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https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/games-puzzles-and-worksheets/games-for-grammar-usage-in-high-school.html

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https://lor2.gadoe.org/gadoe/file/f5b567fc-8df9-4965-a8b6-6710fb492cdc/1/Literacy%20Video%20Playlist.pdf

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https://giphy.com/gifs/batman-grammar-hipsters-1405fIarqbN7hu

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Batman Internet GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Discover & share this Grammar GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

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https://cdn.memes.com/up/4782081574287055/i/1574287259748.jpg

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This post is published with permission from , the Core Knowledge Foundation's publishing partner for the Core Knowledge Language Arts® program. This post, subtitled "How two Wisconsin researchers discovered that the comprehension gap is a knowledge gap," examines an experiment that yielded interesting, and perhaps unexpected, results.

Posted by Core Knowledge Foundation

Category: Curriculum

In Norway, Wisconsin, as in much of the state, cold winters are a way of life. People allow extra time to bundle up and then waddle through town like Michelin men edged with fur. For the few months that grass is visible, it is tightly shorn. Lake Michigan, 20 miles to the east, makes the climate a little milder, so that the first freeze comes with the end of the baseball season, and the last freeze with the start of the next. Houses appear recently painted, and the low-slung school buildings sprawl as if the architect was unsure how to fill such a generous plot of land.

In one of those buildings in 1987, two young researchers from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Donna Recht and Lauren Leslie, ran an experiment elegant in its simplicity but profound in its implications. They took over an empty classroom and created an 18 by 20-inch replica of a baseball field furnished with four-inch wooden figures. Over several days, they invited 64 students to enter the room one by one. Leslie silently handed each student the same story narrating half an inning of a made-up baseball game. They were asked to read the story and use the model to reenact the action. The passage began in the middle of the action:

Churniak swings and hits a slow bouncing ball toward the shortstop. Haley comes in, fields it, and throws to first, but too late. Churniak is on first with a single, Johnson stayed on third. The next batter is Whitcomb, the Cougars' left-fielder.

All day long, Recht, dark-haired and ruddy, took copious notes, while Leslie, fair with eyes that expect you to try your best, ran through the task with a student. One 12 year old after another studied the passage and acted out the play:

The ball is returned to Claresen. He gets the sign and winds up, and throws a slider that Whitcomb hits between Manfred and Roberts for a hit.

Each student read carefully, laboring over every line, straining to capture each detail of the action.

Dulaney comes in and picks up the ball. Johnson has scored, and Churniak is heading for third. Here comes the throw and Churniak is out. Churniak argues but to no avail.

Every day, four-inch figures were pushed and pulled across the field, each motion representing the turning of the wheels in students' brains as they worked through the play. Eventually, Recht gave each student a quiz designed to assess his or her baseball knowledge, while Leslie reset the pieces and ushered in the next kid.

It took two full weeks to work through the 64 students and another month to compile their scores and analyze the results before they were able to pinpoint who did best at correctly reconstructing the story. Was it:

Strong readers;

Kids with good knowledge of baseball;

It made no difference?

Pause for a moment to make your prediction before reading further.

To their surprise, Recht and Leslie found that reading ability had little impact on how well kids understood the story. But knowledge of baseball did. In fact, those who were weaker readers did as well as strong readers if they had knowledge of baseball.

"Prior knowledge creates a scaffolding for information," explains Recht. "For poor readers, the scaffolding allows them to compensate for their generally inefficient recognition of important ideas."* If those same kids were taking a state test, the SAT or any other standard test of comprehension, and the passage just happened to be about baseball, they would outperform everyone else. But if they encountered a passage on a topic they knew little about, they would fare much worse.

High-stakes tests don't contain passages on baseball precisely because that would be unfair to kids who don't follow the sport. But they do contain passages on the founding documents of the United States, animal ecology, and space exploration. (In [another article in this issue](/blog/article/the-10-knowledge-domains-that-will-give-your-students-an-advantage-on-parc c), we present analysis of over 100 PARCC and SBAC passages, showing the prior knowledge that would give students an advantage.) Beyond test taking, others have identified the prior knowledge necessary to succeed in college and life. Beyond school, writers of newspaper articles, magazine pieces and books all make assumptions about basic knowledge shared by readers.

What Recht and Leslie showed was that knowledge counts much more than we think in understanding text. They point out that an emphasis on teaching reading strategies-such as finding the main idea and summarization-has become very prevalent in US classrooms based on evidence that they help weak readers. But practicing these strategies over and over has diminishing returns-and comes at the cost of a crucial missed opportunity; building knowledge is at least as important.

It is hard to find the "main idea" of a piece of writing if you aren't really understanding any of the ideas. Is a kangaroo rat large like a kangaroo or small like a rat? How does a rainforest feel when you are wearing a wool uniform like the English schoolboys did in Lord of the Flies? Prior knowledge can transform a poor reader into a capable one and a poor writer into a fascinating one.

*Recht and Leslie published their research in Recht, D.R. and Leslie, L., 1988. Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers' memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1), p.16.

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The Baseball Experiment - Core Knowledge Foundation

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In 1987, two young researchers from Marquette University ran an experiment. Their results showed that even as many Language Arts programs emphasize "reading strategies," knowledge counts much more than you might think when it comes to understanding text.

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Blooket SAT games
https://play.blooket.com/host/settings?id=630e1415b41783f6e42eba9b

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https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/building-academic-vocabulary/

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by Kimberly Tyson, Ph. D.

Vocabulary and its strong relationship to comprehension has been verified over and over again. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read as well as reading to learn. We also know that increasing vocabulary knowledge plays a large part in overall school success and has a direct impact on comprehension.

Effective vocabulary instruction is a key foundation to helping students acquire a wide and diverse vocabulary. Students need both direct and indirect instruction in vocabulary and word meanings as well as multiple exposures to words. It is through multiple exposures and repetition that students begin to understand the nuances of words and how to use them when speaking and writing.

Additionally, active engagement helps students take part in the learning process and begin to "own" the words and understand word meaning in multiple contexts. Independent reading, intentional read alouds, and wide reading all encourage students long-term vocabulary development and growth.

Teachers need a variety of instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary. Unfortunately, there remains a gap between what we know are effective strategies and what often takes place in the classroom. In Building Background Knowledge, Bob Marzano laid out a six-step process for building academic vocabulary. It includes direct instruction, linguistic and nonlinguistic definitions, recording word learning in a notebook or journal, talking about words, and playing with words. Multiple exposures are at the heart of the process.
Vocabulary Instructional Strategies: Marzano's 6-Step Process
The six-step process includes the following steps:

1. The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the term.

2. Linguistic definition - students restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

3. Nonlinguistic definition - students construct a picture, pictograph, symbolic representation, or act out the term.

4. The teacher extends and refines understanding of the word by engaging students in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students in games that enable them to play with the terms and reinforce word knowledge.

For several years, I've been teaching this process to teachers and helping them implement it in their classrooms. I've found that when teachers become intentional in regard to vocabulary instruction, they become more excited about word learning and observing growth in their students. Soon, teachers get on board with a schoolwide vocabulary improvement effort and they begin selecting words with more intention, develop a toolbox of vocabulary strategies, create word walls to support learning, and observe growth in learning and achievement.
Lessons Learned
As a teacher, you can't teach every word which is why students also need to be engaged in independent reading to build their vocabulary. However, for targeted words that are key to mastering content or comprehending text, you should try implementing the six-step process. Since Marzano's six-step process has been around a number of years, he reports several " lessons learned." Keep these in mind as you implement the six-step process for building academic vocabulary:

The process works best when you don't skip any steps. Don't pick and choose which step you "like" best - do all 6 steps.

Students need to generate their own definition of a term - sometimes I call this a "kid friendly" definition.

Step 3 - the nonlinguistic definition - is a powerful and important step. When students visualize, create a pictogram, or act out a word, they learn it well and achievement soars.

Games - Step 6 - help students play with words and internalize word meanings in a non-threatening atmosphere.

I find that teachers like to use this summary as they're learning the six-steps process. Use the six-step process as a grade-level team or content-area team and report back to each other.

Which step did you find easiest?

Are there any that you're having difficulty with implementing?

Discuss with your teaching partners and work to refine implementation. Check for student learning in both informal and formal ways.

