Beginning the Slice of Life Writings

This month I started having students write “Slice of Life” paragraphs, short commentaries on something they’ve done or something they’ve observed, and then I posted them in the hallways and invited our school staff and students to make comments on post-it notes. I’ve been very pleased with the initial response from everyone so far, and I’m excited to continue the project. I wondered if students might complain about having to write something, but because they are doing something like this every day in our daily writing, I haven’t heard anything negative. In fact, it’s been the opposite. Once the students saw their writing posted, and got a few comments on post-its, they wanted to write more. Some have three or four writings in their folders, just waiting for the okay to put another one up. I didn’t want to overwhelm the readers, so I had the first writings up for three or four days, and then we just taped the second piece over the top of the first piece, so readers could keep reading.  Every day, students ask if they can go out and read and make comments on the writing. I’ve had to monitor that a bit more closely since I can’t have five kids in the hallway unsupervised, but I’ve encouraged kids to respond in the morning when they have a bit of time. Other teachers and staff have been kind about reading and leaving a comment or two as well. 

            Is the writing perfect? Not so much. It’s very clear which students need to be more rigorous in checking spelling and punctuation, and some of them have a very loose understanding of what a paragraph is, so I’ve tried to address that as we’ve gone along. But I think as students see what their peers are writing about, that will encourage them to polish things up a bit.

            The part I think has been the most powerful, though, is reading about how a student is worried about her dad, who was taken to the hospital that morning, or the student who is concerned about the neighbors who are fighting. I wouldn’t normally hear all of those stories, but writing them down allows students to be heard. Some kids wrote about how they got their dog, or injuries they’ve received, or a recipe they’ve tried – the topics are all over the board. I think most people just need someone to listen to them, and if they can’t do it by talking, then writing allows them to share. For some kids, I think it’s easier to write things down than to say them out loud. By putting their writing up on the wall, they have a new audience. And the comments are often very compassionate, reminding the writers that they aren’t alone with their concerns. I’m excited to see how these writings evolve over the rest of the year!

Spirit of Endurance

I’m going to be starting our next reading unit, which is on questioning. My district curriculum has provided me with a couple of books about snakes, which are probably interesting, but I’m ditching them in order to use one of my favorite books: Spirit of Endurance, by Jennifer Armstrong.  The subtitle is “The true story of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic”, and if you don’t know anything about this trip, you need to read this book. One of the reasons I feel confident in switching out snakes for Shackleton is that in addition to teaching and practicing questioning, I can also use it to talk about theme and even character traits, even though it isn’t fiction. Ernest Shackleton is such an amazing person that it’s worth talking about what character traits would describe him.

I’m going to start by showing students the cover, and asking them to write some “I wonder” questions, which I’ll record so we can see if they get answered. We can talk about how some questions get answered as we read, and some don’t, or may require more research on our part. These kinds of questions are the ones that hopefully propel the reader further into a book as they look for answers to their questions. Jan Richardson, author of The Next Step in Guided Reading, calls these “red” questions, because you have to stop and think about the answers.  These are in some ways the most difficult to answer, but we often start any book with things we wonder about, so I’ll be dipping into the more difficult questions first. (A link to her resource page is here: www.janrichardsonguidedreading.com/resources-1)

As we read and find out more about Ernest Shackleton and his crew, and his desire to cross Antarctica by dogsled, then we can try “green questions”, which Richardson describes as being found right in the text. These are the kinds of questions we often ask to check direct understanding, like “Where was Shackleton from?” or “How many dogs did he take on his trip?” I’m going to model several of these, but then I’m going to have students write their own green (literal) questions to share with another student or the whole class.

The last kind of question I’ll be trying is a “yellow” question – one that you may have to look in several places for in order to answer the question. A great question to ask with this book would be “What factors caused Shackleton to abandon his ship?” Asking students about similarities and differences would also be examples of yellow questions.

About midway through the book, I use an activity where the students are given a list of items found on the ship that will either be taken with the expedition or left behind. Students work with a partner to discuss what they would keep and take, and then we go over what actually happened. I found this on the PBS website for the show NOVA, which has some great teacher resources connected to a show they did about Shackleton: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/2906_shacklet.html

The discussion that ensues is often interesting and impassioned, especially with regard to the fate of the dogs.

Finishing up the rest of the book leaves plenty of opportunities for more “red” questions that could start with “what would have happened if….” or “why do you think….”. This is when we can talk about theme (like perseverance and stamina, or never give up) and character traits we could use to describe Shackleton (bold, courageous, dedicated – but while a great leader, probably not the best husband or father, as his love of exploring meant he was always gone).  Through the sinking of the ship, travelling in the rowboats to find land, sailing one of them through freezing hurricane-force winds to finally land on South Georgia Island where an enormous hike awaited them, and finally rescuing all the men, and never losing one of them – Shackleton’s story is one of the greatest rescue stories ever, and it will leave us with plenty of discussion possibilities, such as “Was the trip a success or failure?”

