READ 346 Study Guide

New Idea of Text

"Any configuration of signs that provides a potential for meaning" --> Ex. clothing, graffiti, architecture, sports, and new technologies. *If you are deriving a message from it, you are reading it.* It is the teacher's role to recognize how thinking, reading, and communicating are inseparable from the content of the disciplines and, therefore, must become part of the instructional practices in science, history, math, and all other subjects. Literacy and learning in the content areas and disciplines are one in the same!

Blachowicz and Fisher's 4 principles for effective vocab instruction

1) Active involvement in word learning 2) Personal connections 3) Immersion in vocabulary 4) Consolidating meaning through multiple information sources

Planning for Shared Reading in Secondary Classrooms

1. Choose text that is appropriate for the purpose. 2. Make the purpose of the reading explicit. Tell students what strategy they should be focusing on. If there are discipline-specific elements, be explicit about pointing them out to students. 3. Decide how the text will be accessible to all students. 4. Scaffold, scaffold, scaffold 5. Make sure students are aware of what they are supposed to do with the new knowledge: after you have modeled a strategy and given students guided practice in using the strategy, you must connect it to their independent reading.

2 common errors with using graphic organizers

1. Devoting unnecessary instructional time to teaching students facts about GOs that they already know. 2. Misapplication of GOs - Students copying the teachers; in this case the teacher has done the thinking for them!

5 dimensions of knowing a word

1. Generalization through definitional knowledge 2. Application through correct usage 3. Breadth through recall of words 4. Precision through understanding of examples and non-examples 5. Availability through usage of vocabulary in discussion You can appreciate the discipline-specific facet of some vocabulary, even though this research predates the field of disciplinary literacy by decades. In fact, it is your deep knowledge of a field that allows you to broaden your correct use of terminology.

3 Tasks Involved in Word Learning

1. Learning a new word for a concept when the student understands the concept but has not heard of the label for that concept. 2. Learning a new concept for a known word. 3. Learning a new concept for which they have no label and minimal, if any, understanding or background --> Can be challenging for both students and teachers.

Planning for Read-Alouds in Secondary Classrooms

1. Select readings appropriate to content, students' emotional and social development, and interests. Read-alouds can be especially useful for activating prior knowledge, building background knowledge, and connecting to student experiences. 2. Practice the selection. Think of the read-aloud as a performance. 3. Model fluent oral reading. A read-aloud serves as a place for students to hear fluent oral reading. 4. Engage students and hook them into listening to the text. Creating anticipation can activate student interest and increase meaning. When appropriate, pair read-alouds with other supporting materials such as props, diagrams, manipulatives, or illustrations. 5. Stop periodically to ask questions. Talk within the text enhances student understanding. Plan questions for critical thinking in advance and write them on a sticky note as a reminder. Go with open-ended questions. 6. Engage students in discussion. 7. Make explicit connections to students' independent reading and writing as well as to relevant content. Ex. The end of a read-aloud may be an ideal time to invite students to write a response. Questions raised through the discussion following the reading might prompt further research and outside reading by students.

5 Reasons Why Study Skills Matter

1. Study skills prepare students for education beyond high school. 2. The volume and range of reading required by state level standards in order to prepare youth for post-secondary education and future careers are substantial. 3. Students need strategies for critically processing, generating, and reflecting understandings of electronic and digital texts and contexts. 4. Students use study strategies when they need to retain material for the purpose of taking a test, writing a paper, participating in a class discussion, or any other demonstration of their learning. 5. Students need strategies that will help them cope with content-area and disciplinary tasks requiring higher levels of thinking, such as being required to organize, synthesize, and critique information from multiple sources.

Word Sort

A GO that requires students to find distinguishing characteristics within words and concepts and group characteristics together based on commonalities. There are two types of sorts: closed and open. In closed sorts, the teacher provides students with the category headings and they add to the category. In open sorts, the teacher does not provide students with the category headings, and they must come up with the categories and the words that go under each category.

Preparing for Close Reading in Secondary Classrooms

A close reading may unfold over portions of more than one class period, depending on your learning goals. Because students will be annotating, photocopy the passage onto larger paper so that there is a substantial border around the page for them to write. As with any other lesson, make sure your students know the purpose and what they should do with the information. - "What does the text inspire you to do?" Close readings should result in something - Ex. Allowing students to use their annotated notes on their exams

Developing a Language of Process About Text

A cognitive dimension strategy Disciplinary teachers need to create multiple opportunities for students to eavesdrop on their thinking while negotiating a text so they can model the process of constructing and exacting meaning. Language of Process - refers to the labels we use to describe thinking processes while constructing meaning from the text. Content Statements - those that are made about specific information and ideas in a text; derive directly from the words and ideas in the text. Ex. "Okay, it says here 'where have all the nurses gone?,' so I think the author is going to explain in this next section why the number of nurses is declining." Process Statements - those that are a reflection of metacognitive thinking about these words and ideas. Ex. "What I'm doing now is predicting what the text is going to be about based on the title and subheading. As I read further, I can check to see if my predictions are correct or need to be changed. This will help me concentrate more closely on the information."

General Understandings

A cognitive dimension strategy Modeling and eliciting comprehension processes, as we have stated, is a great way to help youth develop thinking strategies they can use on their own with virtually any text. Another way to promote independence is to encourage adolescents to become generative readers and learners. Students learn best when they are actively engaged! Generative Learning Theory = holds that students learn best when they are taught how to create or generate their own learning prompts and demonstrations.

Representative words

Those that are relevant and perhaps even foundational to the class content. -Is the word representative of a family of words that students should know? -Is the concept represented by the word critical to understand the text? -Is the word a label for an idea that students need to know? -Does the word represent an idea that is essential for understanding another concept? If a word is representative, then it probably deserves instructional attention

Process Guides

A cognitive dimension strategy Models and suggestions on how students should summarize and organize key content-area concepts. Written suggestions that "walk" students through the processes involved in reading like an expert in the subject area. You can provide a variety of suggestions: Guiding students in how to read their paper and e-text assignments (e.g., "skim," "slow down," "notice the graph," "select a particular button," etc.), others remind students to employ strategic reading processes (e.g., "take notes," "organize into a visual aid," "ask questions") and some suggestions might point out an important idea or relationships that students should understand. Ex. "Page 93, paragraphs 3-6: Pay special attention to this section. Make sure you identify three reasons for Hunter's actions."

Levels of Understanding

A cognitive dimension strategy Sensitizes students to the fact that comprehension is more than understanding just the surface or verbatim message of the author. it also involves inferencing application and other critical cognitive abilities that create meanings beyond the directly stated words. Students can be shown that comprehension falls along a curriculum that is text-based at one end and reader-based at the other. Text-based processing is literal-level comprehension or "right-there' thinking. This is in contrast to "author and me" thinking/processing. Here, the author's words are combined with the ideas of the person processing the text to create interpretations, generalizations, and other implied understandings. Finally, at the other end of the comprehension continuum is a form of thinking that is far removed from a dependency on individual printed or spoken words. This kind of processing, known as "on my own" thinking, requires that learners process relevant prior knowledge for the topic sufficient to create sophisticated understandings based on minimal print cues. The purpose of all this is to move adolescent learners further down the comprehension curriculum beyond text-based processing by sensitizing them to the idea that there are various ways of thinking about a text. This all provides sensitivity to various ways of thinking about text while constructing and applying meaning.

