Spring is here! The days are warmer, the sun is sticking around longer, and your students are likely feeling a little extra springy (Anyone have a class full of Tiggers this spring?) With all that energy bouncing around, it may take some creativity to help your students stay focused. 

What if you could channel all that enthusiasm into something productive? Music is a fun and effective way to engage your students, calm their minds, and make learning feel fresh and exciting. Let’s dive into some musical ideas that will turn your classroom into a springtime symphony!

Sounding the Zero Noise Signal

We all know the classic “Hand in the Air - Zero Noise Signal,” but why not mix it up this spring? Instead of the usual silent signal, try using an instrument or sound effect to grab attention. One year, I used a train whistle during a unit on trains. The students loved it! In April, I switched things up with a rainstick. It was perfect for the spring season and provided an opportunity to...

 There has been a lot of push-back in recent years about the Science of Reading and teaching phonics to English learners.

Not too long ago I attended a bilingual education conference. In one of the plenary sessions, the speaker pronounced that there’s too much emphasis on phonics. “We already know how to do that. There isn’t anybody who’s not teaching phonics!”

I couldn’t disagree more.

There are thousands of teachers, like me, who not only didn’t receive any instruction in our teacher prep programs how to teach foundational reading skills, but also work(ed) in districts who follow outdated models of reading that underemphasize or completely disregard teaching foundational skills. And this has been happening for decades.

I think that the push-back toward the emphasis on phonics instruction is a worry that it will replace or overshadow the other components of literacy and language instruction that multilingual students need.

The detractors of SoR have also spoken out against the va...

Our last issue (https://shorturl.at/RIejJ) focused on a knowledge-based approach to reading comprehension. We discussed the points that building students’ background knowledge and teaching reading through content makes a difference in being able to comprehend a text.

This leads us to the question of what purpose, if any, is there in teaching reading comprehension strategies like summarization, compare/contrast, prediction, and main idea?

Tim Shanahan is the expert we will look to for the answer to this question, and then, of course, we have a GLAD® strategy to share to apply this wisdom.

Comprehension is two-pronged

Shanahan makes a distinction about the cognitive aspects of reading comprehension. He says that we need to be more specific when we talk about the broad topic of reading comprehension. Are we assessing if the student understands what he reads? Or are we asking him to remember or memorize the information to be used later for different activities like writing or discussio...

🤯 Mind blown!

During my research on reading comprehension and how best to teach it I came across a series of podcasts that have changed my view of how best to frame the concept of reading comprehension. What is it? How do we acquire it? Can you teach it?

Dr. Sharon Vaughn is the Executive Director of the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas at Austin and the lead author of the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides.

Vaughn posits that comprehension can’t be taught. Rather, we help build it for students by, first, teaching them how to read the words and knowing what the words mean – phonics + vocabulary. Then, if the student has enough background knowledge of the topic they are reading about, comprehension is the result.

Tim Rasinkski of Kent State University, corroborates this assertion quantitatively, “90% of 3^rd-4^th graders who have problems with reading comprehension also have problems with phonics, vocabulary, and fluency.”  

How a k...

I love an infographic!

Maybe because they remind me of a Project GLAD® Graphic Organizer. If you ever search images for  “models of reading instruction”, you’ll come up with a plethora of graphics that researchers and authors have created to illustrate the various components. From the reading rope to the simple view, they all pretty much describe the same components, and it is important to note that all the elements share equal weight.

We will refer back to these models of literacy instruction as we go through this series on Project GLAD®’s literacy strategies. It seems like the best place to start is with decoding, but I’d rather switch our focus to certain GLAD® strategies as evidence-based practices. We’ll save word study and decoding for a future issue. In this issue, we’ll cover the equally important skill of reading fluency and how it relates to several GLAD® strategies that we can use to teach and practice it.

What is reading fluency?

Reading fluen...