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Building Academic Vocabulary: Marzano's 6-Step Process

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In this post, Marzano laid out a 6-step process for building academic vocabulary, including direct instruction and playing with words.

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https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/8-vocabulary-strategies/#:~:text=Provide%20a%20student%2Dfriendly%20definition,it%20to%20their%20own%20context.

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I've been an educator for 36 years, and if there's one thing I think every educator can agree on, it's that increasing the number of words our students know is a good thing. Period.

This is supported by decades of research:

A rich vocabulary supports content knowledge in all disciplines. Conceptual understanding, along with both general and specific word knowledge, impacts learning at every age level, starting with oral language development in preschool. When older students know the meaning of specific words and are able to put related words together during a unit of study, they can connect to new content more readily and remember more (Marzano & Simms, 2013).

Word knowledge is key for reading comprehension. Kindergarten students' word knowledge predicts reading comprehension in second grade (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Roth, Speece, & Cooper, 2002), and this persists through fourth grade (Wagner, Muse, & Tannenbaum, 2007). Even more surprisingly, Cunningham and Stanovich (1997) find that first-grade students' vocabulary knowledge predicts their reading comprehension level much later, in the eleventh grade.

Students who are deficient in vocabulary face numerous obstacles, including having much lower reading comprehension. Their reading range is thus limited, their writing lacks specificity and voice, and their spoken language lacks range of word choice. They risk reading less (both in volume and frequency), not understanding content-area texts or concepts well, writing lackluster essays and reports, and not being able to express themselves as well verbally.

This is why all teachers should address vocabulary instruction head-on.

But what words should be taught? In English language arts/reading classrooms, explicit vocabulary instruction should focus on general academic words (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013). These words cut across disciplines and help students speak, read, and write well in all the academic settings in which they'll find themselves. In every discipline, there are also domain-specific terms students need to understand and learn.

8 Vocabulary-Building Strategies

Good vocabulary instruction can and should happen throughout the school day. This can happen through incidental learning, when students talk with and listen to others, watch videos, play games, and read independently, through explicit instruction, which are more structured activities, or with the help of digital tools.

The strategies that follow, most of which require very little preparation time, come from three of my books, shown below:

Strategy 1: Informal Conversations

One of the most powerful things teachers (and adults in the home) can do is to have rich conversations with children. Recent research on conversational turns (LENA, 2017) indicates that the more turns a young child takes in conversation with an adult, the more they grow their vocabulary and verbal acuity in general.

So asking questions of a student, receiving their responses, adding information, and asking them to reflect or add more information-in other words, keeping the conversation going-is important in vocabulary development. This idea has great potential for non-instructional segments of the preschool elementary day like snack time, lining up to go to lunch, and restroom breaks. It also has potential for older students.

Strategy 2: Anchored Word Learning

Anchored Word Learning (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002) is ideal to use with elementary students where read-alouds are typically part of the daily routine. It can also be used in the upper grades, especially with complex text that is being read aloud and discussed together as a whole class.

For young children, picture books provide excellent sources of higher-level, sophisticated words that are important for expanding vocabulary. They expose students to words they would not typically read within leveled books or on their own. For older children, excerpts from novels, nonfiction texts of various types, and content-area texts can all be used for anchored word learning.

Isabel Beck suggests selecting three general academic words each time the teacher reads aloud a picture book or trade book; these should not be esoteric or archaic terms, but words likely to come up in other academic texts. Older students may be able to handle more words during a read-aloud and class discussion, but teachers are cautioned not to select too many words for one lesson. Three to five words is usually sufficient.

Prior to reading, teachers need to complete three simple preparation steps:

1. Select a read-aloud. Choose from books by favorite authors, recommended books, new books, old favorites, picture books, trade books, and content-area texts that impart critical information.

2. Identify three to five words for direct instruction. Select words which will expand students' vocabulary and will likely appear in varied contexts-or focus on words critically important to the content being taught. "Nice to know" words don't have a place here. The idea is to teach important words that are likely to appear in various contexts or words you really want students to know.

3. Mark the words in the text with a sticky note or with a highlighter and annotations if the text is on paper.

Once this preparation is complete, follow these steps with students:

1. Read the entire text aloud. Don't stop in the first reading to discuss the words at length. Students need to hear complex texts being read aloud fluently-especially a first reading-so they can start to process the story itself or the complicated ideas present in many nonfiction and content-specific texts.

2. After reading the text through once, go back and bring attention to each targeted word. You may want to reread the sentences and/or paragraphs in which each word appears.

3. Have students say each word aloud.

4. Write each word so it's visible to students. You may want to have students write the words down as well (or use their fingers and "write" the words in the air or in the palms of their hands). With younger students, spell the word as you write it. Call attention to any interesting spelling feature, such as double letters, silent E, prefixes, etc.

5. Provide a student-friendly definition of each word. You may want to repeat this several times.

6. Provide examples for each word beyond the context of the text. Encourage children to provide examples of their own so they personalize the word, relating it to their own context. This is a great time to use think-pair-share or turn-and-talk.

7. If desired, post these words on your academic word wall. If you're an ELA/reading teacher, you may want to have a section of the word wall dedicated to words from read-alouds.

Strategy 3: TIP Chart

This adaptation of a word wall features a visual in addition to a brief definition. TIP stands for term, information, and picture. Basically, a TIP Chart (Rollins, 2014) is a three-column poster displayed so students can quickly use it to remind them of the meaning of an important content-area ( tier three) word. In essence, it's a vocabulary anchor chart.

Unlike the well-known Frayer Model, the TIP Chart is useful for words that are fairly straightforward in meaning-not ones with heavy conceptual weight. Once completed, the TIP Chart serves as an "at a glance" reference for important disciplinary terms; this purpose must be kept in mind if the strategy is to be most beneficial.

TIP charts are displayed prominently for the whole class to see, but students can also keep personal TIP charts in their notebooks or digital files as well. The teacher can first model how to create the chart, and later, students can be involved in deciding what information to record and what picture to draw to go with each word.

The best time to use the strategy is when beginning a new chunk of instruction, like a chapter or unit. With the chart ready, announce the first word and call students' attention to the importance of this word in the current segment of instruction. Write the word in column one. Then share the formal and full definition, which ideally would also be printed in the text or on a screen or board in the classroom. Along with students, from this full definition, develop a short, student-friendly definition or a brief list that you write in the middle column. Do not write the full, formal definition in column two. Lastly, provide or co-create a simple visual in column three.

So, for the term soliloquy in my 9 th grade English class, I would first give the formal definition: A long, usually serious speech that a character in a play makes to an audience and that reveals the character's thoughts. We might talk for a minute about the fact that playwrights use soliloquies so the audience understands what a character is thinking. So, in the middle column, we might write the student-friendly, casual definition: When someone in the play thinks out loud. And, to emphasize the fact that this kind of speech is usually given with the character standing alone on the stage, I might then draw a single stick figure with lines or a speech bubble emanating from its face to indicate that he or she is speaking.

The TIP Chart in my class might look something like this:

Here's a social studies example. For the term "monopoly," the full definition might be "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service." It is assumed that the teacher is also teaching the term "commodity" along with "monopoly." In column two for "monopoly," the teacher may write "control of a product or service." In the third column, he or she might draw a large square that surrounds smaller squares, thus showing the dominance of the one provider. Students might also suggest something that symbolizes a monopoly to them, like an iPhone surrounded by other types of cell phones, but the iPhone appears much larger or more prominent, or the other phones are crossed out.

Teachers can gradually do less in whole-class fashion with TIP charts and encourage students to create their own in hard-copy notebooks or digital notebooks using Google Docs, LiveBinders, or OneNote. Students might preview the first part of each chapter or unit (in any class) and try to complete a personal TIP chart to be kept in their organizational system. They could also collaborate with other students to create TIP charts, so that if any individual is confused about a word, they can get ideas from others. This is a portable strategy students can use with any content area and any textbook from elementary school well into college.

Strategy 4: Save the Last Word for Me

Save the Last Word for Me (Beers, 2003) is an ideal strategy to promote peer conversation, increase engagement, and promote deeper processing about vocabulary and content. Although it's usually applied to conversations about literature, its clearly defined structure is perfect for reviewing vocabulary and gaining deeper understanding of specific terms.

