I am getting closer with refining where I want to go with my Driving Question, but I can't stop thinking about the ultimate goal, that capstone. I have some visions of how I want it to look, but the biggest thing is I want it to useful for daily practice. Currently my driving question is: What is the impact of focused language instruction when leveraging the feedback of a comprehension tool?
The backstory to that is many of the ELL students in are district are not progressing with AMAO 1, growth of more than one level each year on the CELDT. Compounded by the fact that at the end of 2nd grade they are scoring below grade-level on the RI (Reading Inventory). These are the students that fall further and further behind. How can we support them with their language acquisition, give them the tools to access more complex texts, and keep them moving forward. I think of a third grade team of teachers I was working with a few weeks back. They have a majority of their class reading at 1st grade/2nd grade level. When they looked at the Reading claim and targets for third grade students, their first response was this will "crush" these students. Immediately I thought, if we don't do it now, then when? These students are capable of accessing complex text, we can use scaffolds to support them in accessing and understanding the structure and ideas. It almost feels urgent, if we don't begin now then these students will fall further and further behind. Tim Shanahan has debunked much of the research behind teaching students at their "instructional level", in fact he has reams of research that states students are stimulated when reading at the "frustration level". Students like a challenge, and well, "dumbing down the text" isn't doing us any favors. So with all that said, what further action research can I do to support this idea. The goal of this program is Innovative Learning..."innovative" can look very different, it doesn't have to be just technology. That said, our education system needs to CHANGE, and in thinking of the TPAC an SAMR model, I want to push my practice into the areas of augmentation and modification. I add this as fuel to my burning capstone fire. How to bring in technology in a meaningful way? I began to look at how I might support these students with language and feedback as they attempt to negotiate the complexity of language in reading? Hattie's work comes to mind, which focused me on the idea of multi-tiered feedback. I am currently reading for our book study, Visible Learning for Literacy, by Fisher, Frey and Hattie. Think Literacy Gurus meet Meta-Researcher, a match made in this Literacy fanatic's heaven. Effect site for feedback 0.75. The feedback we give students falls into four levels: Feedback about the task, feedback about the process, self-regulatory feedback, feedback about self. When thinking about my action research, I am really focused on the Feedback about the process (strategies that are needed to perform the task), and Self-Regulatory Feedback (self-monitoring, directing the processes and tasks). How might I leverage a technology tool to support in guiding students with this feedback? That is my current quest. I have some strong ideas, but working through the best tools to do this. This quote from Visual Learning for Literacy brings all these musings together for me. "Learners who are resilient can come back from failures and incorporate challenges into their growing sense of who they are." (p. 104). Going back to the third grade team of teachers I am working with, I think about how important it is to provide students the levels of feedback that help guide them through these challenges.
4 Comments
Becky albertazzi
3/19/2017 03:08:36 pm
Great blog! I feel your pain. I love the idea of feedback. I have a math teacher friend who does not give grades on math homework, but writes feedback. Her hope is that students who want to improve, will read the feedback and figure out why they missed the problem and how to improve. I can imagine that this would take more time than just marking the answers wrong. I also know the only time I felt like I was a really effective writing teacher was when I did one-on-one conferences about each piece of writing. The student read the writing aloud to me, and we discussed what could be improved. It was hard. It was time-consuming, but it worked. How could that feedback process be aided by technology with out loosing the personal feel? Could a google form with rubrics be helpful? Let me know when you discover it...I want to use it.
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Jennifer Wade
3/19/2017 06:32:00 pm
I'll start by saying that I always appreciate your graphics that really sum up what you are saying and feeling in a very Baggio-esque manner. I am not finding it easy to add in pictures and graphics which I imagine is a pretty basic function, yet still beyond my capabilities, or should I say, patience level.
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3/20/2017 06:16:57 pm
So, I hear your pain regarding your EL's. I have three classes that I teach with them and 2 of them are really long term EL's that are kinda stuck in their progress. In my quest to find tools that help them continue to feel like they are doing something I have found some things that I will share. I am not sure what curriculum you are using with your students but I honestly try to use my assigned curriculum but I find that I use a lot of supplemental things with it. Every week I assign them a newsela article and with the help of Google (there is a translate doc option) I will pick the grade I want (I only translate for my lowest levels) and they will have to fill out a quiz (I usually make it in Google Forms) and I want them to do a get the gist activitiy with each section and also the entire document. I then have them write a paragraph usally about the main idea of the text ( our school is really pushing the use of informational text). I do this with a journal 2-3 days a week. And then sometimes I throw in working on Quill.org and Noredink.com and both of those sites give instant feedback to how they are doing with their grammar. Another tool is Doctopus and Goobric
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6/12/2017 12:07:17 am
Karly,
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