ILTS 207

Three Part Model

1 Qualitative Measures The qualitative measures of text complexity requires an informed judgment on the difficulty of the text by considering a range of factors. The Standards use purpose or levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, as well as the knowledge demands as measures of text difficulty. Rubrics have been developed for both literacy and informational texts that include descriptors for: • Layout • Purpose and meaning • Text structure • Language features • Knowledge demands 2 Quantitative Measures Quantitative measures of text complexity use factors such as sentence and word length and the frequency of unfamiliar words to calculate the difficulty of the text, assigning a single measure (grade level equivalent, number, Lexile etc). There are many formulas to calculate text difficulty and, while they provide a guide, the readability or difficulty level of a text can vary depending on which formulas or measures are used. Grade band equivalents Lexile levels 3 Reader and Task The third measure looks at what the student brings to the text and the tasks that are assigned. Teachers need to use their knowledge of their students and texts to match texts to particular students and tasks.

PSA

A 30-60 second noncommercial message directed towards listeners in a specific community. A message in the public interest disseminated without charge, with the objective of raising awareness, changing public attitudes and behavior towards a social issue

Thesis-driven viewpoint

Writing a "thesis-driven essay" implies that you are making an argument, or that you're trying to prove a point. The thesis is the solid statement of the argument that your essay will make.

Conversational turn-taking

A a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.

Personal essays

A broad essay that often incorporates a variety of writing styles. Most assignments ask writers to write about an important person, event or time period in their life. The goal is to narrate this event or situation in a way that the reader can fully experience and understand.

Schema

A category of knowledge that you currently hold that helps you understand the world you live in and provides some basic guidance for future events. Describes how we organize information. We store information as a particular _____ until it is needed.

Personalized editing checklist

A checklist of corrections to an essay based on feedback from peers and teachers. Part of the editing process.

Think-pair-share

A collaborative learning strategy in which students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This technique requires students to (1) individually contemplate a topic or answer to a question, and (2) collaborate with classmates.

Curriculum compacting

A flexible, research-supported strategy that enables high-achieving learners who have mastered key concepts to engage in learning activities that expand or extend their knowledge. After pretesting results identify specific individuals who are eligible for instructional modification, the teacher's next action should be to streamline instruction for the advanced learners and provide them with enrichment options and opportunities to learn new content.

Web wheel

A graphic organizer that asks who, what, where, when, why, and how? This is a helpful resource for presentation-planning.

KWL Chart

A graphical organizer designed to help in learning. An acronym for what students, in the course of a lesson, already know, want to know, and ultimately learn. Typically divided into three columns titled Know, Want and Learned.

Parallelism

A literary device in which parts of the sentence are grammatically the same, or are similar in construction. It can be a word, a phrase, or an entire sentence repeated. King's famous 'I have a dream' repetition makes the speech compelling and rhythmic, as well as memorable.

Consonance

A literary device that occurs when two words have the same consonant sound following different vowel sounds. For example, the words same and home have the same 'm' sound, but the vowel sounds before it are different. The first is a long 'a' and the second a long 'o.'

Scaffolding

A process in which teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed. The theory is that when students are given the support they need while learning something new, they stand a better chance of using that knowledge independently. Bruner recommends positive interaction and three modes of representation during teaching: actions, images, and language.

Echo reading

A rereading strategy designed to help students develop expressive, fluent reading as well as used for print knowledge. The teacher reads a short segment of text, sometimes a sentence or short paragraph, and the student repeat it back.

Hot seat

A role-playing activity that builds students' comprehension. Students assume the persona of a character from a story, the featured person from a biography they're reading, or an author whose books they've read, and they sit in a chair designated as the _______ to be interviewed by classmates.

Ode

A serious and fairly long reflective, lyric poem that conveys the speaker's sentiments about a person, place, thing or idea. Offers praise or reflection on something or someone of interest or importance, which sometimes may include appreciating that thing you drive.

