Above: Tony Stead, Author of Is That a Fact? and Reality Checks and Jeanne Cantu (SAISD Senior Coordinator, Reading/English Language Arts)

About the Books

—from the Foreword by Tomie dePaola

Podcasts

This podcast was recorded at Edison High School, San Antonio ISD with the permission of Roger Rosen and Tony Stead. (Find out more? about podcasts and podcasting here).

Listen to Complete Podcast (includes Roger and Tony).

Richard Rosen President of the Rosen Publishing Group Email: rogerrosen@prodigy.net	Tony Stead Speaker Email: tonystead@bigpond.com)
Listen to a Chat with Richard Rosen	Listen to Tony Stead’s Presentation (This does not have an intro; it jumps right into the presentation).

Miscellaneous Terms Used Below

Saturday Academy for Literacy and Science Achievement (SALSA) Literacy and Social Studies Academy (LASSO)

Miguel’s Presentation Notes

Why a Writer Writes

• Describe-descriptive reports (e.g. animals, plants, housing, countries)
• Explain-how/why-scientific explanations
• Instruct=procedures, directions, recipes
• Persuade - expositions, debates, advertisement
• Narrate:Fiction -Stories, fairytales, fables, myths
• Narrate: non Fiction - retell/recounts, biographies, letter

Most teaching of writing is focused on narrative non-fiction. In grades 3–5, they discover the world of narrative fiction. Boys would write horror studies, girls about barbies. To be successful in life, what kind of writing will help children in their life? If you’re like me, you’re writing persuasive writing.

When you get to high school, I’m amazed at all the content studies. The biggest problem that middle/high school teachers have is that their kids can’t read, understand the content, then actually record it. Most of their life they’ve been reading and writing narrative fiction stories.

Findings from School Visits

(Duke, 2000;Stead 2004)

• In K-2 classrooms, 95% of writing experiences were with personal narrative and story.
• By 6th grade, children will have spent 84% of writer’s workshop composing personal narratives, stories, and writing from prompts.

Linking Content with Process

• Units of Study-Science Content with Writing Text Type Process
• Animals with Description-Report
• Water-Floating and Sinking with Procedural: Book of Experiments
• Forces of Nature with Scientific Explanation/Charts

• Unit of Study on Weather (Science) - Learning how to write informational reports on writing.
  • The Totally Terrible Tornado: Everything You Need to Know Guide (Written by Mrs. Sturgell and Her Twisted Class)
  • Horrible Hurricanes by Taylor Jones
  • Awesome Avalanches
  • Droughts for Dummies by Jeff Anderson

This starts with our kindergarten kids.

• Unit of Study with Science and Turtles
  • Whole class book about turtles and dedicated to Junior. Unfortunately, Junior died after the turtle books were finished…the children wanted to write a how-to on how they could have saved Junior.
• Which Animal will you write about?

• Unit of Study on nocturnal creatures (Whole Class Investigation - Bats - Science)
  • Learning how to write persuasions.
  • Most people are terrified of bats.
  • Kids wrote a brochure and dedicated it to everyone who is scared of bats. For the us, the use of technology to get online and find out about stuff. With every book, there’s a web site. Kids went to batconservation.com. If you send us the information and produce it and send it to all 1000 of our members. Those kids were screaming with absolute joy. All day, all they want to do is write persuasive brochures. Our kids sit in those classrooms and do what they’re told. They write and read without every understanding why.
• Individual Investigations
  • Should nocturnal creatures be kept in captivity?
  • Is it okay to eat certain nocturnal creatures?
  • Should be people be afraid of nocturnal creatures such as snakes?
• Unit of study on Culture
• Whole class investigation - Foods Social Studies
  • Learning how to write procedures
    • Sequencing - what comes first, what comes next
• How do I make kids inquiry-based learners?
• Science: Plants Writing: Descriptions and Procedures

