Hard and Soft Skills, References + 4 more items

Here are invites...

Hard and Soft Skills
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_5dhbmgfgw&invite=732297991

References
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_6g6t34cfx&invite=1193081546

Resume Bill Heacock
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_2fm5jmnff&invite=1298460219

I Believe
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_1fvxwt8hm&invite=1993795226

Work philosophy
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_4gf58rndf&invite=190296341

Strengths and Skills
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtctf76_3pwcs6shg&invite=1645931976

Book Blog

How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students
By Susan M. Brookhart
Book review by Jacob K Hogan
Chapter 1 Feedback: An Overview
In chapter 1, the main focus of the chapter is on feedback that comes from the teacher to the student and is based on the student’s work. It also explores the concepts of formative assessment and the role that feedback plays in evaluating and encouraging student performance. Formative assessment provides information to both the teachers and the students about how students are doing relative to the goals of the class. It is mentioned that giving good feedback is a skill that teachers need to master as part of good formative assessment. The book reiterates that providing good feedback helps students learn to formulate new goals for themselves and a plan of action devised by the students to carry this new plan out and ultimately achieve their goals. The book goes on to say that addressing both cognitive and motivational factors acts in a “double-barreled” manner. The student is then able to process what information they need and then understand where they are in their learning while also thinking of what to do next to achieve their goal. Good feedback acts to stimulate the students thought process to attain their goal on their own without too much interference from the teacher; it acts essentially as a motivational tool to jumpstart their thought process in new directions with the ultimate goal of arriving at the correct answer.
For feedback to be a positive part of the learning experience, students need to see constructive criticism as a good thing and to also understand that learning cannot occur without practice. If the classroom culture is to always “get things right” then something that needs to be improved is seen as “wrong”. The chapter asserts that if the class culture values finding and using suggestions for improvement, students will be able to use feedback, plan and execute steps for improvement, and in the long run reach further than they could if they were stuck with assignments on which they could already get an A without any new learning. It is not fair to provide feedback and not give students a chance to use it. It is also not fair to the students to present them with what seems like constructive criticism and then use it against them in a grade or final evaluation.
What the research shows:
In early studies positive feedback was considered “positive reinforcement” and negative feedback was considered “punishment”. Both of these affect learning meaning feedback was theorized to be effective in practice. The conflict with this theory is that not all feedback is actually effective. Over the past 100 years of research, scholars have tried to determine what makes some feedback effective and some ineffective. The more recent research emphasizes the student’s role in the feedback process. What is now realized is that the message sent is filtered through the student’s perception (influenced by prior knowledge, experiences, motivation…etc) as it becomes the message ultimately received. In Butler and Winne’s research review, it showed that both external feedback (teacher feedback) and internal feedback (student self evaluation) affect student knowledge and beliefs. These two aspects together assist students with self regulation: which governs their next learning goals by using tactics and strategies used to reach these goals. The important thing to realize here is that teacher feedback is essentially input, that together with the students own internal input, will help the student realize where they are regarding their personal learning goals they want to achieve.
A meta-analysis was done by Kluger and DeNisi of studies of feedback. Their findings were very interesting in that the average effect of feedback intervention on performance was 0.41. This indicates that across all the studies the groups receiving feedback outperformed their control groups by .41 standard deviations or the equivalent of moving from the 50th to the 66th percentile on a standardized test. It is also interesting to consider that more than 38 percent of the effect sizes from the studies that went into the .41 average were negative. This means that the control groups outperformed feedback groups. It was ultimately determined that the effects of feedback depend on the nature of the said feedback. Through a lens of formative assessment based questions, it was then recognized of the importance of feedback in the formative process. Feedback can thus be determined to be the information that drives the process or sequentially halt the process.
Hattie and Timperley proposed a model about “feedback questions” which is composed of four levels: (1) feedback about the task (such as feedback about whether answers were right or wrong or directions to get more information), (2) feedback about the processing of the task (such as feedback about strategies used or strategies that could be used), (3) feedback about self-regulation (such as feedback about student self-evaluation or self-confidence), and (4) feedback about the student as a person (such as pronouncements that a student is "good" or "smart"). It was found that feedback regarding the quality of the work and also about the process of the work was most effective. Feedback that pulls the student’s attention to their self regulation strategies or to their individual abilities as learners can be very effective if students hear the feedback in a way that makes them realize they will get the results they want if they expand their effort and attention towards the task at hand.
Feedback strategies and Content
Figure 1.1 sums up the strategic choices for feedback while advocating comments for each based on the research. Figure 1.2 summarizes the kinds of choices you have about the content of your feedback and makes recommendations based on the research. The link is provided here http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108019/chapters/Feedback@_An_Overview.aspx
Feedback and Grading:
Research has been done over the past 50 years regarding the effects of grades versus personal comments on student performance. In Page’s research it was found that student achievement was higher in groups receiving prespecified comments instead of letter grades and even higher for students whom received free comments written by the teacher indicating that writing comments was more conducive to learning than just giving letter grades. While in these early studies about comments, the feedback was evaluative or judgmental and not descriptive.
Bulter and Nisan investigated the effects of grades, comments, or no feedback. They used two tasks to be measured; quantitative and divergent-thinking tasks. Students whom received descriptive comments on their initial work performed better in both quantitative and divergent-thinking tasks the second time around while also displaying more motivation. The students who received grades the first time around performed well quantitatively but poorly on the divergent task on the final test. And finally students whom received no feedback performed poorly in both the second time around while also being less motivated. This means that the comments used were descriptive and provided more motivation on future work; it also provided interest in the task which is found in effective self-regulated learners.
Chapter 2: Types of Feedback and Their Purposes
This chapter basically touches on various feedback strategies like; timing, amount, mode, and audience. Timing consists of giving immediate or delayed feedback in which students can hear and use your input. For this to be effective, timing needs to occur in a window when the students are still mindful of the topic, assignment, or performance in question. The most important point is the feedback needs to come while the students still have a reason to work on the learning target. For effectiveness it is required that the teacher put themselves in the student’s place to determine the most effective timeline for feedback. Assignments need to be returned promptly i.e. the following day to enable the student to reflect on their mistakes while the material is still fresh. Providing immediate oral response to student misconceptions and questions of fact is a great example of good timing.
The amount of feedback is said to be the toughest to gauge effectively. For real learning to take place, the usable amount of information that students already know must be connected with their mistakes so that the feedback essentially allows them to move on to the next level. As a teacher you do not want to fix all of their mistakes but provide a conduit for them to get the point across. This requires deep knowledge of the following: 1) the topic in general and your learning target 2) developmental learning progressions for those topics 3) the individual students. The proper amount is referred to as the “goldilocks principle” meaning not too much and not too little.
The mode refers to written or oral feedback to the students. It is important to provide oral feedback if the student does not read well or the topics are very broad for the amount the students could read on the subject. This process involves utilizing a teachable moment for the students by providing comments on their work to better perform on what they already know the next time around. If teachers write too much or comments that students cannot interpret, the purpose of positive feedback is all but lost. Teachers need to be careful about how they deliver the mode and to what degree for this type of feedback to be effective.
Audience involves reaching out to the proper students with specific feedback. You want to communicate to each individual student to assure them that you care about their success. Each piece of feedback is tailored to each individual student; this requires a deep understanding of your student body to be able to pinpoint your comments in the appropriate context. This also works for groups of students struggling with the same problems. You can address the class as a whole to provide a group learning experience therefore utilizing time more efficiently.
Questions: How often should a teacher provide “extra credit” for assignments that are corrected based on instructor feedback? How can a teacher identify if a student sees positive reinforcement as them getting “wrong or incorrect answers” when we are trying to help them? What can a teacher do if they are running a class with 25 or more students, how can a teacher possibly contour their feedback to each individual student when there are so many to account for?

