Tag Archives: reading

#3TTWorkshop — How to Hold Students (and Ourselves) Accountable for Reading

#3TTWorkshop, AP English, Pedagogy November 11, 2015 Comments: 15

Three educators. Three states. Three demographics. All practicing Readers and Writers Workshop in our Secondary Classrooms. Read more about us here.

We are the Modern PLC, and every Wednesday, we share our behind-the-scenes collaboration as we talk about the most urgent moving parts of our classroom pedagogy.

Reading accountability and grading our students’ reading goes hand in hand. Both are parts of a workshop classroom that can seem daunting, and sometimes we have to be flexible until we figure out what works well for our students and for us. Let’s start the conversation with accountability.

How do you hold students accountable for their reading?

Amy:  More than any other year, holding students accountable for their reading is driving me crazy. I’ve tried passing a clipboard like I learned from Penny Kittle. Many of my students cannot get their heads wrapped around a simple “Write down the page number you are on” and then “tally your reading for the week.” I see my students for half a class period on Mondays and then every other day the rest of the week. Seems if they miss the chart at the first of the week they never get it caught up.

Last year I tried an online reading chart. Each student had a page in a spreadsheet that I asked them to keep updated. I gave them a couple of minutes in class right after independent reading time. That worked a little better, but it was more difficult for me to access at a glance. I really like to get a true state of the class.

The past few weeks, I’ve started walking around on Mondays and recording page numbers myself. I decided to try this since my students were moving into book club reading. I can see if they are on target with the reading goal for their groups. It’s worked better, but this is not the kind of accountability I want to inspire in my readers. I’ve made myself the accountable one, and I am outnumbered.

Jackie: I’ve had a love-hate relationship with accountability like you, Amy.  The initial passing-around-the-clipboard method did not work for me either.  I shifted to checking individually two years ago.  I have a spreadsheet in which I enter their page numbers and reading rates on Mondays.  The spreadsheet then immediately calculates the percentage they completed and whether they fulfilled their reading rate for the week.  It isn’t a perfect system and I would much rather be conferencing with students instead of checking page numbers, but there are both pros and cons.

On the bright side, I do like checking in with every student on Mondays, and with a class of 24, it takes me about 13-15 minutes to record pages for the entire class.  The other benefit is that I also immediately know when students didn’t complete the number of pages they were capable of reading for that week.  Instead of telling them they didn’t complete the assignment though, we have a conversation about their reading overall.

Honestly, for my freshmen, this form of accountability is key.  It is less important for my AP Literature students, but I enjoy walking through the class every Monday, touching base with every student, and ultimately starting my week off by acknowledging their reading successes.

Amy:  Like you, Jackie, I do enjoy checking in with every student on Monday morning. The time is a trade off though, since I try to hold reading conferences when students are silently reading. I just don’t feel like I have the time to really talk to my students who are not getting their reading time in (That might be the crux of my frustration — I have too many students still not doing enough reading), and now meeting with each student for a longer reading conference on a regular basis takes that much longer. Seems like time eats my lunch every day.

I ask my AP Language students to read three hours a week in their self-selected books each week. Some students read voraciously, and I find these readers don’t necessarily like keeping track of the pages they read each week. I love that they read because they want to — something I hope for all my students, so I do not want to penalize them for not marking an accountability chart.

Besides just noting how many pages students read each week, what other accountability structures do you have in place?

Amy:  In our writer’s notebooks, we keep track of the books we start, abandon, and finish. We also pull vocabulary words –5 words a week — from our independent reading to put in our personal dictionaries. I know you and Shana just discussed vocab last week.

This year as another accountability piece,  I started asking students to complete an occasional reading one-pager. I have mixed feelings about this because I know the value of reading for reading’s sake, but marking the reading chart wasn’t working, and I have a difficult time conferring as often as I’d like. I also need my students to practice writing about literature. All they want to do is summarize, and the one-pager is one way to help them move beyond that.

I hope to get my students to think about accountability as self-evaluation. We talk a lot about the reason for reading:  We build fluency, acquire vocabulary, gain empathy, and learn information. “How has your reading this week helped you do that?”

Jackie: We also keep track of the books we start, abandon, and finish.  Students add to their “Books Read” list at the beginning of their writer’s notebook and they check off the books they complete.  Students also pull four words per week from their independent reading and log them in their WNB dictionaries.

