Spelling! What do I do about it?

I have had several people over the last few weeks ask me about teaching spelling. Questions range from: Should I teach spelling? How do I choose words? Should I buy curriculum materials i.e. spelling workbooks? Let’s take a quick look at this subject.

I think being able to spell is part of being literate. I am sure many of us have experienced spelling instruction based on a list of words that we memorized through rote activities, Friday spelling tests, and little or no transference in every day writing. To this day I have to stop to think of how calendar is spelled. In light of this we should think about a few things: Instructional strategies, instructional settings, and data (to inform our decisions to choose words).

Data

Like all good instruction, data should inform our spelling instruction. (Because, curriculum materials are a one-size-fits-all model, I would definitely steer clear of that choice.) I think most research suggests that the words we choose should be based on orthographic patterns (e.g., double consonants when adding endings to short vowel words) and high frequency words. (High frequency words can be derived from Fry's or Dolch's list. These are words that students have in their reading and oral vocabularies, but they might not spell them correctly.)

Here's an example of 3 ways I would choose words based on data:

1. First, I would give my class a developmental spelling assessment. After analyzing the assessment, I would have some pretty strong data as to which spelling patterns give my students trouble. For instance I might discover that:

• Many students are making mistakes in single syllable words at the Within Word stage i.e. with common long-vowel patterns, diphthong patterns, and r-control vowels.
• Others are having trouble across syllables (two- or three-syllable words) - they are at the next stage called Syllable Juncture stage.

From this information I could begin to design my curriculum. I would decide if I am going to teach whole class spelling or if I am going to teach spelling in small groups.

· If I differentiate spelling instruction, I would have one list of words for one group of students and another group of words for another group of students.

· If I decided to teach whole class, I would choose words that address multi-levels i.e. they include words that address a few problems. For example, they might choose words with the long /e/ sound in –ie and –ea for the Within Word stage AND words in the Syllable Juncture stage such as adding endings to short vowel words as opposed to adding ending to silent-e words. Or they might choose one word that represents to obstacles. For instance, the word announcement can address the diphthong problem and the syllable juncture obstacle.

2. In addition to collecting data from a developmental spelling assessment, I would cull students writing for high frequency words that are misspelled and patterns that they should have been taught. Let’s say that I notice most of my 5^th graders misspell because - a typical second grade word. Because would become a spelling word.

3. I might also notice that many of my students misspell school (scool) and Christmas (Cristmas). My general curriculum has passed the developmental stage of blends and diagraphs. However, I have evidence that with this difficult blend/diagraph my 5^th graders need additional work. This would also become a part of my spelling curriculum.

Instructional Setting

We need to teach spelling couched in explicit word level instruction such as decoding (phonics), word analysis, and high frequency word work. However, it is imperative that the patterns we have taught or are teaching are also part of the conversations when proofreading in writing. This is where it is most applicable and where we want to see transference. Therefore, the patterns we have taught becomes an explicit list of words that students must spell correctly or be able to correct independently.

Instructional Strategies

I think of the Word Wall as my best tool when teaching spelling. Let’s say that I have discovered (see above examples) that many of my students are at the diphthong vowel stage (Within Words), some at the Syllable Juncture stage with adding endings (short vowel double consonant and silent-e words), and many are missing the word because. With this in mind, I might choose these words for my Word Wall: shouting, crowded, hoping, hopped, and because.

Now that I have chosen those words for my Word Wall, I would:

• Use Word Wall activities to teach the words
• Put these words on the “No Excuse” list (to be used when proofreading)
• Write a list of 10 – 15 words that would be this week's spelling words
• Use other words with the same patterns when assessing

Spelling Word List

My “Spelling Words” list might be: shouting, cloudy, crowded, frowning, hoping, skating, hopped, fasting, bragging, and because. You will notice that next to each Word Wall word, I wrote a word that has the same pattern i.e. /ou/ sound in shouting and cloudy, /ow/ sound in crowded and frowning, long vowel silent-e with an ending in hoping and skating, short vowel double consonant with an ending in hopped, fasting, and bragging. Also note that I used endings on some of my vowel pattern words and I used a word to show both kinds of double consonants with the short vowel words with endings.

Spelling Test Words

The words I use to assess might be: because, loud, clowning, shaping, stabbed, and stacking. (plus the spelling words not on the Word Wall). Again, I have added words to check transference and I am assessing because since it is a high frequency word and not a pattern. However, the real assessment for all of these word patterns is in the students’ writing – especially for because.

Let me know if this helps or if you have any more thoughts about this subject.

Planning Around Essential Questions

After working with teachers last week on a curricular plan developed around genres and units around essential questions, one of the teachers emailed me some concerns. Because they are connected to my previous posting, I thought I should respond to these concerns in a public manner.

In his email, the teacher said he was reading Strategies that Work (Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A., 2^nd ed. 2007) where he came across something that made him wonder about a few things. He quoted Harvey and Goudvis work

“…when students practice comprehension strategies in short text of varying genres, they are far better prepared to construct meaning from longer chapter books later."

