Recently, I had the pleasure of joining Steve Barkley as a guest on his podcast, Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud, where we chatted about the power of listening arguments.

“For the past 40 years, Steve has served as an educational consultant to school districts, teacher organizations, state departments of education, and colleges and universities nationally and internationally, facilitating the changes necessary for them to reach students and successfully prepare them for the 21st century. A prolific published author, his weekly blog… has evolved into a go-to resource for teachers and administrators all over the world.”

from Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud

You might already be familiar with my article “How to Heal a Divided World: Argumentative Writing That Actually Listens to The Other Side;” however, my conversation with Steve further elaborates on that elusive state of flow that my students experienced as they deeply engaged with the hearts of those on the other side of their arguments.

As Steve keenly noted in our conversation, my students were practicing “a strong sense of meaning, mastery, and mattering to others.” It is what organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant called the antidote to languishing, the dulled feeling of focus and motivation we’ve all had throughout 2021.

Give yourself some uninterrupted time to listen.

In twenty minutes—who knows—you might just kick that blah feeling yourself and decide it’s time to revamp the next argumentative writing assignment, and, instead of languishing through the school day, your students will stretch their skills, heighten their resolve, and find their flow.

Check out my Listening Argument resources for more help.

Collective Responsibility

When our social studies department chair discussed students’ difficulty to contextualize the facts on the APUSH test, I knew this problem wasn’t just because of one rigorous course curriculum. As a department, all of the preceding Social Studies classes share the responsibility of these scores, and I hated the idea that students left my class at the end of sophomore year and left behind all of the content knowledge that we shared no longer able to use their learning to potentially earn college credit let alone help them flourish further on in life.

When I was in school, I often felt like my history teachers just told us these historical facts and stories in isolation. Sure, I thought they were interesting enough to further my study, but I certainly didn’t have the capital as an adolescent to distill the underlying principles and patterns of the content on my own. Even today, I knew that I’d have to build a cognitive structure for my own students learning in order to make it stick.

Weave it Together

In that light, I started playing around with this idea of taking an already secure framework of must-know US History facts and weaving in larger themes and trends. In other words, I wanted to figure out a way for students to zoom in and memorize the important, you-cannot-be-a-functioning-adult-without-knowing-this-history-fact while simultaneously zooming out to see how these pieces fit together as a whole narrative of the American story. By weaving the isolated facts together, students are able to recognize patterns and retain the content longer because, for example, Executive Order 9066 is no longer floating around aimlessly in their notes but rather fastened to similar racial injustices over time to reveal the bigger picture. Understanding this bigger picture of the past then, of course, helps students understand and make decisions about life in the present.

I describe the Big Picture Guide to my students like a tapestry being woven on a loom. Imagine it hanging in front of you now. Thick vertical threads hang straight down from the top frame of the loom to the bottom. Horizontal threads are individually streamed through and tamped down. The yarn is squished together so tightly that they completely hide the vertical backbone threads from view. When new colors are introduced, their vibrancy pops up occasionally on the front of the tapestry; however, when you turn the work over, you see the various colors of yarn stretching and connecting across the larger space.

To craft my loom framework, I considered the wider lens historians take when they study the past: social, political, economic, and military perspectives. These four categories became the hanging vertical threads of our US History tapestry. Then to weave in the seemingly isolated facts, I sequenced them according to the already “tamped down” sequence of US Presidents. These forty-five presidential terms became the horizontal threads. I ask my students to imagine a slow-growing tapestry that over the course of the year is eventually gridded in a 4×45 pattern with various color trends appearing throughout.

Spaced Practice

As we move through the year, I have the students sidestep from our already ongoing unit study to add to our Big Picture Guide notes. This extra attention to the major events students need to know obviously helps reinforce students’ preparation for end-of-unit assessments, but what’s most important to note about the Big Picture Guide is that we never drop our retrieval practice of all of the earlier presidents. Students are expected to retain all of the BPG facts throughout the entire year and hopefully beyond to support their long-term flourishing.

To make sure this retention actually happens, I use cognitive science strategies to create challenging, spaced retrieval practice. This starts by introducing only 4-5 Presidents at a time; this number generally matches the eras of our unit studies. During that time, I focus on 3-5 must-know social, political, economic, or military events/policies from each of those Presidential terms.

As new sets of Presidents are added unit after unit, it’s essential to both space out the practice to allow time for forgetting to set in and to do frequent quizzing that increases in difficulty over time. In the Civil War & Reconstruction Era Unit, I introduce the must-know facts associated with Presidents #16-19, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Hayes. The quiz, as shown below, is set on “level easy” because students only need to recall the presidents’ last names and the title of each big picture event or policy.

Later on, after we’ve moved on to a new unit and students are quizzed again, the difficulty is increased. The first set of presidents moves from just recall to now “level medium” of recall and description of the major events. The quizzes are still structured according to the original “loom” framework; however, students are now able to start seeing topic patterns emerge. Note the boxes labeled in red below focus on issues related to Native Americans.  Like looking at the back of the tapestry, students can see how the thread of these military and political actions against Native Americans and how they stretch and intensify across time.

Ultimately, because we keep coming back to this same must-know content week after week, unit after unit, my students not only solidify their understanding of US History content today in class, but it’s been structured in a way so they can confidently use the information twenty years from now. They won’t become informed global citizens if the content spills out of them and remains left behind on a Scantron bubble sheet.  I want my students to be fluent in the language of history, the way bilingual speakers can switch languages with each breath.

This post is reshared by the author as previously contributed content from Dave Stuart Jr.’s book, These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most (Corwin Literacy 2018),  which "is centered on a simple belief: all students and teachers can flourish. These 6 Things is all about streamlining your practice so that you’re teaching smarter, not harder, and kids are learning, doing, and flourishing in ELA and content-area classrooms." In exciting news, it is now available on Audible!

In today’s political climate, discussions can easily turn into verbal combat.

From Congressional debates to divisive Thanksgiving dinners and angry-emoji-laden Facebook brawls, each voice ends up yelling louder and viler without ever actually listening to the fear and motivation behind the other person’s heart.

Unfortunately, the same corrosiveness emerges when we teach argumentative writing to students.  

In many places, students are taught a standard model to present their own points and “shoot down” elements of their opposition. While this feels triumphant, especially with a one reader, teacher-audience, it doesn’t equip students to communicate in healthy and productive ways.

With a team of teacher researchers, I spent time the last few years examining the pitfalls of argumentative writing and crafted methods to teach students to use nuance and empathy to achieve productive civil discourse.

My research scenario (and success!) fell in with the traditional, department-assigned social issues research paper, a staple in many schools. What follows is an approach to teaching argumentative writing that can be adapted for any discipline.

1. Create an Independent Reading “Back Channel” 

During your argumentative writing unit, maintain the course with an independent novel reading stream for your students. Do a round of Book Speed Dating where students search for books that are “windows” into lives that differ in some way from their own. Discuss finding an author or main character from a unique identity group (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, class, ability, religion). If you teach outside of ELA, try speaking with your colleague across the hall about how the choice reading that is already happening in their room might lend itself to this work.