book blog

Educating Everybody's Children: Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners edited by Robert W. Cole
Book review by Greg Moman
Chapter 1. Educating Everybody's Children: We Know What Works—And What Doesn't
Chapter one shows many different areas that can be improved on to help students from all backgrounds in the classroom. Some of the outlined areas are Attitudes and Beliefs, Institutional Practices, and Universal Teaching Strategies. Chapter starts out by stating that good instruction works for all students regardless of background, social economic statue, and any other possible classification for a student. The author does also mention about how the poor are often left out of receiving the best instruction and how teachers who teach the poor are not held accountable as much as they should.
Attitudes and beliefs cover so many different areas of the educational world. This section of the chapter highlights the need to have the same expectation for all students and to make sure that all students are treated equal regardless of any classifying factor (SES, race, etc). There is also a mention of the decreased open racism, but also there is an increase of less open racism that may cause more problems for students down the road. Part of the problem with indirect racism may be caused by lacking an understanding of culture and the differences between cultures. The author also mentions about trying to develop and understanding of student's culture to be able to accurately look for verbal signs, learning styles, and identifying student's strengths in the classroom. Each of these elements needs to be combined to help have the same standard and expectation of all students.
Another challenge that we may not think of facing students is the practices schools have setup for placing students, access, consequences, inappropriate instruction, disciplinary practices, parent involvement, impact of testing, and lack of native language instruction. Each of these areas, impact a student's daily life and need to be considered when looking at ways to help all students. Each of the reasons mentioned above create a challenge for students improve academically and create barriers inside the school most students are not able to overcome.
The last part of this chapter provides sixteen practices for universal teaching strategies. A few of the ones I found most interesting were using a multicultural teaching perspective, emphasize brain-compatible instruction, alternative assessments, activate students' prior knowledge, and involve students actively. Each of these mention techniques can be used by any teacher regardless of the subject matter. I found the common thread in most of the mentioned elements is being active with the students, showing an interest, and providing simple ways for students to be actively participating.
The emphasize brain compatible instruction was a very interesting topic and had a good list to consider for the possible conditions for this type of method.

1. " Create a nonthreatening climate.

2. Input lots of raw material from which students can extract patterns—a vast array of activities, aided by an ample supply of materials, equipment, and print and audiovisual resources.

3. Emphasize genuine communication in talking, listening, writing, and reading as ways to interact with other people.

4. Encourage lots of manipulation of materials. Students need to be in command and able to push things around, encouraging them to work toward goals and explore a range of means.

5. Emphasize reality. By using problems, examples, and contacts drawn from the "real world" rather than contrived exercises, texts, worksheets, and basal readers, students can see the real value of their own learning.

6. Address learning activities to actual, productive uses.

7. Respect natural thinking, including intuitive leaps, a grasp of patterns (as in number tables or good writing), and aesthetic and nonverbal interests and activities."

Chapter 2. Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners

by Marietta Saravia-Shore

This chapter is about poor and minority students and test scores. There is also the mention of how expectations again affect students from both of these categories. This chapter as outlines some areas that are in of review like facing the achievement gap, closing the achievement gap, embracing diversity, educating diverse students, and strategies for linguistically diverse students.

Facing the achievement gap may not seem like that big of a deal in one school or another, but almost 1.2 million students in 2006 did not graduate from high school that should have. Urban school districts have a graduation rate of 60% which is 9% lower than the national average. Schools with a high level of segregated populations of students have a graduation rate of only 56.2 %. It was also estimated that 9 million young people between the age of 5 and 17 in America spoke another language besides English in their homes. These statistics show are a great insight into many of the challenges and performances that schools have.