I can’t wait to share this amazing story with another group of students!

Report Cards

This marks the end of our first trimester, so I’ve been working on report cards over our break. Our district has gone to a standards-based report card, and we’ve all been involved in many discussions about what each of the report card indicators mean, and how best to use the new reporting system. I think it would be safe to say that most teachers do not love doing report cards. It’s hard to reduce a whole child down to a number, when that child is so much more.  It makes me nervous knowing that with the new reporting procedure, there will be many questions, and I hope I can answer them satisfactorily.  I also know that many parents are not going to be happy when they see a lot of marks that indicate that their child has only partially met the standard, even though they have the whole year to meet it, and I’m fairly confident that most kids will do this. This process will get easier as we do it more, and as the district better aligns curriculum with the standards, but there’s always the first time for everything, and that just happens to be now.

I hope that as parents look over these new report cards, they keep in mind some things. If the report card grades don’t align with the standardized test scores their child has taken, it might be because standardized tests are multiple choice, and almost nothing in my class is assessed that way.  My students are asked to do a lot of writing and sometimes even the brightest kids don’t take the time to write complete answers. Of course, that’s what we work on all year, and I can see quite a bit of improvement already, but the standards ask them to be consistent, and at this point in the year, not all kids are in that place.

The report cards also don’t show that a child may be the one who is always first to offer a marker to the kid who never has one, or is the student who stops to help others clean up, or is the kid who helps stack the extra chairs each night. No report card grade can show that this child is the one who will include any left out child, or is willing to work with anyone. I’m glad I don’t have to give a grade for kindness, but I feel that is a great quality to have, and some of my students, whose report cards may not have the most stellar grades, are some of the most kind, well-rounded students I have.  One of my son’s teachers said at his conferences, “You can check his grades online. Let me tell you how he is in class and how he treats other students and me.” (Luckily it was a good report, because as a parent, I’m hoping that he’s a good person in a public setting.)

So as we finish this first round of new report cards, let’s take a moment to remember that report cards are just one aspect of our children. An important one, to be sure – everyone wants to know that their child is moving forward in their learning. But take another moment to see your child in the bigger picture, one that includes more than just numbers on a test or a report card.

First Trimester Reflections

It seems that the first trimester has flown by, except for a few days that never seemed to end. At any rate, we will have finished one third of the year by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, and I want to do a little reflecting on some of the things I’ve tried this year.

As part of our Q Comp performance evaluation, we have to set a goal, and I decided to connect it to both the standards and one of our report card indicators. I chose nonfiction summary writing to work on, and so I did something I don’t think I’ve done before: I gave a diagnostic assessment with the intention of giving this assessment again once we had practiced the skill for a while. I don’t know why I haven’t done this before; I certainly assess prior knowledge before teaching, but I haven’t done it this way. I gave the students a nonfiction article, asked them to list all the nonfiction text features that they saw, and then to read the article and write a summary. This didn’t actually take very long, because nearly all students had no recollection of what either of those things were. I had one student out of my first group who wrote a passable summary, but otherwise most kids just stared at me.  I collected these from both classes, but I only used my first group for my goal setting.  We then set out to read a lot of nonfiction and practice writing summaries that included a gist statement, 3-4 sentences supporting the gist statement, and then a concluding statement. I gave the exact same assessment again, and once the students were done, I showed them what they had done with the diagnostic. It was great to see the kids be aware of how much they had learned in the five weeks we’d been working on this, and my favorite statement was one kid saying, “I didn’t even have a gist statement!” Gotta love that. Only two kids still have no idea what either the nonfiction text features are, or how to write a summary, but only six kids wrote a summary that I feel would pass the standards. On the other hand, with a little tweaking, almost everyone else would be able to do a decent summary, and we have the rest of the year to practice.

Another thing I’ve really liked is the Socratic circle discussions. Kids seem to really like doing them, and it is very clear who can participate in a discussion, who only wants to listen to their own questions, and who is afraid to speak. My goal is to figure out how to draw out the quiet kids so we get more participation.

My five-minute daily writing has fostered writing fluency, and I’m now starting to see more consciousness about capitals and periods. I’m going to stretch this into some Slice of Life writing next trimester, and hopefully it will be easier because they’ve been writing about things they’ve been doing for twelve weeks now.

I had kids choose a chapter book out of seven books that I put out, and required kids to read a third of the book each week in November. This actually worked well, as it has in the past, and many kids finished their books in much less time, and then asked to read another of the books I had set out. I will do this again in January, and leave December for books completely of the students’ choosing.

