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Trauma Informed Educators Network Podcast

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Trauma Informed Educators Network Podcast

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This podcast interviews trauma-informed educators on practices and strategies of how to support students and families in schools who suffer from trauma.

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New Literacies with Pre-Service Teachers

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New Literacies with Pre-Service Teachers

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This article presents evidence on how teachers are using new literacies with technology in their lesson plans. These new literacies are also being learned by students in the classroom.

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Technology has expanded notions of literacy that move beyond print-based texts to include digital texts and the practices associated with using them. These innovations made possible by technology hold important implications for the ways reading and writing are taught in schools.

Unfortunately, classroom instruction is not necessarily responsive to these new ways of reading and writing (Solomon, Allen, & Resta, 2003) due to many different reasons, such as not having access to technology or not understanding how to integrate technology (Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). Therefore, an understanding is required of ways teachers can be supported in integrating technology for literacy in the classroom; for example, by having hands-on experience with technology and then immediately applying their learning to their teaching (Jaipal-Jamani & Figg, 2015). Teachers may also adopt a broadened understanding of literacy that includes the new skills and forms of literacy made possible by technological innovations (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004).

This article reports on an examination of a group of teachers who were supported in a graduate course that focused on new literacies and the integration of technology with literacy. The teachers also taught children enrolled in a summer writing camp as part of the graduate course. We followed the teachers into their classrooms once the course ended to observe if and how they were integrating technology and found that, for most teachers, the course encouraged them in their use of technology.

The primary focus of this article is on the ways some of the teachers began to integrate technology into their instruction following completion of the course. The discussion includes how testing presented an especially challenging barrier to technology integration.

Challenges Teachers Face With Implementing Technology

The process of technology integration is complex. Teachers need access to proper resources as well as an understanding of the educational practices that support technology integration (Barron, Kemker, Harnes, & Kalaydjian, 2003; Hew & Brush, 2007; Kellner, 2000; Miranda & Russell, 2011). Teachers must also have technical support (Earle, 2002), as well as general support for their efforts from administrators, their peers, and school systems (Dawes, 2001).

Having access, support, and training are what Ertmer (1999) referred to as "first-order barriers" and are only part of what might explain why technology integration remains low in classrooms. She also identified "second-order barriers," what she considered to be the "true gatekeepers" to technology implementation. They include teacher attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and skills.

Sixteen years after Ertmer first named these barriers, they are still identified as barriers in the recent literature on technology integration in teaching, although the first-order barriers do not seem to be as limiting as they were, because school districts and policy makers are increasingly investing more money in technology (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2013; Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik, Sendurur, & Sundurur, 2012).

Many studies have documented teacher beliefs and attitudes as being factors that explain why they may or may not use technology in the classroom (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Hutchison & Reinking, 2011; Miranda & Russell, 2012; Overbay, Patterson, Vasu, & Grable, 2010; Smerdon et al., 2000; Wohlwend, 2010), although teachers themselves do not necessarily report their own beliefs as being an obstacle for doing so. A teacher's stance on technology, however, especially if it aligns with his or her teaching goals, can be a strong predictor of technology integration (Inan & Lowther, 2010; Zhao & Cziko, 2001).

Teachers are more likely to integrate technology into instruction if they view the use of technology as part of the curriculum rather than as something separate (Hutchison & Reinking, 2011) and if they perceive that technology is important for teaching (Miranda & Russell, 2012). However, some teachers think technology is developmentally inappropriate for students, while others fear that using technology will result in the greater likelihood of plagiarism (Norris, Sullivan, Poirot, & Soloway, 2003).

The demands of teachers being technologically literate are constantly increasing as technology changes (Hagood, 2012; Kinzer, 2010). Additionally, teachers need to develop their technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK). This framework recognizes that teachers should integrate technological knowledge with subject matter learning, rather than focusing only on technological knowledge at the expense of appropriate pedagogy or the content (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).

This framework also promotes the understanding that teaching with technology requires a whole other set of pedagogical skills and that each program, tool, and piece of software requires different genre knowledge. At the same time, while technological knowledge is important, it is not necessarily a prerequisite or even a predictor of who will integrate technology.

Other challenges noted in the literature relate to planning and establishing a classroom culture that supports creative designing as part of learning. Classrooms and schools are not typically organized in ways that allow for the easy use of technology for instruction (O'Brien & Scharber, 2008). Many teachers report that using technology is more elaborate and time-consuming than more traditional teaching practices (Dawes, 2001; Earle, 2002), and they do not feel they have an adequate amount of time to teach with technology or to plan for how to teach with it (Bauer & Kenton, 2005).

Supporting Teachers' Implementation of Technology

Understanding the challenges teachers face with technology integration is important, but so is considering how to support them. The following section reviews the literature on professional development for technology integration as well as the literature on how teacher beliefs and other forms of support interact with teachers' ability to integrate technology.

Professional Development

Professional development is an important part of helping teachers integrate technology. Teachers need models and research-based practices to understand and be able to implement technology into their instruction (Coiro, 2005; Hughes, 2005). They need to learn to cultivate an atmosphere that is conducive to creative designing with technology (Brennan, 2015). Teachers benefit from having hands-on experience with technology and being able to apply what they learn immediately in their teaching contexts (Jaipal-Jamani & Figg, 2015).

In studies that have shown these to be important factors, professional development models were used to support teacher learning. For example, in one study the researchers worked with 16 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in a series of 56-hour professional development sessions on using interactive technology (O'Hara, Pritchard, Huang, & Pella, 2013). The professional development included explicit instruction on using technology as well as time for experimentation with technology individually and collaboratively. The researchers found that their professional development model helped teachers deepen their knowledge since it was responsive to their needs and interests.

In another study with middle school science teachers, Jaipal-Jamani and Figg (2015) explored the use of blogs to teach science content. Through professional development, they supported teachers by modeling specific digital activities to support student-learning goals. They found that teachers' development of TPACK was influenced by the professional development activities as well as the opportunity to immediately apply their learning in their teaching.

Another feature of professional development to be explored further and that shows promise for supporting teachers is the use of a new literacies framework. Collett (2013) argued that this framework can be a powerful way to help teachers understand technology integration in relation to literacy instruction. This framework can also help teachers develop a conceptual understanding of literacy while simultaneously trying out new digital tools and practices.

Adopting a new literacies framework helps teachers recognize technology as more than just a way to get students' attention but as an actual part of the work that students do in the classroom (Bailey, 2009). This approach is similar to the one used in this study and aligns with other studies that have shown the importance of content-area learning along with technology integration, so that technology supports the curriculum and student learning, rather than being treated as an added on activity or object (Glazer, Hannafin, Polly, & Rich, 2009; Harris & Hofer, 2011). This approach may also help with addressing teacher attitudes and beliefs in ways that support theoretical understandings and broadened conceptions of literacy in addition to technical skills (Shoffner, Oliveira, & Angus, 2010).

Teachers' Beliefs

While professional development has been shown to help teachers integrate technology, a lack of professional development cannot fully account for why teachers do not integrate technology (Zhao & Cziko, 2001). Another reason can be attributed to teachers lacking desire to have training because they do not think technology will be useful; therefore, they may not take the time to develop their own technological skills and pedagogy.

Teacher beliefs and attitudes can also play an important role when it comes to integrating technology (Ertmer, 1999; Levin & Wadmany, 2006/2007; McGrail, 2005). When teachers strongly believe in the value of technology, they overcome barriers in order to do so (Ertmer & Ottenbriet-Leftwich, 2013). Also, teachers who have more constructivist teaching beliefs are more likely to use technology (Ertmer, Gopalakrishnan, & Ross, 2001; Miranda & Russell, 2011). When teachers are motivated and committed to their own personal development, they tend to have more positive experiences using technology and, in turn, their students tend to have more positive experiences as well (Sheingold & Hadley, 1990).

Flanagan and Shoffner (2013) examined how two English teachers used technology to support their English/language arts (ELA) instruction. One teacher was a veteran teacher with 14 years of experience; the other was a novice teacher in her second year of teaching. Both teachers reported that their biggest obstacle to technology implementation was a lack of training. However, despite not having training, they both valued technology integration and learned to do so through trial and error or from other colleagues. Their approaches to integrating technology differed in terms of their planning, actual use of technology, and their beliefs about technology and their role as a teacher in the classroom.

The novice teacher considered technology a primary focus of her instruction and made technology a priority, whereas the veteran teacher viewed technology as having a secondary role and, therefore, used it only to support her instructional objectives when she felt it added to her instruction. Despite having different approaches, these two teachers prioritized technology integration because they believed it was important and were able to do so even without professional development opportunities.

Teacher Support

Professional development is one way that teachers can be supported with technology integration. Additionally, other factors that have been shown to be instrumental in leading to technology integration relate to school-wide change, with administrators playing an important role. As with all school environments, the administrator's actions and attitudes can shape the interactions and overall climate, including supporting teachers in using technology. As the school's leader, an administrator can serve as a role model for teachers to learn about and use technology, set the tone for new learning, motivate and encourage teachers to try technology, provide resources, and facilitate learning opportunities (Payne, 2000).

Other related factors that can facilitate teachers' technology integration include the school structure, resources, and support available (Glazer, Hannafin, & Song, 2005; Grant et al., 2015; Staples, Pugach, & Himes, 2005). Administrators can provide support with all three of these factors by giving their permission to use technology, allowing classrooms that use technology to have priority access to computer resources, and ensuring that the structure of the school is set up for collaboration and working toward the goal of implementing technology. Administrators can also provide funding for opportunities that allow teachers to gain proficiency and provide time for teachers to plan their use of technology, such as joint planning periods (Means, 2010).

More research is needed to better understand how to help teachers with technology integration. This study addresses this need by offering examples and suggestions for how to do so, including examples of what teachers did when they returned to their classrooms. We pulled together our understanding of the challenges teachers face when implementing technology with what we knew about supporting teachers.

We specifically focused on ELA teaching in the context of combining a new literacies graduate level course for in-service teachers with teaching in a writing camp in order to understand how the two may have contributed to teachers' understanding and willingness to adopt new practices with technology.

Context

The New Literacies Course

Melody (first author) developed the new literacies course to accomplish three main objectives: (a) to provide teachers with a scholarly foundation in literacy studies that recognizes how advances in technology influence literacy practices; (b) to support teachers in building their pedagogical knowledge of digital texts and tools as well as social practices influencing composing practices; and (c) to provide teachers with a setting for direct application of the theories and practices discussed in class as they worked with children in a writing camp. Joy (second author) served as a teaching assistant for the course.

For a 5-week summer session, the class met for 2 hours each day, Monday-Thursday. Melody and Joy facilitated synchronous and asynchronous online and face-to-face whole group and small group discussions related to new literacies practices in the classroom. Most meetings occurred face to face. The assigned course readings included New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011) as well as various articles (e.g., Lapp, Moss, & Rowsell, 2012; New London Group, 1996; Street, 1995).

Although other topics were addressed in the class (e.g., multiliteracies, critical literacy, culturally relevant teaching, and teaching English language learners), the main focus was on new literacies and technology integration. In addition to reading about and discussing new literacies, teachers composed reading responses using different tools, such as pen and paper, blogs, the online journal Penzu, and wikis - and reflected on the affordances of each. They also participated in one of four book clubs (e.g., Hicks, 2013) and developed an online resource to inform others about the book they read.

