| A+ Education Partnership Blog |  |
Hearts & Minds: How We Teach Reading
Two Mobile Schools That “Elevate the Essentials”
Teacher effectiveness to be revisited May 27
Alabama reading gains hold steady, advance
Cameron's Big Dreams
Both/And Club – want to join?
04-30-2012 Comments
by Caroline Novak
President, A+ Education Partnership
If non-fiction speaks to the mind, literature speaks to the heart, as a teacher's story published recently in the New York Times so well demonstrates. Some of her observations are important for Alabama, as we take new steps to accelerate real learning in our classrooms, bring more balance to assessment and accountability, and increase our educators' capacity to lead students to higher levels of thinking and understanding.
Claire Hollander engages high-needs youngsters at her Manhattan middle school in a reading enrichment program that introduces them to great literature — to fiction written in complex language, telling stories that can help us explore what it means to be human. In doing so, Hollander says she is helping her students -- some of whom "are homeless or who live in crowded apartments in violent neighborhoods" -- build "cultural capital" that can give them the resilience they need to complete high school, to pursue college and careers, and to mature into thinking adults, effective workers and committed parents.
As Hollander suggests, a decade of well-meant but sometimes counterproductive accountability testing has pushed the study of literature and storytelling far down on the curriculum priority list. Most items that test reading comprehension today, she says, include "passages from watered-down news articles or biographies...memos or brochures — passages chosen not for emotional punch but for textual complexity."
We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, but they are complex only on the sentence level — not because the ideas they present are complex, not because they are symbolic, allusive or ambiguous. These are literary qualities, and they are more or less absent from testing materials.
Students, and especially students with challenging home lives, are not likely to engage with exceptional literature outside of school, Hollander believes. Many low-income students "who begin school with a less-developed vocabulary...will read only during class time, with a teacher supporting their effort."
In her experience, those are the same students "who are more likely to lose out on literary reading in class in favor of extra test prep." And the same can be said for many students in Alabama's high-needs schools, where educators (as we might expect) are shaping their curriculum and instruction to maximize student performance on test items that emphasize informational text. Hollander writes:
Of course no teacher disputes the necessity of being able to read for information. But if literature has no place in these tests, and if preparation for the tests becomes the sole goal of education, then the reading of literature will go out of fashion in our schools. I don’t have any illusions that adding literary passages to multiple-choice tests would instill a love of reading among students by itself. But it would keep those books on the syllabus, in the classrooms and in the hands of young readers — which is what really matters.
As Alabama schools implement new learning standards that will require higher orders of thinking from our students and higher orders of teaching from our educators, we believe it would be a terrible mistake to ignore Claire Hollander's core message:
We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts.... We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
The A+ Education Partnership is all about "both/and" solutions. We believe that our schools can teach students how to analyze informational text and apply what they learn in the real world. We also believe that, at the same time, our teachers can guide our students as they grapple with the complex words and emotional events found in great fictional stories.
We affirm the power and value of literature to reach our hearts, and A+'s support for promoting real literature as part of curriculum for all students, whether they live in book-rich environments or depend on our public schools to help them become eager and able readers of every kind of text. Read More...
President, A+ Education Partnership
If non-fiction speaks to the mind, literature speaks to the heart, as a teacher's story published recently in the New York Times so well demonstrates. Some of her observations are important for Alabama, as we take new steps to accelerate real learning in our classrooms, bring more balance to assessment and accountability, and increase our educators' capacity to lead students to higher levels of thinking and understanding.
Claire Hollander engages high-needs youngsters at her Manhattan middle school in a reading enrichment program that introduces them to great literature — to fiction written in complex language, telling stories that can help us explore what it means to be human. In doing so, Hollander says she is helping her students -- some of whom "are homeless or who live in crowded apartments in violent neighborhoods" -- build "cultural capital" that can give them the resilience they need to complete high school, to pursue college and careers, and to mature into thinking adults, effective workers and committed parents.As Hollander suggests, a decade of well-meant but sometimes counterproductive accountability testing has pushed the study of literature and storytelling far down on the curriculum priority list. Most items that test reading comprehension today, she says, include "passages from watered-down news articles or biographies...memos or brochures — passages chosen not for emotional punch but for textual complexity."
We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, but they are complex only on the sentence level — not because the ideas they present are complex, not because they are symbolic, allusive or ambiguous. These are literary qualities, and they are more or less absent from testing materials.
Students, and especially students with challenging home lives, are not likely to engage with exceptional literature outside of school, Hollander believes. Many low-income students "who begin school with a less-developed vocabulary...will read only during class time, with a teacher supporting their effort."
In her experience, those are the same students "who are more likely to lose out on literary reading in class in favor of extra test prep." And the same can be said for many students in Alabama's high-needs schools, where educators (as we might expect) are shaping their curriculum and instruction to maximize student performance on test items that emphasize informational text. Hollander writes:
Of course no teacher disputes the necessity of being able to read for information. But if literature has no place in these tests, and if preparation for the tests becomes the sole goal of education, then the reading of literature will go out of fashion in our schools. I don’t have any illusions that adding literary passages to multiple-choice tests would instill a love of reading among students by itself. But it would keep those books on the syllabus, in the classrooms and in the hands of young readers — which is what really matters.