It is fairly typical for teachers to provide guided review activities before a unit test, midterm, or final exam. Let's say the instructional unit includes about 25 terms which students must recognize and understand how to use correctly within context. Save the Last Word for Me serves as an engaging vehicle for students to practice doing so in preparation for an assessment.

The steps for employing this strategy are as follows; the first three need to be completed ahead of time:

1. Print multiple sets of cards with a target word on one side and the definition on the reverse side (one set for each group of students).

2. Print the directions for the activity (see below).

3. Place the printed directions and terms in a plastic bag or manila envelope for each group of students.

4. Divide students into groups of three to five. It's important that groups are small so each student has an opportunity to discuss. The goal is for students to review and deepen understanding about concepts and specific terms, so making sure they clarify their thinking aloud is important.

To begin, one student draws a card from the deck and another student defines the term. Moving around the circle, each student adds to the definition, refining and adding examples along the way. The person who draws the cards gets the "last word" and can add to the definition or revise it before students agree upon a definition. You may want to model the process in whole-class fashion first or by having a small group model the process as the rest of the class watches.

Sometimes, if the bank of terms is large, I suggest simply printing one master deck of cards and place five or six cards in each bag. After a few minutes, signal the groups to trade bags of terms and, in so doing, each group gets new terms to review.

While Save the Last Word for Me is low-tech, sometimes simpler is better. It delivers by supporting interaction and engagement, deeper conversations, and higher-level processing.
Student Directions for Save the Last Word for Me

One student selects a card from the deck and says the term aloud with the other group members.

On a piece of paper, each student jots down what they know about the term. (This can also be "in your head" and each person takes about 30 seconds to think about what they know about the meaning.)

When everyone is finished, each person takes a turn sharing their reflections/responses. As each participant shares their thoughts, other students can share thoughts and responses.

The student who drew the card gets the last word by sharing their reflections/reactions or by stating a fresh view if the responses of others have altered their original thinking.

If students are unsure or need clarification, they refer to the text, notes, and/or handouts for clarification.

Another student draws a new card, and the process is repeated.

Strategy 5: SNAP Minilessons

Setting aside specific time daily, weekly, or periodically to explicitly teach general academic vocabulary through minilessons (of 5 to 15 minutes each) is another way you can provide explicit instruction.

Each minilesson in my books contains four core components or steps, which the acronym SNAP in the title represents:

S: Seeing and saying each word

N: Naming a category or group each word belongs to or noticing connections to related words or word families

A: Acting on the words (engaging in a brief task or conversation about the words)

P: Producing an individual, original application of the words

The example below is intended for secondary students.

Click here to see this lesson in a Google Doc.

Strategy 6: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy

The primary purpose of the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) (Haggard, 1986) is to help students generate a list of words to be learned based on their prior knowledge and experience with reading and texts. This strategy can stimulate word growth and independence as students read texts and select vocabulary which they deem important to understanding the content.

VSS includes the following steps:

Selecting words

Defining words

Finalizing word lists

Extending word knowledge

The strategy can be used to support general word learning from one's environment or to support vocabulary learning from assigned and self-selected texts.

A colleague of mine routinely used this strategy to support general word learning with college freshmen. Every week, students "collected" three words from their environment (watching, listening, and reading) that they thought important to learn. For each word, students included the following information

An accurate definition

Where they heard or read the word including a bit of the context

A justification for why they thought the word was important to learn

Words were shared and discussed in class at an established time each week. Students also recorded their words in personal vocabulary notebooks. VSS engaged students in lively discussions and specifically raised word consciousness, a critical goal of word learning.

Another way VSS can be implemented is to specifically support word acquisition from content-area text. To support content learning, students can work in cooperative groups and read a chapter from a textbook (or any text). As they read, they identify words they think should be studied and mastered. During class discussion, groups then share their words and why they think the terms are important to mastering content. Additional steps can include developing a class list that contains one word from each group, creating TIP charts with the words, and having students teach minilessons focused on the words to each other.

Strategy 7: Word Talks

Word talks were derived from a similar strategy called book talks, in which students give a brief (less than five minutes) presentation about a book they recommend to their peers for independent reading. Word talks are similar in that they require a student to give a brief presentation on one or several words that they feel are important for their peers to know. This strategy is, like some others in this chapter, excellent for general academic words, not highly specialized, domain-specific words. Also, it can be easily combined with the Vocabulary Self-Collection strategy discussed earlier.

Some teachers who use word talks schedule a certain day a week or a certain day per month on which several students get up and do their word talks. Other teachers schedule a rotation so that a few times a week, one student is doing a word talk that day. Because the word talks consist of a student teaching their peers, it's important to make time for this, because students tend to find the periods in which their classmates are leading discussion much more memorable than when the teacher is; students often have a way of saying something that "clicks" with their peers just because it's said in a kid-friendly way.

What kind of words should students share in word talks? Many students share from their independent reading and their media and technology use. Teachers can ask students to provide a rationale for each word chosen if they like, but they can also allow students to share any word that might be interesting. I find myself thinking of the character Sam in the Netflix series Atypical as a high school student. He would have certainly loved to share words related to penguins and Antarctica in word talks.

In a word talk in one of my high school classes, a student selected the following words to share: ascent, descent, decompression, and recompression. Can you tell what the student was learning to do outside of school? Scuba diving. This student was studying for her initial scuba certification and thought these words would be good to share because although they have scuba-specific meanings, they also have application to non-scuba situations.

Word talks are great opportunities for some students to showcase their interests and expertise, but most importantly, they make clear that continual word learning is important.

Strategy 8: Digital Tools for Independent Practice

The following websites/programs offer support for you as a teacher as well as independent practice activities for students:

Flocabulary
This robust program includes hip-hop type videos to help students learn new terminology.

Freerice
This site has an addictive vocabulary game with five difficulty levels, with levels one and two being appropriate for students in grades three and up.

Vocabador
This game allows students to study SAT vocabulary words, choose an avatar, and "get into the ring" to play against other virtual wrestlers.

There's nothing negative that comes about when anyone grows their vocabulary-and for students, there are many, many positives. By adding even a few of these strategies to your repertoire, you'll help students build vocabularies that will support them no matter what path they choose to pursue.
References
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Beers, K. (2003). When kids can't read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Zhang, X., & Tomblin, J. B. (1999). Language basis of reading and reading disabilities: Evidence from a longitudinal investigation. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(4), 331-361.

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.

Haggard, M. R. (1986). The vocabulary self-collection strategy: Using student interest and world knowledge to enhance vocabulary growth. Journal of Reading, 29(7), 634-642.

LENA. 2017. Proving the Power of Talk: 10 Years of Research on the Impact of Language on Young Children. Available at https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3975639/Research_Summary.pdf?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lena.org%2F.

Marzano, R. J., & Simms, J. A. (2013). Vocabulary for the Common Core. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Rollins, S. P. (2014). Learning in the fast lane: 8 ways to put all students on the road to academic success. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wagner, R. K., Muse, A. E., & Tannenbaum, K. R. (Eds.). (2007). Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension. New York: Guilford Press.

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Listen to the interview with Angela Peery: Sponsored by Google for Education's Applied Digital Skills and fastIEP This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org 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.

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https://greatminds.org/english/blog/witwisdom/examining-scarboroughs-rope-language-structures

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001.

In Scarborough's Reading Rope, the Language Structures strand refers to semantics-how word choice develops meaning-and syntax, the grammatical rules of a language.

The language structures used in writing often differ from how we speak, so building a strong knowledge of semantics and syntax helps readers comprehend challenging texts.

The Role of Language Structures

Why is knowledge of language structures critical for students' reading development?

1. Complex texts have complex language structures. The complexity of language structures within a text contributes to quantitative and qualitative measures of text complexity. Longer sentences, figurative language, and low-frequency words increase the complexity of a text. To read increasingly complex texts successfully, students need support navigating complex structures and word choice to understand how each contributes to the text's meaning.

2. Knowledge of language structures helps readers track information within a sentence or across a text. A skilled reader uses their knowledge of language structures to accurately summarize and make logical inferences. Without understanding how to refer to a noun used in a previous sentence, for instance, students quickly lose the ability to make meaning of challenging texts.

