If you missed the chat or want to relive it here is a link to the Wake
In my first year of teaching, I remember a coworker teaching her students how story writing was kind of like hunting for treasure. You start with a plan (map) and you follow it to craft an amazing story (treasure). She cautioned her students about wandering too far off the map. How not following the plan will lead the reader to confusion and take the story in a completely different and oftentimes difficult to follow conclusion.
As I looked at the topic for our chat this week I could not help but laugh at how this advice that was given to nine-year-olds is so applicable to us as teachers. The need for a plan that is centred around our students and organized in a way that scaffolds the learning towards student mastery. The purposeful work of bringing all members of the learning team into the equation early so parents/guardians see themselves as valued members of the team and not just observers from the outside. Building a community together, both the social aspects and the physical ones and how we must be purposeful in this as well. All pieces of a map that when followed and centred around our students will do wonders in creating an amazing learning space for our students and a community that helps support everyone involved.
In one of my favourite stories, The North Star, Peter Reynolds writes about a little boy who sets off on a journey. There are signs and markers and people all along the way telling the boy the way to go but he never feels it is the right way. He ends up choosing his own journey and follows the star. I like to think of a good plan as a star. At times I get distracted when teaching. I wander off the map because of these distractions (time, other responsibilities, bad lessons that shake your faith in yourself… you know…distractions).
Last week marked the start of a new school year. I LOVE planning. I have my year written out, all of my objectives set by the curriculum, some different options to address those outcomes and some open-ended options for culminating projects that are heavy in student choice. I stick to a digital format because it is easy to adjust when those roadblocks pop up. This week a big roadblock popped up. Just before I was about to begin my first class teaching 9th grade I received word that the plan I had set for the year would not work. Some miscommunication left me in a spot that I will have to (probably this weekend) rework my whole year. Now this is not a woe is me reflection but a great example of why it is so important to focus our planning, centre our planning on our students. I had built my ninth grade year around the Provincial Assessment. This was in an attempt to leave a large part of the year open to the cool stuff but we would do the lame stuff (standardized assessment) first. Unfortunately, that early writing of the exam was not approved. So I sat trying to figure out how to reframe the year minutes before it started. That uncertainty distracted me and our first class was less than the positive experience I wanted. The next day I apologized to my kids for the mess the lesson was, vowed to do better and now I sit here finishing this post and preparing to revamp a year plan that centres on my students, not a test.
Monday is the start of a new week. I am excited to take some time to talk about expectations, not rules. I didn’t start the year that way because I was excited and assumed that as I have taught many of the students I have this year twice before we didn’t need to discuss these expectations. The thing is though that the expectations are just not ones I have for them, my students needed time to tell me what expectations they have for me and for their peers. Rules just sound oppressive. Expectations create opportunities for students to rise. I have two expectations. BE KIND and WORK HARD. They sit above the board so students see them. It is a work in progress. Rules place limits. I think there is some chemical in middle school and high school students that is triggered when they hear “rules”, I think it is because they (the rules) are rarely focused on student success and more on compliance and kids can sniff that out a mile away. Expectations are centred on each student and can be individualized to assist in success. This purposeful decision has reduced “management issues” in my room and we spend less time talking about rules we have broken and more time discussing how we can rise to surpass expectations.
Reflecting on planning and how important it is to plan with our students at the centre has been a great reminder for me this week. I had lost my way a bit on the map of a successful year. Luckily I am only 1 week in and the path is still under my feet. I know where I am going. I am inviting my students to join me as we explore literacy and surpass our expectations.
On August 29, 2019, the #G2Great community gathered with Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey and Dominique Smith to discuss their ASCD book, All Learning is Social and Emotional: Helping Students Develop Essential Skills for the Classroom and Beyond.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a popular “buzzword” in education although the concept is now about 20 years old. The goal of SEL is to educate the whole child and many programs purport to do so as one more “program” added into student days. Fisher, Frey and Smith contend that no new programs need to be purchased. Let’s check our their responses to three questions to begin this post.
1. What motivated you to write this book? What impact did you hope that it would have in the professional world?
“We’ve witnessed the power of integrating SEL into the academic flow of daily learning. The students at the school where the three of us work learn to use these skills to understand the biological, physical, and social worlds. In doing so, they gain insight about themselves and their value to the world. We hope that works such as this one open up schools to the potential of SEL as an essential part of the curriculum.”
