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Click HERE to access the student data tracker for reading.

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Data from both the Fall and Winter MAP testing cycles. Data subject to change pending MAP make-up testing.

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Timely and authentic feedback, as most know, is crucial for student learning and progress. When we don't practice this tenet, students will soon see that the rigor level in your classroom is nonexistent and that all talk of "having high standards" is just that--talk.

Part of our role as educators is to mold and mentor our pupils in the area of our discipline, whether that be English or PE. Students, by the end of the year, should leave our presence wiser, smarter, and more knowledgeable and competent in the area is which they literally just spent nine month of their lives (and ours).

And you can't get there without true, authentic, and timely feedback. That's why I love Prokeys. It allows me to develop clear, nuanced, and hyperlinked feedback (or snippets) that I can then drop in at the touch of a key. What if I have a message that is slightly different than my saved comment? I just insert the comment and then go in and tweak it a bit to better serve my student.

Between this extension and Mote, my students were able to experience relevant feedback in a much shorter time frame that allowed them, while the content was still relatively fresh in their minds, to go back to their work and wrestle with a little more. They were expected to DO something with that feedback. And, while holding students accountable is hard work, if we don't do it, we'll always be teaching and they'll always be learning at a mediocre level.

How can you make your feedback more relevant? And then how will you hold your kiddos accountable for applying that feedback?

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Teacher Hack for Online Grading: ProKeys

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Teacher hack for online grading using a Google Chrome extension called ProKeys where you create snippets to use for feedback in online work

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Check out #1. I'm like, "What????" I've already tried accessing this tool, but there is a waiting list. Go sign up now!

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
Sponsored by Hapara and JumpStart

If you've been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for awhile, you know that every year, I put out a new edition of my Teacher's Guide to Tech. This year's guide is the ninth edition, and we put a tremendous amount of work into making it the best one ever.

For starters, we've added 120 new tools and four new categories - artificial intelligence, drama & theater arts, early learners, and literacy. We also added a few new feature pages on microlearning, working with English learners, and publishing student writing. We also added a few lists of ten throughout the guide, curated lists of teaching-related resources that didn't quite fit in any category. We also completely reorganized the Tips section, which is over 40 pages of articles all hand-picked to help you make smarter decisions about the tech you use. And finally there's the main work of every update, which is to check each and every listing that's already there and make sure everything is still accurate. Every year I am shocked by how many tools change their name, shift their primary function, or disappear completely.

If this is the first time you're hearing about the guide, this video will show you what it is and how it works:

It takes about three full months every fall to update the guide for the upcoming year, and I want to thank my team - Marnie Diem, Brandie Wright, Lucia Hassell, and Kim Darche - for helping me make that happen.

The guide is packed with tools that can meet so many of your needs as a teacher, and many of them are already well established and widely used. But every January, we like to choose six that we think deserve a little extra attention. Most are not actually brand-new to the world, but each one has something special about it. So here we go!

The Tools

1. ChatGPT
chat.openai.com
This one has to come first because everyone seems to be talking about it right now, and for good reason. Released in November of 2022, ChatGPT is a free tool that uses machine learning to compose just about any piece of writing you tell it to.

"In plain English, it's like a magic Alexa," Marnie Diem says. "Or a magic Google. You ask, Alexa, explain to me how a radio works. ChatGPT does it in writing. It uses artificial intelligence to write essays, short stories, plays, you name it." When she first saw it working, Diem had the same reaction many other educators had; with a tool like this, students would never need to produce a single line of original writing again. Forget plagiarism - this tool essentially serves as a ghostwriter for anyone who uses it. "I went into full panic mode," she said. "This is going to change writing instruction forever."

Since that initial reaction, she has since landed in a more pragmatic place. "It's about finding a way that it can help our learning instead of do our learning for us," she says. The tool can be used for doing research, by asking it to explain a given concept to you. It can provide teachers with texts that can be used for lessons. It can even write lesson plans. But despite how good it is, it still needs a human touch. "This tool is not 100 percent accurate," Diem says. "But when we take what it gives us and humanize it and put in our skill set and our knowledge, we could have this tool for a really positive impact on education."

"If we focus on the fear," she says, "we'll be in trouble. If we focus on ways we can use this tool to help our teaching and learning, we're going to have a lot of fun with it."

2. TalkingPoints
talkingpts.org
This free app allows teachers and parents to message each other in their preferred language: The teacher can send out a message in English, and the parent can have it translated into one of over 100 languages. Parents can also respond in their preferred language and it will be translated back for the teacher. It's available as a mobile app or text-only for parents who do not have smartphones.

Brandie Wright's school has a high population of families that speak Arabic and Spanish, and these families had always been harder to connect with than those who spoke English. As soon as she started using TalkingPoints, she started hearing from families that had never responded to messages that were sent out through the school's other communication systems.

"When you create your student list," Wright says, "you put the parents' information in there, including the home language." Once that information is set, all messages that go out to that family are automatically translated into that family's preferred language. So you send a single message out to a big group of families, and each family receives the message in their home language. So this can be used as a single messaging system for all students.

Whether you have just a few families who don't speak English or a large, diverse population speaking multiple languages, TalkingPoints can help you engage all families much more effectively.

3. Ahaslides
ahaslides.com
AhaSlides makes any presentation interactive with colorful, eye-catching live polls, quizzes, word clouds, brainstorming activities, spinner wheels and other interactives that gather real-time feedback and engage your students.

Let's say you already have a lot of PowerPoint or Google Slides presentations that you've used for years. You can now add interactivity by just importing one of these files into AhaSlides and putting interactive elements in between your content slides. Then, when you give your presentation and you get to one of these slides, participants can respond through their phones or other devices (they join with a simple URL or QR code) and the results appear instantly on your presenter's screen.

The free version of this tool limits you to only a few participants, but they have pretty reasonable educational pricing for schools, so my advice is to give the free version a try and if you love it, see if your school will pay for a bigger license. The video below gives you a general idea of what AhaSlides has to offer, but if you want a more in-depth look at how it works, watch this video.

4. The Juice
thejuicelearning.com
This current events platform delivers five articles to students every day. Designed for grades 5-12 at four different reading levels, the standards-aligned articles are written by the Juice staff and sourced from a variety of news outlets. Each article has vocabulary, a comprehension quick check, and the option to read or listen to the articles. Included in every issue are infographics, articles on SEL and STEAM topics, and "extra Juice" links, which send readers to previous Juice articles that relate to the daily topic.

"So you enroll your class, and you assign a reading level to each individual student," Kim Darche explains. "And then automatically, the students are given their 'Daily Juice' in the level that you have assigned them. Then on the teacher's end there's this insane dashboard that talks about which articles the students have read, what questions they got correct, how long they spent reading."

What impresses Darche the most is the quality of the articles and how closely aligned they are with the current events covered by major news outlets. "The articles range; they go from global, cultural affairs to sports. It feels like a newspaper that's getting delivered." she says. And even more impressive, she says, are the comprehension questions that supplement the articles. "The questions blew me away as much as the articles did."

5. 1619 Project Pulitzer Center Resources
1619education.org
The 1619 Project was originally launched in August of 2019 as a special edition in The New York Times. Developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, "The project illuminates the legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States, and highlights the contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American society." Since its initial publication, it has grown and evolved to include two published books and a podcast.

To make the most of the project's rich materials, the Pulitzer Center began building a collection of free, teacher-created classroom resources that use the 1619 Project as a springboard. For the last two years, the Center has sponsored two cohorts of educators from across the United States who have developed materials for the collection. Lesson plans are available on the site for all grade levels and in a wide variety of subject areas.

Our team member Lucia Hassell was a part of the 2022 cohort, and while she says the work was challenging, it was absolutely worth it. "Although this work can be labeled as 'hard history,'" she says, "I think it's important to lean into this work. Some of it, for me, has to do with my ancestry and my roots, but think about how we can challenge ourselves and our students to think about where we are right now and where it all started."

The video below, from the Center's first annual conference, does not showcase the resources on the site, but it features the reflections of teachers who have used the materials in their classrooms. It provides an optimistic and inspiring look at what's possible. Information about applying for future cohorts can be found here.

6. Along
along.org
In recent years, educators have become more aware of the importance of social emotional learning in our students; more specifically, the need to pay closer attention to our students' emotional state and respond when help is needed.

