RM Winter 2016 FLIP

Reading Matters

Technology Matters

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Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 |

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checklist was designed to be

flexible and inclusive, so it

honored the “effectiveness”

of diverse teaching methods.

Plus, I wrote the first two

qualifiers so they directly

addressed the ability to read

and communicate content-

area texts, which is a central

premise of disciplinary literacy

(Moje, 2008; Moss, 2005). As I

visited classrooms, I recorded

the effective teaching

methods I observed, and I

will next offer a synopsis of

three exemplary methods.

Inspiring

Approaches

In my classes, I often

tell my pre-service teachers, “There is no one way to get to

Denver. The point is that you get to Denver.” By this statement,

I mean that there is not a single, magical method for correctly

teaching a topic. Instead, the purpose of teaching a lesson

is that students learn the objective that was taught (e.g., the

“getting to Denver”). In this section, I offer three mini-vignettes

that each capture a teaching method and analyze them

using the Effective Teaching Traits checklist from Table 2.

Method 1: The Silent Seminar

I sat in the back of a high school American government

classroom with another university supervisor, and 20 students were

seated in rows of tables (averaging two students per table and

three tables per row). All of the students had a tablet device and

were logged onto a shared Google Drive document. Before starting

the seminar, the teacher and intern quickly discussed their opinion

of the article students read for homework about civic responsibility,

and their conversation was intended to be a model. Next, they

reminded students of the seminar’s two rules: (1) There was to be

no verbal communication, and (2) Everyone had to contribute a

thought. With that, the intern typed the seminar’s prompt on the

document’s top line:

What is your opinion about the article’s central

argument? Do students have a responsibility to be engaged citizens

before they are 18, if they can’t vote?

After the prompt was displayed

on both the overhead projector and on the students’ tablets, there

was a pause. I counted in my head, “1, 2, 3, 4…” As I was nearing

five, I heard the first tapping of keys on a tablet – like a small leak

in a dam that would lead to an onrush of water. I saw words begin

to appear under the prompt on the overhead screen. The words

were one student’s response to the prompt. I then heard more

typing and watched as words quickly appeared, or rather flooded,

on the screen. The words were both responses to the prompt

and responses to other students’ responses to the prompt. The

responses rushed onto the screen, and it challenged me to keep

track of them. I flipped my eyes from the overhead screen to the

different students’ tablets. Each student had a different view of the

Google document and was

responding to different

prompts synchronously

(Botzakis, Burns, & Hall,

2014; Duke, 2013). After five

minutes, I heard the pace

of typing slow and then

peter out. The teacher and

intern were both smiling,

and the intern eagerly

said, “So, let’s see what we

have.” Soon, the class began

discussing their different

experiences responding

to the original prompt and

how they responded to

both their classmates and

their classmates’ responses.

Applying the

Checklist

The Silent Seminar required students to use multiple skills

to engage the teacher’s original prompt, their classmates’

responses to the prompt, and their responses to their

classmates’ responses. In this way, the students engaged

higher-order thinking skills in multiple ways, which can

be unpacked using Effective Teaching Traits checklist.

Are students reading and/or communicating texts specific

to the content area?

The students read a content-area text

previous to engaging the Silent Seminar and the comments they

provided were in response to both the text and their classmates’

responses. Their classmates’ responses constitute a content-area

text, and the responses each student wrote are content-area texts

they authored. Students’ responses to both the text and their

classmates’ responses align to disciplinary literacy skills in that

they are reading and communicating in the specific subject area.

Are students using technology to collaborate?

The use

of a Google Drive document in this manner allowed students

to share their thinking via their responses to the original

prompt and each other, which supports their development of

disciplinary literacy. As the document came alive with student

writing, I saw them make connections between comments

and build on each other’s comments to make meaning. In

this way, the students did collaborate using technology.

Will the skill students are using or the task students

are completing transfer to other content areas and/or

their life outside of school?

In this activity, students are

using multiple skills simultaneously to complete the task of

responding to the prompt and their classmates. Students are

using text-analysis skills to form their opinion of the article,

interpersonal analysis skills to interpret the meaning of their

classmates’ responses, and digital literacy skills to read and

interpret an evolving, synchronous text. These skills transfer

over to students’ lives when they read a variety of both print

and digital texts in their academic and personal lives.

Table 2. Checklist of Effective Teaching Traits

Qualifier

Justification of Qualifier

1. Are students reading and/

or communicating texts

specific to the content area?

Each discipline contains texts that are unique

to it, and students must be taught how to

engage the texts as readers and writers of that

discipline (Fang, 2012; Shanahan & Shanahan,

2008).

2. Are students using

technology

to collaborate?

To be part of a globalized community, students

must be able to connect, share, and team with

a variety of individuals (Simonson, Smaldino,

Albright, & Zvacek, 2014; Whitehead, Jensen, &

Boschee, 2014).

3. Will the skill students are

using or the task students

are completing transfer to