This post is written by Stephanie M. Lemley. You can find out more about Stephanie at the bottom of this post.
For the past two years, I have had the privilege of working primarily with grades 6-12 Mississippi agriculture and science teachers through a grant entitled Agricultural Sciences Professional Development (ACRE). This professional development for agricultural literacy grant is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. In this grant, teachers participate in an intensive, two-week summer institute where they learn animal science, plant science, and meat science content as well as literacy strategies, pedagogy, and teacher leadership. The teachers also participate in two follow-up days—one in the fall semester and one in the spring semester. As a content-area literacy and disciplinary literacy teacher/educator, I work with the teachers on infusing comprehension, writing, and vocabulary strategies into their classroom practice. During the summer institute, the teachers keep an interactive notebook (either hard copy with a spiral notebook or a digital version on a site such as Canva.com) to record their lab data, literacy strategies, and notes from presentations. Previous research on interactive notebooks in science classrooms has shown that such tools can support students’ communication of science understandings (Wilmes & Siry, 2019).
One strategy that has been impactful for both cohorts of teachers is the carousel (Adams & Leininger, 2017). This strategy promotes productive talk in the classroom. On the first day of ACRE, I post chart paper labeled with the different livestock species—dairy cattle, beef cattle, small ruminants (goats/sheep), equine (horses), and swine around the room. I divide the teachers into small groups and have them circle the room, two minutes at each station, recording as much background knowledge about each livestock species as they can. As they rotate around the room, they read what others wrote, correct any misconceptions, and record their own information in a different color marker. At the end of the summer institute, we revisit the carousel to record new knowledge from ACRE.
Image: ACRE teachers completing the carousel about different livestock species.
Another strategy that I teach and we practice in our summer institute is magnet summaries (Buehl, 2014). A magnet summary is a strategy where students construct meaningful summaries, in their own words, about a topic or concept. As a piece of text is read, magnet words—key terms or concepts—are identified from the reading and are organized into a summary.
Images: Magnet summary on the Mississippi commodity ‘soybeans’.
Both of these strategies translated well into classroom practice for our teachers. In our fall follow up, one teacher noted, “The carousel strategy worked well because students enjoyed going back after lessons to see how much they learned.” Another teacher noted that the compilation of strategies in the interactive notebook the students are keeping “allows them make connections with content throughout the term.”
References
Adams, S., & Leininger, G. (2017). But I’m NOT a reading teacher! Literacy strategies for career and technical educators. Coppell: Sandy +Gwen Always Learning.
Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom strategies for interactive learning (4th ed.). Newark: International Reading Association.
Wilmes, S.E.D., & Siry, C. (2019). Science notebooks as interactional spaces in a multilingual classroom: Not just ideas on paper. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 999-1027. doi: 10.1002/tea.21615
*This work is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Professional Development for Agricultural Literacy priority area, grant no. 2021-67037-34210, project accession no. 1025666, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Stephanie M. Lemley is an Associate Professor at Mississippi State University where she works with pre-service and in-service teachers on incorporating literacy strategies into their agricultural teaching practices.
Literacy in the Disciplines, 6-12 (LiD) is pleased to announce our next after-school Webinar Series session.
Tensions and Supports Between Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Pedagogy and Disciplinary Literacy.
What are Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogies? What is Disciplinary Literacy? Understanding Ourselves, Our Curriculum, and Our Students. Building Students’ Cultural Competence in Disciplinary Literacy: How Can We Do It? Tensions in Disciplinary Literacy and CSP.
The video recording and the associated slides for the session is available at the bottom of this page.
When: Thursday, June 23, 2022, 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET.
Where: Please register here for the July session. A Zoom link will be sent one day before the session.
Cost: Free. LiD6-12 is funded by the South Carolina Middle Grades Initiative.
This session will feature Drs. Rachelle Savitz and Britnie D. Kane.
Dr. Rachelle S. Savitz is an assistant professor of adolescent literacy at Clemson University having been a K-12 literacy coach/interventionist and high school reading teacher. She is the recipient of Association of Literacy Educators and Researcher’s Jerry Johns Promising Researcher Award, American Reading Forum’s Gary Moorman Early Career Literacy Scholar Award, finalist for International Literacy Association’s Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation award, as well as Secondary Reading Council of Florida’s Reading Teacher of the Year award. She has published articles on inquiry-based learning, analysis and use of young adult literature, and response to intervention.
Britnie Delinger Kane is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education at The Citadel’s Zucker Family School of Education. Broadly, her research interests focus on DL and instructional coaching. Dr. Kane has published in Teachers College Record, the Journal of Teacher Education, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and elsewhere. She serves as the Literacy Program Coordinator at her home institution, the Associate Director of the Lowcountry Writing Project, and the Vice President of LiD 6-12.
Please share this professional learning opportunity with your colleagues.
Literacy in the Disciplines, 6-12 (LiD) is pleased to announce our next after-school Webinar Series session.
But I Want to Teach What I’m Really Teaching: Supporting Literacy and Content-Area Learning
This webinar will include activities and discussions intended to help educators understand some of the ways that literacy differs across disciplines. The focus of the session is to encourage teachers to support literacy while helping students meet content-specific learning goals. Being aware of our own use of literacy strategies opens up discussions of how to continuously enrich every lesson, every day with content-area and disciplinary literacy practices.
When: Thursday, May 12, 2022, 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET.
Cost: Free. LiD6-12 is funded by the South Carolina Middle Grades Initiative.
The recording of this webinar is embedded below. The slide deck is available beneath the video.
This session will feature Dr. Britnie D. Kane and Charlene Aldrich.