Like you, I tried one pagers from Kelly Gallagher two years ago, but they were difficult to track and my strongest readers oftentimes slowed down their reading to avoid the one pagers.  I believe they can work, but I haven’t found a perfect fit just yet.  My AP Literature students do keep a critical reading journal (CRJ), which I started using this year thanks to Sheridan Steelman’s help.  Sheri is a phenomenal AP Literature teacher I met at UNH Literacy Institute.  Her structuring of CRJs has helped me gain even further insight into my AP Lit students’ needs and successes.

At the end of the day, my greatest source of information comes from the conferences I have with my students.  Students want to talk about their books, and it is a pleasure to sit beside them and learn every day.

So how do you grade your students on their reading?  

Jackie:  My school has competency based grading, so I file reading initiative grades under “formative assessments.”  I look at reading time as purely formative in the sense that it is necessary practice time for students to explore their interests while also building reading stamina.

Students in my CP Freshman English class must read two hours in their independent reading books while students in my AP Literature class must read three hours.  Each student has an individual reading rate, which they calculate and recalculate throughout the year. I adjust their reading times based on whether or not students are completing whole class or literature circle novels.  Students then receive a weekly reading initiative grade out of 20 points.  At the end of the day though, this structure is in place to help students carve out time for reading.  

One of the greatest complaints from my AP Lit students at the beginning of the year was that they didn’t have time to read anymore.  They loved it but it had been a long time since they’d picked a book on their own.  After a quarter of independent reading, Jessica said, “I love independent reading.  It gives me a break from everything” while Claudia said, “I have read more this quarter than I have in the past year.”

Amy:  I wish I didn’t have to give a grade for reading. I wish I didn’t have to give a grade for a lot of the work we do in class, but that is a topic for another day. All my little reading checks equate to a reading grade, all formative, except for a self-evaluation of their reading lives students complete about every nine weeks — that’s a summative assessment I model after a reading ladders assignment I learned from Penny Kittle.

Really, when it comes to grades, if my students show me growth and improvement, the grading is easy. It’s all about moving as readers. Eventually, most students come to realize that — and they thank me for making reading matter again.

How do you handle reading accountability and reading grades in your workshop classroom? Please add to the conversation by making a comment.

Do you have topic ideas you would like us to discuss? Please leave your requests here.

I think reading may not be all that important — What?!

Amy Rasmussen, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop November 10, 2015 Comments: 5

I am not often speechless. But it’s not often I hear statements like this — from teachers no less:

“There are so many other ways for students to get information. I think reading may not be all that important to students today.”

We were into the second hour of a three hour workshop on conferring. We had already brainstormed and charted what we believe are the needs of our students:

  • trust in authority
  • time and attention from adults
  • a caring teacher who is a listener and is consistent with discipline and classroom management
  • technology to learn and communicate
  • critical thinking skills
  • a context for what we want them to learn
  • positivity and discernment
  • a focus on what matters/ability to ignore “the noise” of unnecessary information
  • the opportunity to freely think and to take risks
  • the ability to communicate in ways that are socially acceptable and responsible

We had just read research on reading as detailed by Nancy Motley in the book Talk, Read, Talk, Write. I share it here:

Literacy skills for the twenty-first century are far more complex than in previous generations (Goldman, 2012). In addition to the basics of reading comprehension, today’s students must also know how to read with purpose, integrate new information, resolve conflicting content in different texts, and identify the writer’s perspective (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006). Students can only learn these skills by reading. Because many students enter the classroom with underdeveloped literacy skills, we often replace reading tasks with lecture and interactive activities to ensure that students stay engaged and learn the content, Hoyt (1999) explains.

“…expository reading for many students is often a listening experience. Well-meaning teachers, concerned about textbooks that are too difficult, often create situations where one student reads from the text and others listen or attempt to follow along in the book. This situation does little to build conceptual understandings, and it can actually deter from the learning process as the listeners are engaging in very little reading.”

When teachers “deliver” the curriculum to students, students lose the opportunity to construct meaning for themselves (Tovani, 2000). According to the Reading Next (2006) report (a meta-analysis of adolescent reading), three of the most statistically significant practices for increasing the academic achievement of middle and high school students included:

  1. direct, explicit comprehension instruction
  2. reading and writing skills embedded in content area classrooms
  3. text-based collaborative learning

Put simply,

“When we routinely model and make explicit the methods adults use to read, think, and make connections, students learn to do it, too. Furthermore, they will see that such close, insightful reading is within their reach — that they can do such reading and thinking, which is central to an education.” (Schmoker, 2011).

I am not often speechless. But this teacher’s comment left me chewing my lip. Did he read the research? Did he understand what it meant? Does he really believe that reading is not important?

