The author of Igniting a Passion for Reading gave a great presentation at this year’s Michigan Reading Association Conference. In this recording you can hear him talk about why he is proud to call himself a “reading arsonist” and he shares how he takes advantage of students’ love of shopping when it comes to selecting books.
Add comment July 14th, 2010
We’ve had a bit of a baby boom here at Stenhouse.
First, it was our production manager Jay Kilburn’s daughter Annie, who gave birth to Jay’s first grandchild, Bea. Here is Bea, proudly displaying the award she won for reading the required number of books at her local library:
Then, our editorial manager Chris Downey gave birth to her first daughter, Ruby, last November. Ruby is also developing an early taste for books:
And finally, web coordinator Zsofi McMullin’s son, Sam, is enjoying a quiet evening with his daddy, binky, and a good book:
1 comment July 7th, 2010
Sarah Mulhern is a sixth-grade language arts teacher and the blogger behind The Reading Zone. In this guest blog post she talks about how she uses “Mock Newbery Awards” to get her tweens excited about reading and she explains why read-alouds are not just for younger students.
When I tell people that I read aloud to my sixth grade students daily I get some strange looks. I also get a lot of questions, mostly along the lines of, “How do you know they are even listening? Kids that age don’t care about hearing a book read out loud. They think that’s for babies!”
I usually react by biting my tongue for a moment, to ensure that I don’t lash out at the offending party. After taking a few deep breaths I calmly explain that my students may feel the same way at the beginning of the year but the evaluations they complete at the end of the year rate read-alouds as one of the top three experiences of their sixth grade year. It’s the number one way I turn my students on to reading! Inevitably, this conversation leads to how I get my students to buy into read-alouds when they are “too old” to be read to. Well, that’s simple: Mock Newbery.
I begin each school year with a Mock Newbery. I explain to my students in the first week of school that we will be reading and enjoying a variety of novels as part of our daily read aloud. I tell them that while these novels will be very different- various genres, authors, and topics- they will all have one thing in common. Each book we share as a class from September to January will be eligible for the Newbery Medal that is awarded by the American Library Association in January. Tween and teens love competition and the Mock Newbery builds community while letting students work towards a common goal- predicting Newbery Medal and Honor winners for the current year.
I spend most of the summer scouring the blogosphere for books that are receiving a lot of Newbery buzz. I look at starred reviews in School Library Journal, Kirkus, and other industry magazines. I look for books that bloggers are talking about and praising. I read these books myself and decide on the first book we will share as a class. I continue reading books through the fall, looking for the books we will share in October, November, and December. I don’t always read the same books with all four classes and will sometimes choose books based on class needs and class personalities. But no matter what, we chart the books we read on our Mock Newbery bulletin board.
Our bulletin board is a focal point in our classroom. I post the cover of each book we read together. When different classes read different books this serves as an advertisement for a variety of new books, above and beyond any book talks I do in class. Throughout the school year we refer to the books we have read together and the bulletin board serves as a visual reminder of our shared reading for my visual learners.
After winter break my classes do a brief unit on the history of the Newbery Award and the criteria for awarding the medal. After studying the criteria for a few days each student writes a short essay supporting the book they think deserves the Newbery, according to the criteria. It’s a great exercise in critical thinking and writing about reading and the students get really into it. We have heated debates about the merits of each book we read and students get very heated when supporting their personal favorite!
But the best part of our Mock Newbery read aloud time is when we sit down together in January and watch the live webcast of the awards. Last year my students were on the edge of the seats and some even jumped for joy when their favorites won the medal or an honor. But I’m fairly certain nothing will beat a class full of students turning to me after cheering for Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and exclaiming, “We knew it would be eligible! We knew it!” This was a class of once-dormant readers who were now experts on the Newbery criteria and were prepared to defend to their death that The Graveyard Book was eligible for a Newbery despite the fact that the fourth chapter was previously published as a short story.
That is the reason I share read-alouds with my tweens. That moment alone makes it worth the time and energy I spend on choosing books and sharing them with my students.
2 comments June 28th, 2010
Kathy Collins uses Reading Clubs in her classroom to allow kids to immerse themselves in topics and ideas to care about and to help them implement the reading skills and strategies they’ve learned in real-life ways. But how do you make time for Reading Clubs? In this week’s Quick Tip, Kathy shows how these flexible clubs fit into any schedule. Kathy is the author of Reading for Real: Teach Students to Read with Power, Intention, and Joy in K-3 Classrooms.