"Regardless of race, the children in married couple families are much less likely to be poor (about 8%) while 29% of white children and 52% of black and Hispanic children who live with a single mother are likely to be poor. Almost half of these single mothers are working, usually at very low-wage jobs. (pp. 4–5)"

Part of looking into the challenges facing schools is to now look at ways to close the achievement gap. This process is outlined with programs like head start; consider the full emotional needs of a student, physical needs, family, and strengths. The problem when considering how to close the gap is the lack of resources and many students do not receive extra help and support until later in their schooling careers. This time lost is often hard to make up later in school. Closing the achievement gap also requires showing sensitive and reaffirming gender, race, culture, and linguistic heritage.
Embracing diversity is also part of the mentioned parts of closing the achievement gap. Embracing diversity is another area outline in this chapter and provided 12 keys for teaching students from all backgrounds.

1. Teachers have a clear sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
2. Teachers communicate high expectations for the success of all students and a belief that all students can succeed.
3. Teachers are personally committed to achieving equity for all students and believe that they are capable of making a difference in their students' learning.
4. Teachers have developed a bond with their students and cease seeing their students as "the other."
5. Schools provide an academically challenging curriculum that includes attention to the development of higher-level cognitive skills.
6. Instruction focuses on students' creation of meaning about content in an interactive and collaborative learning environment.
7. Teachers help students see learning tasks as meaningful.
8. Curricula include the contributions and perspectives of the different ethnocultural groups that compose the society.
9. Teachers provide a "scaffolding" that links the academically challenging curriculum to the cultural resources that students bring to school.
10. Teachers explicitly teach students the culture of the school and seek to maintain students' sense of ethnocultural pride and identity.
11. Community members and parents or guardians are encouraged to become involved in students' education and are given a significant voice in making important school decisions related to programs (such as resources and staffing).
12. Teachers are involved in political struggles outside the classroom that are aimed at achieving a more just and humane society.
It is important to remember to be open and look for ways to learn about student's culture and try to integrate a multicultural perspective when creating lessons.
Part of embracing a diverse student population is to consider how best to educate a diverse student population. Some of the critical issues are listed below.

* The level of the family's socioeconomic resources is associated with success in school but is conditioned by other factors, such as immigrant status.
* Prior education in the country of origin is associated with success in school.
* The age of entrance into the United States affects success in the English language, as well as other academic areas, but the degree of success is also conditioned by literacy in the home language. Those children who enter the United States before puberty will have an advantage in school.
* The longer the length of the stay in the United States, the greater the success in school. Unfortunately, this effect is offset by a reduction of motivation that comes through acculturation into the American society.
* Intact family and home support systems are associated with success in school. Not surprisingly, unaccompanied minors and students from single-parent families are at greater risk of failure in school.

Part of educating a diverse student's population is to also recognize the different major groups of students that have been indentified: African Americans, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans or Latinos, and Native Hawaiians.
It is also important to consider the strategies for students with linguistic diversity. This chapter list many different strategies to help with this task.
"Establish truly bilingual classrooms , Embrace dual-language strategies Use integrated, holistic approaches to language experiences for second-language learners instead of rote drill and practice, Teach language through subject matter rather than specific linguistic skill exercises, Adopt sheltered English strategies Practice English in flexible, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups, Use cross-age and peer tutoring Respect community language norms, Organize teaching around thematic, interdisciplinary units, and Enhance language learning with computers and peer tutors Help students build social capital."
Each of these strategies helps students become more comfortable in the learning environment and help them achieve.
Overall this book is a great resource for looking at things to consider when creating lessons and trying to help students from different backgrounds.
Question- Do the suggestions in this book seem practical in the real world? What are some challenges you could see when trying to provide the suggested situations? Did the graduation rate of 69% seem low or high for America?

Keefauver Book Review

Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen
Book Review by Dean Keefauver

Jensen's book is a look at "brain compatible learning." In Chapter 1, he gives much of the research background information that lays the foundation for addressing specific issues in later chapters. Essentially he uses current brain research, with all of the modern medical technologies that have unlocked what was previously only educated guesswork based on behavioral observations, to create classroom instructional ideas that support how the human brain works, learns, and reacts. With modern technologies such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), electroencephalograms (EEG), and Positron Emission Tomography (PET), doctors are able to "see" and understand what is taking place in the living brain that previously could only be surmised posthumously by looking at brain material from cadavers. Being able to better understanding what is taking place in the brain during certain types of activities or in response to certain stimuli can have an impact on how we deal with students at school and how we present information. Jensen points out that brain research is not a "holy grail" to learning, but certainly can present "ideas or paths that have a higher probability of success" for educators.

Jensen covers two intense topics in Chapter 6 entitled, "How Threats and Stress Affect Learning." He states, "Excess stress and threat in the school environment may be the single greatest contributor to impaired academic learning." As this may seem like a rather over-exaggerated statement, he is quick to describe all of the many behaviors and other external stimuli that fit into one (or both) of these categories. He also describes in detail the impact these two stimuli have on how the brain functions and the effect it can have on memory, creative thinking, problem solving, etc. Taking all of this information together, it makes much more sense why this truly can be a huge detriment to learning.

Jensen begins by stating that behaviorally speaking, threats do little to encourage or create the true desired behaviors we would like to see in students. Moving quickly beyond the behavior realm, he then begins to explore what is actually taking place biologically during moments of threat and stress. When stress occurs, the adrenal glands release a peptide called cortisol that prepares the body for a fight or flight response. Unfortunately, this can lead to suppressed or even damaged brain cells in the hippocampus which affects memory. Taking it a step further, chronic stress can make the body more susceptible to illness, which can start a downward cycle of illness leading to missed classes due to test stress, which then causes poor performance on tests, which then increases stress levels for upcoming tests, etc.

