Literacy Focus

Last Month’s Topic: Readability Scoring

Sample Not so long ago in Montgomery, Alabama, the color of your skin determined where you could sit on a public bus. If you happened to be an African American, you had to sit in the back of the bus, even if there were empty seats up front. Back then, racial segregation was the rule throughout the American South. Strict laws—called “Jim Crow” laws—enforced a system of white supremacy that discriminated against blacks and kept them in their place as second-class citizens. People were separated by race from the moment they were born in segregated hospitals until the day they were buried in segregated cemeteries. Blacks and whites did not attend the same schools, worship in the same churches, eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, drink from the same water fountains, or sit together in the same movie theaters.

THREE CHEERS FOR LITERACY! This Month’s Topic:

Three Tiers of Words Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002, 2008) have outlined a useful model for conceptualizing categories of words readers encounter and for understanding the instructional and learning challenges in each category. They describe three levels, or tiers, of words in terms of the words’ commonality (more to less frequently occurring) and applicability (broader to narrower).

Tier One Words Tier One words are the words of everyday speech usually learned in the early grades, albeit not at the same rate by all children. They are not considered a challenge to the average native speaker, though English language learners of any age will have to attend carefully to them.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Tier Two Words Tier Two words (what the Standards refer to as general academic words) are far more likely to appear in written texts than in speech. They appear in all sorts of texts: informational texts (words such as relative, vary, formulate, specificity, and accumulate), technical texts (calibrate, itemize, periphery), and literary texts (misfortune, dignified, faltered, unabashedly).

Tier Two words often represent subtle or precise ways to say relatively simple things— saunter instead of walk, for example. Because Tier Two words are found across many types of texts, they are highly generalizable.

Tier Three Words Tier Three words ( what the Standards refer to as domain- specific words) are specific to a domain or field of study ( lava, carburetor, legislature, circumference, aorta) and key to understanding a new concept within a text.

Because of their specificity and close ties to content knowledge, Tier Three words are far more common in informational texts than in literature. Recognized as new and “hard” words for most readers (particularly student readers), they are often explicitly defined by the author of a text, repeatedly used, and otherwise heavily scaffolded.

How We Normally Scaffold Tier 3 Words Segregation Jim Crow Laws White Supremacy Textual Cues (Context Clues) Renaming/use of synonyms Repetition within text Reinforcement with related concepts

Sample - Tier 3 Emphasized Not so long ago in Montgomery, Alabama, the color of your skin determined where you could sit on a public bus. If you happened to be an African American, you had to sit in the back of the bus, even if there were empty seats up front. Back then, racial segregation was the rule throughout the American South. Strict laws —called “Jim Crow” laws—enforced a system of white supremacy that discriminated against blacks and kept them in their place as second-class citizens. People were separated by race from the moment they were born in segregated hospitals until the day they were buried in segregated cemeteries. Blacks and whites did not attend the same schools, worship in the same churches, eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, drink from the same water fountains, or sit together in the same movie theaters.

Tier 2 Emphasis Not so long ago in Montgomery, Alabama, the color of your skin determined where you could sit on a public bus. If you happened to be an African American, you had to sit in the back of the bus, even if there were empty seats up front. Back then, racial segregation was the rule throughout the American South. Strict laws— called “Jim Crow” laws—enforced a system of white supremacy that discriminated against blacks and kept them in their place as second-class citizens. People were separated by race from the moment they were born in segregated hospitals until the day they were buried in segregated cemeteries. Blacks and whites did not attend the same schools, worship in the same churches, eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, drink from the same water fountains, or sit together in the same movie theaters.

Vocabulary Matters! An astronaut is driving along the edge of a round crater in his space pod. The crater’s diameter is 14 kilometers. In one revolution around the crater, how far does the pod travel?

When starting the deer hunt on the first day of the season, Betty noticed that the odometer on her SUV read 28,947 miles. At the end of the day it read 29,042 miles. How many miles did she drive that day?

After receiving the opening kickoff, the Packers’ offense lined up on their 20 yard line. Their first play was a 17-yard pass completion. On their second play, they were penalized and moved back to the 32 yard line. How many yards were they penalized?

Teen Beat $9.98 (12 issues) $3.25 Field and Stream $19.97 (6 issues) $4.99 Enquirer $19.98 (12 issues) $2.99 TV Weekly $46.28 (52 issues) $1.95 Which of the magazines saves you the most money by purchasing a yearly subscription instead of an equivalent number of single copies? How much will you save?

The expression c - e, where c stands for the money collected and e stands for the expenses, is used to find the profit from a basketball concession. If $500 was collected and expenses were $150, find the profit for the concession.

John buys 3 boxes of shells for his Winchester to add to the half-full box of shells he still has left from last season. If each box holds 20 shells, how many shells does he have?

Student/parent complaint Johnny knows the information, but he doesn’t score well on the test.

2 Pitfalls to Avoid Have students practiced what you’re testing? Are you testing for reading rather than content knowledge?

Check your Tier II word use Check your sentence structure Begin with the action word you are testing Practice