October 4 Crumble: Get the GIST

To be able to summarize central ideas or themes of a selection is key in both literature and informational text. The developers of the Common Core Standards felt that this skill was something that should be developed over time and, therefore, mandated that we expect our students to, year after year, prove that they are capable of effectively summarizing.  To be able to summarize a selection, students must choose what is important to the purpose of the writing - calling upon either the author to develop that purpose or some outside source (a teacher or the students themselves) to do this for them.

I find that, in teaching kiddos how to summarize text, more often than not they are missing the boat because their writing lacks focus due to ineffective purpose-setting.  An easy way to teach students to develop summaries is the use of a strategy called the GIST strategy (not an acronym, to my knowledge, but still spelled in all caps).  Although not a CRISS strategy per se, getting the the GIST follows CRISS's Principles of writing and organization along with active learning and transformation of information by giving students a formulaic guide to develop a clear summary of a text selection.  And it's really so simple, it makes me smile.

Here's how it works:

• Students or teacher identifies the purpose of the reading.
• Students read the selection, highlighting or annotating the 5 W's and an H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) as they pertain to the purpose.  All text selections will not develop every component, but careful reading will allow students to identify as many parts as possible.  Rereading may help to identify pieces that might require making an inference like the why and how.
• Once the annotation is complete and/or notes are taken, students should then take the purpose of the reading along with the identified components of the GIST strategy and put them into as few well-developed sentences as possible.  A great writing activity would be to have students create complex sentences using all of the information and correct punctuation!

To illustrate what this would look like, I might ask my students to read a brief text selection about social values of an era in history and the impact that these values had on the art and/or music of the day.  I would tell the students that I'm hoping that they will read to find what impact the values of the era had on art or music and then demonstrate how to look for the 5 W's and an H.  Once students have identified the who (not necessarily one person, but maybe a collective "who" such as a religious group), what happened, where did it happen (could be specific or more general), when did it happen, how did it happen (maybe describe what it looked like OR how people felt while it was happening), and why (what caused it to happen), they can then construct their summary using ONLY the information that they gathered and putting it together into just a few sentences.  And voila! A well-constructed summary! 

Struggling writers may find it more difficult to put multiple pieces of information into only one sentence, so they may need some support.  Modeling the process over and over for them is just good teaching for any student, so be certain to demonstrate your expectations.  Allowing students to work together and giving them immediate feedback while they're working may help those resistant or struggling writers as well.  Try it out a few times.  See what you get.  Once you get a handle on what your kiddos can accomplish, then put some supports in place for them.  In a few cases, you may need to supply some of them with frames for their sentences (writing out part of it and leaving empty spaces for students to fill in words), but try to avoid this if you can.  The idea is to create independent summarizers - even if the sentences aren't perfect. 

See, just talking about this strategy makes me smile because its such an effective use of organization and writing!  Don't forget that strategies like this should be given attention on multiple levels.  Try exposing students to it two or three times before tossing the idea to the wayside.  Ask your students to reflect on their use of it the first time around to see if they can tell that they have more focused summaries.  Then ask them to compare their own summaries the next time you do it to see if they found the strategy less daunting.  By the third time you use it, have them reflect on how it has helped them learn content.  Share with colleagues and see if you can use the GIST in multiple content areas so that our kiddos are being exposed and transferring this skill.  And most of all - tweak it and make it fit your teaching style, personality, and students.  Without your spin on it, it's just another strategy. 

September 27 Crumble - Close Reading

The 2013 educational buzz word seems to be close reading, and, unless you're a language arts teacher, you may not completely understand this term.  In fact, some language arts teachers still struggle with it because it's complex and has no concrete rules.  I, myself, become impatient with the practice because I'm a slow reader, naturally, and close reading just makes me read more slowly.

So what is close reading, why should I care, and how could I use it?

Close reading is very much what the term says - it's a close reading of a piece of text for a particular purpose, looking for clues to help you determine what is important for your purpose.  It blends Project CRISS's purpose setting principle and the free-write into one strategy.  When you give your students an activity or a piece of writing, you do it because there is a standard or target that you're trying to hit.  Consider that target when you give your students the assignment, and either communicate it to them or allow them to identify that purpose on their own (checking to be certain they are on the right track). 