The Along platform is a free digital reflection tool used to deepen student-teacher connections and set up a system for regular check-ins. It makes it easier to build relationships with our students and maintain regular contact with them.

Here's how it works: Teachers choose from a database of research-informed questions and resources to share with students. They then add their own response to the prompt before sharing with students. Students see the prompt and their teacher's response - these can be created in video, text, or audio - and then post their own response in a completely private and secure setting.

If you're in need of a tool to improve your connection with students outside of academics, Along may be exactly what you're looking for.

The Teacher's Guide to Tech

The 9th edition of the Teacher's Guide to Tech is loaded with tools that can enrich your teaching. With over 650 tools in more than 50 different categories, this is the resource you need to quickly make smart decisions about the technology you choose for your classroom.

This year's guide has over 120 new tools and three brand-new categories: artificial intelligence, drama & theater arts, early learners, and literacy, plus features on microlearning, teaching English learners, and publishing student writing. We've also completely reorganized and updated the Tips section, over 40 pages of articles about how to use technology thoughtfully. Along with that, we've made sure that every single tool listed has up-to-date information, videos, and links to their sites, so you can find what you need and get back to teaching.

Where to Get Your Copy

Single-User Licenses: If you just want a copy for yourself, you can get it at Teachers Pay Teachers or on Teachable.

Multi-User Licenses: To get the guide for your team, school, or even district, you can save a lot by getting multi-user licenses. I offer the deepest discounts for these on Teachable.

Purchase on Teachable
Purchase on TpT

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A messaging platform that translates for you, a daily curation of current events, the one that writes essays for you, and more.

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AMAZINGLY Informative Video on Instructional Design

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AMAZINGLY Informative Video on Instructional Design

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Explicit Vocabulary Strategy for High School 

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Explicit Vocabulary Strategy for High School 

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Paired Reading, Vocabulary Clusters, Word Walls, etc.

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DIT Labs - Fairfax County Public Schools

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Best Practices: High School Reading Strategies

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The final product in McCauley's class

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Reading Radium Girls by Kate Moore in McCauley's Class

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Literacy Skills Targeted:
1. Prefixes/Suffixes (Word Study)
2. Sentence Fluency
3. Comprehension
4. Literary Devices (foreshadowing)
5. Text Structures (cause and effect)

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Students working together to find the answer.

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Dr. Ludeke sure knows what motivates the young brain, or any brain, really. Hidden deep within the depths of his classroom, a twenty dollar bill silently awaited discovery. The task was to work together to decode a string of ionic compounds in order to break the secret code, which revealed exactly where in the classroom the loot was stashed. I have never seen students move so quickly to get an assignment going. This activity was great because it allowed students to choose to collaborate or to work at it alone. Either, everyone was on task, engaged, and doing rigorous work.

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Close reading a text is such an important skill that should be reinforced in every subject area. Close reading is used for more technical or academic writing; it helps students formulate meaning of the more difficult texts.
1st Read=Cold read; circle unfamiliar words; look up words in dictionary and write meaning in margins
2nd Read=Read for Connection; annotate T-T (text to text), T-S (text to self), and T-W (text to world); don't just write the letters--write a quick "caveman speak" in the margins
3rd Read=Read for Analysis--students read for a specific purpose depending on what skill/standard is being taught/ reviewed (i.e. main idea, theme, tone, etc.)

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When I teach close reading to middle and high school students, I try to keep in mind the ways I actually use this skill in my own life. Close reading for students typically means they are sitting at a desk and annotating along the margins. When I sit down to read something with the intention of retaining information or analyzing it, my reading process becomes much more active, and it does in fact internally resemble what it is my students are doing. To help your students become more active readers who don't always require a pen in hand, you'll want to walk them through the step-by-step process of completing a close read.

What is close reading?

You'll want to make sure that your students know what close reading and annotation is at the outset. Close reading is the process through which a reader uses a series of active reading strategies to gather important information from a text and share what they learn through the annotation process. This typically takes the form of writing ideas within and along the margins of the text. We will go into more detail below on what exactly students should write, but it will be important that you make sure you and your students know what constitutes close reading and how it differs from typical reading.

Why Teach Close Reading?

Close reading leads to a deeper understanding of a text. We teach close reading to give our students important tools that will serve as the foundation for not only their reading comprehension, but also their ability to analyze, evaluate, and examine things like the overall why of a text, literary terms, text connections, and much more.

How to Teach Close Reading

Model the skill:

It's crucial that we as teachers show the students exactly what we expect their close reading to look like. Model the skills over and over, multiple times. Show the students what close reading looks like by doing a "live" close read of a passage on the board. Project the text onto the whiteboard and use markers to annotate for students, so they can see what you are writing, but also hear your thought process as you are annotating. I typically use The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant as an example as there is a lot to work with at the beginning of the story.

A collaborative process:

We might think of close reading as being a solitary activity. I like to think of close reading as a collaborative process that moves into an independent process. Begin by working together on these skills as a class. Provide scaffolding in the form of supports and structures with group or paired work that is slowly taken away to eventually be an independent practice.

Provide a Step-by-Step Structure for Students

Let's take a closer look now at what a step-by-step structure for close reading might look like for your students. I encourage you to use this structure in your class or create something similar. I like to break down the close reading process into four sections: Before Reading, First Reading, Second Reading, and Final Reading. Let me describe each step...

I like to encourage students to make a prediction about the text based on what they know about it before reading. What does the title suggest the story might be about? What do you know about the author, if anything? Have you read anything by this author before? Close reading is a process that begins even before the reading of the text itself.

On the first reading, get your students to circle the words they don't understand. Have them look up these words in the dictionary and include a definition or a synonym beside it. It's during this first reading that the students should also make note of information that seems key to the plot of the story.

The second time around is when students should dive a little deeper. Get them to start thinking about the theme by having them focus on the important lessons they think are in the story. You want students to be thinking about the craft and structure of the text on this reading. Have them make note of the use of things like characterization, figurative language, and literary devices, for example.

The final reading is when I like to get my students to begin making connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world). At this point, the students' opinions about the elements of the text are supported by their two previous readings. After this last step in the close reading process, each student should have a much stronger grasp of the material than they would have if they only read it once without using any of the above-mentioned strategies.

Of course, some students will benefit from this process in different ways than others. Close reading comes naturally for some and is a real challenge for others. This is part of the reason it's so important to have a clearly established structure for your students to follow.

I hope you found these insights on how to teach close reading to middle and high school students helpful. Best of luck working on this with your class! If you plan on teaching students how to annotate poetry, you'll want to check out this post that walks you through the process of poetry annotation.

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How to Teach Close Reading to Middle and High School Students - Presto Plans

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When I teach close reading to middle and high school students, I try to keep in mind the ways I actually use this skill in my own life. Close reading for students typically means they are sitting at a desk and annotating along the margins.

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This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links,
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Are your students the readers, writers, and thinkers you want them to be? Is your school or system producing graduates who are ready to tackle the literacy demands of our world? If you're not sure of these answers, it may be time for a literacy check-up.

As a researcher, author, and consultant for almost two decades now, I've been honored to work alongside teachers to create meaningful literacy instruction. In the past 18 months, I've observed over 1000 lessons-some in person, many virtually-taught by teachers in American classrooms from preschool to 12 th grade. Through these observations, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: We need to do better if our children are to become highly literate.

And they simply must.

They must become lifelong readers, writers, inquirers, critical thinkers, and empathetic souls. Without high levels of literacy, they become prey to misinformation and economic manipulation. They may not fully understand or enact their rights and freedoms. They may not be able to communicate their ideas well. If not highly literate, they will earn lower wages and have a greater risk of being incarcerated (NCES, 1994). They also risk living a life devoid of the beauty and power of literature. There are so many reasons that literacy is perhaps the most pressing civil rights issue of our time.

I've worked with hundreds of schools and systems trying to create markedly more literate lives for their students in the past 18 years. And for 17 years prior to that, I was a teacher, administrator, and instructional coach. So, as a senior member of this profession, I have a long and deep view here. I've seen methodologies and legislation come and go-many of them so-called "game changers"-but what persists is literacy instruction eerily similar to my own schooling in the 1970's and 1980's. There are still numerous class periods filled with answer-the-questions and look-it-up-in-the-dictionary. Student-led discussion is practically nonexistent; teacher-talk and low-level questions fill the hours. Student-made posters with drawings in colored pencil abound. When asked what they're drawing and why, students can't supply key points from the content or use the appropriate, discipline-specific terminology.