Britnie Delinger Kane is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at The Citadel’s Zucker Family School of Education. Broadly, her research interests focus on DL and instructional coaching. Dr. Kane has published in Teachers College Record, the Journal of Teacher Education, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and elsewhere. She serves as the Literacy Program Coordinator at her home institution, the Associate Director of the Lowcountry Writing Project, and the Vice President of LiD 6-12.
Charlene Aldrich is an instructor in the Office of Professional Development at the College of Charleston. While content-area literacy is her specialty, she also teaches Assessments in Reading, Foundations in Reading, and Instructional Practices as required by South Carolina for recertification. She serves as the Treasurer of LiD 6-12.
Please share this professional learning opportunity with your colleagues.
I have to admit, I hated poetry when I was in school. I hated having to figure out what an author was saying. Why couldn’t they just come out and say what they wanted us to see and hear? I remember reading ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins and being completely confounded. Understanding poetry was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without having seen what the completed picture was supposed to look like.
In college I studied William Wordsworth and Langston Hughes. For the first time, I read poetry that was easy to understand and yet beautiful. Its simplicity did not detract from the beauty of form and content. Because I didn’t feel defeated from the start, I began to read other kinds of poetry, the kind that had turned me off to poetry while in high school. I wish I had come to a greater appreciation of poetry while in K-12. I had missed out on so much. But what had I missed out on? Why should children read and learn about poetry?
Poetry helps us to see the world through someone else’s eyes. We can do the same with essays, short stories and novels, but poetry is life and experiences in concentrated form; it doesn’t take long to read a poem, yet an author can concentrate emotions and feelings that would take pages to convey in a novel or poem. Teenagers with angst can find relief when they read a poem to find out others have shared their own experiences. Thus, poetry can be personal and powerful, but its impact can also be felt on a national or global level.
Just how powerful and impactful is poetry in the world of politics? It is so impactful that Stalin caused Anna Akhmatova to memorize and then destroy all her personal written poems, all so Stalin could not silence her poetic voice. Like painters, writers can stir the mind, but sometimes more importantly, they can stir the heart and passions, especially when rousing people to a cause. Students can come to appreciate the power of words, how a poem can rally people to a cause; there are poems of resistance, protest, and empowerment. Certainly students should be exposed to such words and ideas.
Poetry writing empowers students and builds their confidence. Writing an essay can be daunting for some students, but when they are introduced to and encouraged to write simple poems such as acrostics, they usually eagerly embrace the challenge.
Poetry helps students to appreciate the beauty of subtlety, how so much can be said indirectly. They can come to appreciate the power and beauty of words. It can build vocabulary and encourage abstract thinking. Poetry encourages students to analyze what they are reading. It exposes them to other cultures and beliefs.
Why study poetry? Poetry empowers, arouses. Poetry helps students to put ideas and feeling on paper.
Poetry can stimulate the mind, and it can help students to get in touch with their own feelings. One year, I had a student say the following to me in a letter. “I always thought poetry was for sissies. All my life I’ve suppressed my feelings, but this class has made me change my mind. I’ve come to understand that as a male I can embrace and express my feelings.” Those words were music to my ears.
Dr. Angela M. Cozart is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston.
By: Lindsey Douglas, English teacher at Gettys Middle School.
Literacy is often wrongly associated with only the humanities, namely English Language Arts and Social Studies. However, as contemporary studies suggest, disciplinary literacy is a necessary educational shift to meet the demands of the twenty-first century student as they participate in literacies of varied subjects (Lent & Voigt, 2019). The heart of disciplinary literacy is an accurate understanding of how content knowledge is constructed and how literacy (reading, writing, viewing, reasoning, and communicating) supports the knowledge of the respective content (Lent & Voigt, 2019).
For that reason, I teamed up with an experienced, award-winning math educator who is considered an expert in her field. We collaborated and co-taught a lesson, with each teacher valuing the other’s expertise. While the text in Math may look different than texts in my English Language Arts class, we define a text as anything a student can see, interpret, and assign meaning.
Introducing the Lesson
Our first text of the lesson was an image. The images used in the lesson were found on reasonandwonder.com. We introduced the lesson with visual literacy in which students “read” the image to interpret, evaluate, and understand the meaning. We posed two questions for the students to prompt their thinking: What do I notice and What do I wonder? The students first worked independently. Before students began reading the text, we discussed what it means to both “notice” and “wonder.” The classes acknowledged that the skill of “noticing” is what we call observing, and that of “wonder” is to inference. Like Lent suggests, “we want students to know how to interrogate texts rather than simply read them” (Lent, 2015, p.109).
Academic discourse is a critical cornerstone of a Math Disciplinary Literacy classroom. Following the image was both a small group discussion and class discussion of the students’ discoveries. However, before discussing their findings, the Math teacher reestablished group norms.
The group norms of this classroom include:
No one is done until everyone is done
You have the right to ask anybody in your group help
No talking outside your group
No naked numbers
Remember to play your role
Put the question in your answer
Say your “becauses”
Listen to others’ ideas
Take turns
Be Respectful
Confusion is a part of learning
You have the duty to give help to anybody who asks
Disagree with ideas, not people
Helping is not the same as giving answers
Many of the group norms reiterate the marriage between content and literacy such as “say your because” and “put the question in your answer.”
After the small groups discussed their answers, the teacher jotted down their responses on the board. The conversation with the whole class continued until a student finally responded with “The phone is charging!” From that response, the teacher shifted to the second sentence starter posed to students, “I Wonder…”, in which the students start sharing inferences based on the image. Eventually, a student says, “What time will the phone be charged?”
