Literacy Essential Practice Guides

In Read, Write, Lead (ASCD, 2014), Regie Routman advocates for a school's articulation of shared beliefs in reading and writing. 

However, belief statements are broad, philosophical, and sometimes value-based. These statements alone will not improve student learning. We must take classroom-level actions based that align with our belief statements.

The The Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators recently formed an early literacy task force who drafted "Essential Instructional Practices" guides for prekindergarten and kindergarten to grade 3. (Nell Duke explains more in a blog post for the International Literacy Association.)

Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Prekindergarten

Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Grades K to 3

You might also be interested in What Works Clearinghouse's Educator's Practice Guide about reading foundational skills.

How do these practices align with your belief statements?
How do these practices align with your current practices?

Ideas from Wisconsin's DPI

# 1: Reading and the Law 

Who can teach reading? What does a district reading specialist do? What assessment of reading readiness can my school or district you? Your colleagues at Wisconsin DPI have the answers to these and other questions related to reading and the law.

# 2: WISELearn Resource

Ready-to-use classroom resources collected or created by Wisconsin educators for all content area in WISELearn Resources

# 3: Wisconsin Writes

# 4: Support for Initial SLD Eligibility Decisions

Guidance for implementing Wisconsin's criteria for making an initial specific learning disability (SLD) eligibility decision

# 5: ESSA in Wisconsin

Updates on Elementary and Secondary Education Act (most currently reauthorized as Every Student Succedds Act or ESSA) in Wisconsin

BONUS: Promoting Excellence for All
Online resources (including an eCourse) about closing racial achievement gaps from Wisconsin schools that are excelling at this work.

Implicit Bias & Implicit Racial Associations

My colleagues and I are engaging in some professional learning about racial equity in the workplace. Our learning is focused on:

• implicit bias
• color blindness
• microaggression

A 2016 article from Educational Researcher helped me think about the tremendous implications of implicit associations - including implicit bias and implicit racial associations - in education.

What is implicit bias?

Warikoo, Sinclair, Fei, and Jacoby-Senghor (2016) define implicit associations (or implicit biases) as ". . . the automatic cognitive associations people have between a given social group and certain feelings, concepts, and evaluations" (p. 508). Basically, implicit biases are preferences, attitudes, or beliefs that we don't even realize we have that can unconsciously impact our thoughts, words, and/or actions. In the case of implicit racial associations, the unconscious beliefs and resulting actions are related to race.

For example, an educator might explicitly state that a student's race does not impact that educator's attitude, belief, or evaluation of a student (or group of students) while still holding implicit bias toward particular racial groups. 

How do implicit racial associations impact education?

A 2007 study (cited by Warikoo, et al., p. 509) found that 68% of respondents had medium to large pro-White/anti-Black implicit associations. Warikoo and colleagues suggest that implicit racial associations:

• Are highly pervasive
• Are unlikely to correlate with explicitly stated beliefs
• Impact educator-learner interactions in ways that negatively impact "students' sense of belonging, academic performance, and relationships with peers" (p. 510)
• Impact interactions in particularly strong ways in situations where educators are making many high-stakes decisions very quickly
• Impact policy creation at the school, district, state, and national levels

Maybe implicit racial bias or implicit racial associations could even "help explain why racial disparities in schools persist even when genuine, well-motivated efforts are made to reduce them" (p. 509).

What can we do?

• Learn more and become aware of your implicit biases and implicit racial association. Resources are included at the end of this post.
• Share your learning with colleagues, encouraging them to learn more.
• Understand how implicit bias and implicit racial associations might be impacting your students, families, and community.
• Take action.

Additional Resources about Implicit Bias:

• Know Your Bias: Implicit Bias with Dr. Rachel Sumner

• "Beware your Biased Brain" from Mindful
• "Bias Isn't Just a Police Problem, It's a Preschool Problem" from NPREd
• Project Implicit: Implicit Bias Tests from Harvard 
• from NY Times: 25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias, and Identity with Students

Facilitation Idea: Quotes about Equity

Barb Novak contributed this post. Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

Click here to access the document above, 

which includes five quotes about literacy and equity.

