A Peek into our Short Text Unit

We are currently in the middle of our Short Text unit in reading workshop and Literary Essay unit in writing workshop.  These two units are integrated and students are learning how to read texts closely to lift the level of their interpretation, deepen their comprehension, and strengthen their conversation and writing about reading skills.  Students are learning how to leave tracks of thinking on short texts, write patches of thinking by stretching out their interpretation with thinking stems, and write literary essays about a claim they have for a short text.  Stay tuned for a post about our literary essays tomorrow! 

Before beginning each unit, I always have a conversation with students about the unit's purpose and how it is going to go for us as readers and writers.  Below is the chart we created during our first mini-lesson for the short text unit when we discussed its purpose.  Prior to the conversation, I wrote the questions on the chart and left room for student's comments and thinking.  This chart was completely co-created with students as you will notice their first names beside their contribution.  Also notice the important statement at the bottom of the chart - "You will still read your chapter books! :)" It is so important to continue to have students read their chapter books independently no matter which unit we are teaching in reading workshop.   Students need to continue to strengthen their stamina, ability to hold onto their thinking through a longer book, have choice, and transfer the skills we are learning into their independent reading of chapter books.  

Below are two of our charts that were created to keep track of our teaching points for each mini-lesson.  We create teaching point charts for each unit to keep track of all of our teaching points so we can refer to them during mini-lessons to build onto our learning and students can use them as resources while working independently.  New teaching points are added to our chart at the beginning of each mini-lesson.  These charts are great visuals for the students to see all the skills and strategies we have learned and are practicing as readers and writers. 

         

Below are two charts that were created during mini-lessons on how events impact characters and teach them lessons and how to identify the theme in texts by thinking of the whole text.  These charts were created with the students as you will notice their names beside their contributions during the lesson.  For the chart to the left on impact and lessons, I gave each short text club a choice of which text they wanted to use for this important work and gave them two post-its (one medium and one large).  I gave them about 5 minutes to work as a group to identify and agree on an important event that impacted the main character and write down how it impacted the characters and taught them an important life lesson.  Once the groups were done, they added their post-its to our chart in their sections depending on which text they chose.

One professional book that I reference in this unit is Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. To read my post about Notice and Note, click here.   If you haven't read this book, definitely add it to your stack to read soon! In this book, they share six important "signposts" that are significant moments in texts where readers should pause to read more closely and think deeply about.  Kylene and Robert have specific names for each signpost and give a description of these significant places in texts.  Rather than give students the names of the signposts, I wrote the descriptors on large post-its and placed them on a chart at the beginning of the lesson.  I asked students to read the descriptions, think about them and how they may be connected, and share what they noticed with their partner.  After talking with their partners, they realized all of the moments can be connected to one another and shared how one can lead to another.  Then I modeled identifying these moments in our first chapter book read aloud, Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick.  Students then tried this work out with their partner by identifying the six moments in our other chapter book read alouds and were excited to find out that all of the books had these 6 moments!  To end the lesson, students created names for each of the six places and I wrote the name on a separate post-it near the description. By having the students create their own names for these signposts, students internalized them and began using them right away because they felt a sense of ownership in developing these important places to pause in texts to think, jot, and talk! 

Enjoy the weekend! 

Strategies for Argument Based Read Aloud from Mary Ehrenworth

Last week, I had the privilege of going to a full day workshop at TCRWP to hear Kylene Beers speak about close reading and rigor! Stay tuned to hear about that this week.  Prior to Kylene Beers speaking, Mary Ehrenworth shared strategies for argument based read alouds in the classroom.  In our district, we are currently in our Short Text/Literary Essay unit and our next unit is Nonfiction Research/Research Based Argument Essay so I was excited to hear what her focus was for her time with us.  

Below are some of my notes and take-aways about argument based read alouds in the classroom.   