• Kids watch Enchanted Learning.com
• Individual Investigations
• Plant Journal at Grade 1
  • Shared a delightful story about Daniel. In his journal, the

Denton ISD Statistics

• Reading Stats
  • State: 87%
  • District: 88%
  • No SALSA: 72%
  • SALSA I: 90% (4 sessions in one year for teachers)
  • SALSA II: 92% (2 years training for teachers)
  • SALSA III: 99% (3 years of training for teachers)
• Reflections - Discussion
  • In this one year that you have the SALSA training, how many staff development training is that in hours? Response: 4 half-day Saturdays. I (Tony) meet with them, and meet back with them (that’s the key). Once teachers have had 3 years, they understand how to change their pedagogy.
  • Was this a specific grade level you were looking at for reading? Response: All the scores have been combined over 4 years (The Hawthorne Effect). Anything new you do after one year, you’ll get results. We wanted to make sure that we would maintain results.
  • What about spillover into Science? Response: People with one year of training, we’re improving science and social studies TEKS. For example:
  • 5th Grade Science
    • State: 69%
    • District: 73.9%
    • No SALSA: 69.82%
    • Level 1 of SALSA: 78%
  • How did you overcome barriers? Principals want people to teach to the test. How do you get them to take a leap of faith? Response: It was just one school to start with. Let’s see what happens and then finding out you won’t fail. Pilot the program. That’s how the leap of faith happened. Denton ISD tracked the State test. We started with the interested group.

This afternoon, I’m going to focus on teaching strategies. Try one little unit and feel a little bit of success.

• Other districts - SALSA is used with Conroe ISD, Deer Park ISD

Pre-Assessment

• What pre-assessment do you use? Does the State assessment measure their non-fiction reading? Is students’ level of reading of non-fiction equivalent to non-fiction?

Findings from Assessments

• 73% of students read nonfiction at least 3 Reading Recovery levels below that of their fiction.
• 15% of students read nonfiction 3 grade levels below their fiction.
• By third grade, only 7% of students struggled with decoding nonfiction at their grade level. We teach decoding, how to get through text, but we spend little time helping them understand what the text is actually saying. ESL children can easily learn to decode but because it’s a 2nd language, they don’t have understanding of which words to use for concept. They can read at 28 level of Reading Recovery, but comprehension level of 4.
• You know which kids who are going to be your strongest readers and writers—it’s about oral comprehension.
• Students who were competent readers of nonfiction were also competent in reading fiction, but not vice versa.
• Boys were more competent than girls in comprehending nonfiction but girls read with better phrasing and pace.
• Boys slow their reading down because they want to make meaning of non-fiction. They do what every child should do—they fight to read. Children can read 3–4 levels above what they’re benchmarked on topics they’re interested in.

Reflections on Findings

• The way the TEKS are written, they are a big turn-off. They’re not written in story format. Response: Tony qualified it by saying, “It’s non-fiction that’s not written in an non-engaging manner. If we go back to the old non-fiction—librarians hate me because I want to weed out from the 1950s to 1960s from science and social studies because it’s out of date, non-engaging; need new fresh resources in there.
• You’re non-reading fiction is a little more analytic. Boys tend to be more analytic while girls aren’t. Response: My son is not interested in fiction, more in non-fiction. He likes to jump, pulling little bits of information from different places. Researchers tell me to leave him…many kids start with fiction, go off reading altogether, and never have non-fiction in their life. Science and social studies gets a bad rap because of the material we produce for kids.

Findings

• 96% of all read-alouds were with shared fiction. Kids aren’t even hearing the language of non-fiction content until third grade.
• Small group instruction really worried me. You have to meet kids where they are at. 97% of our books—at the right levels—are fiction. Kids were really proficient with narrative. But not with non-fiction. Students started to cry in guided reading because she couldn’t read non-fiction. This crying student felt what that frustration of having words on a page at a level I can decode but can’t comprehend.
• Kids pick up non-fiction books, look at the pictures.

