Providing Skills for Students to Be Successful Past High School

MATC Synthesis Paper

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Teaching

Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

Kathleen Louise Davidson

PID A36615466

July 19, 2013

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After over a million students took the ACT exam in 2012, the results presented showed

something that should influence teachers teaching practices significantly. The report showed

that, “More than a quarter of 2012 college graduates fell short of college readiness benchmarks

that ACT sets for all four subjects, and 60 percent of students tested missed the mark in at least

two of the four subjects…” (Sheehy, 2012). This means that a majority of our students are not

college and career ready after graduating high school. As a secondary teacher, this was a call to

action for me. I knew it was time for me to make a change within my classroom and then help

share those changes with my colleagues. I knew that I needed to provide my students with

opportunities to learn the skills necessary to be successful outside of the high school classroom.

Because I am an English teacher, I knew that two of the most important skills I could teach my

students would be regarding reading and writing. What I didn’t know was that while in the

MATC program at Michigan State, I would learn skills to teach my students regarding reading,

writing, and technology that would help them be successful in the future.

When thinking about creating a classroom where my students could become successful in

their future, I had to decide what it meant to be successful past high school. I look at this idea

very similar to our government. I believe that in order for students to be successful in the future,

they need to be either career or college ready after leaving high school. While that sounds great,

it is still a big idea that I needed to break down so I could see what skills that would require.

When looking closer, I knew that my students needed key learning skills and techniques that they

could use after high school. The most important skills I believed that I could help develop while

they were in my classroom were their reading, writing, and technology skills.

When first entering the program I knew that I wanted to focus on improving my skills at

teaching reading in the classroom. Upon entering the program, I was just finishing my second

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year of teaching. While I knew that I had improved in the area of reading instruction since I had

finished my undergraduate program and internship year, I knew that I still had a long way to go.

Through the courses I have taken and my experience in the classroom, I have found that one of

the most important skills a student needs to be successful past high school is reading. In Duke,

Pearson, Strachan, and Billman’s article “Essential elements of fostering and teaching reading

comprehension,” they stated that, “… the volume of experiences students have interacting with

texts both in and out of the classroom significantly correlates with their overall reading success”

(2011, As cited in artifact 5, p. 7). This means that as an English teacher I needed to provide

students with opportunities to read successfully inside the classroom and outside the classroom.

What I found when practicing this idea in my classroom was that students were really

lacking the motivation to read not just outside of the classroom but also when they were in my

classroom. When surveying my students regarding their reading interests, “I found that only five

out of 28 students enjoyed reading and 21 out of 28 students sometimes enjoyed reading” (2012,

As cited in artifact 6, p. 5). I also found in this study that some of my students even found

reading to be a bother. In order to make sure that my students gained reading skills to use outside

the classroom, I first had to work on the motivation they had to read inside the classroom.

To try to work with this problem, I decided to implement sustained silent reading in my

classroom. I gathered information from Sullivan’s text, “Achievement effects of sustained silent

reading in a middle school” on how to implement this in the classroom. Sullivan’s research

showed that when students were exposed to 20 minutes of silent reading each day, their test

scores with reading improved (As cited in Artifact 6). As I also learned from Kelly Gallagher’s

text Reading Reasons, “reading makes you smarter.” I knew that I wanted to provide my students

with the readings skills they would need after exiting my classroom to be successful on their

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own. Getting students to read more just to develop their knowledge was just one way to help

them improve.

Another idea I wanted to look into were specific skills that students needed to improve on

in their reading. As I found in my research for artifact 6, I knew that they would improve their

reading skills just from reading more, but I wanted to know what else I could do to help them be

successful with reading. One skill I knew that my students needed was the ability to look beyond

what the text is directly stating to identify deeper meaning. In order for students to do this well

both with me working with them, and when they read on their own, I knew I needed to provide

them “… with a repertoire of strategies from which to draw during independent reading tasks…”

(Duke, Pearson, Strachan, Billman, 2011, As cited in Artifact 5, p. 8). I also found in Learned,

Stockdill, and Moje’s text, “Integrating reading strategies and knowledge building in adolescent

literacy instruction,” that “students exposed to reading strategy instruction performed better than

their peers who had not learned strategies” (2011, As cited in Artifact 5, p. 11). This meant that

by giving my students direct instruction on what strategies to use while they are reading in class,

they would be more successful because they would have those strategies to use when I am not

around to help them.