Facilitating equity-focused professional learning is difficult. It's challenging to find the "right thing" to say. Equity-focused professional learning can be uncomfortable, and it's difficult to decide how far and how hard to push people's thinking. 

I've used this "activity" in a couple of recent sessions focused and equity and decided to share it for your adaptation.

1. BEFORE THE SESSION: Select a few quotes (fewer might be better - maybe four or five quotes) that are related to the goals for the session. Prepare the quotes on a handout (digital or paper).
2. Provide participants with time to read and annotate the quotes.
3. Assign each quote a "place" in the room.
4. Invite participants to move to the part of the room assigned to a quote they want to talk about.
5. Participants choose someone to talk to at their selected quote. Participants can move around the room, as desired.

This works, I think, for a few reasons:

• Participants have choice.
• Conversations are non-threatening because they happen in duos or triads.
• The activity involves some movement.

You might consider repeating the activity again at the end of the session (or the beginning of the next session) to focus on how thinking about the quotes changed as a result of new learning and/or application.

Reading the Reading Research: Figured Worlds of Special Education Teachers

Barb Novak contributed this post. 

Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

Click here for more Literacy Booth thoughts about research.

Note. I'm sharing this article simply to give access to how I process when I read from academic journals - how I organize my thinking before, during, and after reading. This post is not intended to be an endorsement of the research or its conclusions.

"Stimulating tensions in special education teachers' figured world: An approach toward inclusive education"

Kathleen A.K. Thorius in International Journal of Inclusive Education (2016)

I accessed the article (full-text free of charge) from Thorius's page on ResearchGate.

Why this article?

I worked with Thorius on a project about identifying high leverage literacy practices for students with disabilities. I respect her strengths-based approach to professional learning and emphasis on collaborative sense-making as part of a change process.

Research Questions:

Thorius introduced "artifacts" during professional learning sessions and reviewed transcripts from the sessions to understand:

•  how "the figured world of special educator participants emerge and shift over time" (p. 1329)
• how artifacts "contribute to the creation of tensions and related shifts in this figured world" (p. 1329)

Important Terms:

• Figured worlds: Holland's theory (1998) that "people figure their identities through participating in activities and social relationships with others" (p. 1328). People construct an understanding of who they are and behave according to these understandings.
• Artifacts: Objects with mediate identity formation.

Methods:

Thorius facilitated seven weekly teacher learning sessions (1.5 hours each). Participants were drawn from "two schools in a large Midwestern urban school district" (p. 1329). All participants were female. Two identified as general educators; four identified as special educators. All worked between kindergarten and grade six.

Each teacher learning session included:

1. a debrief of the previous session led by the research team, 
2. presentation of an artifact developed or selected based on progress in the previous session
3. engagement with the artifact
4. homework (application within the classroom)

Artifacts pushed thinking about inclusive education and universal design for learning (UDL).

Thorius and the research team recorded and transcribed the teacher learning sessions and analyzed the transcripts for evidence of figured worlds.

Main Points:

Special educators who participated in the learning sessions initially viewed themselves as "remediators" and "diagnosticians" (p. 1332). This led to a "desire to learn 'tricks' to fix students" (p. 1333) and a belief that a student's diagnosis "explained student patterns of competence and. . . suggested a prescription for remediation" (p. 1333).

Artifacts introduced in the learning sessions did produce tensions and identity shifts. Some tensions were related to relationships with general education colleagues. Specifically, tensions surfaced about how special educators "were physically and professional positioned by and in comparison to their general education coutnerparts (p. 1335). Participants also realized they needed to be "critical examiners of structural barriers" that may prevent them from applying their learning.

Limitations:

The sample size for the study was small (6 participants from two schools in the same district).