Other assignments included writing a grant to address technology needs for their classroom, lesson plans for integrating technology with writing instruction in the camp, reflections related to those lessons, and a final paper reflecting on understandings of literacy and ways digital tools could be integrated into ELA instruction. Table 1 includes a complete list of the digital tools the teachers used in class and the camp, along with a description of the tools and how teachers used them.

Table 1
Digital Tools Teachers Used During the Graduate Course

Blogs (weebly, Google sites and tumblr)

A website that contains entries recorded in reverse chronological order and typically updated often.

To respond to course readings

To create resource for book club book

Wrote lesson plans to help students create with it

Livebinders

A digital binder that allows the user to organize content by tabs.

To create resource for book club book

Popplet

An online tool that allows the user to create concept maps.

To respond to course readings

Wrote lesson plans to help students create with it

Prezi

An online presentation tool that utilizes one large canvas.

To create resource for book club book

Wrote lesson plans to help students create with it

In the graduate course we advocated for an expanded view of literacy that acknowledges advances in technology so that teaching practices in the ELA classroom reflect broader definitions of literacy. In addressing teachers' broadened understanding of literacy, we used "new literacies" as a framework for discussing literacy.

New literacies are commonly referred to as "21 st-century literacies," which include proficiency with digital tools as well as the ability to collaborate, create, design, navigate, and evaluate multimedia texts (National Council of Teachers of English, 2013). New literacies are concerned with how literacy has changed because of technology such as the Internet and computers. One way literacy has changed is that people are now able to create texts that include sound, images, and movement (Kress, 2003).

People are also able to control design elements easier than ever by attending to size, appearance and functions and are able to do so quickly, making their writing publicly available at the click of a button. As a result, part of being literate means knowing how to use digital tools for a variety of purposes (Alvey et al., 2011). For example, new literacies are involved when participating in online forums like Facebook, designing webpages, and navigating online spaces like blogs.

New literacies are about more than technology, however, and also emphasize the ability to collaborate, problem solve, and think critically (Swenson, Young, McGrail, Rozema, & Whitin, 2006). Therefore, teachers need to think beyond using technology, focusing on how their literacy instruction can be enhanced (Pope & Golub, 2000; Young & Bush, 2004) and considering how to integrate technology into instruction so students can learn to access, evaluate, synthesize, and contribute to information (National Council of Teachers of English, 2007).

In addition to defining new literacies, we discussed the importance of new literacies in relation to the Common Core State Standards ( http://www.corestandards.org/), which emphasize using technology for creating, collaborating, problem solving, and critical thinking. Furthermore, at least 29 states have either adopted or adapted the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards ( http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/iste-standards), which emphasize the importance of students using technology to create, communicate, collaborate, research, make decisions and problem-solve. These standards complement and support a new literacies framework.

The Writing Camp

In addition to theoretical and practical readings related to these topics, we knew that teachers would need support as they began thinking about literacy differently. Thus, we planned for teachers to work with children during a writing camp at the university in order for them to try out what they had been reading and learning in the graduate course.

University faculty and doctoral students, including the three authors of this article, collaborated to plan and run a 2-week writing camp. The camp was independent of the new literacies course, but ran concurrently for 2 weeks, which were the last 2 weeks of the graduate course. This approach allowed the graduate students to work with the children during the writing camp after spending the first 3 weeks developing an understanding of new literacies and digital tools.

Sixty-four students attended the camp; we offered 12 full scholarships to students with financial need. Students were provided with either a laptop or desktop computer, and they were divided into three groups: elementary (3 rd-5 th grades), middle (6 th-8 th grades), and high school (9 th-12 th grades). Camp lasted 3 hours each day and began with local authors visiting to talk about their work for about 45 minutes with all campers. Afterwards, campers moved into age-level groups and engaged in extended writing time, where they chose their own topics.

For the last hour of camp, which was also the last hour of the graduate course, the graduate students enrolled in the course worked with campers in small groups. During this time, they taught minilessons related to composing with digital tools and worked individually with campers to confer about their compositions and offer assistance. The campers used the following digital tools during the camp: VoiceThread, Weebly, Google Sites, Popplets, and Prezis.

The purpose of the camp was threefold. First, the camp served the local community as a unique summer camp experience where students can focus on writing and using digital tools. This camp is the only one of its kind in the area and we advertised to local school districts by sending out flyers. Second, because we hired local teachers as camp instructors, the camp served as summer income for these teachers and provided them with experience helping students compose with digital tools. Last, the camp served as a field experience for the graduate course so that teachers in the course could gain experience with implementing technology and immediately apply their learning and work with students.

Methods

This is a qualitative study that used a collective case study design (Stake, 1995) to examine the question, How does engaging in a new literacies course support teachers' efforts to implement technology with students? Case study research is an important tool for exploring and describing a phenomenon in context while refining theory and identifying areas for more exploration. Data were collected from 19 K-12 teachers enrolled in a new literacies teacher education course as part of a requirement for a reading education master's degree at a university in the southeast United States. The teachers were a diverse group in terms of their ethnicities, years of teaching experience and grade level experiences. Table 2 provides this information about the teachers.

Table 2
List of Teachers Who Participated

Data Collection

All three authors collected data, which included observational field notes of discussions during face-to-face and online classes (19 total); written reflections for each teacher related to assigned articles and book chapters (approximately 19 per teacher); email correspondence with teachers; course assignments; end-of-the-semester feedback; and transcriptions of semiformal small group interviews (teachers were divided into five groups for these interviews). We conducted one round of interviews at the end of the course with teachers divided into four groups. These interviews lasted approximately 1 hour. Appendix A details the questions we asked.

We also collected data during the writing camp, such as observational field notes and video recordings of the teachers working with campers (approximately seven per teacher). Other data sources from the 2 weeks of camp included transcripts of video recordings, photographs of teaching materials, and the campers' writing.

At the end of the semester we created individual cases by compiling all of the data for each individual (e.g., field notes, interview transcripts, and course assignments). In order to follow up with some of the teachers once the school year started, we conducted individual interviews with 11 of them the following fall semester (Note: These teachers are identified with an * in Table 2).

Appendix B contains the interview questions used at this time. Because we were interested in what teachers were doing with their students, we decided to follow up only with practicing K-12 classroom teachers; teachers were not asked for a follow-up interview if they moved to a different city, took on new positions as curriculum facilitators or school administrators, or returned to graduate school full-time. These interviews lasted approximately 45-60 minutes. During these interviews we engaged the teachers in conversation about their access to technology, how they were continuing to make sense of and reflect on their experiences from the graduate course, and if and how they were implementing content covered in the course and writing camp.

Data Analysis

Data analysis occurred in two phases. First, we divided the data sets amongst ourselves for coding purposes. In this initial phase, we examined individual cases and were interested in how teachers developed their theoretical and pedagogical knowledge about digital tools and texts and the kinds of practices they used with the children in the writing camp. We then compared our individual codes across all data sets in order to identify similar codes, agree upon codes, and verify each other's codes. This preliminary analysis generated a total of 59 codes after some codes were combined; for example, "expanded view of literacy" and "broader view of literacy" were combined into one code: "broadened view of literacy."

Next, we collectively compared all 19 cases to combine and collapse codes into a total of six more meaningful categories. Appendix C contains a list of the six categories with an example from the data. In this article, we focus on categories 4 ("Planning for technology implementation") and 5 ("Feedback from teachers about the experience") in order to show the challenges teachers faced as well as how they overcame those challenges.

We then moved into Phase 2 of data analysis, in which the individual cases were combined and compared to create a collective case study. This analysis involved triangulation of the data and a synthesis of cross-case themes (as described by Lincoln & Guba, 1985). We continued to meet regularly, engaged in conversations about the data, and wrote analytic memos (defined by Miles & Huberman, 1994). We also sought out an experienced qualitative researcher not associated with the study for peer debriefing to ensure credibility and to broaden our interpretations (as recommended by Mertens, 2005).

Integrating Technology After the New Literacies Course

Overall, the teachers deepened their understanding of literacy and expressed excitement for shifting their teaching to include more technology. They made statements such as the following:

The concept of new literacies was unknown to me before this course. Through our readings, discussions, and lectures, I now understand that new literacies is not simply about incorporating new digital technology into our teaching practices; it's about a new way of thinking about literacy.

I plan to incorporate the technology tools we learned about into my instruction to enhance student learning.

Because teachers were taking graduate level course for credit toward completing their master's degrees, they teachers may have said things they thought we wanted to hear, which is why we followed up with teachers to see what carried over into their teaching.

After visiting with the 11 teachers in their classrooms and conducting follow-up interviews, we learned that most teachers used technology during their literacy instruction and thought differently about their use of technology. The new literacies course and writing camp seemed to positively influence and encourage them to incorporate technology into their instruction. Specifically, we noted they (a) used the same digital tools we used in the graduate class and camp in their classrooms, (b) were proactive about procuring technology for their classrooms, and (c) took risks and were creative about making time to integrate technology.

Using Digital Tools from Class and Camp

The teachers we followed up with explained that they used the digital tools we used during class and writing camp, which speaks to the importance of providing teachers with hands-on experiences in using digital tools (i.e., Collet, 2013; Jaipal-Jamani & Figg, 2015). Emily, a first grade teacher, said,

For me with the camp, you know, I was able to view and use technology tools that I really didn't know were out there, like Popplet and the bubble maps and things. We've done that in my class this year, and really, truly having the opportunity to get in and use their VoiceThreads with them.

Emily made reference to two tools we used in the camp: Popplet, an online tool for making mind maps, and VoiceThread, an online tool that allows the creator to pair voice recordings with images.

Linda, an elementary special education teacher, told us how she used VoiceThread to work with students who she thought lacked motivation:

I've never used VoiceThread before, and I was really hesitant. Since my students are struggling and are a lot lower in grade level than others, I was worried that they wouldn't be able to do it, but they surprised me.

Having previously used VoiceThread helped Linda incorporate it into her instruction, even though she was not initially sure about doing so. Emily's and Linda's experiences demonstrate the importance of providing opportunities for students to use technology, since doubts can be cast aside once teachers see the positive impact of technology use with students.

Brittany, a fifth-grade teacher, said that she used different methods for composing with her students because of what she learned in the graduate class. She gave her students the choice of using blogs, word processors, or pen and paper to create their reading responses. She had also begun incorporating Prezi online presentation software and had plans to introduce VoiceThread and wikis later in the year. In reflecting on how the graduate course and writing camp supported the implementation of technology into her teaching, she said,

The camp experience influenced my understanding of the content in the course and helped me see the theories and research in action. It was a great way to put into practice all the ideas, course text, and articles. It helped me use the digital tools, and being a writing coach [in the writing camp] helped me focus on the writer, then the writing, then the writing tool. Camp also made me understand how real kids respond to the content in the course.

In the following fall semester, Brittany integrated technology into her instruction although she was one of the teachers who initially had worried about what her administrators would think about her use of technology in her teaching. She also worried about supervisors from the district who have a role in teacher planning and classroom observations:

I think that getting your administration on board, getting your curriculum coordinator on board, and your assistant principal and your principal, and your coaches in your district [is important]. If it's not on the classroom observation checklist, you're going to be reluctant.

