Student Study
November 13, 2009
Western International High School in Detroit, MI
“The Detroit public school system is failing”; at least that’s what NPR is arguing (npr.com). And with substantially low test scores and a city-wide graduation rate of only 21.7%, it’s easy to see why. During my observations at Western International High School in Detroit, Michigan, I was struck by the low expectations the school had of its students. Students come into class late, without any repercussions; they are absent from school for days, weeks, and (in some cases) months at a time, with little concern from the administration. And one particular event sticks out in my mind: at the beginning of November, five students dropped from Mr. Hoetger’s history class because it was “too hard” and the students weren’t getting the grades that they wanted; according to Mr. Hoetger, the students at Western are used to getting an “A” simply for showing up to class. The fact that the administration allowed students to drop the class so late in the semester instead of pushing them to work hard, illustrates the school’s low expectations of the students.
These low expectations of the students can be linked to the school’s relative poverty, according to education scholar Jean Anyon. In her article Social Class and School Knowledge, Anyon claims that working-class schools—whose students are mainly from low-income families—tend to be limited by less motivated teachers, basic curriculums, and resistance between students and teachers (Anyon, 5-11). As 1,200 of Western’s 1,582 total student population are considered “economically disadvantaged” (according to the school’s website), it is clear that Western International High School qualifies as one of these disadvantaged working-class schools. How, then, do we as future teachers rectify this problem? How do we help give these students the resources and opportunities they need and deserve? Anyon argues that, above anything else, it is important “to make available to working-class students the cultural and ideological tools to begin to transform perspicacity into power” (Anyon, 33). In other words, schools like Western need to teach their students how to think critically and to vocalize their opinions; they need to teach their students more than simply facts and figures, but rather, analytical skills that will help them succeed in the real world.
Yet within this school that is undoubtedly marked by disadvantage and low expectations, many students are able to achieve and be successful. For this assignment, I chose to observe and interview one particularly impressive student: seventeen-year-old Christina. During my time at Western International High School, I examined Christina on a variety of different levels: I observed her in the classroom, learned about her experiences outside of school, and studied her literacy skills, both in reading and in writing. During this student study assignment, I will record my observations of Christina, and analyze ways that I—as a future teacher—could help her build her literacy skills and classroom comprehension.
The Student
Christina is a senior at Western International High School in Detroit. Through my interactions with her, I could instantly tell that Christina is a very hard-working student and is eager to make the most out of her educational experience; outside of school, for example, Christina is very busy, and is involved in softball, swimming, the Real Media Club, and ROTC. She has large plans for her future, as she is currently applying to several prestigious universities and plans on majoring in business management. For Christina and her family, this is an immense accomplishment, as she will be the first generation in her family to go to college. When discussing this topic during an in-depth interview, Christina stated, “From my mom’s side, a lot of them didn’t even finish like high school or anything. So this is important”. It is clear that both Christina and her family have high expectations of her, and believe that she will be successful in life. These high expectations are strikingly different from the school’s expectations of the students.
Similar to 54% of the students at Western, Christina identifies herself as Hispanic. With such a large Hispanic population in Detroit, Western is faced with challenges regarding cultural communication. According to scholar Lisa D. Delpit in her article The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, it is important to recognize that a student’s race, economic status, and background influence the way the student learns and the way he or she responds to a teacher. While Delpit only examines the cultural differences between African American students and white students, her research can be applied to all students. Essentially, every student brings with him or her a series of experiences, values, and customs that may cause difficulty in the classroom; for example, because of the differences in culture, a teacher might misunderstand or misinterpret a student’s actions, simply because the teacher did not understand the student’s background. Delpit argues that instead of disregarding a student’s experiences and “Americanizing” his or her language and mannerisms, teachers should value these different perspectives and embrace what each student has to offer. In his AP US History class, I noticed that Mr. Hoetger did a good job of following Delpit’s advice: throughout the semester, each student is required to share with the class a song that represented his own life or that was representative of today’s society. For this project, many students brought in Spanish songs, integrating their own culture into the classroom. In my opinion, this project is a good way of connecting students’ lives and cultures with history; this makes history more relatable to the students and has the potential to prompt them to become more interested in other aspects of history.
Even in the classroom, Christina’s friendly, outgoing personality is evident. For example, during a group activity, Christina was able to spark conversation with four very shy students I had worked with on several occasions; during the activity, I heard all four of the students (who had barely spoken a word during earlier interactions) get involved in the discussion and feel comfortable sharing their ideas. She is very chatty in class, and even though this sometimes frustrates Mr. Hoetger, Christina’s conversations in class seem to always be relevant to the course material. For a student like Christina, it would be beneficial to create different activities and assignments where she can interact and discuss ideas with other students; thus, activities like class debates or smaller group activities like “jigsaws” and “turn and talks” could enable Christina’s conversations in class to be more productive and beneficial.