Reading Closely & Accurately

A cognitive dimension strategy The CCSS for ELA endorse a form of reading that begins with a close and accurate understanding of a text author's message. The emphasis, according to the standards, should be on instruction that ensures that students avoid the all-too-common propensity to "jump to conclusions" about a textual interpretation or fixate on a connection to their own lives that blocks thorough and evidentiary meaning making. We should demonstrate how conclusions should be made based on all the important textual evidence and that relating to an author's ideas is a helpful impulse but should not divert attention away from a full appreciation of an author's information and ideas.

How Writing Benefits Content-Area and Disciplinary Teachers

A common concern among secondary teachers is that learning doesn't stick, especially ideas and information from required reading. One cause for this phenomenon is the tendency for students to be sentence surfers or read superficially. By writing, students are -Paraphrasing, summarizing, organizing, and linking new understandings with familiar ones. -Monitoring their comprehension, making it easier for them to identify what they know and what is confusing to them. Provided affordances in higher-level thinking: elaboration, synthesis of info, expression of critical perspectives -Motivated and engaged -Making clear what they do and do not know Capitalize on writing by: -Modeling how to summarize and annotate text. -Capitalizing on the power of writing by frontloading the assignment given to students. Have students write to brainstorm key content they will soon learn about, for instance. -Encouraging students to think critically and creatively.

Reading Comprehension

A complex, developmental, contextual process Developmental - one's ability to understand text continues to increase throughout life. Contextual - Meaning making is bounded by place, history, social interaction, and function. It cannot be assumed that once students are taught to read in elementary school, they are set for life. Skills and abilities for text comprehension developed in their elementary years are not adequate for the challenges of increasingly complex text students find in middle school and beyond. There is plenty of evidence that skills and abilities for successful comprehension developed in the elementary years are not adequate for the challenges of increasingly complex text students find in middle school and beyond. Every new text and reading situation requires a refined application of literacy skills and abilities. This is especially true of content-area and disciplinary literacy. Our overall goal as comprehenders is to use literate practices to make sense of and to act on our worlds.

Graphic Organizers

A display tool for visually representing concepts/ideas and the relationships between them. Support comprehension, as they require students to think about what they know about concepts being taught and how these concepts are connected. Effective across disciplines and have been shown to be of great assistance to students with disabilities. Can be used before, during, or after reading. As a pre-reading tool (before), GOs can alert students to important ideas they will encounter during an upcoming reading. During reading, GOs can be used to record events in detail and engage students in deep thinking, and after reading, GOs can serve as a review of the topic as well as a way to clarify concepts/big ideas. Depending on when they are used, GOs can serve many purposes: activate prior knowledge, encourage brainstorming, record events, serve as a review. ALL OF THESE lead to comprehension! Should not be considered an end product. Students should not just fill it out and put it in a folder. Instead, they should use it to springboard discussion, use it as a presentation tool, use it to develop an essay, use it as a project display, etc.

Story Grammar Chart

A graphic organizer that allows students to analyze the elements of a story (characters, setting, events, climax, resolution) to help summarize the story's key points in order to decipher the author's message.

Tree Diagrams

A graphic organizer where concepts build on each other. Ex. in a 3-level tree diagram, the overarching concept is a general one. From the general concept, primary levels of classification are built, and to expound upon the primary levels, supporting categories are added. Tree diagrams are most frequently used to categorize and classify information. Commonly used in mathematics, particularly to represent probabiltiy. Can be constructed on the horizontal or vertical. Typically radiate from a general concept ("language") to a primary level of classification ("receptive" and "expressive"). Supporting categories branch off the primary level of information ("listening," etc.). With each additional level, a greater degree of detail is introduced.

Matrices

A matrix is an arrangement of words or phrases in table format to be read both horizontally and vertically. It shows relationships, either by comparing and contrasting concepts or by classifying attributes. Ex. Synectic Chart - Students look for analogies to explain relationships. Then they brainstorm a list of related words that: -Are similar to the focus word; -Describe what the word feels like (a stretch for many students); -Are opposite of the focus word; -Are similar to the focus word but not the same as those listed before; -Redefine the focus word. This exercise is best done in small groups where students can discuss each attribute to construct the matrix. Dictionaries and a good thesaurus are helpful tools in completing this type of GO. If generating words and phrases is too difficult, the teacher can supply a list of words that have been cut apart into small slips of paper to create a word sort.

Think-Aloud

A metacognitive process that allows students to hear what goes on "inside the head" of a fluent reader. It is ideal for profiling disciplinary literacies. Texts that provide unique features are ideal for a think-aloud. This is an excellent way to demonstrate content-area thinking skills - ex. "think like a scientist"

Lexile

A numeric way of assessing or measuring a student's ability to read & text difficulty. Predicts a student's future reading performance/likelihood of students having greater success Teachers and parents can use the level of difficulty to determine if students can or cannot manage material; this way they are not given material that is too easy/hard for them. Determined through sentence length and word frequency Longer = higher level More infrequent/complex/multisyllabic = higher level Determined from standardized reading assessments (e.g., Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)). Ranges from below 0L for beginning readers to above 2000L. When a Lexile text measure matches a Lexile reading measure, this is called a "targeted" reading experience. The reader will likely have some challenge with the text but not enough to get grustrated.

Class Discussion

A personal dimension strategy Being a good lecturer in the middle and upper grades is not enough; students learn and remember best when they participate in the dialogue about class topics. Building community at the front end of a new year pays rich dividends during the remainder of the year in the form of students who are more considerate of one another, who are more willing and considerate of one another, who are more willing and comfortable risk takers, and who appreciate the importance of the social construction of knowledge. The goal is to encourage and orchestrate discussions that result in more student-student interaction patterns rather than student-teacher patterns. Tips for increasing student engagement in class discussions: -Make a deliberate or factual statement -Make a reflective statement -Describe the student's state of mind -Invite the student to elaborate on a statement -Encourage the student to ask a question -Encourage students to ask questions of one another -Maintain a deliberate silence -Encourage other students to answer questions posed to you -Help students link new information to their prior knowedge -Model good listening strategies -Allow for small-group brainstorming first before whole-group discussion.

Alternative Texts

A personal dimension strategy Making a variety of accessible, content-focused texts available in the classroom, giving self-selection of reading choices, and linking the texts to instructional activities will help students find personal connections to disciplinary topics and also increase their consistency (and hopefully interest) in reading. -Ex. Informational texts (trade books or textbooks), Graphic novels, Less difficult/modified texts, Journal articles, Magazines/newspapers, Movies Tips: -Use information books and graphic novels to research class topics --> Ex. Students are given time out of every 90-minute class block to work on individual research assignments that offer wide latitude with respect to particular topics to research and modes of expression. -Make available less difficult/modified texts. --> Build schemas --> Build self-efficacy for reading --> Compile online resources to make reading/study guides -Read articles from popular magazines and newspapers --> Helping youth personalize understandings of text topics is an achievable goal if students are allowed to find links from the everyday texts in their environments to the ideas and information under study in the content classroom. To ensure students are looking at and thinking about the info and ideas in a book and other texts, we need to engage their imaginations, find ways of linking and meaning-making process to their identity construction, and help them discover applications of new understandings to their daily lives. -Build comprehension with popular movies --> Foreign films can be helpful when building language competencies among ELLs

Opinionnaires

A personal dimension strategy Promoting ownership as well as deep understanding by building relevant prior knowledge. Also promote self-examination, value youth's points of view, and provide a vehicle for them to influence others with their ideas. By taking a stand on certain topics - such as health issues - and engaging in critical discussion about those issues, students not only heightened their expectation of the content to follow but also made many new connections from their opinions to those of their classmates. These privilege students' personal insights, feelings, and ideas while catalyzing them to think deeply and critically about content-area topics.

Power Writing

Timed fluency activity --> Get as much "on paper" about a subject as possible in a given amount of time (usually 1 minute). Figure out what they actually know about the topic. Often repeated 2-3 times - strive for "personal best."