Purpose of Argument Based Read Alouds: 

• Increase the intensity and engagement of partner talk 
• Increase skills of using text evidence
• Hone into skills for evidence based arguments 

During an argument based read aloud, you are reading aloud the text like you normally would without the students having the text in front of them and having the students stop and jot/turn and talk about the text.  However, in this type of read aloud, you have rounds of conversation that focus on a particular type of skill.  For example the focus for the rounds of conversation may focus on character attributes, theme, or author's craft.  Also, the partnership has decided who will be partner 1 and who will be partner 2 because each partner will have a specific focus during each round and will need to collect evidence to support their claim for their argument.  Prior to reading aloud, you will need to plan to figure out which parts of the text to stop at and what the focus will be for each partner.  You also will need to tell the students what their focus is so they can take notes on text evidence that supports their position.  When it is their turn to share their position with their partner, they will state their claim first and then their collected evidence along with their evaluation of the evidence.  For example, they should rank their evidence from most important to least important or vice versa, use quotes from the text instead of only plot, and use thinking stems to evaluate the evidence.  

Mary Ehrenworth had us try this out as partners as she read aloud Stray by Cynthia Rylant from Every Living Thing.  It was so powerful and beneficial to try this out as the students to see what their role is like in this type of read aloud and to get a clear visual of how this will look in our classroom with students.  She had us decide who was going to be partner A and partner B and told us that Partner A will work to prove that the main character is weak and partner B will try to prove she is strong.  As she read aloud the beginning of the story, we each took notes to support our position about the type of person the character is in the story.  She paused and gave us a minute to rehearse our claim and evidence in our minds before sharing with partner.  Then she had partner A share first and then had partner B share.  Mary said that instead of just allowing students time to rehearse their argument in their mind before the conversation, partner A can find a partner A to compare evidence and rehearse as well a partner B finding a partner B to do this work.   

We continued this work through a 2nd round that had a thematic focus. Partner A had to collect evidence for how the family struggles with communication and partner B focused on how poverty is an issue for the family.  We went through the same process of collecting evidence while she read aloud and then had our conversations with partner to support our claims.  The 3rd round focused on author's craft and partner A collected evidence to support how weather is used in important ways and partner B focused on how the author uses the dog as a symbol in the story.  

I am excited to try this out with my 5th graders this week and am already planning other stories to use besides Stray by Cynthia Rylant.  This is a strategy we can use in our classrooms with any type of fiction or nonfiction text as long as we plan where to stop and what the positions will be for each partner.  This is an engaging way to have students practice conversation skills, collect important and relevant text evidence, and strengthen their argument skills.  It also teaches students about perspective and how we can read the same text, but see characters, objects, themes, etc. in more than one way.  

If you try this out in your classroom or have already done this with your students, please share! :)

Close Reading and Removing Layers of Snow

If you live anywhere near CT, you spent last weekend (and this week) digging out from the blizzard like I did. As I walked out to my parking lot last Sunday and saw my car completely buried in the snow, I immediately felt overwhelmed and did not even know where or how to begin digging it out.  After someone created a path to my car for me, using a snow blower,  I felt like the task was more manageable and that I actually would be able to get my car out.  With a shovel in my hands and the help from a neighbor, we were able to remove enough snow for me to drive my car out of my igloo parking space.  Then the removal of snow began - layer by layer.  As we removed each layer of snow, using shovels and brushes, my car became more visible and I felt both a sense of relief and accomplishment.  In the end, I achieved my goal and gained new learning from the experience and the process.

My Honda Accord buried under the snow

During this snow removal process, I was reminded of the skills and strategies readers use when they read closely and interpret texts.  Just as I felt overwhelmed at the onset of seeing my car, readers sometimes feel overwhelmed when they get ready to read a complex text.  Just like I had the support from a neighbor who created the path for me, it is important for us to model and explicitly teach close reading strategies to students so they have the support they need to apply them independently.    Readers will need different levels of support, just like I needed additional support by my neighbor.  He helped coach me through the process and helped me as much as I needed at the time.  This is similar to the coaching work we do during conferences and small group instruction.  It is also similar to how reading partnerships support one another during reading workshop.