In his article The Comic Book Project: Forging Alternative Pathways to Literacy, scholar Michael Bitz discusses this idea of creating classroom activities that will spark the interest and the talents of the students. By studying how an urban school district used a comic book project to teach students valuable literacy skills, Bitz’s article illustrates the impact such activities can have on a student’s education. As a future teacher, it is important that I apply these same principles of using the students’ talents in classroom activities. For example, if I was teaching a student like Christina, I might draw on her interest and skills in drama and theatre. Knowing that she is involved in the Real Media Club and that she is taking drama class would help shape my lesson plans to fit her needs. In this case, I could plan an activity where the students created and performed skits on certain topics in history; this type of activity would allow students to use their creativity and talents, while still teaching them important content material.
Literacy Practices: Reading
According to the literacy survey she filled out for my study, Christina enjoys reading. More specifically, she enjoys reading texts that she finds educational and interesting. For example, Christina prefers reading non-fiction books, like historical novels, “because then you’re actually learning something in history, […while] fiction’s just imagination”; for Christina, the level of difficulty of a book isn’t a deterrent, as long as she finds the text interesting and thought-provoking. I learned during an in-depth interview with her that she prefers reading from one of the class’s textbooks, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, because it is “interesting but not so easy to read. You really have to think about how everything was…but like, if you have a long period of time, you keep reading and keep reading”. This response illustrates the value she associates with reading, as she is willing to put in the extra time and effort to think critically about the content in the book.
This value of reading was apparent during one of my first interactions with Christina. The class had taken a trip down the hall to the library to research their presentation topics. While the majority of the class went straight for the computers and instantly pulled up Wikipedia to find information on their topic, Christina and another student instead asked the librarian for encyclopedias on their topics. For the rest of the class period, Christina sorted through a rather large stack of books the librarian had found for her. When I asked her why she didn’t research on the computer like the rest of her classmates, Christina responded, “sites like Wikipedia are never 100% accurate, because normal people can post or change things and like, you never know what’s true”. This particular interaction sticks out in my mind because it showed me the value Christina put on printed texts; it showed me that Christina was willing to put in the extra time and effort it took to dig through dozens of encyclopedias and textbooks, simply because she wanted to ensure that her information was accurate and complete.
Similarly, Christina reads newspapers every day. According to the literacy survey, she reads both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, focusing in particular on community and global news. During our interview, I asked Christina her reasoning for reading newspapers every day; in response, she stated:
It’s interesting. Yeah, you can go online and you can go to the TV, but if you’re actually reading in the context, it’s like you’re reading from a book; you’ll be able to analyze it better because you’re actually reading it rather than listening to it.
I believe that Christina reads newspapers for the same reason that she chose to do her research using encyclopedias rather than the internet; essentially, it can be argued that Christina prefers printed texts because, to her, they are more accurate and more factual. Through her statement “you’ll be able to analyze [the news] better”, Christina conveys that she thinks critically and analytically in her everyday life, not just in the classroom.
In his AP US History class, Mr. Hoetger pushes his students to think critically about everything that they read; one of the ways he does this is by having his students read primary sources at the beginning of almost every class period. To accompany the texts, he gives his students a worksheet to fill out, called APPARTS, which has the students analyze the text’s author, place and time, audience, purpose, main idea, and significance; this worksheet is a very useful tool to promote student understanding, because it pushes the students to think critically about the text. While Christina is able to fill out the worksheet with little difficulty, she thinks that the primary source texts are very boring; and according to the literacy survey she filled out for my study, Christina finds “reading AP History things hard when…the topic is boring”. To better help students like Christina (who enjoy reading, but find boring texts difficult to read) engage with the text, I could utilize several different kinds of activities. For example, a Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) would “foster awareness and thinking by engaging learners in a process that involves prediction, verification, interpretation, and judgment” (Pearson, 60). A DR-TA activity would then push the students to think critically about the text, thus engaging them with the primary source. Furthermore, as a teacher, I could plan certain activities like “turn-and-talks”, which would promote classroom discussion; for students like Christina, who are eager to talk during class and to share their ideas, this kind of activity would allow students to learn from each other and talk about what they found surprising, difficult, different, etc. about the text. In my opinion, both activities would be valuable teaching methods that would help students interact with the text; I believe that if students are engaged with the text, the primary source will have a better chance of sparking their interest and the material will be less boring.
It is clear to me that Christina has a good handle on reading literacy. For example, during the interview, I asked her what she does when she has difficulty understanding something she’s reading; in response, Christina stated:
Sometimes if I don’t understand a paragraph, like especially in the Zinn book, I would reread the paragraph like six times, and if I try to keep going and think , ‘I just don’t understand this’, I go back and read it again.
In my opinion, this response illustrates Christina’s solid literary skills. In high school, when the reading material tends to become more challenging, many students will often give up or stop trying when they come across something they don’t understand. By rereading unclear or confusing paragraphs, it is evident that Christina is willing to work hard to understand the material.
