69 Challenges. Year 2012
Contents:
First-year teachers and induction support: Ups, downs, and in-betweens. The Qualitative Report, 12 2 , — Challenges facing beginning history teachers: International Journal of Social Education, 19 1 , 8— The wrong solution to the teacher shortage. Educational Leadership, 60 8 , 30— New teacher decries lesson plan gap [blog post]. Early career teacher professional learning. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 34 1 , 95— A comparison of beginning and experienced teachers' concerns.
Educational Research Quarterly, 31 3 , 39— Do discipline policies in today's public schools foster the common good?
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Teachers, schools, and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73 2 , — What are the effects of induction and mentoring on beginning teacher turnover? American Educational Research Journal, 41 3 , — He is the author of Simply Better: May Supporting Beginning Teachers. Subscribe to ASCD Express , our free e-mail newsletter, to have practical, actionable strategies and information delivered to your e-mail inbox twice a month.
Struggling with Classroom Management. Burdened by Curricular Freedom Another concern that new teachers commonly raise is a lack of guidance and resources for lesson and unit planning. Sinking in Unsupportive Environments The sink-or-swim nature of many first-year teachers' experiences frequently surfaces as another significant challenge.
How Schools Can Scaffold Success New teachers bring energy and enthusiasm to their classrooms, but also a specific set of needs. Requesting Permission For photocopy , electronic and online access , and republication requests , go to the Copyright Clearance Center. Enter the periodical title within the " Get Permission " search field.
To translate this article, contact permissions ascd. Any older student who still struggles with decoding needs intervention to address this difficulty.
The Challenge of Challenging Text
But even students who have basic decoding skills sometimes struggle to deploy these skills easily and accurately enough to get a purchase on challenging text. To help these students develop reading fluency, teachers should give them lots of practice with reading the same text, as well as instruction to help them develop a stronger sense of where to pause in sentences, how to group words, and how their voices should rise or fall at various junctures when reading aloud. Fluency instruction becomes more powerful when it's taught not as an end in itself, but rather in the context of students' attempts to make sense of a particular text.
True fluency is not merely lining up one sentence after another and reading them aloud quickly; it's also maintaining understanding across a text. Therefore, fluency instruction should emphasize sentence structure and meaning. Teachers should have students pause to discuss the meaning of the text.
They should pair repeated readings of the same text with questions that require the student to read closely for detail and key ideas. Ongoing, solid vocabulary instruction is another essential component to help students develop skill in reading complex text. This instruction should focus not just on domain-specific words and phrases that describe the central concepts in the subject area, but also on general academic words. Effective vocabulary instruction usually provides a rich exploration of word meanings, in which students do more than just copy dictionary definitions—they consider synonyms, antonyms, categories, and specific examples for the words under study.
Students also explore the connections among words, considering other words in the same category, comparing and contrasting words with similar meanings, evaluating or constructing analogies, and building word webs. They also have opportunities to use the words in reading, writing, speaking, listening, drawing, and even physically acting them out. As students analyze the use of the vocabulary terms in text, teachers can guide them to think about the meanings that the authors intended to convey for example, the differences in implication between nosey and curious , or cheap and frugal.
Struggling with Classroom Management
Recently, we were asked to explain why a passage about deserts was challenging for readers. As we started to read the text, we noticed its beautiful language, vivid imagery, and well-wrought descriptions. Despite its beauty, however, we found it hard to make sense of this passage. The problem was that we couldn't tell whether it was meant to be a literary text or a scientific one. Without knowing what kind of text we were reading or what we were expected to do with the information, we had no idea what to attend to.
Students often find themselves in this kind of bind. Younger children frequently encounter hybrid texts that combine a narrative story with expository information. For example, in the Magic School Bus books, the characters take field trips to learn about electricity, weather, dinosaurs, and other topics. When reading these books, children need to determine whether to focus on the story of the field trip or the information about the concepts. Until they figure it out, they may feel confused. Older students are confronted with texts from science, history, mathematics, and literature; and they have to grasp the purposes for reading each of these texts so that they can focus their attention appropriately.
