Thinking Foundation - Research - Case Studies - Mt. Airy

Literacy in a New Language
My Thinking Maps have power. I have all these ideas and nowhere to put them. Thinking Maps let me get them out!
(first-grade student, Mt. Airy School)

The outcomes described above have been attained because of ongoing professional development commitment within the unit of change that makes a difference for individual students over time: the whole school. The whole faculty of the Mt. Airy school were and still are committed to ongoing training. Teachers left the initial training in Thinking Maps with the goal of explicitly training their students to use these tools independently, in cooperative groups, and for the whole class, thus supporting them in internalizing the tools for direct transfer to content learning and process outcomes. The central outcome of the initial training and ongoing follow-up design is represented not only in the high-quality first-grade classroom conversation at Mt. Airy School, but in the quantitative results on the school's state assessments. Following the first year's implementation of Thinking Maps, writing scores realized a 15% increase on the state-mandated assessment, the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program. Later, Mt. Airy Elementary rose from being a school in the middle of testing to becoming the highest performing school of the 21 elementary schools in Carroll County.

In addition, the No Child Left Behind legislation requires that each state test content knowledge and how well students perform. Maryland meets this requirement by using the new 2003 Maryland School Assessments. The cornerstone for Maryland's accountability system is the measure of Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). Again this year, Mt. Airy Elementary is the highest performing school in the county. Mt. Airy's scores are higher than the Maryland state average and higher than the county average, remarkably achieving AYP in all eight subgroups, including special education. The results across our student population show that literacy and cognitive development work together as teachers help students cross the road to reading comprehension with Thinking Maps as a new language for literacy.

To move beyond the inadequacies of past research and practice and to shift literacy to a new form requires a shift in tools and a mind shift by leaders. Literacy alone is not power in the age of information and technology, multicultural and multilingual communication, and global economies (see Chapter 14, The Singapore Experience). A new critical Literacy is required, based on research showing that phonemic awareness and metacognitive strategies must develop together with vocabulary development and comprehension strategies across first and second languages. Many students, and unfortunately most at-risk students, are given an overwhelming, repetitious panoply of strategies that merely heighten their awareness of words without deepening their comprehension abilities. From our experiences and results, we have found, however, that students are not left behind on the road to reading comprehension when given tools for actively reflecting on how they are thinking and the patterns emerging from text.




		Research - Case Studies Mt. Airy Elementary School: Case Study Mt. Airy, Maryland Literacy in a New Language My Thinking Maps have power. I have all these ideas and nowhere to put them. Thinking Maps let me get them out! (first-grade student, Mt. Airy School) The outcomes described above have been attained because of ongoing professional development commitment within the unit of change that makes a difference for individual students over time: the whole school. The whole faculty of the Mt. Airy school were and still are committed to ongoing training. Teachers left the initial training in Thinking Maps with the goal of explicitly training their students to use these tools independently, in cooperative groups, and for the whole class, thus supporting them in internalizing the tools for direct transfer to content learning and process outcomes. The central outcome of the initial training and ongoing follow-up design is represented not only in the high-quality first-grade classroom conversation at Mt. Airy School, but in the quantitative results on the school's state assessments. Following the first year's implementation of Thinking Maps, writing scores realized a 15% increase on the state-mandated assessment, the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program. Later, Mt. Airy Elementary rose from being a school in the middle of testing to becoming the highest performing school of the 21 elementary schools in Carroll County. In addition, the No Child Left Behind legislation requires that each state test content knowledge and how well students perform. Maryland meets this requirement by using the new 2003 Maryland School Assessments. The cornerstone for Maryland's accountability system is the measure of Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). Again this year, Mt. Airy Elementary is the highest performing school in the county. Mt. Airy's scores are higher than the Maryland state average and higher than the county average, remarkably achieving AYP in all eight subgroups, including special education. The results across our student population show that literacy and cognitive development work together as teachers help students cross the road to reading comprehension with Thinking Maps as a new language for literacy. To move beyond the inadequacies of past research and practice and to shift literacy to a new form requires a shift in tools and a mind shift by leaders. Literacy alone is not power in the age of information and technology, multicultural and multilingual communication, and global economies (see Chapter 14, The Singapore Experience). A new critical Literacy is required, based on research showing that phonemic awareness and metacognitive strategies must develop together with vocabulary development and comprehension strategies across first and second languages. Many students, and unfortunately most at-risk students, are given an overwhelming, repetitious panoply of strategies that merely heighten their awareness of words without deepening their comprehension abilities. From our experiences and results, we have found, however, that students are not left behind on the road to reading comprehension when given tools for actively reflecting on how they are thinking and the patterns emerging from text.