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, the “mother” of multicultural children’s literature, talks about this now well-known concept of books as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

Once students have selected a book, use natural transition moments in class to invite a secondary conversation about their books. Ask students to briefly check in with their elbow partner. Provide sentence starters to prompt 60-second book chats:

• “I assume this book is a window for me because ____.”
• “Character X and I both think/feel/value _____ because _____.
• “I used to think _____, but now I think ____.” ← One of my favorite thinking routines from Project Zero

These short conversations will ask students to reflect on their relationship with the characters. Talking about identity and perspective might be clunky at first, but this is important seed planting. Students need to practice identifying the values, motivations, and fears of others. This is an essential component of writing an argument that listens.

2. Curate “Heart-Breaking” Social Issues

Bring together an array of social issues as a jumping-off point for your students. Invite vulnerability in by asking, “What breaks your heart about the world?” This tender zone is where they should begin.

I provide my students with a non-exhaustive list of issues, and many have been inspired by these resources:

• Amnesty International
• Brookings Institute
• I Side With
• 100 People: A World Project
• Annie E. Casey Foundation (list specific to Gen Z)

Obviously, share the issues that weigh heavy on your own heart and let students talk in partners, small groups, and as a whole class. And don’t be surprised by the 1-2 students who cannot choose a topic themselves. They are sometimes swarmed with anxiety about the world or sadly clouded with apathy. Either way, you can always provide them with a topic or they can borrow the heart-breaking topic of a friend.

3. Humanize the “Other Side”

Once your students have initiated their research and chosen their stance on the topic, it’s time to consider the other side of the argument. Instead of writing “to win” a debate, students must learn to heal the divide by practicing empathy.

If empathy means “to lean in with compassion,” help your students see the person who sits across the divide from them. I provide my students with the two-column chart on the right.

Ask your students to consider:

• What type of people might be on “this side” of your issue? on “that side” of your issue?
• What kinds of experiences might have brought them to “this side?” to that “that side?”
• Keeping these experiences in mind, what does this/that group value? What do they care about? What is important to them? 

Aside from writing that has great potential to solve the political divide of our world (no small feat, right? ), essays that practice empathy are more dynamic and interesting to read. Remember apathy is a “lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.” When students ignore what really moves their opponents, they erase passion and humanity from their pages not to mention anything that brings interest to the reader!

4. Provide Models of Empathetic Civil Discourse

So, how exactly do you argue from a place of goodwill? When I began to search for possible mentor texts that model empathetic arguments, I was lost:

“I’m kinda freaking out about this project. I have been spinning my wheels with the lack of specific direction or end game. The obscurity of the Listening Argument has me feeling like I’m trying to teach kids how to get through the woods at night without a compass or flashlight. I see it as important work, but I’ve got no clue how to do it myself, let alone teach it to a group who already struggle with social intelligence…”

– excerpt from one of my real-life, freak out emails to my research partner

Thankfully, I stumbled upon the YouTube series Middle Ground during one of those late-night wanderings and found my way out of the dark forest! Phew!

In class, select one of the videos to watch together. Before you press play, use the “Humanize the ‘Other Side’” graphic organizer to make predictions about the people on either side of the issue. Then, at various times, pause the video to allow students to add or adjust their original thinking. As with all good teaching: model, think-pair-share, and discuss.

Then, release the students to independently explore videos similar to their chosen topics. This will help them develop a dynamic understanding of the people behind their issue’s opposing sides.

Interestingly, my students were most surprised at how civil the Middle Ground participants were throughout the channel. No yelling. No storming off. Nothing like the angry Thanksgiving dinners they’d experienced. We pondered: “What work was done ahead of filming to prepare them for this conversation? How can we prepare ourselves?”

5. Research with “Two Heads”

Once there is an understanding of the human presence on both sides of the issue, follow your normal path for teaching the research process. The shift comes when students begin to analyze the sources from both perspectives. Students need to pivot from just grabbing a quote from each article—if you’ve taught research writing for more than a day, you know this is standard practice—to actually understanding how the message, the audience, and the communicator are perceived by supporters and opponents of their topic.

To support this deep thinking, I provide my students with the graphic organizer on the right for each research source.

Ask your students to consider:

• Why might X trust this author/source?
• What are X’s FEARS around this issue?
• What are X’s MOTIVATIONS around this issue?”
• What evidence from this article might be convincing or worthwhile to X?

Students were fairly comfortable analyzing the source from their own perspective (X) but grew frustrated when they “couldn’t fill out the other head” (Y). They began to recognize that even their research sources sometimes ignored their opponents’ perspectives.

Following this alternate approach to research, one of my students who had previously been ironclad on his pro-life stance came in the next day with a visible emotional shift:

While his adolescent heart did not notice this maturity leap, we were amazed at this growth towards creating more nuanced solutions. Soon, other students began to follow suit as they looked at the research from both sides.

6. Model how to Focus on the Values of “Other Side”

From the start, choose your own topic, gather research articles, analyze the sources, then, as you would with any writing workshop, write alongside them.

Years ago, I realized that my students needed more scaffolding to transfer the skill of disseminating research analysis to the blank page of their essay. I introduced an ICEEE acronym to support their use of text-based evidence (see our classroom anchor chart on the right). This provides them a sequence they can follow to avoid “quote bombing” (you know, where they drop a random quote into a paragraph and flee without saying anything about it). Still, some students were forgetting necessary components, like in-text citations, transition words, etc. So, I crafted what I can only call a “fill-in-the-blank essay” structure to ensure that they don’t skip or scramble important components. When I write on the Elmo in front of them, I use this same structure so they can see the moves.

Where these writing workshop steps diverge for a listening argument is in the “Expose what it means” step of the ICEEE acronym. Model for your students how to expose why this evidence is relevant to the values of “this side” and “that side.” Then, address the next-step consequences for the larger audience or issue.

You can see how one of my students attempted this below in the bold-type:

This student also showed great maturity from her original stance of anger and name-calling towards this group of parents.

7. Provide Sentence Starters that Listen

Provide sentence kick-starters to increase writing fluency and confidence. In my handwritten teacher model (shown in the photo above), I highlighted the sentence starters in green, so students could mirror my structure if necessary, filling in with their own ideas and content. Also, in the student example above, you can see that she has used the following empathy-building sentence starters:

• Many ______ advocates value _______, but most don’t realize that _______.
• The large majority of people who agree with _______ would not _______ if they knew ________.

These prompts show that the writer is willing to listen to the heart of their opponents and speak to those concerns. This certainly makes the argument more compassionate but more convincing as well.

If you’re familiar with my other posts on writing, you know that I’m a huge advocate of providing sentence starters, especially those from Graff and Berkenstein’s They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing.

8. Nix the Old “Rebuttal Paragraph“

Today’s political divide has grown so entrenched. Gone are the days where televised debates actually swayed voters. Where have all the fence-sitters gone? If they are the supposed audience of a rebuttal paragraph, we need to reconfigure the purpose of this space.