2. What are your BIG takeaways from your book that you hope teachers will embrace in their teaching practices?
“One big takeaway is that SEL is fully expressed through public spirit. Learning about oneself and others is foundational, but ultimately wasted if it isn’t in service to families and communities. Another big takeaway is that strong teacher-student relationships make social and emotional learning possible. Face it, we teach SEL whether we intend to or not. How we carry ourselves shapes how children and youth see themselves and the world. Why not be intentional?”
3. What is a message from the heart you would like for every teacher to keep in mind?
“As teachers we have tremendous influence in the lives of our students, and our number one job is to teach with hope. The words we choose, the books we select, the discussions we hold, matter to our students. Hope-filled schools ensure that our students are wise, resilient, and courageous.”
So what did we learn?
All learning is social and emotional. In order for students to thrive, SEL should be included in content instruction every day in all subjects and grade levels. It is too important to be an “add on”. It is too important to be a “separate curriculum”. And it is too important to not have a predictable framework that equips students for life. The language of teachers, the values they share, the materials, tasks and skills they choose to teach kids matter. Teaching kids (not standards) is the target (A shock for many of our readers to consider!). An SEL focus will influence how students think, how they see themselves, and how they interact with content and with others based on their agency and identity, the emotional self-regulation, their cognitive self-regulation and the development of community in classrooms and the cohesiveness of parent and support groups outside school groups.
Agency and Identity
Agency (my belief that I can take action) and identity (how I see myself) are foundational for students’ social and emotional learning. Choice and voice empower students. Classrooms are filled with teachers who make choices every day about addressing students’ agency and identity in their conversations with their students, the learning they design, and the actual tasks developed to elicit student learning. Specific tweets from the authors about building agency and identity, the consequences of limiting agency and identity, and ways to empower students address these issues.
Emotional Self-Regulation
Children learn the vocabulary of identifying their emotions as one step on the road to emotional self-regulation. Naming emotions is an important first step in empowering students. Teachers can infuse emotional regulation skills into read alouds during the academic day and provide opportunities for students to consider the effectiveness of emotional self regulation through reading, writing, and discussion. Selected tweets from the authors follow.
Cognitive Self Regulation
Fisher, Frey and Smith note that goal setting is an essential component of cognitive regulation. They suggest that the adults can lead the way by modeling their own cognitive regulation by sharing their experiences with goal-setting. Involving students, their families, and their community in goal setting has the potential for increased student social and emotional learning. This practice during school and academic content will enable students to be better decision-makers for the remainder of their lives.
Development of Community
Many teachers use circles and regularly scheduled class meetings to address issues that arise in the classroom community. Fisher, Frey and Smith shared how their school faculty uses circle discussions to foster community. Planning in advance to strengthen family and community involvement also pays off by strengthening social and emotional learning. Planning for involvement makes the learning seamless instead of the appearance of SEL initiatives as an afterthought. Wise tweets from the authors include these.
In Closing . . .
In our lives the “R’s” we face daily go beyond the old Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic to include relationships, responsibility and regulation. It behooves us to make sure that instruction includes agency and identity, application in authentic situations, as well as opportunities for important decision-making that build real life practice. Having SEL be a part of school content work will equip students to be confident and competent as well as informed and involved citizens!
Nancy Frey, Doug Fisher, and Dominique Smith will be hosting a full-day pre-conference session on this topic at the ASCD Empower 2020 conference on March 13 in Los Angeles. Check this link for further details: http://www.ascd.org/conferences.aspx
This week, #G2great merged two days into a collision course of celebratory joy:
MARCH 1, 2019: I took my first step into Zaharis Elementary and entered a magical world conceived by Mike Oliver and his staff as my professional dreams exploded into technicolor view.
AUGUST 22, 2019: Mike Oliver and Zaharis Elementary in Mesa, AZ graced our #G2great chat as we took a collective Twitter peek into Beyond Borders where the Journey to Becoming is in full bloom.
Two dates. Perfect union. Life-altering.
When an experience literally changes your life, detailing that experience in a blog post can be a foray into writerly trepidation. The idea of putting the Zaharis story in writing from an outsider’s perspective felt monumental. But as I wrestled to find a sense of direction, beyond borders on a journey to becoming beckoned me back to safe ground. I lovingly recalled my first visit and suddenly understood what it was that took my breath away that day. I walked through the Zaharis doors with a two-fisted grip on beliefs I hold dear and those beliefs had a palpable heartbeat in every nook and cranny of Zaharis. That feeling of being HOME gave me a unique perspective.