Several factors that can cause stress are discussed. A stressful physical environment (including something as seemingly non-threatening as poor lighting!) can have direct impact on student failure. One biological response to stress is the tendency for the eyes to become "more attentive to peripheral areas as a natural way to spot predators first." Handy in a life-threatening situation out in the jungle, but makes it rather difficult for a student to track a line of text across a written page. Fluorescent lighting can also be a cause of stress. In one study, students exposed to full-spectrum lighting missed 65% fewer days of school due to illness as compared to their counterparts who were exposed to fluorescent lighting!

Social situations are discussed as a natural cause of stress for students. When stressed, serotonin levels decrease, which can lead to increased violent or aggressive behaviors. Social hierarchy plays a role in student stress as well. Students who have leadership roles at home (be they positive or negative roles) but are just "one of many" at school can act impulsively. Jensen suggests using a rotating system of roles in the class to allow for all to be leaders and followers at various times, therefore offsetting some of the potential negative effects of this type of stress.

Another environmental stress that we all endure deals with the fact that our predictions rarely match reality. Just as we as adults have small issues throughout the day that don't measure up to what we expected (a broken copy machine was used as an example), so too do students have many moments throughout the day where expectations are not met. All of these add up to an increasing level of stress. Jensen suggests providing predictability through procedures and rituals to counteract this stress buildup.

Next, Jensen notes that even though different people respond to threats differently from a behavioral perspective, biologically our brains all respond in predictable ways. Essentially, when threatened, our brains signal the release of adrenaline, vasopressin, and cortisol. This leads to the flight or fight responses mentioned earlier. Factors leading to this state can include such simple things as harsh comments or sarcasm. Students who come from homes where these types of behaviors are the norm—particularly homes with frequent violence—are often the most inattentive as their brains are in a constant scanning mode looking for "predators." There are endless other stimuli that can cause this same response at school. Bottom line is, "Threats activate defense mechanisms and behaviors that are great for survival but lousy for learning." Jensen further explains that this "survival" will override pattern-detection and complex problem solving. The result can be instead of understanding broad, underlying theories and concepts and being able to connect those to larger scale understanding of many things, students instead remain in a shallower domain of memorizing isolated facts.

Another large issue Jensen deals with in this chapter is "learned helplessness"—seen as nearly complete apathy and persistent passivity on the part of the student. This can be caused by trauma, lack of control, or by decision. Trauma—verbal, physical, or psychological—can come in many forms, sometimes as simple as being embarrassed in front of classmates. Lack of control happens when the student literally has no control over the traumatic event and is therefore immobilized. Sometimes asking students to accomplish as task for which they are not capable can cause this. "Decision" refers to a student making a paralyzing decision that they "can't do anything right," that eventually leads to no effort. The students who are most at risk of learned helplessness are those who deal with threat or violence at home on a regular basis. Interestingly, these same students may be some of the more outgoing and verbal students, seemingly most able to cope with failure. However, they may actually be the students least equipped to deal with it.

Looking at the biology of learned helplessness gives educators information that can help these students to succeed. A study was done with dogs to emulate learned helplessness. In a nutshell, after the initial negative stimulus created a resigned helplessness in the dogs, it took 30 to 50 attempts on the part of trainers to get the dogs to a place where they were actively engaging in choice-making again. This is compared to students who have "learned" to be helpless. How many times do we as teachers "try" to get a student motivated before we give up?—five, maybe ten times? It may take dozens of times.

Finally, Jensen recommends two approaches for reducing stress in students. First, manage the conditions that can induce it; and second, to use personal strategies to mediate and reduce it. Teach students what can cause stress and what to do about it. Things such as time management, regulated breathing, down time, relationship skills, and peer support can help. Positive activities—drama, games, exercise, celebrations—can offset negative effects of stress. Jensen recommends providing a "start of class transition time" for students that allows them to transition from pre-class circumstances, whatever they may be. Be diligent about reducing the threat-potential in the classroom. Deal with disciplinary issues in a way that doesn't humiliate the student. Allow for student input to reduce threat/stress levels, such as asking if students need a little more time to complete an activity.

Questions: What are some practical ways we can help reduce student stress levels in our secondary classrooms? Are any of our current instructional behaviors potentially "threatening" to our students? If so, what can we do to modify those behaviors? What are some signs we can look for to recognize increased stress levels in our students?

Book Blog for : Personalizing the High School Experience

As a high school educator I was very interested in reading this book. Our school and community struggles with drop outs, teen pregnancies, and drugs.... just to name a few of the main issues. I ended up buying this book so I could read it all. However, chapter 1 and 2 are available online and that is what I will be blogging about today.

Chapter 1:A Failure to Adapt

This was an interesting chapter. It set the stage for some of the problems with high school education. According to the text, the main one being the lack of personalization for students. The writer speaks about his adpoted sons that are placed into ESL classrooms. The parents are assured that their children will receive a strong education but upon observation this was clearly not the case. It was not because the teacher was not trying to do a good job rather it was beacuse of the limited and outdated resources and the almost impossible task the teacher/s faced. One classroom was in an old weight room which the other was an old lumber storage area. The books were old, damaged, and out of date. The students in the classrooms came from various countries and spoke a wide variety of languages including Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Italian, Korean, and Spanish. The students were also in three different grades. I do not know how any teacher could be very effective in that diverse of an environment. The story went on describing how the parents tried to get help from the school and district with basically no improvements. So, the parents went on to file class action discrimination appeals to both the state and federal offices for civil rights. This is when improvements finally happened. Their sons were finally making progress and succeeding in school but at the end of their 6th grade year came the beginning of a down hill battle between the parents, the students, and the schools. One of their sons ended up struggling through their freshmen year three times despite being a smart student. At this point, after many struggles, the student asked the parents if he could attend a private school. The parents were sad that public schools could not give their son what he needed but glad that he was finally willing to try something different. After a little time at the new school the student came home and announced, " I'm not stupid". Despite the parents effort to convince him that he wasn't stupid that is how he saw himself in the public school. The boy went on to become successful at the new school and graduate high school. He was one of two students from his 6th grade class that accomplished this task. If it wasn't for his parent's support and resources he probably would not have made it either. After the story the author outlines the major problems with public high schools; depersonalization, lack of adult support, unresponsive teaching, imperceptible results, invisibility, and isolation. These six issues are what the author builds the book around in hopes that future students will not believe they are stupid.