I started the year doing a read aloud every day, and that, sadly, has gone by the wayside. That’s my biggest disappointment of the year, in some ways. I think reading aloud for pleasure is so important, and I just can’t squeeze in the time. Maybe I need to reexamine my schedule and see if there is something I can flex, but with only two hours to a block, and forty minutes of that in guided reading, there isn’t a lot of time left for reading, writing, and social studies. I certainly read books aloud as part of the instruction time, but it isn’t quite what I want. 

How has your year gone so far?

Slice of Life Writing

I like stories. That’s probably the biggest reason I read so much. But I also like watching stories, through movies and TV shows, and I think that’s true for most people. Stories are the way we share what’s going in our lives, from the important to the mundane, and it’s one of the reasons I think families are so important: they are the people who know your stories. The same is true for friends, especially long-time friends; they are the ones who can reminisce with you about the summer jobs you shared or the adventures of the tennis team.

One of the tricks of the classroom is getting to know the stories of all of your students. It would be great if we could all sit around and just share out all day, but that is not going to happen. And you know what the beginning of the year feels like: all of the kids look exactly the same, and there is a big hole where you used to feel comfortable with last year’s class, because you had gelled as a group AND you knew some of each other’s stories. So the beginning of the year is always a time where you look for opportunities to get to know the students as people with background stories. 

For me, this happens in two ways: one is guided reading groups, because they’re small enough even the quiet kids usually feel comfortable saying something; and the other way is writing.

All of this is to say that I’m thinking of trying out the Slice of Life writing beginning in December, with the start of the new trimester. I’ve been reading about it, and toying with the idea, but the latest post on the Two Writing Teachers blog (see the post by clicking on the Two Writing Teachers link to the right, and also the TWT post from August 29, 2013, where a sixth grade teacher talks about slicing in her classroom) was the tipping point for me. The writer tells about the school she works in all doing a weekly Slice of Life piece, and then posting them out in the hallway, where others can leave comments on post it notes. It was the comments that struck me the most – they are compassionate, thoughtful, and I imagine the writers love seeing the comments on their writing. And sharing your writing builds the community we need to create in order to move forward as learners.

The writing doesn’t have to be long; for most kids, it will be about two paragraphs. They need to write about something that happened to them, but it doesn’t have to be “the day the tornado almost missed our house.” It can be about what they did when they found out the cereal box was empty that morning, or something their siblings did that irritated them – you know, the everyday stuff that makes up our lives. I am going to start by hanging their writing out in the hallway, but it would be nice if eventually we had the time to post slices on our Kidblogs.

I’m going to try and get up two different writings in December. I know many classes write a slice each week, and some participate in the Slice of Life Challenge in March, where they write a slice each day.  That sounds like more that I can handle right now, but it’s something to think about for the future. I’m hoping that by giving students another forum for sharing their stories that we can learn more about each other and strengthen our classroom community.

Building Vocabulary - Take 2

My teaching partner and I have signed up to teach an extra class after school, beginning in January. She’s going to be using close reading strategies, and I’m going to be doing a vocabulary piece, so one of the books I just bought is Word Nerds, by Brenda Overturf, Leslie Montgomery, and Margot Smith.  These teachers work in a high poverty school in Kentucky, and the strategies they use to teach vocabulary extend into lessons on life. It’s an impressive book, and I’m both inspired and discouraged. Inspired because they do a lot of interactive lessons, some of which I’m going to try in my regular classes, and some I can try in my afterschool class. But I’m discouraged, because, like all things, vocabulary instruction done well takes time, and this year, more than ever, I’m feeling crushed for time.

So what can I do right now? In the book, they do a lot with synonyms and antonyms, and I’m going to see if there is a way I can incorporate those words more often. I do a “word of the day”, and starting Monday, I’ll also talk briefly about synonyms and antonyms for that word. I think it will help me if I make a chart to hang up that looks like this:

Word	Synonyms	Antonyms

I think having a weekly chart hanging up will remind students of the word of the day, and other words like it.  I may even give students their own chart to fill out each week, so they will have a collection of words to go back and use.  Doing that will allow students to do one of the activities in the book: color the word.

In coloring the word, students are asked to find one color to represent the word. They have to tell why they chose that color, and in the book, that provided some interesting deep thinking. For example, one student chose red for the word “segregation”, because bricks are red and they can be used to build walls that separate people. I like the extra thinking that goes into planning out the colors.