It seems that this statement seemed to conflict with the planning we did based on genres. These conflicts led my friend to three questions. I am going to address the three questions posed as I go along.

Question #1

Because of what he views as conflicting information he asked:

"Are these authors suggesting that a unit of study should be around a strategy and several genres will be explored in that unit? If so, doesn’t that lead to a skill-based classroom where the knowledge of various subjects is neglected?"

I think the authors are saying that students learn to use strategies with more dexterity when they are given opportunity to apply and practice them across genres. That is different than they are “suggesting that a unit of study should be around a strategy.” I do not believe that Harvey and Goudvis are saying that all units must be focused on skills. Let’s look closer.

While working with the curricular team, I suggested to several teachers to include several genres in their lessons. (Obviously I did not make my “instruction” explicit enough! Sorry.) Although we centered our curriculum plans on specific genres, it is necessary to bring in different genres around the same “essential question”. It IS important for students to compare and contrast the genres and to compare and contrast the use of strategies with different genres. For example, let’s say we are studying “What makes a hero, a hero?” in the context of biographies and autobiographies. In this unit, we might instruct students to question and make inferences while reading about the main “character” of biographies and autobiographies. However, while looking at the narrative nonfiction texts wouldn’t it be enlightening for students to compare the real life characteristics of real life heroes as presented in biographies/autobiographies to Henry Fleming in Red Badge of Courage (Crane, S.) or Paul Revere in Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” Students could still ask questions and make inferences about these characters. The class could compare if asking questions about a character in a poem was different than in a piece of nonfiction. They could discuss if heroes are presented differently in biographies, autobiographies, fiction texts, and poetry.

You might ask: “If we are reading all these different genres of texts, then why do we say the unit is focused on biographies and autobiographies?” That is a great question! It really depends on what we are going to assess. If we are going to focus our assessment on determining if students can identify if a text is a biography or autobiography then the unit IS focused on biographies or autobiographies. Also, the main texts of this unit are biographies and/or autobiographies.

Question #2

My deep thinking teacher also asked:

"Should I remove "longer chapter books" from my library early in the year? How much should I restrict independent reading across genres since early units only deal with a limited number of genres?"

I do not think that longer chapter books should be removed from classroom libraries or that we should limit what students read because of our instructional focus on genres. Because it is our goal for students to use strategies across genres, their varying choices of independent reading books will only reinforce this concept. Let’s go back to our hero unit as an example.

Let’s say that in this classroom the teacher is reading The Lost Garden (Yep, L.) aloud to the class as part of the essential question. In small group instruction students are reading: The Rescuers: Kids who risked everything to save others (Zullo, A.); Snowbound: The tragic story of the Donner party (Lavender, D. S.); The Secret Soldier: The story of Deborah Sampson (McGovern, A.); and Vision of Beauty: The story of Sarah Breedlove Walker (Lasky, K). Remember discussions and guided activities are focused on questioning, making inferences, and characters. Now let’s say that a student is reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Blume, J.) during independent reading. This student could still be asked to write questions and make inferences about the character. Another student in the class might be reading Amazing but True Sport Stories (Hollander, P.). Although this student might not be able to look at specific characters, he could still raise questions and identify when he had to make inferences. What shouldn't happen is to ask these students to identify the genre (with text evidence) of their independent reading book.

Question #3

Lastly, the teacher asked a question that insinuated that he had already come to the same conclusions that I have suggested. He queried:

"Would it be reasonable to reconcile our current curriculum plans with Harvey and Goudvis' "across genres" refrain by saying, stick with the genre, but pull in material outside the genre when it is beneficial to compare/contrast, to point out the use of a strategy or skill in different genres, or to enhance kids' knowledge related to our essential questions or common themes?"

As you see, embedded in this question are suggestions of what I have said previously. He has already answered his own question. Oh, I love that I work with such smart teachers!

From Benchmarks to Pacing Guide

Recently I worked with several schools on a long term curricular plan. Among other things, we unpacked the state’s performance benchmarks (…grade-level expectations…or whatever your state calls them), organized the benchmarks around instructional strands, aligned reading and writing, and created a pacing guide. While unpacking the benchmarks, we discovered the state had given direction around genres for reading and writing.

Organizing

We realized as we studied the state’s benchmarks they were not organized neatly. When the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) wrote Language Arts standards they divided them into the usual writing, reading, and listening/speaking. But within each of those categories there were other useful divisions. For example in reading, McREL has a standard that includes benchmarks around general skills and strategies of the reading process. These benchmarks include previewing text, setting a purpose, making predictions, decoding, vocabulary, etc. There is also a standard that focuses on benchmarks for literary text and one for informational text.

