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."

Meaningful Main Idea Instruction

I try to teach main idea and summary towards the beginning of each school year, because I know that once my students can understand the central ideas of a text, it is much easier to delve deeply into the finer details.

Main idea isn't an easy skill to teach, however, especially once you reach fifth grade and beyond, where the Common Core State Standards require that students find two or more central ideas in a text I can't express how many times I've heard cries of, "What?! There's more than ONE big idea in the text?!"

Like with anything you are teaching, main idea will stick best when it is made meaningful and relevant. The following steps have helped immensely in my quest to bring students towards mastery of this difficult concept.

Make Your Students Want To Use Correct Grammar!

Raise your virtual hand if you have ever had a student over the age of eight years old who still doesn't put capital letters at the beginning of his or her sentences. Every year, I receive countless of these students, along with the students who don't write in complete sentences and the students who don't bother putting any punctuation whatsoever in a paper.

Using Pop Culture To Teach Reading Concepts (Minilesson suggestions included!)

I have been in many classrooms where the introduction to a reading skill consists of copying notes, maybe reading a short story together, and then practice worksheets. While I know the teachers who are creating these lessons are intelligent, creative, and hardworking educators who do many wonderful things in their classrooms once they get past this introductory stage, even I find myself drifting off during these lessons. I can only imagine what this experience is like for students who hate reading and fail to see its relevance to their lives.

To battle this boredom and make introductory lessons more meaningful, I use pop culture to introduce my lessons. Here’s why:

1. It keeps students engaged.

I have been asked if using music videos to introduce theme or a documentary to introduce main idea dilutes students' understanding of the concepts. My response is always to ask if stories that are sung don't have themes that are as important. I think my students' understanding is actually enhanced by using these media, because everyone gets actively engaged in these introductory lessons.

How I Taught My Middle Schoolers The Value Of Everyday Heroism

  Perhaps you've been in that meeting where the principal/district administrator/some other person who is not in a classroom declares that you are going to solve all the problems of middle school by integrating some form of social emotional learning into the classroom. Likely, this was accompanied by some form of internal or external groaning, as you realized that you had one more thing to do in your already over-stretched class.

    This blog is going to focus a lot on how social emotional learning can actually be the basis for an extremely rigorous and fulfilling curriculum. Turns out, that administrator may have been right 😃 Reading, writing, and discussion can lead to better citizenship, more empathy, and just generally better human beings.

    Today's post will not focus on rigorous reading or writing, however, but will again ask students to work on building their discussion skills (see posts about teaching academic discussion skills here and here). One of the first tasks I ask students to do as a community building exercise is to complete and present a Pyramid of Heroism.

A completed Pyramid of Heroism.

ARGH! Absences! Tips and Lessons For Easy, Successful Absences

       I always envy my friends in corporate positions who talk about the doctor's appointment or lunch that they just "ducked out for" (for three hours!). Teaching is not one of those careers where you can "duck out for" anything, unless you're okay with the possibility of a fistfight.

     So I literally spent WEEKS trying to convince one of my good friends to reschedule her wedding that was going to be held during the first week of school. Being absent during the first week falls in my top ten list for nightmares. Not surprisingly, she was not impressed by my pleas.

    I used to spend hours preparing for subs. I would write out detailed plans related to our current unit, print and label everything with color-coded Post-it Notes, and then realize I had made a typo and start all over. You can't make up this level of inane time-wasting.

The Classroom Management Technique That Completely Changed My Classroom Culture

     No one wants to feel like their time is being wasted. As someone who has sat through 18 years of schooling and five more of professional development,  I know that I want to walk into any learning opportunity and know what I'm going to take away from it and why that learning matters. My students (and yours!) are no different. If they are going to be sitting in your class instead of playing Minecraft, there had better be a darn good reason for it.

     To begin meeting that need, we take a day in the first few weeks of school to collaboratively construct a class purpose. Doing so gives students the vision to see why what they are doing is important.

5 Engaging Ways to Teach Theme

Theme is one of my favorite concepts to teach, because it is so relevant to the world around us. Each of us lives a story, and each day has lessons to teach. Students often easily connect with this concept, because it is inherent to each fairy tale and fable that we tell to even our youngest children. 

Here are my five favorite ways to teach theme:

Engaging Students With Rereading, Part 2--Lesson Plan Included!

Yesterday, I explained how I begin getting students excited for the idea that we will reread many texts throughout the year. Today, I'll be talking about the clincher of that lesson, when students can actually see the impact of this practice immediately. I call this a "Power Read," and it's always a powerful tool.