We can do better. We must do better.

Esteemed educator Mike Schmoker has written about his experiences in schools quite extensively, and sadly, they mirror my own: "When I tour schools and classrooms with... administrators, we never lament the possible absence of instructional technology, personalized-learning strategies, or other popular (but largely unproven) 'innovations.' We do lament the omnipresence of worksheets; the startling disparities in the content taught by teachers teaching the same course in the same school building; the ubiquitous 'cut, color, and paste' activities that masquerade as literacy instruction... and the widespread inattentiveness..., abetted by the tradition of calling on only those who raise their hands-while the rest sit, passive and bored. We note the paucity of authentic reading and writing activities, even in courses where they should predominate."

The past year and half, which I've spent supporting about a dozen school systems in several different states, has not changed my views. The COVID pandemic has given us an unprecedented opportunity to rethink instruction, but what I'm finding time and time again is that teachers have turned to methods and tasks that don't work well but, in most cases, are easy to orchestrate. There is less writing (especially at the secondary level). There is more cutting, coloring, and pasting (mostly at the elementary level). There's a good bit of clapping and singing beyond the preschool years. Teachers are showing a lot of YouTube videos without discussing them. There are more worksheet packets than I've ever seen. And, tragically, there is too much passive screen time. I see many classes where the kids might as well be back at their kitchen tables during lockdown because they're doing the exact same kind of work-having the teacher and classmates nearby is not part of the work; it's just a kid and a device, doing something together.

I'm not sure why this is happening, and frankly, I don't want to spend a lot of time analyzing it. I understand that every teacher's nerves are frayed. Educators have just experienced the most traumatic and stressful year of their careers. Perhaps it's been difficult to hold true to what we know works. Perhaps we have lost our way a bit. That's understandable. But we need to get back on track, and fast. We must excise ineffective practices and zero in on what works. The literacy check-up process can help us do that.

Defining Good Literacy Instruction

So what works? And how do we make sure we're doing what works as often as possible?

A good starting point would be to look at what it means to be "literate." My book What To Look for in Literacy is a practical improvement guide for literacy instruction. In the book, my co-author Tracey Shiel and I first discuss what it means to be a literate person in today's world. In short, the well-prepared, highly literate high school graduate of today must be all of the following:

A reader who chooses to read independently and who can tackle complex texts in all disciplines;

An effective communicator who can speak and write well, share information effectively, defend one's positions with compelling evidence, and collaborate well;

A critical thinker-one who can analyze and synthesize, taking into account the credibility of sources;

An inquirer who seeks information about his/her interests and who finds answers to meaningful questions; and

A global citizen who embraces diversity and seeks cultural understanding.

Next, we turn to effective literacy instruction in general. Briefly, we focus on how units and lessons should be built, following a backward design process and the concept of the gradual release of responsibility. We also spend a great deal of time discussing the components of reading instruction, effective reading and writing instruction for all age levels, and content-area literacy.

After laying this groundwork, the book then provides approximately 90 research-based tools to monitor literacy instruction for each grade span: the early years (grades PK-2), elementary (3-5), middle school (6-8), and high school (9-12). The tools can be used by administrators, instructional/literacy coaches, and teachers-ideally in collegial fashion-to examine literacy instruction, reflect on practices, and plan for increased effectiveness. And while the tools can be used for various monitoring/accountability purposes, they are intended to fuel inquiry and innovation. They are not meant to be evaluative or punitive.

What follows is a sampling of check-up tools for three areas: environment, reading instruction, and writing instruction. Use these to get a sense for how effective your current literacy practices are. And when you're ready to go deeper, you can explore all of the tools in What to Look for in Literacy.

Check-Up Area 1: Environment

Whole-School Environment

Some of the most tangible, easy-to-collect data is about the learning environment: What do the halls, walls, and materials in the school say about literacy? How do they support literacy learning?

The tool below can be used by any staff member to move around the school and look at various displays, tuning into what is supportive of literacy. It may be enlightening to take a walk throughout the school with your PLC or other team to complete this form (and take photos). "Hard" data like this often spurs conversation and change.

When using this tool to conduct literacy check-ups, I've found that schools often display student artwork and sports-related items (trophies, jerseys, etc.) but are missing opportunities to reinforce literacy learning. Recently, I've also seen a lot of displays focused on the social and emotional well-being of students, often with information about a growth mindset. Why not add student writing samples to such displays? That's just one of many easy literacy moves that I've seen in some schools that have made their literacy focus more prominent.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Encouraging and celebrating all things literate all throughout a school sends a clear message to students and families that literacy is valued. Displays don't have to be elaborate or time-consuming. Look at the examples below that get the job done.

In this example, middle school teacher Melanie Van Soelen posts what she is currently reading at her door. She has shared with me that this simple display has invited several students to talk with her about the books she's reading and to consider reading them too. A display like this shows students that teachers are lifelong readers, not just people who spend all their free time trying to create work for students. Imagine if every teacher in a school had such a display at their doors or in the front of the room! What a powerful message that sends about the importance of reading across one's entire life.

In the next example, former third-grade teacher Leanne Brown has literacy actually spilling out of her room! She posted a motivational quote each week along with a rotating display of student writing. Simple yet powerful.

Classroom Environment

The literacy environment inside classrooms is obviously even more important, as classrooms are where students spend the majority of their time. One of the most vital parts of a literate classroom environment is a robust classroom library. As author and educator Kelly Gallagher has noted, "Rather than waiting for students to discover the joys of the library, we must bring the books to the students. Students need to be surrounded by interesting books daily, not just on those occasional days when the teacher takes them to the library."

I am dismayed that in recent years, funding for hard-copy books has decreased. Electronic books and reading software are good resources to have, but the research is clear that students who have physical books within reach read more - they read up to 60% more in classrooms with libraries (Neuman, n.d.).

The tool below can be used to examine your own classroom library. It can also spark conversation about disparities from room to room. If we want children to be highly literate, then they must have access to materials they want to read as they go from room to room during the school day.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Check-Up Area 2: Reading Instruction

The checkup tools for instruction look a little different. They can be easily integrated into the walkthrough procedures that administrators often use. They can be used by coaches within coaching cycles, especially if a teacher is trying to improve or innovate in a specific area of literacy instruction. They can also be used by groups of teacher colleagues to collect data over time showing which instructional practices are most common (and which are nonexistent).

The three tools below would be used by an observer who watches all or part of reading instruction on any given day. You can see across the grade spans how the "look-fors" change to take into account the age levels of students and the work they are expected to do.

Early Years (PK-2): Direct Vocabulary Instruction

The tool below can be used to assess vocabulary instruction with our youngest students. The best early grades classrooms are awash in language, both oral and print. However, in my recent experience in early grades classrooms, there is more use of video and less oral language coming directly from the teacher. This tool examines vocabulary development with an emphasis on the teacher's actions.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Elementary: Reading Instructional Practices/Strategies

The second tool is designed to be used when teachers are engaged in their daily literacy block. You'll notice that the tool addresses lesson design. One of the most common things I've noticed since returning to face-to-face instruction in many classrooms is that lessons are not designed well for interaction. They also lack the sequence that Madeline Hunter (1982) taught us so well: getting the brain's attention, stating an objective, providing input and modeling, and orchestrating guided practice that leads to independent practice. Reciprocal teaching and jigsaw are specific, highly effective strategies and are represented on this tool as well.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle/High School: Reading Instructional Practices/Strategies

The third and final tool can be used in the secondary grades when observing a teacher of any subject area and may be most useful if your school is engaged in literacy across-the-curriculum efforts. Texts at the secondary level can be very challenging for students to comprehend, and this tool delineates how text should be tackled (stating a learning intention, activating background knowledge, teaching domain-specific vocabulary). Often, in secondary classrooms, teachers simply give students the directive to read - and then are frustrated when students show no comprehension of key content and don't know the most important terminology.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Check-Up Area 3: Writing Instruction

The check-up tools for writing instruction are similar to those for reading in that they reflect sound lesson and unit design and delineate specifics about effective instructional strategies. These tools can be used to collect information about the prevalent writing practices in a school or district and to help teachers reflect on their practices.

Elementary: Writing Instruction

In the elementary years, students learn to express their ideas with correct spelling and fluent, legible handwriting. They need lots of opportunities to write in order to become both more competent and confident. Unfortunately, what I'm seeing in elementary classrooms is what Mike Schmoker has seen too-arts and crafts activities masquerading as writing instruction ( see "The Crayola Curriculum" here).

