MWSubstack 004: Comprehension; AI At Your Door
What can educators do to help middle graders understand more of what they read? And how are trailblazer teachers using AI tools in their classrooms?
Welcome to MiddleWeb Substack. It’s a twice-monthly, two-topic, five-minute read for middle grades educators, featuring several of MiddleWeb’s most popular and influential articles, a book review, and a cool 4-8 resource or project we’ve spotted. That’s it!
►READING INSTRUCTION
Understanding what we decode
Could there be anything more fundamental? In the months to come, we’ll be exploring reading instruction under several topics. Let’s start with reading comprehension.
The authors of Shifting the Balance (3-5) argue for reading instruction in the early middle grades that “Teach(es) important reading comprehension strategies without making reading all about comprehension strategies.” Their 2023 MiddleWeb article “Shifting the Balance with Headwork and Heartwork” describes a balanced literacy framework in practical, inviting language.
And if you’re looking for actionable advice, instructional coach and reading specialist Peg Grafwallner attracted a large readership with her recent article “Embed These 7 Skills to Assure Comprehension.”
I love helping teachers find text that will stimulate student thinking in powerful and impactful ways. However, none of that matters if the student is unable to comprehend the text. While most middle school students can decode text, truly understanding what they are reading and how those words might impact them or the world around them is the crux of any worthwhile lesson.
Grafwallner focuses on “seven essential literacy skills necessary to support our students when comprehending complex texts they are expected to read.” She shares some examples from science and history.
You might also explore these articles:
It’s Time to Reimagine Reading Comprehension (Nancy Boyles)
Helping Long-Term ELs Master Academic Texts (Tan Huynh)
Make It Happen: Reading Growth for All Students (Laura Robb)
A Teacher’s Love Letter to ‘Notice and Note’ (Brent Gilson)
Building Comprehension Using Leveled Texts (Linda Biondi)
►AI IN YOUR CLASSROOM
Is this likely to be a beautiful friendship?
Artificial intelligence was a hot topic when the school year began. Chatbots were populating on the internet, and educators were by turns concerned and excited. The flood of articles warning of mass cheating was diluted by a stream of teacher posts describing AI-enhanced lesson planning, instructional innovations and time-saving moves. Now in January we learn from an Education Week poll that a large majority of teachers have been slow to embrace the new tools.
Most teachers, in our experience, are “deliberate adopters.” With reports of AI hallucinations, math flubs, and phony links and citations, the caution seems justified. (For balance, two recent EdWeek videos narrated by Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Sypnieski offers some AI upsides and some downsides.)
Then there are the AI trailblazers, and several of them have written posts for us – including Sarah Cooper, an L.A. history teacher and school leader. In “5 Fun, Ethical Uses of AI I’ve Shared with Students,” she describes how she’s begun to work chatbot components into her research projects and current events assignments.
Over the past year my students and I have played and experimented with AI. Its well-documented pedagogical uses for brainstorming, self-tutoring, summarizing, and making conceptual connections have sparked creativity and agency.
While Cooper understands the concerns about cheating, she realizes AI can’t be put back in the bottle. So how will education need to change?
(F)ocusing too much on plagiarism will mire us in a losing battle in the present. More interesting and relevant to me are questions on how the nature of learning and teaching is evolving to meet our current technological moment and our students’ needs in the future.
You can read some of her questions in the post. Sarah’s not our only contributor exploring AI’s place in the classroom. Here are six other helpful articles we’ve published in the past year:
3 Reasons I’m Using a Chatbot in My Classes (Allison Paludi)
Lesson Planning with AI in My Grade 5 Classroom (Kathleen Palmieri)
The Principal’s Role in Supporting New Tech (Matt Renwick)
Introducing ChatGPT to Your Classroom (Kasey Short)
Learning to Teach with AI a Small Bite at a Time (Shawn McCusker)
8th Grade Insights Into ChatGPT and the Future (Sarah Cooper)
►ELSEWHERE
Helping students understand AI’s biases
When we talk to students about artificial intelligence, the rise of ChatGPT and other seemingly magical AI tools, and the dangers some see in a future dominated by machine intelligence, one important topic might be whether such tools are inherently prejudiced.
These digital marvels are trained on massive amounts of content drawn from the Internet. In a November 2023 Wired newsletter, tech writer Steven Levy recounts his conversation with AI developer Fei-Fei Li. Li has written about the “surprising” bias that’s emerged in some of her work, revealing how easily racism and gender stereotyping can creep into machine learning. “When the internet presents a predominantly white, Western, and often male picture of everyday life, we’re left with technology that struggles to make sense of everyone.”
What does this have to do with middle grades education? Helping students understand where AI comes from – in ways appropriate to their maturity – is critical knowledge in a world that will soon be permeated with ever-smarter machines.
►BOOK REVIEW
50 Strategies for Integrating AI into the Classroom by Donnie Piercey
Kentucky TOY Piercey’s book provides a comprehensive guide for educators looking to harness the potential of AI in the classroom, offering a wide range of practical strategies and insights that will help de-stress teacher experimentation, says our reviewer. (Read review.)
►REVIEW THIS BOOK FOR US
►NEXT TIME
If they would just listen! Our next issue will turn up the volume on student listening skills. And with state testing on the horizon, we’ll also share some effective, time-sensitive ways to teach academic vocabulary and other hard words.