Complex Texts and How to Navigate Them

Chapter 6 of Buehl begins by discussing a myriad of complex subjects: Renaissance music, neuroscience and a challenging read from Dostoyevsky. All of this revolves around the essential question posed at the beginning of the chapter: How can instruction scaffold the reading of complex disclipinary texts? Areas such as science and math are not quite my forte but I have applied these skills to literature and history countless times throughout my education and as a teacher in some small ways.

When we examine historical texts, many students are discouraged by the sheer volume of necessary prior knowledge in some cases. To understand a new concept or figure, we must trace back the thought/figure through a variety of different sources. For example, if I were to lecture and say "The success of oil baron John D. Rockefeller during the Gilded Age was in spite of, or perhaps because of, his rivalry with the steel king Andrew Carnegie", there is much to be teased out and explained to a student with no prior knowledge. Such as "What is an oil baron? When was the Gilded Age? If Rockefeller was in the oil business and Carnegie was in steel, why were they rivals?". It is a disservice to students to teach without leaving the floor wide open for questions and inquiry to build their knowledge so that sentences such as the one above fly straight as an arrow and not sail over the head.

One particular example of this that stuck out in my mind was when I was a counselor for a middle schooler's summer camp a few months back and I had this kid named Amar'e. Amar'e loved music, he used to dance and rap all the time. I would give him shit for playing Chief Keef and Drake, and he would throw it back at me for saying everything I listened to was weird and no one liked it. So, one day he was listening to Drake and he said "Man, I don't know why people think Kendrick Lamar is better than Drake, that's bullshit." And I asked "Why do you think that?" and he said "Kendrick is always talking about things I don't know, he doesn't make sense most of the time."

Understanding that he was a 14 year old boy, I said "Ok, play me a song by Drake and tell me what you like about it as the song plays. The lyrics, the beat, whatever". He played me his current favorite, "Too Good" and told me about his girlfriend that he really cared about, and how they have problems and he has anger issues. The song is, in my opinion, a bit simple but that's the beauty of music, a song that doesn't mean much to me means the world to Amar'e.

So then, I reintroduced Amar'e to "Wesley's Theory", and taught him ideas such as that the titular Wesley is a reference to Wesley Snipes, who was jailed for tax evasion, and how the song was about a character who sold out for money because Uncle Sam made him do that, the insanity of America made him do that. Amar'e listened intently, and he was a little overwhelmed but he seemed determined to understand. When we take dense, complex works and give students the spaces and tools to learn and to understand, their creativity blossoms. 

Working Complex Texts

At the beginning of chapter 6 “Instructional Practices for Working Complex Text”, Buehl talked about how he developed the competence to work a complex chemistry text independently when he was in high school. This story reminded me of my experience as a high school student in Jordan. Keeping in mind that the education system in Jordan is different from the education system in the U.S, I can say that most teachers in Jordan are not prepared or professionally trained, and they lack the knowledge of many teaching methods and strategies that I had the chance to learn here. I can say that most teachers there are basically lecturing their lessons to students, and students are only passive learners. The teachers often tell the students what they need to know, and if the students didn’t understand the lecture, they would need to work the text by themselves to pass the class. Since I wasn’t an excellent listener, I didn’t learn too much from lectures, and I often had to work many complex texts in many disciplines independently. I used many strategies and study skills to work such complex texts. For example, I recited, I summarized, and I created concept maps. I used underlining, annotating, and I talked to the texts. Actually, none of my teachers have taught me these study skills. I think my internal drive to excel and my persistence to learn the materials had motivated me to do whatever to comprehend such texts and excel my classes. I wish that my teachers at least had introduced some of these study skills and learning strategies in their disciplines. That would really save me a lot of the struggle that I had been through working such complex texts alone.

