Literacy Leaders

1. Literacy Leaders High School Teachers Taking Charge of Their Professional Learning

2. Today’s Schedule • 8:00-10:00 – Session 1: What are some of the problems students have with literacy? • 10:00-10:15 – break • 10:15-11:30 – Session 2: What are transportable & transparent literacy strategies for content area instruction? • 11:30-12:30 – lunch • 12:30-2:00 – Session 3: How can I teach literacy? • Skip formal break? • Finished at 3:15?

3. Inspiration … • Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (2008) “A Content Literacy Collaborative Study Group: High School Teachers Take Charge of Their Professional Learning” Oneyear of secondary teachers attempting to integrate literacy strategies & content instruction

4. Literacy How can I find material that every student in the room can read?

5. Video Game Model • Judy Willis, board certified neurologist and middle school teacher Clip from ASCD convention - 2011

6. Overcoming Negativity with Motivation • Work at “exactly your right level” • Achievable challenge • “See the change”

7. But… what if I can’t change the text? • High school teachers can rarely level texts Textbooks and primary source documents

8. High School Teachers can… Model Reading Skills and Strategies

9. What is the Difference Between Skills & Strategies? • Think about riding a bike…

10. Differences Between Skills & Strategies Riding with ___ __________(is a skill) no hands • What helped you to get there? You learned to __________the bike by shifting your weight, not by maneuvering the handlebars. balance The strategy of balancing takes you to the skill (riding with no hands) Strategy = the process Skill = the product

11. What kind of strategies do adolescent readers need most? Comprehension Strategies

12. What is comprehension? • Comprehension – a ___________between the reader, the text, and the context transaction • It requires purposeful, _________ _________ on the reader’s part strategic effort

13. Comprehension Requires… • a reader who employs strategies to understand a text _____________: Anticipate direction of text (predict) _____________: Seeing the action of the text (visualize) _____________: Contemplate & correct confusion (clarify) _____________: Connect what’s in text to what’s in mind (inference)

14. Session 1: What are some of the problems students have with literacy? • Social and cultural causes of reading problems • Physical causes of reading problems Is the brain capable of plasticity? Can it change itself?

15. Why Can’t Students Read? There is no one reason as to why an adolescent struggles with reading There are no single answers… but there are answers

16. Social & Cultural Causes of Reading Problems • Absence of literature in the home • Poor parental support • Limited teacher training • Large class sizes • Home language differs from school language

17. Physical Causes of Reading Problems • Decoding written text is an artificial creation that calls upon neural regions designed for other tasks. • Reading is so complex that any small problem along the way can slow or interrupt the process.

18. Dyslexia or Reading Disorders • Not all struggling readers have dyslexia/reading disorders • Dyslexia seems to be caused by deficits in the neural regions responsible for language and phonological processing or by problems in nonlinguistic areas of the brain.

19. Linguistic Causes • phonological deficits • differences in auditory and visual processing speeds • structural differences in the brain • memory deficits

20. Nonlinguistic Causes • Inability to hear sequential sounds • Impaired sound-frequency discrimination • Inability to detect target sounds • Visual processing deficit • Less motor coordination skills John Corcoran, advocate for literacy & author of “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read”

21. Brains Are Not Programmed to Read • We were never born to read • Humans invented reading only a few thousand years ago • Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design • Changes in the brain take place that are physiological and intellectual (neuronal connections)

22. What happens if the brain systems are organized differently? • Brain compensates by utilizing the region associated with memory and retrieval on the right side of the brain (amazing plasticity) • Individuals rely on the retrieval of memorized words to the exclusion of other methods • Brain uses less efficient, more time-consuming neural pathways

23. Understanding Brain-Based Disorders Non-disabled readers use more of the left hemisphere in reading Disabled readers use both hemispheres of the brain in reading

24. Specific Reading Disability aka Brain-Based Disorders/Dyslexia • Definition: A congenital disorder characterized by unexpected difficulties in learning to read and spell (generally called specific reading disability) • Misconceptions: Not a visual disorder (students do not reverse letters); not linked to low intelligence • Indicators: By 3rd grade, students become frustrated when visual cue memorization is not enough, guessing based on initial consonant– weak phonological skills