Fishbowl Discussions

A small group of students is asked to discuss an issue or problem while another group of students looks on. The idea of a fishbowl is that the outside group must listen but not contribute to the deliberations of the students "in the fishbowl." At some point during the discussion, those looking in should be given an opportunity to discuss among themselves their reactions to the conversation they observed. Then you can ask both groups to share with the class the nature of their discussions. This approach to discussion allows the outside group to assess and critique the ideas of the fishbowl discussants.

Reciprocal Teaching/ReQuest

A social dimension strategy The teacher and student take turns generalizing questions and summaries and leading a discussion about sections of a text. Initially, the teacher models questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting activities while encouraging students to participate at whatever level they can manage. Gradually, students become more capable of contributing to such discussions and assume more responsibility for their own learning.

Shared Reading

A text or passage jointly shared by teacher and student but is read aloud by the teacher; reading collaboratively. Unlike read-alouds, where only the teacher can see the text, an important feature of a shared reading experience is that in shared reading, there is a lesson specifically related to a comprehension strategy, word solving strategy, text feature, or reading behavior such as stamina, rereading, and/or annotation. Building background knowledge is not so much the focus here: teachers focus on a comprehension strategy or a text feature that enables the learners to understand the content of the text. Bridge the gap between the teacher-directed read-aloud and student-independent close reading. Teacher and students alternatively take and relinquish the lead. May take different forms: choral reading, call & response (with repeated text parts), repeated reading Other strategy examples: inferencing, summarizing, self-questioning and self-monitoring, text structures [cause/effect, sequence, problem/solution], text features [headings and subheadings, captions, directions], interpreting visual representations [ charts, graphs, diagrams], connecting, determining importance, evaluating, predicting, QAR, QtA, Synthesizing, Sequencing

Read-Aloud

A text or passage selected by the teacher to read publicly to a large or small group of students; meant to focus on the content of the text. Even in widely literate classrooms/societies, the act of being read to continues to enthrall. Ex. Audiobooks. These have been found to motivate older, reluctant readers. Work best with engagement activities (e.g., QAR) With read-alouds, the level of text complexity can be raised. When text is read aloud by the teacher, students with reading difficulties can access books that might otherwise be too difficult for them to read independently. This is essential in content area classrooms. Read-alouds alone cannot compensate for all reading/comprehension gaps, but they can introduce important texts that some students might not otherwise be able to read and comprehend independently. Students without reading difficulties will also benefit.

Text Mapping

A textual dimension strategy 1. Identify pages from the class textbook that contain important organizational features such as a table of contents; introductory pages of the first chapter with the title, headings, and subheadings; pages with highlighted terms; pages with graphs and charts; glossary and index pages. 2. Display these pages on the smart board and mark up the displayed text. Ex. draw a circle around the hierarchical diagram that serves as a graphic organizer at the opening of the first chapter and write an appropriate caption - "visual outline of the chapter." Ex. Draw arrows to identify key terms and connect words; make notes in the margins to signal the value of author-provided questions, summaries, graphs, charts, and boxed material - ANNOTATING. 3. Project additional pages and have students come up to the board to practice. Have them explain how the features can be used to guide comprehension or contribute to better understanding of chapter or book content. 4. As a wrap-up to the instruction on text mapping, distribute a photo-copied page from the textbook to each of the students and ask them to use markers and pens to map the page. 5. After they have done the work of mapping for nonfiction elements, hand out a multiple choice and matching worksheet. As students complete the worksheet, have them go back to their mapped page to find answers and add additional text markings to facilitate correct responses.

Bridging Text Ideas

A textual dimension strategy Cohesive texts provide ample cues that help readers link information presented in different sentences. Authors of cohesive texts do this by continually adding and integrating newly introduced information with previously cited information. They also achieve cohesion through the liberal use of logical connectors, such as conjunctions. Steps: 1. Teacher shares with students the topic under study and has them work in groups to produce statements about what they know about the topic. 2. Teacher writes the statements where the class can see them. 3. Teacher reviews the statements and pulls out the ones with logical connections (4-6 statements is a fair amount). 4. The class discusses the statements that are pulled out --> Teacher provides students with a bank of connecting words. 5. Teacher asks them to write a paragraph with the 4-6 statements by using connecting words to pull the separate sentences together. 6. Each group reads their paragraph while the class listens for whether the connections used signaled the correct relationships among the sentences.

Think-pair-square-share

After being given an issue, problem, or question, ask students to think alone for a short period of time, then pair up with someone to share their thoughts. Then have pairs of students share with other pairs, forming, in effect, small groups of four students. Be sure to encourage student pairs not to automatically adopt the ideas and solutions of their partners.

Round Robin

After placing students in or forming groups of three to five, pose a problem or question and have each group go around the circle quickly, sharing ideas or solutions. You can give students on opportunity to "pass" on a response, but eventually they must respond. To be most effective, after the initial clockwise sharing, ask students to write down on a single sheet of paper their responses. This documentation allows everyone's ideas to be represented and serves as a record of the group's thinking, which could be used for grading.

Meeting the Literacy and Learning Needs of CLD Youth

Avoid the proclivity that diversity = struggle or at risk; At risk could be at promise when schools and teachers see youth from diverse backgrounds as resources and assets with multilingual and multicultural flexibility and the potential to make great strides given quality instruction.

The Process of Selecting Words to Teach

Because it is impossible to teach all the general and domain-specific academic vocab words from any reading assignment in a particular content area or discipline, an important first step in teaching vocab is to decide which terms and concepts should be taught. Traditionally, teachers have used a textbook or some other core text as a guide. Students will learn what is emphasized! Vocab instruction, then, should focus on words related to those important ideas. Sometimes the words the core text author has chosen to highlight will match the concepts you choose to emphasize; sometimes they will not. It is important, therefore, that you have a system for selecting the appropriate vocab terms that help students understand the key ideas of the unit. A thorough and elaborative understanding of the salient terms/concepts will, in turn, contribute to students' enhanced understanding of the texts themselves, especially if the target words related to other words or are general. 1. Determine what you want your students to learn as a result of reading and studying the content. 2. Identify key terms that are all related to the unit's objectives. 3. Decide on appropriate activities or strategies to introduce and reinforce the words; Ex. word maps. 4. Identify the general words that are not necessarily central to the objectives of the unit but lend themselves to various word-learning processes.

Firsthand Concept Development

Because the terminology in academic texts is often sterile, abstract, and lifeless, students not particularly motivated to read them find it difficult to retain the info in these texts. Standing before the class and stating glossary-type definitions of key vocab words merely reinforces students' passivity. One of the guidelines for effective vocab instruction is to make important terms and concepts come alive for students so they are motivated to read and learn. This can be done by giving students opportunities to have direct contact with critical vocab from a unit or lesson.

Advance Organizers

Brief textual statements that summarize the main points of the upcoming reading as well as offer explicit connections to larger concepts that may or may not be discussed in the text. They are used as a prereading strategy to assist students in organizing the information through schema building --> The building block for GOs.