Step 1: Give students an article of your choosing (I like this one that I have slightly modified), and instruct students that all they are to do is read it. Don't write on it, don't highlight it, just read and think about the big ideas of the article.

Engaging Students With Rereading

As a book lover, I know the joys of rereading a text and noticing something hidden or unveiling a new interpretation. For many of my students, however, there is no way they want to read a text in the first place, never mind rereading it. Yet rereading has so many benefits, especially for struggling readers; by showing your students how comprehension increases with each subsequent read, you turn reading from an insurmountable obstacle to something that any student can do, given time. Proficient readers benefit, too, as they often read quickly but forget to stop to notice deeper meanings and subtle messages. I cannot speak highly enough of the benefits of rereading! 💕

      Of course, knowing that rereading has benefits and convincing your students of the same can seem daunting. That's why I teach this lesson every year, to students ranging from 5th to 8th grade. It has always been successful and opened up an engaging dialogue about the way we return to favorite books, movies, or texts because of the subtle gifts those revisits can bestow. Here's my lesson for introducing the importance of rereading:

Making Growth Mindset A Reality In Your Classroom

Likely you've heard about growth mindset, but may not know what it actually is, or just don't know how to instill it in your students. Last year I encountered the concept of growth mindset, and let me tell you…it is life changing.

     Growth mindset is the idea that people should want to improve for the sake of improving. Just because you are getting hundreds doesn't mean that you are a great student, and just because you are getting C's doesn't mean that you aren't. A truly impressive person is one who keeps trying in the face of adversity.

                Last year, when I spent the first two weeks of school focusing on growth mindset, there was a noticeable difference in the way my class ran from previous years. Students were more likely to push themselves to do better and go further, as well as to encourage their peers to do the same. So how to implement a growth mindset focus in your own classroom?

Discuss growth mindset and give examples

I like to start with this activity as a hook. I don't give any directions, beyond telling my groups that they must sort their students from best to worst student, and be able to give a justification for their sort.

After students have completed their sort, tell them your answers. Explain to your students that your classroom is not about achievement, but about effort. If someone got an A with no effort, then you are less impressed than you would be by someone who worked hard for a C (and then make sure you walk the walk, too! Reward growth and effort, not achievement).

There are many famous examples of growth mindset in great people throughout history. You can get some from this great Ted Talk by Carol Dweck.

Practice Identifying Examples and Non-Examples of Growth Mindset

I use the following this activity (also available as task cards here!) to give my kids an opportunity to think about what growth mindset looks like, how to cultivate it, and what those with growth mindsets might think. This is a fun higher-order thinking activity that students can participate in during the first week of school (and a great chance to practice academic discussion skills!) Give each group a different situation and allow them to use their academic discussion skills to decide how to improve the outcomes and behaviors in each situation. I like to allow my kids to make posters to go with their ideas and present to the class. Then the posters can become part of our classroom decoration!

Reinforce the power of growth mindset all year long!

I use a modified version of Paul Solarz's "Thank You Points" from his excellent book Learn Like a Pirate: Empowering Students to Become Collaborative Leaders. Because I only have a 60-minute block, I do not have 20 minutes to give to having a daily, student-run meeting to determine our day's thank you points. What I do instead is divide my board into 5 sections:

Positive Actions	Thank You Points
Showed growth mindset
Stayed on-task
Showed politeness, respect,  and compassion for peers
Showed politeness, respect,  and compassion for adults
Showed politeness, respect,  and compassion for the environment

Once students reach 75 points (with at least 10 in each category), I give a small "thank you gift" to everyone in the class, to thank them for their time, their effort, and for making my days rewarding and enjoyable (Thank you gifts could be anything from lunch in the classroom to special pencils for everyone). This is one way to consistently remind the class of the importance of growth mindset.

Another way is to call out those students who are working hard and improving. Showcase their work on your student work board, move up their clips on your behavior chart, or do whatever it is that you do to make exceptional students feel special in your classroom.

Happy learning!

Cheers,

Eliminate poor listeners and freeloaders in your groups

 So you've got your students sounding like young intellectuals, elaborating and contradicting and clarifying left and right. They look great, with positive nonverbal communication skills that indicate that they are actively listening. But are they actually listening, and what do you do when someone is consistently off-task, rude, or relying on his/her group members to do the work?

       Let's start with problem number one. Your students appear to be listening to each other, but you're not certain that they actually are. 

