Dr. Kendra Strange: Accelerating Student Achievement through Best Instructional Practice: Rethinking Student Feedback

Dr. Kendra Strange: Accelerating Student Achievement through Best Instructional Practice: Rethinking Student Feedback:  Imagine the impact on learning if classroom teachers gave feedback the way athletic coaches provided their feedback. Think about music teac...

Key to Closing Achievement Gap: Scaffold Instruction While Maintaining the Rigor

 

Often teachers solely focus on teaching prerequisite skills as a means of closely achievement gaps. This practice typically comes from a good intentions with feelings of doing what's right by the child, essentially providing the child with the instruction they need rather than the instruction the on-level curriculum demands. However, the consequence of this approach is a cycle of deficit for groups of students who are never offered the opportunity access grade level curriculum. 

The key to closing, rather than perpetuating achhievment gaps? Scaffold institution in real time within the lesson of the on-level learning standard. In other words, teach every child the required content, scaffolding up and down during the lesson, but never abandoning the Rigor of the original learning target. This practice creates equity in access to the same curriculum proving every student with the opportunity to master the required learning standards. 

Kendra Strange, Ed.D. 

Kendrastrangeconsulting.com

Rethinking Student Feedback

 Imagine the impact on learning if classroom teachers gave feedback the way athletic coaches provided their feedback. Think about music teachers or art teachers and how they observe and coach a student during practice.

Too often classroom teachers provide disconnected feedback after the student has completed the practice, rather than during. When a teacher observes a students's practice and provides feedback in real time, the student is able to make adjustments before practicing incorrectly. The impact on learning can be significant. Perhaps with the rise of a flipped classroom model, more teachers will use class time for observing and providing feeback on student practice. 

Drkendrastrange.com

@drkendrastrange 

The Secret to Unlocking Literary Analysis and Boosting Reading Comprehension: Topic, Theme & Main Idea

 When English Language Arts or Reading teachers master teaching the universal, literary concepts of topic, theme, and main idea, students develop a skill set that allows them to successfully frame literary works for proper analysis. Students need this skill set to interact with texts from a variety of genres. Relying on the learning standards at each grade level to guide teachers when to introduce each literacy component is key to students successfully understanding the unique role of each literary element.

It seems simple, but as a literacy specialist there have been numerous occasions I've observed teachers who don't seem clear on the  differences of topic, theme and main idea.   These foundational literacy concepts span learning standards from kindergarten to high school. If lower grade teachers understand and teach their standards correctly, then when theme enters the scene in upper grades, the differences won't confuse older students. 

Secondary students often struggle with the difference between main idea and theme. After observing many English Language Arts classrooms, it became apparent to me that many teachers struggle as well. Knowing the differences before tackling a lesson will ensure teachers are able to guide students in their understanding of each literary element. 

Planning tip: Try identifying Topic, Theme, and Main Idea of short selections in teacher planning sessions prior to teaching the lessons to students. Practice as a group, or write short stories that highlight each literary element.
 kendrastrangeconsulting.com

Content Literacy: Content Teachers & Reading Teachers Pair up for Student Success

Reading across content areas is critical to student success. An aligned campus wide literacy approach can lead to huge gains for struggling readers. For example, by strategically matching the expository text, i.e. content, in science and social studies classes with the expository literacy strategies in language arts classes (ELA classes) students interact with both the content and the text structure multiple times for a variety of purposes. It’s takes planning and organization to make the cross-curriculum alignment happen. Campus leadership can provide time for ELA teachers to work with other content teachers to select texts for both classes. Texts selected must meet the literature requirements for a genre study in ELA, but also provide the content needed for other classes. These purposeful interactions can lead to greater retention and increased achievement across the subject areas. Fountas and Pinnell, 2001, remind educators that even advanced students or students reading above grade level benefit from a coordination of content and literacy instruction. Providing a practical example of such integration, Austin ISD boasts of a campus that embraced the notion of content literacy in a campus wide effort to align research and writing across the curriculum.

