Reading and Choice

In my fantasy classroom, all students would be busy reading books they chose for themselves. These books would be at an appropriate reading level and would be genres that the students loved, but they would also happily read books in other genres, just to challenge themselves. Since it’s a fantasy, I will have the time to conference with every student AND get all guided reading groups done. Now before you fall off your chair laughing, I’ll tell you what I usually get each year.

My students who love to read can find books with little direction, but often tend to read one or two genres, just like I do in my own reading life. I know I need to work at broadening their selection, but on the whole, they are readers. And then there are the other students. Some will find books after lots of prodding, or I can interest them in graphic novels, and that will later lead to other novels. But the ones that make me crazy are the students who are always heading to the bathroom during independent reading, or constantly browsing in the book bins, and who change books daily. I know they are mostly fake reading, and I struggle each year to find titles that will engage them.

One solution I have tried with some success is giving students some “guided” choice. I pull out about six chapter book titles, trying to pick books with a variety of levels and topics. I then give short book talks and the kids write down their top three choices on a post-it. I will usually try to give kids their first choice if at all possible, but I will also make sure they are in a book that I know they can finish. I then divide the books into three segments (total number of pages divided by three). Each week the students are asked to read one segment, do some general responses, and then we’ll chat in a group about what they’ve read so far. I think this has worked well because it gives the wandering students a focus – they know how much they need to read and when it is due. They’ve had a little choice, so I’m not forcing them to read something they had no say in. And they actually finish a book, and they feel pride in that. 

However, this year, I’m going to try something even more directed. In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller requires her students to try and read 40 books during the school year, and in a variety of genres.  She lets the students know the number of books in a genre they need to read, and if they read a book over a certain number of pages, it counts for two books (so readers of long books aren’t penalized). I think some books will be picture books, so they will be shorter than chapter books, too. Even if the students don’t reach the goal of 40 books, they’ve still usually read way more than they read the year before.

This is a modification of her genre breakdown, but I think she would probably say you should make it work for you, so this is what I’m going to try:

Poetry anthologies: 2

Traditional Literature: 3

Realistic Fiction: 5

Historical Fiction: 3

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: 3

Informational: 10

Biography: 2

Graphic Novels: 2

Free Choice: 10

I need to make up a list so students can record their books, and I’m anxious to get this going and see if it makes a difference in my students’ reading lives. How do you manage reading choice in your classroom?

Written Conversations

Like teachers everywhere, I’m getting ready to go back to school.  While most of my thoughts these days are about the little things like nametags and book shelves, I know that once those early days pass, we can get going on more in-depth activities. So even though you may not be ready to think about more than getting your room ready right now, sometimes it’s nice to have a little something floating around that you’re looking forward to using in the near future.  And today, that little something is called Written Conversation.

I saw Written Conversations described in a great book called Content-Area Writing by Harvey Daniels, Steve Zemelman, and Nancy Steineke (look at the description here). It’s meant for grades 6-12, but many of their suggestions can be used in lower grades, and with all subject areas. I happen to love Written Conversations. In fact, I love it so much I don’t know why I don’t use it more often. It gives kids a chance to practice their writing, and to read what others have written and respond to it. As the teacher, you can see who is thinking and writing, and who isn’t. And another nice bonus is this activity is completely quiet. I don’t think quiet is important all the time, but it can sure be a nice change some days!

To begin with, you will need to pick some kind of text or even a picture that you want kids to think about and discuss. I’ve used poems, nonfiction selections, paintings, and photographs. That text or picture will be glued in the middle of a much bigger piece of paper; I usually just pull off pieces of bulletin board paper. Divide your class into groups of 4-6 students, and give each group a big piece of paper with the text on it. It helps to push desks together so the kids can walk around the paper. Each person in the group will also need something to write with.  I really like using markers, with each student writing in a different color. It is then very easy to see what each student has written.