Cognitive Dimension of Comprehension

Comprehension as a cognitive process is concerned with the skills, strategies, and background knowledge of the reader. All of a youth's cognitive abilities must come into play when they are trying to understand such varied texts as a chapter on the bicameral nature of the US government, etc. Skills - decoding, fluency, abstract thinking Strategies - summarizing, critical thinking, metacognitive awareness, setting purpose, asking questions, creating mental images; fix-up strategies (rereading, seeking help from an expert, creating a visual aid, asking questions and seeking for answers, etc.). Background knowledge - rich and varied funds of knowledge. Youth who have these are likely to possess well-developed knowledge structures or schemas that allow them to comprehend texts at deeper levels. CCSS seeks to have them think like scientists when reading scientific texts, like historians when reading social studies texts, etc. This requires processes such as asking contextually relevant questions, developing a framework for the details, paying attention to the precise use of words and sentences, reading actively by organizing details, and asking questions, as well as annotating deliberately. Consider the different purposes for reading! -Scientists read by using representations and models to analyze situations and solve problems. -Historians need to organize info around multiple sources to determine the veracity of sources and assertions.

Textual Dimension of Reading Comprehension

Consider how the structure and properties of prose and other texts interact with and stimulate a reader's capacity for constructing and using meaning. A text is not difficult or easy in its own right but rather difficult or easy relative to a person's abilities, enthusiasm, perspective, and level of support from a teacher. A person's cognition and motivation as well as the contextual and relational factors of the setting in which they are reading influence the degree to which a text is comprehensible Ex. An 8th grader may have limited knowledge of science facts and concepts but may achieve a moderate degree of success with the class textbook if the author included structures and features designed to support novice readers of science. Microstructure features - signal the relationships between and among information and ideas, such as connective, conjunctions, pronouns, and overlapping sentences. Macrostructure - features that tie the overall text together, including titles and subheadings, typographic clues, introductory statements, advance organizers, outlines, summaries, and logical patterns of organization. Adding to the challenges posed by complex and inconsiderate text is the need for adolescents to be sensitized to disciplinary text genres. Making students aware of the characteristics, genres, and style of disciplinary text will help them read more like a disciplinary insider and thus develop practices for comprehension appropriate to language and literature, science, social studies, math, and the other content domains.

Close Reading

Deep, critical, analytical reading; guided instruction from the teacher as students engage in the reading of complex, challenging text; explore discipline-specific elements through analysis. A form of guided instruction with lots of scaffolding. Uses text-dependent questions to foster extended discussion. These discussion questions develop across 3 phases: 1) what does the text say?, 2) how does the text work?, 3) what does the text mean? Meant to engage students in complex text that poses challenges to them by zooming in on the literal, structural, and inferential meanings of the text. It is not simply assigning hard texts and then hoping for the best! Distinguishing features: -The passage is short in length - Don't limit yourself to standalone pieces: ex. the densest portion of a larger science article may be an excellent candidate for close reading. -Students engage in repeated readings for authentic reasons. Thought-provoking, text-dependent questions provide an authentic reason for returning to the text. -Students annotate to guide their thinking - a key way to interact with the text -Students talk with their peers Close reading allows for an analysis of the different purposes & audiences behind similar pieces. Close reading allows students the time to unearth the discipline-specific literacies that may otherwise elude them. Students typically read the text multiple times: 1st - What does the text say? - literal meaning (what is the author saying in broad strokes?) 2nd - How does the text work? - read for structural analysis (i.e., organizational structure of the text - description, problem & solution, question & answer, compare/contrast, etc.) 3rd - What does the text mean? - read for inferential meaning (what is the deeper meaning behind the text; what is the author trying to tell me?) Read literally, for structure, and to make inferences.

When to use a graphic organizer

Depending on when they are used, GOs can activate prior knowledge, encourage brainstorming, record events in detail, or serve as a review of a topic. In all cases, they are means of building comprehension. Be cautious about using GOs early in the learning process. GOs help facilitate deep learning, but only when students have engaged in sufficient surface learning. You can't sufficiently organize content knowledge that you don't have!

Confronting the Challenges

Diverse learners deserve effective teachers who have the knowledge and practices to address their needs: Minority and low-income students are over 2x more likely to be taught by lower-qualified teachers (less than 3 years of experience; bachelor's degree; come from less prominent teacher prep institutions). High-quality teachers understand the kinds of responsive and supportable instructional practices students from diverse backgrounds should receive in order to help them achieve at levels comparable to their peers who are accustomed to quality instruction. Not to mention, effective teachers set high and achievable academic expectations. Diverse learners deserve the best instruction from all teachers: Every teacher should be a teacher of reading/literacy to some extent; The issues diverse adolescents bring to the classroom continue to mount. A refusal, benign or otherwise, to address the literacy and learning needs of these students would be unacceptable regardless of the self-justifications. Keep in mind, the relationship between literacy proficiency and academic achievement grows stronger as students move through the grades.

General notetaking procedures

Draw and label notes at the top of the page. Draw a margin and keep all running lecture notes to one side. Indent to show importance of ideas. Skip lines to indicate change of ideas. Leave space for elaboration and clarification. Use numbers, letters, and marks to indicate details. Be selective. Abbreviate when possible. Paraphrase. Use underlining, circling, and different colors of ink to show importance. Cover one side of notes to study. Choose the notetaking format most appropriate for the content and/or discipline.

ELL population

ELLs are one of the fastest growing student populations in the US 2012-2013: more than 4.85 million students --> 10% of the entire US school population. Spanish dominant language amongst these - 38 million people Within the EL subgroup of students, long-term ELs (LTELs) make up the majority in the US. These are typically students who are born and raised in the US yet continue to show consistent gaps in their education, primarily in areas of academic literacy.

Relationship between comprehension and vocabulary

Given that all secondary students are expected to read and navigate through content and disciplinary texts packed with concepts and technical vocab that they must understand fully if they are to learn from these sources, the relationship between word knowledge and comprehension becomes even more significant. When the processing demands for reading complex content-area and disciplinary text become elevated because of their vocabulary load, many students will have little, if any, cognitive energy left for thinking about key concepts or monitoring their understanding. As a result, students can become frustrated outsiders to the learning process. The relationships between reading and vocab acquisition is mutually supportive - the more one reads, the more exposure one gets to words, and the broader one's own vocab becomes; the broader one's vocab is, the easier it is to comprehend texts and assimilate new info and ideas. Thus, for struggling readers and English learners, frequent and wide reading is critical to language development.

Compare/Contrast Chart

Identify similarities and differences between concepts

Repeatability

If the word is going to be used later in the unit, then it is a candidate for direct instruction. However, if the word is repeated frequently in the text, a technique called instructional redundancy, then it may not need to be the focus of instruction. Rather, reading the text carefully might help students develop their understanding of the word. -Will the word be used again in this text? If so, does the word occur often enough to be redundant? -Will the word be used again during the school year?

The Personal Dimension

Issues of engagement, identity, agency, and goals. Understand that in a classroom, there are students of varying characteristics: Multiple cultural backgrounds, motivation levels, self-confidence levels, eagerness levels, reading/writing skill levels, background knowledge levels, etc. Ignoring this dimension when setting expectations for reading often leads to disappointment and frustration for both teacher and students. This is because individual personal attitudes play a vital role in the reading, learning, and remembering process. Offering students choices of texts and options for responding to them encourages investment in their own learning, which has been shown to improve comprehension. Find ways to build youth's literate identities. The more than text can be engaging & relevant for them, the more confident they become in their identities as capable readers and meaning makers.

On preteaching vocabulary

It was a long-held tradition in secondary schooling that explicit vocab instruction is an essential prereading activity to support students' subsequent comprehension. However, many teachers have experienced the dilemma of preteaching the vocab such that the student has little opportunity to apply their learning, relying instead on rote memorization at the expense of deeper understanding. When teachers preteach vocab, students fail to develop their word-solving skills. Further, students often forget the meaning of the words that have been pretaught because they do not see them as relevant, and teachers end up teaching vocab throughout the lesson anyway. Students need vocab instruction that is integrated into their content area learning, not commercials that come before the "real" learning.