Besides those divisions we thought about typical areas of instruction that should be taught in a reading or writing class. For example, we listed word study (which included phonemic awareness, phonics, word analysis, vocabulary, and spelling), fluency, and comprehension as important elements to be taught in reading. We broke comprehension down into comprehension skills (e.g., cause and effect) and literary analysis (e.g., character development). We talked about how comprehension skills could be used in literary or informational text but the literary analysis benchmarks would only be used when studying narrative text.

In writing, we divided the benchmarks into the writing process (and strategies). Besides teaching students that writing is a process, we wanted to include benchmarks that referred to strategies that might be taught to help writers use the process more efficiently. For example, a teacher might teach students to brainstorm as a pre-writing strategy. To teach students to organize their thoughts for a narrative story, the teacher might teach students to use a story map. In addition to the writing process, we made a category for writer’s craft (e.g., voice, organization, sentence fluency, etc.) and conventions (e.g., capitalization, punctuation, grammar usage, etc.)

As the old adage says, there was method to the madness. I have visited hundreds of classrooms across the country and in many of them I see important parts of the reading and writing process being left out. I can’t tell you how many teachers have shared that their students’ fluency skills are holding them back, yet in these same teachers’ classes I have seen no evidence of fluency instruction. Therefore, while studying the benchmarks I wanted teachers to see that it is imperative to teach word study, fluency, reading strategies, comprehension skills, and literary analysis. As we all know, kids don’t learn what we don’t teach them. In the same vein, I also believe that teachers don’t teach what they haven’t planned and haven't created a way of assessing. (If you are a reading teacher, do you intentionally collect data/grades for word study, fluency, and comprehension? If you teach writing, do you collect data/grades for writing process, conventions, and writer's craft?)

Discoveries

We discovered while analyzing the benchmarks that the state had said a lot about which genres students should be able to read and write in different grade levels. We thought this was a good jumping off point to align the reading and writing curriculum. For example, if students were studying informational text, it would be a good idea for them to learn to write a “how-to” or an expository piece. We discussed how text from the reading curriculum could also be used in the writing class. In addition, we talked about how teachers could be intentional about other aspects of instruction. For example, when teaching students about the structures of informational texts in a reading class, teachers need to intentionally connect this instruction in the writing class - writing instruction that is focused on organizing information.

Pacing Guides

The work we did with genres turned out to be a good starting point to put together our pacing guide (We determined that a pacing guide is a list of the benchmarks that would be covered before and between the schools' benchmark assessments.) We had a conversation that certain benchmarks went better with specific genres. Therefore, we could start with a genre and align naturally fitting benchmarks. For example, if a class is studying historical fiction, the study of setting is really important. When teaching narrative writing, dialogue and the mechanics around dialogue should be included. In the end teacher put together a list of benchmarks aligned to genres for each portion of time before and between benchmark assessments. However because of our analysis, teachers were sure to include benchmarks from each strand for reading (word study, fluency, reading strategies, comprehension skills, and literary analysis) and writing (word study, writing process, writer’s craft, and conventions). Let me hear your comments.

Struggling Students/Difficult Text : Before-Reading Sample

In my last posting about struggling students and difficult text, I addressed before-reading components. After reading it, someone asked if I could give a specific example of what the vocabulary lesson, the vocabulary front-loading, making connections/activating prior knowledge, and setting a purpose might look like when connected to a real text.

Let's use the article, Scorpion King's Wines from National Geographic. It will be the basis of the before-reading activities included in this blog.

While planning, I need to ask myself several questions:

1. Which words should be part of the vocabulary development for this unit?
2. Which words should I front-load because students might not know them, and therefore, comprehension might be interrupted when reading?
3. How can I get students to connect what they are going to read to something about which they already have knowledge and how can I get students to activate their prior knowledge about this subject?
4. What purpose will I give them when they begin to read?

Choosing the Vocabulary Terms

If I were a science teacher doing a unit on chemistry, I might identify the following words: residues, resins, substances, additives, synthetic, alkaloids, pharmacopoeia, empirically, collaborating, biomolecular, and analysis.

When looking from an ancient civilization perspective, I might choose: Scorpion King, Scorpion I, pharaoh, archaeochemist, archaeology, anthropology, and papyrus.

Now that I've identified words that my students might not know but need to know for my area of study, I have to choose which are most important for the unit being taught. Since this text is short and it might only take a day to read, I might only choose the word(s) that are relevant to my objective, are thought to be academic vocabulary for my content, and/or are used in other texts the class will read throughout the week. For example, in a history class that is studying Ancient Egypt, I will choose only the words that connect to my unit, are academic vocabulary in Ancient Civilizations, and will be present in other information the class will read during the week. Therefore, the 4 vocabulary words I have chosen are Scorpion I, pharaoh, archaeology, and papyrus.

I will discuss the instruction of the vocabulary terms in another blog.