Removing the snow layer by layer, reminds me of how we teach students to pull back the layers of the text and dig deeper each time they reread to lift the level of their interpretation.  I have used the analogy of peeling an onion in my classroom and how you peel the layers of the text to reveal the deeper meaning just like the onion is revealed after peeling back the layers of skin.  Now I have the analogy of removing the layers of snow off my car to help students visualize the work readers do when reading closely.  When reading closely, readers develop new and revised thinking that they did not have after their initial reading of the text.  They also see the text through a different lens and may have different emotions and/or point of view of the text. When I first saw my snow situation, I felt overwhelmed, frustrated, and defeated.  When my car was snow free after getting help from my neighbor, I felt successful, relieved, and grateful.   Taking the layers of snow off my car was no easy feat, but I had the tools and support I needed to be successful.  We need to make sure we are equipping our students with the tools and support they need to feel and be successful.

Close Reading and Literary Essay Unit

Currently, we are in our Close Reading unit in reading workshop and Literary Essay unit in writing workshop.  The two units are integrated and students are writing about the texts they are reading closely. This is one of my favorite units because it teaches students strategies for close reading which deepen their comprehension, lift the level of their interpretation of texts, and strengthen their conversations and writing about reading.  Each time we begin a new unit, we always discuss its purpose and how it is going to help us as readers and/or writers.  Below is a chart we created during our first mini-lesson when discussing the purpose of the unit.   

For each unit, we also keep track of all of our teaching points for each mini-lesson so we can continue to refer to them, use the chart as a resource during independent reading/writing, and build upon our learning.  It is a great visual for students to see all the skills and strategies they have learned and are practicing as readers and writers.  Below is our first chart we have created with our teaching points - we are on our 2nd chart now of teaching points.  

As students are reading short texts closely, they have been leaving tracks of thinking in the margins and writing patches of thinking in their writer's notebooks. These tracks and patches focus on interpreting the text by analyzing the author's message, symbolism, important lines, character change, theme, theories, and so on.  A few students created this visual below for their classmates to use as a resource as they are working independently to remind them of the different ways they can interpret the text and lift the level of their thinking.  

I always love having students share and display their work so they can learn from one another.  Below are two bulletin boards our class created to showcase our patches of thinking for the short texts we have read aloud and discussed in class as well as their independent short texts they have read during independent reading.  

At the beginning of this week, students read through their patches of thinking and chose a short text to write a literary essay for that would extend their thinking and interpretation of the text.  I wrote my own literary essays to use as models during mini-lessons and mentors throughout the writing process.  We also have been writing a class literary essay together, which has been the basis of our demonstration and active engagement in our mini-lessons.  Students have been busy at work drafting their first literary essay using Google Drive (click here to read about how we are using Google Drive) and are just finishing them  - stay tuned to hear more about our literary essays this weekend! :)

It's Monday! What are You Reading? Professional Books

Thank you Jen and Kellee for hosting this weekly!  To see what others are reading and recommending, or to participate, be sure to check out their blog Teach Mentor Texts :)

I loved reading Common Core English Language Arts in a PLC at Work Grades 3-5 by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey and I highly recommend it! It is a fairly easy read and provides you with a deeper understanding of the CCSS in English language arts as well as practical ways to discuss and process the standards with your colleagues during PLC.  The text is structured in a reader-friendly format and each chapter hones in on a specific strand addressed in the CCSS.  I also loved the guiding questions  embedded throughout the text, that we can ask ourselves during PLC's, as we roll up our sleeves and deepen our understanding of the standards.  

Over the weekend, I also read Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst.  This week, we are starting our Short Text and Literary Essay unit in reading and writing workshop so was excited to see this newly published text on close reading that was just published this month.  Throughout the text, Kylene Beers and Robert Probst share six "signposts" they model and teach students to help them deepen their understanding and thinking while closely reading texts.  The six signposts are significant moments in the text that cause the reader to pause, notice, and reflect on thinking.  

