Literacy Practices: Common, Core, and Contextualized Mary F. Roe, Ph.D. Utah State University

Three Questions  WHAT are the common goals?  WHY are these goals central (i.e., core)?  HOW do middle level teachers infuse these goals into their classrooms (i.e., contextualized)?

Overall Common Goal  To help students read (and write and communicate) better

What do the following relationships suggest about these teachers’ selection of common goals and their decision making about them? Teacher ATeacher BTeacher CTeacher DTeacher ETeacher F CurriculumTextStudents CurriculumText CurriculumTextCurriculumStudents CurriculumText Curriculum

Centrality of Goals  Goals repeatedly proven to contribute to comprehension  Phonemic awareness  Understanding that words have subsounds  Prior knowledge  Holding the requisite background understandings (i.e., understandings assumed by an author)  Vocabulary  Holding a word’s meaning required for the text  Word identification  Saying words accurately and quickly  Connected text  Given appropriate prior knowledge, vocabulary, and word identification understandings, grasping a text’s meaning

Five Premises for Acting on Central Goals  Students learn to read by reading  The opportunity to read is insufficient without an instructionally supportive environmnet  Reading instruction warrants the same authenticity as real reading.  Middle school students ae social, value peer relations, and highly prize opportunities to interact with friends.  The unique literacy requirements across types of reading and the role of technology (broadly defined) demand attention.

Coherency: Intertwine Standards (District, state, and national )  “People leery about calls for standards need to remember their benefits and reclaim them for democratic ends, despite the fact that standards and assessments can be used to limit access and stratify students into educational tracks, or can lead to an overly prescriptive and narrow curriculum” (Rose, 2009, pp ). From Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us

Combining Complex Pieces  According to Cartright (2008), “Teachers must be able to coordinate what they know about research, standards, children’s development, and individual children’s progress. And they must be able to continually recast their perspectives on individual students and instruction based on assessment results and ever-expanding professional knowledge” (p. 365).

Assessment as Guiding Instruction  “The key to effective teaching is not just helping students achieve more on a given assessment, but knowing what to do based on evidence of learning, which may come from standardized and other achievement measures (Berry et al., 2011, p. 187). From Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools…Now and in the Future

When Instruction is Indicated Three Components of an Instructional Plan  Declarative -Tell students “what” they will learn  Conditional -Tell students “why” this topic holds importance.  Procedural -Provide information about the topic. -Provide modeling (think aloud) -Provide opportunities for guided practice (The teacher and student work together.) Provide opportunities for independent practice. (The student works alone.)

Learner Experience, motivation, knowledge, background, interests, and other impactful characteristics Teacher Pedagogical understandings and stance Belief that all students can and should be given the opportunity to learn Re/Assessment + Overall General knowledge, ability, and achievement +Event specific Readiness, interest, background Guiding Purpose +/- Standards +/- Curricular goals +/-Student goals Authentic Events = + Focused Choice +Content and Process +/-Focused product Drama, Art, Text, Discussion, etc. +/-Focused resources Community, Home, Tools, Places, Texts +/-Grouping +/-Evaluation Teacher Pedagogical understandings Belief that all students should receive comparable opportunities

To remember… From the research of Neuman and Celano (2012): “No matter how poor or impoverished an environment might be, children can learn and thrive when they receive a quality education…Urban public schools can provide rigorous, academic, content-rich instruction for students all the way from kindergarten through high school…Teachers matter” (p. 131).

In closing… “We teach and we simultaneously learn to the last syllable of time” (Ayers & Ayers, 2011, p. xi). From Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom