Disciplinary Texts/Text Complexity

Disciplinary Texts/Text Complexity

Synthesis:

Jetton and Shanahan 1,2,3

Chapter 1 covers several important points about reading various disciplines, including ELA. The focus is on getting adequate professional development so that teachers can effectively teach reading comprehension in all subjects. The end of the chapter includes useful information about the many reading strategies covered in the chapter including: KWL, pre-reading strategies, during reading strategies, New-Knew-Q, Guided reading, Save the last word for me, Story Impressions, and many more. In addition, this chapter touches on the idea of internet literacy and all the advantages and disadvantages that come with this technology. Teachers often more on teaching content, when adequate focus on comprehension needs to be given in order for students to succeed. Another concept included in this chapter is modeling, this is another issue that can be difficult for some teachers/or it can just be difficult for teachers to transition their students from modeling to independent work. Embedded questions and making inferences are other tools that teachers must be proficient in making and teaching in order for students to succeed with the more complex disciplinary texts that are encountered in secondary education.

Chapter 2 goes through the differences that children experience with different subject area texts in the elementary grades and the secondary grades. Students must make a significant change from the story-focused and everyday language of elementary texts and the content specific, technical, vocabulary-rich texts of secondary school. This chapter focuses on the main features that make science, math and history difficult for students to comprehend. There are features that are present in all of these subjects; these include: vocabulary, nominalizations, and grammar. These three things are responsible for the difficulties that students can have with secondary discipline texts. Vocabulary is often specialized and technical. The meaning of words can differ between the common meanings and the meanings within specific disciplines. Nominalizations account for long noun phrases with different purposes depending on the discipline that they are written for. As students progress through school, they encounter texts with increasing complex grammar structures. Students must Segway into analyzing these complex structures in order to derive meaning that allows them to effectively comprehend the texts. The researchers recommend the FLA strategy which asks students to think about content, structure, and style/voice/tone. This helps students to better understand what they are reading by breaking it down into crucial elements of the different disciplinary texts.  

Chapter 3 emphasizes the idea that reading disciplinary texts can prove difficult for students. Professionals in the fields of science, history, and math go into detail about how they approach, read, and analyze texts. Each discipline has different guidelines relating to prior knowledge, authors, purpose, and criticism. In addition, the end of the chapter emphasizes the use of strategies and teaching them for different disciplines. This chapter takes note of research in the fields and strategies and how reading specialists and other educators must work together to teach disciplinary reading.

Hinchman and Sheridan Thomas, 6

Text complexity is itself a very complex issue. There are many factors that go into determining text complexity: including quantitative and qualitative factors. Students cannot simply choose their own texts all the time. This chapter gives many metaphors in order to clarify how staying in once place as a reader does not promote better reading skills. Teachers must most importantly be knowledgeable about both their students and the texts at hand. Teachers must know what students abilities and backgrounds are in order to guide them toward reading more complex texts.  

Response:

Text to Self: As a secondary English teacher, these chapters give critical insight to how all teachers can improve their teaching strategies. I’m not sure I realized how important explicit comprehension instruction was until this semester’s readings.

Text to Text: This text relates to many of the other chapters that we have read so far. The need for vocabulary and comprehension instruction is necessary. In addition, a focus on the distinct features of text types shows why there can be confusion when transitioning between subject areas. Comprehension must become a central figure in all areas; it is often neglected in the quest to cover content.

Text to World: People read for many different purposes. How to read for various reasons and disciplines is crucial in order to better understand information. People must be able to easily understand and negotiate what features are important for different texts. As college and career readiness continue to be critical issues, students and teachers must work together to increase ability to read complex texts.

