Reading Strategies: An Important Part of Instruction in All Subjects

"Mr. Armstrong, can I go to the library?" "Sam" looks at me expectantly, holding his agenda for me to sign, so he can leave the classroom during study hall. In his other hand he clutches a novel, one of a series of fantasy books.

"Why do you want to go?" I ask, my standard question meant for monitoring students' activities during study hall. I refrain from correcting his improper grammar.

"I'm finished with my book, and I want to return it and take out another one," "Sam" replies.

This conversation takes place between "Sam" and me at least twice a week, for "Sam" is a voracious reader. Any free moment he has, he opens a book and reads it. 'Brendan,' you may be thinking, 'that's great! There are so many kids today who choose to do other things besides read.' Don't get me wrong, I'm happy "Sam" enjoys reading. But here's the catch--when "Sam" is in class and we're having a discussion about an assigned text, or when "Sam" is expected to write about either a text the whole class is reading or one he's selected, what he says and writes shows little thought about what he's reading. It appears that "Sam" reads all of his books on a surface level, concentrating on little more than the plots and the characters' identities and basic roles in the books.

Reading critically is a large focus of the Common Core State Standards. Not only must students be able to identify or explain what texts state explicitly, but they must be able to identify the implicit meanings in texts. This becomes increasingly necessary as students progress in their K-12 education. In elementary school, students learn to read. But once students reach middle school and progress into high school, the focus shifts, and students are must read to learn. Students are expected to learn content by reading, and the texts are increasingly difficult. To meet this challenge, teachers must teach students to use a variety of reading strategies to read both for knowledge and understanding. The following strategies appeal to different types of learners and ask students to gain knowledge and understanding in different ways.
 

One type of reading strategy students can learn to use is connecting with the text. This strategy involves students making connections between the texts they're reading and their own lives, other texts, and the world around them. Thus, when a student reads about how Roger tries to steal Mrs. Jones’s purse in “Thank You, Ma’am,” by Langston Hughes, he might think of the time his mother found out he stole candy from the convenience store, how Dally, Ponyboy, and Johnny steal cigarettes in The Outsiders, and the sentence for stealing in the penal system of the country he's studying for Cultural Geography. Students are more likely to remember information when they can connect it to something familiar, and by making the connections, students think about the text at a deeper level. This strategy especially appeals to those students who are intrapersonal learners, for these students are insightful and self-aware.

A second reading strategy students should learn is summarizing. For this strategy, students learn to take the important points, events, or information, and write them more succinctly in their own words. For a novel, students might write a three-paragraph summary of the plot. Students in a history class might write a summary of the goals of key actions taken during Roosevelt’s presidency to get the country out of the Great Depression, and students in a science class might summarize the data from graphs in an article on bird migration. For students to accurately put a text into their own words in briefer form, they must know the factual aspects of what they are reading and be able to see how the facts are connected. Summarizing is a strategy which primarily appeals to linguistic learners, those who are most comfortable reading, writing, speaking, and listening to others speak.

Graphic organizers are a third reading strategy students in middle and high schools could learn to use. A graphic organizer is a visual representation of the type of thinking or organization within a text, or a part of a text. Students record information and ideas from the text within a visual structure that shows the relationships between the information and ideas. For example, a student reading The Outsiders might use a Venn diagram for noting the similarities and differences between Greasers and Socs as Ponyboy and Cherry talk to each other; a student studying the Declaration of Independence in Social Studies might use a tree map to record the document’s main idea, its supporting points, and the details related to each supporting point; and a science student might use a multi-flow map to take notes on the process of photosynthesis. Students learn what the different types of graphic organizers are used for and how to recognize which graphic organizer might be useful for a particular reading. Graphic organizers demand that students know what information is important and how it relates to other information and works together to suggest ideas in a text. Spatial learners, in particular, benefit from learning to use graphic organizers because they think in images and pictures.

