Community College Research Group

Community College Research Group

2008-09 Report

Cindy Hicks

Chabot College

Hayward, CA

July 14, 2009

INTRODUCTION

Chabot College is a comprehensive, public, urban two-year college in Hayward, California. It is one of two separately accredited colleges in the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, and offers a wide array of instructional programs including general education, technical and career-vocational education, transfer education, continuing education, and basic skills instruction.

The college serves more than 15,000 students per year to include approximately 4,224 full-time and 10,851 part-time students per semester. Chabot students struggle financially: 63% of surveyed students report household income levels of either low or low to medium, based on federal poverty rate guidelines, and over 60% of Chabot students work 20-40 hours per week.

Chabot College is part of an exceptionally multicultural region serving one of the ten most diverse counties in the United States. Our student body reflects the ethnic diversity of area residents. The student population is 13% African American, 18% Asian American, 10% Filipino, 22% Latino, 1% Middle Eastern, 1% Native American, 2% Pacific Islander, and 28% White with the remaining population either unknown or comprised of other heritage groups. Currently, Chabot serves a student body that speaks over forty different languages and is 72% non-white (Chabot College Office of Institutional Research (OIR), Fall 2003).

Low educational attainment characterizes the Chabot population. Upon entrance to college, 80 percent require remediation in basic math and 77 percent require remediation in basic English. Each semester approximately 50 percent of these students either fail or withdraw from English and mathematics basic skills courses. Chabot students are significantly under-prepared for college-level work, which limits their educational and career options. Because of the poor academic preparation of our students, Chabot has been extensively analyzing such areas as developmental studies, faculty development, and academic support services to determine ways of improving student success. My work with Reading Apprenticeship is part of this analysis to determine ways of improving student success.

What follows is a report on one part of my RA work: classroom research conducted with a first-semester basic skills English class, English 101A (Reading, Reading, and Reasoning I) in Fall 2008.

FALL 2008: English 101A, Reading, Reasoning, and Writing I

About the Class

English 101A, like all English classes at Chabot, integrates reading and writing. The primary text I use in the class is Integrations, by William S. Robinson and Pamela Altman, which is organized around inquiry and case studies. I also include a text for the students’ independent reading. In Fall 2008, I used A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah.

The graded assignments include:

• Five three-to-five page essays, each responding to an inquiry question
• Idea and rough drafts preceding each of the five essays
• Summaries of three sections of A Long Way Gone
• A library research project related to A Long Way Gone
• An oral presentation summarizing an article found on a library database related to A Long Way Gone
• Sentence-combining exercises

In order to respond to the inquiry questions related to the cases in Integrations, the students must have read the articles making up the case studies in the text; the articles provide the “data sets” students need in order to form their responses to the inquiry. (This inquiry approach to teaching writing evolved from about twenty years of research into college composition summarized by George Hillocks in Teaching Written Composition, published in 1985.)

About the Students

Thirty-two students began the class; four students withdrew from the class early on, resulting in a class of 28 students, one student over the class size limit. All of the 28 students received course grades: 50 percent, or 14, received CR, which, while consistent with the basic skills English pass rate for the college, was not the 66 percent pass rate my students usually experience. Even so, all but four of the 28 students (86%) continued in college the following semester. Two of the four who did not continue had passed my class; two had not.

Twenty-eight students completed Student Information Sheets. Of those 28, 18 were new to college; four had been at Chabot for a year; two for two years, and four for more than two years.

None of the students had attempted English 101A previously. Two students identified themselves as having learning skills issues; both had taken at least some of our learning skills classes. Though three students had been in the U.S. for fewer than three years, only two students identified themselves as ESL students and only one had taken all of the college’s core ESL classes. Eleven students first spoke a language other than English and all eleven indicated they speak a language other than English at home, though they have been speaking English and living in the U.S. for many years. Seven of these students spoke Spanish first, two spoke Tagalog, one spoke Vietnamese and one spoke Russian.

Four of the students were enrolled only in English 101A in Fall 2008. Two were enrolled in one class in addition to English; nine were enrolled in two classes in addition to English; eleven were enrolled in three additional classes; and two were enrolled in four additional classes.

Ten of the students worked while attending school. Twenty-two indicated they had a favorite book.

