyze texts as a historian...but I'm a pessimist.

Literacy and Identity

In Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents, the main idea of designing literacy instruction for adolescents, is that it should be engaging and inclusive to the needs of the students. The curriculum should allow for their background knowledge to be used yet it should spark their interests as well. By maintaining their curiosity flowing, they will become engaged in the material thus building their confidence as readers and writers. As adolescents, their self-perception may affect how they feel as competent readers and writers. As future educators we should keep in mind how our students self-efficacy in certain subject areas can influence their capacity to complete an assignment. Motivation and feedback can greatly help students who are struggling with literacy. Fostering student motivation, strategy use, growth in conceptual knowledge, and social interaction are essential for effective literacy instruction.

      

From reading this article and the Buehl chapter, I could not help but think of the movie Freedom Writers. (I know that's cheesy!) Mrs. Gruwell, an English teacher, accomplishes to create effective readers as well as writers. Her students were very difficult to deal with because many were in involved in gangs and they all had different reading levels. They were even known as the "unteachables." Mrs. Gruwell did not waiver or give up on her students. She related what her students were going through (i.g.  violence, poverty) to the Holocaust and The Diary of Anne Frank. She then starts to gradually earn the trust and buys them composition books to record their daily struggles. Her students were soon captivated and submerged by the Holocaust and of Anne Frank's riveting story. Mrs. Gruwell starts to compile their journal entries in a book format, which makes the students feel accomplished and proud. (If you have never seen this movie, you should! It's really good!)

Mrs. Gruwell's example of how she managed to teach literacy to a group of students who were uninterested and unmotivated proves that it can be done. As Alvermann (2002) points out, building on students' cultural knowledge and personal experiences, fosters an intellectual community in the classroom that sustains interest in reading and discussion. As Buehl (2011) notes, we should explore ways to factor in the "reader profiles of our students, based on their out-of-school identities." 

We should encourage and help our students to think "outside of the bubble" and try to relate something in the material to their own experiences.

Freedom Writers!

Using new technologies have enormous implications on how we communicate as well as how we learn to use them.

Literacy, Culture, and Identity

This week's reading of "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" by Donna Alvermann discusses  the topic of literacy, culture, and identity. The main focus of this blog entry is on the article that was assigned. One interesting idea that the instruction of adolescent literacy is effective when it revolves around self-efficacy and creating a diverse learning environment that encourages the involvement of students. I feel that this is an important method to understand when it comes to instruction practices in the future in that literacy is not blindly the ability for an individual to know how to read and write but instead is an idea much more than that. In addition the article brought up that "literacy and reading, though related are neither synonymous nor unambiguous terms."It was explained that in order to instruct adolescents in becoming literate individuals they need not focus on one aspect of literacy but "acknowledge that uses of written language occur in specific places and times as part of broader societal practices."

In addition, an interesting topic within the reading was that the perceptions of adolescents effect how well they read and write, as well as their motivation to do so. And it was explained that "if academic literacy instruction is to be effective it must address issues of self-efficacy and engagement."

Some questions that came to mind as I watched the following Ted Talk were about education and that he discusses that education should in the future be about opportunity. Does education mean literacy to us? To us as teachers? This Tedtalk argues that literacy is not enough, and that we should be questioning the way we perceive literacy and the way that education is taught.

These two related Ted Talks discusses literacy in an interesting way and discusses the issues that have developed with the rise of the e-book and how we experience reading in a different way as a result of reading on a screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Z5HNRC_Ic

This last Ted Talk I believe to be extremely important in a relation to how to explain literacy now and in the future. This video exemplifies how literacy is defined again as not just reading, but that media and technology are especially important when it comes to being a literate individual currently.

Culture, Fairness, and Technology: Complications In Literacy Instruction

One piece of evidence that Alvermann uses in her article that raises many questions on page 192 when she cites the two types of instruction found by Patrick Finn in 1992. He says there are two types of instruction, empowering and domesticating, that develop two different types of literacy skills, empowering and domesticating, respectively. Moving forward this observation should stay with us. We all desire equality and fairness for all in the classroom. We also know that students come to class with a variety of different skills and abilities, not to mention different experiential backgrounds against which their education must placed. Knowing all this, we still do not have the time to completely focus on each area that every individual student may need help with. One needs help wrestling with print, another is not quite efficacious when writing, another gets confused when looking at graphic organizers. It's a time management problem and I think we need to think about what kind of content to include in our lessons that will challenge and address the issues of each student fairly. Unfortunately, we know that we cannot succeed completely in this. What do you think about these two types of literacy that Finn discovered? Does everybody deserve to be taught "empowering literacy?" Can everybody learn to be empowered by literacy given the time and material constraints under which the typical classroom is placed? This is not only an issue of the practice of education but of the democracy of education as well.

I think Alvermann is wary of propounding the importance of vocabulary in comprehension, so I will do it for her. Understanding vocabulary and jargon and their particular meaning to disciplinary texts is of paramount importance. We established it as one of the first things to do when you read a text. It is impossible to productively analyze a text if the appropriate meanings of its most basic building blocks are not grasped.

