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Getting on the
Same Page

From math and science to history, teachers at one Oregon high school embrace common literacy strategies.

Story by Rhonda Barton
Photos by Mount Burns

BEAVERTON, Oregon—Even before you walk into Beaverton High School, you get the message that people here are serious about literacy. Plastered on the front door of the sprawling white building is an 18 x 24-inch poster with literacy-linked “Schoolwide Learning Strategies (SWLS)” smack in the middle.

Radiating out of the SWLS hub, like spokes of a wheel, five strategies describe how the suburban school’s 2,000 students and 100 teachers approach learning: visualizing, questioning, summarizing, activating prior knowledge, and developing vocabulary. Whether it’s a geometry class or one studying the Russian revolution, special education students or those taking Advanced Placement, everyone can expect to use one or more of the strategies throughout the day.

Literacy coach Alyson Miller—a petite brunette who could be mistaken for a student—is on call to help teachers infuse the strategies into their content areas. But, Miller is more facilitator than dictator, more mentor than evaluator. Like her fellow literacy coaches—assigned full time to each of the district’s 15 middle and high schools—Miller’s job is to provide staff development and work collaboratively with other faculty to implement literacy techniques, curriculum, and assessment.

Just two years after literacy coaching was introduced, Beaverton High is seeing results: Reading scores on statewide tests have jumped 12 percentage points with 67 percent of 10th-grade students now meeting or exceeding standards. That’s 11 percent more than their peers across Oregon.

Identifying What Works

Beaverton High’s push toward boosting literacy is part of a districtwide effort that looks slightly different in each school. The district committed to hiring a full-time coach for every school—supported by general fund dollars—as part of its mission to increase student achievement in reading. At the outset, all secondary coaches received common literacy training at least once a month and met regularly with content experts to discuss reading needs in their subject areas. Now that the district has some experience under its belt, it’s moving toward peer coaching and a train-the-trainers model. “We’re trying to get our knowledge out there in as many ways as possible,” says Janet Fortier, who was in charge of secondary coaches but now directs the district’s International Baccalaureate program.

All of Beaverton’s coaches—both secondary and elementary—operate under the same job description. “We tell them they should be coaching and not playing,” explains Sue Robertson, former administrator of the program and now Beaverton’s chief human resources officer. However, says Robertson, each school is responsible for formulating its own improvement plan and coaches tailor their work to those plans and the assessments that inform them.

In addition to support from the district, Beaverton High was able to tap into another resource: a small learning community grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Using SLC funds, Miller and five other members of the school’s literacy team researched what was working in similar-sized high schools and ultimately paid a visit to Hoover High in San Diego. They took away an important lesson: “If we can be more consistent from one class to another in our practice and our expectations about things like note taking, for example, then students are that much more likely to succeed,” says Miller.

The team returned home and set about developing a set of proven practices that could be used in art classes as easily as in language arts. “We called them learning strategies instead of literacy ones because they’re really processing strategies: things we can do in our brains to process information and own it over time,” notes Miller. The team presented 15 strategies to the full staff, which whittled the list down to the top five. Now, the challenge was to translate them from paper into practice.

Finding Poetry in Social Studies

In a crowded classroom of rambunctious ninth-graders, Tony Hynes teaches social studies. But, he also recognizes the role that literacy instruction plays. “It has to be my job because if they don’t understand the vocabulary, they don’t understand the content,” he admits. “It’s the building block of seeing the knowledge.”

At the beginning of the period, Hynes uses a technique called vocabulary front-loading that Miller showed him. On the chalkboard he writes four to eight words that are difficult or critical to the meaning of the lesson. After giving the definitions, he asks the class to rephrase them in a “student-friendly” way and then draw a picture to symbolize each word. Whenever possible, Hynes tries to tie the vocabulary to situations in his students’ lives. “What does it mean to have a bilateral agreement?” he asks. “I’ve given you the word in an international political context, but what about when you and your parents are deciding whether you should be grounded?”

Besides words that are specific to his subject, Hynes pulls out vocabulary that students are likely to encounter in other classes. And, he says the strategy definitely is working. “If I give them an assessment on that particular concept, I often see the words given back to me in their writing,” he says. “Days later, I might ask them what that word means and basically they’ll give it back to me again.”

Teaming up with Miller, Hynes added another dimension to a lesson on trench warfare. “Instead of showing a video, I had Alyson come in and we read poetry actually written by soldiers in the trenches,” he relates. The class jotted down powerful words from the readings and then created their own poems. “It was great; the students still talk about it!” Hynes exclaims.

