Total Literacy Techniques

Tools to Help Students Analyze Literature and Informational Texts

Pérsida Himmele, William Himmele

• Editorial: ASCD
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781416618966
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

This book provides 3rd through 12th grade teachers with more than 50 teacher-tested tools and techniques for helping their students read independently and critically. Authors Pérsida and William Himmele and National Board Certified teacher Keely Potter present literacy as an interconnected process that involves emotions, cognition, and multiple opportunities for developing higher-order thinking. With this in mind, they present tools for helping students develop academic language, become avid and analytical readers, engage with literature and informational texts, discuss texts, and write about texts in clear and cogent ways. Each chapter includes reflections from real teachers and students who share their own literary practices and journeys, bringing the practices to life.

With a focus on engaging students as thinkers, readers and writers, Total Literacy Techniques provides practical and effective ways for teachers to help students develop the critical reading habits that open up new ways of understanding and contributing to their worlds.

Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele are the authors of the best-selling ASCD book Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner.

---

Chapter 1

---

Growing Academic Language: Building Foundations for Academic Literacy

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on.

—Inkheart (Funke, 2003, p. 1470)

Have you ever been lost in a really good book? So lost you didn't even notice the type of vocabulary that the author used to draw you in, compelling you to read on well into the night, even though you should have gone to sleep long ago? Many students can't experience the pleasure of being lost in a good book because of the intense focus that is necessary for them to successfully decode their way through the text. The frustration of repeatedly stumbling as they make their way through text will preclude any enjoyment students experience from reading. And aside from the misfortune of missing out on a great literary experience, this phenomenon has linguistic and academic implications that can negatively affect students' academic growth throughout their entire academic careers.

In fact, without the prerequisite ingredients needed to get lost in a good book, we can forget all about the lofty goals we hope to accomplish through more rigorous and well-meaning standards that are related to students independently and critically reading grade-level literature and informational texts. Being able to do that still requires simple comprehension as a precursor to analysis and to using other higher-order thinking skills exercised in processing what was read.

To help many students make the crossover into deep reading will require a strategic scaffolding of students' interactions with text, student-to-student interactions around text, and pointed support in effectively writing about the text. It will also require our carefully setting the stage for students to critically interpret what they read within the text. If we're serious about providing all students with meaningful access to all aspects of the curricula, it's going to take a well-thought-out game plan that is informed by who the students are, where they are, and what they'll need. We won't be able to get there if we ignore the necessary scaffolds.

Navigating the Language of the Text

There is a profound difference between the language we speak and the language we read. The language in books is often perfectly crafted to convey precise meanings. It is typically more grammatically complex than spoken language. And for most nonillustrated chapter books, it is void of any supports that are not solely linguistic. There is also quite a difference between the language that students read in fictional stories and the type of language that they come across in informational text. Unlike stories, informational text doesn't reward readers with the promise of a good ending to conclude a narrative that has drawn them in or captivated them for several hours. According to 7th grader Selena, "I haven't been as successful with nonfiction, because there's nothing to enjoy in it." And unlike spoken words, the language in informational texts is not accompanied by hand gestures, facial expressions, and situational contexts that support the recipients' understandings. Informational text has a different structure to it. In most cases, all that readers have to hang their comprehension on is words put together in unfamiliar patterns and structures that deal with technical, usually unfamiliar, material that will often fail to pique students' interests.

According to Nagy and Townsend (2012), among the unique challenges that academic language presents are complexities like grammatical metaphor and informational density. Grammatical metaphor refers to phrases that are used in contexts that do not apply to their typical meanings—for example, the term boils down to. Adults familiar with this term may not even notice that it could be a source of confusion for students. Students, on the other hand, may be left wondering how anything they are reading has to do with boiling liquids.