As Alabama schools implement new learning standards that will require higher orders of thinking from our students and higher orders of teaching from our educators, we believe it would be a terrible mistake to ignore Claire Hollander's core message:
We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts.... We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
The A+ Education Partnership is all about "both/and" solutions. We believe that our schools can teach students how to analyze informational text and apply what they learn in the real world. We also believe that, at the same time, our teachers can guide our students as they grapple with the complex words and emotional events found in great fictional stories.
We affirm the power and value of literature to reach our hearts, and A+'s support for promoting real literature as part of curriculum for all students, whether they live in book-rich environments or depend on our public schools to help them become eager and able readers of every kind of text. Read More...
02-09-2011 Comments
by Cathy Gassenheimer
What is ‘essential’ for schools? Three simple things: reasonably coherent curriculum (what we teach); sound lessons (how we teach); and far more purposeful reading and writing in every discipline, or authentic literacy (integral to both what and how we teach). But as numerous studies demonstrate, these three essential elements are only rarely implemented; every credible study confirms that they are still pushed aside by various initiatives, every year, in the majority of schools.
Thus begins Mike Schmoker, author of Results and Results Now, in his new book, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning. As I read those lines, my mind traveled back to a recent visit to Mobile where I helped facilitate the education retreat for Leadership Alabama – the organization that helped “birth” A+ and that for 20 years has engaged Alabama leaders in dialogue about our state’s challenges and opportunities. Our trip included visits to two impressive school programs that exemplify the importance of focusing on the essentials: a high-poverty, high-achieving elementary school and an innovative second-chance program for older teens who want to finish high school.
Read More...
What is ‘essential’ for schools? Three simple things: reasonably coherent curriculum (what we teach); sound lessons (how we teach); and far more purposeful reading and writing in every discipline, or authentic literacy (integral to both what and how we teach). But as numerous studies demonstrate, these three essential elements are only rarely implemented; every credible study confirms that they are still pushed aside by various initiatives, every year, in the majority of schools.
Thus begins Mike Schmoker, author of Results and Results Now, in his new book, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning. As I read those lines, my mind traveled back to a recent visit to Mobile where I helped facilitate the education retreat for Leadership Alabama – the organization that helped “birth” A+ and that for 20 years has engaged Alabama leaders in dialogue about our state’s challenges and opportunities. Our trip included visits to two impressive school programs that exemplify the importance of focusing on the essentials: a high-poverty, high-achieving elementary school and an innovative second-chance program for older teens who want to finish high school.
Read More...
05-17-2010 Comments
Education News in Alabama for May 17, 2010
At its May 13 meeting, the board considered 2 resolutions to improve student learning. One would connect multiple measures of student achievement with educator evaluation systems.
Read More...
At its May 13 meeting, the board considered 2 resolutions to improve student learning. One would connect multiple measures of student achievement with educator evaluation systems.
Read More...
03-26-2010 Comments
Education News in Alabama for March 26, 2010
According to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), considered the "gold standard" of rigorous assessment:
- Alabama's 4th graders held strong to the historic 8-point gain made two years ago, again scoring 216, just 4 points shy of the national average
- Alabama's 8th graders advanced 3 points to 255. Only nine states showed progress with their 8th graders.
01-28-2010 Comments
By Cathy Gassenheimer
Take a minute and look at the photos scrolling at the top of this page. With the exception of the results graphic, all of these pictures featureAlabama students and educators. Spend a little more time looking at the picture of a student reading with a retired educator. There’s a story there.
Cameron is a fifth grader at Wrights Mill Road Elementary School in Auburn. He has big dreams...
Read More...
Take a minute and look at the photos scrolling at the top of this page. With the exception of the results graphic, all of these pictures feature
Cameron is a fifth grader at Wrights Mill Road Elementary School in Auburn. He has big dreams...
01-13-2010 Comments
As we search for ways to help schools achieve more, it’s tempting to frame solutions as “either/or” choices. So often we take sides and expend a lot of time and energy insisting that our choice is the answer and must prevail. For example:
• Either we teach students to read using phonics OR we employ whole language.
• Either we teach kids to memorize important math facts OR we focus on the why and how of math.
• Either we teach a traditional core curriculum focused on mastery OR we teach kids how to get ready for our rapidly changing world by fully integrating technology and the Internet into our instruction.
I don’t know about you, but I’m more than a little weary with all these turf battles. I’m thinking about starting a both/and club. Want to join?!
I’m convinced that in most – if not all – of these endless debates... Read More...
• Either we teach students to read using phonics OR we employ whole language.
• Either we teach kids to memorize important math facts OR we focus on the why and how of math.
• Either we teach a traditional core curriculum focused on mastery OR we teach kids how to get ready for our rapidly changing world by fully integrating technology and the Internet into our instruction.
I don’t know about you, but I’m more than a little weary with all these turf battles. I’m thinking about starting a both/and club. Want to join?!
I’m convinced that in most – if not all – of these endless debates...
