Teaching & Practice

Schools will not be fixed merely via pedagogy. Content is the heart. Content knowledge and the content delivered. #edreform #CommonCore

Deep learning is about transgressing borders erected by tradition and complacency. But one must first become cognizant of said borders

Forget iPads. Give every student a Raspberry Pi. They need to become comfortable with command lines. We need more hackers, not consumers.

At a PD by @DTWillingham today. What he's saying is quite disruptive comparative to US norms: curriculum should sequentially build knowledge

@DTWillingham imagine if we put our focus and energy as a school/district towards the study of carefully selected texts & topics.

@DTWillingham it sounds deceptively simple, yet it would overturn nearly every rote process and approach currently relied upon by schools

Too many teachers operate from the perspective of "my kids can't," rather than "I don't yet know how to." This is a fundamental shift in mindset that leads to continuous improvement.

Likewise, too many administrators operate under "our teachers can't," rather than "I need to figure out how to better support them."

Some problems with the trite takeaways from this study. Territoriality and sitting in the same seat may lead more to complacency, rather than learning. Real learning requires some discomfort. https://qz.com/1349508/ via @qz

Knowing the research on repetitive spaced retrieval and self-quizzing has made watching my 2 year old acquire spoken language especially interesting... I'm seeing how he keeps practicing words as he interacts with the world, over and over again.

One problem in the current resurgence of attention on problems w reading instruction: we need to be clear about distinction between skills that can be mastered sequentially (word reading) and knowledge/schema that is complex and cumulative (language).

We need as much valid and objective data as we can get to make an IEP. Such a critical piece. But we also need a team of adults discussing, monitoring, and updating that plan in coordination with the student and family to make it come alive. https://x.com/carriemelago/status/1189887617208397824

Big problem with adopting newer "high quality curriculum": gaps in outcomes are increasing. Teachers need further support in how to scaffold more effectively and engage students in a productive struggle. https://t.co/jjDZfiAChB

I finished training on the PAST with an 8th grade self-contained class, and began working with the teacher to try and figure out how to incorporate phonemic practice into core instruction. This will be tough, but here's the good part . . .(thread)

One of the students I administered the PAST to today, after I was ready to move into the testing asked, "Why are we doing this?" I stopped and realized I hadn't been explaining the purpose of this, and that students should know. . . especially 8th grade students

This class, by the way, is presenting with severe reading needs. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. But now we can see the way. Rime word walls. Station or small group work that can incorporate PA drills with fluency work with grade-level text. Ideas? Send em my way!

When we explored the phonological basis of word reading and practiced some examples of phonological instruction, and we began brainstorming together, she said, "it's becoming clearer to me how I can help this class."

He taught me the narrative that I now will preface every PAST with. 1) Explain the purpose and 2) "We're going to play some word games that move from easier to harder, so if you feel like you're getting stuck, that's OK!"

So I gave an executive summary of the phonological basis of word recognition, and explained that we needed to see what help he might need with hearing and speaking of the sounds in words, so he could read more fluently. He then was ready to do the testing.

A1: Throwing a bunch of random passages at students and asking them to practice MC strategies isn't going to magically help them become better readers. Kids need to read and discuss texts that are meaningful to them and that will expand their knowledge and vocabulary. #elachat

Honestly, if you are a teacher and developing your own lessons right now, STOP. There is an overabundance of free and well-developed online materials already out there. It's just a matter of selection and connecting your students to it.

Let's think beyond online learning when it comes to remote learning. Let's think about how to get books in the hands of kids at home who need it the most.

We’re now in the business of building daily habits, not just in keeping kids in a chair and delivering content. https://schoolecosystem.org/2020/03/18/remote-learning-social-distancing/

What does a culturally responsive and sustaining approach mean right now? It means helping your students process what is happening to them and to their world right now. Please don't just start throwing random passages at them right now. State tests are off the table.

Thinking out loud: I'm wondering whether remote learning needs to lessen a focus on an "instructional core" and instead focus on small group/individual intervention and more opportunities for project-based enrichment. Seems like remote is more suited for those types of learning.

I've gotten into more than few small spats here on Twitter about the nitty gritty of things: what is research-based practice, whether onset-rime is worth teaching, etc. It's all in service of the learning. There's so much more we need to research and figure out in practice.

