Reader engagement – Page 2

Reflections for the New Year

I am looking forward to a healthy, successful 2019. I have seen many posts on blogs and tweets on twitter sharing everyones ideas and thoughts about the new year and how to make it succeful for educators and students personaly and professionaly. I myself seek the continued growth of my own practice and continued growth for my students.

Today I read two blogs that sparked my thinking about growth. One of them was by Vicki Vinton: A New Year with my old friend: some thoughts on my one little word.

In this post she reflects on her choice for her one little word. She like myself chose to keep her word from last year. Her word is “seek.” My word is “reflect.”

Vicki pointed out many ways it resonated with her that I can say, I feel the same about. She talks about seeking out the right images, words and topics for her blog posts, or seeking out the right books for herself and students.

seek

Seek called out to me for those reasons and many more. So much so, I thought about changing my word from reflect to seek. Hmmm?

For two years now as a staff, we have chosen a word for the school year. It can be a daunting task if taken seriously. 🙂

As I stated at the beginning of this post I am going to be seeking out ways to grow my own practice. I am also seeking out ways to be more efficient with my time and seeking ways to eat more healthy, get back on a workout plan. Seeking to spend more quality time with my kids and wife seem like a priorty also. I plan to seek out time to pick up my camera and explore the word through my different lenses. I also plan to seek out and take advantage of any opportunities I can create for myself after achieiving National Board Certification.

I am seeking out ways to help the students in my building increase their reading scores on district and state assessments and grow their desire to seek out the answers to their wonderings, questions and thinking as they read.

Vicki said, “I also seek for other reasons. I seek to understand what’s going on in students’ heads as they read—and in the head’s of the teachers I coach. And I sometimes seek without a goal in mind. That is, I seek for the sheer fun of seeking.”

I want know what’s going on in my students heads and I want them to seek things out in their reading and in life for the joy of it, for the desire to know know more, but possibly with goals in mind. Goals to grow their knowledge about life, or a specific topic and to practice reading for meaning and understanding. I do not want them reading for the single purpose of practicing a strategy. I want to help them learn to choose to engage with books and all of their learning and to seek out knowledge. I am reading Ellin Keene’s new book about engagement. It is on my mind a lot lately.

I think students may be bogged down with too many things on their brains to slow down enough, to seek out meaning and understanding beyond the surface level while reding. I am seeking and reflecting on ways to help students read deeper.

Wow! I am seeking a lot of things.

You do not really know what you are driven to seek out for yourself and others unless you do some true reflection however, and set goals and makes some plans. So maybe I should stick with reflect.

The other blog post that got my attention was Colby Sharps: Winning the Day

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He talks about how he used that phrase to help him stay focused each day, and how winning many days in a row builds up a winning life. He got the idea from a football team winning each day at practice and then in games. I think this is something we can choose to do as teachers: win each day. You can’t just say you are going to do this and try to stay positive however. You have to know and understand how you are going to go about winning each day. You have to do some reflecting, goal setting and planning. Reflecting keeps coming up!

I found this graphic on a webpage about how to win each day. I would change; review, to Review & Reflect.

wintheday

So I think I will keep reflect as my word for the rest of this school year. I will use my reflections to help me seek opportunities for myself, my students and others to help them grow and also try to win each day using small goals and planning to help me do so through my continuous reflection.

Ha! Does that still count? I think so. The purpose of your one word is to help you be focused on something to improve yourself, right? So it works!

Please do read all the way through Vicki’s and Colby’s posts. I think you will gain something from them to reflect on and use for yourself!

Troy

Are we building bridges to transfer learning?

bridge

I was having a conversation today with a colleague about a student’s Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark score. We discussed some of the student’s reading behaviors. My colleague then went on to tell me about what the group this student was in had been working on, over the last several weeks. The group had been working on comprehension, using some ideas from Sunday Cummins newest book: Nurturing Informed Thinking: Reading, Talking,, and Writing Across Content-Area Sources.

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The group had learned how to code a text and read several articles over the same topic. My colleague was really hoping for some transfer to happen from instruction to the F&P testing situation. I pipped up thinking as the words were coming out of my mouth, “when being tested students probably do not feel like they are able to deconstruct a text and code it like you are doing in your guided reading group. They probably don’t feel like they can take the time.”

Students are not able to mark up testing books. I was implying that there was probably a disconnect happening between how the students are being taught and the testing situation we put them in. My colleague said something like, “well in the testing situation we are looking for automaticity.” That really struck me!