Another literacy strategy that Hynes adopted is the read aloud, think aloud, where the teacher shares his questions and understanding of a passage as he’s reading it—or even memories it evokes. The approach makes sense to Hynes because of his own struggles as a student. “I came from more of an oral culture where reading wasn’t pushed in my home,” the native New Zealander confesses. “I didn’t have the discourse, I didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary, and I couldn’t make the connections in the reading. I used to read the first paragraph and I couldn’t remember at the end of it what it was about.” Hynes says that by asking questions as a reader and making personal connections, “the reading has context then … it’s not just something out there.”

Applying Prereading to Biology

Down a sloping corridor in the science wing, biology teacher Megan McLain also puts literacy strategies to work. She was puzzling over how to introduce a unit on evolution when she attended one of Miller’s inservice sessions on activating prior knowledge—a prereading technique. “I got excited and started brainstorming how to apply that to evolution, which is something so many people have misconceptions about,” she said. “I really needed to dive into the subject in a way that was going to get students thinking.”

McLain decided to use anticipation/reaction guides: a type of graphic organizer that helps students recall what they know or believe about a subject or text before studying it. Students then revisit their initial responses during and after the lesson. In the case of a sensitive issue like evolution, McLain was able to acknowledge the diversity of opinions and explore them in the context of sound scientific investigation. “I think getting their opinions out there and having a voice helps kids compare ideas and be more open-minded about what they’re learning,” she says.

McLain also turned to graphic organizers in an Advanced Placement unit on photosynthesis where students “need to know how to dig into a complicated, college-level text and get out the information.” Guided by three major questions on photosynthesis supplied by the College Board (which is responsible for AP tests), the students broke down everything they had to know to answer the first question. Together, they sifted through the textbook and found all the needed tables and figures. Then, students created their own graphic organizers for the next two questions and helped each other fill in the pertinent information. McLain says the technique gave her “a lot of bang for the buck”: Not only did students find the photosynthesis unit more interesting and easier to understand, but they had less trouble delving into other chapters of the book. McLain says she no longer feels she has to “regurgitate” all the information because students are better equipped to find it themselves.

Mixing Geometry and Graphic Organizers

Using graphic organizers as an instructional tool is as applicable in math as it is in science. David Wagenblast’s geometry students fill in the blanks on a “name that formula” matrix that gives clues like pictures, the name of a shape, or the area equation. The organizer helps students separate out key vocabulary and common or different characteristics of the shapes. “A lot of geometry is getting kids to visualize what you’re talking about,” says Wagenblast, “so this is a different way of looking at it.”

Rather than assume that students understand mathematical terms, Wagenblast throws in vocabulary lessons that are anything but dull. Inspired by the popular game “Taboo,” he came up with stacks of little white cards bearing words like “angle bisector” on one side. A student tries to guess the word while his partner gives hints that can’t include taboo words printed on the card’s flip side (in this case, degree, divide, or same). “Everyone is doing it in their own groups at the same time—it’s you and your partner against another pair—and they’re highly engaged because they’re playing a game,” Wagenblast reports.

With Miller’s help, Wagenblast also turned geometric proofs into a hands-on activity. Using flash cards, teams of students try to match the properties associated with different formulas. “Alyson helped me figure out what literacy we want to get out of this exercise,” says Wagenblast. “What’s the objective we want these kids to learn? By using these techniques, I don’t have to spend 20 minutes doing a boring lecture and the kids really pick up [the concept].”

Wagenblast has found that by collaborating with a literacy coach he gets ideas on how to present complicated mathematical principles in a format that kids can understand. He points out that someone like Miller comes at the problem with a fresh perspective: While another math teacher might share a different way to teach angles, it won’t necessarily be as effective or engaging.

Fine-Tuning Note Taking in History

David Nieslanik has his hands full: Half his day is spent as Beaverton High’s activities director and the other half finds him teaching European History to 108 Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate students. Nieslanik says the five schoolwide strategies “give us a focused way of connecting content to learning.” Students see the same strategies in every classroom, which not only provides continuity but also promotes equity. “It changes the dynamic in the building,” says Nieslanik. “If a kid is special ed or ELL versus TAG or AP or even an average student, they all have the same opportunity to succeed across the curriculum. Granted, my content is a lot more difficult than in other 10th-grade social studies classrooms, but the strategy is the same and students see they’re learning to read content at a deeper level.”

Focusing on the strategy of summarizing, Nieslanik encourages his students to use structured note taking like the Cornell method. In Cornell Note Taking, the student divides a page into two columns and writes key words or questions in one column and definitions or answers in the other. The student recites, reflects on, and reviews the notes at a later point and writes a summary of each page.