Choosing Words to be Front-loaded and Front-loading

Besides Scorpion I, pharaoh, archaeology, and papyrus in my unit on Ancient Egypt, I have identified a host of other words that I am afraid will break down comprehension. Here is the entire list of words about which I'm concerned:

spiked, relation, archaeochemist, colleagues, residues, herbs, resins, substances, additives, anthropology, synthetic, alkaloids, tipples, ailments, advent, pharmacopoeia, mixology, empirically, biomolecular, analysis

This list is too long! Therefore, I need to whittle it down. I ask myself: Which of these terms might the students have some knowledge of and therefore, they will probably be able to deduce their meaning without any instruction? Which of these terms' meanings are embedded in the text or students might be able to figure out using word parts? Which of these terms are not necessary to understand the author's message? Here are my thoughts:

• I think the students will understand relation in its context. If they don't it is not necessary to the author's message. I will eliminate that word.
• Students should be able to figure out residues from the context of the sentence.
• I think the students will be able to see chemist in archaeochemist. I think I will get rid of it. Also, when we talk about archaeology, I will point out the archaeo- affix.
• I think the students will understand the word herb. Many of our adolescents have heard this term in life or on television in relation to marijuana. I think I will eliminate it.
• I hope from science class, from word parts, and from the world around them, students will have some understanding of substance, additives, synthetic, biomolecular, and analysis.
• Students should be able to use context clues to understand ailments.
• They will be able to use word parts and context to understand mixology.
• If students don't understand alkaloids completely it won't take away from the main idea.
• If they don't understand colleagues it will not take away from the author's message.

After thinking through the long list of words, I have chosen these words to front-load:
spiked, resins, anthropology, tipples, advent, pharmacopoeia, empirically

Now that I have chosen these words, I need to front-load their meanings. I want to do this as succinctly as possible. One way to do this is to have pictures or objects to illustrate concrete terms. Examples of what I would do or say to quickly introduce these words:

• I might have a piece of resin for the students to see.
• I might have a bottle of Dr. Pepper handy to illustrate a tipple.
• For spiked, I might tell a quick story. "I was at a party and I didn't know that they had spiked the punch. Someone put vodka in the punch. I thought it was just punch. So, if we spike something, it means we add something extra to it."
• Anthropology: "If I was an anthropologist, I would study the history of groups of people - their culture, their environments, their physical characteristics, and even how they got along with others."
• Advent means the same as arrival. The advent of spring means the arrival of spring.
• You will see this word pharmacopoeia. You probably notice pharma- at the beginning just like pharmacy where we get medicine. It is important in this story to know that this means the medicines they had stored up.
• Empirically - You might have seen this word in science. When someone studies something, empirical evidence is what has actually been seen or observed.

Making Connections and Activating Prior Knowledge

There are a couple of ways that I can connect this to the lives of students. First, the author has already made a connection with his comment on "the Rock" and the Scorpion King. Many of our students will have seen this movie and will be able to automatically put it in some kind of context. Therefore, I might have the students turn-and-talk: "Tell everything you can remember about The Scorpion King starring "the Rock" that you think was based in history."

I could also go in a different direction. For example, this article is about things we learn from the past. To make a connection and to activate prior knowledge, I could have the students think about things we have learned from history. For example: "With a partner, make a list of all of this things you think we use today that are based on something that was discovered somewhere in history."

When activating prior knowledge we want to build schema. To do this, we have to first set the stage so that students think: "Oh, this is about..." or "Oh, this is like..." Once the students have some picture in their head, we can begin to refine it a bit more. Perhaps in this lesson, I might use a clustering activity.

1. The students write the "nucleus" term or phrase Egyptian History at the center of their paper and circle it.
2. Around the center circle, the students write any subtopics that come to mind. For example they might write: mummies, pyramids, pharaohs, etc. The students circle the subtopics and draw lines to what they connect to.
3. After a few minutes, allow students to discuss so knowledge is shared. This activity should be very quick and you should accept all thoughts.
4. The teacher records a group cluster from a quick share out.
5. After reading the passage, come back to the cluster to see what ideas emerged from the reading and what new learning occurred.

Setting a Purpose
I have just looked at CNN on line. The latest news stories are listed as:

• Weeding the budget of $17 billion
• Manny tests positive
• Pakistan to scrap peace deal, launch offensive, source says
• 13,000 flee as California mansions go up in flames

I am going to choose to read: Weeding the budget of $17 billion. When I read it, I want to find out: What are they going to cut out of the budget to save $17 billion?

I have just set a purpose for myself. This is what we must teach our students to do. We know that "setting a purpose" is an important thinking skill. It is also imperative that teachers support students by supplying them with a purpose. The teacher usually has an agenda. She knows what she wants her students to learn from a reading.

In the example about the discovery in the tomb of the Scorpion King, we might choose one of the following:

• Read this article and find out how discoveries in the tomb of the Scorpion King have affected or may affect our lives.
• Read this article and find a connection to the discovery in the tomb to a development of medicine that leads all the way to today.