Within the large community of teachers who regularly implement reading clubs in their classrooms, I know at least a dozen different ways teachers have scheduled them throughout the year. In my own classroom, I’ve tended to spread out reading clubs across the year in the way illustrated by Figure 2.1.
Reading clubs are flexible because they can be condensed into a brief two-week cycle or stretched out into a four-week cycle. How long they last depends on a variety of factors, including the curricular unit in which we implement them and our students’ strengths, needs, and interests as readers. In my classroom, a cycle of nonfi ction reading clubs typically lasted about four weeks, which tended to be the longest cycle of any kind of reading clubs. My students always exhibited incredible energy for nonfiction reading, and there were many different ways that I could
approach nonfi ction clubs. In contrast, whenever my class engaged in author study clubs, they tended to last no longer than two weeks.
Although Figure 2.1 shows how I typically scheduled reading clubs in my classroom across the school year, I think it’s important to say that I would not hesitate to vary the kinds of clubs and the timing of them from year to year, depending on the students in my class. For example, if I had a class full of strong fi rst-grade readers who were able to read books at high levels, I might implement character reading clubs earlier in the school year, perhaps in December, because my students would be reading books with a bit more character development, presumably. I would then consider doing a series books reading club cycle in March. During these series books reading clubs, I would guide my reading club partnerships toward series books at a level that is just right for them or slightly higher, especially if I scaffold their reading by providing a book introduction (Fountas and Pinnell 1996) and an introduction to the series itself.
If I had many students who were struggling readers, I could schedule a reading club cycle called Getting Stronger as Readers in place of, or in addition to, the other reading clubs listed in the chart. During this type of reading club cycle, my students would be part of clubs designed to work on what is challenging them most as readers, such as a Reading Like a Storyteller club to work on fl uency or a Building Reading Stamina and Focus club for those students who are beginning to read longer books that tend to have more characters and multiple story lines, or a Super Word-Solvers club for those students who need more work with word-solving strategies.
It’s important to make clear that if I had many students who were struggling as readers, these reading clubs would not be their only source of support or guidance. In conjunction with the Getting Stronger as Readers clubs, I would, of course, meet with my students in guided reading groups and provide strategy lessons. I would utilize everything at my disposal, including shared reading, interactive writing, one-to-one conferences, small-group instruction, and so on, to offer them the instruction they need to grow stronger as readers.
Add comment May 4th, 2010
“Buzz About Books” is just one of the many classroom activities Steven Layne discusses in his new book, Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers. Steven says that activties like “Buzz About Books” allow the kind of free-flowing, vibrant discussion to take place that truly gets students excited about books and reading. It also helps teachers get a good picture of what their students are reading outside of the classroom.
The best decision I ever made was to stop trying to grade or assess these types of discussions with my students. As you have read in the earlier chapters, I advocate putting a lot of things in place to help match “the right reader with the right book” (Lesesne 2003). One way to all but guarantee stronger discussions about independent reading choices is by doing everything we can to get kids the right books in the first place.
I realize there can be some confusion when I begin talking about book discussions because some readers will wonder if I am talking about books used for literature circle discussions, novels selected for whole-class book study and discussion, and so on. Let me be clear. In this particular chapter, I am focusing on students’ independent reading selections; in other words, everyone in the class is quite possibly reading something different — something that has been self-selected. I might have any number of things happening in my classroom, but there has always been an expectation that, in addition to our major unit of study, kids are doing some independent reading at home (not every night necessarily) and in school (with time I provide). It’s important to me to honor the text they are reading independently, and some time scheduled for book discussions without the trappings of assessment has worked brilliantly. I decided long ago to call these book-discussion sessions “Buzz About Books.”
As with most everything discussed in this book, readers can alter my suggestions to suit a particular building, grade level, time frame, and so forth. I tend to assign students to discussion groups at the very beginning of the year, so there is some degree of incentive for kids to keep moving forward in their books. If students are in groups with their best friends, they can cover for one another more easily than will happen otherwise. Failure to be engaged in independent reading is not typical when kids are being matched with the right books; however, the reality of discussing what’s happening in your story with peers who aren’t necessarily your best friends can keep some kids motivated to move forward in their books simply because having nothing to say in their discussion group makes them uncomfortable. As the year progresses and kids get hooked by the reading bug, I often begin letting them create their own discussion groups.
