29+Oct+10+Meeting+Log


 * Roundtable Discussion of Individual Goals **: (Computers not available for this session. Mike, Jasmine, Janine, Susan R, Trace, and Susan V. present. We will hear from Bobbie, Leslie, Marilyn, Andrea, and Mona at the next session.)

Jasmine (MS Reading Specialist) English teachers are not sure what to do to teach literacy but all content teachers are looking to them. I want to investigate the common language used to promote literacy.

Mike ( 4th grade) Using Tony Stead work on integrating content into classrooms – Typically people think of 4th grade content as social studies or science. In 4th grade we no longer teach kids how to read a text book they are reading to learn content. I want to investigate key word strategies – highlighting key words and putting together main ideas.

SusanV (HS Special Education) I provide academic support across High School curriculum. I am interested in summarizing and paraphrasing as a technique to learn content curriculum and how to practice these skills without plagiarizing. Vocabulary barriers frustrate HS teachers in the level of student ability.

SusanR (HS Special Ed/AIS) I teach 9-12 grades and a resource room for academic intervention in history and English. I am frustrated with students interacting with text. I asked elementary teachers if they worked out of the text and most don’t outside of skimming for vocabulary. Most struggle with dense text. Usual assignment is to read an article but they have nothing to hook it to. I currently use summarizing and text formatting to help students with content reading but I want to give them more tools to be successful.

Andy (HS Earth Science/Forensic) I want to be involved in this group to learn how to use more writing to learn science. I think writing is an underused content tool. I hope this study group will help me stay involved in the writing project. I want to learn more tools to help students learn content from a book or an article effectively.


 * Discussion: **

A major difficulty for learning from text is that students can’t highlight them and that reduces interaction with the text. The push is to use text on line and not provide hard copies. This also limits text interaction. Some participants discussed the ability to highlight and make notes that can be saved online. Most of our group is unfamiliar with this practice. Many expressed an interest in investigating this technology.


 * Definition for academic literacy proposed by our reading,**

//“…Academic literacy is usually defined as the kind of reading proficiency required to construct the meaning of content-area texts and literature encountered in school. It also encompasses the kind of reading proficiencies typically assessed on state-level accountability measures, such as the ability to make inferences from text, to learn new vocabulary from context, to link ideas across texts, and to identify and summarize the most important ideas or content within a text. Notice that the definition of academic literacy includes not only the ability to read text for initial understanding but also the ability to think about its meaning in order to answer questions that may require the student to make inferences or draw conclusions. Our definition of academic literacy also includes the ability to learn from text, in the sense that full comprehension of text meaning usually results in new understandings or new learning. “// We noted that the definition is limited to taking information in – what about putting it out? Susan also noted that it doesn’t address switching from one topic to another. Trace felt this is a very discipline specific skill.

**Literacy Recommendations:**
We took a few minutes to reflect in writing about one or all of the recommendations discussed in Section One of the reading. Then we discussed our writings as a group.
 * Janine would like to spend more time with the common features critical to successful strategy instruction. How can I build in more discussion to help students become more aware of cognitive processes? I need to model more before I unleash a strategy on students. I want to create more meaningful opportunities to learn content using place based student driven work.
 * Mark found the recommendation to increase open sustained discussion resonated with his classroom work. He uses text and students read it together. They use lots of sources, videos, magazines, song club. Kids generate information and he facilitates the group learning by charting facts they gather. This creates more active learning with a lot of discussion. Readers workshops allow students to gather information and writer workshops allow them to write about they learned. He finishes his units with a Socratic seminar where essential questions are addressed.
 * Trace liked Recommendation 4 – increase student motivation and engagement with reading. She feels strong at designing experiences that are motivating but struggles with the reality that not all will be motivated so how to reach the reluctant ones. She trusts the experience enough to try it. She wants students to feel safe. Safety needs to come before motivation.
 * Susan finds that reading is unnatural to most students but many teachers are not aware of this. For many it is hard and will always be hard. She wants to help students manage the curriculum. Most skim because that is all they can do. She finds success in Individualizing the work but this is very difficult to do in classroom.
 * Susan likes the recommendation to give explicit instruction of strategies. For years all content teachers wanted a reading teacher. Content area HS teacher don’t perceive it as their job to teach students how to interact with text nor know how to do it. She would love to see on conference day strategies of reading shared with content teachers. She can have students try the strategies in the resource class but they need more than just one period. Janine encouraged Susan to show the group how she demonstrates these strategies one and one and then let us try to modify the technique for the entire class.
 * Jasmine feels all teachers need to provide explicit instruction for reading. She works with SS and science to incorporate particular skills that help teach the content. Teachers object to teaching literacy but do see good results. She teaches note taking skills and models them. Students are expected to watch videos and take notes. What happens is a special ed teacher works with special ed student with a closed sheet. The special ed teacher writes the answers on the board so how does that help? If we give students the answers, then they don’t become effective learners. Teachers are trying things but trying all strategies at once so too much too fast for students to learn or teachers to do it. Need to slow down and work with relevance and how to incorporate it. Example is thinking maps – must be taught how to think before use maps and they weren’t so instead of facilitating learning it slowed it. Students need to taught why use the tool and when; maybe teachers need this too.
 * We need to train students how to take notes and what does it look like. A discrete skill for notes is active listening, so break down skills with explicit instruction. Some teachers are allowing time to stop and jot or draw the textual information so the information is more meaningful. At the end of the lesson they reflect on what was learned.
 * Trace noted that Nicole, a participant from last year, investigated journals as a means of reflection in science.


 * Understanding the HVWP and NWP**
 * We watched Bonnie’s digital story about the HVWP and we discussed what we noticed.
 * One question that arose concerned opportunities for collegiality and resources to writing to available through the HVWP. Trace highlighted the HVWP’s writing retreats for TCs. At these retreats professors come and work with participants to help publish their work. It is one of the CAS’s goals to have our teacher research on content published.
 * Others noted that some people are doing writing that is not about teaching. Andy discussed how the model of writing at the summer institute help her model how to bring writing into a classroom.
 * Mark wondered along line of how to take this work to our district? Trace responded that the HVWP has a couple of places where this occurs. One is the professional writing retreat and the other is the opportunity to present at Sat workshop. Janine spoke of the HVWP’s desire to do more professional development. Literacy is everywhere.
 * The CAST want all teachers to see themselves as literacy teachers but to do this we need to be able fo communicate what is literacy in a variety of content settings. Our past study teams have found a strong connection between technology and literacy.

Janine showed her digital story centered on Minnewaska and glaciations. She showed student writing that occurred prior to the digital story, after the digital story and then once again after the students visited Minnewaska. After looking at the student writing, we noticed:
 * Evidence of Content Learning Using Digital Stories:**
 * The difference in the confidence of the writing is very evident. After the digital story and then after the visit, students are using more complex language and sentences.
 * We discussed how science writing is different, very evidence based. There is a need to write in each discipline.
 * None of the students noted the U shaped valley found in glaciations.
 * The digital story allows another chance for students to engage with the vocabulary.
 * The digital story reaches different modalities. It allows layering of info with video and visit.
 * The digital story created a story modality for students to learn. It created a place to put the vocabulary that made sense. Janine stated that the student writing generated after watching the digital story and then visiting Minewaska was much richer than the writing students wrote who visited Minnewaska without first viewing the digital story.