Reading Groups and Analysis

I love reading groups. I've professed that love before. Kids enjoy getting together with their peers to talk about virtually anything, books included. At the tail end of last week I had a few great experiences with my kids participating in their novel study groups.

The first instance involved a kid changing his mind about a book. I asked the group, "So what do you think of the book so far?" The reviews were largely mixed, and very tepid. That was until one of the kids said "I really like it now. It is like a mystery where your brain needs to solve the puzzle." This brought on a conversation where he was helping kids clarify some of the puzzle in the book "Chasing Vermeer." Everyone got into it, and was really invested in moving the conversation forward.

Later in the day I had some kids discussing the Phantom Tollbooth. They ran their group, which is difficult for a book where you are attempting to follow the myriad of plays on words. They were going over how Milo was going to get rhyme and reason back together, and escape many of the conundrums he found himself in. "Why didn't the 'Which' push the button to leave the dungeon?" bringing out a larger discussion about the meaning of "which" and the choices in the story.

The most difficult part of groups is trusting peers. You can talk about ideas, but trusting to put them on paper is tough. I had kids working on a problem solving and character analysis sheet, which they were to bring to their groups. It was interesting seeing kids reluctant to really discuss the rationale for why characters acted a particular way, or what actions said about a character. Some really took to it- "Holling standing up to the bullies show that he is maturing. Earlier in the story he would have complained about them, but now he is doing something. I bet it will help him stand up to his father.." Others really struggled in the discussion. It signals a need to keep building trust, as well as ways to converse with each other. It might also signal a need to really peel apart the layers of how characters act. How do character actions speak to who they are (or aren't)? That is what I want us to get at, and it is the hardest work done while reading.

The Gap Between Recognition and Implementation

Perhaps the best part of my first year of teaching was getting to observe in the classrooms of far more experienced teachers. In particular, one visit was incredibly powerful. The class had been reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle as a class novel/literature study. One of the things that they did was use Activotes ("clickers" if you will) to have students voice their opinion. From there students would offer why they made their choice, and debate their respective reasoning.

I walked away with a vision of my own. I wanted to kids to have discussions about books, but also to write about books. I also wanted to have them talking about ideas, and debating. What did I do? I modeled responses to literature ("What is one word to describe the character?", "What is the problem in the story and how do you think the main character will resolve it?") along with some basic criteria for "is it good enough." This gave students a baseline for whether the response that is at standard.

Since last year I've had kids scoring responses on a 4 through 1 scale. The point is to uncover "good enough" looks like. We'll look at a few different responses modeled after student work past and present, and score them. We did this last week and the discussions kids were having were fantastic... When you hear kids say "That response referenced the text, and explained why they chose strong to describe the men.." you feel really good because they are getting it. The issue I ran into was that not all kids were making the leap when it came to their own responses.

Why was that? Part of it was because of the way I crafted the questions for their novel study books. When you don't necessarily provide multiple avenues for kids to travel down then you won't get the quality you're looking for. That was one reason. Another connected to stamina. Writing a quick couple of sentences gets you just above the threshold, and is "enough." This was an instance where I gave feedback to almost all in order to have them improve. Most knew that they could add more, and simply needed direction. More of the same is planned for this week. Should be fun.

Social Studies/Reading Notebooks

When I started two years ago my team was hoping we would integrate social studies and reading together. In effect, I'd teach a major of reading through the social studies content with some use of our reading textbook (as a supplement). At that time we had just adopted a new set of social studies materials, which conveniently came with a student journal. There were some elements of the journal, and I used them often, but there were quite a few pages I opted not to use for one reason or another.

This year we are going into our second year without the student journal that accompanies the material set. While we still have access to the pages (in pdf form), I've moved to tailoring my journals to the reading instruction I'm doing (the pages are more content based instead). Last year's experiment was largely successful. I would write questions aimed at strategies I was teaching, or at content I hoped kids to uncover. The questions were glued into student journals, and they'd respond below the question strip. This cut down on paper usage, but monitoring journals was a monster pain. Additionally this didn't account for any of the reading work (fiction/non-social studies) we were doing.