Here’s what I propose:

First, introduce a grey area or complication from the other side by showing that you fully see these people and understand the complexity of the issue:  

• “The other side believes/values/fears…” 
• “Opponents of my stance cannot look past…” 
• Consider using a quote from the other side.

Next, sit side-by-side with your opponents on middle ground. Hold the weight of their belief by emphasizing why their perspective is valid/compelling: 

• “This is important because….” 
• “This issue especially matters to this group because…”

When teaching this step, I physically pulled two chairs together in the front of my classroom and talked to the imaginary person on the other side of my issue. I picked up their invisible, emotional knapsack and held it in my arms bearing the heaviness of their heart.

When we shared this section of our rough drafts, this was often the space where peer editors amped up the call for more empathy: “You’re not holding the weight of their feels!” “You dropped it too soon. Really show us that you understand!”

Finally, explain what you will do in response. There are two moves here:  

1. THE DIVERGENCE:

Discuss how—even while still holding the weight of their beliefs—you still need to carry your stance further towards a resolution: 

• “As I have come to understand… , for me, I can’t look past…”
• “Although I can now acknowledge …, I want to move forward by…”

2. THE IMPASSE:

Discuss how you can concede the legitimacy of their claim on this grey area. Recognize that this particular divide is too big to cross given the current state of the issue and will let the divide exist unremedied.

Most students took the Divergence path in their essays. However, one student writing a pro-choice argument chose the Impasse when she realized—after sitting with the other side—that neither group could agree when life starts. Without this consensus, she didn’t see this point moving further. Again, we saw great maturity with her including this realization rather than ignoring it and attempting to shoot down a weaker talking point.

Reflection & Recovery

Even if our students aren’t watching the latest Congressional mudslinging, they are paying attention to the way the world argues. What is this modeling for our next generation of leaders?

On top of that, we know much of the conflict our students encounter is online in the comment threads of social media. Sadly, they don’t always see their opponent as a person IRL. The other person’s heart is not an issue they have to deal with. They can choose to ignore it. 

We have an opportunity when we teach argumentive writing to turn the opposition back into an actual person. We can teach students to sit right next to their adversary on middle ground. We can model how to figuratively (or literally) hold their opponent’s hand and both talk about what we’re afraid of or what we value.

We can shift from “winning” an argument to “solving a problem.”

Not only will this make the writing more mature and dynamic, but—with empathy and nuance—our young writers might actually change someone’s mind and help heal this divided world.

For more information on arguments that listen:

• NCTE’s English Journal is publishing a piece on this particular aspect of the listening argument research project. Look for the title “Making Others’ Perspectives Present: Arguments that Listen” in their May 2021 publication. It is co-authored by Dr. Jennifer VanDerHeide of Michigan State University, Dr. Allison Wynhoff Olsen of Montana State University, and me.
• For other approaches to the listening argument, reach out to my other research colleagues Ben Briere and Jessyca Matthews, who presented alongside me and Dr. Jennifer VanDerHeide at the 2019 NCTE Annual Convention in Baltimore. While very different from my own, their studies produced fascinating and powerful results.
• Check out Raising Student Voice: 35 Ways to Teach Argument Writing from Katherine Schulten, editor-in-chief of The New York Times Learning Network. Schulten invited me to contribute content around my research to her book that “provides teachers with 35 strategies and classroom-ready activities for using … peer mentor texts with their students.”
• Since completing this research, I read and enjoyed the book I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth A. Silvers, hosts of the popular Pantsuit Politics podcast. I would love to discuss with other readers how this work might overlap and play out in the classroom.

In the past, when I would ask my classes how they studied for any of our last tests, overwhelming they’d tell me that they reread their notes. That’s it. Looking at words on a page—that they’ve already seen before—is their idea of studying.

FAR TOO MANY STUDENTS THINK THAT REREADING (or RE-VIEWING) IS STUDYING.

So when I say, “Don’t ask student to ‘study’ Latin Word Chunks,” it’s not that I don’t want them to study. I do. I don’t, however, want them to waste their time with an ineffective method, get low scores on the assessments, and then lose all efficacy in their practice.  When they don’t know how to effectively and independently study their course material, there’s no point in asking them to do it in the first place.

WHAT DOES RESEARCH SAY?

My favorite Make It Stick researchers explain:

“Rereading has three strikes against it [as a study method]. It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting, self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the content” (p. 10).

When “rereading” is the only thing hanging from students’ utility belts, they end up cramming the night before the test. Then “brain farts” stank up their scantron sheets on test day leaving kids blindsided because they just knew they were going to “ace this one, for sure!”  Without much surprise, they see that studying—as they know it—doesn’t work. They blow it off entirely and bank on the teacher’s in-class instruction to carry the cognitive load, and students are quicker on this draw with this than many teachers.

We, of course, eat up the responsibility of this independent memory work and exhaust our class days with “test review” to cycle back through content that students should be tackling outside of class. Then, if you’re like me—and I know it’s too many of us go-getter, teachers—you feel the endless weight of guilt after you’ve taught to your full capacity, kids don’t perform well, and department data reflects negatively on your team.

Instead of re-teaching our course content, we need to allocate some class time to teach students how to study, specifically how to do retrieval practice on their own.

The Learning Scientists define it for students as the following:

Retrieval practice involves recreating something you’ve learned in the past from your memory, and thinking about it right now. In other words, a while after you’ve learned something by reading it in a book or hearing it in a class or from a teacher, you need to bring it to mind (or “retrieve” it). The word after is really important; you need to forget the information at least a little in order for retrieval to be effective! You don’t want to just immediately recite what you see in the book or what the teacher told you, but rather you want to bring the information to mind on your own, once it starts to get a little more difficult to remember what you studied.

This level of memory coaching is especially crucial for those of us that teach in low SES districts where students might not have families that can provide this kind of at-home study support.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE?

There are lots of ways to do retrieval practice. Namely, we need to help students learn to self-quiz. In regards to Latin Word Chunks, early in our process, I guide my students through a mini-boot camp of a few memory training methods.

Flashcards

As shown in the title photo above, I provide a set of LWC flashcards for my students at the start of our study. I used to ask kids to whip some up on their own as homework, but it resulted in both a disorganized mess from the apathetic and a revelation of more economic hardship for the “have nots.” Just take the few minutes to print a class set of flashcards and have your kids cut ’em out in class. Totally worth it.

Early in the program, take a few rounds of the original Memory game from childhood with students. Coach those lil’ cheaters to really quiz themselves rather than peek at the other side; otherwise, this method is no better than rereading. And sure! Researchers are okay with digital flashcards (my students use this set on Quizlet); however, consider the benefits of being able to physically shuffle the cards. This tangible manipulation allows students to link terms that share similarities and sort cards into different groups thus creating stronger conceptual frameworks. For example, my students always mismatch [de-] and [dis-, dif-, di-]. To uncouple this letter D pairing in their minds, they use their flashcards to hopscotch back and forth between other LWC pairs with similar meanings:

Actual printed/handwritten flashcards are the best way to create these adjustable self-quizzing stacks. No shock: they can get lost with our less organized students, so I give them an hole-punched envelope to house the cards in their binders.

