The Common Core State Standards (Primary Document)

Musings  and Meanderings
 
While reading Azar Nafisi's book I ran into an interesting question. It is a question that she asked her students at the beginning of her first class; what is the purpose of fiction? What should fiction accomplish, or why should one "bother" to read it. She felt that the purpose of fiction was reflected in a line from Theodor Adorno, a German thinker, "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home " (p. 94). While the Common Core State Standards are not fiction they have caused me to not feel at home in my own home as was demonstrated in my last posting.  I will now look at the document in more detail itself and not others opinions of it to see where it brings me.  

As I read the introduction to the Common Core State Standards I am comforted. A preliminary look at it reassures me as long as it is interpreted according to “The Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach. …Furthermore, while the Standards make references to some particular forms of content including mythology, foundational U.S. documents, and Shakespeare, they do not –indeed, cannot—enumerate all or even most of the content that students should learn” (p. 6).  I interpret this to mean that the exemplar list of reading is not MANDATORY.

Secondly the CCSS does not mandate that English Language Arts classes teach Literature using a 70/30 nonfiction to fiction ratio.  Indicated by an asterisk on page 5 states, “The percentages on the table reflect the sum of student reading, not just reading in ELA settings. Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to information a texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grad should be informational.”

Of great interest to me is “The Standards set grade-specific standards but do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectation.  No set of grade-specific standards can fully reflect the great variety of abilities, needs, learning rates, and achievement levels of students in any given classroom. However, the Standards do provide clear signposts along the way to the goal college and career readiness for all students” (p. 6).  Here the Standards are almost embracing teacher judgment and differentiation (at least I hope that they are).

This is followed by what students who are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, and language. They:

·         Demonstrate independence

·         Build strong content knowledge

·         Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline

·         Comprehend as well as critique

·         Value evidence

·         Use technology and digital media strategically and capably

·         Come to understand other perspectives and cultures

I must admit I feel a little foolish over my earlier protestations. Only time will tell . 

 

To Be Continued....

Chapter 4 and Chapter 7: "Upsilamba!"

Chapter 4 

Who is the Reader? Cognitive, Linguistic, and Affective Factors Impacting Readers by Jeanne B. Cobb and Patricia Whitney 

 The chapter begins by asking the reader to think about factors that impact readers. Generally speaking my students don't read enough, therefore, the question is why don't my students read enough.  I have had students who when they finished a book would say that it was the first book that they had ever read and these are high school students. 

What killed their desire to read? Did they get stuck and never then got unstuck? Did reading become too much about answers not comprehension?  Were there no stories about them? Were there any role models or exposure to reading? I don't always know why, but it seems to be a combination of skill and desire.  I think that most of my students do not see the relevance of reading or the relevance of most the literature that they are required to read, and have never experienced the joys of reading. 

This chapter will focus on what the reader brings to the text

One problem is that English is not many of our students’ first language and they receive substandard care. I addition to the above cultural norms vary and knowledge that a teacher may take for granted may not be accessible to the child of a different culture than that of the main stream.

(23% of adult Americans—44 million people are functionally illiterate  and cannot read a newspaper or warning labels on medicine.

Home-literacies (cultural literacies) How to capitalize on it

8 million of our students k-12 are struggling readers 

FACTORS THAT IMPACT THE READER

When readers struggle it is because of multiple reasons, but the major reasons they do struggle are physical factors, psychological factors, educational factors, and socioeconomic factors, cognitive/intellectual, linguistic, and affective issues.

To be able to access text a reader needs to have syntactic knowledge (parts of speech and their use), lexical knowledge (word meanings instead of grammar), semantic knowledge, and letter name knowledge). As with the prior assigned chapter there is work and there is text. The reader brings their knowledge, skills, past experiences, and present state of mind to the reading to make meaning. 

 

COGNITIVE/INTELLECTUAL FACTORS IMPACTING THE READER

Prior knowledge is important and foundational. “when children are immersed and actively engaged in this literate environment where responsive and dynamic interactions are ongoing daily, then children gain the world knowledge necessary to be strong comprehenders."  

