The reading program that changed my view of reading programs

I have never been a fan of reading programs. Lacking in rigor, authenticity, and originality, the vast majority that I have seen turn teaching from a creative science to a scripted discussion with some follow-up worksheets. I have witnessed reading programs flutter into our district, alluring and colorful, only to limp out at the end of the year, leaving a trail of overspent budgets and disillusion in their wake.

This all changed for me last year, when I began doing research into techniques to increase reading fluency simultaneously with comprehension for struggling readers. My research brought me across Reading Plus, an online reading program, and, for whatever reason, I decided to read on.

Get 100% of your partner pairs on-task with one simple technique

You know that feeling: you have planned an amazing partner activity, one that will help the students in each pair to learn from each other, have rigorous discussion, and work towards the goal of synthesizing understandings. It is going to be an amazing learning experience, and your children are going to enjoy the opportunity to "socialize" in the form of academic discussion.

And then reality sets in. As you look around your room, you realize that half of your students are not working. To be specific, one student in each pair is not working. The more academically inclined or motivated student in each partnership has taken control of the activity, and the less inclined are happy to sit back and allow the work to be done for them. It's frustrating, and you're tempted to just end the whole thing and revert back to independent work.

Your first instinct wasn't wrong. There are enormous benefits to partner work. No one knows everything on their own, and all students should have the opportunity to have their ideas be challenged, praised, and validated by their peers. Working in pairs allows students a safe space in which to practice using academic language, voicing unconventional views, and taking ideological risks. 

Of course, that's only if you can get your students to actually work in pairs.

4 Easy Ways To Make Point of View Relevant

Any middle grades teachers knows that understanding, or even thinking about, others' points of view can be difficult for students of this age. In an age of narcissism, where students are constantly engaging with each other at the most self-centered and shallowest levels through Snapchats, inane status updates, and endless selfies, it can sometimes seem as though our teens and preteens don't even remember that others have a point of view. So teaching this concept, though challenging, can serve students in their both their literary understandings and their daily interactions, if done right.

So how do we make point of view relevant for our students? Take what they know, and turn it upside down! Here's how I make point of view meaningful for my students:

Inference Study Designed To Hook Your Kids On Reading

Inference is one of those skills that underlies everything a great reader does. To make predictions, to analyze, to understand a text at all, students must be able to infer. Yet in my visits to other classrooms, I often see inference treated as a skill that can be taught with a worksheet featuring a few short, low-complexity paragraphs.

So how can inference, this deep skill that matters so much to great readers, be taught in a classroom where half the students believe that they aren't readers and where others are already proficient readers? Use authentic passages from books! After all, what's the point of inferring if we aren't going to use it for reading real texts?

Here are the fun, engaging ways I get my students involved with the act of inferring:

1. Introduce the skill. My notes for this are simple (my notes generally are, because skills like English are more about practicing than about memorizing). My students write that an inference is "What is in the text + what you know." It's that simple.

We then do the practice questions below together (I model the first one with them, then allow them to work with partners or small groups to complete the second one). We create a chart to show what evidence we used to come to our inferences, and how that evidence connects to the knowledge we have already encountered in our lives.

2. Give students short excerpts from texts to get them hooked. I do this in the form of task cards, because I like my students moving as much as possible. 

The multiple choice options provide a scaffold, as does the opportunity to work with a partner at this point. Students who seem to be struggling as I walk around monitoring are given guidance for how to think logically through creating an inference.

Bonus: Before we start, I tell students to write down the titles of any books they discover during this activity that sound interesting for them to read. We add these to our reading plans so that students always know what book to read next!

3. Provide students longer excerpts to practice in a more authentic situation. The scaffold at this point is the specific line chosen for them to make a deep inference from. I expect students to read the entire excerpt provided before completing the associated task. This is a practice that good readers use; one line of text may not tell a reader much, but the same line taken in the context of an entire page or chapter, can be fraught with meaning.

You may want to make this a center, to save on printing, or make only a few copies of each excerpt that students will share. This is a great place to checkpoint who is mastering this skill and who is struggling.

4. Allow students to tell you their own inferences from their choice reading books. This is about as authentic as it gets: Students choose their own book, choose their own significant lines from their books, and provide inferences that are real and meaningful to them.

5. Get students writing so that others can make inferences from their creations. I always do this after or concurrently with our "Show, Don't Tell" lessons. "Show, Don't Tell" is the how; inferring is the result. When students write so that readers can see and experience what their characters are experiencing, then they are writing so that their readers can have a richer experience, full of visualization and inferences.

Inferences will form the basis for how students understand literature all year long, so don't feel as though these activities need to happen in one jam-packed week; rather, distribute them as you feel most comfortable, even if that means you only do one "inference day" every week. Let your students' desire to know and understand, to find meaning, and to discover the hidden clues left by authors, guide and motivate them throughout these lessons, and enjoy the success of realizing that your students are reading more deeply than ever before.

Happy learning!

Cheers,

Serendipity--The Fun, Fast Review Game That My Kids Can't Get Enough Of

Over the past six years, I have tried every game you can find on the Internet to help my students review--Jeopardy, Grudgeball, Trashketball--you name it, I've tried it. But with every game I tried, I found some flaw or another that made it less than ideal. Kids didn't care much for Jeopardy, Grudgeball and Trashketball had a lot of instructional time wasted on side activities...there was always something.

And that's when I came up with the idea for Serendipity.

6 Ways To Have Fun Teaching Commas

I am one of those teachers who loves teaching grammar, though not for the reason that most teachers love it.

The reason I love teaching grammar is that it is easy to make movement-based, interactive, and accessible to all students. With such short classes, I have to be creative with my "brain breaks." Because so many of my reading and writing activities require such high levels of thought, many of my students view the simple application of grammar rules as a welcome chance to move around, interact, and use their minds for some "light" thinking.

Taking students' descriptive writing from blah to BLAM!--Show, Don't Tell

In a previous post, I discussed having students master theme by writing their own stories designed around a self-chosen theme. But why stop with mastering a reading skill when we can incorporate a writing one as well?

I can't tell you how many stories I have read where the main character was "pretty," "popular," or "smart." No further description needed, to many a middle school mind. If I wasn't to tear my hair out with boredom, my kids needed to learn to "show, not tell."