[By David Kleeman, President of the American Center for Children and Media]

In recent weeks, papers worldwide have punched parents' guilt buttons yet again by hyping a study that claims screen time harms children. Editors seemingly competed to give the Iowa State University research the most extreme headline: "Watching TV and playing video games can 'DOUBLE risk of getting ADHD'," "Video games decrease attention span," and the clear winner from the UK's Express, TV DAMAGES A CHILD'S BRAIN.

Planes that land safely aren't news, so "TV makes your kids dumb" is a much more compelling headline than "A limited amount of carefully-chosen programming can contribute to early learning, especially with parental co-viewing." In May, two studies came out simultaneously - one said "TV is harmful"; the other said "turning off TV doesn't help if parents don't engage with their children." Guess which grabbed headlines?

Given the steady flow of research that says everything you've done is wrong, it's a wonder parents aren't paralyzed! They'd be greatly helped if they, and the journalists who cover such studies, had the research literacy to weigh strengths and weaknesses. For example:

Was the sample size large or small? Research on a limited group may suggest direction for further study, but is hard to generalize to the population.

Was the study based on an observed behavior or someone's recollections? The Iowa State study was based on two sets of anecdotal evidence - parents' estimates of children's time spent with media and teachers' assessments of students' attention problems. It's amusing that in the Des Moines Register coverage of this study, a representative from the American Academy of Pediatrics said parents are "relatively clueless" about children's media use - the same parents on whose accurate recounting the study rests.

Did the study find "correlation" or "causation"? Almost 100% of serial killers drank milk as children (correlation); however, milk drinking does not lead to murder (causation). The University of Montreal study cited above noted that "preexisting maternal or familial factors predicted television exposure and were consistently related to most of the dependent variables." In other words, screen time doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is related to family needs. If you live in an unsafe neighborhood, TV may be the safest option; children in dysfunctional families may spend more time alone with the screen; parents struggling to make ends meet may not be able to afford quality child care.

There may even be an element of reverse causation: troubled young people might well seek out media as a familiar and non-judgmental companion, as noted in this gaming magazine article about the Iowa State research.

Did the study take content into account? Carrots and cupcakes both count as food intake, but wouldn't have the same result as a dietary staple. Neither the Iowa State nor the University of Montreal studies looked at content; however, the Iowa researchers felt comfortable saying that fast editing pace is responsible for attention problems.

Did the research weigh environmental elements like socio-economic status, parental education, parental co-viewing and overall involvement with the child? What a child brings to the television is at least equal to what the child takes away; parents of toddlers who show attention problems may allow more TV because it calms or focuses the child.

Did the study look at children's broader habits and activities? The release from the University of Montreal research says "common sense would have it that TV exposure replaces time that could be spent engaging in other developmentally enriching activities and tasks." Young people's lives are not one-dimensional, nor does every moment has to be programmed; in fact, this plays into the hands of those who market products guaranteed to make kids smart.

When confronted with definitive or bombastic headlines, parents should remember that research is a process and not a destination. No single study is definitive (consider the shifting advice on red wine or chocolate) and, because people's lives are complex, it's almost impossible to attribute cause in areas like media use and development.

Read and weigh stories about research, but devote more time to finding trusted sources for content reviews. Unless your family chooses no screen time (a perfectly fine choice, but clearly not feasible for all), the best payoff is in choosing TV shows, websites, mobile apps and games that suit your own children's age, developmental stage, needs, interests and abilities.

(David Kleeman is President of the American Center for Children and Media, an industry-led creative professional development and resource center. He looks worldwide for best practices in children's TV and digital media.)

Assessment in Media Education
By Chris M. Worsnop


Media Literacy: Pitfalls and a Definition

Media literacy is one of the “new literacies” we hear about so much these days -- like numeracy, oracy, technological literacy, and computer literacy. Increasingly, educators are using the term “media education,” referring to an approach that seeks to make students more knowledgeable about media and their importance in our culture. Students of media learn how to read and write media texts in a way roughly analogous to the way they learn to read and write printed texts.
In an essay entitled “Orthodoxy Is the Enemy” (Worsnop, 1989; republished in Worsnop, 1994a), I listed a number of basic misunderstandings about media education, which I termed orthodoxies:

• Orthodoxy 1: Media education as civil defense
In this vision of media education, the media are seen as wicked influences on human behavior. Students must be taught to discard their misbegotten tastes and media habits in favor of more appropriate ones, such as those of the adults in the community. Media education is seen principally as prevention.

• Orthodoxy 2: Media education as ideological means test
In this kind of media education, everything is subjected to political scrutiny to determine adherence to “correct” ideologies. Media that stray from the accepted ideology -- either to the left or to the right -- are condemned. Media education is seen principally as a course in convergent thinking.

• Orthodoxy 3: Media education as multiplication tables
This vision of media education has the student doing little more than learning a set of definitions, rules, and names of equipment and techniques. It offers no place for creativity, critical thinking, or divergence of any kind. Media education is seen principally as memory work.

• Orthodoxy 4: Media Criticism 301
This form of media education sees itself as a carbon copy of university courses in literary criticism. The media are viewed as equivalents of books, though they are usually judged inferior. Media education is seen principally as a course in theories of criticism.
Recently I wrote an assessment document, Media Literacy Through Critical Thinking (2000), where I list the five key concepts I think are central to any good course in media education:

1. Media texts are carefully wrapped packages (in media ed. talk, media are “constructions”).
2. Media construct versions of reality.
3. Media are interpreted through individual lenses.
4. Media are about money.
5. Media promote an agenda.

I make no claim of originality for any of these concepts. All can be easily traced back at least as far as 1985 (see Masterman, 1985). There are other versions of these concepts in such publications as the Media Literacy Resource Guide (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1989), the British Film Institute curriculum documents (Bazalgette, 1989), and a multitude of other places. While expression of the concepts may vary, these sources are more remarkable for what they have in common than for how they differ. Most important, they all proclaim the importance of starting from a conceptual framework.

These five key concepts should, I believe, be incorporated into all media education. The orthodoxies are not to be considered forbidden territory -- in teaching the course, the teacher will occasionally take a “civil defense” stance, will undoubtedly take ideology into account on a regular basis, will find several occasions when students would benefit from definitions and discussion of terminology, and will find it necessary to teach some critical skills. But these forays into the orthodoxies will be in the context of a well-rounded media education course, rather than a doctrinaire exercise.

I would also add some conditions that I consider vital in a good media education classroom:

• The pedagogy should be learning oriented rather than instruction oriented, student centered rather than teacher centered.
• The classroom process should encourage exploration, inquiry, investigation, and discovery approaches to learning.
• Cooperative and collaborative styles of learning should be favored and encouraged.
• Colearning involving both teacher and students should often be pursued.
• Assessment practices and instruments should be open and public, authentic, valid, and reliable.

Why Is Assessment Important?

It is important for teachers to conduct good assessment so that they will know

• How well they are teaching
If students all achieve well in a program, it is likely that the program is being successfully taught to them (although it could also be that the material is too easy, or that the students are remarkably capable and are learning despite poor teaching). If some students do well and others do not, the teacher has information about which group in the class needs extra help, or which topics were less well taught than others.

• How well the students are learning
The information that assessment provides gives the teacher a profile of each student's learning (if the assessment is authentic, that is). This information is valuable in forming groups for remediation, further instruction, or acceleration.

• Whether they are teaching the right material at the right time
Some material is harder to learn if it is not approached in the right manner or at the right time or in the right sequence. Assessment information helps teachers check on their pedagogy, timing, and sequencing.

• What they should teach next
When students have achieved one expectation in a program, as indicated by an assessment measure, a well-informed teacher knows what those students are ready to learn next. This decision is not necessarily as simple as following a prescribed scope and sequence but may involve subtle professional judgment that takes into account other issues, such as learning style or previous experience.

• What they should teach again
Whenstudents fail to learn something in a program, the teacher can investigate a number of possible causes (perhaps the material was not sufficiently accessible, the teacher's presentation did not connect with these students, or the students were not engaged or able to achieve at high levels for one reason or another).

• What they do not need to teach at all
Sometimes students show that they are already competent in a skill, knowledge, task, or concept that has not yet been taught. In that case, the topic can be covered lightly -- or sometimes not at all.

• Whether they are covering the expected curriculum satisfactorily
Teachers can use assessment information to ascertain if the expected skills, knowledge, concepts, and so on are being covered and understood by the students.

• What to report to parents and administrators
Assessment information is exactly what teachers need to report to parents on student learning.
• Where they stand on issues of accountability

Teachers who willingly embrace good assessment as an important part of their program are making it clear to the community of parents, administrators, and politicians that they are happy to be held accountable for their programs.

My Work in Reading and Language Arts Assessment

For 25 years I was a curriculum coordinator in the Ontario, Canada, public school system. I worked first for a small rural school board in the early days of local curriculum development and implementation and later in one of the largest school boards in the province. The work I did in those years involved me in curriculum development, implementation, and assessment -- the classical cycle of curriculum work. As it happened, the assessment component turned out to be particularly important for me.

The focus of my master's thesis (Worsnop, 1980, 1996a) was the development of a technique later to be called retrospective miscue analysis, a procedure that teaches youngsters with reading problems to understand the reading process and then to analyze their “miscues” -- instances when they say or read something that is different (usually an omission, an insertion, or a change) from what is on the page. This understanding and critical ability leads to improved confidence in the reader, and consequent improvements in reading ability. Several years before I completed my master's degree, Goodman and Burke's (1972) Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) had begun to lead those using it as an assessment tool to look upon reading as a process of unlocking meaning from print, rather than exclusively of pronouncing the words accurately and in order. The RMI offered teachers and researchers a procedure for analyzing the miscues students made when they read, and determining what sort of instruction would be helpful to improve their efforts.
My own work with the inventory revolutionized the way I looked upon reading and led me to speculate if students could not benefit from the insights the RMI offered to their teachers. I set up a series of experiments that eventually demonstrated students' ability to improve their reading significantly by coming to understand that

• not all errors (miscues) are of the same magnitude;
• some miscues are insignificant;
• some miscues improve on badly written text;
• all miscues are opportunities to learn more about the personal reading process.

The big lesson I learned from all this was that assessment is not much good unless it leads to improvements in learning.

In my later career as a curriculum coordinator, part of my duties involved visiting schools and performing on-site assessment of programs in subjects for which I was responsible: English and language arts, drama, and media education. I would spend a week in a high school or group of schools and read all the written programs, comparing them both to the examinations and to provincial curriculum documents. I also visited classrooms and interviewed teachers and students at every grade from junior high to high school. Among the lessons I learned was the importance of making the test congruent with the course. I also learned that wording an examination question was a skill that many people take for granted. Poorly structured examinations can lead to weak assessment, with students as the major victims.

Years later, I got the chance to be involved in some provincial-level writing initiatives. In the late 1980s, Ontario decided to hold a provincial review of writing in Grade 12. I worked on that project as a marker, and had my eyes opened to a number of issues in writing assessment that today seem obvious. Shortly thereafter I was appointed to a team charged with designing a province-wide test in reading and writing for all Grade 9 students. It was during this project that I began to apply all that I had accumulated as a set of beliefs about assessment:

• An assessment instrument must measure directly the area it claims to measure. When the claim is that the instrument measures students' writing ability, it must look at writing the students have done; when it claims to measure their ability to spell, it must measure that ability in the context of actual student writing rather than in artificially constructed situations such as multiple-choice tests, dictations, or spelling bees.

• An assessment instrument must deliver the same, or almost the same, “score” over and over when the same piece of work is assessed by different markers or by the same marker.

• The criteria used in measuring student performance should not be established by distant “experts” but instead be derived from observation of a large sample of performances on parallel tasks.

• Ideally, the evaluation criteria should be made public before the students are asked to perform the task.

• Samples of past performances on the task should also be made public before the students are asked to perform the task.

• Teaching to the test is O.K., in that a good test should support the best classroom practice and should measure broad elements of performance in context rather than bits and pieces of knowledge and skills in isolation.

• Assessment experiences should allow students to achieve at their highest level. They should not hamper high flyers by being unimaginative, and they should provide scope for students to surprise the examiners in unpredictable ways.

Our test-development team struggled with these issues as well others associated with holistic versus analytic assessment, scales that emerge from observation of work samples versus those that are developed externally, instrument design as a “quick and dirty” test or as an authentic unit of curriculum, reliability, validity, authenticity, and fairness.

I next became involved in a project that stretched my understanding of assessment even further. My school board decided to inaugurate a portfolio assessment project. Judith Fine, a psychometrist, and I were assigned responsibility for developing an instrument for assessing writing at the elementary level, beginning at Grade 3. The Peel Writing Scales (Peel District School Board, 1995), the major product of the project, became a respected assessment instrument adopted by other boards and districts because of the rigor of its development, its reliability, and its validity. The rigor came from the fact that we operated with the kinds of controls one would expect of a research project. The validity came from two sources: (1) the scales were developed by practicing teachers rather than by an academic (or political) team working at a distance; (2) the standards described in the scales emerged from minute observation of students' writing, rather than being arbitrarily decided on somewhere else. The reliability came from the fact that we worked with an analytical scale with enough detail to keep assessors close to the standard in their assessments. The package also contained anchor papers at each grade level, rather than at only one or two, and an Instructional Practices Handbook based on the performance indicators of the scale that helped make the materials friendly and useful to teachers as a way of organizing their writing instruction and their writing assessment. When the province of Ontario later decided to test reading and writing in Grades 3 and 6, the procedures and instruments used showed a remarkable resemblance to both the Grade 9 test of reading and writing and to the Peel Writing Scales.

In 1995, just as the writing scales were taking on their final form (in their first edition), I retired from my work in the school board. In retirement I have been spent much time training teachers to use the scales. I also worked on the development of the assessment model for writing in the first administration of Ontario's Grade 3 test of reading and writing.

My Work in Media Education Assessment

When I retired in 1995, I promised myself that I would try to devote time to media education. Ever since my undergraduate years -- when I looked for justification for going to the movies seven times a week -- and later when I began filling my basement with 8 and 16 millimeter films and then VHS copies of my favorite movies, I had wanted to explore that area more deeply.
Just days into my retirement, I decided to write Assessing Media Work: Authentic Assessment in Media Education (Worsnop, 1996b). The previous year I had published the first edition of Screening Images: Ideas for Media Education (Worsnop, 1994b), which covered theory and practice but not assessment (except for a few black-line masters in the final pages). I believed that one reason teachers were shy of media education was that they were unsure about assessing work that students might produce in formats such as video, audio, posters, story boards, photo stories, and so on. I also wanted to try to organize all I had learned about assessment over the years into a book.

At the center of Assessing Media Work is a rubric that derives largely from my earlier experiences in assessing writing and creating scales for writing assessment. In developing the rubric, I assumed that all human expression shares the components of writing, namely

• Ideas and content
• Organization
• Effective use of language (or the rhetoric of the medium)
• Understanding of voice and audience
• Technical competence

Also from my experience with writing assessment, I imported a preference for analytical, detailed scales over holistic ones, believing that detail guides teachers and students toward better practice and performance and enhances reliability. I developed the scale on five levels -- despite the fact that Ontario had switched to a four-level scale -- because of my conviction that an odd number of levels is preferable since it provides a center (and also because five is the most common number of levels used in scales). I applied all that Judith Fine had taught me about the importance of carefully separating the levels with language that clearly and evenly differentiated one from another. I made every effort to limit the scale to the description of the actual work rather than to any process that the work represented, or to any internal state of the work's creator that an assessor might believe he or she could perceive. I knew I wanted teachers who used the scale to share it with their students as part of “making the rules clear,” so I planned the book as something that could be sold with a license for duplication within a school building. I developed separate assessment instruments for purposes that fell outside the realm of the major scale -- for assessing personal response to a media text, for instance -- and I included a number of forms for record keeping, diagnostic, and self-, peer, and formative assessment uses.

From the beginning I was aware that Assessing Media Work would be incomplete in one important way: it would not offer the anchor pieces that teachers prefer to have as models for assessment. The development of anchors for media education assessment would be an enormous task since samples in every imaginable format (video, poster, etc.) that students might use at every grade level would be required. Also, different sets of anchors would be needed at each grade level, depending on how many years of media study students had already completed. There is an enormous difference between this and providing anchors for writing assessment, where only a single set of papers at each grade level (with perhaps some flexibility worked in for different genres) is required.

Nevertheless, I have embarked on creating a set of anchors, and I continue to seek help from media teachers around the world who provide me with video work from their classes. A Web site I first put up in 1988 includes a discussion forum where I hope visitors will contribute their thoughts. But progress is slow. In truth, although I can commit the time, sufficient funding is difficult to secure.

Why Is Assessment Important in Media Education?

Assessment is important in all programs, but new programs like media education come under special scrutiny. Media education is frequently accused of being a “soft” course because it deals with things that are already part of students' everyday knowledge and experience. Some critics, blissfully unaware of the irony, ask, “Why would we set up a course to teach kids how to watch TV? They already know how to do that.” One way of disarming the critics is to show that the assessment in the course is rigorous and demanding -- that it is not, after all, a course in underwater basket-weaving.

New program areas often have great difficulty getting themselves established in the mainstream curriculum. There are many reasons for this, often connected to budgets, time, internecine jealousies among teachers in different departments, politics, and so on. Go to the introductory section of my Web site for a comprehensive list of reasons people give for not implementing media education.

New subject initiatives can, however, have a good chance of success if a number of criteria are met. Indeed, without these criteria in place, it can be folly to even begin program implementation:

• Official support is provided through provincial or state curriculum legislation
• The building and district administrators support the curriculum initiative
• Teachers who are not connected directly with media education support those who want to implement it
• Parents are informed and supportive
• Budget (in terms of time, space, training, and personnel as well as money) is provided for the new program
• The school has a well-prepared and -articulated program outline
• There is a clear plan for assessing student progress and program effectiveness

Many new programs are implemented without the final of these conditions in place, even though it is pretty clear that parents, administrators, and students all appreciate the value of a clear, valid, reliable, authentic, and fair system of assessment and evaluation that is set out clearly in advance. My belief is that teachers and administrators can use the fact that media education has strong assessment materials and instruments available as a way of convincing others who doubt the value of implementing the program -- that is to say, the existence of good assessment can be used as a lever to bring administrators, parents, and other teachers on side.