Questions:

1. How can we help students transition from the texts of elementary to secondary school?

2. There seem to be so many variables…how do you help students/classes find appropriate texts?

3. How do we scaffold texts that aren’t “motivating for students?”

Disciplinary Texts- Math

Synthesis

Hinchman & Sheridan Thomas

The Common Core State Standards for math have several expectations: conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and flexible application in and out of the classroom. In order to foster development of these issues, teachers must help students better understand the language of mathematics. Communication is crucial to student achievement. Students must be able to correctly use the vocabulary in respect to the concepts addressed in math. There are three registers of mathematics: linguistic, symbolic, and visual. These are interconnected and together they create meaning. Students have to be able to use all three in order to be successful. In mathematics, students must learn content specific vocabulary, as well as vocabulary that has other meanings, but has specific meaning when used for mathematics. Math has very specific grammatical patterns. These usually consist of sentences that have long noun phrases joined by being and having verbs. These can be difficult for students to makes sense of because of the terminology. This chapter followed the efforts of one teacher. She focused on using prior mathematical and linguistic knowledge to explore new concepts. Using prior knowledge allows students to feel more comfortable with the material and allows them to explore with confidence. She also models the use of mathematics language for more precise concept explanation. Modeling the use of the language fosters greater understanding and confidence. One of the more successful and interesting things she did was to invite students to connect the new concept of previously learned concepts both verbally and through writing. The pressure was taken off of the students through this more straightforward assignment. She provides feedback to develop awareness of features of the mathematics language. She builds off of the students answers and helps them to deepen their knowledge.  In addition, she treats students as mathematicians by inviting students to create mathematics texts for an external audience. This gets students invested in the concepts and encourages them to try to be as accurate as possible.

Jetton and Shannan

This text is very similar to the other chapter, but focuses on the need for collaboration between reading specialists and math teachers. Students must be explicitly taught the literacies of mathematics in meaningful ways. Students must aim toward mathematical expertise that is defined by three constructs: conceptual fluency, conceptual understanding, and mathematical processes. Teachers have three things to do to bring about a successful literacy lesson for mathematics: identifying texts to be used, identifying what reading and writing is required, and to develop a plan that makes texts explicit through students participating in processes for mathematics. In order to accomplish this, the researchers redefined texts “…to include all objects created or interpreted for the purpose of constructing, sharing, and negotiating meaning”. The vignettes showed the portions of the lesson planning and how texts work in a math class. Both teachers identified areas of the literacies that needed to be explained better in ways that developed process and content skills in a positive, exploratory way. This text addresses at the beginning of the chapter the problems of traditional outlooks of how to infuse literacy into mathematics, and presents a much better and more realistic method. In addition, towards the end of the chapter how to better collaborate with math teachers toward better success for students.

Moji

This lecture outlined the fact that students and teachers must constantly navigate between different disciplines. This often takes place physically, relationally, and metaphorically. Texts must be taught explicitly and students should be given enough background knowledge to conceptualize and explore the new material. There are several “E’s” that tie together her approach to navigating the disciplines: expose, engage, elicit and engineer, examine, and evaluate”. At the end of her presentation she adds one more: expect. We must have high expectations for our students. All students should be made aware of how to read with a specific purpose in order to problem solve and successful both with subjects and with interdisciplinary thinking.

Response

Text to Self- I really enjoyed reading about the teacher’s methods in the Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas chapter. I feel like I would have, and my current students would greatly benefit from this type of mathematics teaching. I feel like a lot of students get lost in the terminology; teaching students that some words mean different things in different contexts can be a confusing aspect of education for students.

Text to Text- I feel like this follows the course of our earlier readings. Students must be explicitly taught the vocabulary and features of the texts. Students should be encouraged to access prior knowledge in order to learn new concepts.

Text to World-Students need to be encouraged and engaged through positive and effective methods in order to be successful in math. Their success in school math class is tied to their success in the working world and influences which careers they are eligible for. For the last several years, the United States has been said to have lower scores in math and science than other countries in the developing world. I think that more explicit and thoughtful methods that focus on the unique three-pronged language of mathematics will help our students to compete on a global level.