Another activity I would like to try is called Chain Link. The students in the book have vocabulary lanyards, like plastic nametag holders on necklaces. You can put in words and then do a lot of different activities that involve students moving around the room, sorting and resorting themselves by their vocabulary “nametag”. For Chain Link, the first person starts, tells their word and gives the definition. The rest of the students need to find a way to link their word with the first person’s word. If a student can explain how their word relates, that student stands next to the first student. Now there is a new word to link to, and ultimately the goal is not to be the last person standing, because that person is going to have to link both sides of the chain. Of course, the thinking involved at that point is going to be higher level, since there are two words to connect to instead of just one.

I will see how this goes for me as I try to squeeze in more vocabulary practice in my limited teaching time. I think I can do more with the after school class in January, and that may give me the incentive I need to incorporate more vocabulary practice into my regular room.

More Close Reading

October was a busy book-buying month for me; I purchased three teaching books, which is way more than I usually buy, considering that I’ve vowed to quit buying books. But all of them have information that I felt I needed, so my collection grew. The one I am currently loving is brand new: Falling in Love with Close Reading, by Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts. Close reading is the current big thing in reading, and there are a huge variety of resources to clarify how to do it. I really like this book because it boils down close reading to three steps: read through a lens, such as word choice or text structure. Then use that lens to find patterns in the text. Finally, think about those patterns to help you develop a new understanding of the text. I think using close reading this way fits in with other close reading techniques, like using the signposts in fiction I talked about in a previous blog. I think it also might be easier to teach these strategies to readers of all levels in the hopes that they will transfer them to their own independent reading.

Here is one thing I’ve tried from the book (since I just got it this week). I used the lens of structure when reading an article about the changes in school food with my students. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what exactly do we mean by text structure, and this has helped me clarify it even more in my mind. I asked the students to think about how the text was organized, and then I made a chart that looked like this:

Did the author

describe something,

tell a cause and effect,

compare things,

or make a claim?  

I used a different color for each idea so that when I asked them to think about the purpose, they could match up the purpose with the structure.

What is the purpose for that organization:
To give more information.

to tell why something happened,

to show how things are the same and different,

or to tell the author’s opinion about a topic?

In the article we read, you could make the case for several different text structures, which is a bit messy, but also realistic when reading articles. Authors often use several structures when writing. We didn’t do much with talking about patterns, since it was our first time with this, but here is what I found: when asking students to summarize this article, using structure is a great way to write their gist (or main idea) sentence.  For example, students could have written, “This article is about the reasons why school lunch menus have changed”, and then gone on to give examples of that (using the structure of cause and effect).  Or they could have said, “This article tells why it is better that school lunch menus have changed from the old menus”, using the structure of the author’s opinion.  (As an aside, this also gave us the opportunity to discuss why summarizing an article is different than what you think about an article, since most kids would love to go back to the salty, fatty foods they used to get in the cafeteria.)

I highly recommend this book to all teachers – the examples the authors give include many texts that are for high school students, so this isn’t just for elementary kids. I have already found myself thinking more in my own reading about patterns I’m seeing.  As the year goes on and I try more of the strategies they suggest, I hope to see changes in my students and their reading.

Trying Socratic Circles

A couple blog posts ago I talked about Socratic circles, and I gave them a shot this week. On the whole, it was a great experience, and I’m looking forward to trying them again. But of course, there are things that I will modify for next time, and I thought it might be useful to reflect on what I liked and what I would change.

To start with, the kids need to be discussing a text they are somewhat familiar with, and we used Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” which I had assigned as their fluency reading for the week. Theoretically, all of them had read it at least five times, and I had asked them to underline words they didn’t know, and to write down three questions they could ask, so we had some questions ready to go. This was a good idea, and I think I would do something like this again, until we get better at generating questions more easily. The poem was challenging for fourth graders, and I am fine with that, although I don’t think anyone loved it just because it is quite a bit more difficult than other, more kid-friendly poems they’ve read. But they do need to grapple with challenging text, and this gave them that opportunity.

I had thought a bit about how to divide the kids into two groups, and when I saw how many kids had brought back their homework (not many), that solved the problem for me. I sorted the returned homework into two stacks, making sure that each group had some strong students in it (hoping that they would be leaders, and they were), and then I put all the other kids without homework into the groups, assuming they would sit next to someone with the text.

The inner circle sat on the floor, and I had the outer circle sit around them on chairs with clipboards for their response sheet. (See a copy of the outer circle response sheet below.) That worked out well, but all groups said they had difficulty hearing the students speaking, so by the last group I used our class microphone, which slowed the conversation down a bit but did make it much easier to hear. 

I felt that all groups really worked to do their roles. The outer circles concentrated on what people were saying, and how they were saying it, and the inner circles tried to ask and respond to questions. I think that was the hardest part, as many students wanted to ask their questions but weren’t always interested in thinking about other people’s questions. I’m hoping that changes as we get better at the discussion part. Many in the outer circle commented that all students did not participate, and I think that is a more powerful observation when it comes from one’s peers. It will be interesting to see if there is more participation the next time we try this. I know there are some very quiet students, and this is pushing them out of their comfort zone, so I need to do more thinking about how to encourage them to contribute.