One strategy that I work with students on is their note taking ability when reading texts.

Like I did in Artifact 5, I usually have students begin reading instruction by having them take

notes on a reading on their own and then taking a short reading quiz immediately following the

activity. After we go over the quiz results, I have students look back on how their notes helped

them through the process. From Valencia’s research on assessment with literacy instruction I was

able to see that students needed to engage in self assessment to “… be able to monitor their own

work, set goals, develop needed skills and strategies, and improve learning” (2011, As cited in

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Artifact 5, p. 11). When students look closer at their notes and what they took notes on, they are

able to see whether or not the skill that they are using is really helping them be a successful

reader.

I also work with students on asking questions of a text when reading in order to help

develop those skills that help them look closer at what a text is really saying beyond the literal

words on the page. Students need to be exposed to the two different kinds of questions they can

ask during a text. Jim Burke writes that, “Surface questions address literal aspects of the story –

for example, ‘Where are they now?’ – and basic details such as vocabulary. Deep questions help

establish and reveal the depths of essential events” (2008, As cited in Artifact 5, p. 15). In order

to help students look beyond what was on the line, I had to help them understand what the

difference was when asking surface level and deep questions. When students are able to ask deep

questions about a task and then look at what the answers to those questions may be, they are able

to look beyond what the author is telling them on the lines, to what the reader is telling them

beneath the lines.

When working with students on any reading strategy, I used Duke, Pearson, Strachan,

and Billman’s idea of the gradual release of responsibility model. I work with students very

closely when I first start teaching them a strategy so that they feel comfortable using it. As we

keep using that strategy in class, I gradually allow the students to take more and more

responsibility for using that strategy until they are able to work completely alone. This helps the

students feel comfortable using the strategy even when they are outside of the classroom.

I also used Duke, Pearson, Strachan, and Billman’s gradual release of responsibility

model when teaching writing inside the classroom. Writing instruction was another area that I

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knew needed to improve within my classroom. Writing is another skill that students must have

after leaving high school in order to be successful in the real world. Before entering the MATC

program, I believed that I had improved on my writing instruction and that my students writing

was getting better, but after taking TE 848 I was able to really improve my writing instruction.

Kelly Gallagher, writer of Teaching Adolescent Writers and current English teacher, believes that

“… students need to be exposed to intensive hands-on writing instruction” (2006, As cited in

Artifact 1, p. 2). Through this class and my research, I found that I needed to help improve my

students writing while they were in my classroom with teacher support so they could apply those

skills without me the future.

One way I found to help build my students writing skills was to use mentor texts when

doing writing instruction. Using mentor texts involves having students read an example of a

genre of writing before they write in that genre. The reading that they do involves close reading

to look at the choices the author makes in that piece of writing. The students are then able to take

what they have learned from that example and put it into their own writing process. Gallagher

writes, “If I want my students to write editorials, it helps to show them some strong editorials”

(2011, As cited in Artifact 1, p. 3). When students see strong writing, they can build their writing

skills by modeling their writing after what strong writing looks like.

For this reason, I began using mentor texts when teaching the students narrative writing. I

wanted students to do narrative writing but I knew that they would need examples of what good

narratives look like, so I began by having the students read “A mistake that should last a

lifetime” by Jesseanne Collins (see Artifact 7 for the lesson plan). When reading through the

mentor text they were able to identify the different techniques the writer used and things that

stood out to them from that writing. In other words, the students were able to criticize her writing

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to identify what they would like to use within their own writing. Then after writing their pieces

they were also more able to criticize their own work. When Darla Shaw used mentor texts during

writer’s workshop she also found that, “The students appeared to be more willing and able to

criticize their won writing and of peers after workshops in which they analyzed articles from

various disciplines” (2001, As cited in Artifact 1, p. 4). This resulted in better quality writing

from my students.

While the use of mentor texts is helpful to my students inside the classroom for teaching

writing, they will also be able to use the skill outside of the classroom. For example, in the

future, whether after college, tech school, or high school, my students will have to write resumes

for jobs they want. Even though I won’t be around to help them write these resumes, they should

be able to use mentor texts to help them. They can find other example resumes on the internet to

use as a model to base their writing off of. This means that they will be able to write in almost

any genre at any time after they leave high school, as long as they can find a mentor text.

One of the other skills students need to have prior to leaving high school is a something

that has changed just within the last 20 years in schools. Students now need to be able to use

technology effectively before they leave high school and enter the real world. Technology has

made great changes within our society which means our education system must change as well.