Questions

1. How do you address the words that have multiple meanings in different disciplines?

2. How can we all work toward more exploratory classrooms like the ones shown in the vignettes?

Week 4: Disciplinary Texts

Week 4: Disciplinary Texts

Synthesis:

Jetton & Shanahan, Chapter 5

          This chapter begins with an
explanation of the English teacher Mrs. Smith and her lesson plans for teaching
Mice and Men and how her approach is
not enough. The chapter goes through the process of outlining the broad and
ever-evolving definition of literacy. There are four literacy ideologies:
functional, cultural, progressive, and critical. Functional means that students
can participate in school, work, and life. Cultural focuses on morals and
canonical literature so that they have “’core knowledge’”. Progressive means
that students and teachers develop their own curriculum based on their interests
and relevance to their lives. Finally, the critical literacy ideology focuses
on the why and how of the literature. Most researchers believe that teachers
focus on the first three ideologies, but to be truly successful we must give
students room to question the text through critical literacy. In addition there
are three literacy frameworks: cognitive, linguistic, and developmental. Literacy
does not just know how to read letters, but must go into deeper
understanding.  Teaching English can be
very difficult because it has a great number of skills to teach, as well as
content. I really liked this quote that explains the phenomenon of teaching
English: “We are learning to read and write while we are learning to read and
write in the service of academic goals in the study of English; we build the
plane while flying”. Also in this chapter, the issues of teaching with technology
and using multiple modes of text. Teaching a novel is very complex, and doing
it the right way touches on so many skills as shown in the revised lesson plans
for Mice and Men. Of course, the
issue of technology is only briefly touched on, but as the world leans more towards
technology we must find new ways to adapt, incorporate, and teach.

Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas

Chapter 10

This
chapter opens with introducing the fact that people make multiple decisions
every day. This chapter outlines the basics of the complexities of dealing with
teaching and learning from multiple texts in the subjects of history, science,
and math. Studying history requires many of the same skill sets as studying the
English Language Arts. Students must be able to work with multiple texts in
order to become informed citizens. In history, students use three main
strategies: sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration. The issue of
teaching history is getting students to realize that these texts come from
multiple and varied perspectives and can be presented and interpreted in many
ways. In science, there are two main types of reading: reading for learning and
reading critically. In math, reading must be done in order to determine that
information is accurate. Students must be taught strategies to build their
learning across multiple texts.

Chapter 12

Teaching
students how to read historical texts presents multiple levels of complexity
that must all be addressed and taught. Students must have adequate background
and contextual knowledge. Reading visual images such a table, graphs, and
pictures are examples of elements that often do not explicitly taught, but they
need to be. This chapter goes through a detailed example of some laws from the
early years of immigration in American history. This study shows that students
also need to able to ask and answer why questions. These probing questions
require students to engage with the texts, something teacher must develop with
relevance and connections.

Response

Text to Self-Teaching
English can be a daunting task at times because of how much there is to teach.
The issue of teaching broad skills as well as content can be very difficult.
Especially in a novel, the task of teaching everything necessary for an
effective reading (like the table that shows the lesson plans for Mice and Men)
can almost seem overwhelming. However, the sections that outline the before,
during, and after reading seemed much more manageable and immediately relevant.
I feel that something has been missing and my teaching of literature and that
reading Chapter 5 was especially enlightening in the case of the four literacy
ideologies. I hope to include more critical literacy into my curriculum.

Text to Text-The Jetton and
Shanahan chapter mentions Paulo Friere and Macedo and the issue of “reading the
word and the world”. This text seems to keep showing up in many of my readings
these last few semesters. Although I have read it, it might be time to revisit
it. Students need to be given time to really connect with texts and the world
around them. Literacy is so much more than just decoding, and as demands for
education change, we must adjust our teaching. This will involve a lot of
scaffolding in order to accomplish this goal.

Text to World-Technology and
multiple literacies are crucial in today’s world. Students are expected to do
more with more information. In a world where we don’t know what the next type
of jobs might be, functional and critical readings of many genres will be
necessary. The world has more access to information now than ever before; they
have the right to be explicitly taught. In addition, this also strengthens the
need for students to be able discern multiple texts and to be able to
adequately use and critique them.

