Build a Literacy Toolbox for SBP

This past June, I had a chance to do an inventory of the equipment in the Chemistry lab.  At around the same time, Chelule and Fr. Mark brought to my attention that the equipment in the Physics lab is no longer sufficient, in both quantity and usability, to support laboratory activities associated with that senior course.  As a result of the two inventories, we decided to re-equip both the Chemistry and the Physics labs with the necessary and updated tools to be able to deliver quality education in our courses.

During the same period, I was involved in my reading as suggested by the Critical Reading Committee; we were learning about how to improve the reading skills of the students at SBP.  As I juggled the two activities (reading and taking inventory/ordering equipment), I kept the two tasks seemingly separate in my head, not realizing until today that they both have usefulness in accomplishing our Middle States student performance objectives.

Just as Chelule, Fr. Mark and I went about ordering and gathering equipment for our labs/classrooms, we shall assemble a literacy toolbox and deliver this ‘equipment’ to the content area teachers.  In a very real way, it’s the same process that Dave Cincotta went through with me as I prepared to take over his course and classroom four years ago.  The equipment was there, their locations described to me, and a quick orientation completed this transition from one instructor to the next.  It took me four years to realize the value of the equipment that already existed, and by adding a few items that I thought would help me to fully utilize the tools that I inherited, I believe that my teaching will be more efficient than it had been.

The SBP literacy toolbox will contain the instructional routines that will allow teachers to incorporate more reading into their respective content areas.  The toolbox will also contain routines for allowing more writing in the content areas.  These routines may already be familiar to some teachers, while they will seem foreign and strange to others.  But just as one may be bewildered upon entering a craftsman’s workshop and seeing all the various tools, it is with familiarity with those very tools, careful instruction in their use, and in seeing wonderful products that one’s bewilderment can be turned into satisfaction.

I need to learn how to teach Reading

I was so frustrated one day in Biochemistry class after I had asked the students to read what I thought was a straightforward account of the steps involved in breaking down glucose and how cells are able to extract its energy.  Asking for volunteers who could summarize some of the steps, no one came forward.  I was so frustrated that I thought aloud, "You can read but you cannot understand the meaning.  This is the definition of functional illiteracy."  Although I was not speaking to any student in particular, I was so dismayed that no one could understand what we had just read (aloud, even) that I did not give my students any further chance of discovering the knowledge for themselves.  I gave a lecture on glycolysis.

Looking back, I know now that I made the mistake of presuming that since my students could decode the words, i.e. 'read', they ought to be able to create meaning from what they had just read, i.e. 'comprehend'.  After learning about the process of Reading, during my reading of many books these past three weeks, I now know that I should not have presumed this.  I have to teach my students how to Read, with a capital R.

This is not to lay blame or to apologize.  This is me learning.

Read more about this process in my other blog.

We Are All Expected to be Teachers of Reading

That's a direct quote from a book I've been reading.  Logically, the authors go on to describe, in clear detail, the research evidence pointing to the effectiveness of specific reading (and writing) strategies, and the importance of using content area knowledge as part of learning the reading strategy.

Since my last blog entry, I've been asking myself how I might include 'reading lessons' in my Chemistry class.  As I was browsing the education section of Barnes and Noble today, I chanced upon a book that explains exactly that: it's called Teaching Reading in Science: A Supplement to Teaching Reading in the Content Areas Teacher's Manual.  I immediately was drawn by the title, and then leafing through the book, I realized that it laid out the specific literacy strategies complete with examples and extension activities.  It's not a very long book, and it's written almost like an instruction manual.  The language gets straight to the point, and multiple strategies are explained.

As I continue with reading the book, I'm convinced that I will need to share this with my colleagues in the Science Department.  I will suggest that they read the book and the strategies that it explains, and then consider applying some of these in our lessons.

Now I Know Why I'm Worried

Throughout this period of thinking about the Middle States goals that we have established for SBP, I've been anxious about the process of introducing strategies that will improve the writing and critical reading skills of our students.  I had an idea about why I was worried, but I may have figured it out.  I read it in a report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, called Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement.