To illustrate, take a piece of reading from a book selection on climate change (one of my current collaborative projects).  Your objective may be that students identify causes of climate change.  You communicate that to students and give them the passage.  Modeling the close read is always important, so on the projector or on the board with colored markers (our low-budget interactive white board), show your students what you expect.  A close read is not simply highlighting the causes of climate change, however - but that's a good start.  It requires multiple read-throughs, stopping after EVERY sentence and processing what the sentence is really saying.  The picture to the left shows what this might look like on the white board (thanks to my most amazing colleague for takings pics during one of her lessons!  You can check out her super cute and informative blog right here!).  Notice that she color-coded the annotations here and even made a key. 

This next picture to the right shows how it might look without the color coding.  Notice that she labeled a lot of what she underlined.  The idea here is to have students converse with the author of the selection - to stimulate the internal conversation that is missing so often when students read.  Our kiddos are being asked to perform more and more complex tasks while learning and reading, and many of them become so overwhelmed with the daunting requests that they freeze and forget to be metacognitive while they read.  The close read requires metacognition because students must record their thoughts about the text as they read.  This ultimately gives them a closer understanding of what they are expected to read and allows them to process and ask for help with difficult text.

What can they highlight, underline, or annotate? you ask.  Below is a list of ideas that you can give your students as they practice their annotation and close reading.

• Main characters or the "who" of the selection and evidence of traits of those characters (this can include the narrator).  Traits can be inferred, but the evidence to prove that inference should be marked and noted.
• Setting or the time and place of the selection as it pertains to the purpose of the reading
• Problems/Conflicts and solutions as they pertain to the purpose of the selection
• Unknown vocabulary
• Cause and effect relationships
• Chronological events that pertain to the purpose of the reading and notes as to how they relate to each other
• Questions that you have for the author (that may or may not be addressed later in the selection)
• Answers to previous questions asked
• Reactions to surprising points
• Details that support a conclusion that you have drawn
• Connections to previous learning or real-life situations

The options are really limitless, but remember - your students will get lost in the text if they don't have a focus.  To simply tell them to perform a close read will require them to set their own purpose, but unless you guide them, some of them will, undoubtedly, miss the entire point of the lesson and spend a lot more time processing useless facts than necessary. 

If you're interested in taking a stab at this truly valuable strategy, pick the brain of a language arts teacher this week!  All of our students should have been practicing their close reading the first part of quarter one, and some of them are ready to take their show on the road to other subject areas.

September 20 Crumble - Today's Homework: Study

Years ago when I had the opportunity to visit the four middle schools on a regular basis in support of the CRISS initiative at the middle school level, we conducted a survey with the students.  Part of that survey uncovered things that students felt they didn’t know and wanted to learn – and the top request was instruction in study-skills.  Our kids didn’t, and still don’t, know how to study.  At the end of my work that year, we re-surveyed the students, and, even after the year of inundating them with strategies, they were still asking to be taught how to study.

Part of this is our fault, as educators.  We give them study guides and practice tests that they use as their study tools, and they feel as if they complete these tasks, they have studied.  But is that half hour spent on the study guide a few nights before the test a great study strategy?  For some, maybe.  For most of our kiddos, however, constant, repeated exposure to the material is what is going to make a difference for them, and that is what the 12-Minute-Study is all about. 

Remember that these kiddos have an attention span that lasts about as many minutes as years they've been in school - so we're talking that the average seventh grader has the attention span of about seven minutes before he zones.  We can totally make this work, as long as we carefully plan and give our students ideas for studying instead of telling them that they must do this study guide or these practice questions.  Our ultimate goal is to create independent learners, and in order to do this we need to give them tools that they can use to prepare themselves. 

Just like with our formative assessments, studying can and should be done in small chunks.  So if you have a quiz or test coming up in a week, start these kiddos out on a study regiment, just like an exercise regiment.  Give a seventh grader the challenge of studying seven minutes at the beginning of your class each day that week and then seven minutes at home.  Yes, that's right.  I said seven minutes.  So that's fourteen minutes a day.  If they study all week, that's four days at fourteen minutes . . . you're looking at a good hour of studying for a short assessment.  If you're planning a huge unit test, you have a relatively good idea when that test will be, so start the kids out a few weeks before the test.  Or better yet, from the beginning!  Studying doesn't have to, and probably shouldn't, be for just a test.  It should become part of their academic lives.

