Tag: Engagement

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Reluctant Reader as Author

Literacy specialist, Pat Martin,  authored this guest blog on one of publishing projects.
Pat Martin last guest blogged about the Parents’ Literacy Publishing Project

Img_0182_2Cuyler, a winsome first grader, has published his first book.  The experience encouraged him to exclaim, “I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.”

Mid-way through his second year of formal schooling, Cuyler should be reading about level 9/10 (guided reading text level as described by Pinnell and Fountas).  He’s not.  However, after reading a text created by MaryAnn McAlpin, a retired Reading Recovery teacher, for her grandson, Cuyler was motivated to create his own text using that model.

“I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.” ~ Cuyler, a 1st grader

Writing his personal text benefits Cuyler in so many ways.  His extensive daily vocabulary is supported by actual printed text.  His interests, vehicles of every description and outdoor life, become the basis of his text which further stimulates his daily effort to acquire reading skill.  As such noted advocates for boy literacy as Ralph Fletcher and Michael Gurian note, primary texts and writing prompts seldom deal with the world that interests boys.  There is scant opportunity to connect with the texts, to bring personal experience into the reading/writing or to interact with the text content.

Img_0193_2 Capturing Cuyler’s explanations and descriptions as a book’s text mimics interactive writing or the daily journal writing in the reading Recovery lesson.  And what child wouldn’t read and reread a book of their pictures and writing?  What better way to achieve fluency?  Certainly a more exciting, engaging and authentic method than grappling through Cuyler’s four inch thick stack of Dolch sight words – a practice he he finds less than engaging. Cuyler now sees himself as a literate individual.  He is excited about the growing up as a reader and writer rather than defeated by the challenges that text holds. 

By providing text that supports him as a reader and validates him as a writer, Cuyler is on the path of literacy.  And he is an excited traveler who wants to know “how many days until we go back to that learning lab so I can publish books.”Img_0192_2

For sometime now I’ve been an advocate of new print on demand technologies to give students a chance to publish their learning for an authentic audience and purpose. I’ve partnered with Pat Martin, a literacy specialist and Suzanne Suor, an educational technology consultant, to open a Educational Publishing Learning Lab in Rochester NY. We offer a variety of training packages to assist teachers and districts in taking advantage of the new opportunities in digital publishing. The lab is located at ColorCentric digital publishers, so participants can not only learn how to publish, but tour the facility to see books being made. For more information on how you and your students can publish your own books visit our website Read > Think > Write > Publish

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Rigor, Relevance and Technology

New technologies have put students in charge of the information they access, store, analyze and share.  To paraphrase David Warlick, “Literacy in the 21st century will mean the ability to find information, decode it, critically evaluate it, organize it into personal digital libraries and find meaningful ways to share it with others.”

Next week, I’ll be returning to Pottsgrove School District outside of Philadelphia to work with high school science, social studies and special education teachers on strategies for utilizing technology to incorporate more rigor and relevance into their classrooms. I’ll be joined by the Chris Shaffer, the principal of Pottsgrove High School. Together we’ll demonstrate strategies and technology resources and then give teachers time to work on integrating the strategies into upcoming lessons. Later in the school year we plan to reconvene the group to assess the impact on classroom instruction and student engagement.

Chris will be sharing a variety of websites that provide teachers and students with Web 2.0 tools to transform the learning environment. They include: www.Del.icio.us.com, www.Nettrekker.com, www.Unitedstreaming.com, www.Fantasycongress.com, www.Moodle.com.  I believe that rigor and relevance improves when students have an opportunity to read, think, write and publish for an authentic audience and purpose. I’ll be showing the Pottsgrove audience three approaches that give students a chance to share their learning with others.

Judy Kinz, a very innovative technology specialist, has developed “Virtual Books,” a clever PowerPoint template that simulates the turning pages of a book. I used it to make demo PowerPoints for the Pottsgrove social studies and science teachers. Here’s a sample. Don’t focus on the content – it’s the look of the template that’s the point. homefront-virtual-book (1.9MB PPT)  In partnership with a paper engineer, I’ll soon be launching FlipNLearn, an innovative learning foldable that student design and print on school printers using specialty paper. Presentation notes: Pottsgrove-10-08-07 (1 MB PDF)

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Leadership for Literacy and Learning

Next week (August 6-8), I will present at the Oregon Department of Education’s 2007 Summer Institute: “Strategies for Student Success” at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. More

I’ll be bringing my TurningPoint audience response system and we will model student engagement strategies with the audience. The last time I was in Oregon, I ran a full day session for over 350 teachers and administrators with a response system and live blog. It includes some great posts by teachers on rigor and relevance in their classrooms. More

Download revised presentation material for each a session below – includes audience response data.

