Jessica Bianculli

BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR RIGOROUS ELA INSTRUCTION

Poll

Where are you joining from? • NE

• SE

• South

• Mid-West

• NW

• SW

• Other?

What’s your role? • Teacher

• Principal

• “District” Administration

• Instructional Coach

• Other?

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Agenda

Discuss 3 building blocks for rigorous ELA instruction:

1. A consistent instructional model across all content areas

and grade levels

2. The inclusion of complex, informational text

3. Explicit and systematic academic vocabulary instruction

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What Works in Schools Marzano, 2003

Average student - 50th percentile 2 years highly ineffective teaching

Performance drops to 3rd percentile

Average student - 50th percentile 2 years highly effective teaching

Performance rises to 96th percentile

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Poll

What are these “highly effective” teachers doing?

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Consider This Question

Walk through the hallways of any school and you will see there is teaching going on … but, how do we know if there is learning going on?

Which time is most prevalent in your classroom?

• Allocated Time

• Engaged Time

• Academic Learning Time

Recipe for Student Success

1. Allocated Time – how much time will you spend on a lesson?

2. Engaged Time –are students paying attention to teacher input and/or participating in a learning activity?

3. Academic Learning Time – 1,2 and is the student successfully completing the task at hand?

Improve Teaching By Increasing Academic Learning Time

(1979) Fisher, Marliave,& Filby

Education Leardership - ASCD

Academic Learning Time (ALT) Critical Attributes 1. Students know and understand the lesson objective.

2. Students actively manipulate content in relation to lesson objective.

3. During this active manipulation, students are experiencing a 75–95% success rate.

Because of the time allocated for actual teaching in a school day, teachers must utilize time most efficiently by ensuring Academic Learning Time is always present.

This applies in all grade levels and content areas.

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Anatomy of a Lesson

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Activate Relevant Knowledge

Anatomy of a Lesson

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Teacher Input

Anatomy of a Lesson

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Student Active Participation

Anatomy of a Lesson

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Independent Student Success

Anatomy of a Lesson

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Anatomy of Lesson

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ARK

Understand Lesson Objective

•Activate and Assess Relevant Knowledge. •Augment if necessary. •Show relevance through an essential question.

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ARK

TIP

SAP

ISS

Student Active Participation

45%

Anatomy of a Lesson

Teacher Input: 20%

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Gradual Release of Responsibility TO WITH BY

Modeled

Shared

Guided

Independent Teacher

Student

Mooney, 1990 Pearson and Gallagher, 1983

(I do, you watch)

(I do, you help)

(You do, I help)

(You do, I watch)

Model Shared Guided Independent

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

ME

What does this look like, sound like in an ELA classroom?

During Modeled reading, the teacher does all reading. She models good reading while periodically stopping to “think aloud” and model good strategies/skills

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

What does this look like, sound like in an ELA classroom?

Shared Reading (I do, you help) – The teacher reads the text and provides instruction in skills/strategies, but also ask students to try these strategies/skills on the shared reading text.

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

TWO

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

TWO

What does this look like, sound like in an ELA classroom?

Guided Reading/ Writing (You do , I help) – Students are now asked to practice strategies/skills learned in a “coaching” setting. The child does most of the work and the teacher sits back and coaches when necessary

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

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A Dance . . . Gradual Release of Responsibility

What does this look like, sound like in an ELA classroom?

Independent Reading/ Writing (You do, I watch) – The students show us what they can do and control independently. They read the entire selection on their own and use skills and strategies on their own without assistance from the teacher

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Identify Student Success

Students: • Identify what they have learned • Explain process they used to learn • Discuss how they can use what they learned • Identify what they want more information about •Show evidence of learning

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Reflection Question

How can a consistent school-wide instructional model like Anatomy of a Lesson help increase Academic Learning Time?

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RIGOROUS ELA INSTRUCTION:

COMPLEX, INFORMATIONAL TEXT

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Reading Emphasis

Grade Literary Informational

4 50% 50%

8 45% 55%

12 30% 70%

Distribution of Literary and Informational Passages by Grade in the 2011 NAEP Reading Framework

Source: http://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/publications/frameworks/reading-2011-framework.pdf

The Importance of Complex Text

According to ACT’s Reading Between the Lines, “what appears to differentiate those who are more likely to be ready from those who are less likely is their proficiency in understanding complex texts.”

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The Challenge of Challenging Text “When teachers understand what makes texts complex,

they can better support their students in reading them.”

What Makes Text Complex?

1. Vocabulary

2. Sentence Structure

3. Coherence

4. Organization

5. Background Knowledge

Timothy Shanahan, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

2012

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Text Complexity Consider Text Complexity:

Choosing the Right Texts to Read!

