Chapter 12: You Only Have So Much Time Feb/March Blog

Goodness!  I found my self saying, "Amen!" after every sentence at the beginning of the chapter.  The chapter started off by talking about how exhausted teachers are, feeling guilty for not getting things done and leaving early, and just not having enough time to get it all done!

Chapter 12 put things into perspective for me and made me thankful for the advice given by the author.  My favorite line from the article was, "Our students will not become better readers because we create fabulous projects and centers, give them lots of paperwork, and grade lots of papers.  They will become better readers if they receive excellent instruction and have lots of time to read and talk about books." The advice I will take back and put into action in my classroom is spend most of your time thinking, trust your own experiences to help you plan well, keep work meaningful, keep work simple, make every minute count, use all time spent with your students to teach and assess, make ongoing evaluation part of every literacy activity, reevaluate time blocks, and cultivate a love of learning.  There were many other sections that had valuable information to take back, but at this time I can only take back and implement so much!  Again, we only have so much time! :)

I also feel that sometimes we use time as an excuse or a clutch.  The chapter encouraged me to look at myself as I teach and how I use my time.  As a teacher, our time is very valuable and precious.  We need to make the most most of our time and make our teaching more meaningful for our students!  Our students are the reason we have a job or teach and it is time to make it the most for them!

Time is of the essence

Miller - Section 1 - Is There Enough Time? And Is Time Enough to Support Independent Reading?

This section was very insightful and sounded familiar to what the way I thought about independent reading before this school year. I have always known the importance of independent reading in the classroom. I have always understood that students need time to read to become better readers. Something that I learned from this is the productivity piece of independent reading. The insight that this text provided about what conferencing and working with students as they read independently can bring, really helped me to understand that the time is not just a quiet time in my classroom for students (and myself for that matter) to enjoy. Since reading this chapter, I have begun to use our independent reading time much more wisely. I have learned a lot about my students and their schema, as well as their comprehension. I have modeled during some conferencing to students that have misinterpreted or misunderstood the lesson that was taught. For example, inferencing is a difficult skill to master. A student and I were conferencing and as the student read, they told me that they had an inference. Their inference was more of recall, so I was able to work with that student specifically on the skill for that week. I really look forward to this time in my classroom each day. 

Amanda Justice  Jan/Feb Blog Post

Chapter 9  Emphasizing Shared Reading

I chose to read chapter 9 “Emphasizing Shared Reading” from Routman’s Reading Essentials because this is something we often do in 4K.  I wanted to learn more about shared reading and reflect on my own practices with this technique.  I have found that my students are really starting to enjoy shared reading in our classroom.  As we are learning to track and distinguish between letters and words this is a fun way for students to interact with text.  It provides me with an opportunity to model what good readers do for my students while also allowing them the opportunity to try reading with me. 

I found it really interesting as I read that the author discussed how shared reading is generally seen in the kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms, but rarely after that.  As a 4K teacher I use shared reading frequently.  Looking back to my years as a first grade teacher, I wish I would have used this strategy much more often.  The author mentions that prepackaged programs and guided reading have dominated reading instruction on the recent years.  During my time as a first grade teacher this was the case.  We were given a boxed curriculum to use and I did just that.  We were observed often and were expected to be teaching lessons from this particular curriculum.  Not only were we expected to teach this scripted curriculum, but we also had to turn in monthly documentation of our teaching and assessment information.  I was somewhat afraid to step away from this model.  I think many educators face this dilemma daily.  We often have our own beliefs and ideas about what is best for our students but at the same time we are faced with the pressure of following the curriculum.  I am thankful that our school has broken away from the pressure of a boxed curriculum and to currently work under an administrative team who believes in doing what is best for the students.  This allows me to be confident in my ability to try new strategies and ideas with my students while also doing what is in their best interest.    

In the chapter the author also discusses using oral cloze to help keep students on track during shared reading experiences.  He says to let the students know you will occasionally pause in your reading and expect them to be able to fill in the next word.  While my students may not be able to read all of the words independently yet, this strategy would be a great way to get them thinking about what would make sense next.  I plan to try this with my students in the future.    

Caleb Thrower: January/February

Chapter 12 in Reading Essentials challenged me to take a critical look at the allotted time I have in my classroom and determine if there are any areas in which I need to adjust how that time is spent. With only a small amount of time in each school day it is important to make sure that each minute with students is as productive as possible,

I enjoyed the set of questions the author recommended keeping in mind at all times as you teach. Questions such as "What do I want them to know and understand?" and "How will I know when they understand what I am teaching?" help to cut out the extra fillers that often end up in a lesson. By keeping these questions in mind I can make my lesson more focused on the immediate task at hand.

Reading this chapter also reminded me that the average attention span of a child is a mere 10 minutes. I often require my students to participate in lessons that span longer than they are able to keep focus. I am going to be more intentional in changing the pace of my lessons up so that students don't get bored and tune out after 15 minutes or so.

One thing the chapter suggests that teachers do and something I feel I do well is reflect and adjust. I often sit after school and think on the day. I often see areas in which my schedule needs to be adjusted to accommodate the needs of my students; e.g. spend less time in math because my students are understanding the concept well which opens more time for areas where they need more guidance.