When kids gather together in their groups, the meeting time is generally about fifteen minutes. Groups are sized at four, ideally; I go to five rather than three so that when there are absences the group can still have enough members to feel functional. My objective as the teacher is to join a group and remain with them for the entire discussion session — moving to a new group next time. At the beginning of the year, I often will circulate in an effort to be sure groups are getting off to a great start. Within a couple of weeks, though, I am certain to be a full-fledged participant in the process, which means I don’t simply sit in with groups and observe or listen; I participate.
The most miraculous thing I have done to make these groups functional is to supply a focus item for them to discuss when they meet. They know that they can spiral their discussion off in any direction — ask one another questions or whatever — but having a focused topic with which to open the discussion helps everyone become more active participants. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 provide a complete list of the topics I have developed for these book discussions. For younger readers, topics can be adapted as necessary from my “Buzz About Books!” discussion starters
Teachers working with older readers can select from the large number of samples I have provided (Figure 6.2) without much need for alteration and reuse many of these throughout the course of the year. Each focus topic is broad enough that it can be easily discussed, despite the fact that every student is likely reading a totally different book. When a group meets, they can move in any order. I leave all of that up to them. Each student in turn will show the group the book he or she is reading so group members can begin to become familiar with the cover. The student will then identify the title, the author, and the page number he or she is currently on and rate the book from one to five stars thus far. Once this brief information has been provided, the student will address the focus topic with regard to the book he or she is reading.
Occasionally, I will have students freewrite about a focus topic for a few minutes. I may then have them share their writing in groups orally or turn it into a carousel, with everyone’s piece moving around the groups for silent reading. At other times, I ask for volunteers to read orally for the class. I have been known to collect the writing at times and just read through everyone’s piece to see how things are coming.
Add comment April 20th, 2010
When reading nonfiction texts, many children are hindered in their understanding when they come across an unfamiliar word. To solve this problem and to equip students with the necessary strategies to decode unknown words, Tony Stead shows students how to look for clues in the text and how to use a book’s glossary for clues. In his book, Reality Checks: Teaching Reading Comprehension with Nonfiction K-5, Tony outlines many other practical approaches to help children become confident readers of nonfiction.
In Lisa’s classroom we realized that before providing demonstrations, we needed to initiate talk about what strategies the children themselves used when faced with challenging vocabulary. We achieved this by reading part of a text on whales. When we came to a challenging word, we stopped and talked about ways we could determine its meaning. The children came up with many suggestions, so we charted their responses.
Strategies to Use When You Don’t Know the Meaning of a Word
■ Look in a dictionary.
■ Ask a friend.
■ Ask the teacher.
■ Context clues
Read back.
Read forward.
Read over. Stop and think.
Look for important words around it.
■ Look in the glossary.
■ Break the word apart.
Think about the meaning of each part.
Put it back together.
■ Use the picture.It was not surprising that looking in a dictionary was their number one reply, yet the set of class dictionaries appeared to be gathering dust, indicating it had been some time since our learners had used them. It is also the number one response of most children in classrooms where I’ve worked, because they have been instructed so many times to rely on this strategy. Yet rarely do they employ it when faced with an unknown word. They find going through a dictionary laborious and tedious, and the reading becomes joyless. This is especially true when they encounter a barrage of unknown words in one piece and find themselves with the dictionary as their main source of reading rather than the selected text.
Many children haven’t even been instructed in how to properly use a dictionary and spend their time aimlessly flicking through pages, hoping the unknown word will magically appear. What is even more frustrating to learners is that if they happen to chance on the word, its meaning uses even more complex vocabulary than the word itself, leaving the children totally confused.
The children were aware of a multitude of good strategies that could assist them, but they rarely used them. Clearly they could talk the talk, but not walk the walk. We sorted the strategies into two categories: primary and secondary. For primary strategies, the reader uses methods within the body of the text to solve word meanings. Secondary strategies require the reader to go outside the body of the text, whether it be a glossary, a dictionary, or simply asking another person for assistance. We encouraged children to use primary strategies before secondary strategies. This way they were not always having to go outside the body of the text to find word meanings, which inevitably interrupts the reading and compromises comprehension. An example of the list below can be found in Appendix E.
What to Do if You Don’t Know the Meaning of a Word
Primary Strategies
■ Context clues
Read back.
Read forward.
Read over. Stop and think.
Look for important words around it.
■ Break the word apart.
Think about the meaning of each part.
Put it back together.
■ Use the picture.Secondary Strategies
■ Look in the glossary.
■ Look it up in a dictionary.
■ Ask a friend.