My Reading Goal for the Students

One of the challenges with basic skills English students involves having them experience how one needs to read for college. All of my students answered that they could read, and in the sense that they can decode and often literally understand text, they were correct. Students have great difficulty applying (analyzing, synthesizing) what they read in order develop a reasonable response to an inquiry, however. They often describe this difficulty as resulting from their inability to remember what they have read, and, in a sense, this, too may be correct. They may have difficulty remembering because they do not recognize how text is organized; do not recognize and know how to solve reading problems; are unable to determine a purpose for reading; and are still developing a sense of what discipline-specific reading looks like. My goal was to give the students access to my and their reading processes in order to enable them to apply their reading to solving the problems posed by the inquiry questions they were working with.

My RA Research Question

How will regularly and intentionally involving students in metacognitive routines affect their participation in class, their perception of themselves as readers/learners, and their ability and willingness to question in deeper, more interesting ways?

Data Sources Collected

Student Information Sheets, Personal Reading Histories, 4 CERAs, 3 TttT (attached to CERAs); Evidence/Interpretation T-Chart; 4 TttT with partners’ rough drafts of essays; Reading Survey; students’ use of the reading in their essay; student retention and pass rates; various Classroom Assessments related to the memoir assignment, including: Finishing and expanding upon a sentence starter, “Reading the memoir is like…”; a current article summary + connection to memoir; golden lines and relation to possible themes. Because of the amount of data collected, I followed four students: Jonathon, Laurie, Nathan, and Denis, selected because they all received credit and enrolled in my second-semester class, enabling me to do follow-up observations. The data I’ll be analyzing closely includes: the CERAs, TttT, the classroom assessment, the summary of an article related to the memoir, and the reading survey.

Talking to the Text

I introduced TttT immediately in the term, modeling it with the course syllabus, and then having the students complete TttT with the syllabus. Students then pair-shared their TttT with a partner, and then the whole class discussed the syllabus. I followed a similar routine with each TttT activity through about midterm. At midterm, I modeled less and occasionally asked the students to TttT when they were reading at home. Students always shared with a partner and then with the whole class.

I may have made a mistake with my modeling TttT. I started always with the assignment, and recommended students pay particular attention to the information needed to develop a response to the inquiry question. This focus may explain why the TttT I collected so often included summaries of the content. Also, students didn’t note difficult passages, even when TttT with difficult text. One student, in particular, noted in his CERA that he was able to get the information he needed to write the assignment from the class discussion.

Jonathon

Jonathon, a filmmaking and music composition major with plans to transfer, enrolled in my English 101A class during his third semester at Chabot. He appears to be in his early twenties. Mine was the first English class he had taken at Chabot, and in addition to English this semester, he was taking sociology. He was not working at the time he was enrolled in my English 101A class.

Jonathon indicated he was not the best reader. He noted he gets bored when he reads, though he had a favorite book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, which he described as a “crazy fun entertaining story that actually interests me, not to mention it’s one of the only books I’ve actually read all the way through.” He also noted that he regularly read magazines, including Mad, Maxim, CQ, and Entertainment. Jonathon identified himself as working with our Disabled Students Resource Center on his reading: He put our outside reading text, A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, in Kurzwile to make it an audio-book so he could stay focused and more interested by listening to the book.

I asked all students to describe a time they had learned something well. Jonathon described how he learned to play drums while living in the Dominican Republic. He was taught by professional drum players and learned by jamming with them, adding tongue-in-cheek that the Caribbean rum helped the learning process.

Jonathon interested me because, while he acknowledged problems with his reading, he was a confident student, one who expected to pass the class because he felt his writing was strong. He also was willing to question/challenge me, making me explain why I was introducing various RA strategies in the class.

CERA # 1: Luis Cardenas’s Career Possibilities

I had the students turn in their TttT for the third case study of the semester, a case about Luis Cárdenas, a recent college graduate trying to decide on two job options. The students also turned in the CERA.

Jonathon’s TttT and summary indicated he was noticing his reading and perhaps focusing on the text. His TttT notes were often questions. For example, next to “Luis Cardenas lives in the largest city in the state, where he was born and had deep family roots,” Jonathon wrote, “What city/state?” and “How old is he?” This was the third case we had read, so I was expecting Jonathon to ask questions related to the writing assignment The names of the city and state would not be relevant to the inquiry. On second thought, however, I realized Jonathon, as a reader, wanted to know these details.