The ability to work complex texts independently really made me feel competent, and helped me during my college years. Therefore, as a future teacher, I have realized the importance of teaching students study skills and leaning strategies. I also have learned that I should not assume that students know how to work text effectively or assume that learning strategies are general for all discipline. It is not enough to introduce such strategies to students, but it is also important to provide them with the necessary practices to apply theses skills in different decontextualized settings. Moreover, students need to learn how to transfer the action of these strategies to the study of other disciplines too. To help student to become competent in applying learning strategies in all discipline areas, each disciplinary teacher has to model how to use these strategies in contexts that are specific to their discipline. Moreover, modeling of these strategies should be followed by scaffolded interactions with complex texts and collaborative work to help student build their competence gradually and develop their capacity to access knowledge as readers, writers and thinkers of disciplinary texts. 

Predictions in Mathematics

Before realizing my want to be teacher, I spend a great amount of time in the College of Engineering here at UIC. Throughout my high school career friends, family, and respected teachers all pushed for continuing my education in engineering. My skills in mathematics and natural curiosity for science all seemed to coincide for an engineering career. I find no qualms with the time I spent in engineering because I believe participating in the labs and constant operational work developed a very important skill that I take for granted, predicting answers. Helping students learn to predict solutions can help strengthen conceptual understanding and is just another part of the metacognitive approach we all wish to stress to our students.

            Inevitably we have all followed a solution path that only lead us to an incorrect, faulty, or misleading answer. Anywhere along your journey down this unsettling path, did you every stop to think about the validity of your answer? Did you get a little “squinty eyed,” thinking, “Maybe I’ve made a mistake?” “This can’t be right?” In chapter 6, Buehl, again, talks about this metacognitive voice that should constantly be questioning conceptual understanding of a problem or passage of writing. Buehl quotes Baker and Beall saying, “A good reader, then, should be the one who questions what is read, re-reads, confusing passages, and evaluates his or her understanding of what the author is trying to communicate.” Student work, therefore, puts students in the author’s chair, where the students, themselves, are questioning their own work and evaluating if their work holds truth or not.

            This train of thought continues as we think about the connection to the new common core standards. Regardless of your views on the newly accepted standards, we can all agree that the new practices were implemented with high hopes of increasing student achievement; set up in a way, to scaffold, on a yearly basis, the tools they will need to continue succeeding. The curricula aims to builds upon prior knowledge; thus, we must urge students to see themselves as the source of knowledge in a subject area and have been given the tools necessary to solve the problems we put in front of them

Working Complex Text Techniques

The book “Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines” by Buehl in chapter 6 “instructional practices for working complex text” the writer starts with some very important questions but I believe difficult to answer specially for individuals that don’t have teaching experience. Such as How can instruction scaffold the reading of complex disciplinary texts? What do you do when you have to work a text? According to the author when someone need to work a text, it is recommended that the instructor/teacher does some digging into documents, pick into the details of the documents, discover unfamiliar vocabulary, sources and other research information that can help understand the text more clearly. As the author mentions “you do whatever you need to do to get whatever you need or want from the text.” The knowledge of reviewing/studying a document or text is going to change as the education of student’s progresses.

When you really have to work a text? When the text is too difficult to understand and the answers are difficult to locate. A text has to be studied with full attention and determination. It is important that students and instructors learn to summarize what they understood, that rereading the text to examine and connect visual information is crucial to their own understanding in the process of projecting new information. The Students and instructors should never forget that is important to keep actualizing themselves by constantly reevaluating their studying techniques.  When you are unable to avoid reading it or cannot depend on someone else telling you what it says? In regards to students, they don’t have to develop the capacity to read complex texts independently, because it is necessary that they have the class lecture and information that it’s needed, but it is the student’s responsibility to engaged inside and outside of school in a much deeper studying process necessary to successfully understand a complex text.

According to the author in order to understand a problematic text students need to show motivation and commitment. Also, manage time well and learning style, give full attention to that specific task, recite, paraphrase, summarize, take notes, mark the text, underlining, and text annotating.  These learning strategies are appropriate to understand and remembering. Even though, issues exist regarding the students personal studying habits and student’s identities as readers, writers, and thinkers it is important that teachers/instructors focus on cognitive strategies of instruction because is a form of motivating students to learn that what they are learning has a goal, value, utility and time management would help them achieve their reading goals. It gives me the impression that the students have many things to learn through their careers as students and learners, but it is also not impossible to learn the proper tools and knowledge in order to be successful in the process of reading, writing and thinking critically.