"At the secondary level, the responsibility for teaching reading and writing often seems to belong to no one in particular."

We may ask our teachers, not just those in the English Department, to take on responsibilities for teaching reading and writing.  This will increase the workload of all the teachers because "content area teachers have to contend with a number of pressures that make it difficult to emphasize the teaching of reading and writing even if they fully agree with the need to do so."

The report describes the many real challenges involved in incorporating literacy instruction in content areas, and points out that "the greatest challenge of all has to do with the scarcity of ongoing, high-quality professional development for teachers...relatively few of the nation's secondary school teachers have had meaningful opportunities to learn about reading and writing practices that go on in their own content areas."  It is with optimism that the authors report that when content area teachers "receive intensive and ongoing professional support, many content area teachers find a way to emphasize reading and writing in their classes...many teachers do in fact manage to integrate literacy instruction successfully into their content area courses."

Ongoing, high-quality professional development for teachers: this must be included in our agenda as we pursue our Middle States goals.

Work Cited:  Heller, R. and Greenleaf, C.L. (2007).  Literacy instruction in the content areas: Getting to the core of middle and high school improvement.  Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Excellent Education.    pdf version available here.

Remember SurveyMonkey?

There was a time at SBP, when Rich Lorenzo taught Newark Studies, when students became adept at using an online tool called Survey Monkey.  Checking to see, that provider still exists and continues to offer the ability to easily and quickly create polls/surveys/voting and all for free.  (Several limitations to the free account).  I bring up Survey Monkey because of its similarity to Collaborize Classroom.

Another provider? There's one called "kidblog"

Investigating the issue of the need for emails, I chanced upon a provider called Kidblog.  As one might be able to tell from the name, this provider aims at classroom blogs for young students, elementary school students in particular.  It seems (I have not yet signed up for this service, but I probably will so that I can investigate it) that student emails are not needed in order to create 'accounts' for students.

The downside seems that if many teachers are going to implement blogs at SBP (this is our hope), and each teacher 'creates' an account for the student for one particular class, the student's other teacher will likely have to 'create' yet another account for that same student.  In this scenario, the [poor] student will have to remember two different dummy accounts created for the sake of by-passing the need for an email address.

This issue is avoided in Blogger.  When a student initially creates his Blogger/Google account, ALL the Blogger blogs in which he participates will automatically be visible in his Dashboard.  (By the way, the same is true for Wordpress; currently, I participate in/moderate three distinct blogs via that provider).

So it's good to know that Kidblogs exists, but using it creates difficulties for the students.  Besides, at this point in its existence, Kidblogs only has one plain looking template.  The students will reject that.  And, after all, it would be a challenge to ask a student to log on to a site called sbpscience.kidblog.com, for obvious reasons.

Revisiting Wordpress

Yesterday, I met with Fr. Albert to show him how to add students to a blog that he will be using for his "Wisdom of Benedict" course during the upcoming First Term.  Fr. Albert had previously asked about the ability to 'delay' the publishing of a student's post until perhaps it had been reviewed/moderated by the teacher.  I showed him the section about the work-around that I devised about this deficiency of Blogger, and he seemed to understand how to do this work-around.  (read more about it in my previous post detailing the Guide that I wrote for teachers).

Our meeting caused me to revisit the idea function at Wordpress.  The functionality of the Wordpress Dashboard and how it is able to control the privileges of blog participants continues to make Wordpress somewhat more 'powerful' than Blogger.

Perhaps a reason not to have SSR at SBP

During the 1990s SSR; Drop Everything And Read (DEAR); and Uninterrupted, Sustained Silent Reading (USSR) were commonly used as the independent reading block in many schools. During SSR, the teacher is expected to read and be a role model for students. Students read materials of their own choosing for a specified amount of time. In SSR, there are no accountability measures and there is no required follow-up activity (Pilgreen, 2000). The rationale for SSR was to have students practice reading at their independent reading levels to develop fluency, increase vocabulary, enhance comprehension, and improve wide reading (Krashen, 1988; Pilgreen, 2000). We were well aware of the strengths of SSR but equally aware of possible weaknesses. Students often read inappropriate reading material (too hard or too easy), and many students were fake reading during this time. The lack of response or feedback left some students without a purpose for reading. And in our situation, many students were unable to engage in their text because they lacked strategies needed to monitor comprehension. They viewed reading as decoding words and answering questions when they were finished (Beers, 2002; Wilhelm, 1997). Likewise, the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) reported that it was unable to locate many studies on the efficacy of independent reading programs such as SSR.