This book continues to encourage me to take a look at myself as a teacher to determine the areas in which I need to improve and areas where I am excelling. This chapter may have been the most informative yet and I am eager to implement a few of the ideas it presents in my classroom as the year comes to a close.

Dawn Mitchell's March/April Blog Post "Examine Guided Reading" Routman Chapter 10

Dawn Mitchell's Examine Guided Reading Chapter 10

During the month of February we are learning about Literacy Development.   In both our choice and our required readings this month educational researchers explain the different ways our students grow and develop as readers and writers and their articles provide us with insight and suggestions in how we can best support and foster the literacy growth of our students. 

In March’s blendspace you will find a variety of resources we’ve included for you including the Notes/Thinking chart from Jennifer Serravallo’s Reading Strategies professional development text to use as you navigate through making connections with the four readings from this month.  Also included is the ATLAS Looking at Data protocol that we introduced to you to help analyze authentic student assessment data that can help you determine where students are as readers and writers and what support they need to grow next.   You will also find in our blendspace this month’s tech tool to take called storybird (www.storybird.com) which is a great web 2.0 resource for student publishing of their own books as well as poems. 

This month for my blog post, I have chosen to read chapter 10 “Examine Guided Reading” from Routman’s Reading Essentials for many reasons.  First, this is a classroom structure that many teachers I have the honor of working with utilize in various grade levels in multiple ways and for multiple purposes so I wanted to find out some basic criteria for effective guided reading that could provide a foundational basis for us as a whole for guided reading. 

Second, this is a classroom structure that I have had experience with as a fourth grade teacher and appreciated the structure it provided to work with a small group of students around a shared text to provide support that scaffolded students towards independence, and I wanted to expand my knowledge base.  Second

To fulfill my first purpose for reading I discovered that Atwell’s holistic definition of guided reading is, “…most often defined as meeting with a small group of students and guiding and supporting them through a manageable text.  Students are grouped with others at a similar reading level and supported to use effective reading strategies.  Often, there are “before, during, and after” activities and discussion in which students talk about, think about, and read through the text.” (page 150) Routman goes on to explain that her view of guided reading is broader and can be any context in which the teacher guides one or more students through some aspect of the reading process. 

To fulfill my first purpose for reading to grow myself as an educator I decided to use Seravallo’s Notes/Thinking Chart to hold what I learned from Routman and what it compelled me to think about.