 

 

  

Chapter 6: Instructional Practices for Working Complex Text

What factors determine one’s intelligence? Is intelligence measured simply by a number one accumulates on an IQ test, NWEA score, or ACT score? Or rather, is intelligence measured by the habits one forms such as study skills, personal systems for accomplishing tasks, or learning strategies? Perhaps, intelligence is a measure of emotional maturity?

Doug Buehl addresses these questions in chapter 6 of our textbook this week by explaining how different aspects determine one’s comprehension to complex text and/or tasks. Buehl analyzes how study skills affect students’ comprehension by determining their exposure to these study skills throughout their educational career. In his argument Buehl credits identity, habits of the mind, emotional intelligence, and learning strategies as components to understanding the successfulness of comprehending complex texts and tasks across disciplines.  

As a teacher, I proudly state that I drill the skills with my students for reading comprehension. We emphasize the importance of utilizing reading skills while reading complex text in the hopes of maximizing comprehension. In our reading however, Buehl states, “The term skill is in and of itself diverting.” He furthers this idea by posing the analogy of his wife being a skilled violinist. Buehl argues that it is more appropriate to say, “...she has excellent practice habits that have contributed to her development of skill on her instrument.” Buehl’s wife has dedicated countless hours to practicing her instrument, which has lead her to owning this skill as an accomplished violinist. The importance is in the practice and rehearsal of the skill that leads to comprehension and success. This analogy holds stake with the importance of practicing study skills with students across disciplines. The more practiced a skill is the more ingrained it becomes to a student.

In addition, it is valuable to remind students that the following personality variables affect performance: resisting impulsivity, managing stress and frustration, handling failure, showing persistence, maintaining a positive outlook, collaborating effectively, and delaying gratification. Let’s just take a moment to revisit those variables; resisting impulsivity, managing stress and frustration, handling failure? Are these variables that lead to success as a student or success as a member of society? As an intermediate teacher, I instantly think of the student who shoots up his or her hand while simultaneously shouting the answer aloud for the whole class to hear even though he or she was never actually called on to share. Impulsivity? Absolutely. Stressful? Definitely.  But I’m reminded of how eventually that child stops shouting out and begins resisting impulsivity because the behavior is corrected and rehearsed. The child’s new found ownership of this personal variable becomes another practiced habit that will lead to further success.

Chapter 6: Instructional Practices for Working Complex Text

Instructional Practices for Working Complex Text

Personal System

After reading Chapter 6, Buehl discussed personal systems. As a teacher this caught my attention. “The conversations among teachers frequently veers into, “Someone needs to teach theses students study skills.”(Buehl pg 221) I often hear this saying in the hallways. When I hear this it makes me cringe! I always want to speak up and say you are the person that should be showing/guiding these students “how to study.” Many people/teachers like to blame the parents, but do not take a step back and think that there might not be anyone at home to help these students. Many parents today work full time jobs or are from single parent homes. It is also difficult to teach a student how to study as there are many different study methods.  What may work best for one student does not work for another.  I know many of my students like to listen to music while studying and others like complete silence, some make flashcards and other just read over notes from class.  Trying to teach students one way to study would not make any sense. He also mentioned personal systems that teachers refer to such as telling a student they are disorganized, “we are referring to personal systems for doing the general work of a student.”(Buehl pg 221) However, when a teacher talks about taking note, looking at charts, annotating and etc. these are appropriate for learning/understanding the material and being able to better remember the material that is/was presented. Teachers need to really watch what/how they say and present things to their students. Sometimes you are the only role model a student may have.

