Edwards, Patricia A.

Hopkins, Laura J.

White, Kristen L.

Wright, Tanya S.

English

Scholarworks@GVSU

Michigan Reading Journal Volume 48 Issue 1 Article 5 2016 What's Hot and What's Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the State Laura J. Hopkins Kristen L. White Tanya S. Wright Patricia A. Edwards Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mrj Recommended Citation Hopkins, Laura J.; White, Kristen L.; Wright, Tanya S.; and Edwards, Patricia A. (2016) "What's Hot and What's Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the State," Michigan Reading Journal: Vol. 48 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mrj/vol48/iss1/5 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Reading Journal by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gvsu.edu. Michigan Reading Journal8East Lansing•The Michigan Reading Journal serves more than 2,000 classroom teachers, literacy specialists, educational leaders, teacher educators, and uni-versity faculty both within and outside of the state of Michigan. For the past year, as a new editorial team, we have intentionally published practi-tioner-focused articles, selecting topics we felt were both timely and relevant to Michigan teachers. To better serve our enthusiastic and growing reader-ship on a range of diverse topics related to liter-acy, we developed and administered a What’s Hot survey. More specifically, we aimed to understand our readers and their interests in order to tailor the journal to our audience.Who Responded?In January 2015, the Michigan Reading Association sent the What’s Hot survey via email to our reader-ship. The survey asked readers to rate a number of literacy topics based on their perceptions of how hot the topics are or should be in the state of Michigan. We received 149 complete responses from various regions of the state. The majority of respondents were classroom teachers. We also heard from literacy coaches, administrators, intervention teachers, teacher educators, and authors. In this article, we What’s Hot and What’s Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the Stateby Laura J. Hopkins,Kristen L. White,Tanya S. Wright,and Patricia A. Edwardswill discuss our survey results, highlighting the top responses each of the four areas the survey covered. Next we discuss what’s hot and what’s not hot in literacy in Michigan according to you, our readers.What Did We Learn?What’s Hot in Literacy in Michigan?Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS) was the hottest topic and was rated as hot by 92% of respondents. Interestingly, eight of the remaining top ten hot topics are related to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). For example, close or deep reading, which ranked as the second hottest topic and was rated as hot by 81% of the respondents, and college and career readi-ness, which came in third at 70%, are both related to the CCSS. Table 1 provides a complete listing of the top ten hot topics in literacy in Michigan, broken down by the percentage of responders who selected this topic. The only topic among the top ten that is not directly related to the CCSS is RTI/differentiated instruction. However, the multiple tiers of differentiated instruction that comprise RTI/MTSS are necessary to help all children meet the CCSS.2015, Vol. 48, No. 1 9Laura J. Hopkins, Kristen L. White, Tanya S. Wright, Patricia A. EdwardsWhat’s Not Hot in Literacy in Michigan?The majority of respondents rated creative writing and genre knowledge and instruction as not hot. Other notable topics rated as not hot included English language learners, summer reading, teacher education, and foundational skills such as phonemic awareness/phonics, and fluency. It is interesting to note that political/policy influences was rated among the not hot topics, although policy seems to be influencing teacher perceptions of what is hot, as illustrated by the ranking of the CCSS as the hot-test topic. See Table 2 for a complete breakdown of the top ten not hot topics, including percentages.Topic % who rated this  topic as HOT1- Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts 91.85%2- High-stakes assessment 81.15%3- Close reading/deep reading 81.06%4- Informational/nonfiction texts 78.86%5- College and career readiness 70.00%6- Writing: argumentative 68.80%7- Response to Intervention (RTI)/Differentiated instruction 67.20%8- Comprehension 66.42%9- Critical Reading and writing 64.39%10- Adolescent Literacy 64.34%Table 1Topic % who rated this  topic as NOT HOT1- Writing: creative 81.30%2- Genre knowledge and instruction 80.00%3- Phonics/phonemic awareness 78.86%4- Teacher education for reading (embedded) 73.98%5- Fluency 71.43%6- Summer reading 69.05%7- Preschool literacy instruction/experiences (Pre-K) 66.95%8- Literacy coaches/reading coaches/reading specialists 66.41%9- English language learners/English as a second language 64.57%10- Political/policy influences on literacy 63.03%Table 2Michigan Reading Journal10Should Not Be HotWe have chosen to report only the topics that more than 50% of respondents said should not be hot, rather than sharing the top ten. Only two of our survey topics fit that criteria. The first was Should Be HotAmong the topics readers felt should be hot, 94% of responders selected adolescent literacy, placing