Chapter 2:Guiding Personalized Learning

The key issues iterated over and over in this chapter was advisory groups. The private school that the author's child joined had an advisor for every student. This person (usually one of the teachers) meets with the student every week, sometimes multiple times during the week. They usually work with the same students throughout their high school career. This provides the student with an adult that provides support, caring, and help in planning out their high school career and their future. Showcase schools for advisory groups typically include the following; Offering an advisory program with a clear purpose, Looping students so they saw the same teachers over more than one year (for many of the schools, the looping took place in advisory), planning weekly professional development opportunities for the entire school staff, strongly expressing the understanding that they hadn't reached their goals yet and still had much to improve. The text describes a list of some of the purposes of advisors. Although, not all of these things are expected from one advisory group. * To increase student motivation * To guide course selection * To help students imagine their future * To connect families to student learning * To celebrate student achievement * To connect each student with a caring adult * To relate student work to standards * To explore noncurricular options * To support identity formation * To initiate lifelong learning
* To increase self-awareness * To emphasize applications of knowledge * To gather a best work portfolio * To banish anonymity from school life * To clarify graduation requirements * To plan a path after high school * To prepare for college application * To define a personal pathway * To promote reflection and reevaluation * To improve basic skills * To explore career choices * To develop personal talents * To extend community involvement * To evaluate content acquisition * To legitimize nonschool achievements * To prepare for college applications
The article also outlines how to set goals, organize, prepare activities and asses advisory groups. Several examples of assessments are available in the chapter.

Do you believe that advisory groups would be helpful in increasing student achievement in the high school and why? What do you see in this summary that would benefit your future students? Why do you think advisory groups made such a big difference in the success of the author's son?

Book Blog

Here is my blog for my assigned book:

Building Literacy in Social Studies: Strategies for Improving Comprehension and Critical Thinking

by Donna Ogle, Ron Klemp and Bill McBride

Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 6

Reviewed by Tim Alexander

This book was primarily written to help teachers (and students as well) understand what factors are ultimately involved in the struggle towards improving literacy skills not only in Social Studies but all content areas. The authors start off in the Preface with the notion that part of the responsibility placed on social studies teachers is to give students the skills and motivation to become informed citizens. They go into discussion about why it is so challenging to get students "pumped-up" about studying history, government, etc. One of the main reasons listed is the fact that students don't really see the importance of studying "dead people" and about events that happened so long ago that they have no meaning anymore. The Preface also brings light to the fact that today's Social Studies teachers have an ever-abundant supply of resources out there with the increasing uses of the Internet/World Wide Web. One such very useful resource

a teacher can access is the Library of Congress where actual documents, pictures, songs, etc. can be located and studied by students for first-hand experiences. The Preface then lays out the groundwork for the rest of the book, describing its arrangement and the orders of strategies for improving comprehension and critical thinking skills, as the book's title suggests.

Chapter 1 starts out with a fictitiously named teacher called Mr. Reaf getting ready to start his first day of the new school year teaching U.S. History. He nonetheless has a horribly ineffective introduction of his subject to his students by telling them to open up their new textbooks and begin reading the first couple of pages while he takes roll call. After he is finished with the taking of attendance, he asks the class a "simple" question pertaining to the first settlers in America and their effects on this new land. None of the students respond, and when Mr. Reaf calls on a student for an answer, the student responds with an "I don't know" answer. When the teacher asks why and questions whether the student actually read the first 2 pages, the student responds "Yes, but I didn't understand it." Mr. Reaf and the students just stare at each other in disbelief. He thinks to himself, "Here we go again, another textbook that students can't understand."

What can social studies teachers do to help struggling readers in their classrooms? Why are social studies texts so difficult to comprehend? What skills and strategies do students need to become expert readers of history? What exactly is it that students need to be able to do?

It is here where the authors try to answer some of these questions. There are a host of reasons why students find social studies texts hard to understand.

The readability of social studies texts is affected by a number of factors:

* Students may have no prior knowledge about the concepts, such as foreign cultures, people, places, and previous eras. Prior knowledge is a key determinant of student engagement and comprehension.
* Social studies texts cover a large amount of information. A typical middle or high school textbook includes 800 to 1,200 pages of facts, anecdotes, statistics, questions, activities, and graphic images. Students have difficulty discerning which concepts to focus on and which are the most important to retain.
* Because of the large amount of information, teachers may feel pressured to cover material quickly and superficially, which hinders student engagement, comprehension, and retention.
* Social studies texts are filled with abstract "-isms" about economics, religion, government, and culture. A student who doesn't understand key concepts such as imperialism or Buddhism can't understand the main ideas of a chapter.
* Social studies texts also contain a great deal of academic vocabulary—content-specific terminology with meanings specific to history or government.
* Students who come from minority populations may feel disengaged from a country's history and politics. Within some texts, minority students may see their cultures described only in negative ways, such as African Americans pictured as slaves with no mention of the rich African culture that they possessed when they arrived in America.
* Social studies texts, tests, and standards often require students to analyze and synthesize much information—a skill that they may not have been explicitly taught and that assumes comprehension of the material.
* The ability to understand and summarize the literal narrative in social studies textbooks is related to a student's age and reading ability.
* Readers who are less able may also struggle with the wealth of visual information—such as maps, graphs, and charts—in social studies texts.