It did not strike me as wrong necessarily, but as a problem that we need to look into fixing. At one point and time it was said, to test the way you teach. Then some teachers started to teach to the test. Now we have started dissecting the teaching of reading into many pieces.

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We are using many tools (strategies) to do this. My question is how can we make sure students are putting the parts back together into meaningful pieces of information and building a bridge to transfer what we are teaching into something more automatic and functional in a testing situation. Are we giving students a chance to try out the tools for themselves and figure out which ones work best for different situations. This can be done during independent reading and guided reading. Are we throwing too many tools at students without allowing them time to master the use of the most important one: reading for meaning! Reading with the purpose to figure out something, not do a strategy in of itself.

meaning

Are we giving students opportunities to put the pieces together without telling them exactly how to do it? Yes we need to teach and model, but we also have to step back, bite our tongues let the students try things out. We can even let them struggle, so they can know what thinking through a text really feels like when they have to go it alone. We need to let them try a text out first sometimes also, and listen as they figure out what they need before we jump in and teach by modeling something they might not need. Students have to feel what the true work of reading feels like, that is very different from practicing things in isolation or with the intent on the use of the strategy, not meaning. They need to know what it feels like when you struggle your way through a text and persevere after changing your thinking several times and trying many different things and putting it all together. That is the real reading work they have to experience!

If we expect students skill and strategy use be to automatic in testing situations, but we are breaking it down so much as we teach it then I can see transfer not taking place.

If we are teaching students to deconstruct a text by coding it and annotating it( see examples of this strategy on Sunday Cummins blog: http://www.sunday-cummins.com/blog.html)) and it is really helping them make meaning and then expecting them to be automatic with their strategy use, is it fair? We have to help them transfer those drawn out strategies and start using them in modified, fluent ways that do not to take up to 4 days to really dig into like they may within a guided reading groups.

When and how are we taking time to help students build the bridge that they can cross to make that transfer happen. Sunday does talk about transfer in her book and acknowledges how important it is. Thanks for doing that Sunday. But when we are in the midst of teaching these tested skills and strategies we often loose site of how that transfer of learning will happen and what it will look like.

Are we teaching them how to take that strategy and make it more automatic or just expecting it will happen. If you are working with a group of striving readers, then it will not happen unless we guide them across that bridge and then give them lots of practice at building multiple bridges across many text. Or by making them aware of when it does happen and help them notice and name it. Practice without over-scaffolding happening and without students directly being told what exactly to be doing needs to be taking place.

Close reading, and really digging into texts and taking the time to annotate and code texts or paraphrase texts can be powerful. It appears we are missing the next step however, the step where transfer needs to be allowed and nurtured to happen.

Are we teaching in isolation without giving students a chance to put it all together. Are we allowing them to be complacent on first reads of texts? Are we teaching for engagement and meaning or skill and strategy use.

I want to find a way to build that bridge from teaching students to deconstruct a text to putting it together in a more fluent way without needing to make reading a piece by piece drawn out process that is hard for striving readers to follow. Or to find that mix and show them how a readers might have to alter the approach within a testing situation. Don’t we want kids to gain as much as they can from a text during the first reading, applying strategies in a fluent way leading towards that automaticity. If so we have to teach for it. We can’t always teach in pieces.

We have to give students practice with us supporting them through the thinking processes, not over-scaffold or tell them what to try and when to try it when. They should be practicing it, experiencing it for themselves. In sports kids often cannot understand how the pieces they learn in practice fit together until they experience it in game situations. Players have to think for themselves and make quick decisions out on the field during games. When they experience how it feels, they start to gain some perspective and real understanding and the big picture starts to form. Then coaches go back in and coach them up where they need it. Kids do some great learning in game situations. Are we giving readers enough space to get some of that in game practice time and then coaching from the sidelines. We can’t be doing the majority of the thinking or suggesting. We have to make sure students are not being bogged down with so many isolated strategies that they do not know how to put the pieces together in the fluent manner that is expected in testing situations. Are we asking them to read with meaning in mind first, and use the strategies as tools to help them make that meaning? I think a feel an action research project taking shape!

Are we teaching for compliance or engagement?

