Standard 3: Content and Curriculum Expertise

Teacher leaders have a deep knowledge of the subjects they teach and understanding of curriculum theory and development. They value collaboration and the interconnectedness of disciplines. They understand the importance of curriculum relevance in engaging students in content. Indicators are:

Context:
This IRA Standards Matrix artifact was created as part of class RE 5525, Product of Learning, under the instruction of Dr. Woodrow Trathen.  The matrix documents how the standards for Reading Language Arts from the International Reading Association have been met through my education in Appalachian's Reading Education Master's Program.  I aligned each standard with artifacts from the master's program and accompanied a rationale statement as to how that standard was addressed by the artifact.

Rationale:
This artifact shows I have gained a deep understanding of the reading and writing processes through the master's program in Reading Education at Appalachian State University and that I understand the importance of curriculum relevance in engaging students in content.  Furthermore, the matrix demonstrates my in-depth knowledge of curriculum, instruction, and assessment in reading, writing and spelling. It also demonstrates my ability to integrate the 21st century content and skills into educational practices.  The Matrix shows the relevant and rigorous curriculum I gained through Appalachian's Master's in Reading Education Program.  I have met the criteria to be deemed a highly qualified literacy teacher.

Midterm and Final Response Questions on Reading and Writing Instruction in the Classroom
From: RE5100 Teaching Beginning Readers and Writers

Context:

Dr. Robert Schlagal was the professor for this class. His teaching style mirrored my preference in seeking knowledge. In this course, we did a great deal of reading, participated in weekly discussions that were rich in student input and probing questions from Dr. Schlagal and then wrote papers as midterm and final exams to synthesize our thoughts and new knowledge. The weekly discussions and paper topics focused on classroom instruction and best practices in reading and writing. Instead of focusing on one system, our readings covered the stages a child progresses through in learning to read, spell and write and then covered a broad range of "systems" and practices that teach these essential early learning skills. Those systems and practices that survived the test of research were covered in-depth. Dr. Schlagal encouraged (and even required) us to focus on our own classrooms and reflect deeply on our own practices. The exam questions required us to compare own our practices to the best practices and research base we had covered in our readings. If we did not teach in the area of beginning readers and writers, he required us to formulate a plan for instruction and back it up with research.

Rationale:

I realized now that it was a good thing I took the courses in my master's study pretty close to numerical order. This course was numbered 5100, and it was one of the earlier ones in my study. The class was a survey of the necessary components for word knowledge, the stages of beginning reading, writing and spelling and how these factors come together to allow students to become fluent readers. The fact that I got this survey early on was critical for me as a high school teacher. In studying the language as undergraduates, English majors focus on literature grouped by genre, nationality, year of publication or theme. The only true study of the language I did outside of grammar was a single class in linguistics. So the foundational knowledge from RE5100 was essential in allowing me to succeed in later classes such as Reading Assessment and Correction and in the Clinical and Practicum courses. 

But even more valuable than that, this course began to answer some of the questions that led me to pursue a master's degree in reading. I started this work with the question, "Why won't they read -- even if I give them class time to do it?" And it was in this class that I began to get the glimmering of an understanding. We discussed the way that reading skill can be a predictor of overall school success and in the potential to finish high school. Poor readers are more likely to repeat grades, fail classes and drop out, I learned. Third grade reading performance can be correlated to high school drop out percentages.

High school teachers long ago gave up the practice of round-robin reading, so I didn't get to hear all my students read out loud. Had I taken that simple step, I could have answered part of the question before beginning my master's work. I realized during this class that some of my students won't read because they really can not read -- at least not the texts I was asking them to read.

It was intriguing and instructive to me that we began our study with the question, "What is a word?" We even had the chance to address it in our midterm exam. I had never thought much about the concept. But our readings and discussions focused on the fact that the written word is a contrivance. It doesn't mirror the patterns of speech. So there is no logical way to teach a child who has learned to speak fluently what a word is by mirroring it to speech. The following quotation is from my midterm exam on the topic of why it is important to teach beginning readers concept of word.