The book then goes into an in-depth discussion on the differences between fluent readers and those students who struggle with reading. They list the characteristics of these differing students before reading, during reading, and after reading.

Figure 1.1. Differences Between Struggling and Fluent Readers Before Reading

Struggling Reader

Fluent Reader

• Sees reading as a difficult task filled with failure and expects to gain little, if anything, from the task except frustration and embarrassment.

• Sees reading as an opportunity to gain knowledge about the world and to feel more self-secure in school and among peers.

• Doesn't possess prior knowledge about the general topic or doesn't connect existing knowledge with the text.

• Possesses and activates relevant background knowledge from previous reading, viewing, or conversations about the topic.

• Doesn't try to understand the text until questioned after reading.

• Uses strategies throughout the reading process to construct meaning.

• Reads one word at a time or groups words together but not necessarily in meaningful phrases.

• Groups words in meaningful phrases noting punctuation and transition words that show text structure.

• Doesn't possess background knowledge of abstract terms often used in social studies texts that describe government, economics, culture, or religion, such as colonialism or Buddhism.

• Possesses background knowledge of abstract terms often used in social studies texts from previous years of wide reading.

• Doesn't preview the text to note such features as headings, subheads, vocabulary words in bold type, information in the sidebars, pictures, maps, graphs, and charts.

• Surveys textbook features to understand the context of the reading task and to begin setting purposes for reading.

• Begins reading without predicting what the text might be about, doesn't plan what to read in what order, and doesn't know on what part of the text to focus the most attention.

• Predicts the text content by surveying the text features and then plans how and what to read in what order.

• Begins reading without a purpose other than decoding for meaning.

• Begins reading to answer questions about the writer's ideas, purposes, and biases.

Once fluent readers begin reading in earnest, they add another set of skills and strategies to promote comprehension. These readers continue to use text features and visual information to predict and connect to content, but now they begin monitoring their comprehension; determining key ideas; asking mental questions about the content; noting differences and similarities; visualizing people, places, and events; rereading what is unclear; and, often when reading school texts, taking notes to aid retention. Figure 1.2 compares the skills used by a fluent reader during the reading process with those lacking in a struggling reader.

Figure 1.2. Differences Between Struggling and Fluent Readers During Reading

Struggling Reader

Fluent Reader

• Possesses few, if any, decoding skills beyond basic phonemic awareness.

• Possesses and applies a variety of decoding skills, such as context clues and structural analysis (word parts and roots).

• Identifies words individually or in small clusters without using meaning to group words into larger comprehensible units.

• Reads fluently by using punctuation and meaning to group words into larger phrases that make meaningful statements.

• Skips unknown words and doesn't reread to decipher their meaning.

• Skips unknown words but monitors comprehension to see if the word's meaning is critical, and if it is, returns to the word to apply comprehension strategies.

• Doesn't recognize that informational texts have different structures than narrative fiction and consequently doesn't use these structures to aid in comprehension.

• Recognizes the signal words that show various text structures, such as cause/effect, problem/solution, comparison/contrast, and sequence, and uses these to aid in meaning.

• Doesn't stop to visualize descriptions of important people, places, and events to help "see" what the text is stating.

• Visualizes important descriptions and constantly tests these mental pictures against what the text is stating.

• Ignores maps, graphs, charts, and other important visual information.

• Understands that visual information often restates the information in the text and uses this information to check for comprehension.

• Possesses few, if any, "fix-up" strategies, such as using context clues, text structure, structural analysis, or visual information, to apply when comprehension is lost.

• Possesses a variety of "fix-up" strategies and applies them appropriately when comprehension breaks down.

• Reads through text once, and if comprehension is lost, either continues "reading" or quits altogether.

• Monitors comprehension, recognizes where and when comprehension is lost, and rereads for clarification.

• May retain only substories presented as colorful additions to enliven the text rather than core events (Britt et al., 1994).

• Identifies and retains the core events of the text as separate from substories or anecdotes.

• Doesn't understand the context of primary sources or the archaic language in which they are often written.

• Understands the context of primary sources and applies vocabulary and comprehension strategies to figure out archaic language.

• Doesn't question the writer's assumptions or intentions, reading only to discern facts.

• Continually questions the writer's ideas, assumptions, background, and biases.

After finishing a text, fluent readers begin to reflect on what they have read. Fluent readers continue to monitor their comprehension to decide whether to reread parts that may still be confusing or unclear. With informational texts, they may begin to question the validity and reliability of main points or persuasive arguments. Fluent readers may question sources and do further research about the topic. Figure 1.3 compares the skills that fluent readers use after reading with those lacking in a struggling reader.

Figure 1.3. Differences Between Struggling and Fluent Readers After Reading

Struggling Reader

Fluent Reader

• Doesn't reread any passages that are unclear.

• Returns to the text to reread difficult passages or graphics and clarifies their meaning.

• Doesn't analyze the author's viewpoints to see if the ideas are well supported.

• Questions the viewpoints of the author regarding the support given through facts and evidence.

• Doesn't reflect on the text to draw conclusions about the author's viewpoints.

• Uses facts and opinions expressed by the author to draw conclusions about the author's views.

• Sees the textbook as containing a sequence of accurate historical facts that must be memorized.

• Understands that historical facts are open to interpretation.

• Doesn't evaluate the author's views against other sources and personal viewpoints.

• Evaluates the author's views and compares them against other sources and personal viewpoints.