Expected Lexile Ranges

K: BR40L-230L 1: 190L-530L 2: 420L-650L 3: 520L-820L 4: 740L-940L 5: 830L-1010L 6: 925L-1070L 7: 970L-1120L 8: 1010L-1185L 9: 1050L-1260L 10: 1080L-1335L 11 & 12: 1185L-1385L

Additional Considerations for Graphic Organizers

Let learning goals drive design: Well-designed GOs should guide students to categorize key concepts, surface the interconnection of ideas, or help students construct knowledge. Unless they're designed with the end in mind, organizers may unintentionally lead students on an intellectual scavenger hunt that generates surface understanding and thinking. The design of the GO must align with the learning goal and require that students apply the info they deconstructed in order to make meaning or develop unique insights. Make the student the designer: Over-scaffolding a GO means the higher-order skills of evaluation, determination, and judgment are used in the design stage by the teacher rather than in the instructional stage by the student. Design for transfer: GOs should ultimately build a student's capacity to draw upon what they learned in order to become independent readers, active citizens, and solvers of complex problems. If this is our goal, students need the opportunity to construct the processes to achieve those ends.

Shallow Word Knowledge/Definitional knowledge

Memorizing definitions Important but limited, as students often do not make the connection between the definition of a word and its meaning in a particular text. When students are not making those connections or inferences, their understanding of the text is usually compromised. Not really applicable to true reading.

Teaching GOs

Like all good teaching strategies, GOs must be introduced carefully to students. Without proper scaffolding, GOs are reduced to the level of a fancy worksheet, completed only to satisfy the teacher. As students create graphic representations, they manipulate and construct organizational patterns for the informational or narrative text. The students have become actively involved in concrete processing of abstract ideas in print form. Considerations: -Set the purpose for a new GO. -Model how to use the GO with a familiar text. -Provide guiding questions -Practice with new texts. -As students add to their repertoire of GOs, be sure to provide lots of blank copies that are readily accessible. Many teachers keep an open file in the room containing labeled folders of GOs from which studnets can choose. With practice and reflection on the process and its benefits, students may begin to alter or design their own GOs. When this happens, it is a sign you've done a great job in teaching this tool!

The Social Dimension

Making, extracting, and using meaning is a social process. An individual's meaning making is understandable only when it is viewed in relation to others. - Ex. examining different types of language (i.e., slang vs. academic language). Even when reading in private, you are not alone - you are interacting with an author who holds other ideas, points of view, styles of expression, etc. It considers the various types of learners in the room as some learners need a moment to process information before they can share. Teachers are encouraged to arrange the room to promote problem-solving and flexibility. Analyze texts through cultural lenses for their universality, bias, and relevance. Within a community of learners, teachers can apprentice youth in the practices of content literacy through modeling, reciprocal teaching, and a host of other collaborative experiences.

Imagery and Keywords

Many of us create mental pictures to help remember a difficult word or procedure because we know that images can be powerful reminders. For example, if the targeted word you need to learn is acrophobia, a mental picture to remember "fear of high places" could be an acrobat who is afraid of heights walking on a tightrope high in the sky. You could follow this up with a sentence such as: "The acrobat, who has always been afraid of high places, suffered from acrophobia." When we make pictures in our minds to help us remember what a word means or how it relates to another word or superordinate concept, we are using the imagery strategy. Research suggests that imagery can be a powerful tool for reinforcing vocabulary knowledge because students are actively involved in their learning. The keyword strategy differs slightly from imagery approaches in that catchy phrases or sentences related to the word are created and remembered. Ex. Amorous - you might think about a phrase such as "more love for us," which sounds like amorous but has a synonym for the word in it.

Academic Language and Vocabulary

Many students - not only CLD - experience difficulties learning the large number of academic English words they see and hear daily in US schools. Academic language is primarily accessed through texts, not conversation, and some youths are well positioned to gain access to this language while others are not. Because academic language is different from everyday language, many students who are highly successful in communicating in informal contexts may struggle at school. Approaches should ensure that learners receive 1) multiple exposures to words in multiple contexts, 2) opportunities to process words over time, 3) opportunities to personalize newly learned words, and 4) visual support and extra practice time whenever possible.

Guidelines for Effective Vocabulary Instructional Practices

Many would agree that no single method, material, or strategy will consistently guarantee that students will improve their word knowledge. Therefore, it seems advantageous for teachers to select a range of approaches to increasing students' academic and disciplinary vocab words, and this can be accomplished using the following evidence-based guidelines: Teach vocab in multiple language contexts: -"Drill and kill" deals with Target Memory - the ability to study and memorize specific info for one particular task at one point in time. The problem with this approach is that the info memorized is quickly forgotten. -Ex. Words taught in the context of a discipline will be learned more effectively than words taught in isolation because context allows students to integrate words with previously acquired knowledge. -Once the targeted words have been selected for study from the various text sources and from which students are expected to read and learn, students should be provided with multiple opportunities to converse with the words, write the words, read the words, and hear the words spoken. Reinforce word learning with repeated exposures over time -Students' word knowledge takes time to develop and increases in small, incremental steps. Although it is impossible to identify a specific time frame for all students, an important evidence-based principle for vocab development is that word ownership is reinforced when students receive multiple exposures to targeted words over the course of days, weeks, and in some cases even months, particularly for struggling readers and those learning English. -Ex. A math teacher puts this into practice by building vocab through 1) extensively discussing key terms and symbols and exploring what students already know about them, 2) previewing how the words and symbols are used in their math texts, 3) asking students to record the words and symbols in a vocab notebook, 4) practicing words and symbols with a variety of activities and exercises that require students to think and write rather than identify a correct answer, and 5) reviewing and testing in a formative fashion. -Vocab reinforcement approaches such as these ensure students' long-term understanding of academic and disciplinary-related words and concepts. Emphasize students' active role in the word-learning process -The importance of students' active participation and elaborative processing in learning new words is a consistent theme that emerges from vocabulary research for the past 30 years. When students take an active role in vocab development, they understand how to define new words and how to use these words in different contexts. -Benefits: 1) ability to sense and infer relationships between targeted vocab words and one's own background knowledge, 2) ability to recognize and apply vocab words to a variety of sources, 3) ability to identify examples and nonexamples, and 4) ability to generate novel contexts for the targeted words. -In contrast, passive involvement in vocab learning is conditioned when students are given worksheet-type tasks that require selecting definitions in matching or multiple-choice formats or filling in blanks with words from a list. Give students tools to expand word knowledge independently -Vocab development involves both the "what" and the "how." The "what" focuses on the processes involved in knowing a word. The "how" is equally important because it involves students in learning strategies for unlocking words on their own. -If you teach students some words, they will be able to recognize and add those particular words to their repertoire of known words; but if you teach students independent word-learning strategies, they will be able to leave your instructional contexts and independently expand their vocabularies continually, which will result in more successful reading experiences with increasingly complex text. Stimulate students' awareness and interest in words -As teachers, we all know the role that interest plays in daily instruction; when students are interested, there is an increase in effort and persistence. -The best starting point for building word enthusiasm is with you: the teacher. We can hardly expect our students to become sensitive to words and interested in expanding word knowledge if we cannot demonstrate and ardor for words ourselves. -Model playfulness, excitement, and the vocab-learning process Build a language-rich environment to support word learning -Students with strong expressive and receptive vocabularies are the ones who are immersed in home and school environments characterized by "massive amounts of rich written and oral language." As such, teachers can best promote vocab growth by working with students to create an environment in which new words are learned, celebrated, and used in authentic and communication tasks. -Students should be given opportunities to experiment with using words in low-risk situations, to discuss new ideas daily, to talk freely and openly about how text concepts relate to their real-world experiences, to read texts from a variety of genres related to the topics under study, and to write purposeful and meaningful texts that employ keywords and demonstrate understanding of important concepts. Encourage wide reading -Children's vocabularies grow exponentially through the first 4-6 years. Virtually all of this growth results from exposure to words in conversational language contexts. Eventually, however, new word learning in these everyday communicative settings begins to slow until at some point it plateaus. The reason is that there is a limit to the words children are exposed to in their homes and communities. -For those who grow up in language-privileged environments, the level of exposure to new words may be much greater. -Regardless of the level of privilege, eventually children must have exposures to a source of new words if their vocab knowledge is to grow. One of these critically important sources is text, in print of media form. -Reading comprehension and vocab learning are mutually supportive: As word knowledge increases, the ability to make meaning from text grows as well. -Teachers should stimulate reading by encouraging students to read newspapers, magazines, graphic novels, informational articles and books, and the like.