3. Reading comprehension relies on subtleties of language structures. Semantics and syntax both affect meaning. You may have seen (or even own) a coffee cup with this frequent but clever pairing of sentences:

"Let's eat Grandma!"
"Let's eat, Grandma!"

To understand the joke, a reader needs strong knowledge of how the comma placement in the second sentence changes the meaning. Developing knowledge of language structures strengthens students' ability to glean meaning from sentences.

The Power of Integrated Instruction

Ideally, teachers help students build knowledge of language structures by guiding students to analyze the language of complex texts and apply that learning to their own writing. But educators haven't always approached teaching syntax this way.

Traditionally, grammar has been taught isolated from texts and content knowledge, focusing primarily on students' ability to identify, describe, and define grammar rules (Fearn and Farnan 64). Often, traditional grammar instruction begins and ends with error correction, which reinforces negativity and insecurity with writing (Cleary; Shanahan 18). The traditional approach lacks the component of grammar's deep relationship with meaning.

To make meaning from complex texts, students must be able to analyze the relationships among words, phrases, and clauses at the sentence level. This ability builds students' reading habits and stamina (Liben and Pimentel 9). It also improves students' written communication (Fearn and Farnan 79).

When students analyze a text's sentences, they develop an understanding of grammatical rules (syntax) and the strategic use of words and phrases to carry meaning (semantics). In an integrated English language arts classroom, students also receive explicit instruction on crafting similarly structured sentences that convey meaningful ideas about students' learning.

Wit & Wisdom's Approach to Teaching Language Structures

Wit & Wisdom builds students' knowledge of language structures by anchoring learning in the module texts. When students learn from the language used in complex texts, they build a skillset that strengthens their reading comprehension and written expression.

At any grade level in Wit & Wisdom lessons, teachers can regularly find language structure instruction in two places:

Deep Dives: Students engage in daily 15-minute Deep Dives that focus on building language-structure knowledge and skills. The content of Deep Dives directly relates to a Wit & Wisdom core lesson. Students might categorize module-specific words for their shades of meaning, engage in a morphological analysis of an important word from a module text, or analyze the construction of sentences from a core text.

Reveal stage lessons: The Reveal stage often requires students to analyze the effect language structures have on meaning. Students answer the question, "What does a deeper exploration of _____ reveal?" This sentence is often completed by an element of language, such as an author's word choice or the use of figurative language.

Wit & Wisdom Prologue™

All learners need opportunities to build knowledge of language structures used in writing, especially in academic and expository texts. To make content learning accessible for multilingual learners and students with language-based learning disabilities, additional instruction may be needed to support language and reading comprehension (Haager and Osipova 8). Prologue, a collection of 30-minute lessons for grades 6 through 8, supports students' language development to prepare for Wit & Wisdom instruction.

Summary

Teaching language structures improves students' reading comprehension, and teachers' approach to this instruction matters. Teachers can cultivate comprehension and effective communication by integrating reading and writing instruction and by providing focused time to study how language conveys meaning.
Works Cited
Cleary, Michelle Navarre. "The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar." The Atlantic, 25 Feb 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-wrong-way-to-teach-grammar/284014/.

Fearn, Leif, and Nancy Farnan. "When Is a Verb? Using Functional Grammar to Teach Writing." Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 26, no. 1, City University of New York, spring 2007, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ787964.pdf.

Haager, Diane, and Anna V. Ospiova. "Enhancing Academic Instruction for Adolescent English Language Learners with or at Risk for Learning Disabilities." Insights into Learning Disabilities, vol. 14, no. 1, 2017, pp.7-26, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1165739.pdf.

Liben, Meredith, and Sue Pimentel. "Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom." Achieve the Core, Student Achievement Partners, 24 Aug 2021, https://achievethecore.org/page/3185/placing-text-at-the-center-of-the-standards-aligned-ela-classroom.

Shanahan, Eileen. "From Finding Error to Finding Wonder: A Shift in Grammar Instruction." Voices from the Middle, vol. 28, no. 3, National Council of Teachers of English, March 2021, https://library.ncte.org/journals/vm/issues/v28-3/31174.

About Hannah Dieter

Hannah Dieter is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of  Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was the director of early childhood education for Lorain City Schools in Ohio. Hannah is also a former kindergarten teacher and instructional coach. She is currently working on her master's degree in reading science from Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

About Tanisha Washington

Tanisha Washington is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was an assistant principal for a charter school in Washington, DC. As an assistant principal, Tanisha was a member of the 2013 New Leaders' Aspiring Principals program, the 2018 Relay Graduate School of Education's National Principals Academy, and the 2018 School Leader Lab's leadership cohort. Tanisha is also a former elementary school teacher and has a master's degree in elementary education from American University in Washington, DC.

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Hannah Dieter and Tanisha Washington explore the Language Structures strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope and how to help readers comprehend challenging texts.

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https://greatminds.org/english/blog/witwisdom/examining-scarboroughs-rope-background-knowledge

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands.
Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001.
The uppermost strand of Language Comprehension represents background knowledge. When a reader knows a lot about a topic, that background knowledge strengthens their comprehension of the text.

Students bring prior knowledge to school, including their cultural experiences and practices, exposure to related content, and previous instruction. As students learn, their prior knowledge grows. It is important to note that students' prior knowledge may be incomplete or include misconceptions.

Students bring a diversity of prior knowledge to school. English language arts curricula should strategically select, sequence, and repeat key topics and ideas to help students build specific background knowledge for reading. Building background knowledge ensures all students can access new content, regardless of the depth or accuracy of prior knowledge.

Today's background knowledge is tomorrow's prior knowledge-once students develop their thinking and commit their knowledge to long-term memory.

Building Knowledge: A Task for Long-Term Memory

Reading texts without background knowledge is a challenging endeavor. Strategically building background knowledge before reading prepares the student for learning from the text. Cognitive load theory can help explain how knowledge building supports reading texts about unfamiliar topics.

The goal of learning is to store information in long-term memory, but first, students process new ideas, concepts, and skills in their working memory. Students must actively engage in a mental task that commits their learning to memory to move this learning from working memory to long-term memory (Willingham 2008-09, 20). Students need opportunities to work with new knowledge and skills after an introduction to those ideas and later when that learning is less fresh (Sealy 2019).

The working memory has a limited ability to hold information. The working memory facilitates making connections between new information and prior knowledge, but that capacity is limited. Too many new ideas or skills at once can overtax the working memory, reducing the quality of what the brain can store in the long-term memory.

Long-term memory is better able to hold information, which students can use to make sense of their reading and learning. Deep, lasting knowledge has a home in long-term memory.

The Role of Knowledge in Reading

Cognitive scientists have identified several benefits of background knowledge to readers. We discuss three of these benefits below.

Background knowledge supports recall and summarization. Let's use Recht and Leslie's baseball study to understand the difference background knowledge makes for a reader. (If you are unfamiliar with this study, this video provides a quick summary.) Students with high levels of prior knowledge about baseball could accurately summarize the events of an inning of baseball, even when those students were low-ability readers. Students with little prior knowledge struggled to recall events accurately.

The high-knowledge students could recall information about baseball stored in their long-term memory and performed well on the recall task. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham attributes this to the high-knowledge readers' ability to "chunk" several actions together to recall a double play rather than multiple events (2006). This ability to "chunk" reduces the students' cognitive load, allowing them to use more of their working memory to make sense of the relationships between the events.

Background knowledge provides focus and organization to the reader. Without sufficient knowledge, readers can struggle to comprehend the key ideas of texts. In The Knowledge Gap, Natalie Wexler explains that knowledge is like Velcro, which "sticks best to other related knowledge" (33). With background knowledge, readers have an organizing framework they can stick new information onto as they read-a kind of fast-track to long-term memory storage.

Informational texts can be incredibly challenging for students with limited knowledge of a topic. For example, a 2015 released test item from the PARCC assessment includes a passage about how animals keep warm in the Arctic. Having some knowledge of habitats and animal adaptations can help students organize their understanding of the passage. Otherwise, a reader may travel down "blind alleys" that disrupt the coherence of a text-focusing too closely on just one animal or adaptation and losing the author's main idea (Catts). Sufficient background knowledge helps the reader determine what is and is not valuable information as they read.

