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I remember being in the fifth grade (too many years ago to count) and my entire class had problems with sentences. We didn't know the difference in a noun and a pronoun much less what a verb was. Our teacher was shocked! She actually started us all back over like we were in kindergarten and taught us the basics. She went on to teach us all how to diagram sentences. I learned so much in that 1 year. My children never learned as much about English as I did years ago. Today, I don't think teachers would have the leeway to start back at the beginning to teach students what they have missed. There would not be enough time to do that and still teach everything that had to be covered for the end of year tests. I may be wrong, but I think putting so much emphasis on how one does on a test is setting society up for failure.
I am a fourth grade teacher, and trust me, we are supposed to teach grammar. I teach all parts of speech, and I reinforce it weekly when we read a new story. My kids know very well what a noun, verb, pronoun, adverb, preposition, and adjective are when they leave my class. UnforTunately, the primary teachers can't teach the academic vocabulary, they tell the primary students that a noun is a NAMING WORD. GEEEEEZE THAT'S A PROBLEM FROM THE BEGINNING.
I disagree that these are testing tricks. UNRAAVEL seems more like attentive reading techniques. In fact, the first part of UNRAAVEL reminds me strongly of the structural and interpretive readings from Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. With practice, interpretive reading leads ultimately to critical reading, a time-consuming and difficult process that most schools neglect to teach, assuming that once students learn to sound out words their job is done and the kids will naturally take it from there. Critical reading is essential for students who plan to attend college, so I'm happy to see educators giving higher-level reading some attention, even if it does come under the umbrella of test-taking skills.
My thanks to the OP for the information.
Thanks for your kind words. You are right in that many think that just because students can call out words they are reading, when in actuality if children can't retell what they have read, make inferences/generalizations, and evaluate what was read, then that is not true reading comprehension. Unfortunately, we have so many students who are still struggling with decoding unfamiliar words and who are lacking the fluency to comprehend passages. Teachers have to explicitly teach students how to read with the correct intonation, expression, and speed showing their students how flueny readers read a passage, and give their students ample amount of practice at school and at home in order to get their students to the point where their reading sounds conversational. If a person can't read at least 200 words per minute, which is the average adult's reading fluency level, then that person is at a severe disadvantage, and more than likely struggles with comprehension.
Thanks for your kind words. You are right in that many think that just because students can call out words they are reading, when in actuality if children can't retell what they have read, make inferences/generalizations, and evaluate what was read, then that is not true reading comprehension. Unfortunately, we have so many students who are still struggling with decoding unfamiliar words and who are lacking the fluency to comprehend passages. Teachers have to explicitly teach students how to read with the correct intonation, expression, and speed showing their students how flueny readers read a passage, and give their students ample amount of practice at school and at home in order to get their students to the point where their reading sounds conversational. If a person can't read at least 200 words per minute, which is the average adult's reading fluency level, then that person is at a severe disadvantage, and more than likely struggles with comprehension.
I may just put it up on my whiteboard for my community college students to refer to..... Thanks!
You make a very interesting point. But I would love for you to write all of the state Ed departments so that you can voice your opinion about this matter. By the way, when 80% of my students can't speak English fluently, I am spending my time front loading academic vocabulary to them for each lesson, and by the way the research says that I can't teach them more than 10 words a week across all academic areas, being a 4th grade multiple subject teacher, and the rest of the words that they don't learn are supposed to be hummmmmm? done by incidental learning. Man, aren't my hands tied?
I disagree strongly with the conventional wisdom of educational research. Try reading Joining the Literacy Club or The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith. He posits that children naturally learn upwards of 20-40 words a day, every day, whether they try to learn them or not. This is my experience for being with typical children who begin to talk constantly from about the age of 3 or 4.
The problem is what to do with children from language-poor environments. See the research by Hart and Risley to see the reality: children of professional parents have a larger vocabulary at age 6 than the parents of children in families on welfare. Then consider that neuroscience research shows that neural pathways that are not used by age 3 are pruned away. While neural branching continues throughout life, this early pruning stunts the network at an age when it is most able to blossom.