I've been trying out The PAST phonemic awareness screener and other tools, and sharing pieces of my learning with various small audiences. There's been ups and downs on this journey. It's a tough burden to ask any individual teacher to shoulder, I've found. It's been piecemeal.

I've been on a learning trajectory since that post, reading Louisa Moats, Jeanne Chall, Words Their Way, Alfred Tatum, and many posts and research papers. I've been tapping into the learning of our Universal Literacy coaches, my excellent critical friends here on Twitter....

At the beginning of this school year I wrote about reading, and all the things I've been learning that I didn't know before.

Much in our world has changed since then.

But what we need to do to equip our children to read has not.

https://schoolecosystem.org/2019/08/22/learning-how-kids-learn-to-read/

Please welcome our Bronx ELA Liaisons from District 9. We want to build a shared understanding of the science of reading, culturally responsive teaching, and what can be done within an MTSS model to disrupt and invert the literacy outcomes of our district. #BronxELAchampions

I'm so excited to begin this collective learning journey within my district. We need champions for literacy for our students who are unafraid to confront the data, have a deep love for the communities we serve, and are willing to fight against norms that aren't working for all.

After the shift to remote learning, without the exhaustion of a daily commute on various buses and trains and the time I usually spend in individual schools and classrooms, I've discovered an opportunity to bring teachers in schools across my district together around this.

Just "visited" an elementary school doing solid live instruction each day and keeping their kids engaged and learning by working cohesively as a team. It isn't about synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction. It's about "by any means possible," people.

@MsJasmineMN's response also pushed me to see how making superficial connections to police brutality and racial injustice and coopting Black voices because it's news du jour can be damaging. https://x.com/MsJasmineMN/status/1270086882228043778

This response really got me thinking. I tweeted the original article w/o critical reflection, and I was going to use Hammond's interview myself in an upcoming PD, where I'm trying to link SOR to culturally responsive teaching. I'm rethinking how I want to engage participants https://x.com/Ready4rigor/status/1270194275838341122

I believe strongly that equity work is teaching kids to read, write, and foster critical consciousness about what they read and experience. Trying to bring these threads all together.

@MicheleCaracapp has also got me thinking a lot about how we need to be very careful about how we frame the use of universal screeners and targeted support and instruction. I believe we need to do both -- meet kids where they are, but use that info to scaffold grade-level texts.

Are we considering what students and their families bring to the table and responding to their experiences and knowledge? Are we looking through the remedial lens of a deficit model, or are we planning how we can accelerate learning with grade-level content and expectations?

I view the science of reading as deeply connected to the work of culturally responsive and sustaining education, but there are so many ways that framing of SOR through that lens can go wrong. What texts do we teach? Why?

Instead of giving students less, what if we gave them more? What if we hosted a daily textual and linguistic feast? https://wp.me/pcrIPG-108

The forces in our field that would deny students opportunities and access to grade-level expectations, knowledge, and texts is strong. And it is perpetrated under the guise of care and concern.

I feel like writing remains so strangely segregated from reading, both in research and in practice. Yet the irony is that writing is the very technology that enables reading to exist. It's like we have everything backward.

It's genuinely frightening to realize that reading is the "easier" ability to teach and acquire than writing.

Sometimes, you just need to be willing to appear stupid to get to the truth. (Psst, tell students this. Asking questions is how everyone gets smarter!)

I am a big proponent of the Simple View of Reading, but one consequence is that it positions phonology as solely related to decoding, when it also relates to oral language development. This may cause unnecessary debates about phonology instruction.

Clearly, they are deeply interrelated, but a narrow focus on phonemic awareness loses sight of the fact that language development at the word, sentence, and discourse levels is ongoing beyond decoding development.

So there's two strands here in working with speech sounds: the speech sounds necessary for morphological, syntactical, and semantic language development and articulation, and the speech sounds necessary for decoding and encoding.

I think the debates that position synthetic phonics proponents against linguistics approaches loses the forest for the trees. This isn't just about efficiency. This is about ensuring all students gain the opportunity to develop linguistic and cognitive flexibility and proficiency

Phonology is not only about developing the abstraction of phonemic awareness necessary for decoding and encoding writing systems. It is also about the ability to hear and speak the sounds of the language. And language ability is far less constrained and linear than decoding.

This internecine fighting about phonics vs. linguistics approaches seems like a waste of energy to me. We're not only developing students' reading abilities in the early years. We're also developing their language abilities -- and that work continues all throughout education.