I have a two-part solution for this. For partner and small-group discussions, I allow students to call on any member of their group to summarize back what was just said. Not only does this ensure that all students are listening, it also means that each idea is articulated twice and often requires that lower-achieving students actively work to understand and paraphrase the ideas of higher achieving students.

      I do something similar with whole-class discussions. Occasionally and randomly, my students know that I may yell, "Listening quiz!" Whoever can repeat or summarize what was just said (or what was said three volunteers ago, or six, or…) receives a small prize. It's a wonderful technique that I start during our beginning of the year ice breakers ("Who can tell me what Xavier stated was his favorite sport?") and gradually move on to more complex opportunities for restatement ("Who can explain why Ellie believes the protagonist to be merely timid, rather than a snob? What evidence did she use to support her ideas?"). You would be amazed, by the end of the year, how many of students can repeat what was stated five answers ago.

     On to problem number two: freeloaders, rudeness, and off-task behavior. 

    The bane of every group project, freeloaders consistently try our dedication to using collaboration as a tool in the classroom. My solution for freeloaders is simple: Don't allow it. In my classroom, students are made aware from day one that they may be dismissed from any group assignment, should their group and the teacher unanimously agree that they are not putting forth the effort required. You can download my free proposal for dismissal here. A student who is dismissed is still required to complete the assignment, but must do the entire thing alone, resulting in more work than they would have had if they had just done the group assignment. This is a pretty big deterrent for habitual freeloaders. The same rules apply for students who are rude or off-task during small group discussions. If dismissed from a discussion, a student must write a response to the same question the rest of the class is discussing.

      The other benefit of this technique is the process that the rest of the group must go through. 

Throughout their lives, my students will have to deal with coworkers or employees who do not complete tasks on time or to the level of quality required. Before dismissing a student from the group, these students must attempt to problem solve in a variety of ways, and oftentimes, they discover that by giving a freeloading student a specific role or merely asking for help in a new way, they can gain the involvement of a formerly uncooperative peer. It is a powerful lesson regarding their ability to be inspirational leaders.

Cheers,

Get Your Students Using Accountable Talk From Day 1

  Because I know that my students will learn more deeply if they have to negotiate meaning and listen thoughtfully to the ideas of others, academic discussion plays an enormous role in the everyday procedures of my classroom. And because tweens are so eager to talk, this is an easy way to keep the class on task and engaged.

        Yeah, right.

      Academic discussion is the center around which my classroom turns. But if I want the endless hours we spend in small-group, partner, and whole-class discussions to be valuable and worthwhile, academic discussion is a skill that must be taught with the same rigor as any other English skill. That includes both speaking and listening skills. Without rigorous instruction and daily practice in how to speak about academic topics, students will waste plenty of time discussing how great Alicia looks in her new Gap skirt. But the time invested is worth it--every testing year for the last four years, my students have had some of the highest literacy growth scores in the school. 

2016-2017 students engaging in a student-led Socratic discussion on texts about the implication of increasing technology.

        Here are three easy ways to begin teaching your students how to engage in academic discussion:

1. Teach sentence stems explicitly. 

Every year, I begin the year with these academic discussion cards hot glued to each desk (I haven't found a way to make them stick to the desks all year, but by the time they come off, my students are proficient enough with academic discussion that they no longer need them). 

   I use these cards as a jumping-off point for continuing discussions; they provide a safe way for shy students to enter the conversation and immediately show students some examples of high-level vocabulary that they can and will use throughout the year. I do not teach all the stems at once. Typically, I teach one or two at once, and then provide a task to allow for practice (one example can be found here). We may practice two sentence stems for a week, before adding a new one to our repertoire.

2. Give students numerous low-pressure opportunities to practice. 

Creating a concept map about a partner is a great critical thinking activity where students can practice asking others to elaborate on their ideas or to clarify a statement. Holding a whole-class discussion to come up with logical consequences for various types of misbehavior is an ideal time to practice asking for examples or contradicting respectfully. Every ice breaker and community builder that you do is an opportunity for students to use their newfound discussion skills. Make sure to remind, encourage, and model these skills before each activity.

3. Study the nonverbal aspects of communication. 

Oftentimes, middle school students believe that as long as they are not yelling, "Shut up," they are being respectful. How often has a student rolled their eyes at you, only to go, "What? I'm not saying anything!"