Discussion:

Thorius's article has implications for planning and facilitating professional learning:

• How can reflection be included in professional learning in order to consider how one's identity is shifting?
• How can sequential opportunities for learning be adjusted to meet the needs of the participants (rather than strictly following a set plan)?
• How can professional learning promote change within classrooms but also within a system? How can professional learning position educators as change agents for their system?

Full Citation:

Thorius, K.A.K. (2016). Stimulating tensions in special education teachers' figured world: An approach toward inclusive education. Interntional Journal of Inclusive Education 20(12), 1326 - 1343. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2016.1168877

Reading the Reading Research: Afflerbach on Assessment

Barb Novak contributed this post. 

Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

Click here for more Literacy Booth thoughts about research.

Note. I'm sharing this article simply to give access to how I process when I read from academic journals - how I organize my thinking before, during, and after reading. This post is not intended to be an endorsement of the research or its conclusions.

"Reading Assessment: Looking Ahead"

Peter Afflerbach in The Reading Teacher (2016)

Wisconsin educators can use Badgerlink to access full-text of Reading Teacher articles. .

Click here to access Afflerbach’s article.

Why this article?

I’m feeling now, more than ever, the need to think carefully about assessment in order to actively seek change where it is needed. From his book (Understanding and Using Reading Assessment) to that time he recorded a webinar just for Wisconsin, I trust Peter Afflerbach’s thinking about and work around assessment.

This is not research; “The Inside Track” is a column in each issue of The Reading Teacher. The author of the column is selected (issue-by-issue) by the journal’s editors.

Research Questions:

Not applicable - this is a column written by a literacy expert rather than research.

Methods:

Not applicable - this is a column written by a literacy expert rather than research.

Main Points:

Afflerbach uses the article to advocate for “developing comprehensive formative assessments, assessing the wide array of factors that contribute to students’ reading development, and fostering student independence by helping students learn to use reading assessment on their own” (p. 413).

• An assessment system (and each assessment within it) must be based on “a detailed model of the thing we are to assess” (p. 413). What is reading? How do we define it?
• Afflerbach believes all assessment should follow this credo: “Assessment should produce information that is useful in helping students become better readers, and assessment should do no harm” (p. 413 - 414).
• Widely used assessments measure what was considered by the National Reading Panel Report, which is not a match for what is required of a reader on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) or by the Common Core State Standards.
• Assessment should include “affective aspects of reading” (p. 416).
• Students should be the end users of data from reading assessments. Afflerbach states, “When we view reading assessment as an important teacher task, we may gather information that informs our instructional decision making. When we view reading assessment as something to teach, we can help students move toward the goal of independence through self-assessment. We want to use assessment that helps shift students from an outward orientation, where there is dependence on the teacher for assessment feedback, to one that looks inward” (p. 417).
• What impact could we have if we took all the money we spend on assessment and, instead, spend it on professional learning for educators about instruction and assessment?

Limitations:

• I wanted/needed more about “comprehensive formative assessments”. Common formative assessments, in my opinion, are interim assessments and are too formal to be considered formative. I was hoping comprehensive formative assessments could be an idea to replace common formative assessment.
• The article is theory; there is not a research component. It could inform questions for future reference.

Discussion:

• I’m interested in how Afflerbach’s ideas about engaging students in instruction and practice to become reflective readers could apply within universal instruction and intervention. What would it look like to make this a systemic and systematic practice? How could the results of implementing this practice be measured?
• Reliance on numeric data and the high-stakes nature of numeric data are obstacles to implementing Afflerbach’s ideas - especially his ideas about assessing the affective aspects of reading.

• This article would be useful foundational piece for reading and discussion by a school/district team reviewing its literacy assessment system.
• Excerpts from the article could be used to consider how a school/district engages students in reading assessment and teaches self-efficacy.

Full Citation:

Afflerbach, P. (2016). Reading assessment: Looking ahead. The Reading Teacher 69(4), 413 - 419.