Academic language also contains morphologically complex words and a high degree of technicality and abstractness. It packs all of these complexities into meaningfully dense sentences that are structurally complicated and that are unlike spoken language. For example, they contain more ideas using fewer words, requiring more focus and more rereadings on the part of the reader. The more difficult the words and the more complex the structures, the more experiences students will need with those words, and the more motivation they'll need to make sense of what they read. While 7th grader Hayley enjoys reading fiction, she finds nonfiction much more of a challenge. "When I read nonfiction, it doesn't always make that much sense. I don't really understand it. I don't understand how they word things." In preparing students to succeed with informational texts, we will need to address approaches to helping students understand the academic language that can so often cause them to stumble.

The Vocabulary Gap

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results point to a persistent and growing vocabulary gap by socioeconomic status as well as by race and ethnicity (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2012). School-like experiences at home divide children long before they actually enter school. We know that children who are exposed to more sophisticated school-like or academic caretaker speech end up having a larger school-like vocabulary (Hoff, 2003; Roberts & Kaiser, 2011; Weizman & Snow, 2001). This is true even when the increase in the amount of exposure to linguistically and cognitively complex speech is relatively small. Ruston and Schwanenflugel (2010) found that a twice-weekly 25-minute intervention of exposure to more sophisticated academic language was followed by an increase in the complexity of expressive vocabulary for students in the study's experimental group. We also know that students who have experienced read-alouds (stories read to children) have a larger academic vocabulary than their peers who have not participated in read-aloud experiences (Elley & Mangubhai, 1983; Meehan, 1999; Roberts, 2008; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002; Sharif, Ozuah, Dinkevich, & Muklvihill, 2003).

We acquire language through experiencing it in contexts we understand. Books provide that comprehensible linguistic experience. So, not surprisingly, there is strong evidence of a positive link between vocabulary development and the read-aloud experience. Subsequently, students with stronger early language development learn to read more quickly and develop better reading comprehension (Biemiller, 2003; Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Rodriguez & Tamis-LeMonda, 2011; Shany & Biemiller, 1995, 2010). In short, exposure to academic language in contextually rich environments, such as the read-aloud experience and sophisticated caretaker speech, has a direct influence on academic vocabulary growth, which in turn affects reading development.

It's Not Just About Language

If it were just a matter of some students having a different kind of speech or fancier academic speech than others, the growing vocabulary gap outlined in the NAEP study might not matter as much. But the impact of the vocabulary gap affects every aspect of schooling that is dependent upon reading ability. Additionally, timing matters. Stanovich's (1986) synthesis of reading studies points to evidence of a snowball effect that occurs both for those who develop literacy skills early and for those who develop them later. This phenomenon is often referred to as the "Matthew effect" in reference to a Bible story found in Matthew 25:14–30. The story contrasts a wise and a foolish investor. It concludes, "For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." In essence, the Matthew effect points to the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The Matthew effect has a substantial impact on all areas of literacy development and, subsequently, academic achievement. Those who develop literacy skills sooner continue to progress, while those who develop them later continue to fall behind (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001).

Allow us to focus on how the Matthew effect works when it comes to vocabulary growth. Isabel Beck, a well-known author and researcher, has written extensively about vocabulary development, but it's this personal account of her own experience with vocabulary that we feel best describes how children use selective attention to tune in and out of conversations that contain unfamiliar words, and the resulting snowball effect that vocabulary growth has on additional vocabulary growth.

I remember learning the word earnest; it was in the fourth grade and a character had been described as earnest… At about the time I learned about earnest, I began to notice that other people were catching on to it, too. I started noticing the word in newspapers and even overheard it in a conversation. It was amazing to me that I was somehow a part of a group of people across the country who had simultaneously discovered the word earnest! (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002, p. vii)

