More Matters

I decided recently that I need to get a stronger upper body. So, I bought some small hand weights and I asked my husband to show me some weight lifting exercises. And then, I tried a couple of the exercises but I wasn’t doing them quite right. So we both decided that since he was good at it and I wasn’t, he should just lift the weights for me. All the time.

Hahahaha!!! Nooooooo, not really!

You’re thinking, “Tracy, that’s ridiculous! The only way to get better at weight lifting is to ...actually lift weights.

But I do think that’s what many of us do with reading in Social Studies. We want the kids to improve their reading, so we ask them to read something.

And then, they don’t do it very well because they are all kids and because some of them are not strong readers and others are not very into Social Studies and others are intimidated by the term “Amendment” or “Timbuktu” or “progressivism” and others looked at the single-spaced long (to them) piece of text and gave up before they started.

And then we say, “OMG! These kids can’t read!”

And then we say, “Since they can’t read, I had better do the reading for them”.

And then we put it in a powerpoint or a handout or in bullet points or fill in the blank or another actual language (for ELL students) ...

And then the kids don’t actually have to read.

We do all the reading for the kids.

And then we are frustrated when their reading doesn’t improve.

Huh.

I read recently a PSA campaign about fruits and vegetables that says “More Matters”. The idea behind the PSA is that just eating an apple a day isn’t enough. The more fruits and veggies you eat, the healthier you are.

They’re probably right. I should increase my fruit and veggie consumption if I’m not going to lift any weights myself  

But I would like to suggest that you apply the “more matters” philosophy to your students and pieces of text.

More TEXT matters.

Kids should have the opportunity to have their eyes on text every day in your class -- and  different texts. They should have maps and charts and graphs and textbook-style readings and primary source documents and secondary source documents and articles and political cartoons and artworks ...

All. The. Time.

And if your kids stink at reading?

Then they need to read MORE!! (It’s called productive struggle and it’s a powerful thing)

Of course, you will have to bust out all your strategies:

• Chunk the text
• Have kids mark the text
• Have them talk about the text.
• Have them write about it
• Have them think about it
• Have them read it again
• Have them respond in writing
• And about 1000 more reading strategies...

And when they aren’t good at it?

Try it again.  They need to read again!! That’s how they improve. Productive struggle is how we grow. Don’t take away that chance for kids to struggle for themselves.

I’m going to go work with my weights. And see if I can improve.  

How about you? How about your kids? Can you have them try “productive struggle” with text every day? Different text, different strategies, but stil working with text.

More Matters.

Email me! newmantr@pcsb.org

Baby ... One More Time

Baby ... One More Time!

The first time one of my reading coach friends suggested that I have my students read something more than once, you had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Social studies teachers having kids read something more than once? One more time?

What an absurd idea!!!

Who’s got time for that?!?!?

“But Tracy”, she argued, “How is a kid going to learn all they need from a text in just one read?”

“I have no idea”, I replied, “but we still don’t have time for reading things more than once. We have to get through 147 benchmarks in one year. We can’t slow down enough to read the same thing a bunch of times!”

Well, watch me eat my word:

I was wrong. She was right. Sometimes, kids have to read things more than once.

“But Tracy”,  you now argue with me-from-the-past (because you’re now invested in this debate), “you were right before! We don’t have time to read everything three times!! We have pacing and a test coming up and review to fit in and.....”

Well, in the words of NO POLITICIAN lately,

Let’s compromise!

As I listened to the Supreme Court hearings last week, it occurred to me how darn many times our (current AND historical) Supreme Court Justices had read the Constitution.

And had read the constitution.

And had read the constitution.

And had read the constitution.

And if those very smart folks had to (and still have to) read the Constitution over and over to better understand it, then how could my teenagers POSSIBLY get it the first time?

Even the most brilliant teen isn’t a better reader than the whole Supreme Court.

So how do I work in this read it (baby) one more time with a billion standards to cover in the last 47 days of school?