Finally, my last observation would be that you need time to do this. The first group I allotted about thirty minutes, and this wasn’t quite enough for the first experience with the activity. The second group always has a shorter class time anyway, and we ended up breaking our discussion time into two days.  That worked better only because both groups had more time without feeling rushed, but I liked having both groups go on the same day to keep the discussion more fluid. 

Allotting forty-five minutes would have been the smart thing, which I’ll keep in mind for the next time.

Perhaps the best indicator of the success of my first Socratic circles would be the student responses. I had a number of students ask if we were going to do them again, and I was happy to tell them we would. I highly recommend you give Socratic circles a try!

Reading Professionally

I got an email this week from Heinemann publishers, telling me about a forth-coming book. “Ha! “ I said out loud. “I’ve already pre-ordered it!” I do love a good professional book, and I’ve got a cupboard full of them.  In fact, I make a yearly vow not to order any more, and then proceed to break that vow at least several times a year. I think reading professionally, although not to everyone’s taste, has really helped me to stay fresh as a teacher. So I decided I’d give a few of my recommendations, since not everyone wants to read long books all the time.

If you haven’t seen The Reading Teacher, and you teach elementary school reading, you are missing out. You get this magazine as part of your membership when joining the International Reading Association, and I think it’s the best professional publication devoted to reading and writing that you can find. While some issues have more that directly affects me than others, on the whole they have their fingers on the pulse of the latest research, and write in a way that is accessible. I can’t tell you how many things I’ve tried in the classroom as a result of an article that I read in this magazine. The cost of a membership is spendy (I think it’s about $67 per year, which I write off on my taxes), but it’s well worth it.

There are plenty of less expensive options for professional reading, though. Both Stenhouse and Heinemann, two of the top educational publishers, will often put all or part of their new books online to look at. I’ve saved a little money by reading them on my computer, taking notes on what I think I’ll use, and then not buying the book.  Ok, sometimes I buy the book anyway, but it’s nice to preview it first.

Then there are all the online options. Plenty of the people writing those professional books are also blogging, and I’ve found a wealth of information following their blogs. (See the list to the right for some of my favorite blogs.) One way I found out about some of them is through Twitter, which I lurk on regularly. I initially joined Twitter to find out more about using iPads in the classroom, so I followed people who were writing about education and technology. They would then retweet (or repost) other people in education’s tweets, and I slowly found myself broadening my Twitter scope to include other teachers, principals, and children’s book writers. I highly recommend trying Twitter – it’s free, it’s short, and you can follow up interesting links when you have the time. I know I should probably be tweeting (or posting) but I haven’t taken that step yet. I just read what other people are tweeting about, and therefore have access to speeches, conferences, and book lists that I would never have heard about otherwise.

I’ve resisted joining Pinterest, but I know that many people have gotten some great ideas off of that website. And there are probably other websites containing great ideas – even YouTube has videos you can watch that show teachers trying different teaching strategies. I think it’s important to try new things out, both for the kids and for me as a teacher. Keeping things fresh keeps everyone more interested, and for me, professional reading is the gateway to what is new. Are there professional resources that you rely on? 

Socratic Circles

One of the best things about being a teacher is having other teachers to collaborate with. I’ve had the very great fortune of working with many teachers who have great ideas and are eager to share them and talk about ways to make those ideas even better. When I taught in a triad, I had fewer opportunities to work with someone teaching at my grade level, but for the past two years we’ve had a dyad at fourth grade, and I have my teaching partner who shares the same students as I do, and a teaching partner who teaches the ELA content that I do. It is great to have someone to talk content with, and my partner and I have been eagerly looking for ways to incorporate more reading strategies that match the Common Core Standards.

One strategy we are eager to try is using Socratic circles in the classroom. I ended up buying yet another professional book, Socratic Circles by Matt Copeland (Stenhouse), because I needed more information than I was getting from the various websites I was exploring. Copeland gears the book for middle and high schoolers, but I think with some direction, my fourth graders can benefit from this strategy. Socratic circles are basically a way of discussing text, but with only half the class.  They sit in the “inner circle.” The rest of the class is in the “outer circle”, observing the discussion and noting who is saying what, and thinking about the quality of the discussion. After a set amount of time (Copeland suggests ten minutes, but we think we’ll start with five) the class pauses. The outer circle is then asked for their evaluation of the discussion, and after that the groups switch positions. The new inner circle has their own discussion, with the new outer circle now evaluating the discussion. I’ve oversimplified this for the sake of quickly describing it, but I think it gives a basic idea of the way the circles work.