So: when we teach decoding and encoding, focus first and foremost on phonemic awareness from the start. Makes total sense. But: when we teach oral language (are we teaching this? If we need to ask, that's part of the problem), we need to instruct at different grain sizes.

While reading 'Bear Came Along' tonight, my 4 year old asked about some marshy type of plant in a picture. After I explained what a "marsh" is, he asked, "Is that like where Martians are?" Really cool to see phonological and morphological awareness develop in real-time.

We often talk about the challenges of written language, rather than about the enhancements to our thinking and communicative ability that the technology can afford us.

Look, it just needs to be said sometimes as a friendly reminder:

A school can have evidence-based programs in place and get horrific results.

A school can use all the fuzzy stuff and get strong results.

We undervalue execution and coherency and organizational culture.

I'm saying this as much to remind myself, as someone strongly committed to research and evidence. I just have seen too many contradictions in practice.

Leadership and commitment and a shared purpose drives excellence, not just whether something on paper is "aligned" or not.

I don't think we talk enough about how general learning ideologies are so often driven by a secondary lens, and don't make any sense at an early elementary level.

The reason there is no established morphology scope and sequence is because what morphemes you teach should be based on what words you teach, and the words you teach should be based on the texts you read. . .

. . . not to mention many higher-level skills such as genre and text structure knowledge, executive function, text comprehension, even pragmatics (how do they choose to communicate in this medium to this audience on this task)?

One of the richest, and often overlooked, sources of information on students is their writing. Taking time to deeply examine their writing as a team can provide guidance on instructional strengths and needs in phonology, orthography, vocabulary, syntax, motor skills. . . .

If you want to know a student well, take the time to read and examine their writing at a word, sentence, and discourse level. As a team. It will tell you things you don't see in any other source of data. In combination with those other sources, it can be very powerful.

The missing link in literacy instruction: More frequent opportunities to connect oral language to written language through interactive read-alouds, peer discussion, and shared writing experiences across disciplines.

How about instead of calling it the "science of reading," we call it the science of language and literacy development? Language and literacy development are reciprocal. So much unnecessary tunnel vision out there dividing the two, when we should be surveying all the evidence.

In this respect it's similar to assessment of reading and language conprehension, which is also highly complex. But writing is arguably even more difficult to untangle.

OK opening a can of worms, but . . . Let's talk about writing assessments in elementary.

Writing performance draws upon a panoply of underlying skills, and assessment is therefore multifaceted -- you could measure any number of given criteria, much of it subjective.

All of it?

Rubrics, which rubrics, how normed? Comparative judgement, how trained what platform? AI automatic grading? Which vendor, how accurate?

Writing assessment is deep. What do you recommend?

So how do we assess writing in a valid and reliable way and gain useful information that will inform instruction?

Is it spelling? Handwriting and motor control? Is it sentence construction, grammatical accuracy? Paragraphs? Genre knowledge? Analysis of prompt and text? Planning?

The problem in education is that everyone just wants strategies they can do in their schools/classrooms tomorrow, when what they really need are better frameworks and deeper knowledge for making better instructional decisions.

First off, why haven't many heard of it yet? And why don't we just call it Speech-Language Impairment (SLI), which is the formal term used for IEPs and services in schools?

It's a rather recent term, not without some debate, that was introduced in 2016 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0158753

Today is #DLDAwarenessDay! Here in the US, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), seems to not yet be widely known or understood.

So let me try to lay down a few reasons why it has caught my attention, in the hope I can bring it to yours.

A 🧵⬇️

What is the definition of DLD?

DLD is "a language problem that endures into middle childhood and beyond and that has a significant impact on social or educational function."

Sounds important, right?

#Dyslexia has been getting a lot of (warranted!) attention over the last couple of years, resulting in legislation and important investments in early screening.

But did you know that up to 50% of those with dyslexia ALSO have DLD, and vice versa? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30458538/

By adopting a unified term, which can be recognized internationally, allows for stronger advocacy. This is important because "the lack of awareness among the general population translates into limited resources for addressing the problem."

Why use the new term?

There hasn't been consensus about terms, and the identification used for SLI has been too narrow. DLD is a broader term, which can include SLI, that allows for a diagnosis alongside co-occuring conditions, such as dyslexia, ADHD... https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2019_PERSP-19-00083

We need to improve identification of this need from the earliest grades, so we can ensure our instructional core address this need, with intensified supports when needed.