The tool below focuses on the writing process and specific, effective strategies (shared writing, interactive writing, mentor texts, etc.). It's a succinct guide to help everyone remember and look for evidence of best practices.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle and High School: Writing Instruction

Sadly, I see a fair amount of non-writing occurring at the secondary level as well. The most common fake writing assignments are poster-making and report-writing that consists of copying and pasting gobs of material from various websites. Students do these assignments with little conversation among themselves and with very little initial direction or ongoing feedback from their teachers.

This tool focuses on effective instructional strategies, like modeling the type of writing expected and conferring with writers to provide feedback. This tool is most appropriate for English language arts classes; in the book, there are also tools for non-ELA classes, as shown in the next example.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle & High School Non-ELA: Writing Instruction

This tool is designed to be used in non-ELA classes and combines environment and instruction. This tool makes clear that when assigning writing in any class, the use of exemplars and rubrics is necessary. It also reminds teachers that resources like word walls and reference materials are needed in all classrooms to support content-area learning. This tool would be excellent to use if your school is engaged in cross-curricular literacy efforts - or if you want to be in the future.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Where to Start

If you want to conduct a literacy check-up in your school, get started in one area. Perhaps literacy learning environments have been neglected during the past year and need to be revamped. If so, you can start with the environment tools. Or perhaps you've spent the past couple of years implementing a new elementary reading program. If so, what has been done for writing? Has it suffered from a lack of care? Use the tools to find out. Or, if your school or district wants to go big and bold, you can have my consulting team come in and collect baseline data in all the areas covered in the book - environments, reading, writing, speaking/listening, and research/technology. We would work hand-in-hand with your leadership team so that you can all understand and act on the data.

We all know the adage, "What gets monitored gets done." It's not a surprise to me that teachers are handing out a lot of worksheet packets, playing too many videos, and having kids cut, color, and paste in their English/reading classes. It makes clear that the monitoring of effective literacy instruction has fallen by the wayside. It's time to refocus.

We educators have had a year like none other, and we are finally back with our students, in a situation as much like normalcy as it can be. What better time is there to do what works best? As administrator Jay McClain says, "As we come out of the shock of our crises, we have an opportunity. We have a choice. We can choose to be awakened, to come out of the wilderness... Or we can choose to pretend this never happened and revert to what wasn't working. The choice is ours."

References

Hunter, M. (1982). Mastery teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.

McClain, J. (2021). A found year. Unboxed. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from https://hthunboxed.org/unboxed_posts/a-found-year/.

National Center for Education Statistics. (1994). Literacy behind prison walls: Profiles of the prison population from the national adult literacy survey. Retrieved May 12 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf.

Neuman, S. B. (N. D.) The importance of the classroom library. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/paperbacks/downloads/library.pdf.

Schmoker, M. (2019). Focusing on the essentials. Educational Leadership. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept19/vol77/num01/Focusing-on-the-Essentials.aspx.

Come back for more.
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Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?

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Sponsored by Today by Studyo and Scholastic Scope This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. Are your students the readers, writers, and thinkers you want them to be?

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This is a fun, active way of reviewing information or introducing information.

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To add structure to the process of finding a partner, divide the class into two equal groups. Have one group make a circle and face out. Have the other group make a circle around the first group and face in. Students in both circles should stand face-to-face with the person across from them.

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If done correctly, this strategy is an accountable way to do partner work.

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Rally Coach: How to use this Collaborative Structure

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The Hand Up, Stand Up, Pair Up strategy can be used at any time during the learning process to quickly partner learners for meaningful conversation. View/Download Hand Up, Stand Up, Pair Up directions card. http://bit.ly/HandUpStandUpOpen http://bit.ly/groupingstrategies to view and/or download othe…

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What an engaging way to have students put events into chronological order. Students were able to work in partners or small groups to research the events represented in each card, determine the year it happened, and record it on the timeline organizer. Sweet!

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Gale K. Gorke: Not One Brain, but Three – The Truth About Real Learning | TED Talk

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In her engaging TEDx Talk, Dr. Gale Gorke shares with us that learning doesn’t involve just using one brain, but using all three. Only by looking at the how, the what, and the why, will direct us on the right path to real learning.

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11th and 12th grade students reviewed the A.C.E. short answer response (SAR) strategy in English class. When answering any SAR, students can use the ACE strategy as a foundation and then tweak the strategy to better fit their needs as they progress as writers.

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The technique is called ACE.

When students follow this format, they learn:

to give detailed and specific answers to questions related to text

to find evidence in the reading and cite it to support their answer

to explain how the evidence supports their answer

This format helps to move kids past the one-sentence answer to an more in-depth response.

Steps to A.C.E. Response to Text Writing

1. (A) Answer the question

This is the first step with responding to text and usually this is as far as students go. They give an answer, but they don't support their answer with evidence from the text. Teach students to answer the question using a complete sentence (which usually requires them to restate the question).

I found the following question on Readworks.org (which is a spectacular FREE resource for educators). It includes many free articles (both fiction and nonfiction) with question sets. This question was part of the article: "Why is the Moon so Scarred with Craters?"
Explain what you think the moon's surface will look like in a million years if astroids and meteors stopped hitting its surface? Support your answer with evidence from the text. A: Answer the Question
Here is a potential answer:
I think the moon's surface will continue to look bumpy and rough in a million years even if astroids and meteors stop hitting its surface.
Usually, this is as far as students take the response. However, now we need to find evidence from the text that supports this answer.

2. (C) Cite evidence

This is the second step. Students need to find a quote from the text that supports their answer. I encourage students to write the direct quote and not summarize. The summary comes in the Explain or Extend portion of the response.
C: Cite Evidence According to the text, "Pretty much any tiny dent made on the moon's surface is going to stay there."
Now that I have answered the question and provided evidence from the text to support my claim, I need to explain how the quote relates to my answer.

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Help Your Students A.C.E. Response to Text Writing - TeachWriting.org

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The technique is called ACE. When students follow this format, they learn: to give detailed and specific answers to questions related to text to find evidence in the reading and cite it to support their answer to explain how the evidence supports their answer This format helps to move kids past the one-sentence answer to an more in-depth response.

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"Where I'm From" Poem in Mrs. Begay's Class

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"Where I'm From" Poem in Mrs. Begay's Class

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Mrs. Begay's 9th grade students are writing poems that will illustrate (using words) their history, background, family . . . They are focusing on showing not telling. Make sure to stop by and check out her students' work once published.

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Physical Education and Literacy: the Odd Couple or a Match Made in Heaven?

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Physical Education and Literacy: the Odd Couple or a Match Made in Heaven?

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CHAMPS is great because it clears up students' questions about when they can and cannot do certain things like use the bathroom, sharpen a pencil, etc.

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Mrs. Cauley's 10th graders are currently creating their own collages of an assigned element by synthesizing information gathered into a visual display. Together, they will create an entire periodic table of elements. I enjoyed watching students gather information and generate ideas for their task.

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Today, I was able to sit with Sidney and chat with her about her her National History Day topic. She was sitting in the library, pages filled with notes sprawled out around her, deeply engaged in her thoughts. When asked what she was working on, she lit up and proceeded to talk to me for fifteen minutes about her thoughts and ideas. It was so refreshing to hear her articulation and see her excitement for her task. I'm impressed with her grasp of abstract vs. concrete ideas and with her metacognitive awareness. How great that our students have this opportunity and mentorship from Mrs. Gutierrez. Can't wait to see all of our participants' final products.

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Pair your Gallery Walk activity with THIS See-Think-Wonder graphic organizer to maximize critical thinking skills.

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A gallery walk activity gets students moving as they explore a range of documents, images, or student work displayed around the classroom.

English & Language Arts

History

Social Studies

Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening.

- Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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A gallery walk activity gets students moving as they explore a range of documents, images, or student work displayed around the classroom.

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If you haven't tried teaching with a hyperdoc, do it NOW. It's a game changer. If you'd like to learn more about using hyperdocs in your classroom, reach out to me. I'd love to help you!

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The HyperDocs Toolbox: 20 engaging example activities

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HyperDocs provide an engaging, student-centered framework for classroom lessons. Looking for ideas to fill those HyperDocs up? Check out these example activities.