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51vLk92FYEL._SX410_BO1,204,203,200_ When thinking about student engagement as I started reading Ellin Keene’s newest book Engaging Children: Igniting a Drive for Deeper Learning, I started to think about how I engage with people. Am I truly present in conversations with my wife and children. At times I admit I may appear to be listening with intention, however I am really being compliant, not fully mentally present. I am not truly engaged anticipating what might occur next, creating new background knowledge, asking questions, showing intense focus and concentration towards the topic of discussion and trying to apply what we are talking about in a new or interesting way to help solve a problem or give insight. That is what we want when we have conversations with people, right? I actually ask a lot of questions, but my questions tend to fall short of the intended focus of the conversation and often frustrate my friends and family.

Continue reading “Are we teaching for compliance or engagement?”

Self-Assessment

self assessment wordle

I recently completed the National Board Teacher certification process. I do not find out if I achieved until December 2018. Part of that process required me to create and administer a student self-assessment. As I thought about the type of assessment I wanted to create, I thought about strategy instruction. Explicitly teaching strategies is very hot right now in some circles of literacy instruction. Teachers are modeling the heck out of strategies and explicitly teaching them and students are “doing” them. I think a key word here is doing them. Students are going through the steps and doing them. I wondered if they were thinking and reflecting about themselves as a reader and using the strategy as a tool to help and enhance reading for meaning as they completed these strategies however.

 I work with striving readers as a Reading Specialist in my building. A strategy I have really started exploring is Cross-Checking. As a reading specialist I know and value the importance of it, but realized my students needed to be doing more than just completing the steps of it after watching me model it. They needed to be authentically attempting cross-checking on their own, in books of their own choosing and reflecting on what they did as a reader and really become metacognitively aware of themselves as readers recognizing what works for them. I wanted to be teaching for transfer, not just for students to do the strategy. I realized that most strategies do not actually have steps we need to follow to be successful with them. They require students to think and process information from multiple sources often simultaneously. I noticed that when trying to stretch out cross- checking into steps, it slowed students down. Some students relied on visual cues more than meaning or semantics and vice-versa. Some students didn’t try to use any other source of information. This told me I was staring in the right place.

 Reflecting as a teacher and getting your students to reflect is a big part of the National Board process. I recognized that reflecting required me to do more than go through the steps and my students needed the same. I had recently read an article from Reading Research Quarterly, called “Change over time in first graders’ strategic use of information at point of difficulty in reading” (Mcgee, L., Kim, H. & Fried, M., 2015). The researchers reminded me that beginning readers first rely on meaning to help them read. They used pictures and their own experiences and apply those understandings as they read a text not noticing the visual cues within the words themselves but mostly using pictures. We quickly teach them to notice beginning letters, endings and eventually whole words. Of course we stress applying meaning to what they notice visually about the word so they do not have to try to stretch the word out completely often butchering it up beyond recognition. Point being lots of readers learn to over-emphasize the visual cues without applying meaning or syntax. To me this goes back to simply doing a strategy without thinking.

Cross-Checking requires students to think through the questions of “does it sound right, does it make sense and does it look right.” Students have to apply these simultaneously.

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They are not steps students mindlessly complete. Meaning of the word they are trying to solve at the sentence, paragraph and whole text level is key along with visual cues and thinking about how the word sounds. A combination of thinking through the questions of cross-checking is what makes it work! There is no magic order to think through the questions readers ask themselves as they cross-check. I feel it may vary depending on the word and text.  With this in mind I designed the following student self-assessment for a group of 2nd graders. The assessment can easily be adapted to fit striving readers of all levels. I usually had students start them on their own, jumping in and giving support as needed. I would often add some notes to the bottom of the assessment to help me clarify information. I found that discussing each self-assessment with the students’ guided reading group, individually or sharing it to the class as an example of what readers do made it more meaningful.  Talking with readers about what they were doing as they cross-checked and after was effective for the students; moreso than all the modeling in the world was. As we talked I noticed and put names to what students were doing, so we could refer back to what they did.

Students have to be thinking about what they are choosing to do as readers at the point of difficulty when solving words or monitoring for comprehension. I continue to use this cross-checking self-assessment today and I am developing others to address student needs. I feel self-assessment even in simple forms is key to making sure students transfer what we teach into their own reading. Students have to think to become effective, efficient readers, much like we found students have to do when solving equations in math. Going through the motions of following formulas we found was not enough. We are learning to making sure students have number sense. Making sure they can recognize when an answer or attempt they make doesn’t make sense. Students are learning to keep a meaningful answer in mind when solving equations and can recognizing when something does not make sense. We have to be applying the same thinking to reading instruction. Readers have to be able to do more than go through a set of steps. Any strategy you use has to be used as a tool to help make meaning, not take the place of making meaning and thinking. Self-assessments like the example below can help make sure students are not doing strategies but using strategies to effectively help their meaning making processes as they read. Let me know how you are using self-assessment with your literacy instruction or if you have any questions about what I have done and learning to do as I continue to reflect and grow my practice.  Here is the Cross-checking self-assessment I created. It is simple, but gets students to think about what they did. On the second example you can see I added a box at the of the form to write notes.