“If I gave my students The Canterbury Tales and expected them to read it, that just wouldn’t happen. I read it to them, and they get a lot of information, and they come to like it,” this teacher continued.

And I countered, embracing my inner Penny Kittle, as I facilitated another hour of professional development:  “What is your purpose for ‘reading’ The Canterbury Tales — or other texts you choose for your students? What skills are you teaching with that book? How do you know your students are learning them? How are you helping your students develop as readers — because that is our job as English teachers. If we are not helping students become better readers than they were when they came to us, we are not doing our job.””

“Today’s students must … know how to read with purpose, integrate new information, resolve conflicting content in different texts, and identify the writer’s perspective.  Students can only learn these skills by reading.” 

They must also know how to discern viable information from the barrage of biased and unreliable information. And know how to understand a rental agreement when they sign a lease, a sales contract when they purchase a car, a speeding ticket when they get one, a ballot in a voting box when they are standing in line next to you and next to me.

Students can only learn to read by reading.

benefits of reading

What do you think? Is reading important to the students we teach? How would you have responded to my teacher friend?

#FridayReads: 14 Titles My Students Always Re-Read

#FridayReads, Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes November 6, 2015 Comments: 3

NCLast week, Dylan looked at me with utter dismay when I told him that I still didn’t have the third book in the Maze Runner series.  Then, he brightened.  “I was actually kind of confused about some things that happened in The Scorch Trials.  Can I re-read it while I’m waiting for the third book to get returned?”

“Of course,” I agreed.  Musing, I jotted down some titles in my notebook that I wanted to re-read–my usual favorites, of course, but also books I’d only read once and had just loved–The Night Circus, Station Eleven, Zeitoun.  It made me wonder about what other books students wanted to re-read, so this past week, I asked them about it during conferences.  Lots of titles emerged, and I soon saw a pattern emerge–there were four reasons why they wanted to read particular books again and again.

HPSeries.  It quickly became apparent that if a new book in a series was coming out, re-reads were necessary.  “I’ve read the whole Harry Potter series three or four times,” Ryan told me.  “I understood all the hidden references and more about the characters the second and third times.”  Olivia agreed: “Those books are so complex there’s no way to understand everything in them the first time you read them.”

Anna read the whole Percy Jackson series twice “because I was in middle school and the struggle was real in finding books I enjoyed.  So I just re-read ones I knew I enjoyed!”

Shailyn read the Twilight series twice, and is reading it again now for the third time since the 10th anniversary editions were just released.  “I just loved the story,” she said.

Books that were being made into movies.  Mylana was adamant about this category: “I had to re-read Paper Towns really quick before the movie came out so I could tear it apart with how it didn’t compare to the book.”

Kaylee laughed and agreed: “I re-read The Fault in Our Stars for the same reason!!”

EPReally gripping stories.  “American Sniper was tough to re-read, but I did, because the story was so powerful.  I just wanted to experience it again,” Ryan said.

“Eleanor and Park was the most beautiful love story I’ve ever read,” Olivia said, “so I’ve read it three times!”

“I re-read All the Bright Places, because it was probably the best book I’ve ever read,” Shailyn said.

“I read The Giver and The Help twice because I wanted to pay more attention to the moral story line and internal struggle in all of us that was portrayed so candidly in those books,” Anna said.

AFBooks they were assigned in school.  Mockingbird was popular in this category: “I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird numerous times because it’s my favorite, it’s a classic, and because I discover new details about the trial and Boo and Atticus each time I re-read it,” Olivia said decisively.

“I re-read The Diary of Anne Frank because I read it first as an assignment, but then re-read for fun because I wanted to think more about her time period vs. ours,” Mylana said.

“I had to re-read The Book Thief after it was assigned to me because I just wanted to focus on the storytelling the second time through,” Jonathan agreed.

What titles do your students (and you) love to re-read?  Share in the comments!

#FridayReads: Whole-Class Novels to Teach, and How to Frame Them

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes October 16, 2015 Comments: 3

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Today is the third and final installment of our week-long discussion using Google Docs.  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

41Cx8mY2UNL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Question 6: How is it different to be forced to teach a certain novel versus to be able to choose the ones you teach?

Jackie: I will readily admit that I am “forced” to teach To Kill A Mockingbird and Macbeth at the freshman level.  That being said, I love teaching both of them and am fortunate that my students respond well to both pieces.  The challenges are certainly different though.  I must create student buy-in or else my students will drag through the next four to six weeks of our unit.  I frame each lesson to fit their needs and I make sure to fit the book into a workshop structure the best I can to create consistency.