it at the top of the list. Second was early intervention, selected by 93% of responding readers. Again, this trend is not surprising because it supports our previous finding that the What’s Hot survey results closely parallel recent policy efforts. In other words, it makes sense in the current educational climate that educators in Michigan are concerned with preparing students early on and up through adolescence to meet the CCSS, and ultimately the high-stakes assessments that test these standards. The top ten topics that respondents felt should be hot can be viewed in Table 3. high-stakes assessment, which 73.8% of respondents thought should not be hot, even though 81.2% said that it is currently a hot topic. The second was genre knowledge and instruction, which 57.9% of respondents thought should not be hot. What’s Hot and What’s Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the StateTopic % who rated this topic  as SHOULD BE  HOT1- Adolescent Literacy 94.44%2- Early intervention (K-3) 92.52%3- Critical Reading and writing 91.51%4- Comprehension 90.00%5- Informational/nonfiction texts 88.46%6- Motivation/engagement 84.40%7- Struggling readers (grade 4 and above) 88.39%8- Disciplinary/content area literacy 86.92%9- Close reading/deep reading 84.91%10- Writing: argumentative, and based on sources 84.76%Table 3Topic % who rated this topic as  SHOULD NOT BE  HOT1- High-stakes assessment 73.83%2- Genre knowledge and instruction 57.94%3- Political/policy influences on literacy 47.57%4- Fluency 46.73%5- Phonics/phonemic awareness 45.00%6- Writing: creative 41.90%7- STEM literacy 33.65%8- English language learners/English as a second language 30.19%9- Summer reading 28.30%10- Literacy coaches/reading coaches/reading specialists 28.18%Table 42015, Vol. 48, No. 1 11Responding to This SurveyWhat We Have Done so FarIn the first year of the journal we published several articles addressing the topics readers rated as hot and should be hot. We have published a number of articles addressing the CCSS including Building Capacity for Sustained Change: Characteristics of Common Core Implementation Models that Actually Work, by KaiLonnie Dunsmore and Catherine Nelson, and Engaging with the Common Core, by Kristyn Stierley (2014, Volume 47(1)). In the same issue Fries, Howard, and Johnson addressed the implementation of a school-wide read-ing intervention program in their article titled Implementation of a Reading Intervention Program: Internal Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis (2014, Volume 47(1)). These articles addressed some of the hottest topics from the survey, although they were published before we had received our survey results. Since receiving and reviewing survey responses, we have intentionally sought to publish articles on topics of concern to our readers. In our second issue, for example, we published Critical Issues articles on the new M-STEP assessments by Suzanne Hindman and Wendy Zdeb-Roper (2015, Volume 47(2)). Julie Johnsen highlighted strategies for working with informational text (2015, Volume 47(3)) in our third issue, and Mary Smith addressed adolescent literacy and college and career readiness. In our current issue, Kathy Highfield and Laura Pardo review two professional books related to close, critical reading and complex texts. Additionally, Nell Duke tackles project-based learning with a focus on incorporating informa-tional texts. What Can You Do? Write for MRJ!While we have received and published a plethora of articles addressing topics that readers rated as hot or should be hot, we have not yet discussed some of these topics in the pages of the journal. For example, many of the manuscripts we have received over the past year have addressed topics such as engagement, read-alouds, and writing workshop, but we have not received many submis-sions addressing the hot topics of reading compre-hension, argumentative writing, and preschool/early intervention. In response, we are specifically requesting manuscripts addressing these topics. We also note that many topics that were not rated as hot on the survey are still relevant to educators statewide, and we hope to continue receiving and publishing articles on a wide range of topics for our diverse audience. ConclusionWe are delighted at the opportunity to serve as the editorial team for the Michigan Reading Journal and to represent the journal here at Michigan State University. Furthermore, it is a privilege to communicate with all of you about the future of the journal. We do hope that you will watch your email so that you can participate in the next What’s Hot survey coming in January 2016. In the mean-time, we wish you a joyful and productive year. Please consider sharing MRJ and your enthusiasm for the journal with colleagues so that our reader-ship continues to grow! We look forward to seeing you at the annual Michigan Reading Association conference in Detroit on March 18-21, 2016.Laura J. Hopkins, Kristen L. White, Tanya S. Wright, Patricia A. EdwardsMichigan Reading Journal12

What\u27s Hot and What\u27s Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the State

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What\u27s Hot and What\u27s Not in Michigan: Improving Literacy across the State

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