The Zaharis spirit moved me to tears of joy for what is alive and well in Mesa, Arizona. Yet, it also made me cry for the children who may never experience what I saw that day. I spend a great deal of time in schools across the country, and I can tell you that Zaharis is not the norm. In recent years, our profession has been in a perpetual tug of war of epic proportions as we fight for the very values that are the heart and soul of Zaharis. They are winning on those battlegrounds but others are succumbing to the very antithesis of the beliefs we hold dear. I stared at my computer pondering how to write the words that would do Mike Oliver and his teachers justice… and then I thought about our dear friend, Heidi Mills:
And just like that, Heidi’s HOPE gave me an unwavering sense of direction. According to Merriam-Webster, a verb shows action, occurrence or state of being. The Zaharis spirit resides in these words since they are in a continual state of being along an action-oriented path to becoming. They show us Heidi’s HOPE in action and remind us what is possible if we are unfettered by ties that bind. When we allow hope to turn beliefs into actions, we would move mountains to bring our hope-fueled vision to life in the company of children. Heidi’s Hope lives in Zaharis and I’ve seen it in glorious action.
Zaharis educators don’t limit their sight to what IS – they dream of what COULD BE
And so, in this post I’m going to share how I see Zaharis bringing Heidi’s HOPE into view – for their teachers, children, community and now for each of us. If we can put a name to actions where Heidi’s HOPE already lives, we could then see hope through the eyes of Mike Oliver and his teachers so that they can serve as a beacon of HOPE that could inspire every school to take their own transformational journey to becoming. For the sake of this post, I identified six ways that HOPE can LIVE, but I needed Mike Oliver’s words to show us what is possible in a space where HOPE already LIVES. Through is insight, his voice can lead the way for others to start the Zaharis journey:
HOPE lives when we verbalize the values that could propel us forward.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
Our mission at Zaharis is this: “Learning, caring, rejoicing, and working together to create a more just, compassionate, insightful world.”
We never ever compromise it.
Zaharis IS the school of my dreams. We built on the foundation of learning through inquiry, where learning is co-constructed, agency is fostered, and learning is elevated to another dimension—life, complete with all its wondrous complexities!
First Grade teacher Kathy Mason connects both emotionally and academically to children
HOPE lives when we see barriers as our lighthouse to change.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
We recognize standardized test scores for what they are—one metric, one star, in a constellation of many! Never has it been more imperative that we nurture the skills and dispositions needed in today’s ever-changing world, those skills often referred to as “soft skills.” Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communicating in many ways, kindness, compassion… you know this list. These skills are anything but soft!
In a recent district meeting, I suggested that we flip the script. Soft skills are the ones that can be bubbled-in on a scantron. The ones that matter most in the 21stcentury world of today are the ones that can hardly be bubbled-in. It’s quite simple. We can’t chop up the world into a sequence of standardized test questions and bubble-in truth with a #2 pencil.
We must avoid falling into the trap so many others are imprisoned by—trying to do the same stale, boring, antiquated things better. We need to do better things! Those “better things” are not always best measured by a standardized test question. In fact, they rarely are.
Our approach to life in this era of high stakes testing and accountability is this: approach the test like a genre study…
“Boys and girls, sometimes people want to know what you know about the world around you by looking at your score on a standardized test. We’re going to do an inquiry into this test so when you take it, you have a few tools to be armed for success.”
Get in and get out. Be intentional and deliberate. Do not let this “genre study” spill out and contaminate the learning experience throughout the school year.
Beautiful quotes from authors and books grace the halls as a reminder of what matters.
HOPE lives when we embrace the resources that will bring our values to life.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
Hire teachers who love books and take care of their own literacy!
Provide children with access to real and carefully selected books EVERYWHERE on campus. Carve out time for deep, critical and authentic conversations where students and teachers can share their insights, interpretations and noticings in response to reading. Foster and cultivate voice, choice, agency and identity as students engage with texts and develop as readers and writers.
Framed photographs of the Zaharis staff holding their favorite books sends a message
HOPE lives when we can celebrate the powerful potential of collective agency.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
Because of this united support, our school board and superintendency are undoubtedly part of this viewing audience! Not only are they supportive of our model of inquiry where agency and excitement abound, but they are leading the charge for its expansion.
Years ago, we decided to no longer be content with a school unlike most others. Too many times I have looked into the eyes of a mother after leading a group tour where I could see a sense of wonderment. It’s not uncommon to see tears well up when others enter into the heartbeat of Zaharis. High up on my list of least favorite things to do is to inform a parent who believes to have found an answered prayer that they are soon to be at the end of a very long waiting list. This simply shouldn’t be.
