Prof Prax 2007

Rhythm & Flow

Performance Reading with Garage Band

Brock DubbelsMinneapolis Public SchoolsThe University of MinnesotaCenter for Cognitive Sciences

• Many students have expertise in the new media.

• Connecting with new media might create motivation

• Also creates new skill sets– Autonomy– Tech– Construct & Create– Work in teams– Network

Alignment

Generating EngagementPurposeInterestConnectionIdentity

Are you on your way up?

rolesimage beliefslanguagewritingpublic perceptionproducingperformingmaking the band

Deliver content

Motivate &

Engage

Apply&

Reflect

Content Frame

Student Learning

Play

Design

Play?

• What is it?

• Why do it?• In school?

• What about work?

• Game elements.

Invoking play

Towards top sight

Amazing

ReadingSystemsTop Sight

Built like a game

Non-traditional Narrative for Assessment

Decision Trees

• For a decision tree to work, it must have the following qualities:– Time in the game takes place in turns or other

discrete units.– Players make certain number of finite decisions that

have knowable outcomes– The game is finite, it cannot go on forever.

– Different, but just as good

Why are they important?

• Because a decision tree is also a diagram of the formal space of possibility in a game.

• Games represent the same design elements as research and curriculum design.

How about Chutes and ladders?

Describe the game play mechanics

What are the elements of this game? What makes the play emergent? Is it non-linear?Games as a metaphor for instructional design

Discussion

• Based upon these concepts in game design and the literacies and habits of mind supported by them, how can we use these design elements to construct curriculum for our classroom?

• Do we need computers to do this?

• Engagement• Bootstrap• Embodiment• Performance as assessment• Coach vs Broadcast• More feedback• Autonomy• Built in performance Assessment• Valid & Reliable• Incidental Learning• Outside of class

Clapping Academy

You’re the jury

• Thumbs up / Thumbs down• Qualities• Quality gradient / rubric• Builds engagement• RFOL• Continuous improvement• Cooperative Learning

Pre-reading

Instructional Framework

PostDuring

Relate to prior knowledge

Establish Purpose

Clear up misconceptions

Pre-teach vocabulary

Guidance

Interaction

Monitoring

Review

Synthesis

Assessment

Link to DR-TA Link to Three-level guides

Characteristics of readers

High compHigh fluency

Low compHigh fluency

Low compLow fluency

High compLow fluency

+1 Level of fluencY

ability to comprehend in dialogic method /create a model

Psycholinguistics & Comprehension

• A key component of the higher cognition is the ability to reason by manipulation of complex symbolic expressions according to logic like rules.

– Smolensky and Legendre 2006; Newell and Simon 1963; Pylyshyn 1984; Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988

Elements of comprehension• Attention• Prior Knowledge

• Content, Structure, Genre, Categories, Concepts

• Situation Model– spatial locations, time frames, people, objects,

ideas, color, emotions, goals, shape, spatial, temporal, causal, ownership, kinship, social, etc.

• Composition of Comprehension

Building comprehension process

B asic reading skills

Decoding

Reading Comprehension

Comprehension S killsAge/ time

How do we build a comprehension model?

Comprehension Model• A spatial-temporal

framework – spatial locations, time frames

• Entities – people, objects, ideas,

• Properties of entities – color, emotions, goals, shape,

etc.

• Relational information– spatial, temporal, causal,

ownership, kinship, social, etc.

Literary Elements• Character/

Characterization• diction• Plot

• Setting

• Point of View• Theme

• Tone

• Voice• Word choice

Fluency1. Reading is done word by word, rather than in larger phrases. There is

no "flow" in the reading. Words are read telegraphically. The reader demonstrates only word-by-word reading. Used generally when the reader is new to the text and the words are very challengingor the content is very complicated—like a research article where there are many new ideas and new complicated words.

5. Performance is characterized by reading that generally "flows."The student's voice changes to reflect meaning changes in the passage.Ending inflections are consistently appropriate.Reading is fluent and smooth, generally easy to listen to and understood.This type of reading is used for performance. Think of an actor interpreting the voice of the character and bringing the text into living voice.Adapted from Table 1. from Marston, Mansfield, cited in (pg. 81 Heineman, in Fountas and Pinnell, 1996) by Dubbels (2003)

Middle fluency1. The reading is done with two to three word phrasing.

Reading is very hesitant.The reader displays considerable pausing and drawn out connecting between words, and attempts to decode the words.Reading is more of word calling than fluent, comprehensive reading.

2. The reader pauses for ending punctuation. Inflection changes may not be present as the student reads from sentence to sentence. The student reads in phrases but misses the tone considered necessary in fluent understandable reading. This is generally the voice the reader uses when reading to themselves. The silent voice that is used for gathering information or non-fiction.