Another type of reading strategy teachers can instruct students in is called questioning the author. Questioning the author helps students make sense of challenging texts by encouraging them to ask questions to figure out what the author is either directly stating or suggesting in different parts of the text. Students are taught to ask different types of questions, depending on where they are in the reading or what they are trying to make sense of in the reading, and then expected to accurately answer the questions using information from the texts. A student reading Heart of Darkness may ask, “Did the author clearly explain why others in the Company resent Kurtz?” A student studying U.S. expansionism in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in his textbook might ask, “’All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous’ is what Teddy Roosevelt says, but what does it mean?” And a student reading in a science textbook about the different parts of a plant might ask herself, “Did the author tell me how fertilization happens in a plant?” Questioning the author forces students to reread texts to search for answers, increasing the likelihood that they will remember information. And certain questions encourage students to look at the deeper meaning of texts for the answers. This reading strategy is certainly useful to interpersonal learners, those who are strong at recognizing the intentions and motivations of other people.

A final reading strategy frequently useful to students is a KWL chart. This reading strategy employs three columns across a page. The first column is titled K, which stands for know or think you know. The second column’s title is W, which represents want to know or expect to know. And the third column’s header is L, which means learned. Students prepare for a subject by listing in the first column all that they know or think they know about a subject. Then they move to the second column and write a list of questions about what they either want to learn or think they will learn based on the reading they are preparing to do. Finally, as students read a text, they list information that answers their questions from the second column, clears up any misconceptions they had, based on what they wrote in the first column, and other information they find interesting or important, especially that information which might lead them to begin another KWL chart. For example, take a student who is beginning a unit on the Holocaust. She knows that during the Holocaust Jews were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis. So, she writes that down in the first column. But this girl’s primary experience with camp has been the weeks during summers that she has spent at Camp Coniston, and she doubts that was what the concentration camps were like. So, in the second column she writes, “What was it like to live in a concentration camp?” Then she reads a short history of the Holocaust. In it, she learns concentration camps were places where prisoners were forced to work, lived in crowded, uninsulated, unsanitary barracks, and were almost starved to death because they were given only a measly amount of food each day. So, the student lists these pieces of information in the third column. Asking the questions prior to reading creates bridges for students from what they already know to new knowledge and gives students purposes for reading, which results in students more likely retaining the information they read. Also, students often ask questions which seek implicit answers from the text. This reading strategy is particularly useful to both spatial and intrapersonal learners because the spatial learners can see the progression of their growth of knowledge and understanding across the page, and the intrapersonal learner looks inside at what he or she already knows and determines what he or she either wants to or should know about the subject.

Not all students need to be taught reading strategies. A small percentage intuitively develops effective strategies for comprehending texts. But for a majority of students, students like "Sam," this is not the case, and teaching these students a variety of reading strategies is empowering. They're able to choose which works best for them, depending on the subject and type of text. While it takes teachers’ time away from teaching content initially, ultimately, teaching reading strategies pays off as students more quickly, accurately, and deeply read texts once they master the reading strategies. Teachers don't have to spend as much time re-teaching material because more students get it the first time. And this is one reason why teaching students to use reading strategies is necessary in all subjects, not just English. Teachers who take the time to teach, and give students time to practice, reading strategies are doing their pupils a great service, for these skills are certainly ones they can make lifelong use of as adults.

Thank you,

Brendan

Student Choice

This fall, I focused on teaching my students research skills. They learned research strategies, understanding search engines and domains, analyzing sources and evaluating information, and analyzing graphics as sources of information.  These and other research skills they learned are vital skills in today's society of seemingly limitless information, and misinformation. Students completed an I-search report to demonstrate how well they could apply the skills they learned. What did I do to encourage the students' use of the skills, rather than just using Wikipedia, or the top three or four sources that popped up when students Googled a topic? I gave them options for what they could research. Students' choices ranged from changing a car muffler to the Ebola virus to the importance of an Ivy League education to becoming a writer to Shailene Woodley. By allowing students a choice of topics, I hoped they would be inclined to use the best research skills possible because they cared about their subjects.