Instruction Model

The vocabulary instruction, the front-loading, the activation of prior knowledge/making connections, and the setting a purpose should take as little time as possible. We want to save the time for students to read and learn. If the students have a 45 minutes period, I suggest this instructional model:

• 8 minutes - vocabulary development
• 10 minutes - Before-reading (3-4 minutes - front-loading, 4-5 minutes - making connections/activating prior knowledge, 1 minute - setting a purpose)
• 17 minutes - During-reading
• 10 minutes - After-reading

I hope these specific examples are helpful. When I talk about this next, I will discuss the importance of teaching students to interact with text with during-reading activities.

Let me know if you have any questions about what is written here. I love to have conversations about these important instructional topics.

Jimi

High-Frequency Words - Just for Primary?

High-frequency words and/or sight words are best known from lists like Fry's Instant Sight Words, Dolch's 220 Sight Words, Fry's 1000 Word List, or Cunningham's 100 Word Wall Words. (By the way, Cunningham has a primary and intermediate list available.) These lists of words sometimes take on a life of their own. I've observed some schools that seem to ground their early reading instruction on students' memorization of these "magical" words. In primary grades, it is not uncommon for teachers to send lists of these words home for students to learn by rote. After second grade there seems to be less emphasis on high-frequency words and often by the 4th grade, teachers no longer give them a second thought. So what are these words, how important are they for readers to know, and what are some ways to teach them?


Sight Words vs. High-frequency Words

First let's look at the two types of words.

Sight words are a words that readers need to know "at sight" to read fluently. It does not matter if these words are decodable or not. These are high-utility words that occur most frequently in English.
High-frequency words are high-utility words that are used most commonly in English. Because they occur so frequently, knowing these words assist a reader in becoming more fluent.

In other words, they are pretty much the same thing. Some think of the sight words as the group of 100 - 200 words that make up most of what is written. For example, it is said that the 220 words in Dolch's list make up from 50% - 75% of words in most books. Others say that if a reader knows the first 100 of Fry's list, h/she will be able to read 50% of all words in most books. (Many of these words are not decodable; therefore, students will not learn them through phonics instruction.)

Fry has listed 1000 words that are most often used in English. He has these words listed in groups of 100. It is important for a school to decide which words are taught in which grades. A quick search on the internet will produce many samples from schools across the country.

What does it mean to KNOW these words?

As mentioned above it is really important for readers to know these words - especially the words that are not decodable. But, what do we mean by "know" them? Readers need to know these words with automaticity so that the brain does not use cognitive energy when it confronts them. High-frequency words are usually in a child's oral vocabulary; therefore, it is not necessary to include them in a vocabulary curriculum. I suggest that students should be able to read and write them fluently. Because these words are the utility words of our language, not only will fluency be effected by the reader's knowledge of these words but a student's writing skills will be impacted as well.

When mapping our curriculum, we should set expectations for students sight word knowledge. We can assign a set of words to each grade-level. We can set goals as to when students should be able to read and/or spell high-frequency words. However, be careful! Even if we have mapped when students should know them, we still have to be aware of ALL students' actual abilities to read and write them. For example, students might read the word because with automaticity in second grade, but it is not uncommon for 8th graders to misspell this seemingly primary word. Therefore, if a teacher discovers that a good portion of her class does not spell because correctly, it would be appropriate for her to revist it as a high-frequency word.

Instruction

I have found interactive Word Walls the most effective method of teaching sight words (Cunningham, 1995). Note: I specify interactive because a static list of words on display that are not used will not help students learn them. Here is a quick reminder of Cunningham's method:

• The teacher introduces 5 words a week.
• The words are added to a display in alphabetic order and in a way that all students can read them from their desks.
• On the day of introduction, the class claps the consonants and snaps the vowels while chanting the spelling.
• Each subsequent day, the teacher leads a short activity to practice the words and to draw attention to the Word Wall.

Many of Cunningham's activities require students to think about the word's use (syntactic), its meaning (semantic), and its spelling and sounds (graphophonic). This comprehensive approach embedded in the method helps students see the connection of phonics, reading, and writing.

For Primary Teachers: To add a layer of phonics instruction to the Word Wall, Cunningham has identified words on her list of 100 words that can be used to teach word patterns. For example, the word at can be used to teach the -at pattern. In fact, she suggests that a teacher should frequently ask questions such as "What other words can you read because you know how to read at?"

As you have noticed, I have not mentioned sending home lists of words, sight word card rings, etc. I think these types of strategies are very useful. However, I do not think they should take the place of classroom instruction of the words. If (when?) we place the responsibility of teaching into the hands of our students' parents, inevitably some of our students will be left behind. Not all parents have equal amounts of time to lead activities with their children. Therefore, some students will have ample opportunities to practice while others get little. If we depend on our parents for instruction, achievement gaps will persist.

Lastly, I would like to explicitly state that I do think there is room in any grade for teachers to teach high-frequency words if data shows that students cannot read and write these important words. I have given one example of how I might choose a word in 8th grade. Another approach might be to revisit the words during the middle school years to address multiple meaning words. For example, the word product is on Fry's 1000 Word List. At what grade could the multiple meanings of product be relevant? - in math? - in economics? - in science?

