Literacy is a vital skill to the success of our students in school. In the past literacy instruction fell solely on the shoulders of English Language Arts teachers. It was their responsibility to teach reading strategies, differentiate reading abilities, elements of literature, and more. However, with the introduction of the Common Core State Standards, every teacher has the responsibility of teaching literacy. These standards push for higher levels of comprehension such as analyzing text relationships, identifying structure, explaining points of view, synthesizing arguments and more. In Buehl Chapter 2, he explains the importance of comprehension instructions by stating, “Comprehension instruction leads to learning from current text and builds capacity to learn independently from future texts". Students are able to make inferences, ask questions, and construct arguments. This connects back to meta-cognition and the ability of students to think about the thought process of the author and making connections across the texts.
For example, when reading history students must have the ability to identify vocabulary, historical references, historical perspectives, along with charts, graphs, and maps in connection in the context of CCSS. This is a major change for history instruction. According to Buehl, “Schools typically socialize students into seeing history as a chronology of events and the explanations of social, political, and economic phenomenon offered in texts as a truthful and unexamined master narrative” (P.33). History is more then facts and memorization. It is making connection across disciplines and time periods to other major themes and ideas. The goal of these literacy strategies is not to isolate them from one another in each subject, but build off each others give students the ability to analyze a text with a specific lens.
However, the challenges of reading in history are great. The first challenge that the book, Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy mentions is "meeting the needs of students with an array of reading abilities." History teachers must have the ability to differentiate literacy instruction. This can be done by scaffolding texts, preforming close reads, or small group instruction. Teachers are using data from their formative assessment drive these instructional practices. The second challenge is "teach all students to reason in the complex ways that the disciplines require". Students need to be able to explain what they are reading, make real world applications. How do students analyze the text they are reading?
There are many ways for students to grapple with text and find meaning. Two comprehension instructional strategies that this week's reading brought up were "talking to the text" and "Accountable Talk". Each are beneficial to students and allow students to use critical thinking and meta-cognition in coordination with the text. Talking to the text, includes marking up the text and making annotations. Steps include circling words or sentences you don't understand, starring the main ideas underlining supporting evidence, and most importantly writing comments or questions in the margins. Accountable talk uses others students to develop rigorous discourse about the text. Students are encouraged to use starter phrases, question, challenges each other. Both of these strategies are student-centered and focuses on independent thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Zbie1R_ec (Talking to the Text Demo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE8BHzPzna8 (Accountable Talk Demo)
Discussion Question:
What comprehension instructional strategy do students learn best from : Talking to the Text or Accountable Talk? What are possible advantages or disadvantages of each? How can these strategies be used in together?
I would like to say both strategies - Talking to the Text and Accountable Talk, are beneficial learning methods but they should be put on different stages. Talking to the Text strategy is the laying foundation. Before students move on to the next steps, they must understand that text content, the main ideas and so on. Only students comprehend the information, they are able to discuss with peers, which is using Accountable Talk strategy. Since students' reading level may be different, it challenges teachers how to allocate time properly during classes. Encouraging students set up groups study after classes may be a way to solve the problem of lack of time.
ReplyDeleteI agree that they can be used at different stages. Also, in small groups, individually, or an entire class. Small group instruction is important to these literacy instructional strategies to give extra support to students are struggling. I like what you said about peer to peer learning, "Encouraging students set up groups study after classes may be a way to solve the problem of lack of time." Students learn best from each other and giving time for students time to study can be essential to the success for the classroom.
DeleteI believe both talking to the text and accountable text are important strategies. In my past educational experiences, especially in my English classes, I have had mostly talking to the text. This allowed for me to connect the reading to broader themes and recognize the importance of different aspects of the reading. Only using this kind of reading, however, did not allow for the engagement that accountable talk could have allowed for. Accountable talk could have allowed for me to make connection I had previously not seen or engage in dialogue focused on other aspects of the reading.
ReplyDeleteI agree that accountable talk builds off talking to the text, and forces students too apply and synthesize the material the just made by forming argumentative claims and counterclaims with supporting evidence.
