The purpose of reading (part 2)

In last week’s post, I began to really dig into the concept of the purpose of reading. With our work around Science of Reading, we have really spent a lot of time, especially in our early grades, focused on structured literacy and skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding, but as Natalie Wexler reminds us:

What I was focused on in my last post (which you can see here) is digging into the idea that the ultimate purpose of reading is to comprehend the words that are on the page. At a conference I recently attended, Anita Archer shared the four things that all students must be able to do in order to comprehend:

Read the words accurately and fluently.
Understand the meaning of the words.
Have adequate background knowledge.
Focus attention on critical content.

Last week, I focused on the idea of accuracy and fluency. Today I’ll be digging into the idea of understanding words. In future posts, we’ll dig into building background knowledge and focusing on critical content.

As you know, I always love to understand the why behind what we do, so what does the research say about understanding the meaning of the words in relation to comprehension? I think we can all agree that vocabulary is related to reading comprehension. In fact:

“…one of the most eduring findings in reading research is the extent to which students’ vocabulary knowledge relates to their reading comprehension.”
~Osborn & Hiebert, 2004

I think we’d all agree that for our students to be able to read fluently, they need to know the words that they are reading. When our students don’t know the meaning of a word they are decoding during text reading, they must use context to figure out what the words mean. This added cognitive load takes away from fluency – one of the things that must be in place for solid reading comprehension.

There are several ways we can make sure that our students have that strong foundation in their vocabulary. Anita Archer suggests the following checklist to help build vocabulary:

Use high-quality classroom language.
Consistently use academic language.
Read narrative and informative read-alouds in primary grades.
Promote wide independent reading.
Teach word learning strategies (context clues, morphemes, and resources like dictionaries, thesauruses, etc.).
Explicitly teach critical vocabulary terms.

Over the years, I’ve spent time sharing about the work of John Hattie. His research says that vocabulary programs have an effect size of 0.67 (that’s pretty high, and definitely above the “hinge” point). In fact, Bob Marzano says:

“Direct vocabulary instruction has an impressive track record of improving students’ background knowledge and comprehension of academic content.”

So, what might a vocabulary instructional routine look like? This is the format that Archer suggests – just like with any other part of the five pillars of reading, it should be systematic and explicit. To do that, we should introduce the word, introduce the word’s meaning, illustrate the word with an example (and non-examples when it’s helpful), and then check for understanding. Let me take you through those steps a little more in-depth:

Step 1: Introduce the pronunciation of the word: You should display the word in some way, maybe on the screen, written on the board, or on chart paper. Then, read the word to the students and have students repeat it. With multi-syllabic words or more difficult words, repeat it several times. You might also have students read the word by parts, tap the word, etc.

Step 2: Present a student-friendly explanation: Tell the students an explanation, or have the students read an explanation with you. This might include using the word in a sentence, providing synonyms or antonyms, etc.

Step 3: Illustrate the word with examples: You might use concrete examples like having an object or acting the word out. You might use a visual example like an image or picture. Or you might use a verbal example to explain the word.

Step 4: Check students’ understanding: You might choose to do this in a few ways. You could ask deep processing questions, give the students think time, and then ask partner A to tell partner B. You might have students discern between examples and non-examples, so you might share a sentence and then ask students to say whether it is an example of the word or not. A third way you might check for understanding is to have students compare the vocabulary term with another term. You might have partner A share examples of ways the words are similar, and partner B share examples of ways the words are different.

Linnea Ehri tells us that if words have been read before and stored in memory, prediction strategies are not required for a reader to decode. When we can introduce difficult vocabulary words to our students in an explicit way before teaching, then our readers are better able to focus on their primary task in reading, comprehension.

What strategies have you tried in building vocabulary with your students? What has worked well? What hasn’t? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

What is the purpose of reading?

In the past few months, I have been deeply engaged in learning a lot about reading. What it takes to support our students in their reading growth, how do we create a foundation for learning to read, how do we assess where our students are as readers, and what do we do when a student is struggling. But even with all that learning, I don’t think I’ve taken a lot of time to reflect on the true purpose of reading. What would you say if you were asked? Pause and reflect on that for a second…

There are several things you might say. Some of the ideas that pop into my head have to do with gaining information about a topic, connecting information in the text to knowledge the reader already has or for the purpose of entertainment. Personally, I love to sit down with a good book and get lost in the words on the page, although I know this is not the case for everyone. But I think we can all agree that whether or not a reader sees reading as a joyful task, it is definitely a necessary task. Ultimately though, whatever the purpose of reading may be, it’s meaningless without comprehension of the words on the page.

