Houston: We've got a problem

This term I've been wishing that I'd remembered to try a strategy from the Dallas League for Innovation conference in March - having students confront the failure of their schema to solve the central problem of the course, right at the beginning of Week 2.

A Canadian script-writing professor from Humber College recommended aligning each course with the plot structure of a Hollywood comedy. He pointed out that in a Hollywood comedy the audience learns of the central problem within minutes of the start, and then the plot unfolds to resolve this problem or conflict.

In a typical course, though, students don't realize they have a problem until late in the term - typically Week 7 or later - when they try to do a final project or they face the most challenging material. This professor suggested that Week 1 be spent creating a safe space to make mistakes, and then early in Week 2 giving students the challenge that the course would help them overcome, so that they could then move on to learning.

In the context of a script-writing class, this meant assigning students to write a script and share it so that the group could identify the problems with the attempt. In my context, it would be reading a difficult text and failing to comprehend it. A lot like a pre-test, which has always worried me as a Week 1 activity, because I like the focus to be on community building. What I'm thinking now is that if Week 1 is community building, then early Week 2 could be the dramatic revelation that students' schema is not up to the task of comprehending college text.

Maybe by the time students come to me they have taken so many tests that I don't need to give another! Maybe all I need to do is give students the time and support they need to compare their test results with the results they would need to move ahead - that might be the evidence they need to see that their schema is not enough.

Why is it so hard for students to adopt new reading strategies?

Take any group of emerging readers, and you'll find people who are stubbornly clinging to a few minimally effective reading strategies, such as:

• reading from the first word to the last word without thinking or stopping
• taking notes only after reading the entire text
• highlighting everything that seems significant
• if you didn't understand it, reading it again, and again
• if you didn't understand it, reading on to see if the meaning comes to you later
• if you didn't know a word, looking it up in the dictionary 
• if you didn't know a word, asking someone what it means 

Why is it so difficult for emerging readers to try new strategies?

• active reading seems to take more time, even if it's more efficient
• active reading has more steps
• they've never heard of active reading
• if this were so effective, some K12 teacher would have taught it to them
• they're following the advice of a former K12 teacher, probably someone they respect
• writing in a book is forbidden in K12 (because it would require owning texts = $$$$)
• stopping and starting while you read aloud means failing at reading in K12 - it's not fluent!
• saying something out loud that might be "wrong" is a sure way to get humiliated in K12
• talking to yourself is something crazy people do
• they "understand" the text, they just can't remember what they read
• sharing your thoughts out loud is "touchy feely"
• if they were just better at "comprehension," the way they learned it would work

Choosing inquiry over a leveled text

Here's why I leaped into the unknown zone of inquiries a few weeks ago:

I had been assigning students articles to read in a leveled text called Well Read 3. As reading texts go it's not too bad - each chapter has a content theme with a few interesting readings and also highlights a strategy or two, with limited opportunities to practice on the texts.

After I taught my students to preview, though, I found they could retell the articles with solid accuracy after previewing and putting the text aside, and they could also answer all of the multiple choice comprehension questions accurately before close reading.

Since the text builds in difficulty I could have skipped to later chapters, but the sequence of strategies attached to the reading makes it hard to jump ahead.

Mostly the text just seemed too easy.

I have had almost zero success convincing emerging readers to learn and use new strategies if they can manage without them. In fact, now that I think on it, even when the text is hard I find emerging readers loathe to replace their schema for reading.

So into inquiry we went.

My original goals went something like this:

• identify a topic for inquiry that would engage students in my afternoon class
• identify a question or inquiry prompt that would require students to hunt for answers
• identify a limited set of "data" or readings for students to use in the hunt
• include varied texts in order to support a variety of strategy lessons, for example texts of different complexity, charts, articles, source material, etc.
• see how this approach does or doesn't work in this context, for me as a teacher
• find out what students think of this approach after they have experienced it

Think alouds

Thursday's experiment: I used a think aloud in my Fundamental Reading class so that students could learn how to make connections and ask questions while they read. It seemed effective but I made several mistakes I'd like to correct next time...

