These chapters truly confirmed what a horrible job I did teaching reading and writing. I taught earth and life science. I did not use any of these techniques and as I reflect, I did my students a disservice. I hope you will consider implementing these techniques into your own teaching.
Reading on page 256 about homogeneously grouping student relates directly the discussion we had at Leadership last month - Ruth Morris suggested we include in our SSR/Intervention/Enrichment time, a way to separate readers based on reading level in order to provide more effective opportunities to engage students in their reading. In your class, the techniques presented are pretty easy to incorporate - "Keep Durations Unpredictable" will keep students on the edge of their seats ready to go, just in case. "Keeping the Identity of the Next Reader Unpredictable", "Keeping Durations Short," "Reducing Transaction Costs and Using Bridging to Maintain Continuity" can be easily included and am convinced they can be effective.
Reading Ch. 11 confirmed how little I know about the fundamentals of reading - learning about the importance of decoding and how to effectively correct students was very enlightening. At the Schools to Watch Conference in Sacramento, Dr. Ruby Payne discussed at length the 10,000 word vocabulary gap that exists between students of privilege and students from less advantaged backgrounds. The "academic vocabulary" we've been emphasizing with our English Learners relates directly to this gap - we need to continue to incorporate these techniques in the classroom to close this gap! Which of the six techniques to reinforce strong vocabulary can you encorporate into the subject you teach?
The ultimate aim of reading - comprehension - as described in Ch. 12 provides some great techniques to build comprehension - prereading, contexting, focal points, and front-loading. The "Don't Wait" technique sounds obvious but I know I was sloppy in applying it. Get your questions ready and have them written down to refer to as you read with your class. Include low and high-level thinking questions - "Lower the Level" and "Evidence-Based." How do you summarize the reading? Very important to see if the students "got it!" Make connections - text to text, text to world, and text to self! Especially with our English Learners, we need to help them visualize - "Picturing" and don't forget to include opportunities to "Predict" and "Infer."
I will quote from the Conclusion -
"Approaching teaching is an art - meaning by that phrase that it is difficult and requires finesse and discretion in the application, craftmanship, and careful and attentive development of technique to master it - is the path to success." "The tools here are a means to results, not an end in themselves."
When we looked at the Galileo data, the math department discussed at length how many students struggle with word problems. A student's lack of reading ability affects EVERY SUBJECT - please consider using these techniques!
Thanks for blogging!!!! Please have the book read and blogs in by the end of summer!! Muchas Gracias!!
Thank you for the mention! I was excited to see that the final chapters and conclusion of the book were all about Reading!! Indeed, I came to the conclusion earlier this year, while doing CST prep, of HOW critical reading is. We always knew it, and, in education to this time, one of the answers had been this concept of "SSR." But, we all know that that is really only "bringing a horse to water." In order to get the horse to drink, the horse must be thirsty, and the water must be potable enough to drink. To continue on a different but related metaphor, from the time I was credentialed (relatively recently despite my age!), teaching had become Starbucks, and not Denny's. At Denny's, a cup of coffee was just that, but, at Starbucks, every cup is made-to-order. That's how I believe we need to set up our reading programs, and now, with our "Advisory Period," we have the chance to do that. The book gives some excellent techniques to work with both in our classes, and during the proposed "new" SSR/Advisory periods. We are gathering data and ideas such as these now, and will work through the summer on some proposals. More to come!
ReplyDeleteRegarding teaching as an art in the conclusion,
ReplyDeleteA master teacher (who supervised my high school student teaching in world and U.S. history at John Kennedy High) gave me two pieces of long-term advice. "You will need to decide which level you will teach. Will it be middle school or high school students."; also, "It will take 5 years to learn your art."
Anything that Teach Like a Champion could offer needs to be couched in this first piece of advice, that is "where am I working?" The second piece of advice is particularly humbling because during the five years it takes to learn the art of teaching, bad teaching habits can be established, an so entrenched, that replacing them with better habits (like the book offers) will be like becomeing a student teacher again - applying the book's techniques will take some time.
I found it exciting to read these chapters. Reading is such a key to student success. These chapters are filled with strategies that are easy to implement. I'll comment on just a few with applications specifically to my SDAIE class from last year. My students enjoyed the challenge of the Oral Cloze method on Page 260. The students really responded to fun of the calling out technique. In the Vocabulary section, I look forward to adding the "Stress the Syntax," strategy to my teaching. English can be such a confusing language for EL students and I think pushing this strategy might help. I also appreciate the warning about using "the synonym model," for vocabulary development. As the authors state, its the difference between words that counts, more than the similarity. This is what I have found to be true in my experience. Finally, in terms of teaching Reading Comprehension, I need to focus more on Post-Reading techniques.
