Accelerating Freshman Understanding of College Tasks

1. Accelerating Freshman Understanding of College Tasks Thursday, June 19, 2014 Breakout 4: Dr. Deborah Culbertson Texas A&M University - CC

2. Goals • Improve freshman literacy through improved thinking skills • Use techniques that accelerate proficiency using multiple resources, including technology • Provide a collegial environment using academic language without communicating failure

3. Posits • Reading, writing, listening and speaking define literacy and are connected literacy tasks. • Critical literacy processes ask students to understand and evaluate the arguments of others. • Academic words for thinking include analyze, evaluate, defend, and judge. • Academic words for format include essay, study, report, and article. • Rhetorical evaluation of assignments is only part of reading comprehension; good readers use the information gained from reading.

4. IRW at Texas A&M – Corpus Christi, TX • Campus size: 10,000 approximately • Developmental Reading and Developmental Writing integrated into IRW in 2013-2014. Moved from Reading Department in the College of Education to the English Department in the College of Liberal Arts. • Classes – Fall - 7 sections of 25; Spring - 3 sections of 30

5. IRW Configuration • Integrated reading and writing – 3 hours a week • Co-requisite is Freshman Composition 1 • Mandatory tutoring at the reading section of the Student Success Center - 1 hour a week (40%) • 1 hour a week • Must be tutoring in a content other than English • Mandatory tutoring at the writing section of the Student Success Center – ½ hour a week • If the student fails English Composition, they repeat the non-credit based IRW along with English Comp 1. If the student makes below a C but does not fail, then they repeat IRW and move on to English Comp 2.

6. Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce • Throughout its history, the United States has often grappled with controversial domestic issues that have divided its citizens. In a well-constructed essay, discuss at least two such issues and the historical background that led to the controversy. Explain the government's legislative and/or judicial responses in each case, and assess the effectiveness of those responses.

7. Markers of Good Academic Reading and Writing • Hass & Flower (1988) defined critical reading: it involves more than careful rhetorical skill and comprehension of text; critical reading requires the reader to build a complex representation of meaning. • Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz (2011) talked about reading as a tool students use to construct, clarify, and extend meaning in a given discipline. • Kantz (2011) published a goal of reading and writing. It is to invent an original structure, talk about the sources paying close attention to originality and self expression. • Bean (2013) added to the discourse with student need to compare messages of text using questions of the text and evaluate the sources of information.

8. Study of Reading • Professors • What does a reading assignment look like? • What are your expectations for the student? • What behaviors are appropriate for reading? • What do you do if they don’t read? • What do you do if they don’t understand?

9. Responses • The responses were interesting but expected— • What are your expectations/behaviors for students? • Pre-empt class so the information can be used for discussion or questions. • Professors talk about expected behaviors while students read – highlight, connect to previous lecture information, write down questions they may have regarding the reading.

10. Student additional questions • What behaviors do you have when reading for your classes? • What do you do when you do not read? • Goal: Strategies for reading and content acquisition

11. Responses • Students use many strategies while reading including highlighting, notes in the margins, and they have special places to do their reading. They use the internet for additional information. • Students who do not read slowly, skim read. They reading the first sentences, skim, then continue to the last sentences • Students who do not read will look up bolded vocabulary and read the main headings. They may use the internet to look at more details. • Students who do not touch their book, use other students to verify the information. They may look online.

12. Students use strategies…. • They have a gap in their understanding how to perform high school and how to perform college. • They do not use reading to catapult more inquiry. • They do not explicitly understand what they should do when you use academic vocabulary. • You can do many things with information • Describe, explain, compare, analyze, define, synthesize • An essay can have many formats…. • Report, argue, research, comparative

13. Academic Language • Essentially, literacy format is the structure of the thinking …academic vocabulary gives that thinking a name. • We can describe verbally, read a descriptive essay, and write descriptively. The format can be an essay, narrative, or a journal article. • By the definition of Maxwell (2013), academic language is necessary for college literacy as they learn to read, write, and speak within a discourse community.

14. What is the Gap? • Background knowledge of a the world outside of themselves • Background knowledge of a discourse community • Vocabulary of a discourse community • College discourse vocabulary • Global connections to information • Using reading as a tool to clarify and extend. • Using writing to communicate information in a variety of academic formats. • Presenting information in a variety of ways.

15. Method and Pedagogy • Interactive with each other and sometimes me. • Facilitator and sometimes Sage on the Stage (I do not talk longer than 10 minutes at a time before I have students interact.) • Thematic Units that include a variety in the reading, discussion, writing, peer evaluation, presentation, and listening exercises. • Use collaborative and individual work assignments. • Peers evaluate the efforts of their group members and have the responsibility the jobs each will do.