Giving students choices in their learning is used to increase their motivation to learn. Students feel empowered, and thus are engaged, want to complete work, and perform better. Critics of student choice conjure images of free-for-all classrooms, with a lot of interaction, enthusiasm, and activity, but very little learning. And it may be that some well-intended teachers are giving students free rein, and thus running around their classrooms like clowns in a circus act. But not all teachers are doing this, yet they're still providing students with choices that increase their learning.

One way teachers allow choice is giving students options for subjects, or topics, about which to complete an assignment. The topics or subjects from which the students may choose are ones the teacher has selected because of their appropriateness to the type of product the students are learning to generate or related to the unit of study. The I-search report described above is an example. Or in a health class, students must research an addictive substance consumed by people, and they can choose between alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine. The choices in both examples lead either to employing similar skills or to understanding similar concepts.

Teachers are also allowing for choice of products students make to show knowledge of subjects or skills. For example, in a unit on cells, the teacher’s final assessment is a computer-based project, rather than a test. The three options the teacher gives students are to create a digital story that combines images, text, and narration in a series of frames, a Glog, which is essentially an electronic poster that can include images, text, video, and audio, or a Web page, where visitors learn about cells by reading text and accessing images and video via different links on the page. Or in a technical education class, the students must demonstrate their skills at cutting, smoothing, and finishing wood, so the teacher gives them options of building a bookcase, an end table, or a footlocker. In each of these cases, there are set expectations, but students have alternatives for how to exhibit their knowledge.

Students spend a lot of time in class either analyzing or applying the concepts and skills they learn during direct instruction. One way teachers provide for student choice during these times in class is through learning menus. A learning menu is a collection of choices students have for learning activities that engage them in material. The learning menu a teacher creates usually offers options that address either different learning styles or levels of understanding. Some teachers present learning menus either in restaurant-menu style, with appetizers, entrées, side dishes, and desserts, or as tic-tac-toe boards. Students are given directions for how to choose the activities to complete while engaging with the material, such as complete two appetizers, one side dish, one entrée, and one dessert, or perform either three horizontal or diagonal tasks in a row to make a successful tic-tac-toe threesome. 

For example, consider a tic-tac-toe learning menu for reading a short story that addresses understanding at different levels. In the first column are three comprehension activities, in the second, three analysis activities, and in the third, three evaluation activities:

Accurately describe one character, using at least three descriptive words	Explain who is the protagonist of the story, using four details to support your determination	Judge how much the protagonist changes over the course of the story, including four details from the story to support your judgment
Accurately complete a plot outline of the story with seven important events, including four events in the rising action, the climax, and two events in the falling action	Explain the causes and effects of one conflict a character experiences, identify two causes and two effects	Judge how well a character or characters resolve a conflict in the story, using four details from the story to support your judgment
Accurately describe the setting of the story, including at least seven details that show the time and place of the story	State the central theme of the story and provide four details from the story which show this to be the theme	Judge how logical a character’s motivation for one action is, using four details from the story to support your judgment

With learning menus, students have choices for the activities they complete, but they hone their understanding of the concepts the teacher wants.