I do believe that teachers must have a choice in what they teach, though.  We must be allowed to tailor our lessons to fit the needs of our students.  Independent reading allows us to understand our students as readers and individuals, which in turn, allows us to further assess what books our students might connect with best.  Fortunately for me, the freshman team I work on is progressive and forward-thinking.  They’re always willing to try new things, which oftentimes involves integrating contemporary works.

Shana:  This summer in Tom Newkirk’s class, he innocently posed this question to our class:  “Why is the defining novel about race in our country written by a white woman?”  He was referring to To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, as many of us were discussing its lately-released sequel.  That question, so casually tossed into our midst, made me think about why the canonized novels taught in schools are often so heavily prescripted.  Why does Harper Lee have a voice of authority about being black in America?  Why do my rural students need to read a particular story about race?  I know why it’s important to read stories about people different than us–I would argue that it’s essential to building empathy and a broader worldview to read widely–but why does Harper Lee hold the monopoly on that topic, and not someone like Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston?

As usual, I have raised more questions than I’ve even attempted to answer, but I’m still not sure of the correct solutions.  I think it’s preposterous to have a rote schedule of “books to teach” for all teachers in a school when it’s blatantly obvious that the community of every classroom is different, which means the culture of its students is always unique, which means that no child ever needs the same book at the same time.

Jackie: It’s funny that you bring up Tom Newkirk’s question.  As I was sitting next to you, I had one of those hide-your-face-moments when I thought, “Oh geez, I teach To Kill A Mockingbird!”  As I said earlier, I am required to teach this book, and while I love it, it does not meet the needs of all of my students.  Teaching in New Hampshire, I have a predominantly white population.  This means that their understanding of race relations and their exposure to diverse literature is rather whitewashed.  We desperately need new, diverse voices to help our students understand and empathize with a variety of individuals.  The precious few books we read together should be based on the needs and interests of our students instead of being dictated by a one-size-fits-all approach.

Question 4: What is the most effective way to frame a whole-class novel and create student buy-in?

Jackie: At the beginning of the school year I discuss the different types of reading we encounter as lifelong students.  I explain that, as a reader, I read for pleasure as well as for knowledge.  Oftentimes those two paths can and may cross, but typically my personal reading life looks drastically different from my professional reading life.  I love pouring through popular YA lit, but in the same breath, I can’t get enough of dissecting poetry with my AP Literature class.

This same pattern applies to my students’ reading within our classroom.  As a class we must learn to maintain a fruitful and engaging personal reading life that allows us to not only learn from our literature but to also explore our own interests and passions.  That being said, we mustn’t overlook the power of dissecting and discussing language and craft as a class.  Reading whole class novels reinforces the fact that no two people read a book the same way.

Shana:  If choice is the golden guide to teaching of reading, then I think the culture of a classroom must dictate the novel we read.  While A Raisin in the Sun was immensely popular in my inner-city Cincinnati classroom, it completely flopped here in West Virginia when I tried to teach it.  The inverse is true of Huck Finn; wildly successful in WV, but a total fail in Ohio.  Thus, I seek to hear the themes my students return to again and in again in their writing and conversations–this year, we are engaged in many discussions about political rhetoric, the origin of power, and the struggle that class/social/financial/ethnic differences create.  Thus, I’ll seek out novels that explore those themes to help us engage with them more fully.

In closing, we leave you with a list of the most successful whole class novels we have taught as well as a list of the books we would teach our current students if given the opportunity.

Most successful novels I taught, from Shana:28c4d1f2e8d048f702c3dbf0990aca8c

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Shana:

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Boy21 by Matthew Quick

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Most successful novels I taught, from Jackie…(you’ll notice some repeats):51BWES5VL2L

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (read aloud and performed as a play)

On Writing by Stephen King

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Jackie:

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments! We would love to hear your perspective on whole class novels and how you incorporate them into your classroom.

Click here to read day two of our conversation.

Click here to read day one of our conversation.

Whole-Class Novels: Why Do We Teach Them, Anyway?

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes October 15, 2015 Comments: 2

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Here is day two of our insights and discussion we’ve had over the past week using Google Docs (click here for day one).  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

Question 3: After a year without whole-class novels, how did you feel?MTI5MzY0OTk4NTM0MjQwNzM0

Jackie: At the beginning of the year, I felt like a rebel.  The thought of not only allowing but also empowering students through independent reading went against the entire curriculum within our department.  All of my colleagues taught whole class novels, which meant that none of my students had experienced the pure freedom of choice.  That being said, three-quarters of the way through the year, I missed whole class novels.  Despite having unique successes with the independent reading, my classes lacked the communal experiences of reading, discussing, and simply just enjoying (or sometimes hating) a novel together.  By the end of the year, I found that both my students and I missed some components of reading whole class novels.

