Thank YOU readers! My book Energize Research Reading and Writing is in it’s fourth printing!
I’m honored to be a part of your classrooms as you rethink more student-centered, engaging, and rigorous research and informational text instruction.
Join in the conversation on twitter using the hashtag #EnergizeResearch. I especially love when you share your work and that of your students. Always energizing!
Thanks for all you do!
My new Choice Literacy podcast with educator, author, and friend Franki Sibberson is live!
In it, Franki and I discuss saving the teaching of research and informational reading/writing from the boredom inducing 8-week long card-catalog projects of our own youth to teaching in ways that support student learning, energy, and interest. The podcast draws on thinking from my book Energize Research Reading and Writing (sample chapters here). And is also the subject of my upcoming October 3-part webinar series with Heinemann PD (more on that and registration in yesterday’s post).
Listen to the podcast by clicking the image below (or this link):
Happy re-thinking research!
Let me start with the things I appreciate about the recent episode of CNN’s Inside Man:
Here is the first of two big worries that have stuck with me since this show, I will write about the second tomorrow because it feels too large to share a post with anything else.
The episode begins with the tired premiss that the US is lagging behind other countries in performance. A point that has largely been proven false. I wrote about this in my SMARTBlog on Education guest post, Fairytales of Data. And sent this one, out of a shower of tweets about it, while watching the episode live:
Here’s Stanford U study @InsideManCNN didn’t read before claiming Finland/US comparison. We’re not perfect, but plz. http://t.co/MpGr0aIdAR
— Christopher Lehman (@iChrisLehman) July 22, 2013
The fact is that the rise of “Finland” (with no offense to Finland, you are doing many things right) was based on one international test, the PISA 2009, that the Stanford study found the have faulty results. Furthermore, there is this point:
PISA exam @InsideManCNN cited, US middle/high income students perform above top performing countries. #USPoverty is ignored issue. #edchat
— Christopher Lehman (@iChrisLehman) July 22, 2013
Which I wrote more extensively about in my post on this blog, Education’s Own 47%.
What worries me is not just that CNN didn’t do their homework. What worries me is that there is public perception that our education system is failing in a way it isn’t. Our larger failure is poverty and the lack of access. I worry that if we don’t tell the true facts the solutions will continue to be clouded by other, less pressing, concerns.
The premise of every episode of Inside Man is that Spurlock fully enters the world he is studying. This I admire, many politicians, pundits, policy makers, and journalists tell us what we need to do to “fix” education (see point one), but few actually step into classrooms. While I think his final analysis was a bit nearsighted (after one lesson on one day at a school in New York he said students “got it” and their required written responses were the proof), the fact that he rolled up his sleeves and gave it a whirl is just what we need more education reform leaders to do.
For understanding of recent educational history and citing of facts: F
For effort: B+
Yesterday was an awesome day with the Wisconsin State Reading Association who hosted my 1-day Institute “Write to the Core: Energize Research Reading and Writing” in Wausau, WI, based on my book Energize Research Reading and Writing.
A large group of dedicated educators filled the room to capacity despite the heat wave(!) and talked, tweeted, wrote, shared, and considered ways of re-imagining research instruction to support engagement, learning, and student independence.
Here are my slides from the day.
And Storified tweets from participants.
Thanks everyone for all you do for learners–adult and child alike!
I’m pleased to be speaking at a one-day institute this summer, hosted by the Wisconsin State Reading Association. Click for the full WSRA Flyer. Registration is available here.
I’m looking forward to a fun day!
I’m looking forward to speaking at the All Write!!! Institute in Warsaw, Indiana. I’ve heard rave reviews about this one and look forward to presenting, listening in on the other amazing presenters, and the great conversation with fellow edu-literacy-friends.
Click for the full flyer, which includes registration information.
Thanks everyone who was able to join me and @meenoorami for #engchat tonight when I guest moderated “Teach Students to Research, Not Regurgitate.”
…To be completely accurate, I guest moderated until this happened:
Yes, my friends, with around 15 mins to go… I found myself in twitter jail! (Which I find hil-arious). Twitter sort of kind of explains what this mystical place is here. A place I had never heard of until deep into moderating a popular chat.
So, note to self: Day of hosting a chat = barely tweet.
It was still worth it, however, because I love #engchat and tonight’s sharing of ideas was another great night of learning.