■ Ask the teacher.Once the lists were completed, we modeled how they could be of assistance when students were faced with unknown vocabulary. We knew explicit modeling was needed, which is often the missing link in instruction. Too often we solicit talk from the children and they give us what we want to hear, yet they have not internalized how to use the strategy independently.
We brought the children to the meeting area, and Lisa and I took turns reading Chapter 1 of a text called The Voice for the Animals by Evelyn Brooks. We made sure all the children could see the text as we read it to them. We told the children that as the text was read, they should raise their hands if they heard a word whose meaning they didn’t know.
What Are the SPCAs?
“Throughout the United States, there are many local organizations that work to save the lives of abandoned and mistreated animals. Each organization is known as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). The people who work at SPCAs rescue and care for these hurt creatures. At the SPCAs the animals are cleaned and fed. If the animals are healthy and well behaved, they are offered to people for adoption.”
When we read the word abandoned, several hands were raised, so we stopped reading and wrote the word on chart paper. We referred them to the first primary strategy—context clues—and asked whether there were any words or ideas around the word that gave them hints about its meaning. The children told us that mistreated and organizations that work to save gave them clues, so we recorded those on the chart next to the word abandoned. We asked them to discuss with the student next to them possible meanings of the word based on the key words around it and recorded their responses.
We then asked which words were most likely the true meaning. The children came up with the words hurt and left through the process of elimination. They agreed that smacked didn’t make sense because lots of people smack their dogs when they are naughty, and an organization that tried to stop this didn’t make sense. As Katie put it, “You’re not saving an animal’s life if you stop the owner from smacking it.” The words yelled at were also quickly eliminated for the same reason. This left hurt and left, which both made sense, so we then looked to other primary strategies: breaking the word apart and looking at the picture. These appeared to offer little support, so we suggested we leave our primary strategies and look to the first secondary strategy: the glossary. This was met with some resistance, as the children informed us that only words in bold such as prevention and adoption would be in the glossary. Therefore, in the children’s eyes this was a waste of time. When I showed them the glossary with the word abandoned, they were stunned. “But how can that be?” Jeremy asked. This was a good question, so we gave the children some time to think until Alex asked to look at the previous pages of the book. I showed the children the page before, which happened to be the introduction.
I had not read it to them, and there was the word abandoned in bold print. This was a valuable learning experience for our children, for they realized that you can’t assume a word won’t be in the glossary just because it isn’t highlighted on a specific page. They had also learned that when trying to locate the meaning of unknown vocabulary, you sometimes need to use more than one strategy. Harry summed it up perfectly when he said, “I feel like a detective looking for clues and some of these are hidden from me. You have to look carefully.”
Harry’s notion of being a word detective was one that appealed to the children, so we ensured that when reading texts that had complex vocabulary we always put on our detective hats and used our strategy chart to help solve the mystery. Sometimes Lisa and I would provide texts that contained vocabulary that could be solved only with the use of a dictionary. Other times we used texts with complex vocabulary that could be easily solved by simply breaking the word into parts, such as compound words. Our goal was to get our learners to start using these strategies naturally as they read independently so that their comprehension of informational texts was not lost. To achieve this goal we needed to provide ongoing demonstrations.
Add comment March 23rd, 2010
If you ever had a classroom full of teenagers groan and question the necessity of reading a great piece of literature, then Kelly Gallagher knows how you feel. ”The success of our students’ reading experience may hinge on just how effective we are in providing meaningful answers to these questions,” Kelly writes in his book Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12. In this week’s Quick Tip, Kelly shares some of the reasons he gives his students – and how to move beyond those questions and help students see what role a great book might play in their own lives.
In my earlier book, Reading Reasons: Motivational Mini-Lessons for Middle and High School, I outline a number of answers to the question “Why should I read?” I focus on reasons that demonstrate the benefits students get from reading. Students should read because:
• Reading is rewarding.
• Reading builds a mature vocabulary.
• Reading makes you a better writer.
• Reading is hard, and “hard” is necessary.
• Reading prepares you for the world of work.
• Reading well is financially rewarding.
• Reading opens the door to college and beyond.
• Reading arms you against oppression.
• Reading makes you smarter.
• Reading develops a moral compass.