25. Emotional Effects of Specific Reading Disorders • Have difficulty taking notes • Feel lonely, don’t “fit in” • Resent teachers that don’t understand • Poor organizational skills • Suffer from forgetfulness • Have deteriorating grades • Exhibit behavior problems • Feel loss of dignity

26. Holistic Approaches to Students • Convey empathy • Empower students by involving them to set targets • Provide strategies in study skills, examination techniques, and note-taking • Acknowledge their strengths • Engage in using literacy skills such as key words

27. Rewiring the Brains of Struggling Readers? • Can the human brain be rewired for certain tasks? Yes! • Neuroscience shows that as a result of reading interventions, students can rewire their brains to more closely approximate the reading circuitry of typical readers, resulting in accurate and fluent readers.

28. So Who Is a Struggling Reader? 1. Close your eyes and conjure up an image of a struggling reader. 2. Now sit like that reader would sit in your room.

29. What did you discover about the struggling reader’s appearance in the classroom?

30. Textbook Activity • Choose a textbook from a content area that you do not teach

31. Textbook Activity Reflection How far back can you remember?

32. The Issue Isn’t the Struggling • Anyone can struggle given the right text… The struggle isn’t the issue; the issue is what the reader does when the text gets tough

33. Indicators of Struggling Readers • Sarcasm • Intimidation • Let’s shock the teacher • Let’s keep the class laughing

34. What is reading?

35. How the Brain Learns to Read • For 50% of children, reading is a formidable task. • For about 20-30%, it definitely becomes the most difficult cognitive task they will ever undertake in their lives. • The human brain is not born with the insight to make sound-to-letter connections, nor does it develop naturally without instruction.

36. Reading Comprehension & Memory • As reading progresses, the meaning of each sentence in a paragraph must be held in memory so that they can be associated with each other to determine the intent of the paragraph and whether certain details need to be remembered. • Working memory must then link paragraphs to each other so that, by the end of the chapter, the reader has an understanding of the main ideas encountered.

37. Reading Comprehension & Working Memory • With extensive practice the working memory becomes more efficient at recognizing words and at chunking words into common phrases. • As a result, the child reads faster and comprehends more.

38. Reading Demands • An adolescent using a book with advanced vocabulary words will have trouble with comprehension because: so much memory capacity is being used trying to decode unfamiliar words.

39. Being a Skilled Reader Means… • You do not read each word individually. • Your eyes do not move from word to word until they read the end. • You scan the text searching for patterns that will make the task of reading easier

40. Activity #2: Being A Skilled Reader • Packet activity Results: Most spot the “P” but miss the “O” “P” violates the pattern, but “O” closely resembles it

41. Activity #3: Being a Skilled Reader • Packet Activity

42. Being a Skilled Reader • We become so adept at recognizing common words that we can do it even if the word is significantly misspelled

43. Being a Skilled Reader • The brain has an amazing ability to sift through seemingly confusing input to establish patterns and systems

44. Fake Reading • Strategy – an intentional plan that readers use to help themselves make sense of their reading Fake Reading is similar to this game of fake playing

45. Fake Reading: Students’ Strategies 1. Reread 2. Skip words 3. Read slowly • This is a very small set of strategies.

46. Additional Fake Reading Strategies Used by Students • Listen to music while reading • Don’t read for fun • Fall asleep • Daydream • Fake-read • Forget what I read • Read the words without knowing what they mean • Read the back of the book instead of the whole book • See the movie instead of reading the book • Ask people what the book is about so I don’t have to read • Read without paying attention • Read too fast • Start books and never finish them • Just look at the words • Lose my place

47. A Shared Badge of Honor • “Some kids are born good readers and some kids aren’t. I’ve always been a bad reader and I always will be. It’s too late for me.”

48. When the text gets tough… • Independent Readers – figure out what’s confusing them. • Dependent Readers – Depend on an outside-of-themselves source not only to tell them what to do– but to do it for them. • We want to teach students to struggle with the text

49. Activity #4: Independent vs. Dependent Readers • Stop • Set goals for getting through the reading • Appeal to the teacher • Figure out what is confusing them

50. Dependent Readers • They expect the text to provide everything. • They think they’re job is, at most, to decode print. • After that, if the meaning isn’t immediately apparent, they stop reading or ask us to explain.