Why do this? Copeland and other people who have used Socratic circles cite the quality of the discussion. Students need to come to the circle with a text they’ve looked over and possibly annotated, ready to dig deeper into the meaning of that text. In many ways, that’s what close reading is asking students to do as well, but this is in a discussion format, instead of strictly written. Speaking in a group and having a discussion is part of the standards, so this is a good way to meet that standard.  Furthermore, learning to have a good discussion that sticks to the text and ideas, but doesn’t dissolve into name-calling, is a skill many people need to develop.

My partner and I are going to start with Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”, and use that as a fluency reading first. We’ll ask the students to mark words they don’t know, and to write down questions connected to places they are confused. Hopefully this will give them some springboards for discussion in our first Socratic circle. I’ll report back here after we try it, and let you know how it goes.  Our classes are somewhat different in their makeup, and it will be interesting to see what difference that makes in the discussions our students have. Has anyone else tried these? Any suggestions for texts, or strategies for managing the circles? In the meantime, I’ll be reading Copeland’s book closely for his recommendations, and in a week or so, after our break, I’ll be jumping in to Socratic circles!

Reading Choice

In Friday’s edition of the Star Tribune, there was an article entitled “For A in empathy, read Chekhov.”  I mention this because we’re at the point in the school year where I’m starting to look more closely at what my students are selecting for their independent reading, and like usual, I’m a bit nervous.  It isn’t that my students aren’t reading during their independent choice time – they are.  The graphic novels in particular are flying off my shelves, and students are taking home those books all the time from my classroom library.  And I’m happy about that – I really am.  But in terms of difficulty or complexity, few students are choosing chapter books that are what I think of as fourth grade level chapter books.  Some are happy reading Magic Treehouse or Horrible Harry, but nobody is picking up Bud, Not Buddy or other more “classic” children’s books.  I’m not even sure if “classic” is the right word, since adult classics all seem to be hundreds of years old and are often difficult to get through, but I’m talking about more literary books that don’t have cartoony characters on the cover. I know many of those are really higher grade books, but the Star Trib article made me think about getting my students ready for those more challenging books.  Even reading books with more text and fewer pictures is daunting for some of my more struggling readers, and their guided reading books usually have quite a few picture supports. 

But at some point, students need to be preparing for more text and fewer pictures, especially in fiction. I hesitate to even bring up testing, but the state tests have very few pictures unless it’s a nonfiction passage that includes a graph.  Students have groaned when they see a whole page of text, so a whole chapter book that has page after page of text with no pictures isn’t at all appealing to them. I wrestle with how much choice I need to give, when I know that they need to build up reading stamina, and that reading longer books will also challenge their vocabularies and broaden their reading experiences.

 It’s at this point in the year where I break out some chapter books in a variety of levels, and give some quick book talks.  I then ask students to choose their top three, and I sort through and assign them a book to read.  I’ve had success with this because there is some choice involved, although I will put students in books that best fit their reading level rather than let them struggle (if their first choice is a book I know will be too much for them).  I then require the students to read a third of the book each week, and I put their section pages up on the board so they know how many pages they need to read each week.  I do have them fill out a short response sheet that asks about setting, characters, problem, solution, etc… but it doesn’t take too long to complete.  I try to meet with all the kids reading that book each week, so I can assess whether or not they’re understanding, but it isn’t like a full-fledged lit circle (although it certainly could evolve that way).  For some students who truly have a hard time choosing a book, having an assigned book helps them out, and for some students, this is the only way they will finish a book.  I have rarely had a student tell me they didn’t like the book they picked, but when it happens, I have always let those students read something else.

My selections are what I consider to be good children’s literature, and it makes me wonder if the aforementioned study that showed that reading literary fiction instead of popular fiction builds empathy also applies to children’s lit. At the very least, it gives kids exposure to writing styles they may not be getting with some of the more popular but casual styles of children’s books. And I’m all for reading those – I myself read a wide variety of material, some more high-brow than others. All of it helps our kids as readers.  Still, I want my students to have exposure to books they might not pick up unless their teacher assigns them; much of the time, they really like what they read, so I know it wasn’t a tortuous experiment.  How much choice do you give your students in selecting what they read independently?

Here's a link to the Star Tribune article: www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/226396821.html

Building Vocabulary - Take 1

Vocabulary building is huge – ask any reading specialist. They will tell you that the bigger the person’s vocabulary, the easier reading (and probably all other subjects) is and the better the person’s comprehension. If you’ve ever tried to read anything technical without having the vocabulary background, you know this is true. My daughter is playing rugby in college this year, and reading an account of one of her games is like experiencing a new language, except I can read all words – I just don’t know what they mean. And I’m fortunate this year to again be working with ELL students, who experience that disconnect on a daily basis. So I’m once again thinking a lot about how to build up all students’ vocabularies, so that everyone can be more successful in school.

