Reading to learn independently? Are you crazy? When I asked 7th grade, 8th grade, Junior, and Senior classes regarding the amount of time they spend reading expository textbooks and the reasons they do or do not complete the reading assignments, I received a lot of honest answers. The most striking answer was, "Why would I read it if the teacher (me included) is just going to tell me what I need to know?" Hmmm. Talk about an ah-ha moment that should have occurred a LONG time ago. I mean, I know they weren't reading, but, well, their loss, right? During the first semester I asked the students to read and expected them to do so; however, during the mini lectures, I would tell them exactly what I wanted them to pull from the text book. To no one's surprise, they didn't read; conversations were limited to a handful of students, and we would move on. Was I facing a purely motivational issue or were there ability issues I needed to address as well? Irregardless, I was inadvertently giving the students reasons NOT to read. Sigh. Things needed to change.
Prior to expecting my students to read, summarize, and take notes while reading expository texts independently, I needed to demonstrate the methods in which they may find success. I decided to go back to the basics; teach the students how to think about their reading. We have been working with the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy for a couple of years, and the students have heard me talking about recall... up to analyze.... and continue to create; but Webb's Depths of Knowledge takes this thinking to another level. I had just recently attended a Common Core Institute in Des Moines and decided it was time to make a full faith effort to include Literacy "I Can Statements" and to make the first critical shift in literacy as recommend by the Common Core Institute.
The first shift was "Literacy instruction in Content Areas," so... all of my classes went back to the basics. Webb's DOK has four levels and make connections with Revised Bloom's. Level I of Webb's, DOK is recall (correlates with Bloom's Remember Level); within this level, students recall elements and details and perform routine procedures. Level II of Webb's DOK is Skill/Concept (correlates with Bloom's Understanding); within this level, students identify and summarize the major events, organize, represent, and interpret data. The third level of Webb's will require the students to support ideas with details and examples; they will also identify research questions, design investigations for a problem, or apply a concept in other contexts (correlates to Bloom's Application). The top DOK level is extended thinking (Bloom's Analyze, Evaluate, and Create); students will create a project that requires specifying a problem, designing and conducting an experiment, analyzing data and reporting results. They also analyze and synthesize information from multiple sources as well as describe and illustrate how common themes are found across texts. This instruction took several days, and I'm spending even more time teaching the 7th graders (their minds are still open and haven't mastered the wrong ways to learn, yet! :) When Webb's DOK is used with Bloom's Taxonomy and when the students implement this thinking processes... presto-magico... Success!
The 2nd major shift in teaching was "Academic Vocabulary." Vocabulary - yep, you are going to first study your vocabulary for the unit and NOT just content vocab, look for academic words you may not know. I asked the students to skim through the reading (As the 'S' in SQ3R would require) and locate unknown key terms and phrases in addition to the vocabulary. Next, is the reading. Read one paragraph at a time and stop to use the strategy WIN from the Journey's reading program - W: Who/What the paragraph is about, I: what information is given, and N: number of words (10) or less, summarize the paragraph. Okay, we are on a roll now. Study and mastery a level low level vocabulary quiz is our first formative assessment. 80% ? Awesome; if not, the students needed to make time to see me to determine whether their 'non-mastery' of the vocabulary was motivation issue or ability issue. Beware... a retention quiz will be given several days later to see if the students actually learned the material or just crammed it all in just before the quiz!
Okay, the next shift I introduced into my classroom was "Increase Reading of Informational Text." Right now, in each class, students are being expected AND being held accountable for reading their text. Together as a class, we discover the purpose for reading, we create DOK leveled questions for the chapter to prepare for our reading, and then do the impossible... READ. Read to learn. At this point, S, Q, and the first R of SQ3R are accomplished and we have gone from Level I (vocab recall) to Level II (summarize major events/organize, represent, and interpret data) of Webb's DOK. After reading and taking notes, the fourth shift I am making is "Text-Based Answers." During this time, the students need to look closer at the reading and draw evidence to prove their conclusions about the leveled questions we created are correct. We now have completed the 2nd 'R' in SQ3R (recite), and if they studied the questions and continue to look over the material, the 3rd 'R' (review) would also be completed! Increase reading of text? Heck yeah! Yes, I understand the students are not near as excited about the reading assignments as I am, but, I guess I'm hopeful that it is helping at minimum a handful of kiddos that didn't know how to read/take notes.
I asked the students to give my ideas a chance. Okay, I bribed them. I bribed them with 25 points to do the vocabulary. I bribed them with 50 points to take notes independently over the entire chapter. They didn't get zeros if they chose not to do the vocab and notes in written format; some students are able to just simply read and absorb the material. They have this unit to prove their strategy works; for some, it seems to be going okay.... others, not so much.
The fact that this process of doing vocabulary, creating leveled questions, taking notes, thinking about their learning, and ultimately taking responsibility for their learning will take time was presented to the students. BUT, in the end, they will become more strategic readers and actually learn the material. Think about it. They skim and study vocab - 1st contact with the information, go back and take notes - 2nd contact, discussion with me and how this knowledge can be applied to situations today - 3rd+ contact, actual application / analysis / evaluation / creation in a project based lesson - 4th+ contact with the material. Webb's DOK 3rd and 4th levels are the toughest of all as this requires lots of thinking, but we are exploring these with PBL. Win. Win. Win.
Ultimately, I want to incorporate all 6 shifts; however, "Writing: Evidence-based and from Sources" as well as "Grade Level Text Complexity" will come in time. For now, the four shifts we are starting will be sufficient in sprucing up my curriculum in order to bring literacy into the world of social studies.
