The Stenhouse Blog

Quick Tip Tuesday: Short bursts to build stamina

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

Feeling guilty about conferring?

Do you feel quilty because you think you don’t spend enough time with your students in conferences? Are you struggling with what questions to ask during a conference? Are you looking to learn how to confer well?

Then join our conversation with Patrick Allen, author of Conferring, and Mark Overmeyer, author of What Student Writing Teaches Us. This is your opportunity to ask questions from two experts who can give you all the answers you need for successful reading and writing conferences!

So ask a question, leave a comment, and start conferring!

Add comment December 16th, 2009

Conferring in Reading and Writing Workshop

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

Preview online: Small Group Intervention DVD

For struggling readers, success depends on self-regulation and the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations. In their new DVD/CD professional development program, Small Group Intervention, Linda Dorn and Carla Soffos model the components of an effective word study intervention that gives students opportunities to transfer word-solving strategies to reading and writing texts.

The DVD contains eleven short video episodes and the accompanying CD integrates these same episodes into a PowerPoint presentation that will be welcomed by staff developers. Background, instructional principles, and discussion prompts guide teachers through three intervention components: a word study lesson, reading a new book, and writing about the book. The program models explicit instruction that helps students acquire new knowledge, and shows how to use five levels of prompting for problem-solving strategies as students read connected texts.

Dorn and Soffos emphasize the importance of instructional language and scaffolding according to each student’s needs. Teachers can study the video episodes and implement the intervention as part of their school’s Response to Intervention (RTI) process. In addition to the PowerPoint, the CD also contains a viewing guide and handouts.

Small Group Intervention is available now. View a sample video clip, download the free viewing guide, and get more details on the Stenhouse website!

Add comment November 12th, 2009

Changing beliefs about conferring, one teacher at a time

In an in-depth interview on A Year of Reading blog, Patrick Allen talks about his new book, Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop. He tells Stenhouse author and blogger Franki Sibberson about the origins of his book and about what he hopes teachers will take away from it.

“A lot of Conferring is about the journey I went through as I tried to change some of my beliefs and to enhance my instruction. I hope that as people read the book, they’ll understand that like all great learning, learning to confer takes time, energy, and practice, but it’s well-worth the effort! My own journey has made conferring the keystone of my reader’s workshop.”

Read the full interview and then preview Patrick’s book online!

Add comment November 4th, 2009

Quick Tip Tuesday: Counterfeit beliefs about conferring

In this week’s Quick Tip, Patrick Allen tackles some of the myths about conferring. In his new book, Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop, Patrick maintains that the benefits of conferring with readers are worth the effort of learning to do it well. He sets out to reveal how teachers can overcome their perceived obstacles and make the somewhat intangible aspect of conferring with readers tangible.

I remember when my friend and colleague Lori Conrad and I met to plan a presentation on conferring with readers. Scones and lattes in hand, we set to work (we always do our best thinking over coffee, it seems). We had our conferring notebooks, anecdotal records, professional texts, and favorite conferring quotes spread out on the table. We were hoping to synthesize years of conferring work into a two-hour presentation.

When we spent time in others’ classrooms, Lori and I noticed that many teachers were conferring with writers, but fewer were having similar interactions with readers. Teachers were talking to children about their writing, but not always taking the time to have the short, meaningful types of reading conferences we were having with the children in our classrooms.

Why were we seeing so few regularly occurring reading conferences?

As we started to outline our presentation, Lori said to me, “There are a lot of misconceptions out there about conferring with readers. I hear them pop up when I talk to teachers about the power of conferring.”

I nodded in agreement and added, “I don’t have time; I don’t know what questions to ask; It’s too hard; I don’t know what to write in my notes; I don’t even take notes; I don’t know how to go deep . . . These excuses are myths that have developed about such an important instructional construct. Teachers have internalized lists of reasons about why conferring can’t or won’t work.

There has been such a focus on small groups of late. Reading conferences are less tangible, but not less important. I think people just think they’re too hard. The lists of ‘can’ts’ or ‘won’ts’ are the things people need help sorting and understanding. We know conferring is effective, but there’s so much to learn.”

