I admit this a kind of click-bait title, but I paraphrased it from a source arguing that far too much ELA time is spent on comprehension skills. I did end the title with a question mark.
The article divides the development of reading skill into two pretty much sequential components – decoding skills and comprehension skills. I agree. The article does not argue that attempts to teach comprehension skills should be completely abandoned, but rather claims that these stepping stone skills are emphasized too much because the key to reading comprehension is really the development of existing knowledge. Again, I kind of agree and suggest that this research supported argument is under-appreciated by many teachers and is lacking in the understanding of such important issues as the struggles of lower SES kids in developing core academic skills.
The position taken by the authors reminds me of a post I generated just a few days ago concluding that increasing time spent in social studies at the elementary school level is more important in developing reading proficiency than variations in the time spent on reading instruction. The logic explaining this finding is that of the typical elementary subject areas, social studies is the area that best covers what might be described as general knowledge (e.g., in constrast to the specialized knowledge and vocabulary of science). Understanding what we read is heavily influenced by what we already know about a topic and general knowledge is, as the term implies, general meaning it applies more widely. Hence, it seems wrong, but possibly counterintuitive to many, to steal time from social studies to emphasize STEM. Develop learning skills first and then allow opportunities to turn these proficiencies loose on topics of personal interest.
Given the complexity of the news environment at this moment, even technology enthusiasts may have missed the massive (400+ pages) report focused on alledged anti-competitive practices of Amazon, Apple. Facebook, and Google. Four hundred pages is a lot to read, but there is an executive summary and sections on specific issues and the individual companies that may be of interest.
The report is titled – Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets. To be precise, this is the house majority report (Democrat). Party animus being what it is, the minority members of the committee may offer their own commentary. The minority wanted some issues such as their claim that conservative issues are disadvantaged by algorithms that do not appear in the report of the majority. I am also not certain that this claim can be objectively demonstrated.
I would describe the general tenor of the report as finding specific faults with all of the companies investigated. While each company operates in somewhat independent areas, the general conclusions were that:
Each company functions as a gatekeeper over a category of distribution
The advantages of this gatekeeper position is used to maintain control.
While the companies function as intermediaries, they exploit their advantages to influence opportunities for competitors and take advantage of companies who depend on the intermediary.
The committee pointed to the combined economic power of these companies in justifying potential regulations that may be necessary. The combined valuation of these companies is more than $5 trillion.
The report indicated that Google would probably be the first to face regulation. Without defending Google, I am personally more concerned about the impact of Facebook. Facebook was indicated in the report to have 1.79 billion daily users and if it has reasonable competitors, these competitors would most likely be other services it owns (Instagram). Facebook was reported to be on 74% of U.S. phones (200 million), Messenger on 184 million, and Instagram on 119 million. Facebook was reported to control 95% of time in minutes spent on social media.
Facebook’s advantages include network effects (people want to be where most other people are and as the percentage goes up the power of the network increases out of proportion to the numbers involved), switching costs (lose access to data – photos, posts, friends), and access to data (the more data the more tailored the experience).
I understand these factors, but I am concerned with the influence that Facebook has on users. It limits their capacity to make sound data and factually informed decisions because it manipulates access to facts and data based on personal biases and emotional triggers. To some degree, Google may be moving in this same direction as it has diluted the original page-rank algorithm to take into account personal preferences. How do you explain to people that what we like and what tends to activate us (content with an emotional edge) may not be accurate or good for us?
Here is a research study from the Fordham Institute that should give all elementary teachers and administrators something to think about. I will say as a preface that I know nothing of the Fordham Institute and I tend to trust studies I find published in scholarly journals more than technical reports. This is because the review process for journal publication requires the review of an article by other scholars who might identify flaws I have not considered. Still, the results of this study seem solid and the deeper question is likely why the results obtained happen. The paper itself (a pdf available for download from the link I provide) may be longer that many want to take on, but the executive summary is easy enough to consume and consider.
The study makes use of a longitudinal design following more than 18,000 k-12 students focused on the development of reading comprehension skills. The basic idea was to predict (a regression statistical approach) differences in 5th grade reading comprehension scores from variations in classroom time focused on different subject areas over the K-5 time span.