OCDE Project GLAD® is a model of language and literacy. Language and literacy – these words have been in the description of our model since the 1980’s. Of course ,we know what they mean, right? Over the past several years, I have been doing a lot of reading and research on the Science of Reading, as many of us have, and reflecting how this body of best practice research fits into what I know about GLAD® strategies that support multilingual students’ development of language acquisition and literacy.

It seems the reading war is alive and well and has been raging at least since the dawn of my career in education, now in its third decade. So, I’m going to wade right in and attempt to offer an olive branch to both sides of the issue of literacy instruction.

In one camp, we have the (for lack of a better term) “Science of Reading Folks”. Their position is that students need to be taught the code of the language at the sound, letter, and word level as foundational skills. From there, move i...

Have you ever asked a question to your class or a student and you're met with... crickets. Nada. Zilch. Silencio.

“Hoang, what do you think?”

The seconds tick by. The class grows antsy. The blurters are quivering with restraint.

What’s happening in Hoang’s mind right now? What’s going on behind the scenes?

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Perhaps Hoang’s silence is an indication of learned helplessness.

• If I wait long enough, the teacher will call on someone else. It’s worked in the past, why not do it again?
• I could pull out the ‘ol ‘I don’t know’ and cover my head with my hoodie. That always works.
• Maybe I’ll divert attention away from the question and skate by without having to answer. I could fall back in my chair. Or have to go to the bathroom.

💡 TIP: Keep your expectations high!

One of my favorite phrases Jody uses when a student says, “I don’t know” is…

“If you DID know, what would it be?”

You may need to add some scaffolding (heads together, a sentence frame, etc…) ...

After a busy summer of OCDE Project GLAD® Foundations trainings we are always energized by the enthusiasm of the teachers we’ve had the pleasure to support. Oftentimes, on the last day of the demo the teachers’ take away from the PD was that the students were so engaged and motivated to learn. They want to take that love of learning back to their classrooms and start the year off right with skills for motivating students.

All Project GLAD® strategies are grounded in underlying concepts that create a safe learning environment, where student take risks with language and concepts. It starts with building motivational routines.

Three Personal Standards

When you are creating your classroom culture, communicating and reinforcing clear expectations for behavior is one of the most important things to do to start off on the right foot.

Knowing what to expect and how you will react in many situations creates trust between you and your students. Many experts agree on the hallmar...

I took my first GLAD® training in the fall of 2004. When I returned to campus after the 5-day demo, my principal asked me to write a reflection of what I had learned. I recently found that (really old) document on my computer while clearing out files.

            …One of my favorite strategies was the Narrative. It’s like a story board where you place pictures of the story you’re teaching on a background, and it can be used to teach content, academic vocabulary, and story elements…I also think the expert groups, process grid and cooperative strip paragraph have great promise for teaching note taking from research and expository writing…My biggest concern is finding the time to do the prep that’s required for these new strategies…

Those thoughts have been echoed by multitudes of teachers over the decades!

Your GLAD® training inspires you! Your brain is full of research-based, practical teaching strategies that you know will help your students. And you are making so many connect...

Graphic Organizers, Pictorials and Comparatives: What’s the Big Difference?

Drawing while talking, isn’t that the whole idea?  Does it really matter what you call it?  While the title isn’t going to revolutionize the learning experience, the purpose behind what you’re doing will. 

GRAPHIC ORGANIZER INPUT CHART

Let’s start at the beginning.  The BIG picture.  When introducing a new unit topic we first orient the content in time and space. 

How does everything we’ll be learning fit together? 

This is the purpose behind the Graphic Organizer.  It might be a world map, a timeline, the kingdoms of living things, or any other kind of graphic organizer that gives the BIG picture of the unit.  

The graphic organizer is generally the first input chart presented in a new unit of study.  

Now, consider your emerging bmultilingual students.  What does a graphic organizer look like when you’re tracing the organizer and writing in the key concepts and vocabulary?  Basically, we have a bunch...