How Media and Language Arts Assessment Are Related

In Screening Images (Worsnop, 1994b, 1999), I say that media education has to have three components, which can be aligned with three components of the language arts:

Media Education Component ---- Language Arts Equivalent ---------- Assessment Instrument
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Experiencing media------------- Reading for enjoyment ------------- Journals, logs, response

Interpreting media------------- Studying literature------------------ Criticism, critical response

Making media------------------- Writing----------------------------- Rubrics

In terms of assessment, I interpret the similarity with language arts as follows:

• Look to reading assessment theory and practice to inform the way experiencing media is assessed
• Look to the theory and practice of literary criticism and response (audience theory) to inform the way interpreting media is assessed
• Look

Criticism, critical response to the theory and practice of writing assessment to inform the way making media is assessed

Let's take these in reverse order. The analytical scale at the center of Assessing Media Work (Worsnop, 1996b) is the equivalent of a writing assessment scale or rubric. It operates in the same way, except that it is offered as a way of assessing not only one kind of expression (i.e., writing) but many (e.g., video, audio, posters, photographs, Web sites). The holistic scale in Assessing Media Work for assessing personal response to a media text mimics the assessment of literature response well known to language arts educators. In addition, Media Literacy Through Critical Thinking (2000) provides an instrument for assessing analytical response to a media text, which is akin to traditional critical approaches to analyzing a literary text.

The “Rote Map” of Standards, Progressive Education, and Performance Tasks

The recent fashion of defining curriculum in terms of “standards” has created an impression among some that meeting the standards is a teacher's only job. The effect that such an interpretation can have upon classrooms is stultifying, with students in danger of encountering nothing more stimulating than a stream of worksheets keyed to specific standards. Creative, investigatory, collaborative work is relegated to the pedagogical backseat in too many cases.
Many teachers look at the standards movement with skepticism -- after all, they've watched behavioral objectives, mastery learning, minimum-competency testing, and outomes-based learning (just to mention a few) come and go. Some teachers expect standards to come and go in like fashion, and feel inclined to do nothing in the meantime. Others are clearly overwhelmed by the amount of detail contained in some of the lists of standards and despair of ever being able to do justice to each minute item. Many others, though, see that the standards are picayune for the reason of completeness, and these teachers continue to teach in a holistic rather than atomistic fashion.

I believe the promoters of standards endorse this last reaction. I believe they want to see progressive, as much as thorough, teaching and learning in classrooms. It is not their intention to bring the classroom down to the methodological level of the parade ground, and that is certainly not the intention of media education. If you scratch a media educator, you will often reveal a progressive educator who has been attracted to the subject by the likelihood that progressive pedagogy will be a perfect fit to the content. Media classrooms often display the following characteristics, typical of progressive education:

• Group and collaborative work is encouraged and rewarded
• Independent and project work is encouraged and rewarded
• Self- and peer assessment is practiced and acknowledged in final grades
• Abstractions including creativity, originality, and experimentation are encouraged and rewarded
• It is not a problem when a student knows more than a teacher
• The process of work is valued, sometimes as much as or more than the product
• Sometimes work is undertaken without a clear expectation for the outcome
• Risk taking, experimentation, investigation, and discovery are all acknowledged as powerful learning tools

Many jurisdictions are trying to make it clear that their delineation of standards is meant as a clarification of expectations rather than as a strict “rote map” by including performance tasks in their large-scale assessments. (For a link to Canadian standards in media education, go to the Media Education in Canada page of the Media Awareness Network site; standards for U.S. states are listed at Frank Baker's The Media Literacy Clearinghouse.) Performance tasks are not tests; they are activities deliberately designed to give students the chance to show their best performance in an area of learning. They assess not only knowledge of facts and skill (both low-level kinds of learning), but also understanding, conceptual thinking, and the ability to extrapolate into other areas of learning -- the synthesis and evaluation levels in Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956).

The link between performance tasks and progressive education is that progressive education (among other things)

• Seeks to provide the best possible conditions for learning in classrooms
• Considers learning to be a lifelong, integrated activity
• Recognizes that classroom relationships revolve around power, and seeks to give power to students to control their own learning
• Believes that learning should be motivating and enjoyable
• Provides for individual differences in learners and teachers
• Tries to make the learning of facts and skills a natural part of the more important learning of concepts, understandings, competencies, and abilities
• Practices active learning and teaching at least as much as passive
• Considers the classroom as an important but not sole site for learning
• Acknowledges that students can be teachers and teachers can be learners without any conflict of role or power
• Values colearning and cooperative and collaborative learning as much as it values direct instruction
• Sees assessment as a learning opportunity as well as an occasion to make judgments
Performance tasks, if they are made important in large-scale testing programs, remind teachers that there is a lot more to good education than just covering a list of skills and facts. Here is a list of the qualities of a good performance task, compiled by my colleague Judith Fine. You will notice more than a passing similarity between it and the description of progressive education above. Good performance tasks
• Present engaging, “real world,” meaningful, substantive issues or problems -- the “big ideas”
• Are directly related to important curriculum expectations
• Focus on what students can do, how they apply and extend their knowledge
• Require students to utilize and integrate a variety of essential skills, knowledge, concepts, procedures
• Emphasize the processes students use to achieve solutions, rather than only the “right” answers
• Present students with complex, loosely structured problems that allow for a wide range of products -- this makes the task accessible to all students
• Require students to justify, defend, explain the conclusions they reach
• Involve the use of complex thinking skills, and the extension of knowledge, skills, abilities -- the task should help students make connections and generalizations that increase their understanding of important concepts and processes
• Often encourage a team effort, collaboration, group discussion, brainstorming
• Require students to demonstrate, create, explain, perform, produce, present something -- i.e., generate solutions, not select answers from a list
• Are often interdisciplinary in nature
• Make available to students assessment criteria (e.g., rubrics), and also models or examples of high-level products -- this encourages students to self-assess and contributes to their becoming independent learners
• Focus on learning that cannot easily (if at all) be assessed with tests
• Are usually longer term, rather than one-shot, efforts
• Are designed to emphasize depth more than breadth
• Give teachers rich data on how well students understand a topic, use the tools of the discipline, and support a point of view

I believe that classroom activities should always display at least some of these same qualities. But that should not be a surprise. I am, after all, an inveterate and irreconcilable progressive, as well as a passionate media educator.

Outstanding Issues, Needed Research, and Implications for Practice

My interest in assessment in media education promises to keep me occupied for a long time to come. There is plenty of work to do to improve assessment in general and to address the following important issues in media education assessment.

1. Writing as the means of assessment
One of the biggest bugaboos of assessment is the tendency to rely on writing as the medium of reporting, and on the essay as the format. In both Screening Images and Assessing Media Work I include a list of 186 ways a student could report on learning other than through an essay. While I do think that the essay, or a variety of essay, is probably a useful way of assessing important elements of interpreting media, I must point out that it is not the only available or useful tool.
Even when it is sensible and necessary to assess some part of media education learning through writing, the essay is only occasionally the best format to use. Although the “op ed” and the editorial are variants of the essay, both are superior to the traditional “school” essay as measures of media learning because they are themselves common media formats -- perhaps the dominant versions of the essay among writers today. The school essay, on the other hand, is intended to measure not only how well students can report about having learned something, but also to demonstrate how well they have mastered the dominant academic rhetorical form.
Beyond writing, such things as student-made videos, for instance, are capable of reporting learning in ways that provide information not available at all in an essay. Video's ability to carry images, sound, rhythm, pace, color, distance or closeness, time, and point of view can be considered as value added to the pseudo-essay of the voice-over. What's more, a successful video is a demonstration of skills other than those used in oral language and writing, many of which need to be practiced collaboratively rather than in isolation. A little more analysis will make it clear that the ability to bring all the skills of video making together in a group project is an indication of a number of other social and synthetic skills that would warm the hearts of Piaget and Bloom.

The reason many teachers give for not allowing students to work in formats other than the tried-and-true essay is that they -- the teachers -- do not feel comfortable or qualified in assessing work that comes to them in other formats. (It was to answer that anxiety that I wrote Assessing Media Work.) Insistence that students restrict themselves to essay writing in the assessment of their media learning is also sometimes found in conjunction with a view of media as a second-rate substitute for books. Together they display an approach to media education that can be called “print snobbery.”

I do not want to argue that students should not learn how to write academic essays. I do want to argue that their success or failure in media education ought not to depend on their facility in a kind of rhetoric that is not part of the subject under study. The serious media education teacher needs to ask this question: Should it be possible for students to do well in this course if they are good at media education but weak at writing? Clearly, my own answer to this question is a resounding yes!

Needed research and implications for practice

Studies are needed to test whether students learn as well in courses where writing is not a major component of their assessment. Such studies should be conducted not only in media education classes but in other subject areas as well, as an investigation of whether writing requirements might actually serve as a deterrent to learning (or to the demonstration of learning) in some subject areas, or for some learners.

Teachers could conduct their own action research projects in which they teach a unit or a class in different ways, requiring students to report on their learning in various formats or in a format of their choice. The control assessment measure in all instances could be an oral interview at the end of the course or unit, in which students demonstrate their understanding of course concepts orally, using any other supports they choose.

2. Measuring student media products against professional products

In my workshops I often show samples of student-made media that I have collected from colleagues in many countries. I have sometimes been shocked to find that some of the workshop participants assess the student work against a yardstick of professionally produced materials. I have seen student documentaries criticized (and thus in some sense assessed at a low level) because they were not up to the standard of editing and pacing of the best available on television. I have seen student dramas criticized because the script or music was not up to Hollywood standards (as if that was the highest standard to achieve).

My belief is that student materials should be assessed against a standard of what is possible for the best student materials to achieve under the same circumstances of creation as those in place for the piece being assessed. By this I mean that assessment of a student piece made with an inexpensive camera and no editing facilities should take into account the limitations of its creation. I have seen plenty of poor work that was completed with very sophisticated equipment.
Needed research and implications for practice

The chief resource needed here is a set of anchors. Teachers assessing writing have access to banks of writing samples that exemplify performance at different levels. Teachers need access to the same sort of resource for other kinds of media. Video and audio are the logical places to begin, but the task of assembling anchors is enormous. Here modern technology and the Internet should make the task somewhat easier, and should also make available a range of international samples. I have already made a very modest beginning by collecting samples of student-made video from teachers in a few countries, and would welcome contacts from teachers interested in providing further samples. The project, however, will remain informal and of limited use unless it can find more energy and resources than my own. In an ideal situation it would be funded long term by a university or corporate partner.

3. If you can list it, it exists and it is important

The fact that we can make a list of characteristics, skills, requirements, or standards sometimes gives the list itself an authority greater than it deserves. It is important in all assessment -- not just in media education -- to make allowances for thinking and performing “outside the box,” otherwise we run the risk of squelching the extraordinary, disadvantaging the different, and disempowering the unfamiliar. The very best evidence of learning sometimes comes in a form and fashion that we cannot possibly anticipate in even the most comprehensive provincial, state, or national assessment. We must avoid the hubris of believing our plans and schemes are all encompassing, finished, or perfect.

Needed research and implications for practice

I have already noted how important it is for classrooms to incorporate good performance tasks into the work that students are required to do. Researchers should study the impact of such practices on the overall performance of all students. It would be interesting to see if such tasks not only improve academic learning but also lead to classrooms that encourage better attendance, have fewer discipline problems, create improved teacher-student relationships, and suffer less thievery and vandalism.

4. International studies

We need to avoid parochialism and pay respectful attention to what is happening worldwide. In the United Kingdom, for instance, there is a tremendous store of experience in media as a secondary school subject. There are numerous international researchers who have published works using case study methodology, discourse analysis, and demographic and action research approaches as tools of investigating how people experience media (see, e.g., Barker & Brooks, 1998; Buckingham, 1996; Hart, 1998; Prinsloo & Criticos, 1991; and von Feilitzen & Carlsson, 1998, 1999).

In some countries, including Spain, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil, media education is seen as a defense against a return to authoritarian government -- literally a bulwark of democracy. Assessment in those countries takes on a different style and function than it does for those of us who take democratic systems for granted. Realizing how those countries stress the empowerment of the individual and an understanding of the political system through media education is not something we can afford to ignore, but something we can use to expand our vision of media education and assessment.



References
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Media literacy through critical thinking [curriculum resource document]. (2000). Olympia, WA: Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Commission on Student Learning.
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Worsnop, C.M. (1980). A procedure for using the reading miscue inventory as a remedial teaching tool with adolescents. Unpublished master's thesis, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
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Worsnop, C.M. (1989). Four bad ways to teach the media, and maybe one that will work. In Writing in Peel (pp. 2-4). Mississauga, ON: Peel Board of Education.
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Worsnop, C.M. (1994a). Orthodoxy is the enemy. In Screening images: Ideas for media education. Mississauga, ON: Wright Communications.
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Worsnop, C.M. (1996a). The beginnings of retrospective miscue analysis. In Y.M. Goodman & A.M. Marek (Eds.), Retrospective miscue analysis: Revaluing readers and reading. Katonah, NY: Richard C Owen.
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About the Author
Chris Worsnop is a consultant, writer, and speaker who specializes in media education and assessment. His background is in high school teaching and K-12 curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation in English language arts, drama, and media education. His books Screening Images: Ideas for Media Education (2nd edition, 1999) and Assessing Media Work: Authentic Assessment in Media Education (1996) are both published by Wright Communications, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached by e-mail at worsnop@pathcom.com.

Academic Resilience and Reading: Building Successful Readers
By Erin M. McTigue, Erin K. Washburn, Jeffrey Liew


As she prepares for parent conferences, second-grade teacher Ms. Warren (all teacher and student names are pseudonyms) considers her students' growth from August to December. She notes that two students, Donte and Walter, had nearly identical scores on the year's initial reading screening—placing them at the primer level. However, four months later, Donte is reading firmly at the second-grade level, while Walter has made slower progress and is reading at about the late first-grade level. The two boys started at the beginning of the school year in the same reading group, but even by October, Donte's progress had outpaced Walter's, and when Ms. Warren reorganized groups, she moved Donte to a more challenging group. She revisits the subtest results in the initial screening for clues that may clarify their disparate progress but finds no explanation.

Ms. Warren's anecdotal records of their behaviors in reading class, however, do reveal a potential explanation. Her notes from September document Walter's chronic mumbling in his oral reading that seems intentional—to conceal potential miscues. On another day, when pressed to read more audibly, he resisted her requests to independently try to decode unknown words. In contrast, her notes about Donte reveal that he approaches reading group with enthusiasm and confidence. He frequently asked to read “harder” books, and when reading aloud, he added much expression to the base text. Ms. Warren concludes that these personality differences appear to be propelling Donte forward with his risk-taking approach while, in turn, Walter's anxiety seems to limit his growth. She undertakes the goal of more carefully observing Walter and her other struggling readers for indications of resilient thinking. She also sets the goal of helping all of her students increase their self-efficacy.

When considering the question “What factors in preschool are most important for predicting later reading success?” teachers will likely cite alphabetical knowledge and phonological awareness. Much research indicates that these skills are indeed critical to the early reading process, but another important set of contributing factors—the personality factors—are often overlooked. We maintain that language and alphabet skills are a necessary—but insufficient—condition for early reading success. When directly comparing the contributions of personality traits to phonological awareness in predicting kindergarten students' reading success, recent evidence shows that personality traits may be more important (Niemi & Poskiparta, 2002). We do not intend to minimize the contribution of phonological awareness in early reading, but rather, we advocate that literacy skills and socioemotional development should be considered in concert. To this end, Johnston (2005) recently advocated that future literacy screenings should include measures to assess resiliency and self-efficacious beliefs. While academic resiliency “cannot provide the skills required to succeed…it can provide the effort and persistence required to obtain those skills and use them effectively” (Pajares, 2005, p. 345).

In the following section, we summarize current research to provide a theoretical basis for the role of socioemotional development in reading. Next, via vignettes from a second-grade classroom, we identify six key principles for promoting students' self-efficacy within literacy instruction and give examples of practical implementation. We expect that teachers will recognize many of these techniques as part of their daily repertoire or as only minor adjustments to their current practices. Our goal is to reinforce such quality teaching by providing explicit rationale for these practices, as well as to encourage reflective thinking regarding how to further facilitate emotional competencies within existing literacy curriculum.

Summary of Underlying Research

Why Should Reading Teachers Care About Developing Socioemotional Skills?
Learning to read English is an inherently challenging and nonintuitive process, particularly due to persistent exceptions to phonics rules (e.g., “ea” in neat vs. sweat vs. great vs. caveat). Even with the coaching of skilled teachers, novice readers encounter stumbling blocks on every page and therefore need academic resilience to keep trying in the face of multiple failures (Waxman, Gray, & Padron, 2003). Such academically resilient children are driven by their own goal of mastery, which leads to persistence. To understand the academically resilient mind-set and how to foster such attitudes in other learners, we must understand the intricate interplay of student factors and classroom factors. Student factors include both (a) temperament and (b) beliefs about themselves as learners, and these are described within the next sections.

Aren't You Born With Your Temperament?

At the most fundamental level, temperament refers to early individual differences in acting and reacting to the environment and is linked to later development of personality (Kagan, 1994; Rothbart, 2007). It is obvious to most teachers that learners enter classrooms with unique temperaments. However, less obvious but also important is recognizing that the early individual differences in temperament do not guarantee future successes or struggles: Early individual differences can be accentuated or attenuated over time depending on the environment (Rothbart & Bates, 2006), including interactions with teachers and classmates (Hughes & Kwok, 2006; Liew, Chen, & Hughes, 2008). The capacity for fostering academic resilience serves as the motivation for this article. Current evidence indicates that time spent developing early socioemotional skills boosts students' future success in literacy (Duncan et al., 2007; Raver & Knitzer, 2002; Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, 2004). Unfortunately, teachers typically receive little preparation about individual differences in students' socioemotional development (Cleary, in press).