As I've been going through Guiding Readers I realized I need to better organize the student journals. The first full page is going to be their table of contents where we'll log each entry. I'll model this with my own journal under the document camera. A sample might look something like:

• 9/19 p. 1 The Hunger Games response


• 9/20 p. 1 Hunger Games response/S.S 1.2-3 Questions


• 9/21 p. 2 Catching Fire response/S.S 1.3 Questions

With each day they will write a minimum of a few sentences about what they are reading. Beyond modelling this at the start of the year, I will also have a few options for students to chose from in writing about their book- summarize what they read, describe a character, analyze a character's actions, etc... Students will have choice over time, but we'll start with more structure and guidance as part of the gradual release process. To help the monitoring process I'll collect journals every week (or every third week since I have 3 groups... that part isn't fleshed out yet) to give feedback. I can look through journals to see what kids are saying, and how they are interpreting text. I might also have the journals as a way for kids to keep a record so that they can create a written response in our online blackboard-esque system at the end of the week (alleviating some of the legwork with journals on my end). This will also start to simulate more dialogue about books. The prospect of having a written dialogue is exciting for me, and one that I want to move in the direction of.

Organizing My Week

I have yet to find an order to my week that is to my liking. That statement was true until earlier today. To digress, one area I have been looking to hone in is how I organize my reading instruction. Previously it has been a hodgepodge of social studies instruction, literature circles, and word study.

I've used the non-fiction in social studies as my vehicle for reading strategies, and it has worked out ok. Literature circles came about as I said "oh goodness (perhaps another nasty word substituted there) fiction is a gaping hole! how can that be?!" The literature circles were an attempt to get kids reading fiction in a more holistic manner, as the 5th grade reader only presents part of books... and how do you really understand what an author is doing when you don't see the beginning, middle, and end? Word study was another "oh goodness..." sort of remark, since word derivations are a 5th grade standard (get it, derived?! word study joke!).

Looking at Guiding Readers today, I came to the realization that I have a basic structure already in place. My challenge is sticking to it, and picking out the most important pieces. What does that structure look like?

• Monday: Reader's Workshop- 5 to 10 minute mini-lesson; 50 minutes with guided reading groups, and including some reading response work towards the end.


• Tuesday: Social Studies- content and strategy work; critical thinking and response; writing with some use of Units of Study


• Wednesday: Word Work Wednesday- depends on the focus, but it has largely amounted to work with prefixes, suffixes, latin/greek roots, that sort of thing.


• Thursday: Social Studies- content and strategy work; critical thinking and response; writing with some use of Units of Study


• Friday: Social Studies- content and strategy work; critical thinking and response; writing with some use of Units of Study

Now in the Social Studies time the overall breakdown is 15 minutes of Independent/Guided Reading, and 40-45 minutes of content. That allows me to continue to work with readers and give them specific instruction tailored to their reading needs.

A few other things have become apparent. First is that I need to have kids organize their Social Studies journal. My plan is to use is as a reading/social studies journal, with kids keeping track of their work in a table of contents. This is already done in science, so it will be a continuation of that practice. I'll also be able to track their progress with kids leaving their journals for me to check periodically. The second piece is that I will need to be flexible in my use of that Friday time, allowing for kids to meet face to face with their literature circle group. I hope to pair this with the online component where they'll be blogging and message boarding. Organization will be key, particularly for me. The earlier I hone my process for the kids, the smoother this will go. The end should be more strategic instruction, and increased learning... or so I hope.

Ways to Spend Your Time

Spring Break is here. It is half over, but it feels great. How do I fill the time?

• Read kids books. Already done with Moon Over Manifest (2011 Newbery Award Winner), and the Westing Game (also a Newbery Winner). Currently in the midst of Catching Fire (Hunger Games book 2) and purchased Heart of a Samurai, and Mockingjay.


• I run. Lots. Aiming for 90+ miles this week, which is great considering I was sick last week.


• I plan my coming weeks.


• I think big picture about instruction...

Questions I'm working over, but will address in another post...

• In what ways can I mesh the Literary Essays book of the Units of Study for Writing with my current novel study structure? So many good things in there that I do, but in a different way. How can I reinvent what I already do to be more impactful?


• How can I better utilize the end of my day? I'd virtually given up on read aloud because of where it fit. My writing instruction also hasn't been what I had envisioned either. Not coincidentally, both were/are in the last 75 minutes of my day.


• What technology tools can I leverage to do quick checks of reading comprehension? Is it google docs with a quick form? Is it using my district dropbox? I wasn't too thrilled with the latter, but that could have been my setup not the implementation.