Questions:

1.
How do we teach/approach critical literacy?

2.
How can we approach and incorporate multimodal texts with minimal access to
technology?

3. What counts as engagement and how do we foster
it?

4. How do we work with “why” questions?

Week 3 Comprehension

Week 3: Comprehension Development

Synthesis:

Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas

This
chapter emphasized the idea that students need to read a variety of texts for a
variety of purposes. Students need to have strategies and skills modeled for
them in order to be successful. Students at the high school level must read
multiple types of nonfiction texts. Language Arts teachers should not get rid
of literary texts but should spend a considerable amount of time helping
students to become familiar with nonfiction texts. Teachers must model their
thinking in order for students to understand how to handle complex texts.
Students must also be taught to engage in close reading and repeated reading in
order to get to the depth of complex texts. It would be preferable that students
could annotate the text, but this isn’t always doable. However, it helps
students to better understand their own thinking. Appropriate (not just recall)
text dependent questions are crucial for students to delve into the meaning of
texts. Students must learn strategies for dealing with complex texts; some of
the strategies include: self-questioning, summarizing, using inferences,
self-monitoring, connection strategies, and analysis strategies.

Fisher, Frey, Ross

This
text goes over the basics needed for comprehension and also discusses routines
to help make students better at comprehension. Three things contribute to
students’ ability to effectively comprehend a text: background knowledge,
purpose, and word knowledge. Students must also be aware of text structures and
text features in order to understand how to read the texts. In addition, two
routines were introduced: modeling and reciprocal teaching. Modeling has been
referred to in multiple texts, including Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas.
Reciprocal-teaching involves four parts. Students gradually lead their own
discussions through this technique that builds comprehension skills.

Jetton and Shanahan

This
chapter is dense with information about instructional and reading strategies.
One in particular, CORI has had significant research done on it that proves its
effectiveness in science, but it has not had significant research done in other
areas. Students have trouble with texts in school subjects because the language
is so specific to the content. Words in real life often have different meanings
than the same words when used in subject area content. Also, information on the
internet makes the issue of comprehension even more complex. The internet
offers many more opportunities for students, but makes the issue of credibility
of texts more difficult to judge. Students use many of the same skills when
evaluating internet texts, but this issue of relating texts is often very
different. Text discussions have been shown to be crucial in student
understanding.

Response:

Text to Self: These chapters
are very relevant to me as a teacher at the secondary level. Teachers use texts
as a vehicle for learning, but sometimes do not realize that the texts
themselves need to be addressed in more detail. Through these readings, I
better understand what I need to do as a teacher, and what I can do to help
other teachers. I am excited to take these strategies to the classroom, and
hope my students find them both enjoyable and effective. Most districts have
begun to advocate more use of nonfiction texts and this will change some of the
approaches that are necessary to help all students succeed.

Text to Text: The reading
doesn’t really connect to anything else I have read outside of this class. But
I see a strong connection between this and the Common Core standards and what
they are trying to accomplish. I think that cross-disciplinary learning and
more focus on nonfiction reading strategies, routines, and general
instructional strategies will lead to more research on this topic. In relation
to last week’s readings, the necessity for effective vocabulary instruction is
even more crucial when read in the context of how difficult comprehension of
different types of texts can be for students.

Text to World: The world is
becoming more connected everyday through technology. With this comes the fact
that different texts are more accessible and necessary for gaining information.
Students have to be very versatile because the world is becoming more
versatile. However, at the same time the language used in everyday social life
is increasingly less complex than the language of texts related to different
disciplines and fields of study. Information is more accessible, but at the
same time students need more help comprehending what they have access to
because there is so much to learn. In addition, the world has so many more different genres and forms of texts and
people must have a decent understanding in order to comprehend them. People
must be able to adapt to an ever-changing world, and that means that basic
comprehension skills are absolutely essential.

Questions:

1.
What types of instructional and reading strategies have you used in the
classroom? Has anyone used any of these from the readings? How explicit are you
about each of them? What are your experiences with modeling?

2.
How do we encourage students to find their “neuron” moment? What can we do to
instill a love of learning, but still make sure students are actually gaining
knowledge and skills?