The leadership in Mesa Public Schools is changing this. We are all working together in Mesa to offer our 63,000 students and 81 schools a learning experience free from stale scripts and programs, where authentic learning experience is commonplace. Readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and social scientists are beginning to engage in real world work and thrust it out into the world where it belongs.
School board members and administrators also want what’s best for children. We have to help each other learn to see with new eyes as we envision new possibilities and pathways to success.
Teachers embrace inquiry as bathing children in authentic book experiences is the norm
HOPE lives when we build our foundation on professional knowledge.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
A friend of mine once said, “Ya can’t lead where ya ain’t goin’.” We have found it next to impossible to lead others on a journey we are not on. One cannot inspire others to travel down a path that he or she is not travelling.
Our mentor wall was created to declare to all who enter, “We are learners. And we take our own learning every bit as serious as our students’ at Zaharis.”
The interviews for teaching candidates at Zaharis are no more scripted than our teaching. But there is one question we ask without exception. It’s a three-part question:
What are you reading for your own pleasure right now, what are you currently reading aloud to your students, and what have you most recently read professionally and how has that informed your practice?
You simply can’t fake being a reader. We know in two seconds when someone tries. There is a ceiling for those who are given the charge to develop readers who are not readers—who are not learners themselves. And that ceiling is not very high. Unfortunately, we have discovered during interviews that not all teachers are taking care of their own literacy.
Not only do we have a mentor wall, but we also have a wall dedicated to the declaration of our own literacy. Each staff member, all teachers, cafeteria workers, custodians—everyone has a framed picture of themselves holding a book that has influenced them in some way.
We are a community of readers.
The Mentor Wall includes framed professional book covers of the shoulders they stand on
HOPE lives when our entire school family is at the center all we do.
Mike Oliver Words of Wisdom to Live By
First and foremost, we must truly value them! Roland Barth once coined a term that changed the way I look at Zaharis. “Schoolpeople.” All one word, no hyphen. Schoolpeople are not simply the paid employees in the building. Parents are Schoolpeople. Grandparents are Schoolpeople. Local business owners, operations workers, groundskeepers, the manager at the local coffee shop and state policy makers are all Schoolpeople.
So many schools fall into the trap of looking at parents as a populace to be informed—“This is how we do things here, and this is what you need to know.”
Communication is often a one-way transmission, not much unlike instruction is in far too many classrooms.
Schools where community and a curriculum of caring abound, schools where a sense of family exists, tap and harness the enabling power and culture shaping influence of Schoolpeople.
Not long ago, I was in a rush to get to a district meeting. I was stopped abruptly on the way to my truck by a little first grader named Ashley who greeted me with a hug and a smile. I patted her on the back and asked, “How is my little friend?” She replied, “We’re not friends, Mr. Oliver, we are family!”
That hallmark moment is not one I will soon forget. It serves as a testament for what we have developed at Zaharis. Family is not a metaphor, but a way of being, a way of existing for us. In a world where it is not deemed safe for educators to hug a child, it is not uncommon to hear a teacher tell one just how much he or she is loved and valued.
Schoolpeople of all forms are culture creators.
Mike Oliver welcomes all of their “Schoolpeople” to the Beyond Borders conference
MY CLOSING THOUGHTS
Heidi’s HOPE is on the horizon my friends, and it is waiting for us to take what already lives in Zaharis and allow it to create a ripple of HOPE in every school. One Zaharis is simply not enough because no child should have to take the luck of the proverbial HOPE draw – yet that is happening across the country as I type these words. The HOPE that I witnessed as soon as I walked in the front door of Zaharis Elementary needs to spread like a wildfire into every school where all children can reap the benefits of HOPE because it will live and breathe everywhere.
There are no programs and packages anywhere in Zaharis Elementary so they show us that these things are not needed. Yes, they must also adhere to outside obligations, but they do not allow them to deter their singular focus on HOPE. They make HOPE their constant companion in a sacred space where passion-fueled professional endeavors grounded in a mindset of inquiry-based learning and teaching defines each day in every classroom. They believe in the impact of books and so they put that at the top of their priority list across the building. Above all, they believe that Heidi’s Hope as a verb means that our every action is a choice that we make in the name of children and they make that choice every day because they know that their children deserve no less than the very best we can give them.
Zaharis Elementary is the poster child of HEIDI’S HOPE and we can draw from their inspiration to create a collective ripple effect of what COULD BE!