Trap-Doors

Like the hidden trap-doors that occasionally appear in fiction, this self-quizzing method provides a concealed entrance flap to secret knowledge passageways below. In a far-less cheesy description, it’s when you cover up the answers on one side of a page and practice recalling the information beneath. My students use the original notes from their LWC Study Study Pack to do this. Of course, we talk about how this practice with trap-doors is more mentally engaged than just looking back over unconcealed notes because they have to generate the meaning (or the LWC) from blank space. They have to lift the screen in their brain to find the answer. I also try to teach students to pair this study technique with Cornell notes from their textbook reading in US History. If students create those separate columns for questions and facts as they take notes, they can later camouflage the hardcore content and—bam!—they’ve made their own recall practice quiz.

Practice Tests

Clearly, this method of retrieval practice asks students to form a habit of assessing themselves. The verbal processors in my classes like to do a Q&A out loud with another student or family member while the internal processors in the group prefer to do this on their own. I suggest that they all hold on to previously corrected LWC quizzes from class or use any of testing variations on Quizlet (the Learn function is my favorite because it increases in difficulty over time and shuffles back in old terms).

Dual-Coding

Using the images already printed on the flashcards, those students drew in their Study Study Packs, or in some other variation, take time to coach students on intentionally pairing visuals with verbals. Talk it out. Model for them how to form mental images of their learning. Initially, my students struggle with [epi-][upon, on top of] until we fuse the LWC with the visual of an emergency allergy situation. I briefly describe how my sister has injected an EpiPen right up on top of her son’s thick clothing to quickly deliver the medicine into his system. Immediately, this strong visual/verbal cipher is locked into students’ memories.

Unfortunately whenever we talk about dual-coding, we still have to debunk the baseless claims students make about the need to address each of their personal learning styles. Unfortunately, far too many College of Education professors and K-12 teachers are still entangled in this misunderstanding. Again The Learning Scientists counter this claim:

…it is important to remember that a great deal of research has shown that assessing your learning style and then matching your study to that “style” is not useful, and does not improve learning… So, remember, regardless of any “learning style” you may or may not possess, or think you possess, matching the specific way you are studying to this style will not improve learning! You may have a preference for verbal materials or visual materials, but that does not mean that you learn better with those types of materials. Instead, students learn best when they combine visual materials (like pictures or diagrams) with verbal materials (like words from a textbook). So, even if you have a preference for one type of material or another, it is important to dual code and use both!

As a method of study, coach students to evoke their different verbal/visuals as they move through their retrieval practice. Even if their dual-coding is an ugly drawing or silly analogy, this interlacing is one key to content retention.

Brain Dumps

Even simpler than any of the other methods (and my go-to, #1, favorite) is a Brain Dump (I’ve written more about them here). I always tell my students that the vast white page before them is the most honest assessment of what they know and what they don’t. Essentially, all you do is write down everything you can remember about a given topic. With LWCs, students start by spilling out the confetti of terms and meanings that are teeming from the edges of their brains. As those easily recalled LWCs dry up, they have to dig deeper to generate the remaining terms. To do this, students start mentally organizing and sorting patterns to see where they have gaps. Because I teach the LWCs in first in sets of prefixes, roots, and suffixes, then—within that—groups of four terms at a time, and alphabetically, kids begin to delineate where they might be missing something. This is more regular practice in my class with complex concepts that require more than just vocabulary recall (e.g. the causes of WWII) because it asks students to elaborate and keep pulling back more layers of understanding.

Get the “Latin Word Chunks Total Package” here.

Thanks . . . to Dr. Megan Sumeracki and Dr.Yana Weinstein of The Learning Scientists for helping translate a wealth of cognitive psychological science research into practice application for students, parents, and teachers. I especially love their videos! 

But wait–there’s more! If you like what you’ve read here, check out my resource page for products/downloads, share my workshop offerings with your administrator or School Improvement team, and join my mailing list to receive posts sent directly to your inbox.

As well-read ELA teachers, one of our most difficult struggles is with fitting in all that literacy research best practice into one class period. Independent reading. Grammar Practice. Articles of the Week. Writing Invitations. Latin Word Chunks. We understand the benefits of getting these essentials into each class period but just can’t figure out how to make it actually happen in 53 minutes.

For me, when it comes to Latin Word Chunks, I follow this five-step process for the instruction of five new terms, which we can accomplish in less than 10 minutes nearly each Monday. In my classroom, it looks something like this:

1. Present students with a brief explanation of the new term

“Alright team, grab your highlighters. Mark term #39 ‘mort’ and the definition, which means ‘die or death.'”  

Under the document camera, I highlight the term and definition on my Student Study Pack. I reserve one pack for each hour. This makes it easier for reference when students are absent or one class comes up with great examples and I want to share them with the other hours.

“Our mentor example ‘mortician’ is a funeral director or, essentially, someone who prepares dead bodies for burial.”

On my Student Study Pack, I’ll annotate this box making sure that I use at least part of the term definition ( ⤷ one who prepares dead bodies).

2. Ask students to generate their own explanations of the term

“Turn and talk to your neighbors and come up with your own examples.”

Asking the group to do a Think-Pair-Share before calling on individual students to answer is, of course, a way for everyone to share their ideas and be heard.

This way I can cold-call five random kids to collect examples from the groups and not spend the rest of the hour either begging for raised hands or faux-fawning everyone’s “awesomer” example. I do this by quickly numbering off kids (i.e. “airplane stacking,” per Adaptive Schools training):

“Jazmon, you’re #1. Rody, #2. Logan, #3. McCoy, you be #4. And, Aryis, you’re #5.”

This extra moment of organizing who is being called on speeds things up and lets kids have a half second to collect an example from their group (if they zoned out) before I pull their voice into the lesson.

When I call out the numbers, kids shout their examples, and I write them in the “Collected Example” box on my Student Study Packet. Sometimes, I ask kids to clarify how that word fits with the Latin term and definition. Students are expected to write these words and whatever additional examples we didn’t share on their Student Study Pack.

Just a heads-up for middle and high school teachers: Some terms invite what we’ll call “PG-13” responses from students when prompted to come up with example words. Often, these words… uh, might be best suited for a reproductive health class. Consider what results your kids might generate for “circum-” or “ex-, e-.” I’m generally straight-forward with my students and explain how these terms fit the definition. Normally, the examples that make my students giggle are the terms that they remember the most.

3. Present students with a visual for the term

Next, I choose one of our example words to draw in the “Visual Representation” box.

I draw very quickly—less than 20 seconds—and generally repeat the same sketch each hour to save time.

I do try to illustrate something other than the word on the flashcards, so kids have one other option. For example, the flashcard for “mort” shows a screenshot from the video game Mortal Kombat, so I draw might draw someone who is “mortified.”

