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CAROLYN
BEITZEL
Diary #26
If
They Can't Read the Content,
How Can They Learn It?
We've just completed
standards assessment testing for the state of Pennsylvania. The experience
led me to reflect upon my own teaching practice and to wonder about education
in low socio-economic areas.
NCLB says that
for our school (which is classified a "failure" at the moment) we must raise
our test scores at least six percent every year in order to make the 100%
at the end of the time period allowed. We are to do this with no additional
help from the government and very little from the district. I personally,
have not been given any additional curriculum (e.g., texts, readings, etc.)
or administrative (e.g., increased copy numbers to run off the items needed)
tools to ensure my classroom success. At least 40 percent of my students
read below grade level but do not have a reading class scheduled in their
roster (not enough reading specialists in my building to accommodate the
need).
How can the
students be better prepared for taking a standardized test in general?
As an eighth
grade teacher I am not sure how much damage I can undo before they leave
me and go to the high school, where the performance bar is raised even higher.
I want to raise the bar myself, but I am afraid that it is all for naught.
I feel caught in a vicious cycle that I am worried will never end.
The students
I teach have poor writing, reading, comprehension and math skills. Why is
that? I have seen them struggle through exercises that my twelve-year-old
(a sixth grader) can handle with ease. It has to boil down to what these
students have NOT been getting in their past academic life. It is obvious
to me that they have not been getting a "proper" education. I use the term
loosely, as it can mean different things depending on where you are coming
from.
For example,
proper reading skills for my eighth graders would not always include being
on grade level. For you and the students you teach, that might be different.
Proper reading skills for me would include being able to comprehend what
you have just read and apply it to a real-life situation.
Remember, I
teach 13- and 14-year-olds. I would have thought their prior knowledge base
would be wider and deeper than it is. I feel like I have to re-teach ideas
that they should already know. Let me give you an example of what I am up
against.
We are learning
about the frontier west, pioneers and the westward expansion of the United
States during the years 18401880. In the first lesson I wanted to "re-visit"
(note my word of choice) what the country looked like during this time period
and how the geography of the U.S. played a significant role in being able
to settle the west. Our task was to label mountains, plains, rivers and
deserts using our textbook and a student atlas.
Well, I could
not go further because most of my students did not know what a "plain" was.
Let alone how it might have been an obstacle in travel plans. And some wanted
to know if a desert was the same thing as what you eat at the end of your
meal (I kid you not). So instead of moving forward, I had to step back (several
steps actually) and teach a mini lesson on United States geography, which
by the way is in our sixth grade district curriculum.
After they learned
terms and applied them to a map of the U.S., their assessment was to answer
the following question: If you were a pioneer traveling on foot or leading
a wagon, what kind of obstacle would a mountain present to you? Then substitute
the words plain, river and desert in the place of mountain and answer the
question again.
We even had
difficulty with this. First I had to define "obstacle" before we could go
further. Most still could not answer the question until I set a scene for
them.
I painted a
picture. "Okay, you are a person who wants to get to the west before the
next winter. You come across a river. How are you going to get across it
and not lose your supplies like flour and sugar? You know if they get wet
they are ruined and you will likely starve." Or "You are driving a wagon
pulled by slow oxen. You have come to the start of a steep climb up a mountain.
You are in tall grass and the weather is still warm, but when you look straight
up at the mountain, all you see is snow. How are you going to get your wagon
up and over before the winter comes? What might you experience on the trail
that is going to stop you from getting over the top?"
This type of
banter is ongoing and seems endless to me. Until we've exhausted every angle
of every task, the students seem hard-pressed to begin. To me, this comes
back to a basic lack of of reading and comprehension skills — which
bears on their ability to pass the standardized achievement tests.
What can
I do in social studies class to help prepare my students for these kinds
of tests?
First, I have
decided that I need to "mock up" a variety of short reading assignments,
create multiple-choice questions to test for understanding and then develop
an open-ended question that can help determine if the student has internalized
the content. These supplemental reading tasks will then "mirror" the kinds
of questions students will encounter on the standardized tests.
This is a
daunting task. The textbook is a basic form of reading, not very in depth,
but a good survey of content. I have not found any books that I could
just purchase and include in my curriculum. There are many reading books
that will assist in raising student test scores, but after an exhaustive
search I have not found even one book that concentrates on social studies
readings.
Second, I will
need to beef up my reading
comprehension strategies and incorporate them more often into my lessons.
I have used them sporadically this year, but I really need to focus more
on reading in the content area instead of learning the content. A subtle,
but very important difference.
I feel like
my main task as a social studies teacher — whether or not I like it
— is to help students figure out what to do with the words they see
before them that don't make any sense. I didn't go to graduate school to
become a reading specialist. But if I don't develop into one (self taught,
since there's no support for my professional development in this area, either),
my students are not going to be able to break the cycle of failure. Once
again, I need to rethink and remold my teacher-self into something other
than what I thought I should be.
I can see
why some teachers find a niche and stay put for years and years. Trying
to be an effective teacher is exhausting!
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