Four ways.

• Worth It. Rereading needs to be with something worth it. Most textbook chapters aren’t worth it. But a good quote or primary source might be worth the time to reread.
• Length. Rereading needs to be with something of manageable length. Don’t ask a kid to reread chapter 23. But maybe they can reread an important paragraph.
• Purpose. Rereading needs to have a purpose. Don’t just reread because your lesson went too quickly and you have 10 minutes to kill. Reread because the text is interesting, thoughtful, multi-layered, or important.
• Differences. Rereading needs to have a different task each time. Don’t have kids look for the same info every time. Instead, maybe the first time we read it to get the gist and the second time to answer a specific question, examine the author’s point of view, or look for specific words or phrases.

Try with something short, like a quote and then gradually expand your practice with longer texts.

This is beneficial for both struggling readers and excelling readers. If you choose a good piece of text, kids can get something new out of it after a second (or maybe even a third!) reading.

Like Brittney Spears says, read it “(baby) one more time”

Make intentional choices about what your kids read and how many times they read it. But don’t be afraid to read something meaty and important more than once.

Thoughts, ideas, questions? As always, email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

How About A Big, Warm Cup of "Nope"?

Sometimes, it turns out that I’m not as brilliant as I wish I was. (I know. Big shocker.) Sometimes, it takes me more than once to learn something.

I think I’m not the only one.

My daughter helped remind me of this. She’s in first grade now and she has terrible handwriting. It’s pretty illegible. Her teacher even commented on it last week. (Not that mine is ALL that much better...)

So what do I do? Well, I’m a teacher! And I try to be a good parent! I’d like to help her with this. Not knowing much about teaching first grade or about teaching handwriting, I go to the internet and find some worksheets.

Here’s how I envisioned helping my daughter work on her handwriting.

Step One: Give her the worksheet and time to work on it.

Step Two: Check on the worksheet.

Step Three: Handwriting improves due to practice. She is rewarded with a little extra TV time.

Uh, nope.

Here’s how it actually went down:

Step One: Give her worksheet

Step Two: Check on Worksheet. Handwriting is still illegible. But there’s more of the illegible writing there on the page now. More illegible writing.

Step Three: Handwriting doesn’t improve at all. She wants extra TV time anyway, since she put in her time and effort.

Out of frustration, I email her teacher,

“Dear Mrs. Teacher. We have been working on handwriting at home but it doesn't seem to be improving. Any suggestions?”

Her teacher emails me back, “It’s great that you’re helping! Here is the first grade handwriting curriculum that we use. Maybe that will help!”

Great! A better worksheet!

And then, I click on the email and open the attachment.

Uhhhhh....

Hmmmm......

Uh oh. This is not going to go the way I had envisioned.

It sure looks like ... REAL TEACHING

Because I can see that, instead of a worksheet where we just do MORE of the same not-helping activity, instead the curriculum is

1. Gradual Release-based
2. Requires teacher (or parent in this case) to do the gradual releasing.
3. Way, way better than getting a worksheet off the internet.

So we tried it. We sat down and I showed her how to form each letter. I read the script (did you know that there is a particular way to describe the formation of each letter? Me neither!)  We talked  through where on the line each letter begins. I modeled how to form each letter. She wrote it in the air with her finger and then wrote each letter on the line while I talked her through the process. THEN, we went back and evaluated the all letter “e”s we had written and re-did a few that weren’t up to par.

It was hard work, for both of us.

But, slowly, sooooo slowly, it started to pay off. Her letters are better formed. They aren’t up “in the air” or all over the page. They rest on the line like they’re supposed to.

So here’s what I learned.

1. Sometimes, a kid doesn’t need MORE of the SAME to get better. Sometimes, they need it re-taught, probably a little differently.
2. Worksheets rarely help kids actually learn, as independent work.
3. Gradual release really does work amazingly well for skills.

