Contact: Jane Meadows, (850) 645-8159, jmeadows@fcrr.org
Kristen Coyne, (850) 644-1656; kcoyne@fsu.edu
June 4, 2010
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — History teachers teach wars and presidents. American literature teachers tackle Hemingway and Steinbeck. Obvious, right?
Maybe — in an ideal world. But in reality many students, even as teens, struggle to read, and thus struggle to learn in all subjects. Which is why this month faculty from The Florida State University will show 75 middle and high school teachers how to help their students get more from what they read in class — whether that class is economics, history or English.
Only 71 percent of fifth-graders read at or above grade level, according to 2009 Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test results.
“Content area teachers have to help with reading,” said Jane Meadows of FSU’s Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR), who has organized the two-week professional development institute, which runs June 14-24, for teachers from across Florida’s Panhandle. “These workshops show them that they may not know how to teach phonics and morphological awareness, but they can teach using strategies to make the text more accessible.
“After all, that’s why we learn to read — so we can learn content,” Meadows said.
At workshops in Tallahassee and Chipley, institute participants will switch to the other side of the teacher’s desk. Professors from Florida State’s College of Arts & Sciences, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy and College of Education will provide both content material and effective strategies for teaching that material. Meadows said partnering content specialists with education specialists gives this institute its unique strength.
“A lot of time, when you’re in college, you don’t get both of those together, you get one or the other,” she said.
This is the second of three years planned for the institute, which was highly rated by last year’s participants. Funded by a $700,000 federal Title 2 flow-through grant to the Florida Department of Education, the project is a collaboration of Florida State, FCRR and the Panhandle Area Educational Consortium.
“The emphasis of the institute on disciplinary literacy and the varying demands of English, history and social science texts is consistent with current research on adolescent literacy,” said Barbara Foorman, FCRR director and the Francis Eppes Professor of Education at Florida State.
Wakulla High School teacher Melinda House applied what she learned at the 2009 institute to one of her biggest challenges: “Romeo and Juliet.”
“The students always seem kind of excited about it at the beginning,” the English teacher said. “Then, after a day, they seem to lose interest.”
Their problem? They just can’t grasp the text.
But this past year, using tips from her FSU training, House engaged her ninth-graders in a debate about who was at fault for the deaths of the star-crossed lovers. She was amazed by how animated her students became. She later surprised them with an essay test on the topic.
“Almost everyone just aced it,” House said. “They were able to pull together what their peers had said, what they had learned, what their own opinion was.” House has registered for this year’s institute, where she hopes to learn more effective, research-based teaching strategies.
Only half the institute takes place during this month’s two-week session. The teachers’ work will continue during the school year with 60 hours of additional sessions, online work and classroom observation.
The institute is not the university’s only foray into teacher training this summer. The Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (FCR-STEM) has organized six training sessions for 240 state teachers on math and science subjects. Arts and Sciences and College of Education faculty will help teach these sessions, funded by Florida PROMiSE, as well.
Spots are still available in the FCRR-led institute. For more information visit http://teacherquality.paec.org or contact Jane Meadows at jmeadows@fccr.org.
The FCR-STEM sessions are full. For more information on those sessions, held in June and July, contact Mabry Gaboardi at mgaboardi@lsi.fsu.edu.