• Doesn't pay attention to sources of information and doesn't question the veracity of the information.

• Evaluates the sources cited by authors as to their reliability.

Based on a study by Sam Wineburg at Stanford University, Judy Lightfoot has constructed a chart detailing the characteristics of an expert reader of history versus a novice reader. That chart is seen in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.4. How Experts and Novices Tend to Read Historical Texts

Experts . . .

Novices . . .

Seek to discover context and know content.

Seek only to know content.

Ask what the text does (purpose).

Ask what the text says ("facts").

Understand the subtexts of the writer's language.

Understand the literal meanings of the writer's language.

See any text as a construction of a vision of the world.

See texts as a description of the world.

See texts as made by persons with a view of events.

See texts as accounts of what really happened.

Consider textbooks less trustworthy than other kinds of documents.

Consider textbooks very trustworthy sources.

Assume bias in texts.

Assume neutrality, objectivity in texts.

Consider word choice (connotation, denotation) and tone.

Ignore word choice and tone.

Read slowly, simulating a social exchange between two readers, "actual" and "mock."

Read to gather lots of information.

Resurrect texts, like a magician.

Process texts, like a computer.

Compare texts to judge different, perhaps divergent accounts of the same event or topic.

Learn the "right answer."

Get interested in contradictions, ambiguity.

Resolve or ignore contradictions, ambiguity.

Check sources of document.

Read the document only.

Read like witnesses to living, evolving events.

Read like seekers of solid facts.

Read like lawyers making a case.

Read like jurors listening to a case someone made.

Acknowledge uncertainty and complexity in the reading with qualifiers and concessions.

Communicate "the truth" of the reading, sounding as certain as possible.

The end of Chapter 1 then re-enacts Mr. Reaf's first day with him utilizing the nifty idea of a "Table of Contents Scavenger Hunt." I thought this was a really great idea in getting students engaged with their brand new textbooks. Mr. Reaf has the students team up with partners and hands each pair a list of 15 questions, all of them answerable just by looking at the Table of Contents. The students were immediately involved and showed genuine interest in "surveying" their new textbooks, a skill Mr. Reaf told his students they could use in any/every textbook they had to study that year.

Chapter 6 then goes into great detail in focusing on reading social studies textbooks. The chapter is divided into the following lessons that teach specific strategies to help students become critical readers of textbooks:

* Previewing Texts
Strategy: Making Preview Maps
* Activating Prior Knowledge
Strategy: Creating a P.L.A.N.
* Determining Main Ideas
Strategy: Using Pair Questions and Answers
* Organizing Information
Strategy: Making Three-Column Notes
* Understanding Maps
Strategy: Recognizing Key Map Terms and Features
* Interpreting Graphs
Strategy: Understanding Pie, Line, and Bar Graphs
* Analyzing Charts
Strategy: Synthesizing Data
* Summarizing Key Concepts
Strategy: Using a Frayer Model

Each lesson has two parts:
1. A Teaching Model section that includes the following:
· Description of the strategy
· Introductory activity to motivate students
· Step-by-step instructions explaining how to teach and model the strategy
2. A Student Strategy section that includes the following:
· Step-by-step instructions for guided practice
· Applying the strategy activities for further practice and assessment

Each lesson also includes practice pages—models of appropriate texts and reproducible graphic organizers for use with the models.

Based on my readings of the few chapters mentioned, I believe the authors of this book did a tremendous job of living up to its title's name. There were some truly insightful methods discussed (especially in Chapter 6) that educators from all content areas could incorporate into their teaching routines. This book should prove to be a good read for any and all teachers interested in enhancing their students' abilities in comprehension and critical thinking skills.

book blog

Book Posting by Rachel Ourand on June 7, 2009.
The book I read was Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering and Jane E. Pollock, and it was written in 2001. This book was a meta-analysis of studies on instructional strategies that can be used by K-12 teachers. As well as including instructional strategies, the book compares out-dated research and recent research on education and talks about the conclusions of those reports and the views that came about because of them.

Chapter 1: Applying the Research on Instruction: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Marzano starts off talking about the relatively new phenomenon of education right now; how it is quickly transitioning from the "art of teaching" to the "science of teaching." Until the 1970s, teaching had never been studied in a scientific manner. It was then that the first studies looking at the effects of teaching and instruction on the students came about. Marzano brings up a well known study that was published in 1966 called Equality of Educational Opportunity. The report, now commonly referred to as the "Coleman Report" because it was written by James Coleman, came to the conclusion that school made little difference in the achievement of students. The data was taken from about 600,000 students and 60,000 teachers in more than 4,000 different schools. Their study found that "the quality of schooling a student receives only accounts for 10 percent of the variance in student achievement." According to Marzano, the Coleman Report found that the majority of differences in student achievement were due to "the student's natural ability or aptitude, the socioeconomic status of the student, and the student's home environment." This was upsetting, of course, because there was nothing the school could do to change those factors. These same findings were confirmed by Christopher Jencks in his book "Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effects of Family and Schools in America." For about a decade you can see why it was heavily thought that the schooling students had made little difference in how much they learned and how they performed.
Marzano highlights the fact that there is hope for the influence of schools and teachers on the students. He explains that this is possible because the conclusions from Coleman and Jencks reports had some major flaws.
"The finding that schools account for only 10 percent of the differences in student achievement translates into a percentile gain of about 23 points. That is, the average student who attends a "good" school will have a score that is 23 percentile points higher than the average student who attends a poor school. From this perspective, schools definitely can make a difference in student achievement."
Another reason that the schools should have hope is that more recent research has found that individual teachers can have a lot of influence on student achievement, even if the school itself does not.
Attitudes About Educational Research
Many people think that research in education is not as rigorous or conclusive as research in the hard sciences such as chemistry or physics. After being reviewed by Larry Hedges, however, it was found that research in education is comparable to research in the hard sciences in terms of its rigor. Hedges did mention, however, that many more studies in the hard sciences are thrown out if the report's findings are considered unexplainable, whereas when extreme findings are found in educational studies are rarely discarded. Hedges recommendation is to find as many studies as possible to analyze before an estimate of a topic should be considered instead of just one single study or even a small set of studies.
One of the primary goals of Marzano's study was "to identify instructional strategies that have a high probability of enhancing student achievement for all students in all subject areas at all grade levels." Nine categories of strategies that have a strong effect on student achievement were found and are talked about in chapters 2-10 of the book. These strategies include Identifying similarities and differences, Summarizing and note taking, Reinforcing effort and providing recognition, Homework and practice, Nonlinguistic representations, Cooperative learning, Setting objectives and providing feedback, Generating and testing hypotheses, and Questions, cues, and advance organizers.