Notes – What Routman Says	Thinking – My Thoughts
“Be Cautious About How You Group Children.”  Routman says “Once students are already reading, grouping students so narrowly is unnecessary…Personally, I am no longer comfortable ability grouping beyond second grade.  I worry about the message such grouping sends to students – a message that they are somehow less capable.  If you group by   ability, make sure you keep it short (ten to fifteen minutes) and provide daily opportunities for more varied groups – whole-class shared reading, heterogeneous small groups, partner reading, independent reading.	I agree with this thought 100%.  I have ethical issues with ability grouping students in the same homogenous group all year long.  I have seen how this unintentionally labels students and in doing so, limits what instruction we provide and what they can do. I do appreciate the suggestions Routman provides in her section on opportunities for flexible grouping and have tried several of her suggestions. (page 153) *literature circles *Re-reading and discussing a story with a group *Reading with a partner *Reading a small chunk or passage from a *book with a group during whole class interactive reading. *Engaging in reciprocal teaching *Rereading part of a familiar text as Readers Theatre.
“Be sure the texts you use are of the highest quality.  Your guided reading lesson will only be as good as the text you use.” (page 154) “Because the quality of books varies widely, be sure you carefully examine the ones you use for guided reading…For older students, put more emphasis on interest than on levels.  Once a student is a competent reader, you don’t have to worry so much about exact levels.”	YAASSSS!  Preach it Routman!  Too many times we provide students with mass produced “leveled readers” that are boring, have poorly done illustrations, and are not interesting enough to provoke discussions and extended thinking.  I loved the checklist Routman provides on page 155 to identify qualities of an excellent test for guided reading.
“…you don’t need to meet with every group every day…Once students are independent readers at their grade level, you will not need to see them every day in guided reading group:  two or three days a week is sufficient, especially if you have a strong shared reading program and a well-monitored independent reading program.	This is reassuring to here because I have found that many times I need to adjust my structures depending on my students’ needs and what the data tells me they need.  For example, there have been times students’ needed an extended independent reading block because they were “into” their books and we’d extended stamina and I was conferencing with students.  There’ve also been times when we were in a really in the zone with writing workshop and I needed to spend longer one or two days a week to maximize student motivation for the task and to make progress with their student driven products.  Knowing that consistency that you meet with students takes priority over consistency when you meet with students matches what works for me in my practice.
“Make Time for Independent Reading Your First Priority…Be consistent about reading aloud, maintain a daily (monitored) independent reading program, and implement shared reading and guided reading flexibly as contexts for demonstrations, strategies, and practice.” (page 158)	Yes!  I definitely appreciate this clarifier in this chapter.  Everything I’ve read points to independent reading of choice texts is the number one factor in promoting reading growth.  I know firsthand when implementing a new structure it can take over and dominate your literacy block crowding out any time for other equally or even more meaningful structures.  Independent reading and writing are the priority.  Guided reading supplements this.
“Keeping your focus on learner-centered reading instead of on group-centered reading enables you to make the best teaching decisions for your students.  Once again, you teach students, not programs.  Decide first what it is you want and need to teach and then what the best contexts are for teaching to ensure students are learning and enjoying learning to read.” (Page 160)	This needs to be a bill board…A giant poster…A commercial… A required public service announcement that plays repeatedly on all airwaves…Seriously I love me some Regie Routman! #makethebestteachingdecisionsforyourstudents
“Modeling exactly what we expect students to do must start the first day they enter our classroom.  When we have established a classroom where we have bonded with our students and treat them respectfully, they return that respect… Expect students to manage their own behavior. My single best piece of advice is to ignore distracting behavior. Do not intervene unless it’s an emergency.  You are letting students know that the teaching you are about to do is critically important and that they are now in charge.”	Can anyone say Harry Wong?  I had major flashbacks to The First Days of School Text but Routman and Wong and Marsha Tate along with a host of other experts in promoting independent behaviors in students suggest that we must teach students what we expect and showing, not just telling is effective in helping to create consistency in our classroom procedures and routines.  Excellent anchor chart ideas that also reminded me of the suggestions for I-Charts from the authors of The Daily Five on page 164 and 165.
“If the first question we ask students after reading is, “What words did you have difficulty with?” we are giving them the message that reading is about getting the words right.  I always ask first – even with nonreaders – “Tell me about what you just read” so students always know we read for understanding.” (page 167)	Yes! Reading = Meaning We must not reduce our reading instruction to isolated word de-coding, skill and drill, or fact/recall questions.  We read to learn, to know, to grow.
“Don’t jump right in when a child makes an error.  Students need opportunities to problem-solve in order to learn to monitor and correct themselves.” (page 174)	I believe in this whole-heartedly but find that at times I struggle controlling my first impulse to jump in and help students.  I am not helping them when I am doing the work for them.  I am actually sending the message to them that I don’t think they can do it themselves.  I want to build capacity not limit it.
“Underlying all purposes for reading is the question, “How is what I am doing today going to help students become more independent readers?” (page 168)	Yep!  That is the ultimate driving essential question for us as reading teachers.  How are we growing readers into leaders?
*Excerpts From Guided Reading Groups from page 175-182	Must Keep for Future Reference – These transcripts of actual guided reading lessons are a great resource for any teacher, myself included when planning to implement guided reading with their grade level.

Thanks Regie Routman for the wonderful suggestions and advice.  Thanks to Jenniffer Serravallo or the great structure that helped me hold my thinking.

Sincerely,

Dawn

Alisha Bridges Jan/Feb Blog post Ch. 9 Emphasizing Shared Reading

For my January and February blog, I selected the chapter on shared reading. As a first grade teacher, doing shared reading came naturally as all students wanted a turn and this was the best solution to model my fluency in reading. I do feel, as the author suggests, that upper grades could benefit from shared reading as a powerful tool. The opportunities to model thinking as a reader, voice inflection, and fluency are ripe in shared reading. Sometimes older students may scoff at the idea of "needing help" or "not reading independently", but done right the fun factor will draw in these detractors. I think some key components to making shared reading work are highlighted by the author when he mentions "a relaxed setting, maximum support" and "no fear of failure". This is one of the reasons I enjoy having a small group of 2nd graders that I pull to do reading intervention. The small group makes it so inviting and less inhibiting, so that even the very shy students can participate. In front of a whole class of watchful eyes and students who may make fun, reading aloud can be scary. The students who need the most support tend to participate less, speak more softly when reading, and fall back on coping mechanisms they have learned to mask their reading deficits. This is why small groups, where mistakes are encouraged as a clue for what the teacher can better teach the group and where there is no chance of hiding reading weaknesses, are so important. While reading, I also noticed that the author mentioned the cost effectiveness of shared reading and the fact that every student doesn't require their own copy of the text during shared reading. I think that is something that sometimes prevents teachers from trying it. Of course, my tech trainer mind immediately decided that one text, projected via document camera, was the way to do this shared reading. OR you could find a shared reading example online and project it on the Promethean board. Possibilities are endless! I like how the author also suggests shared reading aloud as powerful tool. I find my students perform at such a higher level when they know that they will be showing someone else their work at some time. World Read Aloud Day Skype-a-thon on Feb. 24th is providing my 2nd grade pull out group with just such an opportunity. We are Skyping (as well as at least 2 other classes and the school's librarian, GO BOBO!) with another class to read aloud to them and they to us. It makes meaning for their reading practice and for finding the context clues in the book we are endeavoring to read for this. The example in the text by Routman of how the reading lesson progresses with what the teacher says and what the teacher does was great to read before implementing this practice to prepare! I hope to implement more shared reading and shared read alouds with my small group.