Vygotsky emphases learning as a social process involving social and cognitive development

Schema (pl) categorized, itemized knowledge stored in long-term memory that provides the base for comprehension: a theory about the comprehension process.

The child’s schema effects what is comprehended or not

Story grammar—framework of knowledge about narrative texts acquired at an early age by children whose parents read aloud to them 

SPECIFIC COGNITIVE FACTORS RELATED TO THE READING TASK

Researchers do not agree upon these factors

Neisser (1976)—a cognitive psychologist—identified perception, imagery, retention, recall, problem solving, and thinking as aspects of cognition

(some disagree with perception; a cognitive correlate or a sensory function—and so…) Neisser also grouped thinking (recall, retention, problem solving, and imagery)

 

LINGUISTIC FACTORS IMPACTING THE READER

Suggests that literacy is a continuum beginning with oracy, listening and speaking, to reading and writing, and infinity and beyond.

According to Goodman problems reading can result from code switching, home to school, and the child not seeing the relevance or that their dialect or first language is not respected and judged lacking in the light of standard English.

 

 

 

SPECIFIC LINGUISTIC FACTORS RELATED TO THE READING TASK

Are phonological knowledge/decoding; metalingusitc awareness; syntactic knowledge; lexical/semantic knowledge (vocabulary and word meanings).     

(Phonological awareness—the ability of the child to hear and distinguish the individual phonemes or small speech sounds in spoken language.

Phonemic awareness—the most advanced level of phonological awareness, the ability to manipulate and segment individual phonemes.

Metalinguistic awareness—specific knowledge about language that refers to a child’s ability to use language about language and to understand the explicit terms used to describe written language, is word, sound, sentence, paragraph).

 

Syntax—a set of rules or the grammar of a language

Or children use what they know of syntax to make meaning of what they read

“Kutz believes that literacy acquisition parallels oral language acquisition in that children build creatively on what they know, forming and testing different hypotheses, and eventually developing for themselves a rule-governed system that approximates conventional standard grammar and helps them make sense of words they encounter.”

 

This agrees with my hypothesis that humans are creatures of meaning. We are always looking for meaning, and will create it even when there is none. When it can’t be created it is a tragedy for us as we are then deprived of one of our innate purposes for living.  

Vocabulary is important and is foundational to comprehension. Readers will try to read a word that they have already heard (knowing words is foundational or is almost first on the literacy continuum). Poverty has been identified as one of the greatest factors of poor literacy and is directly related to vocabulary.

Hence the need for a Print Rich Environment

  

AFFECTIVE FACTORS IMPACTING THE READER

This domain includes interests, motivation, values, self-esteem, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes toward school as well as reading.

INTEREST, REWARDS, VALUES, BELIEFS

Interest can help engagement and can create intrinsic readers

Books can also be paired with pleasure as when a parent or an adult close to a child reads to them they enjoy it and transfer that affection and enjoyment to the new person reading to them

As children become older their initial intrinsic motivation to read changes and they can come to dread it. But Why?

Rewards are one answer as they discourage risk taking and have a narrow focus

Varies from culture to culture as literacy is valued.

ATTITUDES TOWARD READING

Allport defined attitude as “a mental or neutral state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual's response to all objects and situations  with which it is related." Fishbein and Ajzen and Kush, Watkins and Brookhart have identified three important components of attitude: beliefs, feelings and behaviors. Research shows that a child’s reading is influenced by their attitude of reading. It will influence the amount of time  they spend reading (and we know that the more one reads the better one reads). Factors that improve a child’s attitudes on reading are reading, having books available in the child’s first language, teacher-student conferences, peer interactions around recreational reading, positive and engaging teaching methods, versus less engaging instructional methods, and home environments.

What does research say about cognitive, linguistic, and affective factors that influence reading and how can they be used to improve reading?       

