Literacy Now

Just as the TILE-SIG series on Reading Today Online provides a place for us to share ideas regarding issues in the field of technology and literacy education, online publications, communities, and blogs can be used in the classroom to foster collaboration and sharing among students and a wider audience. As access to technology and the plethora of digital resources increase, blogging can be a viable tool for increasing collaborative opportunities in the classroom setting.

p: BarbaraLN via photopin

Blogs offer endless possibilities for use in the classroom. Zawilinski (2009) suggests developing students’ higher order thinking skills through reflection, response to literature, and sharing of class news and student work. Students can use blogs as a forum for literature discussion within and beyond the classroom. Having an authentic audience to communicate with about commonly read literature beyond the four walls of the classroom can enhance students’ motivation and engagement with reading.

The use of blogs also allows for cross-curricular connections. Blogging from the perspective of a historical figure allows students to interact with content-area text in meaningful ways. Using a perspective guide (Lapp, Wood, Stover, & Yearta, 2011), the teacher poses several thought-provoking questions for students to respond to from the point of view of a historical figure such as a Union or Confederate soldier. These responses could be shared on students’ blogs where, remaining in character, they could then engage in digital dialogue with their peers.

Using the blog as a space for scientific thinking can also allow students to create and share content specific writing. Students can respond to experiments or pose questions to one another.  Additionally, students can write content-based “I am what I am” poems. See the example below written from the perspective of a plant cell.

I am what I am
I am a plant cell and I’m pretty amazing
I am different than an animal cell
I am green
because of chlorophyll
I maintain structure
because of my cell wall
I take energy from the sun and water
to make my own food
in a process called photosynthesis
I am what I am

In math, students can respond to a thought-provoking “problem of the week” on a class blog. Here, they can create word problems for their peers to complete and can also discuss their problem solving process. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards across much of the United States, students are required to show their thinking when working through math problems. The Smarter Balanced standardized assessments currently require that students are aware of their thinking and can explain how they arrived at a particular answer. Sample math problems from Smarter Balanced can be found here. Encouraging students to create and work through problems on the blog gives students a platform to share their mathematical thinking and reasoning with a wide audience.

Blogs can be used in a myriad of ways across the curriculum while also providing teachers with a form of authentic assessment as students’ thinking and inner conversations are shared (Stover & Yearta, in press). Teachers and students’ peers can reply to posts by leaving comments and asking questions to probe for deeper understanding. Students can also use blogs as a form of ongoing self-assessment. By returning to previously written blog posts, students can set goals and reflect on their growth over time.

Blogs offer a digital landscape for students to interact with their peers within and beyond the four walls of the classroom. Examples of kid-friendly blogs include www.kidblog.org and www.quadblogging.net.

References

Lapp, D., Wood, K.D., Stover, K., & Yearta, L.S. (2011, Nov. 7). “You’re on a ‘Role’ with Perspective Guides” in Rigorous Real-World Teaching and Learning. International Reading Association. Retrieved from /Libraries/Members_Only/Lapp-Fall_2011-Perspective.pdf.

Stover, K. & Yearta, L. S. (in press). Using blogs as formative assessment of reading
comprehension. In K. Pytash, R. Ferdig., & T. Rasinski. (Eds.) Technology and reading: New approaches to literacy competency. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Zawilinski, L. (2009). HOT blogging: A framework for blogging to promote Higher Order
Thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(6), 650-661.

Katie Stover is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She can be contacted at katie.stover@furman.edu.

Lindsay Sheronick Yearta is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, SC.  She can be contacted at lyearta@uscupstate.edu.

I think that the very first test I remember taking in elementary school (beyond the Friday spelling tests) was one on the Spanish explorers and the conquest of America. We had to draw a line matching the explorer with the territory—Cortes with Mexico, Ponce de Leon with Florida, De Soto with the Mississippi and Louisiana. In my memory the Spanish Conquest was a cornerstone of the elementary curriculum.

There are other eras and episodes in history that are taught and re-taught, written about in grave historical texts, threaded through social studies units, and the subject of novels. To even think about writing a novel on some of these subjects is daunting just because they have been written about so much. From an author’s perspective the stories seem almost threadbare or worn out from so much exposure. She thinks to herself, What else might I offer?