3. Most of the time, the student has appropriate reading, "flow" and phrasing. The voice of the character/narrator comes out. This prosody score also indicates attention to punctuation with pauses and appropriate inflection.

Reading in schools• is more unlike the reading students are

doing outside of school than at any point in the recent history of secondary schools, and high stakes, print-based assessments are tapping skills and strategies that are increasingly unlike those that adolescents use from day to day.

– O’Brien & Dubbels (NCREL, in press)

Part of the problem• Texts are becoming increasingly more

complex• Low academic literacy is not restricted to poor

performing students. • Students who do well in school have

developed strategies for being successful without engaging in reading of academic texts

• Teachers may have created work-arounds for students to avoid reading the text through frustration, lack of instructional knowledge, or apathy.

• We may need to wade into the New Media.• Performance is the best medicine.

A dolescents who struggle to read in subject area classrooms are positioned as unmotivated, and lacking in requisite skills and strategies needed to succeed in their content classrooms. They could benefit from instruction that is developmentally, culturally, and linguistically responsive to their needs. Y et. . .

– S uch instruction is seldom embedded in the regular curriculum.

– Instruction is seldom tailored to their range of abilities with a range of texts and tasks.

» (Moore & Hinchman, 2003; Moje & O’B rien, 2001)

Reading, Agency, and Confidence• Adolescents’ perceptions of their

competence may be a more important predictor of whether they will engage with difficult texts across the disciplines than their past reading performance.

» (Alvermann, 2001; Anderman et al., 2001; Bean, 2000; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000)

The Digital Divide• How do we connect with these students

• How do we train students without this kind of knowledge and know-how?

• How can we teach them?

• How do we reach them?

Literacy?• "One's ability to extract information from

coded messages and to express ideas, feelings, and thoughts through them in accepted ways; the mastery of specific mental skills that become cultivated as a response to the specific functional demands of a symbol system"

(S alomon, 1982, p. 7).

Literacy to Multiple Literacies• Our personal, public and working lives

are changing in some dramatic ways, and these changes are transforming our cultures and the ways we communicate. This means that the way we have taught literacy, and what counts for literacy, will also have to change.

Engagement is Key–Struggling adolescent readers have

disengaged from reading and choosing to read early in their academic careers and are unlikely to re-engage with strategies instruction alone

(Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Alvermann, 2001)

Aspects of Agency Self-determination theory posits that three

needs for Agency:1. Competence: the need to successfully engage,

manipulate, and negotiate the environment.

2. Relatedness: emotional bonds and feelings of connectedness to others socially.

3. Autonomy: the degree to which one’s actions are precipitated by the self. The quality of owning one’s actions. Not out of compliance.

Key habits of good readers: traditional• Mentally engaged• Motivated to read and to learn• Socially active around reading tasks,• Strategic in monitoring the interactive

processes that assist comprehension.Setting goals that shape their reading processes,

• Monitoring their emerging understanding of a text, and

• Coordinating a variety of comprehension strategies to control the reading process.

• This is Agency

Elements of Student 2.0

• Has multiple tools available for learning available 24/7 • Who doesn’t just consume knowledge, but produces knowledge products (e.g.,

digital video) and does so with reference to high professional standards. • Who is able to innovate, not just replicate. • Who sees knowledge not just as facts and information, but as designed into

tools, technologies, virtual worlds, and systems. • Who sees knowledge not as resident just in heads, but as distributed across--

and sharable with--various tools, technologies, other people, social networks, and social interactions.

• Who thinks in terms of complex systems and their interactions and not just in terms of isolated facts and events?

• Who makes decisions based upon experience.• Respects demonstrable expertise.• Does not respect rank or privilege not based upon merit.• May join a community knowing that they are joining to build expertise, and that

they move to new communities to further their own agenda and interests.

Teacher Expectations• We need to ask ourselves a number of

questions:–How do I teach reading?

–What does a good reader do?–What are our reading expectations?–What do I want students to read?

–What is the role of the text?–Are there texts that might be of higher

interest?• Are we including the new media?

Rhythm & Flow

• High interest• Role Playing• Performance

• Technology• RFOL• Writing• Video• Music

Making the grades

• Character/ Characterization

• diction• Plot/ story grammar• Setting

• Point of View• Theme• Tone• Voice• Word choice

MAKING THE BAND

How about the cover art? Creating a web presence? Press kits? A band itinerary? A band identity and branding? Video?

Skee Lo -- I Wish

What some of the kids did. Popular music

Leveraging other literacies• Depiction

Represents Ideas

• What does this depiction of the house say to you?

How about movement?

DiscussionThank you.

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