Productive Partnerships: New Professional Learning

Barb Novak contributed today's post. Click here for more of Barb's thinking.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recognizes that improving literacy outcomes for all students depends upon collaboration between adults, who often bring different areas of expertise and varied beliefs about reading. While this could ensure that the team is able to select or design an intervention that matches a student’s exact needs, this variety in knowledge and understanding can also pose interpersonal challenges that impact the team’s ability to serve students.

Productive Partnerships Learning Module

Productive Partnerships: Collaboration Strategies to Improve Outcomes is a collection of online resources to build and maintain a healthy team focusing on improving literacy outcomes for all students. The materials include preventative and maintenance tools about trust, individual strengths in collaboration, and norms; an overview of a variety of theories about literacy; and a process a team can use for writing beliefs about literacy.

The materials also include strategies to apply when team members are experiencing interpersonal conflict. Individuals can apply these strategies to examine and change their behavior or to prepare for talking with a colleague about a difficult topic. Strategies include assuming positive intent, listening, diagramming interpersonal conflict, and scripting hard conversations.

The resources include a ready-to-use slide deck with speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, handouts, and video explanations. Users are encouraged to modify the materials to best meet the needs of the team(s) they serve.

The materials - developed by experts representing literacy, Title I, and special education - can be accessed at http://dpi.wi.gov/reading/professional-learning/productive-partnerships.

Elena Aguilar: More Coaching Inspiration

Barb contributed this post. Click here to read more of Barb's thinking.

I was fortunate enough to spend two days learning with Elena Aguilar (author of The Art of Coaching and The Art of Coaching Teams and contributor to Edutopia and EdWeek).

Elena's simple description of the coaching conversation resonated with me. She suggested a coaching conversation consists of:

1. Listening
2. Thinking
3. Responding

When a coach engages in and moves between each of those behaviors, he/she applies lenses or tools or ways of thinking. In a challenging situation, a coach could push him/herself to try a new lens (or tool or way of thinking) in order to move the client forward.

Elena suggests the following thinking tools:

• Mind the Gap - a tool for helping the client identify a will, skill, knowledge, capacity, or emotional intelligence gap 
• Spheres of Control - a tool for helping the client identify what is within his/her control
• Asset-Based Coaching

Mindset on My Mind: Chapter 7 Disco

Barb Novak contributed this post. She is reading Mindset by Carol Dweck and sharing her thinking about every chapter. Click here to read more of Barb's posts about mindset.

Click here to read Barb's notes from Chapter 7 as a PDF.

In Chapter 7, Dweck applied mindset to parents, teachers, and coaches - people who have great power to use their words and actions to develop growth mindset in children.

Basically, everything adults say in response to children carries a message. Our adult words tell young people how to understand the world around them. Our response to success, failure, and behavior can build a growth mindset or reinforce a fixed mindset.

Our adult words and actions can also tell other adults how to understand actions. I heard Joel Westheimer say, "Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions". In chapter 7, Dweck proposed that schools must be about teacher learning if they are ever to truly be about student learning.

It's not enough to develop a growth mindset in our students. We must also develop a growth mindset about ourselves and our profession.

Mindset on My Mind: Chapter 6 Disco

Barb Novak contributed this post. She is reading Mindset by Carol Dweck and sharing her thinking about every chapter. Click here to read more of Barb's posts about mindset.

Chapter 4, applying mindset to sports, got me thinking about the differing ways mindset applies to my own life. As I already confessed, I have a very, very fixed mindset about sports and fitness. This chapter made me ask myself hard questions about whether I also have a fixed mindset about relationships and whether events in my life have led to that mindset. That, though, is a discussion better had over drinks or, perhaps, with a therapist.

The part of this chapter most applicable to education discussed the connection between mindset and bullying. 