Annotating and Text Coding

I am a 4th grade teacher and my 4th grade team and I started to annotate with all of our students. It is a huge adjustment for our students, but once they “get into the swing of it” it becomes very useful. As a team we really started this last year. I myself really only focused on this skill during the reading period and when using the basal reader. I wanted to get myself and my students comfortable with our “new” system while reading. Since then, I have started using this coding system with novels. I have the students have their own packet of sticky notes. I started off slowly and only had the students write down the words they do not understand or what they had questions about while reading at home. This skill is important as it is used in all grade levels at our school.  The students will be introduced to the basics in my room and as they move on in school the annotations will become more specific.  This skill has been one way in which the other reading teachers at my school and I have been able to collaborate.  I am building a foundation that they will continue to add on to through the years! I have not yet used the text coding codes from figure 6.2 on page 233. (Buehl) I will try this towards 2nd semester when the students have become more comfortable with this process. I will also have an anchor chart up so the students will be able to look up at the chart for guidance on the different codes that are being used. Recently,  the skill I was working on was character traits with the students. While reading the novel, I would model where I found text evidence of the character trait from the reading. This also models for them how to find text evidence to support their answers. As time goes on, and I introduce cause and effect I would like to try and use the text coding model on page 246. (Buehl) I really like how the students can “prove” their answers while reading. This also allows for me to walk around quickly and see who had difficulty during the lesson.

Assessment Madness

As cliché as it sounds, there is no standard way of learning, so why is there a quantified and "standardized" of assessing students' performances? Most of these tests have the same style of texts that are thrown at students and expected to be read, remembered, and referred back to when they turn to begin answering the nerve wrecking questions. The structure of these standardized tests are so repetitive than it is mind numbing after a short while, just ask any student in the midst of ACT/SAT season. Students are not given the opportunity to showcase what makes them an individual and a scholar. There are no chances to use graphic organizers or to make own yourself to demonstrate what goes on in your mind when tackling a specific subject or school of thought. Everyone wants to show their greatest abilities when given the opportunity to, but what if you lack the means to demonstrate your passion?

The number of standardized tests given to students is too damn high. Kids today have so many tests within a school year (let alone the horror that awaits them 3rd, 5th, 7th, and Junior year of high school) that they are too stressed to keep a calm and cool head while taking them. With so much riding on the line for them, many face high levels of anxiety which can lead to poorer results than they would have if they were made to take less. There are not just tests anymore: there are pre-assessments, pre writing tests, tests for making sure they understand the directions when taking a test, and even post test assessments that aim to know how long the information stays with the student and the after effects or completing the school term.  

For years now, federal education officials have used testing as a key component for what they deemed to be measures of scholastic growth. The part that they forgot to meantion was that they were also going to use the results of these tests  which were designed to measure the student's ability to read and recite information in order to determine the ability of the teacher to educate. I always found it so astounding that federal officials would believe that a few standadized tests would ever be as useful in determing a students abilites than than the notes and understanding of the teacher who has been working with the student all year long. There is always more than meets the eye when it comes to students, especially adolescents, and so it is vital that there be an allocation for perssonalization thoughout the academic career of a student, so that they as well as their teacher, can monitor their progress and provide resources to help fill in the gaps within their knowledge or understanding in certain subjects. 

If you have your students taking a cookie cutter test with no space for them to structure and scafold their thinking, they will develop the mind set that there are only certin ways that you can solve tasks; that there is no room for creative thought and/or ingenuity. Students may develop minds for taking information from a source and using it to solve questions placed in front of them but doesen't there seem to be a gap for the area that should be available for specific content-based text and forms of understanding within descliplines?

As stated in the reading Disciplinary Literacy Assessment: A Neglected Responsibility, " Summative assessments of learning have overshadowed formative assessment for learning. Assessment of discipline- appropriate literacy is an all but ignored topic in the professional literature."(Gillis, Wig, 2015) This best summarizes the current state of mind when it comes to assessments: Instead of having tests that understand the student's abilities in a more precise, micro scale, student progress is gathered in a macro, wide ranging format so as to try to get as much data as possible. This is not helpful for the student or teacher, because it does not leave a concrete, precise area that can be improved upon in the time that is left within the unit or school term. 

The SCLA seeks to fix this gap within the specialization of content within an assessment, for it is "a teacher-created assessment of students’ abilities to read and comprehend discipline- appropriate text. The assessment measures students’ abilities to connect what they read to prior knowledge, summarize what they read, draw inferences, make intertextual connections, comprehend vocabulary terms that are explicitly and implicitly defined in the text, and think metacognitively" (Gillis, Wig, 2015). As a future history teacher, I must say that this style of assessment is much more appealing for several reasons. 