4. Ask students to create their own visuals for the term

During this time, students can either copy my sketch or come up with their own image.

I always tell my students that they’re invited to be the “worst artists in the room.” It doesn’t matter the quality of the drawing. Students just need to practice elaboration and image association for each term to insure research-based content retention.

5. As students read over the next few weeks, ask students to review their definitions and examples in comparison to new texts

From there on out, when students are reading their choice books, I’ll often have a kid point out during a reading conference how a Latin Word Chunk helped him understand an unknown word.

More often though, it’s during the US History hour of our Humanities block that students make connections with the Latin Word Chunks. For example, during our Great Depression roleplay, students had a very lively conversation about the term “mortgage.”

“Aaagh! It’s ‘mort’ because you’ll be paying the bank ’til you die!”

Even better is when the math and science teachers on my team say that our students are using the Latin Word Chunks to help define academic vocabulary in their classes

Repeat Steps #1-5 for the next four terms.

Aside from following these steps, I do recommend setting a timer during the first few weeks of practice. This helps students feel the sense of urgency when generating their examples and drawing the pictures. It also helps you find a flow, so you can move on to all those other ELA goals.

Get the “Latin Word Chunks Total Package” here.

Thanks . . . to Robert Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works (2001) for providing all the ooey-gooey research goodness that guides teachers towards best practice instruction. 

But wait–there’s more! If you like what you’ve read here, check out my resource page for products/downloads, share my workshop offerings with your administrator or School Improvement team, and join my mailing list to receive posts sent directly to your inbox.

As the new school year approaches, we’re all eager to meet our new students. But—if you’re at all like me—you might fumble through this start-of-the-year, get-to-know-you-phase like you’re on 30+ awkward first dates all at once.

“No. I’m Mikayla, Mrs. Beaton. She is Mikaela.”

“Riiiight.”

Regardless of the stumbling through, we know the importance of building a strong classroom community, so much so that we lay in bed on July nights restlessly thinking about new seating arrangements that will best support student talk.

What Does Research Say?

Building a connected community that supports our students’ success, however, is heavily dependent on our students’ belief that they truly belong. Last year, my colleague and work-brother Dave Stuart pushed our teaching team’s understanding of character to accept that “belief drives behavior.” His research into Camille Farrington et. al’s studies show,

“Belonging affects everything from the amount of days that our students come to school to the degree to which they identify themselves as the type of person to do the work our classrooms require.”

If I want my social studies students to grasp the big picture of history or my English students to grow as independent readers, I need them to

1. come to school (Yes, this is a “duh” point but often easier said than done, especially when working with an At-Risk population)
2. engage in our work with genuine drive

That drive comes from a number of components, some that we as teachers have influence over, like belonging.

The thing is—we all recognize—getting to know students doesn’t happen all at once, even more so when you have 30ish kids on your class roster. And albeit it might take me a few days to figure out which Mikayla/Mikaela is which, it takes more time to learn the background and needs of each young lady.

What Does It Look Like In Practice?

Students want to be heard, but, in the first week of school, we don’t always have the opportunity to sit down and chat with everyone. To remedy this early on in my career, I started crafting a start-of-the-year “Who Are You? Questionnaire.” With adjustments and additions each year, I’ve learned that this nosy, six-page survey invites kids to share in ways that I never could get them to do early on in our relationship.

The questions offer check-boxes and fill-in-the-blank lines with some of the following headings:

• YOU AND YOUR FAMILY
• PRAISE & ACCOMPLISHMENTS
• ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS
• FUTURE ASPIRATIONS
• LEARNING PREFERENCES & SUPPORT

Some helpful questions:

• I live with my _______________ ❑ everyday ❑ throughout the week ❑ on weekends ❑ seasonally ❑ rarely/never
• Are you new to our school this year?  ❑ Yes  ❑ No; If yes, where were you before? What brought you here?
• What do you imagine yourself doing ten years from now?
• Do you like this class as a subject in school? ❑ Yes ❑ No ❑ Sometimes; Why or why not?
• I might need support with/when…

While I joke with my students that some of these questions may seem nosy for our first introductions, students still have the choice what questions they want to answer and how much they want to reveal. I’ve found that more often than not students just want someone to ask, to know that someone is listening, to have a chance to share their story.

So even though, I could have learned about these things over the course of the semester, this questionnaire helped me quickly learn about

• Jake’s dirt bike racing sponsorship
• Bri’s mild hearing impairment
• Melanie’s dad’s death last November, which brought her and her mom to town this school year
• Chris’ 3am before-school farm chores, which was why he was often tired and still warming up his hands when 1st Hour began
• Julie’s brother’s imprisonment

Now I’m not saying that I’ve found a way to totally eliminate the strangeness early on—I still shake their hands and stare into their eyes until they blush when we first meet—but having an extra glimpse inside my students’ lives gives me an idea of what they think is funny, what holidays they celebrate, how to navigate possible class discussion trigger warnings, and hopefully how to help them feel like they belong in our academic community.

Your Turn . . .

How do you quickly connect with your students at the beginning of the school year?

What questions do you pose that offer the most insight?

Thanks . . . to Kathleen Cushman’s Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students (2003) for inspiring some of the content in this questionnaire.

But wait–there’s more! If you like what you’ve read here, check out my resource page for products/downloads, share my workshop offerings with your administrator or School Improvement team, and join my mailing list to receive posts sent directly to your inbox.

When I first started teaching, we used ditto machines and overhead projectors.

Take these dinosaur “tech tools” and pair them with 1) a random list of high-frequency SAT words and 2) a cloudy understanding of the Frayer model and you get the haphazard vocabulary instruction I used for years. Show kids a complex word each day. Ask them to draw 100+ corresponding graphic organizers. Expect them to nail the SAT test.

Just like all those dried up Vis–à–Vis markers, this method didn’t work.

What Does Research Say?

Instead of teaching a random “hard” word each day, shift your time to teaching students the most frequent Greek and Latin parts of words (i.e. prefixes, roots, and suffixes).

The experts have been talking about teaching word-level comprehension this way for years:

Kylene Beers notes in When Kids Can’t Read, what Teachers Can Do that students don’t “know how to use the…word parts such as root words and affixes to discern meaning.”

(2003, p. 35).

In fact, most kids don’t even realize that words share similar parts let alone a common meaning.

Mike Schmoker, author of Focus, explains that the most effective classrooms “repeatedly practice and master…the 50 most common transferable word chunks…to build up students’ reading vocabulary.”

(2011, p. 104).

So we’re not talking about some massive endeavor like teaching our students to actually speak Greek or subscribing to some reading program software.

In Deeper Reading, Kelly Gallagher says that type of vocabulary instruction “takes away from reading time, which is where the most effective vocabulary acquisition occurs. But students can benefit from knowing —that is, memorizing—some of the ‘staples.'”

(2004, p. 72)

In other words, the highest performing teachers make time to introduce these word components to students and help them memorize these chunks so they stick.

