from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, and a master’s degree in reading from Concordia University in Chicago.
To learn more about Daniel’s work, follow @dargentar125 on Twitter.
Katherine A. N. Gillies works as a reading specialist and English teacher at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois, where she previously served as a literacy coach. Katherine serves as the lead architect of schoolwide literacy improvement work, including building a comprehensive system of intervention and support for struggling readers, as well as crafting research-based curricula to ensure the continued literacy growth of all students. Katherine leads several collaborative teams and cross-curricular initiatives aimed at using data to inform instruction, building capacity for disciplinary literacy, and employing responsible assessment practices in the secondary arena. She has presented on these topics at local and national conferences, including that of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Katherine earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and secondary education from Saint Louis University; a master’s degree in literacy, language, and culture with reading specialist certification from the University of Illinois, Chicago; and a master’s degree in educational leadership and administration from Concordia University, Chicago, and is also a certified Project CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-Owned Strategies) trainer.
To learn more about Katherine’s work, follow @LiteracySkills on Twitter.
Maureen M. Rubenstein is a literacy coach and special education instructor at Adlai E. Stevenson High School. As a teacher, she works on individualized education plans with students who have diagnosed reading, writing, and emotional disabilities. In her coaching role, she partners with instructors from all divisions to work on disciplinary literacy. In addition to coaching individual teachers, she works with other literacy coaches to coordinate and implement book clubs, professional development sessions, and one-on-one coaching sessions.
Maureen received a bachelor’s degree in special education from Illinois State University, a master’s degree in language literacy and specialized instruction (reading specialist) from DePaul University, and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Northern Illinois University. Maureen is also a certified Project CRISS instructor and certified to teach Wilson Reading.
To learn more about Maureen’s work, follow @SHS_LiteracyMR on Twitter.
Brian R. Wise is a literacy coach and English teacher at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He has taught a wide array of English and literacy intervention courses throughout his teaching career. As a literacy coach, he works with faculty members from all divisions of the high school to build teachers’ capacity for embedding literacy skills into classroom instruction and assessment.
Brian received his bachelor’s degree in English education from Boston University, a master’s degree in English from DePaul University, and a master’s degree in reading from Concordia University, Chicago.
To learn more about Brian’s work, follow @Wise_Literacy on Twitter.
To book Daniel M. Argentar, Katherine A. N. Gillies, Maureen M. Rubenstein, or Brian R. Wise for professional development, contact [email protected].
PREFACE
To begin this book, and to immediately demonstrate the value of professional learning communities (PLCs) to support positive, thoughtful collaboration, we want to share a real-life experience we had with a group of fellow English language arts (ELA) teachers in our school. We believe this serves as an example of the familiar struggle occurring in many schools when even ELA teachers struggle to approach literacy instruction. It’s important to emphasize at this point that, when we refer to literacy, we mean the act of engaging, knowing, and ultimately being able to navigate new understandings of known and unknown nuances associated with defined content. So, during one of our early conversations about working through prereading strategies, it stood out when one teacher said, “I don’t have enough time to work through the reading process if I am going to get through the novel by the end of the term. Students already know how to read.”
The conversation that ensued was difficult. Many of the teachers on our collaborative team understood the concept and importance of prereading, and we realized the value of connecting information to students’ existing knowledge and the value of building prior knowledge bridges for students to learn new information. But at the same time, even for this group of ELA teachers, teaching the reading process (prereading, during-reading, and postreading skills) had seemingly fallen out of practice for many. For whatever reason, many of us were bypassing these important steps in the reading process. This discussion led us to an epiphany: Could it be that many grades 6–12 ELA teachers assume students know how to read? Have ELA teachers stopped teaching reading skills in favor of an in-depth exploration of the literature we love and admire?
It seems that we were not alone in our questioning. In a report, the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2010) notes “the downward spiral of adolescent reading achievement levels,” also pointing out that “U.S. students in grade four score among the best in the world, yet by tenth grade students score among the lowest in the world.” These findings indicate that we need to do a better job of teaching literacy.
We could see this effect at work in our own classrooms. In our various discussions with colleagues about teaching and learning, declining literacy skills were a clear concern that arose as a top priority. Many of us saw it daily in student writing that showed a clear inability of some students to clearly convey inferential and applied thinking. Others heard it every day in students’ slow and painful reading, despite these students being adolescents. As teachers, we knew we had to navigate each of these realities carefully—we simply could not send our students out into the post–high school world with such drastic deficits.
So, our team had to make a decision: either return to incorporating reading skills into the curriculum or continue to forgo vital educational needs to instead focus on what we love and want students to take away from our beloved novels and texts. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, but the reality is that by taking the time to develop students’ reading processes, teachers might have to let go of some other favorite elements of their ELA studies.
Facing this decision, our team acknowledged that, as ELA teachers, we needed to recommit to being reading teachers, and we hope this example and this book drive home for you the need to make this same commitment in your school and classroom. The increasing gaps in students’ abilities to read effectively demonstrate the need to make literacy instruction a priority in all classrooms, and the English classroom is no exception.
As students move through their middle school and high school experiences, many fall behind their peers, not learning how to read to learn. As literacy experts at our school, we (the authors of this book) realized this early on in our experiences when we discovered that many of the ELA teachers we work with don’t make use of reading strategies to support students throughout the reading process. We didn’t expect to discover that many ELA teachers don’t have much background in teaching reading. As they shared with us, many grades 6–12 ELA teachers’ expertise is more focused on teaching literature, and by the sixth grade, they assume that students have already learned to read. However, just learning to decode and read text is not enough. Students need to be able to engage with a text and be accountable