The six signposts in the text are: 

• Contrast and Contradictions - places where the character acts "out of character" or in a way we don't expect them to act.  
• Aha moments - places where the character has a realization 
• Tough Questions - places where the character asks tough questions about themselves/situation
• Words of the Wiser - places where the character receives advice and/or words of wisdom 
• Again and Again - places where something is repeated, whether it is an object, word, phrase
• Memory Moment - places where the character has a flashback and remembers something or a time

Kylene Beers and Robert Probst share that the six signposts and anchor questions in the text can be reworded by the teacher and/or class.  In the text, they share sample lessons and strategies to teach students to help them internalize these signposts and strengthen their comprehension and close reading skills.  According to Beers and Probst, the more students noticed these signposts, the more they were using the comprehension skills: visualizing, predicting, summarizing, questioning, inferring, and making connections (p.69).  

During our upcoming unit on close reading, I am going to introduce, model, and teach these signposts but will most likely tweak the wording a little to make it our own in our classroom.  

Happy Reading! :)

Adventures in Graphica by Terry Thompson

I have always had some graphic novels in my classroom for students, but I wasn't a big graphic novel reader myself.  Yes, I read some books from the Big Nate and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, but never dipped into reading others until this year.  After joining Twitter this year and hearing so many great reviews about Babymouse, Squish, Lunch Lady and many others, I decided it was time to try out reading more graphic novels and I am so happy I did!  As I wrote in other posts, I love the Lunch Lady series by Jarrett Krosoczka and can't wait for the next book to come out in the series.  Now I know how the kids feel when they get hooked on a graphic novel series.

This summer, I did some damage on Amazon and at my local bookstores buying more graphic novels to add to my classroom library.  By reading more graphic novels this summer, I became more aware of how difficult it may be for some kids to navigate through this form of text and also how engaging it can be for reluctant readers.  I heard about Adventures in Graphica: Using Comics and Graphic Novels to Teach Comprehension, 2-6  by Terry Thompson years ago, but kept putting it off in my TBR stack because maybe I wasn't ready to fully embrace graphic novels in my teaching since I wasn't familiar with as many as I am now.  After reading many graphic novels this summer, I immediately bought Adventures in Graphica and absolutely loved it!  I have been reading, rereading, and marking up the text this week with excitement to use the strategies and lessons Terry Thompson shares.

In this professional book, Terry Thompson shares and explains ways to integrate graphic novels into our mini-lessons, small groups, and read aloud instruction.  He shows us how important it is to teach students about the layout and organization of graphic novels, just like we teach students about text features and structures in nonfiction reading.  I love his idea of having students engage in an inquiry lesson to explore graphic novels in small groups and chart what they notice about organization, conventions, and so on.

There is one chapter dedicated to comprehension skills and how we can use graphic novels in our instruction to help teach summarizing, visualizing, inferring, monitoring, and synthesizing.  This was one of my many favorite chapters.  It is full of lessons and examples to help us shore up students thinking and strengthen comprehension.  Another favorite chapter focuses on visualization and inferring.  This chapter gives examples of how we can engage students during read aloud by sketching their own panels at the end of chapters to create a visual read aloud timeline in the classroom.  This promotes the importance of visualization while also teaching how to summarize, determine importance, and synthesize the text as you read.

I could go on and on sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that Terry Thompson explains in his book, but instead I'm going to highly recommend that you purchase, borrow, or take it off your shelf to read and enjoy.  I have a new outlook now on sharing graphic novels with my students and using them in my reading instruction. I also encourage you to build up your graphic novel section of your classroom library if you already don't have a good selection available to your students.   Thank you Terry Thompson for writing this amazing book about using graphic novels in the classroom! :)

Happy Reading! :)

Some Skills We Should Teach Readers

On Saturday, Mel and I drove to New York to attend the Teachers’ College Reading and Writing Project Saturday Reunion. I had never been so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Mel had been working on me for weeks to go and I agreed since it was actually a relatively light weekend for my family’s activities. (We are mercifully between sports and theater  productions at the moment!)  Together, we went over the workshop offerings; we split up so that we could get more information and share it so we had to agree on the overabundance of workshops that interested us.