Let me know if you have any questions about teaching high-frequency words. Also, if your school has divvied up Fry's or Dolch's list and you would like to share it, let me know and we can attach a link to it.

Peace and happy word studying,
Jimi

Planning Units/Last Minute Planning

I am really excited to begin the discussion about unit planning. I feel this is the crux of great instruction. Far too often, teachers are so overwhelmed that they plan at the last minute. We have to ask ourselves: Does last minute planning lead to effective instruction informed by data, goals, and relevancy? In this entry I want to set the stage for planning a unit together with a 6th grade reading teacher and I would like to offer some reminders of backward planning.

Joey
I am so fortunate to introduce you all to Joey from KIPP: Central City. He is a new teacher. He teaches 6th grade reading. (I only wish I would have been as good of a teacher in my first year as he is in his.) During my last visit at Central City, Joey and I discussed the idea of planning thematic units. (The discussion began because I felt that I had pushed the teachers so hard to teach strategies that interest and relevancy had suffered. I didn't see kids excited about what they were learning because they were learning strategies - not very interesting to young adolescents.) A few weeks ago Joey contacted me about beginning the process together. I asked if we could do it on-line so more people could be involved in the process. He graciously agreed. Thanks, Joey!

School Background
The team at Central City has been given a lot of freedom to expand their horizons in the last quarter of the school year. The state test is over and their supportive and creative leader suggested that they "experiment with a lot of things."

Project Background
When Joey first contacted me about beginning this process, we discussed that he might do a unit with the Social Studies teacher. With that as a backdrop, I asked him to send me the following pieces of information.

1. Talk to the social studies teacher and find out what they will be studying at some point in the future that will give us time to plan together electronically.
2. Create a theme around the social studies topic i.e. civil rights era or holocaust could turn into a justice theme.
   
3. Choose 4 GLEs (Grade Level Expectations) that you have not covered or that the students have not mastered, two for fiction, two for nonfiction.
4. Split your students into three leveled groups. Let me know who is in the groups along with their levels.

When Joey got back to me he told me about the teachers' opportunity to "experiment". He told me that he wanted to do a thematic unit, inject drama into the mix, and try literature circles. He also shared that he would not be doing the theme connected to the Social Studies curriculum. In addition he shared that he had not chosen a theme but would possibly center the theme on the book, Bud, not Buddy. He also shared that these would be the benchmarks that he would like to address through the unit: character development, main idea, theme, and raising questions.

Next Steps
I suggested that if he was to use Bud, not Buddy, he might look at a theme about family or loss. Here is the information still needed to begin planning:

• The theme, preferably written as an essential question. (Example: How do teenagers deal with loss?)
  
• The average reading levels of the literature circle groups that he will form. (Example: Group 1 - F&P level P, Group 2 - F&P level R, Group 3 - F&P level T, Group 4 - F&P level V)
  

Reminders of Backward Planning
When backward planning, it is important to think first about our goals. You'll notice that when I began assisting Joey I asked him what benchmarks he wanted to cover. In addition, you see that I am pushing Joey to think of an essential question as opposed to a topic. If we plan our units with an essential question that is relevant to our students we will most likely see more engagement and motivation. Therefore, when writing an essential question we have to ask ourselves: What really matters to our students?

Let's take the sample essential question into consideration. Is loss something your students are dealing with or have dealt with? If so, that might be an engaging essential question. The question should be the impetus for everything in the unit - assessments will be affected by the question, books will be chosen with this question in mind, and it should "set the purpose" for all of our reading.

If we are going to use the literature circle model, we will need to choose at least 2 books for each level that would help students answer the essential questions. Books might include: Maniac McGee, Alice in April, Abduction, Beyond the Mango Tree, etc.

Warning: I have seen some teachers who use essential questions but the questions are academic oriented. For example: How does asking questions help us become better readers? For most of our students, this questions is not going to sustain interest. However, if our students really want to learn about how teens deal with loss, they will be enthused to read to find out how characters in books deal with it.

But what about those "pesky" benchmarks? How will we get the students to ask questions or identify main ideas? As students try to discover how teens deal with loss, we want to give them strategies to assist them. Therefore, the benchmarks become the tools that help us learn what we want to know.

Up Next
Keep your eyes open as to what Joey decides about his essential question. Our next step will be to look at how students will demonstrate that they can track character development, identify main ideas and themes, and raise questions.

Word Study: Phonics

Ay! Que Grande! When I think of the topic of word study, this Spanish phrase is the first thing that comes to my brain. The phrase doesn’t come across in English the same as it does in Spanish. - How Big! - How Grand! NO, it just doesn’t work very well. But when I think of the chore of teaching our kids decoding skills, high frequency words, vocabulary, spelling, and word analysis – It gets to be a bit overwhelming.