Dweck suggested a bully most likely has a fixed mindset. The bully's actions are a way for the bully to exert power. He/she judges people to continue feeling good about him/herself. A "victim" of bullying who responds with a fixed mindset sees him/herself as a victim and may accept what the bully is saying as truth. In contrast, a "victim" with a growth mindset may want to help the bully change and works at forgiving the bully. Dweck suggests fostering growth mindset within the culture of a school will reduce bullying and develop how individuals respond to bullies.

What do you want to know about?

What do you want to know more about?
What should we write about on The Literacy Booth?

Use the comments to give us some suggestions.

Productive Disequilibrium

Beside my teammates, I participated Beyond Diversity I sponsored by The Network. Beyond Diversity I is a two-day immersive experience in which participants experiment with tools for having "courageous conversations" about the impact of race on student learning.

Applying the learning from Beyond Diversity I is part of my larger goal of developing an understanding of and applying culturally sustaining practice. This journey has pushed my thinking in ways I never anticipated. I continue to look carefully at myself and my actions and words. I hear new things in what my colleagues are saying that, frankly, terrify me. I question whether "the system" - both schools and the larger society they fit within - will address equity issues quickly enough. 

Basically, I quickly spiral from feeling energized about this work and feeling a great sense of urgency to feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Beyond Diversity I gave me words to talk about this spiraling - I'm working through an adaptive change process and moving in and out of my zone of productive disequilibrium.

Image taken from Kansas Leadership Center Field Guide

We improve through both technical and adaptive change. Technical change asks us to change our practice - what we do. Adaptive change ask us to think about our fundamental beliefs and values as individuals, groups, and organizations. 

While engaged in each type of change, individuals experience some level of disequilibrium, and this disequilibrium is productive as long as it remains within a certain zone - the zone of productive disequilibrium. Below this zone, individuals might not feel a sense of urgency about change or be motivated to participate in change. Above this zone, individuals might feel too stressed or at risk to participate fully in change.

An extended time within the productive zone of disequilibrium is an expected part of adaptive change. It explains my fluctuating stress and emotional levels in my journey to be culturally responsive.

I'm noticing that I'm not at my best when I'm at the top of my zone of productive disequilibrium. It becomes increasingly difficult for me to really think before I speak or act. I'm likely to speak or act from a place of emotion rather than logic. I feel powerless. I'm critical of myself and my colleagues. To keep engaging in this work, I need to better monitor myself. I need to watch myself and my emotions to understand when I'm close to my disequilibrium limits.

However, this also has implications for me as a facilitator and a coach. Each person's productive zone of disequilibrium is different. I need to be mindful of others' equilibrium and anticipate and react to it in order to fully engage my colleagues.

Simple or Complex? Art and School Improvement

Barb Novak contributed this thinking. Click here to read more of Barb's thinking.

I recently saw an exhibit of Frank Stella's art at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

I'm still thinking about the transition that I saw in Stella's work. His earlier work - featured at the beginning of the exhibit - (such as Star of Persia II, 1967) was geometric and clean. His later work - featured at the end of the exhibit (such as Extracts from Moby Dick Deckle Edges (1993) - had evidence of his earlier geometric style but incorporated many abstract elements, utilized more complex printing technologies, and reflected literary and/or world events. 

Frank Stella, Star of Persia II, 1967

Frank Stella, Extracts from Moby Dick Deckle Edges, 1993

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Stella's later works. Something about the complexity in technique and combination of elements on top of a highly geometric and predictable background resonated with me. It took longer to notice the beauty and thought in these works, but the time spent studying helped me see dimension and intentionality. However, the same works of art and the process to appreciate them were probably not pleasurable for everyone at the exhibit.

The transition in Stella's style and how I reacted to it got me thinking about the ways in which we represent and approach the complexity of education.

Educators and schools are, increasingly, being pushed to think about education in highly systematized ways. If we implement an evidence-based practice, kit, or script with a high-degree of fidelity throughout our system, we will see improved learning for students. I see this predictability and systemic thinking in Stella's Star of Persia II. 