How Does Temperament Affect Academic Resilience?

An academically resilient student needs to have a good deal of self-regulation to maintain a positive attitude, especially during frustrating moments of a school day. Even in young children, components of self-regulation can be recognized and include effortful control and ego-resiliency. A student with effortful control (i.e., self-control) can control her impulses. For example, a student waiting for her turn exhibits effortful control. Ego-resiliency means flexibly using control. Therefore an ego-resilient student under stands that he needs to exert more self-control during reading group than lunch (Block & Block, 1980). These two traits both emphasize flexibility and will and are the basis for having self-regulation, which, again, contributes to academic resiliency.

How Do Self-Beliefs Affect Academic Resilience?

In addition to temperament characteristics, learners' beliefs about themselves, particularly self-efficacy, contribute to their self-regulated learning and achievement (see Denissen, Zarrett, & Eccles, 2007; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Pajares, 1996; Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006; Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). Self-efficacy means having the belief that one's efforts can bring about desired goals (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996). Students with self-efficacy are therefore more persistent or, in other words, resilient, in the face of learning challenges.

How Do These Socioemotional Skills Work Together to Contribute to Literacy Skills?

To foster self-regulated learning in schools, teachers must recognize that students' temperaments differ from students' self-beliefs, and both factors contribute to achievement in different ways. A recent empirical study shed some light on the connections between these traits because both effortful control and self-efficacy beliefs were studied together. Liew, McTigue, Barrois, and Hughes (in press) found that, even when IQ scores were taken into account, effortful control at first grade contributed to both academic self-efficacy beliefs at second grade and literacy achievement at third grade. This study adds to a growing body of research (e.g., Blair & Razza, 2007; Duncan et al., 2007; McClelland et al., 2007) that demonstrates that early school efforts to help develop such skills in children benefit their future academic resilience and achievement.

What Implications Does the Research Have for Literacy Instruction?

Oftentimes, problems with reading, motivation, and self-regulation are linked. For example, school psychologists recently rated reading deficits as the most common referral problem, followed by self-regulation and motivation problems such as task or homework completion, conduct and violent behaviors, and academic motivation (Cleary, in press). Unfortunately, even school psychologists reported having little training or expertise in the procedures for assessing self-regulation and motivation in students, and teachers receive even less information (Cleary, in press). To effectively help all students become successful readers, a holistic approach to literacy instruction that nurtures socioemotional skills in addition to language skills may be most effective. In the next sections, we propose principles and practices of literacy instruction that foster socioemotional development.

Applying the Knowledge to Practice

Through short glimpses of Ms. Warren's second-grade classroom, the following principles are introduced and enacted: (a) acceptance, (b) assessment, (c) modeling practices, (d) feedback, (e) goal setting, and (f) self-evaluation.

8:35—Morning Meeting

Tuesday morning. Ms. Warren is holding a ball of purple yarn while the circle of students, convened in their morning meeting arrangement, wonders expectedly about the yarn. “Today,” she explains, “we will be doing a new greeting—a spiderweb greeting!” and details the procedure. The students enthusiastically roll the ball of yarn across the circle, one at a time, while greeting the receiving classmate by name. When students remark at how their circle is indeed looking like a spiderweb, Ms. Warren proposes the idea that the web represents the personal connections within their class. Next, after every student is greeted, they reverse the yarn-rolling process in a backward greeting. (This involves much giggling as the yarn gets misrouted and tangled). During this time, Ms. Warren notes students' moods and observes an overall uplift in positive spirit due to the greeting game.

Then two students, who had signed up previously, each share a personal story. Adriana shares about the distress of losing her tooth while biting into a taco the previous night and then almost swallowing it! Naturally, this elicits many questions and Adriana selects two classmates to ask their questions. At this point, many other children desperately want to share their tooth-loss stories, too; however, Ms. Warren explains that although there is not enough time now, these sound like some exciting topics for their daily journal writing so to be sure to hold onto them. The morning meeting continues in its usual pattern involving a short group-building activity and ends with a student reading aloud the daily letter posted from Ms. Warren, which outlines the day's plan. By 8:55 the students are sharpening their pencils for journal writing.

Principle 1: Creating an Environment With Acceptance and Warmth

A safe environment is more than a pleasant place to be; a safe environment fosters academic achievement because it encourages students' engagement and, therefore, self-direction in their learning. Students take risks and become more involved in classroom activities when they rate their learning environments as warm (Birch & Ladd, 1997).

Supporting Practice: Morning Meetings

The traditional model of classroom management is often based on behavioral management. As an alterative, using relationships as a basis for classroom management can be a more effective style and also creates a warm climate (Pianta, 1999). One specific practice to reach this goal, modeled by Ms. Warren, is the use of morning meetings. The forum of class meetings can establish an environment that values interpersonal connections and a sense of classroom pride.

This routine is an essential practice of the Responsive Classroom (RC) approach, an intervention designed to bolster children's academic, social, and emotional growth by integrating such types of learning. Seven essential principles underlie the RC approach including the view that social interaction facilitates cognitive growth and that teachers can nurture empathy, assertion, cooperation, and other social skills (Northeast Foundation for Children [NEFC], 2007). Specific RC practices emerge from these principles, notably (a) morning meeting, (b) rules and proactive discipline, where consequences for problem behaviors follow logically from misdeeds and rely on positive teacher-child relationships, and (c) a shift in teacher language, where teachers learn to comment descriptively on children's effort and learning processes, not only products (NEFC, 2007). The purpose is to create classroom environments conducive to learning and to emphasize social and emotional skills as immediate goals that contribute to academic achievement. Students in classrooms using the RC approach exhibit increased growth in reading and math (Rimm-Kaufman & Chiu, 2007).

9:00—Journaling

During journal writing time, Ms. Warren observes selected students—three per day—so that she attends to each child every two weeks. Carrying a clipboard and sticky notes, she takes anecdotal records, which she will add to her files. During parent conferences, she uses these notes to give concrete examples of student progress in academic and socioemotional areas. A checklist also attached to the clipboard reminds Ms. Warren of particular behaviors associated with self-efficacy. She notes evidence of self-monitoring when Donte returns to his Monday's writing, rereads it, crosses out some words, and then adds on to it. In contrast, she records with concern that Walter demonstrates avoidant behavior, rather than engagement, and uses the majority of his journal time going to the bathroom, sharpening a frequently breaking pencil, and repeatedly searching in his desk. At the next table, she observes help seeking as Caroline asks her neighbor for spelling help with “tooth fairy.”

Principle 2: Literacy Assessment Should Include Measures of Academic Resilience
While there are few formal tools for relating personality assessments to reading instruction, there are informal methods to collect such information. Namely, structured observations during literacy instruction and during storybook reading can provide invaluable information. Key features to observe and consider are (a) engagement and participation levels, (b) self-monitoring, and (c) inquiries for help. The checklist in Figure 1 can guide such teacher observations.

Figure 1. Teacher Checklist of Academic Resilient Behaviors in Literacy

Engagement and self-efficacy are often interrelated because of the common root of persistence. If an individual believes in her ability to achieve, she will continue to persist rather than avoid a hard task, and during journal writing Donte and Walter demonstrate markedly different levels of persistence. Engagement can be observed in many forms, including verbal and nonverbal (Sipe, 2002). Resilient students, operating on the premise that learning derives from effort, will also be more likely to monitor their learning than just relying on teacher reactions (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003) and this can be easily observed in writing and in oral reading. Without prompting from the teacher, Donte noticed areas of need in his writing and revised accordingly. Contrary to popular beliefs, students with high academic self-efficacy, such as Caroline, are more likely to ask for help because they are not fearful that other students will label them as incapable (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003). Finally, although these dimensions can be considered distinct, they are typically interrelated as a pattern of behavior. For example, students that ask for help generally also show persistence and motivation (Marchand & Skinner, 2007).

9:30—Social Studies

After journal writing, Ms. Warren's class begins social studies. Ms. Warren starts with a read-aloud of When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Muñoz Ryan as part of a text set on the Civil Rights movement. Throughout the read-aloud she uses “think-alouds” to demonstrate her reactions to the biography: outrage, pride, sadness. Students also feel empowered to voice their reactions and respond to one another. In addition to connecting with the story, Ms. Warren also models when she needs a comprehension “fix-up.” For example, after Ms. Warren reads the phrase, “to hold on to the memory of every opulent note,” she pauses and says, “Hmm…I wonder what opulent means. I've heard it before, but I can't remember it. Let me reread that whole paragraph and look for a clue.” When her modeled approach does not clarify the meaning, she notes that “Sometimes one strategy doesn't work out, so that's why we need a whole toolbox of fix-up strategies.” She questions her students, “What else can you do when you don't know a word? What other tools do we have?” This type of discussion allows peers to learn from one another.

Also, Ms. Warren's thoughtful choice of a biography, regarding Marian Anderson's overwhelming success in singing despite resistance from certain Americans holding racist attitudes, provides a rich opportunity for the class to discuss the traits of determination and optimism. Marian herself represents a model of socioemotional strength.

Principle 3: Use Direct Modeling to Promote Literacy and Self-Efficacy
Modeling, the process of observing and patterning one's thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors after an exemplar (Schunk, 1987), represents both a principle and practice that literacy teachers can employ to support resilience in student thinking.

When engaged in modeling, a teacher gives concrete explanations and demonstrations to show students how to use a new skill (Schunk, 2003; Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007). In addition to modeling for thinking strategies, teachers should also model coping strategies (Walker, 2003). Teachers can model mistakes while reading and then provide a plan for recovery from mistakes, like Ms. Warren when encountering the word opulent. This gives students the concepts that even teachers can make mistakes and learn from such opportunities (Pajares, 2005). Peer modeling can be a more effective means of raising student self-efficacy than even teacher-student modeling (Schunk, 2003), and Ms. Warren capitalized on this by asking students for their fix-up strategies rather than demonstrating them in solo.

10:30—Guided Reading

During guided reading today, Ms. Warren begins with her group that is reading at a late first-grade level. As the students are whisper-reading All About Bats by Jennifer Jacobson, she listens to individual students and gives immediate responses. To Walter, she emphasizes, “I noticed that you caught and fixed a mistake all by yourself. The first time you read that sentence you said wigs instead of wings, but then you stopped because that didn't make sense. Did you think, ‘Bats don't have wigs’?” (Walter nods yes.) Ms. Warren continues, “Wig and wing only have one letter different, so you are being a very careful reader who is thinking about the meaning!”

To Angel, she notes a miscue that Angel does not catch and guides her to it, “Look back at that word (points to clinging). You got the first part—“cl”—right. But the word isn't clapping. Let's look at the next sound.” She continues to give feedback to all of the students as the reading occurs. Finally, at the end of reading the text, Ms. Warren points out the specific improvements between yesterday's and today's reading of the book and commends them on how their careful practice is making them more skillful readers every day.

Principle 4: Effective Feedback Should Be Specific and Accurate and Emphasize Effort
While modeling is helpful in raising student self-efficacy, modeling without effective feedback is somewhat incomplete. Additionally, the medium of feedback, teacher language, is a powerful and pervasive tool. Part of the power of teacher talk lies in its subtlety, as seemingly small adjustments by the speaker can reap significant consequences for the listener (Johnston, 2004). We advocate three features of effective teacher response: (1) specific, (2) accurate, and (3) emphasizing effort or process.
Specific feedback should provide information that is indicative of the student's performance on a certain skill rather than the generic “good job.” In the example above, Ms. Warren focuses her emphasis on how Walter is exhibiting self-monitoring. This practice can help young readers better identify what is making them successful. Moreover, the specific nature of feedback affords the student the opportunity to take control of his or her own learning as opposed to relying on teacher feedback alone for progress monitoring (Johnston, 2005).

Accurate feedback provides students with judgments that comment not only on their present performance but also on the entire learning process for students. In contrast to accurate feedback, unmerited positive feedback creates a false perception of ability (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003). When Ms. Warren points out Angel's miscues, she provides correction while focusing exactly on the correct and incorrect features.

Finally, through feedback teachers can attribute growth to effort (Pajares, 2005). For example, Ms. Warren attributes success to effort, not an innate ability, by telling the group that practice leads to skill.

1:00—Writer's Workshop

In the afternoon, Ms. Warren's class engages in writer's workshop time. The current writing assignment is a book jacket or newspaper review about a favorite book. To help ensure that writer's workshop is a time of individual growth and creativity, Ms. Warren has incorporated short (5-minute) conferences with each student to set goals for writing that are specific, intentional, and can be attained in the time frame. In addition, she does a “Status of the Class” check-in (Atwell, 1998) for students to voice their daily individual writing goals as a means to track progress and focus attention. During the check-in, Billy states that he will use three descriptive words in his writing. Ms. Warren responds enthusiastically and suggests that he add that goal to his writer's checklist. Ms. Warren has constructed a general writer's checklist for content and mechanics based on the minilesson and has left space for the input of individual goals. The writer's checklist is then used as a guide and gauge for her students during the writing process.

Principle 5: Goal Setting

Effective and accurate feedback also helps students set appropriate goals. Schunk (2003) contended that “goals are integral components of motivation and learning” (p. 163) and should be set with (a) specificity, (b) proximity, and (c) difficulty in mind if students are to experience raised self-efficacy. This effort can be channeled into individualized goal setting.

A specific goal is individualized and targeted on learning a certain skill or completing a particular task. Similar to effective feedback, the achievement of specific goals is more likely to raise self-efficacy because they are much easier to evaluate than a general goal (i.e., “Do your best”; Schunk, 2003). For example, Billy's writing often lacks descriptive words. Ms. Warren knows Billy is capable of including such words because he participates actively and accurately during minilessons; however, she has not seen much of this transfer to his writing. Therefore one of Billy's current writing goals (which they decided upon in a recent conference) is that he will include more descriptive words. From that conversation, he sets the specific goal of three words today. Daily goals, with short proximity, are useful because those that are accomplished quickly, including those within a matter of minutes, result in “greater motivation and higher self-efficacy” (Schunk, 2003). Finally, it is important to think about setting goals that are at the appropriate level of difficulty—not too easy or too hard for a student to attain. In the example, although Ms. Warren knows that using descriptive language has been challenging for Billy, she is confident that he can attain his present goal because the essence of the assignment asks students to give a descriptive review of their favorite book.

1:45—Writer's Workshop Continued

In writer's workshop, it is important for teachers to provide students with opportunities to evaluate their work (Atwell, 1998). In addition to teacher-student writing conferences and the writing goals checklist, Ms. Warren asks her students to complete a self-evaluation sheet after each writing assignment. This self-evaluation sheet requires students to reflect on and respond to such questions as “What goals did you accomplish during this writing assignment?” “What was your favorite sentence or sentences in this writing assignment?” and “Is there something that you wish you had done differently?” Today, after students complete their self-evaluation sheet, individual students voluntarily share their personal successes.

Principle 6: Literacy Teachers Should Promote Self-Evaluation

As a natural extension on goal setting, teachers should strive for students to become self-evaluators of their literacy progress. The evaluation process should also reflect their progress toward their specific goals. According to Pajares (2005), “without the capability to self-reflect, human beings would be reactive souls without the capacity for self-improvement” (p. 363). Instructional activities that require students to set specific goals and monitor their progress will help facilitate self-evaluation. An emphasis on external comparisons (e.g., standardized tests) fosters the viewpoint that there are good students and poor students, depending on how one falls on the normal distribution (Johnston, 2005). By tracking progress and emphasizing effort and growth, all students (not just those above the 50th percentile on normed tests) can experience self-efficacy in their literacy.

Final Thoughts

Through this work, we aspire to direct attention on the socioemotional aspects of teaching reading and provide ideas on how to address this issue within a classroom. Because socioemotional learning influences academic achievement, specifically in reading, it is imperative to consider all aspects of students' development (cognitive, language, social, emotional) in synchrony. We feel that, rather than the implementation of additional programs to discretely address socioemotional issues, literacy instruction is already replete with authentic opportunities for teachers to foster the growth of academic resilience.
The vignettes of Ms. Warren exemplify the reflective teacher who capitalizes on such opportunities. As we can stand in awe and learn from such teachers, Johnston (2004) eloquently observed, the most humbling part of observing accomplished teachers is seeing the subtle ways in which they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities—intellectual environments that produce not mere technical competence, but caring, secure, actively literate human beings. Observing these teachers accomplish both goals convinced me that the two achievements are not completely at odds. (p. 2)

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Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

By Eric M. Mesmer, Heidi Anne E. Mesmer



In the most recent “What's hot, what's not for 2008?” Reading Today survey, 75% of prominent literacy researchers believed that Response to Intervention (RTI) was “very hot” and the same percentage believed that it should be “hot” (Cassidy & Cassidy, 2008). RTI is a new approach to identifying students with specific learning disabilities and represents a major change in special education law, the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA). This change shifts the emphasis of the identification process toward providing support and intervention to struggling students early and is similarly reflected in the Reading First provisions of No Child Left Behind, which calls for proven methods of instruction to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties. RTI will alter the work of reading teachers because more than 80% of students identified for special education struggle with literacy (Lyon, 1995), and the law names “reading teachers” as qualified participants in the RTI process because of the International Reading Association's (IRA, 2007) lobbying efforts. However, RTI has only recently attracted the attention of the reading community (Bell, 2007), despite having roots in approaches such as prereferral intervention (Flugum & Reschly, 1994; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Bahr, 1990), curriculum-based measurement (Shinn, 1989), and Reading Recovery (Clay, 1987; Lyons & Beaver, 1995).