“Rigor, Relevance and Literacy for Middle School Teachers”

Boost student achievement with rigor, relevance and literacy. This session is designed for intermediate and middle school teachers of all disciplines. It will demonstrate that teachers don’t have to sacrifice content to help their students achieve academic success. You’ll experience practical examples of how teachers support standards-based instruction in their subject area while improving student skills in vocabulary, comprehension and analysis. This engaging workshop guarantees to be rigorous and relevant to teachers—we’ll actually use the strategies being promoted, not just talk about them! It will feature an audience response system that helps us model a student-centered approach to learning. Teachers prefer workshops that share practical instructional ideas—and you will leave with many strategies ready for use in your classroom.  MS-presentation.pdf (2 MB)

“Rigor, Relevance and Literacy for High School Teachers”

Same themes as the middle school  presentatation with some different examples. HS-presentation.pdf

“Leading for Rigor, Relevance and Literacy”

See what happens when schools share a vision of quality instruction based on Rigor, Relevance and Literacy. The session demonstrates how educators can boost achievement with a consistent focus on common standards-based instructional strategies in a student centered classroom. It is designed for district and building administrators of all levels. The session will demonstrate that teachers don’t have to sacrifice content to help their students achieve academic success. This engaging workshop guarantees to be rigorous and relevant to instructional leaders. You’ll leave with many new ideas and loads of strategies ready for use with your teachers. We’ll use an audience response system to effectively model a student-centered approach to learning. You’ll experience practical examples of how school leaders can support their teachers while they build student skills in vocabulary, comprehension and analysis. Admin-presentation.pdf  (1 MB)

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So why aren’t your students publishing their own books? Part II

ABCs Human Body
ABCs Human Body

It’s been nearly a year since I first raised that question. In case you haven’t heard – print on demand technology has made it possible to produce beautiful hard cover and paperback books without minimum runs or prohibitive upfront costs. During the last year, I have helped teachers from across the country get started on digital publishing. Kids are motivated by producing books for an authentic audience. Publishing helps students master course content and develop project management and teamwork skills. The power of publishing enables students to think like writers, to apply their learning strategies and to organize and express their learning. It exemplifies the best of the information revolution –students as creators of content rather than as passive audience.

I find that a publishing project is a great way to ensure that my training workshops get put to use back in the classroom and result in teachers having the chance to reflect on their practice by looking at student work.

I continue to add material my website – Read>Think>Write>Publish. Go there and you’ll find downloadable template books and tech guides. I also have posted sample student books that you can use as models to motivate your students. You can download them as a free pdf or order them published at cost.

Stay tuned – student publishing is going to be big!

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Engage Your Audience with a Response System

Turning Point ARS
Turning Point ARS

I’ve always found it ironic that I give large-group presentations promoting techniques to create a more student-centered classroom. Few teachers are inspired by a lecture on “Rigor and Relevance in the Classroom,” so I’m always using new approaches to engage my audience. Recently I’ve tried audience / student response systems (ARS / STS) in my professional development workshops. Judging from teacher feedback – its working.

So far, my favorite ARS is TurningPoint from Turning Technologies. It integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint and is quick to learn. It allows me to pose questions in my presentation, rapidly gather audience response via small RF keypads, and graph their responses into my PowerPoint presentation. I appreciate the quick set up – I open my laptop, plug in the RF receiver, pass out the keypads and go. After a few ice-breaker questions, audiences are comfortable using the responders.

For a sample of the system in action, here’s a 55 minute RealPlayer video of a conference presentation I did for the Oregon Dept of Eductation called “9th Grade Academy – A Small Learning Community that Works.” All members of the audience had responders and you can see how quickly we gathered data. If you need RealPlayer click here.

The right mix of presentation material and reflection can ramp up true-false, multiple choice and likert scales questions into a higher-order experience. In a recent “Content Reading Strategies” workshop, I teachers used the ARS to evaluate the strategies I was promoting – is it engaging for the student, does it support content mastery, will it be easy to use?

The quality of the discussion was dramatically improved. Teacher had a sense of how their peers felt and openly voiced their opinion on “why” they voted that way. The ARS helped us uncover a solid level of support that empowered their instructional leadership team to move forward.

Teacher evaluations of the ARS workshops consistently point to greater engagement, a better understanding in the material and livelier discussion. That works for me. Stop back for more of my feedback on the system. If teacher are this engaged, what it would do for students in the classroom?