Learning outcomes: In a group discussion the students reported that they found the method helpful and thought it would boost comprehension. They answered the reading comprehension questions in the text accurately. However the text questions are multiple choice and test only the lowest level of understanding, so many students can answer them after previewing! Argh. I need to create a better assessment tool.

Learning objectives: 

1. Make connections to the text while reading.
2. Ask questions about the text while reading.

 ABSE Learning Standards (Read with Understanding): 

• Select and use reading strategies appropriate to the purpose
• Analyze the content and reflect on the underlying meaning
• Integrate the content with prior knowledge to address the reading purpose

 Lesson steps:

• Wednesday's pre-lesson: students identified their reading purpose (analysis) and then previewed a non-fiction article in the text:
• worked in pairs, alternating reading the 1st sentence of each paragraph aloud
• closed the book
• wrote down everything they could remember about the article (silence)
• stood up and shared their retells orally with the class - one person starts, others add what they caught that hasn't been said yet

• Thursday's lesson:
•  introduced think aloud:
• explained the problem with teaching them reading: reading is invisible, they can't see what I'm thinking (doing) while I'm reading
• need to pretend I've sliced the top off my brain so they can "see" my reading
• to make this happen I'm going to say aloud everything I'm thinking while reading
• ask them to try it after I show it
• not a permanent technique (they won't be babbling in the college library)
• on the way to writing notes in their texts while reading
• demo thinking aloud about one paragraph
• read the words aloud
• every time a thought came into my brain, said that aloud
• asked questions about the material (why is this guy hiking with no coat?)
• made connections (I hiked in UT and I was scared of the flash floods...)
• noted my reactions (I'm getting the idea this is going to end badly)
• put students in pairs to try it
• asked one person to do a think aloud of one paragraph, other to listen, then switch
• circulated to listen
• redirected students to push pair to make connections, ask questions, give reactions
• redirected students not to wait for end of sentence to jump in - go with any chunk of content
• students completed comprehension questions in the text, solo
• students checked their answers with the pair
• brought pairs back for whole class discussion
•  meta-cognition: what did it feel like? what do you think of this?
•  content: discussion of the article

 Patterns of student difficulty:

• Students tended to read along without commenting
• Students seemed to want to read a whole sentence before stopping to comment
• At least on the first try, it seemed like the pair was needed to prompt the student to stop and think, make a connection, analyze, etc.

 Student workaround:

• One student thrust a pencil under the other students' chin like a sports interviewer with a mic
• Tell me, Ms. _____: 
• What questions do you have at this time? 
• What is your reaction to this? 
• What connections can you make?
  

Successes:

• students tried to do the think aloud with good heart
• a student returned from meeting with an advisor and other students showed her how to do it
• student connections, questions and reactions were interesting and on point
• in the meta cognitive discussion students said this technique will boost comprehension
• students were able to answer text questions about the article correctly

Errors to learn from:

• intro took too long
• use two sentences only:
• I'm going to show you how...(clearly announce the purpose)
• While I'm doing this try to notice how I am doing this...
• need an inquiry! random text selections are not reason enough to learn and use strategies
• use college-level text - this text is so easy it's hard to find ways to dig deeper and it's hard to demonstrate the strategies
• build a more meaningful assessment - the multiple choice questions are too easy
• try isolating a single strategy for each demo?
• be more clear about the technique(s) I'm demonstrating, in the intro
• avoid reteaching instructions by having students identify them 
• tell them to notice while I demo
•  have them pair and share or share in whole class
• build instructions for the technique I am demonstrating on the board

Prezi with steps I need to follow for future think aloud experiments!

Plan, plan, plan and plan some more

I watched students make tremendous gains today and am reflecting on what worked! Sometimes it seems like nothing is just right, but today was better! (Hmm...how to replicate).