Solving the Problem
Once students land on this essential question, the lesson then shifts to the “second act” where students attempt to solve the problem. The Math teacher then asks the students to make a “too low, too high, and just right” guess at what time the phone will be charged if it is 5% at 9:02. Asking students to estimate a too high, too low, and just right answer is critical thinking and at the heart of student’s mathematical practice standards. (SCCCR.MP 1-7). In just one sentence, a too high, too low, and just right guess allows students to use reasoning and analysis to create a path to problem solving. After students shared some guesses, the teacher shared three more images, revealing the next three stages of charging.
The teacher then told the class: “Now we are going to represent data. Four representations of math are words, tables, graphs, and equations. Please remember to answer your questions in the form of a sentence.” She also reminded students of one of the group norms: say your becauses. For the math teacher, it is important that students represent Math in all four representations every lesson. This representation of data reiterates the importance of students developing a deeper mathematical knowledge. The students first represented math through words, so they moved onto representing it in a chart.
Before they began developing their charts, the teacher and the class worked together to define their variables for this situation (x=minutes of charging since 9:02; y=battery percentage).
X
Y
0 8 12 24
5 14 19 33
After creating the chart, the teacher asked, “using the data in your table, can you determine the type of relationship between these two variables?” The class consensus was that it is a positive relationship and appears nearly linear.
The teacher then told the class, “For now, let’s assume it is nearly linear. If this is true, could we use the data to write an equation to use for prediction when the phone will be fully charged?”
Y = 1.17x + 4.88
100 = 1.17x + 4.88
X ≈ 81.3
Therefore, they determined the phone will be charged approximately 81 minutes after 9:02, or 10:23. After they solve the equation, the teacher then revealed the answer to show the students by slowly showing the progression over time.
The slow reveal built suspense, and ultimately curiosity from the students. As Lent states, “The process of wondering, formulating questions, and thinking through concepts while respecting multiple viewpoints is as much the goal as certitude about a concept” (Lent & Voigt, 2019, p 111). If Math is the aspirin, then teachers must create the headache. Not a migraine, but a “cognitive conflict” or a “disequilibrium” (Meyer, 2015). This headache is created through the processes of wondering, questions, and thinking. And at just the right time, with just the right amount of curiosity and inquiry, the aspirin is given to the students in a sigh of relief (and frustration!).
At this point, the class has represented math in three different ways: words, charts, and equations. The last representation is a graph. After the final reveal, the teacher says to the class, “What happened? We assumed that it would continue charging at the same rate. But as we start charging batteries, it actually gets slower. It starts slowing down.”
The Importance of Disciplinary Literacy and Collaboration
While there may be hesitation for educators to pedagogically shift towards a disciplinary literacy approach to instruction, collaboration and co-teaching narrows the gap. Disciplinary Literacy is not merely reading and writing across the content, but rather placing literacy within the discipline itself. Lent explains, “…While practice is still important, the emphasis has shifted from only teaching the principles of math to helping students develop a deeper mathematical knowledge– and such instruction often includes collaboration” (p 155). I am thankful for Math teachers who take transformative action about the way in which they think about their content. I am thankful for a school where disciplinary literacy is a school-wide initiative. But most of all, I am thankful for literacy itself and its rightful place in all disciplines across all curriculums.
References:
Lent, R. C. (2016). This Is Disciplinary Literacy: Reading Writing, Thinking, and Doing… Content Area by Content Area. Corwin.
Lent, R. C. & Voigt, M. M. (2019). Disciplinary Literacy In Action: How to Create and Sustain a School-wide Culture of Deep Reading, Writing, and Thinking. Corwin.
Lindsey Douglas is a Clemson University graduate in English Literature, Secondary Education, and a Masters in Literacy K-12. Lindsey is a third year English teacher and is the 8th grade English Department Head at Gettys Middle School. She is passionate about disciplinary literacy and helping teachers embed literacy practices into their content. She also coaches volleyball and enjoys spending time outdoors, and reading.
About the Collaborator
Ashley Weaver is a National Board Certified Teacher and math nerd with 13 years of experience teaching middle schoolers. She teaches with the belief that all students can learn math and achieve at high levels and hopes to instill a love for learning in her students. When she isn’t teaching or learning about teaching, she enjoys reading and spending time with her husband and daughter.
By: Hunter Thompson, University of South Carolina Pre-Service Music Educator
Teaching students how to read music is basically like teaching students how to be literate in another language. As you learn more and more of a language, the rules and guidelines for reading, writing, and speaking that language become increasingly complex. Music educators should approach teaching students music like they are preparing students to be literate in the complexities of music, and we all know how complex music can become (we’re all looking at you, Schoenberg). Music students should not only be literate in musical literacy, but they also need to be literate in traditional literacy, numeracy, communicative literacy, and even technological literacy to be successful in today’s music classes. Students must be literate to comprehend expressive markings such as accelerando or rallentando. The basis of teaching rhythm is contingent on the assumption that students are numerate, and we also use mathematical structures within music theory. Watching a conductor’s gestures and expressions requires students to be literate in the nuances of communication. The rising popularity of electronic music and the usage of online notation software requires students and teachers to be technologically literate. All of these forms of literacy converge in our music classrooms, so this means that we must adapt non-musical strategies for usage in our lessons.
Close Reading is a task that students are expected to do in essentially every class that they will ever take; however, it is a skill that is unintentionally not as well-developed and practiced outside of typical English Language Arts courses. Without clear guidelines for how Close Reading is applied to subjects like music, art, physical education, dance, and other classes that are necessary for educating the whole child, students will not be able to put these strategies into practice. Therefore, it is crucial that we, as music educators, make our approach to Close Reading essential to our lessons, and instead of relying solely on music-specific structures to achieve this, we should also model our approach off of existing structures. Although Close Reading is a strategy that was originally created for use in English language arts courses, Close Reading (with some minor adaptations) will help to engage students in a deeper analysis of music that they are performing and to which they are listening.