What we like about this personal account is the way it cleanly portrays how learning new words opens up new conversations to us. The conversations that Beck had heard prior to her learning the word earnest still existed. She had simply tuned them out. Our students do that, too. When they learn new words, that conversation then opens up other new words embedded within conversations that would have otherwise been tuned out. The context of these once inaccessible conversations is now clearer because of new known words, and additional words can be picked up based on their being embedded within that meaningful context. In other words, the more vocabulary children know, the more vocabulary they'll learn. The less vocabulary they know, the less vocabulary they'll learn. According to Biemiller, "unfortunately, slower learners do not ‘catch up.’ If we could avoid the growing vocabulary gap during kindergarten to grade two, and possibly fill in some words already missing at the beginning of kindergarten, reading comprehension, perhaps, could be improved" (2003, p. 328). Rather than taking lack of academic vocabulary development as a given and unchangeable circumstance, the classroom itself needs to be a place where all students are immersed in opportunities to soak in comprehensible academic language in ways that can help bridge that vocabulary gap. In other words, academic language development needs to be an academic priority in schools for students of all ages.

The Blah Words

Just how much of an impact does the lack of academic language have on a student's comprehension of informational texts? When we asked a particularly well-read 8th grader what she found confusing about informational text, she guided us to this chapter in her history book, which she indicated was one example of the many that left her with a frustrating lack of understanding. A sample paragraph reads as follows:

Under the terms of the Compromise, popular sovereignty would be used to decide the question of slavery in the rest of the Mexican Cession. People in the states created from that territory would vote whether to be a free state or a slave state when they requested admission to the Union. Also, in return for agreeing to outlaw the slave trade in Washington D.C., southerners got a tough new fugitive slave law. (Davidson & Stoff, 2007, p. 486)

We asked her to read the paragraph out loud, substituting the word blah when she got to a word she didn't understand. This process gave us a better feel for how she understood this paragraph and provides insight into the importance of particular words for understanding the paragraph.

Under the terms of the Blah, popular blah would be used to decide the question of slavery in the rest of the Mexican Blah. People in the states created from that territory would vote whether to be a free state or a slave state when they requested admission to the Union. Also, in return for agreeing to outlaw the slave trade in Washington D.C., southerners got a tough new blah slave law.

These same words, represented by blah, were unknown to another boy who also unknowingly struggled with the word admission in the phrase "admission to the Union." The original sentence reads, "People in the states created from that territory would vote whether to be a free state or a slave state when they requested admission to the Union." Knowing the word admission in the contexts of movie theaters and amusement parks, he erroneously interpreted the sentence to mean the following: "I understand that they need a ticket to get into the Union. So these people probably want to leave their states to go and move to the Union." He could not understand the sentences containing the blah words, and because of his lack of exposure to words in different contexts, he also misunderstood the only sentence that contained no blah words. We're not sure which is worse: not knowing what something means, or not knowing that you don't know what something means. Clearly, we will not be able to reach our goal of helping students independently and critically read grade-level literature and informational texts if we do not also address the hurdles associated with acquiring academic language. Our classrooms need to become places that foster academic language growth both implicitly and explicitly. By implicit language growth, we mean that students acquire understandings of these words and structures based on a comprehensible context. By explicit language growth, we mean that the teaching of academic vocabulary and language is spelled out and consciously addressed for and by students.

What Are We Really Asking of Students?

While the goal of preparing students to be able to independently and critically read grade-level literature and informational texts seems like a simple set of expectations, it entails a whole series of skill sets and a whole lot of experiences with texts. In addition to that, it must be addressed within the context of child development and the practical context of everyday schools within everyday realities. What is reasonable to expect of children at certain ages? What is most important to develop at certain ages? What about struggling readers? What about reluctant readers? What about students with minimal exposure to the type of academic language found in informational texts? What about English language learners? What about students who have learning disabilities? Where do we begin? When it comes to more rigorous expectations for all students, these are the questions that teachers are asking. While exploring the answers to these questions will take a great deal of teacher intuition, we do know that a good place to begin is with a conscious and strategic effort toward building the academic language of all students, so that they can make sense of what they read.