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9 New Ways to Use Flipgrid in the Classroom

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The popular tool has features that teachers in any subject can use to help students connect with each other and share their learning.

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MOTE is a Google Extension that allows you to record voice notes. This come in handy when giving specific feedback, making documents interactive, and/or assessing your students' knowledge. To learn more about MOTE, see me. I want to help you revolutionize your life. (Okay, a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.)

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Learn how Mote helps support ELLs, STEM, and helps engage ALL students with 15 Ways to Use Mote in the Classroom.

In this episode, Kasey chats with teacher and Mote Community Leader, Eleni Kyritsis.

Eleni shares how Mote, a voice note extension, allows you to do so much more than just leave notes and feedback in your favorite Google tools.

Teachers, you are going to love using Mote to engage your students!
Listen to this article.

This episode is sponsored by Mote.
Shake Up Learning listeners can get an exclusive 3-month trial for Mote Unlimited by going to justmote.me/shakeuplearning.

Shoutout

Thank you to Bobbie Rae Flores on Twitter for sharing her excitement and ideas as she reads Shake Up Learning: Practical Ideas to Move Learning from Static to Dynamic.

Quick Tip of the Week (Google Slides)

Did you know you can use Mote to record and insert audio in Google Slides in just a few steps? Super easy!

📺 Watch this quick video to learn how!
Quick Tip Video Library Subscribe to Shake Up Learning on YouTube ➡️ OR, watch it on TikTok!
Mote is a FREE Chrome extension that allows you to leave voice notes and feedback, and much more!

Mote allows you to talk more and type less. If you haven't explored all of the features of Mote, now is the time!
Download Mote here.
Teachers need to have it installed. Students do not have to have it installed, but it works more seamlessly if they do have it.

Jon Neale from Mote recorded a great demo tutorial for Shake Up Learning readers:

1. Voice Comments and Feedback

With one click of a button, you can record audio feedback for students and leave it as a comment in your favorite Google applications or Google Classroom. You can also record any time using the Chrome browser and paste the link wherever you need it to go-Canvas, Schoology, etc.

This is a huge time saver for teachers!

2. Transcribe and Translate Voice Comments (25 languages)

Mote also gives you the option to insert a text transcription with the audio. But it gets better; you can also translate that text into 25 other languages. (Available with Mote unlimited.)

Emojis

Not only can you insert voice comments with transcription, but you can also insert emoji!

Here's a reminder about how to easily insert an emoji using mote.

1. To start, just type the symbol colon :

2. Then type at least two other letters, e.g. :he

3. Use up/down arrows to select your emoji, or 'delete' to try another combination of letters

4. Once your preferred emoji is highlighted, just hit 'return' to insert the emoji.

3. Support ELL Students and Improve Accessibility

Using the translation feature is a great way to support our English Language Learners. Record and translate into the student's first language. So they can hear it in the language they are learning and see the translation to reinforce the meaning.

Foreign language teachers will also love this feature for helping students learn a new language.

4. Google Classroom Comments & Instructions

Once installed, you will see the Mote icon inside Google Classroom posts. Add voice instructions to your assignments, leave voice comments, voice announcements, or use them in the grading workflow.

Learn more about using Mote with Google Classroom.

5. Create a Bank of Voice Comments with Motebook

Save and reuse your voice comments with Motebook!

6. Support STEM with Scientific Notation (STEM Mode)
Related: 5 Chrome Extensions that Make Google Classroom Even More Awesome
STEM, math, and science teachers, listen up! Use STEM mode to include scientific notation in your Motes.

Just enable STEM Mode and transcription in your Mote account settings from the extension icon.

Now start talking like you do, and see motes appear with notation. Just like magic. For example, saying "C 10 H 16 N 2 O 3 S" will appear in your mote as:

7. Mote for Slides (Record & Insert Audio)

This is so easy! You can record and insert audio into Google Slides with Mote!

(embed quick tip video)

8. Creative Writing in Slides

Eleni also suggests using Mote for creative writing in Slides. She gives her students a picture book as a writing prompt.

9. Choose Your Own Adventure Stories in Slides

Eleni uses Google Slides for students to create their own "Choose Your Own Adventure" style stories. By linking slide to slide, the stories can have different options. Then, they use Mote to add narration to their stories.

10. Student Reflections
Related: 25 Ways to Use Audio in Google Slides Projects
Eleni has her students take a photo of their work, insert it into Slides, then record a reflection using Mote.

11. Improve Reading Fluency

Students can improve their reading fluency by using Mote to record themselves reading and listen to it.

12. Demonstrate Learning

Consider the many ways students can add a mote audio recording to explain their answers and demonstrate their learning.

13. Exit Tickets

You can also use Google Slides and Mote for exit tickets. Eleni likes to use "Two Stars and a Wish" to guide students through their exit tickets for the day. On the slide, they insert their mote recording to share their thoughts and questions.

14. Gmail

Mote is also available in Gmail.

With mote for Gmail, you won't ever have to proofread another email. You get to capture the enthusiasm of your voice, the warmth of your tone while saving a ton of time.

Before you begin, you'll need to allow permissions to approve mote in Gmail. Simply click the Mote icon in the browser bar (or the 'puzzle' icon if you can't see mote, then 'pin' mote to the browser). Next, click "YES" in the purple pop-up.

Next, click "Allow" in the Chrome pop-up that opens in your browser. If you don't see this, just check to see if you have other Chrome windows open, and see if the approval pop-up has appeared elsewhere.

15. Engage Students

One of the best things about Mote is that you can actually see if students have listened to the Mote recordings.

And in Google Classroom, students can use an emoji to show their understanding of the assignment or indicate they need help.

Just Released! Mote for Google Forms!

📢 BIG News! 📢

Teachers: Voice notes in Google Forms would be awesome 💡
Us: We think that you'll love Mote for Forms! 💜

It's easy to use and is launching today in beta 🚀

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback 🗣️

Get started today at https://t.co/E1GnNrlzyP! pic.twitter.com/FkjexAPKjb

- Mote (@justmoteHQ) April 23, 2021

Coming Soon to Mote!

Mote is working on a mobile app. Look for that to be released in the coming months.

Become a Mote Certified Educator #MOTECE

Demonstrate your mote knowledge and earn an exclusive certificate by becoming a mote certified educator.

Become a Mote Ambassador

Think you've got what it takes to reach the pinnacle of mote expertise? If you're already a #MOTECE, then you're ready to begin your journey to becoming a Mote Ambassador.

About Eleni Kyritsis

Location: Melbourne, VIC Australia

Title: Community Leader (Mote) / Curriculum & Innovation Leader

School District/Campus (or Employer): Mote / Strathcona Girls' Grammar

Bio: Eleni is an award-winning teacher with a passion for sharing her creative lesson ideas to enhance teaching and learning around the world. Eleni has been recognized for her outstanding contribution and support of the education community by being awarded the 2017 ACCE Australian Educator of the Year and the 2016 DLTV Victorian Educator of the Year. She is a Google Certified Innovator & Trainer, Microsoft Innovative Education Expert, Apple Teacher, and Hapara Certified Educator. Eleni has been honored by the opportunity to facilitate keynote presentations and professional learning workshops across the globe.

© Shake Up Learning 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.
Spring semester applications for the Mote Ambassador program are now closed, but we'll be re-opening applications for the Fall cohort in August 2021.

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15 Ways to Use Mote in the Classroom - SULS0107

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In this episode, Kasey chats with teacher and Mote Community Leader, Eleni Kyritsis. Eleni shares how Mote, a voice note extension, allows you to do so much more than just leave notes and feedback in your favorite Google tools. Learn how Mote helps support ELLs, STEM, and helps engage ALL students with 15 Ways to Use Mote in the Classroom.

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The power of Socratic Seminars in the classroom!

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Best Practices: High School Reading Strategies

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Best Practices: High School Reading Strategies

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Fairfax Network - Fairfax County Public Schools

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Best Practices: High School Reading Strategies

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Simplistic but filled with good strategies

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Sponsored by Today by Studyo and Scholastic Scope

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links,
Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

Are your students the readers, writers, and thinkers you want them to be? Is your school or system producing graduates who are ready to tackle the literacy demands of our world? If you're not sure of these answers, it may be time for a literacy check-up.