So how does it work?  It's simple:

• Each day of the Seven Minute (or Six or Eight) Study Challenge, begin class immediately with a quick study tip.  For example: "Look at the notes we took as a class and make up questions in your head that might be answered with the notes.  Try it with a partner now, and then tonight for the study challenge try it by yourself." 
• Then give an example, and set the timer for seven minutes. 
• Tell partners to go back and forth with making up questions and answering them.  The challenge is to do it for exactly seven minutes.
• Challenge students to give it a shot at night.  You could have them use a study log to log whether they did it.  They could even staple that log to their test, and you could compare the scores of the students who studied to those who didn't as part of the reflection after the test.  Share this information with your students!

So what else can students do during this Study Challenge?

• They can use flashcards to see how quickly they can get through them, and then they can race themselves using a timer (or stopwatch because everybody and their brother has a phone with a stopwatch on it now).
• Instead of going over vocabulary words, tell them to read the definitions and then give the word.
• Students can make up sentences using vocabulary and just say them out loud.  Writing takes too much time in seven minutes.
• Ask students to listen to their favorite song while studying and see if they can put the notes to the music.  Guaranteed any kid who can do this will certainly get whatever part she put to music perfectly on that test.
• Ask students to draw quick pictures of some notes.
• Have them read the notes out loud.
• Ask students to go back to the text book section and match the illustrations to their notes.  Then have them think of reasons why those illustrations probably go with those notes.
• If there are lists of things that students need to have memorized, ask them to think of great mnemonic devices to share in class the next day.
• Ask students to read a section of their notes and then close their eyes to visualize what it might look like.  Then do it with the next section.
• Ask students to think about the notes from the perspective of somebody else (maybe somebody from the notes?).
• Ask students to write a quick letter to somebody ridiculous (like Superman or Sponge Bob)using as many of the vocabulary words as possible . . . correctly.

There are so many possibilities with studying, and what we need to emphasize with our kiddos is that they need to find out what is going to work best for them.  Some people actually find that recopying notes helps them remember them!  Well, have at it then!  What we want is for them to find out what works and go to it when the stakes are high.  We also want to empower them to have an open mind to try new things, as well, so that they can increase their shopping cart of good study-strategies.

Happy studying, friends!

September 13 Crumble - Purpose Setting - the key to engaging our students

I have a ten-year-old who doesn't like to read.  But every once in a great while I can't get her head out of a book.  It's at those times when I look at her and ask myself, "What is different about this time, and why is she making the choice to read?"  In her case, eighty-percent of the time it is a non-fiction book that has captured her with a picture that made her go, "What's that!"  And at her age she knows that she will find the answer inside. 

So how can we transfer this type of behavior to our classrooms?  One of Project CRISS's Principles and Philosophies is Purpose Setting - but we're not just talking about telling kiddos why they're doing what they're doing.  Purpose setting comes in all sizes and shapes - including the "sneaky-teacher" ways of getting kids interested.  Here are some ideas to get your students motivated to read, learn, and participate.

• Play a video related to your content (YouTube, United Streaming, DVD clip) that is not too long (6-8 minutes max) - something that is edgy or entertaining, and maybe evokes emotion.  After the video, ask students to write observations and reactions.  Give them a sentence frame if you think it will help.  Expect them to give details about their observations and reactions. Have students discuss and share their thoughts and then have them ask questions about it. You now have the beginnings of purpose (their questions).
• Use music.  Kids love music.  Many of them write, and if you approach their lessons in a way that breaks down their own music or allows them to understand what goes INTO writing it, those with a musical inclination are more likely to participate.  Is there music that relates to the topic at hand?  I'm not talking a song about the scientific method or the fifty states, but music that somehow connects to the topic at hand.  You make the connections for them initially.  Have them observe and ask questions. 
• Google Images is, hands down, one of the most fun places to go when you're curious about something.  Why not use it to gather some attention and show images that related to something in the lesson before giving the lesson and see if you can get kids to react to it.  So how does your topic of study connect to students' lives TODAY?  Find some images.  Have students write and discuss their observations and reactions and . . . you guessed it - ask questions!

In the three general ideas listed above, there are some commonalities that I'd like to point out, and then I'll let you take it from there. 

• Get the kids thinking about the topic before they learn.
• Engage them in something other than reading or talking (viewing, listening, or playing).
• Require them to observe, write, and react.
• From those observations, require them to ask thoughtful questions.  The questions asked can be used to drive your instruction or not - but a good educator can easily find the balance between what the kids want to know and the stuff that we're being told is important. 