"For those who know how to read, the question ‘What is a word?’ may seem ridiculously simple. A word is a word they might respond – it’s just a word. It’s like asking an adult, ‘What is thought?’ It is such a basic element of cognition that it doesn’t get much close examination, unless one is Steven Pinker. But to a beginning reader, that question, “What is a word?’ is the most important one.


"By the age of two, almost all children have learned to ride 'the speech stream.' A two-year-old may not be doing much talking, but they understand everything that is said to them. Three years later, these children will enter kindergarten, and that is where teachers introduce them to the written word. The concept of word – a group of symbols that represents some specific part of speech in a written form – must be understood for children to begin to read. I think that often teachers are afflicted by the curse of knowledge. 'Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has ‘cursed’ us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.' (Heath, Chip and Dan, Made to Stick, Random House, 2007).

"Because teachers are, by necessity, readers, it is very difficult for them to remember what it was like before they could tease words out of those lines of symbols that make up printed text.

"Part of the answer to the question of why beginning readers must be taught what a word is comes from the breakdown between spoken language (what almost all preschool children learn without visible effort) and print. 'A spectrographic examination of utterances spoken at a normal rate reveals that words are not separated by pauses or other obvious word boundaries; that is, there are usually no ‘spaces’ between successive spoken words, as there are in printed text' (Daddy, Where Did the Words Go?). So the teacher’s job in teaching word concept must bridge the gap between the way people speak and the conventions of written text. Children must be taught that letters represent sounds; letters combine their sounds in words, and words are separated by spaces."

Beyond the idea of what is a word, this class introduced me to the critical gateways that a student much pass through in becoming a fluent reader. I learned the stages that readers go through in identifying initial consonant sounds, final consonant sounds and medial vowels. I learned about within word and syllable juncture and the critical skill of automaticity. Decoding and fluency and the ways that fluent readers actually read were examined in depth. Rather than focusing on a single system or a single premise -- we examined a wide range of research-based practices that allow young children to become fluent readers. A wide variety of practices  -- print awareness, print direction, letter direction, concept of word, sorting word cards, choral reading, fingerpoint reading, ditacted stories, high-interest tightly leveled texts, repeated readings, big book reading, writing and illustrating books and self-selected reading -- were examined.  These practices could be tailored and adjusted to classroom needs through a series of research-proven assessments that would give valuable and accurate indicators of each child's progress. Those assessments might include: initial consonant awareness, final consonant awareness, medial vowel awareness, concept of word in text, spelling or phonemic awareness and word recognition. Grouping students by ability would allow students to work in appropriately graded material.

During the class, many elementary school teachers discussed the dilemma they face in being required to have students work in grade-level texts. It was a theme that would resonate through all the courses I took that examined reading skills and reading assessment. The best practice for a student to grow in skill and knowledge is to have that student reading instructional level texts. But elementary teachers mentioned that they were not allowed to do this. It was a curriculum and instructional dilemma with a profound moral overtone. Is it moral to ask a child to do work that is beyond him? The clear answer, we decided, was, "of course not." But how does one manage that in the face of grade-level only orders? It was not a dilemma we were able to resolve.

It was through those conversations in this class and through the thought processes from the exam questions that I realized how helpful my master's work was really going to be -- even if I never became an elementary literacy coach or a reading specialist. In this class I realized that the fundamentals of reading and writing skill was where many of my students struggled. It took a great burden off of me to understand that some of them weren't just lazy or willfully refusing to work; they didn't possess the basic skills to do the work. Each time we added a layer to our knowledge of the skills and progression of reading and writing acquisition, I would find examples of the concepts from RE5100 in the reading, writing or spoken language of my own students. It was through this class that my eyes were opened. With my lower level classes especially, I began making much more use of recordings of our selections, read-alouds, partner reading and teacher-read aloud. Since I had no dictate from a principal to teach in grade level texts, I began thinking carefully about what I asked my students to read -- and how I asked them to do it.

I also discovered that if I looked, I would find that my most disruptive students were often poor readers, poor writers and poor spellers. This illuminating discovery allowed me to structure my lessons to support them -- which reduced my classroom management issues significantly. If nothing else ever comes of this class for me -- it was worth every penny of tuition and every minute of work just for that.