Although Brittany may have worried about being monitored by her administration and district, her worries were not enough to preclude her from trying the digital tools she used in the graduate course and camp.

When Brittany, Emily, and Linda had the opportunity to work with digital tools beforehand in the graduate class and the camp, they were able to gain experience and understanding of the tools as well as envision how they could be used in their own classrooms. The time to experiment and gain experience with the digital tools can be a critical way to support teachers' use of technology (as also asserted in Jaipal-Jamani & Figg, 2015).

Procuring Technology for the Classroom

In addition to using the digital tools from class and writing camp, we found that teachers were more proactive about securing more technology. One of the class assignments required students to write a grant in order to seek funding for technology for their classroom or school. Grant writing was new for most teachers; it had not occurred to them that this was an option for getting additional resources. Meredith, a middle school reading specialist, began to see grant writing as part of a teacher's role and believed that inaccessibility was not an excuse for not incorporating technology:

Digital texts should play an important role in teaching because this is part of the future of reading and writing in our society. We have the responsibility to expose students to many different types of texts and educate them in effective ways to use these digital texts. If access is an issue, write a grant!

Meredith successfully received $1,000 for a grant proposal she wrote in class, which she used to purchase a Chromebook and books to aid with hosting family book clubs. In this way, she used digital technology to enhance paper-based texts and extend her instruction beyond the classroom.

In addition to grant writing, teachers gained access to more technology through rethinking the tools they already had available to them. This action reflects a component of the graduate class where teachers had to think about technology they had access to and reflect on how that technology could be used to enhance their instruction. For example, Emily, a first-grade teacher, made a computer station in her classroom with old laptops that she salvaged from being discarded at her school. In addition, she described how she was provided with an iPad in order to administer and record individual student assessment data. Rather than restrict the iPad's use to testing, Emily let her students use it and even offered her own iPhone for students' use.

Seeing how Emily was able to be creative about allowing her students to access technology was encouraging for us, because she did not let lack of access discourage her. Her behavior supports what the literature says about teachers' use of technology: that when teachers believe technology use is important, they find ways to use it that get beyond problems of access (Miranda & Russell, 2012).

Taking Risks

As the teachers became more comfortable with using digital tools and finding ways to obtain more technology, they also started taking risks to be able to integrate technology. In the graduate course we read articles about how teachers implemented technology (e.g., Hagood, 2012; Husbye, Buchholz, Skidmore Coggin, Wessel Powell, & Wohlwend, 2012). In our discussions about these articles, we emphasized the importance of being adventurous and trying technology with students.

In camp, the teachers could immediately see how students reacted to using digital tools and support them. In turn, teachers became more persistent about incorporating digital tools into their teaching. For example, Emily, the first-grade teacher who took steps toward obtaining more technology, communicated her understanding that administrative support was important for technology implementation. She explained,

If we're trying to fight someone [an administrator] who wants nothing to do with it; we're going to lose every time. You've got to have support, you know, on the higher end, so that you can give it a try.

Her comment reflects an understanding of the importance of having administrative support, but also echoes a sort of fear that teachers may have of not following the norm. When Emily took a risk to obtain more technology and use it in her instruction, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that her administration was not as opposed to technology use as she had previously imagined.

Similarly, Skylar, a fourth-grade teacher, became proactive about convincing her administrators of the importance of technology after taking the graduate class. Originally, Skylar had reported feeling constrained by her administration in using technology and was, therefore, discouraged from using it. She taught in a school that was part of a technology initiative, however, where each classroom was well equipped with technology such as individual iPads, smart boards, a document camera, Nooks (e-readers), and digital cameras.

Despite having everything she desired in terms of technology, Skylar did not initially feel she could readily use it. She described this feeling, saying, "Access is not the issue, but administration's monitoring of [it] is. [I'm] afraid of getting into trouble for using technology." Skylar believed the administration in her school was not supportive of her teaching with technology and she worried that an administrator would walk in and "catch her" doing something that was not explicitly stated in her lesson plans or the Common Core State Standards. Her school and administration were so intensely focused on standards and developing lessons that prepared students for end-of-year testing that there was little room for the use of technology.

This concern echoes other studies that have shown the importance of administrators in influencing teachers' practices (Dawes, 2001). When we followed up with Skylar, we saw a noticeable shift in her approach to using technology, which included showing her administrators how technology could be used in the classroom and advocating for its integration by taking on a leadership role as a staff trainer for other teachers in her school.

Samira, a first-grade teacher, also reflected on taking a risk by giving kids more control of the process. She found that "letting go a little" was a way to navigate time and management issues. Where she previously thought students would not be able figure out the technology without strict guidance, she found that they were much more capable that she previously thought. She said that it actually took less time when she let them try the technology instead of restricting them to use only when she was sitting right next to them. In turn, it was easier for her to manage the technology because she did not feel the need to work with each student individually all the time. This set-up is similar to the camp setting, where students were encouraged to experiment with technology and Samira could see firsthand how students were able to work independently. When teachers were able to see what students could do with technology, they were surprised that they did not need as much assistance as the teachers had previously thought.

Carly, a kindergarten teacher, saw her lack of comfort with technology as an opportunity to take risks in her classroom. Carly believed that teachers should "figure it out with our students or else we will never try." In addition, Carly said that the way teachers approach teaching impacts how comfortable they feel with technology and suggested, "It takes an inquiry framework."

She believed that teachers who control how students learn rather than having them construct their own understanding will have a harder time feeling confident in their use of technology. Carly's approach to integrating technology into her teaching serves as an example of how we emphasized that teachers did not need to be technology experts in order to use technology in their teaching.

As with any new materials or methods, technology integration meant these teachers had to be persistent about using technology, which involved learning to take a risk. For Skylar this meant taking on a leadership role, for Samira this meant allowing students to have more control, and for Carly this meant learning as she went.

Being Creative About Time

In addition to taking risks so teachers could integrate technology, we also found that they discovered ways to be creative with their time so they could implement technology. In camp integrating technology was easy because that was the focus of the camp and it was set up for technology integration from the beginning. In their classrooms, however, teachers had to think beyond what they perceived their schedules might allow in order to make time for technology.

Skylar found ways to incorporate more technology during the school day that included using her morning work time to teach and have students practice with new technology:

Just squeezing it in and letting them use the iPads whenever they want. I think that's been my biggest surprise. I thought I was going to have to model, guide, share every program and really, the more you let them use their iPads, like if you let them take them to recess, the more they play around with them, and they'll tell me things.

For Skylar, part of increasing student access also meant recognizing that students can figure out the technology without as much teacher assistance as she previously thought. Her experience in the camp also showed her how students were able to quickly learn the technology, even without formal and explicit instruction.

When we followed up with Carly, she was finding ways to support her instruction with technology. For example, she described a student in her class who used the computer to reinforce his understanding of phonemic awareness:

Just seeing how much he could do. Seeing he could search the Internet, he could find images. He loved finding images. And that takes literacy. Finding images is literacy. Thinking about the beginning sounds, and it was for a purpose. We weren't doing beginning sounds drills but he was working on initial and medial and final sounds.

Rather than have her students use worksheets or drill them on identifying sounds, she was able to let them use technology to practice and demonstrate their understanding. Students used technology in a purposeful way to enhance learning and instruction rather than rote learning (as also in Brennan, 2015). Additionally, Carly said that "finding images is literacy," a view supported by new literacies that recognizes literacy is about making meaning in multimodal ways.

In the fourth-grade class, Tara was required to use a reading textbook during her language arts instruction. She described how she used this curricular requirement as an opportunity to incorporate technology: "I used the stories we read together to do the blogging and the technology. So it's okay to be able to pull that technology, and there's some stuff in there like researching and how to use the Internet properly." Rather than restrict her teaching because she was required to use the textbook, Tara found that blogging was a way to incorporate technology while still following her school's protocol. Blogging was one of the composition practices teachers were asked to try during the graduate course to respond to assigned readings, much like Tara had her students do with their assigned reading.

Impact of Testing on Technology Integration

The ways that teachers implemented technology into their teaching after taking the new literacies course was encouraging for us, and we learned from them about how to support them. One challenge, however, teachers found especially difficult to overcome was testing and how they felt restricted by testing.

Because testing has been reported as strongly affecting the curriculum and organization of pedagogical practices in negative ways (e.g., Au, 2007; Valli et. al, 2008), addressing how it also intersects with technology implementation is important. Several teachers said that the amount of time spent on testing and test preparation was a major barrier to incorporating technology into instruction. Some teachers did not increase their use of technology for this reason.

Teachers expressed frustration with testing. For example, Kate, a kindergarten teacher, expressed her annoyance with having to administer what she thought was an excessive number of one-on-one tests with students, leaving her little instructional time:

I'd like to be able to implement a lot more of the technology and the different things that I have learned in my [graduate] classes, but I really haven't had any time to work with any of it. I feel like all I do is test, and I don't have time to teach them.

She referred mainly to the progress monitoring mandated by her district that she was required to administer every 10 days. In Kate's case, technology integration into her instruction was not the only aspect of her teaching that was affected by testing; she did not feel she was able to teach in other ways she desired either (e.g., reading and writing workshop). Interestingly, Kate was provided with an iPad specifically for recording students' assessment data. In this case, the new technology was only intended for the teachers' use and explicitly for testing purposes.

Robyn, an eighth-grade teacher said,

There is so much pressure on language arts teachers to have high value-added data and help schools achieve growth that anything not explicitly tested is pushed to the side. Even with a supportive principal, it is still difficult to spend class time on anything that cannot be directly linked to the test.

Robyn's statement reflects Boardman and Woodruff's (2004) findings that statewide assessments have a significant impact on teaching, and teachers often use the tests as a reference point to decide whether or not to adopt a new instructional practice. If teachers perceive a new practice as supporting test-preparation goals, such as teaching to the test, they are more likely to adopt the new practice. If the practice does not seem to support testing, teachers may not implement the new practice or will adapt it to be more aligned with test preparation goals.

In addition to questioning the ability to teach anything that was not directly tested, some teachers questioned their ability to use technology for purposes other than testing. For example, Brittany, a fifth-grade teacher, explained that laptops were provided at her grade level for each student because the required end-of-grade tests were only available online: "We got them [carts with classroom sets of laptops] because of the science tests moving online. So pretty much they wanted us to use them for test prep and not digital teaching."

The result was that technology instruction was geared toward testing, with students learning "how to click in a bubble instead of how to pencil in a bubble." This example is a sober reminder of the prominent role testing plays in schools and how what might seem innovative-a one-to-one laptop ratio for students-can actually be another form of supporting testing.

Brittany highlighted another tension many teachers expressed regarding high-stakes testing not matching expanded notions of literacy:

I have not seen or heard of a high-stakes test that measures the proficiency of friending, sharing photos, tagging, liking a comment, sending messages/gifts, or any other social aspect of network awareness.

Her statement also indicates the prominent role that high-stakes testing plays in the current educational context and the shaping of teaching practices, including technology integration.

Problematic Access to Technology

Testing was not the only barrier to technology integration, however: Two teachers - Ann, a third-grade teacher, and Hannah, a K-5 English as a second language (ESL) teacher - did not increase their use of technology because access remained an issue. Despite more funding for technology found in many schools (Ermer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2013), access can still serve as a gatekeeper for some teachers.