What if education really is something far more complex, though? Learners, families, and educators bring background and expertise and passion and knowledge (and a little messiness) to this place we call school. Order, structure, predictability, and evidence are, undoubtedly, part of how schools serve students and their families, but the order of learning happens in concert with and response to what students, families, and educators bring. For me, this interaction and harmony (and messiness) are evident in Stella's Extracts from Moby Dick Deckle Edges.

Stella's way of representing the world through art changed as he learned, gained experience, and developed new techniques. That's what I believe learning is - growing knowledge, practicing, experimenting, blending new with known, and creating - for both students and educators. I want school, assessment, and professional learning to foster and reflect this complexity.

Mindset on My Mind: Chapter 5 Disco

Barb Novak contributed this post. She is reading Mindset by Carol Dweck and sharing her thinking about every chapter. Click here to read more of Barb's posts about mindset.

Chapter 5 was about the impact of fixed and growth mindsets in business. The information wasn't surprising - a leader with a growth mindset created a business that was financial successful and an enjoyable place to work.

The examples that were most stunning to me were those where the leader actually changed, learned, and grew along with their business and employees. The best examples were Welch (GE) and Mulcahy (Xerox). The director of human resources once spoke against a promotion for Welch, say Welch ". . . was arrogant, couldn't take criticism, and depended too much on his talent instead of hard work and his knowledgeable staff" (p. 127). Welch used this feedback to grow and, eventually, was selected as the CEO of GE because he "promised to develop" (p. 128).

Mulcahy - the only female executive discussed in this chapter - demonstrated her growth mindset by going "into an incredible learning mode, making herself the CEO Xerox needed to survive" (p. 131). She learned answers but also learned exactly who could provide answers she could not.

The business leaders with a growth mindset demonstrated the same "growth", "passion", and "gratitude" they wanted to cultivate within their organization.

What does this mean for education? Or for me as a leader?

It reminds me that we (whether a principal or a coach or a teacher or a parent) serve as models. Those around us internalize and act upon what they see us doing. Every gesture, facial expression, conversation, email, and action reveal something about our mindset. . . and the mindset we would like to cultivate in those around us.

Kindness - It's Not Just for Others

Artful quote from Alexandra Nelson's Instagram. Ali offers a monthly subscription of hand-drawn inspiration directly sent to your real mailbox.

I'm ending my week with an impossible list of things that still need to be accomplished and feeling a whole lot like I didn't do enough this week. I'm working hard to be kind to myself about everything I didn't get to - trying to practice some self love and self kindness.

To re-focus myself, I'm taking a few minutes to write a different kind of list this Friday:

Positive Things I Did for Myself This Week

• Went to yoga
• Found a mantra to focus on each time a certain stressful thing enters my mind
• Drank no soda
• Took a few vacation hours
• Recognized my limits in a social situation

Every day, extend yourself the same kindness and patience and positivity that you reserve for others. 

Building on Vitality

I recently read Bob Tschannen-Moran and Megan Tschannen-Moran's "The Coach and the Evaluator", an article for a 2011 issue of Educational Leadership. Click here (if you are a Wisconsin educator) and prefer to read the full-text PDF via Badgerlink.

Several paragraphs are about approaching coaching from a strengths-based perspective. Tschannen-Moran and Tschannen-Moran suggest that, "Strengths-based coaching conversations stay within three positive questions [bullets added for emphasis]:

• Where are the signs of vitality within a teacher's current practice?
• What can we learn from those signs about teacher strengths and capacities?
• How can we leverage that learning to invite new possibilities for teacher growth and change?" (2010, p. 16)

I've become a little obsessed with the power of these questions. It's not surprising because I'm also a little obsessed with the idea of approaching people as "naturally creative, resourceful, and whole", a concept from co-active coaching that Laura Gleisner introduced me to.


What do you think? How can these questions impact your coaching?