Aside from the focus on the study just the data on how student time is allocated and how it varies from school to school is interesting. Over this time span, the average daily academic time is 302 minutes. ELA (language arts) takes up consistently the most time (120 minutes) with math coming in a distant second. ELA time spent is more than the total of all other academic areas combined if math is excluded.
Even with this solid generality, time in different subjects does vary so the regression model attempts to use the time spent to predict variations in reading comprehension in fifth grade based on these variations (controlling for some other variables such as K reading assessments).
The study found that the only variable predicting reading comprehension differences was the time spent in social studies. Note that this includes variations in time spent in ELA. In addition, the researchers broke the data down by SES quartiles and found that this outcome was consistent across the bottom three quartiles, but not in the most affluent quartile.
The interpretation. The authors conclude that social studies offers the best opportunity to develop general knowledge and comprehension itself ends up highly predicted by what one already knows about a content area. I agree with this explanation based on other information I have read. One of the most persuasive study (actually mentioned in this report) involves the description of the play by play from a baseball game. Learners were differentiated based on reading skill and baseball knowledge. So, think of this as four groups – high knowledge/high reading, high knowledge/low reading, low knowledge/high reading, and low knowledge/low reading. In the study high knowledge/low reading demonstrated better comprehension than low knowledge/high reading. If you think about the importance of background knowledge in understanding, this should make sense.
Before I reached their explanation, I wondered about science. Why was time spent studying science not a predictor? The authors thought of this too and proposed that science is more about specialized and not general knowledge.
What about the SES results? Again, I found their explanation quite credible. They suggest that kids from more affluent families simply have far more opportunities to learn about the world – develop general knowledge. Students with fewer opportunities are more dependent on schools to provide background and just focusing on the strategies of reading as a skill does not provide this exposure.
The authors argue that the allocation of school time so heavily to traditional reading misses out on the opportunity to develop general knowledge important to both reading comprehension and life. The authors argue for diversion of some time (they suggest 30 minutes a day) from ELA activities to social studies. As I read this, I thought about the potential of Newsela as a way to do this. Newsela offers reading material on many topics with each article available at multiple reading levels. This would seem the type of activity relevant to both reading skill development and knowledge development.
Back to my general concern. Longitudinal studies lack the manipulated controls of the best research. Hence, longitudinal research is by design correlational and without random assignment to treatments more prone to misinterpretation because of direction of causality or biasing variables. The student attempted to control for such possibilities, but this type of bias always remains a possibility. On the other hand, longitudinal research has a certain type of validity in taking a long term perspective based in actual experiences and while expensive or at least demanding the results are appealing.
I think it will be interesting over the next months to see if this study attracts some attention. It is unfortunate that our present point in time has us focused on so many other issues.
I promote users making use of RSS and a RSS reader to control the blog content they consume. It is the best way to not give control of what you read to the vague algorithms of search and social media. However, I pay some attention to how folks get to my own posts and recognize that search and social media account for a substantial proportion of the page views. If not RSS, I suggest you follow me on Twitter to identify the headlines from posts you may find interesting. Twitter does not select content for you and you see the content of those you follow. Following Twitter link recommendations offers a form of discovery based on your trust in those you follow.
My Twitter posts can be located at @grabe. I do tweet about many topics and some political comments. However, all my blog posts automatically generate a tweet (as did this one).
Google Image Search has made some changes to how an educator might go about searching for images available for use in classrooms. Google image search brings up all kinds of images, but educators should be looking for images available under a Creative Commons license. Search identifies images only some of what have any kind of identifiable license and only some of the licensed images are available with a CC license.
Here is a process educators might use. Start with image search and identify the image you want.
This search would reveal everything Google has located. You want to modify the search to identify those with a CC license. Under the Settings header find advanced search in the drop down menu.
From the usage rights designation select Creative Commons.