Before thinking about the particular lesson, I am reflecting on what made it possible for today's lesson to succeed. It was a heap of planning:

1. an assessment plan with clear learning objectives for the term
2. learning objectives selected for today from that term-long plan
3. the day's objectives posted on the board and reviewed with students
4. challenging and engaging readings selected
5. readings that extended the previous topic (mindset/how we succeed)
6. strong general plan with details left open, so activities emerged out of my sense of the students interest and ability in the moment
7. no timing assigned to the lesson segments - no rush or stress to complete segments "on time" or "cover" them
8. spot decision to teach the one objective deeply instead of moving on to the next today

Phew! It would be nice to make these routines, because just listing them is making me tired.

Lesson on previewing ("flying over") text before close reading

Over the years I have developed a bad attitude about teaching previewing.  Previewing is a pre-reading strategy where the reader skims the material at a medium trot to see what the text is about and how the author is approaching the topic, returning later for a close reading. Sometimes it's called a "fly over."

As I have read more about the brain, though, I've come to appreciate why this technique might be valuable. The brain works by making associations. With material the brain has never seen, on an unfamiliar topic, it could be a struggle to create associations. It seems logical that previewing would give a reader's brain a quick dose of background knowledge - creating a mental framework to support further associations.

The problem is that previewing (as I have taught it in the past) has made no sense to students, for many reasons:

1. It flies in the face of students' dearly held schema for reading. Everyone knows that the way to read is to start at the first word and continue to the last word. Skipping around before you do that is confusing. How can you expect to know more by reading less and taking information out of order?
2. If the problem for the struggling reader is that reading something first word to last word takes a a long time, adding steps before the reader starts that process makes a bad thing worse.
3. The steps themselves seem arbitrary to students. What if there are no headings to reveal the structure of the text? Why would it work to read only the first sentence of every paragraph? What if the first sentence of many of the paragraphs is taken up with rhetorical questions and flourishes, instead of conveniently announcing main ideas? What if the reading is 50 pages long? 
4. Previewing comes at the beginning of the term (the first of a chronological sequence of reading strategies) when students are anxious to improve comprehension. Since it seems unlikely to make a difference, this lesson leads students to question whether they will make any progress in the course or whether this is another situation where they will not learn to understand what they read.

Yesterday, though, I had a rare shining moment teaching previewing. It left me hopeful that my students grasped the value of the technique. I plan to post-test them at the end of the term to see if they will share with me which strategies they plan to keep using after the term and I am fascinated to see whether previewing will make the list.  Here is the lesson I used, adapting what I used to do based on principles of Reading Apprenticeship:

Lessons on Previewing: Objective: Students preview a text with no headings.

Past lessons related to this (starting with previewing with headings):

Lesson on previewing a reading with headings:  On Day 1 the students used the Course Description document to work in pairs to solve and share their solution of a common student problem. (Note: depending on student reading level, class size and the type of class the number and type of problem varies. This link is to an example from a non-credit class. In graded classes I include many scenarios about grading, late work, etc.). In order to make it possible for them to solve the problems without reading the document closely I taught them to preview by skimming the headings, so they could become acquainted with the contents and the location of the information.

I explained:

• previewing helps the brain connect to the reading by building some knowledge of the contents
• it's easy to preview by looking at headings
• in previewing you don't slow read from the first word to the last, you skim rapidly
• the goal (put on board) is to find out "what's there and where is it" for future close reading

I demonstrated previewing the top of the document. They tried previewing, solo, and then used the Course Description to solve the student problems and share their answers with the group.

Yesterday's lesson:

• I gave students two articles about the value of failure (one from Forbes, the other from Harvard Business Review). 
• We started with one article (Harvard Bus. Review piece about the failure wall)
• I put them in pairs 
• I asked them to read the first line of each paragraph aloud, alternating with their pair
• I demonstrated this with a student pair very briefly
• Students tried it (and said it felt freaky!)
• I gave each student a sticky note
• I asked them to write down any words or ideas that came to mind after previewing
• We discussed what they wrote on their stickies as group and whether they were able to make sense of the content (most of them got the topic, a few got the main idea, one extracted the emotional tone only!)

