Literacy Lenses

Literacy Lenses

Focusing on The Literacy Work that Matters
Menu

Category: Student Centered

We (still) Got This: What It Takes to Be Radically Pro-Kid

By Fran McVeigh

I’ve been working on something new to me from the quilting world. It’s paper piecing that is almost the opposite of “regular” quilting because the pieces are actually sewn to foundation paper in order to stabilize the irregularly shaped fabric pieces. It’s only my second attempt at paper piecing and I readily admit that the task is daunting. I have 158 pieces in my pattern. That’s fewer than last year’s big quilt. But with paper piecing each individual quilt piece has a varying number of parts itself labeled alphabetically, a-i, for a possible range of 158 pieces to 1,422. (yikes!) The letters tell me the order of sewing and it only works in alphabetical order but sometimes “a” is at the top, other times at the bottom, or even in the middle. Every piece is unique. Now that I have five of seven sections complete, I’m past the halfway mark. It often seems like I’m sewing upside down because the pattern is on the top where I sew and the right side is on the bottom of the pattern where the seams are magically hidden when I sew it correctly. How do I know? One, the fabric covers the pattern so no paper is “uncovered”; two, the seam is hidden; and three, the fabric is truly “right side up.” How did I learn that? When I had to replace nine pieces that were the wrong color. Three hours of ripping out and replacing taught me several important lessons, but more on that later.

Why did I include this information about paper piecing in this week’s blog? It’s new learning. I’m far from perfect even with five of seven sections completed because I haven’t practiced enough that it’s “easy” and “automatic”. Quitting or tucking this project away might be a solution except it’s a birthday present for someone very special next month.

Thursday night, April 6, 2023, found two dynamic, inspiring education leaders at the #G2Great chat table, and what an amazing conversation around this Schoolutions podcast by Olivia Wahl and Cornelius Minor. Olivia is in her second season hosting Schoolutions podcasting so you will want to check out all of the available podcasts here. The wide range of her podcasts allows listeners to dip in and out of either the podcasts or the transcripts allowing quick access to key points. Our second leader, Cornelius Minor, is no stranger to #g2great as he appeared here when his book, We Got This: Equity, Access and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, debuted on the educational stage five years ago. Cornelius was also with #g2great and Courtney Kinney here. As thought leaders and change agents, both Olivia and Cornelius are leaving footprints for us to follow.

Wakelet archive of the Twitter chat here

Here’s my thinking based on our chat and the podcast. If you were there, see if it matches your thinking. If you missed the chat, remember you can check out the Wakelet archive of the Tweets and the podcast for yourself. The highlighted sections offer some questions for your reflection and future actions.

Let’s get started! We Got This!

What is our work?

1. Determine Your Commitment

What is your commitment? Is it to the students? The school? The community? What do you value? How do we know? Often the way you spend your time shares your commitments. What takes up the biggest chunk of time? Is that where the time needs to be spent?

Be Radically Pro-Kid

Cornelius Minor’s keynote at CCIRA in February 2023, had the phrase “Radically Pro-Kid” in the title. I hadn’t yet listened to this podcast by Olivia with Cornelius but I was intrigued from the first moment that I read the title in the conference program. Of course, Cornelius’s keynote was brilliant and inspiring.

What does that mean: To be radically pro-kid?

What do you value? How do you share that with others around you?

2. Create Opportunity for ALL Students

ALL means all. Always. Olivia stated that in the tweet above about “engaging all learners.” How and when are we checking to make sure that all students have opportunities for success? That automatically also includes ACCESS. How do we ensure access? What barriers exist? How do we work to identify and dismantle those barriers?

How do you ensure that ALL students have access and opportunities? For those that are striving, how do you ensure that they actually have increased access and opportunities to close gaps without usurping other needed content/time?

3. Listen

Some key points arise in the podcast around the 12-minute mark. Cornelius talks about listening as “a way of being.” He also talks about “heavy presence and light touch.” And …”folks won’t articulate in traditional ways what they need often. But if I’m around, if my presence is heavy and my touch is light, I can be among students.” This idea of presence and listening is critical in relationships as well as in school because we can’t be “radically pro kids” if we aren’t present and listening.

This is super important because adults often feel comfortable in their knowledge and like to give kids a choice of this or that. But even that “forced choice” feels heavy on the TELLING side. Students need opportunities to make decisions and learn from those choices that they make not that are predetermined by the adults in their sphere of influence.

How do we really listen, with our ears, eyes and hearts to make sure that the whole student is considered? How do we strip away the masks (hat tip to Cris Tovani)? How do we stay curious? How do we collect data that continues to drive instruction?