And then in this nearly threadbare, worked-over historical tapestry, you find one little maverick thread sticking out at an edge and you just can’t help giving it a tug. What will happen? Will the entire tapestry unravel? Or will the thread itself lead like a trail into new, undiscovered territory?

A little of both happened to me when I tugged on one such thread in the story of the Spanish Conquest. It was that of horses. We have been told and taught in elementary school that the Spanish brought the first horses to our continent; that in February of 1519 Hernando Cortes sailed from Cuba to Mexico. He sailed with eleven ships, five hundred men and sixteen horses. All this is written down in the seminal book by the conquistador/historian Bernal Castillo Diaz who was on that voyage. Interestingly enough Hernando Alonso, the blacksmith for the horses, was a Jew escaping the Inquisition. He was a secret Jew actually or what was called a converso. There were several conversos on board.

I found all this intriguing. Yet what really caught my fancy was a revelation that it is completely erroneous to think of these sixteen horses as the first ones ever to set hoof onto the soil of the New World. There had been horses in the New World but they had disappeared millions of years before the Spaniards had arrived.

So for the horses of Cortes it was not so much an arrival as a return, a homecoming of sorts. In fact it was in the New World that the first horse Eohippus equus, known as the Dawn Horse, had evolved. Of course the Dawn Horse did not look much like the modern horses we know today. It was tiny, no more than ten to twenty inches in height. Over the vastness of time that tiny creature changed and became the progenitor of three other species of horses much closer to what we now consider a modern horse. However, two million years before the arrival of Cortes those horses mysteriously vanished .

This seemed like a story waiting to be told. But then again, how to tell it?

I considered telling it from Hernando Alonso’s point of view—a secret Jew with a deep empathy for horses, fleeing his own native land. Or perhaps I might tell it from the perspective of a young groom for the horses, an African boy who was on the ship as a slave. Finally, I thought, Why not tell the story of the Spanish coming to the New World from the horses’ point of view.

At first I was rather intimidated. I have written so many books about animals now—owls in The Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, wolves in The Wolves of The Beyond series. But all these animals were completely wild. Indeed I set those series in post-human times. There was no contact or involvement with humans.

p: Randy C. Bunney via Wikimedia

But the history of horses is inextricably involved with humans. Horses were domesticated for centuries. Oh yes, I know there are ‘wild’ ones, mustangs, but in North America they are nonetheless the descendants of the horses that came to America with the Spaniards. To say they were “wild” is not entirely accurate. They were “feral.” That means they were not born in a wild state but only became wild after they escaped from captivity or domestication. Therefore they had to actually learn how to live wild, to forage, to shed the gaits they were trained to trot in and to gallop without shoes.

It is an odd angle perhaps from which to tell this uniquely American story, but as I said it is an alternate history. I truly felt there were themes and subtexts concerning questions of wildness and freedom that I could only explore from this peculiar perspective of the horses who had been brought to serve in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.

Winston Churchill once said that history is written by the victors. THE ESCAPE, the first book of my new Horses of the Dawn series, is in one sense a novel of alternate history in that it is not being told from the perspective of the victors or the vanquished, but of the horses. I think of it as an equine retelling of the coming of horses to the New World that for them was ultimately a homecoming after millions upon millions of years.

Kathryn Lasky is the author of more than 100 books for children, adults, and young adults, including the New York Times bestseller series "Guardians of Ga'Hoole", basis for Warner Brothers recent film "Legend of the Guardians". She has won awards including a Newbery Honor, New York Times Best Books, Boston Globe Hornbook Award, and the Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award for the body of her non-fiction work and the Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers Literature. She has twice won the National Jewish Book Award.

Kathryn lives in Cambridge, Ma. With her husband Christopher G Knight who has photographed many of the nonfiction books.

BALL DON’T LIE (Delacorte Press, 2005)
Written by Matt de la Peña
Grades 9-12

Sticky is a young teenager trying to find his way and make sense of a world where he feels alone. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which embarrasses him, so he just can’t help doing certain things over and over until they “feel” right. He no longer answers to his given name, Travis Reichard, and his memories of his life before his mother died are distant, confusing, and not always happy.