DeleteI think that each strategy can be used for whatever is best for the student. Students' ability to learn is very differentiated so I think that it is best to try both of these strategies so that a student can experience both and see what strategy works better for them. In my experience, my high school english teachers wanted us to annotate everything which is the talking to text stratey and we were graded on how much we wrote down. I did not like this though because just like in real life I don't talk much so I would never get a good grade on that because my teachers didn't think I engaged the text enough even though I got good grades on any discussion questions we might of had on little tests throughout the year.
ReplyDeleteAnnotation is an important skills, but I think it is more important for students to be able to apply and synthesize the material they are reading. I think that accountable talk is next step in rigorous instructions. This is the ability that students are forming their own argumentative claims and challenging other students by using supporting evidence and counterclaims.
DeleteFor students that don't like to talk out load, its the teachers responsibility to promote a classroom environment where other student encourage each other to participate. In addition, have alternative assessment to demonstrate mastery of a skill.
I would also agree with most and say both strategies are useful. I think that there needs to be a mix. Allowing students to first engage in the reading, marking it up, highlighting, underlining words that they don't understand, and then moving towards an accountable talk, to "encourage students to explain their thinking as they problem-solve, including problem-solving in reading" (Lee, 2010). They can read the text all day to themselves, but it isn't until they begin "justifying" their thinking and reading that they will grasp the content being taught. The disadvantage I see with talking to the text is that a student can "highlight" or "annotate" parts of the text that don't really draw to the authors main arguments, hence the student is not really taking anything from the text. I think this process also assumes the student to go above and beyond. A student can underline a word they don't understand, but are they going to go the extra step and actually look up its meaning?
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ReplyDeleteHi Patrick. Thanks for you sharing, especially the videos, which are useful for me to further understand two instructional strategies: “talk to the text” and “accountable talk”. The following are my opinions toward these two strategies. Firstly, “talk to the text” is an effective way of self-learning which allow individuals to associate their old knowledge and to keep thinking while reading, but this may needs background knowledge. Secondly, as for “accountable talk”, I think, on the one hand, in contrary to traditional learning way by which students absorb knowledge passively, “accountable talk” encourages students to make conclusions and solutions by themselves via reasoning skills. On the other hands, I think students who are of introversion tend to have less opportunity to speak out.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should not only regard English Language Arts teachers as a person who suppose to take all the responsibilities to teach elements of literature and reading strategies. Every discipline has its own feature and method of literacy, teachers should be able to teach literacy suitable for their own subjects.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to "Talking to the text" and "Accountable talk", I think individual differences should be taken into consideration. As for me, I am more interested in “Accountable talk”. Comparing to “Talking to the text”, I could engage more through expressing myself and listening to others. However, for some students who are really good at reading or even have disabilities in communication, “Talking to the text” will be much more effective than “Accountable talk”. The main advantage of the first approach is that students can dissect the mind of the author word by word, but its disadvantage is that some abstract concepts may not easy to understand, while students can enchange their ideas and learn more through ”Accountable talk”, but this approach may not quite suitable for introverted students. Overall, I think we should combine both two methods according to the specific text content. After all, creating a good learning environment is not enough, we should make students more engaged in literacy rather than just complete assignments or surface processing.
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ReplyDeleteI think both are feasible to apply in the teaching and will help students develop their reading comprehension skills, however, as for picking up a better one, I think it depends on the students who are taught. Talking to the Text may be more helpful to those who are interested in reading and have a certain level of capacity of raising questions and critical thinking. Students may build a conversation with the authors through exerting their imagination and prior knowledge to understand the material, thus it may be better to have some prior knowledge relevant to the background of the material, otherwise it might be difficult for struggling readers and easily to cause some negative emotions like resentment. In terms of Accountable Talk, it can engage students into discussion easily and provide the students opportunities to listen to other opinions which are also beneficial for them to develop critical thinking. However, the limitations of this strategy might be it cannot engage all in the classroom. Just like what was showed in the video, only some of the students engaged in discussion actively, yet there were several students kept silence (perhaps they just kept silence in the video clip). Therefore, I think these two strategies should be used depending on the students’ ability and willing.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think both strategies are important. Personally, I have been taught to use the “talk to the text” strategy, and I think that works fine. Because we are able to really understand and think about the reading, while reading it. I think “accountable talk” would work just as much. I think accountable talk can allow for students to engage in discussion and really interact with the reading and their peers. It would be a good idea to use both strategies, because students will first have the chance to understand the text by themselves and then they can talk to their peers about it.