Wolsey and Lapp’s Approach to Close Reading for Traditional Print Texts
Close Reading strategies have historically been applied to print texts, but texts come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There are two types of text: print and non-print texts. In a music classroom, an example of a print text could be a student’s individual part or a conductor’s score. Print texts have traditionally been the dominant of the two in classroom settings, but there is still an enormous amount of information that students can gain from working with non-print texts. With regards to music classes, an example of a non-print text could be a live or recorded performance.
Photo by Jamie Taylor on Unsplash
Thomas DeVere Wolsey and Diane Lapp outline Close Reading for traditional print texts like this. First, you must select a complex text for your students to study, and think about priming questions that you could ask your students before introducing them to the text. Next, have students complete an independent reading and annotation of the text. After that, complete partner sharing activities so that your students are able to hear a diverse range of perspectives. Following that, re-read the text (as an independent reading, student-led reading, or teacher-led reading) with specific goals in mind, and conduct a group discussion to reinforce particular ideas. Re-read the text as many times you deem necessary and conclude with a written extension, reflection, or explanation of the text that highlights a specific skill concept.
This approach to Close Reading has been highly effective in countless traditional literacy settings to help students gain a deeper understanding of complex print texts, but what does this process have to do with music? Close Reading, by definition, uses “text-based questions and discussion,” and “students are guided to deeply analyze and appreciate various aspects of the text” (Brown & Kappes 2012).
Close Reading Adaptations for Music Classrooms
Music teachers do these things on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. Additionally, music teachers want their students to develop the skills necessary to perform and listen to complex pieces of music with much deeper analysis. It is extremely important to remember that this level of analysis will require multiple visits with the same text. With every close read, students will pick up on more nuances and important details which will ultimately lead to a greater understanding of the composer’s and/or conductor’s craft.
In music classes, we constantly ask our students to perform and listen at the highest level; therefore, students must develop a more advanced skill set to analyze complex works. Resultingly, I have adapted Wolsey and Lapp’s outline of Close Reading for performing music and listening to music. The adaptation for performing music is geared more towards a band, choir, or orchestra class while the adaptation for listening to music is geared more towards a music appreciation or music history class. However, they can be used in any music classroom with minor adjustments.
Adaptation Chart of Close Reading for Performing and Listening to Music
Wolsey and Lapp’s Close Reading for Traditional Print Texts
A Close Reading Adaptation for Performing Music
A Close Reading Adaptation for Listening to Music
Select a complex text that relates to instructional purpose (use Lexile Levels to help with this)
Select a complex text that relates to instructional purpose (use state grade categorizations to help with this and resources provided by sheet music retailers)
Select a complex text that relates to instructional purpose
Provide priming questions: What are you thinking as you read? What words do you not know? What techniques is the author using? What is the author’s message? What is the impact on the reader?
Provide priming questions:What is the tempo? What is the key signature? What is the time signature? What is the pitch range? Are there any accidentals? Are there any difficult rhythms? What kind of signs, repeats, dynamics, and articulations do you see?
Provide priming questions: What do you hear? What genre is this piece? What is the instrumentation or orchestration? What is the structure of this piece? What style period is this piece from? What message or emotions is the composer attempting to convey?
Number the paragraphs.
Number the measures.
For listening with a score, number the measures. For listening without a score, segment the recording using time stamps.
Independent reading (use paragraph numbers to chunk text for greater analysis)
Independent sight reading (use measure numbers to note difficult and important sections in the music)
Independent listening with a score (use measure numbers to chunk the score for greater analysis)Independent listening without a score (use time stamps to chunk the piece for greater analysis)
Text annotation – writing on paper; using highlighters and/or pens to “mark” the text
Text annotation – writing on music; using a pencil to circle/star/box any notable parts of the music
Text annotation (with a score) – writing on the score; using colored pencils or pens to mark melodic lines and harmonic analysesText annotation (without a score) – write down notes about the piece with time stamps included
Partner sharing – discussion with language frames
Partner sharing – discussion with language frames
Partner sharing – discussion with language frames
Rereading (independent, student-led, or teacher-led) with analysis on how text was written and writer’s craft
Re-examining (independent, student-led, or teacher-led) with further analysis of sequences, modulations, intervallic relationships, and other patterns
Re-listening with a score (independent, student-led, or teacher-led) with analysis of compositional techniques and composer-specific musical idiomsRe-listening without a score (independent, student-led, or teacher-led) with analysis of how different time stamp segments are similar and dissimilar
Discussion to reinforce academic vocabulary and interpretation
Discussion to reinforce academic vocabulary and interpretation
Discussion to reinforce academic vocabulary and interpretation
Written extension, reflection, explanation of the piece, or demonstration of the skill concept through writing
Written extension outlining performance goals and practices and/or a summarization of elements of the composer’s style
Written extension (music critique or analysis), reflection, explanation of the piece
Will Close Reading Consume My Already Precious Class Time?
Believe it or not, you are probably already doing parts of activities like this in your classroom. However, it has not been made clear to students that these activities are part of the larger process of Close Reading. It is critical that we are intentional, from the very beginning, in choosing what texts we use, and for music, it is important to take into account the musical abilities of each student if you intend to perform a chosen text. Additionally, we must be purposeful in the strategy we use to teach the musical complexities that our students will encounter within the chosen texts.