Once a week I give my students a mini-lesson that delves into one of these ten reading reasons. I have found these mini-lessons useful in motivating my students toward our classroom goal of every student’s reading two million words a year.Making students aware of all the reasons they should be readers helps them develop recreational reading habits, but a more targeted approach is needed to help them see why they are about to spend a few weeks reading the same novel together. In many ways, “Why should I be a reader?” is an easier question to answer than “Why should I read All Quiet on the Western Front in the next three weeks?” Students readily understand the overall importance of reading in helping them land a good job or get accepted to a university; they have a much more difficult time understanding what specific and immediate benefits they will reap from reading The Scarlet Letter or Things Fall Apart.
When students ask, “Why are we reading this book?” teachers often rely on one of two stock answers, or both. These answers are legitimate; but alone they do not go far enough when it comes to motivating adolescent readers.
Stock Answer 1: “We’re reading this book because it’s a great story.”Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, I want my students to appreciate great stories. This probably sounds absurd to people who like to read because they—we—take this for granted; but many of our students have never discovered the pleasure of reading great books. They haven’t found the beauty and power the stories have to offer. They haven’t experienced unforgettable reading moments. I can still remember the exact moments in my reading life when . . .Anne Frank’s hiding place was discovered. Boo Radley appeared out of the shadows to rescue Scout and Jem. Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldermort. Sethe’s daughter was murdered. Sophie made her terrible choice. George killed Lenny. Winston and Julia were discovered in their love nest.
My list of memorable reading moments goes on and on, as undoubtedly does yours. Unfortunately, many of my students look at me oddly when I describe the powerful feelings that can arise from reading memorable books. Some of them have never found themselves in a reading flow—that trance we get into where we become so engrossed with what we are reading that we lose track of time and place. Many have never had the experience of having a book linger in their minds long after they have finished it. They have trouble seeing the greatness of literature.
During the first week of this school year, I asked my senior students to share some reflections they had about themselves as readers. Here are some of their responses:
• “I only read when teachers make me.”
• “I never read on my own. It’s boring.”
• “I have never read a single book on my own.”
• “Why should I read when there are so many interesting things to do
instead?”Their aversion to reading is appalling, and I want to change the way they perceive reading. I want to help them discover the greatness of the books we will read over the course of the school year. Though I am not naïve enough to believe that every one of my students is going to love every book I assign, I start with that as a goal. I know that what I do as a teacher will greatly influence the level of my students’ involvement.
Though not every student will like every book, I want every student to see the value in what they are reading. Have you ever read a great book with your class only to have many of them tell you they found the book boring? When this happens to me, I have to think that maybe it’s not the book that is the problem; maybe it’s me. When my students are having a hard time connecting with a great book, I am forced to reconsider my approach. Have I provided enough framing? Have I addressed my students’ lack of prior knowledge? Have I supported them to make sense of the difficult vocabulary? Have I helped them embrace their confusion? What is getting in the way of their discovering the greatness of this book, and what can I do to remove these obstacles?
As I have emphasized throughout this book, if we want students to fully appreciate great works, we must design lessons that lead students to discover this greatness. If we’re asking our students to read a great book, it’s our job to nudge students past their reluctance and allow the book’s greatness to emerge.
Stock Answer 2: “We’re reading this book because it affords us the opportunity to recognize and appreciate the writer’s craft.”
If my lessons are successful in drawing students into literary works, I then have the opportunity to make the author’s craft visible to the students. Once they understand the story, they can be taught to analyze one or more of the following:
• Characterization: How does the author develop the characters? What is the difference between “flat” and “round” characters? Which minor characters play important roles? How do the characters advance the plot and the conflicts?
• Time and sequence: How does the author develop time and sequence? Is foreshadowing used? Flashbacks? How does the author craft these time shifts? How do these time shifts advance the telling of the story?
• Themes: Which themes emerge from the book? Is there an overriding theme? Do minor themes emerge? How are these themes developed?
• Author’s purpose: Why do you think the author wrote this book? What did he or she really want to say? What was the historical context in which this book was written, and how did this influence the author?
Who is/was the author’s intended audience?
• Diction: How does the author’s choice of words advance the story? Is dialogue used effectively? Does the diction ring true? Does the author effectively use figurative language—metaphor, simile, and allegory?
• Symbolism: How does the author effectively use symbolism to advance the story? How do these symbols enrich the novel?
• Voice: Who is telling the story? Which point of view has the author used? How are the other literary elements revealed through the use of narration, dialogue, dramatic monologue, or soliloquy?
• Setting: Where is the story set? How does this setting affect the story’s development?
• Conflict: What are the central conflicts in the work? How does the author develop these conflicts? Are the conflicts primarily internal or external?