Shana:  I reflected on my teaching after a year without whole-class novels (mind you, many novels were read through book clubs, literature circles, reading challenges, and independent reading), but I felt like the one thing that was lacking in all of my instruction was the idea of sustenance.  I wasn’t seeing my students sustain an idea for an extended period, or grapple with an issue over time, or try to live with a topic for more than two drafts and three weeks.  The case was the same in their reading and writing–I wanted them to have more length in their thought processes and I wanted us to engage in those long thought processes together.

Question 4: Why is teaching a whole-class novel valuable?  More specifically, why do we do it, and what skills are taught?

brave-new-world-bookShana:  I am not sure why I used to teach whole class novels, or, specifically, why I taught the novels I taught.  I know that there were valuable instructional methods behind the way I taught them (thematic units, Socratic circles, exploratory essays), but I don’t know if I had a sound rationale behind the obligation I felt to actually teach multiple novels to all of my students.

After a year without them, though, I find that the collective classroom experience of reading, interpreting, and discussing a novel produces a route for a unique connection to a text that cannot be achieved without reading as a group.  I missed the experience of coming to a new, shared understanding of a text as a whole class, and I felt that my students missed out on that experience as well.  I don’t believe that when I read plays independently in my undergraduate Shakespeare capstone that I would have comprehended, connected to, or engaged as passionately with those plays alone as much as I did through our frequent in-class discussions, activities, and writings.  I don’t want my students to miss out on that experience either.

Jackie: This year I am teaching AP Literature for the first time.  I took the challenge believing that this new course would be somewhat of a paradigm shift for me compared to my contemporary-lit based freshman English class.  The more I prepared, the more I yearned to discuss my thoughts, questions, and analyses of texts.  I went so far as to ask everyone around me to read these canonical classics and discuss them with me.  Preparing to teach AP Lit reinforced the social significance of reading literature.  At its base, dissecting stories as a group is interesting and engaging.  Beating the crap out of them is not.  I agree with you, Shana, in that the experience of sharing a text is one of the blessings of being in an English classroom.  Once students graduate from high school, they rarely have the opportunity to interact with texts in a classroom setting.

Shana: I love that the way you prepared to teach was to ask friends to read books with you, then discuss them.  You engaged in an authentic book club there, as I know you have your students do now.

More of our discussion will follow tomorrow.  Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments!

#FridayReads: Matching Reluctant Readers to the Classics

#FridayReads, Books, Boys & Literacy, Classroom Culture, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes September 11, 2015 Comments: 6

IMG_9287On Tuesday, during a lull in class, Tyler was staring at the ceiling.

This isn’t unusual, or even discouraged, as our ceiling is covered with tiles that represent books.

“What’s that book up there?” he asked, pointing. “The one with the fire?”

“That’s Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury,” I replied.  I know that Tyler is a volunteer for our fire department.  I also know that he hasn’t had a lot of positive experiences with reading, so I tailored my impromptu booktalk to my knowledge of him specifically.

“Fahrenheit 451 is a book about a fireman.  But he’s not an ordinary fireman–instead of putting out fires, he starts them.”

Tyler looked incredulous, and a bit offended.  “So he’s an arsonist?”

“He is, but that’s the job of the whole fire department in this book. Their job is to start fires to burn books and maintain censorship. Anyone whose house has books in it is the target of the department–they burn the house, and the books inside.”

“That’s messed up!” Tyler said, eyebrows raised.

“Right?!?” I agree, equally outraged for his benefit.  I tell Tyler some more of the plot–the corrupt fire chief, the terrifying mechanical hound, the strange professor that Guy happens upon.  “But eventually the main character–his name is Guy–gets curious.  He’s never read a book.  He starts to wonder, do they really need to be burned?  So, one day, at one house, he takes one.”

“The hound goes after him, don’t he?” Tyler predicts.

IMG_9289“He does.  And a lot of other crazy stuff happens.  I love that book so much…the way that Guy changes is so cool.  I really grew to love him by the end.”

Then, he asks the best question:  “Do you have that book?”  We cross to the bookshelf and I thank the gods–it’s there.

I give it to him, and he starts reading right away.