He has been in four foster homes since his mother died, but his home-away-from-home is a gym called Lincoln Rec where he goes every weekend to play basketball. Sticky had to earn his way to play in the Saturday games, and he is a force to contend with on the court, where he experiences every move on the court in meaningful detail. His friendships at Lincoln Rec and his girlfriend Anh-thu help him along the way, even though his path is difficult.

BALL DON’T LIE is a moving story, rich in imagery and description. An excellent book to study with adolescents, BALL DON’T LIE offers up many topics for discussion including basketball as a passion, what it entails to become the best that one can be regardless of the obstacles, how to matter when it seems no one has your best interest at heart, working through ethical dilemmas when you have nothing, and how to proceed when finding oneself on a difficult path.

Cross-Curricular Connections: English Language Arts, Social Studies, Health

Ideas for Classroom Use:

What Makes a Person?

There are descriptions of different characters on pages 45, 76, 120, and 121, beginning with the phrase “he (or a character’s name) is:” that can be used to start a discussion of what makes up a person. Can a person change from moment to moment? How important are physical characteristics? Using these sections from the book, have students write a paragraph about who they are right now, in this moment, using the format de la Peña uses.

To continue this lesson further, have students transform their paragraphs into a picture blog using https://jux.com. This blogging platform offers a clear, screen-sized picture with no other “clutter” on the screen unless you decide to put words there yourself. Students can decide to put the words they have written in their initial paragraphs on each picture of their presentation, or they can let the pictures speak for themselves. Students can use pictures of themselves or pictures of everyday objects they used to describe themselves.

Figurative Language

BALL DON’T LIE is full of powerful imagery, metaphors, and similes. As a pre-reading activity, teach a lesson on figurative language and use synectic boxes to learn about similes. Place students in groups and use the following chart with basketball terms, everyday items, or items of interest to the students. After completing the chart, have students discuss how the existing examples could be changed to create metaphors, and have students create new metaphors to share with the class. Instruct students to identify and keep notes of similes and metaphors as they read the book.

Similes are as easy as pie!

Socioeconomic Status: A Race to the Wall

Dante has a conversation with Sticky on page 228 about the injustice in life. “The laws we operate under are set up by those who have everything, in order to protect themselves from the ones who have nothing.” He goes on to make a comparison of life in America to a race to a wall in which some people have much more of a head start than others. Begin by doing a close reading of that section of the book. After reading, begin a class conversation in which students consider how one’s background, experiences, and resources can affect success.

The Ethics of Stealing: A Moral Thief?

There are several references and a few conversations throughout the book about stealing. Sticky thinks that stealing from an individual is wrong; however, he justifies stealing from a store as acceptable. On page 123, Chuck tells Sticky “Stealin is stealin, Stick. Don’t matter if it’s from a store or some little old lady, it’s the exact same state of condition.” As a pre-reading activity, have students read the background and the ethical questions posed on this ethics blog.

Have students comment on their thoughts on the ethical dilemma on a private class blog (www.edublogs.com). As a post-reading activity, have the class re-visit the blog and discuss the ethics of stealing as it relates to Sticky’s situation. Is Sticky right, is Chuck correct, or is the answer more nuanced?

Additional Texts:

More books that deal with the themes of basketball and coming of age.

Alexie, Sherman (2009). THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Alphin, Elaine Marie (2011). THE PERFECT SHOT. Carolrhoda Books.
Deuker, Carl (2009). NIGHT HOOPS. HMH Books for Young Readers.
Deuker, Carl (2008). ON THE DEVIL’S COURT. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Fink, Mark (2011). STEPPING UP. Westside Books.
Lupica, Mike (2007). MIRACLE ON 49TH STREET.Puffin.
Lupica, Mike (2007). SUMMER BALL.Puffin.
Lupica, Mike (2012). TRUE LEGEND.Puffin.
Mackel, Kathy (2010). BOOST. Speak.
Myers, Walter Dean (2014). HOOPS. Ember.
Quick, Matthew (2012). BOY 21. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Additional Resources:

Random House Readers Guide
Random House has compiled a reader’s guide for four of de la Peña’s books. Page 6 offers many thought provoking questions about BALL DON’T LIE.

