Lesson Planning & Implementation (Blog Response #4)

I recently read a really fascinating article in The Reading Teacher called “Literacy Instruction With Digital and Media Technologies” by Diane Barone and Todd Wright that discussed how blended classrooms can engage our students (you’ll need to be a member of The Reading Teacher in order to read it). In the article, the authors cite 3 key ideas that teachers must remember:

“1. Simply using software programs on computers does not prepare students for new literacies’ expectations.
2. New literacies are deictic in that they constantly change and require teachers to embrace these changes.
3. New literacies are essential in classrooms so that equal opportunities are offered to all students.”

Just after I read the article, I cotaught a lesson with the library/media specialist in the computer lab. During this lesson, she wanted the students to locate information on World Book Online in order to answer questions. About half way through the period, she came over to me and asked, “Why do all the students think they can type the whole question into search box instead of the key words?” That basic question reminded me that simply using technology is not enough to develop literacy skills. The students need direct instruction, modeling, and support strategies for identifying key words, selecting a search result, and skimming the text. The lesson had a decent foundation, but our implementation needed improvement.

What was even more striking to me was that fact that we had just finished a key word search unit in connection with our science fair research. Just like every other skill the students learn in school, once is not enough. We need to teach, reteach, confer, model, and repeat until new literacy skills become second nature to the students.

It will take a lot of work—but I’m excited for the direction we’re heading in. Now if only I could teach in a one-to-one laptop classroom like the teacher in the article and the Floydada Independent School District do!

A Mindtool for Online Research--Reflection

I finished making my mindtool, which is meant to help students strengthen their online research and reading skills. Check it out at: http://www.wix.com/cmitton/Science-Fair-Research. I began using it with my students and received feedback from other teachers. Based on both experiences, I've decided to make the following modifications for next year:

1) Before beginning the science fair research project, I'll find a few websites of interest for the class to read together. Throughout a series of mini-lessons, I will introduce the students to Flowgram as I read the site out loud, think aloud, highlight key details, and draft summary notes. Then, I'll have the students work with partners to practice the strategy on another assigned website within Flowgram. Finally, they will work individually on an assigned site in Flowgram. I'm making this change because I realized that learning to generate research questions, navigate search engines, evaluate websites, and then read, comprehend, and reflect about online content is a lot to tackle! Introducing the skills in smaller stages will help scaffold student learning.

2) Secondly, as we used the webquest this year, I added a step into the process. I had the students bookmark each site they'd like to use for their research using Internet Explorer. After they located 3-7 sources, then we added them into Flowgram, highlighted, and wrote summary notes. This chunked the learning for the students into manageable pieces, and it also made writing the bibliography easier.

I'm sure as the students continue to work through the mindtool, we'll need to make some more adjustments. But, overall, I'm really pleased with the progress we're making as researchers and readers!

Creating Critical Readers: Both Offline and Online

As teachers, we've heard it time and time again: research has shown that the top performing students read 1 hour or more a day. In fact, the students in the top 10% read more in a year than the bottom 10% reads in their life.

But, in today's digital age, what qualifies as reading? Last week, I started to discuss Will Richardson's blog about online reading skills. Since then, I've explored a few more articles on the topic. In the September 19, 2008 issue of the Chronicle Review, an article titled Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind implores teachers to find a balance between fast-paced internet reading and slower, hard-copy reading.

By discussing a Neilson study on eye movement when reading online, they argue that digital texts receive less attention from the reader.
"…Teenagers skip through the Web even faster than adults do, but with a lower success rate for completing tasks online (55 percent compared to 66 percent). Nielsen writes: 'Teens have a short attention span and want to be stimulated. That's also why they leave sites that are difficult to figure out.' For them, the Web isn't a place for reading and study and knowledge. It spells the opposite."
Because of these learned behaviors, they argue that some classes need to remain unplugged from the digital world, focused on Victorian novels, and pencil-paper tasks.
"It is about the reading styles they employ [online]. They race across the surface, dicing language and ideas into bullets and graphics, seeking what they already want and shunning the rest. They convert history, philosophy, literature, civics, and fine art into information, material to retrieve and pass along."

While I agree with the underlining concept of maintaining a healthy balance, the facts the article uses to persuade me actually has my mind racing in a different direction. If, according to ETS results published in a NY Times article, only 39% of college freshmen reach proficiency in "core functional levels of Internet literacy" on the iSkills test, then what reading strategies do we need to be teaching our students so they can efficiently find, evaluate, synthesize, and respond to online content?

As I watch my students attempt to gather information online each year, I notice repeated behaviors. Google a few keywords, click on the first few links, check for interesting pictures, video, or sound files (not to mention colorful backgrounds and big text), and within ten minutes claim that there is nothing on the Internet about your topic. To me, this is just unacceptable--not because the kids aren't trying (I think they are!), but because I haven't given them the skills to be successful.

In the Chronicle article, they mention "racing across the surface," hunting for "bullets and images," and "shunning the rest of the text." I get frustrated with my students when they do this, but, honestly, that's what I do myself. When reading my blogroll, I skim and scan, quickly deleting posts that don't capture my interest. With so much quality content online, isn't that a reasonable strategy as a reader? I think my problem has been that I don't explicitly model my online strategies in think-alouds like I do with offline reading.

In addition to committing to use more teacher modeling, I hunted around the web for a good online highlighting tool. Awesome Highlighter is not bad, but on a few types of websites it does not work. Additionally, students have to keep their own list of URL addresses that are created when they highlight. With the organizational skills of my 5th graders, this is asking a lot. Diigo is a better choice, since it allows for highlighting and inline commenting, but it might be a little too complex for some of my students. Flowgrams seem to be my best option. All the websites for one research topic are stored in one convenient location. Students can record audio comments, highlight text, add typed notes, and embed their final compilation on our class website. They can share and discuss sources with their teams. I'd much rather have them create a Flowgram than become copy-and-paste kids, don't you?