Personal essay

A short, flexible autobiographical work. Introducing a character Specific, significant details such as physical appearance and personality Descriptive language Effective for showing the significance of an event or experience. Useful as a narrative tool. Engages the reader's senses (visual, olfactory, auditory, etc) Conclusion

Assonance

A sound device that consists of a series of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words. Remember: it's the vowel sound, not the vowel.

Short story

A story that is short and to the point. Generally, these include one main character, and maybe a handful of minor characters, one major conflict, and only several events. Can be anywhere from 1,000 words to up to 20,000 words, and usually don't take more than a few hours to read.

Self talk

A strategy in which the adult describes what he or she is doing. The adult provides the words to describe her actions, without expecting the child to respond.

Informal reading inventory

A student reads several graded passages and then answers a teacher's questions. The teacher evaluates the student's level of accuracy, word recognition, and comprehension to determine the independent, instructional, and frustrational levels for that particular student.

Informational text

A subset of the larger category of nonfiction. Its primary purpose is to inform the reader about the natural or social world. Different from fiction, and other forms of nonfiction, this does not utilize characters.

DR-TA

A teacher led model in which students are guided in asking questions and making predictions about a text.

Differentiated instruction

A teaching method in which teachers adapt their instruction to accommodate a variety of learning needs. It is more than simply helping students who need extra assistance after a lesson is presented. It is proactively developing a variety of teaching materials so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively regardless of differences in learning style or academic skill. There are four aspects of the classroom that teachers can focus on to _______ instruction: content, which is the material students are supposed to learn: process, which is when students work on the content: product, which is how students demonstrate what they've learned: and learning environment, which is how the classroom works and feels.

Ballad

A type of poem that is sometimes set to music. These have a long history and are found in many cultures. They actually began as a folk song and continues today in popular music. Many love songs today can be considered _____. A typical _____ consists of stanzas that contain a quatrain, or four poetic lines. The meter or rhythm of each line is usually iambic, which means it has one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. In these, there are usually eight or six syllables in a line. Like any poem, some _____ follow this form and some don't, but almost all _____ are narrative, which means they tell a story.

Transitional expressions

A word or phrase that shows how the meaning of one sentence is related to the meaning of the preceding sentence.

Turn and Talk

An oral language scaffolding strategy that enables all students to articulate ideas and share them with other students in a low-risk setting. In this activity, two students face each other. One student talks while the other listens, and then they switch roles. Sentence frames can provide additional scaffolding during this.

Setting a purpose for reading

Aids comprehension by focusing a reader's attention.

Reading rate

Also known as speed. The number of words a student is able to read in one minute.

Contextual analysis

An analysis of a text (in whatever medium, including multi-media) that helps us to assess that text as it connects to its historical and cultural setting, but also in terms of its textuality - or the qualities that characterize the text as a text.

Contextual analysis

An analysis of a text (in whatever medium, including multi-media) that helps us to assess that text as it relates to its historical and cultural setting, but also in terms of its textuality - or the qualities that characterize the text as a text.

Miscue analysis

An analysis of the errors a pupil makes while reading. A miscue is an unexpected response to a reading cue-saying something different than what is in the passage.

Guided oral reading

An approach in which a teacher models fluent reading for students using a text that is at the students' independent reading level. Students then reread the text both silently and aloud, gradually reading it more fluently. After practice, students are generally able to proceed with silently reading texts with fluency and at a faster rate than they are able to read orally.

Editorial

An article that presents the newspaper's opinion on an issue. It reflects the majority vote of the board, the governing body of the newspaper made up of editors and business managers. It is usually unsigned. Much in the same manner of a lawyer, writers build on an argument and try to persuade readers to think the same way they do. Meant to influence public opinion, promote critical thinking, and sometimes cause people to take action on an issue. In essence, this is an opinionated news story.

Persuasive essays

An essay in which you attempt to get the reader to agree with your point of view. You are trying to present arguments, research, and ideas in order to sway the reader one way or the other.

