R-II teachers implementing reading plan
Becky Albrecht
Next month, the Missouri State Board of Education is expected to adopt a new slate of Missouri Learning Standards.
While the current standards are based on common core, the new standards will be the result of professional, expert review and input as required by the Missouri Legislature.
No doubt, there will be changes, but one thing that will remain is the focus on increased text complexity.
School curriculum at all grade levels will require teaching students to read and analyze information of a higher level, a level often required by college and careers.
To prepare for this focus, Maryville R-II has implemented a district-wide, three-year initiative to improve students’ reading ability. This initiative is a priority for all subjects and classes, not just language arts.
This year, the first of the initiative, is a focus on vocabulary, a key component of reading comprehension.
Representatives from each building worked together last year to learn about teaching academic vocabulary and to develop a plan for this year’s implementation. Their work was heavily influenced by educational expert Robert Marzano’s research.
For each building, specific words and their definitions were identified as important for academic success. Each building staff then created a plan for teaching these words to students in a consistent, practical manner.
As a result, when students are reading and encounter words such as imply, summarized, infer, or contrast, they will know and understand exactly what is meant. When students know what key words mean and how they interconnect, they can better assimilate the concepts they are trying to learn with their prior knowledge, creating quicker and more thorough understanding.
Next year, the focus of the initiative will be on Close Reading strategies. Representatives from each building are working this year to learn, study, and develop plans for next year’s implementation. Simply put, Close Reading requires multiple readings of a text, with each reading serving a different purpose.
The first reading is often to determine meaning. The second and third readings are usually for determining how the text works and evaluating its quality.
Close Reading strategies teach students how to annotate or mark up the text, organize its content through graphic organizers, make connections between the text and other learning, and make personal connections. All of these promote understanding and learning on a deeper level.
The third and final year of the initiative, school year 2017-2018, will focus on increasing text complexity, and the process will be the same. The district team will utilize the prior year to study, plan, prepare, and share.
Then, all buildings will implement by incorporating material in their daily lessons.
A text’s level of complexity is determined by three components: qualitative, quantitative, and reader/task.
Qualitative dimensions refers to the demands placed on the reader by the vocabulary levels of meaning, and sentence structure, and how conventional the language used is. Quantitative dimension refers to the word frequency and sentence length.
The reader and task dimension refers to the student’s prior knowledge, motivation for reading, and interests.
The overriding goal of text complexity strategies is to match students with the optimal texts and tasks to promote their learning and stretch their reading comprehension.
With this three-year initiative and concentration on literacy, students should become better readers district-wide. Being a better reader leads to academic success, but it does more than that.
It also helps kids outside the classroom in everyday life.