It's important for middle school and high school students to learn effective note taking in preparation for college, where large amounts of reading must be completed and understood between classes and in preparation for exams. Another way teachers are using choice in public schools today is teaching students several effective forms of note taking and then allowing them to choose how they will take notes. Summarizing is one choice students have. Students capture, in their own words and in briefer form than the text, the main ideas, details, or events from the reading. Students may also choose double-column notes. A page is divided vertically, with the left-hand column taking up one third of the page and the right-hand column the other two thirds. The student writes the first topic or main idea in the left column at the top of the page. Then in the right column the student writes pieces information, examples, and vocabulary related to the topic or idea. When the student reaches the next topic or idea in the reading, he writes it in the left column lower on the page than the notes in the right column about the previous topic. Then the student proceeds from there down the page in the right column. A third choice for taking notes is graphic organizers. Students use series of bubbles or boxes connected by arrows or lines, which visually represent the thinking in the text, such as a flow map for narration or process, a multi-flow map for cause and effect, or a thematic map for main idea with supporting points and details. A fourth option for taking notes is annotations. Students mark parts of a reading with symbols that have different meanings, such as a rectangle around key content vocabulary, a double underline for important points, and a question mark for confusing information. Students must learn to take notes, which take effort to do well, but by giving students effective choices for how to take notes, the task seems less onerous to them.

Everyone must make choices about their futures, what they want to accomplish. Effective adults set goals for themselves, and teachers who allow students to choose goals for their learning serve the children well by teaching them a life-long skill for success. A teacher allows a student to set one or two goals for what she wishes to learn or accomplish during a particular unit of study. The teacher and student agree upon what constitutes successful accomplishment of the goal(s). Then, part of the student’s final grade is based upon her progress toward reaching the goal. One way teachers are helping students choose goals is to review work from previous units and giving the student a choice for something to focus on that was weak in a previous piece of work. For example, let’s say that in a student’s first report he failed to correctly spell several homophones and had numerous run-on sentences. So, the teacher and student negotiate that the student will correctly spell 100% of homophones in the new report. The student is still responsible for run-on sentences as well, and they will be counted into his grade for mechanics, but the homophones are a separate grade, his goal grade. Another way teachers are giving students choices for goals is to provide them with a list of objectives to choose from which are usually stretch goals—activities completed, or skills or concepts mastered—that go beyond the material taught to the whole class. In both cases, students have some say in what they choose to learn, but the goals are related to the material taught in class, and the teacher is involved and has say over what the students learn.

Student choice, in reasonable doses, is good pedagogy, and teachers today are effectively allowing students choices in classes while still maintaining control over the situations. The keys to effective student choice are limited numbers of choices and teachers being the originators, or supporters of students in the creation, of the choices. 

Thank you,

Brendan

Teaching Latin and Greek Word Roots

In late April of 2014, my seventh-grade students finished a unit on the Holocaust. The final project, meant to assess their understanding of the concepts we covered, was a poster they presented to each other in small groups. Since the poster was about a historical novel, one of the concepts the students learned is a historical novel shows what was important about that time in history.

On the day students presented to each other, I circulated around the room during fifth period, listening in on students' presentations and making initial assessments of the students' projects. All of a sudden, from across the room, a student called, "Mr. Armstrong! Come here!"

I turned and saw two students beckoning to me while a third student stood holding his poster up, a dark look on his face. I crossed the room, and one of the students pointed at the poster. She said, "Look what 'Billy' wrote!" I looked at the poster. 'Billy' had written, "The time period is important because it makes people feel grateful that they are not Jewish."

"'Billy' shouldn't have said that, right Mr. Armstrong?" the third student asked.

I looked at 'Billy.' By then he was looking down at his feet, clearly embarrassed, and trying to lower his poster. And I knew what had happened. 'Billy' wasn't intentionally trying to say being Jewish was undesirable. 'Billy' had demonstrated weak written and spoken expression since he had enrolled in our school and joined my class two months prior. This was just another time 'Billy' struggled to convey ideas due to his weak vocabulary.

It was because of 'Billy,' and all my students, really, that I embarked on a new journey to increase students' vocabulary. After some research, I decided the most effective means of broadening my students' vocabulary would be to teach them Latin and Greek word roots. Further research led me to chapter 1 of What Research Has to Say About Vocabulary Instruction. Entitled "Getting to the Root of Word Study: Teaching Latin and Greek Word Roots in Elementary and Middle Grades," it's by Nancy Padak, Evangeline Newton, Timothy Rasinski, and Rick M. Newton.