Check out the great work of @TrinaDSpencer2 and others on this: http://www.trinastoolbox.com/

We have many children in our classrooms who need our district, school, and teacher leaders to understand that they need supports with language development.

Wait time after questioning, talking slowly, providing concrete scaffolds to accompany verbal information.

And follow leaders in the US and beyond doing advocacy and research on DLD @tiffanyphogan @larchiba6 @SuzAdlof . . . I know I'm forgetting many here, please tag in more leaders!

You began to attune your budding awareness to the prosody of human speech. You began to distinguish the voices of different speakers and between the sounds of different languages.

Language learning begins almost the moment we can hear or feel or move. When you were in the womb, your mother’s heartbeat, sonorous voice, and burbling digestive system bathed you in constant aural stimulation and sparked the rapid development of neural connections in your brain

When our children first come into our schools, whether in pre-K or in kindergarten, they already come with a wide range of unique experiences with language. However, not all have had the same level of exposure to the language of written text . . .

We are born to communicate with and learn from one another, to gesture, to imitate, to assign names and labels, to array things and events and actions into discourse. This amazing ability to learn and communicate is our universal birthright.

After we have entered into the world and the umbilical cord has been cut, language is the interstitial tissue that binds our interactions to the people and objects around us. We cry and wave, we grab and we coo, we point and laugh and babble and shriek.

The academic term for this type of language is “decontextualized” or “abstract” language, and children are exposed to this language whenever an adult reads books aloud to them and talks with them about what they read (“extra-textual talk”).

. . . , a language that tends to be more syntactically complex, with greater use of specialized and infrequent words, greater requirements for inferencing, and glimpses into realms of inquiry that lie beyond the immediate and concrete.

. . . with challenging concepts and ideas. Frankly, I don't think we leverage the power of read-alouds frequently nor effectively enough across our classrooms, and across content areas. #language #readalouds #sharedreading

. . . most especially as disciplinary language grows ever more specialized. The dense yet rich informational texts of social studies and science are ripe for read-alouds, providing opportunities for students to hear complex written text read fluently and engage intellectually. .

These early shared reading experiences improve later reading outcomes and motivation to read. But shared reading shouldn't stop once kids have learned to decode. Read-alouds should continue all the way up through secondary . . .

To commune with the elders. To reckon with capital. To communicate into a void that returns ourselves in reflected potential, a snapshot of a timelessness in which we can almost see beyond our selves into an accumulating consciousness.

Learning a writing system requires the ability to recognize the compositional and combinatorial parts of words and sentences and genres, and to fluently and flexibly use that awareness to step beyond time and space into the realm of abstraction.

Is learning a second or third language considered "natural" and acquired via exposure and use? Or does learning a new language require direct and explicit instruction? Or is some measure of both needed, varying based on context of use and individual learning profile?

The reason phonics is still being debated today is that the "artificiality" of sublexical units (phonemes & graphemes) strikes all too many as "unnatural," rather than as the awe-inspiring birthright of a remarkable human invention, akin to controlled flame. https://t.co/SMUoYwNnNv

Language and literacy development are on a spectrum from effortless to effortful, with another axis around the individual profile of a child that requires either more explicit instruction or greater opportunities for more independent implicit learning. https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/01/28/a-finale-learning-to-read-and-write-is-a-remarkable-human-feat/

Today my 3 year old came home and shared the word "metamorphosis" from her class study of caterpillars, while my 5 year old shared the word "bioluminescence" from his class study of fireflies. #universalpreK #NYC #knowledge #vocabulary

A wondering re: multisensory approaches to phonics instruction. Is it possible such approaches can at times add to extraneous cognitive load, rather than reduce it?

The hardest work we do as educators and leaders is when we honestly reflect on whether the lessons or sessions we facilitate have landed in the learning we planned and anticipated.

Much of the time, the honest answer is: not quite. This is why this work is so hard.

The endorphin rush of a well planned and delivered window into eternity is well worth the painstaking chiseling of our shallow egos.

But also, why it's so fulfilling and why those who dedicate their lives to this endeavor so often stick with it well beyond "retirement." Learning and systemic change are mostly incremental, until those little avalanches, those heretofore invisible tipping points, are achieved.

I wonder how much this plays into the everpresence of pedagogies in our schools that pretend that kids will gain mastery of all the hard stuff without the discipline and daily effort of practice?

