Author: jenandhannah

See what the ILEC has to say about reading reform across America: https://radicalscholarship.com/2023/07/28/ilec-response-reading-reform-across-america-the-albert-shanker-institute-july-2023-susan-neuman-esther-quintero-and-kayla-reist/

The room is quiet. The students are settled in their spots with their books. You sit down next to a child, clipboard in your hand, ready to confer. “How’s it going?” you ask. The child tells you all about their book and their  thinking, and suddenly, you panic. 

You realize that you do not know how to respond.

Teachers often ask us to work with them on conferring. We cherish the opportunity to focus on one student at a time, yet we are not sure what to do with that time. We know that students thrive with individual teaching. So what makes conferring so challenging?

Let’s start with the myth.

The myth is that in the moment, I can notice what the student is doing, reread my previous conferring notes and mentally review everything I know about the student, recall every strategy I know, and I can name the perfect strategy and have the perfect way to teach it. The student will then practice the strategy independently, with no further teaching. 

Now, let’s be real.

The reality is that I take time to prepare for each conference, just as I would a mini lesson or a small group. To prepare for conferring during Independent Reading, I reread my conferring notes and look at what I have already taught. I review the latest running record. I list a number of possible next steps. I might have a book ready to teach a new strategy. In the moment, I am listening to the student read and talk. Because I am prepared, I can be responsive. I know that I need to check back with a student 10 minutes after the conference and again the next day to assess whether they understand the strategy or whether they need more support.

Conferring is magic. The magic is in preparation and clarity.

How can your preparation make reading conferences magical for your students?

How can we help?

Here is our newest blog on Reading Recovery!

Don’t forget to come to register for LitCon and come to our presentation on Monday, January 30 at 2:40pm.

I am forever on my way”

Maxine Greene

Embracing the possibilities inherent in being a teacher means embracing our roles as professionals committed to learning and growing alongside our students and colleagues.   

As we start back to school in January, we are thinking about our commitment to our own practice, to the teachers with whom we collaborate and the students with whom we are privileged to spend time. Based on what we have learned and experienced this past year, we are committed to:

As you head back to your classroom, what are your commitments?  How can you forever be on your way in 2023?  Here is some inspiration  from teachers with whom we work:

• I commit to focusing on where my students are right now, instead of panicking about where they are supposed to be.
• I commit to scheduling literacy instruction across a week.  No more trying to cram everything into one day.
• I commit to taking an asset-minded approach to my students.  
• I commit to letting go of practices. No more holding on out of nostalgia.
• I commit to laughing with my students every day.

Teaching is a hard and serious job. And it is also joyful, exciting and fun. When we are having a bad day, it helps to remind ourselves of why we decided to become teachers in the first place. We can, for a moment, put aside test scores and teaching points. We can devote time to simply connecting with students. We can ask the students to select a favorite book, and read it aloud and laugh together. We commit to centering joy in the classroom.

What do you want to commit to for the rest of this 2023 school year? 

How can we support you?

Please share below in the comments!

There is a plethora of research (Duke, 2019) on the effectiveness of  small group instruction. Typically, we think of small groups as being based on the skills students need to work on. These are groups that typically focus on the work of reading.  We pour over our conferring notes, notice that there are students who are still retelling the entire book, and design a series of lessons on summarizing chapters. Or, our analysis of running record data shows that there are students who routinely ignore punctuation, and we prepare a series of lessons on fluency and why punctuation matters. These groups are an efficient way to reach multiple students, and students enjoy working together.  Most of us are familiar with these sorts of small groups and are already implementing them effectively.

What if we built on what we knew about the effectiveness of small groups and widened our vision of what small groups could address? What if we took all that we know about teaching readers and designed small groups on aspects of being a reader, such self-efficacy, agency, and book choice? 

So when we think about the reasons we gather students together with this expanded notion of teaching reading and readers in mind, new possibilities for teaching open up.  Here are some groups focused on the work of readers that teachers have tried so far this year:

• What are different ways that readers choose books?
• What do readers do when they get stuck?
• Why do we read? What are different purposes for reading?
• How can I get back into the book when I have forgotten what is happening?
• How do I keep my brain in the book for a long time? What do I do when I get distracted?
• How do I balance reading and writing about a book?
• How do I try a new genre?

These groups thrive when we use a combination of inquiry and explicit teaching. Using inquiry as an entry point for the work of the group is a powerful way to intentionally start from a place of strength and provide time for students to share these ideas with others.  