• What quick assessments can I use to monitor skills, and better adjust my instruction? This dovetails on yesterday's posts where I want some quicker checks that I can put into a spreadsheet to help track how kids are doing on particular skills in order to ensure timely feedback. I do this... but without the papertrail that I want (or need).

Discuss Amongst Yourselves

One of the things I really want to do is get kids having a variety of discussions. Kids need to talk to each other, arguing their points of views at times. They aren't vessels to be filled with knowledge by me, as I'm certainly filled with a variety of faults of my own. Instead I want them to exercise far more abstract skills, like analysis, prediction, and evaluation. If you can take information and use it appropriately (leveraged if you will) for the purpose of your argument, then I am definitely doing my job.

A comment earlier mentioned how technology had largely been used for a test taking purpose. I have an Interactive Whiteboard. I could teach without it, but am fortunate to have it. One of the tools that come with my Activboard is an Activote. In short, it is a device that is shaped like an egg, and can transmit voting information to your IWB. You can use it to do an informal comprehension check. You can use it for more formal assessments. You can simply use it for opinions.

Last year in my first year, I was fortunate to observe in a few different classrooms. One in particular had been doing some novel study around the book "True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle." With that, she had a variety of opinion questions that students responded to. The whole group discussion was one of the more powerful things I've seen. Everyone participated in voting with each question. But the teacher then acted as moderator as kids debated responses, agreeing and disagreeing with each other. Kids were able to respectfully disagree with each other, pointing out ways that each other's arguments were flawed. It was a fantastic way to see kids interacting and learning together. There was incredible power in seeing kids talk together, and seeing a myriad of kids participating. I can't emphasize how useful the activote was in that discussion, as kids were inspired to act based on the results- seeing it as vindication (or a challenge) to/for their argument.

When It Goes Well

One of my goals for the year is to have students leading discussions analyzing text. Today was one of those days where I could see the goal coming to life. We were evaluating our own responses to literature, and deciding whether they were above, at, below, or well below standard. I started to reviewing our purpose for literature response (done largely through our Fact/Question/Response FQR sheets). We talked about the need to make clear connections, give examples and detail, while also having clear and complete sentences.

I took 5 different student responses, unedited, and typed them into my flipchart. I read them orally, with kids following along, and then had them use their Activotes to evaluate them (for those unfamiliar with Activotes, they are voting devices connected to the Interactive Whiteboard we have-Activboard). After letting kids see the results visually (30% say 3, 40% say 2, etc) I had students discuss what they chose with their table group (usually shoulder partner) and then I had students from one of the voting blocs start off why they voted that way. From there I asked for students who disagreed with that point of view, and we continued going back and forth for 3-5+ minutes before moving onward to another response.

The result was fantastic. The buzz in the room during the table group discussion was lively, even from reluctant readers/speakers. Kids were pointing at the board to talk about their responses, using language from our stated purpose. When we moved into whole group discussion a variety of kids participated, and they were talking to each other respectfully. Best of all was the content of their discussion, as kids used language like: "I disagree with you about there not being a connection. It says 'it reminds me' in the first sentence, which shows the connection they are making" or "...not having complete sentences made it hard for me to understand it."

Some days go really well... today was one of those days.

Response!

In my limited time as a teacher, reading response seems to be a literacy skill that is lagging behind for my kiddos. For me, reading response is interacting with the text by writing connections you've made to particular pieces of text evidence. You might compare your own experience to a character and explain why. You might also discuss why you feel like you are similar/different compared to a character. I use it in my novel study FQR (fact/question/response) work, giving kids a menu of questions to choose from and respond to.

My kids can verbally make connections. Most kids can verbally make connections, most commonly done through a "one time I..." type of story. When it comes time to turn those stories into writing, I've seen them fall flat. To stem that tide, I used some student work as my basis for modeling responses. A few had made giant run-on sentences, while others responded to BOTH questions with simple one sentence responses. Neither were in the ballpark of what I was looking for, largely because it lacked any deep reflection or connection to the reading.

With my first two groups I opted to let them start on the response section with some support from me (and modeling). But as we went I pulled pieces under the document camera for the whole group to see, opting for that route instead of 18 mini-lessons or conferences in each group. This involved my own writing and connection- and the change was great. Most really got it as it was intended while a few others will need more support. The last group I went ahead and adjusted ahead, opting for my guided work and support throughout the process. Based on their writing previously, I determined that letting them float along wouldn't be prudent (particularly with the information gathered from my first two groups). The hope is that this pays dividends later when we start our novel study work.