In Hollywood films, the part where the hero or heroine suddenly develops mastery of Kung Fu or something is always a sped up musical interlude. In our culture, we want all the cool benefits without the actual hard work.

Mastery takes disciplined daily effort and practice.

At the same time, we need to hype up the payoffs in gaining those foundational basics. Because once they have that automaticity and fluency, they can jam, they can pick any books they can play with numbers. That's when it gets fun, and that's when lifelong learning becomes real.

Instead, we need to be honest and upfront with our kids that gaining mastery of reading, math, and other disciplinary domains requires a lot of hard work both up front to gain the basics, and for a lifetime to gain mastery.

It's the pervasive disconnect between what our children are capable of learning and doing and the motley assortment of materials and approaches that are used by so many in our schools.

I deleted an earlier tweet posted in frustration as a parent regarding the curriculum overview presented for his kindergarten class.

I want to be clear here. My issue is not the teacher, nor even the school. https://t.co/DJZjoKBCdJ

Foundational literacy and language skills and disciplinary and world knowledge and experiences should go hand in hand. It's not about having a program for every subject. It's about reading, writing, and talking around shared texts and topics.

My son came home from preK talking about metamorphosis. Now he's saying he doesn't like school and he only wants lunch time and recess.

So as a parent, and as someone who works to support our schools, I'm concerned. Granted, it's just the first full week, so I'll give it time.

So I shouldn't have tweeted in a way that makes it seem like I'm attacking his teacher. It's not about her. It's about a consistent pattern across schools I already well knew that disturbed me and that I have worked to push against that I am now experiencing directly as a parent

Teaching, and leading a school, is extremely hard work, and I don't want what I'm saying misconstrued. We have a lot of hard work to do collectively to ensure we have schools that are both supportive and rich in disciplinary and cross-disciplinary academic learning from Day 1.

There's a tension between multilingual learner advocates and SOR advocates that can be far more exaggerated than it needs to be.

Structured literacy (SOR) provides a great anchor for contrastive analysis, a foundational practice for building cross- and meta-linguistic awareness.

Furthermore, the stress is on explicit instruction of linguistic features, such as morphology and syntax, that are especially important for students learning English as a newer language.

And multicomponent approaches for all who need more supports.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/structured-literacy-instruction-basics

Structured literacy isn't just about phonics, as it is so often misinterpreted. Approaches that are supportive of MLs--like @GreatCitySchls "3Ls," @ELeducation "language dives," and protocols for oracy--align with a structured literacy approach.

Structuring opportunities for direct instruction and analysis of spoken linguistic features and of how they relate to orthography can benefit all children.

By enhancing those opportunities with connections to students' home languages, MLs can bring their strengths to the table.

A tendency is to jump into immediate action, put in place some singular practice or program or system, and then clap one another on the back and start a new school year without ever having addressed the underlying root of problems that prevent universal success.

One the one hand, teams need to slow down to do deeper analysis and planning at the systems-level. They need to check their biases and assumptions, collect more data, more clearly problems they can change, and refine their theories and designs for action.

Been thinking a lot lately about the balance and tension between systems-level work and classroom-level work within MTSS in a school and district.

A brief 🧵 👇

On the other, teachers, staff, and students need immediate and ongoing guidance and supports across the school community and in classrooms.

Navigating and carrying school teams through these competing tensions seems to be a key aspect of improving outcomes.

We need to slow down teams to speed up instructional efficacy.

PSA: for an older student who comes to the US and speaks a language other than English, putting them on a laptop to do phonics as a default is not serving them well.

Unless there has been significant interrupted or inconsistent formal education, they will bring foundational literacy and advanced language and knowledge in their home language(s).

Instead, ascertain what they bring in their home language. NY state provides the MLS screener. Or provide a prompt, and ask them to write a response in their home language. If they are constructing words, sentences, and passages in their home language, they are fully literate.

Leverage their home language and literacy to make connections to the spoken and written forms of English. No, you aren't teaching them their language: you are inviting them to share their knowledge. But having at minimum basic awareness of their spoken and written language is key

CUNY-NYSIEB has a great overview of cultural and linguistic aspects of different languages in NY state https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cuny-nysieb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NYSLanguageProfiles.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi-j6D0-Yz7AhX2kIkEHb83BY4QFnoECAsQAg&usg=AOvVaw0bVH7exrig1O8zJu1Z4fNt

Using contrastive analysis, you can support students in comparing and contrasting their existing knowledge of the phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax, and meaning in their home language to English, and teach in to the areas that are most dissimilar.