Let’s break it down and look just at the phonics portion of this monster. Steven Stahl has an article in The Reading Teacher called “Saying the ‘p’ Word: Nine guidelines for exemplary phonics instruction.” In it he says,

Your phonics program:

1. Should be built on what readers already know about the functions of print i.e. teachers must use the words and knowledge of print and stories that children possess to teach phonics – NOT begin by teaching letters and sounds and blending those into words.
2. Should be based on strong phonemic awareness – Phonemic awareness is essential and is easy to teach.
3. Should be clear and direct e.g., show a word like dog in context or by itself and say that it begins with the letter d and that the letter d makes the /d/ sound. This is a clear and direct approach. It should be followed by children reading words that begin with d.
4. Should be integrated into the total reading program – Phonics cannot be the reading program. 25% or less of the time in a reading program should be spent on phonics instruction and phonics practice. Use quality children’s stories that match the high utility element that you are teaching. For example, when teaching the short /a/ sound, you might use The Cat in the Hat (Seuss, 1957).
5. Should focus on reading words, not learning rules. Effective decoders see patterns that they recognize from words they know and apply that knowledge to the new situation. Less than ½ of the rules we usually teach work even as much as 75% of the time. Pointing out rules to aid in spelling doesn’t hurt but we should NOT have children memorize rules.
6. May include onsets and rimes. Letter-sound correspondences are more reliable when readers look at rimes than looking at letters in isolation. In addition, 500 words can be learned from 37 rimes.
7. May include the opportunities for readers to experiment letter-sound correspondence through invented spelling.
8. Should develop independent word solving and word recognition strategies by focusing on the structures of words. For example, a teacher might explicitly teach readers to look for rimes they know in the unknown word that will help decode it.
9. Should develop automatic word recognition skills so that readers can apply their energy to meaning rather than words. “The purpose of phonics instruction is not that children learn to sound out words. The purpose is that they learn to recognize words, quickly and automatically…”
10. Should be over quickly. Studies show that phonics instruction should be finished by the end of second grade. Once readers can use spelling patterns to recognize words fluently, it is time to move away from phonics instruction so that they have more time to read and write. (Stahl, S., 1992, V. 45)

So, how does your phonics program compare to this? Is this a bunch of mumble jumble to you? Let’s start a dialogue about this important subject.

Writing Instruction: In Days of Yore?

As I think about the kind of writing instruction I received as a student, I cringe. Most of my teachers would say something like this:

“I want a 3 page research report. Make sure you cite your sources and use strong topic sentences. Be sure to check for errors and spelling.”

Not having much writing experience, I would find a topic that I hoped my teacher would like. I would look in encyclopedias for information on the topic. (Give me a break. I’m old!) I would try my best to paraphrase the information I had read because I knew that I wasn’t supposed to copy or I would be thrown into jail for plagiarism. I didn’t really understand the idea of topic sentences so I just wrote things that made sense to my ears. After plodding my way to the end of the 3^rd page, I would check to see if everything “looked” right.

I turned these labors of... dread into the teacher and would wait in anticipation. (Picture the boy in A Christmas Story and you’ll have a vision of me.) After 3 days or 3 weeks, the teacher would return the graded report. I would look at the red marks on the paper and try to decipher the hieroglyphics. I would glance at the grade (usually a C), try to figure out what those marks meant, wonder why the teacher’s word choice was better than mine, and then stuff the assignment in a tattered folder.

I never saw a teacher write. The writing process was not discussed. Conferencing was yet to be invented. I never had a mini-lesson on word choice. Instead, I had the privilege of matching topic sentences to pre-written details. I had the opportunity to memorize and identify the parts of speech and diagram sentences...but I did not know how all of those things should affect my assignments.

My hope is that the kind of writing instruction (or lack of it) that I experienced has retired along with my teachers. (By the way, this is not to wag my finger at my teachers. This was before researchers were looking so closely at what effective literacy instruction looks like.) Unfortunately, I am not sure writing teachers of today know how to deliver the kind of writing instruction that research has shown to be effective. I do not know if they know how to teach differently than they were taught. For example, when I mention to folks that Writing Next reports that explicitly teaching parts of speech and sentence structures has shown to have negative results with low achieving students ( 2007, p. 21), many retort with something like, “That is how I was taught. It is important that students know these things.”

So now, I put it to you…

If you examine your writing instruction, does it look like it came from "days of yore"? What do you need to align your instruction with what research has to say about effective writing? (See Writing Next, 2007 for a reference point. There is a link to it on my website: www.comprehensiveliteracysupport.com)

Frontloading Vocabulary

Someone asked about this idea of frontloading vocabulary as opposed to teaching vocabulary. What might that look like in real life - with a text? Let's use an excerpt from an on-line Newsweek article by Nick Summers and Barrett Sheridan called "Browsing the Future" (March 5, 2009):

"At least 18 percent of you already know what Firefox is, because you're using it to read this interview. (Or so says the statistics engine behind Newsweek.com, which tracks things like that.) For the unfamiliar, Firefox is a free Web browser that is built by coders around the world whose open-source work is organized by the Mozilla Corp. and its nonprofit parent, the Mozilla Foundation. Introduced in 2004 as an alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous, but buggy, Internet Explorer, Firefox has been a force for innovation in the browser category, with improvements such as tabbed browsing and plug-ins that work on any operating system. Commissions from search engines appear to keep Mozilla awash in revenue for now ($75 million in 2007; the foundation has not released 2008 data), although the vast majority of that comes from a company, Google, that now has its own competing browser, Chrome. Mozilla's plans for 2009 include a new version of Firefox, which will focus on user-interface polish; an overhaul of Thunderbird, its e-mail client; and taking Firefox mobile."

