"Scout's Honor" by Avi

What Anchors Student Success?

First, you must have standards. Second, you must have sophisticated and rigorous text. Third, you must give students the tools to analyze text. Fourth, you must give students a rigorous culminating task. Fifth, you must require that students answer text-dependent questions. Sixth, you must give students the opportunities to write, revise, edit, and publish.

What provides the roadmap for good instruction?

There are three significant shifts for English Language Arts and Literacy. First, Students must have regular practice with complex text and its academic language. Secondly, reading, writing, and speaking must be grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational. Thirdly, students must build knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

There are fifteen elements aimed at improving literacy programs in schools:

• ·         Direct, explicit comprehension instruction, which is instruction in the strategies and process that proficient readers use to understand what they read, including summarizing, keeping track of one’s own understanding, and host of other practices.
• ·         Effective instructional principles embedded in content, including language arts teachers using content-area texts and content area teachers providing instruction and practice in reading and writing skills specific to their subject area.
• ·         Motivated and self-directed learning, which includes building motivation to read and learn and providing students with the instruction and supports needed for independent learning tasks they will face after graduation.
• ·         Text-based collaborative learning, which involves students interacting with one another around a variety of texts.
• ·         Strategic tutoring, which provides students with intense individualized reading, writing, and content instruction as needed.
• ·         Diverse texts, which are texts at a variety of difficulty levels and on a range of topics.
• ·         Intensive writing, including instruction connected to the kinds of writing tasks students will have to perform well in high school and beyond.
• ·         A technology component, which includes technology as a tool for and a topic of literacy instruction.
• ·         Ongoing formative assessment of students, which is informal, often a daily assessment of how students are progressing under current instructional practices.
• ·         Extended time for literacy, which includes approximately two or four hours of literacy instruction and practice takes place in language arts and content area classes.
• ·         Professional development that is both long-term and ongoing.
• ·         Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs, which is more formal and provides data that are reported for accountability and research purposes.
• ·         Teacher teams, which are interdisciplinary teams that meet regularly to discuss students and align instruction.
• ·         Leadership, which can come from principals and teachers who have a solid understanding of how to teach reading and writing to a full array of students present in schools.
• ·         A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program, which is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental and may even coordinate with out-of-school organizations and the local community.