Idiomatic expressions

An expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (such as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as ride herd on for "supervise")

Book study

An in depth talk about a book conducted by a teacher. Similar to a book talk.

Automaticity

An inherent component of fluency. It involves the ability to identify letters, letter patterns and isolated words accurately and quickly.

Panel discussion

An interactive communication format in which panel members respond to a moderator's questions or statements. Participants engage in discussion in front of an audience, for the benefit of the audience. Typically, this is opened up to the audience and the moderator guides the discussion, often eliciting audience input.

High-level thinking skills

Analysis Evaluation Inference

Process/growth artifacts

Assembled to show writing progress relevant to specific skills involved in planning, shaping, drafting, and revising a piece of writing. Multiple drafts that focus on students' ability to accomplish targeted writing objectives often include feedback notes from teachers and peers. Viewed as a whole, an assemblage or series of these would provide a teacher with information to assess the development of students' writing over time.

Comparative analysis

Compares two or more things: "two texts, two theories, two historical figures, two scientific processes, and so on" (Walk, 1998). "May be about two similar things that have crucial differences (two pesticides with different effects on the environment) or two similar things that have crucial differences, yet turn out to have surprising commonalities (two politicians with vastly different world views who voice unexpectedly similar perspectives on sexual harassment)"

Motivation in reading

Directly related to student's desire to read for the purpose of either entertainment or education. A key factor in connecting students to fiction is the presence of characters that are relevant to student's personal experience.

Informative essay

Educates your reader on a topic. They can have one of several functions: to define a term, compare and contrast something, analyze data, or provide a how-to. They do not, however, present an opinion or try to persuade your reader. Topic sentence Clearly introduces the topic in an engaging way and indicates what direction the essay will take. Evidence Quotes and data from nonfiction, reliable sources such as journals, articles, and bibliographies. Conclusion Restates key ideas without repeating language verbatim. A successful conclusion frequently ties up loose ends or leaves the reader with a sense of closur

Denotative and connotative comprehension questions

Questions that gauge the direct and implied meanings of a text

Lyric poetry

Expresses personal emotions or thoughts of the speaker, just like the songs of today. Also, just like songs, these always have a musical quality, or a specific melody which makes it easy for you to sing along with. For the most part is short and written in first-person point of view. There is always some specific mood or emotion being expressed. Often that mood is about the extremes in life, mostly love or death or some other intense emotional experience. No matter the theme, though, all ______ are known for brevity, emotional intensity and musical quality. Types: sonnet, elegy, ode

Compacted learners

Gifted and talented learners who already know many of the concepts taught in a curriculum.

Pragmatics

How language works in a social context

Recorded reading

In this activity, the student listens to a recording of a fluent reader reading a selection of text. The student then replays the recording, reading along with the recorded voice several times, until he or she is able to read quickly and correctly. In this way, the student is able to learn to read the selection accurately at the same rate as the recorded voice reads.

Spatial order

In this pattern, items are arranged according to their physical position or relationships. In describing a shelf or desk, I might describe items on the left first, then move gradually toward the right.

Independent, instructional, and frustrational reading levels

Independent The level at which a student can read and comprehend without assistance. Instructional The level at which a student can be instructed profitably. Frustrational The level at which a student is completely unable to read with adequate word identification or comprehension.

Domain specific vocabulary

Language or word choice that is directly related to the class for which you are writing. For example, if you are writing a literary analysis essay for English, words like "theme," "symbolism," and "juxtaposition" would be great examples. In science, however, those words would not be as relevant- instead, you might use words like "scientific method" and "molecular."

Compound words

Made up of two or more smaller words that are combined to make a new word with its own meaning. The smaller words that form this type of word are like puzzle pieces you fit together to create a new bigger picture. Take the words milk and shake. If we fit these pieces together, we get the ______ word milkshake.

Semantics

Meaning in language.

Multidimensional fluency scale

Measures aspects of fluency that compromise prosody, such as expression, volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace. Reading rate and accuracy do not alone denote fluency- a reader must be able to interpret a text with appropriate expression and phrasing.