Young children learn best when they have a rich and varied experience. It is unfortunate that we have turned education over to the researchers and consultants when it is usually the teachers who know the children that are willing to do what it in their best interest. Rather than using the UNRAAVEL method as a test prep activity, use it to help the students learn about an upcoming field experience. Then have the students record their experiences, and review them later to use as the basis for writing lessons. You could still use the test prep materials, but instead of using them as the curriculum, you could use them as the basis for an experiential curriculum.
It seems that this would also be true for students who are learning English after being uprooted from another culture. Every child should visit the zoo, preferably at least once in every season over the course of several years. For children whose first language is not English, this type of experience provides a great deal of vocabulary, in a real-life, interesting context which provides the basis for future learning.
Children learn best in interesting, novel situations, that engage their attention. They need to go out into the world to experience what they learn about at school. If they are learning about fish, they need to really learn about fish--go to a fish market or aquarium. Children in rural areas need to visit cities, and city children need to visit farms. Use the UNRAAVEL methods on the mandated reading texts before and after the experiences. I believe the results will show that the achievement levels will increase significantly.
I disagree strongly with the conventional wisdom of educational research. Try reading Joining the Literacy Club or The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith. He posits that children naturally learn upwards of 20-40 words a day, every day, whether they try to learn them or not. This is my experience for being with typical children who begin to talk constantly from about the age of 3 or 4.
The problem is what to do with children from language-poor environments. See the research by Hart and Risley to see the reality: children of professional parents have a larger vocabulary at age 6 than the parents of children in families on welfare. Then consider that neuroscience research shows that neural pathways that are not used by age 3 are pruned away. While neural branching continues throughout life, this early pruning stunts the network at an age when it is most able to blossom.
Young children learn best when they have a rich and varied experience. It is unfortunate that we have turned education over to the researchers and consultants when it is usually the teachers who know the children that are willing to do what it in their best interest. Rather than using the UNRAAVEL method as a test prep activity, use it to help the students learn about an upcoming field experience. Then have the students record their experiences, and review them later to use as the basis for writing lessons. You could still use the test prep materials, but instead of using them as the curriculum, you could use them as the basis for an experiential curriculum.
It seems that this would also be true for students who are learning English after being uprooted from another culture. Every child should visit the zoo, preferably at least once in every season over the course of several years. For children whose first language is not English, this type of experience provides a great deal of vocabulary, in a real-life, interesting context which provides the basis for future learning.
Children learn best in interesting, novel situations, that engage their attention. They need to go out into the world to experience what they learn about at school. If they are learning about fish, they need to really learn about fish--go to a fish market or aquarium. Children in rural areas need to visit cities, and city children need to visit farms. Use the UNRAAVEL methods on the mandated reading texts before and after the experiences. I believe the results will show that the achievement levels will increase significantly.
I agree with you 100%. Part of the problem for our inner city ELL learners and poor kids that I teach is just that "Won't Do" and "Can't Do" mentality because their parents aren't that well educated themselves to help them learn in class. The attitude by the government, state, and local civil rights groups, is that teachers who work in those areas have to be miracle workers where they have to work extra extra hard and still not be respected when the results doesn't reflect their dedication and hard work.
All I keep hearing by all of these, so called experts or people who only have been in the classroom 3 years minimally before they became administrators, just provide high quality instruction, use these research proven strategies, and provide all of these intervention and poo pow! your students will all become proficient.
The reality of the matter is that these kids are exposed to too much negativity that no child should have ever had to experience. If I start sharing some stories by my students that I have taught over the years, some of you reading this mouths would become wide open.
There are many inner city kids living in households where drugs, abuse, and every thing under the sun is going on, and yet the last thing that child is thinking about once he or she enters the classroom is how do I explicate a Shakespearean sonnet.
I have said this many times to my colleagues, and even though I am not one who likes using the race card, but this time it really applies to our inner city poor black and ELL learners. If our government and states really gave a damn about our kids, then the class sizes in those areas would be a lot smaller and the teacher's salaries would be more attractive so that the school districts could hire the best and the brightest.