Questions:
What qualities do you think a teacher must have in order to make a strong impression on a student even if the school itself has little influence?
Why do you think educational studies that find unexplainable conclusions are often kept as good data instead of being discarded like those studies in the hard sciences?

Chapter 6: Nonlinguistic Representations

This chapter focuses on one of the nine categories of strategies mentioned in chapter one; Nonlinguistic Representations.
I really liked how this chapter started out because of the great use of examples of nonlinguistic representations. Marzano tells a story of a teacher and her 5th grade class. In the story, the teacher tells her students to close their eyes and then she begins reading a story to them. After a few pages she describes to them what image she is seeing in her mind and then asks them to picture in their own minds the things she describes to them. She also tells the students to ask any pertinent questions to help the image in their minds become more concrete. After the story she asks each student to draw pictures of their "favorite scenes" from the images they had created in their minds. The next day the teachers asks the students to share their pictures in small groups and then have each group draw a semantic web to show which information from the story was the most important to them.
The teacher in this story has made good use of a powerful aspect of learning—generating mental pictures to go along with information, as well as creating graphic representations for that information. These are forms of nonlinguistic representations, or the imagery mode of representation. Studies have found that the more we use both linguistic and nonlinguistic representations, the better we are able to think about and recall knowledge. Unfortunately studies have also found that the primary way teachers present new information to students is linguistic, either by talking about new content or having students read it. "It has even been shown that explicitly engaging students in the creation of nonlinguistic representations stimulates and increases activity in the brain."
Research indicates a few different activities that enhance the development of students' nonlinguistic representations, and therefore a better understanding of the subject's content. These activities include creating graphic representations, making physical models, generating mental pictures, drawing pictures and pictographs, and engaging in kinesthetic activity. The process of generating nonlinguistic representations engages students in elaborative thinking, which is great because when students elaborate on knowledge, they can recall it more easily and understand the content in more depth.
Marzano then gets more detailed about the different types of nonlinguistic representations by providing information on every one and also showing examples of each. The first is a graphic organizer, which he states is the most common form of nonlinguistic representations that students engage in. Actually, as he states, a graphic organizer is actually a combination of both linguistic and nonlinguistic representations because they use words and phrases, and also symbols and arrows to represent relationships. Marzano lists six different types of graphic organizers that are great in a classroom. They include descriptive patterns, time-sequence patterns, process/cause-effect patterns, episode patterns, generalization/principle patterns, and concept patterns.
The next type of nonlinguistic representations Marzano covers is physical models. He gives an example of a teacher who, when helping teach about the different phases of the moon, uses a lamp and Styrofoam ball and has the students stand in the room and move their moons in such a way that they see first a crescent moon, then a half moon, a full moon, and a three-quarter moon. Mental pictures is the type gone over next. This excellent example of generating mental pictures was used:
"Imagine," Mr. Williams says, "that you suddenly see something in the distance that looks like an apartment building carved into a cliff. Would you be puzzled? Curious? Frightened? Now imagine that you gallop your horse to the edge of the cliff and peer across at the black and tan sandstone and yes, it is something like an apartment building. There are ladders, black hole windows, and circular pits, but no people. It's absolutely quiet. There's no sign of life. Would you wonder what happened to the people who lived there? What would you think about the builders of this mysterious structure? Would you be brave enough to go inside? What do you think you would find?"
The next type of nonlinguistic representations is drawing pictures and pictographs, which is seen very often. An example of this could be drawing the human skeleton to help remember the different bones in the body. The last is engaging in kinesthetic activity, or an activity that involves physical movement. By definition, physical movement associated with specific knowledge generates a mental image of the knowledge in the mind of the learner. An example Marzano gives of this is from a teacher who started an activity called Body Math. Here is an excerpt from the chapter to give an example of this:
"During the lesson on radius, diameter, and circumference of circles, Barry uses his left arm outstretched to show radius, both arms outstretched to show diameter, and both arms forming a circle to show circumference. During a different lesson on angles, Devon depicts obtuse and acute angles by making wide and not-so-wide "Vs" with her arms as the children yell out the degrees. They even have ways to show fractions, mixed numbers, and turning fractions into their simplest forms."

Questions
Why do you think the primary way teachers present new information to students is linguistic when research suggests that incorporating nonlinguistic representations further increases students' ability to think about and learn new information? Do you think it's because of lack of creativity or perhaps because some teachers do not realize how effect nonlinguistic teaching methods can be?

In conclusion
I found this book very interesting! I personally did not know that nonlinguistic representations was much more effective in helping students learn new information and helped students elaborate on knowledge. This does make sense though, because many of the things I remember from high school and college classes came from an interesting activity we did or something aside from the normal linguistic style of teaching. It was also nice to read that teachers can have significant influence over students. I would recommend other people interested in teaching to give this book a read!