Departmentalizing (Blocking) Reading: Caution

This year, I moved to a new grade level in my building (a change that has been pleasantly nice), and we made the switch to departmentalizing reading across grades 3-5. If you're not familiar with the concept, to departmentalize in this case means that the grades involved share a common time for the subject, and students are put into ability groups, meaning that the majority will not be with their "homeroom teacher." This is also known as "blocking" in some circles, depending upon the jargon that is used where you teach. For the previous three years, the school I work in did self-contained reading groups (with the exception of some pull out special education students), and I was met with great success, because I was responsible for my students, and they performed up to the level that I demanded of them.

Now with this move to departmentalization, something I had previously dealt with four years ago, I have been forced to advocate for what I believe is best, both in my own experience and from what the research says.

I will first discuss my own opinions apart from the research:

I believe that self-containing classrooms in an elementary setting have many great advantages, ESPECIALLY in the area of literacy. We teach pre-service teachers that reading should be cross curriculur, that students need consistency, they need to reflect on their reading all day, and that they should have a classroom where they are able to revisit their readings and branch out into the other disciplines with their new knowledge.

My school has blocked reading from 3rd grade through 5th grade, and it basically looks like this:

Highest Group (taught by a 5th grade teacher)
2nd Highest (taught by 5th grade teacher)
Next (taught by 4th grade teacher)
So on and so forth, moving down the line to 3rd grade.

Now, for the highest groups, these teachers keep their high 5th graders, and are given the highly advanced 4th graders and off the chart high 3rd graders. So the highest 4th grade group is not truly the highest 4th grade group, because the highest 4th graders move up, while lower 5th graders move down. So basically, all but the top two groups become remedial in nature. Students, whether we want to admit it or not as teachers, are keenly aware of what group they are in. They know if they are "high" or "low," and this has detrimental effects on the motivation of all but the highest students.

Putting these facts aside, let's look at the effect of splitting the classes up for reading block. I love to teach literacy thematically, and let it flow over into social studies, math, and writing. With my students spread all over the building, I can no longer do this. To sum this up, everything that WORKS in the classroom is fundamentally impossible to do in a blocked environment.

The research in this area in the past has been mostly qualitative in nature, and has focused on standardized test scores, as well as student input, mostly in the form of narrative or question responses. For every study that opposes blocking, I can easily find one that is in favor of it, both in theory and in data. As with most issues in reading, there are opposing camps, and if this had been definitively proven one way or the other, it doesn't necessarily mean that we wouldn't be here anyways (because a shockingly low number of teachers actually read and understand current research). I am currently performing some doctoral level research on this very subject, and hope to have some beginning level results in by Thanksgiving.

Obviously I am opposed to the departmentalization of reading. I would like to continue this discussion. Maybe some of you have success stories, and that's great. But personally, I do not see the value, have not seen the value, and continue to not see the value.

Some More Technology in Literacy: Finding My Way Under New Mexico's Response To Intervention Model

I've been talking about technology in literacy a little bit lately, so I figured I'd stay on that topic today. My school district, like all school districts in the state of New Mexico, is implementing a "Response to Intervention" model (from here on referred to as RTI). The RTI model does have some MAJOR issues, including the fact that schools are basically left to their own devices to implement it, that it takes instructional time from the day, and that in many cases (whether the state department wants it or not) all students are given the interventions.

If you're not familiar, and I don't want to get too deeply into this, RTI is a mainly literacy intervention where kids are given extra small group tutoring sessions in heterogeneously grouped settings. I can't honestly say that I agree with the model and in the two years we have implemented it I haven't seen it do any good. But that's not the point here.

My grade level implemented RTI by taking one classroom teacher a quarter, as well as support staff, and splitting up the students in need of intervention (we defined them as "below benchmark"), while the other teachers took the kids not needing it and did science. When it was my turn, I had an intensive group of four students.