       But just as important as the words we use are the ways in which we make others feel valued with our bodies. A student who feels listened to and valued is more likely to remain a part of the conversation and venture forth risky ideas than one who feels as though his or her audience is bored.

  After introducing students to the term "nonverbal communication," we read this text from the Aurora Employee Assistance Program, and students work in groups (using the sentence stems "Can you justify your ideas with evidence?" and "Can you elaborate on that?") to create skits showing both positive and negative nonverbal communication. This has benefits all year, as every time I start to see my students slump, I remind the class that, "I need to see your best nonverbal communication!" Works like a charm, every time J

       Every year, I hear teachers say that they would like to have more collaboration and group work in their classroom, but they fear the time that will be lost in off-task chatter and students who freeload off the ideas and work of others (I'll be describing a solution for this in my next post). Though there will be days when it feels as though students are wasting more time than learning, the greater your dedication to modeling and giving practice time for discussion, the more your students will rise to the challenge of articulating their ideas and helping their peers to understand complex concepts. I promise it's worth it!

Cheers,

Starting the school year on a positive note

      Every year for the last six years, I have spent the week leading up to school having nightmares about my upcoming class. They all have major behavior problems. None of them can read. They hate school with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. In essence, they are the worst class in the world. I have this same nightmare literally every year.

   The worst part? Every year, for the first month of school, I believe my nightmare has come true.

     To be clear, my kids are not actually the worst in the world. It just feels like it when they arrive each August unable to work collaboratively in groups, unable to resolve conflicts peacefully, and unable to critically think with the depth that I know that lies dormant within them. I am constantly comparing them to the kids to who just left at the end of May, the kids who used their writing about important issues to inspire a US Representative to come visit our school, and who could run the classroom by themselves (as they proved to me on "Silent Day"...aka, I was silent all day and they ran the class). Every year, come August, I spend a month despairing that my students will ever again be as competent, compassionate, independent, and self-motivated as last year's group was.

Silent Day, 2017-2017

    This year, I resolved to go in knowing and remembering that, while my students may not be perfect yet, I have never failed to create a classroom where learning, respectful discussion, and collaboration are valued. The first day (or month) may not have the depth that so uplifts my soul, but I darn well let students know from the first moment what my class will look like. Here are my five steps to starting the school year on a positive note:

1. Make sure that students have something to do from the moment they walk in the room. 

Make it simple, so that students can experience success from their first day in your room. Make it something that shows that you value students' interests, ideas, and experiences. I have often used this sheet to begin getting to know my students, or, for a more in-depth look, this one

2. Be a person. 

Your students have no idea who you are, and you are a person who is going to have a large amount of influence over them for the next ten months of their life. However you choose to do it (I generally make a Prezi), show your students that you are a real person with interests, vulnerabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. I am not shy about letting my students know that I struggle with a disability, or that I have a brother who died, or that I used to study monkey psychology before I began teaching. These are often the things that strike students the deepest--too often, students believe that success is out of their reach because of their difficulties. If you can succeed despite yours, then students will know that you expect them to succeed despite (and sometimes because of) theirs.

3. Immediately start teaching the procedures that matter most to you. 

As students walk in the room, a greeting and simple directions for what to do (find any seat, and begin quietly working on your getting-to-know-you page) are posted on my board. This sets the tone that, in my room, students can expect clear directions. Any student who fails at this task is gently and firmly directed to read the directions. We also practice my silent signal, in the context of having students share their summer activities, or hopes and fears for the school year, with table mates.

4. Make your yearly priorities first-day priorities. 

As a teacher, I passionately believe that my purpose is to teach students to be active, involved citizens who have the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills they need to change the world. In the process, I also seek to guide students towards a love of reading and writing. Therefore, I begin building an understanding that collaboration will play an enormous role in our year together, by teaching students to reference their academic discussion cards (more on these in this post) during a partner conversation and by having a book frenzy, an idea that you can read more about in Donalyn Miller's fabulous book The Book Whisperer. From day one, students should know that your classroom is a place where reading and collaboration are valued.

Some bins from my library, ready for our book frenzy!

5. Don't stress. 

It's hard to avoid the feeling that you didn't get nearly enough done on the first day (or every day thereafter). What with handing out schedules, going over bathroom procedures, first-day tours, and the infinite number of other mandated rituals that you will be required to go through, it is likely that you may not get through everything you planned. That is perfectly okay, because no one else did either. An amazing, awe-inspiring year starts with a first day, but it doesn't end there, so don't despair if yours doesn't go perfectly.

Happy back to school!

Cheers,