Once everyone in the group is settled with a marker, I will either read the text out loud, or read a prompt for them to respond to. This is for the students who may not be as strong in their reading skills-I want them to be able to be responding right away instead of laboring over the text. Then I tell the students to write about the text. They can ask questions, tell what they think a particular line means, tell how it connects to them or something else they’ve read – but it all has to be done in writing. They can highlight the text, or underline parts they find confusing, and they can also begin to respond to what the others in the group are writing.  Many times students can clarify the questions that other students are writing about. They underline their proof in the text, or connect to something else they know about.  This may mean walking around the paper to find a spot to respond, which is fine.  However, I don’t let them wander over to another group’s work, and they can’t do any talking.

If things are slow at first, I will walk around and write questions to get the conversations going. The nice thing about doing this activity more than once is that kids get used to the format and it doesn’t take them as long to get started. I’ve had my quiet students tell me they really like this activity because their “voice” was finally heard – they didn’t have to wait for the chattier kids to stop talking. I will say that it is a challenging activity for kids who dislike writing, and it will be very apparent who has contributed a lot and who hasn’t when the activity is done.  But it’s a great record of everyone’s thinking, and the students and I love looking at all the comments when the activity is done. I know this year I plan to use Written Conversations more often!

Becoming a Book Whisperer

In early August, I had the very good fortune of taking a class with Donalyn Miller, the author of The Book Whisperer. Donalyn (I’m going to presume we would be on a first name basis with each other) has a new book coming out, called Reading in the Wild, and her class was geared towards helping teachers create an environment where all children are readers and where readers can flourish. I know I may not be able to implement every idea I heard about that day, but here are some things I’ve either tried or will try in starting out my new school year.

Just like teachers of writing should be writers themselves (hence my blog), teachers of reading need to be readers. This has luckily never been a problem for me, but once the year gets going, it’s harder to read as much or as often as I would like. My solution to this has been audio books.  I run in the mornings before school, and I wear a fanny pack with a portable CD player strapped to my waist. I know it isn’t pretty, but I “read” most of my children’s books this way.  At school, I have a “What is Mrs. Quist Reading” poster on the wall near my classroom door, and I print off a picture of the book cover as well as a short summary of the story. When there get to be too many of these papers on the wall, I three-hole punch them and put them in a binder for kids to look through when they need new book suggestions. Always having a book going allows me to tell kids about my own reading life so that they know I’m walking the walk with them.

This year I’m going to have the kids do the same thing. I’m going to laminate tags for their lockers that have space to record their current books. Hopefully other kids will read them as they pass by in the hallway, and get ideas for books to read from their peers.

Early in the year –either at open house or during the first days or weeks – I’ll have the kids wear name tags that say “Hello – I like to read about __________.” As they interact during the day, they’ll have a chance to make connections with other readers who share their same interests. At the very least, I’ll get some ideas for book suggestions for each student.

I’m also going to try a reading graffiti wall. This is a blank piece of paper where kids can write down their favorite lines from books.  I will have them show me what they’re going to write down first, as I can see this getting out of hand, but I really like the idea of building awareness of good writing by having students recognize it themselves. I plan to call my wall “Notable Quotables” because I’m a little worried that calling it “Reading Graffiti” might just inspire writing NOT connected to reading.

These are just a few ideas that I’m going to try on my way to becoming more of a book whisperer this year. I’ll post some more things that I try as the year gets underway. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to inspire more kids to love reading!

Close Reading

I took a number of professional development classes this week, and I’m happy to say that all of them were good. Of course, now my head is spinning with a lot of new information, book titles, and strategies to try in the classroom, but it’s a good kind of spinning.

One class I was particularly interested in attending was one on close reading. It seems to be the new “in” thing in education, and I have read a bit about it, but I was interested in delving deeper. Kari Ross, a reading specialist at the Minnesota State Department of Education, led the session, and gave us a good place to start learning. Much of her information is based on the work of Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, who have some good resources on their website. 

The gist of close reading is to get kids to struggle with text that is a bit above their reading level, using rereading and discussion to better understand what they are reading. Because of this, you wouldn’t want to use close reading all the time, as I think you would kill any enjoyment kids have in reading. But with a good choice of text, kids will have a chance to not only delve deeper into the meaning of the text, but to see how an author chooses words and text structure for maximum effect.