You most likely are using some of these steps within your classroom, but Close Reading works best and benefits more students when the full process is completed for specific texts. If your wind ensemble is playing Holst’s First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band, it may prove wise for students to complete several close readings of their own part and several close readings of the score. Since this piece is public domain, you can find the score online from the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). If you are unable to provide each student with a conductor’s score, you could also use a document camera and projector to display the score during class for a teacher-led close reading of the text. Vision is the dominant sense, and many of our music students may be visual learners, so it could prove very beneficial to those students if they can see how their individual part is connected to other parts. If you are teaching a unit in a music appreciation course on dance rhythms, you could complete a close listening of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, which might be more recognizable and engaging to students than a Baroque dance suite. Remember, we could choose any school-appropriate text for our students to work with, but it is important that we know exactly what we want students to learn from that text and that we know exactly what strategies we will use to teach the text.
One concern about implementing a Close Reading strategy in your music classroom is that it will take a large amount of time from technique building and preparing for performances. However, Close Reading is a method of keeping students engaged with a text. If students simply go through the motions, rehearsing the same set of pieces day after day, then students will begin to lose focus while performing. If we take class time to purposefully implement Close Reading strategies into our routines, then it will help students to better understand individual and ensemble performance goals for that particular piece. Ultimately, a strong foundation of technique and fundamentals mixed with the implementation of Close Reading and other literacy strategies will set students up for musical success.
Adapting Other Literacy Strategies to Grow Students’ Music Literacy
Additionally, I urge music educators to avoid what Laura Sindberg refers to as “music teacher isolation” (Sindberg 2011). Look for ways outside of your school’s Fine Arts Department to adapt literacy strategies. Regularly ask your colleagues in the Science, Mathematics, English, History, and Foreign Language Departments about how they adapt traditional literacy strategies in their classrooms. Remember to talk to the other Fine Arts teachers in your schools who do not teach music as well, and do not forget to share your ideas too. Readers’ Theatre is a literacy strategy that requires small groups of students to create and perform a dramatic script based on a provided text. When adapted to a music appreciation class, you could assign small groups of students a recitative and aria or an ensemble song. Make sure the libretto of the assigned opera is translated for your students. Then, they can create their own script to perform their adaptation in front of the class. If you have enough groups and pick out key parts of the opera, your class will be able to summarize the plot of an entire opera with short scenes that they have created. When you have amassed your own stockpile of creative strategies, you will be able to impact a more diverse group of learners because of the numerous options from which you have to choose.
Just as students in an English class will not be able to comprehend William Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, and Oscar Wilde if they cannot comprehend Dr. Seuss yet, students in a music class will not be able to comprehend the masterworks of great composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Jennifer Higdon, Eric Whitacre, and David Maslanka if they cannot comprehend their beginner technique books. Literacy looks different in each discipline, and it is our job to make sure that our students can read, perform, listen to, analyze, and critique increasingly complex texts. This blog post is by no means a critique of the strategies currently employed in music classrooms, but in actuality, it is a call to broaden the literacy strategies we are using in our music classrooms. I encourage us to do what music teachers do best, and use our imagination to see what kind of ways we can incorporate creative adaptations of literacy strategies, like Close Reading, into our lessons.
References
Brown, S., & Kappes, L. (2012). Implementing the Common Core State Standards: A primer on “close reading of text.” Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.
Sindberg, L. (2011). Alone All Together—The Conundrum of Music Teacher Isolation and Connectedness. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, (189), 7–22. https://doi.org/10.5406/bulcouresmusedu.189.0007
Wolsey, T. D.V., & Lapp, D. (2017). Literacy in the Disciplines: A Teacher’s Guide for Grades 5-12. Guilford Press, a Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
About the Author
Hunter Thompson is a junior at the University of South Carolina, where he is majoring in Music Education. He grew up in Hartsville, South Carolina, and he participated in his school band program beginning in sixth grade and continuing to his senior year of high school. He would like to thank several educators for the tremendous impact they had on him: His mother, Elizabeth Thompson, who will always be his biggest educational influence; his high school band director, Cameron Watkins, who always believed in his musical abilities; and one of his college professors, Dr. Jennifer D. Morrison, who provided him with an amazing opportunity to write about a subject that is very important to him.
By: Dr. Leslie D. Roberts, Assistant Professor of Reading at Georgia Southern University
Helping students develop a love for reading is a contentious and often enigmatic topic for both educators and researchers. The thought process of “this technique helped motivate me to read in school, so it should motivate my students to read” is often flawed. As educators, we learn that practices that are effective for increasing the reading motivation for one group of students, may not be helpful for another group of students; furthermore, the same practices that were once successful with a group, may not continue to work for them as they matriculate through school. In this sense, reading motivation is a fluid construct that educators are constantly striving to achieve with their students.
Perhaps my favorite book about reading motivation is No More Reading for Junk: Best Practices for Motivating Readers (2016) by Barbara Marinak and Linda Gambrell. In this text, Marinak and Gambrell remind us that it’s not enough to teach a student to read, but we need to instill an intrinsic love of reading. They also reiterate that motivating students to read should not involve rewarding them with prizes, pizza parties, points, or other public forms of display like keeping track of books read by individual students or comparing classroom reading progress. These types of systems often perpetuate a sense of competition, which may be helpful to motivate some students extrinsically, while simultaneously disengaging others who worry about their status in competition. And, for all of us who’ve experienced a reading program in school that awarded us free pizzas for reading books, we can attest that these incentives do not last into adulthood.