One change that we can make for our students is to use more technology within our classrooms

so that our digital native students have more motivation when they are in class learning.

While implementing technology is important, I was somewhat nervous about doing it

within my classroom. I thought that by just using powerpoints and videos I was adding in

technology effectively. My perspective changed completely after taking two technology classes

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during the MATC program. These classes showed me that technology can be integrated into

lessons that we already teach and that the technology we present should be interactive. I also

learned that in order to effectively integrate technology into a lesson plan, the teacher should

follow the TPAK and/or SCOT theories. The TPAK theory tells us that when creating a lesson

using technology, the teacher needs to have technological pedagogical content knowledge. In

other words, a teacher must know the content they are trying to teach, they must have knowledge

of how to teach that content, and they must have knowledge of the technology they are using

when teaching that content (As reference in Artifact 3). If they have all of these different things

working together, they will be able to effectively integrate technology into a lesson. The SCOT

theory tells us that the use of technology comes from the user. Meaning, a technology doesn’t

have a purpose until we give it one. Teachers need to keep these two ideas in mind when

developing lessons with technology.

I used these ideas when putting together lessons throughout this past school year. For

example, when teaching a lesson that required students to write obituaries and create news

announcements for characters from The Great Gatsby, I knew that I needed to keep the TPAK

theory in mind. As stated in Artifact 3 on page 7, “I knew that I had the content knowledge about

obituaries and The Great Gatsby to teach this lesson and the skills to teach about them –

pedagogical skills – but I knew I needed to those a technology where I had technological

knowledge or else I wouldn’t be able to assist the students.” I learned from this class that I

needed to have all of those different pieces working together in order for the lesson plan to be

successful. I also learned from the SCOT theory how a technology’s purpose can change based

on how you use it. I found this when creating a classroom website for the upcoming school year.

The website, Artifact 8, has a bigger purpose than I originally planned on it having for my

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classroom. I was able to add in powerpoints, websites, and videos that students could access

outside of class when I am not there to support them. This is much different than the original

website that I was going to design using Weebly which was going to have a calendar of what

happened in class for the students to reference if they were absent. In this class, this technology

didn’t have a purpose until I gave it that purpose.

While using these technologies in class is great for student motivation, they are also

necessary skills that students should have before they leave high school. In our ever changing

society, students need to be able to use technology to support their learning outside of the

classroom. They will be able to do this if we teach students using technology while we are there

to support them.

So what happens to the students who were a part of the 60% who failed to meet career

and college readiness standards? These students may go on past high school to struggle in

reading in their career and/or classes, they may have to take remedial courses in college that

won’t count towards their degree, or perhaps they will have to hire a tutor to help them through

the courses they are struggling with – an added expense which most students can’t afford to pay.

These students should not have to encounter these experiences. It is the job of teachers to make

sure that these students leave high school with the skills needed to be successful in life. The

MATC program has given me the knowledge to provide my students with these skills. It is now

my job to not only help my students prepare for their life after high school, but also to help my

colleagues understand what they can do with reading, writing, and technology in their classroom

to help their students as well.

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References

Burke, Jim. The English teachers' companion: a complete guide to classroom, curriculum, and

the profession. Third ed. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2008. Print.

Duke, Neil, P. David Pearson, Stephanie Strachan, and Alison Billman. "Essential elements of

fostering and teaching reading comprehension." What research has to say about reading

instruction. Fourth ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2011. 51-93.

Print.

Gallagher, K. Teaching adolescent writers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2006. Print.

Gallagher, K. (2011). Write like this: teaching real-world writing through modeling & mentor

texts. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Learned, Julie, Darin Stockdill, and Elizabeth Moje. "Integrating reading strategies and

knowledge building in adolescent literacy instruction." What research has to say about

reading instruction. Fourth ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2011.

159-185. Print.

Shaw, D. (2001). Sailing the seven C's of writers' workshop. Journal of Adolescent & Adult

Literacy, 45(4), 322-324.

Sheehy, K. (2012, August 22). High school students not prepared for college, career. U.S. News

& World Report. Retrieved June 12, 2013, from

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/08/22/high-school-

students-not-prepared-for-college-career

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Valencia, Sheila. "Using assessment to improve teaching and learning." What research has to

say about reading instruction. Fourth ed. Newark, DE: International Reading

Association, 2011. 379-405. Print.