Tyler has abandoned a lot of books, but I think he’ll finish this one.  This was a case of matching the right book with the right reader at the right time, as Teri Lesesne says.

Tyler wants to read this book, despite its difficulty–he has reading strategies to cope with the challenges in vocabulary, sentence structure, and chronology that he’ll encounter.  I have faith that he will employ those strategies and grow as a reader and a thinker, as I have seen many a student do before, with greats like The Poisonwood Bible, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Pride and Prejudice, and Brave New World.

We don’t need every single student to read all of those books.  They are gorgeous works of art that I hope everyone will discover, but thinking the only way to expose students to those books is to make everyone read them isn’t the way to do that.  Our student readers will find the classics on their own, if we give them the tools and the hunger to do so.  Tyler has the tools, and the hunger, so he found Fahrenheit–all because of a simple desire to know more, to find out why firemen would act so radically, sparked by the depiction of a flame on our classroom’s ceiling.

How do you match your readers with classic texts?

A What-to-Read Conference: Books on Bullying

Books, Boys & Literacy, Conferring, Readers Workshop, Shana Karnes September 3, 2015 Comments: 3

Many of my reading conferences happen at the bookshelf, as students finish one book and begin the search for another.  Here’s one example I just can’t stop thinking about.

Yesterday, a former student of mine came down to my room to borrow a book.  This particular student didn’t start out as a reader, so I was really excited to see him seeking reading material independently a year later.

“Do you have Winger?” he asked me.  We walked to the bookshelf and looked for it–all my copies were checked out.

“Why are you interested in Winger?” I asked him.

“Christina told me about it this summer,” he explained.  I smiled–books were still going viral, beyond our classroom community and into the summer months.

“Well, they’re all checked out.  What is it about that book that interested you?”

“The bullying,” he said, looking away.  Bullying?  I was surprised for a moment that this particular student was curious about bullying–he was a popular kid.  He drove a cool car, had a boisterous and charismatic personality, and had a trail of lovesick girls whose eyes followed his every move.  But then my surprise faded–all high school students, no matter how popular, confident, or smart they seem, struggle with their peers’ meanness.

I had to decide–what do I teach into here?  This student as a reader, or as a vulnerable teen?  I am no longer his teacher–so I don’t have to teach him as a reader, right?

Wrong.  I chose to treat this as a reading conference…but in doing so, I knew I was giving this student the tools to deal with the issue of bullying.

411MJMpTseL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_I began to suggest alternate books about bullying, and I promised him that I’d set Winger aside for him when it was returned.  He ended up leaving with Thirteen Reasons Why, but I also suggested Nineteen Minutes, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, The Truth About Alice, Speak, Wonder, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe, and By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead. 

I knew that when that student finished Thirteen Reasons Why, he’d be back.  I knew that I could guide him toward more books about this issue he was curious about, and that our future conferences could help him climb a reading ladder about bullying.

“Reading ladders take students from one level of reading to the next logical level…We can help them stretch as readers by showing them books that mirror what they already like but that…will challenge them more,” says Teri Lesesne in Reading Ladders.  By continuing to guide this student toward more complex books about the same issue, not only would I be helping him to grow as a reader, I would be offering him more titles that could help shed more light on the difficult issue of bullying.

Penny Kittle is fond of saying “reading saves lives.”  My own classroom library is emblazoned with the quote “We read to know that we are not alone.”  This student was seeking salvation, solace, and information in books.  He wanted to know that he wasn’t the only one feeling the way he felt, and he hoped to find a story that showed him a triumph over bullying was possible.  That he sought this guidance in a library shows the power of teaching readers…not books.

Simplify, Simplify: An Invitation

Classroom Culture, Community, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop August 25, 2015 Comments: 6

We’re six days deep into the school year here in West Virginia, and I am so happy, fulfilled, and content.  The start of this year has been the smoothest of my seven years, and our readers and writers workshop is coming together more quickly than it ever has.  I think it’s because of all of the invitations and welcomes that have been flying around our classroom, rather than the commands and directives of years past.

Amy’s post on inviting students to just talk helped me simplify the structure of my first week of lessons.  I strove to make our first days together as inviting as possible–as laid back, relaxed, and caring as I could.  Students were drawn to our classroom library with an invitation to check out whatever book they’d likethoreau-simplify.  They were intrigued by an invitation to write daily–nulla dia sine linea, in the words of the inimitable Donald Murray–as we set up our writer’s notebooks.  I invited students to just read for pleasure, to just listen to a poem to enjoy it, and to just write for fun.

My invitations all centered around simplicity.