Academic Vocabulary Versus Academic Language

Building students' academic language involves more than just racking up sophisticated words. Academic language is complicated. We want to make a distinction between academic vocabulary and academic language. For the purposes of this text, we define academic vocabulary as referring to non-content–specific academic words that would be considered low-frequency words but are high-utility words for the audience being discussed. In other words, they are "fancy" words, but not ridiculously so. They are low-frequency words, because they are typically not spoken by students in conversational contexts. But they are somewhat high-utility words because we can be confident that students will encounter these words again in their future readings. For example, there is very little point in focusing time and energy on a vocabulary word like esurient if the next time we can expect students to come across this word is when they are 40, if at all. Academic vocabulary refers to words like impending and crisis that realistically may be encountered in texts. Academic language, on the other hand, refers to the whole package of how words are put together to create meaningful cognitively complex messages. For example, consider this sentence written by 9th grader Kinsey: "Books carry truth, whether that truth be light or dark; and by reading these books, we build our hearts out of words." Intense, no? Yet the sentence uses only nonacademic high-frequency words for a 9th grader. But, because of the complexity of how the words are put together to create imagery and to cause readers to think deeply about the statements she makes, we would characterize this sentence as making use of academic language.

So, academic language is not just words; it also refers to the way words are manipulated to carry cognitively complex messages. Ninth grader Alison addresses this skill when she described what she loved most about a favorite book. According to Alison, "One of the best things about the book for me was that it was a challenge. There were new vocabulary words, of course. There were also words and phrases put together in ways I would have never thought of."

The distinction between academic language and academic vocabulary is an important one, because throughout this book we will use samples of text and student work that use academic language but not necessarily academic vocabulary. Both Kinsey and Alison are referring to beautiful words found within the pages of literature. However, the academic language found in informational texts may not be so much beautiful as it is baffling. For example, a sentence like "Likewise, investigators found culpability on the part of the ship's crew, in that the ratio of life jackets to passengers was negligently low" may cause readers to need to double back and reread. Our goal is to help students be able not only to read and comprehend academic vocabulary and language found in literature and informational texts, but also to analyze and re-create academic language in effective ways toward meeting their academic goals. In order to do that, we will need to address the topic of academic language, both explicitly and implicitly. We will need to immerse students in language that, in 9th grader Kinsey's words, "I connect to, or that I think hold brilliance, such as metaphors, symbolic meanings or things that make me wish that I had come up with them."

Where Is Academic Language Found?

Where can teachers find academic vocabulary? And, where does academic language come from? If we view academic vocabulary as more than just content-area-specific words, we can more clearly understand what it is in content reading that stumps children, especially those with fewer reading experiences. For the most part, content-area-specific words such as colony, Puritan, and Pilgrim are introduced and taught to children at about the same times in their schooling careers. These content-specific words are not typically spoken by 4th graders, for example, on a playground. As a result, the teacher is often alert to the fact that all of the students will need to be given an overview of these words at some point prior to or within the lesson. The non-content-specific vocabulary is another matter altogether. Words like conscientious, presume, resemble, and the thousands of other words that often stump readers may never directly be taught in school.

These same words are not at all likely to be experienced in everyday conversations on the playground with peers, or even with teachers. But for some students, repeated prior exposure to these words in the form of independent reading and read-aloud experiences have provided a boost to comprehension, so that whether or not students are actually ready to use these words in their own speech, they are more likely to comprehend them when they see these words in the context of an academic text. This is less likely to be the case for students who have had fewer independent reading or read-aloud experiences (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001). While the content-specific vocabulary is generally introduced to all students at the same time by the teacher who is teaching in that specific content area, non-content-specific vocabulary is subject to the literary experiences and to the exposure that each student has had to words in books and through sophisticated conversations with the adults in their lives.

Literature as an Indispensable Component

Quite a bit happens when students get lost in a good book. Beyond just providing an enjoyable literary experience, both fiction and nonfiction can be excellent sources of academic language. The types of words that authors ...