Teaching literacy—reading, writing, speaking, and listening—was long thought of as the job of the English department, and if students weren’t considered proficient, it was that department’s fault.
Thankfully, that mindset has changed. It is our responsibility, whether you’re a classroom teacher, a paraprofessional, or an educational assistant, to give all of our students literacy opportunities in every discipline.
Craig Shapiro and Peg Grafwallner explore the evolving landscape of education, emphasizing the importance of empathy, productive struggle, and redefining failure. Peg shares her extensive experience in education, discussing the 'Not Yet' approach to learning and the significance of normalizing obstacles.
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These strategies for teaching literacy across all content areas can help educators ensure that students build the skills they need.
All teachers want their students to be able to participate in class discussions, to talk confidently and with conviction about a topic, and to share their insights and perceptions about that topic. When teachers take the time to introduce, define and demonstrate how to use the seven essential literacy skills, students are able to apply them to their own reading. They are able to break down those complex phrases and inferences to make meaning.
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Clearing the Path for Developing Learners: Essential Literacy Skills to Support Achievement in Every Content Area is a book that came about after educators in Peg’s district began breaking down what essential literacy skills made their appears in standards, curriculum, and other areas. While I’ll let her talk more about these seven essential skills, I will say that Peg was recently a guest speaker for my Curriculum and Instructional Leadership course discussing these very skills. I think you will find a lot of applications in what Peg is discussing along with the usefulness her new book can provide districts.
After you listen to today's episode, go to www.escottengland.com and click on the Podcast tab at the top to find today's episode page and read more about Peg.
Listen to the Spotify Podcast Here
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Productive struggle is something that we should all encounter, but moreover, productive struggle is something that we should all embrace. Afterall, when we experience productive struggle that means we are making grounds at getting to our goal. My guest today, Peg Grafwallner, would agree. Peg is the author of Not Yet…And That’s OK: How Productive Struggle Fosters Student Learning. She joins us today to talk more about the not yet mindset and the productive struggle including strategies in how to boost student engagement and learning.
Listen to the Podcast Here
Listen to the Apple Podcast Here
Every day, in every classroom, students are expected to understand and analyze arguments. However, this work requires students to possess and practice explicit communication skills that some have not adequately developed. To be successful 21st century learners and professionals, students must be able to understand that not all information is reliable; in addition, they must be able to determine credible sources, conduct research, and think critically about texts. Delineating and evaluating arguments is a vital skill students require in academics and beyond.
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The value of being able to infer – to apply inferences when reading – is necessary in the classroom and beyond. By giving students adequate practice in the classroom, teachers support them to move toward automaticity, which they’ll need to transfer the skill to diverse contexts beyond academic learning.
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One might contend that the foundational skill of compare and contrast is a challenging skill for some children to master and, as a result, we should hold off teaching it until a certain age or a certain grade level. However, we know that when skills are introduced at an early level – even in the most basic formats – we are providing that background knowledge that becomes so necessary later in our students’ academic careers.
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The foundational skill of cause and effect focuses on connections that students are able to make between the results and what caused those results. Teaching cause and effect can open up the conversation to more than just the consequence of the reason; it can inspire our students to learn more about issues they care about. Think about tackling a school issue or a social justice issue and giving your students the chance to learn more about the causes and effects of those issues making that opportunity even more real, relevant, and relatable.
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In this episode, educator and author, Peg Grafwallner, joins to unpack the term productive struggle and what this can look like in every content area – from ELA to PE. You’ll also hear about Peg’s book, Ready to Learn, and how teachers can model productive struggle throughout the day, including with technology, to set up students for success.
Vocabulary is the key to understanding what we want our students to know and be able to do; without it, our students are unlikely to comprehend the complex content in front of them. We know academic vocabulary is the mainstay of the classroom experience and what it has to offer.
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I recently observed a teacher introducing an upcoming heart rate lab by telling the students how “easy” the lab would be. She reiterated her point several times, explaining that they would “get it right away” and “really, this is so easy,” with extra verbal and physical emphasis on “so.”
As I listened to the words she chose, I was struck by the immense weight of those words…Read more…
While we know every learning challenge is an empowering opportunity to grow, we also know that message might sometimes be lost on our students. Those learning challenges can cause some students to become frustrated and shut down from the learning.
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Besides academic vocabulary, I cannot think of a cross-curricular skill that is most often used in the classroom, in college, and in the world of work. Finding the main idea is paramount to understanding any piece of communication. According to Kelly Roell from ThoughtCo. (2019), “Finding the main idea of a paragraph or longer passage of text is one of the most important reading skills to master, along with concepts like making an inference, finding the author's purpose, or understanding vocabulary words in context.” Consider this, locating the main idea begins the discussion about the what and without that what there wouldn’t be a need to move toward the supporting details, or toward more discussion!
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We want our students to interact with text in a personal way; to make inquiries and comments that demonstrate their learning in a way that makes sense to them. To comprehend text, one must deconstruct the text. That deconstruction begins with explicit directions from the teacher on how to read the text and make meaning from it.
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In 2014, I became an Academic Coach at Ronald W. Reagan College Preparatory high school in Milwaukee. The position was relatively new to RRHS, so I had the opportunity to make it my own. My principal, however, was clear on one specific component of my position: raise ACT reading scores. I had some background in the ACT College and Career Reading, Writing and English standards as an ACT test preparation teacher for those subjects; but, to help our students in moving beyond Reagan’s current score, I knew I needed to immerse myself in the ACT skills.
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In my most recent book, Not Yet…And That’s Ok: How Productive Struggle Fosters Student Learning, I explain the mindset of the Not Yet approach as an opportunity for teachers to create an authentic classroom experience where students value setbacks and obstacles as ways to grow, learn, and develop. Instead of allowing failure to define the student, the not-yet approach creates opportunities to normalize development and empowers students to realize learning takes time and that mastery isn’t the end of their growth.
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Years ago, it wasn’t unusual for the teacher to assign the usual “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay to welcome back students to the classroom. Teachers Pay Teachers (a website I would never recommend) has nearly 458 activities that incorporate the “summer vacation” theme. There are thousands of “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” images available on Google for teachers to download, print, and give to their students. “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” appears to be a part of an academic rite of summer passage.
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Rita Platt over at Middle Web reviews Ready to Learn: The FRAME Model for Optimizing Student Success.