What Does It Look Like in Practice?

To start, I highly recommend getting a copy of Gallagher’s Deeper Reading. He shares his “30-15-10 List” (i.e. the 55 most common chunks) and how he rolls them out with his students.  The reading comprehension growth my students have had is thanks in large part to his work.

Here, I’ve taken his idea and given a possibly more detailed rundown of how it looks in my room, including the specific documents my students use:

At the Start of the Year

Students complete a Latin Word Chunks pre-test. This is very quick, informal, and low-stakes. They use the correct answers from this pre-test to create a personal set of Latin Word Chunk flashcards. If you’ve read about my passion for content retention, you know how my students and I nerd-out on flashcards. We use these nearly every week in class, and students are expected to practice self-quizzing with them at home during the week.

Direct & Guided Instruction

After that, my students work from a Latin Word Chunk Student Study Pack that I created, drawing on Robert Marzano’s research about best practice for acquiring vocabulary. In less than ten minutes, I can introduce five new terms. Together, we generate word examples that use the chunk and draw corresponding visual representations.

Students are expected to study their flashcards at home; however, we often use them in class to play a version of Memory to help reinforce strategies of self-quizzing. Otherwise, students use hand-held devices to play the various games on Quizlet. [Here’s a link to my Latin Word Chunks folder on Quizlet. It also includes flashcards sets for all of the English 10 Literary, Poetic, and Rhetorical Devices.]

Week-by-Week Quizzes

As I mentioned, I introduce five terms at a time with a quiz at the end of each week. The timeline is always slightly different depending on the needs of my students, but it might look something like what I share below. But first, please note, we typically spend about 30 minutes in total each week on vocabulary instruction (including the quizzes). This process looks complex but is quite fast when you and your students get into a rhythm.

• Week 1: On Monday, introduce terms #1-5. On Wednesday, do a mini-review of #1-5. On Friday, take a #1-5  quiz.
  • The first assessment exposure to terms #1-5 means they are set on “Level Easy.” Students know this means there will be a word bank and the terms are listed on the quiz in the same order as our Student Study Pack.
• Week 2: On Monday, introduce terms #6-10. On Wednesday, do a mini-review of #1-10. On Friday, take a #1-10 quiz.
  • The second assessment exposure to terms #1-5 means they increase in difficult to “Level Medium.” This means there isn’t a word bank for those terms, yet they stay in list order.
  • Since this is the first assessment exposure for terms #6-10, those items are on “Level Easy.”
• Week 3: On Monday, introduce terms #11-15. On Wednesday, do a mini-review of #1-15. On Friday, take a #1-15 quiz.
  • This is now the third exposure to terms #1-5, so they shift to “Level Hard” and are shuffled in order without a word bank.
  • Terms #6-10 move to “Level Medium” with their second assessment exposure.
  • And the new terms #11-15 start at “Level Easy.”
• Week 4: On Monday, no new terms are introduced, and we might do a mini-review of #1-15. On Wednesday, do another mini-review. On Friday, take a #1-15 quiz.
  • Terms #1-10 are both on “Level Hard,” and #11-15 moves to “Level Medium.”
• Week 5: Same Monday and Wednesday with quick review. On Friday, take a #1-15 quiz.
  • All terms move to “Level Hard” before introducing a new set of five terms the following week and folding those into our memorization mastery.

I describe this strategic approach to knowledge-building for my students simply as “snowballing” [See image above]. We begin with a tiny cluster of snowflakes (i.e. amount of terms) and gradually pack on more snow over time adding more and more until we have a snow boulder. This process supports proper content retention rather than just crashing an avalanche of terms at them, like I did in the past. I use the same snowball process with my US History students’ memorization of the big events and presidents.

Depending on the strength of the students’ memories, we’re often able to move more quickly through this process before adding another set of five terms. When we get to the first 30 prefixes, I do the same pause and increase the level of difficulty. I don’t always include every quiz in the grade book because the management of points can get ridiculous.

Results

Every year, I am amazed at how much impact this has on students reading comprehension. Upper-level teachers come back to me year after year saying how they can always recognize the kids that come from my class because of their ability to independently implement this vocabulary skill later on. So whether students are breaking down vocabulary on the SAT or applying their knowledge of these chunks to more authentic learning, I see the results of this method, and because of that impact I want to make my student resources available to you.

Check out the link below for more detailed product information, and–of course–leave me a message with any questions about the resources or the process.

Spring is upon us, even here in Michigan.

With sunshine peeking in through classroom windows, your students are no doubt asking to have class outside. After all those cold winter months, they’re like rehabilitated animals itching to get out and stretch their legs.

Over time, wildlife doctors have learned what skills and techniques animals need to learn to survive in the wild without their care. Thus, reintroduction programs have to be planned carefully, ensuring that the animals have those necessary skills before their release from captivity. Zoologists must also study the animals after the reintroduction to learn whether the animals are thriving successfully in their new ecosystems.

After two years of enrollment in our high school’s school-within-a-school, At-Risk program, my students dramatically grow as readers, moving on average between of 2-5 grade levels. Following their sophomore year, they will exit the Academy and be reintroduced into the general high school population, where they will not experience the same level of intervention.

Since they’ll no longer live in captivity, my students must learn how to live as readers in the wild. And thus, if I want them to survive (and the work we’ve done to persist) students must learn how to become self-directed, independent readers.

From the Book Whisperer

In 2013, Donalyn Miller addressed this issue in her second book Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. Certainly her first book holds a special place in my heart with its enormous impact on my classroom, but this one has such power as she asks: Are we really teaching readers if they only read with us?

Last week, Penny Kittle interviewed Donalyn for The Book Love Foundation podcast {Subscribe to the podcast, if you haven’t done so yet. It’s fantastic!}, and they discussed this evolution of her thinking—how we need to shift the responsibility from the teacher back to the students.

In Part 1 of Episode 7, Donalyn says:

“Teachers cannot drive the reading lives of their students year after year after year. If we’re not passing over the keys to their reading lives to the children…, then what are we doing?

It’s not enough to have one great year with one great teacher… I realized that part of it was that my students relied on me… Those scaffolds are meant to be temporary. They’re meant to come down.”