Integrating Low-Stakes Writing into Daily Lessons

Maximize the potential benefit of writing by remembering that it is about the process, not a graded product. Ex. Ask students to write the story of the path their minds followed as they tried to solve a problem. --> These paths are interesting and revealing - metacognitive. These low-stakes writing activities can often be spontaneous - e.g., quick writes, position statements, and partner discussions/debates. Benefits: -Promotes active engagement compared with lectures -Helps students find and develop their own language for the issues and content in a disciplinary classroom --> Reveals misconceptions. -Practices skills needed for later high-stakes writing. -Helps us understand how students' minds are working: how they are understanding the course material, feeling about it, and reacting to our teaching. -Make students keep up with the assigned reading every week, ensuring they contribute more and get more from discussions and lectures. -Takes little of our time or expertise.

Morphological Analysis

Morphemic analysis has been a traditional part of vocab instruction and has routinely appeared in commercial materials and district-level curriculum guides. - Ex. students who know the meaning of the prefix in and the Latin root cred should be able to conclude that the meaning of incredible is "not to be believed." A renewed emphasis on word morphology, when combined with other techniques such as contextual analysis, emerges from the need to meet the ever-increasing language development needs of recent immigrants to our middle and high schools. 1. Make sure students understand how morphemic analysis works so they can disassemble words into their parts - ex. They should realize that a word such as subordinate consists of the prefix sub and the base word ordinate. Adolescents, unless prompted, often do not break longer words into their meaningful parts. 2. Provide explicit instruction and modeling, using words from the students' reading assignments. Content-area and disciplinary teachers should find it relatively easy to locate key terms that possess prefixes, suffixes, and roots. 3. When possible, group the instruction by word families. 4. Select prefixes and roots that have high utility and consistent meanings (e.g., the prefix trans or the root graph). 5. Model situations for students in which morphemic analysis does not work and then demonstrate alternative approaches for deriving meaning (e.g., consulting definitional resources such as dictionaries or glossaries, focusing on context, or asking someone). 6. Prompt students to use morphemic analysis as an independent word-learning strategy; have them exploit this strategy by making lists of the most common or domain-specific affixes and roots readily available to them or by displaying charts with these word parts in the classroom.

Notetaking vs. Notemaking

Notetaking - Students' written notes from a lecture or class discussion. Notemaking - The slightly different phenomenon of recording notes from printed materials. While many of the procedures are the same, students cannot go back again for more information in notetaking (e.g., the lecture or video is over); they can do this in note making (by rereading the text). Good notetakers generally do better in school, and specific types of notetaking produce better results. Note taking serves both a product and a process function, both of which produce improved comprehension and retention of material.

Vocab Cardsuiler

On the front of the vocab card, students write the targeted word. On the back of the card, the desired information about the word or concept is provided. This can vary depending on the goal for word learning and the overall learning goals of the unit or lesson. It is most common to include at least a definiition and an example. Added to this might be a picture or illustration, a synonym or antonym, or a personal sentence. Students can either make vocab cards using index cards and handwriting the info on the card or design them using interactive online tools like Quizlet. By creating and rehearsing with cards, students learn to see relationships among key terms, differentiate between relevant and irrelevant examples of words, and connect critical attributes with words. This word-learning routine also helps students link what they are already familiar with to academic language and concepts.

Characteristics of Effective Teachers of CLD Students

Possess knowledge of language and language development. -Models of language proficiency -Draws on their knowledge to make necessary curricular modifications Possess knowledge of culture -Sensitive to particular dynamics Possess knowledge of subject matter -Draw on a comprehensive command of subject matter, language of instruction, and their relationship to each other to establish goals, design curricula and instruction, and facilitate student learning. -They do so in a manner that builds on students' linguistic and cultural diversity. Provide meaningful learning -Use a variety of approaches that allow students to confront, explore, and understand important and challenging concepts, topics, and issues in meaningful ways. Create multiple paths to knowledge -Provide multiple paths to help students develop language proficiency, learn the central concepts in each pertinent discipline, build knowledge, and strengthen understanding of the disciplines. Create positive learning environments -Caring and support; linguistically and culturally rich; a safe place to take intellectual risks Collaborate with students, teachers, parents, second-language specialists, and administration. -Address disjunctures between school culture and home culture. -Make sure all are aware of and working within established expectations.

Learning Logs

RAFTed assignments, responses to SPAWN prompts, and virtually all the low-stakes writing students produce should be kept in a central repository or log. The generic name "learning log" can become a science log, math log, etc. Includes "on the spot" reflections, connections, summaries, explanations, critiques, and more that content-area and disciplinary teachers might request any time during a lesson. Benefits: Higher test performance, ability to use higher-level reading and thinking strategies, and greater capacity to monitor their understandings.

Basis for prioritizing writing

Recent NAEP: For both 8th and 12th graders, as many scored at the below basic level and another 53% at the basic level, while only 27% had scores in the proficient range and a mere 3% reached the highest achievement category of advanced. This all suggests the need for schools to prioritize high-quality writing instruction for all youth, particularly for those who struggle and for multiethnic, multilinguistic, and multicultural learners, by implementing a sociocultural approach to writing.

Contextual Analysis

Refers to our attempt to understand the meaning of a word by analyzing the meaning of the words that surround it. It is figuring out a word's meaning by how it is used in a particular text. Ex. One way to figure out the meaning of words is to pay attention to extended descriptions or appositivies. Just because a word is representative does not mean that it needs to be taught. If the author has provided strong context clues, such as embedded definitions or synonyms, then the word may not need to be taught. Instead, it is a candidate for teachers to model word solving in which they show students how to use clues to figure out the meaning of the word. -Can students use context clues to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction? In authentic text - text not written purposelly to teach students to determine meanings of unknown words through context - it is often a bigger challenge to acquire knowledge of new vocab through context alone.

Using Prompts for Writing to Learn

Regardless of the prompt, students should be able to answer: -What is my purpose for writing this piece? -Who is my audience? -What is the task? Ideas: Crystal Ball - describe what they think class will be about, what will happen in the next chapter/lesson, etc. Admit slips - write on an assigned topic first thing Found poems - students reread an assigned text and find key phrases that "speak" to them and then arrange these into a poem structure without adding any of their own words. Awards - Recommend someone or something for an award that the teacher has created. Brings to mind the idea of applying for class jobs. Cinquains - A 5 line poem in which the first line is the topic (a noun), the second line is a description of the topic in two words, the third line is three "ing" words, the fourth line is a description of the topic in four words, and the final line is a synonym of the topic word from the first line. Yesterday's news - students summarize the info presented the day before either from a film, lecture, discussion, or reading. Take a stand - students discuss their opinions about a controversial topic such as "Just because we can, should we clone people?" Exit slips - closure activity

RAFT

Role of the writer - Is the author a person, a thing, a concept, an animal? Audience - To whom is the author writing? Form - What format or discourse mode is the author going to use? Topic - What topic is the author writing about?; typically done after content is learned; Grounded in content --> Expository Once students become familiar with the RAFT format, teachers can assign groups of students to different perspectives and then invite group conversations about the topic at hand. Content: Science Ex. R = A sailor at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941 A = people on the mainland F = A telegram T = We've been attacked! Math Ex. R = Isosceles triangle A = My angles F = Email T = Our unequal relationship Literature: R - Romeo A - Lady Capulet F - Letter T - Persuade her to let him marry Juliet.