As a researcher, author, and consultant for almost two decades now, I've been honored to work alongside teachers to create meaningful literacy instruction. In the past 18 months, I've observed over 1000 lessons-some in person, many virtually-taught by teachers in American classrooms from preschool to 12 th grade. Through these observations, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: We need to do better if our children are to become highly literate.

And they simply must.

They must become lifelong readers, writers, inquirers, critical thinkers, and empathetic souls. Without high levels of literacy, they become prey to misinformation and economic manipulation. They may not fully understand or enact their rights and freedoms. They may not be able to communicate their ideas well. If not highly literate, they will earn lower wages and have a greater risk of being incarcerated (NCES, 1994). They also risk living a life devoid of the beauty and power of literature. There are so many reasons that literacy is perhaps the most pressing civil rights issue of our time.

I've worked with hundreds of schools and systems trying to create markedly more literate lives for their students in the past 18 years. And for 17 years prior to that, I was a teacher, administrator, and instructional coach. So, as a senior member of this profession, I have a long and deep view here. I've seen methodologies and legislation come and go-many of them so-called "game changers"-but what persists is literacy instruction eerily similar to my own schooling in the 1970's and 1980's. There are still numerous class periods filled with answer-the-questions and look-it-up-in-the-dictionary. Student-led discussion is practically nonexistent; teacher-talk and low-level questions fill the hours. Student-made posters with drawings in colored pencil abound. When asked what they're drawing and why, students can't supply key points from the content or use the appropriate, discipline-specific terminology.

We can do better. We must do better.

Esteemed educator Mike Schmoker has written about his experiences in schools quite extensively, and sadly, they mirror my own: "When I tour schools and classrooms with... administrators, we never lament the possible absence of instructional technology, personalized-learning strategies, or other popular (but largely unproven) 'innovations.' We do lament the omnipresence of worksheets; the startling disparities in the content taught by teachers teaching the same course in the same school building; the ubiquitous 'cut, color, and paste' activities that masquerade as literacy instruction... and the widespread inattentiveness..., abetted by the tradition of calling on only those who raise their hands-while the rest sit, passive and bored. We note the paucity of authentic reading and writing activities, even in courses where they should predominate."

The past year and half, which I've spent supporting about a dozen school systems in several different states, has not changed my views. The COVID pandemic has given us an unprecedented opportunity to rethink instruction, but what I'm finding time and time again is that teachers have turned to methods and tasks that don't work well but, in most cases, are easy to orchestrate. There is less writing (especially at the secondary level). There is more cutting, coloring, and pasting (mostly at the elementary level). There's a good bit of clapping and singing beyond the preschool years. Teachers are showing a lot of YouTube videos without discussing them. There are more worksheet packets than I've ever seen. And, tragically, there is too much passive screen time. I see many classes where the kids might as well be back at their kitchen tables during lockdown because they're doing the exact same kind of work-having the teacher and classmates nearby is not part of the work; it's just a kid and a device, doing something together.

I'm not sure why this is happening, and frankly, I don't want to spend a lot of time analyzing it. I understand that every teacher's nerves are frayed. Educators have just experienced the most traumatic and stressful year of their careers. Perhaps it's been difficult to hold true to what we know works. Perhaps we have lost our way a bit. That's understandable. But we need to get back on track, and fast. We must excise ineffective practices and zero in on what works. The literacy check-up process can help us do that.

Defining Good Literacy Instruction

So what works? And how do we make sure we're doing what works as often as possible?

A good starting point would be to look at what it means to be "literate." My book What To Look for in Literacy is a practical improvement guide for literacy instruction. In the book, my co-author Tracey Shiel and I first discuss what it means to be a literate person in today's world. In short, the well-prepared, highly literate high school graduate of today must be all of the following:

A reader who chooses to read independently and who can tackle complex texts in all disciplines;

An effective communicator who can speak and write well, share information effectively, defend one's positions with compelling evidence, and collaborate well;

A critical thinker-one who can analyze and synthesize, taking into account the credibility of sources;

An inquirer who seeks information about his/her interests and who finds answers to meaningful questions; and

A global citizen who embraces diversity and seeks cultural understanding.

Next, we turn to effective literacy instruction in general. Briefly, we focus on how units and lessons should be built, following a backward design process and the concept of the gradual release of responsibility. We also spend a great deal of time discussing the components of reading instruction, effective reading and writing instruction for all age levels, and content-area literacy.

After laying this groundwork, the book then provides approximately 90 research-based tools to monitor literacy instruction for each grade span: the early years (grades PK-2), elementary (3-5), middle school (6-8), and high school (9-12). The tools can be used by administrators, instructional/literacy coaches, and teachers-ideally in collegial fashion-to examine literacy instruction, reflect on practices, and plan for increased effectiveness. And while the tools can be used for various monitoring/accountability purposes, they are intended to fuel inquiry and innovation. They are not meant to be evaluative or punitive.

What follows is a sampling of check-up tools for three areas: environment, reading instruction, and writing instruction. Use these to get a sense for how effective your current literacy practices are. And when you're ready to go deeper, you can explore all of the tools in What to Look for in Literacy.

Check-Up Area 1: Environment

Whole-School Environment

Some of the most tangible, easy-to-collect data is about the learning environment: What do the halls, walls, and materials in the school say about literacy? How do they support literacy learning?

The tool below can be used by any staff member to move around the school and look at various displays, tuning into what is supportive of literacy. It may be enlightening to take a walk throughout the school with your PLC or other team to complete this form (and take photos). "Hard" data like this often spurs conversation and change.

When using this tool to conduct literacy check-ups, I've found that schools often display student artwork and sports-related items (trophies, jerseys, etc.) but are missing opportunities to reinforce literacy learning. Recently, I've also seen a lot of displays focused on the social and emotional well-being of students, often with information about a growth mindset. Why not add student writing samples to such displays? That's just one of many easy literacy moves that I've seen in some schools that have made their literacy focus more prominent.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Encouraging and celebrating all things literate all throughout a school sends a clear message to students and families that literacy is valued. Displays don't have to be elaborate or time-consuming. Look at the examples below that get the job done.

In this example, middle school teacher Melanie Van Soelen posts what she is currently reading at her door. She has shared with me that this simple display has invited several students to talk with her about the books she's reading and to consider reading them too. A display like this shows students that teachers are lifelong readers, not just people who spend all their free time trying to create work for students. Imagine if every teacher in a school had such a display at their doors or in the front of the room! What a powerful message that sends about the importance of reading across one's entire life.

In the next example, former third-grade teacher Leanne Brown has literacy actually spilling out of her room! She posted a motivational quote each week along with a rotating display of student writing. Simple yet powerful.

Classroom Environment

The literacy environment inside classrooms is obviously even more important, as classrooms are where students spend the majority of their time. One of the most vital parts of a literate classroom environment is a robust classroom library. As author and educator Kelly Gallagher has noted, "Rather than waiting for students to discover the joys of the library, we must bring the books to the students. Students need to be surrounded by interesting books daily, not just on those occasional days when the teacher takes them to the library."

I am dismayed that in recent years, funding for hard-copy books has decreased. Electronic books and reading software are good resources to have, but the research is clear that students who have physical books within reach read more - they read up to 60% more in classrooms with libraries (Neuman, n.d.).

The tool below can be used to examine your own classroom library. It can also spark conversation about disparities from room to room. If we want children to be highly literate, then they must have access to materials they want to read as they go from room to room during the school day.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Check-Up Area 2: Reading Instruction

The checkup tools for instruction look a little different. They can be easily integrated into the walkthrough procedures that administrators often use. They can be used by coaches within coaching cycles, especially if a teacher is trying to improve or innovate in a specific area of literacy instruction. They can also be used by groups of teacher colleagues to collect data over time showing which instructional practices are most common (and which are nonexistent).

The three tools below would be used by an observer who watches all or part of reading instruction on any given day. You can see across the grade spans how the "look-fors" change to take into account the age levels of students and the work they are expected to do.