We used a short piece by Sandra Cisneros called “Salvador, Late or Early”, which would be a great choice to use in an upper elementary classroom (here is a link to a PDF ). Short text is key with close reading, as kids are going to be working with more challenging text than they may be used to reading.  Generally the teacher gives very little background information; the goal is that the kids do the work of uncovering the text. We began by reading the text with a pencil to annotate. We were asked to circle any powerful words or phrases that affected us, and to underline what confused us. After reading, we did a quick write about what our impressions were of Salvador.

Next, we chatted with a partner about our impressions. The discussion with others is important in close reading, as we want to see what others thought and why they had those thoughts.

The teacher does the next reading out loud. It’s a chance for kids to hear the text read by a fluent reader, and they may pick up something they missed the first time. The teacher then asks a series of text-dependent questions. Having students go back into the text to support their answers is critical. The teacher may start with questions designed to get at general understanding, but then moves to questions about text structure and vocabulary, such as “Why does the author use so many color words in this text?”  The last kinds of questions relate to author’s purpose or ask students to make inferences. Fisher and Frey have a nice Power Point on their web page about text-dependent questions that may be helpful for teachers wanting to try this.

It can be confusing to just read about how to do something, so if you’re interested in doing more with close reading, I’d recommend watching a couple of YouTube presentations of teachers doing close reading. It looks different in each classroom, but many of you have probably done aspects of this in your classroom for years.  I’m anxious to try it out and see how it goes!

Power Writing

Daily writing has been one of the staples of my classroom for the last couple of years, but sometimes I need to mix things up just to keep the kids (and me) interested. One thing my students have really enjoyed is Power Writing. I got this idea from Jeff Anderson’s book 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know, which you can preview online. 

Power Writing consists of giving kids a pair of words (like duck and pickle), telling kids they have to use at least one of the words in their writing, and then setting the timer for one minute. The kids have to write as many words in one minute as they can. They need to be in sentences, but that’s about all I require. After the timer goes off, the kids stop writing and draw a line underneath what they have written. Then they count up their words. On the white board, I draw a chart with three columns and ten rows.  The rows are labeled 0-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on (see picture below).  I stop at 91-100 because that’s virtually impossible to do, but maybe it will inspire someone. I ask the kids to raise their hand when we get to the number of words they wrote in a minute. I mark those on the chart, and then put up two new words.

This is repeated three times, and sometimes I have the kids add up all of their words just to see what they can do in three minutes. Some students who struggle with the daily five minute writing find they often write quite a few words during Power Writing, but students who are just slow writers, even when they're inspired, sometimes don't like the speed aspect, and I will give them a choice to just write freely instead of do Power Writing. Anderson suggests doing this several times a week to build writing fluency, but I find that it works better for me if it is once a week or once every two weeks. It takes longer than my regular daily writing, so it’s easier if it is a special thing we do. 

You could easily use words tied to curriculum content, but I find that since this is the first thing we do in our day, silly words are more fun to write about. I like anything goofy sounding, like "gargle", or strange animal words like "platypus." Some body part words are funny, like "nostril", but you'll want to be kind of careful about some other ones. And finally, at least in my fourth grade classes, any words that indicate that something could explode have been VERY popular. Play around with Power Writing and see if you notice more fluency in your writers!

Daily Writing

One of the things I wrestle with is how to get in more writing practice. There isn’t enough time to spend with mini-lessons and practice unless we’re working on a writing unit, but I want kids to be doing some kind of writing each day, with the idea that doing a little bit each day will make it easier when we need to do the longer projects.

So two years ago, I decided to start each class period with five minutes of writing. The kids would come in (I was teaching three sections of reading and writing that year), get out their notebooks, and get started. I told them to start out by writing three sentences, and that they could always do more. They could write about whatever they wanted - fiction, nonfiction, just something they were interested in.