It's not tough - in fact, I find that our purpose setting activities can be the most fun part of the lesson because it requires students to express themselves.  This is the beauty of middle school!  They're just learning to express themselves - their viewpoints and opinions, and yet we don't have to reel them in too much.  You can learn so much from just talking to your kiddos, and who knows?  Maybe what you learn from them is a new way to look at the topic! 

September 6 Crumble - How do we use our data?

I usually try to write these blogs as focused on instruction as possible so that they apply to a variety of educators from anywhere, but I've had some requests and questions about benchmarking, assessments, and progress monitoring over the last few months, so I've decided to dedicate this early-in-the-year blog to explaining the process that we use at our middle school to assess for reading and plan the proper programs for our students.  I'll also talk a little about how we are using lexile scores, as lexiles were recently under question by Tween Tribune and Fox News in the last month, for those of you who saw the reports. 

The last few years, our district has chosen to use Scantron Performance Series as our benchmarking and screening tool for reading comprehension at the middle school level.  This test uses a combination of vocabulary, non-fiction, long and short passages to assess a student's reading comprehension and provides a National Percentile Ranking (NPR), Scaled Score (Scantron's own scoring system), a lexile score, and a lexile (research) score.  I do a few things with these scores.

First off, if a student's NPR is below the fiftieth percentile (out of 100 students, his scaled score fell below at least fifty of them), his language arts teacher is then required to run the AIMSWEB Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), which is a three minute test of oral reading where the teacher listens to the student read, out loud, three different passages (on grade level) at one minute each.  From the ORF, we can determine whether a student reads at an acceptable pace or not and whether she is an accurate reader (misreading words).  AIMSWEB gives us specific benchmark scores that show where students should be at different times of the year (depending on their grade level), and these scores are used to guide us in choosing the correct program for the students.  We are just finishing up Performance Series right now, and I've already started going through rosters and highlighting students who need AIMSWEB benchmarking for teachers so I can get those out early next week. 

Here is where things start to get tricky.  Often, a student will read below the fiftieth percentile but his fluency has met the benchmark.  At this point, as long as the student's score is above the twenty-fifth percentile (still talking Performance Series), then no intervention is recommended.  I will sometimes put kiddos on my monitor list (unofficially) if they are below the thirtieth. 

Fluency scores that fall below the twenty-fifth percentile (on the AIMSWEB ORF) are flagged, and we place those students into a Small Learning Community (SLC, which is like a homeroom.  Ours is sixteen fantastic minutes.) where they will participate in the (super easily implemented) program The 6 Minute Solution (Adams and Brown).  We are lucky to have teachers across content areas who are willing to work programs like this.  They're scripted and easy and don't require the implementing teacher to know a lot about reading fluency, as long as I'm around for consultation and direction.

Yet there are still students who need more.  The ORF also tells us how accurately a student reads a passage.  For example, if a seventh grader reads her passages and miscues (gets them wrong) more than five percent (sometimes I will check over three percent) of the words for that benchmarking period, I will pull that student to run a few different screening tests on the student to see if she has some gaps in her phonics skills (putting letters together to make words). 

We use 95% Group's PSI to start.  Our high school reading specialist also developed a syllable-types screener (to determine if the student may just have trouble with identifying/reading a specific type of syllable).  But one thing that I'm starting to learn is that basic sight words are a source of trouble for a small group of our middle schoolers, especially those who are still learning the language.  Because of this, I started using the Scholastic Phonics Inventory (SPI) to gather information on sight word recognition and fluency, and wouldn't you know it?  My theory about sight words tended to be true.  At this point, we haven't developed a specific intervention that targets those students with sight word deficiencies.  This is on my list of things on which to research.  I've also used the SPI to identify students for placement in System44, one of our Tier 3 programs, which takes the place of the student's exploratory class.  I hate to use that time because the exploratory cycle is so important for so many of these kiddos, but time is not on our side, and this is the most logical place to insert a Tier 3 intervention. 