 One highly effective school began the school year by organizing calendars for research project  assignments across every subject area. (The calendar helped to ensure that students were not slammed with 3 or 4 research papers due at the same time.) …In this school, even the physical  education and fine arts faculty participated. In P.E. students were required to write an article for a sports page in the school newspaper or write a biography of a famous athlete. Students in art class were required to research a theme in art or describe a style common in a certain period of history. At this school, every student was writing a paper for every teacher every 3 to 6 weeks, and the student success in all subject areas was significantly increased. And as a side benefit, no one teacher bore the brunt of grading all of those papers and giving students feedback. All of the teachers accepted their role as literacy teachers. (AISD, 2012, p. 65) 

 Content teachers need not be overwhelmed by the notion of teaching language arts and reading. There are small, yet effective teaching moves that can facilitate the merge of interdisciplinary learning standards. For example, content area teachers can use activities that activate prior knowledge of the academic discipline that do not require laborious reading initially. By working with the reading teacher, content teachers can provide students with instructional leveled reading that allows students to build on the prior knowledge while extrapolating new information from the texts. As the vocabulary and content knowledge build, the complexity of the content text can increase providing more opportunities for students to interact with authentic disciplinary texts, such as journal articles or traditional text books. (Lee & Spratley, 2010) The stronger the planning relationship between content teacher and ELA teacher, the more intentional and effective content literacy lessons become.


 “AISD Comprehensive Literacy Handbook.” Austinisd.org, AISD Department of English Arts, 2012, curriculum.austinisd.org/la/documents/_AISDComprehensiveLIteracyHandbook.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2017.

 Fountas, Irene C., and Gay Su. Pinnell. Guiding readers and writers: teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2001.

Lee, C.D., Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Is There a "Best" Method of Teaching? Yes & No...

As an educational consultant, my job is to provide instructional coaching and support to districts and campuses that are seeking ways to refine teaching practices and increase student achievement. When working with campuses I'm frequently asked, "what are the best teaching methods?". My answer is always the same, "it varies". This response is often met with sighs of exasperation as teachers are sincerely seeking a beeline to best practice. Understandably, teachers who feel pressured to cover a large amount of content in a limited amount of time want a quick and easy response. However, as rushed as we may feel, student-centered teaching methods are the goal of every engaging classroom. What do student-centered teaching methods look like you ask? Well... it varies. Ideally, a teacher would limit direct instruction to small increments of time, then during guided practice provide individualized support based on each child’s learning style. Often teachers feel this type of teaching takes too much time. However, when students receive instruction that is aligned with their unique learning styles, mastery time is expedited and teaching becomes more efficient. In other words, as we differentiate we maximize student learning and increase mastery of the content, which ultimately reduces the need for remediation and increases student achievement. Kendra Strange, Ed.D.

High School Reading Instruction: A Must to Ensure All Students Secure Their Future Freedom

Dr Kendra Strange

As educators, it is our duty to ensure every child becomes a proficient  reader in order to ensure they preserve their future freedom.  

The words of Frederick Douglass, "Once you learn to read you will be forever free", reminds educators of the monumental charge of preserving a literate society. Elementary teachers are often passionate and committed to the necessity of teaching a child to read. However as secondary teachers, often the art of teaching a student to read understandably takes a back seat to literary content and analysis. 

Can we teach reading in a secondary setting?  

Principals and other educational leaders must create a pathway for secondary English Language Arts teachers to have the opportunity to provide reading instruction to secondary students who still need foundational reading instruction, while simultaneously proving on level content instruction. This is no easy task in the scheme of a large comprehensive high school setting. So often the need to teach reading remediation in high school is overlooked, or at best is provided via pull-out or in a disconnected (from primary English) class.  Ideally, the two would be provided in a connected manner meaning the students' on level English teacher is given the opportunity to also provide the remedial reading instruction. This model creates a connection between the content in English class and the reading support, which accelerates instruction while remediating basic reading skills. 

How do we get there? 

This literary-content-reading-remediation structure doesn't occur naturally in a traditional high school setting. Teachers who need time to teach reading must advocate for a schedule that allows time to reach struggling students, and principals must prioritized literacy in master schedules. Additionally, central administration must lead conversations that include exploring options for creative scheduling that includes additional blocks of time for reading instruction.  

When school leaders, content teachers and central administrators have literacy as their focus, students would be less likely to be lost in a high school setting and continue to struggle with reading through adulthood.  Educators, regardless of position held, are charged with providing every opportunity for every student to become strong, competent readers, i.e. ensuring  their future freedom.   

Problem Solving Includes Allowing for Failure

Real teaching provides students opportunities to problem solve. This instructional practice includes allowing students to fail and try again. So often we fail to provide those key opportunities to students. When educators end the process at failure, we omit the significant "retry" step. Where would the world be if famous thinkers such as Einstein were not allowed a "do over"?

Dr Kendra Strange Shaffer @drkendrastrange
Kendrastrangeconsulting.com