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Next week I am teaching a 2 hour course on using a problem-based approach to teaching reading for my districts Summer Academy professional development program with a colleague Elizabeth Hagan. I hope to reflect on that experience and bring some new insights from other great teachers within my district. This problem-based approach comes from Vicki Vinton and her book Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading. Check out my previous blog post about this book: https://troyafredde.blog/2018/02/06/teaching-reading-skills-in-isolation/

Troy 

Do You Have Students Break Words?

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I am trying a new approach in the Word Study component of my guided reading lessons. Sunday Cummins shared this approach with me recently. Jan Richardson shared it with her. It comes from Michele Dufresne. Twitter: @MicheleDufresne

It is really simple and makes great sense when you think about transitioning readers from using sound boxes into chunking words or breaking a word, a strategy you should be using with readers in stages Early – Fluent.

This strategy teaches readers to break words into meaningful parts or chunks. This is a strategy you should be prompting readers to use as you listen to them read and get stuck on a word. Breaking a word will help the reader hold onto the meaning of the word and sentence as they work through it. The alternative of asking readers to stretch it out, does not often work and it causes them to lose meaning of what they are reading. Breaking a word should be used as part of the cross-checking strategy when students are reading.

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The old adage of sound it out is not effective when reading for meaning.

This new approach involves asking students to break words apart instead of asking them to build words during the word study component of guided reading.

When introducing this approach, you may want to tell readers where to break words at first. However you want them to be responsible for breaking the words themselves when possible. You have to know your readers and what they need. If they do not need to be told, then do not tell them. Let them figure it out.

Let readers take on as much responsibility as they can. Never start from the stand point that readers cannot do something, give them a chance and jump in when they need the support. Remember one benefit of guided reading is that the teacher is right there supporting students as they try things out. It will be more authentic for the student and they will remember it better when they do the work. Then they will transfer the skill more easily.

Example: Break chop in front of the vowel: ch op

Or just ask students to chunk/break the word.

If your students need to be told where to break the word I think it is important to say break the word in front the vowel. This will help reader distinguish vowels from consonants, a skill they must have when breaking apart larger, more difficult words. Recognizing different vowel combinations is very helpful.

In my 2^nd grade group this week I practiced this strategy. I wrote the word sticky on a white board and asked my students to build it and then break it out, without saying the word out loud. They came up with 3 different ideas.

st i ck y

stick y

st ick y

All of these can be helpful to individual students. So, do not penalize readers for breaking the words differently. But make sure you ask them to explain their reasoning. There are certain guidelines you will want to enforce, however.

Keep vowel pairs together: ea, ou, ir

Keep digraphs together: th, ch, sh

Keep blends together: st, sw, sl

Keep prefixes and suffixes together

(This is not a complete list)

Look for meaningful chunks that keep common patterns(rimes) together:

CVC words like: p op, s at, t ub

Readers in the Early stage of reading will probably need more support.

Here are a few more examples of words my students have broke apart this week.

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This student changed her break in the word to “con” “nect” when I asked her to explain reasoning for the break in the picture above. She even said at first I though it was “co” (with a long o sound) and then I thought it was “con” I always ask student to explain why they broke the word the way they did and let them notice a better way to break it without directly telling them when at all possible.

The other students broke it like this:

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Here are the basic steps

Step 1: Write a word on a dry-erase board. Do not say the word and tell students not to say the word. (chop)

Step 2: Have students take the letters off their trays and make the word.

Step 3: Tell students to break the word at the vowel. (ch op)

Step 4: Have the students say each part chorally. (/ch/ /op/)

Step 5: Have the students put the word back together and read it. (chop)

Step 6: Tell the student to change a letter or two to make a new word (e.g. tell them which letters to change). For example, tell the student to “change the letter c to a letter s” so they have the letters for shop). Do not say the word and tell students not the say the word. Students then break the word, say each part, and put the word back together as they read it.