Despite TttT notes that didn’t appear to me to be helpful to summarizing the case, Jonathon’s CERA summary was accurate, if broad. He wrote, “Luis has two choices as to where he works. He can work for a big shot business or be an elementary school teacher.” He indicated that TttT was unnatural and he needed to get accustomed to doing it. In response to the question about the kinds of things happening in his mind as he read the text, Jonathon wrote only that he was talking to the text. What helped him understand the reading was reading slowly, underlining important details, and reading it twice. He found the reading “not too hard” and felt he understood it “pretty well, probably better than the last two stories.” (Students often refer to all genres in my English classes as “stories,” perhaps because stories are involved in all the texts we read. Also, we hear about “news stories.” I try to remind the students of more specific names, such a “article,” or “case study,” or “memoir,” but I need to have them identify features of each type of “story” if I believe it’s helpful for them to make the distinction.)

The essay Jonathon wrote, in which he needed to determine which of the two positions would be best for Luis Cardenas and why, was well developed: he received 75 percent (CR) of the total points possible. Jonathon had indeed attended to the important details in the case study. His final essay included more summary than analysis, but it indicated he was on the right track for achieving the goals of this reading, reasoning, and writing class.

CERA #2: Lavonne Williams’ Working Future

Jonathon did not do the second CERA.

CERA #3 and Related Activities

The third CERA focused on the memoir, A Long Way Gone. Prior to the CERA, the students had responded to a classroom assessment: Please finish this sentence and then expand on your thought in a paragraph: Reading A Long Way Gone is like….” Students also found “golden lines,” which they read aloud and which formed the basis for class discussion. Finally, the students found a current event article related to the memoir and then summarized the article and noted the connection to Beah’s book.

Jonathon did not develop a metaphor for the sentence starter, instead indicating that he found A Long Way Gone interesting, adding, “I don’t read often unless I have to and this book has been a really good story. When I read I take into account all the important and major details and write them down for when the time comes to write my summary.” He adequately summarized a current event article about a child soldier in Sierra Leone whose experiences were similar to Beah’s.

Jonathon’s CERA included the reading on pages 88-91 of the text. (Since the students were reading the book independently, I asked them to continue reading from wherever they were in the book for their CERA.) He noted that he understood the pages he read “quite well” and that the reading was “not too hard”; however, his brief summary was lacking in detail: “Beah tells about the mood and atmosphere that he and his group feel after having buried one of their friends who had suddenly turned ill and died.”

In this CERA, unlike in the earlier one on the case study, Jonathon identified a process for reading: he visualized. He indicated no difficulty when reading this text, but based on his summary, I suspect that Jonathon is remembering a highly emotional moment in the text and not seeing how this moment relates to a bigger picture. I believe Jonathon is noticing his reading but has not yet gotten to the level of focusing on his reading. He seems, however, to be building a reader identity and he notices the memoir lends itself to visualization.

CERA #4: Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe

The final TttT I collected from the students was of a difficult text, an opinion written by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. After they talked to the text, the students discussed the text and their notes with a partner. Then each group came back to share with the whole class (think/pair/share). Students then worked on Evidence/Interpretation charts that they shared with one or two classmates. The purpose of the Evidence/Interpretation chart was to provide support for a class discussion.

Jonathon’s TttT had progressed from the beginning of the semester. He asked such questions as “a location? An organization?” next to the phrase, “…fundamental limitations imposed by the establishment clause.” He also guessed at meanings of phrases, restated points in his own words, and wrote exclamation points indicating strong agreement.

The Evidence/Interpretation chart I collected from Jonathon and his partner didn’t really provide much beyond a summary of the final point of the majority opinion. That the chart didn’t work is my fault—I hadn’t introduced it earlier in the semester and the students had not practiced using it. Since none of the students came up with a helpful E/I chart, I won’t address the E/I charts further in this report. I clearly hadn’t provided the scaffolding the students needed.

In the essay Jonathon wrote in response to this case, he was able to summarize the justices’ opinions adequately, which, given the difficulty of the reading, pleased me. He also was able to support a conclusion about the validity of the majority opinion. He earned a CR on the essay.

End of the Semester Reading Survey

In his reading survey responses at the end of the semester, Jonathon wrote that he would describe himself as a reader now the same as he had described himself at the beginning of the semester. He still doesn’t enjoy reading and doesn’t read unless he has to. However, he also noted that he has now read two books in their entirety and that he noticed himself getting drawn into Beah’s story and finding the reading becoming easier. When reading the case studies, especially the final, most difficult text, Jonathon said that in order to understand the reading he read it multiple times and he rewrote the Supreme Court opinion in his own words and kept notes. He rated himself as a “usually ok” reader of academic texts, which was the middle ranking. He also noted in his CERA responses about how hard the reading was. Though he did not indicate he reads anymore outside of school reading, he did not check reading as a school task that is difficult for him, as he did at the beginning of the semester.