Rather than beat them over the heads with worksheets and mundane tasks, I pulled out some technology and had them interact with each other and texts in a new way. This was easy because there was four of them and I had eight computers in the classroom. One of the biggest things they did during their 9-weeks with me was they would read Diary of a Wimply Kid on Funbrain.com. This was basically the same book that I had six copies of on my bookshelf, but they came to me every day begging for more.

We were on computers four days a week during my RTI cycle (the entire 9-weeks). When these four students went to take the MAPS Test, an online assessment, they grew more than any other RTI intensive students that year. Of course, I knew why. They were excited about their reading, they were seeking out more, and they stayed positive. They were in an environment that allowed them to experiment with the text, to interact with it, and to get out of the mundane routine of worksheets and textbooks.

I guess my point(s) here are:

1. Sometimes school districts or state education departments implement programs that are not in the best interest of learning.

2. Sometimes teachers have to make the best of a bad situation (that is more than sometimes in some cases).

3. Think outside the box, even if it's just baby steps. I know that computers in the classroom aren't a "WOW" thing anymore, but they are still out of the routine.

4. Follow what works. Just because it worked for me doesn't mean it will for you. I'm just sharing in the hopes that maybe it will work for somebody else.

The Ethical Battle of Doctoral Work and Positions of Power in Public Schools

While most of the posts on this page have to do with direct classroom literacy practice, book reviews, and things of that nature, I do occasionally talk about issues in the public schools, including things that I hear about, things that I face, and other issues happening.

As I've stated many times before, I teach 5th grade. This means that I teach all subject areas, not just the language arts, as my literacy focused blog might imply. The state and school district I work in are both heavily focused on standardized testing measures, which are ongoing. Pre tests, mid tests, post tests, formative, summative, daily, weekly, monthly, semi-monthly, one-shot, short term, long term, you name it, we're asked to do it all.

In math, we are in the second year of our adoption of Math Investigations. The adoption process was highly politicized, which is something that, if you're a new teacher, you need to get used to. What I mean is the fact that everything that happens that involves large sums of money and massive, multi million dollar contracts, probably involves some sort of nepotism, friendly hand outs, pocket lining, or some other sort of politics. Now I'm not claiming this happened with Math Investigations, but after participating in the adoption proceedings, it was hard not to feel like someone in a position of power wielded some sort of influence into the final decision to hand over millions of dollars to the Investigations people.

OK, OK, anyways, on to today's little story. Recently, the entire district was asked to give some sort of numeration assessment, and this was tossed at us mid-year, right in the middle of everything else. Of course, the initial reaction from the teachers in the 25+ elementary schools around town was "why?" There never was an answer. Now, I am a doctoral student at the local university, and happen to know people that move in and out of both circles, public schools and university, their paths cross often actually in a town such as this one.

What I found out, through contacts both in the university system and knowing contacts who work at my districts central office is that we're doing this assessment to help someone in a position of power downtown with their doctoral dissertation. Now the issue becomes ethical from where I stand. There is nothing I found out there that actually says this is wrong, in fact, it's probably not, so I'm not implying wrongdoing on the part of the university or the public schools, or this person. I think it's an issue of individual ethics, and it's from that perspective that I will proceed.

It's one thing to complete a doctorate while working as a director of some program or another with a public school district, but it's quite another to mix the two, and ask 1,000 teachers to do the dirty work. I am still a little new to the whole process, but that gives me unique perspective as someone who moves within both systems (both high levels of the university and the public schools) to see this from an individual perspective not influenced by "the way it's done according to..." When I get to the dissertation sequence of my doctorate, my research will be my own, and if I need to assess students, I will do that, and if I need help, that's what grad assistants are for and others in the university level, not people who work for me and have no power to say no.

