Dr. Barbara J. Ehren is Professor and Director of a University of Central Florida doctoral program which focuses on language and literacy for learners who struggle. Dr. Ehren is also a member of IRA’s RTI Task Force. Dr. Ehren has a special interest in assisting school systems to build capacity at the school level for more effective literacy programs for diverse learners. A recurrent theme of her work is shared responsibility for literacy acquisition. 

Barbara Marinak: Tell us a little about your work in secondary schools.

Barbara Ehren: My message is that shared responsibility for literacy across the school is required to meet the needs of diverse learners. I approach my work through a language inquiry lens, helping secondary educators to understand the underlying language requirements of curriculum. I encourage partnerships among the language-focused professionals—reading specialists, speech-language pathologists, and ELL teachers—to help others recognize and address the language needs of students across all modalities—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. How would describe the literacy needs of today’s adolescents in light of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)? The literacy needs of today’s adolescents are increasingly complex for a number of reasons. Most importantly we must prepare students to compete in a global marketplace using communication across all language processes for the purpose of comprehending and creating a wide variety of texts. In analyzing the standards it is easy to see that our work with adolescents will require a greater focus on the integration of complex language and literacy skills and strategies within each discipline.

BM: What do you see as the needs of struggling adolescent readers?

BE: Given the demands for complex literacy skills and strategies within each content discipline, there is a need to help all readers become proficient in the discourses present across the secondary curricula. However, we need to be aware that many adolescents who struggle with literacy and content mastery have foundational language issues. The contribution of language to achievement with adolescents is not widely acknowledged at the secondary level. As a result there is often a mismatch between the student and instruction with the missing piece being critical aspects of language.

BM: What impact do you see the CCSS having on secondary intervention?

BE: I think the CCSS provide a ruler. In other words, knowing that the standards reflect what students should know and be able to do in college and/or careers, we need to identify the needs of adolescents who struggle in light of the CCSS. We need ask, “What is keeping the student from meeting the standards?” Then we need to engineer interventions that address those underlying problems. A challenge that secondary schools face is structuring intervention to be truly responsive to students’ specific needs. It is a tall order within the master schedule with semester courses. One step that secondary schools can take is to build a flex period into their master schedule to permit movement across targeted learning experiences so that students receive the instruction/intervention they need for as long as they it in the amount that they need it. This is the goal of RTI.

BM: If secondary teachers and/or reading specialists are going to begin implementing the CCSS in their intervention practices, what would you recommend?

BE: Collaboration with disciplinary teachers is critical. As I mentioned previously, reading specialists, speech and language pathologists and ELL teachers, as languagefocused professionals, are key players in this collaboration process. Work groups that include these individuals should be discussing the language “culprits” that are underlying students’ difficulties in meeting standards. In addition, content teachers need to come to the table with an open mind. This is not a competition between language/literacy learning and content learning. It is about recognizing that domain learning and literacy learning are integrally bound. Without content teachers and support professionals collaborating, students will not be prepared to deal with the discourse requirements in the content domains. We must use the CCSS and RTI processes as the context to renew our critical conversations about the role of language and literacy in domain learning.

Dr. Barbara Marinak is associate professor of education at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. She is also the co-chair of the RTI Task Force of IRA, marinak@msmary.edu.

This article is reprinted from the April/May 2012 issue of Reading Today, the International Reading Association's bimonthly member magazine. Members: click here to read the issue. Nonmembers: join now! 

by Jen Donovan

Calling all literacy advocates and book lovers! World Book Night is quickly approaching. On April 23 the U.S. will celebrate its very first World Book Night by sending thousands of copies of paperback books out communities across the nation. Thirty books have been chosen, featuring modern American classics such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, as well as NY Times best sellers like Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Also included in this literature line-up are a number of books for young adults. The Hunger Games and Because of Winn-Dixie are some examples of the featured award-winning titles in young adult fiction. 

World Book Night will rely on volunteers to distribute 20 copies of their favorite book on the list to members of their own community. The goal of the event is to encourage the love of reading and allow volunteers and participants to share their passion for a great book. The original World Book Night was first held in the UK; it was such a success that the idea has spread around the world. In the US, the first World Book Night is supported by major publishing houses, libraries, authors, and communities. 

The 2012 US World Book Night currently has tens of thousands of volunteers signed up to distribute, but there is also a waiting list for those who wish to be a part of the event. More information is available on the World Book Night website.

by Jen Donovan

ReadWriteThink.org recently introduced Cube Creator, an online interactive tool that provides students with a special type of graphic organizer. The interactive organizer is in the form of a six-sided cube with different information appearing on each side. Students must record an answer or observation to the prompts on each side. After the student records their information, the cube flips to a different side with a new prompt. The concept of the Cube Creator works by breaking the subject down into smaller elements that eventually come together to form a bigger picture or main idea. As the student records their answers the cube becomes complete, leaving them with fun-shaped, organized chart of information.

This interactive tool includes a planning sheet, which allows  students to think about their answers and simplify them for their final cube. Cube Creator also has a special save feature that allows students and teachers to save and edit their cubes at any time. (Visit ReadWriteThink.org for a video tutorial on saving interactives.)

The final result is a print-out pattern of the cube that can be cut out and assembled into a tangible representation of the topic. Students can actually hold the 3-D organizer in their hands and see how it visually represents what they’ve learned. 