1. Can students read the text? (Quantitative) 2. Should students read the text?

(Qualitative) 3. Do students want to read the text

(Reader) and does the text contribute to coherence of knowledge and understanding (Task)?

1. Can students read the text?

Measures such as:

• Word length

• Word frequency

• Word difficulty

• Sentence length

• Text length

• Text cohesion

Quantitative Measures

Adapted from Kansas Common Core Standards

BEST MEASURED BY COMPUTER SOFTWARE

A Cautionary Note

While knowing the Lexile score for the books you intend to use in your classroom, you should understand that Lexiles (or other readability measures) don’t really tell us everything about a book.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

occupy the same Lexile band. • The Lexile scores are 950 and 890.

The MetaMetrics website offers this disclaimer which we should heed: "Many other factors affect the relationship between a reader and a book, including its content, the age and interests of the reader, and the design of the actual book. The Lexile text measure is a good starting point in the book-selection process, with these other factors then being considered."

Qualitative Measures

Measures such as:

• Levels of meaning

• Levels of purpose

• Structure

• Organization

• Language conventionality

• Language clarity

• Prior knowledge demands

Adapted from Kansas Common Core Standards

2. Should students read the text?

3. Do students want to read the text?

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Reader and Task

Considerations such as:

• Motivation

• Knowledge and experience

• Purpose for reading

• Complexity of task assigned

regarding text

• Complexity of questions asked

regarding text

Adapted from Kansas Common Core Standards

BEST MEASURED BY EDUCATORS’ PROFESSIONAL

JUDGMENT

Points of Entry

“Teachers need to help students find access points that enable them to gain entry to complex informational text and then trek their way through to a successful conclusion.”

Four access points are:

1. Establishment of the purpose by modeling and thinking aloud.

2. Close reading instruction.

3. Collaborative conversations.

4. Independent reading.

November 2013 | Volume 71 | Number 3 Tackling Informational Text Pages 34-38

Points of Entry

Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher

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Points of Entry

“Teachers need to help students find access points that enable them to gain entry to complex informational text and then trek their way through to a successful conclusion.

Four access points are:

1. Establishment of the purpose by modeling and thinking aloud.

ARK/TIP

2. Close reading instruction.

TIP/SAP

1. Collaborative conversations.

SAP

1. Independent reading.

SAP/ISS

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William Faulkner was once asked to give his advice to readers of his fiction who

couldn’t understand it even after reading it three times.

Faulkner’s advice: “Read it four times.”

RIGOROUS ELA INSTRUCTION:

ACADEMIC VOCABULARY

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Vocabulary Quiz 1. How many words does the average student have in his/her spoken

vocabulary at the start of 1st grade?

6,000

2. True or False: Direct vocabulary instruction focused on essential academic terms leads to an average improvement of 33 percentile points on subject area tests.

True

3. Students need to have a vocabulary of approximately __ words by the time they graduate from high school.

84,000

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Reflect

How do you decide which words to teach?

What criteria do you use for selection?

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Tiered Vocabulary Model

Tier 3 Words

Tier 2 Words

Tier 1 Words

Domain-specific words

General academic words

Words of everyday speech

Bringing Words to Life, Second Edition: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. (2013) Beck, Isabel L., McKeown, Margaret G., Kucan, Linda.

Word Sort

Sort the following words into three tiers.

melancholy school antiderivative

osmosis endothermic benevolent

happy

inevitable

Word Sort

melancholy

school osmosis

endothermic

benevolent

antiderivative

happy

inevitable

Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3

Repeatability

Important Considerations for Choosing Words

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Representative

Careful. . .

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Key Findings from Vocabulary Research

Vocabulary instruction has the greatest effect when it focuses on a reasonable number or important academic terms rather than on high-frequency word lists (Marzano, 2004).

Developing anything more than a superficial understanding of new terms requires multiple exposures to the terms (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984).

Understanding and retention improve when students interact with words in a variety of ways ( Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002).

Students need opportunities to think deeply about new words using thinking strategies like comparison, metaphors, and nonlinguistic representation (Marzano, 2004).

From The Core Six: Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core (2012) by Silver,

Dewing, & Perini

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Reflection Question

How does this vocabulary research connect to Anatomy of a Lesson?

How does this vocabulary research support student success with informational text?

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Agenda

Discuss 3 building blocks for rigorous ELA instruction:

A consistent instructional model across all content areas

and grade levels

The inclusion of complex, informational text

Explicit and systematic academic vocabulary instruction

51

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Thank you for your participation!