“You’re right,” Lori said. “There’s a difference between legitimate wanting to learn and making excuses.”

“Learning to confer is an art; we know that. It’s not easy; it takes practice,” I said. “But it’s one of the most important and beneficial instructional moves I use with my students.” Then a lightbulb went off . “That’s how we should start,” we said together.

Lori said, “Let’s start out by sharing some of the conferring myths we’ve uncovered in our work with students and adults.”

“Should we call them myths? A myth is more like a legend or a tall tale,” I said.

We both laughed. We’d heard plenty of reasons why conferring takes a backseat to other instructional practices. “What about counterfeit beliefs?” Lori suggested.

“Counterfeit beliefs. I like that.”

We started talking about the film A Private Universe. You remember it, don’t you? Many of us saw the fi lm in one of our college methods courses. If you didn’t, it is an interesting commentary on what happens when learners develop and maintain long-held beliefs that lead to misconceptions in their understandings of a concept. In the fi lm, graduating Ivy League seniors were asked to explain what causes the seasons. The graduates thought that “eccentricity in Earth’s orbit” made it warmer when it was closest to the sun and that the moon’s phases were caused by Earth’s shadow. And when ninth graders at a nearby school were asked the same questions, they had similar misconceptions.

Then students had an opportunity to test their ideas and justify their reasoning. The results? If students saw their ideas proven wrong they would do one of three things: (1) immediately let go of their old ideas and accept the new ones, (2) try to blend the old and new, or (3) revert to their previous learning.

In college, before we became classroom teachers, we may have found the film a bit humorous, but our humorous reaction changed to a state of being flabbergasted. We started asking, “Why don’t students grasp these concepts?” Even the brightest students have long-standing misconceptions that endure despite what they were taught by their teachers. And, in our methods classes we had conversations about instruction and assessment, trying to identify the causes of having students leave our classrooms with mistaken thoughts, ideas, or notions about their learning.

In our experiences, Lori and I saw the misconceptions about the power of conferring running rampant. The very definition of conferring—discourse, consultation, discussion, comparison, viewpoints, deliberation, talk—was somehow getting lost in translation.

If confer means to bestow a gift, we hoped that participants would better understand conferring as a result of our workshop.  Jeff Wilhelm says that many teachers still rely on an “information-transmission” approach, focusing mainly on the what, which he believes is insufficient for powerful understanding (2007, 9). Wilhelm contends that if we focus on only the what of learning, it leads to “shallow learning and even misconceptions” (2007, 9). Educational psychologists know that “if misconceptions exist, meaningful classroom learning requires experiences that help to restructure existing knowledge” (Murphy and Mason 2006, 307).

Perhaps teachers were doing the same thing with the notion of conferring with readers. The misguided concepts Lori and I noticed about reading conferences needed to be restructured.

Murphy and Mason point out that “Conceptual change refers to revisions in personal mental representations; revisions that are often precipitated by purposeful educational experiences” (2006, 307). Lori and I felt that nudging teachers to revise their misconceptions was our best option. So what did we come up with? Here is our list of counterfeit beliefs. Which ones do you believe? Which ones have you actually said, or thought, at one point or another?

Counterfeit Beliefs About Conferring

1. If I meet with small groups, I don’t have to meet with individuals. It’s easier to meet with small groups.

2. If I don’t meet with every student every day, I’m not doing a good job.

3. If I don’t do a running record during each and every reading conference, I’m not really assessing my students’ reading ability.

4. If I don’t talk about all the errors a student is making while he or she is with me, I’m not being diligent.

5. I have to take an expert stance in each conference.

6. I need to focus on skills and fluency; comprehension comes later.

7. When I’m talking to a child about his or her learning, I’m conferencing.

8. I need to confer with every student the same number of times for the same amount of time each week.

9. I need to give the rest of the class something “to do” so they’ll stay busy and leave me alone so I can confer.

10. I’ve tried _____’s conferring suggestions and recommendations and they just didn’t work out.

Now before you close the book and say, “Wait a minute, I agree with number nine or number two,” let the statement weigh on your mind a bit. Think about each statement carefully. Spend some time pondering. Can you see why these ideas might be considered misguided?