Zaharis Visual Gallery of HOPE
Authors who visit the wall sign their name with a message Mike Oliver’s office is a virtual playground that highlights their deep belief in bookVolume is high priority in all classrooms as independent choice reading is a daily featureStudent agency and inquiry drive their daily professional decision-makingTeachers acknowledge the essential ingredient of high engagement in literacy experiencesClassroom are invitational spaces where discovery and curiosity live across the building
Full chat archive can be found here https://wke.lt/w/s/WoYDGS
Sitting down to write this post has been a great opportunity for reflection. According to my school calendar, I see my students for 179-184 instructional days which works out to approximately 1000 hours give or take. I thought it would be overwhelming to look at an hour breakdown but in reality, it just solidifies my resolve that we have so much to do and so little time that what we choose to do must honour our students. They do not have the choice to be in our rooms so it becomes our moral responsibility to make sure the things we do in that room are worthy of them.
In the last few days of school this year I overheard a student in Social Studies class talking about his Language Arts class (I didn’t teach him both) and the textbook they used. His table partner (who I do teach LA) asked him to repeat himself and on verification of the Language Arts skill and drill textbook instruction, he apologized to his friend and then began to explain how we did LA. I was really excited in the moment because it verified that the time we were putting in, the real books we were reading and stories we were sharing, the authentic writing and even the Ted Talks we were discussing were establishing with this student a sense of value and joyful literacy work. On the last day of school, he excitedly proclaimed he read 6 books over the year.
“That is 5 more than last year Mr.Gilson and I fake read that one.”
So what helped this student learn to appreciate reading? TIME. The choices in our classroom, the opportunity to “bond with books” will only come if we prioritize our time to reflect that important shift. As the #G2Great community came together this importance became clear.
As we move through the chat so many established their “non-negotiable” with the time they have. Time for students to explore books, explore words and writing, explore their ideas.
As I am currently finishing up “Why They Can’t Write” by John Warner I am constantly reminded about our duty to help students explore their curiosity. To write about what interests then. To use the precious time we have to serve our students in a way that establishes school as a place for joyful learning. This stops happening when we use our time for isolated skills practice over a balanced approach to exploring literacy. We must be purposeful about the choices we make.
1000 hours of instruction is my school year, I can’t afford even 1 minute wasted on disengaging work that contributes to my student’s apathy towards school. School doesn’t need to be a party but the work needs to be purposeful, engaging and worthy of our students time.
This is still a journey for me and many I know have yet to start this purposeful reflection on how they use their time. We have work to do.
A few years ago, Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D., wrote an article in
which she spoke about teachers as model learners. Dr. Gerstein posits that in
order to lead students in the process of learning, teachers themselves must
engage in reflection about “how they
learn, set personal learning goals, regularly self-assess and adjust their
performance, and use strategies to support their learning.”
Often
when reading an article on progressive educational practice, it’s tempting to think
of the ideas presented as more fantasy than reality. That is not the case here,
however.
There was clear evidence of many in our #g2great PLN in the chat on Thursday who hold to the idea of teachers choosing to set specific goals for new learning; their own learning. Educators engaged in a spirited discussion about the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning. And they shared specific ways in which they embrace the wisdom of “teacher as lead learner”.
You can see the chat here in its entirety. Let’s look at some #g2great questions and answers:
Teachers model the process of learning when they:
Set goals for learning
Articulate and make note of metacognitive
strategies while learning
Respect the iterative nature of learning
Reflect often throughout the process
Make adjustments when necessary
There is no magic potion for maximizing learning for all students, but when educators commit to being the lead learner there is power in that stance.
Power that transforms.
The work involved to lead the learning is not easy, but it is a certainly a worthy pursuit.
Educators as Lead Learners. (2016, January 12). Retrieved from https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/educators-as-lead-learners/
Please check out the entire #g2great chat, Creating a Common Lens Across Tiers for Explicit Instructional Interventions from 6/13/19 captured on Wakelethere.
I don’t often start a blog post with analytics from a social media platform, but I’m going to do that very thing right here.
Uh, you think we touched a nerve? 24,153 times this tweet showed up in someone’s Twitter feed. It doesn’t mean it was read, but look at the engagements. Almost 580 people engaged with this tweet.
I’ll ask again. Do you think we touched a teacher nerve?
The focus of our discussion in Part 4 of the series Rethinking Our Intervention Design as a Schoolwide All-Hands on Deck Imperative was on creating commonality in thinking and practice across tiers. That’s a lot of educator-speak, so let me say what I believe that means.
In regard to intervention, every person who interacts with students in a learning environment on a campus must own a shared vision of what it means to support our most fragile readers.
OK.
When we’re about to launch into such a critical issue of a shared vision of intervention across a campus, I want to hear from someone who is an expert in the field. Dr. Richard Allington has written much about this and so I want to take the liberty of quoting him here in this post. The following quotes come from an interview of Allington at Ed Week.