Background knowledge strengthens thinking. Knowledge provides the foundation for higher-order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating (Willingham 2006). The more knowledge a reader has stored in their long-term memory about a topic, the more space they have in their working memory. Freeing space in working memory allows a reader to form relationships between ideas and ask questions. Building strong, strategic stores of background knowledge creates an efficient path to critical thinking.

Background Knowledge in Wit & Wisdom

Since all students enter the classroom with a variety of prior knowledge and experiences, English language arts curricula must provide a level playing field by building relevant background knowledge. How does Wit & Wisdom help students build the knowledge they need for future learning?

1. Modules prioritize in-depth knowledge of a topic. At Great Minds®, our Humanities team knows the benefits of having knowledge stored in long-term memory. Building that knowledge takes time. Modules typically last for eight to nine weeks to ensure students have sufficient time to build a depth of knowledge of the topic and the literacy knowledge they need to engage in module tasks. Modules provide opportunities for students to revisit key concepts, which helps move new knowledge from working memory to long-term storage.

2. Inquiry focuses the knowledge building. An Essential Question guides learning throughout every module. Each lesson includes a Focusing Question and a daily Content Framing Question. This inquiry structure provides a scaffold for students to focus their learning on key ideas, facts, and concepts and avoid the "blind alleys" that readers often go down when reading about unfamiliar topics.

3. Instructional routines engage students in actively building knowledge. Thinking is messy, challenging, and collaborative work. Students benefit from regular academic conversation with their peers through the instructional routines in Wit & Wisdom, such as Think-Pair-Share, Tableau, and Gallery Walks. Students engage in the same instructional routines throughout their Wit & Wisdom instruction years. As a result, there are fewer demands on students' working memory to process directions. Instead, they use their working memory to engage in deeper thinking and active learning.

Wit & Wisdom strategically builds background knowledge over time, beginning in kindergarten. Over the years, students rely on this knowledge to make connections, ask thought-provoking questions, and read with depth and curiosity. Students conclude each module with more substantial prior knowledge for their future endeavors-ensuring all students grow to be knowledge-rich.

For more advice on joyfully building knowledge in Wit & Wisdom, read " Knowledge for All: Strategies for Hosting an Inclusive Knowledge Party" by Wit & Wisdom fellow Julia Sawyer-Wood.
Works Cited
2015 Released Items: Grade 3 Performance-Based Assessment Research Simulation Task. New Meridian, 2019, https://resources.newmeridiancorp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/3rd_Grade_Research_Simulation_Task_Item_Set_12016.pdf.

Catts, Hugh W. "Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension." American Educator, Winter 2021-2022, https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2021-2022/catts.

Cervetti, Gina and Elfrieda Hiebert. "Knowledge at the Center of English/Language Arts Instruction." The Reading Teacher, vol. 72, no. 4, 26 Sept. 2018, pp. 499-507, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327908045_Knowledge_at_the_Center_of_English_Language_Arts_Instruction.

Recht, Donna R., and Lauren Leslie. "Effect of Prior Knowledge on Good and Poor Readers' Memory of Text." Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 80, no. 1, 1988, pp. 16-20, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.80.1.16.

Scarborough, Hollis S. "Connecting Early Language and Literacy to Later Reading (Dis)Abilities: Evidence, Theory, and Practice." Handbook of Early Literacy Research, edited by Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson, Guilford Press, 2001, pp. 97-110.

Sealy, Clare. "The Best Way to Help Children Remember Things? Not 'Memorable Experiences.'" Education Next, 26 Sept. 2019, https://www.educationnext.org/best-way-to-help-children-remember-things-not-memorable-experiences-excerpt/.

"The Baseball Study by Recht and Leslie." 5 Aug. 2015, video, 3:50, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP6qpSrr3cg.

Willingham, Daniel T. "How Knowledge Helps: It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning-and Thinking." American Educator, Spring 2006, http://witeng.link/0869.

Willingham, Daniel T. "What Will Improve a Student's Memory?" American Educator, Winter 2008-2009, https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/willingham_0.pdf.

Wexler, Natalie. The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System-And How to Fix It. New York: Avery, 2019.

About Hannah Dieter

Hannah Dieter is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of  Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was the director of early childhood education for Lorain City Schools in Ohio. Hannah is also a former kindergarten teacher and instructional coach. She is currently working on her master's degree in reading science from Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

About Tanisha Washington

Tanisha Washington is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was an assistant principal for a charter school in Washington, DC. As an assistant principal, Tanisha was a member of the 2013 New Leaders' Aspiring Principals program, the 2018 Relay Graduate School of Education's National Principals Academy, and the 2018 School Leader Lab's leadership cohort. Tanisha is also a former elementary school teacher and has a master's degree in elementary education from American University in Washington, DC.

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001. The uppermost strand of Language Comprehension represents background knowledge.

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https://greatminds.org/english/blog/witwisdom/examining-scarboroughs-rope-verbal-reasoning

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001.

Good readers think about what they are reading. Developing strong reading comprehension includes developing students' expectation that what they read should make sense (Liben and Pimentel). In Scarborough's Rope, the Verbal Reasoning strand refers to a reader's ability to think about a text and infer meaning from what is explicitly and implicitly stated. To do so, readers must engage in cognitive and metacognitive processes such as

making logical inferences,

integrating ideas within and across texts, and

interpreting abstract language.

Verbal reasoning requires readers to go beyond what they read so they can make sense of a text and more deeply understand a topic (Burton et al. 5). For students to flex their verbal reasoning muscles, they need access to complex texts, adequate stores of background knowledge, and regular opportunities to think for themselves, with appropriate support along the way.

Knowledge and Verbal Reasoning

Readers make inferences by connecting prior knowledge to information stated in the text. But what happens if a student has very little prior knowledge? What if their knowledge is inaccurate or incomplete? The student will likely struggle to make a logical inference.

Educators often fail when trying to teach students to make inferences without first building background knowledge -students need to draw on a body of knowledge as they think through a text. According to cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, "factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes [such as] problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes-the very ones that teachers target-operate." Background knowledge provides the reader with tools to ask questions, connect concepts, and evaluate ideas within a text.

Productive Struggle and Verbal Reasoning

To support students with reading and thinking about complex texts, educators must foster students' productive struggle. Productive struggle describes the effort students exert when they persist and succeed with appropriately challenging tasks. Educators can foster productive struggle by gradually releasing responsibility to students as they work with complex texts.

Teachers may equip students with strategies for making inferences or interpreting and integrating textual information. Education researcher Nell Duke and colleagues recommend teachers gradually release responsibility to students to apply strategies in the texts they read. Teachers model thinking, provide opportunities for collaborative or guided practice, and require students to independently apply their strategies to reading. The most beneficial work happens in the middle when students collaboratively and independently practice while supported by the teacher (65-66).

Strengthening Verbal Reasoning in Wit & Wisdom

With a strong foundation of building knowledge and fostering productive struggle, Wit & Wisdom 's design further supports verbal reasoning development in three ways:

Complex texts create opportunities for verbal reasoning. Students need opportunities to read texts that will challenge their thinking. The complex texts students read in Wit & Wisdom allow them to apply their background knowledge to make inferences, interpret language, and integrate information across texts in a module.

The Content Stages invite all students to engage in verbal reasoning. The Content Stages scaffold students toward deeper thinking about a text over time. Each Content Stage employs associated strategies, which students use to comprehend what they read. Students gradually gain increased responsibility for applying the Content Stages to their reading and internalize the process for navigating texts independently.

Wit & Wisdom instruction fosters collaboration. Students regularly collaborate with their peers to exchange ideas and build on each other's thinking. Much of the collaborative work in Wit & Wisdom engages students in productive struggle to make sense of the texts they read. Students will often collaborate with a partner or small group and eventually bring their learning back to the whole group to deepen everyone's understanding of the text.

Summary

Successful reading comprehension requires students to apply their knowledge to new ideas in texts. In Wit & Wisdom classrooms, students leverage their background knowledge to effectively make inferences, interpret language, and integrate ideas within and between texts while engaging in lively, collaborative work that helps unlock hidden meanings in the rich, complex texts of each module.
Works Cited
Burton, Nancy W., et al. Toward a Definition of Verbal Reasoning in Higher Education. ETS, Nov. 2009, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507807.pdf.

Duke, Nell K., et al. "Essential Elements of Fostering and Teaching Reading Comprehension." What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, edited by S. Jay Samuels and Alan E. Farstrup, 4th ed., International Reading Association, 2011, 51-93.