I also look at Performance Series scores to see if students need extra support in reading.  Sometimes I'll catch an incoming student on the opposite side of the spectrum who may need to be referred to our Gifted Coordinator so she can take a look at the student's scores.  This doesn't happen very often, however.  Ironically these students seem to come in with all of their paperwork lined up, every I dotted and every T crossed.  Its our new struggling readers who end up popping up in November, and then we shake our heads trying to figure out how we missed them.  Usually its because they came in after Performance Series or they're on my To-Do list, but we DO eventually pick them up and get them what they need. 

Teachers who take a good look at their data will often look at lexiles and NPRs and email me about kiddos about whom they have immediate concern.  I will then consult my vast spreadsheet of scores over the last two years and let the teacher know if the kid tanked the test or if maybe there is more to the student. 

The big question is - What would cause immediate concern?  Well, that's another tricky question that comes with a variety of tricky answers.  I try to use lexile.com's CCSS Text measures (at the bottom of that link), but most of our kiddos struggle to hit those, so I also take into consideration their past years' growth and what classes they were taking at the time.  For example: if I'm looking at an eighth grader in a regular language arts class with a lexile score of 700, this is undoubtedly low for eight grade.  The teacher may question the student's placement, but what the teacher may not know is that in sixth grade the student was at a 500 all year and had been receiving support in the intervention language arts classroom.  The following year we decided to place the student in a regular language arts classroom around peers who were great models of reading and give this student a vocabulary intervention in SLC.  In seventh grade we saw that lexile score creep up to 700, so we decided on the same program for this student for eighth grade.  This is how the scores can be used to shift students around in the Tiers. 

Language arts teachers who have these growing strugglers have options of using material of different text complexities for instruction.  Our current text book has text selections that are paired and labeled for more accessible vs. more complex text.  Teachers can choose selections and differentiate right in their classrooms if need be.  Plus, all of this data is available to any of our content area teachers, as well, and if there are students who need support, we try to make people available for that (Special Education teachers, paraprofessionals, myself, support staff). 

One last thing I like to do with lexiles before I sign off for the weekend.  Tween Tribune and Fox News went on a lexile rampage about a month ago, talking about teachers who get lexile scores and make kids read only at that level, and it frustrated me.  I think we truly have a good thing going in our use of these scores.  The reason I bring this up in this blog is because I think its important that everybody understand how they're used in relation to the testing process. 

First off, many of our teachers share the most recent lexile scores with students and will often use this score as a springboard for conversations about what students can do to maintain or improve.  But lexiles were not designed originally as a benchmarking measurement.  Just like so many of our educational tools, the lexile score morphed into something it was never intended to do.  Lexiles were designed to match a student with a piece of text.  Period.  Now there's all sorts of research out there that tells us that students should read at their independent level, and now we're seeing stuff come out that we should instruct students at their frustration level. 

I'm talking strictly independent reading now, friends.  Put yourself in the shoes of a thirteen year old.  If you didn't like to read, and you were given a book where thirty percent of the words were a challenge for you and the sentences were lengthy, what would you do?  I know what I would do, and it isn't pick up the book and read for twenty minutes a day!  I'd chuck that baby at the bottom of my locker and put on my bad-girl face as I walked to language arts.  Struggling students need to feel success before they can choose to grapple!  They need to want to wrestle with the text before they do it.  It's like learning to do anything for fun.  If I don't want to do it, why would I do it?

So when we walk into the library of 10,000 books with a class of students who are all struggling to read, the last thing I want them to have to do is decide which one out of the 10,000 they will hate the least.  So we take their lexile score (Not their lexile research score from Performance Series - the lexile score from Performance Series considers the student's grade level and will give us books that are more age appropriate because some of these kids have scores that are so low there is nothing available for them that is age appropriate.  This works in our ET classes also where we have some students whose lexile research scores max out at 1400, but the only thing we have to give them at that level would be a college text book from one of our grad classes!) and we plug it into our computer catalog along with information from an interest inventory that we have given them before we go to the library, and Voila!  A short list of books at an attainable level that might be interesting enough to crack open this week.  And then we look at them, read the back, analyze whether the length will be something they want to tackle, and maybe even check it out with a smile. 

And that, my friends, is my long winded narrative of how we acquire the scores, how we use them, and how they can work for us.  Please ask if you have questions, as I am open to answering.  Also, if you're reading this and disagreeing with something, I'm also open to having that conversation as well.

Happy weekend!