Value Lines

This discussion technique is especially helpful when preparing to present content that evokes strong responses and controversy and when you want students to take a stand on an issue. Create an imaginary/symbolic line in the classroom. Next, read a statement or make an assertion and ask students to move to one side of the line reserved for those who agree with it and the other side for those who disagree. Then have students turn to the person on their right or left side and discuss why they agree or disagree with the statement. After a bit, have students converse with someone across the line to share why they believe the way they do. At any time, you can ask pairs of opposing conversationalists to give their opinions and ideas. The teacher monitors the conversations and encourages respectful disagreement.

Foster Discipline-Based Writing

Secondary teachers should also be mindful of and plan ways of demonstrating and involving students in writing activities that fit the specific content under study. This type of writing will move students closer to the kind of thinking, problem solving, and communicating engaged in by scientists, historians, mathematicians, engineers, language specialists, and other disciplinary insiders. Virtually every discipline demands the ability to form and defend arguments in writing in one form or another. CCSS expects students in middle and high school to demonstrate proficiency at composing logical arguments linked to major claims and supported by valid reasoning and pertinent evidence. Ex. Math Writing tasks are tied directly to the content under study as well as real world issues. Ex. Inner-city students need above all to see the relevance of their learning in order to remain engaged; as such, mathematical thinking is not solely a cognitive activity but also an important life skill. The teacher helps his students come to appreciate this by constantly making connections between mathematical concepts and processes and solving genuine everyday problems with those particular concepts and processing tools.

Concept Maps

Shape-bound words or phrases that extend from a main idea or concept to show a relationship. The power of the concept map lies in the learner's opportunity to negotiate meaning for themselves! Students should have freedom to construct their own maps even if they vary from the teacher's schema

Turn-to-your-neighbor-and-discuss

Simple implement: before an exploration of new content, ask students to consider a problem or question or make a prediction, then turn to the classmate sitting next to them and discuss a response. Limit the time for a response so students will start thinking quickly and stay on task. When all students are given a brief opportunity to think and say something about a topic with one another, they seem to be better prepared to offer their comments afterward to the whole class.

Transportable words

Some words get used a lot in other situations, including other classes or past and future units of study. If the word is better taught, students may just need a reminder. If it's a word that crosses other content areas, some students may know the word while others do not. -Will the word be used in group discussions? -Will the word be used in writing tasks? -Will the word be used in other content or subject areas?

SPAWN

Special Powers - Students are given the power to change an aspect of the text or topic. Ex. You have the power to change an important aspect leading up to America's entry into WWI. Describe what it is you changed, why you changed it, and the consequences of the change. Problem Solving - Students are asked to write solutions to problems posed or suggested by the texts being read or material being studied. Ex. We have been reading about how most people in the US were isolationists at the start of WWI. How do you think President Wilson an convince his country to enter the war? Alternative Viewpoints - students write about a topic or story from a unique perspective. Ex. Imagine you're the commander of the Lusitania. Write an accurate description in a letter format of your ships being torpedoed. What if? - Similar to special powers, the teacher introduces the aspect of the topic or text that has changed and then asks students to write based on that change. Ex. What might have happened if the Turks hadn't entered the war on the side of the Germans? Next - Students are asked to write in anticipation of what the author will discuss next. Ex. We learned yesterday that Germany has decided to use poison gas as part of trench warfare. What do you think the Allies will do next?

Considerations when selecting words to teach

Structural Analysis: Words with known parts, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes may not need to be taught if the students know how to use word-solving strategies. If they do not, then the teacher can model word solving using morphology or word parts. -Can students use structural analysis to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction? Cognitive Load: Unlike other factors, cognitive load has less to do with the individual word and more to do with the total number of words identified. It's hard to identify the right number of words to be taught, but if students are going to know them at a deep level, there needs to be a reasonable number. Students should be able to learn two or three words per lesson per day, and some students may be able to learn more. -Have I identified too many words for students to successfully integrate?

Overall vocab goals from CCSS

Students need to acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level. Students should be able to demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when encountering an unknown term important to comprehension or expression.

Inside-Outside Circles

Students stand and face each other in two concentric circles. The inside circle faces out and the outside circle faces in. After posing a readiness problem or question, ask students to discuss ideas and answers with the person standing most directly in front of them. At any time you can ask the inner or outer circle to rotate until you say "stop." Then the discussion can begin anew. After a few rotations, we randomly ask individual students to share their own ideas or those of the person(s) with whom they have been discussing. The advantage of this strategy is the variety of inputs possible through simply rotating the circles of students.

Word Maps

Students will become more independent in their vocab learning if they are provided with instruction that gradually shifts responsibility for generating meanings for new words from the teacher to them --> Word Maps are a key strategy here! To build a word map, students write the concept being studied or the word they would like to define in the center box of a map. Using charts and shapes from any word processing program facilitates the design of a map. Because of the checking process they go through in asking questions about the concept, this strategy also fosters self-monitoring and metacognitive abilities - "What are some examples?" A word map is essentially a visual representation of students' thought processes while trying to determine word meanings in context.

Generative Sentences

Students write a sentence based on a given word in a given position of the sentence. These allow the teacher to check students' understanding of common grammar and syntax rules as well as their understanding of the content. Ex. "Write a sentence that starts with the word democracy." "Write a sentence that is at least 10 words long and ends in constitution."

Setting up Students for Successful Notetaking

Teachers have a responsibility to organize their lectures in ways that make it possible to create notes. Tips for making your lesson notetaking friendly: -At the beginning of the lecture, introduce (preview) the sequence of topics and concepts for the day's lesson,. -Ensure that the lesson closely follows the preview and the information is presented in an organized fashion. -Detailed (key) info, such as technical vocab, names, dates, and formulas should be presented visually as well as verbally, and well-timed pauses should be used to give students time to record info. -Signal words and phrases like "this is important" or "be sure to write this down" will alert students to include items in their notes. -Ending the class with a review enhances memory and retention and allows students to make connections to their day's notes.

Self-Assessment of Current Knowledge

Teaching vocab is further complicated by the varying word knowledge levels of individual students. Even when the core reading is held in common, students bring a range of word understanding to the text. Rather than a "one size fits all" approach to vocab instruction, it is wise to assess students before the reading. This awareness is valuable for the students as well because it highlights their understanding of what they know and what they still need to learn to comprehend the reading. Vocab Self-Awareness: Words are introduced at the beginning of a reading or unit, and students complete a self-assessment of their knowledge of the words. Each vocab word is rated according to the student's understanding, including an example and a definition. If they are very comfortable with the word, students give themselves a plus sign. If they think they know but are unsure, they give a check mark. If the word is new to them, they place a minus sign next to the word. Over the course of the reading or unit, students add new info to the chart. The goal is to replace all the check marks and minus signs with a plus sign. Because students continually revisit their vocab charts to revise their entries, they have multiple opportunities to practice and extend their growing understanding of the terms.