ASHA also has some great resources on the linguistic features of specific languages and dialects https://www.asha.org/practice/multicultural/phono/

If they do require systematic instruction in the alphabetic principle, grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and so on, then by all means provide it. Just don't forget that they also need lots of structured discussion and peer interaction and access to texts in multiple modalities..

and in their home language aligned to core content and topics, when and where available, to support connecting to and building upon their existing conceptual knowledge.

I think there can be a place for F&P RRs in individual classrooms, when used judiciously. But not as a universal school-wide tool. It's inefficient, it's subjective, and most importantly, it takes time and focus away from shared content and language rich, grade-level texts.

Keeping the focus on daily high quality content-rich instruction in a school is always a challenge.

So why do we spend so much time doing F&P running records? For what?

To get a "level" that is not grade-level and takes access away from too many to shared content-rich texts.

"If ONLY teachers would do the miscue analysis!" is the common refrain of running record enthusiasts and the administrators who force them upon everyone. How about we don't waste time with an inefficient analysis based on vibes and faulty theory?

10 years ago, I wrote a series on #curriculum on @ChalkbeatNY, and I stressed the importance of #opensource curriculum. I don't think the field was ready to hear it then, but maybe we are now given developments since then. Here is the post republished: https://languageliteracy.blog/2022/12/11/the-open-source-imperative-for-k-12-curriculum/

An underappreciated aspect of effectively using ChatGPT: It takes a well crafted prompt to generate a truly interesting response. Therefore, teach kids the knowledge and skills of crafting great questions for inquiry.

Controversial opinion alert: Morphology and etymology should be viewed and taught as directly and reciprocally related.

The written code is part of meaning. It is an overlay, an enhancement to meaning. It is meaningful. It is worthy of study. It is not a one-size-fits-all to ensure that it is taught well, taught with joy, and taught systematically and explicitly with a shared scope and sequence.

What does it say about our beliefs about the impact of daily instruction in schools when we remain so focused on tutoring, afterschool programs, and summer school as solutions to pandemic effects?

If researchers can claim big learning effects on self-created measures, even when there is no impact on standardized measures . . . . . . well, shouldn't teachers be able to, too?

Simple messages and concrete models are important for laying the foundations to advance growth and broaden reach.

Ultimately, we need to be able to carry people into a space of nuance and complexity and divergence. Not to such a level that all is relative and nothing is essential. But also some level of quiescence can be a means to move all forward in the long run.

A seed carries the kernel of complexity, which when provided with adequate space, time, love, and attention, flowers and branches multifaceted into the sky.

But growth can be easily stunted when the conditions (leadership, policies, resources) change too rapidly to secure those foundations, or the foundations are never agreed upon or actively sabotaged.

It starts with simplicity, but it carries from the beginning a hungry tension that edges towards the as-of-yet undefined. It emerges. It adapts. It is beyond any one person's limited capacity.

Our messages, however simple, must allow for these future multitudes.

That generous, generative space of complexity, the level we want to get people on a team or in an organization to, is at the same level as water. Dynamic, flowing, accepting of all -- and relentless in its drive to flourishing.

Can we stop with the games of creating a rubric and then using it to pretend it says anything substantive about a curriculum? What we need are more empirical studies of the impact of curriculum on the academic outcomes and the reported experiences of real students.

You know that you can still invite students to compare words in English to words in their home languages even if they aren't cognates, right?

Then I can feel more confident in bringing my preexisting knowledge and skills to bear. And when I am supported in producing the language of instruction through scaffolds and in participation through clear and consistent routines, I can engage in instruction very quickly.

Think about it for a second: if I come into a new country not yet speaking much of the majority language, I still possess language--the language I use at home.

I can certainly produce that language! And when bridges are built between home language & the language of instruction

I strongly disagree with this premise: "As teachers the expectation should not be that learners are producing language."

This idea of a "silent period" is unfortunately based on outdated theory and should not be used to lower expectations for language.

https://wp.me/papLcz-dO

I shudder to think of teachers waiting a year to expect their students to speak!

Please don't do this! Expect more and support more. Provide plentiful opportunities for kids to hear, see, read, speak, and write words, phrases, sentences, and passages.