It was wild to see the impact of background knowledge play out. The person who made the most complete sense of the text on her stickies was a department manager in a business. We discussed the impact of her background knowledge.

Students asked why this technique makes a difference in comprehension? Was it worth the time? When would they do this? With all texts?

I invited them to

• develop the skill through practice 
• test out its effectiveness. 
• observe  and talk about whether this makes a difference in comprehension. 

I said in my own experience it's especially useful if I lack background knowledge of the text to start with.

I was so excited about the success of this lesson using college-level text. In the past I have used a text about how to read, aimed at struggling readers.  I am convinced the level of challenge is the key change. Students won't bother to learn a new skill unless their existing skills are not equal to the challenge in front of them. Texts about how to read, in my experience, don't offer students enough challenge to force them to confront the shortcomings of their existing reading strategies, which usually boil down to re-reading and moving on without comprehending. When I've taught them reading strategies is as if we were walking along flat ground and I spent a lot of time showing them where to put a ladder.

Unit relating mindset theory to reading ability

Today my Reading students learned more than I think I have ever had students learn in a single, 50 minute period. I'm making these notes to see if I can make this happen again! It was addicting.

I'm posting here one part of what we did today, which was the culmination of a unit on mindset theory. The rest of today's class is in a post that will follow.

Unit Objectives: 

1. Students identify their mindset (growth or fixed).
2. Students relate mindset theory to the process of learning.
3. Students relate mindset theory to the ability to read. 

Before today's lesson we worked on the first two objectives: Students...

• listened to me quickly describe Dweck's two mindsets (success comes through talent/natural ability vs. success comes through effort)
• thought, talked and wrote about a time they were successful
• identified their own mindset based on that example from their lives
• listened to me read aloud a page from Dweck's Mindset with the story of Michael Jordan
• continued to read a few more pages of that excerpt about Babe Ruth and a female runner (optional homework - many did it and asked to discuss in class after reading)
• thought about whether reading is a natural ability as a "do next" assignment before they came to class (thinking question I give out at the previous class)

Today's lesson focused on the third objective: Students...

• wrote about whether reading is a natural ability for 5 minutes silently as a "do now"
• were asked to take extra care to back up their opinion with examples 
• discussed their views as a group, using a talking stick, starting with a student, continuing around without my comment until each member of the group spoke, concluding that reading was mostly effort but it started with some natural ability to make sense of the words as sounds 
• listened to my contribution/wrap up, affirming their conclusions and adding some background I learned from John Medina's Brain Rules and from Stanislas Dehaene's Reading in the Brain:


• our brains were designed in the Stone Age 
• our ability to read depends on the brain re-purposing functions originally designed for pre-literate life
• almost all humans have the wiring that lets them read
• some people use a different part of the brain to read (dyslexics)
• the brain constantly changes, actually moving around physical material, based on what we demand of it
• a dyslexic brain, like any other brain, can change over time, depending on what is demanded of it 
• true story example: a dyslexic person I know, how they learned to read at different ages and what strategies they used
• big idea: we can improve our reading through effort and we change our brains as we go

Follow-up assignment (link to assignment sheet):  

Choose a pleasure book they have never read before (help and resources offered to make this choice). Read 15 minutes a day (or more to go the "extra mile"), aiming for a regular time of day to build a reading habit. Discuss the reading at a Readers' Cafe first thing at Monday's class. Write about the reading every week, due on Tuesday. (This could be a Moodle forum or could be postings to Goodreads - we haven't decided that yet and I am going to ask students to choose as a group.)

In connection with this assignment students also reviewed their 10 rights as readers, by Daniel Pennac and illustrated by Quentin Blake. One important right is the right not to finish a book, which is why I focus on the literacy habit (15 minutes, same time each day), instead of finishing a particular book or reading a set number of pages.