Early Years (PK-2): Direct Vocabulary Instruction

The tool below can be used to assess vocabulary instruction with our youngest students. The best early grades classrooms are awash in language, both oral and print. However, in my recent experience in early grades classrooms, there is more use of video and less oral language coming directly from the teacher. This tool examines vocabulary development with an emphasis on the teacher's actions.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Elementary: Reading Instructional Practices/Strategies

The second tool is designed to be used when teachers are engaged in their daily literacy block. You'll notice that the tool addresses lesson design. One of the most common things I've noticed since returning to face-to-face instruction in many classrooms is that lessons are not designed well for interaction. They also lack the sequence that Madeline Hunter (1982) taught us so well: getting the brain's attention, stating an objective, providing input and modeling, and orchestrating guided practice that leads to independent practice. Reciprocal teaching and jigsaw are specific, highly effective strategies and are represented on this tool as well.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle/High School: Reading Instructional Practices/Strategies

The third and final tool can be used in the secondary grades when observing a teacher of any subject area and may be most useful if your school is engaged in literacy across-the-curriculum efforts. Texts at the secondary level can be very challenging for students to comprehend, and this tool delineates how text should be tackled (stating a learning intention, activating background knowledge, teaching domain-specific vocabulary). Often, in secondary classrooms, teachers simply give students the directive to read - and then are frustrated when students show no comprehension of key content and don't know the most important terminology.

Click image to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Check-Up Area 3: Writing Instruction

The check-up tools for writing instruction are similar to those for reading in that they reflect sound lesson and unit design and delineate specifics about effective instructional strategies. These tools can be used to collect information about the prevalent writing practices in a school or district and to help teachers reflect on their practices.

Elementary: Writing Instruction

In the elementary years, students learn to express their ideas with correct spelling and fluent, legible handwriting. They need lots of opportunities to write in order to become both more competent and confident. Unfortunately, what I'm seeing in elementary classrooms is what Mike Schmoker has seen too-arts and crafts activities masquerading as writing instruction ( see "The Crayola Curriculum" here).

The tool below focuses on the writing process and specific, effective strategies (shared writing, interactive writing, mentor texts, etc.). It's a succinct guide to help everyone remember and look for evidence of best practices.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle and High School: Writing Instruction

Sadly, I see a fair amount of non-writing occurring at the secondary level as well. The most common fake writing assignments are poster-making and report-writing that consists of copying and pasting gobs of material from various websites. Students do these assignments with little conversation among themselves and with very little initial direction or ongoing feedback from their teachers.

This tool focuses on effective instructional strategies, like modeling the type of writing expected and conferring with writers to provide feedback. This tool is most appropriate for English language arts classes; in the book, there are also tools for non-ELA classes, as shown in the next example.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Middle & High School Non-ELA: Writing Instruction

This tool is designed to be used in non-ELA classes and combines environment and instruction. This tool makes clear that when assigning writing in any class, the use of exemplars and rubrics is necessary. It also reminds teachers that resources like word walls and reference materials are needed in all classrooms to support content-area learning. This tool would be excellent to use if your school is engaged in cross-curricular literacy efforts - or if you want to be in the future.

Click images to open larger view. Click here to make a copy of this tool for your Google Drive.

Where to Start

If you want to conduct a literacy check-up in your school, get started in one area. Perhaps literacy learning environments have been neglected during the past year and need to be revamped. If so, you can start with the environment tools. Or perhaps you've spent the past couple of years implementing a new elementary reading program. If so, what has been done for writing? Has it suffered from a lack of care? Use the tools to find out. Or, if your school or district wants to go big and bold, you can have my consulting team come in and collect baseline data in all the areas covered in the book - environments, reading, writing, speaking/listening, and research/technology. We would work hand-in-hand with your leadership team so that you can all understand and act on the data.

We all know the adage, "What gets monitored gets done." It's not a surprise to me that teachers are handing out a lot of worksheet packets, playing too many videos, and having kids cut, color, and paste in their English/reading classes. It makes clear that the monitoring of effective literacy instruction has fallen by the wayside. It's time to refocus.

We educators have had a year like none other, and we are finally back with our students, in a situation as much like normalcy as it can be. What better time is there to do what works best? As administrator Jay McClain says, "As we come out of the shock of our crises, we have an opportunity. We have a choice. We can choose to be awakened, to come out of the wilderness... Or we can choose to pretend this never happened and revert to what wasn't working. The choice is ours."

References

Hunter, M. (1982). Mastery teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.

McClain, J. (2021). A found year. Unboxed. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from https://hthunboxed.org/unboxed_posts/a-found-year/.

National Center for Education Statistics. (1994). Literacy behind prison walls: Profiles of the prison population from the national adult literacy survey. Retrieved May 12 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf.

Neuman, S. B. (N. D.) The importance of the classroom library. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/paperbacks/downloads/library.pdf.

Schmoker, M. (2019). Focusing on the essentials. Educational Leadership. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept19/vol77/num01/Focusing-on-the-Essentials.aspx.

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Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?

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Sponsored by Today by Studyo and Scholastic Scope This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. Are your students the readers, writers, and thinkers you want them to be?

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A plethora of resources related to teaching vocabulary and word study

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When I started teaching in the '90s, I was a bit like Tom Hanks in Castaway. I lived on my little island. I created my lessons independently. Sometimes those lessons were good, and other times not so much. How many learning opportunities were missed in my development as an educator?

As an administrator for 14 years, I have had the opportunity to walk into classrooms daily, and I've seen so many amazing lessons over the years. I have left many rooms feeling inspired and proud to have such talented educators in my school and district. It left me wondering if there were teachers who were that good when I was a new teacher.

The more we can spotlight great teaching practice and demonstrate that it can be done with the students in our school or district, the better all teachers will become. Here are a few ways to highlight the best teachers in your school to scale effective practices.

5 Ways to Promote the Best Teaching Practices

1. Model best practices at faculty meetings. If you haven't done so already, stop using faculty meetings to pass along information. We have adopted the practice of emailing anything that can go out in this manner. During your meeting, remind staff that the email was sent and highlight anything critically important.

One week before each staff meeting, we sit as an administrative team and share some of the very best of what we have seen in classrooms over the last three weeks. After the discussion, we identify a teacher doing great things and provide them with an opportunity to share with their colleagues. We usually allow 5-10 minutes for this.

At first, I thought some teachers would be shy about sharing with their peers. We have seen just the opposite. This has become the highlight of our monthly staff meetings.

2. Encourage teacher-led professional development (PD). We have nothing against bringing in talented and knowledgeable professionals to lead PD in our district, but we also feel like we get the most positive feedback when we organize our own professional learning opportunities. Not only does it allow for professional growth, but also it empowers educators to strive to become experts in certain areas of their disciplines. It motivates further professional learning and can allow them to demonstrate exemplary performance levels in their evaluations.

To do this, survey staff on the knowledge and skills they need to feel more prepared to meet the needs of all students. Then, reflect on your all-star staff and ask them to propose PD for an upcoming session. Many teachers feel great pride in presenting to their peers. Others have indicated that being a part of the learning experience is professionally motivating. Allowing teachers to be the focal point of PD builds efficacy and helps develop strong teacher leadership.

3. Videotape teachers and share with others through professional learning communities (PLCs). Seeing is believing. We always encourage peer observations. Many of us have heard of pineapple charts, where teachers invite their colleagues into their classroom or learning environment. Having these opportunities is great, but it doesn't make it easier for staff to get into other teachers' classrooms. Many elementary teachers barely have time to use the restroom, never mind spending 30 minutes with their colleague's class.

Some schools have started videotaping lessons to share with other staff members. This strategy will not appeal to everyone. It definitely requires permission and a talented and confident teacher to make it happen. No doubt you have some of them in your school. If you can establish a culture of trust with your teachers, you may find that more are willing to participate in this than you might imagine.

If you have folks who don't love this idea, don't worry about it. All can benefit from only a few participants. Using these clips during common planning time or through PLCs is a great way to engage staff in conversations about best practices.

4. Facilitate instructional rounds. Utilizing instructional rounds is yet another way for teachers to experience excellent teaching for themselves. Unlike pineapple charts, this is more formalized to get small groups of teachers into classrooms. This requires some organization on your part as an administrator, as well as appropriate budgeting for class coverage and identifying teachers to participate in the observations.

Getting groups of teachers in the same classroom to see the same lessons is a great recipe for rich discussions on classroom management, engagement strategies, Universal Design for Learning, social and emotional teaching strategies, and many other important topics in our profession today.

5. Create a newsletter with a "pedagogy corner" where you invite teachers to share their resources. In addition to the previous strategies, we can provide a digital or print means to access ideas for improving teaching. Creating a newsletter highlighting great educators and teaching methods can be a wonderful way to provide others with the inspiration they need to push their practice to the next level.