However, according to the survey she filled out, Christina ranked “learning new vocabulary” the most difficult of the literary practices she is expected to do in AP US history (this includes other literary practices like “reading your textbook”, “reading other texts your teacher gives you”, “taking notes from teacher lectures”, and “writing reports”). So, during our interview, I asked Christina to describe what she does when she doesn’t know a word. In response, she stated:
If I don’t know a word, I first try to get the context of where it’s from, like how it’s used in a sentence, and then if I’m still not really understanding it, I gotta go look it up.
Christina’s response conveys that she is comfortable using different reading strategies to discover the meaning of unknown words: it is clear that she knows how to use the word’s context to help her discover meaning, and she is willing to resort to a dictionary when she still does not understand the word. According to the Pearson text, it is important for students to utilize both typographic clues and syntactic and semantic clues. For most readers, typographic clues (such as “footnotes, italics, boldface print, parenthetical definitions, pictures, graphs, charts, and the like”) are more natural to utilize because they “provide a clear-cut connection and a direct reference to an unknown word” (Pearson, 100). On the other hand, syntactical and semantic clues are “the grammatical relationships among words in a sentence or the structural arrangement among sentences in a passage [that] often help clarify the meaning of a particular word”; these clues are much more subtle and are often more difficult for some readers to utilize (Pearson, 100). However, as Christina claims that she examines both the context and the sentence structure to discover the meaning of a word, it can be argued that she is able to use both types of clues to further her understanding.
If that is the case, it is important for me to understand why Christina has difficulty with vocabulary words, despite her effective reading techniques. During our interview, I specifically asked her to describe why learning new vocabulary is relatively difficult for her. She responded:
I’m not much of an English person as is, so I learn a new word and I try to think about it; like what can I use the word in a concept like when I’m writing an essay or something, but I’m not really fond of big words.
From this response, I believe that Christina focuses largely on the larger concepts, rather than the smaller details. Quite simply, maybe Christina doesn’t see the value of learning new vocabulary words. Claiming that she thinks about how she “can use the word in a concept like when [she’s] writing an essay”, might indicate that Christina views vocabulary words as only necessary to further her description of larger ideas or that she only sees the vocabulary words as something she needs to learn to get a good grade on an essay. As a teacher, I would need to further her understanding of the vocabulary words to show the importance of using appropriate vocabulary words and how they further our comprehension of the material. To do this, I may use certain activities like List-Group-Label, which would draw on students’ prior knowledge and push them to make connections; by interacting with the words rather than simply memorizing a definition, I believe that students will be able to recognize the importance of learning vocabulary words.
Observations on Reading Skills
During a PowerPoint presentation Christina gave to the class, I was able to study her reading skills and observe firsthand her reading strengths and weaknesses. Her project was on the War of 1812, and the slides that she had prepared for the project were filled with (very) long quotes from historical figures like Andrew Jackson and James Madison; as Christina presented the material to the class, I was able to loosely analyze her reading skills based on informal reading assessments, such as miscues and retellings (Pearson, 228).
For many of the slides, Christina read the long quotes verbatim, and as she was reading, I studied her literary skills based on miscue analysis. In this context, miscues refer to mistakes during oral reading, and according to the Pearson text, “can help you understand how a reader decodes texts and tries to make sense of them”; so, by taking note of Christina’s mistakes, I can better understand her literary skills and how she constructs meaning in the texts she reads (Pearson, 231). Throughout her presentation, Christina read from the slides fluently and clearly, with very little stumbling or hesitation. She spoke with inflection and followed punctuation, indicating that she is cognizant of how sentences are formed and how words fit together. For the most part, she pronounced words correctly, and on the few occasions that she mispronounced a word, she would pause, repeat the word correctly, and then continue with the rest of the quote. In my opinion, this shows that Christina is mindful of her own reading, and is comfortable enough with her literary skills to recognize and then fix her mistakes.
The chart Word Recognition Miscues from the Pearson text divides the different types of miscues into two categories: scored and unscored. Essentially, scored miscues (such as substitution, omission, reversal, insertion, and no attempt to pronounce the word) are mistakes that indicate deeper word-recognition problems, compared to less-indicative unscored miscues (like self-correction, repetition, pause, and missing the point). For the most part, Christina read the quotes with very few miscues; and when she did make a mistake, she was able to correct the word or phrase on her own. These types of miscues fall under the “unscored” category, as they are not reflective of any deeper reading issues. From the Word Recognition Miscues chart, I can conclude that Christina’s reading was satisfactory and showed high levels of skill and ability.
On other slides, however, Christina chose not to read the quotes word for word, instead summarizing the quote for the class. Through these summaries, I was able to informally assess Christina’s reading skills through retelling analysis. According to the Pearson text, “rather than mere recognition, retellings require recalling knowledge from the reading selection”; thus, retellings are a way to analyze the student’s comprehension of the content during reading (Pearson, 237). While summarizing the quotes, Christina did a good job of describing the main idea of each passage, illustrating that she is able to pull out the key points and recognize what is important; this indicates, in my opinion, that she is able to read critically and that she truly understands the material.