RTI in Theory
Background and Rationale

RTI was developed because of the many problems with the discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities (e.g., Francis et al., 2005; O'Malley, Francis, Foorman, Fletcher, & Swank, 2002; Stanovich, 2005; Vellutino, Scanlon, & Lyon, 2000; Walmsley & Allington, 2007). In 1977, a learning disability was defined as “a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability” (U.S. Department of Education, 1977, p. G1082). In practice, this involves schools administering IQ tests and achievement tests and then examining scores for discrepancies between intellect and achievement to identify a learning disability (see Table 1). The discrepancy model has drawn four major criticisms. First, it requires that a learning problem becomes considerably acute in terms of an IQ/achievement discrepancy before a learner can receive additional support, a problem called “waiting to fail” (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003, p. 139). Second, establishing a discrepancy is not necessary to improve outcomes for struggling readers, as students both with and without a discrepancy are qualitatively the same in their literacy instructional needs (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan, & Young, 2003; Vellutino et al., 2000). Third, the IQ/achievement discrepancy has shifted focus away from understanding the impact of other possible factors, such as opportunities to learn (Walmsley & Allington, 2007). These factors need to be considered prior to determining that a learning disability exists. Fourth, under the discrepancy model, many districts and states have seen skyrocketing percentages of students identified as learning disabled, particularly minorities (IRA, 2007; Walmsley & Allington, 2007).

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

Table 1. Definitions of RTI Terms

Discrepancy model - The standard for identifying students with learning disabilities based on the 1977 federal regulations. This process required that a significant difference be documented between a student's ability (IQ) and achievement in order for a learning disability to be identified. RTI models respond to the many problems identified with the discrepancy model.

Intervention - Targeted instruction provided in addition to the regular classroom program that addresses a student's documented instructional needs. Instruction that intends to prevent students who are struggling from falling farther behind their peers and intends to improve their future educational trajectory. Level data Information that reflects how students are performing in comparison to peers at a specific point in time.

Slope data - Information that reflects how a student is learning across time in comparison to his or her previous learning. These data capture rate of learning and can also be called growth rates. Slopes that are steeper show more growth over a smaller period of time than slopes that are flatter. Slope data are obtained by repeatedly measuring student performance in a particular area. They are displayed using a line graph.

Student progress monitoring - An assessment technique required by RTI regulations. Teachers administer quick assessments (1–5 minutes) frequently (weekly) to gauge the improvement of a student. The assessments provide information about the student's rate of learning and the effectiveness of a particular intervention (National Center on Student Progress Monitoring, 2007).

Literacy screening - The process of assessing the most basic and predictive literacy skills for all students in a school. The goal of screenings is to select learners whose reading achievement is significantly below standards. Literacy screenings are intended to identify students who require additional help so that further slippage and literacy failure can be prevented.

The Law

In 2004, IDEA, Public Law 108-446, introduced RTI language (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). In Table 2, the section entitled “Specific learning disabilities” (§ 300.307) asserts that states cannot be required to use the discrepancy model for identifying learning disabilities but may “permit the use of a process based on the child's response to scientific, research-based intervention.” This is RTI, a process measuring whether a learner's academic performance improves when provided with well-defined, scientifically based interventions. In an RTI model, the “tests” of whether students possess learning disabilities are not standardized measures but students' measured responses to interventions. Within RTI, student potential (IQ) is replaced by a goal that allows for the evaluation of a performance relative to a defined academic standard (e.g., performance of other students in the class or grade level). Students responding quickly and significantly to interventions are less likely to possess a disability than students responding more slowly or not at all. However, data showing a student's response to an intervention serves as only one source of information for determining whether a learning disability is present. Learning disabilities cannot be diagnosed when appropriate instruction, socioeconomic status, culture, sensory issues, emotional issues, or English as a second language may be of concern.
Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know

Table 2. Additional Procedures for Identifying Children With Specific Learning Disabilities
IDEA terminology and IDEA definition:

§ 300.307 Specific learning disabilities. A State must adopt, consistent with 34 CFR 300.309, criteria for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability as defined in 34 CFR 300.8(c)(10). In addition, the criteria adopted by the State:
• Must not require the use of a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability, as defined in 34 CFR 300.8(c)(10);
• Must permit the use of a process based on the child's response to scientific, research-based intervention; and
• May permit the use of other alternative research-based procedures for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability, as defined in 34 CFR 300.8(c)(10).
A public agency must use the State criteria adopted pursuant to 34 CFR 300.307(a) in determining whether a child has a specific learning disability.
[34 CFR 300.307] [20 U.S.C. 1221e-3; 1401(30); 1414(b)(6)]
§ 300.309 Determining the existence of a specific learning disability.
The group described in 34 CFR 300.306 may determine that a child has a specific learning disability, as defined in 34 CFR 300.8(c)(10), if:
• The child does not achieve adequately for the child's age or to meet State-approved grade-level standards in one or more of the following areas, when provided with learning experiences and instruction appropriate for the child's age or State-approved grade-level standards:
o Oral expression.
o Listening comprehension.
o Written expression.
o Basic reading skills.
o Reading fluency skills.
o Reading comprehension.
o Mathematics calculation.
o Mathematics problem solving.
• The child does not make sufficient progress to meet age or State-approved grade-level standards in one or more of the areas identified in 34 CFR 300.309(a)(1) when using a process based on the child's response to scientific, research-based intervention; or the child exhibits a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in performance, achievement, or both, relative to age, State-approved grade-level standards, or intellectual development, that is determined by the group to be relevant to the identification of a specific learning disability, using appropriate assessments, consistent with 34 CFR 300.304 and 300.305; and the group determines that its findings under 34 CFR 300.309(a)(1) and (2) are not primarily the result of:
o A visual, hearing, or motor disability;
o Mental retardation;
o Emotional disturbance;
o Cultural factors;
o Environmental or economic disadvantage; or
o Limited English proficiency.
To ensure that underachievement in a child suspected of having a specific learning disability is not due to lack of appropriate instruction in reading or math, the group must consider, as part of the evaluation described in 34 CFR 300.304 through 300.306:
• Data that demonstrate that prior to, or as a part of, the referral process, the child was provided appropriate instruction in regular education settings, delivered by qualified personnel; and
• Data-based documentation of repeated assessments of achievement at reasonable intervals, reflecting formal assessment of student progress during instruction, which was provided to the child's parents.
Note. From U.S. Department of Education. (2006). Assistance to states for the education of children with disabilities and preschool grants for children with disabilites (Federal register 34 CFR Parts 300 and 301). Washington, DC: Author.
In the section entitled “Determining the existence of a specific learning disability” (§ 300.309), the law states that a learning disability may be present when a student's performance is not adequate to meet grade-level standards when provided with appropriate instruction and research-based interventions. The term appropriate refers to instruction in the classroom that matches a student's skill level. The descriptors scientific or research-based indicate that interventions should be based on practices that have produced verifiable results through research studies.

RTI Processes

The processes undergirding RTI have been used for evaluating the success of schoolwide supports, individualized interventions, and special education (O'Connor, Fulmre, Harty, & Bell, 2005; Powell-Smith & Ball, 2002; Taylor-Greene et al., 1997). However, in this article we focus on RTI as an initial referral and identification process for students suspected of having learning disabilities.

Step 1
Universal literacy practices are established. Prevention begins with universal literacy screenings to identify students who could be at risk (see Table 3). Any state receiving Reading First monies has identified a literacy screening in grades K-3. All students are screened on basic literacy skills approximately three times per year. Typically, student performance is compared with minimal benchmark scores and students not meeting benchmarks receive help.

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know
Table 3. Examples of Literacy Screening Assessments


Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Good & Kaminski, 2002
Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) Invernizzi, Juel, Swank, & Meier, 2005
Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI) Texas Education Agency & University of Texas System, 2006
Illinois Snapshots of Early Literacy (ISEL) Illinois State Board of Education, 2004

Step 2

Scientifically valid interventions are implemented. When students do not meet benchmarks, they need additional instruction. Within most RTI models, interventions are first delivered to a small group and are intended to assist students in developing skills that will allow them to improve their reading skills.

Step 3

Progress of students receiving intervention instruction is monitored. RTI requires that progress-monitoring data are continuously collected as students receive interventions. Progress-monitoring assessments should address the skills that are being targeted for intervention and should indicate if the intervention is changing the student's reading. Also, the assessments should be administered repeatedly (weekly or biweekly) without introducing test-wise bias, which occurs when the results of an assessment reflect the testtaker's acquired knowledge about a test rather than true performance. In addition, the assessments should be sufficiently sensitive to small changes in the student's reading performance (i.e., those that might occur within a few days) because if students are showing growth on the more sensitive, microlevel progress-monitoring measures, they will also be showing growth in the more comprehensive measures (Deno, Mirkin, & Chiang, 1982; Fuchs & Deno, 1981; Riedel, 2007). Finally, progress-monitoring measures must be reliable, valid, and brief (National Center on Student Progress Monitoring, 2007). For a list of tools for progress monitoring, see the National Center on Student Progress Monitoring website at www.studentprogress.org/chart/chart.asp.

Step 4

Individualize interventions for students who continue to struggle. Students who continue to struggle despite receiving initial intervention instruction will require more intense, targeted interventions. These interventions may require additional assessments to clarify the nature of the difficulty. The data generated from these additional assessments should be used collaboratively by teachers, reading specialists, school psychologists, and parents to develop more intensive intervention strategies. Upon implementation, the student's progress continues to be monitored.

Step 5

A decision-making process to determine eligibility for special education services occurs when necessary. In the last step, a team of school-based professionals and the student's parents review all data to determine whether the student is eligible for special education services. Special services may be indicated when the student has not responded to interventions that have been well implemented for a sufficient period of time. If the team suspects that the student's lack of response may be explained by some other factor (i.e., not explained by a learning disability), then it should request additional assessment of the student's social, behavioral, emotional, intellectual, and adaptive functioning.

RTI in Real Life: Making a Difference for Mark

To illustrate RTI processes, we use a vignette (with pseudonyms) based on our experiences in schools. This vignette shows how a team including Donisha, a reading teacher, Julie, a special educator, Carol, a second-grade teacher, and Sandra, a school psychologist, worked collaboratively (and sometimes painstakingly) within an RTI model to assist a student named Mark.

Step 1: Universal Literacy Practices Are Established

In September, Mark was administered the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening (PALS; Invernizzi, Juel, Swank, & Meier, 2005), an assessment that begins with two screening measures, the first-grade word list, given in the fall of grade 2, and a spelling assessment. From these measures, an entry benchmark score is formed. If the benchmark score does not meet the grade-level minimum, then additional diagnostics are administered (preprimer and primer lists, letter naming, letter sounds, concept of word, blending, and sound-to-letter). Students also read passages through which accuracy, reading rate, phrasing (a 3-point subjective scale), and comprehension scores are collected.

In the fall, Mark received a benchmark score of 22 (7/20 on the first-grade word list) and 15/20 on the spelling assessment. An expected benchmark score of 35, based on 15 words on the first-grade list, and 20 spelling feature points is expected for the beginning of second grade. Mark read instructionally at the primer level (1.1) with moderate phrasing and expression and answered five-sixths of the questions correctly. He read the 120 words in the primer story in 4 minutes and 20 seconds, a rate of about 28 words correct per minute (WCPM) and 20 words below the 50th percentile for second graders in the fall (Parker, Hasbrouck, & Tindal, 1992). When diagnostic assessments were administered, data showed that Mark had mastered alphabetic skills, such as phonemic awareness and letters. Carol described her initial analysis: “Mark seemed to have the basic building blocks for reading but needed more practice at his level.” Initially, Mark received small-group classroom instruction, including reading daily in on-level materials and working with Carol on comprehension and decoding. In September, October, and November, Carol took running records on the books that Mark and the other students had been reading. Although the accuracy and book levels of other students were steadily increasing, Mark's accuracy was averaging 90% in less difficult books. Carol explained, “I felt like Mark needed more help, and we needed to act because I was concerned that he would continue to fall behind.”

Step 2: Scientifically Valid Interventions Are Implemented


RTI requires that instructional interventions be scientifically valid, public, implemented with integrity, and systematically evaluated. Julie, who had recently attended the district's RTI workshop, explained that “The who, what, when, where, and how of interventions must be clear.” The content of the intervention should be designated, the teacher responsible for implementing it identified, and the assessments determined. Often different team members plan, implement, or assess the intervention based on availability and expertise. For this reason, educators must collaborate and share information.
The team discussed Mark's needs and designed an intervention. Based upon its review of the data, the team determined that accurate, fluent reading in connected text seemed to be the problem. Mark could easily understand books above his reading level, but his progress was being impeded by word recognition. The group decided that an intervention increasing the amount of reading practice for Mark would build up his reading level. The designed intervention comprised the following components: modeling of fluent reading, repeated readings, error correction, comprehension questions, and self-monitoring. They decided that Donisha would implement the intervention with three other students in the classroom in 20-minute sessions, three times per week. In addition, Carol continued to work with Mark in the classroom during small-group instruction. Specifically, she had Mark read from the same materials used by Donisha to further increase practice opportunities, and she set a daily goal for Mark on comprehension questions. Mark checked his answers each day and provided the results to his teacher at the end of the reading block.

Step 3: Progress of Students Receiving Intervention Instruction Is Monitored

As the intervention was implemented, Sandra tracked Mark's accuracy and fluency in reading passages at the primer and second-grade levels, because the goal was to understand Mark's progress toward grade-level norms. She used a PDA device loaded with passages at different levels. As Mark read these passages weekly, Sandra kept track of his accuracy (percentage of words correct) and reading rate (WCPM). Figure 1 shows Mark's accuracy and Figure 2 shows his reading rate before and after implementing the intervention for six weeks. Mark demonstrated some gains in accuracy and fluency, but his progress was not increasing at a rate that would allow him to meet established second-grade goals.

Figure 1. Mark's Accuracy During Intervention Instruction (The Eduspaces forum doesnt have ability to show graph)

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know
Figure 1. Mark's Accuracy During Intervention Instruction

Figure 2. Mark's Fluency During Intervention Instruction (The Eduspaces forum doesnt have ability to show graph)

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know
Figure 2. Mark's Fluency During Intervention Instruction

As we have described RTI to this point, it sounds smooth and trouble free. But it was anything but that for the professionals involved. Donisha's first reaction to RTI was strong:

At first, I felt like this group was shrinking reading down to something very simplistic. I had to advocate for comprehension questions to be included in the intervention. Even though Mark's comprehension was fine, we did not want him to believe that comprehension didn't matter. We also clarified that interventions are additive and by nature narrower because their power lies in solving specific problems. The comprehensive reading program is broad and multifaceted, and it keeps going on while a child is receiving an intervention. So Carol wasn't going to stop guided reading or doing the rest of her program.
We liken the intervention and the reading program to a balanced diet. The intervention is like an extra serving of milk, but it doesn't replace meat, fruits, or vegetables.

Donisha was also concerned that the intervention would be scripted. Scripts are directions to teachers that are read verbatim during instruction. Interventions are specific and systematic, but nothing in the law requires them to be scripted.

Carol also had concerns. “I was not used to people asking me specific questions about exactly what I was doing, and how often, and what my results were. At first, it felt invasive and suspicious.” Given the frequency with which blame is placed on classroom teachers, Carol's reaction was understandable. However, the team members pointed out that the instruction was working well for almost all of the other students and acknowledged the time limitations and demands placed on Carol as a classroom teacher. Although she had felt it in the past, Carol did not feel as though fingers were being pointed at her. Sandra had faced equal frustration before:

I come in because a teacher has a concern and when I start asking questions, I get tight responses and defensiveness. It's like asking questions is stepping on toes. I can't help others further understand the problem or contribute to a useful intervention if we can't talk nitty-gritty. Once I had a teacher tell me, “You're not a teacher. You won't be able to help.” While I am not a teacher, I can contribute to the development of interventions, and I have particular skill in measuring effects.

In addition to reviewing Mark's progress during the six weeks of intervention instruction, Mark's mid-year PALS scores were evaluated by the team. He was independent at the primer (1.1) level and barely instructional at the first-grade level with 14 errors and a reading rate of 42 WCPM. Despite his increase in instructional level and fluency, the team remained concerned about the lack of reduction in the number of errors that Mark was making. The team decided that these errors would ultimately become detrimental to Mark's fluency and comprehension, particularly as text increased in difficulty. The team determined that individualized intervention was warranted.

Step 4: Individualize Interventions for Students Who Continue to Struggle

Because they had no measure of decoding, the team decided to assess Mark using the Word Attack Test from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Results from this assessment revealed that Mark was having difficulty decoding words with more than one syllable or those that contained difficult vowel patterns. This resulted in reduced accuracy and fluency. The team enhanced the intervention by adding practice with problem words. Mark practiced incorrectly read words, received instruction in how to analyze word parts, extended analytic skills to similar words, and practiced through word sorts. Following word sorts, Mark read each word within a sentence. Donisha implemented this individualized intervention for 10 minutes each day following the reading practice intervention (discussed earlier in the article).

Mark's reading accuracy and fluency continued to be monitored weekly by Sandra. The team determined that the intervention would be implemented for a minimum of 6 weeks, as this time frame would correspond with the end of the school year. However, the team recognized that interventions in early literacy often need to run longer, between 10 and 20 weeks, depending on factors such as the needs of the student and the intensity of the intervention (University of Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 2003; Wanzek & Vaughn, 2008). Moreover, Mark's progress was measured each week so that the intervention could be modified if he failed to make adequate gains. His response to the individualized reading intervention is provided in Figures 3 and 4. Figure 3 shows that Mark quickly responded to the word attack intervention. Data were collected once per week on the percentage of words read correctly from second-grade passages. Mark's response to the intervention contrasted dramatically with his performance reading unknown words prior to the intervention. By the sixth week, Mark correctly read 100% of words presented when prior to intervention he was only reading 55% to 60% accurately. Figure 4 shows that Mark improved in reading fluency as well. Prior to word attack intervention, the effects of the fluency intervention had leveled off. With the addition of the word attack intervention, Mark's fluency steadily improved until he met the second-grade goal. By the end of May, Mark met the PALS summed score benchmark. His end-of-the-year PALS (58 summer score) showed him meeting the benchmark, reading instructionally at second-grade level with comprehension, and reading at a rate of about 60 WCPM.