• Irony: How is irony used in the story? What kinds of irony (verbal, situational, dramatic) are used? How does the use of irony advance our understanding of the characters?
• Tone: What is the author’s attitude in this work? How and where is it revealed?
As English teachers,we are already aware of these literary elements, but year in and year out I am surprised by how little my incoming students are acquainted with them. They are accustomed to simply reading books without any awareness of the level of craft employed by the author. Knowing the story is one thing; appreciating the level of craft under the surface of the story is another thing.Making these techniques visible to students boosts their appreciation of the work. When students examine the time and sequence elements found in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, for example, they begin to understand the level of craft that went into the writing of that novel. When students are asked to write a sonnet in iambic pentameter, their appreciation of the Shakespeare play they are reading instantly deepens. If there is real craft involved in the writing of the work and this craft can be made visible to the students, their commitment to reading the work intensifies.
Students revel when they discover the craft used in the work. Making the writer’s craft visible has an added benefit: it can help improve our students’ writing. If I want my students to write an effective persuasive essay, it helps immensely to provide them with models of persuasive pieces (the “My Turn” essay featured in Newsweek is one source of excellent models).When my students learn to spot arguments and counterarguments in an essay they read, they are more likely to make use of arguments and counterarguments in their own essays. Students who are taught how to study the techniques, the structure, and the craft of other writers often find these techniques seeping into their own writing. Models help students write better.
Both of these approaches—appreciating the greatness of books and developing an understanding of the literary techniques employed by the authors—are valuable, so much so that they have become foundational in secondary schools. Indeed, I emphasize both of them strongly in my own classroom. But when it comes time for students to find the relevance a book plays in their lives, they must be encouraged to move outside and beyond the text to consider the following questions: What does this book mean to us today? Why did we read it?
Add comment January 26th, 2010
Taking a cue from his basketball coach, Max Brand describes how he and his fellow teacher and wife, Gayle Brand, “train” students with short bursts of reading activity to become more fluent readers. This week’s Quick Tip is from their book, Practical Fluency: Classroom Perspectives, Grades K-6.
I can still remember my first experience in organized sports, freshman basketball. We had a wonderful coach, Mr. Orr, who left a lasting impression on my thinking and teaching. Coach Orr had an uncanny ability to motivate us and get the team to overachieve by demonstrating basic skills (shooting, dribbling, and passing).
He provided constant feedback that was specific, so that we could continue to build skills and develop as team players. Coach Orr expected our team to achieve at a high level, and we did. Our successes were celebrated, no matter how small, which brought us together as a team and motivated us to work harder. The most memorable lessons were the drills to build stamina; “killers” we fondly named them. We would begin and end practice with forty-eight ticks on the scoreboard clock. The team had to complete a series of sprints in this amount of time or challenge ourselves again. These sprints were designed to help us build stamina, developing endurance for our ultimate test, game day.
Thinking back now, practice moved at a brisk pace, and most skill building drills were completed in a short period of time. This was done to keep us focused on the skill and use time efficiently so that we could scrimmage and become automatic with the skills while playing basketball.
When I think about planning for fluency instruction, the structure of basketball practice influences my thinking. I work with my students in short bursts of learning, consolidating skills and strategies that lead to fluency and building students’ reading and writing stamina. As teachers, we need to plan for short bursts of learning that enable students to build stamina and become fluent readers and writers.
Gayle and I plan for these short bursts of instruction by first thinking about the skill, then which instructional setting (whole class, small group, or individual) will allow our students to learn and practice this skill. Automaticity with word recognition, spelling, and writing on demand are areas of instruction we target during short, focused lessons. The skills learned during these sessions allow our students to read for extended periods of time during reading workshop and sustain their writing for long stretches during writing workshop.
When planning for fluency instruction, we look for opportunities to foster students’ automaticity with print, increase their reading rate, and read in meaningful phrased units. Richard Allington (2001, p. 75) reminds us that “providing children access with appropriately leveled texts and a noninterruptive reading environment typically produces profound changes in reading fluency and self-monitoring.”
Of course, there isn’t any right time to teach fluency. Instead, you have to look at your daily schedule and consciously plan for fluency while seizing teachable moments to stress the importance of fluency instruction. Brief fluency lessons occur during content studies and reading or writing workshops. Prior to these lessons, Gayle and I have informally assessed our students, found a specific focus for fluency instruction, and then decided which grouping structure would help us effectively and efficiently support our students. We have found that working within the context of our thematic studies or workshops allows students to quickly practice skills and then use them for purposeful reading or writing. Gayle and I adopted this thinking after reading Stanovich’s seminal article (1980), “Toward an Interactive-Compensatory Model of Individual Differences in the Development of Reading Fluency.” We want to build fluency skills so that our students can keep pace with their peers, think about the same content, and use most of the workshop time for personal, purposeful reading and writing.