Motivating readers requires more than giving rewards for completing books, encouraging competitions to see who can read the most books, or asking them to read a number of texts in an allotted amount of time. The key is to ensure our students experience an authentic and intrinsic love of reading while in our classrooms, but how do we accomplish this when there are so many ‘gimmicks’ out there claiming to promote good reading habits? In order to encourage students’ intrinsic reading motivation and support them on their journey to becoming life-long readers, research suggests the need to look at students’ value of reading and their expectations for success with reading.
Ways to support life-long reading habits with students:
1) Allow Students to Make their Own Reading Choices
Researchers agree that choice of reading is a motivating factor for readers of all ages (Fisher & Frey, 2012; Ivey, 1999; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). When empowered to choose a text about a topic or genre of interest, students will likely place a higher value on reading. Considering that books act as mirrors and windows (Bishop, 1990), allowing students to view themselves (mirrors) and to learn about others (windows) in the books they read, encouraging choice of text plays an integral part in creating insightful, reflective, and motivated readers.
2) Ensuring Students Have Access
Ensuring students have access to texts will likely increase their value of reading. Access may include varied exposure to books by taking trips to the library, providing a brief overview of a book through book talks, and being able to suggest books to students. Access to reading also refers to providing a space and time for reading occur during the school day (Gambrell 2009; Krashen, 2011). However, it is important to note, that this time should be intentionally carved into the school day, not just when students finish work early. It is crucial the time spent reading is substantial to allow students time to “get into a book.” Rather than allotting a few minutes every day for reading time, it is better to devote longer periods of time for reading every few days.
3) Reconsider What Counts as Reading
Reconsidering what counts as reading can also prove helpful for reluctant readers who prefer other forms of reading than the traditional book. Blog posts, graphic novels, comic books, and books with integrated technology represent some of the various alternatives to traditional texts that can engage unengaged readers and increase their expectations for success with reading.
We should strive to create authentic reading experiences for our students. When we consider the question, “how do I motivate myself to read?” we typically think of having a book that regularly engages us and makes us want to return to it again and again, until we’ve finished it. The same principle goes for our students. Reading shouldn’t be seen as a chore, and just because the initial part of a book was engaging, doesn’t mean it will hold students’ interest until completion. Students should be allowed to test and try books until they’ve found a “good fit book” they want to return to again and again.
Furthermore, after we’ve finished a great book, we generally don’t think of immediately creating a diorama of a scene from the book we’ve read, taking a test, or creating a book report to prove we’ve read this book, so we shouldn’t expect our students to be entirely motivated to do these things either. To ensure an authentic reading experience and still hold students accountable for reading, consider having them produce a book review. This could be on a teacher-made website or allowing students to create their own goodreads accounts. With this, students are able to find more books that may be of interest and participate in a community of readers and reviewers.
Creating Life-long Learners
Life-long readers are created through positive experiences with books in varied environments and teaching practices. Allowing students to see value in their reading experiences, as well as feel successful in their reading endeavors, are the keys to promoting intrinsic reading motivation. A one-size-fits-all approach, or a reading system built on rewards and prizes for reading, is rarely effective to instilling intrinsic reading motivation. Perseverance, patience, and flexibility are of utmost importance in fostering reading motivation with students. While this at times may seem exhausting and overwhelming, cultivating students who are life-long readers is the best reward a student and teacher could receive.
References
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 6(3), ix-xi.
Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2012). Motivating boys to read: Inquiry, modeling, and choice matter. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(7), 587-596.
Gambrell, L. B. (2009). Creating opportunities to read more so that students read better. Reading More, Reading Better, 257-258.
Ivey, G. (1999). A multicase study in the middle school: Complexities among young adolescent readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 34(2), 172-192.
Krashen, S. (2011). Free voluntary reading. Libraries Unlimited.
Marinak, B. A., & Gambrell, L. B. (2016). No more reading for junk: Best practices for motivating readers.
Heinemann.Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 68-81.
About the Author
Dr. Leslie D. Roberts is an assistant professor of reading at Georgia Southern University. Having been a middle school ELA teacher for five years, she realized how important intrinsic motivation was for her students’ success in reading. Her research focuses on reading motivation for students across grade levels, content areas, and ability levels.
Do motivated students engage in learning more often and/or at higher levels?
OR
Does active engagement result in highly motivated students?
Rhetorical questions? Maybe not! Because it’s every teacher’s desire to instruct highly engaged and motivated students, let’s look at how to achieve this outcome!
Human engagement begins at birth. Motivation to survive is instinctual; crying demands engagement. Survival is assured. John Bowbly writes that a newborn’s “need for attachment” motivates the demand for engagement. Engagement/attachment is achieved through proximity which fosters personal security. Similarly, Abraham Maslow theorizes that physiological and safety needs must be met prior to love and belonging needs. These are prerequisite for esteem and self-actualization to develop. Innate needs motivate engagement prior to high order needs.
If you have disengaged students, are they missing attachment, sustenance, safety, love, and belonging? And is it possible that Erik Erikson implies that instructional engagement as a result of motivation to learn stems from trust and autonomy needs being met?
Motivational factors: survival, protection, love, belonging – all before esteem and self actualization resulting from education
Engagement strategies: tears, proximity, physical contact – these preface acting out, poor academic performance, and feigned illness behaviors in students.
I’ve not told you anything that you haven’t already studied as educators; it’s just that the silo you live in has been built around the here and now. You may have lost access to vital background knowledge that enables you to discern students’ missing needs that stifle motivation and interfere with engagement. But it’s never too late to adopt new instructional practices and classroom language!