This should now identify the images Google believes has a CC license of some type. To get additional information select the tab (red box) associated with an image you think looks useful and this will reveal more information about that image. I found a mix of sources for images and many offering ambiguous information about CC. For example, the method for clearly describing expectations might be no longer available. To be meticulous about image selection it makes sense to search the information provided for what seems a useful image and read more about the details of the CC designation (see red box within the information associated with the selected image.)
You are looking for a clear description of the CC designation.
I enjoy photographing wildlife and I sometimes make use of trail cams as part of this hobby. Trail cams are probably most commonly used by hunters to determine if the wildlife they seek are in a particular area. I don’t hunt, but trail cams offer a different way to see what animals inhabit the land we own.
Some years ago Cindy found a birdcam at a sale. This variant of a trail cam is intended for taking motion activated photos at close distances. The version she bought came with a mount allowing the camera to be precisely positioned to collect images of birds coming to a feeder. The camera was probably expensive when first sold – it has a provision for video or photos and settings for the distance to the target to allow better quality images. It is probably 8-10 years old now so the megapixels of data it collects is not close to what we now expect.
I recently joined a Facebook group – Grow with KARE – hosted by a local television station. The group is gardening/yard oriented and I had just found an interesting photo on my birdcam I shared with the group.
The image shows a male cardinal feeding seed to what I thought was a juvenile. Cardinals are frequent visitors to the feeder, but this feeding behavior seemed unusual. I had not witnessed it outside of a nest before. I just thought it was unusual and interesting. The photo generated a great deal of interest (at least in my experience posting to Facebook). Female cardinals are far less colorful and I had assumed that this was possibly an immature female being raised and acquainted with the feeder by the male.
Several of those responding to my post informed me that this looked like an immature cowbird. The species lays eggs in the nests of other birds and the other birds then raise the babies when they hatch. I checked out cowbird and this seems to be the case. This is likely an immature female.
I explore photography as an educational opportunity and I have definitely learned something from the group process I experienced.
Just for the record, here are photos taken by the birdcam of male and female cardinals.
While I think educator interest in Twitter chats has waned, I find an occasional group that has maintained interest in this approach and chat activity may pick up when we get past the pandemic and worrying about just getting through tomorrow. My issue with Twitter chats (ed chats) was what I would describe as inefficiency – too much time to get anything accomplished if the goal was to offer educators a personal learning network. My suggests have been focused on things like asking participants to read a common resource each week or come prepared to share a link related to the topic of the week.
Keeler is capable of deep dives on technology topics and often combines detailed knowledge of how to accomplish technical hacks with different tools with related ideas for the classroom. Her recent post and sharing of a chat template is a good example.
The template is based in a spreadsheet and includes cells set aside for the questions to be asked during a chat, cells for responses to these questions, and a cell to be used for the hashtag that keeps all chat participated connected during a chat (the first part of the Keeler post explains the basics of a chat process and so does my post on Twitter chats).
The advantage I see in Keeler’s use of a template for an educational chat would be the time saved in generating the questions (by the moderator) and responses. Too many chats (in my opinion) are seat of the pants sessions with little or no preparation and educators responding on the fly. Everyone types at the same time to generate responses with little back and forth. I assume Keeler’s proposal is that the template for a given chat be shared (the questions) and participants then prepare their initial responses. As the series of questions and responses were then relayed via Twitter during an actual chat, participants can focus more on reading the responses offered by other participants and commenting on these responses. Efficiency, preparation, and greater consideration of ideas offered by others would be the benefits.
I was curious about Keeler’s approach. She made use of a web function – =hyperlink and Twitter capabilities I was unfamiliar with (intents). As I understand a major reason for the intent capabilities, Twitter capabilities can be added in other contexts such as a web page. So, for example, I would create a URL including the intent command here that should bring up your Twitter and include a tweet. You would then send the tweet if you wanted.
You can examine what your own tweets would look like when coverted to a similar format. After you have generated a tweet, you should see the tweet contains a V shaped symbol in the upper right-hand corner. One of the options under this drop down is Embed Tweet. Twitter will generate the embed for you.
So what Keeler has done is create a script using the hyperlink function to pull data from the spreadsheet (there are some columns you will have to reveal to understand the script).
This is an interesting approach that solves a practical problem.
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