4. Work Collaboratively

Sometimes we have mentor -teacher relationships or collegial thought partners that help move our thinking and our actions into real life. But for many folks, we live, think, and work in isolation in our own buildings because we are independent beings with commitments and minds of our own. When we are “radically pro kid” we may have a narrower field of friends in our own schools/districts/states. That isolation can be reduced by finding like-minded individuals across the country or continents.

How and when do we co-construct learning opportunities? Who assists us? What other resources do we need?

Full Circle

I’ve always loved crafts and giving handmade gifts but had little time in recent years for big projects. I began quilting during the pandemic and freely admit that it took about a year to really sew straight lines with a 1/4-inch seam. What have I learned from paper piecing this last month? I had to interrogate my commitment to the project (a May birthday gift), create opportunities for myself to learn (face to face and via videos), listen (fabric does speak and pictures of the work reveal glaring errors), and work collaboratively (consult with experts and other learners at varying stages. It has been a learning journey!

Where will you begin your learning journey? Who will you enlist as a learning partner? When will you begin? Cornelius gives you the blueprint for action research in We Got This and Olivia gives you choices of topics/ideas in her Schoolutions podcasts. The list above is not “prioritized” but does include some big ideas for your planning and implementation.

Additional Resources:

Olivia R Wahl

Host: Schoolutions Podcast
  www.oliviawahl.com

Twitter: @OliviaRWahl  @schoolutions 

Instagram: @schoolutionspodcast

Cornelius Minor

Kass & Corn

Twitter: @MisterMinor

Instagram: corneliusminor

The Next Step Forward in Running Records: Getting to the Heart of Effective Instruction Through Deeper Qualitative Analysis

by Fran McVeigh

Entire Wakelet Can Be Viewed at this Link

The #G2Great chat was electrifying on 9/23/21 as the Twitterverse welcomed C.C. Bates, Maryann McBride, and Jan Richardson for their chat around their new book, The Next Step Forward in Running Records: Getting to the Heart of Effective Instruction Through Deeper Qualitative Analysis. Dr. Jan Richardson is no stranger to #G2Great as she hosted on July 28, 2016 for The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading. This new text has so much information about running records that it would be ideal for a study by partner teachers, teams of teachers, or even a full faculty building level study. In the educational world, C.C. Bates, Maryann McBride and Jan Richardson have a total of over 100 years of experience that they honed as they wrote this text and their wisdom is found on every page.

Many educators are totally stressed by the role of assessment in their lives as they try to survive and even hope to thrive during these pandemic times. So let’s begin this post with the authors’ response to WHY they wrote this book.

1) What motivated you to write this book? What impact did you hope that it would have in the professional world?

We felt running records were falling short of their potential. Often times we would see teachers calculate the accuracy rate and ignore the analysis of other behaviors including errors and self-corrections. We hoped the book would provide opportunities for professional conversations around how running records can be used to make instructional decisions. The book incorporates questions we have received from teachers nationwide. The book addresses these questions and provides guidance on why running records are important, how to take, score, and analyze them, and connect the analysis to individual, small, and whole group instruction. Finally, the book provides insight into specific challenges that are uncovered through a detailed analysis of running records.

Email correspondence with C.C. Bates, Maryann McBride, & Jan Richardson

There is so much to consider when using Running Records. They are simplistic in design: a written response to what the student said out loud while reading. That “inside out” view of student processing. The deeper meaning comes from the qualitative analysis with the changes in instruction coming from a study of student patterns and teacher reflection on instruction over time. To hear that teachers would often only calculate the accuracy rate is disheartening.

I would be remiss to not state my own personal bias. Running records informed my life as a special education teacher, as a classroom teacher, as a curriculum coordinator, and as a literacy consultant. The information gained from running records analysis has the potential to transform instruction for students. The information gained from teacher analysis of their own TOLDs would be reflective action research that could also change a teacher’s self awareness. Running records are powerful in the hands of a thoughtful, reflective, research-oriented teacher.

Let us continue. This post is going to identify five key points about running records from The Next Step in Running Records that were amplified by the chat.

Know your purpose for running records

Running records would typically be classified as formative assessments. This process: take a running record, score, analyze, and then connect to individual, small and whole group instruction. All of this information is used to then guide the teacher’s decision making in developing an instructional plan that includes choosing a book for instruction, choosing the next steps in letter and word work, as well as the next steps in vocabulary, language and strategic action. Other decisions include the type of passage to be used: a cold passage (never read before) or a reread of a passage that the student has read once before.

MSV is not the order of importance

MSV is the alphabetical order of three areas. Let me repeat that. MSV is the alphabetical order of the three areas.

It is not the order of importance.

There is synergy in the crosschecking that occurs often almost simultaneously between these areas. V or Visual is a priority for “phonics instruction” because it deals with attending to the print that is in the text in front of the students. Letters. Sounds. Decoding the words. Visual information is about the print (not the illustrations). The print is often the first area that many teachers consider when they want to know if phonics instruction is working/ sticking. V or visual information is important and many critics of balanced reading instruction claim that “phonics is last in instruction” because visual is last one listed in MSV. But the listing of MSV is truly alphabetical order.