Extended definition

One or more paragraphs that attempt to explain a complex term.

Oral language scaffolding

Oral language Techniques Parallel talking, imitations, expansions, extensions, immersion, cloze procedures, paraphrasing

Narrative poetry

Poems that tell a story have existed in many forms over several centuries, and many of our favorite television shows start with nothing other than a narrative poem to give us the background for the stories to come. Come in several different forms: the idyll, the epic, the lay, and the ballad.

Reciprocal teaching

Refers to an instructional activity in which students become the teacher in small group reading sessions. Teachers model, then help students learn to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Once students have learned the strategies, they take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading a dialogue about what has been read. Summarizer At the given stopping point, the Summarizer will highlight the key ideas up to this point in the reading. Questioner The Questioner will then pose questions about the selection: Unclear parts, Puzzling information, and Connections to other concepts already learned Clarifier The Clarifier will address confusing parts and attempt to answer the questions that were just posed. Predictor The Predictor can offer predictions about what the author will tell the group next or, if it's a literary selection, the predictor might suggest what the next events in the story will be.

Syntax

Sentence structure in language.

Specialized terminology

Terminology that would be understood by professionals, but not by the general public.

Morphology

The arrangement and relationships of the smallest meaningful units in a language. So what does this really mean? Every human language depends on sounds. When specific sounds are put together in a specific way, words, phrases, and finally sentences can be created. This is how messages are sent and received.

Summative

The goal of this type of assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. These are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value.

Formative

The goal of this type of assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. Generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value.

Gallery walk

The instructor prepares several discussion questions. Student teams in a ______ typically number three to five. Questions are posted on different "stations" on classroom walls, placed on pieces of paper on desks in different locations around class, or typed on different computers. At each posted question a student team reviews what previous groups have written and adds new content. After a short period of time, say three to five minutes but the exact time will depend upon the nature of the question, say "rotate." The group then rotates, clockwise, to the next station. The rotation continues until all posted questions are addressed. As students discuss questions, the instructor can circulate around the classroom, clarifying questions, gauging student understanding, and addressing misconceptions.

Inflections

The modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, and mood.

Extemporaneous

The presentation of a carefully planned and rehearsed speech, spoken in a conversational manner using brief notes. By using notes rather than a full manuscript, the speaker can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the speech as it progresses. The opportunity to assess is also an opportunity to restate more clearly any idea or concept that the audience seems to have trouble grasping.

Impromptu

The presentation of a short message without advance preparation. Often occur when someone is asked to "say a few words" or give a toast on a special occasion. You have probably done this many times in informal, conversational settings.

Syntactic analysis

The process of analysing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar

Derivations

The process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as -ness or un-. For example, happiness and unhappy come from the root word happy.

Anaphora

The repetition of the first word or words of a sentence. Repetition helps suggest a conclusion or resolution has been reached.

Memorized

The rote recitation of a written message that the speaker has committed to memory. Actors use this kind of speaking whenever they perform from a script in a stage play, television program, or movie scene. When it comes to speeches, this can be useful when the message needs to be exact and the speaker doesn't want to be confined by notes.

Morphemes

The smallest unit of a word with meaning. That meaning is how language conveys messages. _______ are more than just letters. When a number of letters are put together into a word part that now has meaning, then you have a/an ______.

Prosody

The study of the tune and rhythm of speech and how these features contribute to meaning. The study of those aspects of speech that typically apply to a level above that of the individual phoneme and very often to sequences of words.

Scripted

The word-for-word iteration of a written message. In this type of speech, the speaker maintains his or her attention on the printed page except when using visual aids.

Norm-referenced scores

These tests report whether test takers performed better or worse than a hypothetical average student, which is determined by comparing scores against the performance results of a statistically selected group of test takers, typically of the same age or grade level, who have already taken the exam.