Liben, Meredith, and Sue Pimentel. "Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom." Achieve the Core, Student Achievement Partners, 24 Aug. 2021, https://achievethecore.org/page/3185/placing-text-at-the-center-of-the-standards-aligned-ela-classroom.

Smith, Reid, et al. "The Role of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Critical Review." Reading Psychology, vol. 42, no. 3, 22 Feb. 2021, pp. 214-240. Taylor & Francis Online, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02702711.2021.1888348.

Willingham, Daniel T. "How Knowledge Helps: It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning-and Thinking." American Educator, American Federation of Teachers, Spring 2006, https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/spring-2006/how-knowledge-helps.

Wexler, Natalie. The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System-And How to Fix It. New York, Avery-Penguin Random House, 2019.

About Hannah Dieter

Hannah Dieter is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of  Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was the director of early childhood education for Lorain City Schools in Ohio. Hannah is also a former kindergarten teacher and instructional coach. She is currently working on her master's degree in reading science from Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

About Tanisha Washington

Tanisha Washington is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was an assistant principal for a charter school in Washington, DC. As an assistant principal, Tanisha was a member of the 2013 New Leaders' Aspiring Principals program, the 2018 Relay Graduate School of Education's National Principals Academy, and the 2018 School Leader Lab's leadership cohort. Tanisha is also a former elementary school teacher and has a master's degree in elementary education from American University in Washington, DC.

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Examining Scarborough's Rope: Verbal Reasoning

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001. Good readers think about what they are reading.

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https://greatminds.org/english/blog/witwisdom/examining-scarboroughs-rope-literacy-knowledge

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001.

Developing Literacy Knowledge

Strong literacy knowledge-the understanding of the purposes, features, and conventions of texts-contributes to skilled reading. Like other components of the Language Comprehension half of Scarborough's Rope, literacy knowledge builds throughout a lifetime.

Even before students enter school, they may start building literacy knowledge, such as understanding how to hold a book and which parts are the front and back. In the early grades, emerging readers first build simple print concepts, such as understanding that reading in English means moving their eyes from left to right and that books have an author and often an illustrator. This knowledge of text features and print concepts builds a foundation for literacy.

How do educators continue to build students' literacy knowledge? By providing students opportunities to purposefully read a wide variety of genres with attention to text features, educators can help students develop internal frameworks for how texts work, strengthening students' literacy knowledge and facility with different genres. Students also benefit from writing instruction in the same genres as the texts they read, which allows students to internalize the features of these genres and how authors convey meaning.

Instructional Moves to Build Literacy Knowledge

Throughout their time in school, students need opportunities to read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts, including novels, informational trade books, speeches, poetry, short stories, lyrics, and news articles. Exposure to a wide variety of texts ensures students build literacy knowledge of different genres, the purposes of those genres, and their associated structures and features. Growing literacy knowledge helps students navigate new texts with a clear understanding of how different genres work.

As students read across genres, they benefit from explicit instruction in text structures, a key kind of literacy knowledge ( Shanahan). To help students make sense of a text's organization, teachers can use various strategies such as employing graphic organizers, looking for signal words, and asking and answering questions about the text structure. These strategies help students make meaning by analyzing the relationships between ideas presented in the text. With these strategies, students build literacy knowledge and a deeper understanding of the text's content.

During instruction on text structures and features, teachers should maintain a clear focus on text comprehension, as some research suggests that simply teaching students a genre's features may be less effective than using the texts for authentic literacy purposes (Duke and Roberts 82). For example, reading a recipe while cooking a dish helps the reader understand the genre's features, such as the ingredient list order and the numbering of steps. In English language arts instruction, reading texts for authentic purposes-to answer a question of interest or communicate information to an interested audience-implicitly teaches students how different kinds of texts work. By reading with a purpose, students can leverage their explicitly built literacy knowledge to engage in important comprehension work.

Finally, integrating reading and writing widely benefits students' reading comprehension (Duke et al. 76); however, it's worth examining closely how students build literacy knowledge when reading and writing in the same genre. Two meta-analyses of the research on teaching text structures highlight the power of integrating writing into text structure instruction ( Shanahan). Students may use the same graphic organizers and signal words from reading instruction to craft similar texts in their writing instruction. Making organizational decisions as a writer can also help students build their awareness of how specific text structures and features communicate ideas, which reinforces students' experiences reading similar texts in the future.

Building Literacy Knowledge in Wit & Wisdom

In three key ways, Wit & Wisdom modules address the necessary literacy knowledge for students to comprehend complex texts:

Every Wit & Wisdom module integrates literacy knowledge and skills while providing reading opportunities across genres. Through a wide selection of texts, students build genre-specific knowledge and skills in the reading and writing domains while also building robust knowledge of an interesting and worthy topic. For example, in grade 5 students start the year by reading the novel Thunder Rolling in the Mountains and by building their understanding of cultural beliefs and values through several historical pieces about the Nez Perce people. Students also analyze an 1879 speech given by Chief Joseph, study maps of the United States' westward expansion, and listen to oral retellings of Nez Perce stories. As students study informational text features and enrich their learning via a variety of genres, they use their reading experiences to craft an informational essay.

Organize and Reveal lessons help students attend to text features and structure. During Organize and Reveal lessons, students build their understanding of text organization and analyze specific features that convey meaning to the reader. While students read texts to build topic knowledge, they also engage in text analysis to build transferrable reading skills in making sense of text structure and features. Organize and Reveal lessons use strategies such as encouraging students to ask and answer questions about text structure, employing graphic organizers, and analyzing the use of signal words that help students identify the text structure.

Wit & Wisdom writing instruction deepens literacy knowledge. During the Craft Stages, students learn how writers use text features by examining elements of authors' craft such as how topic sentences work or how authors use subheadings to organize information. The End-of-Module Task challenges students to write in the module's primary genre of study, providing students an opportunity to demonstrate their growing literacy knowledge and skill with different writing types. For example, in Grade 1 Module 3: Powerful Forces, students read a variety of texts, including informational and literary picture books, poetry, and informational articles. Through a study of sensory language and narrative structures, students develop their own narrative pieces. The lessons build students' understanding of narrative text structures and features, which helps students analyze the texts and create their own.

Summary

Strong literacy knowledge allows students to make sense of a text's organization and purpose and contributes to richer comprehension. To build literacy knowledge, students need opportunities to read a variety of genres, study them closely, and craft their own texts. Wit & Wisdom lessons help students do exactly that.
Works Cited
Duke, Nell K., and Kathryn L. Roberts. "The Genre-Specific Nature of Reading Comprehension." The Routledge International Handbook of English Language and Literacy Teaching, edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews, and James Hoffman, Routledge, 2010, pp. 74-86.

Duke, Nell K., et al. "Essential Elements of Fostering and Teaching Reading Comprehension." What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, edited by S. Jay Samuels and Alan E. Farstrup, 4th ed., International Reading Association, 2011, pp. 51-93.

Shanahan, Timothy. "Does Text Structure Instruction Improve Reading Comprehension?" Shanahan on Literacy, 22 May 2021, https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/does-text-structure-instruction-improve-reading-comprehension#sthash.TvI535QX.4xO1yrx4.dpbs.

About Hannah Dieter

Hannah Dieter is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of  Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was the director of early childhood education for Lorain City Schools in Ohio. Hannah is also a former kindergarten teacher and instructional coach. She is currently working on her master's degree in reading science from Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.

About Tanisha Washington

Tanisha Washington is a director of implementation services on the Humanities team at Great Minds. In this role, she leads a team of implementation leaders who support schools and districts across the country with their implementation of Wit & Wisdom and Geodes. Before joining the Great Minds team, she was an assistant principal for a charter school in Washington, DC. As an assistant principal, Tanisha was a member of the 2013 New Leaders' Aspiring Principals program, the 2018 Relay Graduate School of Education's National Principals Academy, and the 2018 School Leader Lab's leadership cohort. Tanisha is also a former elementary school teacher and has a master's degree in elementary education from American University in Washington, DC.

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Examining Scarborough's Rope: Literacy Knowledge

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Scarborough's Reading Rope provides a model for understanding the components of skilled reading. This blog series examines each of the strands of the Language Comprehension half of the rope and how Wit & Wisdom® strengthens these upper strands. Image courtesy of Dr. Hollis Scarborough, 2001.