Read the rest of Chapter 1 and the entire book online now!

Add comment October 27th, 2009

Quick Tip Tuesday: What is an independent reading workshop?

In this week’s Quick Tip Kathy Collins, author of Growing Readers and Reading for Real, takes you on a “tour” of several classrooms during independent reading time.

In many classrooms around the country, teachers have given careful consideration to ways and methods of providing their students with time to read independently, and of ourse, their conceptions differ. Imagine that right now, you and I are going on a professional journey together (paid for in full by our districts, of course). Our quest is to step inside classrooms and observe what’s happening in the name of independent reading so that our vision of the independent reading workshop becomes clear. Okay, grab your notebooks and let’s go.

Our first stop is at my school, P.S. 321 in Brooklyn, where I’ll show you the independent reading workshop in my classroom. My students are gathered in the meeting area, looking at and listening to me as I teach a mini-lesson on a comprehension strategy that proficient readers use. Each day I begin independent reading time with a mini-lesson like this one in which I offer whole-class, direct, explicit reading instruction. I wrap up the mini-lesson (which typically takes less than 10 minutes) by sending the students back to their reading spots for private reading time. It takes a minute or so for the room to settle. The children have their own plastic file holders with several books inside. They are reading a range of texts, from easy books with one line of text on a page to chapter books, because each child is reading a book at his or her independent reading level. I assess the children often so that I can guide them toward the books that match them as readers. As the children read independently, I offer individualized direct instruction during one-on-one conferences with readers. I take notes about each child during these reading conferences.

After 20 minutes I tell the children it’s partner reading time. I briefly remind them of one of the ways we’ve learned to talk well about books. The children quickly move around to meet with their reading partners. The noise level in the classroom has risen slightly as the children begin reading together and talking about their books with their partners. During partner reading time, I confer with some partners and then I gather four children for small-group direct instruction. Today, I’m supporting a small group of readers in a guided reading session because, based on my assessments, they are ready to move to the next level of text.

After about 10 minutes of partner reading time, I stand up and again get the children’s attention. “First graders, I hate to say it, but reading time is over.” There is an audible group sigh, and a couple of children plead, “Just another minute, we have to finish talking about this page!” I smile and tell them to use a sticky note to save their spot so they can continue their conversation tomorrow. Then I say, “Please put the book you’re going to read at home tonight in your take-home bag, and bring your bag and your body to the meeting area for share time.” For the next few minutes the children gather again in the meeting area, and I share some of the great work I observed during reading time today.

During this visit to my classroom, you witnessed instruction throughout the independent reading workshop. The instruction began when I modeled and demonstrated a reading strategy in the whole-class mini-lesson. Then, as children worked independently and with partners, I coached and instructed them during reading conferences. I pulled a small group of children together to offer more assessment-based instruction. Finally, during the teaching share, you saw that I reinforced the day’s lesson by sharing some of the ways children were successful with the strategy I taught.

The next stop on our journey is my old elementary school, where independent reading is known as silent sustained reading or SSR. As we go into a classroom, we listen as the teacher instructs the children to take their SSR books out of their desks. “Remember that this is a quiet time,” she reminds them. As we look around, we notice that the children are reading a huge variety of books, and the room is very quiet. I used to look forward to SSR time when I was a student. We only had it twice a week: on Wednesdays after library time, and on Friday afternoons, and it was exciting because our teacher would let us read any book that we brought in or borrowed from the library.

Let me be honest here: what excited me most about SSR wasn’t necessarily having time to read my own book. What I really looked forward to was the possibility of “getting the call.” My teacher randomly picked children who would get to be her helpers during SSR time. Oh, how I hoped my name would be chosen! I loved to be a helper and do things like use the staple remover to take down the construction paper jack-o’-lanterns with accordion legs in order to make way for cornucopias and five-finger turkeys. I longed to be the one to collate and staple homework packets for the following week.