By analyzing Christina’s reading skills through both miscues and retellings, I was able to conclude that Christina reads at a high skill level. Her minimal number of miscues showed that she understood the basic mechanics of reading, while her clear, precise retellings illustrated that she comprehended the words she was reading.
Literacy Skills: Writing
According to the literacy survey, Christina ranked “writing reports” as something she is best at in her AP US History class. And from our interview, I learned that Christina has been in the Honors English program at Western International throughout her entire high school experience. Even through she indicated that she rarely writes outside of school, Christina uses her writing skills to send emails and texts, make a grocery list once a week, and to occasionally jot down directions on how to get somewhere. While these responses do not necessarily imply that Christina is a good writer, it can be assumed that she enjoys writing and values writing as an important part of her education.
During my time in Mr. Hoetger’s classroom, I was given the opportunity to grade one of Christina’s essays, and reflect on her writing strengths and weaknesses. This particular essay was assigned to introduce the concept of a Data Based Question (DBQ) essay that would be found on the AP test in May. For this essay, students were given ten short primary source documents, and were expected to form an argument by using the documents; this essay asked the students to analyze the question “to what extent did the American Revolution fundamentally change American society? In your answer, be sure to address political, social, and economic effects of the Revolution in the period from 1775 to 1800”.
As this was the students’ first attempt to write such an essay, Mr. Hoetger walked the students through the process. Through this instruction, Mr. Hoetger outlined the Six Levels of Thinking, taken from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy; these six levels include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, and are important to push students to think more critically while analyzing texts. By prompting his students to distinguish between these levels of thinking, Mr. Hoetger is teaching his students how to form opinions, recognize trends, and assess validity; and in my opinion, these skills are absolutely vital to a student’s understanding of history.
After reading her essay, I gave Christina a score of 8 out of 9 on the AP rubric, which was the highest score I gave to any student. To me, Christina’s essay was very strong: she wrote with appropriate historical language, using words like “tension”, “rebellion”, “immigration”, and “savages”; she wrote with proper grammar, utilizing punctuation and consistent tense; and finally, she wrote with a clear syntactical structure, with complete sentences, varied sentence structure, and free of short, choppy statements. It is clear by reading her essay that Christina understands and utilizes basic writing skills and is able to combine her ideas into a well-written essay.
In her essay, Christina did an impressive job of utilizing the six levels of thinking and incorporating her own analysis, judgments, and ideas. For example, her essay’s thesis statement (The American Revolution allowed the country to escape tyranny [from Britain], however it did not serve as a fundamental change for the Native Americans, women, and common American people) does more than just list the main points of her essay; instead, her thesis includes a clear argument, important details, and an evaluation of American society. Furthermore, in her conclusion, Christina states: It would seem that America would serve as a nation of fundamental change, but this would not occur not until hundreds of years later. But yet the fundamental change that didn’t occur during 1775 to 1800, helped shaped America the way it is today. By relating historical events to the present, it is clear that Christina is able to make connections and recognize over-arching trends. Essentially, both her thesis and her conclusion illustrate Christina’s ability to think critically and establish an opinion, and from my perspective, is what makes her a strong writer.
However, despite her high quality of writing, there are many things that Christina could improve on in her writing. First and foremost, while she was able to incorporate many relevant quotes into her essay, Christina failed to connect the quotes back to her central argument; instead, she stated the quote without any supporting description, analysis, or evaluation. To help Christina and, ultimately, all students think more critically about the quotes they include in their essays, it would be important for me as a teacher to push the students to examine the source of the quotes. In her article The Stories of People’s Lives: Thematic Investigations and the Development of a Critical Social Studies, scholar Sarah Jewett suggests using an analysis chart, which would “help students search for the perspective from which source is derived”; this analysis chart would have students examine the source based on the following criteria: identification, attribution, perspective, and reliability (Jewett, 4, 5). Thus, students are doing more than simply pulling out relevant quotes from primary sources; instead, they are examining the source and questioning its intent, purpose, and author. In my opinion, this is an important activity that would teach students how to utilize the texts to support or extend their essays’ arguments.
Furthermore, while Christina was able to make connections between the documents and her prior knowledge, she failed to make connections between the texts. In this case, it would be helpful to provide students with some sort of reading guide like an Inquiry Chart. An Inquiry Chart asks students to answer the same set of basic questions for two different documents; by completing the chart, students can directly compare and contrast the documents. According to scholar Dixie D. Massey in her article, Promoting reading comprehension in social studies, Inquiry Charts are beneficial because they “help students keep track of what they are learning and begin to make associations between the texts” (Massey, 35). By incorporating such activities early on in the year, students will be able to learn valuable sourcing and critical thinking skills; it is the goal, then, that by the end of the year, students will have mastered these skills and will be able to utilize them without being prompted by an Inquiry Chart.