I tell this story simply as a cautionary tale, especially if you're in a situation similar to mine (and I'm not saying I'm unique, there are literally tens of thousands of teachers who are working on doctorates simultaneously). I think that, in terms of action research, to better my method and praxis, it's definitely appropriate, if not necessary, to have ongoing research, experimenting with new methods, and other things, within my own classroom. It's another thing to impose that on other classrooms without prior consent (that's not based on an "I said do it" mandate) from the instructor. So watch out, stand up for yourself, and know your rights. As for me, I'm not too sure what my rights are, so it looks like I'm stuck, but at least I can vent, right?

Why I've Decided That the DRA Just Isn't Good

Maybe the title of this post could have been differently worded, but it's not. I think that the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), compared to other diagnostics, is decent (not worth something like $250 per kit), but is ultimately just another stupid diagnostic. Why have I come to this decision? It's rather simple actually.

I like to read. Reading is great, there is nothing better than a good book. I don't really care if it's a popular book, a bargain bin book, a book for kids, whatever, it's all good. Some I'll hate, but most are at least somewhat enjoyable.

Now, what the DRA is all about is this little books that are at reading levels. You have this box full of these 16 page books for students to read and respond to. The DRA instructions basically say that for the teacher to fully understand the results, that they should have read the book as well.

16 pages don't sound like much, but trust me, it's beyond brutal. I've always maintained more than a touch of selective ADD, when stuff doesn't interest me, I just shut down. I can't read these DRA books, it's impossible. I honestly don't know how my students get through them. They're poorly written, there's little to no attention to actual, you know, story telling.

So when your school district adopts the DRA, and hands you your first kit, try to read those books. You are truly a champion if you can pull it off, because they're not good. It goes against everything I believe about literacy instruction, basically, that it should be interesting to read. Think about it.

The Textbook Manifesto

Textbooks are the devil, textbooks drive students away from true learning, and textbooks are a waste of money. Teachers use textbooks because they're already there, they're easy, they don't force the teacher to actually have the background knowledge, and they're usually standards based. Textbooks are a cop out, they make the job of a teacher easier, and if a teacher uses them they'll be considered a good teacher.

Textbooks are like a lot of other things the schools want teachers to use. Textbooks are ridiculous, out of touch, and are one of the main things that drive students away from learning. I still have yet to see a textbook that is effective in any way.

A textbook should be a tool for learning, a resource, much like an encyclopedia or wikipedia. It is not the curriculum, the sooner teachers realize that, the sooner children will actually start learning. Until then, it's long live the textbook culture, and the 50% dropout rate. Let's keep patting ourselves on the back and ignore the problem.

The DRA Problem

DRA stands for the Developmental Reading Assessment, a reading assessment program published by Pearson. The DRA is used in schools across the nation to assess student reading fluency and comprehension. This year was my first using the DRA in my classroom, as it was adopted by my school district at the end of last school year.

Of course I went through all of the trainings that came with the program (they were provided on DVD's, and my school set up a process for seeing each part and practicing the test). The DRA usually comes in a kit, which includes a set of leveled readers (that are only supposed to be used for the purposes of the assessment), teacher guides, training DVD's, and the materials the teacher needs to do the assessment and analyze the results. This comes at a cost of $150 per kit. Let me break this down for you. I work in a school district that has 25 elementary schools. My school, like most in town, ordered two English kits and one Spanish kit for every grade level. Assuming this trend held across the city, the district spent $90,000 at least on purchasing these kits.

I know that school districts have a tendency to throw money in the direction of every fad that comes down the pike, and I have always had my suspicions that this was the case with the DRA. If you're new to the DRA, are here seeking information from someone who has nothing to gain by selling you the kits, or are just curious, let me walk you through my experience and my opinions with this program.

The DRA is a scripted program where the teacher reads certain questions or statements to students, and they respond. The teacher then interprets student answers according to a rubric, and, taken with their fluency score and their miscues, they either score at that level, or need to move up/down depending on their score.