Raise your hand if you’d like to create a “picture-perfect” classroom—a place where your students are engaged and responding eagerly. A place where you hear the “Oh, man! We have to clean up already?” comments when your students just want to keep going. Can this classroom truly exist in today’s high-tech, fast-paced world?

p: Enokson via photopin cc

While the “picture-perfect” classroom may seem like more of a dream than a reality, it is certainly not impossible. At the end of each day, teachers want to feel confident that their students are going home with a sense of wonder and accomplishment. Educational games—desktop computers and tablets included—provide effective teaching tools that can motivate students and captivate their interests to foster this environment.

So, how do you get started?

1. Begin by personalizing the relationships with students.
Establish personal connections and build a strong rapport with your students at the start. From the moment Kaylee walks into the room, acknowledge her with a high five and a “Good morning.” Spend time in small groups to ask Tommy and Stephen, who play together at recess, what they spend their time doing at home. Plop down next to Sheila, who never speaks up in class, and find out what excites her. Personalizing relationships with your students from the start sets a positive tone, sets expectations, and helps them feel connected. After all, kids are more absorbed in the material if the classroom culture is welcoming and expectations are clear.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Educational gaming personalizes the learning environment for your students. It does this by offering approaches that will not only meet their learning styles, but also their individual interests as well.

2.  Incorporate objectives faithfully.
When planning a game-based learning lesson, teachers must adhere to learning objectives and goals. “Playing video games to learn” sounds like fun to anyone, but administrators and parents will only buy into it if the games are intentionally aligned to the curriculum.

How does this impact e-gaming?
According to nonprofit research firm SRI International, children are 90 percent more engaged when they are actively participating in an activity, as compared to simply reading. Educational games increase active engagement in the lesson. E-gaming ties the skills to their keenest interests, which, in turn, initiates digging further into an interest without being told to do so.

3. Avoid reinventing the wheel.
While teachers often come up with their own creative ways to integrate technology into lesson plans, online resources such as Submrge, Graphite, Edshelf and Edutopia provide inspiration for teachers. Resources like these are dedicated to empowering teachers with helpful hints, imaginative ideas, and lesson plans to ignite student learning without reinventing the wheel.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Today’s tech-savvy kids will be more engaged through digital-learning technologies. Using readily available resources will allot you more time to integrate the standards into your day. 

4. Organize small group stations.
Just as there are many philosophies in education, there are differing opinions about small group instruction, as well. However, if specific expectations are established from the beginning, you’ll avoid a classroom management nightmare.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Placing students in small groups enables you to adjust gradually to the use of e-gaming in the classroom. Begin with three to four stations, depending on your class size, focusing at least one of those stations on using digital learning tools.

Suggested stations include:
Station 1: Teacher instructed– Personalized learning enables teachers to key in on learning styles.
Station 2: Technology integration – Skill-based programs on a tablet or computer.
Station 3: Independent study – Students work independently to accomplish a task.
Station 4: Small group collaboration – Students collaborate to complete tasks.

Overwhelmed yet? Start small.
Since you’ve read this far, you’re already interested in enriching your curriculum with digital learning. While it may seem overwhelming at first, feel free to start small. Providing your students with just a few minutes of digital learning and increasing the amount each day channels their energies and personalizes their learning. With practice and patience, your students will be performing like critical thinkers and problem solvers in no time at all.

Lindsey Hill is a two-time Elementary Teacher of the Year honoree and veteran teacher of 14 years. As the lead for reading engagement innovation at Evanced Solutions, LLC, she explores current trends in reading innovation to aid in the development of solutions that increase reading proficiencies among our youth. By spending time with parents, teachers, librarians and students in and out of elementary classrooms, Lindsey is able to demonstrate how kids can embrace their interests to learn and read proficiently.

Much in the wide world has changed since I began teaching in 1991—landlines have given way to iPhones, the Soviet Union has dissolved, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been rebooted several times over. Yet much has remained the same. In 2009, when I returned to classroom teaching after spending ten years away as an educational consultant, I came back to a school where I was required to use a core-reading (or basal) program, a program very similar to the one I was required to use almost 20 years earlier.

In 2010, after one year of using this basal program, my frustrations were many. Few phonic patterns were taught to mastery. Spelling was not strongly integrated with writing. There was a dearth of authentic reading and writing activities and too many worksheets. Students had no choice in what they read, and there was little time for them to practice reading on their independent levels. The list goes on and I haven’t even mentioned my struggling readers’ slow rate of achievement or the creativity and professional control the teacher’s manual stripped from me.

