Author: Arpan Chokshi

A High School Social Studies Teacher and Technology Coach

Top 10 Takeaways from ICE 2018

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ 2 Comments

The national ICE Conference (February 26-28, 2018) was an incredible opportunity learn from incredible teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators from around the U.S. Although the focus was on educational technology I was especially interested in sessions that addressed practical considerations for pedagogy.

Here are my Top 10 Takeaways from ICE 2018:

1. Teach Digital Literacy by Modeling how to See, Think, Wonder and Create

Kristin Ziemeke (@kristin_ziemeke) made a compelling case for the evolution of literacy  (just think of all the different media you consumed during the past week!) Then, she offered a few ideas on how to improve digital literacy instruction.

First, we must continue to improve students’ underlying literacy skills and love for reading by offering:

  • Choice: Students can often read a text that is to 2 grade levels higher than their current reading level when they get to choose the text they read.
  • Volume: Provide many opportunities to read; libraries are more important than ever in this digital age.
  • Authentic Response: Encourage students to respond to reading in authentic ways– informal discussions, journals, etc.

Second, while teaching digital literacy can seem daunting, we can model what we already do as expert readers for our students: see, think, and wonder. For example, we could project an image like the one below and model for students how we observe various details, then show what those details make us think about, and finally share the questions that arise in our minds.

SOURCE: Filip Warwick

Here are some resources to help teachers create tech (text) sets for your curriculum:

Finally, Kristin argued that students need to spend more time creating media, not just consuming it. Currently, approximately 65% of the time teens are using digital technology they consume content but spend only 3% of their time creating it.

We should strive to design more assignments that allow students to create infographics, videos, blog posts, etc. The process of changing ideas from text to visual (or vice versa) leads to increased activity in both halves of the brain and deeper learning.

 2. You Build or Break a Culture During Every Interaction

Joe Sanfelippo (@Joe_Sanfelippo ) reminded us that every interaction, whether it’s with a student, colleague or parent can build or break a school’s culture. It doesn’t take long! In 30 seconds we can promote great work of a colleague, thank someone, get to know a student, and more. Make every interaction count!

 3. Reassess your Gradebook

Joy Kirr (@joykirr) pushed us to re-examine what, how, and why we grade in our classroom. A large body of evidence shows that feedback without a grade leads to the largest student growth.

There’s no one right way to do grades; but, we shouldn’t continue grading the way we’ve always done it because…that’s how it’s always been done. We have to stop being the monkey trying to grade everything and push students across the finish line (end of the quarter, semester, etc.):

The activity below can help re-examine our views on grading. For additional resources on feedback & grading, check out her impressive collection in her livebinder.

Sort the terms on the right into the categories on the left:

 What needs to be included in the gradebook?

Extra Credit

Formative Assessment

Homework

Late Work Penalty

Points

Redos/Revisions

Reflection

Rubrics

Standards

Summative Assessment

0s for Missing Work

4. The 3 Keys to Successful PD: Learning, Experimenting and Reflecting

Kristi Sutter (@kristi_sutter) and her team at The Feast showed why all professional development must include time for teachers to experiment in a supported environment and, most importantly, reflect on what they learned so new tools & practices are integrated thoughtfully.

If you’re bold enough, practice radical transparency during extended professional development by asking participants to complete a feedback form multiple times. Then, read the feedback out loud and share what changes you will make as a result of their feedback.

5a. Affluent Students Need Grit  

Dr. Kenneth Hoover argued that we’re mistaken if we believe the main purpose of teaching “grit” is to motivate students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Students from less fortunate families often have had to learn how to overcome struggles their entire life while affluent students have experienced few major obstacles in life. Therefore, when affluent students face truly challenging academic curriculum they often don’t know what to do. Affluent students probably need to learn how to be gritty more than their less privileged peers.

giphy

For their entire lives many affluent students have had parents trying to brush away any obstacles along their path like curlers during the Olympics. It’s difficult for parents to let their son or daughter struggle because we always want to give our children more than what we had growing up. However, if we want to raise a resilient generation we must let them face hardships and persist.

5b) Practice should be Interwoven, Varied and Distributed

Using the above chart, Dr. Hoover also argued that we need to quiz/assess students more often; not for a grade but to improve long-term retention. True mastery is when students can apply a concept or skill to unfamiliar contexts. To prepare for this they must have varied and interwoven practice.