Step 7: Write a word on the dry-erase easel with the same rime but different onset. Have students read it. (stop). If they need help underline the rime (stop).

Now when readers come to a difficult word and are trying to cross-check it, I have them try breaking it as an added strategy. When reading with this group of 2nd graders I had to prompt them to break several words this week. They wanted to guess or try to stretch it out. A habit I am trying to break. They quickly put their finger on the word and eventually all solved their words by breaking them apart.

I like to say break the word instead of saying look for a part or word you know. Saying that can sometimes backfire on you. For example in the word: finger, recognizing the word in will not help. I am sure many of you have encountered many words where it didn’t help. You have to think about the word, text and student when making in the moment word solving decisions.

I did not have to tell any of these 2nd graders the words we chunked this week. They solved every one.

Let me know if you try this out and how it goes. Email me if you would like a copy of this complete strategy.

Engaging Readers

I recently had a group of 3^rd grade students who had started to become disengaged in their reading. We had just returned from spring break and they were well, not engaged! I was deeply frustrated! So, what did I do? I reflected! On my own practice and on student strengths and needs. Also about the texts I was choosing. All of this impacts engagement and motivation. I also thought about how the students classroom instruction had changed. Students were 3 weeks aways from taking their first state assessment. Classrooms switched to test prep activities that changed what their teaching.

My initial concern was kids distracting each other. When one student finished reading before the others and became a distraction. This is not always an issue if you are able to group kids who read close to the same rate, but groupings do not always work out perfectly & kids grow at different rates. After reflecting I came up with a game plan. I focused on what I could do proactively to help keep students engaged.

The next day I led them in a discussion about our goals as readers, and how we could best use our time to meet those goals. Note, I said I led a discussion, they did most of the thinking and talking. I did not want this to be about me, but about them as learners. We discussed what expectations they had for themselves and what they felt my expectations were for them. This helped them refocus themselves without me lecturing them. I purposefully directed the conversation towards the purpose of reading. We discussed what they could do as readers if they finish reading a section of text and the rest of us are still hard at work. They came up with lots of good ideas, while I nudged them towards some others.

We discussed rereading of course. To keep kids engaged as they reread they really need a purpose for reading however. A student in this group had an “ah ha” moment a few weeks prior that I used as a teaching point to help kids understand the importance of rereading and how it can deepen our understanding. So, we talked about rereading with a purpose in mind. Rereading to figure out a confusing point or something they didn’t understand. We discussed rereading to answer a question, and to see if we might have missed a key detail. We talked about rereading to find an important detail they want to share and to mark it with a sticky-note or highlight it if appropriate. Or to flag an idea they want to talk about and clarify. These are things you may ask kids to do when rereading with a purpose on day 2 or day 3 of your guided reading lesson, but you don’t always have to wait. After all you have students in your groups for very brief moments of time, utilize it!

I incorporated more opportunities for student talk around what they were discovering when engaged in their reading. This helped bring more student to student interactions and student/teacher interactions. These interactions were both teacher and student initiated.

We are continuing to review using our time wisely every day in group and it has helped tremendously. Students are not distracting each other as much anymore. When they do it, it is sometimes in reaction to something they noticed in the text! They are also reading to share, or lead a discussion about something they noticed in the book, something missed the first time they read. They are having more authentic ah ha moments and figuring more out on their own. This is what we strive for, right!

In a recent blog post Sunday Cummins talks about the concept of reading multiple sources about the same topic. A concept sometimes called Reading Ladders. This is an idea a colleague and I dug into a little bit last school year when conducting an action research study on student motivation. We found it very motivating for students.

Here is a link to Sunday’s blog post: https://sundaycummins.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/our-students-know-so-little-if/

Anyway, she describes her natural desire to want to know more about a topic and how students have that desire too. We need to utilize that desire with students. I think first we need to get students to be willing to dig deeper into their original source more closely and extract all the information they can! This will lead them on a more focused journey for information through other sources. The journey Sunday is talking about in the mentioned blog post above. This brings up the need to be using appropriate texts with enough depth to keep their attention and stretch their thinking. Especially in stages: Early, Transitional and Fluent.

I argue that reading instruction can and should be more interactive to promote engagement and hold it. Students naturally want to read more to discover more or to find out what happens!

What are your thoughts!

Remember this blog is a way for me to reflect, grow and continue to refine my practice. Hopefully it helps others as well. Idea’s and thoughts are always welcome!

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