This seemed to be working fine until I started looking more closely at what they were actually doing. I’m sure three-fourths of them were doing something helpful, but then I stopped at M’s desk and this is what she had written: “I like cats. I like mom. I like dad.” A grand total of nine words, and most of them were repeats. I looked at her and said, “Can’t you do a bit more?” And she gave me a smile and said, “You said we only had to write three sentences.” I smiled weakly back, and immediately started thinking about how to change things up so that this fourth grader would be pushed to do more.

The next day, the assignment changed from writing three sentences to writing at least twenty words. I didn’t care how many sentences, I just wanted twenty words in sentences (I had to make that clear when a few kids just wanted to write the shortest word they could find twenty times). This generally improved things, and from then on, I upped the word count by five each month, until we were at fifty words in five minutes.

Around March, when we began to do some test prep, I found out that nobody could remember what a metaphor or simile was, as we had covered all of that in September. I panicked a little, but then I decided to roll some of that practice into the daily writing. On Monday, their writing needed to include a simile, on Tuesday a metaphor, Wednesday alliteration, Thursday personification, and Friday onomatopoeia. I made sure I had some kids share out each day so we could hear examples of each.  That weekly practice did help solidify the meanings of figurative language for most students, and it got them to remember to use them in other kinds of writing.

Last year I started with fifteen words in September, and even the most reluctant writers could generally accomplish that in five minutes.  As soon as I had taught similes, etc…, I incorporated that as part of their daily writing, instead of waiting until March.  We increased the total by five words a month, and most kids were able to easily do that amount and more. Many enjoyed the ability to write about whatever they wanted, but I still struggled with those students who had to be prodded every single day to get started.

This year I will do the same thing, but as the year goes on I want to add some simple revision practice in there as well. I might tell them to try and start a sentence with a verb, or find a place where they can cross out a word and use a different word. In my head this should only take five minutes, but in reality it will probably be closer to ten. 

I think that short, daily practice will hopefully translate to the longer writing that we do. Are there daily writing strategies that you have been successful with?

Signposts in Fiction

I have a weakness for buying professional books, which I think publishers like Heinemann and Stenhouse can sniff out a mile away. I have a lovely collection of these books, and each year I vow not to buy any more. I never quite make that a reality, but I have gotten my buying down to one or two books per year, and the rest I try to read online. How can I do this, you may ask? The publishers will usually publish a chapter or two on-line, and sometimes you can read the whole book for free. That’s what I did with Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kyleen Beers and Robert E. Probst (Heinemann, 2013). http://www.heinemann.com/products/E04693.aspx

Close reading seems to be one of the new,  hot topics in reading, and I know next to nothing about what it entails, so I was happy to look through the sample chapters provided online.  Beers and Probst talk about reading a wide sample of grade level literature, and noticing some repeating patterns that writers use. They called them “signposts in fiction”, and I thought they were very helpful.  I typed them up for kids to glue into their reading notebooks, but I also had these signposts up on a flipchart everyday during our read aloud book. I tried to be aware of them as I read, so I could model how a reader might use these signposts to help them better understand the text.  Here they are, as copied right from Notice and Note:

1. Contrasts and Contradictions: Is the character suddenly doing something different from what we’ve come to expect? Ask why.

2. Aha Moment: When the character suddenly realizes something – what caused that realization?

3. Word to the Wise: Messages from older, wiser characters. What message are they giving?

4. Again and Again: What activities are repeated? Are there things characters say over and over? What is the author trying to tell you through these repetitions?

5. Memory Moment: When the character remembers something, what are they remembering? How does it help the story?

6. Tough Questions: When the character asks him- or herself questions about what they’re doing – it often reveals what their internal struggle is.

Using these signposts brought a new level to our reading discussions, and when I had kids independently use them in their own reading, I found their thinking being pushed as they tried to decide which signposts they were noticing, and how it helped their understanding of the book.

I’m taking a class in early August on close reading, so I will see how that adds to my understanding of the process, but I recommend trying out the signposts and seeing what you think!