For example, hitters who just practice hitting curveballs do worse then those that focus on curve balls but mix in a variety of pitches during practice—that’s what they’ll see in a game!

Book Suggestions: Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job and Make it Stick

6. Stop Assigning Fake Work

Kristine Ziemke (@KristinZiemke) challenged us to stop assigning “fake work” and strive to create opportunities for real work that is authentic, important, and relevant. When was the last time you made a diorama? Elementary school?

Have your students do work they will actually do outside of school. We no longer have to wait for the annual science fair to give students a broader audience; use technology to create authentic audiences and address real challenges that are relevant to students.

7. Address Teachers’ Mindsets before you deliver Professional Development

Cindy Crannell (@ccrannell) and Annmarie Clasky (@AClasky) shared why it’s important to introduce the concept of a growth mindset before presenting a new tool or strategy during PD. Too often teachers believe that learning how to use new technology is too hard; they’ll never get it, etc.

Teaching the growth mindset can help teachers  self-monitor when they slip into the fixed mindset and try to move back into a growth mindset. This video can help introduce the concept of a growth mindset:

 

8. 11 Protocols for Creating a Culture of Questioning in your School

Kim Darche (@kimdarche) gave powerful yet practical suggestions for creating a questioning culture among students and adults in your building. While project based learning, genius hour, design thinking, etc are important trends in education,  a critical prerequisite to any of them being successful is students’ ability to ask powerful questions. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening in most classrooms.

Research shows that on average teachers ask 200-300 questions/day while students ask only 2 questions/day. In an age where Alexa, Siri & Google are available at our fingertips there’s a greater need for problem finders than problem solvers.

11 tips for creating a culture of questioning:

    1. Only Questions Allowed: Get brains primed for questioning by asking pairs of students to have a conversation but only using questions. Once someone makes a statement instead of a question, they “lose” and rotate to a new partner.
    2. Question Formulation Technique (@rightquestion). To learn more check out A More Beautiful Question and Make Just One Change
    3. Dice Game: Post a topic for students (e.g. theme in a book, imperialism, climate change, right triangle, etc.). Then, in pairs or small groups students take turns rolling a dice. Based on the number they roll they have to:
      • 1-Define it
      • 2-Support it
      • 3-Flip it
      • 4-What is your stake in the ground about it?
      • 5-Innovate it
      • 6-Question it
    4. Rule of 5 (Inspired by Toyota): Ask Why 5 Times in a Row
      • Start with any problem (e.g. There isn’t enough social & emotional support for students)
        • Why isn’t there support? Lack of Resources
        • Why aren’t there resources? They misallocate resources.
        • Why aren’t priorities aligned with resources? The School Board doesn’t understand the problem.
        • Why doesn’t the school board understand the problem? They don’t spend enough time in classrooms.
      • These series of questions helps us get to the root cause of a problem.
    5. Notecard: Write a problem on a notecard and ask someone else to solve it, this will give you valuable new perspectives. Too often we’re biased and don’t even realize it.
    6. Universal Questions: Commit to memory and make a poster with these questions:
      • How might we….
      • What if….
      • What else…
      • Yes and…
    7. Ask What, Not Why
      • Asking someone ‘Why’ makes them defensive, ask ‘What’ instead
      • E.g. Why didn’t you pay the bill? Makes us defensive. Instead ask “What happened to the bills this month?”
    8. Point of View:
      • Present an issue then ask students to list 5-20 characters who might be involved in the situation and discuss what each of them would do. For example, for bullying students might list parents, teachers, counselors, school bus drivers, etc.
    9. Shrug More Often: Create a habit where students and teachers seek answers to questions on their own. Don’t answer everything for them!
    10. Follow every statement with a question: Help colleagues & students find the root cause of an issue by insisting that all statements be followed by a question (Source: Action Learning in Action). Without such a protocol it would be easy for discussions to devolve into a pity party. Here’s an example of the protocol:
      • Statement: We have a large issue with physical aggression at our school.
      • Q: How large of an issue is it?
      • A: It happens every week.
      • Q: Is it the same group of students?
      • A: Yes …
      • Q: Why is it those group of students?
    11. Use Deborah Meier’s Habits of Mind: Create a poster with these statements for your classroom —they can be used in nearly every subject area. Deborah Meir created an entire school centered on these 5 questions!
      • Evidence: How do you know what’s true or false?
      • Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes?
      • Connections: Have we seen this before?
      • Conjecture: What if it were different?
      • Relevance: Why does this matter?