This @emollick post made me think about how using an LLM as a tool for student reflection could be powerful, such as after completing a unit performance task.

More thoughts in 🧵⬇️

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/assigning-ai-seven-ways-of-using?publication_id=1180644&isFreemail=true

Wouldn't be surprised if someone out there has already designed some tool to do this, given the surge of innovation in this space right now. Or maybe it's already embedded in an existing LLM and I'm just not aware?

What would make it most useful for such a pedagogical purpose is if the teacher had a dashboard where they could get the LLM started with the same, well honed prompt, then assign the generative discussion activity to each student individually.

I've only been dabbling but I am convinced there are many powerful use cases for AI in the classroom--with the proper constraints in place, once we get past all the anxiety around cheating.

While LLMs may be great for boilerplate forms of writing, their most powerful use is dialogic--and this is where we should look to harness them with students in instructional use.

What do your students at beginning levels of English language learning need that is separate from core instruction? For how long? Seems to be a fundamental area of tension in our field that boils down to values and theories of language development.

Best feedback I got from today's PD on scaffolding a core curriculum for MLs: "I have been to many [vendor we shall not name] trainings and I know you kept telling us "you weren't the expert" -- but you taught me more in today's session than all of those trainings combined!"

If we think of language as completely innate, then perhaps we don’t think it requires much of any teaching that is explicit, systematic, or diagnostic. https://languageliteracy.blog/2023/08/12/language-like-reading-may-not-be-innate/

We think of LLMs inaccurately because we forget that written language is different than spoken language, and they are trained thus far solely on the written form

I have to pinch myself when using @AnthropicAI Claude2-- which is currently free to use. Uploading research papers and asking it questions about the paper -- including across multiple papers -- is an absolute game changer. https://claude.ai/ https://t.co/LvjGLF6POb

I'm starting all over with a new blog.

& I'm starting off reposting where it began for all my musings on ed, 13 years ago as a new teacher in a 5th grade 12:1:1 classroom in the Bronx, with an analogy between growing healthy food and teaching children

https://languageandliteracy.blog/

Next, we grow this idea to the concept of a school as an ecosystem

https://write.as/manderson/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-i

Then, we keep expanding that metaphor, considering the impact of school culture on learning and well-being.

https://languageandliteracy.blog/public-schools-as-ecosystems-part-ii

If literacy improvement becomes more about a bunch of disconnected programs, and less about the collaborative planning teams must do to provide clarity, consistency, and coherence across the school, then we're getting lost.

This article on the continued pervasiveness of the discredited discrepancy model for dyslexia identification is important and rightfully getting amplified.

But I wanted to pause for a minute on a paragraph towards the end (screenshot below).

A brief🧵

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-flawed-dyslexia-screen-leaves-thousands-of-kids-without-help/ https://t.co/XuSKwzvdo3

More extensive and voluminous data, in other words, does not necessarily equate to better targeted instructional support or intervention. The idea of neuropsychs for all may be alluring but misguided both in terms of time and cost and in terms of scalability of impact

As a former SPED teacher and IEP coordinator, I loved receiving extensive neuropsychs on kids. I love data. Yet at the same time, making the connection to a specific instructional program or support that my school or class could provide each day was not a clear nor direct task.

There's a tension between a cost-benefit of the depth and extend of diagnostic assessment and its utility for gaining targeted instruction that is glossed over here. There's an assumption that having an extensive 'neuropsych' for more children will better ensure targeted support.

These reflect the measures used by screeners like DIBELS and Acadience. While there is still some work needing to be done to translate that data into targeted instruction, it is much more immediate and actionable -- and that is what is needed to prevent later reading challenges..

Look back at that last sentence I highlighted in that paragraph -- I think the scalable--and already happening here and nationally--solution lies there. There are efficiently administered and more cost effective assessments available for identifying specific literacy needs.

...rather than merely labeling them.

These are the shifts we can make more immediately to get more kids what they need. When we can move more directly from screening (identification of needs) to progress monitoring (targeting specific needs), then we will see impact.

We must practice with precision if we are to extend our abilities beyond that of everyday functioning and communication. Our context and environment does not necessarily lend itself to such practice unless we have guidance. https://languageandliteracy.blog/thinking-inside-and-outside-of-language

Maybe we need to shift from the simple explicit vs implicit learning dichotomy to "are sufficient structured opportunities for learning being provided"?