ReplyDeleteAbout Chapter 10, the author says all teachers have to be reading teachers. There are some ideas that stand out because of Lemov's
ReplyDeleterequirement from teachers:
1. students read more and better.
2. meaningful and accountable reading.
3. transaction costs.
These ideas have merit. As usual for me, I do not want to operate in a bubble. A student's education is inclusive of ALL parents and families. That makes for a distinguished school. The first reading teachers must be parents for these ideas to work at maximum efficency, which means that parents too must be using these ideas. These ideas cannot remain unknown to and unused by CCMS families.
For Chapter 11, a transaction cost of decoding during reading outloud is a student correcting the reading of another student's pronunciation. A procedure needs to be established at the start of the year to eliminate this cost.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see E.D. Hirsch's work promoted in a positive way. A rich vocabulary is vital to success in history classes. There are a myriad of push and pull factors that influence both students and teachers not to produce a historically context rich knowledge base (which is what vocabulary is about).
Tone and rereading are important to me in regards to fluency. Not varying tone in outloud reading is a sign of this, "I wish the teacher had not called on me. This stuff is boring and I don't understand it anyway." And, rereading portions of a history text from months ago is advantageous to solidifying the content in the student brain in preparation for state test time.
Chapter 12 carries a warning. "The unintended consequence of any teaching approach is the tendency to make the approach (not comprehension) the purpose." In a scenario, the principal or teacher visits my history class. Yes, they see students on task with activities. But, is there actual historical/geographical comprehension happening? With the focus on EL students and EL training these days, teachers need to watch out about being enthusiatic and dutiful about applying EL techniques but forgetting about the purpose, standard's based COMPREHENSION.
ReplyDeleteI agree with several points that Lemov made in these chapters regarding teaching reading. I also found some of his techniques for teaching reading inspiring as I try to become a more serious and effective teacher of reading in all of my classes.
ReplyDeleteMuch like Lemov, I have had very little success with KWL charts. They were highly touted in my teaching preparation classes and by some other teachers I have met, but I never found them a particularly useful tool. The students know random, irrelevant facts (or nothing whatsoever) about the topic we are studying and want to know either nothing or obscure/strange things about the topic that I won't be covering and/or are not worth the class time. I have not had success coaching or steering the students to "want to know" about things that I will actually teach. In fact, I have actually stopped using KWL charts altogether. So, I was glad to hear from Lemov that he believes their utility is overblown, and they are not particularly useful.
Lemov discussed reading out loud as a wonderful classroom technique. I use this extensively in my classes but have not found a way to make sure that other students are engaged in the reading while one student is reading out loud. I would like to try Control the Game to engage students by varying the duration of reading times and keeping the next reader a mystery. This must be better and more interesting to kids than my current method of assigning paragraphs to students before we begin reading! Also, taking on difficult sentences myself to keep things moving and model appropriate reading out loud is a great idea.
In the end, I appreciate Lemov's concluding statements. The techniques in this book, or any book, are only as good as the results we produce when using them. They are not ends, but means to an end.....meaningful learning.
As the author also admits, teaching is an art, which means there will be variances in success among teachers. Just keep trying.
Delete-Saving the best for last. As a beginning teacher, I’ve always focused on how to teach content and had never given much thought on how to teach reading. As a result, these chapters were very eye-opening. I definitely want to use the techniques for reading aloud in chapter 10. By mid-year, I usually give up with having kids read aloud and usually just read the text aloud to the class. Now, this gives me some techniques to go back and try. I like the changing of the pace and the quick transitions. The techniques are simple but often overlooked in their importance. To be honest, I must say that I was a little overwhelmed by all the techniques on vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension in chapters 11 and 12. I’m not sure where to begin there. I will definitely have to look back over those. I think what made the comprehension chapter hard is that a lot of the examples were from stories in language arts novels. There were not many examples from science articles or textbooks.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anthony . . . as a science teacher I never thought about focusing on reading in my class. . . When I take and look at the new perspective if everyone focuses on the fundamentals it will strengthen the student ability as a whole. This year I want to focus on helping decode, vocabulary development, and comprehension in the text. I liked the different ways to have students read aloud and the practicals on how to keep everyones focus(varying lengths that students read, quick transition between readers).