Unfortunately, during those many SSR times when my name wasn’t picked, I had trouble concentrating on reading my book. I was distracted as I watched my lucky classmates hand masking-tape loops up to our teacher as she stood precariously on bookshelves putting up the maps of the continents we had colored during social studies. During SSR time, the teacher may or may not be teaching reading. My teacher spent SSR time catching up on the other work she needed to do with the help of some eager children. It seems that often SSR time is less an instructional opportunity and more of a management structure that enables teachers to get some other things done while children are quietly looking at books.

Our next stop is a first-grade classroom during literacy center time. The teacher is meeting with a small group of children for guided reading at a cashew-shaped table. The rest of the children are working in small groups around the room. Some are plugged into the tape recorder at the listening center, and others have Big Books and shared reading texts spread out on the floor. A group of children are practicing spelling and making words with magnetic letters. Almost everyone seems busy and engaged. As we continue looking around, we see a group of children sitting at a table with a basket of books in the middle, all reading books from the basket and debating about who has the scariest Halloween costume. This conversation about costumes began when two of the children were looking together at the book Rattlebone Rock.

I ask the children what they are doing at this center. One child looks up and says, “It’s the independent reading center. We’re reading Rattlebone Rock. This is the browsing basket.” Again, like SSR time in the previous classroom, the independent reading time in this classroom is a management structure that enables the teacher to do something else, in this case, to meet with guided reading groups. The teacher is not teaching directly into the children’s independent reading because she is working with one guided reading group after another. When she finishes the second of the three guided reading groups, she transitions the students into another center.

The next school we visit is in a district where independent reading is called DEAR time, or “Drop Everything And Read.” During DEAR time everybody in the school, including the principal, the custodian, and the guidance counselor, stops what they are doing to read something, anything. As we walk around the school, we see adults reading catalogs, professional literature, district memos, magazines, novels, and newspapers. We see children sitting in their seats reading a variety of texts as well. The building is relatively quiet as everyone focuses for a while on his or her own reading.

The obvious power of DEAR time is that a school becomes a community of readers. It’s exciting for children to see grown-ups around them reading, in much the same way as it can be thrilling for children when a teacher joins a game of tag at recess or the principal sits beside them in the cafeteria and eats her lunch. During DEAR time, however, if everyone is dropping everything to read, no explicit reading instruction is going on. Of course, the power of modeling reading is important, but we have to ask, “Is that enough?”

Now, as our journey nears its end, let’s talk about what we observed. In each of the classrooms I’ve described, the children were, in fact, reading self-chosen books independently. One of the main differences, however, between the independent reading workshop in my classroom and independent reading time in the next three examples (SSR, independent reading during literacy centers, and DEAR time) is the absence or presence of direct, explicit instruction. In some classrooms the only instruction children receive during independent reading time is on management and procedures, because the teacher is engaged with other tasks (e.g., her own reading, her to-do list, or guided reading groups). By contrast, during the independent reading workshop, the teacher provides whole-class, individual, and small-group direct, explicit reading instruction to her students. In addition, when children read independently during independent reading workshop, they read just-right books, which are books that match their independent reading levels. Children can read their just-right books with fluency, comprehension, and at least 90–95 percent accuracy (Calkins 2001).

1 comment September 29th, 2009

Quick Tip Tuesday: Is Reading to Kids Women’s Work?

This week’s Quick Tip comes from Leanna Landsmann’s syndicated A+ Advice column. A reader asked her recently about how she could get her husband more involved in reading to their kids. Leanne turned to Jane Baskwill, author of Getting Dads on Board for the answer.

Is reading to kids ‘women’s work’?

Question of the Week: I read with our young children nightly. I enjoy it, but it takes time. Since my husband was furloughed and I work two jobs, I asked him to take it over, but he says “women” do a better job. How can I get him to pitch in?

Answer:
This is a more typical “guy” reaction than you might think. While many dads love “reading hour,” some think they need special skills when it comes to boosting kids’ literacy development. Not true!

Dads are very important to their child’s literacy learning, says Dr. Jane Baskwill, a reading educator who coaches teachers on involving fathers. “Fathers are role models. Whenever a child sees a dad reading — whether to look up information, follow instructions to assemble a toy or simply for pure enjoyment — the child starts to value reading.”