Many assessments centered in the humanities or social sciences take a non fiction text that summarizes the historical background of an event, person, or idea through a story-type medium.  While this is functional (to a degree) for getting a historical timeline into a student's mind, it is missing the comprehension, analyzation, and reasoning that truly makes for an assessment of value for the student and teacher. 

The SCLA offeres teachers the ability to adapt the test to understand how strong the student's abilities are in several elements, including Questioning, Drawing Inferences, Making Connections, and Vocabulary Knowledge. Each element is able to take several shapes depending on the subect being tested (English, Science, History, and even Math), plus the elements can be tested within shorter or longer time periods, depending on the amount of text used and the types of questions being asked of the students. The student and teacher are able to take the results of these assesments and use the data to structure the lessons being given so that the gap is filled and remains filled throughput the progression of the school term, bulding a pathway to the next unit or grade level for the pupil.  

Assessment and My View on Standarized Test

          Assessment. This concept is the focus of our readings this week. At first, prior to the reading, I had plenty of misinformed and misconceptions of how assessment would occur in the classroom. I felt as though the assessment I observed throughout my k-12 education was solely based on my performance on test and such. To an extent it was, and I will go into a bit more detail further on in this piece. But continuing on my point, let us focus on our readings, mainly Chapter 4: Classroom Assessment of Literacy Growth and Content Learning, as it shows how my initial view doesn’t reflect the depth that goes into assessment, or the importance of good assessment. With that being said, let us first determine what assessment is in the first place. As seen in the text, and is something that I can generally agree with, “the goal of literacy assessment is to provide teachers with knowledge about how best to improve and support learning and self-knowledge for students so that they will become more reflective, active, and purposeful learners.”   In other words, assessment, although comes into play, should be a factor in determining whether I child passes or fails a class, it is a tool used to better improve your teaching and thus improve learning. Not only that but as the book suggest, assessment should be a tool that is not to be used either at the beginning or end of the school year, but something that occurs multiple times throughout a year. This is because it allows you “to obtain more useful and meaningful information about your students’ literacy and learning abilities.” Let us now move toward to see what 5 key aspects are present in producing good authentic assessment for students.

            These are:

1.     Content-Area Assessment is a Continuous Process of Becoming Informed About Students’ Learning

2.     Assessment Literacy and Content Learning Should use Multiple Data Sources across Multiple Contexts

3.     Effective Assessment Involves Students

4.     Effective Assessment Requires Planning, Interpreting, and Managing a Variety of Data

5.     Assessment Should Include Students’ Interest, Attitudes, and Belief Systems

1. I'm provided such a picture in order to show us somethings to keep in mind along with the 5 key aspects when we are dealing with assessment and feedback to our students.

            With these 5 concepts in hand, and in mind, then an authentic way of assessment should be made for your students. I am pursuing to go into detail for each, as though I believe many if not all are pretty self-explanatory, but the other reason to not go further into detail is to focus our attention into standardized test. This choice to shift topics is due to the importance I have learned of standardized test, well more like unimportance.

            Let us look at the claim that is provided in the text which is this: “What needs to be remembered, however, is that standardized tests, like any other assessment instrument, are only one data source or sample of students’ behaviors, skills, and strategies.” Now taking that in, we can assume then that standardized test don’t have that much importance in assessment and other such things but, as I have seen in other courses, standardized tests have become the only thing that matters in the government’s eyes. Education reforms such as No Child Left Behind and Race to The Top, has created an environment of competition amongst public education and that of privatized education. What this means is that, these policies has created an environment where schools must show excellent scores on standardized test in order to receive government funding and resources. As most can assume, this means that those schools are marginalized from funding and such which effects the quality of education a student receives. Not only that but it also limits the curriculum that can be taught as most schools will prioritize material that will be on the test. In my head, I can only think of the lack of knowledge, vital knowledge, children are missing out on due to this.

2. A picture that paints the cause of standardized test, just one of the many effects created.

            My point of bringing this up, and frowning upon standardized test, is that the text make it seem as though they are more beneficial than harmful. Not once did I see any argument/point that shows the true relation between standardized test and education in our world.