There’s no doubt that most of us learn most of our new words through reading. We rarely stop to look most of them up, but instead use context clues to help us make sense of the words. If I come across something new enough times, I may look it up, but otherwise reading broadly across multiple genres will give me (and my students) exposure to many words, both words directly connected to a subject, and other, more commonly used words. So like most teachers, I try to provide lots of reading opportunities with a variety of sources.

I also try to foster word consciousness – getting students to be more aware of words, particularly ones they haven’t seen, or ones they find interesting. One way I’ve done this is just a poster where we can write these words. I ask that the students notice interesting words in their reading, write them on a post-it, and then give it to me to approve before writing their words up on the poster. I didn’t do this last year, and we got some words that were either commonly known, or were names that didn’t really help us either. I’m hoping a little more oversight on my part will raise the quality of this activity.

Another related activity is putting up a long strip of adding machine tape, and asking students to add content-related words. The caveat is that they can’t repeat any words, so they have to read what is already written down before adding their words. I’ve done this particularly with social studies units, and students are often very eager to add something new. I think it would work great with science or math units as well, and it encourages students to be aware of the technical words connected with their studies.

The last activity I’ll mention is using alphaboxes. I first saw these in Linda Hoyt’s book Reflect, Revisit, Retell , and if you Google alphaboxes, you can find templates. I use these most with nonfiction, especially in guided reading groups, but you could certainly use them for fiction as well. Students add words to the boxes (one box per alphabet letter, with space for several words) that they think are important to what they are reading about. I only tell them that they need to be able to justify why they added each word if I were to ask. 

At the end of the book or article, I may ask them to pick 5 words off the sheet and tell why they are important to the subject, or pick 10 words and use them as part of a summary. Students are then held accountable for learning the meanings, not just aimlessly writing them down.

I would love to hear what other people do to build vocabulary with their students.  Even if your students aren’t learning English as a second language, a bigger, richer vocabulary can only help them in reading and in life.

Blogging with Students

I’ve just finished setting up my class list in KidBlog, and I’m eager to get going with my classes on their class blogs. I’ve had class blogs for the last three years, and each year I get a little better about using them effectively. There are a variety of different blog sites you can use, but KidBlog is designed for teachers, I’ve had good success using that site, and best of all, it’s free!

What can you use a class blog for? I think it is a great way for kids to see how writing can be something powerful and useful in their every day lives. Last year we wrote fables, and then I had the students type them into their blogs. Each student was then asked to read at least two other fables and respond to them. We talked about writing comments, and what kinds of things really made a comment helpful. Comments like “I like this” are nice, but it’s much more powerful to write something like “I liked how you made the tiger show the mouse how he really felt”. We practiced a bit beforehand with comment writing, and it substantially improved the quality of comments. Some teachers will have students do some “paper blogging”, and I’m going to try that this year as well. We’ve been writing poems, and I’m going to have students pick one they really like, copy it out in their best handwriting, and put them around the class. We’ll discuss commenting, and then I’ll turn the students loose with at least three post its.  They will need to read at least three poems and write out three comments that specifically notice something the writer did. If they say “I like this”, they will then need to explain why.

After doing this activity, I will introduce the blogs on the computer. I think I’m going to have them type that poem or another one in as their first post, and we’ll repeat the comments activity. Later in the year, I will ask them to type in other forms of writing we do in class, in addition to letting students choose what their topics will be.

I set the privacy settings to just our class having access; nobody else can read the posts. I also choose the setting that lets me look over the posts and comments before they get published. This is a bit time-consuming on my end, but I’ve learned the hard way that if I don’t moderate it, someone is going to write something that is inappropriate, and everyone will see it before I do. I’ve also included my partner teacher (who teaches math/science) and our Talent Development teacher on the list, so they can post questions for students to respond to as well.  Students can access the KidBlog website through a link on my classroom webpage, so they can blog whenever they like, not just at school. Some kids love to write about all kinds of things, while others will just post when asked to in class.

If you haven’t considered having a class blog, it might be something you want to try this year. It gives students an authentic writing platform, and in today’s social media world, learning how to write helpful comments can’t hurt. 

Fluency

Many studies have shown that increased fluency has a direct effect on comprehension, so getting students to increase their fluency is definitely a goal of mine. Repeated reading is an easy way to increase speed, word recognition, and add expression, but as usual, the question is how to work that in to an already packed day. Many teachers (and students) like using Reader's Theater to get in that repeated practice, and I enjoy using those scripts, too, but I find it hard to work those in all the time.  My solution has been to send home the fluency practice.