Studies show that children whose dads read with them do better academically, exhibit more social competence, and have more confidence as learners. Data also shows that a father’s reading habits, choices and interests positively influence those of his children. Literacy activities also increase communication and strengthen father-child bonds.

Think beyond books at bedtime, says Baskwill, author of “Getting Dads on Board” (Stenhouse, 2009). “Some dads may not enjoy story hour, but they might love to share an article in the newspaper about a favorite team, work a puzzle, or enjoy reading children’s magazines or comics with kids. Encourage your husband to put his own twist on special time with your children.”

Try these activities.

TELL STORIES: With storytelling, kids learn to listen, imagine, and add to their vocabulary, says Baskwill. Find tips on effective storytelling at eldrbarry.net.

PLAY GAMES AND PUZZLES: When Dad and kids share a board game or tackle a scavenger hunt, the result is conversation, inquiry and discovery. “These are easy literacy activities to extend,” says Baskwill. “For example, one dad creates scavenger hunts with his GPS. Another invented a car game called ‘Signs.’ He calls out a letter, and kids spot signs with that letter. They categorize them in a notebook. He says it’s fun, and he feels like he’s helping them with school.”

POINT OUT THE PRINT: Pointing out “environmental print” — the letters, words and logos that surround us — fans a child’s desire to read, says Baskwill. “These activities are especially good when they relate to things young children love, such as reading labels of favorite cereals and signs of places to visit. As kids get older, let them read, sort, and evaluate the family’s ‘junk’ mail. One dad creates a family scavenger hunt with Sunday’s paper supplements. Kids look forward to it each week.”

RESEARCH AND REWARD: When dads share reading about their hobbies, such as sports, fishing and cars, they’re showing kids how reading helps you keep up with things you like. A dad who is a NASCAR buff might check a fan Web site every day with kids. Conversely, he could tap into a child’s interest. Whet the “reading” appetite of a child fascinated by sharks, for example, by sharing age-appropriate books and TV shows about sharks.

A father doesn’t have to read Junie B. Jones every night to further a child’s literacy learning. “Dads can participate in ways they feel comfortable. As their confidence grows, and they see how much kids enjoy it, they will try new things and expand their involvement. The most important thing is keeping the activities easy, fun and natural. Both father and child will reap great benefits,” says Baskwill.

Copyright 2009, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

1 comment July 28th, 2009

Quick Tip Tuesday: Finding the time for meaningful comprehension lessons

In her book, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading, Cris Tovani shows how teachers can expand on their content  expertise to provide instruction students need to understand specific technical and narrative tets. In this week’s Quick Tip, Cris talks about what teachers need to think about when faced with the decision of what to give up in order to make time for more meaningful comprehension lessons.

Not Having Our Cake and Eating It Too
I know the biggest issue for any high school teacher thinking about making changes or additions to the curriculum is time. I hear this from almost every high school teacher I’ve met with over the last few years. What we’re being asked to do is almost impossible. We’re being asked to teach ridiculous amounts of material. We’re being asked to teach kids how to read and write and think in sophisticated ways, and we’re given a very, very short time in which to do it. Something has got to give.

An English teacher recently said to me, “I want my kids to read eight novels, but they’re not doing it. What should I do?” I don’t know if he was just expressing frustration or asking me for an easy solution, but I don’t have one to give. My reply to teachers with these concerns and frustrations is this: I want to lose 30 pounds and eat chocolate cake all the time. It’s not going to happen. I have to decide if I can eat chocolate cake once a month, or cut back in a different way to lose weight.

It’s a trade-off. Only you can decide whether it is worth giving up some content for the time it takes to design comprehension instruction that means something to your students. If you don’t value the thinking strategies, you won’t give up content. If teaching kids to memorize what is in the textbook is most important to you, then this type of work won’t be very successful.