Here are three ways groups could go:

You might begin with a general question to frame the work:

Teacher: What are the different ways you already have to pick books?

Student: I swap books with my reading partner because we like the same things. 

Student: I read all the books in a series.

Student: I sometimes pick books written by the author of a read aloud I liked.

Teacher: These are great! Let’s get them down in a chart. We can work together to build from there…  

You might begin by acknowledging what the students are already doing and teaching a new strategy:

Teacher: You have lots of different ways that you go about picking books. You often think about your favorite genre and your favorite series. Here is something else you can do. Think about the kinds of characters you like and find other books that have those kinds of characters. For example, Fatima likes strong female characters who do not act the way that girls are “supposed” to act. She found a lot of books with these kinds of characters. 

Finally, you might begin by inviting students to share their challenges, a move that also serves to implicitly teach students that sometimes the work of readers does not go smoothly.  

Teacher: As a reader, sometimes I find that I’m in a slump.  I go to the library or the bookstore and nothing looks good…I just don’t know what book to pick up. Does that ever happen to you?  Let’s talk about that a little bit to try to find out what is getting in the way…

Implementing small groups about the work of readers can also be an opportunity for students to reflect on their own identity as readers and use these reflections to make agentive choices.  Instead of putting students in  groups, you could introduce the topics to the entire class and invite students to sign up for a group that they feel would be relevant to their needs as readers.

How are you using small group instruction to teach readers, not just reading?

Reference: Turn Small Reading Groups into Big Wins by Nell K. Duke and Laura Varlas

Growing Readers, Growing Reading.

Read Part 2 of our blog on Reading Recovery to find out more!

How do we teach readers and reading?

Read our new blog on Reading Recovery to find out more!

As students are reading for longer stretches of time, and you have done more
assessments, you are probably preparing to start small group instruction. One of
the most common wonderings we hear is this:
“During Independent Reading, should I be doing small group work or conferring?
I value one on one conferring, but small group work seems more efficient.”

We get it. Here are some thoughts about the why you should continue to confer.

Focusing exclusively on small groups during Independent Reading sends an
unintended message.

If we are not sitting on the rug next to students as they read, we are
inadvertently sending a message that the work they are doing during
Independent Reading is not meaningful. This can lead to students being compliant
or becoming disengaged. Students do not magically know how to stay focused for
long periods of time; when we are physically present and actively teaching
students, they are more likely to make progress and find reading joyful.

Conferring gives us a window into students’ strengths.
You may be in the habit of using conferences to “check in.” Reflect on what
that means. It takes the same amount of time to just check in as it does to have a
strength-based conference. Ask a reader:

• “How’s it going?”
• “What is going well for you?”
• “ Can you read to me or tell me about a favorite book or page?”

Follow up by naming a strength:

• “Right now, you are the kind of reader who…”
• “I noticed that when you read, you…”

Readers will smile, sit up a little taller, and read for longer when you tell
them what they are doing well. This is data that helps us imagine next steps
for them.

Conferring allows us to avoid making assumptions.

In a first grade classroom, the students were using reading mats to keep
track of which books they had read. A quick glance around the room showed that
all the students had stacked the books on the green side and were moving them
over to the red side. One reader, however, had spread out all of her books in front
of her. “I really like animals, so I picked all animal books.” she explained. “Now I
am putting the books together by what kind of animal the book is about.” This
child had made her own text set and had a purpose for spreading the books out.
She did not need the reading mat because she had a system that worked for her.
If we had not conferred with her, it would have been easy to assume that she
“wasn’t following directions.” Instead, we learned that she is intentional about
the order in which she reads her books.

Conferring gives us the opportunity to assess the impact of our teaching and be
responsive.
Independent Reading is the chance for students to apply mini lessons, as
well as strategies from the Read Aloud and Shared Reading. This transfer does not
happen automatically. We need to coach the students as they try a newly taught
strategy to their own reading. We can pay attention to:

• What patterns do we see across the class?
• Which students would benefit from more support?
• Which student could teach their partner how they used the strategy?

If we are not conferring, we do not know how much transfer is occurring.
And transfer is the goal.

Conferring includes conferring with partners.
In order to create productive reading partners, we need to explicitly teach
students how to work together. Sit down next to a partnership and watch what
are they doing. Tell them what they are doing well, and then model one way they
could make their partnership even stronger. For example, “I noticed that you took
turns reading the pages. Another thing that reading partners do is stop and talk
about every page.” For upper grades, model how partners can develop their ideas
together when they are reading the same book.