For more information about Western International High School, visit their website.
Western International High School in Detroit, MI
“The Detroit public school system is failing”; at least that’s what NPR is arguing (npr.com). And with substantially low test scores and a city-wide graduation rate of only 21.7%, it’s easy to see why. During my observations at Western International High School in Detroit, Michigan, I was struck by the low expectations the school had of its students. Students come into class late, without any repercussions; they are absent from school for days, weeks, and (in some cases) months at a time, with little concern from the administration. And one particular event sticks out in my mind: at the beginning of November, five students dropped from Mr. Hoetger’s history class because it was “too hard” and the students weren’t getting the grades that they wanted; according to Mr. Hoetger, the students at Western are used to getting an “A” simply for showing up to class. The fact that the administration allowed students to drop the class so late in the semester instead of pushing them to work hard, illustrates the school’s low expectations of the students.
These low expectations of the students can be linked to the school’s relative poverty, according to education scholar Jean Anyon. In her article Social Class and School Knowledge, Anyon claims that working-class schools—whose students are mainly from low-income families—tend to be limited by less motivated teachers, basic curriculums, and resistance between students and teachers (Anyon, 5-11). As 1,200 of Western’s 1,582 total student population are considered “economically disadvantaged” (according to the school’s website), it is clear that Western International High School qualifies as one of these disadvantaged working-class schools. How, then, do we as future teachers rectify this problem? How do we help give these students the resources and opportunities they need and deserve? Anyon argues that, above anything else, it is important “to make available to working-class students the cultural and ideological tools to begin to transform perspicacity into power” (Anyon, 33). In other words, schools like Western need to teach their students how to think critically and to vocalize their opinions; they need to teach their students more than simply facts and figures, but rather, analytical skills that will help them succeed in the real world.
Yet within this school that is undoubtedly marked by disadvantage and low expectations, many students are able to achieve and be successful. For this assignment, I chose to observe and interview one particularly impressive student: seventeen-year-old Christina. During my time at Western International High School, I examined Christina on a variety of different levels: I observed her in the classroom, learned about her experiences outside of school, and studied her literacy skills, both in reading and in writing. During this student study assignment, I will record my observations of Christina, and analyze ways that I—as a future teacher—could help her build her literacy skills and classroom comprehension.
The Student
Christina is a senior at Western International High School in Detroit. Through my interactions with her, I could instantly tell that Christina is a very hard-working student and is eager to make the most out of her educational experience; outside of school, for example, Christina is very busy, and is involved in softball, swimming, the Real Media Club, and ROTC. She has large plans for her future, as she is currently applying to several prestigious universities and plans on majoring in business management. For Christina and her family, this is an immense accomplishment, as she will be the first generation in her family to go to college. When discussing this topic during an in-depth interview, Christina stated, “From my mom’s side, a lot of them didn’t even finish like high school or anything. So this is important”. It is clear that both Christina and her family have high expectations of her, and believe that she will be successful in life. These high expectations are strikingly different from the school’s expectations of the students.
Similar to 54% of the students at Western, Christina identifies herself as Hispanic. With such a large Hispanic population in Detroit, Western is faced with challenges regarding cultural communication. According to scholar Lisa D. Delpit in her article The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, it is important to recognize that a student’s race, economic status, and background influence the way the student learns and the way he or she responds to a teacher. While Delpit only examines the cultural differences between African American students and white students, her research can be applied to all students. Essentially, every student brings with him or her a series of experiences, values, and customs that may cause difficulty in the classroom; for example, because of the differences in culture, a teacher might misunderstand or misinterpret a student’s actions, simply because the teacher did not understand the student’s background. Delpit argues that instead of disregarding a student’s experiences and “Americanizing” his or her language and mannerisms, teachers should value these different perspectives and embrace what each student has to offer. In his AP US History class, I noticed that Mr. Hoetger did a good job of following Delpit’s advice: throughout the semester, each student is required to share with the class a song that represented his own life or that was representative of today’s society. For this project, many students brought in Spanish songs, integrating their own culture into the classroom. In my opinion, this project is a good way of connecting students’ lives and cultures with history; this makes history more relatable to the students and has the potential to prompt them to become more interested in other aspects of history.
Even in the classroom, Christina’s friendly, outgoing personality is evident. For example, during a group activity, Christina was able to spark conversation with four very shy students I had worked with on several occasions; during the activity, I heard all four of the students (who had barely spoken a word during earlier interactions) get involved in the discussion and feel comfortable sharing their ideas. She is very chatty in class, and even though this sometimes frustrates Mr. Hoetger, Christina’s conversations in class seem to always be relevant to the course material. For a student like Christina, it would be beneficial to create different activities and assignments where she can interact and discuss ideas with other students; thus, activities like class debates or smaller group activities like “jigsaws” and “turn and talks” could enable Christina’s conversations in class to be more productive and beneficial.