We are also putting pressure on ourselves to cover vast amounts of content. Many state standards don’t tell us that we have to teach certain novels in English classes. State standards don’t always specify what years of U.S. history we have to cover in the history curriculum. Many students will dutifully complete any strategy assignment from a teacher. After all, that’s how I found myself one night facing a desk covered with sticky notes and banal comments. But that doesn’t mean the assignment truly has any value for students, or is pushing them to think harder as readers.

I don’t know if teachers can work any harder than they’re already working, so we’ve got to find ways to make students carry more of the thinking load in our classrooms. As I walk out of school with my colleagues at the end of each day, we’re all tired. We’re carrying heavy bags of books and papers, and our shoulders are slumped.

Meanwhile, our students bound past us to the parking lot, running and jumping down the steps two at a time, full of energy. I once heard someone say, “School should not be a place where young people go to watch old people work.” We’ve got to figure out how to work smarter, because what we’re being asked to do is really a challenge.

A young teacher from my district recently came to visit my classroom. He had told his teaching teammate he was coming in to see me teach. His teammate had read some of my work and said, “Take a lot of notes and find out what she does that’s supposedly so great.” This young teacher shared that request with me. He then smiled and said, “You’re really not doing anything great. What you’re doing is something I can take back and do in my classroom.” Then he got a bit flustered and his face turned red, because he had said something that might be perceived as unkind.

I took his words as a compliment. What I’m doing is not unique or revolutionary. I use simple principles of good teaching to design comprehension lessons, activities, and materials. I give students models, time to practice, and time to think. It’s common sense, and a lot of it comes from my own process as a reader.

What Works

1. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” and “How will it help students think, read, or write more thoughtfully about my content?”

Teaching Point: Good readers use reading, writing, and talk to deepen their understanding of content.

2. Remember that strategies are only options for thinking. One comprehension tool is not more important than another. There is no specific order, sequence, or template for introducing strategies to students.

Teaching Point: Good readers have a variety of ways to think about text. They can make connections, ask questions, infer, and visualize, as well as sift and sort the value of different pieces of information.

3. Ask yourself as the expert of the content and the best reader in the class: “Is this activity authentic?” Would a mathematician, scientist, historian, or artist ever read in ways that approximate what you are asking of your students? If not, how could you make the activity more genuine?

Teaching Point: Good readers don’t need end-of-the-chapter questions or isolated skill sheets. They ask their own questions, based upon their need for a deeper understanding of specific aspects of the text.

4. Don’t isolate strategy instruction into discrete, individual activities from day to day. Plan lessons based on student work from the previous day, using student response as a way to analyze how thoughtfully kids are approaching text.

Teaching Point: Good readers reread and return to text to build and extend their knowledge of specific concepts, or to enhance their enjoyment of texts they have enjoyed previously.

1 comment July 21st, 2009

Questions & Authors: Easing Into Summer with Great Reads

School is out, or will be soon in most of the country. This is a great time to get kids hooked on some great summer reads. Teri Lesesne, author of Naked Reading and Making the Match, offers some suggestions that will make for some magical — and educational — summer reading for all kids.

My 16 year old is keeping a countdown clock on her laptop. It is ticking away the last weeks of school. It is not that she does not love school; she does. What she is looking forward to, though, is the luxury of time. That struck such a resonant chord with me. More than anything else, I think my teen looks forward to summer because she becomes “time wealthy.” She can sleep late, certainly. What she most loves about the abundance of time is that she is free to read those books that have been accumulating throughout the school year: the ones not assigned for her English classes. Summertime and the reading is easy, or it should be.

Easy does not mean, however, that books are without rigor. Often, I think, books for young adults tend to be snubbed by some adults who think that they are little more than pablum; nothing nutritious can be gleaned from reading books written specifically for young adults. Perhaps these adults can be forgiven; they must not have read some of the books from the last couple of years that challenge teen readers. That is what great YA literature does: it offers teen readers the chance to explore all sorts of new terrain in terms of issues and topics. What sets these books apart from their adult counterparts, though , is that YA literature is developmentally appropriate for teen readers. For example, how does legislation such as The Patriot Act impact on the lives of teens? Cory Doctorow explores this territory in Little Brother. Doctorow takes readers into the lives of a handful of teens who are arrested following the terrorist bombing of a bridge in San Francisco. he teens are held captive by federal agents until they (the teens) unlock their computers and cell phones and give the agents total access to their accounts and records. One teen, Markus (aka, w1n5t0n), dares to defy his captors for a time. Ultimately, though, he capitulates. The experience makes Markus begin to question authority.The comparison to books such as 1984 is inevitable and valid, too. However, the central character here is a teen, not an adult.

