Special Edition - Beyond the Reading Wars Vol. 44, Issue 3 | Page 25

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The Three Levels of Support

1. Share: Teacher and students do the work together. I would do this with my entire class if they all needed some supported practice in something I had previously modeled.

2.Guide: Students try the work within a known shared topic on their own, while the teacher supports. I would do this with students who I had determined needed even more practice with what I had taught OR with students who needed something different from what I had taught.

3.Apply: With teacher support, students integrate what they have learned into new topics/genres. I would do this with students who only needed a little bit of additional coaching in order to be able to transfer what had been taught into their independent writing

The Research Underpinnings of the

“We-Do” Model

As a literacy consultant, I place value on many different types of research. I agree with Tim Rasinski’s wise words that teaching is both an art and a science. To create the “We-Do” model of writing, I conducted action-based research, as well as leaned into three main bodies of written research.

1. Gough and Tunmer’s Simple View of Reading

Gough and Tunmer make the case that strong reading comprehension cannot occur unless both decoding skills and language comprehension skills are strong. So, in order to produce skillful readers, teachers need to provide separate instruction in both decoding and language comprehension. I relied on this research while creating my “We-Do” model of instruction. If we want to create powerful writers we also need to provide separate instruction in different writing areas. The “We-Do” model has a language conventions strand that mirrors the decoding strand in reading. It has a language composition strand that mirrors the language comprehension strand in reading. I added in an application strand as well. I have found that students are much more engaged and instruction is much more purposeful if students are putting it together right from the start. This 3rd instructional strand and its accompanying instructional session ensures that we give students support practice while they are learning to put it all together.

2.Pearson and Gallagher’s Gradual Release of Responsibility

The Gradual Release of Responsibility Model is a well-researched teaching methodology that marks a deliberate shift from a teacher assuming all the responsibility for performing a task to a situation in which students assume all of the responsibility. The “We-Do” model of instruction relies heavily on this research by featuring three levels of practice. There were particular areas of the gradual release of responsibility that were especially instrumental in the creation of the “We-Do” model. The first is the importance of using the gradual release model flexibly. The three levels of practice in the “We-Do” model are meant to be used flexibly. Some students will need extra supported practice in the form of share, guide and apply and others will need some of those levels and some will need none of those levels of practice.

The “We-Do” model, just as the gradual release model, also places emphasis on lingering longer in the middle phases. While creating this model, I was acutely aware that in the past I had spent too long modeling and not enough time in the ‘we-do’ phase of instruction. Dole Duffy and Pearson recently said, “Observing in classrooms, we regularly see a jump from explicit teaching and modeling all the way to independent practice, missing the all-important middle part of the gradual release model.” I agree and created this model to support teachers in lingering longer in the middle parts of the gradual release model.

3.MacLeod and Bodner’s research around the Production Effect

MacLeod and Bodner’s research found that saying something out loud yielded substantial memory improvement. While this research is not particularly surprising research it was particularly helpful for the “We-Do” Model of instruction. When using the “We-Do” model of instruction with teachers, I emphasize the importance of all students constructing and practicing more complicated sentence structures during Write Aloud. It’s this phenomenon of everyone saying it out loud that supports the transfer to independent writing.

 

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