…the promise has been held that we’re going to teach all kids to read. The good news is that, in the past five or 10 years, we’ve had large-scale demonstrations that show that in fact we could do that if we wanted to. We have studies involving multiple school districts and hundreds or thousands of kids demonstrating that, with quality instruction and intervention, 98 percent of all kids can be reading at grade level by the end of 1st or 2nd grade. So it’s not a question that we don’t know what to do. It’s a question of having the will to develop full literacy in this country, and to organize schools and allocate money in ways that would allow us to do that. Instead, we’ve tended to come up with flim-flam excuses for why it’s not possible.
Richard Allington states that with robust instruction, we can virtually ensure that most students can be reading on grade level by end of 1st or 2nd grade. He offers the solution to that, too. We can and must create literacy instruction and practice with the funds to support teachers to meet the needs of all readers. Can I just say here that once we’ve done that, we will see dramatically fewer students who require some kind of separate support, or in other words, intervention?
We’re not done here because Dr. Allington has more to say–
For the first time in many years, the federal government wrote a law that is not very prescriptive. It simply says: Take up to 15 percent of your current special education allocation and use that money instead to prevent the development of learning disabilities or reading disabilities. And do it in a way that, while there’s no mention of specific intervention tiers, incorporates increasingly expert and increasingly intensive instruction. It’s just telling schools to stop using money in ways that haven’t worked over the past half-century and start investing at least some of that money in interventions that are designed to actually solve kids’ reading problems.
It’s clear from Allington’s statement that we have choice in how to intervene for fragile readers, but he qualifies that by saying, “…incorporates increasingly expert and increasingly intensive instruction.” I understand that to say that our most highly qualified individuals should be using the most effective research-based methods and materials to meet the unique needs of students reading far below grade level.
More from Allington–
For me the most important part of the proverbial three tiers is the first one: regular classroom instruction. In my view, RTI works best if it’s started in kindergarten and 1st grade—we know how to solve those problems. A lot of them (teachers) assume that if a kid is struggling and is way behind in reading, he must have some neurological problem, and therefore it’s not their job to teach him. So you can do a lot by strengthening instruction. The evidence is there in the research literature. We can reduce the number of kids who have trouble in the 1st grade by half just by improving the quality of kindergarten. And by 2nd grade, we can reduce the number of kids who are behind by another half just by improving the quality of 1st grade instruction.
The problem of a packaged reading program doesn’t have any scientific validity to start with, because we know that if you take 100 kids or even 10 kids, there are no prescribed programs that will work with all of them. What kids need are teachers who know how to teach and have multiple ways of addressing their individual needs. And the evidence that there’s a packaged program that will make a teacher more expert is slim to none.
It’s so simple, really. When districts spend time and money on allowing knowledgeable people to write a clearly aligned curriculum and provide their teachers with top tier instructional materials, followed up by systematic training and support for those teachers, then we can ensure kids get the foundational reading instruction that leads to mastery.
I’m currently working as a consultant with a district in my home state as they write curriculum for the upcoming school year. In Texas, we have new state ELA standards and it’s also the year for new ELA adoptions. Imagine my absolute delight when the teacher writers I’m supporting are copiously studying the specific behaviors young readers need to tackle leveled texts as K-2 students, then aligning phonological awareness and phonics resources to the instructional guides. They are also aligning their curriculum documents to include interactive read-aloud and shared reading texts that will engage and model a robust reading life. The district purchased additional classroom libraries for teachers so students will have plenty of texts to choose from as they read independently and with a partner.
This district’s ELA department vision statement includes three powerful words: choice, authenticity, independence. Would you agree that their values align with their practice?
That’s what Part 4 of this series was all about. What can you do on your campus, or in your district to promote a shared vision of what it means to be responsive to every reader’s needs?
Join us next week for the final chat in the series.
The June 7th, 2019 #G2Great chat was the midpoint of five chats scheduled under the title: Rethinking our Intervention Design as a Schoolwide All-Hands on Deck Imperative and and it was momentous as the Twitterverse was filled with wisdom about increasing volume.
Before we can begin, what exactly are we talking about?
What is volume? This question whirred in my brain for the week leading up to the chat as I thought about my answers to the chat questions and this follow up blog post. Some answers: Not the volume on the TV. Not the “speak louder” for volume in fluent reading. Not the first “volume” in the Harry Potter series. Not the volume measurement in liters.