If a technology teacher was using this article in his/her class, s/he might decide that the following words were important to teach as vocabulary words:

• coders, open-source work, tabbed browsing, plug-ins

These words, because they are the academic vocabulary, would be taught with effective vocabulary instruction methods throughout the week. However, the teacher might also identify ubiquitous and revenue as words that will interrupt comprehension for some students. Therefore, as part of the front loading the teachers says:

"We are going to read an article about the browser Mozilla. In the article you will come across a couple of words that might trip you up. One word is ubiquitous. (The teacher displays the word.) Ubiquitous means widespread. For example, the talk of Obama's victory was ubiquitous. Another word has to do with income - the amount of money someone makes. The word is revenue. The revenue for the project grew every year. (The teacher displays the word.)"

Let me know if this example helps.

Struggling Student/Difficult Text

I've been thinking a lot about students who face difficult text everyday and the teachers who teach them. We know that students learn best when the text they confront falls in their instructional level (95 - 97% word accuracy, 75 - 89% comprehension). But let's face it, when students hit middle school and go on to high school, more often than not they are given materials that are too difficult for them. This is a very common problem! In most classes in middle and high school, teachers have lots of content to cover. In addition, these teachers don't feel they know a lot about reading. So, what's a teacher to do?

There are several things teachers can do to deal with this problem but in this posting I would like to begin to address a question I get asked a lot.

"What can I do to help my students read (and learn) from materials that are too difficult?"

First, teachers must plan ahead!

• You must know what text students will be expected to read for the week.
• Once you have chosen the amount of text for the week, split it into sections students can read each day.
  
• Sometimes it is helpful to split the daily sections into small bits so that you can guide students at the breaking points.
  
• You must identify vocabulary in the week's section of text that students need to know.
  
• Finally, it is good to know the structure of the text to be read i.e. cause/effect, problem/solution, sequential, concept/definition, etc.

Once you have chosen the text and vocabulary and have identified the text structure, it is important to think about three steps:

1. Before-reading activities
2. During-reading activities
3. After-reading activities

For now, I am only going to address the Before-reading Activities. Before-reading involves a couple of things:

• Frontloading vocabulary
• Activating prior knowledge
• Making Connections
• Setting a purpose for reading
• Giving readers a way to organize learning as they read

Vocabulary Frontloading
Teaching vocabulary and frontloading vocabulary are a bit different. In direct instruction of vocabulary you teach with the goal of students KNOWING these words - at least to a level of knowledge that they know the words in context. However, when a teacher frontloads vocabulary, s/he is giving the students a synonym or brief description of the word to avoid comprehension interruption when students are reading.

Activating Prior (Background) Knowledge and Making Connections
We know that learning occurs when we connect new learning to something we already know. We've all heard the analogy of the file cabinet in our brains with certain file folders containing knowledge of what we have already learned. The idea of activating prior knowledge plays on that same idea. Teachers want to give students an activity that forces the learner to file through his/her brain for any background knowledge s/he already has on the subject. One of the most common ways teachers do this is with the KWL (Ogle, 1982). (This strategy is actually a before-, during-, and after-reading activity.)

• Know - You ask students to brainstorm what they already know about a subject.
• Want to learn - You ask students to identify what they want to learn about the topic.
  
• Learned - You ask students to record what they have learned about the topic.

Setting the Purpose
Now that students have identified what they already know about a topic and therefore, connected it to their own lives, it is time to set a purpose for reading. (In the KWL, the "want to learn" can be the purpose.) Setting the purpose sounds something like this: "The subheading says 'Causes of the Civil War'. Read the next section of text and find the causes of the Civil War." When setting the purpose the teacher should ask a question or give a task that requires students to locate information in the text they are about to read.

Organizing New Learning
Although the organization of new learning is the during-reading activity, students must get instruction on this activity. This instruction should include teacher modeling of the activity and some guided practice of the activity. For example: The students are to read to find the causes of the Civil War. As they read, the teacher might want the students to organize the information in a bubble map or a graphic organizer. If that be the case, the teacher might begin the lesson, demonstrating finding causes of the Revolutionary War using the same bubble map the students will be using. After finding two causes from the text the teacher is reading, the teacher might have students work in pairs to find the third cause.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I have shared. I will be happy to go into further detail if someone wants more information.