Gayle’s students scatter about the classroom, using the entire space for personal reading during independent reading time. As the students leave the meeting area, Gayle reminds them to use punctuation to guide their voices, a fluency concept she has demonstrated while reading aloud The Other Side.
Some students have been reading quickly, not fluently. They read through punctuation, sometimes getting confused because one idea runs into the next or the intended meaning was altered. This will be the focus for her individual conferences. The small-group work will continue its thread of reading punctuation but will also extend to a word-solving strategy. Gayle wants her students to use repetitive patterns and the local context of the sentence to predict unknown words. She wants them to cue on the first letter(s) as they anticipate the next word, developing automaticity with print.
Gayle will mask a handful of words in the big book, Oh No! (Cairns 1987) She will mask the word spot, a repetitive word in the text. She will reveal the s and p, covering the rest of the word with a sticky note. She will mask this word on pages 4 and 6, knowing that students will have had an opportunity to read and internalize the pattern of this text. She will mask dress on page 10 and place on page 16, allowing students to use the meaning and structure of the text and picture to predict these words. Ellie, John, Seth, Tommy, and Alya will work together with Gayle in this flexible group.
Gayle will begin this short lesson with the students writing five frequent words on wipe-off boards. She wants to build the students speed in knowing these words that appear on the word wall. Then she prompts the group to write the high frequency word see at the top of their wipe-off board, underline the s, and then write words that begin with s. The group generates high frequency words so, saw, and she, copying from the word wall. They also independently come up with sat, sand, sad, set, sit, Seth, and Stephanie. Gayle brings closure to this segment of her lesson by prompting the kids to write seen and seed. The students easily add the final consonants, laughing that they should have remembered these words. The students read the big book with masked words and after about seven minutes, find their own places in the classroom to read independently.
Gayle scans the room noting where individuals and small groups are reading. She spots Sam sitting at a table by himself reading Henry and Mudge in Puddle Trouble. She makes her way over to the table, pulls up a chair alongside him and without asking, he reads orally from the middle of page 19. The text challenges Sam because he wants to read the line of text as a phrase. Gayle says, “Sam I like how you’re reading the line of words together, listen to how I read the idea.” Gayle reads, “One blue petal fell from his mouth into Henry’s hand,” from the book. “You didn’t stop at the end of the line, Mrs. Brand,” Sam comments. Sam reads to the end of the chapter similar to Gayle’s model. He reflects, “I didn’t have to reread so much, it was easier to follow the text.”
Reading workshop ends with students sharing about how they used punctuation to understand their reading. Ellie, Seth, John, Tommy, and Alya share that while reading Oh No! there are red letters and an exclamation point to tell them how to read the line. They think they should be reading them with voices that convey something is wrong, not just excitement. The students move next to word study. The group will work on making words with magnetic letters from the rime, eat.
I will also nurture fluency development by bringing Matt, T.J., Alyssa, and Alex together as a group. I will use shared reading to reading with them the Time for Kids article, “Saving Our National Parks.” I will demonstrate fluent reading by pausing and thinking about big ideas. I will begin by reading the title and subtitles and reading captions while looking at pictures. I will think out loud about what I think this article will teach me.
My reading begins by stating my purpose for reading. My purpose for reading this article is to find out how we can save our national parks. The reason this is my purpose is because I noticed the subtitle, “What Can Be Done.” I record this on the chart and begin reading. I read the article while the group follows along. Students stop me to reread sections or record important information on the chart. I bring closure to the lesson by asking the kids what they noticed. “I need to spend more time looking at what I’m going to read before reading it,” Matt comments. Alyssa reflects, “You read to the end of the sentence before stopping, not the end of the line. I need to look for periods and question marks.” T.J. reports, “I’m going to write a purpose now when I read. This will help me focus on why I’m reading. I won’t stop so much.”
The students join the rest of their classmates, sharing what they learned about national parks and reading fluently. As a class, we debrief our reading by writing a summary about national parks’ renewable resources. We use shared writing to write this summary. While rereading the summary, we discuss punctuation and fluent reading. The discussion reinforces the day’s fluency thinking.