            With that, I also brought it up to introduce the second reading that accompanied us. That being Disciplinary Literacy Assessment: A Neglected Responsibility. I felt this would be a perfect way to introduce the idea found in this piece, that teachers should adopt the Strategic Content Literacy Assessment, which is “a teacher-created assessment of students’ abilities to read and comprehend discipline-appropriate text,” and it “measures students’ abilities to connect what they read to prior knowledge, summarize hat they read, draw inferences, make intertextual connections,…” and so on. So if we, as a whole, as a nation, are able to adopt such a form of assessment, I truly believe it would usher in better education throughout the nation and more knowledgeable students. It is time we stray away from this toxic environment created by standardized test and focus our assessments on ones that facilitate knowledge.

3. In this last cartoon, we are shown just what standardized test due to our students. It takes students, individuals who are unique, come from different backgrounds, experienced different things, and other such things, and makes them take an exam as if they all know the same things.

Assessment is a team effort

When it comes to classroom assessment many things came to mind for me, especially since i am a student as well as being in the process of becoming a teacher. I have seen both sides of the assessment in a classroom up to this point. With that being said, I feel William Brozo and Michele Simpson look at assessment as more than just what a teacher does for a student's work. They talk about the process of assessment and how it is important to relate it to your classroom as well as to the students. For instances, in their article they talk about about how learning can occur if assessments are “rooted in activities that have genuine purpose” ( Brozo & Simpson 88). When I read this I thought about all the past worksheets I had to complete as busy work for some classes and how I never really took away from them. We shouldn't give students work just to give them work to grade, these activities they do should always possess a learning opportunity for students.

One other thing in the Brozo & Simpson reading that I found very interesting is their idea of having students assess themselves. I thought this was very important because as teachers we assess students work and they usually take our assessment as a final word of their work and thought processes. With a continued assessment from both teachers and students it would help the students be more interested in how well they are doing/turning in their work. In Brozo & Simpson they mention how the involvement of students own assessment can lead the students to:

“(a) recommend possible assessment activities, (b) assist in the creation of rubrics and checklist,(c apply rubrics and checklists to their own work, and (d) participate in self-reflection and evaluation activities that encourage them to relate their performances to the strategies they have used” (Brozo & Simpson).

This would encourage students to be more active in their learning and more importantly how to really assess their own work. Assessment is a two people thing where students and teachers come together to try and improve and learn. We would want the students to always look at their own work as much as we would and to think deeply of what this work means to them. That should be the purpose of assessment. Brozo & Simpson, throughout their article, provide various kinds of self assessment charts and surveys that I feel should be more commonly used in classrooms.Providing students the opportunity to evaluate their own work lets them know that we care what they think and that their own opinions on their work matters just as much as ours do.

Something I always wished for, particularly in the arena of math, was for my quizzes to please just be graded completion assignments. For my own personal learning, quizzes function best to see what I am not good at yet, or what aspects of a math concept I do not understand, to target learning. What that notion implies, however, is that it is hard to be prepared for quizzes, haha. They are often a day or two after the material they are covering was taught, and that only allows for a strict style of learner with ample free time every day to excel at them.

It seems that the readings for this week can hear what I am saying and echo it or snap their fingers melodiously at it (like, that’s a groovy idea, mannnnn). First was the Gillis and Van Wig reading. They accentuate the use of formative assessments. I love this idea. For one thing, formative assessments are very low-stakes tests. That may allow for students who have issues with tests to acclimate to a testing environment. If a student can get used to the form and diction and procedures of a test without any pressure, it seems like a good way to get comfortable in that situation. If someone threw me into a competitive high school baseball team without ever having played before, I never could have learned to love baseball—the environment was too hostile. But growing up on sandlots and playing house-league baseball gave me a comfort on the diamond that translated to that same competitive high school field. The Brozo-Simpson reading had some sports analogies in them, so I figured I’d follow suit.