After listening to me gripe for months about the basal, my mother, a retired literacy professional, sent me THE DAILY FIVE and encouraged me to pitch it to my building’s administration as a replacement model. However, our district, just like many others, had made a commitment to their very expensive program. I knew they wouldn’t allow me to simply cast it aside.

Simultaneously, while guest lecturing to pre-service teachers at a local university, speaking on the joys of guided reading, browsing bins, and independent writing routines, two students said to me, “Yes, that’s all well and good, but in our school we use a basal program. We’re not allowed to implement any of the cool stuff you’re showing us.”

All of this led me to wonder, “Is there a way to meld the progressive practices I believe in with the traditional core-reading program I am required to use?” Personally, I couldn’t stomach the basal, yet I couldn’t get rid of it. And so I approached my district’s curriculum director and asked for permission to modify and supplement the reading program in one 3rd grade classroom. My goal was twofold: 1) maintain my sanity during upcoming years of teaching, and 2) increase the reading achievement of my struggling readers. Thankfully the reply was “go ahead.”

I based the new program on what I considered to be the four essential elements of any effective reading program:

1. Time for extended reading
2. Time for extended writing
3. Attention to the big ideas in reading and writing
4. Use of effective teaching practices

As my cooperating 3rd grade teacher and I taught with this modified and supplemented basal reading program, and as I watched it unfold over the year, I saw struggling readers experience success more often and reach higher levels of achievement than they had in the previous year. I became excited by the idea that I could write a book about this “bridge” program, bringing a message to other basal using teachers (which, I found out, were the majority of reading teachers in the United State) that said, “If you must use a basal, you can make it better.” What exactly does better mean? It means more interesting and engaging to all readers, more effective for the lowest and highest achieving readers and writers, and more satisfying to masterful teachers.

That 3rd grade program planted the seeds for SUPER CORE! TURBOCHARGING YOUR BASAL READING PROGRAM WITH MORE READING, WRITING, AND WORD WORK. Its most important messages are: 1) a core-reading program should never be and can never be a complete reading program because it simply isn’t flexible enough, powerful enough, or motivating enough to enable all children to reach important reading benchmarks, and 2) by subtracting a few components, adding a few research-based reading strategies and routines, and becoming mindful of a few instructional techniques, teachers and administrators can create a much more effective reading program.

During my years as a consultant, I met reading teachers who knew these messages to be true. But because most were not permitted to make changes to their district’s publisher-created core-reading program, they had to “fly below the radar,” making instructional changes clandestinely, tucking in progressive reading routines whenever possible.

Today, approximately 75% of U.S. elementary schools still use a basal program (a.k.a. core-reading program) to provide reading instruction. Are these programs effective? If no, is it possible for districts to continue to use them, but make them more effective? If so, what are the ways in which these programs can be made more effective? And finally, what instruction and leadership roles for teachers can be created within a basal system that honor their professionalism and expertise and increase their students’ chances of reaching critical reading benchmarks?

My desire to try and answer some of these questions prompted me to write SUPER CORE. Now, with the book written and three years of 3rd grade data in my spreadsheets, I realize there are ways to build bridges between the progressive reading models used by roughly 25% of the country’s teachers and the less-than-effective traditional basal programs used by everybody else. Perhaps discussions on how to meld the old with the new will be of use to districts as they begin to implement the Common Core State Standards. And perhaps SUPER CORE will bring hope to teachers who are required to use their school's core (or basal) reading program...but don't love it.

My personal belief is that school systems that exhibit a willingness to modify and supplement can create primary reading programs (K-3) capable of boosting 85% to 95% of third grade children to independent third grade reading and writing levels. Additionally, I believe that intermediate grade basal programs (4-6) can be made more effective even as these primary programs are built. If districts and administrators avoid pendulum swings, build programs in systematic ways, stick to the common consensus on what works (as identified in the research literature of the last 40 to 50 years), and empower their most expert teachers to organize, create, and lead, then more effective and more satisfying-to-use reading programs can be built on the bones of a basal in three to five years.

Mark Weakland is a mild-mannered Title I reading specialist in Western Pennsylvania; his alter ego, however, is faster than a fluent reader, stronger than a metacognitive strategy, and able to leap outdated vocabulary instruction in a single bound.