ReplyDeleteAfter reading chapters 10, 11, and 12 I really feel as though I have done a great disservice to my students by not having them read more in class (I feel like such a bad teacher!). Reading these chapters has given me some great ideas that I can use during class time and during silent reading. For example, at the beginning of the school year I can start off the semester by not only reading with the students, but teaching them HOW to read the science textbook. I think we've all done it where we start to read something and we're not really paying attention, yet somehow we manage to get to the end of the page. I don't want that for my students.
ReplyDeleteThis year I am definitely going to use techniques such as: keeping the students accountable for reading (maybe by sharing or summarizing what they or someone else read), oral cloze, decoding, using the vocab they learned, having energy as they or I read,front loading, and summarizing.
All of these are great techniques to get the students to understand what they are reading, but I think that bringing energy in to what we are reading will be the most powerful tool due to the fact that it can make the most boring of topics seem interesting.
The last section of this this book was perhaps, the most meaningful to me as a teacher and really opened my eyes up to actually how little I teach reading throughout the course of the year. Lemov initiated this self reflection for me on page 256, where he wanted the reader to imagine a History class where Primary and Secondary sources are read and interpreted throughout the course of an entire class period. My first thought was yeah right a sixth grader reading for 90 minutes. And what. It's ancient history, not like I can pull up diaries of regular Greek Joe and his life in Athens. Why not? How much primary and secondary analysis is actually done in my class throughout the year? The answer is not even close to a desirable amount. I think that Asa history teacher, I haven't placed much emphasis on Historical Reading and yet it in vital in understanding the subject. It was the first thing that I was thought in my Undergraduate program and I need to make it a focus of my curriculum. Comprehension is going to me my main focus this year as described in Chapter 12. I found the section on better connections to be particularly valuable in this area especially as it relates to history. Professional development is about applying what you learn in effective and meaningful way. Starting here. Implementing these ideas will lay the groundwork to improve historical reading and comprehension in my classroom,
ReplyDeleteAs we don't read a lot of long passages in math, I think I can best effectively use the information from the chapters in the same manner as Erika. Focusing on decoding will be my goal this year. My ELL students need help in decoding basic math vocabulary such as sum, difference, etc. However, my Geometry students need assistance as well in decoding. The Geometry text is filled with definitions of new terms that at times are more confusing than the word itself. In the past, I have taken the easy route by just telling them what it means in "layman" terms. This year, I will focus instead on guiding them in translating the definitions on their own. It will take longer of course, but hopefully more beneficial in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI would like to jump on the math/science bandwagon and agree that I haven't given enough consideration to how I can help my students improve their reading skills. When I do ask students to read aloud in class, it is usually directions for an assignment. In the past, I usually selected a student to read the entire paragraph, but learned that this is not the best strategy.
ReplyDeleteI thought the idea of explicitly teaching students to track and read along in their heads and then varying when a new reader will take over is a strategy I would like to implement. The best part is that we will have several assignments that have directions that need to be read aloud in the first weeks of school, so I will have an opportunity to work on this before I forget!
After reading these chapters, I feel more confident in calling on students to read aloud. Lemov stated that the benefits of having students read aloud outweighs what we might see as the potential risk of "embarrassing" students who are not as strong of readers. It seems that providing more opportunities to read will help students to become better readers.
Great points Jon. It is interesting that he and Payne mention vocabulary deficiencies. In the eighth grade curriculum there is talk of students reading 1,000,000 words a year. This works out to about 12 books during the school year. At the beginning of the year I discuss this standard and try to get student buy-in through a list of reading reasons. One is "If you read about a million words a year - for fun - you'll learn about 1000 new vocabulary words." -Amazon Books. A lot of students claim this as their reason for reading more books. They love learning new words; it makes them sound smart!
ReplyDeleteI loved to read more about reading and having a book that discusses its importance in every subject!
Well, I'm glad that the responsibility of teaching reading does not rest soley on the shoulders of the Language Arts teachers. Let's face it...listening to students read is tedious...even for the best readers...I would imagine that when content is king, it's easy to want to opt out of teaching reading. I remember being in a classroom when the teachers were bored and didn't know how to teach reading, so they just had each person in the class read a paragraph. It was a time killer. That's about it. It's not surprising that my history teachers would just tell us to outline the chapter and go in their offices. Without good strategies for teaching reading, it's a bit like a dog gnawing his own leg off to get out of a bear trap. Thank goodness their are some good strategies out there. One that I use is Jump In Reading. The idea being that the best readers are the best models, so you just let them "jump in," and the rest will jump in when they're ready...no pressure.