Dr. Timothy Shanahan says that challenging texts are motivating! Struggling students may be struggling readers who lack motivation as a result of “baby text” assignments that require no effort. Audio-visual instruction is passive learning; audio books are not a substitute for individual, independent, active reading. Students must be actively engaged in reading and writing to learn, retain, and apply content. Reading and writing processes require active engagement; changing groups every ten minutes is not active engagement.
Challenging, complex texts demand grit. Teachers who engage students with literacy process practices empower them to accept challenges, persevere, and experience success! Angela Duckworth says grit is the best indicator of future earnings and happiness – factors connected with success and a satisfying life. Accomplishments as the result of hard work are motivating! Participation ribbons are not. Carol Dweck says that the word ‘yet’ is amazing to motivate continued engagement in learning. When teachers believe that more is possible, striving students believe it as well!
My personal favorite way to engage students in challenging reading and writing assignments is with open-ended questions. Every answer has value as a way to shape discussion where the teacher wants it to go. There are no wrong answers! Teachers adapt, reframe, and ask additional leading questions. Each student can experience a place of belonging in an atmosphere that builds corporate knowledge.
“What do you know about…?” opens the discussion on a new topic or introduces a complex text.
“What do you recognize in this word…?” enables students to use visual clues to construct meaning from unfamiliar words.
“What did you read about?” paves the way for main ideas, details, and outlines.
“What happened?” is the foundation for summaries.
And when we follow-up with HOW and WHY questions, we lead students onto the path of critical thinking. “Prove it” is like a double-dare to students. “I don’t know; find out and tell us.” shows our humanness and need to continue OUR education as well. You will probably have to throw in bonus points as tangible reinforcement on the way to inherent satisfaction from learning.
Listen to yourself asking questions. I think you’ll find that “Does anyone know……” is the phrase of choice. This is not an open-ended question; it is binary. That begs a yes or no answer. Striving students and striving readers disengage from the lesson because their head voice says “no.”
Open-ended quick-writes such as bell-ringers and exit tickets allow students to become agents of their own learning:
“What was interesting to you about our topic today?”
“What was confusing?”
“How does today’s topic connect to our lessons earlier in the week?”
“What is something good about today?” “How did you spend your weekend?” “What are you looking forward to this weekend?”
Questions don’t always have to be about content! But they DO need to be thought-provoking, sincere, and unpredictable.
You see at the end of the day, ‘correct’ answers and written responses are not as valuable as an answer that a student can support from reading and then, communicate freely in a written response. Correct answers can be found online; students’ answers are found in their brains as a result of active engagement in learning, motivated by successful prior experiences.
And when all else fails, offer chocolate…..
References (in order)
https://www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html https://shanahanonliteracy.com/publications/teaching-with-complex-text-1 Duckworth, A. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, 2016, Simon & Schuster Dweck, C. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, updated edition 12/26/2007, Ballentine Books
About the Author
After 20 years of growing literacy in under-prepared college students, Charlene retired to focus on state-wide literacy initiatives such as LiD, 6-12 and her R2S approved literacy courses at College of Charleston. She lets her life speak by empowering teachers to have the confidence and competence to implement a literacy model of instruction in any content area and at every grade level. Her best Covid-19 memory is teaching her grandson Algebra 1 via phone calls, Zoom, text messaging, and FaceTime. It was online instruction at its best – synchronously and interactively.
By: Kim Ferrari, South Carolina High School English Teacher
“I hate reading.”
“I don’t read.”
“Books are boring.”
“I’d rather watch the movie.”
These are all statements that I have heard from my high school students throughout my time as an English teacher. At first, I would get disappointed when I heard a statement like that from one of my students, but now I smile and nod at them when they say that because I know that by the end of their semester with me, they won’t have such strong feelings against reading.
What once felt like pulling teeth now feels more like cheering. What is the secret to getting students to not hate reading and maybe actually even fall in love with it? Well, it’s not so much a secret and more just a matter of taking the time to help students find the right book for them. For some students this is done in a matter of minutes, while other students might take a little longer.
One of my favorite ways of helping students find books that interest them is by holding a book tasting (also known as a book pass or book speed dating). Early in the semester, I work with my media specialist to pull a wide variety of mostly YA novels in different genres: action/adventure, romance, realistic fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, dystopian, historical fiction, graphic novels/comics, sports, and mystery/thriller. We sort the books onto different tables by genre and students rotate through the stations. At each station, students choose one book to sample for 3 minutes, and they are instructed to read the front and back covers, the inside cover, and begin the first chapter. After the 3 minutes has ended, students decide whether the book is a yes, a no, or a maybe, and record it on their graphic organizer. They then rotate to the next table with the next genre and the process repeats.
After students have rotated through all the genres, I pull aside anyone who still needs help finding a book and work with them to look for options that might interest them. Before we leave the media center, students check out one book, though I always have several students asking if they can check out more than one. Depending on how long your class periods are and how many students you have in each class, you can modify how this is set up, but I have found that exposing students to different genres helps them to realize that just because they don’t like a specific type of book doesn’t mean that they don’t like all books.
The Importance of Modeling
Modeling reading for students is important, so while they are reading, I spend the first few rounds circulating the room and “tasting” books. After a few rounds though, I start to look for students who have yet to find a “yes” book and use what I already know about them and what they have rated the books they have already previewed to help me suggest titles at their next station.