I just find it quite interesting that in many rich and upper middle class areas, especially in heavily populated states like CA, those schools in nicer areas typically have smaller class sizes for its students and teachers who have more experienced and training. Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm? However, inner city schools aren't doing the same and many teachers that come there are there to get their foot in the door then after that school district trains them, they simply leave.
It seems as if we want to see more inner city kids remain low performing because that at least keeps them out of the job market for the scarce high paying jobs. Also, if more inner city kids become educated, that means more of them would be able to financially afford to live in nicer areas where some people don't want them to move in any way. It's just a thought that makes you go hummmmmmmm? but another topic for another thread.
I agree with you 100%. Part of the problem for our inner city ELL learners and poor kids that I teach is just that "Won't Do" and "Can't Do" mentality because their parents aren't that well educated themselves to help them learn in class. The attitude by the government, state, and local civil rights groups, is that teachers who work in those areas have to be miracle workers where they have to work extra extra hard and still not be respected when the results doesn't reflect their dedication and hard work.
All I keep hearing by all of these, so called experts or people who only have been in the classroom 3 years minimally before they became administrators, just provide high quality instruction, use these research proven strategies, and provide all of these intervention and poo pow! your students will all become proficient.
The reality of the matter is that these kids are exposed to too much negativity that no child should have ever had to experience. If I start sharing some stories by my students that I have taught over the years, some of you reading this mouths would become wide open.
There are many inner city kids living in households where drugs, abuse, and every thing under the sun is going on, and yet the last thing that child is thinking about once he or she enters the classroom is how do I explicate a Shakespearean sonnet.
I have said this many times to my colleagues, and even though I am not one who likes using the race card, but this time it really applies to our inner city poor black and ELL learners. If our government and states really gave a damn about our kids, then the class sizes in those areas would be a lot smaller and the teacher's salaries would be more attractive so that the school districts could hire the best and the brightest.
I just find it quite interesting that in many rich and upper middle class areas, especially in heavily populated states like CA, those schools in nicer areas typically have smaller class sizes for its students and teachers who have more experienced and training. Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm? However, inner city schools aren't doing the same and many teachers that come there are there to get their foot in the door then after that school district trains them, they simply leave.
It seems as if we want to see more inner city kids remain low performing because that at least keeps them out of the job market for the scarce high paying jobs. Also, if more inner city kids become educated, that means more of them would be able to financially afford to live in nicer areas where some people don't want them to move in any way. It's just a thought that makes you go hummmmmmmm? but another topic for another thread.
Bold added by lhp.
I have never heard anyone else state this so directly. There are times when NCLB seems downright Orwellian in its intent.
This looks like a great strategy. I approach tests as a genre- that's not to say that I don't hate it. But I want my students (middle school) to clearly get that the way they approach a novel that they're reading for pleasure is going to be very different from the way they approach a test passage. I am in an inner city school with lots of English Language learners and struggling readers- anything I can find to help them become a better reader (and therefore a better test-taker) is great.
BTW, I came back to print out the initial post and forgot to share a strategy that I use to help my students respond to the constructed response questions on the NYS ELA exam. (Constructed response questions require the students to answer in a few sentences- shorter than an essay.)
R: Restate the question
A: Answer the question
F: "For example..."
T: Tie it up
I didn't create this myself; I stumbled across it and am not sure who developed it. But I find it really useful (or I should say my students find it useful) because:
- It gives the kids an organizing structure- something many of them struggle with.
- It gives them an easy way to start (starting was always a struggle for me, so I really appreciate being able to give the kids a tip here.)
- It reminds them to use an example- so often I think my kids fall into that trap of, "I don't need to use a detail because the person reading will know the answer already.)
- It helps them stay within the expected length- ironically, it's not that the kids don't write enough- it's that many of them write TOO much- they go way, way past the given lines, thinking it will make them look smart. This reminds those over-ambitious kids that less is more and that being able to get to the point quickly is an important writing skill.
Hope this is helpful to someone!
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