In his article The Comic Book Project: Forging Alternative Pathways to Literacy, scholar Michael Bitz discusses this idea of creating classroom activities that will spark the interest and the talents of the students. By studying how an urban school district used a comic book project to teach students valuable literacy skills, Bitz’s article illustrates the impact such activities can have on a student’s education. As a future teacher, it is important that I apply these same principles of using the students’ talents in classroom activities. For example, if I was teaching a student like Christina, I might draw on her interest and skills in drama and theatre. Knowing that she is involved in the Real Media Club and that she is taking drama class would help shape my lesson plans to fit her needs. In this case, I could plan an activity where the students created and performed skits on certain topics in history; this type of activity would allow students to use their creativity and talents, while still teaching them important content material.
Literacy Practices: Reading
According to the literacy survey she filled out for my study, Christina enjoys reading. More specifically, she enjoys reading texts that she finds educational and interesting. For example, Christina prefers reading non-fiction books, like historical novels, “because then you’re actually learning something in history, […while] fiction’s just imagination”; for Christina, the level of difficulty of a book isn’t a deterrent, as long as she finds the text interesting and thought-provoking. I learned during an in-depth interview with her that she prefers reading from one of the class’s textbooks, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, because it is “interesting but not so easy to read. You really have to think about how everything was…but like, if you have a long period of time, you keep reading and keep reading”. This response illustrates the value she associates with reading, as she is willing to put in the extra time and effort to think critically about the content in the book.
This value of reading was apparent during one of my first interactions with Christina. The class had taken a trip down the hall to the library to research their presentation topics. While the majority of the class went straight for the computers and instantly pulled up Wikipedia to find information on their topic, Christina and another student instead asked the librarian for encyclopedias on their topics. For the rest of the class period, Christina sorted through a rather large stack of books the librarian had found for her. When I asked her why she didn’t research on the computer like the rest of her classmates, Christina responded, “sites like Wikipedia are never 100% accurate, because normal people can post or change things and like, you never know what’s true”. This particular interaction sticks out in my mind because it showed me the value Christina put on printed texts; it showed me that Christina was willing to put in the extra time and effort it took to dig through dozens of encyclopedias and textbooks, simply because she wanted to ensure that her information was accurate and complete.
Similarly, Christina reads newspapers every day. According to the literacy survey, she reads both the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, focusing in particular on community and global news. During our interview, I asked Christina her reasoning for reading newspapers every day; in response, she stated:
It’s interesting. Yeah, you can go online and you can go to the TV, but if you’re actually reading in the context, it’s like you’re reading from a book; you’ll be able to analyze it better because you’re actually reading it rather than listening to it.
I believe that Christina reads newspapers for the same reason that she chose to do her research using encyclopedias rather than the internet; essentially, it can be argued that Christina prefers printed texts because, to her, they are more accurate and more factual. Through her statement “you’ll be able to analyze [the news] better”, Christina conveys that she thinks critically and analytically in her everyday life, not just in the classroom.
In his AP US History class, Mr. Hoetger pushes his students to think critically about everything that they read; one of the ways he does this is by having his students read primary sources at the beginning of almost every class period. To accompany the texts, he gives his students a worksheet to fill out, called APPARTS, which has the students analyze the text’s author, place and time, audience, purpose, main idea, and significance; this worksheet is a very useful tool to promote student understanding, because it pushes the students to think critically about the text. While Christina is able to fill out the worksheet with little difficulty, she thinks that the primary source texts are very boring; and according to the literacy survey she filled out for my study, Christina finds “reading AP History things hard when…the topic is boring”. To better help students like Christina (who enjoy reading, but find boring texts difficult to read) engage with the text, I could utilize several different kinds of activities. For example, a Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) would “foster awareness and thinking by engaging learners in a process that involves prediction, verification, interpretation, and judgment” (Pearson, 60). A DR-TA activity would then push the students to think critically about the text, thus engaging them with the primary source. Furthermore, as a teacher, I could plan certain activities like “turn-and-talks”, which would promote classroom discussion; for students like Christina, who are eager to talk during class and to share their ideas, this kind of activity would allow students to learn from each other and talk about what they found surprising, difficult, different, etc. about the text. In my opinion, both activities would be valuable teaching methods that would help students interact with the text; I believe that if students are engaged with the text, the primary source will have a better chance of sparking their interest and the material will be less boring.
It is clear to me that Christina has a good handle on reading literacy. For example, during the interview, I asked her what she does when she has difficulty understanding something she’s reading; in response, Christina stated:
Sometimes if I don’t understand a paragraph, like especially in the Zinn book, I would reread the paragraph like six times, and if I try to keep going and think , ‘I just don’t understand this’, I go back and read it again.
In my opinion, this response illustrates Christina’s solid literary skills. In high school, when the reading material tends to become more challenging, many students will often give up or stop trying when they come across something they don’t understand. By rereading unclear or confusing paragraphs, it is evident that Christina is willing to work hard to understand the material.