ReplyDeleteBoth strategies that you mentioned are great to use in class and no doubt are beneficial. Personally, I feel that "talk to the text" is the better strategy of the two. I may be a little biased towards it because it is the strategy that I use the most frequently and have had success with it. The problem I can see occurring with using "accountable talk" is that not every student can be engaged in it. Leaning on other students for support can either go really good or really bad. What I like about "accountable talk" is that it can give students an opportunity to see what others are thinking and may get a different viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteI am going to agree with mostly everyone else by saying that both are useful strategies. "Talking to the text" is a very effective generic strategy, but I feel that "accountable talk" is a better strategy within a particular discipline because it encourages the student to analyze and make connections in way specific to that discourse. For instance, you mentioned that students need to explain what they are reading and make real world connections, which is certainly true. However, another important aspect that Buehl emphasized is understanding why events happened in a certain sequence and even why the author came to that conclusion. I know that I was decently far into high school before I even realized that we can and should question the argument of the historian who wrote the text. I imagine that this way of thinking is developed as they use the strategies you mentioned with various primary source and secondary texts on a topic.
ReplyDeleteI love how you pretty much described the purpose of history as well highlight the strategies with this quote "The goal of these literacy strategies is not to isolate them from one another in each subject, but build off each others give students the ability to analyze a text with a specific lens". That is exactly what students need to do through communication, reading but also critically think as well. There is a struggle to make education work effectively but we often times don't do or express a value to connect with other involving the work or work with others. By that same standard that history follows, Do you think the same strategies can work with English or Science classes? and if so do you think there can be a way for students to interact with the strategies without direct communication like in-class assignments or group work?
ReplyDeleteThe common core has gotten a lot of hate from teachers, but I think that one positive attribute it has brought was inter-department relationships to form. Since now not just the English department is responsible for teaching literacy, math teachers can now go to a science or history teacher to synthesize ideas. Anyway, I really liked the two instructional strategies you provided to help students further analyze the texts. Rather than constantly testing them to measure their knowledge, teachers can see their notes and annotations to see what the student is grasping from the text and then further guide them from there. Great resources, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have seen the "accountable talk" in my own classrooms before. I think there are many pros with it, as it teaches students to monitor themselves and analyze the information that is being given to them, (did what this person just say, have any true content or are they talking to just to talk?). I think these are critical skills in life as students need to analyze and justify what is important to information for them to take in and what is not. One of the cons I could see is the grading system. While it is important to put value on a good comment, I could see how making the grade becomes more important than engaging in a good classroom discussion. I think the other strategy gets the students to engage at a more personal level which is equally as important, however, again the personal attachment may get in the way of analyzing the text in a critical worldly view. There are many pros and cons of each. I think they each show a value in individual opinion and help students see value in themselves, while also teaching them skills of how to engage with the world around them. - Kiley
ReplyDeleteI agree that both "Talking to the text" and "accountable talk" are useful strategies. "Talking to the text" is a good one, but "accountable talk," I think, is a better strategy within a discipline because it enables the student to analyze and make connections more effectively. Both are very good at getting the students involved in discussion, but both have drawbacks that take away from the class itself and how the text can be analyzed critically by the students. Otherwise, the strategies are a good non-test way to measure knowledge that is in a low stress way where the students can succeed the most.
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ReplyDeleteThe way core competencies in allowing a student to be able to think deeply is very interesting. History and the knowledge it encompasses builds off each other. Using strategies like scaffolding is rather interesting as students form a baseline in the material, teachers able to probe more from students allowing them to reach a deeper level of understanding or cause them to better analyze the material. History does transcend the mold of memorization and it involves building connections and it’s study enhances literacy of students to apply these skills in all subjects.