Janet Steinberg, a literacy coach in the Bronx before joining the TCRWP as a staff developer, presented The Integration of RTI, Reading Workshop and the Common Core. I have four pages of notes from this 45-minute session and I won’t try to include them all in this post. Instead, I am reflecting on the six things that she talked about that we need to teach our students as readers.

1. Predictions

It’s amazing to me how complicated making a prediction is for students but at the core of a prediction is an inference. If a student is thinking ahead about what could happen, then s/he is thinking about more than what is explicitly in the text. The students who struggle with reading (and these are the ones I focus on since I am the Special Education teacher in the classroom) struggle to make meaningful predictions. For some of them, decoding requires so much energy that thinking beyond syllables is a Herculean task; read alouds are critical for these students so they develop thinking skills and understand that we can learn and think about books well beyond the words on the page.

     2.  Listening

I love this skill! I loved how Janet talked about recognizing the different sounds of fiction and non-fiction. However, I also love teaching listening to students throughout the day in all subjects. I write Language Arts IEPs that include developing skills in reading and writing. As I reflect on this second skill, I wonder about developing goals and objectives that hone students’ abilities to listen.  So much of my learning comes from the conversations and integration of other people’s words


3.    Engagement

Janet wondered out loud how many of our students really read during reading workshop. I’m in the regular education classroom every day for reading workshop and the students who love to read and are good at it spend their time reading. Our reading engagement inventories (see Mel Swider’s post yesterday about Jennifer Serravallo's workshop) provide meaningful data that our struggling readers are not as engaged. They are talking, jotting notes, choosing a new book, asking questions, going to the bathroom, looking out the window, finding a comfortable place…they aren’t reading. My students need explicit instruction about how to initiate the reading process and then progress monitoring for how long they can maintain reading stamina.

4. Monitoring

This is an area I teach my students well. As soon as they are reading successfully, I teach my readers self-monitoring questions:

• Can I picture what is happening in the text?
• Do I know the names of my characters?
• Can I give a quick retell when I reach the end of a chapter?
• If there’s a cliff-hanger or turning point, can I explain it?

I teach them that if they can’t answer these questions, it’s their responsibility as readers to review the text, figure out where they began to struggle and figure out how to clarify it.

5. Building a relationship with a book.

This is another one of my favorites. Whenever I read a really good book, the rest of my life suffers. I miss the characters when I finish the book. I read The Fault in our Stars  a couple of weeks ago and I still miss Augustus and Hazel.

Janet pushed my thinking about relationships with books in that she talked about non-fiction books and the need for students to get information from books and recognize the purpose of reading.

And (drumroll…)

     6. Envisionment

We talk to our students often about visualizing, but Janet’s presentation about envisionment involved teaching students how to talk across different texts and  make connections between books for many reasons. Her point was that struggling readers are just in the moment. During reading workshop and also in conferences, we ask students to think about:

• how they can connect many different characters from different books,
• what are similar messages/lessons they can find across books and genres,
• and what some of the common issues or structures are that exist within and across genres.

As we read increasingly more non-fiction in classrooms, we will have to continue to hone this set of questions. What are some of the questions that will help students to think across informational and other forms of non-fiction texts?

So, this was about a third of a page of the four pages of notes that I took during one of the four workshops I attended on Saturday. If anyone out there is ever able to make an upcoming TC Reunion, they are highly worth the day in New York!