9. Portfolios Facilitate Student Ownership, Continuous Feedback and Learning Without Grades

Although I wasn’t able to attend their session, the materials Ana Thompson (@AnaAnamta15 ) & Lisa Berghoff (@LisaBerghoff ) shared demonstrated how portfolios create opportunities for frequent feedback and student ownership of learning—especially for ELs!

10. Students can apply Design Thinking in 12 (Fairly Easy) Steps

Sarah Thomas (@sarahdateechur) used her final project from the Google Innovator Academy to show how students can use design thinking to pursue their passions. She also shared the site Rock Your World (@rockyourworld70) which helps students address true global problems like human rights, discrimination, education, homelessness, human trafficking, food insecurity, women’s rights, and access to water.

Sarah has created a Google Form that guides students through the design process which creates a slick Google Doc to help students prototype & set intermediate deadlines.

Design Thinking Steps

Step One: Define the Problem

What is your big idea?
Step Two: Brainstorm Possible Solutions

What can you create or make to address the need identified in Step One?
Step Three: Research Ideas/Explore Possibilities

Do a search, or draw upon your background knowledge to answer the following questions: What similar projects may be out there? How have they addressed this need? Where is there room for improvement?
Step Four: Specify Constraints

What obstacles may be in your way to achieving your goal?
Step Five: Consider Alternatives

How can you overcome these obstacles? Figure out as many possibilities as you can.
Step Six: Select an Approach

Given the information from the first steps, which approach would be the best, and why?
Step Seven: Develop Written Proposal

Come up with a brief plan, highlighting action steps that you plan to use.

(Due: ___________________)
Step Eight: Make Model/Prototype

Try your idea on a small scale.

(Due: ___________________)
Step Nine: Test & Evaluate

Run your prototype! What worked well/what didn’t?

(Due: ___________________)
Step Ten: Refine/Improve

Figure out how you can tweak your model or idea to make it work.

(Due: ___________________)
Step Eleven: Create and Implement Model/Project

Go for the gold!

(Due: ___________________)
Step Twelve: Communicate Results

Use social media to speak about your experiences, and generate more buzz. This guide from The Sullivan Foundation gives some good advice, especially if you are involving students.
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6 Tips for Facilitating Discussions on Race with Predominantly White Students

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ Leave a comment

Teachers at predominantly white schools, especially those in conservative communities, may be reluctant to discuss race in the classroom. However, it is precisely in these communities that conversations about how race, ethnicity, and other social identities are critical for broadening students worldview.

Here are some ideas on how to have these conversations based on a town hall that a group of teachers and I helped organize at my school in an affluent, predominantly white public school in the suburbs of Chicago.

During the town hall we first asked a panel of diverse students share an experience that exemplified their experience with race or ethnicity in our school community. Then, we asked these students to join teachers who had signed up to attend the town hall to help facilitate discussions with their students.

A special thanks to Robin Vannoy, Robyn Corelitz, Billson Rasavongxay, Noah Lawrence, Cassandra Richardson and Deborah Powell for their ideas and support!

1. Prepare a Framework 

Ask student facilitators and teachers to carefully read articles on race along and strategies for leading difficult conversations from Teaching Tolerance, Harvard Graduate School of Education: Usable Knowledge, and Anti-Defamation League.

2. Ask Students to Complete an Anonymous Survey

Statement

Agree

Disagree
1. I am a student at Hinsdale Central High School.

✓
2. I can turn on the television and see people of my race/ethnicity widely represented.
3.I can be sure that the curriculum in my classes celebrates the contributions of my race.
4. I can criticize our government without being seen as a cultural outsider.
5. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race/ethnicity.
6. I can easily find groups of friends who understand my cultural/ethnic background.
7. I feel I can be myself in class by sharing my views without worrying about being seen by my peers as an outsider.
8. I can easily find teachers and other staff members who are of my cultural/ethnic background.

SOURCE: National Seed Project

3. Discuss why race matters

cover_article_2005_en_US
Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools

“Our racial history is part of our present, it is in our structures…in the ways schools are organized, in how neighborhoods are laid out, in the composition of our family trees, in the unconscious stereotypes that get primed when we mentally sort people along racial lines. We walk around with it, and while it is never the only dynamic in the room, it matters.”