Both of these teachers said that their understanding of literacy had changed, but their main challenge was not having access to technology. Ann said that she was trying to use more technology,

...but not at all in the way that I think would be most ideal. I would consider our school pretty limited in technology. We do have three computers in my classroom, and they're used. And as far as sharing original source documents and stuff like that, I can project from a computer to a screen, and we use that a lot and other digital tools that I can share in that way, but as far as the students being able to create, that's very limited.

In Ann's case, having limited access to technology prevented her from doing more, although she did try. She expressed the importance of students being able to create with technology, which was a challenge with only three computers in her classroom.

Hannah reported that her understanding of literacy changed, but because she did not have access to much technology, she was not able to integrate technology in her teaching:

I feel, I guess, the class really helped me think about the whole new literacies concept, but honestly I don't feel like a lot of that has transferred into my teaching. My new school does not have a lot of technology available....If I had more technology available I would be able to do more.

For Hannah, not having technology made it difficult for her to think about using it with her students. In addition, Hannah was an ESL teacher who spent the majority of her day going into other classrooms or pulling students out to work in small groups with her. She described her teaching in this way as limiting her use of technology: "But honestly I mainly teach guided reading, so with guided reading you don't use a lot of technology anyway. It's just the kids and the books, you know."

Hannah viewed guided reading as a traditional instructional approach with print-based books, so including technology did not make sense to her. Another pedagogical factor that influenced Hannah's technology use was having to share a classroom with a second ESL teacher. She worried about "disturbing the other class that is taking place in my room at the same time." In this way, she saw technology as something that might be distracting for students who were not engaged in the lesson with her, so her choice to not include technology was also a management and space issue.

Ann and Hannah did express their understanding and belief of the importance of technology integration and teaching new literacies. The main factor that kept them from using technology - access - was strong enough that they were not able to develop alternatives for including technology in their instruction in the same way that the other teachers did. They may have felt their teaching was constrained in their schools, and their actions exemplify the enactment of teaching literacy within their specific contexts.

Testing is a prominent barrier for many teachers, preventing them from teaching the way they want (Au, 2007). That access to technology was another barrier is important because it continues to be an issue for some teachers when schools or their districts do not prioritize access for all students (Miranda & Russell, 2011). At the same time, the other teachers in the study who were able to get around the issue of access show that this barrier can be overcome when they are determined enough to use technology. As we interpret the data, then, a strong desire to implement technology with a belief that it is important is what set the eight teachers who used more technology apart from the three who did not.

Discussion

We cannot make claims about the teachers' beliefs changing since we did not collect data on this specifically. However, we can infer that the teachers agreed with and understood the importance of using technology stressed during the graduate course, because they actively worked on incorporating technology into their instruction. For Skylar, this meant taking on a leadership role; for Brittany, knowing more about digital tools was important in helping her use them with her students. When access was an issue, Emily was able to think creatively about using digital tools that were available, such as old computers, her own iPhone, and the iPad purchased for her to use for assessments.

Professional development may be important for helping teachers integrate technology, while teacher beliefs and attitudes about technology also may be important. It makes sense then that professional development could support teachers by targeting their beliefs and attitudes. In this study, the graduate course served as a form of professional development in which we provided hands-on experience in the writing camp. In addition, we used the course readings, discussions, and assignments to build understanding and address beliefs and attitudes about literacy and technology as well as teaching and learning. Together, the course experiences along with teaching in the camp gave teachers opportunities to expand their understanding of literacy and technology and the importance of technology integration while gaining experience with using digital tools.

Our approach to addressing technology should be situated within a broader view of literacy. Rather than emphasizing technology as the main point, we focused on new literacies (as recommended in Collett, 2013). This approach allowed us to address literacy as situated practice, which in turn, allowed us to conceptualize technology as more than just an add-on (as in Hutchison & Reinking, 2011).

We then saw how teachers carried new literacy practices into their teaching, such as Carly allowing her students to find images on the Internet to support their phonemic awareness and Tara's use of blogging in her class for students to respond to their readings. As teachers' understanding of literacy was expanded to include a new literacies perspective, they were able to find ways in which technology could support literacy practices, rather than focus solely on ways to use technology for the sake of using it. In this way, the use of technology meaningfully supported their teaching and goals (as also happened in Harris & Hofer, 2011).

Another important aspect of our approach to the graduate course was the use of the writing camp. It helped teachers bridge theory to practice, giving them time to try new instructional approaches. Rather than just reading about and discussing new literacy practices, teachers were able to apply their learning immediately by working with children in the camp. The daily minilessons they created to support the campers' use of technology pushed them to teach with digital tools while also supporting campers' composing practices. In this way, their use of technology was grounded in authentic writing instruction, and they could see how the campers benefitted in real time. The teachers appreciated this model of including camp with the new literacies course. For example, Skylar said,

I think it was a really good professional development because most professional developments you go and hear adults speak about a topic, and you're just supposed to go back and implement it by yourself. This was like you heard the adults speak, and then you actually had real kids to try it with.

The experience with the new literacies course and camp gave teachers an opportunity to extend their understanding of literacy, try out different digital tools, and apply their learning by working with children. This combination of factors was important for helping them integrate technology in their classrooms and supports what the literature says about helping teachers to do so, such as immediately being able to apply their knowledge (e.g., Jaipal-Jamani & Figg, 2015).

A camp setting is quite different from a regular classroom setting, however. The student-to-teacher ratio is drastically smaller, there was no testing, there were no administrators, and the camp was specifically focused on technology use-to name a few. Without having the pressure that comes from being a full-time classroom teacher, our teachers were able to focus on technology integration in a unique way. Although the transfer from the camp setting back to their classrooms seemed to work well for the teachers, because the two settings were different, some teachers may have had more difficulty in applying course concepts, such as Hannah who taught small group ESL instruction.

Finally, this study showed the negative impact of testing. Testing detracted from some teachers' time to teach and try new pedagogies. An overemphasis on testing is commonly reported as limiting teachers' pedagogical control (Au, 2007) and disrupting other aspects of teaching (e.g., time, materials, and standards taught). Although its effect on technology integration is not commonly discussed, our research found testing to have consequences for the teachers' use of technology.

Implications and Conclusion

While we worked only with in-service teachers, we acknowledge the importance of helping preservice teachers develop an understanding of teaching with technology as well (e.g., as asserted in Bai & Ertmer, 2008; Sadaf, Newby, & Ertmer, 2012). Just as we engaged in-service teachers in a study of new literacies and gave them the opportunity to work with children in the writing camp, preservice teachers should be given similar opportunities, either as part of their field experiences or in a separate class. Giving preservice teachers time to work with digital tools and try out technology integration in their instruction would support them as they move into their own classrooms and understand what is possible with technology.

To this end, teacher preparation course work should be grounded in a new literacies framework to broaden their teachers' understanding of literacy as well as ways to integrate technology. This framework can help preservice teachers adopt a broader perspective of literacy and understand how literacy has changed because of technology. For example, when the teachers in our study had the opportunity to learn about a new literacies framework and then actively engage students in using digital tools, they expanded their understanding of technology integration and were able to connect this back to their classrooms.

Teacher educators should, therefore, broaden their own conceptions of literacy and how they talk about literacy with preservice teachers. As teacher educators reflect on their literacy methods courses, they might think about how to organize these courses to address the core content through a new literacies framework. This kind of revision of course work should allow time for preservice teachers to have hands-on experience with digital tools, address how to effectively use technology with students (Pope & Golub, 2000), and think creatively about technology implementation. At the same time, preservice teachers need to think about how to obtain technology should they find themselves in a teaching context where technology is sparse. As part of their teacher preparation, preservice teachers can learn about the value of grant writing.

Our findings also have implications for teacher educators who should take into consideration the challenges teachers face related to not only their own dispositions, but also related to their specific contexts - in particular, contexts where testing is emphasized. The enormity of testing in shaping literacy practices is troublesome as the field considers how to help teachers adopt and teach broadened views of literacy (e.g., Bai & Ertmer, 2008). It has been well documented that an overemphasis on testing disrupts teachers' practices and leads to narrowing the curriculum (Au, 2007). This study indicated that teachers' ability to integrate technology is yet another area impacted by time spent on testing. This issue is important to acknowledge in order to help teachers think through ways to navigate contexts where testing is overemphasized.

Finally, teacher educators can help teachers understand that implementing technology into instruction is a process of learning and may require new teaching practices, such as releasing more responsibility to students, similar to what Samira discovered was possible and important with her first graders. It may be easiest for teachers to start with small goals and make a few changes here and there, as opposed to becoming overwhelmed by making dramatic changes to their entire pedagogy. Despite the feelings of discouragement that may come from trying new approaches to teaching, growth and increased insight are inevitable.

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Appendix A
Interview Questions for Small Group Interviews

1. What are the main things you are learning during camp?

2. What has surprised you? About yourself as a teacher? About the campers?

3. In what ways has camp been similar to teaching in your classroom?

4. In what ways has camp been different from teaching in your classroom?

5. How can you take what you have done with the campers and apply it to your teaching context?

6. What role do/should digital texts and tools play in teaching? What if access is an issue?

7. What goals do you have for your teaching related to multiliteracies and teaching with digital tools?

8. What questions do you still have about new literacies and digital tools?

9. What support do you need to incorporate digital texts and tools into your teaching?

10. What are some of the things that have gone really well during camp? Describe something (an interaction, a conversation, an event) that went really well during camp.

Appendix B
Questions for Individual Interviews

1. How is your school year going so far? Tell me about your class and your school.

2. In reference to the graduate course this last summer, what are some of the ways that your understanding of literacy changed? And how has that looked in your teaching?

3. Also in reference to the graduate course, what are some of the ways that your teaching has shifted to incorporate new literacies? Describe some of the specific ways you are incorporating digital tools.

4. What aspect of the class had the most impact on your teaching?

5. What are some of the affordances you have found of using technology in the classroom?

6. What are some of the constraints?

7. In reference to the camp, in what ways did the class and camp experience together served as a form of professional development?
a. What were some of the benefits of that model?
b. What were some of the limitations or drawbacks?

8. How did the camp experience influence your understanding of the content addressed in the graduate course?

9. How did working with a mixture of kids from different places in the city influence your teaching as opposed to teaching the same kids in your school? What kinds of connections did you make back to the students at your school?

10. Do you feel an experience similar to this would be appropriate in your school? What might that look like?

11. In the class many students expressed the need to align assessments with new literacy practices. Have you been able to align the two in your classroom this year?
a. If so, what does that look like?
b. If not, what are the challenges of doing so?

12. What are some new questions that you have arisen for you in relation to the course content and what would support your development?