I want to slow down my thinking this year.  It seems my brain is always flying at a hundred miles a minute, and I bet my students’ minds are too.  I will invite my students to simplify their thinking–to streamline their thought processes, open their minds, and just write.  Just read.  Just talk.

This year, I’m inviting everyone in our classroom–adults and students–to put away their phones.  We read this article to understand why that may be necessary, as our devices can distract us without our consent.  Part of this conviction came after I read M.T. Anderson’s Feed, an award-winning YA novel about the mindlessness technology can fill our lives with.

I’m inviting learners to resist letting their lives be frittered away by detail, to simplify, simplify.  We will do more with less, and we will do all of our reading, writing, and thinking more deliberately.  These first six days have been marked by that simplicity, and I hope to continue that trend all school year long.

What are your goals this school year?  What do you hope to achieve with your learners?

Okay, I Will Share My AP Testing Data

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Community, Conferring, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop May 26, 2015 Comments: 14

A new friend asked me if I would share any AP testing data that I’ve gathered since embracing Readers and Writers Workshop. I had to think about it since I rarely think about it. I do appreciate the question though because it led to this post.

I need to tell you right up front:  While I appreciate the AP exam as a high-stakes test, I do not lay a lot of value on testing data for many reasons.

So many factors figure into how a group of students tests each year, and looking at figures from one year to the next, and trying to compare numbers with different groups of students has never made sense to me. The only real valid data is the growth I measure from the fall when students walk into my door until they leave me in the spring. However, I can tell you that the first year I implemented Readers and Writers Workshop and gave up whole class novels in favor of encouraging students to read books of their choice and taught skills with short, sophisticated, complex texts, my students’ scores were 12% higher than my students’ scores the year before.

The best I can do to respond to your question is to quote Stephen Krashen in the article “Free Reading:”  “. . .research strongly suggests that free reading is the source of our reading prowess and much of our vocabulary and spelling development, as well as our ability to understand sophisticated phrases and write coherent prose. The secret of its effectiveness is simple: children become better readers by reading.”

And…  “Research has . . .shown that SSR is at least as effective as conventional teaching methods in helping children acquire those aspects of reading that are measured by standardized tests, and pleasure reading provides a great deal that these tests don’t measure.”

The first two years I taught AP, I tried to do it like I learned at my APSI. I assigned the traditional novels taught in American literature: The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Awakening, The Grapes of Wrath — because the other AP teacher on my campus did. I can tell you, my students did not read. They even told me later that they didn’t — lots of joking about that on Facebook a few years after they left me. They knew how to play the fake-reading game perfectly.

I know Krashen’s research centers on much younger grades than our students in AP English; however, reading is reading, and students gain skills by doing it — skills that improve their lives far beyond those tested on one day in May as they sit for the AP English exam.

My students just wrote end-of-year reading evaluations on their blogs. Here’s a few of the highlights about reading this year in their own words. This is the kind of data I value:

“Being apart of a reading community has benefited me deeply within my entire life. Even though I didn’t read as much as I wanted to, the reading that I did do was very beneficial. Reading helped me expand my vocabulary a lot. Sometimes when I would speak to my mom I would use a word that I learned from the book I was reading and she would just look at me like she didn’t know who I was. Reading also helped me become a better writer. So many different books that I read helped me use different structures, understand how to use rhetorical devices, and use my upper level vocabulary.”  DeDe, currently reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

“Being part of a reading community as a student opened my mind how others thought of the book we were currently reading together. Occasionally, I’m an ostrich that’s always in the ground; thoughts to myself, ideas to myself, and the “this is what this means” mentality. I’ve slowly learned how to use the point of view of others by implementing it into my own work. In addition, this year’s English class did not feel like a burden compared to previous years. The freedom of choice we were given provided us with the decision to pick a book we enjoyed.” Doreen, currently reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

“I believe the place I need to improve as a reader is being able to find the hidden meanings or putting everything together in order for me to understand a book. Sometimes without me noticing I just read to read and I forget what I read and have to read the paragraph or page again in order for me to understand it. I need to read and take everything under consideration and understand what it is that I’m reading and at the end put it back together. Maybe my problem is that I try to read too fast.” Johnny, currently reading The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith

“Being part of a reading community benefited me because I always felt like I needed to be reading a book. It felt splendid being a part of something, especially something I would of never thought I would be a part of.  I understood the importance of reading. The more you read, the better writer you will become. I realized what genre of books I liked and which ones I didn’t. Most importantly I explored a different variety of books and read a minimum of 12 books. Something I had never done before. Usually I would read a minimum of 3 books every year.” Lizbeth, currently reading Playing Dead byJulia Heaberlin