16. Resources Available to Students • Everything… • Access information by cell……. • Newspapers both online and print • Library both online and print • Posting journal articles for students to read; they also post journal articles to share • Textbook – reader which can be purchased as a text or e-book • Music • Video • Pictures

17. Cell Phones • Access to information, especially for vocabulary • Find information….. • Instant access also means in class they are reading, researching, and must talk about the credibility of the resources they locate. • College level phone use must be a discussion class…but the rule of no phone usually means students are engaged in looking at their laps or inside their bags most of the class.

18. Last Note on Phones • The students have my cell number. I have theirs. • They exchange contact information with two people while they are in my class. • I use the cell to give them assignments when they are not in class. • They use the cell to ask questions about college assignments.

19. Visual Media: Photojournalism • Pictures tell the story in photojournalism. • I use a Ted Talk to let an expert tell students about taking pictures that communicate information. • We also use the newspaper to look at photojournalists work. • Since we use the National Geographic reader, it is easy to use the articles in their readers and the National Geographic online presense also.

21. Library: Journal Stacks • Their library access is specific to task…find the journals of their proposed majors. • The goal is to see how their discourse community is looking at the world and what language they use. • Find problems the discourse community is solving.

22. Vocabulary • Academic terms • Assess using a CUBING writing technique • Describe, explain, compare, analyze, evaluate, synthesize • Practice verbally using the skills; the terms are part of the conversations in class • Discourse of the composition terms (Rhetoric) • Vocabulary work is not isolated; self-selected terms from the reading are part of their work. (board work)

23. Sample Discourse Community Vocab • Inc = Increase   • Dec = Decrease        • Hdc= Half double crochetDec hdc= Half double crochet 2 stitches togetherInc hdc= 2 half double crochet in same stitch • Dc = Double crochet Inc dc = 2 double crochet in same stitchDec dc = Double crochet 2 stitches together Tc = Triple crochetDtc = Double triple crochet Inc tc = 2 triple crochet in same stitchDec tc = Triple crochet 2 stitches together

24. Reading using Discourse Vocabulary • Heart: using color A yarnR1: form a magic ring, crochet 12 dc into the ring, total 12 dc (pull ring close, sl into first st to join, ch 1) • R2: work all sts into front-loops only, 1 hdc and 1 dc into 1st st, 3 tc into next st, 2 dc into next st, 1 dc and 1 hdc into next st, 2 hdc into next st, 1 dc into next st ( you have just finished half of the heart now) • Go counter clockwise: 1 dc into next st, 2 hdc into next st, 1 hdc and 1 dc into next st, 2 dc into next st, 3 tc into next st, 1 dc and 1 hdc into last st, total 24 sts ( sl into first st to join, ch 1)

25. Reading Selections • Current use: National Geographic Readers. GREEN and Diversity in America • Current strategy: Mind Mapping • Project Samples: • GREEN – Presentation/group work. Groups where formed by the students according to discourse community. Their goal is to come up with a solution according to what their community focus. • FICTION – Fairy Tales – Inception to present. They learn the global nature of these tales and how each rendition reflects the society in which it was told. Presentation and paper.

26. Critical Listening Skills • Ted Talks – practice listening • What do critical listeners do? • To prepare the students as a class we discuss the goals of writing a speech. What are the parts of a good speech? • Then the class listens for the topic, the problem, examples given, then the proposed solution. • For credibility of the information they also record the speaker and judge what makes this person worth the lecture.

27. Analyze This….. • If you want the students to use this skill, the student must understand what make up the whole of whatever they are told to analyze. • For example, in art…… • We practice analysis and talking about the parts and what relationship those parts have to the whole. • How is it different then explain, synthesize, or compare?

28. Journals: Divided in Sections • Great writing lines from reading or environment with citations of the sources • Notes for class lectures and Ted Talks • Vocabulary – Mirrors freshman composition class or is centered in the thinking vocabulary. The strategy utilized in class is the Concept of Definition Map. • Personal Writing Problems – This sections focus is on their personal issues such as they’re, there, and their. We use the space to comment on the readings and to comment on essays from other classes.

29. Writing Assignments • Students write every class period • Practice changing everyday language to academic language…… • I can imagine how the people can get sick using the water available to them. • The people of Ghana have medical issues because of the waste, both human and animal, in the water they use for daily consumption. • Find and record ways writers use the language that appeals to their style. • Use “just in time” or mini lessons for grammar issues and sentence structures.

30. Class Connection to Campus • Class is tied to using the Tutoring Lab once a week for….. • Assignments parallel freshman composition in vocabulary to give students more time to understand the discourse of the format of the required reading in their Freshman Comp. • I am the guest speaker in many of the classes in freshman English.

32. Final Notes • Give students the voice of academics • Practice using the vocabulary of their major • Create opportunities for students to see what they haven’t seen – I love TED Talks for this reason, who doesn’t have 5 to 8 minutes? • Use group work and individual work evenly • Let the group fire bad group members … everyone has a job. • Materials – online/text,, journals, library, phones, internet, newspapers, journals, magazines, billboards.