Recursive drafting

This means we repeat. We forget about the five steps of the writing process and develop our own approach to writing. We follow the steps of writing as we want and revisit or repeat ideas as we see fit. This means you do not just sit down and follow all the steps of the writing process from start to finish. It allows you to take the idea of a 5-step writing process and mix it up a bit to fit your needs.

Diagnostic

This type of assessment is a form of pre-assessment that allows a teacher to determine students' individual strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and skills prior to instruction. It is primarily used to diagnose student difficulties and to guide lesson and curriculum planning.

Authentic

This type of assessment is the measurement of "intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful,"[1] as contrasted to multiple choice standardized tests.[2] This type of assessment can be devised by the teacher, or in collaboration with the student by engaging student voice.

Running record

To do this, the teacher sits next to a student, listens to the student read, and quickly and efficiently records the student's reading fluency using a series of checks, miscued words, and other symbols. These use a finely tuned set of books leveled from A through Z according to difficulty. Teachers, alone or in partnership with a literacy coach, can study these to better understand what students know, how they use that knowledge, and what they still need to learn. These can also provide teachers with data for grouping students by reading level and determining the difficulty of text appropriate for the reading groups. Finally, they can serve as a way to record individual students' changes and progress over time.

Think-aloud modeling

To enhance students' ability to trace and evaluate an argument and specific claims, the teacher would verbalize inner speech relevant to identifying claims in the text, identifying reasons to accept or reject the claims, and identifying evidence that supports those reasons (e.g., facts, examples). By modeling these thought processes, the teacher can guide students' thinking as they independently trace and evaluate arguments.

High-interest topic

Topics that are particularly appealing or engaging to students

Curriculum based assessment

When this is used, each child is tested briefly each week. The tests generally last from 1 to 5 minutes. The teacher counts the number of correct and incorrect responses made in the time allotted to find the child's score. For example, in reading, the child may be asked to read aloud for one minute. Each child's scores are recorded on a graph and compared to the expected performance on the content for that year. The graph allows the teacher, and you, to see quickly how the child's performance compares to expectations.

Loaded language

Wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes. Such wording is also known as high-inference language or language persuasive techniques. These words and phrases have strong emotional implications and involve strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning.

Targeted words

Words chosen in advance by the teacher to specifically focus on during a lesson

Visual texts

Uses a combination of visual features (camera shots, still pictures, and graphics) and verbal features (words, dialogue and language features) to get a message across to the audience.

Infer

Using observation and background to reach a logical conclusion. You probably practice this every day. For example, if you see someone eating a new food and he or she makes a face, then you ____ he does not like it

Inferences

Using observation and background to reach a logical conclusion. You probably practice this every day. For example, if you see someone eating a new food and he or she makes a face, then you ____ he does not like it

Description

Using sensory perceptions to make the reader see, feel, smell, touch, taste an object, environment, process, state of mind, or emotion

Observational checklist

Using this will help the teacher focus on specific skills and behaviors that the teacher had formerly introduced and modeled in class. The teacher will then be able to use the assessment results to decide which skills the teacher needs to reteach using a different strategy and which skills the students have mastered.

Semantic web

Visual representation of the relationships among words related to the text's subjects. This in turn enhances student's understanding of the word's nuances of meaning.

Shared purpose/common goal

When serious conflict arises during a group discussion, it may be beneficial for the group leader or facilitator to pause the discussion to remind the group of this.

Tiers 1, 2, and 3

______ _____ words are the words of everyday speech usually learned in the early grades. ______ _____ words (academic vocabulary) are far more likely to appear in written texts than in speech, and they appear in all kinds of texts: informational texts (words such as relative, vary, formulate, specificity, and accumulate), technical texts (calibrate, itemize, periphery), and literary texts (misfortune, dignified, faltered, unabashedly). ________ ______ words (domain-specific words) are specific to a domain or field of study (lava, carburetor, legislature, circumference, aorta) and key to understanding a new concept within a text.

Morphemes

words and meaningful parts of words

Phonemes

sounds of language