Word Analysis

The ability to deconstruct words to ascertain meaning is directly related to a student's knowledge of root words and affixes. By closely investigating the parts of a word, including root words, derivations, and affixes, students can acquire tools for use with unfamiliar words, thus expanding their general and specialized vocabularies. Imagine how useful this is for English learners. Generally begins with free morphemes like port because their meaning is generally accessible. --> Then bound morphemes (ex. porter; portable) Of course, one of the most effective ways to develop students' word analysis skills is through modeling. When teachers come to a word appropriate for this type of analysis, they pause and think aloud, showing students how they used the word parts to determine a word's meaning.

Addressing Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (ClD) Students

The challenges of identify arising out of linguistic differences between students and school are not restricted to immigrant or so-called minority populations. Speakers of any dialect at variance form that of the school and dominant culture are often made to feel incompetent and must cope with stereotypes. Language is often conflated with identity. At the heart of the challenge is the struggle to develop academic literacies through curricula and strategies that are inclusive and affirm the cultural values and individual identities of every adolescent.

Word Schema

The complex web of knowledge of a word, including metalinguistic (inferring meaning through context), morphological (using prefixes, suffixes, and roots), and patterned (understanding the plausibility of a meaning). It also includes understanding the words' use in relation to the contexts, its permutations (port, airport, portly), and your ability to make accurate predictions about the meaning based on these elements. "Knowing a word" is much more than its definition.

Process and Product Functions

The process function (recording the notes) and the product function (reviewing notes later) are both required to create valuable notes. Encoding function - requires students to pay attention to the lecture while they write. External storage function - allows students an opportunity to review their notes - and thus the main ideas presented - before having to use the information on a test, essay, or lab.

The Importance of Word (Vocabulary) Knowledge

The word knowledge gap has a major effect on content learning and reading comprehension. Mastery of the technical language has long been recognized as a predictor of success in any field. In fact, vocab is one of the factors the distinguishes experts in a content area. Not to mention, vocab knowledge impacts writing performance. More words + deeper understanding = better compositions and more fleshed-out arguments. The relationship between reading and vocabulary acquisition is mutually supportive - the more one reads, the more exposure one gets to words, and the broader one's own vocab becomes; the broader one's vocab is, the easier it is to comprehend texts and assimilate new info and ideas. Thus, for struggling readers and ELLs, frequent and wide reading is critical to language development. Writing is also an excellent way to check students' understanding of the content. When students write, especially with technical vocabulary, their teachers can determine which ideas stuck, which are being confused, and which are errors.

Paper vs. Digital Notes

There is evidence that paper and pen/pencil notes are better for long-term learning. In a study of 251 college students, handwritten notes resulted in better learning outcomes. "Although the computer allowed for greater velocity when taking notes, handwriting enhanced students' grades when performing memory tasks." "'Laptop note takers' tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing info and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."

Word Grids/Semantic Feature Analysis

To read successfully in the content areas and the disciplines, students need to have a deep-level understanding of key concepts and terms and the relationships among these important vocab terms. Word grids is a highly effective visual strategy for accomplishing this goal. Involves building a grid in which essential related vocab is listed on one axis of the grid and major features, characteristics, or important ideas are listed on the other axis. Students fill in the grid, indicating the extent to which the keywords possess the listed feature, characteristic, or idea. Once the grid is completed, students are led to discover both the shared and unique characteristics of the vocab words.

Deep knowledge/Contextual Knowledge

Understanding the concept that the words represent; meaning gained from encountering and thinking about words in various textual and language settings (e.g., a novel, an article, a picture, in conversation, on the Internet, etc.) ensures that students know the word and can use it flexibly in a variety of diverse contexts.

Cognitive Load

Unlike other factors, cognitive load has less to do with the individual word and more to do with the total number of words identified. It's hard to identify the right number of words to be taught, but if students are going to know them at a deep level, there needs to be a reasonable number. Students should be able to learn 2-3 words per lesson per day, and some students may be able to learn more. -Have I identified too many words for students to successfully integrate?

Writing Models

Using existing, often previously published, writing as a model for new writing Ex. "I am" poem Templates: I am, I wonder, I hear, I want,... Use of frames "After all, even the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures."

Flow Diagrams

Visual displays that illustrate how concepts are organized in a specific order. These visual displays are ideal for processes, event sequences, and timelines. Arrows show the direction or sequence of the topic being illustrated. Can be used for retelling: setting, character, plot, conflict, climax, resolution, and theme Flowcharts are similar. These use a standardized vocabulary of shapes to describe an operation or procedure. Ex. Oval shapes signal the beginning and ending of the procedure whereas a diamond shape contains questions.

Word Walls

Word walls are alphabetically arranged high-frequency words displayed in a manner that allows easy visual access to all students in a room. It is essential to "do" rather than just display a word wall. --> Ex. Teach the word wall every day through brief interactions around a particular set of words: model writing using the word wall; play games such as Guess the Covered Word; ask students to talk about a selected word with a peer and to note how it is used in the text they are reading. Once taught, the words should stay in the same spot so students can reliably locate them. This is very important for struggling readers because vocab is often a barrier to their learning in content area classes. regular practice with the words in a discipline helps students who struggle. The wall provides comfort and security, reassuring that "there are still a lot of words to learn, and we don't all know them already!"

Understanding the Nature of Word Knowledge

Word-learning strategies and practices should require students to combine new text info with their prior knowledge to yield conceptual understandings of words. Definitional Knowledge = knowing a dictionary-like definition for a word. Important but limited, as students often do not make the connection between the definition of a word and its meaning in a particular text. When students are not making those connections or inferences, their understanding of the text is compromised. Contextual Knowledge = meaning gained from encountering and thinking about words in various textual and language settings (e.g., a novel, an article, a picture, in conversation, on the Internet). Sophisticated readers use a combination of definitional and contextual knowledge to determine word meanings.

Structural Analysis

Words with known parts, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes, may not need to be taught if the students know how to use word-solving strategies. If they do not, then the teacher can model word solving using morphology or word parts. -Can students use structural analysis to determine the correct or intended meaning of the word without instruction?

Language Experience Approach

Works on reading and writing skills by developing an understanding of the speech-to-print function modeled by the group and the teacher. Students have a discussion with the teacher: They first together agree on a message --> the teacher then writes the message for the students (students may copy the message(s) into a writing journal or note-taking guide). This is especially helpful for ELLs

Writing to Learn

Writing to learn differs from learning to write in several important ways: Students "learn to write" throughout their lives (e.g., basic encoding/decoding, grammar skills, essay structure, technical specifications, writing to take a position, etc.) Writing to learn is not a process piece that will go through multiple refinements toward an intended final product. Instead, it is meant to be a catalyst for further learning - an opportunity for students to recall, clarify, and question what they know and what they still wonder about. "Involves getting students to think about and to find the words to explain what they are learning, how they understand that learning, and what their own processes of learning involve." Ex. How would you explain the bombing of Hiroshima to your younger sibling? -Need to consider prior knowledge about the bombing, the cognitive development of your younger siblings, what students have read or listened to about the topic, their own background knowledge, and how to best convey the information in writing.

Considerate Texts

Written and formatted in ways to help intended readers follow the ideas easily; considerate text is achieved when authors: -Effectively communicate their purpose or aim -Consider their audience and provide sufficient background info -Have a focus and share that focus with the readers via an overall organization or macrostructure (e.g., headings, subheadings, main ideas that are linked to each other, etc.) -Have a focus and share that with readers through a microstructure that provides development via examples, anecdotes, supporting details, explanations, and quotations from primary sources. -Employ clear use of graphic elements such as tables, charts, and graphic organizers. -Use a style of writing that is clear and explicit.