Figure 3. Mark's Accuracy During Individualized Intervention (The Eduspaces forum doesnt have ability to show graph)

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know
Figure 3. Mark's Accuracy During Individualized Intervention

Figure 4. Mark's Fluency During Individualized Intervention (The Eduspaces forum doesnt have ability to show graph)

Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know
Figure 4. Mark's Fluency During Individualized Intervention


Step 5: Decision-Making Process to Determine Eligibility for Special Education Services

Despite falling below the second-grade benchmark in September, Mark demonstrated growth on accuracy, fluency, and decoding as a result of the efforts of school personnel. The team reviewed Mark's intervention data and determined that special education services were not necessary. However, Julie voiced concerns about Mark and the continued need for support:

I could see that Mark had made great progress, but I knew that summer could potentially influence his starting point in the fall and that his progress was the result of substantive instruction in addition to the regular classroom. So I insisted that a meeting be scheduled for him in the fall to be proactive about his needs.

Mark's progress was significant relative to where his skills were at the beginning of the year. If the interventions had not met Mark's needs, the team would have been charged with determining whether the lack of response was indicative of a learning disability.

Why RTI?

As illustrated, RTI is a process that incorporates both assessment and intervention so that immediate benefits come to the student. Assessment data are used to inform interventions and determine the effectiveness of them. As a result of the intervention-focused nature of RTI, eligibility services shift toward a supportive rather than sorting function. A testing model that identifies and sorts students into programs or services is predicated upon the effectiveness of those services. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of special education, particularly placement of students in separate classrooms, has been variable at best (Bentum & Aaron, 2003; Kavale, 1990), even as an increasing percentage of students have been identified as learning disabled over the past 30 years (Gresham, 2002). Within the RTI model, instruction can at last be addressed.

Queries, Concerns, and Future Research

We have worked with state departments of education, school districts, schools, and teachers long enough to have questions about RTI. The first issue is that definitions of scientific research privilege experimental and quasi-experimental research (Eisenhart & Towne, 2003; Pressley, 2003). Experiments occur when subjects are randomly assigned to different conditions and the results measured, and they are the best way to know if a practice is causing a certain learning outcome. However, they depend on delivering an instructional treatment in a standardized way, often with study personnel. When teachers do participate in experiments, they often receive intensive support that may not be available when the strategy is widely implemented. The artifices of experiments can limit the degree to which the instructional treatment can be implemented in the real world (Pressley, 2003).

Second, if scientifically based interventions are to be implemented, then research findings must get to schools. We are concerned that the label scientifically based will be misused and will proliferate as publishers and companies slap it on everything they market to schools. The final issue is that diverse ways to screen in literacy are still emerging (Gersten & Dimino, 2006). Researchers note that phonologically based competencies, such as phoneme awareness, letter/sound knowledge, and decoding, contribute to part of what makes a student a successful reader (Gersten & Dimino, 2006; Paris, 2005; Scarborough, 2005). Readers must also have a deep knowledge of word meanings and be able to comprehend text. We know oral reading fluency is a good predictor of grade 1 comprehension (Riedel, 2007) but powerful, direct screenings in the areas of vocabulary and comprehension have yet to be developed for elementary learners. Nonetheless, intervening in these areas is important despite the fact that few screening tools exist.

Despite the challenges with RTI, we have seen this approach increase the quantity and quality of instruction for struggling readers. RTI is an initial attempt to provide an alternative to the dominant and damaging discrepancy model in which so much time is spent admiring the student's reading problem. By this we mean people discuss the problem, collect data on it, and write about it, months before they do anything about it. IDEA 2004 provides school districts with a choice to opt out of the discrepancy model.
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References

Bell, M. (2007). Reading teachers play key role in successful response to intervention approaches. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from www reading org downloads resources IDEA RTI teachers role pdf
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First Graders and Fairy Tales: One Teacher's Action Research of Critical Literacy

by Ryan T. Bourke

“I'm finished writing, Mr. Bourke!” exclaimed Jonathan, a 6-year-old boy in my first grade class (student names are pseudonyms). Grasped in his outstretched hand was his proud rendition of the Sleeping Beauty story. As I read Jonathan's version, I smiled at his unorthodox conclusion:

The cen gav her dat woo I dont loc csing I was bater uslep. Suo da arogd and aguy
[The king gave her that (referring to the kiss). “Woo, I don't like kissing. I was better asleep.” So they argued and argued.]

“Jonathan,” I asked, “will you tell me about your ending?”
He replied, “OK. I think Sleeping Beauty don't want no one kissing her to wake her up! In my version, the princess tells the king what she thinks, ‘Don't you kiss me!’ She don't want to be kissed. She likes sleepin' better.”

“Why do they argue?” I inquired.

“They arguing 'cause the king, he want to kiss the, umm, kiss her, but she don't want that. They have to fight.” Jonathan's tone had become serious as he explained his reasoning. I carefully jotted down his words, intent to document the critical literacy event that was occurring before me.

My students often astound me with their acuity; however, that afternoon I was pleased not only with Jonathan's insight, but also with how, embedded within his act of literacy, there existed elements of critical literacy. Jonathan had approached this writing project from a new perspective—a critical perspective. He had interrupted the normalcy of the happy ending and succeeded in reconceptualizing this familiar story.

In the following pages, I detail the struggles—victories and defeats included—as my students and I wrestled with the implications of adopting critical literacy. In an effort to honor my students' preferred genre, I had introduced this previously absent practice via unorthodox critical literacy texts: fairy tales. I had assumed that my students would embrace critical literacy as they read, wrote, spoke, listened, and thought; after all, if I could create the space for critical literacy to operate, then so too could my students. This “space,” as I was soon to discover, was not easily filled with critical literacy practices. Rather, it became a place in which several obstructions were made manifest. Critical literacy, therefore, took root not in the filling in of available opportunities, but in the deconstruction of those obstacles that hindered its inception. One purpose of this article is to convey to educators how my critical literacy endeavor was instrumental in exposing the tacit undercurrents of my students' literacy lives. The other purpose, and perhaps most important, is to demonstrate how I as a teacher learned to don a critical lens that allowed me to “read between the lines” of the literacy practices of my 21 first-grade students.
Critical literacy, as I illustrate in this article, is the act of approaching texts wearing a set of eyeglasses through which the reader examines and questions the familiar and comfortable (Jones, 2006). It is the process of problematizing texts to expose privilege and oppression; it reveals how texts benefit some people and harm others. Critical literacy recognizes that all texts position the reader; it proposes that multiple perspectives exist, many of which contest the sovereignty of author and text. Most important, critical literacy lends itself to social action and the creation of a better, more just world (DeVoogd, 2006; Powell, Cantrell, & Adams, 2001). Shannon (1991) stated that “a critical view of reality challenges the injustices and inequalities of the status quo by asking the question ‘Why are things the way they are?’” (p. 518). In all, the critical reader not only renegotiates texts but also the world in which he or she is situated—an immense task for both teacher and first grader.

Disrupting the Three Billy Goats Gruff: The First Attempts at Critical Literacy in My Classroom
We all know the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and in retrospect, so did my students—or so they thought. Little did they realize that by questioning and exposing the “ulterior motives and below-surface ideas” (Ciardiello, 2004, p. 138) privileged in the words and illustrations, their views of the hoofed heroes were about to change. Little did I realize that my role as a teacher was also about to change. I began to identify my first-grade students as the educators, myself as the learner, and fairy tales as the catalyst to a new curriculum. I connected then with the practices of Paulo Freire (2000), the Brazilian educator commonly associated with critical literacy, when he said, “The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and reconsiders his earlier considerations as the students express their own” (p. 68).

I also contemplated the methods by which to introduce my students to an investigative way of thinking. To do so would require that my reading instruction evolve beyond the alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension advocated by the Report of the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Compton-Lilly (2004) suggested that formal schooling reinforces the assumption of reading as the mastery of discrete skills. I had hoped that the reading of this fairy tale, and the others to follow, would challenge such assumptions and expose my students to a frame of mind that could ultimately change not only how they approached literature but also how they perceived the world around them. My goal as an educator would be to implement into my pedagogy a repertoire of critical thinking. The only question was how?

I had previously emphasized reading as the process of understanding the author's message. Conversations with my students would often incorporate the occasional “I think the author is telling me…” or “The author's message is….” I had used these strategies as methods to hold students accountable to the text and as a way in which to assess their comprehension. During this first reading, I became aware that if I were to teach critical literacy and instill in my students the habit of recognizing and questioning how language contributes to injustice (Comber, 1998), I would have to reconsider the aforementioned approach. Recognizing the importance for critical readers to question (Simpson, 1996), it seemed antithetical for my students to merely understand the author's message without interrogation. When students question texts as well as their experiences and beliefs, they are engaging in deeper practices of critique and analysis; likewise, when students learn to read critically, the author's message becomes available for new interpretation; alternative explanations are then made possible (Leland, Harste, & Huber, 2005).

With the commencement of the Three Billy Goats Gruff read-aloud, so began the onslaught of comments. Jonathan declared, “The troll is mean, mean, mean!” In response, I posed my first question: “Why is the troll so mean?” I was immediately dealt many responses, all of which positioned the troll as the villain. This was a question they could all answer, and the eagerness before me was all too familiar. I was left to speculate: Why do teachers ask what students already know?

Michael declared that the troll was a monster. Malik stated that “trolls are just mean, just because trolls are trolls.” Alyssa commented that “trolls don't like nobody.” The consensus was final: The troll was the bad guy, and the goats were the good guys. Although the students had understood the author's message, my question had failed to elicit deeper thinking. How was I going to confront what I had so adamantly taught before? And how was I to challenge a genre in which the concept of good and bad had become so ingrained?

My second query was, “Why did the author make the troll so mean?” The students were silent. Several children giggled. Then James responded, “To make the story more interesting. You know, if the troll was nice, he would let them get grass on the other side. The story would be boring.” His voice trailed off as he stretched out the word boring. He had captured a valid point but had neglected to question it. I continued, “How do you think the goats feel?” Some answers included “sad,” “not happy,” “scared,” and “hungry”— all typical first-grade responses. Then I asked, “How do you think the troll feels?” There were no answers, and the looks of surprise, coupled with the groans of discontent, communicated the students' conviction that one should not elicit information regarding the emotional status of the “bad guy.” Only the good guy counts.

As we read on, stopping intermittently to discuss the events of the story and to ask an occasional question, I noticed that as the story accumulated, the students' excitement level increased. They were anticipating the grand finale when the large Billy Goat knocks the troll into the river below. It was inevitable that good would triumph over evil, not to mention that justice would be served upon the troll. At this point, I felt no other option would satisfy my students. In their minds, the only suitable and acceptable conclusion was images of the evil troll kicking and screaming as the waters swept this antagonist (along with all the troubles of the world) away from the goats forever. My mind, however, was searching for ways in which to usurp the predominant axiom of fairy tale architecture, the one that so aptly defines the ways things should be.

Of course, upon the father goat's safe and happy reunion with his family, there was a round of applause. Alyssa, who had listened intently the entire time, commented, “I knew that was going to happen!” Interestingly, most of my students, while from the beginning very aware of the outcome of the book, appeared somewhat relieved. Perhaps the questions I had posed had made them uncomfortable; perhaps I had momentarily disrupted that which, in the words of James, had made the story “more interesting.” If my questions that morning had evoked in my students a premonition of how their reading was to be transformed, they were correct; however, not much had happened yet. Regardless of the fact that my students' worries had been alleviated, I remained unsettled.

And so went my first attempts at critical literacy: I would ask a question, and the students would respond. Their reactions, while thoughtful at times, were often unsuccessful in establishing much distance from the author as the authority. The students were taking for face value that which the text presented. They were resistant to accept any other possibilities.

The Gap, the Good Guys, and the Grass: The Birth of Critical Literacy in My Classroom

As the dialogues transpired, I began to liken my role as teacher to that of a bridge over which my students could cross in their progression from readers who accepted text as it was to readers who questioned text on a regular basis. I could not assume that the boys and girls in my class never challenged texts, but in regard to this fairy tale, it appeared as if it were my responsibility to help eradicate the troll from the bridge and allow them passage. One way to accomplish this would be to familiarize them with and support them in the process of asking deeper and more pertinent questions. I had discovered previously that my class was competent at and rather enjoyed using the strategy of putting oneself in the character's shoes. I decided, amidst cheers and applause, that the following day I would facilitate questioning that would require my students to resituate themselves in the individual perspectives of the characters. I hoped that from a different point of view they would be able to examine the situation from each character's unique position. The students could then connect with the goats and perhaps even the troll.

The next day, it happened. At the end of the second reading, Nicholas contributed an interesting observation: “Why did the Daddy Gruff and Mommy Goat send Baby Gruff first? I wouldn't do that!” This question demonstrated to me that children, even as young as 6 years old, are capable of engaging in habits as critical readers. All I had done was to ask my class to view the situation from a different point of view—one small request. Nicholas, on the other hand, by empathizing with a character other than those framed as most important, had reconsidered the element of justice as presented in the story—a monumental accomplishment for critical literacy.

I jumped at this opportunity and with renewed enthusiasm continued to probe: “Would anyone else like to put themselves in the characters' shoes?” The students' responses were affirmative. My students discussed issues concerning the welfare of the goats, ultimately deciding that they would have done things differently had they been Daddy Gruff. Indeed, it was neither fair nor just that the weaker and less capable characters had been sent first. Finally, I asked, “If you were the troll, how would you feel?” Most of the class remained silent, as they had the previous day, but one response from Jennifer further fueled the sparks of critical reading—sparks that were to consume some former reading habits. “Sad. I think he feels sad. It's not, it's not really fair for the troll. The three goats all got to eat the grass, but the troll is hungry. Why can't he eat, too?” This was an excellent observation that even I had neglected to consider.
Like the goats, my students began to timidly trip-trap across the bridge that separated one world from the next. They were beginning to cross “boundaries and recognize that there are entire other worlds of meaning, depending on how they look at things” (Bomer & Bomer, 2001, p. 51). As I closed the pages on the bucolic scene of three goats grazing happily, my students left the once cozy and tranquil reading area disconcerted, uneasy, and in state of disequilibrium. Two young classmates had forever disrupted the issues of the gap, the good guys, and the grass. Before long, many others would join the ranks of first-grade critical readers.

Critical Literacy and Colors: Darkness as Evil

Two distinct versions of Little Red Riding Hood presented the Wolf as a malevolent character lurking in the woods. Both renditions, however, provided my students with opposing portrayals of the wilderness through which the young girl must pass. One presented the woods as dark and uninviting, while the other, less morose version, depicted the forest as friendly and attractive. I did not dispute that the antagonist was indeed awful; I did, however, interrogate the unquestioning use of darkness to equate black with evil and how students might cross-contextualize this notion from one text to another (i.e., from the fairy tale text to the text of their lives).

Research indicates that the way children see themselves in books affects their identity formation (Hurley, 2005). I was suspicious that the concept that darkness is evil might contribute to the construction of deficit-based subjectivities, not in how my students saw themselves within the text, but in how they saw themselves positioned relative to dominant culture. As such, I sought to disclose how the proclivity of fairy tales to portray darkness as synonymous with evil could perpetuate constructs of white superiority, especially because my children were all of non-European descent. Leland, Harste, and Huber (2005) illustrated how first-grade students tackled texts that explicitly articulated social inequities; I wanted my students to tackle the clandestine reifications of oppression as they subtly exist in fairy tales. If critical literacy could expose such insidious ideologies from the pages of a supposedly benign genre, it might also provide my students the opportunity to recognize and deconstruct the similarly covert narratives of mainstream society.

The transcripts of the readings and discussions of Little Red Riding Hood revealed that my students accepted the synonymy of darkness and evil as the way things are, the status quo. They were unable (or unwilling) to discern one author's pastoral depiction of the woods as simply the dwelling grounds of a bad wolf from the other author's depiction of the woods as a dark place lacking light in which inevitably a bad wolf (or a villain in general) must reside. The dark version prompted discussions of evil, while the more colorful and inviting portrayal elicited much different conversations—ones that focused on the superficial aspects of the tale. For example, Kiera noted that Little Red Riding Hood's location was different: “She is not on the path. She is in a garden.” When I directed their attention to the difference between versions, the darkness issue became paramount:

Mr. Bourke: What do you notice about the difference between the woods in this story [pointing to the friendlier portrayal] compared with the woods in the other story?
Dante: It's different colors.
Rosemary: It's pretty.
Mr. Bourke: How does this make you feel? [pointing to the depiction of the dark woods]
Dante: Scared.
Several students: Sad.
Tanaj: Scared…because I see a fox on the path (referring to the wolf).
Dante: Because she's in the woods.
Allison: It's really dark there…it's really dark.
Kiera: It's scary.

There is something to be said for teaching children the wisdom of not “straying from the path,” however, looking at this concept from a critical literacy perspective, it becomes apparent that neglecting to teach students to question the dark-is-evil/white-is-good notion can have far-reaching consequences in the way they interpret texts. Below is an excerpt of a later transcript of a reading of Cinderella in which the concept of black and white as associated with evil and good surfaces once again.

Jennifer: In that story, the godmother is white, and the woods is black…in that story the fairies have white clothes and the witches have black clothes.

Mr. Bourke: Remember how we talked about the beginning of the other Cinderella…and if characters are supposed to be nice, they are dressed in white, and if characters are supposed to be bad, they are dressed in black?

Michael: Black-white, they're opposite.