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When using graphic organizers, students can pull themes and examples from the text to create meaning.

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"Students may use the same graphic organizers and signal words from reading instruction to craft similar texts in their writing instruction. Making organizational decisions as a writer can also help students build their awareness of how specific text structures and features communicate ideas, which reinforces students’ experiences reading similar texts in the future."

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Need some strategies to integrate literacy?

1. KWL

2. Anticipation Guide   (1)

3. Vocabulary Review

4. Word Sort (3)

5. One Pager

6. Table Talk

7. 5-word Prediction (4)

8. ABC Brainstorm (2)

9. Cubing

10. Magnet Summary

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http://luposliteracylounge.weebly.com/ari-literacy-strategies-before-during-after.html

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ARI Literacy Strategies: Before, During, After

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https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/seven-literacy-strategies-that-work

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By all accounts, Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, California, was a school in trouble. Achievement scores were the lowest in the county and among the lowest in the state. Teacher morale was low; turnover was high. Crime, poverty, and basic skills were the most frequent topics of conversation on campus. At one point, a consultant suggested that we should not expect more from our 2,200 students: 46 percent of them are English language learners, 100 percent qualify for free and/or reduced lunch, and 96 percent are members of minority groups.

We did expect more, however. Every teacher at our school had been working hard to meet students' needs. We had a health clinic, counselors, and a great library-but our students were not achieving. Then, in 1999, we formed a staff development committee of teachers, administrators, and San Diego State University colleagues. Together, we identified seven instructional strategies that would permeate the school at every level. We wanted the strategies to be transparent to the students, and we wanted literacy strategies in content-area instruction to become common-place-across English, science, social studies, art, physical education, music, and shop. After the school's governance committee approved these strategies, we expected every teacher in our school to use them.

Equally important to the commitment from teachers was our commitment to them. This school had seen many reform efforts come and go, and staff members were exhausted from shifting priorities. We needed an unswerving focus. Over the next three years, we worked on a professional development plan that centered on our adopted strategies, and the results seem to support our efforts.

Our Gates-MacGinitie scores, for example, which we use to measure reading achievement, have increased from an average 5.9 grade-level equivalent to an average 8.2 grade-level equivalent. Although these scores remind us that student achievement at Hoover still has room for growth, we are encouraged that the average student now reads more than two grade levels higher than three years ago. In addition, we met our state accountability targets for the first time in a decade. California uses its official accountability score, the Academic Performance Index, to encourage improved school performance by setting an accountability target for each school based on its assessment results. In 1999-2000, with a baseline score of 444 and a target of 462, Hoover achieved a score of 469. On another measure of reading scores, the Stanford 9, Hoover's 9th graders exceeded district growth between 1998 and 2001; the district's scores increased by 1.5 percent, and Hoover's by 2.5 percent. In other words, our students are catching up, and the gap is closing.

The link between strategic teaching and student learning is the keystone of our professional development plan. Teachers need ongoing professional development that allows for growth in expertise across departments and with years of teaching experience. All staff members need to study each strategy, practice it in their classrooms with peer support, and eventually assume the responsibility for delivering future staff development.

After reviewing research evidence on the efficacy of the strategies, teachers quickly adopted the phrase seven defensible strategies as part of the high school's lexicon. The specific instructional strategies we selected were read-alouds (or shared reading), K-W-L charts, graphic organizers, vocabulary instruction, writing to learn, structured notetaking, and reciprocal teaching (Fisher, 2001). Teachers attended monthly preparatory meetings to read research reviews of the strategies, discuss the successes and challenges of implementing the approach, and use videotapes of their classes to model the strategies for their peers.

We also created posters of the seven strategies for classroom use so that teachers could refer to them in the course of instruction and students could become familiar with the names of the strategies and their use.

A read-aloud-or shared reading-is one of the most effective ways for young adults to hear fluent reading (Allen, 2000). Our literacy plan advises that teachers read to their students every day in every class for at least five minutes. Some teachers read the text aloud while students listen; other teachers read the text aloud while students read along. Most often, the selections are not from the textbook; instead, teachers select other materials that build students' background knowledge, provide them with interesting vocabulary words, and ensure they are hearing fluent reading.

For example, an art teacher recently read aloud the picture book My Name is Georgia (Winter, 1998) before displaying some of Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Nearby, a U.S. history teacher used an overhead projection to share a newspaper dated September 1, 1939, announcing Germany's invasion of Poland. Both teachers noted that these literacy experiences built and extended background knowledge.

K-W-L charts (Ogle, 1986) are a great way to hook students into learning. These language charts start with the question, "What do you know about the topic?" Following this discussion, students are asked, "What do you still want to know about the topic?" Once the unit of study has been completed, the language charts are used again and students answer the third question, "What did you learn about the topic?"

As a way to open her unit of study on the book Seedfolks (Fleischman, 1997), an English teacher first asked her students what they knew about community gardens. Their responses included "My grandma has one with lots of flowers," "We use them to grow vegetables," and "Poor people can grow something to eat."

Their responses to what they wanted to know included such questions as "Why do people like them?"; "What can you grow in San Diego?"; "How much land do you need?"; and "Are community gardens legal?"

When they had finished the book, visited a community garden, and tried to grow their own plants, the teacher returned to the language chart and asked her students, "What did you learn?" Their responses included such comments as "It's not about growing food; it's about having space," "Gardening helps you relax," "The garden was a place for people to meet and talk," "This writer's cool; he knows how to tell a story," and "Growing food is really hard." Like many other teachers we have worked with, this classroom teacher reports that using K-W-L charts helps students organize their inquiries.

Graphic organizers provide students with visual information that complements the class discussion or text. Organizers come in many forms (see Wood, Lapp, &amp; Flood, 1992). Students at Hoover consistently report that the graphic organizer is the most helpful strategy that we employ. For example, a science teacher placed on the board at random a number of magnetic strips with terms on them related to the concept of matter. The teacher invited individuals to come to the board to create a graphic representation of the information they had been studying. He also asked that they draw lines and write in the relationships between the words. One student moved the word neutron under the word nucleus and wrote "contains" between them. She understood that the nucleus contained neutrons. The next student drew a circle around the words nucleus, neutron, and contains. He then added the word electron to the outside of the circle and wrote "spins in the shell." The science teacher was pleased to see evidence of the student's understanding of this atomic unit's orbital behavior.

Student achievement data consistently reported that vocabulary scores at Hoover were low. It seemed that every teacher focused on different words and used different approaches for teaching vocabulary. Many considered vocabulary knowledge to be the domain of English or elementary school teachers. We decided to focus our professional development on transportable vocabulary skills-that is, skills that students could use across content areas. We studied word families, prefixes, suffixes, word roots, vocabulary journals, and word sorts (Blachowicz &amp; Fisher, 2002).

For example, in an algebra class, the teacher wanted his students to understand that the vocabulary words that he selected had both general and math-specific definitions. He asked students to fill out four columns in special vocabulary journals. In the first column, students wrote a list of words, including variable, equation, and binomial. Then the students wrote the common definitions of each term in the second column and the math-specific definition in the third column. In the final column, students identified where they had found the accepted math definition; some cited the page in the algebra textbook, while others noted a Web site address or a poster on the bulletin board. In the past three years, teachers have noted that their students' vocabulary knowledge is becoming increasingly transportable across content areas. This focus on vocabulary acquisition is yielding dividends: The vocabulary subtest on the Gates-MacGinitie has increased 16 percent during the past three years.

We agree with Fearn and Farnan (2001) that reading, writing, and content learning are related. Teachers use writing-to-learn strategies at the beginning, middle, or end of class to help students inquire, clarify, or reflect on the content. The student thinks for a minute or so, then writes for about five minutes. Some teachers begin class with this strategy to help students focus on the topic. Students told us that it was difficult to think about a social conversation that they had had earlier in the day when they were actively writing about the stock market crash. Other teachers conclude their classes by asking for a summary of what students had learned in class, for a description of one highlight of the class, or a prediction of what the class would study the next day. Regardless of how teachers implement this strategy, writing helps students think about the content, reflect on their knowledge of the content, and share their thoughts with the teacher.