Once students all have books to read, we begin every class with independent reading. The first few days are usually a bit of a struggle as students learn the procedures and expectations for this part of class, but after a week or so, independent reading becomes a regular part of our daily schedule and students know what is expected of them. Our daily schedule is built around independent reading to ensure that no matter what, we have time to read. While students are reading, I walk around the room reading my book. This allows me to model independent reading for them because they can see all the different books I read and it allows me to quietly redirect students who may be off-task or distracted. Modeling reading for students helps to encourage them to read and motivates them to continue reading. Because I am reading when my students are reading, I am able to read a lot of books every year, which helps me recommend titles that I think students will enjoy based on their interests. Independent reading is a skill that needs to be developed over time, so we begin with reading for 7 or 8 minutes and build up to around 15 minutes as students’ stamina increases. The more students are engaged in their books, the longer they will read for, which is another reason helping students find books that interest them is so important. If I notice a student appears to be disengaged with their book, I keep an eye on them and if a day or two later, they’re still not engaged, I have a conversation with them and recommend a different book.
Making independent reading a priority in my classroom has led to increased reading stamina, higher engagement with books, and significantly fewer groans when I announce it’s time to read. At the end of each semester, I ask students to reflect on their experience and every year, there are positive comments that remind me why I put so much effort into helping students find the right books and making independent reading such a focus. Students share that this is the first time in years that they’ve finished an entire book, that they found themselves looking forward to independent reading each day, that they didn’t know reading could be fun, and that our independent reading time gave them a chance to relax. Some students even come back after they leave my class asking for book recommendations or if they can borrow one of my books, so I get to continue to foster their love for reading. When students come back to me years after graduating high school and tell me about the books they’ve read lately, I know I have done my job of creating lifelong readers, which to me is the ultimate goal.
About the Author
Kim Ferrari is an English Teacher at Manning High School in Manning, SC. She received her Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from the University of Maine at Farmington and is working on her Master’s in Literacy from Clemson University.
By: Kimberly Dunbar, Social Studies Teacher at Cane Bay Middle School
There was an 8.2 intensity earthquake rippling through upper elementary and middle schools classrooms in the summer 2019. After years of wrangling, new social studies standards were adopted by our State Department of Education, and there were substantial changes in content for grades 3 – 7. As usually happens, it was now up to the teachers of South Carolina to make everything work. For sixth grade teachers like me, the changes were exactly what we knew were coming but had long been dreading – we were supposed to teach all of human history in 180 days. It was difficult enough to complete when we stopped after the Age of Exploration. The task now felt unattainable.
Part of what has made teaching this content so difficult is that very few students have any background knowledge about the earliest civilizations. If they do, that knowledge is usually limited (Egypt’s pyramids and mummies) or inaccurate (Greece according to Percy Jackson or 300). It’s hard for my students to make connections to material when there is no foundational information to attach to. My dilemma was how to present enough content so learners can connect the dots without overwhelming them.
Introducing Historical Fiction in the Social Studies Classroom
Wendy Garrett, a friend and mentor, introduced me to the idea of using historical fiction to build my students’ background knowledge. She had students participate in a class reading of a book she selected in addition to their daily warm-up questions. The thought was to kindle an enjoyment of reading AND sneak a little historical context in at the same time. Many of our students were academically below grade level and reluctant to attempt a typical novel study. We chose to scrap the usual process and keep things focused on the reading – no vocabulary, no character studies, no plot diagrams. If students ask about the meaning of a word, we’ll discuss it, try to decipher it. If students wanted to discuss things or had questions about the plot or theme, we would talk. Our intent was to present some details about ancient civilizations and historical events while we remind students how enjoyable reading could be. We let student interest guide our actions and activities. Everything was low stakes.
As I included daily readings into my lessons, what I found was encouraging. The first 2-3 weeks were long as I had to demonstrate and promote expected behavior during the read aloud time. When students accepted and started living into these new expectations, all of us could focus more on the information in the book. We were able to take a few minutes to practice using context clues to determine the meaning of new words. Afterwards, it became a game – who could find an appropriate time and place to use these new words. If an actual person was mentioned in our book, a student would give us a 60 second biography of the character. When an historical event was involved in the story, someone gave us a quick recap of what happened. The payoff came when students saw these same people and events in our regular class discussions and were able to recall information we had covered before. I could take another minute and help students put together the cause-and-effect of concepts we were learning. Lots of wins on multiple fronts!!!
Useful Tips when Integrating Historical Fiction into the Classroom:
Explicitly teach your expectations for this reading time. If you are part of a teaching team and your ELA partner has procedures for this activity, try to mirror it. Consistency will make implementation easier. Have an anchor chart to use as a visual reminder of what you want to see and hear during this time.
Save your voice and use an audio reader system when possible.
Befriend your media center person. They are often the keeper of class sets. They know what’s available, what’s on order, what’s popular. They may have connections with other media centers and can arrange a loan of a class set from another school.
Give your students some input about what your class reads. I get single copies of books and let my students “test drive” them. All I want to know is, “Did you enjoy it? Would you recommend it to a friend?” If a student can give you more details, write it down. These details are an invaluable resource in determining what will grab your students’ attention and can guide future choices.
Get comfortable with looking for additional sources of funding. Until schools are better funded, it is hard to get class sets of the “latest and greatest titles” that are more likely to hold students’ attention. I have purchased several class sets through Donors Choose. I have several grant portals bookmarked. I’m always looking for ways to keep my classroom library fresh.
The skills that building background knowledge allows your students to practice, are the ones that will make them more engaged citizens and more valuable employees. Recognizing links between people, events and ideas are a building block of critical thinking. Critical thinkers identify situations, gather information, analyze information, and present solutions. These are the people that will make a difference in the future, if we take the time to teach them to solve problems. Teaching these new and different skills won’t be easy, but giving our students those skills will be worth every ounce of that effort.
About the Author
Kim is a second-career teacher with 13 years of experience. She’s currently working to bring ancient history to life at Cane Bay Middle School in Summerville, SC.