This chapter is full of useful information and ideas, and I felt, once I'd read it, that it would be an adequate resource for my first year of teaching Latin and Greek word roots. In the chapter, there are four principles on which to base instruction, lists of word roots divided according to grade appropriateness, metalinguistic concepts to be stressed at different grade levels, and numerous activities to use to teach students the word roots and words that contain them. I decided to start each class with a vocabulary activity.

So, far, the voyage seems to be going well. We start out each week with Divide and Conquer, an activity which involves me presenting the word root, its meaning, and five words broken down by parts and showing how the parts add up to make the words' meanings. For homework each Monday, students must find five other words with the root and add them to the Divide and Conquer chart we began in class. Then, each Tuesday, we do Word Spokes in class. I review with students the word root, its meaning, and the meanings of the five words I taught them on Monday, and these are the beginnings of the Word Spokes. From there, students offer words they've found, and when I add them to the Word Spokes, students share the words' meanings. Students have been enthusiastic about this activity because they take pride in sharing words they've found

After Tuesdays, the weeks have varied. Typically, Wednesdays are for a quiz on the previous week's word root and vocabulary that contain it. Thursdays and Fridays' activities have been meant to reinforce students' knowledge of the words they've learned. On these days I've used Wordo, Odd Word Out, and Twenty Questions, which all come from Padak, Newton, Rasinski, and Newton's chapter. I've also added Fill in the Blank, which exposes the students to context clues, and Word Groups, where students have to categorize words based on their meanings. Students seem to be engaged during the activities, and I think it's, in part, due to the variety.

There have been three weeks, including the first week, when there haven't been quizzes because I chose not to teach vocabulary during the weeks before them. On these weeks, I've also been able to do an extension activity. So far, I've only done Root Word Riddles with the students. For this activity, either I've come up with riddles about the vocabulary words, or each student has come up with a riddle for one of the vocabulary words. Students must guess the word based on the clues in the riddle. Students have both enjoyed figuring out which word the riddle is for and writing their own riddles. I see this activity challenging them to think creatively about the words. Eventually, once I've presented enough prefixes, bases, and suffixes, I'll also have the students do Be the Bard as an extension activity--students will have to make up new words with new meanings by combining word roots.

Will this excursion be successful? So far, students have done well on the weekly quizzes. I hope to see more improvement in students' reading and writing skills than last year as measured on the NWEA tests. And if 'Billy' can remember, in year hence, to look for familiar parts of words he encounters as a means of determining the meanings and accurately determine when it's appropriate to use 'intervene,' rather than 'interrupt,' in his writing, that will be a victory in my mind.

Thank you,

Brendan

The Challenges of Motivating Students

"The fundamental difficulty is that the work in which the schools seek to engage the child is not significant to him. It does not satisfy the needs which the individual child experiences. It does not gratify any hunger or yearning he has felt. It does not answer any questions which his experiences have raised in his mind. It does not contribute to the solution of any problems which he has encountered in actual life." Does the sentiment of this quote about students' motivation sound familiar? It comes from chapter one of The Motivation of Schoolwork, by H.B. Wilson and G.M. Wilson. This book was published in 1916.

Jump ahead nearly 100 years, to 2014, and an article written by Emma Brown in The Washington Post entitled "U.S. Students Stall In Math, Reading." This article about United States students' scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress highlights the stagnation of twelfth-graders' scores recently, and actual decline in reading scores since the early 1990's. In the article, readers see this analysis: "Some analysts contend that the 12th-grade scores are evidence only of an unsurprising truth: that high school seniors are not motivated to try their hardest on tests in which they have no real stake. 'We all remember exactly how engaged your 17-year-old high school senior is,' said Frederick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute."