We implemented structured notetaking because many students did not have a repertoire of study habits that helped them to do well. Most Hoover students use Cornell notes (Spires &amp; Stone, 1989). The students draw a vertical line about two inches from the left side of the paper, log main ideas and key words to the left and details to the right of the line, and write a brief summary of the lesson at the bottom of the page. Teachers throughout the school quickly noticed the implementation of this strategy because they realized that they no longer had to devote instructional time to teaching a study technique. Other teachers have remarked that notetaking is not simply a way to record facts; it also leads to deeper student engagement and reflection.

This strategy has been the most difficult for teachers to incorporate into their lessons. The teachers who use it, however, consistently report that it is the most effective way to engage readers with texts. Students also report that they read and understand more when they use reciprocal teaching than when they read the text independently. Reciprocal teaching (Carter, 1997; Palincsar, 1984) allows students to become the instructors of the content that they are studying. Working in groups of four, the students read a text passage together, following a protocol for predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing-skills that teachers have modeled over a series of lessons until students are comfortable assuming these assigned roles. These student-directed discussion groups can then monitor their comprehension and reinforce their understanding.

In a physical education class, for example, the teacher introduced the rules of volleyball by providing students with a text that explained all the rules of the game. He could have explained the rules verbally, but he knew that reading, asking questions, and clarifying the rules in small groups would both foster literacy skills and increase his students' understanding of the game. When we overheard a student remark, "Hey, isn't this reciprocal teaching?" we knew that we had succeeded in making this strategy clear to our students.

The focus on these seven instructional approaches has benefited the staff of Hoover High School in a number of ways. The shared decisions of the staff development committee and school governance helped us articulate a schoolwide focus on instruction. Subsequent professional development has built the teachers' ability to implement each practice. The administration incorporates each strategy into accountability plans only after teachers have sufficient professional development on using the approach. Administrators, department chairs, university partners, and teachers now have a list of common expectations for discussion and planning.

Student achievement is up, indicating a positive trajectory for future growth and greater opportunities for our graduates. Last year, 40 seniors were admitted to California universities, including 12 students who were accepted to Berkeley, arguably California's most selective public university.

Although we are pleased about the outcomes for these students, we recognize that we must continue our focus on teacher development to improve student achievement for all. At Hoover High School, strategic teaching encourages student learning. We know that excellent teachers have a positive impact on student outcomes. Our role as university partners and administrators is to ensure that our teachers have the tools to be excellent.

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A schoolwide commitment to reading and writing strategies in all content areas has had a positive impact on student achievement at Herbert Hoover High School.

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https://www.adlit.org/topics/comprehension/teach-seven-strategies-highly-effective-readers

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To assume that one can simply have students memorize and routinely execute a set of strategies is to misconceive the nature of strategic processing or executive control. Such rote applications of these procedures represents, in essence, a true oxymoron-non-strategic strategic processing.
- Alexander and Murphy (1998, p. 33)

If the struggling readers in your content classroom routinely miss the point when "reading" content text, consider teaching them one or more of the seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers. Cognitive strategies are the mental processes used by skilled readers to extract and construct meaning from text and to create knowledge structures in long-term memory. When these strategies are directly taught to and modeled for struggling readers, their comprehension and retention improve.

Struggling students often mistakenly believe they are reading when they are actually engaged in what researchers call mindless reading (Schooler, Reichle, & Halpern, 2004), zoning out while staring at the printed page. The opposite of mindless reading is the processing of text by highly effective readers using cognitive strategies. These strategies are described in a fascinating qualitative study that asked expert readers to think aloud regarding what was happening in their minds while they were reading. The lengthy scripts recording these spoken thoughts (i.e., think-alouds) are called verbal protocols (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). These protocols were categorized and analyzed by researchers to answer specific questions, such as, What is the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' strategies as they determine the main idea of a text? (Afflerbach, 1990b).

The protocols provide accurate "snapshots" and even "videos" of the ever-changing mental landscape that expert readers construct during reading. Researchers have concluded that reading is "constructively responsive-that is, good readers are always changing their processing in response to the text they are reading" (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995, p. 2). Instructional Aid 1.1 defines the seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers, and Instructional Aid 1.2 provides a lesson plan template for teaching a cognitive strategy.

Instructional aids

Instructional Aid 1.1: Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

Activating

"Priming the cognitive pump" in order to recall relevent prior knowledge and experiences from long-term memory in order to extract and construct meaning from text

Inferring

Bringing together what is spoken (written) in the text, what is unspoken (unwritten) in the text, and what is already known by the reader in order to extract and construct meaning from the text

Monitoring-Clarifying

Thinking about how and what one is reading, both during and after the act of reading, for purposes of determining if one is comprehending the text combined with the ability to clarify and fix up any mix-ups

Questioning

Engaging in learning dialogues with text (authors), peers, and teachers through self-questioning, question generation, and question answering

Searching-Selecting

Searching a variety of sources in order to select appropriate information to answer questions, define words and terms, clarify misunderstandings, solve problems, or gather information

Summarizing

Restating the meaning of text in one's own words - different words from those used in the original text

Visualizing-Organizing

Constructing a mental image or graphic organizer for the purpose of extracting and constructing meaning from the text

Instructional Aid 1.2: A Lesson Template for Teaching Cognitive Strategies

1. Provide direct instruction regarding the cognitive strategy

a. Define and explain the strategy

b. Explain the purpose the strategy serves during reading

c. Describe the critical attributes of the strategy

d. Provide concrete examples/nonexamples of the strategy

2. Model the strategy by thinking aloud

3. Facilitate guided practice with students

Instructional Aid 1.3: A Lesson Template for Teaching Summarizing

Lesson Template for Teaching Cognitive Strategies Lesson Plan for Teaching Summarizing

1. Provide direct instruction regarding the cognitive strategy

a. Define and explain the strategy.

Summarizing is restating in your own words the meaning of what you have read-using different words from those used in the original text-either in written form or a graphic representation (picture of graphic organizer).

b. Explain the purpose the strategy serves during reading

Summarizing enables a reader to determine what is most imporant to remember once the reading is completed. Many things we read have only one or two bid ideas, and it's important to identify them and restate them for purposed of retention.

c. Describe the critical attributes of the strategy.

A summary has the following characteristics. It:
-Is short
-Is to the point, containing the big idea of the text
-Omits trivial information and collapses lists into a word or phrase
-Is not a retelling or a "photocopy" of the text

d. Provide concrete examples/nonexamples of the strategy.

Examples of good summaries might inlude the one-sentence book summaries from The New York Times Bestsellers List, an obituary of a famous person, or a report of a basketball or football game that captures the highlights.

The mistakes that students commonly make when writing summaries can be more readily avoided by showing students excellent nonexamples (e.g., a paragraph that is too long, has far too many details, or is a complete retelling of the text rather than a statement of the main idea.

2. Model the strategy by thinking aloud.

Thinking aloud is a metacognitive activity in which teachers reflect on their behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes regarding what they have read and then speak their thoughts aloud for students. Choose a section of relatively easy text from your discipline and think aloud as you read it, and then also think aloud about how you would go about summarizing it - then do it.

3. Facilitate guided practice with students.

Using easy-to-read content text, read aloud and generate a summary together with the whole class.

Using easy-to-read content text, ask students to read with partners and create a summary together.

One students are writing good summaries as partners, assign text and expect students to read it and generate summaries independently.

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teach the seven strategies of highly effective readers

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Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers

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To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwYUfgx6HcnYYl9Nc1lGSHNDVHM/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-C4qcagWJ0yhu9NaTpi2MiQ

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Bz2uA9UxSiIc6SxOdMAQbqcocKqrppbxWo6Uo_i4jk/edit?usp=sharing

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Science Literacy Strategies for Secondary Classrooms

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Rewordify.com - reword texts to various levels to make it easier to access the material contained in the text

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https://smmry.com/ - summarizes texts to make the information more accessible

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https://www.newsinlevels.com/# - provides news articles in 3 levels to make texts more accessible- Also, has videos that read text to students

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“Readers who are familiar with the particular structure of the text (reading a story, reading science text, reading in social studies, reading math story problems, etc.) have several advantages.

They know

What to expect from different parts of the text,

Where to search for particular types of information,

How the different parts of the text are linked together.”

(Oakhill, Cain and Elbro, 2015, p.82)