In addition to sharing the great work of exemplary teachers, you can add links through which teachers can get more information on specific teaching methods. You can share articles, podcasts, or even some of the teaching videos from your staff or other educators. Once you get this up and running, encourage others to share their own resources and ideas and be a guest writer for the next edition.

As building administrators, you are likely bombarded with emails and phone calls from vendors who have the next best PD opportunity for you. These can be great, and they can also be greatly expensive. Sometimes the best solution is to work from the inside out. We have found great success in partnering with our teaching experts in our own district to lead PD opportunities, and although we will sometimes utilize some great resources from outside of our district, utilizing our own staff will be our primary focus. Not only will you see positive growth, but also you can save some of those scarce budgetary funds for other important initiatives.

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5 Ways to Elevate the Effective Teaching Happening in Your School

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When I started teaching in the '90s, I was a bit like Tom Hanks in Castaway. I lived on my little island. I created my lessons independently. Sometimes those lessons were good, and other times not so much. How many learning opportunities were missed in my development as an educator?

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I love this one!

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"education technology tutorials" "education technology" "teacher tips" "instructional technology" "technology in schools" teaching "new education technology"...

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Empowering teachers to reach the next generation. With a combined 20+ years of classroom teaching experience and a combined 10+ years creating YouTube content for teachers, expert lesson designers Sam Kary and Thom Gibson create videos to help you learn what it takes to create engaging learning experiences for your students.

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"Tick, Toc, Tick, Toc..."

How many of you pictured the crocodile from Peter Pan? If you have seen Peter Pan this simple phrase brings you back to the scene where Captain Hook realizes he is not alone in the water. As the viewer you are immediately engaged. You have background knowledge of what could happen to Captain Hook, you are wondering why the crocodile sounds like a ticking clock, and you continue watching because you need more! This is not the time to pause the movie to get a snack. The movie has your complete attention and that was their goal. You have been hooked!

What is a hook?

A hook is when a teacher uses an engaging way to grab their students' attention before the lesson. Hooks can be used to connect background knowledge to the lesson, bring excitement into the students' learning, and/or provide objectives to the content. Hooks can be short around 2-5 minutes with a short video, photograph, sound clip or they can take some time by doing a virtual field trip or a movement. Think about your classroom of students. What do they respond to best? What are their interests?

Why Hook Them?

Imagine you're standing at the front of the classroom. One student is playing with his shoe laces. Another student is watching what is happening out the window and about 8 others are daydreaming about what's for lunch and what they're going to play at recess. Diving into rigorous content when the majority of your class is not cognitively present for is a perfect storm for a flopped lesson, confused students, and a teacher walking away frustrated.

Hooks give teachers that edge they need to bring students attention back to the classroom, spark their interest, and give them the boost of energy they need to delve into the upcoming content. Did you know that the synonyms for the word "Hooked'' are enamored, captivated, absorbed? Are those not the words we want as teachers to describe our students in the act of learning!? If that alone doesn't convince you to incorporate hooks into your lessons, maybe these reasons will!

Lesson hooks:

Increase student engagement and motivation

Are an attention grabber

Lead into asking questions (lingering questions)

Spark curiosity

Create an event that students can connect to

Make content feel more relatable and relevant

Build classroom community and classroom culture

Are a vehicle for deeper discussions

Are really FUN

Now that we have given you some background on what a lesson hook is and why it's so beneficial, it's time to get to what you all have been waiting for...ideas on how to implement this into your teaching! Below, we have listed 10 hook ideas that can be modified to any grade level or content area.

If you are a beginning "hook" user it can be challenging to decide or know what to do. Remember to keep your students in mind and to start off simple.

Now that you have some background knowledge and ideas, go give it a try! See for yourself how these lesson hooks engage students, keep them motivated, and bring back the joy of learning in your classroom.

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Captain of a hook: 10 engaging lesson introduction ideas

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This post is written by Megan Diede and Kara Risby. Megan and Kara both currently teach primary at Prairie Wind Elementary in Gillette, Wyoming. They are

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Annotation 'rules' can zap students' natural curiosity, but building a culture of observation encourages them to ask questions.

The act of reading elicits a feeling of curiosity. We notice stuff, certain words or phrases that make us pause or experience a feeling of weight. I know this is true for adult readers, for high school readers, and for my own children. My 3-year-old son stops me while we read together so that he can touch illustrations or ask random questions. When my 6-year-old daughter reads, her eyes grow wide as she shouts, "Wait! I see something!"

My high school students notice stuff, too. Their eyes also grow wide with recognition. They see repetitions and discrepancies. They experience cognitive dissonance and ask questions. However, at the beginning of the school year, many consistently claim, "I don't know" or "I don't see anything," when approaching an unfamiliar text. They annotate nothing or highlight everything. Only after months of observation routines do they admit the truth: They didn't think their annotations would be correct.

In the late 1990s before No Child Left Behind, the National Reading Panel performed a large-scale secondary analysis to determine the effectiveness of reading instruction. Not surprisingly, they learned that teaching reading comprehension does in fact improve reading, which ignited a series of conditional arguments. If I must teach comprehension, I should teach how to annotate correctly. If there are correct ways, there must be incorrect ways. If there are incorrect ways, there must be ways to assess.

The unsettling consequence of using annotations to assess comprehension is that annotations are no longer used to record curiosity or investigation while reading. Perhaps this is why students constantly ask if their annotations are correct or, more compellingly, why they express contempt toward annotating.

Building a Culture of Observation

Allow me to make myself clear: I am not asking students to stop annotating. I am asking teachers to guide students to observe as a habit of mind, rather than explicitly teach how to annotate.

When we prescriptively teach annotating, students comply rather than comprehend. When we use annotation guides, students scan the text for answers rather than observe and question. When we grade annotations, students are afraid of being incorrect. The more explicitly we teach it, the more they hate it.

Often, teaching annotation leads students to notice what the teacher has decided is important, and they too quickly forfeit their own observations and ideas in order to finish an assignment. Instead, teachers must explicitly reframe the skill of annotation and build a culture of observation.

6 Ways to Encourage Observation
2. Reframe annotation, and invite students to observe through mantras.

"No one knows what's important on the first read; trust what you notice-it could matter!"

"I'm not asking you to find something specific or deep. Notice any little thing."

"Can you take this big text and break it down into little parts? What do you see?"

3. Reframe annotation using different analogies or metaphors.

"Read with a pencil. Let the pencil be an extension of your thoughts-from brain, to arm, to pencil, to paper."

"Have you ever played I Spy? I Spy stuff, and don't judge what you find."

"Don't run-walk. Walk through the text, and smell the flowers. Notice everything."

1. Prioritize "observing text" as a habit of mind. Insist that "good reading" is not fast or perfect reading. Good readers slow down to observe, to notice. Observe texts together, and annotate collectively. Do not reject any observation, even if it sounds wrong.

4. Exemplify various styles of annotations. Laud and display different styles. Victoria loves colors, Angel uses arrows, John draws boxes around phrases, and Oscar only uses a pencil. Omit examples that have scant annotations.

5. Model annotation using different students. While collectively annotating, ask different students to annotate on a projected text as the class shouts out what they notice. Then explicitly state that the style doesn't matter. What matters is the content-the stuff you notice!

6. Encourage marking words and phrases. Patricia Kain's essay from the Harvard College Writing Center invites students to focus on words and phrases instead of whole sentences. This is the only suggestion for annotation that I give explicitly. I do not correct their annotations but explain that words and phrases create connections in a way that whole sentences do not. A repetition of phrases or discrepant word choices could lead to important discoveries.

The suggestions above seem simple, but they must be implemented consistently to build a culture. Teachers must genuinely forfeit their own sense of correctness and resist the lure of leading students to the teacher's answers. Building a culture will require more time, patience, and practice, but not necessarily extra work.

Teachers will no longer have to tediously grade annotations, trying to guess whether a student understands the text. Students will no longer have to guess what the teacher wants them to mark down and feel like they cannot master a reading assignment. Instead, both will engage in a more observational and analytical learning culture that will pay off in time and energy when students begin to meaningfully engage with texts. They will shout, "Wait! I see something!" and endearingly take photos of their messy annotations, proud of all the scribbles and arrows and stuff that only they can understand.

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A Different Approach to Teaching Annotation

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Annotation 'rules' can zap students' natural curiosity, but building a culture of observation encourages them to ask questions. The act of reading elicits a feeling of curiosity. We notice stuff, certain words or phrases that make us pause or experience a feeling of weight.