How do you define volume in reading? In search of a definition of volume, I consulted some reading texts, Google Scholar, and some real life literacy scholars. There are several definitions available. Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis define it as “Access + Choice + Time.” Those three elements were present in the pre-chat quotes shown here.
Although literacy gurus agreed that volume was critical to student success in reading and writing, everyone also had just a little different twist that added depth. Allington said it most succinctly when he talked of time spent reading and number of words read.
Others chimed in with “meaningful” and “engaged” reading as well as “across the day” although a commitment to time remained constant. Both Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher tell us that if students are not reading AT school then we know they are not reading at home either.
But is Reading Volume more flexible and fluid than JUST time and words?
Yes, there must be a commitment to time but a small part also says access means a lot of texts as well as the engagement factor or rapture of being “lost in a great book” and then the meaningfulconversations that come from conferring and dialogue about books.
How do we measure Reading Volume?
In the past many have tried to measure reading volume with book logs and lists of books read. Questions and concerns arose from those practices: Were the books chosen by the students or the teachers? Were the lists accurate? Did the lists include some “fake reading” titles?
Accountability may have won the battle and lost the Volume War as students did the “bare minimum” or perhaps less only in the name of compliance or completed logs. Time is surely one factor.
But does time only count when provided by teachers?
What about the time when students are “sneak reading”? And HOW would time be counted? Minutes? Pages? Books? If we value time spent reading, there is no time to be wasted “counting” words so we could use “The Google” to find out some word counts. (Try googling Harry Potter and number of words just for fun.) As students build up stamina, how could/should those counts increase?
One way to consider the flexibility and fluidity of time is shown in this table from Simple Starts by Kari Yates. The differences between the fall and spring show the expected growth in time and also reflects the increased difficulty of texts throughout the course of the year.
A commitment to access to quality books (chat #2) and quality Tier 1 (chat #1) are a great beginning to improving interventions for striving students. Where do we find Access, Choice and Time that are necessary for reading VOLUME? We will need to continue to say NO to programs that don’t allow students to have access, choice and time to read. We will need to continue to say NO to interventions that don’t allow students to have access, choice and time to read. We will need to say NO to “magic bullets” that don’t allow students to have access, choice and time to read. We will need to say NO to spending money on resources that don’t allow students to have access, choice and time to read.
When educators are together, we spend the bulk of our time talking about all the things that need to be implemented. ASAP.
We don’t, however, often talk at length about the practices that should be avoided. That conversation, however, is critically important and thanks to Jimmy Casas and Jeffrey Zoul we have a clear, concise resource to start (and continue) the dialogue.
Before we get to details from the chat, let’s hear about the book from the authors themselves.
Most schools are mostly amazing places. Yet, for far too long in education, we have continued to do many things simply because “we have always done them.” In writing this book, our hope was to motivate other educators to fight to change what is no longer working in our schools and focus on what does.
We hope that after reading this book, educators will continue doing many of the great things they are already doing. At the same time, we hope to challenge educators to stop doing those things that are counterproductive to maximizing student performance and start doing what matters most.
We believe that teaching is the most noble profession imaginable. Almost every teacher we know, gives the profession their very best each and every day. The job is rewarding, but extremely demanding. We cannot waste our teachers’ or students’ time on things that do not matter most.
How fortunate we are to have two educators such as Jeffrey and Jimmy to speak to this critical issue of shutting down the practices that do not contribute to the academic and personal success of the kids in our classrooms. Take a look at the contributions from our #g2great PLN from Thursday evening.
Many thanks to Fran McVeigh for sharing this chart from Dave Burgess. It’s incredibly helpful to see the 39 STOPS in a clear concise format.
Engaging in practices that kids need based on what we hear and observe, has been, and will forever, be the best way for teachers to determine what kids need. We will never get that valuable information from a box, or computer program. For that reason, we must be alert to the practices that are not adding value to students’ learning and development.
It was said over and over during our chat that teachers must work in collegial ways to affect change. True change is difficult to see when decisions are made from those farthest from the everyday work. Campus administration that invites collaboration from all staff are wise to include “stakeholders” in the important process evaluating teaching and learning in an effort to choose what matters most.
The old adage of “Don’t Weigh the Elephant–Feed the Elephant” has perfect application here. Teachers need far more “input” in relation to the amount of evaluation of their practice. In education, when we spend more time, energy, resources on providing coaching support for teachers, we see personal reflection that leads teachers to seek out solutions (research-based) that align to their students’ unique needs.