13. Is there anything else you would like me to know about your teaching, the class, or you?

Appendix C
Example of Category Development Chart

1. Teachers developed new understandings of literacy, new literacies, and using technology in the ELA classroom.

"The concept of "new literacies" was unknown to me before this course. Through our readings, discussions, and lectures, I now understand that new literacies is not simply about incorporating new digital technology into our teaching practices; it's about a new way of thinking about literacy." (Meredith, Final Paper, 07/30/13)

2. Teachers need support (e.g., professional development) to use new literacies and technology in their classrooms.

"I think it was a really good professional development because most professional developments you go and hear adults speak about a topic and you're just supposed to go back and implement it by yourself. This was like you heard the adults to speak and then you actually had real kids to try it with." (Skylar, Interview, 10/28/13)

3. Teachers learned how to integrate technology into instruction by working with campers.

"Seeing the project carried through in young writer's camp kind of brought it all home. This is what they're talking about. The kids can do this, they can figure things out better than you can, you just have to go with it." (Carly, Interview, 07/25/13)

4. Teachers experienced challenges related to using technology in the classroom.

"Learning has been disrupted at times due to the challenges new literacies can uncover, for example, technology access, cost, unsupportive administration/districts, and lack of professional development." (Brittany, Final Paper, 07/29/13)

5. Teachers planned for how they would use technology and made changes in order to implement technology.

"I plan to incorporate the technology tools we learned about into my instruction to enhance student learning. In addition, I will apply the ideas of the importance of balance between technological and other activities, and the importance of instructional context, into my instruction as well. I feel confident that my students will benefit as a result." (Hannah, Final Paper, 07/30/13)

6. Feedback from teachers can inform teacher educators about how to design experiences for teachers to help them integrate technology into instruction.

"I almost wish we were with the students, had more time with them. And it would have been nice to be able to collaborate more with the group leaders of the camp because there was kind of like a disconnect from there to us. I think it would have been more beneficial for the kids if we had more time to collaborate. So maybe if part of that time would have been where we could sit down with the camp leaders and have discussions and talk about the students." (Linda, Interview, Fall 2013)

2,109 total views, 1 views today

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Teachers' Engagement With New Literacies: Support for Implementing Technology in the English/Language Arts Classroom

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Technology has expanded notions of literacy that move beyond print-based texts to include digital texts and the practices associated with using them. These innovations made possible by technology hold important implications for the ways reading and writing are taught in schools.

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Multimodal Literacy Strategy in the Classroom

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Multimodal Literacy Strategy in the Classroom

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This video shows innovative teaching using multimodal literacy in the classroom to inspire literacy culture int he classroom.

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Teaching and Learning in South Australia

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Retelling Stories By Creating A Multimodal Text: Cummins Area School

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Strategies to Build Literacy as a Classroom and School Culture

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Strategies to Build Literacy as a Classroom and School Culture

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This resource provides explicit examples of how a school and a classroom can implement a literacy culture. A literacy culture creates a community built upon literacy and how important reading/writing is essential for all school staff, educators and students.

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The story that went viral earlier this year about the teacher who had the genius idea of installing a basket of books on her school's bus has a crucial message behind it: Small acts can have a big impact when it comes to fostering a culture of reading in your school and community. When we let students know that reading is worthwhile and empower them to experience it joyfully, it creates a chain reaction of literacy learning. Here are 25 of our favorite strategies for fostering a reading culture.
Just a heads up, WeAreTeachers may collect a share of sales from the links on this page. We only recommend items our team loves!
1. Leave reminders about books everywhere.

Whether it's on your classroom bulletin board, or in the hallway, or even on the wall clock, dropping not-so subtle hints about great books gets students' attention.

2. Make sure actual books are everywhere, too.

Display books attractively in all areas of your classroom to highlight their many uses. Little kids can use books as pretend play props-baby dolls love bedtime stories! Kids of all ages will be intrigued if you leave a field guide near the window for birding or with a cool rock or shell collection.

3. Make your classroom library a sacred-and accessible-space.

Make sure your library is organized to allow kids to get in, find a great book, and get reading immediately. For tons of insight about effective classroom library setup, we're loving the professional book It's All About the Books: How to Create Bookrooms and Classrooms that Inspire Readers by Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan.

4. Ditch the level labels.

Yes, it was standard practice at one point to organize classroom library titles by level, but this approach is outdated. Organize your library by topic, author, or genre instead to encourage readers to choose books they will love.

5. Stay up to date on the best books.

There will always be classroom classics that every kid should read, but kids gravitate to what looks fresh and new. Replace worn or dated titles, assess your library regularly for representation, and celebrate new releases and book arrivals as notable classroom events. (Do you need to brush up on the newest, best titles to share with students? WeAreTeachers' book list archives have you covered.)

6. Share those recos.

Source: Bookriot

Create a community in which readers recommend books to each other in visible ways. Create a What I'm Reading bulletin board, highlighting picks from teachers and other school staff (the more unexpected, the better) to model lifelong reading for students. Peer recommendations pack incredible currency, so make sure you have an ongoing way for kids to promote their favorites. (It doesn't have to be fancy to be effective.)

7. Give lots of book talks.

Hearing someone rave about a book immediately makes it more appealing. Give frequent book talks to highlight titles for kids.

8. Dial up the fun factor.

Gimmicks tend to work with kids. Add a fun reading-themed element to your school to spark excitement about books. This book vending machine got rave reviews from kids. Repurpose an old gumball dispenser into a poem vending machine or make your own from recycled materials.

9. Read aloud to all ages.

What's the one practice that should happen in classrooms at every grade level (plus, we'd argue, at assemblies, faculty meetings, and parent events, too)? Reading aloud. You're really never too old to enjoy being read to, and reading aloud a compelling title is one of the BEST ways to promote enjoyment of books. To get reinspired, check out The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by the Wall Street Journal children's book reviewer Meghan Cox Gurdon.

10. Make reading a social activity.

Reading is a solitary pleasure, but reading in a community makes it even better. Ask compelling questions and give kids plenty of low-stress opportunities to talk about books. How about encouraging Lunch Bunch book clubs?

11. Try a whole-school read.

There's a special connection created by shared book experiences. Scale this phenomenon. Elementary school classes can all read aloud the same title. Classics like E.B. White's Charlotte's Web appeal to a wide range of ages and have curriculum tie-in possibilities for any grade. Middle and high schools can select a title everyone reads to provoke important community conversations and build empathy. Check out the One School, One Book program website for ample resources.

12. Incorporate literacy into your morning announcements.

Get kids to stop chatting and start listening to the announcements with a fun literacy-themed component each day. Share a quote from a favorite book or book trivia fact. Or, share a joke of the day to build vocabulary and show students the fun of word play.

13. School leaders, be literacy leaders.

School administrators set the tone in a school in so many ways. Make sure authentically promoting reading is one of them. Be that principal who's always carrying a book around, excited to talk about it with students. Be that principal who invites students into your office to browse your principal's bookshelf or pick out a book to keep as a birthday treat.

14. Connect kids with authors.

It's so powerful for kids to realize that books are created by real people. In-person author visits can be expensive, but virtual visits are a fantastic option. Author Kate Messner offers an extensive list of authors who Skype with classes for free. Writing to authors can also be a powerful exercise for kids. This post has some helpful tips.

15. Make it reading for the win.

Everyone's loving the March book madness ideas on social media, but you don't need to stop there. Organize a book pennant race during the World Series, a book Super Bowl (who will play the halftime show?), or host the Library Olympics à la Mr. Lemoncello. Who says reading can't be a sport?

16. Roll out the red carpet.

Source: Patch.com

Participating in a book award process as a class or school generates excitement about great titles and builds community around reading. Join in with one of the many state book award programs, submit a class nomination for the Nerdy Book Awards, or create your own. Do it up right: paparazzi, a red carpet, sunglasses, and feather boas are totally appropriate when you announce the big winners.

17. Take on a challenge.

A good challenge can build intrinsic motivation for reading. (Plus, checking off items on a list IS a reward, as to-do list addicts everywhere know.) Challenges can also encourage readers to try out books they might not otherwise have chosen. Brightly is a reliable resource for monthly reading challenges, or create your own.

18. Tap into the power of social media.

There are lots of ways to use Insta, Twitter, and Snapchat to get kids excited about reading and connect with the wider reading community. Have kids join the #bookstagrammer ranks to recommend books to others or create fake profiles for book characters. Even the act of publicly logging page-number progress or books read on a book-driven social platform like Goodreads can be motivating.

19. Change it up with theme days.

Inject a little novelty into reading time by planning special themed reading days. Grabbing a flashlight to curl up and read in a blanket fort on pajama day is a perennial favorite. You could also try a reading picnic outdoors, a book-themed treasure hunt in which the treasure is a stack of new books for your classroom library, or a fractured fairy tale day.

20. Host a community read aloud day.

What's even more exciting than a teacher reading aloud a fantastic book? A firefighter reading it. Or a police officer. Or a local athlete, news anchor, or even a notable school face like the custodian or a favorite bus driver. Put the call out for volunteers to grab their favorite titles and spend time sharing them in classrooms.

21. Celebrate book holidays.

There are plenty of other reading-themed celebration days in addition to Read Across America Day. How about bringing World Book Day to your school and ask everyone to dress up as a favorite book character? Or honor Día, (Children's Book Day), a national celebration that promotes literacy for children from all backgrounds. Need more ideas? This month-by-month list of book-themed holidays has plenty.

22. Get books in kids' homes.

The power of book ownership is unparalleled for kids. Host a book giveaway event with your school's book fair to make sure all kids get to bring home new books, even if they can't buy them. Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's book Game Changer! Book Access for All Kids has tons more ideas for getting books in kids' hands (plus lots of online resources you can unlock with a hard copy purchase).

23. Celebrate libraries of all sizes.

Source: littlefreelibrary.org

You can't beat the charm of a Little Free Library . Involve students in bringing one to your school or other community location, or create a list of existing local ones kids can seek out. Give your public library every shout out possible, too. Meet with your local librarians to determine barriers to kids' public library use and work together to overcome them.

24. Provide virtual read-aloud alternatives.

Of course, there's no perfect substitute for a snuggled up, in-person read aloud, but if you're worried students don't have anyone to read to them at home, offer an online substitute. The Internet loves Texas principal Dr. Belinda George, who hosts the Tucked-in Tuesday read aloud for her students each week via Facebook Live. Check out the WeAreTeachers Storytime series, too!

25. Highlight and support literacy champions in your wider community.

Source: Barbershop Books

We love hearing stories of literacy-themed community programs, like barbershops stocked with books, or efforts to bring books to places kids tend to hang around waiting, like the laundromat. Identify places where your students spend out-of-school time and offer to partner with community members to get kids reading when they're not in class.
How does your school foster reading culture? Share your tips in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, 21 ways to build background knowledge and support readers.

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25 Ways to Build Your School's Reading Culture - WeAreTeachers

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The story that went viral earlier this year about the teacher who had the genius idea of installing a basket of books on her school's bus has a crucial message behind it: Small acts can have a big impact when it comes to fostering a culture of reading in your school and community.

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This blog from Edutopia shows how student choice is crucial to show in the classroom. This blog also reviews how teachers use the traditional canon of texts, but student choice provides more benefit for students.

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The day I arrive for the school-wide "Read-In" this past spring, teenagers and books are covering every available surface in Jarred Amato's English classroom at Maplewood High School in Nashville, Tennessee-flung across lived-in couches, desks, and chairs. But there's not a book one might traditionally identify as a "classic" in sight, and that's by design.

In the middle of the room, a group of girls are cracking open the third installment of March, the graphic novel by Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin about the civil rights movement, when a student pushes his way through. "Hey, get out of my way," he says playfully to the girls, grabbing a copy off the top of the stack. "I've wanted to read March!"

Things weren't always this way. Four years ago, when Amato arrived at Maplewood High, he assigned his freshmen Lord of the Flies -a staple of high school lit classes for more than 50 years-but he couldn't get students to read the book. "It's a classic for some reason, but I don't know what that reason is. Because it's not good," says Calvin, a graduating senior, who laughed when I asked if he finished it.