Teachers have grappled with how, optimally, to motivate students for at least 100 years. The fact that it's hard to motivate children is old news to parents. Anyone familiar with Bill Watterson's work in Calvin and Hobbes or Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's contemporary comic strip, Zits, will recognize these authors' spot-on depictions of parents trying to motivate their children to help with chores, eat healthy food, join in family activities, and be better students. But, take 10 Calvins or Jeremys, put them together in a room with 10 more students, and have the goal of teaching all 20 some aspect of an academic subject, such as symbolism, the causes of the Great Depression, multiplying fractions, or cell division. Maybe now it's understandable why the engagement of students has been a topic of study, discussion, and debate for so long.

On a theoretical level, why is motivating students so challenging? Take a look at Learning Theory Fundamentals. This web site examines the learning theories of just six psychologists and theorists: David Ausubel, Albert Bandura, Jerome Bruner, Robert Gagne, B.F. Skinner, and Lev Vygotsky. Yet each one has his own theory about where students derive their desire to learn. For Ausubel, motivation comes out of learning. Bandura thinks students' self-efficacy is at the root of their motivation. Bruner believed intrinsic rewards encouraged students to achieve. In Gagne's view, students are motivated by feeling more capable. And Skinner held that external rewards are what motivates students. Finally, Vygotsky's research led him to conclude that students are driven by appropriately challenging and engaging tasks. What's the problem? These and other researchers are all right, about some students.

No two students are exactly alike. While some students want to do well because they take pride in their work, others can't get to this point because they've developed negative beliefs about their own capacities to learn. Some students love to get stars, bookmarks, and homework passes for doing well. But others will only try if the work they complete shows they can earn "A's."

So, how do I light the fire to learn in my students? Learn, practice for excellence, and experiment. On a practical level, Jon Saphier, Mary Ann Haley-Speca, and Robert Gower identify, in The Skillful Teacher, three areas of teaching which address motivation: expectations, personal relationship building, and classroom climate. In the book, they present multiple actions teachers can take, in each area, to improve students' motivation. I could spend the rest of my career learning to use these research-supported actions, and I still wouldn't perfect all of their ideas. But a few I've worked on developing are sticking with students, actively listening to students, and instilling positive beliefs about risk taking.

I also have to take what I learn from theorists and my coworkers and devise my own approaches to test on students. Recently, all of my students took standardized math, reading, and language use tests, as they had done in the fall, and some took again in the winter. A coworker who teaches math aimed to motivate her students to do well on the math portion of the test. She handed them the math scores they earned when they most recently took the test. She then talked to them about how, if the students did well enough this spring, they might move to a more advanced level of math class next year.  A good plan, I thought, employing both Vygotsky and Skinner's theories of motivation.

By chance, I was privy to two students' thoughts about my coworker's motivational tactics. The first I overheard talking to some friends. And from what she said, I gathered she felt concerned about doing well enough to be promoted to the higher level math class. What she said and her tone conveyed that she felt threatened by the challenge. The second student told me about this challenge and confidently stated that she believed she would be up to it and was capable of advancing to the more challenging level of math. My analysis of these two incidents--the first student operates under Bandura's theory of motivation while the second is motivated according to Gagne and Skinner's theories.

Since I wanted to encourage my students to try their best on the reading and language use tests, but didn't want a repeat thought process for the first student I describe above, I decided to tweak my coworker's approach. I gave my students their last scores on the tests. And then I appealed to their sense of wanting to show how they've become more capable by challenging them to do their best, so I had a true sense of how much they had grown in their learning.

I also used two metaphors. First, I explained how in individual sports, such as cross country running, there can be only one winner. But what everyone else can do is improve on their previous best time. This, I hoped, would touch upon the students' self-efficacy by making the goal less daunting, try to better than last winter or fall. My second comparison was about Michael Jordan not making the varsity basketball team as a sophomore in high school. I relayed to students what the coach said Jordan needed to work on in his game, and how, within a few years he was a star college, and eventually pro, player. And I also highlighted how Jordan's success must have come from hard work and desire to improve in those aspects of basketball. The point I eventually made was, even if students didn't score the highest in seventh grade, they still had a lot of growing to do, and could still end up strong readers and writers if they kept working at it. Here, I tried to instill an intrinsic reward.