However, according to the survey she filled out, Christina ranked “learning new vocabulary” the most difficult of the literary practices she is expected to do in AP US history (this includes other literary practices like “reading your textbook”, “reading other texts your teacher gives you”, “taking notes from teacher lectures”, and “writing reports”). So, during our interview, I asked Christina to describe what she does when she doesn’t know a word. In response, she stated:
If I don’t know a word, I first try to get the context of where it’s from, like how it’s used in a sentence, and then if I’m still not really understanding it, I gotta go look it up.
Christina’s response conveys that she is comfortable using different reading strategies to discover the meaning of unknown words: it is clear that she knows how to use the word’s context to help her discover meaning, and she is willing to resort to a dictionary when she still does not understand the word. According to the Pearson text, it is important for students to utilize both typographic clues and syntactic and semantic clues. For most readers, typographic clues (such as “footnotes, italics, boldface print, parenthetical definitions, pictures, graphs, charts, and the like”) are more natural to utilize because they “provide a clear-cut connection and a direct reference to an unknown word” (Pearson, 100). On the other hand, syntactical and semantic clues are “the grammatical relationships among words in a sentence or the structural arrangement among sentences in a passage [that] often help clarify the meaning of a particular word”; these clues are much more subtle and are often more difficult for some readers to utilize (Pearson, 100). However, as Christina claims that she examines both the context and the sentence structure to discover the meaning of a word, it can be argued that she is able to use both types of clues to further her understanding.
If that is the case, it is important for me to understand why Christina has difficulty with vocabulary words, despite her effective reading techniques. During our interview, I specifically asked her to describe why learning new vocabulary is relatively difficult for her. She responded:
I’m not much of an English person as is, so I learn a new word and I try to think about it; like what can I use the word in a concept like when I’m writing an essay or something, but I’m not really fond of big words.
From this response, I believe that Christina focuses largely on the larger concepts, rather than the smaller details. Quite simply, maybe Christina doesn’t see the value of learning new vocabulary words. Claiming that she thinks about how she “can use the word in a concept like when [she’s] writing an essay”, might indicate that Christina views vocabulary words as only necessary to further her description of larger ideas or that she only sees the vocabulary words as something she needs to learn to get a good grade on an essay. As a teacher, I would need to further her understanding of the vocabulary words to show the importance of using appropriate vocabulary words and how they further our comprehension of the material. To do this, I may use certain activities like List-Group-Label, which would draw on students’ prior knowledge and push them to make connections; by interacting with the words rather than simply memorizing a definition, I believe that students will be able to recognize the importance of learning vocabulary words.
Observations on Reading Skills
During a PowerPoint presentation Christina gave to the class, I was able to study her reading skills and observe firsthand her reading strengths and weaknesses. Her project was on the War of 1812, and the slides that she had prepared for the project were filled with (very) long quotes from historical figures like Andrew Jackson and James Madison; as Christina presented the material to the class, I was able to loosely analyze her reading skills based on informal reading assessments, such as miscues and retellings (Pearson, 228).
For many of the slides, Christina read the long quotes verbatim, and as she was reading, I studied her literary skills based on miscue analysis. In this context, miscues refer to mistakes during oral reading, and according to the Pearson text, “can help you understand how a reader decodes texts and tries to make sense of them”; so, by taking note of Christina’s mistakes, I can better understand her literary skills and how she constructs meaning in the texts she reads (Pearson, 231). Throughout her presentation, Christina read from the slides fluently and clearly, with very little stumbling or hesitation. She spoke with inflection and followed punctuation, indicating that she is cognizant of how sentences are formed and how words fit together. For the most part, she pronounced words correctly, and on the few occasions that she mispronounced a word, she would pause, repeat the word correctly, and then continue with the rest of the quote. In my opinion, this shows that Christina is mindful of her own reading, and is comfortable enough with her literary skills to recognize and then fix her mistakes.
The chart Word Recognition Miscues from the Pearson text divides the different types of miscues into two categories: scored and unscored. Essentially, scored miscues (such as substitution, omission, reversal, insertion, and no attempt to pronounce the word) are mistakes that indicate deeper word-recognition problems, compared to less-indicative unscored miscues (like self-correction, repetition, pause, and missing the point). For the most part, Christina read the quotes with very few miscues; and when she did make a mistake, she was able to correct the word or phrase on her own. These types of miscues fall under the “unscored” category, as they are not reflective of any deeper reading issues. From the Word Recognition Miscues chart, I can conclude that Christina’s reading was satisfactory and showed high levels of skill and ability.
On other slides, however, Christina chose not to read the quotes word for word, instead summarizing the quote for the class. Through these summaries, I was able to informally assess Christina’s reading skills through retelling analysis. According to the Pearson text, “rather than mere recognition, retellings require recalling knowledge from the reading selection”; thus, retellings are a way to analyze the student’s comprehension of the content during reading (Pearson, 237). While summarizing the quotes, Christina did a good job of describing the main idea of each passage, illustrating that she is able to pull out the key points and recognize what is important; this indicates, in my opinion, that she is able to read critically and that she truly understands the material.