Frustrated, Amato surveyed students about their reading preferences and found that most didn't know: They almost never read outside of school and generally had negative attitudes about reading. Many students felt like the books they were assigned at school didn't reflect their experiences, and featured characters who didn't look, think, or talk like them.

The issue of a disconnect between young readers and the books they're assigned isn't new, though. Like previous generations, American middle and high school students have continued to spend English class reading from a similar and familiar list from the English and American literature canon: Steinbeck, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Alcott, and, of course, Shakespeare.

But now, as social attitudes and population demographics have shifted, teachers across the country are saying that the disconnect between the canon and its intended audience has become an epidemic, driven by rapid changes in the composition of American schools and the emergence of always-on digital platforms that vie for kids' attention. By middle and high school, teachers concede, many of today's students simply aren't reading at all.

"What I saw was that the 'traditional' approach to English class wasn't working for a lot of our kids," Amato says, referring to Maplewood's chronic low performance- fewer than 5 percent of students are on track for college and career readiness in English (and math as well). "We have a literacy crisis, and Shakespeare is not the answer."

To Amato and a growing number of teachers, the solution has been to move away from classics in English class and instead let students choose the books they read, while encouraging literature that is more reflective of the demographics and experiences of students in America's classrooms. In teacher training programs, in professional publications, and throughout social media, choice reading has become a refrain that can sometimes sound like dogma, and for some it has become a call for advocacy.

What's in the Center?

But while the student choice reading movement is growing, it is by no means universally accepted or supported in all classrooms. Other educators have warily pushed back on the approach, worrying that too much student choice is putting young adult (YA) and graphic novels -not highly regarded and vetted literature-at the center of the English literature curriculum. While not all books are enjoyable (or easy) to read, challenging books help boost students' comprehension and reading proficiency, they argue, and force them to grapple with difficult, timeless questions about love, life and death, and societal dynamics.

Choice reading and academic rigor are not mutually exclusive, though. To find balance, some teachers are trying methods like allowing students to choose from more diverse, preapproved lists of challenging literature; alternating between chosen books and assigned books; or using choice to pique students' interest in reading more stimulating texts.

Though polarizing-and at times highly contentious-the debate over reading lists in English class has illuminated the rapid pace of change in what kids are reading and the tension in trying to diversify literature without completely ditching the canon.

A Love of Reading

English teachers have long hoped that students would fall in love with the literature they taught. Mrs. Lindauer, my own English teacher from junior year in 1990, went to great lengths to demystify Shakespeare's greatness, impersonating characters' voices from A Midsummer Night's Dream to make us laugh and help us understand the difficult language.

But in the years since I attended high school, many teachers are increasingly finding that students do not always develop a love of reading in English class, and a disaffection for assigned books can foster something else-a general distaste for it.

A key belief-and a passionate one-I found among English teachers is that they feel their assignments require some enjoyment to complete, a sentiment that seems to have less standing with teachers of other subjects. Educators' concerns are also reflected in the research data, which indicates a steep decline in teens' reading for pleasure: 60 percent of high school seniors read from a book or magazine every day in the late 1970s, but by 2016, the number had plummeted to 16 percent.

On social media, teachers are adamant about the risks of an uncritical devotion to the classics. Some teachers have argued that these concerns are especially pertinent for children of color, who are less likely to be represented in traditionally selected texts. Though U.S. classrooms are rapidly diversifying-in just a few years, half of American students will be students of color-the English literature canon, many argue, has remained mostly unchanged and mostly white.

Amato's response to his students' reading apathy (and the canon) was to develop ProjectLit, a classroom approach that gives students the freedom to choose and discuss the books they want to read. In just two years, the model has not only improved his students' interest in reading, he says, but turned into a grassroots, national movement with its own hashtag (#ProjectLit) on social media with hundreds of participating schools. Other educators have also created movements of their own, like Colorado's Julia Torres's #DisruptTexts social media conversation.

The impact of his new approach in English class is already evident in the changes he's seen in his students, says Amato. The 13 students who helped Amato develop the new approach in his classroom got full scholarships to attend Belmont University in Nashville this fall. In addition, 46 students from his initial class who participated in #ProjectLit scored 5.7 points higher on the English ACT and 4.4 points higher on the reading ACT than the rest of their peers at Maplewood.

The Power of the Shared Text

But there isn't any substantial scientific evidence yet to suggest that choice reading improves reading proficiency-or even fosters a love of reading-according to some literary experts I talked to. Instead, critics warn that reading choice can be a limiting rather than expansive influence, permitting students to choose overly simplified texts or to focus singularly on familiar topics.

Doug Lemov, an educator and managing director of the Uncommon Schools charter network, tells me a story of visiting a special school for elite soccer athletes a few years ago. Looking around the room, he noticed that many students in their choice-based English classes had selected books about soccer. "They should not be reading books about soccer. All they know is soccer," says Lemov, who, along with coauthors Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway, has written Reading Reconsidered, a book that pushes back on choice reading.

Lemov believes that student choice reading has been overhyped by schools and makes a couple of assumptions that don't add up: First, that adolescents know enough about books to know what they like to read; and second, that there's greater power in the freedom to "do your own thing" rather than in developing a deep understanding of what you're reading.

Whether it's Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, or Harper Lee, shared reading can also improve equity by giving all students access to high-quality literature, Lemov says. He also emphasizes that it teaches students to engage in a balanced and civil discourse, asserting that "you can only really listen to someone else's perspective on a story if you're discussing a text that you have also read."

And though it may not foster a love of reading, the data also shows that teacher-led explicit instruction in reading a particular text (especially in different genres), combined with lots of reading, can reap four to eight times the payoff compared with students' choosing books and reading on their own, according to Timothy Shanahan, founding director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Shanahan, a leader of the National Reading Panel, notes that classrooms where students have free rein over book selection can place a significant burden on teachers to know many different books well enough to guide deep analysis and interpretation of text for each student.

Finding a Middle Ground

For many teachers I spoke with, though, the polarizing debate over reading lists is making it difficult to find middle ground. In her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at J.T. Moore Middle School in Nashville, Anna Bernstein tells me she puzzles through a thousand considerations when choosing what her students will read that year.

Bernstein tries to include a diverse array of characters and authors while getting the texts to align to both state standards and an end-of-year community service learning project. She chooses three to four texts the class will read together while leaving some room for student choice texts. Then, she considers text difficulty and genres that will stretch her students' capabilities or open their eyes to new ways of life.

But sometimes it can seem like this constant balancing act requires her to juggle too many factors. "What's hard right now in the English education world is there are two camps-one group that's never going to stop teaching Lord of the Flies, and another group that's never going to talk about that book," she says.

Yet while the data suggests that we are failing to interest many of today's students in reading, it seems that educators are starting to find some equilibrium between choice and a regimented list of must-reads: Shakespeare can exist in class alongside books kids want to read.

To find better balance, educators can gather recommendations of diverse books to include in their classroom libraries from organizations like We Need Diverse Books, which has partnered with Scholastic to ensure that all kids see themselves and their experiences represented in literature. Others suggest that teachers allow choice reading within tiered levels of challenge or a mix of easy, medium, and challenging texts. And Melanie Hundley, a former English teacher-and now professor at Vanderbilt University-emphasizes that teachers can "hook" students using choice books to get them excited about more challenging literature.

"If kids will read and you can build their reading stamina, they can get to a place where they're reading complex text," she says. "Choice helps develop a willingness to read... [and] I want kids to choose to read."

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English teachers are wrestling with how to navigate the increasingly contentious terrain between student choice and assigning the classics.

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Literacy Practices of First Year Teachers

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Literacy Practices of First Year Teachers

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This is a blog series from Cult of Pedagogy that shows the literacy practices of a first year teacher. it shows how teachers create goals for literacy and how these literacy practices can be shared with a teacher's students.

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I'm thrilled to introduce Shelby Denhof, who will be letting us follow her first year of teaching in a series of written and video diary entries. To see all entries in the series, click here.

I'm writing this from my own desk in my own classroom. Mine. I was offered a 7th grade English Language Arts position three weeks ago and this is my first time in my classroom.

From my chair, I see bare walls, clean marker boards, and rows of desks. When I open drawers and cupboards, I find remnants of the teacher before me: three pads of sticky notes, a handful of paper clips, and a file cabinet stuffed to the brim with who knows what. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but sitting at this desk feels like a success in itself.

I'm about to start my first year of teaching.

A lot came before this. In college, I worked in a number of traditional and nontraditional learning environments: I've been a sixth-grade camp counselor, an after-school P.E. teacher, a literacy tutor, an intern with the Lake Michigan Writing Project, a German instructor. I set out to garner as much experience as I could working with kids before graduating. For student teaching, I had the privilege of working with the person I consider to be my long-time mentor and role model and I taught English and German at the high school level. After student teaching, I was immediately hired as a paraprofessional for a high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There, I worked primarily with kids labeled "at risk," as well as special needs students and English language learners. I learned more there than I ever did in college.

All of these experiences taught me something and helped form who I am as an educator, but few prepared me for working with middle schoolers. This will be a new adventure entirely.

Since I began writing this entry, I've begun to fill my shelves with books for my students to read. I wrote a quote on the board. I organized a cabinet. Like I said, there's a lot to do, and that's not even with the curriculum.

It's taken me a long time to decide how to arrange my desks. I don't enjoy rows because I find that rows aren't conducive to group work or sharing with peers in any way, but I'm going back and forth on how to clump the desks together, debating between stations of two, stations of four, or creating a horseshoe-shaped arrangement. For now, I've committed to creating stations of four, making it easy to do think-pair-share activities, share journals, and play games, which I love incorporating in my lessons to get kids actively learning and participating. My biggest doubt about this setup has to do with classroom management. With the desks being so close together in their groups, I have a fear in the back of my head that kids will find talking to their peers irresistible or maybe even share work. For now, though, I'm going to give this setup a try while I figure out what works best for me and my students.

I'm overwhelmed with the number of hopes and goals I have for my first year. I want my kids to read more, write more, and speak more. I want to make learning more interactive with in-class debates, discussions, and games. I want to incorporate articles of the week and journaling to propel meaningful conversation. I want to embed service learning into what we do as a class. The list goes on.

But I need to take a breath. I've been told before that beginning teachers should focus on doing one or two new things really well instead of doing many new things haphazardly. Now, I'm a "go big or go home" kind of person, but that advice speaks some truth to me. When I was student teaching, I gave it my all; the classes were mine to do what I wanted with them and my cooperating teachers gave me an absurd amount of freedom. I put everything I had into making those classes rock, consistently working thirteen hour days, and I'd find myself crying out of stress at least once a week. Best case scenario would be a few tears on Sunday evening, feeling overwhelmed with planning and grading. Worst case scenario would be a time like one weekend where I received a minor injury that required stitches; the whole hospital process backed up my schedule so badly, I couldn't do any of the work I needed to to survive the week (or, that's at least how it felt), and I became a bucket of tears. Any small hiccup-stitches or not-was a threat to my fragile, inefficient system. The heavy pile of obligations was too much at points because I was working just days ahead of my students. Now, student teaching really was a big success for me, but is that lifestyle sustainable? Heck no. And I'm not going to let myself get like that again.