For me, focusing on techniques that encourage my students is a critical part of what I do each day in my classes. Challenges continue to present themselves, and discovering and utilizing the solutions to these problems takes effort. But I see a strong payoff in continuing to better myself at tackling the complexities of motivating students.

Thank you,

Brendan

Expect Key Moments in Class

According to Jon Saphier, Mary Ann Haley-Speca, and Robert Gower in The Skillful Teacher, anticipation is an important ingredient to being a successful teacher. We must anticipate when students will need clarification, when there may be lulls in a lesson, and how to best group students for an activity, just to name a few parts of any lesson where it could get derailed if things aren't considered ahead of time.

So, expect the unexpected should be a mantra of mine in the classroom. Yesterday, I didn't foresee one development in my lesson. Fortunately, what took place was a pleasant surprise.

We've begun our final writing unit, an argument of judgment. I'm following the approach presented in Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12: Supporting Claims with Relevant Evidence and Clear Reasoning, by George Hillocks, Jr. He suggests starting the unit by considering a simple argument of judgment, what comprises a good school mascot. So, two days ago, we discussed our school mascot, the Lebanon Raiders, and the examples of unusual, but real school mascots Hillocks, Jr. shows in the book. We discussed what students thought of the mascots, whether or not they liked them and thought they made sense, and why.

Yesterday, picking up where we left off, I had students work together to generate descriptors of what a good mascot should be. By the time students had exhausted their lists, in each class we had over 15 descriptive words and phrases. After presenting students with the concept of criteria, and with the intention of having students write a brief argument of judgment about our school mascot in groups, I then told students we needed to narrow our criteria for a good school mascot down to the top five.

And this is when I was happily caught off guard. Up until this point, students worked dutifully and diligently. But, suddenly, hands shot up all around, some being waved by their owners. And thus began lively discussions of which criteria were most important. Was "courageous" a top five criteria? Did a majority of the students think "intimidating" should be one of the most important standards? How vital was it for the mascot to be "original"? All around the class, students were flexing their brains, reasoning out why they made their choices, listening to what their peers said and respectfully either adding to the other student's position or rebutting it. Class-wide, rudimentary arguments of judgment sent the energy levels through the roof.

These discussions lasted 10 or 12 minutes, and a majority of the students participated in them. By the end of each deliberation, I had the sense that my students' grasp of criteria and an argument of judgment was stronger. I've spent years honing my skills at predicting when there may be problems in a lesson and planning accordingly. What I realized during this lesson is that I should also look ahead for points in lessons that will be strong, and plan to make my students' learning even greater during these moments.

Thank you,

Brendan

Modeling Good Social Skills

"Billy, can you please turn around and focus on working with Jim?" "Will you please hold on a second, Susie? I'm in the middle of talking to Mrs. C." "Guys, do you really think it's a good idea to be karate kicking a full water bottle off the table?"

Yes, these are all things I've said to students this year in attempts to manage their behavior and suggest to them that their actions may not be socially fitting for seventh graders. As a teacher, part of my job is to help students learn appropriate social skills.

A coworker recently emailed me a link to the article "Social Skills in the Digital Age: What's Screen Time Got to Do With It?" In this article, Norene Wiesen alerts readers to a concern about too much time spent in front of electronics' screens stunting children's social skills. The article suggests that excessive time devoted to electronics by children prevents them from learning to carry on normal person-to-person interactions.

This idea makes sense--time spent watching television, surfing the web, and playing video games is time spent either without conversation or having artificial conversations. There is no healthy exchange of ideas. There is no reading of physical cues. There is no consensus reached on a disagreement.