4. Establish Ground Rules

  1. Assume good intentions. Everyone is in the room because they desire to learn from one another.
  2. Speak from your own experience instead of generalizing (“I” instead of “they,” “we,” and “you”).
  3. Respectfully challenge one another by asking questions, but avoid personal attacks — focus on ideas.
  4. Actively speak & listen — community growth depends on expressing & listening to every voice. The goal is not to agree but to gain a deeper understanding.
  5. Be conscious of body language and nonverbal responses — they can be as disrespectful as words.

SOURCE: EdChange & University of Missouri

5. Suggest Questions but let Students Choose 

  1. Why is it challenging to have conversations about race & diversity?
  2. To what extent are your cultures & traditions represented in popular culture & at Hinsdale Central?
  3. In what ways do you have advantages or disadvantages that you did not earn?
  4. Why might some students remain silent in order to feel safe with peers, in classrooms, or at school?
  5. How can we help create a community that allows all students to be themselves & share their voice?

6. Scaffold Difficult Conversations

white-final
What Does it Mean to be White?
  1. I’m nervous/scared/uncomfortable to say this… and/but…
  2. From my experience/perspective as (identity)…
  3. It feels risky to say this and/but…
  4. I just felt something shift in the group. I’m wondering if anyone else did.
  5. I have always heard / thought that…. What are your thoughts on that?
  6. I have a different perspective because…

Developed by Anika Nailah & Robin DiAngelo, 2013

Stay Silent on the 1st Day of School: Create a Student-Centered Classroom

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ Leave a comment

With the start of the new year I’ve committed to becoming a more reflective teacher by blogging at least once a month. Here’s my first post of the year which coincided with the start of a new semester at my high school.

NOTE: I’m well aware that this activity might not work for teachers of all grade levels or settings but I wanted to share my experience in case it is useful to you.

***

Whether you’ve long admired John Dewey or you’re trying to live up to Danielson’s definition of a highly effective teacher, many teachers, myself included, are working to build a more student-centered class. Here is one way you can start the journey from the moment your students walk into your class on the first day of school.

Be prepared to push yourself and your students out of their comfort zones by avoiding all the things we normally do at the beginning of the semester: Don’t stand in front of the class, Don’t review rules, Don’t lead the class through a series of activities.

In fact, do nothing.

Instead, let students lead the class, make a plan and guide their classmates. Set the tone from the very first day that students will be at the center of the classroom experience.

Before students walk into class have the following instructions projected on the screen:

Welcome to Mr. Chokshi’s class!

I’m conducting a social experiment to see what students can do on their own.

  1. Please take your Chromebook according to the list on top of the cart and your seat according to the chart at the front of the room.
  2. By the end of period you should:
    1. Know the names and a unique fact of everyone in your group
    2. Create ONE class Google Slides presentation introducing your partner:
      1. One thing your partner is proud of (e.g. skill, character trait, etc.)
      2. A major challenge they have overcome (e.g. family, socially, academically, etc.)
      3. Greatest academic strength
      4. Greatest academic challenge
    3. Present your partner to the class
    4. Return your chromebook to the correct location
  3. If time remains, learn the names & unique fact about another group. You will be expected to know everyone’s name and something about them by the end of the week!

Then, as students file in, greet them but give no instructions. When the bell rings to mark the start of class, say nothing. I find it helpful to take a seat on the side of room so they know you won’t be guiding them.

While students struggle with finding their seat & Chromebooks, creating a shared presentation, and figuring out how to connect their computer to the projector it’s absolutely critical that you remain silent. Not a word. If your students know you’ll swoop in and save them whenever they face a challenge they won’t become accustomed to seeing their peers as their first resource.

Other than creating the norm for student centered learning, such an approach helps you learn within the first moments of the school year which students enjoy leading the class and which students prefer to play a more supportive role.

Doing this activity on the first day of school does require a little more prep work such as having a roster and seating chart prepared in advance; however, most teachers have these ready before the first day of school anyways. The most difficult preparation is mental: realizing that we’re not the most important person in room and that the class can function without us leading them.

Investing time to create a student centered class pays dividends throughout the year as students follow instructions with minimal guidance from you, ask their classmates for help first and, above all, direct their own learning.

10 ways to adjust instruction based on formative assessment data

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ 2 Comments

SOURCE: ASCD 

 

 

You’ve collected exit slips, spot checked students’ homework, skimmed their Google Doc, seen the results from a Google Form,  Pear Deck, Formative or Socrative. What do I do next?