Using Quick Assessments to Help Form Small Groups

Years ago, I met Jennifer Serravallo through the pages of her book, Conferring With Readers which gave me new insights into conferring.  It also helped me coach other teachers on their own conferring.  I’ve attended many of Jen’s workshop sessions at Teachers College over the years on conferring and small groups so I was thrilled when I heard she was writing a new book on Teaching Reading in Small Groups.  Of course I bought it as soon as it came out last year and tagged parts with multiple post-its and notes.  This year, our school is focusing on strengthening our small group instruction across grades and subjects and are reading Teaching Reading in Small Groups as a school book club.  So when I saw that Jen Serravallo was presenting a session at the TC Saturday Reunion titled:  Using Quick Assessments to be sure our small group work in reading has traction, I added it to my list of sessions! 

In addition to her two professional books, Jen Serravallo recently published  Independent Reading Assessment which is a new assessment resource through Scholastic. 

During this session, Jen talked about the many different forms of assessments that can be more powerful and informative than formative pencil and paper tests.

Some of the assessment examples she talked about are:

·        Reading logs

·        Engagement Inventory

·        Writing about reading (post-its and readers notebooks)

·        Conversations (partners, whole class, book clubs)

·        Comprehension continuums

Importance of Reading Logs:

Both teachers and students need to ask questions about the logs and notice patterns so they are purposeful, inform instruction, and are reflective tools.  Some possible questions and noticings are:

·    What is it about this series or author that you like so much?

·    Hmmm…I’m noticing that you are reading more when you are home than in school. Why do you think this is?

Engagement Inventory:

Jen developed this idea when she realized one day that her students were quiet during reading workshop, but doing everything they could to avoid reading.  She created an engagement inventory to document her observations of what kids were doing in 10 minute increments.  The engagement inventory is a class list document with 10 minute increments across the top and an abbreviation note-taking key on the bottom.  For example:

·   a check mark = engaged

·   W = looking out window

·   T = looking at teacher

·   NB = writing in notebook or on post-its

I began using this inventory in my classroom when I read about it in her book, Teaching Reading in Small Groups and it is very informative! Once you notice and make note of the avoidance behaviors, you can create and pull small groups to teach them strategies that can help strengthen their stamina and engagement as readers. 

Having Students Create Portfolio Pages of Post-its from Read Aloud:

One of Jen’s ideas is to have students create a portfolio page of post-its for each marking period to show their individual comprehension continuum and growth in specific comprehension skills.  Three times a year (beginning, middle, end of year), give students four specific prompts to jot down their thinking while you are reading aloud.  They jot down their thinking on individual post-its that you will collect at the end of the read aloud. 

Some comprehension skills that you can assess through the prompts are:

·    Visualization (Imagine what the character’s home is like and describe it OR Describe this scene using all of your senses)

·    Developing theories about characters (Describe what kind of person _____is OR What’s an idea you are having about _____)

·    Determining Themes/Lessons (Even though we aren’t at the end of the story, jot down what you are thinking so far about the theme/lesson/author’s message that you are learning)

·    Making Connections (What does this story remind you of?)

·    Questioning (What are you wondering right now?)

·    Predictions (Based on what you know about the character so far, what do you think s/he will do next or how will they react?)

·    Synthesis (Now that we finished the story, what are you left thinking about the characters? OR How has_____changed from the beginning to the end of this book? )

·    Empathy (Put yourself in the characters shoes and explain how s/he is feeling right now)

·    Interpretation (Why do you think the character acted or reacted in this way? What’s motivating or causing their behavior/actions? OR What is the story really about? )

After you collect all the students’ post-its, you can sort them into three piles for each skill based on their level (low, medium, high level of understanding of the skill).  So if you ask four prompts, you will have three piles of post-its for each of those prompts.  Once you have your sorted piles, you can begin to form small groups based on the similar needs you notice for each skill.  My next couple of posts will talk more about small groups and what to do next with these piles so stay tuned! J

When you are finished sorting and forming the small groups, you can give the post-its back to the students so they can tape the four post-its onto a sheet of paper with the title of the book, date, and each post-it labeled with the skill (i.e. prediction, question, theory, etc.).  These papers go into their reading portfolios and by the end of the year, you will have three examples to help see the students’ growth in comprehension skills. 

Happy Reading! :)