Kelley, M.J. & Clausen-Grace, N. (2006). R5: The sustained silent reading makeover that transformed readers. The Reading Teacher, 60, 148-156.

SSR, USSR, SSRI, Sustained Silent Reading

Do a search on Google Scholar, and you'll discover some nuggets of information about this strategy called Sustained Silent Reading:

What about Web 2.0 ?

I heard about this 'thing' called Web 2.0, defined by Wikipedia as "web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design." I once signed up at a website called Classroom 2.0, and one of their sponsors is a provider called Collaborize Classroom.

Although I have not yet signed up for their 'free' service, I am intrigued by some of the features that they advertise. Could this, perhaps, be one of the items which can be added to the functionality of blogging at SBP? Time will tell, as I investigate more about this type of Web 2.0 application.

From what I can tell, it's not a wiki; it is more of an online discussion board. To add variety to some blogging assignments, would it be possible to use Collaborize Classroom to facilitate discussion?

Organizing Student Posts

Since blogs at SBP will be team blogs, a method must be found to organize the posts so that a visitor to the blog can select to read a certain student's posts.  I believe I have found a method to do this organization, and that entails the use of a feature called "Labels" in the Blogger posting window.

Blogger or Wordpress?

Having tried both blog service providers, I decided that for the purposes of the blogging initiative at SBP, we ought to use Blogger.  That's not to say that I have not investigated other blog providers, including the recently-popular Tumblr (no, that's not misspelled).  Therefore a few words about tumblr:  yes, the provider allows for team blogs, but there are two hitches.  First, the posts are not signed; it is not easy to see who has posted new content, unlike on blogger where the post is clearly marked with the contributor's name.  (View the last line on  this post.)  Second, the premium templates and bells-and-whistles on tumblr (gadgets and themes/appearance) are for sale, i.e. they need to be purchased.  Those fancy-looking tumblr pages have spent some money to look that way.

So why Blogger, and why not Wordpress?  More about that after the jump.

Which blog provider should we use?

It has obviously been a while since I've posted anything on this blog.  What has happened since January?  The blog committee has not met again; I suppose it's the load of teaching four blocks a day that did that, primarily.  My attention has also been on doing research for the Critical Reading committee, and we've made some headway over there.

With the graduation and classes being over, I've had a chance to play around more with some of the possibilities that exist about introducing blogging to the school.  Here are some more things that I have learned, commenting first about the plan the I had written about in January...

Beginning the journey at SBP Science

Actually, the journey begins tomorrow, Monday, January 24.  After attending the blog/wiki seminar for teachers at NJIT this past Saturday, I will being piloting a program for using several web tools, including blogs, wikis, and Google docs, into the curriculum of some (and eventually all) of the classes that I'm teaching at SBP this semester.  Several SBP teachers also attended the seminar, and we had a chance to discuss how to implement some of these web tools into our classrooms.


My further incentive to learn about this has to do with my role as the main proponent of using blogs to improve the writing abilities of the students at SBP.  As we learned more about blogs and wikis, several teachers and I began to realize the possibilities, and the challenges, of using blogs and wikis in our classrooms.  One of my primary concerns is the apparent unwieldy nature of signing-up our rosters of students into the blogs and wikis that I, as the classroom teacher, would create for each class.  To be included as a contributor into a wiki or a blog, a student must sign-up with the provider of the blog/wiki, which would be either blogger.com or wikispaces.com (during the seminar, we had a chance to investigate other providers, but these seemed like the most easy to use, and also the most popular).  The current nature of the email system at SBP would cause a delay in the sign-up process, and I hope I've been able to find a work-around to that concern.


Here's my plan, and let's see if it works.