Strategies to Build Independent Readers

This got me thinking about the scaffolds I provide as I’m trying to support the independent reading lives of my students before they are released into the wild. Through the year, I support my students do the following:

1. Speed date a stack of books from varying genres by reading/previewing each book for 30 seconds during “Book Frenzy.” Add possible titles to your To-Read List. Swap and steal books from your classmates. 
2. Sign-up for Goodreads to rate previously read books, write book reviews, record to-read books, find book suggestions, and engage with online community of readers. 
3. Read everyday in class for at least 10 minutes. 
4. Engage in 1:1 reading conferences with the teacher.
5. Enjoy a shared whole-class novel with the class as the teacher regularly reads aloud. 
6. Complete a “Reading Interest-a-lyzer” on Google Forms to determine interests and preferences (via Donalyn’s The Book Whisperer).
7. Begin Reading Invitation, where students are challenged to choose and read 20+ books throughout the year from a varied genre requirement chart. 
8. Write entries in the Big Idea Books and respond to classmates’ entries (from Penny’s Book Love). 
9. Study Latin Word Chunks by discovering examples, drawing visual representations, and deciphering meaning in context.
10. Track Reading Rates after setting Quarterly Goals.
11. Analyze adolescent literacy research through Articles of the Week.
12. Maintain To-Read Lists during teacher-led Book Talks and student-led Book Waterfalls.
13. Watch professional and student Book Trailers using YouTube.
14. Create “over-vacation goals” and pack up book stacks.
15. Read and analyze a student Reading Ladder mentor text.  Design the rubric. Emulate the Reading Ladder mentor texts after analyzing the complexity of one’s own book list.
16. Read, analyze, and emulate mentor examples of professional and student Book Reviews found on various blogs, online publications, and Goodreads.
17. Write reflections after charting Lexile scores following the Scholastic Reading Inventory tests. {My district uses the SRI as one snapshot data point to measure students’ reading proficiency.}
18. Celebrate reading successes!

Now some of these scaffolds must be done in the classroom with my support; however, the intention behind all of the strategies is that they eventually lead to strong, independent reading habits that will carry on beyond my class, beyond high school, and into their flourishing, wild and free lives.

Your Turn . . .

• What strategies do you use to scaffold your readers towards independence?
• Have you noticed that your students seem to regress once they leave your class? What do you do about it?

Thanks . . . to Penny Kittle and the Teacher Learning Sessions for producing quality podcasts each week. You bring such inspiration to my commute!

But wait–there’s more! If you like what you’ve read here, check out my resource page for products/downloads, share my workshop offerings with your administrator or School Improvement team, and join my mailing list below to receive posts sent directly to your inbox and a FREE resource.

Okay, English majors: Who else feels guilty when we have to rush through a literary masterpiece in order to meet the end-of-the-year time crunch?

In ENG 560-whatever, you and your classmates danced in language play and impressed one another with literary insight. Now that you’re deep in the work of ELA instruction yourself, you know that it’s impossible do all that Dr. Berk did with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In fact, that might just be Readicide for our middle and high school students. Yet, even at that, we’re still miffed when we have to hurry through good books.

One example of this occurs in my Humanities class, a two-hour block of US History and English 10. I pair Shakespeare’s Othello with the imperialism/WWI unit, asking the driving question: “Is it okay to intervene in other people’s business?” Somehow between the quick pace of our US History timeline and demands of the ELA curriculum, this was one of those shared texts that always got rushed.

When Fluency is Lacking

The main problem was that my students’ fluency lagged painfully behind their comprehension.

On their own, students dragged themselves through the barren desert text of Iago’s confusing soliloquies with not so much as trickle of understanding. However, once I broke down each scene and translated the lines, my students could totally absorb the complexity of this rich story.

We tried to perform the play aloud in class—in hopes that the stage direction might support them—but hearing my fifteen-year olds perform the Elizabethan language was painful for everyone! I wasn’t going to resign myself to just assigning the text for independent reading in an effort to sail on towards the literary analysis essay, so I tried having them listen to audio of the professional stage performers. I’m sure you’ve guessed it already, but they checked out long before the green-eyed monster even arrived on stage.

So on one hand, my students couldn’t independently decode the text (i.e. it was an issue of Basic Literacy), yet with my support their analyses were on par with or exceeding grade-level expectations.

If your students are at this stage, we have some important questions to ask:

Question #1: Why bother at all with a Whole-Class text?

By this point, some English majors are already annoyed with me. Those teachers might think it’s a waste of time for students to share a whole-class text like this in the first place.

Regardless of the literary merit, they protest because it’s too challenging for students to decode independently. They argue, “Kids could finish more independent choice novels in the time it takes to force everyone to read the same book.”

As I said two years ago, “This dispute of philosophy begins to ignore the canon of research [on best practice literacy instruction] … Teachers question whether novels should be shared as whole-class texts or if students should freely chose novels according to their own interests and plans for growth.” We have to end this debate and false dichotomy and look at the benefits of doing both. This winter, I resurfaced the flaws of this choice-only approach when I referenced my voracious reader Savannah: “If I don’t help her to read things beyond her realm of interest, she’s going to lose out on life opportunities. She is not going to survive in this world.”

I want my students to share great literary works, like Othello, because there are other objectives to reading than what choice reading alone can offer.

Question #2: What Are Your Objectives?

Essentially, we need to ask what do you want kids to know and/or be able to do with the text? Sometimes, it’s not just about fluency.

If you’re keeping it simple, you might consider your objectives according to the CCSS Reading Anchor Standards. Looking at the whole of my English 10 curriculum, my objectives for reading Othello are the following:

Objectives: Determine the theme, analyze the characters, and evaluate Shakespeare’s craft

In order to do this, my students have to first understand what the heck the play is all about. Without interpreting the whole play for them or dragging out our shared study for three weeks, I turn to the following solution:

Solution: Read the Modern Translation

I can just hear my Shakespeare professor gasping at the audacity of this decision: “You’re actually encouraging your students to read the modern version of the text?!” She’d probably say it in her fake British accent (at least I’m pretty sure that it was fake. I was a pretty judge-y 19-year old.).

Yes, Professor Snooty-Pages. I am, and so is Kelly Gallagher.

He defends this solution saying, “My goal is not to turn my students into expert translators; my goal is that my students develop a clear understanding of the play so they are positioned to think deeply about it.” So if fluency isn’t your objective and deeper thinking is, we cannot argue against the Sparknotes No Fear Shakespeare texts. They make getting to the heart of the story the whole game.

Of course, my students do still perform the play aloud as Shakespeare intended. We still stop to discuss theme, irony, and characterization. But now, they actually get what’s happening (Bonus: I no longer have to explain each racy innuendo to the whole class. Also, reading the play in this format shifts our performance timeline down from about three weeks to 5-6 days.) All in all, this allows us more time to extend our focus on other objectives.

Objectives: Determine the meaning of words/phrases and evaluate diction/language

“But I thought translation of the original text wasn’t important to you?” English majors, don’t you fret: Gallagher says that students still need to practice “wrestling with Shakespeare’s beautiful language.” We’re not giving that up. Here’s what we do:

Solution: Assess via a Second-Draft Reading Quiz

Once my students get the gist of the plot through their first-draft reading, they revisit the text with new focus. This time, I give them the original text to test not only their understanding of the words/phrases but also their literary analysis skills. Determining the meaning of the original text is important, we just have to restructure our process in order to support students’ achievement of the goals.

So, in order to do this without getting tied up in the whole play, I use Second-Draft Reading Quizzes. At the end of each act, students receive a monologue of the original text, as shown below.

They are asked to write a mini-literary analysis of the excerpt. Students must follow our ICEE structure of Introduce a quote, Cite a quote, Explain what it says/means, and Evaluate why it matters. These paragraph responses are short, easy to grade, and they offer students a manageable chunk of the original text to dissect before we move on to bigger, badder goals.