I was particularly impressed with the ability of some students to refer to other texts and draw comparisons between the two. Michael's summation: “Black-white. They're opposite,” confirmed my suspicions: My students were deciding on good and evil simply by the colors presented in the illustrations, an unfortunate characteristic of not only fairy tales, but also many children's texts and films. Reading fairy tales without disrupting the black-white dichotomy, would do nothing more than reinforce the mainstream ideologies so often privileged in texts. Consider the following excerpts of discussion that occurred only days after the Little Red Riding Hood readings. Here, not only is yellow (whiteness) equated with good but also with beauty:

Mr. Bourke: Why would you say she is beautiful?
Jennifer: Because she has a yellow…she has hair that's beautiful and a dress that's beautiful.
Mr. Bourke: Take a look at the stepmother and the stepsisters. Would you say they are beautiful?
All: No.
Unknown: 'Cause they're mean.
Mr. Bourke: Do you know they are mean just by looking at this picture?
Michael: 'Cause you know, you know why? 'Cause these two have the dark colors on their dress and this one has light colors. And these two, and these two are peach, I mean these two are, you know, these two are tan and this one is peach (referring to the white Cinderella).
Mr. Bourke: Their skin you mean?
Michael: [agrees] Uh-huh.
James: That the, that this, that their color of their dress is really dark so that doesn't make them really nice. And this one has a gold color which makes it really beautiful.

While engaging my children in the above discussion, I became very apprehensive with the direction the conversation had turned. Here, before my class, sat a presumably innocent, benign, and harmless text. The fact that my 6- and 7-year-old students had identified and accepted as fact that which the illustrations suggested, while entirely neglecting to question the framing of dark as evil and light skin as beauty, was of major concern. This issue proved to be most difficult to confront. I wrestled face-to-face with the issue of color as synonymous with concepts of evil, good, and beauty. I wanted them to “stray from the path,” so to speak; to break the association of darkness with evil, of beauty with whiteness, and to begin considering alternative possibilities in which a character who is ugly could be good, and a character who is dark could be beautiful.

In an attempt to amend this mindset and to equip my students with a critical lens with which to confront such pervasive constructions of goodness and beauty, I seized every opportunity to combat the opponent. It was not sufficient that I expose my students to multiple versions of fairy tales (including disruptive renditions); I had to teach them to argue with texts. By instigating conflict with both characters and authors, my students engaged in critical altercations that foregrounded many of the assumed normalities of fairy tales. Most important, the students questioned their lack of representation within fairy tales, refusing to allow authors to use skin color as a tool to characterize one's nature. As my students resituated their interpretations within the interstices of the black-white, beautiful-ugly binaries, they began to interpret texts in a deeply personal context that embraced not only their personal experiences but also their unique attributes. I wanted nothing to debase my students' identities as children of darker complexion—children who are grossly unrepresented in most texts, children who are equally worthy of depictions of beauty and benevolence. If I could arrest, in the smallest degree, the cycle of color discrimination that could potentially transfer to more realistic texts, including the unwritten texts that perpetuate white privilege, then critical literacy could serve a purpose far greater than I had ever imagined. And here, right before me, first-grade students had begun to embody critical practices that could accomplish just that.

Critical Literacy and Rules: An Adversary

Following a reading of Jack and the Beanstalk, the question “Could things have happened differently?” arose. A discussion of whether Jack should have returned the beans and reacquired his cow prompted James to articulate an obstacle that had been rearing its ugly head from the very beginning:
That if I were the man, I would not give the cow to Jack because he, because I traded the beans to him… because rules are rules. He gave me some[thing], he gave me a cow, and I gave him beans, so rules are rules (emphasis mine).

The certainty with which James arrived at his conclusion, rules are rules, illustrated the class consensus in general concerning the authority of rules. It was quite beyond James to accept an alternative version of Jack and the Beanstalk in which Jack returns the beans. For him, “rules [were] rules,” and no matter what ill fortune may occur otherwise, to transgress authority was not acceptable, nor was it allowed. I suspected that the concept of absolutism (e.g., black is black and white is white; good is good and evil is evil) played the role of the adversary in terms of children's ability to look critically at texts. Bryan (2005) said that “in the land of ‘once upon a time,’ issues are never clouded” (p. 5). James's comment demonstrated this argument quite strongly. For him, changing the outcome of the story was unjustified if it meant a minor shift in what is right or wrong. Jack was right and the giant was wrong—final and unclouded. It is with this unfortunate propensity of fairy tales to promote absolutism that I found myself in opposition. And I was up for quite the battle.

According to Finn (1999), the discourse of some schools is one contributor to the ways children resist the notion of challenging authority. Most often, students view the teacher as the authority, the one who holds the knowledge and the one from whom knowledge is obtained. To challenge or question the teacher, or other school-valued authorities such as texts, is perceived as a step out of line, an epistemological “stepping on toes.” What is often neglected is how children transfer this inherent acceptance of “the ways things should be,” to texts. The rules are rules comment illustrated quite conclusively an issue I had faced from the very beginning, a term I have coined as the rule of text: the perception that text is authoritative and final and an underlying belief that suppresses the reader's license to challenge, question, deconstruct, and rewrite the assumptions, beliefs, ideologies, and concepts embedded, whether implicitly or not, within the perspective of the text. For my students, the rule of text was further perpetuated as a yearning to see the story conclude only as it should.

Discussing and creating alternative endings for Jack and the Beanstalk problematized the right-or-wrong duality. What was once upon a time so clear-cut became vague. The students and I had swung open the door to include the possibility that a good character may have committed a wrongdoing. Despite this conceptual ambiguity, when I attempted to address the consequences of Jack's actions and explore other possible reconciliations, my students would not concede. For them, the identifying of Jack committing a minor infraction, such as disobeying his mother, was merely incidental. To suggest otherwise—that he shouldn't have disobeyed his poor mother, and that in doing so everything could have been avoided (including the death of the giant)—was tantamount to murder (literally the murder of the giant). Furthermore, Jack not only disobeys his mom, but he also proceeds to engage in several clearly wrongful and criminal activities, all of which my students shrugged off as merely collateral damage. The culmination of the story with the death of the villain, as had been the case also in The Three Billy Goats Gruff, as well as the assurance that the good guys lived happily (and richly) ever after, was sufficient to warrant whatever exploit necessary, regardless of its rightness or wrongness. Several statements reflect this notion:

Giovanni: If, if I was Jack, and the man gave me the beans, I'd say, “no forget about it. That cost me 200 dollars” …and I'd just chase him and steal my cow.
Jennifer: If I were Jack, I would take his beans. I would say to him I want the beans but not give the cow…first give me the beans… I would trick him and take the beans and run away.

We discussed these wrong activities as a class. No matter what, the consensus was that Jack was right, the giant wrong, and the rule of the text should prevail. The beans were paramount to the conclusion of the story and when a happy ending is to come, it shall come by whatever means necessary.
I was compelled at this point, no matter how futile it seemed, to present to my young readers the possibility that the giant was not bad but merely a character subjected to wrongdoing. In doing so, I engaged critical literacy to ask questions about “language and power, about people and lifestyle, about morality and ethics, about who is advantaged by the way things are and who is disadvantaged” (Comber, 1998, p. 8). Would I be capable of breaking the rules, to depart from the mainstream perspective of this text, and persuade my students to see things from the giant's point of view? Could I expose the adversarial tendencies of children's texts, especially proliferated by the very nature of fairy tales, and allow critical literacy to define itself in the literacy lives of my students? No. As it turned out, I was not capable of filling such a tall order, but the students—through their self-authored fairy tales—were.

Critical Literacy and Authority: The Discourse of Power

Gee (2004) defined discourse as a “distinctive way to use language integrated with ‘other stuff”” (p. 46). The other stuff in the discourse with which children approach texts is complex and, in my opinion, often disregarded. Included in student discourse is evidence of ideologies of religion, justice, ethics, and individual and societal responsibility, to name only a few. After several occurrences in which such other stuff surfaced, I realized that not only did fairy tales often align themselves to pertinent childhood issues, but they also provided an opportunity for children to engage in discursive interactions in which critical literacy could occur. I recognized that by inviting the discourse of my students into the stories, my students could exercise some command over text.

One such discourse was that of power. My students began to notice how power plays a role in the actions of the characters. This was particularly evident during a later reading of Rumpelstiltskin. The following excerpt of conversation informed me of the sensitivity of children to the issues of power and authority:

Mr. Bourke: [reading voice of Rumpelstiltskin] Now give me what you promised me!
Unknown: Oooh!
Allison: She doesn't have to give away the baby to him because she's the Queen and she says what to do.
Similar statements had occurred from the very beginning of my research, although I had identified this as contrary to the critical approach I was attempting to teach. My students' willingness to extend power to the marginalized characters continually propagated the happily ever after theme. To turn the tables on the distribution of power, I introduced the concept of power-as-a-writer by introducing a self-authored version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. In this version, I subtly vilified the father goat by focusing on his insensitivity in sending the feeble and weaker family members over the bridge first. This time, I incorporated Malik's “just because trolls are trolls” hypothesis and granted no mercy to the two smaller goats. I also used Nicholas's observation regarding the unnecessary sending of the baby first. In the end, the widowed father goat is left wondering why he hadn't crossed first. After I was subjected to a brief homily regarding story etiquette, I granted my students the right to write. The moment I equipped my students with the power to create their own texts, and in doing so, insert their discourses into their renditions, a noticeable shift occurred in the way their stories depicted authority. Below is a condensed version of Michael's first of three Three Billy Goats Gruff stories in which an unfortunate end befalls the troll.

One day dady gruff broght a lazergun…the brige was gared by a big ugly trol…dady gruf shot him…his butt was on fire he fell into the water the end.

The proceeding version was significantly less bellicose, depicting three “Billy Trols Gruff” attempting to cross a bridge guarded by a goat. The goat is knocked off the bridge, slapped by a fish, and chased away by the three trolls. The final and most aberrant version is presented in his composition entitled “the 3 Billy gots gruf.”

Wonce upoan a time thar was 3 billy gots gruf. They wear vare hugre. Thay had to cross a brige gared by a man aeting troll. But the troll wonted 3 pet gots and the gots wonted one pet troll. So they bcame frends. The end.

When my students were granted agency to adjust factions of power, their fairy tale renditions resonated with evidence of critical thinking—thinking that was to extend into other areas of curriculum. As we read other genres, my students transferred their critical skills and began to discern the inequities present in various text types, deconstructing them in their conversations and writing. Fairy tales had been the medium through which critical literacy was introduced; however, in time, many genres would be made vulnerable to the critical gaze of my first-grade students.

Critical Literacy: A Challenge to Educators

I cannot conclude this piece “happily ever after”— doing so would suggest that all has been done that can be done. Rather, I urge other educators to sow the critical seeds that have the potential to grow, like Jack's beanstalk, and transcend the clouds that obscured much of my first-grade students' desire to disrupt normalcy. If this piece compels teachers to stray from the path of what traditionally counts as literacy in early childhood classrooms and experiment, as I did, in a realm so few dare tread, it is entirely possible for transformations akin to Cinderella's pumpkin coach to transpire. It is my hope that, because of teachers everywhere, the obstacles that limited my attempts at critical literacy will continue to fade as students far and wide acquire a lens through which to critically examine texts.

As Jonathan poignantly illustrated in the opening scenario, there is occasionally no choice but to put up a fight. Like the king and princess in his story, my class of first-grade students often found themselves in situations where they too “[had] to fight.” Their efforts to recognize and challenge the assumptions so entrenched in the fairy tale genre were critical literacy at its best. In a time when reading instruction is more focused on the teaching of basic literacy skills (Allington, 2001), our timeliness at recognizing and challenging inadequate constructions of literacy could not be more imperative. Jones (2006) states, in regard to progressive classrooms, that students are not learning to be text analysts; they are not questioning power relations in the text, stereotypes that are reproduced through text, the multiple ways in which a text could have been constructed, and the ways in which a text positions different readers. (p. 114)

One need only fathom the potential material consequences of a transformed curriculum to insist that critical literacy be included in everyday classroom pedagogy. That my first-grade students could grant the troll due process and trouble the notion of good and evil within a discourse of equality portends the potential of critical literacy to be reified in future classrooms, playgrounds, and work sites. I think it appropriate, therefore, to end with “Once upon a time, 21 first-grade students strayed from the path of traditional practice and treaded upon the far and away grounds of critical literacy.” My challenge is for educators far and wide to consider their classrooms the critical landscape in which to continue this story—a story that, with their contributions, has potential to live on happily ever after.
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References

Allington, R.L. (2001). What really matters for struggling readers: Designing research-based programs. New York: Longman.
Bomer, R., & Bomer, K. (2001). For a better world: Reading and writing for social action. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bryan, L. (2005). Once upon a time: A Grimm approach to character education. Journal of Social Studies Research, 29(1), 3–6.
Ciardiello, A. (2004). Democracy's young heroes: An instructional model of critical literacy practices. The Reading Teacher, 58(2), 138–147. doi:10.1598/RT.58.2.2 doi:10.1598/RT.58.2.2
Comber, B. (1998). Critical literacy: What's it all about? Learning Matters, 3(3), 8–13.
Compton-Lilly, C. (2004). Confronting racism, poverty, and power: Classroom strategies to change the world. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
DeVoogd, G. (2006). Question authority. School Library Journal, 52(4), 48–52.
Finn, P.J. (1999). Literacy with an attitude: Educating working-class children in their own self-interest. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gee, J.P. (2004). Discourse analysis: What makes it critical? In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 19–50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hurley, D.L. (2005). Seeing white: Children of color and the Disney fairy tale princess. The Journal of Negro Education, 74(3), 221–232.
Jones, S. (2006). Girls, social class, and literacy: What teachers can do to make a difference. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Leland, C.H., Harste, J.C., & Huber, K.R. (2005). Out of the box: Critical literacy in a first-grade classroom. Language Arts, 82(4), 257–268.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Powell, R., Cantrell, S.C., & Adams, S. (2001). Saving black mountain: The promise of critical literacy in a multicultural democracy. The Reading Teacher, 54(8), 772–781.
Shannon, P. (1991). Questions and answers: Critical literacy. The Reading Teacher, 44(7), 518–519.
Simpson, A. (1996). Critical questions: Whose questions? The Reading Teacher, 50(2), 118–127.

Building Fluency, Word-Recognition Ability, and Confidence in Struggling Readers: The Poetry Academy

By Lori G. Wilfong

In the fall of 2004, the principal at the elementary school where I worked as a literacy coach asked me to do a reading curriculum-based measurement (CBM) of the third grade. He chose the third grade because those students would be involved in two rounds of state-mandated achievement testing, and he wanted another measure of student progress to identify which students might need extra intervention. A CBM is performed to find out the reading rate and word-recognition abilities of a student (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Pink & Leibert, 1986; Rasinski, 2000).

I decided to add a retelling to my CBM. After students read a grade-level passage in a normal manner, I asked them to retell the story to me. I used a rubric to rate them on the number of events they were able to recall (Padak & Rasinski, 2005). I felt that with the combination of words read correctly per minute (WCPM), percentage of words read correctly, and retelling score, I would have a rounded picture of the students' reading abilities. I was able to compare the WCPM score to U.S. norms to see where our students fell in comparison with their age-mates (Hasbrouck & Tindal, 1992).

When looking at the data from the fluency assessment performed in September, I found that almost half of all the students assessed (N = 86) were significantly below (20% or more) their grade level in WCPM. In the fall of third grade, at the 50th percentile, students read an average of 65 WCPM. My own concerns as an advocate for sound literacy instruction surfaced here. As an advocate, I saw a problem that needed to be fixed, and I was set on fixing it. I knew that if I merely reported my findings, it was probable that the 36 students I had identified as significantly below the U.S. norm would be put into a pull-out group for intervention. These groups often receive watered-down reading instruction and are less engaged with text (Allington, 2002; Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 2004).

I decided to give my findings to the principal with an intervention of my own ready to be put in place. This is when the Poetry Academy was born. Through my work as a graduate assistant for Nancy Padak and Timothy Rasinski, professors of literacy education at Kent State University, I had read and heard about their research on a program called Fast Start (Padak & Rasinski, 2005). In this program, preschool and primary students read poetry with their parents using a strategy called repeated readings. In this strategy, a piece of text is read and reread to help build fluency, confidence, and comprehension in students (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Samuels, 1979). I hypothesized that a similar program would work well with the third graders at Colina Elementary School (CES; pseudonym). The Poetry Academy name came to me as I was reading the fifth book in the Harry Potter series. Hogwarts Academy, the school featured in the Harry Potter books, sounds dignified, and I wanted the students who were placed in the Poetry Academy to feel proud of what they were doing. Any student can just read poetry with a volunteer—only apprentices got to be in the Poetry Academy.

In this article, the Poetry Academy is described along with the mixed methods research study that was carried out to validate its use as a literacy intervention.

Specifics of the Program

Several factors were influential in the creation of the Poetry Academy. CES already had reading interventions such as tutors and Title I reading in place. Both of these interventions involved pulling the students out of the classroom, so I decided that any new interventions had to be quick and involve minimal pullout from class.

Other researchers such as Moyer (1982) worried that repeated readings may seem like a punishment or boring for older readers. This is why the use of poetry was ideal for its comparatively short text, fun subject matter, and easy match with the strategy of repeated readings (Homan, Klesius, & Hite, 1993; Moyer, 1982; Rasinski, 2000). Mastery of a short poem would cause students to feel confident and successful early in the program, similar to the success that other researchers found in the use of short texts in conjunction with fluency development (Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant, 1994).

The next factor examined was staffing. Like many schools across the nation, CES faces budget constraints. The tutors, Title I teacher, and I, the literacy coach, already had overextended schedules and were unable to find time for any extra help around the school. When I voiced this staffing concern to the principal, he suggested speaking with the community literacy program coordinator. The community literacy program coordinator was happy to give the names of five community members who had time to give. She also volunteered herself for the program, excited to participate in something new.

Components of repeated reading, listening-while-reading, assisted reading, and modeling were all equally important factors in the Poetry Academy process. These components were combined to combat the boredom often associated with repeated reading as a single intervention (Moyer, 1982), to take advantage of the ease of implementation and success of listening-while-reading (Lionetti & Cole, 2004), to take advantage of the one-on-one nature of assisted reading (Hoskisson & Krohm, 1974; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003), and to provide modeling of good reading (Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002).