August 30 Crumble - Daily writing ideas for ALL contents

Writing is tricky to weave into some content areas, but it can and should be done as often as possible.  While my previous blog on Reaching Social Students discussed why we should allow students to discuss to process content, another of Project CRISS's Principles and Philosophies is writing for the use of processing content.  Both target different learning styles but are beneficial for all learners.  What writing does that discussion does not is allows an individual to reflect upon himself without the distraction of others' thoughts in the middle of a reflection.  "If we can write about content and explain what we are learning, we can claim knowledge as our own" (Santa, et. al, 2012).

And any teacher can use it.  Our job is to decide how and how often.  Just like with reading, sports, or music - daily practice makes writing a habitual activity.  Throwing it in on a weekly basis is definitely a good start, but what if you required writing daily?  So instead of boring you with theory and pedagogy, I've decided to give you some ideas and choices so you can decide how writing would work best for you:

• Daily writing prompts (could be used as bellringers).  For science, life skills, PE, woodshop, computers, math, and other classes where physical action is required at times, consider having students write out their best idea of how they think they will accomplish a task, how they accomplished a task, or how they think they did on the accomplishment on the task.  Ask students to use a few of the Tier 3 words (content area words) that you've been introducing as a bonus!
• Free writes.  During a lab, lesson, lecture, video, reading assignment, or other academic activity, stop about every six to eight minutes (1 minute per grade level) and ask students to write down anything that comes to mind about what they're doing (a question, prediction, inference, idea, connection, etc.).  They can use their class notebook, a sheet of paper to turn in, sticky notes, or desk white boards (these are always fun).  Change it up each time so they don't get bored with it, but the activity is the same.  Give students a 2-3 minute pause to write.  Decide whether you'll let them share with a partner or just move on.  This acts as a reset button for those who are starting to zone off, and it also allows for some processing time for those who need to catch up or who have questions.  Demonstrate this for your students as you're doing it so they understand that you truly are leaving it up to them!
• Writing templates.  For your struggling writers who can barely get words out of their mouths, let alone produce anything in the form of a complete sentence in writing - use a writing template or paragraph frame for any writing activity!  I used a previous blog to discuss paragraph frames, and wowza!  What a difference it made in the writing of some of our students!  You don't want to give them a template forever, but you do want them to get into the habit of writing in a comprehensible way, so start out with a few templates.  An example of a writing template would be, "I don't understand why . . . because . . . "  or "I can really relate to . . . because . . . "  Giving students four to five templates from which to choose keeps their options open but also takes the stress out of forming understandable thoughts.  These work really nicely as exit slips.  And, again, after a PE activity, math lesson, art lesson, literature lesson - there is no limit here, friends!

• Double entry reflective journals. Although not meant to necessarily be a daily activity, I believe this is one of my favorite of all of the CRISS strategies. To build some background on the topic or unit you're about to introduce, start your students off with a set of questions, quotations, thoughts, problems, etc.  Have them write their thoughts about each one.  Students can write questions, answers, inferences, predictions, reflections, or discuss anxieties about the content.  Then you teach the lesson or unit.  In a third column, have students go back to the same sheet and write their new thoughts about the information they were given before learning took place.  To expand on this even further, have them compare their thoughts before and after learning and write why they think their thoughts changed!  Here is an example of a double entry reflective journal.  If you click on it, it should enlarge well enough for you to see that the student reflected upon who he thought Edgar Allan Poe was after hearing about some of his writing and then who Poe really was after watching a documentary on Poe's life.
• Dialogue journals.  These work similarly to the free-write above but with the added component of having a written discussion with a partner.  As a teacher I can use this as part of the free-write process if I choose.  Once students write their free-write, they can switch papers, read what their partner has written, and then respond.  Some care should be taken to teach students how to respond.  You might consider giving students some options such as: "I agree because . . . " "I understand what you mean when . . . " "I see what you're saying, but in my opinion . . . "
• Observation entries.  These are so much fun and can be used anywhere!  Have students observe anything and write about it.  Period.  What you did to find a research topic, how you play an F on a clarinet, how you work together in groups, how to properly use hand tools . . . anything!  When I went to the IRC Conference back in March, observation was such a key tool in so many of the ideas presented.  Friends, we are the models for our students - have them watch you do what you do best and then have them write about it!
• Perspective entries.  Have students write about what they're learning, but have them write from a perspective other than a student sitting in your class. 