Here’s the example of Ben’s paragraph in the title photo:

“In Act 1 Scent 3 of Othello, Iago is trying to tell the reader how he will take Cassio’s place as Othello’s lieutenant. He says that “Cassio’s a proper man. Let me see now, To get his place and to plume up my will in double knavery.” (1.3.329-331). Basically, Iago is formulating a plan to take Cassio’s place. It shows how he is willing to meddle in other’s affairs to better himself, and how little regard he has for other people.”

In about 10 minutes, Ben shows that can closely read the text and begin to answer our driving question about intervening in other people’s business.

Objectives: Analyze how a subject is represented across mediums

As I mentioned, Othello is part of my Humanities class blending US History and English; therefore, we’re looking at the subject of “interventionism” at both the one-to-one human level, how it moves a story, as well as at the international level, how it makes history. In order to do that, students need to:

Solution: Read and write across disciplines.

For my students, this means we need to read other texts about intervening in other people’s business both in ELA and history. To scaffold, we start by watching clips from ABC’s What Would You Do? before we move on to more dense texts like Othello and some primary source documents about the Spanish-American War and WWI. Throughout our study, we write about how alliances and misinformation or propaganda can sway our decisions away from peaceful diplomacy into aggressive action. We discuss the play and debate military decisions.

Ultimately, when we consider the “English major guilt” of rushing through a masterpiece like Othello, we have to start with the end goal in mind. What do we want students to be able to do? Gallagher says, “Instead of spending time wrestling with translating the text, I’d rather my students spend time wrestling with the big ideas found in the text.”

And I’m all for that, even if I do annoy some people along the way.

Your Turn . . .

How annoyed are you with this suggestion? Are you a total Shakespeare purist? If so, how do you make his work accessible to your students?

What strategies do you use to quicken the pace of other texts without watering down your objectives?

Last week, I discussed the serious problem many schools face when administrators absently name everyone on staff a “reading teacher.”

This has sincere implications.

For one, some educators and school leaders interpret this statement to mean we just need to add more traditional reading and writing to the curriculum, such as the narrative writing example I discussed in math class, even if it pushes aside content.

Furthermore, this issue bears a sobering weight as we consider our time and finances. Teachers across the content areas are being required by their state DOE to take collegiate reading courses in order to maintain their certification.

When the “reading teacher” title gets tossed around carelessly without appropriate support, your staff—as serious and professional as they are—might burn out or respond with the playfulness of my colleagues (and apparently my current writing mood).

They be like: “What?! Oh heck no! Hold up. Huh? Oh okay.”

{If you haven’t seen this Impractical Jokers clip, you might be thinking the same response right now.}

“What?! Oh heck no!”

Because you’re here, reading this non-required edu-article, I know you don’t blindly accept every claim on the table. If someone tosses around the “Research says…” adage, you don’t accept the argument as legitimate until the speaker has provided appropriate evidence. Because not only do you teach argumentative writing, you know how to form one yourself. Yeah, that’s right.

So when school leaders (at your district or the state-level) casually call everyone on staff reading teachers, you draw the line in disbelief: “What?! Oh heck no!” You may not want to accept that claim if it isn’t backed up with support.

“Hold up.”

Despite our skepticism, we are smart enough to get past this blanket statement and realize that maybe there’s more to this claim than smoke and frustration. If we start to understand the different types of literacy, we begin to see how reading and writing can actually support content mastery. “Hold up.” For real, it will allow us to move into our content with more depth.

Basic Literacy:

Generally taught in the first few years of elementary, this base-level of literacy focuses on decoding and knowledge of high-frequency words.

Secondary teachers, for the most part, do not have to teach basic literacy skills because students know how to read already. (Certainly, this doesn’t include students will significant gaps or special needs. They might receive basic literacy services in the upper grades.)

Middle and high school teachers can freak out by the “reading teacher” title when administrators haven’t narrowed the definition of reading to exclude this type of instruction.

Content Literacy:

This level of literacy transfers to all subjects because it focuses on generic comprehension strategies, study skills, and common word meanings. 

As a whole staff workshop, I guide cross-content teachers through universal strategies like activating background knowledge, setting goals, summarizing, and more. This includes close reading, argumentative writing, and debate across the various disciplines. We’re all tired of teaching around the content when the students don’t read the assigned texts. These literacy strategies help students access the information independently, so we can dig deeper in class.

The thing is content literacy PD obviously supports teachers who use traditional text types (i.e. books, articles, etc.), but it can frustrate the teachers who instruct via non-traditional text types, such as lab demonstrations, mathematical equations, and artistic expression.

Disciplinary Literacy:

Specifically focused on the unique skills and tools that the experts in a discipline use, this last level of literacy needs explicit instruction from subject-area teachers.

Students need to learn to see each discipline through different literacy lenses. We don’t read in Biology the same way we do in Language Arts. Character maps aren’t going to help you out when you’re reading about cellular function.

Before students can do this, department and PLC teams must explore how the masters of their discipline read, write, speak, and think about the content:

How do engineers tackle problem solving?

What do historians do when they interpret primary source documents?

How do scientists use data to construct explanations?

What strategies do artists use to conceptualize their work?

Thoughtful literacy PD guides teachers through the various discipline-specific thinking skills and leads them to create authentic classroom applications for their students. Two weeks ago, I attended the Michigan Reading Association annual conference in Detroit and led a session discussing the finer points of disciplinary literacy. I love supporting secondary content masters as they deconstruct text structures, determine specialized vocabulary, and figure out the metacognitive strategies of their discipline. 

How do we define “text?” What is the language of our tribe? How do experts think through our content?

“Huh? Oh okay.”

So when school leaders say “We’re all reading teachers,” they’re not say secondary teachers need to teach kids how to decode high-frequency words, nor are they asking teachers to simply add more traditional reading or writing assignments into their curriculum just for the sake of more literacy.

Rather, mindful school administrators recognize that those “reading teachers” actually need support revealing the dynamic cognitive processes that make each subject unique and compelling. “Huh?”

To be sure you’re picking up this language play, I’ll push it to say that as reading teachers we’re actually “mind-reading” teachers because this is exactly what we’re doing with disciplinary literacy:

We’re helping students see into the minds of subject-area experts: How do they read, write, and think, and how can I emulate that in my own practice?

Therefore, departments and PLCs must come together to craft authentic literacy work that supports stronger readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers specific to each discipline. “Oh okay.” No one would deny the plea for more authenticity in the classroom.

And while the “reading teacher” title is full of silly truths and lies, this is very serious and necessary work before us, so let’s have at it.

Thanks . . . to my math/physics colleague Chris Painter for always pushing our students (and me) to think about problem-solving in the most authentic ways. Also, I appreciate you letting me snag this picture from your classroom. Yes, friends, that is a student drawing of Mr. Painter pushing his mathematicians to construct viable arguments.

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