What I'm suggesting here is that precision on those distinctions may be less useful than whether students can have enough opportunities to be exposed to and practice with the target learning. Explicitly teaching a vocab word is not very helpful in isolation...

...while implicit learning of vocabulary and concepts across multiple texts can be incredibly powerful. It's more about whether the learning is designed and planned for in a manner that will provide those repeated opportunities over time in connection to a topic or discipline...

...and less about any given explicit or implicitness in one component or one lesson.

Yes! And another related point. . . all too often, we put things up for other adults, rather than for our students. Rule of thumb: If what is up on your wall will not be referred to by your students in any upcoming lessons, then take it down. https://schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/what-is-on-your-classroom-walls-why/ https://x.com/rodjnaquin/status/1753087642223116774

...if I do my close reading and annotating, and then share my compiled quotes with an LLM, I've found it quite useful for summarizing and synthesis of the key points and patterns I've drawn out. It can also then be more helpful for a basic outline of what I might want to write

I don't use AI tools very frequently in my own life or work yet, but beginning to discover specific uses that can make my blogging more efficient. I've found that I can't rely on LLMs to read and synthesize research if I upload PDFs directly. Too general and vague...But

In other words, I still need to do up front reading and analysis. But it helps me to more efficiently consolidate what I pull out on the back end.

AI, at least in current iterations, best supplements, not supplants, human knowledge and insight.

When language is more formalized, more abstract, and more removed from the immediate context of interaction with our physical world, it requires more explicit teaching and guidance. https://languageandliteracy.blog/the-inner-scaffold-for-language-and-literacy

I am far less interested in the potential of AI for tutoring and far more interested in its potential for supporting planning of instruction or easing administrative tasks for teachers and leaders

Should all students be expected to read the same texts? Or should all students be empowered to read different texts? Why?

Write a claim statement, such as by completing the following stem:

In my opinion, all students should read ______ because_____________________________.

This is of course deliberately framed as oppositional to draw out debate, but it's really about how we strategically design for both, to build an intellectual community engaged in disciplinary study, while reading a wide variety and larger volume of texts https://t.co/ipnFncPZnr

When I coordinated IEP development at a school, I structured the process to ensure students understood their data and had a say in their own goal-setting and aligned supports. And they were invited to share those goals and their reflection on their progress at the IEP meeting

"When kids have a better understanding of the condition that affects their learning, they tend to have a better self-concept, and they are more likely to feel empowered and motivated to self-advocate."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neurodivergent-kids-flourish-when-theyre-taught-how-their-brains-work/

We always had an eye on self-advocacy and agency when developing IEP goals, looking ahead to when students would leave our school and how their services and goals would best put them on a path for greater independence.

It all starts with supporting students with building their confidence to ask questions in class when they don't understand something and to ask for help when they need it--and to understand that self-advocacy as part of the learning process, rather than "not being able."

The effectiveness of #AI and #LLMs hinges on the quality of our input.

Just as with previous tools like Google Search, the more precise and informed our prompts, the more powerful and accurate their responses.

Another way of framing this idea:

LLMs can help us further widen or refine our own ideas and language. They are far less useful in just handing them to us.

They mirror and leverage what we provide to them.

The meaning of a concept may not be determined by its individual vector components, but rather by its relationships and interactions with other concept vectors in a vector space. Hence: the advancing power of LLMs. https://x.com/MatthiasMichel_/status/1821575602937139299

So why do we call learning to read unnatural?

Yes, it developed farther down the evolutionary line.

But what we probably are getting at is that it takes more effort to learn.

That doesn't make it unnatural. It just makes it not immediately and easily available to all.

Here's the thing that's kind of funny about calling learning to read "unnatural":

We humans invented the technology of writing. We could put a trademark on it.

We also pretty much have spearheaded the advancements in language, though we share traits of it with other species.

Yet that very notion of "accessibility" is culturally determined.

We can teach all our kids to read, if we truly believe it is essential to all.

So stop pretending learning to read is some alien imposition.

Learning to read should be more properly viewed as our birthright.

Stated another way: if learning to read is unnatural, then the human species is unnatural.

New post! LLMs have demonstrated that implicit learning of statistical associations are fundamental not only to language and to reading, but to our knowledge and experience of the world. https://languageandliteracy.blog/llms-statistical-learning-and-explicit-teaching