Each week, on the back of their word work homework, I put a short passage for the students to read at home. I alternate between fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and I almost always connect it to something we have been doing in class. The passages are pretty short, and I encourage families to modify the length more if their child can't manage the length of the passage due to reading difficulties.  In some cases, I might send home an easier text altogether. The students are asked to read the passage five out of the seven days that they have it, and then return it to school.  I give them up to five points, which I record to use as a homework grade.

So does it work?  Well, at the beginning of the school year, I have each student do a one minute fluency reading in a fourth grade level passage. I do a running record as they read, and get an initial words per minute rate. I try very hard not to dwell on the numbers with the kids, but I do tell them I have a goal for them to be reading at least 125 words per minute by the end of the year. Those who are already at that rate get a higher goal. Then I will listen to them read in guided reading, and discuss phrasing and expression, but won't do another timed reading until the end of each trimester.  It is then that the kids can see their improvement, as I use the same text that I used at the start of the year. I know it isn't a cold reading, but they don't remember it well, either, and I like seeing how the running record changes, as well as the reading rate. I have had students literally double the number of words read per minute over the course of the year, and I attribute much of that to their daily fluency practice.  On the other hand, the kids who don't do the practice tend to see much smaller gains in their overall fluency.

I think that parents tend to like the practice, too, as they have commented to me that there is a marked difference from the first day their child reads, to the last. And by having the fluency passages be connected to our classwork, they can ask their child how the story ends, or something about social studies or science.  I have used  part of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech in January, and the Gettysburg Address in February.  I like using some of the more classic poems, like Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, too. There may be some memorization as the week goes on, but I like being able to refer back to some of these readings, and the kids will start reciting them to me.
Weekly fluency practice is an easy thing to get ready, and the payoff for me and my students has been huge.

Word Work

If I had to go back to college again, which I wouldn’t mind doing, one area I would love to take classes in would be linguistics. I love words and studying words and their origins – it just makes my geeky self pretty happy. Luckily, I can indulge this geeky interest in the classroom through word work.  I know in the Common Core (for fourth grade, it’s standard 4.3.0.3 – and yes, I had to look it up) students are expected to use morphology, including roots and affixes, to help with determining word meanings.  But how best to do this?

Over the years, I’ve developed what I call word work.  I don’t think it is anything original, and there are certainly many activities you can do that would be considered word work, but here is what mine looks like.

Each week I introduce two prefixes or suffixes. I start with some pretty basic ones early in the year, and then move into some that may be a bit less common, or would be considered more of a word part (like auto-) rather than a prefix. The first day, I have the students get out their dictionaries and look up the prefix or suffix. This is about the only dictionary work I do during the week, but at least they are getting a little practice. I have them write the definition down in their word work section of their writing notebook. I also hand out a take-home work sheet asking them to find one word for each of the affixes that we’re doing that week, write a sentence with that word showing what it means, and then I leave a small space for a sketch of the word. They have a week to get this done.

The following days I spend about five minutes going over two examples of each word part being used in a word. For example, this week we’re going over pre- and tri-, and I will do preview and predict, triangle and tricycle on the first day of words. I have the kids write the words in their notebooks underneath the definition of the word parts. Then I draw a sketch of the word, and encourage the kids to do the same. Over the years, I’ve developed a cartoony cast of characters that I use to illustrate the words, and that seems to help draw the students in as they wait to find out what is going to happen with Fred and Susie. (It also entertains me, which is a plus!)

By the end of a five-day cycle, students will have eight words each (sixteen total) that are examples of these prefixes and suffixes. For students who don’t have a dictionary or help at home, they have a bunch of words they can choose from in their notebooks.

It takes a while, but what I’ve observed is after a few weeks of doing this, students start to notice when a word has a prefix or a suffix that we’ve studied. I give them “Quist points” for noticing (the points don’t really go towards anything, but I tell them to keep track of them and they’ll get something great at the end of the year, which luckily nobody seems to remember). Many researchers will tell you that one way to increase your vocabulary is to learn Greek and Latin roots, and as we learn more throughout the year, I will have kids predict what they think a word means, based on what we’ve learned in the past.  I’ve even experienced this myself when I’ve come across words I didn’t know, but they had an affix whose meaning I remembered. It’s possible to be remarkably accurate in predicting meaning with that information. And finally, when kids are asked about Greek or Latin roots on the MAP test, I’ve found they now know what the question is asking them about. 

I’d be happy to share my worksheet and word lists with anyone who is interested in trying this in his or her classroom. The best part is it really doesn’t take that much time, and you get a big payoff with word recognition. Happy word work!