When was the last time you DIDN’T get something on the first try? (It’s ok. It doesn’t mean anything bad. Just that you’re human and not perfect.) Was it using “Unify”? Was it a new lesson plan template? A piece of technology? A dinner recipe? A type of exercise?  A home improvement task? (I know it takes me three tries and four trips to Home Depot every time I try a new home improvement task...)

How do you decide when to reteach? Is it ... the result of (whipping off my sunglasses) FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT? (Bam! Flashbacks to September’s Formative Assessment Month! Eeeooowwww!!) How DO you reteach concepts and benchmarks where your kids struggled?

We’ll get more into the nitty gritty next week.

As always, I love to hear from you! Email me newmantr@pcsb.org and talk about reteaching.

It Says/ I Say/ And So

** Welcome to a WAYBACK Wednesday email – where Tracy shares a tip from wayback – this time from wayback in 2012! Still relevant, still helpful, (I hope). Enjoy!

Michael Stipe of the band REM once said, ““Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious...”.

Does that sound like your students sometimes? Or even your class?

Are your administrators looking for “higher-order” thinking in your classroom? Want to make it easy to prep and obvious to your walkthrough team or evaluating administrator?

Students often think that reading is a passive task – that once they read it (or even look over it) they will get a magic light bulb over their heads that will clarify and expand on the reading. And they get frustrated when that doesn’t happen. Hmmph. I get frustrated when that doesn’t happen too! (I’m talking to you, IRS and Turbotax…..)

One quick and easy way to help them learn to dig deeper into text, to help them react, respond, summarize, and infer is a quick strategy called “It Says/I Say/And So”. This strategy is good for using DURING reading and AFTER reading.

It’s not too complicated. The teacher poses a couple of questions. The students make a chart with three columns (four, if you count the questions as a column). The first column says “It Says”. The second column says “I say”. The third column says “And So”. They read the text (text means textbook, document, article, chapter, editorial, or whatever you want them to read.) and answer the questions through the columns about what they’ve read.

Column 1—“It Says”: As the students read they answer the first column, what “It Says”. By “it” we mean the text they are reading whether it’s a textbook section, a primary source, an article, etc. This is a brief summary. This is where students find information from the text that will help answer the question.

Column 2 – “I Say”: In the second column, they can put it in their own words or their own views. They can think about what they already know about that information or what they learned in class or in another reading

Column 3 – “And So”: In the third column, they can infer and extrapolate from what they learned. Combine what the text says with what you know to come up with the answer. I kind of like to use the phrase “This means” here (like I do on DBQ arguments). So here is where students have to practice their higher-order thinking. You can, of course, model this a few times before they “get” it. Real thinking takes practice!

Here’s an example, based on using a short excerpt the Declaration of the Rights of Man (from the French Revolution)

Here’s the excerpt:

1. Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on public utility.

2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible (can’t be taken away) rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The sources of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms.

Here is what it looks like with a couple of questions:

QUESTION	IT SAYS	I SAY	AND SO
What do the French think about government?	Men are born free and equal and the government can’t take that away.	The French treated most of the people (the 3rd estate) pretty horribly. They really didn’t have any rights before.	They feel like they have to spell it all out since they really didn’t have any rights before now. They want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
According to the French, who gives the government its power?	Rulers get their power from the people	If the leaders get their power form the people, that means it’s NOT from God or anything else.	That means we give the rulers their power – so we can take it away, too!

Think of it like the DOK levels. Level one, you can find with one finger on the answer in the text, like the “it says” column. Level two, you can find the answer with two fingers in two different places in the text, like the “I say” column. Level three, you can find the answer with three fingers – two on two different places in the text and one finger on your head to represent thinking about what you bring to the table, the “and so” column.

I would try it with a textbook passage, first, to help ME learn how to make the questions. I would also make sure I had some answers in mind for each section, so I know if I wrote a good question for this assignment or not.

Anyone willing to try this out? Or need help making a chart or questions? I can’t wait to hear how it goes! Have a great week!

-Tracy