So there's the DRA for you. Now, for me, at the beginning of the year, having already seen my kids work for a few weeks, I thought the DRA gave an inflated view of how the students were actually performing. This is a trend that continued all year long, it wasn't entirely consistent with my own observations or assessments that I used to inform my teaching (you know, REAL assessments).

There are many issues I have with the DRA:

• First of all, I am always hesitant to use scripted programs, they serve mainly to assess learning that serves students well on the standardized test, and I have big problems with this.
• Next, this very expensive program did not give me any information that I could not have gotten by myself, for free, using my own skill as a teacher-researcher (that's a whole other problem itself, the fact that teachers aren't trusted even though they're the experts).
• I also am not a huge fan of pre/mid/post tests, that is, tests that are given only a few times per year, as they really can't serve to be assessments that inform learning and instruction in the short term.
• If you use the test much more often than four or five times a year, students will have seen so many of the leveled readers that it will become invalid.
• There is no student buy-in on this test. I've found that my students aren't interested in the small texts that come with the program, and they don't really feel the connection between the results and them.
• For students above grade level, this test won't serve them after a year or two. I've seen third graders 'max out' the program, which means we can't give it to them in fourth or fifth grade, because they're done.

There are some of my issues with the DRA. I can tell you, quite honestly, that if you really want to assess literacy learning, there are better ways to do it that won't cost you $150 per classroom. That is a ridiculous cost, and for schools to continue to scrape by while spending money on these fad programs just doesn't make sense.

When You've Got To Slow Down

Here we are, late April, finally. The end is near, here in New Mexico, it's now less than four weeks away. That means a few things. First of all, it means that we're running out of time, but it also probably means that students are having a little difficulty staying focused, most teachers are starting to drag a little bit, and administration is still breathing down everyone's neck, does that sound about right?

Well, if your state is anything like New Mexico, you might have some lag time between your standardized testing and the end of the year. We take it to extremes here, taking the test over 10 school weeks before the end of the year, yes 10. That means that the pressure is in full gear up until the last week of February. The testing then takes place for two weeks, and the last 10 weeks, most of March (with Spring Break mixed in there), April, and May coming after the storm.

For me, this is a golden opportunity to do some actual teaching and let my kids actually learn (let's stop it with all this essential learning, back to basics nonsense, I'm talking about those 'nice to know' things that all teachers wish they had time to teach).

In terms of literacy, this means more self selection, more multimedia tie ins, more long discussions, and more chances to take risks on some new and untested books.

We've lost touch with our students so much that it sickens me. School has been reduced to numbers, students nothing but test scores and labels of advanced, proficient, nearing proficient, or beginning step. It's ridiculous, we need to stop patting ourselves on the back every time a kid goes up two percentage points on the test, and start patting ourselves on the back when a kid pulls a book off the shelf for fun or because they're interested, that's what it's all about, everything else is nonsense.

How To Get Rich While Making School Lame

OK, so this isn't a 'get rich quick' post with a how-to, the title was just a ruse to suck you in, and now you're here, so you should probably just read this post, because it probably will make sense to you.

Most school districts are alike, and as a rule, the bigger the district (student and city population wise that is), the more banal some of the ideas that come out of the leadership can be, that's just the way it is. I've seen so many programs come in and out of my school district that I can't remember all of them, and the crazy thing is, this is only my third year as a teacher. I'm not exaggerating, I've seen a lot in that short period of time, since 2005.

I've seen reading programs, writing programs, math programs, science programs, social studies programs, and even different approaches to Title I programs. Some of the programs come from the big textbook companies, you know, the Scott Foresman, Houghton Mifflin bunch, but I've also gone through programs invented by one person.

I've seen Math Investigations, Nancy Fetzer, Response to Intervention, Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), Baldridge, New Science Science Kits, and the Scott Foresman basal reading series, just to name a few. Now sure, most of the examples I gave are companies, but there are those programs that come from individual people.