(Note: I spend a lot of time on analysis of the visual information processing to ensure that phonics instruction is meeting the needs of students.)

MSV is an analysis of student reading behaviors

Why analysis?

What are some of the the key student reading behaviors?

“V or visual information stands for the ways in which children draw upon the alphabetic principle or the connection between letters and sounds. V also includes children’s use of orthographic patterns and their automatic recognition of high-frequency words.” (p. 23) Visual information does NOT include pictures/photographs.

M is meaning and is a focus on constructing understanding whether at the paragraph, sentence, phrase, or word level. The author’s use the example of a child reading “The house is brown” for “The horse is brown” where it does make sense at the sentence level but not the text level if the child is reading about horses. We do want student using both visual and meaning simultaneously and these types of miscues can easily be clarified as words that need to be studied in the middle (/u/ and /r/) as the beginning and endings are correct.

S is structure and deals with the language and the grammar. Some miscues occur due to language or grammar that is unfamiliar to students. Coordinating the language and grammar with the visual information in the text is a challenge when the child is working with text that is outside their current areas of cognitive practice.

Monitoring and self-correcting are also windows into student processing. What the student says is important as they attempt to solve a word. Student work in their head and out loud provides data for teachers to analyze.

This was just an abbreviated overview of complex reading behaviors that are detailed in The Next Step Forward in Running Records. These behaviors can be accessed during every running record taken of a child’s reading. What a gift for teachers and students.

A running record is the key to developing a responsive instructional plan

Reading behaviors operate together. They may be analyzed separately as MSV or physical behaviors during the running record but the goal is for the behaviors to work together in order for student processing systems to function effectively. The goal of analysis is to determine which ones and HOW they are being used in order to plan for the next layer of instruction needed by the child. And inn the tweet below, C.C. Bates shares one example of what is NOT an instructional implication.

Pay attention to patterns of behavior that emerge over time

Don’t shortchange running records by just looking at accuracy. Look for patterns over time to inform and guide responsive differentiated instruction.

Let’s return to the words of the authors for a response to question two for takeaways for teachers to embrace and question three with a message from the heart.

2) What are your BIG takeaways from your book that you hope teachers will embrace in their teaching practices?

We hope teachers will see that capturing students’ reading behaviors and using the information to provide targeted instruction is time well spent. In the book, we show how running records are an integral part of the instructional cycle. We give suggestions on when to take running records, with whom, and how often. Most importantly we attempt to help teachers move beyond the accuracy rate to deepen their understanding of students’ literacy behaviors and their instructional implications.

Email correspondence with C.C. Bates, Maryann McBride, & Jan Richardson

3) What is a message from the heart you would like for every teacher to keep in mind?

This book was a pandemic project. Focusing our energy on a topic near and dear to our hearts kept us grounded and moving forward as we tried to balance our personal and professional lives. Running records do require time, energy, thought, but we believe that children are always worth the effort!

Email correspondence with C.C. Bates, Maryann McBride, & Jan Richardson

Closing thoughts . . .

Are you using running records? If yes, how and why do you use them? If no, why not?

Any passage can be used for a running record that can be analyzed in order to determine the reading behaviors that students are consistently using as well as the next possible steps for instruction. Running records provide a window into a child’s brain to assess their reading behaviors. As a reminder, the word assess comes from the Latin assidere, which means to sit beside. Literally then, to assess means ‘to sit beside the learner.” A running record allows a child to sit beside an adult who listens intently to the child read and watches their reading behaviors. When I am taking a running record, I pull all that information together for analysis of those in-the-head behaviors along with the behaviors I observe during our work together. I believe it is important for an adult who understands the value of a deep analysis to listen to children to determine whether they are applying skills that they have been taught as they read connected text.

Isn’t that what every child in every classroom deserves?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

LINKS:

https://vimeo.com/517580786 – Running Records Webinar by Jan, C.C., and Maryann

https://www.janrichardsonreading.com

https://readingrecovery.clemson.edu – Click on Teacher Resources for more on running records

https://shop.scholastic.com/teachers-ecommerce/teacher/books/the-next-step-forward-in-running-records-9781338732856.html

Why do you need to read and study this book?

The book will help you understand the depth of the previous information as well as these Additional Tweets to Consider about TOLDS (a Teacher Behavior) that are an ENTIRE chapter in the book:

Phonics In Perspective: Taking a Closer Look

by, Jenn Hayhurst

To access the archive of the chat please click here.