Gillis and Van Wig really believe in formative assessment as a way to inform lessons. Used properly, G&VW say, formative assessments tell teachers what students know and what still needs to be covered, what is a foreign language to students and what students are using to write wonderful novels. I am saying that, for this purpose, perhaps teachers need not even use formal formative assessments. The teacher I am using my observation hours with has her students input their homework assignments into an online program. From there, the program tallies for her what types of problems students are not doing well with, what problems they are doing well with, and she says that this helps. In this way, can homework be considered a formative assessment? Or, where do we draw the line, and does the line matter?

I wonder what a learner auto-biography would look like from students of all ages. If I made one, I could add to mine “I learn slowly and so I do not do well on quizzes usually.” I could add the fact that I am not the best auditory learner and sometimes mumble back what teachers say so that I can more easily comprehend that (not sure why it works but it helps). I would indicate that while I am a slower learner, usually, I am also a thorough learner and will remember what I have learned. But, with all this being said, will it help me? Will it matter? School runs a particular pace and one class can only really go at one pace. But how can one pace suit 25-35 students? I like the idea of a learner auto-biography a lot from a conceptual standpoint, but I cannot figure out how to remedy its limitations. I think one of the most useful parts would be considering what your bad and good experiences with teachers were like, what did the experiences of each type (bad/good) have in common, and how can we bring it together to create a learning experience that works.

                

Assessments Should Change

Gillis and Van Wig bring up some great points including one about teachers having to spend instructional time to teach students how to take standardized tests.  I know many teachers who dread standardized testing because it is not an effective way of measuring students' progress and it takes away time teachers could use to give valuable information students need in their disciplines.  The article offers a formative assessment tool called the Strategic Content Literacy Assessment, or SCLA for short.  According to "Disciplinary Literacy Assessment", "The assessment measures students' abilities to connect what they read to prior knowledge, summarize what they read, draw inferences, make intertextual connections, comprehend vocabulary terms that are explicitly and implicitly defined in the text, and think metacognitively." (Gillis & Van Wig, 2015).  This kind of assessment would be a much better tool to assess and monitor where students are at with course work and understanding of the material.  The assessment forces students to go below surface level regurgitation of information and understanding.  This tool would help teachers and students figure out what materials and skills need more time and attention.  This assessment would also be much more productive and usable in terms of class time and resources.  It would be a much better use of instructional time as it teaches students not only to think about what they know and their thought process, but also to make connections and inferences within their disciplines.

Also, the fact that this assessment can be applied across disciplines is even better than general standardized tests.  By tailoring the assessment to subjects and course material makes it a more reliable and efficient way to know how students are progressing.  This article actually gives me hope in terms of having better tools to help my students and myself and it should be implemented in classrooms everywhere.  The article outlines how the assessment works for each discipline and how to score and evaluate assessments.  Teachers are also able to share results with students and this would help increase student understanding and hopefully parent involvement as well so everyone knows what needs to be done for students to progress and succeed academically.

And Yet Another Thing I Have to Learn as a Teacher!

Digital literacy is the knowledge, skills, and behaviors used in a broad range of digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs, all of which are seen as network rather than computing devices.   –Wikipedia

Some of you might have a problem with the definition of digital literacy above I have presented above. And I am will to bet that it is because I pulled it from Wikipedia. I might hear sighs of exacerbation because I am an educated graduate student who has stooped to using Wikipedia and incorporating it into a formal class assignment. I know your reasons why you may have a problem with this and I understand why you discourage or may discourage students from using Wikipedia. I have used those same exact arguments myself when teaching class. But I utilized Wikipedia to illustrate a point about digital literacy and how we sometimes teach it to our students. Yet consider this: have you adequately explained to your students how Wikipedia operates and how entries are made? Have you demonstrated that, because it is open to the public, mistakes will occur, facts may be incorrect, and that concepts may not be well defined or explained, and that source materials may not be adequately cited. I will take it one step further: have you ever confessed that you as a teacher may have used it on occasion? I have. It is great way to get quick information about a book, a movie, or a scientific idea I may come across in a book or discussion that I know nothing about and want a quick reference about it so that I understand it immediately before moving on in my reading or discussion. It is a tool that has its place, and yet we discourage students from using it in their academic endeavors rather than explaining its strengths and weaknesses so that our students can understand when and not to use it. If we “Google” something to get an answer that may solve a conversational argument one night at a bar with friends over drinks, how do we know that the source we tap on our smartphones is in any way better than Wikipedia? It sounds like we as teachers need a little bit of training in digital literacy ourselves, and that is okay. In fact, I would encourage seeking such training. Most of our students are way more equipped than us to handle all things digital across many platforms. I have seen their strengths in this regard, and I have also seen their weaknesses.