CHAPTER 7: THE TRANSACTIONAL THEORY OF READING AND WRITING by Louise M. Rosenblatt 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ury6klNBy-k

 

I remember when I thought I liked theory, but sometimes it is written in such incredibly undecipherable way that it is difficult to understand. But here I go into the wild....

What is the difference between transaction and interaction? 

I couldn’t agree with the following statement more, that “A theoretical model is an abstraction, or a generalized pattern devised in order to think about a subject.” Ok, but, “there are innumerable separate transactions between text and reader.”

 

THE TRANSACTIONAL PARADIGM  (PARADIGM- pattern, set of assumptions, concepts. Values, and practices, that constitutes a way of viewing reality--was related to pragmatist epistemology).

The new paradigm was that there is no objective reality the self is not separate from the object perceived. Neils Bohr suggests that the observer is part of the observation—the human instrument the mediator in any perception of the world or any sense of reality. 

Interaction implied separation of what is perceived and the perceiver while transaction implies the observation, the observer, and the observed as a whole.

This requires a change of thinking from the old stimulus-response, subject-object, individual-social dualism s give way to recognition of humans being part of nature, continuously in transaction with their environment.    

LANGUAGE

Text—set of signs capable of being interpreted as verbal symbols ( yes another definition of text).

The view of transaction in relationship to text emphasizes poststructuralist and deconstructionist theories. 

Dewey, Peirce, and Saussure

Dyatic Signifier and signified / words and concepts as though they are deconstructing it or breaking things apart. 

Triadic--a sign is related to its object in consequence to its mental associations (Peirce’s triadic model) science supports this 

 

Vygotsky thinks that there is a dynamic system where affective and the intellectual united

Bates provides a useful metaphor that word meanings are like icebergs visible tip represents the public aspect of meaning resting on private meanings. 

 

Words, themselves hold different meanings—those that are found in a dictionary and those that hold personal meaning because of personal experiences. This is part of the argument that reading is a transaction and is not written in stone. It is the reader, their background knowledge, their mood, and their interpretation of the text that creates meaning while reading. 

 Individual’s private associations with a word may or may not agree with its official meaning.

Linguistic Transitions 

If literacy is a continuum which begins with oral expressions and these exchanged oral expressions (or conversations) are mutually interpreted then the same can be applied to reading as it is part of the literacy continuum.  The reader interprets the text or work as an actor would when interpreting a written role. 

(Possible classroom practices: Reader's Theater, Role Playing, Trials, RAFTs) 

Selective Attention

THE READING PROCESS

Transacting With the Text

Every reading is an event, or a transaction involving a particular reader and a particular pattern of signs, a text, and occurring at a particular time in a particular context. (One reads through the lens of ones live and through the lens of what one is experiencing while reading.) The text is seen as a “work” and does not have meaning in itself until the reader gives it meaning. The interpretation of a text is subjective and is similar to Impressionism.

MeaningTextReaderInterpretation=transaction. The sum is greater than the whole.

The creation of meaning comes from the context and reader’s purpose in reading.  

Evocation—aspects of the reading process centered on organization of a structure of components to yield the meaning of the text.  
(So knowing about the genre is an organizational structure, as is beginning, middle, and end?)

THE READER’S STANCE

Stance—reader’s purpose

When a reader read they must choose why they are reading or choose the activity.

The Efferent-Aesthetic Continuum

Public reading or Private reading

Efferent –type of reading centered on what information is to be “carried away” after the reading event

(remember the iceberg—it is on the part of the iceberg that is above the water, it has a limited scope).

The Aesthetic Stance—is more reading for pleasure; reading to live vicariously through the story.

Texts are not Efferent or Aesthetic it is the reader’s purpose that is.   

The Continuum

 

  One's reading stance is generally not just efferent or aesthetic but will determine what you pay attention to or your purpose for reading.

EVOCATION, RESPONSE, INTERPRETATION

(note--Rosenblatt uses text as the symbol and work as the meaning that is made from the text. I like this better :)

Sometimes words are not the objects that they represent but represent ideas.

The evocation refers to the work of the text and can be either aesthetic or efferent. 

