Disciplinary Literacy, Pt 2 - Teacher as model

PT 2 - MODELING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY FOR STUDENTS (TEACHER “THINK ALOUD”)

Happy Tues-Thursday! The plan was to have this strategy out last Thursday – but it was college move-in week in our household. If you’ve done that in your family, you have a good idea of what last week looked and sounded like for us. So I’m coming to you on this Tuesday, having moved my youngest into a new college in a new state. To those of you sending your babies off to college, I send you all the good thoughts. I am right there with you!

Another strategy will come out on Thursday this week as well. For now, let’s jump in and look at where we’ve been and where we’re going to develop strong Disciplinary Literacy in our classrooms.

Last time, we grounded ourselves in the understanding that this is going beyond general literacy strategy usage. We’re beginning to hone in on and help our students see the specialized literacy practices for looking at and thinking about and reading and writing and speaking and listening about our discipline and our content.

If you missed our last post or need a refresher about the “What _______ Do” anchor charts and how we co-create as a community as we introduce students to a text indicative of what they’ll encounter in the particular discipline we’re teaching, then check that post out. You’ll love the strategy. It’s invaluable for practical and relational purposes.

MODELING

We definitely want to co-create in our learning communities - and we also want to offer the expertise we as teachers bring to the content we are teaching our students. We know and we have mastered how to read and write and speak and listen and think - and so we become a powerful resource for our students. Sometimes this strategy of modeling is called a Teacher think aloud. If you do a search, you’ll find a lot of great resources and research behind the power of this strategy.

There are two approaches to the text we want to model for our students: Thinking and Annotating.

THINKING - TEACHER THINK ALOUD

Of course, these are the out-loud thoughts we will share with our students as we look at the text. We’ll show them, “How do you think like a _____?” This is accomplished by posing the questions out loud, stopping at certain points to pause and reflect and notice what’s going on in the text.

ANNOTATING - TALK TO THE TEXT (HOW DO YOU MARK A TEXT?)

We also want to model for our students how to annotate - how to use our note-taking, highlighting, Post-It notes (or other tools) to acknowledge and keep track of what’s going on in the piece we are reading.

Do you remember buying used books in college and finding highlighting from the previous owner? Sometimes it was clear the person who had the text before you might not have done as well as they could have. They may have highlighted everything in the book - or practically nothing. Either way, it was clear that, although they seemed to know the value of annotating, they didn’t have the skill or the know how to make it of great benefit to them.

LET’S WALK THROUGH IT…

We have to model both of those approaches well for our students. Over at Reading Apprenticeship they call this “talking to the text.” I really like that moniker for it thinking about the fact that we really are talking to that text.

So let’s look at this as if I'm in my English class and we’re doing a unit on poetry. I would select a particular poem. Poetry is a unique genre that's going to come up in my English class and I want my students to know and to think about the academic vocabulary and concepts in our classroom that we are going to utilize when approaching a text like this. As I do the teacher think aloud and some modeling for my students, I'm going to say something like, “Today we're going to look at the poem "Songs for the People". This is by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.”

As I’m saying this, I’m point each thing out and, when necessary, writing notes on the text, or putting Post-Its, or highlighting to help us keep track of what we are noting.

TEACHER NOTE

One thing I notice about this poet is that she lived between 1825 to 1911, so I already know going into this text that there could be concepts or words she uses that are unfamiliar to my students since language and culture change over time. I'm going to keep that in mind as I begin to approach this text.

We're only going to look at two of the stanzas from the text because we are simply laying groundwork for our students here - honing in, not completing an entire work.

I can say something like, “I notice there are four lines grouped together and then there's a break and four more lines. I know we call those stanzas when we are talking about poetry.” The students probably know this, but as I notice along with them, it refreshes their memories and reminds them to observe even the small details.

Then I read the first stanza out loud:

Let me make the songs for the people,

Songs for the old and young;

Songs to stir like a battle-cry

Wherever they are sung.

 Already in this stanza, I point out that she ended with people, young, battle-cry and sung. I'm noticing a pattern. She's rhyming the second and the fourth lines here.

I want to see if that continues, so I take a look at the second stanza:

Not for the clashing of sabres,

For carnage nor for strife;

But songs to thrill the hearts of men

With more abundant life.

These lines end with sabres, strife, men, life. Again, she's definitely got a pattern. If I continued reading the rest of the poem, I bet I would find the same pattern where the second and fourth lines rhyme.

I can go on to point out to my students the type of punctuation she uses at the end of each line and stanza. I can share my thoughts on that: “She's got commas at the end of the first lines, semicolons at the end of the second lines, and a period at the end of the fourth.” I will point out to the students that there's intentional use that she has made as a writer for doing that. 

What I'm doing here is I am taking my expertise as someone who has studied literature and poetry and has knowledge around that academic vocabulary and those academic concepts, and I'm bringing it to life for my students in my classroom. I can share it as observation and discovery. As they hear my observe and discover, they will be encouraged to do the same. I could even correct myself as I’m thinking out loud, then taking my verbalized thoughts back and rethinking. This gives them permission to formulate thoughts, admit if they were wronIg, and work to grasp hold of the content even more clearly.

HOW TO DO THIS IN YOUR CLASSROOM

When you consider doing this in your classroom, here are some tips and tools to use:

• CHOOSE a Text: Make sure that you choose a text that is indicative of what they will be looking at in your class. It could be the same one you created the anchor chart around from the last strategy, or it might be the next text you want your students to dive into independently, so you're going to model some of the thinking for them so they can move forward.

• IDENTIFY academic vocabulary and concepts that are important.

• THINK ALOUD/MODEL

• DEBRIEF with your students and ask: “What did you hear me saying and noticing? What connections did you make?” We do this because we want to begin to bring them into the conversation.

• CONNECT and add to our "What ______ Do" anchor chart.

  • In my classroom it’s our "What Readers Do" anchor chart. I can ask my students "Did you see or hear me using some of the strategies that we already had on there? Did you see me using strategies that we didn't have on there? What do we need to add?” I am still honoring what they're bringing, but also am beginning to show them how we actively read and write and speak and listen and think as experts in the content we are in.

I hope that if you go out and try this strategy that you will come back and share your thoughts or if you already do this and have some insights that you can share with the rest of us we'd love to hear it.

Come visit me on Facebook! I have a new Facebook page for TSB Education Partners. I’d love it if you’d stop by and share in our community. (Click the hyperlink, or search for us on Facebook: TSB Education Partners LLC)

I hope that your school year is off to an amazing start! Let’s continue this journey of exploring disciplinary literacy together. Have a fantastic week!