To be clear: small group instruction is a powerful method of instruction. (Stay
tuned for an upcoming blog post!) You may never find the perfect balance of conferring and group work. What you can do is be intentional when you confer so
that the feedback you give students is relevant and actionable. Trust conferring to
support all students during Independent Reading.

Choice is much more than simply picking a book to read for the next 20 minutes or the next week. By creating a choice-rich classroom environment, you are supporting students in cultivating an active reading life beyond the classroom. Sustaining a choice-rich classroom requires you  to have a tremendous amount of trust: trust in your students as readers, the alluring power of text, the learning that comes from mistakes and in yourself to support readers as they think through their choices.

As you begin to conduct running records to assess students’ independent and instructional levels, here are some thoughts:

False choice is not choice.  When Jen’s son was in kindergarten, she would often say, “blue pants or black pants?” when it came time to get dressed.  She gave him a false choice to speed up the process, letting him feel as if he had some control in the situation. ( Please note that “no pants” was not a choice as she  knew full well that that choice would be the winner.)  In the classroom, limiting a student to picking from only a certain basket is a false choice.

Choice is for all students.  Due to the logistics of the school schedule,  there are students who do not get Independent Reading in the classroom and who do not get to choose their books. They are “pulled out” during Independent Reading, and they are limited to reading what the teacher gives them. Meanwhile, students who are perceived as being “high” or “above grade level” are allowed the luxury of reading a wide range of texts. 

Choice is not something that has to be earned or is tied to a particular reading level. All students should have a say in what they want to read.

Choice means making mistakes.  As adults, we pick books in a variety of ways. We pour over book reviews and keep track of our favorite authors. We get recommendations from friends with similar tastes.  We grab a book from the library shelf because the cover attracts our attention. In all these cases, we sometimes find that a book keeps us up reading all night and sometimes we abandon a book after one chapter. Students do the same. Not every book they pick will be right for them. This does not mean that we should pick books for them. The experience of picking a book that is too long, too boring, or too confusing  is crucial because readers learn for themselves when reading feels right and what to do when it doesn’t.

Students deserve the opportunity and time to make those mistakes so that they can learn about themselves as readers.

Independent does not mean alone. You might have organized a schedule that allows one group of students to book shop on their own while you are working with another group of students. Although that might seem efficient, we suggest being actively involved in the classroom library. You might kidwatch to learn more about a student’s process of picking books. You might know that one student needs suggestions, and you have some books already ready for them. You might follow up on a conference with a student. And of course, students can recommend books to one another.

Choice means that we need to know the books in the library and we need  to be conferring around book choice.

We trust that students come to our classrooms already living their reading lives. At home, maybe they love to listen as family members tell stories. Maybe they have a bookshelf of their favorite books.  Perhaps they go to the library every week, or perhaps they have not had access to books over the summer. Maybe they spent the summer writing their own graphic novels, or maybe they love to draw pictures of their favorite characters. Perhaps they do not yet see themselves as readers, or perhaps they spend hours lost in books. We have the pleasure of inviting all of those reading identities into the classroom.

An invitation is a situation or action that tempts someone to do something or makes a particular outcome likely. As we start the school year, we consider:

•  How does our classroom environment tempt all students to read? 
• How does the classroom environment make it likely that all students will grow as readers? 

When you do your very first read aloud, show the students that you have an empty basket just waiting for that book. When you read aloud another book later that day and ask the students where to put it, they will likely suggest that you put it in the same basket and think about different  labels for the basket, such as  “Books our teacher reads to us” or “First Week of School Read Alouds.” Starting with day one, you are inviting the students to take ownership of the classroom library.

As soon as you learn about the students, you can honor their interests by finding books for them. Imagine spending the first week of school giving each student a book and saying, “Yesterday, you told me you really liked Dogman. This series is similar, and I thought you might like it.” or “You wrote a story about your dog yesterday, so I found some books about dogs for you.”  The students might decide to put these books in their personal collection of books to read, or they can figure out where that book goes in the library.

You can invite the students to build the classroom library with you. Put piles of books on the floor or the tables and ask the students to think about what books go together. With first graders, you might give them just a few books. With older students, you might give them more books. Eavesdrop on their conversations to learn about them as readers. The categories the students decide on are less important than the conversations they have.

How are you inviting your students into reading this year?