Therefore, time management is my biggest goal for the year. I need to make the clock my boss and cut myself off from working at a certain point. If I have a lot of time to work on something, I won't stop. I desperately need to get better at creating quality lesson- and unit plans and grading within a reasonable amount of time. I'm also giving Saturdays back to myself-one day a week with no school obligations. We'll see how long that lasts, but it's a solid step to keeping me sane this year.

Just as important for my sanity, I need to maintain the mindset that I have value, even as a newbie. I'm the only first-year teacher at my school in a sea of seasoned professionals. That intimidates me. Thoughts run through my mind if they'll accept me and take me seriously. At low points, I question what I have to offer.

The thing is, though, when I really think about it, I have unique experiences, most coming from working with at-risk youth. My principal highlighted how excited he is to have me on the team because of my youth and enthusiasm. The superintendent mentioned how thrilled he is to have me on board because I offer the opportunity to expand German in the middle school as well. Many times, what seems normal to me can be completely new to my more experienced colleagues. I already saw that when I shared the reading comprehension strategies I use with students to members of my department. As a new teacher, I have a completely different perspective than those around me and I think that kind of diversity in thought is going to be valuable to the school. I just need to trust myself with my ideas as well as be open to the advice of others.

Now I'm back at my desk, nearly invisible under piles of books and folders and dusty supplies. Outside my window, I see two boys skateboarding on the sidewalk. I wonder if they'll be students of mine in just a few short weeks. I can't help but smile at that thought. So much needs to happen between now and the first day of school, but I feel oddly at peace. I'm about to leave my classroom for the day, but I'll be back tomorrow. I shut off the lights and take one last peek at my room before closing the door. ♦

If you're a new teacher, the Cult of Pedagogy New Teacher Checklist will provide a structure to follow as you progress through the school year. To download a free copy, just sign up for my mailing list. You'll get the checklist, plus all the other free downloads in my Members-Only Library. (If you're already a subscriber and want this resource, just check your most recent email for a link to the Members-Only Library!)

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Diary of a First-Year Teacher: Setting Goals

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"When I was student teaching, I gave it my all, consistently working thirteen hour days, and I'd find myself crying out of stress at least once a week. But is that lifestyle sustainable? Heck no. And I'm not going to let myself get like that again."

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This article supports content area literacy with diverse learners and how this literacy improves engagement in the classroom.

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Critical pedagogy in the Classroom Resources

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Critical pedagogy in the Classroom Resources

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This website is from the Friere Project in critical pedagogy. This website provides concrete lesson plans that include critical pedagogy using literacy.

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Making sure to teach every class with a critical lens is not always easy. Teaching the "double curriculum" can be tiring and at times difficult. However, there is strength in community. Read about how other teachers are taking the concepts and principles of critical pedagogy and using them and their classes.

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Novice teachers and pre-service teachers are in the beginning stages of learning to make instructional decisions based on data. This article provides strategies on how to make those instructional decisions based on data to benefit students int heir literacy goals.

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The TEDtalk video shows how literacy can effect people's lives in and outside of the classroom. It shows the importance of literacy and how we as a whole society need to continue to read more. This serves as the evidence to allow student choice and a literacy culture.

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More Reading: Kelly Corrigan at TEDxSonomaCounty

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This blog provides concrete examples of effective pedagogy for the classroom. These pedagogy strategies lend to literacy practices in the classroom.

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Does your teaching include these five standards? Take a deep dive with this self-check, originally produced by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence at the University of California.

Teacher and Students Producing Together

Learning occurs most effectively when experts and novices work together for a common product or goal, and are therefore motivated to assist one another. "Providing assistance" is the general definition of teaching; thus, joint productive activity (JPA) maximizes teaching and learning. Working together allows conversation, which teaches language, meaning, and values in the context of immediate issues. Teaching and learning through "joint productive activity" is cross-cultural, typically human, and probably "hard-wired." This kind of "mentoring" and "learning in action" is characteristic of parents with very young children; of pre-school, graduate school, adult learning, school-to-work and service learning, on-the-job training - of all education, except the common K-12 tradition. In schools, there is ordinarily little joint activity from which common experiences emerge, and therefore no common context that allows students to develop common systems of understanding with the teacher and with one another. Joint activity between teacher and students helps create such a common context of experience within the school itself. This is especially important when the teacher and the students are not of the same background.

Joint activity and discourse allow the highest level of academic achievement: using formal, "schooled," or "scientific" ideas to solve practical, real world problems. The constant connection of schooled concepts and everyday concepts is basic to the process by which mature schooled thinkers understand the world. These joint activities should be shared by both students and teachers. Only when the teacher also shares the experiences can the kind of discourse take place that builds basic schooled competencies.

Indicators of Joint Productive Activity

The teacher:

Developing Language Across the Curriculum

Developing competence in the language(s) of instruction should be a metagoal of all educational activity throughout the school day. Whether instruction is bilingual or monolingual, literacy is the most fundamental competency necessary for school success. School knowledge, and thinking itself, are inseparable from language. Everyday social language, formal academic language, and subject matter lexicons are all critical for school success.

Language development at all levels - informal, problem-solving, and academic - should be fostered through use and through purposeful, deliberate conversation between teacher and students, not through drills and decontextualized rules. Reading and writing must be taught both as specific curricula and integrated into each content area.

The ways of using language that prevail in school discourse, such as ways of asking and answering questions, challenging claims, and using representations, are frequently unfamiliar to English language learners and other students at risk of educational failure. However, their own culturally based ways of talking can be effectively linked to the language used for academic disciplines by building learning contexts that evoke and build upon children's language strengths.

The development of language and literacy as a metagoal also applies to the specialized language genres required for the study of science, mathematics, history, art, and literature. Effective mathematics learning is based on the ability to "speak mathematics," just as the overall ability to achieve across the curriculum is dependent on mastery of the language of instruction. Reading, writing, speaking, listening, and lexicons can be taught and learned in every subject matter, and indeed all the subject matters can be taught as though they were a second language. Joint Productive Activity provides an ideal venue for developing the language of the activity's domain.

Indicators of Language Development

The teacher:

Making Meaning: Connecting School to Students' Lives

The high literacy goals of schools are best achieved in everyday, culturally meaningful contexts. This contextualization utilizes students' funds of knowledge and skills as a foundation for new knowledge. This approach fosters pride and confidence as well as greater school achievement.

Increase in contextualized instruction is a consistent recommendation of education researchers. Schools typically teach rules, abstractions, and verbal descriptions, and they teach by means of rules, abstractions, and verbal descriptions. Schools need to assist at-risk students by providing experiences that show abstract concepts are drawn from and applied to the everyday world.

"Understanding" means connecting new learning to previous knowledge. Assisting students make these connections strengthens newly acquired knowledge and increases student engagement with learning activities. Schema theorists, cognitive scientists, behaviorists, and psychological anthropologists agree that school learning is made meaningful by connecting it to students' personal, family, and community experiences. Effective education teaches how school abstractions are drawn from and applied to the everyday world. Collaboration with parents and communities can reveal appropriate patterns of participation, conversation, knowledge, and interests that will make literacy, numeracy, and science meaningful to all students.

Indicators of Contextualization

The teacher:

Teaching Complex Thinking

Students at risk of educational failure, particularly those of limited standard English proficiency, are often forgiven any academic challenges on the assumption that they are of limited ability, or they are forgiven any genuine assessment of progress because the assessment tools are inadequate. Thus, both standards and feedback are weakened, with the predictable result that achievement is impeded. While such policies may often be the result of benign motives, the effect is to deny many diverse students the basic requirements of progress - high academic standards and meaningful assessment that allows feedback and responsive assistance.

There is a clear consensus among education researchers that students at risk of educational failure require instruction that is cognitively challenging; that is, instruction that requires thinking and analysis, not only rote, repetitive, detail-level drills. This does not mean ignoring phonics rules, or not memorizing the multiplication tables, but it does mean going beyond that level of curriculum into the exploration of the deepest possible reaches of interesting and meaningful materials. There are many ways in which cognitive complexity has been introduced into the teaching of students at risk of educational failure. There is good reason to believe, for instance, that a bilingual curriculum itself provides cognitive challenges that make it superior to a monolingual approach.

Working with a cognitively challenging curriculum requires careful leveling of tasks, so that students are motivated to stretch. It does not mean drill-and-kill exercises, nor it does not mean overwhelming challenges that discourage effort. Getting the correct balance and providing appropriate assistance is, for the teacher, a truly cognitively challenging task.

Indicators of Challenging Activities

The teacher:

1. assures that students - for each instructional topic - see the whole picture as a basis for understanding the parts.

2. presents challenging standards for student performance.

3. designs instructional tasks that advance student understanding to more complex levels.

4. assists students to accomplish more complex understanding by building from their previous success.

5. gives clear, direct feedback about how student performance compares with the challenging standards.

Teaching Through Conversation

Thinking, and the abilities to form, express, and exchange ideas are best taught through dialogue, through questioning and sharing ideas and knowledge. In the Instructional Conversation (IC), the teacher listens carefully, makes guesses about intended meaning, and adjusts responses to assist students' efforts--just as in graduate seminars, or between mothers and toddlers. Here the teacher relates formal, school knowledge to the student's individual, family, and community knowledge. The IC provides opportunities for the development of the languages of instruction and subject matter. IC is a supportive and collaborative event that builds intersubjectivity and a sense of community. IC achieves individualization of instruction; is best practiced during joint productive activity; is an ideal setting for language development; and allows sensitive contextualization, and precise, stimulating cognitive challenge.

This concept may appear to be a paradox; instruction implies authority and planning, while conversation implies equality and responsiveness. But the instructional conversation is based on assumptions that are fundamentally different from those of traditional lessons. Teachers who use it, like parents in natural teaching, assume that the student has something to say beyond the known answers in the head of the adult. The adult listens carefully, makes guesses about the intended meaning, and adjusts responses to assist the student's efforts - in other words, engages in conversation. Such conversation reveals the knowledge, skills, and values - the culture - of the learner, enabling the teacher to contextualize teaching to fit the learner's experience base.

In U.S. schools the instructional conversation is rare. More often, teaching is through the recitation script, in which the teacher repeatedly assigns and assesses. Classrooms and schools are transformed into communities of learners through such dialogic teaching, and when teachers reduce the distance between themselves and their students by constructing lessons from common understanding of each others' experience and ideas and make teaching a warm, interpersonal and collaborative activity.

Indicators of Instructional Conversations

The teacher:
Reprinted with permission from the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, University of California.

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Does your teaching include these five standards? Take a deep dive with this self-check, originally produced by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence at the University of California. Learning occurs most effectively when experts and novices work together for a common product or goal, and are therefore motivated to assist one another.

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This blog provides literacy strategies that classroom have been using over the years and have not been effective to instill the love of reading in the classroom. The love of reading contributes to the implementation of a culture of literacy in the school and classroom.

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Listen to my interview with Pernille Ripp (transcript):
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If I had to pick one thing that makes the biggest difference in the quality of any person's education, the quality of their life, really, it would be reading. And I'm not really talking about basic literacy-not about the ability to read-I'm talking about reading for pleasure, to satisfy curiosities, to understand how people work and find solace in knowing we are not the only ones who think and feel the way we do.