With the recent downturn in the economy, one of the most startling set of statistics concerned the rise in the number of handguns being sold. As people worry about their own survival in tough economic times, sometimes they also fear that someone will come to take what little they have. It is not too big a leap from here to futuristic scenarios where the wealth is in the hands of a few, a few who are corrupt to boot. Suzanne Collins delves into such as future in her proposed trilogy which begins with The Hunger Games and continues with the second book, Catching Fire . Katniss and Peeta must defeat the other players (all of whom are children) in the annual “Hunger Games” in order to survive and win rations which will allow their family members to survive as well. Dystopic views of the future abound in literature for young adults from Lois Lowry’s The Giver to Mary Pearson’s chilling The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin. For students who might prefer some nonfiction, books such as Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic by John DeGraaf or Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On ( Not) Getting By in America. The Hunger Games is one of the books nominated to YALSA’s “Teens Top Ten” list for 2009. To see the other books teens can read and then vote for in the fall, visit the YALSA web site and click on the link to Teens Top Ten. And while you are there, take a look at the winners for “Teens Top Ten” for 2008 (and earlier, too) and see how many of these titles are ones you know and have read. If teens are voting these are their favorites, perhaps we need to know a little something about them, too?

What about offering readers a chance to explore some history through YA books? Often, nonfiction is overlooked for recreational reading. However, there are terrific choices available to teens who want to learn more about a wide variety of subjects. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice provides readers with insight into the role of this teen during the bus boycott in the South of Jim Crow legislation. Ellen Levine’s Freedom’s Children includes a vignette of Claudette Colvin plus dozens of other young people who took part in the Civil Rights Movement. I have been writing lately about the concept of reading ladders, a concept that helps us move readers from one book to the next and from there to another. A reading ladder for this issue might include the picture book A Taste of Colored Water and then progress to the two books about Claudette Colvin and continue on to novels such as The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 or one of Mildred Taylor’s novel in the Roll of Thunder series or any other novel set during these tumultuous times. Take a small step off to another reading ladder and recommend Gary Schmidt’s Trouble, a book that examines prejudice against Asian-Americans in the 1980s. Or select Denied, Detained, Deported: Stories from the Dark Side of American Immigration by Ann Bausum for a look at how immigrants were denied entry into the U.S. across history. Summer reading might just afford teachers the opportunity to construct ladders so that students can experience a story or history in interconnected ways rather than one piece at a time.

How wonderful to be a teen again and see the wealth of time summer offers. I am certain that you, too, have an ever-growing (and more than likely toppling) stack of books to engage you over the summer. Let me add just a handful of titles from the hundreds of YA books published this year already. These books represent the array available in YA literature: books for tweens and younger teens, fiction and nonfiction, reimaginings of familiar stories, and (most of all) accessible enjoyable texts. I discuss these books at my blog. Stop by and see how I am spending those precious extra minutes summer offers.

Some Suggestions for Summer Reading:

Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill is a modern day “Faust” set in El Paso. See what happens when the devil comes to collect on a deal made by Bug’s grandfather that involves two souls and a primo Cadillac.

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story set in contemporary time. Imagine waking from a 200 year nap to discover that your entire world has undergone tremendous changes.

Knucklehead: Tales and Mostly True Stories about Growing up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka. This slice of life autobiography is a quick and incredibly funny read. Scieszka is the US Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for a reason.

Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick follows the life of a soldier wounded in Iraq. As Matt’s memory of his injury return, he faces some tough moral decisions.

Hamlet by John Marsden is a prose variant that contains much of Shakespeare’s characters and plot with a few new twists.

Add comment June 4th, 2009