Community volunteers attended a two-hour training during which I went over the basics of repeated reading, listening-while-reading, modeling, and assisted reading. I then talked about the program: Each volunteer would be assigned six students identified as disfluent by the CBM and would meet with each student once a week for 5–10 minutes. During this session, the volunteer would introduce to the student a new poem—chosen by me, based on my knowledge of the student's current reading level. The volunteer would begin by reading the poem aloud to the student (modeling) and would then invite the student to read the poem with him or her simultaneously (listening-while-reading, assisted reading). Next, the volunteer would invite the student to read the poem aloud independently (repeated reading) and would provide assistance and praise. At the end of the session, the volunteer and student would discuss what the poem meant to the student, dissect any unknown words, and sometimes just chat about events in the student's life.
The student would take the poem home and read it aloud to as many people as possible, gathering signatures from listeners to verify the reading. The following week's session would start with the student reading the poem one more time to the volunteer to demonstrate mastery of the poem. The volunteer would then introduce another poem, and the cycle would repeat. Figure 1 demonstrates the Poetry Academy cycle.

Figure 1. The Poetry Academy Cycle

A few incentives were in place in the Poetry Academy program. I had issued students a folder in which to keep their accumulating poetry and to protect the poems from the ravages of their backpacks. Students often needed reminders to take these home and bring them back for their Poetry Academy sessions, so the volunteers began giving stickers and small pieces of candy to the students who remembered. The other incentive offered to the students was the promise of a Poetry Café to take place at the end of the school year, provided that they participated in the Poetry Academy to the best of their capabilities. The students' parents were invited to take part in a poetry celebration where students selected their favorite poem from the year and performed it in front of the group. We enjoyed pizza, cake, and poetry as each student proudly read his or her poem at an outside pavilion at CES. At the end of the celebration, the apprentices received a certificate commemorating their apprenticeship signed by their volunteer and me.

As stated earlier, I turned to poetry for this intervention because its brief format was ideal for the short sessions with the volunteers. Perfect (2005) pointed out how poetry's format “is especially suited to struggling or reluctant readers, and enhances reading motivation” (p. 17).
When selecting poetry, I turned to the crude, rude, and funny. I wanted students to enjoy their time with their volunteer. I noticed that in my own time in the classroom, humorous text drew students in and held their attention. A plethora of humorous poetry abounds, and I made good use of poems such as “Examination” by Shel Silverstein, from his collection Where the Sidewalk Ends; “My Sister Think She's Santa Claus” by Kenn Nesbitt, from his collection Santa Got Stuck in the Chimney; “A Bad Case of the Sneezes” by Bruce Lansky, from his collection If Pigs Could Fly; and “The Dog Ate My Homework” by Sara Holbrook, from her collection of the same name. I did not perform any type of grade-level identifier when choosing poetry; instead, I considered vocabulary, length, and topic. Each week, I placed copies of two poems in the volunteers' folders. One poem was slightly more difficult than the other to accommodate all of our learners.

Research Takes Shape

Five weeks into the Poetry Academy program, the principal asked me to retest all of the students in the third grade on a different passage on the CBM. The growth that the apprentices in the Poetry Academy were making in comparison with the other students in the third grade was enough to make me and the third-grade teachers take notice. It was then that the research on the Poetry Academy began to take place. The six community volunteers had already been keeping informal data on a volunteer log for me to review, and I was keeping weekly notes on comments made to me by parents, school personnel, and students about the nature of the program. This informal information twisted itself into a sequential-explanatory mixed methods study.

For the purpose of evaluating the Poetry Academy, the participant-oriented approach to program evaluation made the most sense. In this approach, the stakeholders are central in determining the values, criteria, needs, and data for evaluation. Stakeholders are defined as the individuals or groups who have a direct interest in and may be affected by the program being evaluated (Worthen, Sanders, & Fitzpatrick, 1997). The vested stakeholders in the Poetry Academy were the students, their teachers, their parents, the community volunteers, and me. When it became apparent in January 2005 that we were on to something with the 36 students who were involved in the Poetry Academy, I met with these stakeholders to determine the values, criteria, needs, and data to use to evaluate the program. What we decided is as follows:

• Values—The goal of the Poetry Academy is to not only increase fluency, as measured on a CBM by WCPM, word recognition, and a retelling score, but to affect students' attitudes and motivations through reading, as measured on the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS; McKenna & Kear, 1990) both before and after the intervention.
• Criteria—Changes in fluency would be measured in comparison with the students not receiving the Poetry Academy intervention (the control group). Fluency scores would also be compared with U.S. fluency norms.
• Needs—More than just statistical numbers must be used to evaluate this program. The voices of students, parents, and teachers must be heard to judge whether this program is a success.
• Data—Data would be collected numerically (fluency scores, attitude scale scores, changes on achievement tests) and narratively (interviews, volunteer logs, focus groups, e-mail).
By bringing stakeholders into the evaluation process, I was able to create a study with results that would be tangible not just to me as a researcher but to the individuals who experienced and helped run the Poetry Academy. This was important to me and to the school and community that I served.

Participants

The participants in the Poetry Academy were 86 third graders divided into four classrooms at CES, located in a small, rural town in the Midwest. Table 1 describes the student participants in the Poetry Academy. The WCPM on a September CBM for each student was used to separate students into the treatment and control groups: Students who scored below 65 WCPM (or 20% below the U.S. national average of 76 WCPM) were purposively selected for the treatment group.

Table 1. Student Participants in the Poetry Academy ( view table)
To gather narrative data about the Poetry Academy, interviews, focus groups, and written communication took place with the various stakeholders. Table 2 details these other participants.

Table 2. Narrative Data Collection Participants ( view table)
Data Collection

To study the effects of the Poetry Academy, a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest experimental design was used. This design was chosen for several reasons. The first fluency test conducted in September identified two separate groups: 36 disfluent readers and 50 fluent readers. The Poetry Academy intervention was designed for the disfluent readers, and the 50 additional third graders served as the control group. The intervention was used only with the disfluent readers, because “for students identified as remedial readers, assisted reading was effective in promoting fluency and comprehension development. However, these gains did not generalize to students who were already fluent readers” (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003, p. 13).

The Poetry Academy was scheduled during independent work in language arts instruction in the classroom. During this time, the Poetry Academy students were not exposed to more instruction, a time factor that could have confounded results. Instead, both the treatment and the control groups received equal amounts of language arts instruction. To control for the effects of the Poetry Academy, the treatment group was not pulled out for any additional intervention during the 11 weeks the program took place, including Title I tutoring.
As mentioned earlier, the quantitative data for this study was collected through the use of a CBM using passages at a third-grade level from a commercially prepared informal reading inventory (Burns & Roe, 1992) and the ERAS (McKenna & Kear, 1990). The types of quantitative data collected were as follows:
• Curriculum-Based Measurement
o WCPM
o Percentage of word recognition
o Comprehension (via retell)
• Elementary Reading Attitude Survey
o Attitude toward academic reading
o Attitude toward recreational reading
Pretest data was collected before the introduction of the Poetry Academy. Posttest data was collected when the Poetry Academy was over.
Qualitative data collection and analysis took place at the end of the Poetry Academy program. As shown in Table 2, group, paired, and individual interviews and written communication formed the basis of narrative data used to evaluate the Poetry Academy. The final qualitative data collection came through my role as a participant observer of the entire Poetry Academy process from inception to implementation to evaluation. Johnson, Avenarius, and Weatherford (2006) described participant observers as a window and a hand in the research process. Not only do participant observers describe what is going on, but they are also able to participate and affect change. I had many chance encounters with the volunteers, students, teachers, administration, and others during the year that the Poetry Academy was implemented. I documented these encounters in research memos and believe they provided great insight on the program (Maxwell, 2005). These served as a guide to all other qualitative data collected to help evaluate the Poetry Academy.

Results and Discussion

Curriculum-Based Measurement
Students in the Poetry Academy made gains greater than those in the control group on the CBM administered before and after the implementation of the program. Statistically significant gains of the treatment group were made in the area of WCPM and word recognition. Tables 3 and 4 show the differences between the treatment and control groups in these areas from semester one and semester two, when the α level is set at 0.05.
Table 3. Comparison of Words Correct per Minute ( view table)
Table 4. Comparison of Word Recognition Gains by Group ( view table)
Using the strategies of repeated reading, listening-while-reading, and assisted reading, students in the treatment group were able to make gains of an average of 45.06 words per minute. When looking at the oral reading fluency norms set by Hasbrouck and Tindal (1992), students at the 50th percentile made an average gain of 36 words per minute, similar to the average gain of 37.32 words made by the control group in this study. Repeated reading has been shown to increase WCPM through the use of short, simple texts (Homan et al., 1993; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Samuels, 1979; Therrien, 2004). Poetry has also been used to boost WCPM with positive results (Rasinski & Padak, 2001).

As seen in Table 4, the difference in change in word recognition accuracy is considered significant when compared with the control group at an α level of 0.05. Students were labeled as “independent” in word recognition if they read 99%–100% of the words correctly, “instructional” if they read 95%–98% of the words correctly, and in “frustration” if they read 94% or less of the words correctly.

Word recognition was one of the calls for research made by Kuhn and Stahl (2003). In their call, they asked for a closer study of changes in word recognition using a true experimental or quasi-experimental design (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). The feedback given to the Poetry Academy students may have assisted in their word recognition gains.

The final CBM was a rating on a retelling using a rubric that appraised comprehension. As seen in Table 5 students in the treatment group did make gains in their comprehension when compared with the control group, and these gains were marginally statistically significant. An example of this change is shown through the “excellent” ratings given both prior to and after program implementation. In semester one, during the pretest CBM, 3 students in the treatment group were labeled with an “excellent” rating on their retelling compared with 13 students from the control group with an “excellent” rating on their retelling. In semester two, when the CBM was readministered, 26 students from the treatment group scored an “excellent” rating, making them equal to their control group counterparts, who also had 26 students with an “excellent” rating.

Table 5. Comparison of Story Retelling Gains by Group ( view table)
The findings of the present study mirror those of Homan et al. (1993), where both the control and treatment groups made gains in terms of comprehension as scored on a retelling when repeated reading was used as an intervention with the treatment group. Similarly, the present study fits into the meta-analysis conducted by Therrien (2004), where the method of repeated reading in conjunction with tutoring by an adult and corrective feedback can have an effect on comprehension.

The innovation in method that helped to create these changes in WCPM, word recognition, and retelling was the use of volunteers as literacy intervention. Community volunteers devoted only 5–10 minutes a week per struggling reader and were able to create progress in each of the areas in each student. Future studies using support staff in a similar role are to needed to expand and replicate this innovation in method.

Elementary Reading Attitude Survey

The ERAS can be broken down into two components: academic and recreational reading. A statistic that was seen as significant was the change in attitude toward academic reading between the semester one and semester two administrations of the ERAS for the Poetry Academy students when compared with the control group.
Quantitatively measured changes in attitude toward reading have been proven in other studies (Alexander & Engin, 1986; Kush & Watkins, 1996; Lazarus & Callahan, 2000; McKenna & Kear, 1990; Roettger, Szymczuk, & Millard, 1979). Using either the ERAS or another calibrated instrument, these studies looked into the differences in attitudes over time. Lazarus and Callahan (2000) used the ERAS in a way that is similar to the present study; it was used to determine group differences, whereas the others tracked changes in student attitude toward reading over time. The present study adds to the literature using the ERAS by tracking change with the use of an intervention against a control group.
Significant change in attitude toward academic reading is important because, historically, struggling readers tend to feel more negatively toward reading in school (McKenna & Kear, 1990). It makes sense that when students are comfortable and feel success in a task, they are more likely to enjoy engaging in it. The Poetry Academy helped readers create that comfort and success toward academic reading.

Qualitative Results

Change in the Poetry Academy students was not only observed through the CBMs and ERAS, but through observations made by the students, their teachers and other faculty members, their parents, and the volunteers.

In the postintervention interview, students mentioned the ways in which the Poetry Academy program changed them. They talked about it helping them in various ways:
• “It helped with my reading.”
• “It helped me not be embarrassed to read in front of everybody.”
• “It helped me understand more words.”
• “It helped with the stuttering.”
• “It helps with fluency.”
• “It helps you read better.”
• “It helps you figure out words.”
The teachers mentioned the ways in which the Poetry Academy program changed the students as well. The teachers talked about the transformations they saw in attitude and skills:
• A shy student was described as a “little actor.”
• There was a “light” that students had when returning to the class after meeting with their volunteer.
Parents of students participating in the Poetry Academy and other faculty also observed changes in the students. Their observations usually related to specific students:
• Zach's mom mentioned that poetry helped Zach like reading.
• Haley's mom talked about how the short format of the poems helped her feel confidence quickly when reading.
The volunteers observed the following changes in attitude and skills in their tutees:
• Increased WCPM
• Reluctance to return to class
• Improvement in confidence
• Improvement in word-attack skills
• Increase in accuracy
• Improvement in comprehension

Advantages of the Program

A volunteer-based program can effect change only if it is supported by those involved (McDaniel, 2002). By including the voices of those concerned, we are ensuring continued support by making changes based on suggestions they give. Advantages of the program as seen and ranked through qualitative data analysis are as follows:
1. Increase in student skills in terms of fluency (WCPM, word recognition, and comprehension)
2. Improvement in attitude toward reading
3. Increased family involvement
4. Poetry as motivation
5. One-on-one attention
Disadvantages, or ideas for improvement, as seen and ranked through qualitative data analysis are as follows:
1. Space for volunteers to work
2. Program expansion
3. Increase in parent communication
4. More intensive training for volunteers
5. Carefully chosen poetry topics
The stakeholders had great ideas for improving the program. Incorporating their voices in the evaluation of the Poetry Academy ensures that future use of the program will run more smoothly and benefit all involved even more.
The advantages suggested by the various stakeholders form the core of the program. The goal was to improve student skills and attitudes, and this was accomplished through the use of poetry, one-on-one attention, and family involvement.

Implications

The Poetry Academy used poetry for literacy intervention with positive results. Teachers, students, volunteers, and parents mentioned the short format of poetry, combined with its usually humorous text, in conjunction with the improvements of the apprentices in their reading skills and attitudes toward reading. The use of poetry in the classroom can help build student confidence and improve their reading skills and attitudes (Certo, 2004; Homan et al., 1993; Moyer, 1982; Perfect, 2005; Rasinski, 2000; Rasinski et al., 1994).

One-on-one attention is a valuable tool. The teachers and volunteers involved in the Poetry Academy referred again and again to the worth of this aspect of the program. I encourage teachers to find time to meet one-on-one with students and to encourage parents to read one-on-one with their children.

As teachers look to use community volunteers to participate in literacy intervention programs, there are certain elements of the present study that should be factored into decisions. First, it is beneficial to train volunteers in the tasks that they will be doing (Burns, Senesac, & Symington, 2004; Invernizzi, Juel, & Rosemary, 1996/1997; Invernizzi, Rosemary, Juel, & Richards, 1997; McDaniel, 2002; Meier & Invernizzi, 2001; Morris, Shaw, & Perney, 1990; Murad & Topping, 2000; Neuman, 1995; Powell-Smith, Shinn, Stoner, & Good, 2000; Wasik, 1998a, 1998b). Volunteers in this study were appreciative of the directions they were given, and it was suggested that even more training might be beneficial in the future. Volunteers also quickly adapted to the routine that was suggested during the training. Creating simple but fun routines to repeat made the process of literacy intervention a pleasure for the volunteers and their students.
When using community volunteers, it is recommended that a reading specialist be a contact for the volunteers and the teacher (Burns et al., 2004; Invernizzi et al., 1996/1997; Invernizzi et al., 1997; McDaniel, 2002; Meier & Invernizzi, 2001; Morris et al., 1990; Murad & Topping, 2000; Wasik, 1998a, 1998b). Even the former classroom teachers who served as volunteers in the present study would stop in to ask me questions about strategies to use with students.

As a reading specialist, I found it advantageous being a part of this program as well. The insights offered by the volunteers helped me assist the classroom teacher with modifying or accommodating classroom work for the students. Through the reading of the weekly logs and informal chats, I got to know the struggling readers at CES even more than I would have had I been there only in a traditional reading specialist role.

It is advisable to use community volunteers for more than just copying and creating bulletin boards (Rasinski & Fredericks, 1991; Sanacore, 1997). The volunteers in this study were grateful to be used in a constructive manner and worked hard when given a concrete goal.

Teachers implementing this program might wish to take advantage of the new depth the Poetry Academy gives to the lives of their struggling readers. Perhaps reviewing the volunteer logs weekly and informally chatting with the volunteers a couple of times a month will help bring teachers up on the progress of their students. An example from this study is the little girl who sometimes forgot (or purposefully left at home) her glasses. Her teacher did not realize that she was doing this until the volunteer pointed out the student's reluctance to wear her glasses because she did not like them. It is information like this that would be invaluable to the teacher, but that sometimes only another person can provide.
Finally, the principles of the Poetry Academy can fit into a classroom with ease. At its core, the Poetry Academy is dedicated to bringing humor and pleasure in reading to struggling readers. All students can benefit from fun texts and the intrinsic rewards that result from confident, fluent reading. The extrinsic rewards, like the stickers and the promise of a Poetry Café, can serve as motivators in the classroom to continue to propel students to read fluently.

Final Thoughts

The goal when creating this program was to not follow in the footsteps of traditional literacy intervention. Traditionally, literacy intervention is typified by watered-down instruction and segmenting of text that results in a lack of comprehension and interest (Allington, 2002). Instead, the Poetry Academy sought to enrich student lives with personal attention and engaging text while retaining a research-based premise.

Haley, a student identified by her teacher, volunteer, and parents for improvement in both skills and attitude, made a definitive statement about the Poetry Academy during her interview:

Mrs. W., it didn't seem like school. I knew the whole time I was reading and learning, but it felt like spending time with a friend. If all school was like this, I wouldn't be so bored. I would like to read more.

Haley read weekly with Mrs. O'Neil, who made this statement: “This has just proven to me what just five minutes of reading with your kid can do.”