For example, science texts focus heavily on causation. These texts convey information about what causes what, but they are not typically concerned with the intention behind these events. Students reading a science text may learn that apples grow on trees and that birds eat them, which plays an important role in spreading the seeds around, which creates even more apple trees; however, readers will not be expected to question whether apples grow on trees intentionally so that birds may eat them.
In contrast, in reading history and literature, readers need to be concerned with not just the causes of events, but also the human intentions behind these causes. In clearly communicating the purpose of reading to students, teachers should not convey so much information that it spoils the reading or enables students to participate in class without completing the reading; rather, they should let students know what learning to expect from the reading.
For the text about deserts, for example, establishing the purpose, "Determine the difference between desert and tundra biomes" would direct the reading differently from establishing the purpose, "Examine the author's use of imagery and consider how you could apply it in your own writing. When students struggle to understand the task, they pay less attention to the text itself.
Over time, as students read with purpose, they develop background knowledge and a deeper understanding of the organizational structures authors use to convey information. This understanding gives students access to increasingly complex texts. Learning to read challenging text is similar to undergoing physical therapy.
Initially, such therapy is often painful and exhausting, and it's tempting to cheat on the exercises a bit. Physical therapists have to focus not only on the muscle groups that need to be strengthened or stretched, but also on the patient's motivation. They need to keep the patient's head in the game, because working past the pain is beneficial.
Similarly, it can be tough for students to hang in there and stick with a text that they have to labor through, looking up words, puzzling over sentences, straining to make connections. Teachers may be tempted to try to make it easier for students by avoiding difficult texts. The problem is, easier work is less likely to make readers stronger.
Teachers need to motivate students to keep trying, especially when the level of work is increasing. The payoff comes from staying on track. A good physical therapist knows what good teachers know: You need to create successive successes.
Shorter sentences, for example, tend to be easier to read than longer sentences; presumably, they put less demand on the reader's working memory. March Volume 69 Number 6 Reading: Younger children frequently encounter hybrid texts that combine a narrative story with expository information. In a recent survey of more than 8, Teach for America teachers nationwide, 41 percent said their schools or districts provided them with few or no instructional resources, such as lesson plans. In attempting to convey emotional complexity, we might write a sentence like this: Any older student who still struggles with decoding needs intervention to address this difficulty. Other aspects of sentence structure can determine how hard it is for readers to make sense of text.
Students experience success in the company of their teacher, who combines complex texts with effective instruction. They apply their growing competence outside the company of their teacher by reading texts that match their independent reading ability. Over time, they engage in close reading of texts of their own choosing, as well as assigned texts that build their subject-area knowledge. All the while, they set goals with their teachers so that they can gauge their own progress. Forward motion toward a goal matters. Gone are the days when text was judged as difficult solely on the basis of sentence length and syllable count.
We now know that many factors affect text complexity. With this increased understanding, teachers do not have to rely on intuition to figure out which books their students can handle. Instead, teachers can select texts worthy of instruction and align their instructional efforts to ensure that all their students read complex, interesting, and important texts. The effects of vocabulary instruction: Review of Educational Research, 56 , 72— Subscribe to ASCD Express , our free e-mail newsletter, to have practical, actionable strategies and information delivered to your e-mail inbox twice a month.
What Makes Text Complex? Vocabulary If you ask students what makes reading hard, they blame the words. Sentence Structure Words are not the whole picture. In attempting to convey emotional complexity, we might write a sentence like this: Coherence Another challenge concerns how particular words, ideas, and sentences in text connect with one another, a feature referred to as coherence.
New Teachers Face Three Common Challenges - Educational Leadership
For example, take this simple passage: Organization Ideas can be arranged across text in many ways, some more straightforward than others. Background Knowledge Vocabulary, sentence structure, coherence, and organization can all be determined by closely analyzing the text itself. Build Skills Let's face it: Establish Purpose Recently, we were asked to explain why a passage about deserts was challenging for readers. Foster Motivation and Persistence Learning to read challenging text is similar to undergoing physical therapy.
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No More Guesswork Gone are the days when text was judged as difficult solely on the basis of sentence length and syllable count. Requesting Permission For photocopy , electronic and online access , and republication requests , go to the Copyright Clearance Center. Enter the periodical title within the " Get Permission " search field. To translate this article, contact permissions ascd.
Ideas from the Field.