“My journey began with Escape From Camp 14. I moved through different genres and difficulty levels thereafter: Anna and the French kiss, Allegiant, High School Bites, The Glass Castle, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Where’d You Go Bernadettte, The Art of Secrets, The Hot Zone, Little Bee, The Joy Luck Club, Down the Rabbit Hole, Room, Incendiary, The Wright 3, and most recently, Y. During this time, I abandoned The Kite Runner, The Thirteenth Tale, Ready Player One, Saving Fish From Drowning, Telegraph Avenue, and Station Eleven.   Even I find it odd, that out of the entire list, I enjoyed The Joy Luck Club more than any other. I say this because I’m not the patient type- I like constant action, fueled excitement. The Joy Luck Club almost counters that expectation, and if I had to describe it, I might even consider calling it boring.” Nawoon, currently choosing — just abandoned Station Eleven

This evaluation by Jasmine is too good to not share the whole of it. And this one by Shaniqua.

I just need to share one more thing, a little gift I got today as I read student reading evaluations. I know most teachers get these at one time or another.

It is the thing that keeps us going.

Laura wrote:

“I still need to improve on not judging a book by it’s cover. For us to GROW as people, we must get out of our COMFORT ZONE and pick up a shattered book because it needs someone to appreciate it’s language. As much as reading conference were sometimes nerve wrecking for me, they helped me get a second opinion on my progress in class as a human and not merely as a student. I can never thank Mrs. Rasmussen enough for dedicating chunks of her life to her students. Positivity in a world were criticism is many people’s issue is so rare and pure. She truly cares about each of us and sees past our struggles and attitudes and tries her best to help us understand it’s okay to have emotions and display them for others to see.  I’ve learned it’s more important to turn our conflicts into beautiful gifts instead of becoming a bitter person.”

Don’t you think that is better than any testing data?

©Amy Rasmussen, 2011 – 2015

 

Missing Pieces by Meredith Tate

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop May 14, 2015 Leave a comment

24903132I love receiving e-mails from students—not the “Is this due tomorrow?” or “Why do I have a zero in PowerSchool?” e-mails—but the ones that are written bleary-eyed, late at night (or sometimes early in the morning) from students who have just finished a book. Recently, Alyssa, one of my Advanced Composition juniors e-mailed me at 10:30pm after finishing Missing Pieces. She wrote:

“Wow, I just finished the book and I am completely shocked! Was definitely not expecting…[Can’t put this in because I don’t want to spoil it!]…I am extremely happy the way it ended! This was most certainly one of my favorite books that I read this year and if any of my friends ask for a recommendation I would without a doubt recommend it.”

As a teacher, finding a book students can connect with is a victory! But in this, case the victory was even sweeter. I grew up with Meredith Tate, the author of Missing Pieces, and even as children playing in the sandbox at our tiny four-classroom elementary school, Meredith knew how to weave a story.

Missing Pieces is the story of Tracey (Trace) and Piren, two best friends growing up in a dystopian world where they are matched with their spouses at six years old based on genetic compatibility. Despite Trace and Piren’s undeniable friendship and eventual attraction, they are paired with different partners. It is a fight between fate and free will.

While the plot might sound generic, resembling the many dystopian romances novels we’ve seen lately, Meredith succeeds in weaving together a distinctly unique story. Trace and Piren are flawed and frustrating and real. They live in a world of messy mistakes. As a social worker, Meredith doesn’t skirt around issues of alcoholism and abuse—instead she confronts them head-on, addressing the harsh, debilitating nature of addiction. I love that this book doesn’t cleanly fit into any distinct genre—it’s a romance, but it isn’t mawkish; it’s categorized as “new adult” but it begins when the protagonist is 14 years old; it’s dystopian yet it distinctly resembles modern society. Despite the numerous questions posed throughout the book (including those in the excerpt below), we learn that life is a series of difficult decisions; it’s the pure beauty of this rawness that makes this book relevant to teenagers.

“What if the one you’re supposed to be with, and the one you want to be with, are two different people? My entire life was mapped out for me before I was born. Is my only choice to silently follow the course already plotted? To blindly accept my future and walk that trail until I die? To smile and pretend everything is okay and I’m happy and in love with my Partner when I’m spiraling downward and drowning in my loneliness? I’m drowning, like in my childhood nightmares. Only this isn’t a nightmare; I can’t wake up from this life.”