You can't tell me that there isn't one writing idea above that you'd can't use in your classroom this week.  Writing (as you can see) is a bit of a passion for me, and the thought that our students could potentially be doing it eight periods a day makes me giddy!  It would be like a basketball coach watching students practice basketball drills for ten minutes every period while reviewing math concepts before getting down and dirty with a new lesson in algebra!  Can you imagine how much better writers our students would be if we had them writing more often?  Just consider it this week.  Your content areas are so important, and adding a writing component would be like plugging in another tangible way for you to assess how well your students are internalizing what you consider to be important.

Stay cool!

August 23 CRISS Crumble - Choose Your Words Carefully

Welcome back, friends! This week has been one of adjustment for both students and staff as we move into another year of change, but I have already begun to see glimpses of normalcy throughout the day. By the end of next week, this place will be radiating with the routine hum of learning, and things will settle down.

So what is on the plate for our first Crumble, you ask?  Vocabulary is my focus for our students this year. Every year at the end of the year when we take a look at scores, we shake our heads and say, "I wish there was something more we can do for these kids to help build their vocabularies." But then we leave, hoping something will miraculously come to us (perhaps in a vision induced by overexposure to the sun) over the summer, and by the time we are back into the routine of things here at school in the fall, that wish is forgotten, only to be dredged up again in May. Please tell me that I'm not the only nerd who has this wish every year AND who thinks about it periodically over the summer!

A large percentage of our student population lacks basic academic vocabulary – plain and simple. A few years back I had an eighth grade student (formerly bilingual, but transitioned in fourth grade) whose social studies teacher reported that he "just didn't care" and refused to do the work. After meeting with this student a few times and just listening to him speak, it dawned on me how often I had to either repeat what I said to him or reword entire sentences until he understood what I had said or asked. If I had to do this with him one-on-one, imagine how he felt in a class filled with thirty students and a teacher who couldn't monitor his comprehension every second! So I asked the teacher to reflect upon her presentation style. How did she speak to the students? Her response was, "As adults." But my real question is - what kind of adults? Did she speak to them as if they were all adults who had a rich literate background like she did as a child? Or did she speak to them as if she herself had a rich literate background, but with an understanding that her students may need clarification on basic academic conversations due to lack of vocabulary? Her response was simply raised eyebrows and an, "Ohhhhhhh! Aha!"

To break it down for you, there are three tiers of vocabulary (and many definitions of these tiers, depending on who you ask):

• Tier 1 – basic vocabulary and acquired through every day speech
• Tier 2 – high frequency, academic / multiple-meaning words that appear across all types of text
• Tier 3 – low frequency, domain-specific / content-specific words often termed “vocabulary words” in content areas

Most of our kiddos have a good handle on how to speak to each other using Tier 1 vocabulary (some a little too much!). And we are doing a pretty decent job of exposing them to Tier 3 - but we assume that they can absorb what we are saying in front of our classroom using our Tier 2 words. This is not always the case. Words that we take for granted are being thrown out at our students without even realizing the damage we could be doing by not supporting our own rich use of vocabulary. In this paragraph alone there are probably a dozen or more words that have multiple meanings and would confuse even some of our hardest working strugglers. Words like handle, decent, exposing, assume, absorb, granted, and rich all have double meanings and make the heads of our English language learners spin like tops! And heaven forbid you use an idiomatic phrase (such as make your head spin) with them! They'd go off the deep end for sure. I really need to stop.

The point is, friends, that we need to choose our words carefully. Am I saying that we need to simplify how we say things for our students and stay away from using words that may challenge our kiddos? Heavens, no! In fact, I encourage the use of fancy words! But know that the more you use them, the more you will need to rephrase, check for understanding, illustrate, model, and allow for processing before you move on.

So, create a quiz with words in parenthesis near tough Tier 2 words where you think a student might trip up. Know that your text books are not only full of your content-area vocabulary, but they are also very heavily loaded with Tier 2 words that may confuse your students as well. Teaching Tier 2 words as vocabulary doesn't necessarily make sense in a science or social studies class, but don't assume that your kiddos are going to be able to understand the text book without a lot of support. Know that part of the job that I do at school is to help you service these students, not just in their language arts classes, but across the curriculum, and I am certainly willing to do so. And enjoy reflecting on your own vocabularies over the next week, because I know you will.

Have a fabulous first weekend of the school year.  You deserve it!