Gayle’s primary-grade classroom also has collections of texts used for curriculum content work organized in text sets. She may spend more time reading aloud texts from these baskets than I do. Gayle’s text sets include big books that she uses for shared reading. She uses shared reading to introduce key ideas and develop schema and background knowledge that help her students learn vocabulary and ideas needed to read texts from the text set fluently. These primary-age students learn the importance of text features (pictures, captions, titles, and headings) as they read information for a variety of purposes.
Gayle not only uses big books during curriculum content study, but also uses an overhead projector to share texts. She demonstrates fluent reading, reading ideas by pointing or using an index card for reading a line at a time to focus her class on the text. By introducing key curriculum ideas and vocabulary in a shared format, she helps her students to read these ideas fluently. This helps her students internalize vocabulary and nonfiction written language
forms.
Add comment January 19th, 2010
Patrick Allen
“Learning to confer and to confer well is an ongoing process. It takes time. I started by being nudged by someone I trusted, and then started to watch others confer, and then I started recording my own conferences to listen to the types of conversations that develop…think about the best conversations you’ve had with a fellow reader and try to replicate them.”
–Patrick Allen
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard teachers say if they don’t meet with every student every day, or even once a week, they feel guilty…if you have individual conferences at any time during the year, you are giving them the gift of your time and undivided attention.”
–Mark Overmeyer
Mark Overmeyer
Head over to VoiceThread.com, where Mark Overmeyer, author of What Student Writing Teaches Us, and Patrick Allen, author of Conferring, compare and contrast reading and writing conferences, and offer suggestions for teachers who are looking to expand the role of conferences in reading and writing workshop. Join their conversation by submitting your own audio or text comments and questions; the authors will respond to new comments posted by Friday, December 18.
Add comment December 10th, 2009
In his book Good Choice, Tony Stead outlines strategies that foster successful independent reading in grades K-6. In this week’s Quick Tip, Tony talks about author studies as a way for students to reflect on their own story writing and to encourage reflection about their reading.
Specific author studies are a valuable means of strengthening students’ understandings of plot, setting, recurring themes, connections, and literary devices such as mood, voice, and author craft.
As a classroom teacher, each year I would select a specific author and provide my children with copies of the author’s books to explore. The author study would take from one to three weeks, and we would spend between twenty and thirty minutes daily studying the works of that author. The authors I chose depended on the suitability of their materials, which was based on the interests and the reading levels of my children. For instance, an author study on Eric Carle was terrific for first graders because most children were able to read his books independently, and many of his books were about animals and insects, which are of high interest to first-grade children. Note: Author studies can be on books that children cannot read independently. In this scenario, the teacher can read the author’s books to the children, which will provide the springboard for discussions.
First, I collect as many copies of the author’s publications as possible. In addition to publications I already own, I also collected books from the school library and my local public library. When implementing an author study be sure to have enough books for each child to have access to his or her own book. If this is not possible, then two children can share one book and the children can buddy read. An assortment of the author’s publications are best, rather than having twenty-seven copies of the same book, because I want my children to look for recurring themes and author craft. After I have amassed enough books, I place them into several baskets and label the baskets with the author’s name.
I begin the study by reading one of the books to the class to immerse them in the author’s works and promote discussions. After the reading, the children can talk about the book based on discussion areas I provide. I place these headings on a chart and record children’s observations.
Over the next few weeks, the children read different books by the selected author, either individually or in pairs. At the end of each session, I bring the children together to discuss what they have discovered and add their findings to the chart. For the section titled “About the Author,” the biographical details in the books, together with researching websites about the selected author, provide the children with a wealth of information.
It is also useful to write a class letter to the author and send this to the author’s publisher. I tell the children that the author may not reply because he or she is busy writing or illustrating new books, but we usually receive a letter from the publisher. Most well-known authors have someone to handle letters from children; sometimes a signed letter from the author will arrive. The children are thrilled when this occurs. This chart acts as a great springboard for children to examine their own story writing and the craft they are using to hook their readers. I also encourage children to conduct their own author studies of their favorite authors and give them an organizer to assist them with the task. Refer to Appendix H for a copy.
Discussion categories can vary and will differ depending on the grade area taught. I found that when conducting author studies with children in upper elementary school grades, the categories became more specific about the author’s craft and included mood, voice, use of suspense, recurring themes, character traits, and emotions the author evoked. For children in lower elementary school grades, the categories were simple and dealt primarily with likes, dislikes, reactions, and connections.
Add comment December 8th, 2009