Our heads have been in the books with teacher preparation during college to get us ready for the classroom. Our students have had their heads in digital devices (one form or another) for most of their lives. Can you see the potential for conflict in the classroom arena over lessons involving reading and writing with this last example? How can we synergize both camps on the path of digital literacy to bring focus and balance?

     Let’s not forget that it is not just digital literacy we are dealing with, but digital literacies. “From a sociocultural perspective, these different ways of reading and writing and the ‘enculturations’ that lead to becoming proficient in them are literacies.” (Lankshear & Knobel, pp 7). I have never considered before (though it should have been apparent) that how two people write blogs, emails, make social media postings, create websites, and so forth can be vastly different. Even the use of language employed will have many distinct varieties. It is daunting to think about the complexities when approaching digital literacy and incorporating it successfully into the classroom. And there are generational differences amongst teachers that present certain problems.

     For a young twenty-something teacher, the idea of employing digital literacy within the classroom may be easy for that person since s/he has grown up with digital media. I am forty-seven years old. I remember when computers were a cute novelty to be used once a year in certain classes and no more. But I did not get a cellphone until I was forty, because I did not like the behaviors people exhibited in public and social settings thanks to using the cellphone and resisted getting it lest I start exhibiting those same behaviors. I am not fluid in digital media, and when decided to catch up to the 21^st century and buy a SmartTV, it was students I turned to get their advice about which model to buy (and I wound up buying the model they had suggested and I am quite happy with it). At least I had the wisdom to turn to the experts: my freshmen students. I know they are a valuable resource and that they can teach me things about all things digital. As one article noted that I took to heart, “One way to capitalize on the synergies between digital and disciplinary literacies is to reconsider the expert/novice binary.” (Manderino & Castek, pp. 80) when it comes to the reading apprenticeship approach. Now, can I teach my students how to use all things digital properly, employing critical thinking to discern, decode, comprehend, and apply information? I think I can—at least with some proper training. But what about teachers in their fifties and sixties who have to ask me how does our new copier work, or are still using flip-phones and yearn for the “good old days” of using a mimeograph to make classroom copies? There are resources out there for teachers to learn about employing digital literacies in the classroom, but I believe school-led training is required. And what about underfunded schools with limited technological resources? What about students from families at the poverty line that may not have internet or a computer at home, but we want to assign a digital media project? The problems of bringing digital learning to the classroom have just increased. Not to mention a typical teacher complaint: “My students have problems putting together a proper sentence together on paper, but now you want me to also teach them how to use digital literacies as well?” Challenges abound, and we as teachers sometimes get lost on what to do.

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/29/ctq_crowley_digitalliteracy.html

     This is a new age of digital learning, that, like it or not, is here to stay. And we as teachers must adapt to it and “grab the bull by its horns” and wrestle with it and learn how best to use it in in education. To paraphrase Lankshear & Knobel (pp 14) we have to: 1) become more aware of the diversity of digital media that is out there; 2) approach digital use through the lens of sociocultural understanding and understand there are multiple digital literacies out there; 3) employ practices that adopt the best strengths these literacies have to offer within the classroom (and outside) and to know their weaknesses or misuses as well.

     So who’s up for the challenge?

P.S. I apologize if some boxes come up with a question mark in them, or if the text or picture alignment is a little disjointed. This is my first time writing an entry, and I had a hell of a time trying to make my post presentable since I wrote this on a MS Word document first, then when I cut and pasted it to this blog, the "translation" between Word and this blog did not go over very well. Then on top of it, as I was trying to edit and correct everything, the pictures and text began to swim around chaotically and created something of a mess for me to decipher and learn how to correct properly. See? I'm not very digitally-literate in this regard. Another challenge for me! ;)