By analyzing Christina’s reading skills through both miscues and retellings, I was able to conclude that Christina reads at a high skill level. Her minimal number of miscues showed that she understood the basic mechanics of reading, while her clear, precise retellings illustrated that she comprehended the words she was reading.
Literacy Skills: Writing
According to the literacy survey, Christina ranked “writing reports” as something she is best at in her AP US History class. And from our interview, I learned that Christina has been in the Honors English program at Western International throughout her entire high school experience. Even through she indicated that she rarely writes outside of school, Christina uses her writing skills to send emails and texts, make a grocery list once a week, and to occasionally jot down directions on how to get somewhere. While these responses do not necessarily imply that Christina is a good writer, it can be assumed that she enjoys writing and values writing as an important part of her education.
During my time in Mr. Hoetger’s classroom, I was given the opportunity to grade one of Christina’s essays, and reflect on her writing strengths and weaknesses. This particular essay was assigned to introduce the concept of a Data Based Question (DBQ) essay that would be found on the AP test in May. For this essay, students were given ten short primary source documents, and were expected to form an argument by using the documents; this essay asked the students to analyze the question “to what extent did the American Revolution fundamentally change American society? In your answer, be sure to address political, social, and economic effects of the Revolution in the period from 1775 to 1800”.
As this was the students’ first attempt to write such an essay, Mr. Hoetger walked the students through the process. Through this instruction, Mr. Hoetger outlined the Six Levels of Thinking, taken from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy; these six levels include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, and are important to push students to think more critically while analyzing texts. By prompting his students to distinguish between these levels of thinking, Mr. Hoetger is teaching his students how to form opinions, recognize trends, and assess validity; and in my opinion, these skills are absolutely vital to a student’s understanding of history.
After reading her essay, I gave Christina a score of 8 out of 9 on the AP rubric, which was the highest score I gave to any student. To me, Christina’s essay was very strong: she wrote with appropriate historical language, using words like “tension”, “rebellion”, “immigration”, and “savages”; she wrote with proper grammar, utilizing punctuation and consistent tense; and finally, she wrote with a clear syntactical structure, with complete sentences, varied sentence structure, and free of short, choppy statements. It is clear by reading her essay that Christina understands and utilizes basic writing skills and is able to combine her ideas into a well-written essay.
In her essay, Christina did an impressive job of utilizing the six levels of thinking and incorporating her own analysis, judgments, and ideas. For example, her essay’s thesis statement (The American Revolution allowed the country to escape tyranny [from Britain], however it did not serve as a fundamental change for the Native Americans, women, and common American people) does more than just list the main points of her essay; instead, her thesis includes a clear argument, important details, and an evaluation of American society. Furthermore, in her conclusion, Christina states: It would seem that America would serve as a nation of fundamental change, but this would not occur not until hundreds of years later. But yet the fundamental change that didn’t occur during 1775 to 1800, helped shaped America the way it is today. By relating historical events to the present, it is clear that Christina is able to make connections and recognize over-arching trends. Essentially, both her thesis and her conclusion illustrate Christina’s ability to think critically and establish an opinion, and from my perspective, is what makes her a strong writer.
However, despite her high quality of writing, there are many things that Christina could improve on in her writing. First and foremost, while she was able to incorporate many relevant quotes into her essay, Christina failed to connect the quotes back to her central argument; instead, she stated the quote without any supporting description, analysis, or evaluation. To help Christina and, ultimately, all students think more critically about the quotes they include in their essays, it would be important for me as a teacher to push the students to examine the source of the quotes. In her article The Stories of People’s Lives: Thematic Investigations and the Development of a Critical Social Studies, scholar Sarah Jewett suggests using an analysis chart, which would “help students search for the perspective from which source is derived”; this analysis chart would have students examine the source based on the following criteria: identification, attribution, perspective, and reliability (Jewett, 4, 5). Thus, students are doing more than simply pulling out relevant quotes from primary sources; instead, they are examining the source and questioning its intent, purpose, and author. In my opinion, this is an important activity that would teach students how to utilize the texts to support or extend their essays’ arguments.
Furthermore, while Christina was able to make connections between the documents and her prior knowledge, she failed to make connections between the texts. In this case, it would be helpful to provide students with some sort of reading guide like an Inquiry Chart. An Inquiry Chart asks students to answer the same set of basic questions for two different documents; by completing the chart, students can directly compare and contrast the documents. According to scholar Dixie D. Massey in her article, Promoting reading comprehension in social studies, Inquiry Charts are beneficial because they “help students keep track of what they are learning and begin to make associations between the texts” (Massey, 35). By incorporating such activities early on in the year, students will be able to learn valuable sourcing and critical thinking skills; it is the goal, then, that by the end of the year, students will have mastered these skills and will be able to utilize them without being prompted by an Inquiry Chart.
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