To track the impact of the method, Nieslanik did an informal study comparing test results for his students who used Cornell Note Taking with those who used a more traditional approach. In three quizzes and one unit test, scores were consistently higher for students using the Cornell method than for “traditional” notetakers. Nieslanik cautions that his study wasn’t scientific, but adds that the results certainly were “interesting.”

Turning Kids on to Literature

Melissa Allen’s language arts classroom is abuzz with energy and excitement. The first-year teacher has divided the class into literature circles, a group discussion technique that incorporates comprehension strategies such as predicting, summarizing, and visualizing. Five weeks ago, Allen assigned these 35 juniors and seniors the World War II story, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, by Slavomir Rawicz. It was up to each group to agree on a reading schedule and take on individual roles.

In one tight knot, a half-dozen students are busily wrapping up their work. Annie explains her job as discussion director: “I make up the questions we talk about, like when this happened in the book, how did you feel?” The “literacy luminary,” Edsel, says he finds passages in the book that are special: “I look for something that really appeals to me.” Meanwhile, Amanda, the illustrator, is putting the finishing touches on a drawing of a house with two people in a wooded setting. She chose this scene from the book because it’s one of hope. Other students act as vocabulary “police” and “connectors,” pulling the threads of the story together.

Edsel is a fan of the circle approach. “We pressure each other into actually reading because we have to turn in a sheet after each discussion,” he says. Annie adds, “When you talk about the story in a small group you can express your views more easily.”

Allen, who earned her master’s degree a year ago, says using techniques like questioning and activating prior knowledge come easily to her. “It’s natural for language arts teachers to do this, but the strategies really apply across the board,” she thinks. “There’s that blanket stereotype that LA teachers teach literacy and others teach everything else, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Teaching Everyone To Go Deeper

While coach Miller’s primary focus is teaching teachers, she also works—either individually or in small groups—with students who are referred by their teachers. Ryan, Codi, and Nathan are three freshmen who are taking advantage of this intensive support once a week during their study hall period. Today, Adrian Harvie, a student teacher from Pacific University, leads them in a leveled questioning activity under Miller’s watchful eye.

The assignment is to create questions of increasing difficulty about a 12-line portion of Xenophon’s Conversations of Socrates. It’s the kind of text you’d expect college students to blanch at, but the boys handle it with both ease and pride. In turn, each one asks a Level I question about a basic fact and a Level II question that requires the reader to make inferences. Level III questions tie the text to personal experience. For example, Nathan poses the difficult question: What actions do you consider to be involuntary? Codi asks if it’s easier or harder to think on your own. And Ryan wants to know what the advantage is of questioning society.

“This makes you think harder about your reading,” says Nathan. “When we first read the article I didn’t necessarily understand it, but by the time I did all my questions, I did.” Codi says leveled questioning has definitely helped him tackle Lord of the Flies in his language arts class and Ryan brags that he “rocked” a Shakespeare assignment where he had to pick out quotes and rewrite them in modern-day English.

Harvie, who will complete his degree in six months and return home to Australia, says practicing literacy strategies has been “huge” for him. “As a future social studies teacher, I see how well it can work if initiated well,” he remarks. “In the beginning, these guys weren’t asking in-depth questions, but now they are—which shows that they’re thinking more about the text and what it means. The experience has shown me that if I model what I’m looking for and then shift the questioning to my students, they can take on that responsibility.”

Measuring Success

As the school year comes to a close, Beaverton High’s literacy team gathers to reflect on whether the five learning strategies are really taking root. Have team members succeeded in convincing colleagues and students that literacy should be front and center? The answer is a resounding “yes.”

Special education teacher Linda Keil is excited that “the strategies are becoming standard operating procedure. Staff and teachers are using the same language and the kids are able to explain why we’re doing this,” she says. Wendy Orloff, an ESL teacher, observes that students now incorporate the strategies spontaneously. “If they’re reading a passage, they’ll ask the three levels of questions on their own.”

Jared Storts, who teaches math, tells the group, “I had a big epiphany about assessment and it came directly from our work on the strategies. In math, we put 75-80 percent of our emphasis on the test, but by focusing on the strategies I realized we have to measure how we get there. It’s like a saying I saw that gave me pause: You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it. … If you wait until the test, it’s too late!”

Vice Principal Claudia Ruff has the last word. She points out that reading scores have improved tremendously since Beaverton adopted its literacy program. She’s also seen a heightened sense of community and greater cooperation. “Students realize we’re all doing these strategies together,” she remarks.

There may be 2,000 students, 100 teachers, and school traditions that stretch back more than a century. But, five strategies have helped everyone at Beaverton High get on the same page and push to improve literacy.