We can talk about practices that we need to abandon in favor of ones that benefit students, but if we’re not replacing the poor practices with those that support our kids toward academic and life success, then we fail both teachers AND students. That’s where building teachers’ capacity through coaching and collaborative support leads to success for all. Teachers have autonomy and new practices/resources to implement in the absence of the poor practices that were abandoned. If we expect teachers to cease the “less than” practices, we must empower and embolden them through collaborative coaching.
Many thanks to Jeffrey Zoul and Jimmy Casas for their book, Stop. Right. Now.: 39 Steps to Making School Better. And much gratitude to all the amazing educators who return to #g2great chat week after week to share their knowledge, wisdom and insight.
Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, and Brad Buhrow joined #G2Great on Thursday, May 9, 2019 to illuminate their vision of the power and possibilities of Researcher’s Workshop. Stephanie and Anne are not strangers to #G2Great chats as they were here for the 3rd edition of Strategies that Work and Stephanie for From Striving to Thriving Writersand From Striving to Thriving Readers here. But this book has long been anticipated since Stephanie laid the groundwork for a “four a day” workshop model years ago. Our chat illuminated their vision of a “Researcher’s Workshop”, some essential elements of the workshop, a sampling of instructional elements, and the need for teachers and students to be curious.
What is “Researcher’s Workshop”?
What are two crucial elements in “Researcher’s Workshop”?
Researcher’s Workshop scheduled every day is motivating to students because of the time dedicated to learning HOW to research within supportive inquiry frameworks as well as the TIME to have in depth student-chosen research rather than regurgitation of trivial facts and topics. Teachers who are already using “Passion Projects” will love the embedded essential questions available within curricular research in science and social studies.
What are some of the instructional elements of a “Researcher’s Workshop”?
What is the role of curiosity?
Curiosity should never be about answering teacher questions. Both generating and answering questions are important life skills. Teachers can keep curiosity alive during school years by their own actions: the way they support and value student questions and answers.
How will Researcher’s Workshop empower students?
In summary, “Researcher’s Workshop” may be the answer for incorporating more content knowledge into science and social studies learning . . . and not just surface learning or “coverage” of topics. Managed choice as proposed by Allington and as described in Inquiry Illuminated will allow students to choose the learning that is most important for each of them and yet still meet curricular goals. Providing a chunk of time for that research will also provide additional practice time to solidify all those literacy skills – reading, writing, speaking, listening, and THINKING – as well as time for transfer. The perfect WIN/WIN for students and teachers. Dig into the links to research all of the possibilities!
Thursday, April 11, #G2great hosted a Twitter chat entitled, Balanced Literacy: What’s in a Name? We had a powerful discussion around the balanced literacy framework with #g2great veterans and some first-timers as well. Let’s revisit the framework and some of the thoughts from the chat.
Balanced literacy is a framework that delivers extended reading
and writing support in varied environments within the classroom applying
instructional methods that differ by level of teacher support and child control
(Fountas and Pinnell, 1996).
Through this framework “children are explicitly taught the
relationship between letters and sounds in a systematic fashion, but they are
being read to and reading interesting stories and writing at the same time” (Diegmueller,
1996).
Originally, balanced literacy was focused on both a skills-based
approach and a meaning-based approach in the literacy block. There is a renewed
effort to include the systematic teaching of phonics along with a focus on
comprehension–all within and around rich and meaningful literature-based
experiences (Asselin, 1999).
The optimal balanced literacy program consists of literacy
events, such as read alouds, guided reading, shared reading and independent
reading and writing (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). Most recently, some
educators have included book clubs as an integral part of the framework.
It is important to note that a highly successful balanced
literacy framework includes teacher directed instruction (direct instruction
and modeling of skills, strategies, dispositions, procedures and processes by
the teacher) along with student centered and student directed work.
When planning, teachers can strategically design instruction,
modeling and practice for students in each of the components listed above. For
instance, when thinking about the practice readers need in applying knowledge
of letters and sounds, it makes sense that the instruction and application
would take place during the phonics, word study and spelling portion of the
language arts block. But, in fact, it would also make sense to include quick
instruction and group application in a day’s lesson included during shared
reading.
In
addition, emerging patterns observed in benchmark assessment and progress
monitoring are not only reserved for instruction during guided reading.
Teachers can strategically plan to include modeling of the observed gaps during
an interactive read aloud or the reading mini-lesson. You can see that readers’
needs can be addressed through instruction and modeling in any or all of the
components of a balanced literacy approach.
A balanced
literacy framework provides a system whereby instruction in reading and writing
is delivered and supported in contexts that are connected and designed to meet
student needs. It’s well worth our time to continue to learn and perfect the
components and their interconnected systems to grow readers and writers in
authentic ways.