Alvernmann's asserts that NRP's findings on how vocabulary contributes to comprehension is narrow because it "risks disenfranchising students who may learn better in socially interactive settings or whose literacies (e.g., visual and computer) span a broader range than those typically emphasized in school literacy." The fact that school's instruction of literacy is narrow is not only self-evident, but sometimes, I argue, necessary. By now we all understand that today's students have developed more than one set of literacy skills due to the ever expanding melange of technological mediums through which information can be transmitted. This is obvious. The problem is not so much that these technological literacies aren't being employed in the classroom as much as the ubiquity of these technologies is undermining students's ability to comprehend print. Although literacy skills do not end with print, we cannot ignore the development of traditional reading skills by bringing in all sorts of tablets and graphic charts. Reading print is probably the literacy area in which most students still struggle. It is more difficult to grapple with than a flow chart. It requires more active thinking than a video which is shot into the eyeballs of a passive viewer. And because reading and writing remain the most difficult areas of literacy, they cannot be ignored. My concern actually gets addressed later in the article on page 200, when it is noted that two girls using instant messaging demonstrated "little critical awareness how the chat/IM technology might be manipulating them and their literacy practices." My suspicion is that focusing on literacy practices that are not usually academic like computer and video can invite students to turn off their critical thinking. Call me a technophobe, but sometimes I think the best thing we can do for our capacity for thought is to throw out out everything that has a screen. For more on this party-ruining conversation, here is a critique of the internet, from the internet:

Culturally responsive instruction could be the first step in bridging the gap between home and community, home and school. The example given is a study where teachers went to the homes of Latino students to develop a greater sensitivity to their students's culture and how it could make reading practices in class more relevant. I think this may be a solution to the clash of public education with non-dominant cultures. Whether we're conscious of it or not, American public education is inherently White, Anglo-Saxon, English oriented. It clicked with me because it was made for me. If teachers can get a glimpse at the cultures of the students they teach, perhaps the assignments and class materials can be aligned with these newly discovered cultural norms. The problem here is how can you invite all students to incorporate their culture into the classroom and have time for the state prescribed curriculum?

Disciplinary Literacy & New Ways of Reading Texts

The academic article in this week's readings touches on a lot of the issues that we exposed in the first two weeks of class. Namely, the reluctance of teachers to teaching literacy based on misinformation and the ever expanding variety of texts that students engage with. I think it is helpful to note that it is noted in the beginning of the article that "English departments...analyze popular cultural texts such a online fanfiction as almost as eagerly as they embrace canonical texts of English literature" (Moje 96). Now, my distaste for fanfiction aside, I think this example is a valuable reminder to us that ANYTHING with meaning is a text and can be used to promote literacy in students, no matter how unorthodox and strange it may seem. Using pop culture as in tandem with more traditional academic texts can be a way to encourage interest in your students and enable them to see the everyday relevance of the course matter. This juxtaposition of high and low culture and theory also flies in the face of established knowledge and can be used to turn outdated interpretations and knowledge on its head. Sizing up the value of different sources based on origin, author and other contextual components "builds an understanding of how knowledge is produced in disciplines, rather than just building knowledge in the disciplines" (Moje 97).

Using popular texts along with academic ones can in fact be a helpful way of understanding how society at large and not just a small circle of intellectuals understands an issue. This is especially important when looking at the way that people are socialized through media to embrace certain politics and worldviews (American Sniper for propaganda film of the year). Cultural criticism of this nature can be exemplified by the so called "Elvis of philosophy," Slavoj Zizek. A Slovenian Marxist, he is famous for his thick volumes on Hegelian theory and critical analysis of popular Hollywood films. In many of his books, he uses pop culture as a way of explaining high philosophical concepts, like using the novels of Stephen King to understand the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A lot of his work goes way over my head, but his method of incorporating many different texts to aid in understanding similar ideas is useful to us. Check out his analysis of the hidden ideology in the movie Titanic below:

Zizek makes philosophy more readily comprehensible through pop culture, just like we can show our students that history and physics don't only exist in textbooks but are all around us. His analysis reminds us that we are always being taught and indoctrinated, especially when we don't think we are. Literacy is simply the consumption of meaning. As soon as we can convince our students and other teachers that this is the case, resistance to disciplinary literacy practices will break down. Who doesn't like to watch movies? Ideology, which is the primary focus of Zizek's work, is something I find to be a particularly powerful force in history and science. Plus, that thick Slovene accent is pretty comical.

Moje's article addresses a crucial issue that is posited by secondary school teachers, "that the division of secondary school learning into subject areas drawn from the disciplines reifies a belief (and constructs sets of practices) that implies knowledge is inherently different in different
disciplines" (Moje 99) The instruments and spaces that we see as intrinsic to certain subjects (like protractors to geometry, laboratories to chemistry, etc.) define the ways we can learn. But does it always have to be that way? Can we not learn about physics through examining how the interplay between faith and positivist science? Could we not complicate our understanding of (in)famous historical figures and events by injecting psychology and other sciences? Why exactly do we study our discipline the way that we do? Are we overlooking something? To give an example of how easy it is to be lulled into a false sense of certainty, I'll enlist the help of Rupert Sheldrake, a scientist who in the video below explains how scientists are dogmatic in believing in the scientific laws as immutable.

Some people think Sheldrake's claim is a joke, but it's good to play devil's advocate.

What is key here is that knowledge needs to be looked at as constructed and not a predetermined body of values that needs to be absorbed. Moje illustrates this usefully on page 100 when explicating the normative practices of different scholars, from historian to mathematician. These practices are in place for reasons both practical and political and it is important to analyze the standards in our field. We might even ask ourselves how pedagogy is taught to us and why we learn it in a certain way.

The practices of professional scholars however, will not always be the most practical or attractive for our students. We need to back up and look the situations that our students may find themselves in while reading texts. On page 8 of Buehl, he notes that "reading does not occur in a vacuum." It is easy to forget that students may find themselves in situations that make it more difficult for them to dissect and quantify the meaning of a text. What prior knowledge does a student bring with them? Is the place in which they are working conducive to close reading and critical thought? Do they have the support of their peers and family? For who is reading an isolated act or a social activity? Like we discussed in the previous week, intellectual awareness is an emotional endeavor as well as a rational one. Ensuring the proper environment and attitude for our students critical thinking is paramount to success. We must remember to look up from the page we are wrestling with and ask where we are and how we feel.