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Preparing Teachers of the 21st Century: Creating Technological Literacy in a Teacher Education Program

By Sandra M. Stokes, Timothy U. Kaufman, Arthur Lacey


The word renewal can be used to describe the changes that are taking place in school systems in the United States, with the goal of improving delivery of instruction to all students. According to Keefe and Jenkins (2002), renewal should replace the word reform because the latter term “is usually preoccupied with accountability...[and is often] aimed at rewarding or punishing schools and educators” (p. 440). Renewal, on the other hand, has to do “with the people in and around schools improving their practice and developing the collaborative mechanisms necessary to better their schools” (Goodlad, 1999, p. 574).
The tasks associated with renewal, however, are often difficult for teachers. During their preservice education, most did not have the opportunity to experience such practices as teaching in teams, teaching in inclusive settings, using or being asked to create products amenable to authentic assessment, making use of technology as an integral part of instruction, or learning through an integrated curriculum (Pugach, 1992; Stokes, 1999; Wise, 1994). These practices are not often part of teacher education but they occur frequently in schools, where students are assigned to multiage classrooms, block scheduling is common, students with special needs are placed in general education classrooms, and teachers are expected to be experts in all forms of assessment and in teaching with and helping their students learn to use technology.


There has been a great deal of criticism of teacher education. Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde (1998) argue that most teachers have not been taught “best practices,” as they define the term. Severe critics (e.g., Black, 1999) have argued that teacher education programs consist of “fluff” courses taught by faculty who are disconnected from the daily reality of classrooms. In fact, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, “Only 500 of the nation’s 1,200 education schools meet common professional standards” (Black, p. 52, quoting from National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996, online document).


While we concur that there is a need for widespread renewal in teacher education in the United States, a number of programs are addressing these challenges. The importance of renewal efforts cannot be overemphasized: As Pugach (1992) states, it is teacher education programs that must provide teachers with what they need to know in order to create the changes that are necessary.

As Stainback and Stainback (1987) point out, what teacher candidates learn during their teacher preparation program -- both in the content covered and in the way programs are organized -- will appear to them to be appropriate and so will influence their thoughts and actions about appropriateness when they are in classroom positions themselves. Teacher education faculty often talk about the best practices that should be implemented in preK-12 settings, but do not consistently use those best practices in teacher education classes, most probably because the faculty themselves may not have experienced best practices. Thus, pre-service teachers’ knowledge of best practices very rarely carries over to new teachers’ classrooms.

Technology in Teacher Education

One area of weakness often noted in teacher education programs is the lack of integration of technology. Technological literacy, as well as the ability to teach technological literacy, are increasingly important but recent expectations placed on all teachers; however, all too many preservice teachers do not learn technological literacy in their teacher education programs (Dugger, 2001, online document). Dugger defines technological literacy as “the ability of a person to use, manage, assess, and understand technology” (p. 514). An important point to remember, however, is that it “is the complex interaction of people and machines that is the essence of instructional technology” (Tiene & Luft, 2002, p. 37).

Another pressing issue is the fact that many public and private schools do not provide support for teachers’ use of technology in the classroom (Richards & Morse, 2002, online document; Wilcox & Wojnar, 2000, online document). All too often, opportunities for meaningful professional development in the use of technology are lacking. Preservice teachers go into field settings where they see little or no use of technology (Mathison & Gallego, 2002, online document). These factors underscore the importance of schools and universities working together to educate new teachers adequately and to provide continuing and effective professional development for practicing teachers in the important area of technology integration and use (Maring, Boxie, & Wiseman, 2000, online document)


In response to the growing need for technology to be integrated into teacher education programs, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) released a revised set of technology standards for all teachers:

Teachers demonstrate a sound understanding of technology operations and concepts.
Teachers plan and design effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology.
Teachers implement curriculum plans that include methods and strategies for applying technology to maximize student learning.
Teachers apply technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies.
Teachers use technology to enhance their productivity and professional practice.
Teachers understand the social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology in PK-12 schools and apply that understanding in practice.

As Leu (2000a, online document) states, “If we are fortunate enough to prepare teachers for literacy instruction, we need to include the Internet in their preparation” (p. 424). However, in a United States Department of Education report, Lewis et al. (1999, online document) note that more than 80 percent of classroom teachers at all levels in the United States do not believe that they know how to use technology in their classrooms. This is a concern because, as noted by Mallette, Karchmer, and Leu (2001), “Our professional as well as our personal worlds are being redefined by the new literacies of information and communication technologies” (p. 157).

To complicate this problem even further, only half of American states require computer education for licensure of teachers; of these, only three require technology training for license renewal. Further, only two states (North Carolina and Vermont) require students in preschool through grade 12 to demonstrate their ability with technologies within a portfolio (CEO Forum on Education and Technology, 1999, online PDF document). A report from the Task Force on Technology and Teacher Education of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (1997, online document) notes, “Not using technology much in their own research and teaching, teacher education faculty have insufficient understanding of the demands on classroom teachers to incorporate technology into their teaching” (p. 5). The question facing most classroom teachers today is “How can I integrate the Internet [and other technology] into classroom teaching?” (Leu, 2000b).

When teacher education programs do require preservice teachers to take a technology course, it is often a stand-alone offering with little direct application to the rest of the curriculum (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997). Merkley, Schmidt, and Allen (2001) state that a “required technology course in a teacher preparation program must be complemented by faculty who model effective use of technology for instructional and administrative tasks throughout the teacher preparation coursework” (p. 221). Indeed, research shows that staff development is most effective when teachers “have an immediate need and opportunity to apply their new skills” (Lacey, 2001, p. 6). Extensive, and continual, teacher training in technology use and curricular application is crucial (Cooley, Cradler, & Engel, 1997). Teachers themselves expressed their most important technology needs as “word processing, a Web browser, and presentation software” (Tiene & Luft, 2002, p. 38).

There is some preliminary research linking the use of technology in teaching to improved student achievement (Lacey, 2001; National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997). In addition, collaborative, inquiry-based learning -- which has been identified as a best practice (Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde, 1998) -- is a feature of instruction that uses the Internet (Karchmer, 2001, online document). While the focus of this article is on how technology has been integrated in the first professional course that preservice teachers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay take, a few other best practices found in this course are briefly described because they provide a foundation and context for understanding how technology has been integrated into it.

Aspects of Our Teacher Education Program

Too often, teacher education courses are designed to illustrate or confirm existing theories. This has the shortcoming that students accumulate facts that do not fit with their own internal models for the concepts covered in the curriculum (Oliver, 2000; Willis, 2000); it also runs counter to research on how best to prepare teachers to integrate technology in their future classrooms (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997).

The work that went into revising the beginning courses in the teacher education program at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has been the focus of several articles (Simmons & Stokes, 1998; Stokes, 1997). This article addresses the initial foundational courses taken by all newly admitted preservice teachers at the university, along with a course titled “Instructional Technologies.” In our program, technology is a feature of the preservice teachers’ first experiences in order to provide them with early opportunities to acquire technological literacy. All initial courses address ISTE standards. Further, throughout the Instructional Technologies course, undergraduate students focus on the use of technology and methods of incorporating it into all aspects of the curriculum. This process involves building a strong foundation of technological literacy that is unique to each learner (Fulton, 1998; Goldsworthy, 2000 [8]; International Society for Technology in Education, 2000). Components of technological literacy include

Word processing
Use of “drag and drop” functions
Use of spreadsheets for data management
Database structure and management
Acquiring and managing digital images
Digital video and audio capture and management
Local and network file management
Object linking and embedding
Desktop publishing
Use of presentation software (e.g., Microsoft’s PowerPoint)
Webpage and website creation and management
Integrated curriculum. The semester following their admittance to the teacher education program, preservice teachers take the “foundations block,” consisting of general introductory courses in education, educational psychology, evaluation and testing, and exceptional learners. Students also enroll concurrently in the Instructional Technologies course, which mirrors the progression of this block. Thus, the preservice teachers see a closely integrated curriculum in the first courses they take in the teacher education program. In too many such programs, it is commonplace to find “faculty teaching about integrated curriculum while still teaching separate, non-integrated courses” (Simmons & Stokes, 1998, p. 40).


Integrated curriculum has been identified as a best practice (Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde, 1998). Research has shown that “an integrated curriculum encourages the study of a subject in a holistic way,” so that it is “meaningful...and complete” (Stokes, 1997, p. 60). Further, brain research suggests that an integrated curriculum supports student understanding and learning (Kovalik, 1994; Sylwester, 1995).

Courses in the foundations block rest firmly on a constructivist approach, which views learning as practical and builds on concrete experiences. Joyce and Weil (1996) use an excellent metaphor to contrast constructivist and more traditional approaches: Traditional education throws material at students with the assumption they will receive and store it in a manner identical to that of the instructor or textbook, much as a Frisbee retains its form as it travels from the hand of the thrower to the hand of the receiver. Constructivists, on the other hand, focus on bringing forth students’ relevant mental models and attempt to integrate external information within personal frameworks (Willis, 2000). They also recommend grounding activities in everyday contexts, expressing multiple perspectives, and encouraging student collaboration (Willis, 2000).

In designing the first block and its integration with Instructional Technologies, course instructors sought to replicate one of the cornerstones of the constructivist classroom: the idea that learning should always start from the student’s point of view, “from where the student is” (Nickerson, 1995, p. 9). We deliberately sought to create an atmosphere in which authentic and relevant tasks were situated in contexts designed to motivate and interest the preservice teachers, as well as to encourage them to revise their mental models of an issue or concept. We also tried to create an environment for the preservice teachers to become what technologically literate, as Dugger (2001) describes it.

Team teaching. Two or three instructors coteach the foundations block: one or two teacher education faculty members plus a “teacher in residence,” a master teacher who serves on the university faculty for two years and then returns to his or her district. The composition of this teaching team permits, for example, theoretical perspectives on professionalism to be introduced by the university faculty members; the teacher in residence then defines what it is that professionals do. The instructor for the Instructional Technologies course is an adjunct member of the team and is included in team planning sessions, which facilitates the interweaving of technology into the foundations courses.


Thus, the preservice teachers see teacher education faculty practicing team teaching, which is being used extensively in classroom settings across the United States. However, as Winn and Messenheimer-Young (1995) found,

University faculty in teacher education programs seldom model this practice at the university level. There are some examples of university team teaching...but in most cases team teaching has taken the form of taking turns with faculty members teaching. The situation is thus quite ironic; in trying to prepare pre-service teachers to function well in teams in preK-12 settings, university faculty are having to ask themselves what it takes for successful team teaching to occur (p. 31).

The situation is worsened by the fact that many university faculty lack school-based experience in team teaching.

Portfolio assessment. Preservice teachers in our program create a professional portfolio arranged around the ten Wisconsin Standards for Teacher Development and Licensure. The faculty has recently agreed to implement electronic formats for these portfolios. Thus, our preservice teachers get a head start on the professional development that the state of Wisconsin is beginning to require of all initially licensed teachers.


Portfolio assessment, in which students assume responsibility for maintaining and explaining their work to their parents, has become commonplace in school districts across the United States (Stokes, 1996). Portfolio assessment at the school level has also been widely researched (see, e.g., Routman, 1991; Tierney, Carter, & Desai, 1991). However, it is only in the recent past that research on the use of portfolio assessment with preservice teachers has become common, mostly in language arts and reading methods classes (Ohlhausen & Ford, 1990, online abstract; Stahle & Mitchell, 1993). Very few universities make concerted efforts to include portfolio assessment as an integral part of their teacher education programs (Stokes, 1994, 1996); even fewer require or encourage preservice teachers to create electronic portfolios.

Inquiry groups. Inquiry groups are being used successfully in today’s schools (Gray, 2001; Reimer, Stephens, & Smith, 1993; Short & Burke, 1991). Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde (1998) explain that in inquiry groups, class members

Identify areas for further study or investigation
Share prior knowledge and set goals
Divide into small groups to conduct investigations, with the teacher acting as a facilitator
Gather to share their findings
Inquiry groups in our foundations block grow out of exploration of controversial issues affecting education today. We try to identify issues that will have a direct impact on the preservice teachers’ work in their own classrooms. The students are given a list of issues and are asked to choose one that interests them; they are given several opportunities to refine their topics before they form final inquiry groups. Issues that have been explored include

Ability-level tracking
Alternative assessment
Bilingual education
Brain research
Diversity
Inclusion
IQ testing
Moral education
Multiple intelligences
Parental involvement
Rewards and learning
Single-sex classes
Standards and accountability
Technology
Whole language

One source for the preservice teachers to use when conducting their investigations is the Internet. Initially, we help them raise their comfort levels with this technology by providing website addresses that explore dimensions on which their issues might be analyzed. We also provide the preservice teachers with journal articles or books that offer the pro and con of their line of inquiry. Students are asked to use these sources to investigate their topics, and then to participate in a formal debate in class. We divide each inquiry group into opposing sides of a given issue. For example, a question such as “Will a push for standards and accountability lead to a more motivated student?” might be the focus of a debate. These debates provide the foundation for deep understanding of the issues: The preservice teachers are encouraged to find evidence to support a position fully and to make a systematic examination of all the implications of various aspects of any position on a controversial issue. As a result, they sometimes modify their initial personal positions or abandon a position entirely.

Follow-up discussions take place electronically through the class website, which offers a secure collaboration tool to present and receive course materials and assignments and an online bulletin board feature. The preservice teachers develop or are given follow-up questions related to the issues debated in class and are invited to continue their discussion on the bulletin board. Inquiry groups are then formed around the issues after they have been refined; the preservice teachers are expected to gather additional data and develop a multimedia presentation of their question for evaluation. This culminating activity is held in the style of a conference, at the university union. Fliers are posted around campus advertising the event; faculty and administrators receive special invitations to attend.

Two examples of these presentations can be viewed at the website addresses below. It should be noted, however, that these examples have been modified to accommodate slower Internet connections; they do not include the multimedia used when the presentations were made.

www.uwgb.edu/education/VSRP_files/frame.htm
www.uwgb.edu/education/dotyweb/doty1_28_files/frame.htm
Newsletter. An example of a link between technology and the foundations course content is the newsletter assignment. Approximately halfway through the course, the preservice teachers are required to compose an electronic newsletter that summarizes what they have learned to that point: developmental theories, multiple intelligences, the history of education, the professionalization of teaching, technology, field experiences, and philosophies of education. A rubric for the content of the newsletter is given to the students. In their writing, they are asked to take the stance of teachers sending a newsletter home to parents.

Figure 1
Sample of Page 1 of a Preservice Teacher’s Newsletter

This assignment also allows us to determine how well the preservice teachers have learned to design and structure an electronic assignment. The instructor for the technology course has a rubric for evaluating the use of technology in composing the newsletters. Figure 2 contains the specifics of the technology portion of the newsletter assignment.

Figure 2
Newsletter Assignment

Your task is to create a newsletter that contains information according to Block 1 requirements of content.
You will receive one grade for content for the Block 1 course,
You will receive one grade for design and structure for the Instructional Technologies course.
Instructional Technologies Newsletter Specifications:

While composing the content for your newsletter, be sure to include the following specifications to give your future reader an attractive, well laid-out design.

Below are the main specifications, but remember that you are the designer of your newsletter and only you know the best way to design and carry out your plan. If you think more or fewer columns are needed, then do so. The same applies to all other elements of your newsletter to some degree.

5 pages minimum, 7 pages maximum
3 pages will have 2 columns
2 pages will have 3 columns
You will NOT use columns in Microsoft Word. Instead, use “frame linked” text boxes to form the look of columns.
Manual header and/or rooter on each page, whether you choose the word processing section or the drawing section
Manual page numbers
Clip art and digital images and self-created graphics (minimum of one per page)
Maximum of (4) four types of fonts
Your title of the newsletter can be up to font size 24
The title of each section that you discuss can be up to font size 18
All other text must be no larger than size 12
Horizontal and/or vertical bars (used to create borders connected and disconnected)
Provide a non-cluttered look, clean and flowing
Add color to elements of your newsletter where you feel necessary and to accent.
Other elements may be added by you. Be creative and have fun.
You must include a “scanned” image of yourself that clearly shows you (not you with a bunch of other people). You must embed your full name into the picture using Microsoft Photodraw.
This picture should be approximately 2 inches tall by 1.5 inches wide and must be on the first page of your newsletter. If for some reason you do not have a portrait of yourself, please let me know and we will make arrangements.
Again, you will NOT use columns in Microsoft Word. Instead, use “frame linked” text boxes to form the look of columns.
Remember that the overall goal of your newsletter is to provide a smooth flow of content that is well designed and attractive. Every non-text (like images, borders, etc) used should accent and go along with content.

Web resources. To support our focus on helping preservice teachers think about and develop skills in technology and its use in the classroom, we use a number of Web resources. For example, Evaluation of Information Sources contains pointers to help preservice teachers develop criteria for evaluating information resources, with a focus on the Internet. www.pacbell.com/wired/fil/ describes the Web tool “Filamentality,” which is useful in the development of Web-based learning activities.


Conclusion

Approximately two million teachers will be hired in the United States in the coming few years (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997). All too many of them will have been prepared for their careers in teacher education courses that emphasize studying from and using textbooks rather than using the Internet. And yet, according to Leu (2000a), in a very short time, “far more U.S. classrooms will have Internet computers than will have telephones, television sets, encyclopedias, or comprehensive classroom libraries” (p. 425). Will new teachers be able to use this technology in their classrooms? The answer to this question is that new teachers will have to be able to use this technology in their classrooms.

All too many teacher education programs today are not adequately preparing preservice teachers to be able to teach technological literacy. This is a particular concern because of the rapid evolution of technology. A computer purchased today may well be considered an older model within a few months or a year. It is only by integrating technology across courses in teacher education programs and having faculty work together to learn the newest technology that education students can become teachers who use technology in their classrooms.

The foundations block and the Instructional Technologies course for preservice teachers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay offer one example of a successful approach to the preparation of future teachers. With their focus on technology integration and the teaching of technological literacy, these courses build best practices in the constructivist classroom. Through them, preservice teachers are immersed in an integrated curriculum that encourages critical thinking and development of problem-solving skills. Technology is the key that unlocks the door.


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