That kind of reading.

But when I see what my kids do in school for "reading," it doesn't really look like reading. I ask them what books they are reading in school, and a lot of times they give me a blank stare. What they do in reading, they tell me, is mostly worksheets about reading. Or computer programs that ask them to read passages, not books, and answer multiple-choice questions.

Knowing this has bothered me a lot, and it led me to Donalyn Miller's book, The Book Whisperer, and then to Kelly Gallagher's book, Readicide. Both of these books show us that the reading programs and activities schools are using don't work very well to raise students' reading proficiency, especially if they take the place of real interactions with real books. And they certainly don't do anything to turn our students into people who love to read.

The only thing that can do that is books. Reading actual books alongside other people reading actual books.

What baffles me is that this message still hasn't reached so many schools. Schools are still shelling out thousands of dollars on expensive programs, putting pages and pages of passages and comprehension questions in front of our kids every day, sending them through the system without ever having them read a real book. Just excerpts. Just passages. Just reading-related "activities," but little to no time with actual books.

So today I'm going to do what I can to get the message out there by having my friend Pernille Ripp on the podcast. Pernille is a seventh grade English language arts teacher in Wisconsin. She has been blogging for years, she speaks all over the country, and she has written several books about teaching.

Her most recent one is called Passionate Readers, where she writes about her own journey from teaching reading through programs and activities to teaching in a way that honors books and develops a love of reading in every child. It's an awesome book. The best thing about it is how transparent Pernille is about her own doubts and struggles in this process.

In our interview we talk about why she made the change, what her reading instruction looks like now, and how other teachers can change their own practices. The key takeaways are summarized below. You can read a full transcript of our conversation here.

What's Wrong with the Way We Teach Reading Now?

In many classrooms that are feeling the pressure of high-stakes testing, instruction tends to emphasize what researcher Louise Rosenblatt called efferent reading, the kind of reading we do when looking for information, as opposed to aesthetic reading, which is done for enjoyment. Reading for information is a vital skill-without the ability to tackle challenging texts, locate evidence to support claims, summarize important ideas, and identify bias, students' academic progress will be stunted.

Unfortunately, our push toward developing close reading skills has had collateral damage. In far too many schools, reading for pleasure has been treated as an afterthought, something we encourage but don't really make time for. Instead of giving students time to read, we're giving them activities, projects, computer programs, reading logs, and worksheets that detract from actual reading.

"We're constantly reading for skill," Ripp says. "We're constantly asking kids to do something with their reading, and then wondering why they're choosing to leave us and never picking up another book. They can't wait to get out of school so that they don't have to read."

When she criticizes these practices, Ripp has no desire to teacher-bash. "I get it," she says. "We are all kind of facing the pressure of our districts and our government and our testing and our parents and everybody's focus on the data to show that these children can comprehend and compete with this global market economy that we're a part of."

"But unfortunately," she explains, "what that has led to is just this further step away from what we know works within reading instruction."

Even when we do have students read for enjoyment, we require evidence-reading logs, book reports, quizzes-to prove that the reading actually happened.

This was how Ripp taught for several years: "It was exhausting," she says. "When we did book clubs, it was all about me, and I was reading five different books and coming up with all of the questions. All the kids had to do was show up, read aloud. There was no discussion about which book we were going to read or anything like that. It was just all teacher-centered, all the time, book reports just to prove they had read rather than doing meaningful work after they had finished the book."

The Catalyst: What Caused the Change

Then one day a student said something that stopped Ripp in her tracks.

"I was doing the 'reading is magical' lesson that I think we all do at some point in the beginning of the year, and a kid in front of me whispered to his friends, 'Reading sucks.' And you know, I wanted to jump on him and be like, 'Oh, you just haven't found the right book,' because how often have we said that?"

Instead, she asked him to tell her why.

That's when the floodgates opened: Invited for the first time to honestly share their thoughts about reading, students told Ripp that they didn't like having to sit still. They wanted to be able to choose their own books, rather than being limited to a certain level. And more than anything, they hated the fact that every time they read something, they had to do some kind of activity related to the reading afterward.

Thus began Ripp's journey toward what she calls a common sense approach to reading.

Returning to a Common Sense Approach

Once her eyes were opened, Ripp found herself drawn to the people she calls the "pioneers" of a type of reading instruction: Nancie Atwell, Donalyn Miller, Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, Stephen Krashen, and so many others. She began to understand that scripted programs and reading-related activities-teacher-centered reading instruction-were not the way to help students become life-long readers. Over time, she shifted to a different approach.

When she talks about her current practices, she emphasizes over and over again that this is nothing new. "We have so many years of really great reading research out there, and yet it seems to be forgotten."

Here are the most important components of Ripp's reading instruction the way it looks today.

Time to Read

Ripp's students are given ten minutes at the beginning of every class period for independent reading. "Every child, every day," she says. Even though she only has 45 minute blocks with each seventh-grade class, she makes sure they get that time to read every day. "It is sacred time," she says. When she taught at the elementary level, she was able to give students 30 minutes a day, but she no longer has that luxury.

During that independent reading time, Ripp does check-ins with students. "I'm sitting down and I'm simply saying, 'What are you working on as a reader?' And it gives me that two-, three-minute connection with a child if they need to book shop, if they're not doing well, to see what their reading identity is, where are they on their journey, and then I kind of pull all this information to think about what I still need to teach them (during the other part of class time)."

Students are not graded for this reading. "We can't actually grade their independent reading, because that's practice," Ripp says. So there's no other work associated with that time: no worksheets, no logs, no written reflections. "Nothing to do except to read. I want them to fall into the pages. I want them to reach flow. I want them to be silent and in this moment of their book."

Ripp uses the remainder of the 45-minute period to have students work on the other things you'd expect to see in an English language arts classroom. "When they come back to me (after the ten minutes), we then do a mini lesson on reading or writing or whatever it is we're doing, 10 to 15 minutes. And then they go and do something, and that's where I assess them." But those first ten minutes are always, always devoted to independent reading.

Choice

"Whenever I ask kids," Ripp says, "'What's the one thing you wish all teachers of reading would do?' (they say) 'Choice.' And yet, what do we do time and time again? We take away choice from kids, especially kids who might not be where we would hope they would be at this time. We end up with these limited choices for them, and then we wonder why they're the ones that distance themselves from reading the most, because they never get to develop their reading identity. They never get to go through the selection process. They never get to just read and struggle with text and have meaningful conversations and sometimes yes, make the wrong choice."

Students in Ripp's class always have free choice of what they want to read during independent reading time. Through lots of conversations, students practice getting to know who they are as readers so they can make choices that work for them. "They're constantly evaluating their book choices just either through conversation or self reflection or just their habits," Ripp says.

If a student finds that a book just isn't grabbing him, he is free to abandon it. "We should be celebrating when we abandon a book," Ripp tells her students, "because we know ourselves enough as a reader to know that this will not provide us with a reading experience that will matter to us. And we need to start building up that stamina, so we need books that work for us at that time, and that's really important for my students to remember, and to know and to recognize that what they need at this moment might be different than what they need a month from now."

A Robust Classroom Library

Ripp's classroom library houses several thousand books that students can check out at any time. You read that right: several thousand.

Why so many? "I need a book for every reader," Ripp says, "and I teach kids that read from about a second grade level to a college level. I teach kids with lives that share no similarities at times and others whose lives are very much like my own. And so I need to make sure that every child has a chance of finding a book that will speak to them."

Where do they all come from? "(At the time I had) three kids at home, you know, on a teacher's salary," Ripp explains. "I can't go out and spend thousands of dollars on books, and my school didn't have a lot of extra money, but I would rather that a child can go up to this bookshelf and find a high-quality book pretty much any time they go there rather than have to dig through the junk and hope they find something. So it just became my mission that instead of buying things to make our classroom prettier or anything like that, I bought books. I used Scholastic, I went to library sales and parents donated books, and I was always really picky. It was big for me that the books were good, and then I just purchased books."

Why not just have students use the school library? Ripp believes students need both. "Kids need to see the books staring at them at all times, and I think that has made the biggest difference for some of my kids who would go through the motions of going to the school library and they would even check some books out, but then when it came down to actually sitting down and read it, they didn't feel that same need or urge to read it." Her experience has proven the research that says students read more in classes that have good classroom libraries. "I had a seventh-grader come back to me my first year at the end of the year," she says, "and he said, 'You know what made the biggest difference? The books were always right there staring at me.'"

Ripp's classroom library also includes an incredible assortment of picture books. Having lots of picture books in the classroom helped remove the "babyish" stigma many middle schoolers attached to them. "If you walk into our classroom, yes there's all those books, the chapter books and all of that, but then all around us are picture books. And it's just a vibe, right? You feel it when you walk in that this is a classroom where you can have fun and where you get to read and you can choose whatever you want. No one cares what you're reading in our classroom, because you can pick up picture books at any time." To start building your picture book collection, take a look at the tons and tons of recommendations for picture books Ripp offers on her website.

Culture and Community

A constant thread that runs through Passionate Readers is the sense that a classroom culture is constantly being built, that every day, Ripp communicates how incredibly important books are to a good life, and how, if we get to know ourselves as readers, and have lots of conversations about our reading, we'll really get to experience the true magic of reading.

The 7th Grade Book Challenge is one way she encourages students to build more reading time into their lives. This was adapted from the 40-Book Challenge introduced in Donalyn Miller's Book Whisperer. Ripp participates in the challenge herself, just one of the ways she shares her own reading identity with her students.

Outside of things like the challenge, the culture is ultimately built on a day-to-day basis. "Teaching reading is not supposed to be quick and easy," she says. "It's supposed to be about human connection. It's one conversation at a time."

She admits that this new way of teaching is not perfect, and she's constantly reflecting on how she can do better for her students. "We cannot go in there and expect every child to change, but we can go in there hoping that we can help," she says. "I tell my students this: I'm not here to make you love reading. I'm here to make you hate it less. And if you already love it, then I'm here to protect it with all of my might." ♥

Pernille's book, Passionate Readers, goes into a lot more detail than I have room for here. It really walks teachers through how to implement a more reader-centered approach to teaching reading, complete with all the possible obstacles and pitfalls. I really encourage you to get a copy. To read more from Pernille Ripp, visit her fantastic blog at pernillesripp.com.

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Too many schools are producing non-readers at an alarming rate, but it doesn't have to be that way. Pernille Ripp and I talk about how to change things.

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In learner centered theory, students make decisions based on what they would like to learn given resources by an educator. In this philosophy teachers need to be able to provide authentic feedback to students to encourage authentic literacy learning.

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This podcast is solely for literacy practices from researchers and practitioners. it provides research to teachers in literacy.

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Listen to bi-weekly podcasts (available 1st and 3rd Mondays) of interviews with literacy researchers as they discuss the implications of their research. Teachers, parents, principals, and policymakers are invited to listen and discuss ways to improve literacy instruction. Voice of Literacy podcast hosting provided by PodcastPeople.com

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Teachers as Facilitators not Information Givers

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Teachers as Facilitators not Information Givers

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This video shows how project based learning can be used apart of a student/centered philosophy in the classroom. Teachers model how to serve as a facilitator and not just a giver of information.

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Student-Centered Learning: Building Agency and Engagement

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Peek inside a high school where teachers act as facilitators and students are directors of their own learning.