Of course, they're not all bad, and most are crafted by someone who really believes in their program, and they bring it out there for the world to see, and possibly bank a few million dollars while they're at it selling it to big and small districts alike.

The problem I have is that when schools jump so hard and deep in to a program for every single subject, meant to take up every single minute of the day, they're all but assuming that teachers, the professionals in this great field of education, those on the front line, are incompetent and incapable of doing the work themselves.

I don't mind having math textbooks, they actually make my job a little easier, but I don't want to have to teach, day by day, out of a scripted program. Sure, the reading basal may have a nice story here or there, but by no means do students need to have a literacy experience, for years at a time, that are almost solely based around textbooks, this just isn't' right.

If I wanted to get rich quick, I'd think up of a new way to bring test scores up, and sell it off. I would go around the country doing trainings, peddling my materials, and then sit back and drive a Bentley around while students continue to push further and further away from education and teachers continue to leave the field in droves because they feel insulted, but who cares, I'd be rich.

As this blog evolves (or if you read my other blog, The Buss), you will see that I'm definitely a teacher to the core. I support teachers, I support them as professionals, as the leaders and innovators in the field, and as the trailblazers that will actually save education. It's not about some innovator with that great idea, I'm sure it worked for them, but I need to have the right, as a teacher, to pick and choose what works and doesn't work for my students. Anything else is idiotic.

Forced Into Doing Something Idiotic?

It's the question that applies to 100% of all teachers in this country. At one point or another (sometimes at all points), we're forced into some kind of program, whether it's a literacy program, a test-practice program, or a math program, that is completely idiotic and hasn't been thought out very well.

I live and work in New Mexico, which, needless to say, means that I am VERY familiar with idiotic ideas in education. I could be talking about many things right now, but mainly I'm talking about the Response to Intervention model that is currently a dark cloud hanging over our schools(you can Google it yourself if you'd like more information, because I don't want to provide a link that is completely one-sided in its definition and explanation of RTI).

Here is precisely what Response to Intervention is:

Everyday, for 40 minutes (longer in some places), students are pooled in to homogeneous groupings (groups of students at similar skill levels, so all the high kids are together, lows together, etc). In these groups, the teachers have to design some interventions that will serve the students. Since this is reality, and not some superintendents wet dream, the interventions have quickly turned to 40 minutes of daily test taking strategies.

It's supposedly mainly an intervention model that focuses on literacy components. However, intervening on students in no need of the intervention is not just a head scratcher, it's absolutely moronic. Now, I'm sure that some schools out there have appropriately implemented the model to only address those students who 'need it,' but now we've stumbled into a new area of debate.

The struggling student, many times a student with special needs, has obviously, OBVIOUSLY, become the plague of schools across the nation, because they hold down test scores (called Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP). Response to Intervention was crafted to serve these students. Before RTI, many schools would just pull these students out of science or social studies instruction (because who needs those? I'm not joking, I have literally been told that social studies doesn't help on the test, so it's not important) and work on reading strategies more. This is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, social studies and science are important disciplines, especially at a younger age. When educators make the error of assuming that literacy instruction is isolated to some sort of 'reading block,' or must be done in a certain way, they are taking away the power of differentiated and cross-curricular instruction. Done correctly, science and social studies are extremely valuable literary subject areas, especially for the struggling student, who is also at risk for being the bored student.

Second, well, I think I just said it. The struggling student is at risk for being the bored student. If we pull them out for 40 more minutes of test taking strategies, echo reading, and comprehension testing from isolated passages and short stories that they connect to in no way, then they'll just hate it even more.

So, have you been forced into doing something idiotic? I'm going to make a new label titled 'forced into something?', as well as 'teaching the test,' and will put similar posts under those labels so that this discussion can be furthered in the future. I realize this blog is new and doesn't have many readers as of yet, but if you come across this post and a light bulb goes off in your head, let me know what you're thinking or what's happening where you work, and we can discuss that a little more as well.