The Science of Reading Part 13: Using Graphic Organizers to Support Comprehension
Graphic organizers are powerful tools that can be used by every teacher, no matter their subject area. In The Science of Reading: Using Graphic Organizers to Support Comprehension, Joan Sedita, founder and author of professional development routines for Keys to Literacy, explores the power of graphic organizers in supporting reading comprehension for all students. Ms. Sedita explains what the research says about the use of graphic organizers and shares a variety of examples to illustrate how educators can best utilize these tools in their classrooms. She focuses on two types of graphic organizers and the underlying skills students must have in order to use them effectively.
Using Graphic Organizers to Support Comprehension is the thirteenth course in the 15.5-hour Science of Reading learning path. It was recorded on October 7, 2019 at the Faulkner County Library in Conway, Arkansas. This series was developed to help Arkansas educators meet the requirements in the Right to Read Act (Act 1063 of 2017).
The Science of Reading Part 14: Supporting Critical Thinking Through Question Generation
Students generating questions about what they’re reading and learning is a powerful way to improve comprehension.
In The Science of Reading: Supporting Critical Thinking Through Question Generation, Joan Sedita, founder and author of professional development routines for Keys to Literacy, explores how critical thinking and in turn reading comprehension can be supported by question generation. Ms. Sedita talks about the roles of both student- and teacher-generated questions.
Supporting Critical Thinking Through Question Generation is the final course in the 15.5-hour Science of Reading learning path. It was recorded on October 7, 2019 at the Faulkner County Library in Conway, Arkansas. This series was developed to help Arkansas educators meet the requirements in the Right to Read Act (Act 1063 of 2017).
Coaching Self-Expression: Go In, Poet
Arkansas 2019 Teacher of the Year Stacey McAdoo illustrates her relationship-based approach to nurturing self-expression in her students. This master teacher describes her underlying philosophy behind her guidance of The Writeous, a youth performance poetry collective founded by her and her husband, teacher Leron McAdoo. In these short mini-lessons, viewers watch Ms. McAdoo work intensively with individual students as she coaches them through revision of their work. This close-up view shines a light on how this master teacher creates a safe environment for creative risk-taking through the intentional actions of listening, affirming, mirroring, and provoking student reflection and self-assessment (LAMP). Ms. McAdoo views the writing of poetry as a communal art, and she advocates for teachers to collaborate with others as they support their students. While Ms. McAdoo primarily guides high school students in the artistic genre of spoken-word poetry, her feedback techniques are applicable to the teaching of the writing process as well as to coaching students in general.
Literacy Across the Content Areas in Middle Grades
Literacy development is not only for English class; it can be developed through school-wide work as well as work in any content area classroom. Dr. Dru Tomlin, Director of Middle Level Services with the Association of Middle Level Education, describes a wide variety of activities that are designed both to build literacy and to meet the needs of middle level learners. Dr. Tomlin explains how these activities can be adapted for use in different content areas, and he provides several examples of ways to check student understanding.
This course was recorded at the Arkansas Association of Middle Level Education Conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 4, 2016.
Literacy Connections
Students must make connections with what they read in order to learn and grow as learners. In this course, Fort Smith Southside High School teacher Oretha Ferguson shares several activities proven to motivate students to read outside of class and make connections within texts, between texts, and with texts and their own world. She also explains how these activities might be used in content areas other than language arts.
This course was recorded at the Arkansas Association of Middle Level Education Conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 4, 2016.
Conversations in Literature: Responding as Readers
In this workshop, you will meet the readers in this workshop series - including Dr. Langer - through their varied literary backgrounds. Dr. Langer also introduces the major concepts of her work in understanding the processes through which effective readers interact with literary texts.
Conversations in Literature: Envisioning
Dr. Judith Langer presents a clear explanation of the four vantage points that effective readers take as they work to build their own envisionments and the research process through which she identified them. Stances, or vantage points, include being outside and stepping into an envisionment, being and moving through an envisionment, stepping out and rethinking what one knows, and stepping out and objectifying the experience.
Dr. Langer explains how each stance contributes to a constantly-evolving understanding of the text that is the hallmark of a successful reading experience. The community of readers demonstrates these stances as they discuss Gary Soto's poem Oranges.
Conversations in Literature: Stepping In
In this workshop program, you will join readers who are outside of the text and stepping into it. While looking at James Dickey's The Lifeguard and Frank O'Connor's First Confession, the group talks about the impressions, intuitions, and hunches that help them gather information as they first start to read. They also talk through sticking points when the information they encounter in the text breaks apart their envisionments, and demonstrate how they work to rebuild them, sometimes with the help of other readers.
Conversations in Literature: Moving Through
When readers are in and moving through a text, they interact very closely with the text, actually living within the world of its words. During this workshop, you will watch as readers weave a rich envisionment within the text, calling on all they have known or experienced before. The group works with two texts, Cathy Song's poem Lost Sister and Stephen Dixon's short story All Gone, building on their initial impressions to examine motives, feelings, causes, interrelationships, and interactions as they create a more complete envisionment of these texts.
Dr. Langer's comments during this workshop point to the diverse paths readers follow when they stand in this relationship to a text, and explain why their actions are an important part of the effective reader's arsenal.
Conversations in Literature: Rethinking
The community of readers demonstrates another important vantage point that competent readers adopt: stepping outside the text and using what they find there to rethink their lives. You will observe them as they discuss Shakespeare's Hamlet, looking at the various parts of the text that talk about familial relationships, and learn about the places in their lives where these themes resonate and the ways it has made them rethink what they have known, said, or did.
Dr. Langer stresses that, while not all texts speak explicitly to readers in this way, seeking to find the places where their life intersects with the lessons of literature is important for all readers.