In this era of student centered-learning and data informed instruction we know we should be formatively assessing our students frequently. However, what should we do after we administer the formative assessment?

What do I do with that data? 

Here are 10 easy to implement strategies to help you make changes to your instruction and meet your students where they are at:

1.Plan branch activities for students to do at the beginning, middle or after class: if you feel comfortable with X then you should do Y, if you’re struggling with X then you should do Z.

2. Create a resource area on your website or in your classroom where students can review key topics & skills (preferably organized by objective) so students can easily review concepts they’re struggling with.

3. Have students discuss & defend their answers with partners & groups before presenting them to the class. This leverages peer feedback in a low stakes environment before creating opportunities for students to learn from each others’ mistakes while presenting to the class.

4. Bunch related lessons together and turn them into a project so students have a menu of activities they complete at their own pace while you help students individually or in groups.

5. Post answer keys around the room and write the next steps students should take if they get the answer wrong or right.

6. Allow students to self-select groups based on which skill/concept they need to review the most. Create station rotations see Caitlin Tucker’s resources here.

7. Solicit the help of their resource/study hall teachers. Email them review activities/ links to help students review concepts & skills they’re struggling with before a quiz/test.

8. While helping students who need extra review, have other students complete quick but complex challenges that ask students to think strategically and apply what they learned to real world problems. Extension activities don’t always have to mean doing a lot more work (for the student or the teacher!)

SOURCE: We are Teachers

9. Ask a student or small group of students to come in before/after school to get 1-on-1 help. Often, helping a student for 5-10 minutes outside of class is more effective than trying to help 30 students for an entire class period.

10. Prioritize objectives, if all students won’t be able to reach a level of mastery for every single objective in the same amount of time, which are most critical for students’ success in future lessons, units & courses? Plan subsequent lessons & units to continue to reinforce those critical objectives. You can’t do it all in one day!

 

Teacher’s Sanity: Late Work, Re-Takes, Pacing

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ 2 Comments

Progressive teachers for decades (perhaps centuries!) have long advocated for deemphasizing grades, developing various methods for re-learning concepts & skills, and providing students multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning.

These  ideas have found a renaissance of sorts with the the recent movement towards standards based grading, mastery learning, competency based learning, and allowing students to submit assignments late without penalty.

I am an advocate for being flexible in how students learn and demonstrate their learning, but doing so has raised a number of practical and philosophical issues:

  • Personalized learning helps meet students where they are at. However, at what point does a class become too individualized? How do we balance personalization with shared experiences like whole-class discussions, debates, and simulations that are critical for building community?

 

  • Students learn at different rates. Can we expect all students to master the same number of objectives in a defined learning period? Should some objectives be required and others be for enrichment? What does it really mean to hold high expectations for all? Are some objectives (or some courses) more important than others? Who decides?

 

  • Define a learning period. A class period? A week? A unit? A semester? If we truly implement mastery learning, should teachers or students move on to the next lesson, unit or class even though some students haven’t mastered some of the objectives? What percentage of objectives or students? What level of evidence is required to demonstrate “mastery”? Should a student be asked to stay in a course until they demonstrate mastery of the required objectives even if stretches into the summer or next school year? Should all students be required to stay in a course for a full term even if they demonstrate mastery of the required objectives sooner?

 

  • Mastery learning & teachers’ sanity. How do teachers manage providing multiple opportunities for assessments to different students at different times? Should teachers have firm deadlines after which they will no longer will accept work or re-takes? Do schools’ grading policies push them to do so? To what degree is it the teacher’s responsibility to ensure all students master required objectives? To what degree is it the students’ responsibility?

These are some of the questions I’m grappling with as I try to emphasize feedback & mastery instead of learning for a grade in the courses I teach and with teachers I coach. I look forward to reading about, thinking about and discussing these questions further and share my reflections with you.

8 Takeaways: Global Axis Summit 2017

~ Arpan Chokshi

 

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend and present at the Global Teachers Institute Axis Summit. The summit was focused on education in South Africa but teachers from all over Africa and America attended. Here ere are some of my key takeaways from the summit:

  1. Dawn Oler: Personal Connection & Reflection are vital. Use a personal Venn diagram to create relationships with students by finding what you and your students have in common. At the beginning of the school year share your life story and have students complete the diagram to see what they have in common and explain what’s unique to them. Also, have students monitor their own progress towards mastering unit objectives. This process is key to empowering students to own their learning.