But what makes less sense is Wiesen's call to action. In my classes, students spend only a small percentage of their time in front of a screen. This article intimates that the excessive time students spend in front of screens is mostly outside of school. Yet Wiesen calls upon teachers like me to devote instruction to helping students learn healthy screen-time skills in daily life.

This is an unreasonable task to undertake. Most of the days school is in session, I only have my students for 42 minutes. Anyone familiar with the Common Core State Standards knows the depth of learning my students must achieve in English/Language Arts, and that learning takes time. Also, I don't think it's my place to suggest, through lessons, that students' choices for free-time activities at home are inappropriate--that's up to their parents. Finally, even if teachers do instruct students on using electronics in moderation, there's still the matter of instilling in students good social skills.

Having students learn good social skills is the crux of the matter, isn't it? I want to concentrate on teaching my students what to do, not what not to do. Wiesen does touch upon what should be an effective, embedded approach, modeling. On my whiteboard most days is a new quote of the day. These quotes are meant to provoke thought in my students, but many times, they also serve as reminders to me. Two that have made the board, and I don't know the source of either, are "Children have more need of models than of critics," and "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." Again, time in class is limited. Wouldn't modeling be the best and most efficient way for me to teach students good social skills?

But what social skills should I model? Here, too, Wiesen brings up an excellent source, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People. This book is filled with principles for how to handle people, get people to like you, bring people around to your way of thinking, and be a good leader--the skills needed to be socially successful. If I take these principles and apply them to my interactions with my students, my students will be witnesses to excellent social skills.

Here are a few examples. Carnegie posits that one of the basic techniques for dealing with others is to "Arouse in the other person an eager want." In other words, he suggests that we find out the other person's desires and then present ways we can help him or her achieve those desires. So, in my class, I can sit down with a student, learn about her goals, and then explain how what she will learn in Language Arts will help her achieve those goals. Another idea Carnegie presents is, to get people to like you, "Talk in terms of the other person's interests." With this in mind, I try to keep mental notes of my students' interests--Steve plays football; Jane plays basketball; George plays the trumpet; Alison is into hunting; Carl has chickens; Erica has a horse; Paul likes The Hunger Games; Rachel likes Harry Potter. Then, when I get the opportunity, I'll spark up a conversation with students related to their preoccupations. Finally, Carnegie opines that to be a good leader, one thing to do is "Ask questions instead of giving direct orders." You saw me do this in the first paragraph of this post.

Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, "Goethe taught, 'Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.'" I have hundreds of interactions with students each day. There is ample opportunity, each day, for me to do my part in encouraging my students' social growth by modeling the principles Dale Carnegie suggests.

Thank you,

Brendan

My Purposes

Two definitions of "reflection" in the on-line Merriam-Webster thesaurus are "a briefly expressed opinion" and "a careful weighing of the reasons for or against something." Education continues to be a broad topic of discourse and examination. In today's editions of my two local newspapers, there were eight articles related to education, and that's not counting the sports pages' coverage of local schools' athletics.

As my sixteenth year of being on the "front lines" of education draws to a close, I'm ready to join the discussion. Every day, an insight strikes. Every day, a challenge arises. Every day, an issue puzzles. One of my intentions here is to address the complexities of teaching I face. Some subjects may be applicable to others' situations, and some may be specific to my current experience.

Rosa Parks said, "Stand for something, or you will fall for anything. Today's might oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground." Reflections from the School is where I'll stand and wave my flag. Readers may not agree with everything I say, and I'll welcome differing insights. For it's through openly engaging in reasonable arguments that we can all grow.

Adding one more voice to the multitude may seem useless. But I hope otherwise. I recently explained to my students that most new ideas are simply expansions or twists upon, or syntheses of, older ideas. If, through this blog, I or someone else is elevated to a new level of thinking that improves education, then I'll count it a success.

Thank you,

Brendan