If you couldn’t join us live check out the archive. Start from the bottom and work up (it’s only 74 pages!) …And laugh as you notice me suddenly disappear…
Or as @thereadingzone explains in a way that makes me feel less embarrassed and more proud of everyone’s work tonight:
In closing:
Please transport me back to the exact moment and exact person who thought, “I know, let’s make teaching research skills the most awful experience possible.” I’d like to give that person a piece of my mind.
What are we doing? Research is incredible. Look around yourself right now: every single thing you own, are wearing, are eating, are talking on or tapping on, came from someone or some group of someones researching, studying, communicating new findings with one another, and developing all of it. All. Of. It.
Research is tremendously empowering. Don’t like the price of that used car the salesperson is offering you? Research. Wondering if there are other ways of dealing with a disease? Research! Baby on the way? Research. iPhone-this or Galaxy-that? Research. Where to eat, where to go, how do I unclog this drain, what song is on this commercial, what do mosquitoes do anyway, what good book should I read next, flipped classrooms are what exactly, how do I help my readers,… Research!
So why, then, is the first image that pops into many people’s minds (and I have asked a lot of people): students, or themselves as students, recopying book information onto little cards (e.g. photocopying) and then recopying the information from those little cards onto paper and doing so in the approximate shape of paragraphs (e.g. photocopying), ending in a horrific inferno of last minute final draft making, that–when all is said and done–results in the answer, “I dunno,” to the question, “so what have you learned about this topic?”
We are better than this, people. Rise up teachers. Rise up.
I undertook this mission, to rescue research, and began in an obvious (and Dr. Suess-ian) way: by researching research to rescue research by teaching kids researching in the way we all research. This resulted in my new book: Energize Research Reading and Writing. In researching for, and during the process of, writing the book I came to some new understandings of what we are mostly doing now in the name of research and what changes we can make (or some are making) that can dramatically transform both how we teach and students’ relationship to these skills. I would like to share three essential moves in this post:
The Common Core has devoted an entire strand of the Writing standards to research (7, 8, 9):
and the tests that are chugging on down the track toward us aim to make research skills a big portion of how students are assessed (PARCC-one of the three performance tasks and SMARTER Balanced-see page 17-18). Meaning, students will be expected to be independent with these skills, not co-dependent. Not expecting us to dole out each bit.
So one place to start is actually to stop. To stop assigning specific topics or ways those topics should specifically unfold (“on page three describe the state bird and draw a picture of it, on page four write three facts about the state’s agriculture…”). Also, stop handing out the sources students should use. Instead teach them the very habits you use when you think, “We’re having a baby… now what??”:
The start of research is like dating: you really only know what you are looking for after you have been looking for awhile.
Chapter 2 of my book describes this in way more detail and is a free read here.
We need to cure the I am pretending to take notes but actually I am just copying everything disease or its related strain I am mostly just writing down numbers I come across but I don’t know why virus.
A way to do this is to shift students’ perceptions away from taking notes on books to taking notes on our minds. More specifically:
It takes a bit of practice, even sometimes an overly exaggerated policing-coaching, “nope, nooooo notes now, just read.” or “now before you write any notes, teach me about your topic, tell me what you just learned….. …great! now right that down in the same way.” I call this strategy Read, Cover and Jot, Reread. It’s cousin is Read, Cover and Sketch, Reread for students that just won’t stop copying: if they are reading text, take notes in sketches and labels; if looking at a diagram, take notes in words.
Lastly, to counteract dry, dull or I didn’t really learn anything even though I wrote 8 pages research writing, I argue that we need to add a new step in the research writing process.
One example is you have a fact or few – say “cuttlefish subdue their prey by making their skin flash” – you can experiment with how you will teach that fact:
These are just two examples of this type of teaching-through-writing. In working with students, I was amazed at how this shift in the process not only lead to students doing better and more interesting writing, it also helps them continue to learn about their topic because they continue to manipulate it in a variety of ways–all with their readers in mind.
On Monday, Oct 1st at 7PM EST I guest moderated #Engchat (YAY!) with the topic “Teach Students to Research, Not Regurgitate.” The archive (and a funny story) is at my post: “I Broke Twitter. And It Was Worth It.”
My book on this topic, Energize Research Reading and Writing, is available at book sellers like Heinemann, Amazon, and Barnes&Noble.
As always, leave comments or tweet me, I’d love to hear ways you are helping students have the excitement and deep learning that real research provides.
Christopher Lehman 