ReplyDeleteThese chapters were pretty interesting. Usually teaching math it is hard to relate content since math is so different. I like what Kelley stated about decoding. Yes in math the reading is usually word problems, but understanding and comprehending those word problems takes good reading skills (and math skills). Also in chapter 12, comprehension is a huge thing in math because, and I am pretty sure you have all stated it, read the directions, what is the question asking for... etc. Math is no different in this case.
ReplyDeleteReading is the key students' success. As a science teacher, I tend to forget this sometimes because I'm focused on teaching the key concepts of science. But for a Middle school student, one of the keys to their successful learning of science and social studies concept is to master their comprehension skills. As a science teacher, I have not focused on improving the students reading comprehension skills but next school year, I am going to integrate it into my curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI agree with my fellow Science teachers I have not done enough reading in my class. I usually read aloud so i will be having the students do more of the reading. I worry so much about my curriculum that I often do not stop to think about the reading skills. I myself do not have the best reading and writing skills so I find it difficult to teach it. The last chapter gave me some helpfull things to include.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that reading is the #1 skill that must be taught and practiced. Language Arts class may focus more explicity on reading (and writing), but it is the responsibility of all subject matters to engage students in meaningful practice. I do have students read aloud in Social Studies class, especially early in the year. In addition to great practice for students, it allows the teacher a meaningful diagnostic tool to evaluate and adjust the curriculum for the coming months. Almost every student that struggles in Social Studies has sub-par reading and writing skills. It is almost never a lack of prior history knowledge or an inability to think critically.
ReplyDeleteThese chapters provided an excellent refresher on reading strategies to implement before, during, and after reading to increase comprehension. I'm reminded how important it is to provide context before reading a passage... let the kids know about what they're about to read. It seems so obvious, but I often skip this step. And I very much appreciate the "Don't Wait" strategy to ensure that students comprehend what their reading during the process. I often wait until the end and, at that point, many students may already be lost! Finally, Lemov describes the importance of having students summarize after reading. I particularly like the the "word limit" strategy in that is requires students to prioritize their information and really stick to the ideas that are essential in their summaries.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that reading needs to be reinforced in every class. I have made it a goal of mine to have students do more reading in my class and maybe less direct instruction. Specifically I want to work on the "don't wait" technique from chapter 12. Students will read an entire passage but might be missing a lot of understanding. I will check for retention much more frequently, maybe after each paragraph or so. I also think highlighting, underling, and making side notes while reading can greatly improve comprehending as well.
ReplyDeleteReading Ch. 10, 11 & 12 was a good reminder of how important it is for all of us to focus on the basics of reading to improve students understanding. It is very easy to over look teaching the basics such as decoding, fluency and vocabulary the way it was described in the text because of the emphasis of how much content we have to get through. Incorporating those components into our teaching will increase students’ comprehension which will of coarse improve their general understanding of the subjects being taught. I have spent a lot of time in the past two years including vocabulary development into my lessons. After reading this, I see the need to include the decoding and fluency components. If we focus on these techniques, we will be helping students build an even stronger foundation that will definitely help them better comprehend all material.
ReplyDeleteCh. 10 stuck out at me the most due to the emphasis on seeing the ability to read as a tool for the student, not just a goal or test score. This philosophy reflects a powerful idea that reading is a force multiplier when it comes to a student’s education. Similar to the thought that if you give a person a fish to eat they will eat for the day, but if you teach a person to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. Similarly if you read for a student they will learn for the day, but if you teach a student to read they will learn for a lifetime. Learning to read is the key to a student’s ability to self-educate themselves.
ReplyDeleteBy reinforcing and teaching constant reading, the student then has the ability to utilize all of the worlds information about what they choose to learn, whether it is from the internet, instruction manuals, books, etc. Information is presented within a narrow scope in school compared to the vast amount of resources available throughout the world and having the ability to access (through reading) those resources is an immense tool.
As a teacher, reading is engrained into every aspect of the lessons, even in Physical Education. Without the tool of a complete reading ability, much of what is taught and what is available will never be accessible to the student.
-Jason Vermillion