The second Stream of Response  

When we read and are transacting with the text-we are reacting to our transactions which too may take the aesthetic or efferent form and may range from assimilation to accommodation to confirmation. 

Expressed Response 

Expressed Interpretation 

Interpret, Explain, and Construe

THE WRITING PROCESS 

The Writing Transaction 

The  writer has no Triadic sign of sign but chooses what words to use

  

 

 

  

 Writers stance

Writing about Texts

is writing about a transaction. If it is aesthetic or efferent is a choice. But it is a moment in time. It is part of the literacy continuum.

 

  

Authorial Reading 

The writer of a text is always transacting with the text. There are two kinds of authorial reading 

Expression oriented and Reception oriented 

Expression Oriented Reading is what an author does when they read to have the written text agree with the text's purpose. It is a type of revision.  

Inner Gauge is the intuitive sense that a word is not right and when the right word is found is the intuitive sense that they have found the right word. 

 Reception Oriented   Reading is when an author reads the text as they image a reader would read the text.

Communication Between Author and Readers

There is a transaction between the reader and an author persona. Who you are and when and where you come from are important as they determine how you transact with the author. The reader must be the final word in deciding if the information given about the author persona and the time period is helpful with their interpretation of the text or the validity for the interpretation. 

Validity of the Interpretation 

"The impossibility of finding a single absolute meaning for a text or of expecting any interpretation absolutely to reflect the writer's intention is becoming generally recognized by contemporary theorists."     

(Isn't this inherent in the idea of transaction? or is this just a support for it?) 

Criteria for the Efferent-Aesthetic Continuum 

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING
Reading and Writing Parallelism and Differences 
By teaching one it will effect the other--so while one is teaching reading helping students to experience the craft of writing is a model for when the students write. But as a whole how can teachers take advantage of this? Reading skills add to a student's bag of writing tricks and visa versa. 
Because we as thinking beings are always in transaction with our environment many factors come into play. Some of these factors are classroom environment/culture, social and cultural context (their inclusion or their exclusion); Activating a reader/writer's background knowledge or their schema;  Giving readers purpose; And concentrating on the process instead of the product. Making reading and writing a whole process which motivate the student to make meaning and grow within the creation of that meaning.  

 

Collaborative Interchange

 

 

Discussion fosters growth, peer reading, give purpose and direction to reading and writing, a balance of efferent and aesthetic so children become life long readers (hence learners), giving choice of text

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH
Developmental Process
"How does the child move from the earliest, undifferentiated state of the world to ' the referential, emotive and associative part of process' (Just the question OK almost the question I asked myself as I was and am raising my children.) What is it they need to learn and how does their developmental state influence that and how can that state be used?
Performance
Teaching Methods


  Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

I am trying to read Azar  Nafisi's memoir (I say trying as I read it at the end of the night and am lucky to finish 5 pages) and am struck at its expression of the transactional theory of reading and writing.  

"The theme of the class is the relationship of fiction and reality." They called the class "a space of our own." 
"Upsilamba!"

"I mentioned that one of the criteria for the books I had chosen was their authors' faith in the critical and almost magical power of literature, and reminded them of the nineteen-year old Nabokov, who, during the Russian Revolution, would not allow himself to be diverted by the sound of bullets. He kept on writing his solitary poems while he heard the guns and saw the bloody fights from his windows. Let us see, I said, whether seventy years later our disinterested faith will reward us by transforming the gloomy reality created of this other revolution." 

"Explain the significance of the word upsilamba in the context of Invitation to a Beheading. What does the word mean, and how does it relate to the main theme of the novel?....The truth was that upsilamba was one of Nabokov's fanciful creations....So in the first day in our private class, we let our minds play again and invented new meanings of our own"  "Upsilamba become part of our increasing repository of coded words and expressions, a repository that grew over time until gradually we had created a  secret language of our own. That word became a symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy, the tingle in the spine Nabokov expected his readers to feel in the act of reading fiction; it was a sensation that separated the good readers as he called them, from the ordinary ones."