Cube Creator presents its users with four different options for summarizing, organizing, and planning:

• Bio Cube was the original interactive cube organizer and the inspiration for Cube Creator. It allows students to create an outline of the subject of a biography or autobiography that they've read in class. It prompts them to record thoughts on the person’s significance, background, and personality. Students can also use this tool for organizing and writing their own autobiography. 
• Mystery Cube helps students organize clues to solve their favorite mystery stories. It also helps them with creating their own mystery by identifying the necessary mystery elements and vocabulary. Questions prompt students to describe the setting, clues, mystery, victim, detective, and solution to the mystery story.
• Story Cube introduces students to the key elements of a story. Students will be able to identify character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme. This introduces students to the basic elements and vocabulary of literary analysis.
• Create-Your-Own Cube can be used for any subject. This tool allows teachers to create their own prompts and topics and save the file to be shared with students as a class exercise. Students can also use this cube to create their own interactive learning tool on any topic of their choosing. The Create-Your-Own Cube is a blank canvas for any subject, and it’s perfect for science, math, and social studies units.

Unlike traditional prewriting webs or charts, filling out the Cube Creator is more like completing a puzzle. It challenges students to organize information, creating a comprehensive summary of their topic by completing the cube. Cube Creator is a fun and visually engaging learning tool that students are excited to use. 

ReadWriteThink.org is a project of Verizon Thinkfinity, the International Reading Association, and the National Council for Teachers of English. Visit www.readwritethink.org for more interactives and lesson plans.

by Thomas DeVere Wolsey

Personal learning environments (abbreviated as PLEs), are a way of organizing, curating, and bringing coherence to the many digital interactions students have with other students, teachers, digital others on the Internet, and the content they find online and on paper. Personal learning environments provide entry points, organization, and a network that makes sense; these entry points serve as a table of contents to an individual user’s multiple digital interactions. As important, the class learning environments teachers create can become important components of the personal learning environments their students create.

A key aspect of the personal learning environment is that it is created by individual users. My personal learning environment will look quite different from yours, for example. Personal learning environments may also intersect in a network. For example, Sabrina is a 10th-grade student. Her science teacher shared a set of readings via links on Delicious. Her English-language arts teacher has assigned a reading from a digital library (for example, SunSITE), and her social studies teacher has asked her to examine several artifacts from the World Digital Library. In mathematics, she created an online presentation in SlideShare showing practical applications of triangulation. Keeping track of the assignments and emails from teachers and classmates can be difficult. In addition, she maintains her own digital presence on Facebook and collects links about her interest in the piano on Diigo, which she shares with friends.

Sabrina could be overwhelmed with all the digital content with which she is expected to interact; however, her homeroom teacher helped her design a personal learning environment using SymbalooEDU as one entry point. With Symbaloo, Sabrina can add links to web sources and her teachers’ assignments and schedules, code sources by color, and produce task lists to be sure she accomplishes her goals.  In addition, she can choose webmixes created by other users on topics such as writing tools or biology resources. As important, Sabrina can integrate her own interests via links and RSS feeds. She shares the elements of her personal learning environment that she chooses, while keeping other elements private. In this video, a student, JJGeorgy, describes how to get started using Symbaloo.

Because personal learning environments are, indeed, personal, they take many forms.  The graphic organizers linked on the Edtechpost http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams wiki illustrate the many variations of the PLE.  A PLE is an approach users take to aggregate content, organize it, and lend context to it. Owners can create their own content and gather it from teachers, peers, and other Internet sources. Sometimes, teachers provide a basic framework and share elements of their own personal or classroom learning environments to help further learning.

In the video below, a technology coordinator explains how teachers and students use Symbaloo in first through third grades in Memphis, Tennessee.

Thomas DeVere Wolsey is a literacy specialization coordinator in the Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership at Walden University.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

Technology Professional Development Sessions at the IRA Annual Convention

by Jen Donovan

The International Reading Association partners with the NCTE and Verizon Thinkfinity to produce ReadWriteThink.org, a website devoted to providing literacy instruction and interactive resources for grades K-12. ReadWriteThink presents teachers with effective lesson plans and strategies, a professional community, and engaging online interactive student tools. One of their most popular interactives that can be applied to almost any literacy lesson is the K-W-L Creator.

Just as modern technology has replaced blackboards with smart-boards, and turned written papers into online assignments, the traditional K-W-L chart has been transformed from its paper format to a new online interactive tool. The K-W-L method helps students prepare for what they are reading by organizing what they know (K), what they want (W) to learn, and reflecting on what they’ve learned (L). The K-W-L Creator provides teachers and students with an interactive way to learn through reading comprehension.

The interactive tool is easy to use and understand. Because it is accessible online, students can use the internet to further explore their topic. They can include links to images, videos, and other online resources in their own K-W-L charts, creating visual presentations of what they’ve learned. Teachers can also display the tool on their interactive whiteboards and use it for a class exercise. Each individual chart can be printed separately, so the teacher can focus on a certain area with the entire class. For example, the “L” section can be used to consider and summarize what the class has learned from the readings. 

The worksaver feature is what makes this interactive really unique. It allows users to save their work to either their computer or to their e-mail. Teachers are able to modify the K-W-L charts by asking their own questions and save these modifications for the next lesson. The worksaver functionality also enables students to save their progress and reflect on the overall process of completing the entire K-W-L exercise online. ReadWriteThink has an online video tutorial about saving work for those who need assistance. 

The K-W-L Creator is a highly customizable tool that can be as interactive as you want it to be. Printouts of the K-W-L chart as well as individual charts are available for download from the website. There are also several different versions of K-W-L graphic organizers which create print-out graphic organizers on any specific topic, creating an instant classroom exercise.

The K-W-L Creator, along with all the other interactive tools from the website, is an engaging way of teaching literacy and organization to students. It’s easy to use and the students have fun with the interactive, online-learning component of the tool. ReadWriteThink.org gives teachers the freedom and the resources to tailor their lesson plans, making learning literacy fun and exciting. Visit the K-W-L Creator webpage for more information. 

Jen Donovan is an intern in the Strategic Communications Department of the International Reading Association.