For as long as I can remember there has been an ongoing public debate for how to teach children to read. The “Reading Wars” asked teachers to take a side – are you pro phonics or whole language? Not even a global pandemic could silence it. If anything, it has only gotten worse. Nowadays it is: are you for the Science of Reading or Balanced Literacy? While that may all be well and good for selling newspapers, or getting “likes” over social media, it does little to elevate teacher knowledge or practice. The best way to do that is to engage in a good conversation rather than rigid one-sided debates.

On August 12, 2021 the #G2Great team hosted a chat to take a closer look at how to keep Phonics in Perspective. Teachers from all over came together to share their knowledge and experiences for phonics instruction. We discussed what we know to be true, we listened with the intent to understand, and aspired to build on our existing knowledge base to grow our instructional practice.

What we know to be true

Phonics learning is a strategy that helps readers to match spoken sounds to letters in an effort to decode. Phonics knowledge also helps readers identify common patterns embedded within syllables, this is helpful for both reading and spelling. Teachers of young children know that phonics instruction is important. When it comes to teaching children to read, nothing should be off the the table. Reading is a very complex process, one that requires teachers to differentiate instruction based on the needs of the students in front of them. This is a basic truth that many commercial programs fail to acknowledge and I think that is why so many programs fall short:

Listening to learn and grow instructional practice

During the chat I found myself reflecting on what others had shared about how to keep phonics in perspective. I returned to the Wakelet and gathered some tweets that really helped to clarify what I learned to grow my instructional practice. One takeaway I had was the importance to make room for transfer of learning to occur. Making room for transfer can happen when students: participate in word sorting, interactive writing, shared reading, or independent reading of decodable or more authentic texts. Then my thoughts turned to how important it is to bend the curriculum in order to make room for lots of component work. Finding ways to integrate interactive writing, shared reading, guided reading, and conferring to phonics learning will give students so much repeated practice for their learning of phonics as well as many other important strategies. I also though about the reading writing connection and how that promotes opportunities for phonics learning during reading and writing workshop. Again, I found my thoughts returning to the need to differentiate because reading is complex and there is no one simple “right” way to teach children how to read.

Teachers already know what side to take when it comes to the “Reading Wars” debate. There is no alternative but to be on the side of students, and that means integrating phonics instruction and honoring student centered decision making. Throughout this post many smart educators discussed how to embed phonics instruction for their students in meaningful ways. I am truly so grateful to be able to learn from so many talented and experienced teachers.

No More Random Acts of Coaching #G2Great

by Jenn Hayhurst

To view the archive of the chat click here.

On December 3, 2020, Erin Brown and Susan L’Allier joined #G2Great’s community and led an important conversation about coaching. Their new book, No More Random Acts of Coaching, is part of Heinemann’s Not This but That series. If you are not familiar with this fantastic series, it pairs the expertise of a researcher and a practitioner to give readers tips and insights on how to grow teaching practices that are supported by research.

Needless to say, when I found out Erin and Susan were to be our guests I was extremely excited because I am a Literacy Coach. Then as it worked out, the night of the chat turned out to be my school’s Parent-Teacher Conferences. So I didn’t get to be there live but I did get to read the Wakelet and boy were chatters inspired. I can also say that I really wish this book had been written when I began my career as a coach. Erin and Susan give readers a plan to grow into the coaching role. Successful coaching is not about being lucky. It is about careful planning and lots and lots of preparation!

There are three tenets that ran through the chat. When I discovered that I got chills because they are what coaching is really all about at its core: curiosity, communication, and responsiveness.

Curiosity

Being inside a classroom when a teacher is making connections with students, tucking in expert moves that accelerate learning is something to admire and wonder about. Being part of that process, even when things don’t necessarily go as planned, is thrilling. So many questions are born from those experiences: Why did that work? What was unexpected? Why do you think that happened? What did students do when that happened? Coaching and curiosity really work hand-in-hand.

Coaching isn’t about fixing. It’s filled with respect for the art of what happens with students in a school every day. A coach’s appreciation of a teacher’s strengths allow for real learning to happen during their conversations.

Erin Brown No More Random Acts of Coaching

Communication

Coaching requires precise language in terms of feedback but is also open-ended and generous to support deeper learning. We learn a lot by listening. Every time we paraphrase, we allow teachers to hear their own words come back to them. Pausing and making reflections are essential parts of the process.

We sometimes forget the research-established idea that when teachers, principals, and coaches work together to create a climate of intentional, ongoing professional learning, the likelihood of student literacy growth increases!

Susan L’Allier No More Random Acts of Coaching

Responsiveness

Whether a teacher or a coach, both roles are really about being responsive to the needs of learners and making meaningful connections. Whether it is a child or an adult we all want to be heard. This is a very important takeaway for anyone considering what it is to be a coach.

Let me send out a huge thank you to Erin Brown and Susan L’Allier. Thank you for joining #G2Great and thank you for this beautiful book: No More Random Acts of Literacy Coaching.