Help Kids Inquire

• Check Chapter 2 of Reality Checks book, also look in the Teachers Guide provided.
• This is about rethinking a strategy that teachers in the U.S. have been using for the last 10 year. This strategy is KWL.
• KWL Problem - I believe it’s only effective for kids who already bring good background knowledge to the table. When you ask them what they know, that’s all dependent on content understandings.
• Interview with Michael on the topic of Octopus. and ask him what do you know?
  • His replies:
    • It can kill people by squashing them.
    • Giant octopus can destroy boats.
    • The source for this info comes from Tom & Jerry Cartoon.
  • What do you want to know?
    • How long does it take to kill people?
    • Has the giant octopus ever been filmed?
    • How many boats has it destroyed?
• His research hasn’t been set up because it’s based on incorrect knowledge.
• Interview with Sally regarding Deer. She cites Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
  • How does Rudolph get around the world?
  • Can all deer be like Rudolph?

A New Strategy

• RAN - Reading and Analyzing NonFiction Strategy (Chapter 2)
  • Whatever the content area is—such as sharks—I am not going to start off with what do we know. As a class, I ask them, what do you THINK you know? Why is this better terminology than what we think we know?
  • Students put post-its on a chart.
• How can we move from “what we think we know” to “Yes were right Confirmed”
• Anything we think we know, we can start to move.

RAN Strategy

1. What I Think I know
2. What I Know is True (Confirmed)
3. New Facts
   • Any new facts, on the back of the post-its, you have to write where you got it from (the source).
4. Wonderings
   • After listening to the wonderings, go back to the text and see what’s available. If it isn’t there, then let’s go get another text/resource.
5. Misconceptions

• Don’t start with all five categories with students, but instead build and build and build.

Reflection on RAN

• More of a motivating statement to find out what they they know. Response:It’s ok to approximate content knowledge. You don’t have to be true.
• Middle school students are reading books to confirm what they already believe.
• In reading a book about volcanoes, I’ll write down what I think I know. Then, after reading,

When you ask kids what they think they know, you are assessing their background knowledge. If you see that their background knowledge, then you have to back up. That’s the problem with science information since we go in with direct content. This is assessment driven instruction in Science and Social Studies.

• Question: Do they ever become independent?
  • Response: Yes, they can but they need some place to record it. The older students use pocket folders.

• Be careful of the misconceptions.
• A university lecturer came to visit me and I’ve been using the RAN at the university level. “This is the fabric for how we all think. Day 1, I asked my students…write an essay about how they think children learn to read. Over 6 weeks, they had to—in yellow—confirm what they knew, highlight in blue any misconceptions, write down any wonderings and at the end of the semester, they had to write down a new essay and share their wonderings and misconceptions and new facts.

RAN in Social Studies

• “What do you think you know about Native Americans?” is too broad a question to ask kids. If I asked Texas kids, “What do you think you know about Mexico?” That’s too broad.
• Rather than ask students what you think you know about presidents, George Washington, the cherry tree…be very specific so you can gauge their understandings.
• When you ask about misconceptions in Science…I can live with a misconception about Pluto. But in Social Studies, biases and prejudices come up and I can’t live with that. Kids get those misconceptions about native americans from Hollywood.
  • “Native Americans have few “close.”“ (clothes). On the RAN chart, only the child who puts it up can move it. Eventually, the child who wrote this came to understand that “Native Americans wear clothes like us.” When we talk about Native Americans, we view them in a historical context.
  • “Native Americans live in teepees.” The next one took a week and a half to move. I was horrified
  • “The indians killed there families and friends for things.”
  • “They were shot down.” The cowboys “got ‘em all.” (killed them).
• The most amazing new facts became aware of:
  • “Some indians are still alive!”
• Girls are often not represented in non-fiction, so they’re put off by that.
• We have to help kids take risks.