2. Amanda Burton & Linda Korbus: Expect, inspect & respect mistakes. Create a class culture where mistakes are celebrated and become a regular part of the learning process. The metacognitive process of evaluating your own learning & mistakes is vital to deeper insights.

3. Baba Bantu: Decolonize our minds. Critically examine how Eurocentric narratives & institutions have formed over time. Actively seek counter-narratives and passionately immerse ourselves in cultural practices (languages, traditions, etc.) even if they are not considered “mainstream” or “normal.” Encourage our students to explore and celebrate their own cultures and develop pride for their identities.

4. John Gilmore: Set personal & professional goals every year. Our personal & professional lives are intertwined . Share your goals with others to keep us accountable.

5. Pam Bylsma: Make your values transparent. Nearly every activity and critical decision made in school should include a conversation about values. For example, hallway monitors can recognize students’ citizenship when they pick up trash that’s not their own. Teachers can encourage citizenship by debating social issues in classes & clubs.

Administrators can keep values (such as those highlighted in the Character Counts program) front and center by referring to them when resolving conflicts between staff or making controversial decisions transparent to parents. The following ethical frameworks can help students, teachers and administrators make tough decisions:

  • Harm/Beneficence: Does it do less harm and more good than the alternatives?
  • Publicity: Would I want this choice published in the newspaper?
  • Reversibility: Would I think this a good choice if I were among those affected by it?
  • Code of Ethics: How does this choice relate to the ethical standards of my profession?

SOURCE: Computing Cases

6. Tania Ham: Understand Special Needs. Can you imagine trying to draw with your eyes closed? Describe a painting you had never seen before? These types of exercise can help educators experience the types of struggles some students with special needs experience. By better understanding the challenges students face, teachers can better differentiate & scaffold learning activities.

7. Sunarku Clifford Sykes: Connect & Network. Be a teacher warrior for your students—-the challenges many of them face motivate us to give it our all everyday. Nearly every problem we face has already been solved by someone, somewhere—connect & just ask!

8. Kurt Minnar: ring your passions into your classroom. Connect your passions outside of school to the subjects you teach in school. Even subtraction & dancing can go hand-in-hand. Keep students engaged and moving, then they won’t have time to get distracted.

 

3 Takeaways from the 2017 SIOP National Conference

~ Arpan Chokshi ~ Leave a comment

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend and present at the SIOP National Conference at the end of June. Although I gained a lot of ideas & strategies I can bring to my class, here are 3 things I hope to apply to my classroom this year:

1) Prepare students for a broader range of academic discourse

Most people believe there are two distinct modes of communication—how we talk with our friends & family and how we read and write at school & work. Conversational language (popularly known as BICS or Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) versus academic language are false dichotomies. In schools, workplaces, and daily life, there are a range of settings that require some use of academic language.

As teachers, we must be aware of the academic language demands on our students and strive to prepare them from a wide variety of language needs. We can do this by not just assigning strictly academic papers by writing, reading, and speaking for a wider variety of authentic contexts.

2) Give students significantly more meaningful interaction with new words

Dr. Deborah Short shared research that shows that students need 12-15 meaningful exposures to a word before it becomes a part of their lexicon.

How can we create word-rich schools?

  • Create word walls so students can easily review and use new words
  • Collaborate with teachers across subject areas to coordinate which words are taught and deliberately design assignments that elicit the use of new vocabulary
  • Teach root words! Teaching a short list of root words (and reviewing them throughout the year!) can help students understand thousands of words that are unfamiliar to them.

3) Read aloud to students more often

In the book In Defense of Read Aloud Prof. Steven Layne argues that teachers should skillfully use their diction, volume, pace, tone and pitch to bring texts to life. Reading aloud helps students see and hear the narrative and appreciate stories in ways silent reading never could. Reading out loud for students has clear benefits:

  • Students can access texts that contain vocabulary, text structures, etc, more than 2 grade levels above their current reading level
  • Fosters positive attitudes toward books & texts
  • Exercises students’ imagination
  • Builds background knowledge
  • Reinforces & improves reading skills
  • Provides a model of prosody and fluency
  • Broader interests in genres
  • Increases cultural sensitivity (if the appropriate texts are selected)
  • Improves listening skills