In a recent post, I shared a little of what I had learned from Pamela Snow during my time at The Reading League’s Annual Conference (you can see that post on the connection between oral language and literacy here). But her presentation went even deeper than that connection, it also dug into the importance of comprehension in reading. She shared the following about reading comprehension:

Comprehension will suffer if a word has been incorrectly recognized, if the text includes words that are not in the reader’s oral vocabulary, if the linguistic structure of the text is overly complex, or if the topic of the reading material is so unfamiliar that the reader cannot make inferences (“read between the lines”) that are necessary to understanding the text. (Emphasis added by Snow)
Snow, Scarborough, & Burns (1999). What speech-language pathologists need to know about early reading. Topics in Language Disorders, (20)1, 48-58. (p.51)

While I agreed with the concepts of this statement and much of what Snow shared during her presentation, I was left hoping for a bit more on the how. I get the why of reading comprehension, but what can we do in practice to support readers in this area? That’s why I appreciated the afternoon session I attended that same day with Anita Archer. Her session that afternoon was titled Comprehension is an Outcome, not a Strategy. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t immediately familiar with Anita Archer’s name, however, I was mesmerized by her presentation. First, any presenter who can keep a room full of adults fully engaged for an entire one-hour presentation has my utmost respect. Most of the time I’m at a conference, I find myself tweeting out (X-ing out now… that just doesn’t have the same ring!) highlights of almost any session I’m in. I didn’t tweet once during this session. Not because there was nothing worthy of sharing, but because I was so engaged I didn’t want to look away. If you ever have the opportunity to hear Archer in person, you should absolutely take it!

Archer’s simple definition of comprehension is the act of understanding what you have read. But as educators, what do we need to do to make sure this happens? In Archer’s opinion, there are 4 things that all students must be able to do. The student:

Reads the words accurately and fluently
Understands the meaning of the words
Has adequate background knowledge
Focuses attention on critical content

What I loved about the presentation was that for each of these sections, she gave a little information on the research of why that skill is important, a checklist of things that we as educators should do to make sure that our readers are able to carry out these skills, and then a way you might go about teaching at least a piece of that skill. Today’s post is going to dig into the way we make sure that our students can read the words accurately and fluently.

First, though, why is this important? Here are a few pieces of research that help explain why our students need to read accurately and fluently:

Cognitive science has shown beyond a doubt that fluent, accurate word recognition is a hallmark of skilled reading with comprehension.
Adams, 1990; Rayner et al., 2001

…poor readers are almost always limited by their ability to use letter-sound skills (e.g., phonics skills) to identify unfamiliar words.
Ehri, 1998; Rack, Snowling, & Olson, 1992

Based on this research, it is imperative that ALL students get to the point of reading fluently and accurately. And it’s also important to remember that reading fluency is about more than just the rate of reading. There are actually three key aspects of reading fluency: Accuracy (decoding and recognizing words correctly), Rate (the pace of reading), and Prosody (use of intonation, stress, and phrasing). But how do we help all our students read fluently? Archer put together a checklist of what we should think about in order to be sure that our students have these skills (and it’s important to remember that these skills apply to all grade levels). If we are committed to making sure that all our students can read accurately and fluently, here are the things that Archer suggests we must do at our school:

Teach foundation skills to ALL students to mastery (print skills, phonemic awareness, letter-sound associations, decoding, fluency)
Teach advanced decoding of multi-syllabic words
Provide systematic interventions on foundational skills for struggling readers
Preteach the pronunciation of unfamiliar words before passage reading

A huge part of fluency instruction revolves around modeling, practice, and feedback. Strategies that can support fluency in reading might include scaffolded repeated reading, choral reading (teacher and class read together), echo reading (teacher or partner reads a sentence, and then students read the same sentence), recorded reading (have students record themselves reading a passage, then listen and self-reflect), read-alouds, and performance reading (like a reader’s theater).

When choosing to use a passage for repeated reading or any fluency work, previewing the text as the teacher is important. Are there print structures that might be difficult for students? Are there multi-syllabic words that students need support in decoding? Are there words that students might need to have pronunciation modeled? Once you identify those challenges, take a moment to pre-teach those structures or words. For pronunciation practice, you might read the word, show it to students, and have the class echo it back to you.

When we take the time to practice fluency routines, we set students up for success. When students are more successful in their fluency, they are able to better comprehend their reading. As you begin working toward that purpose of helping your students read more fluently and accurately, you are bound to notice higher levels of comprehension.

What are some of the specific things that you have found support the fluency work in your classroom? Do you have favorite tools or activities? Share with us in the comments below!

The connection between oral language and reading instruction

At the beginning of the month, I had the privilege to attend The Reading League’s 7th Annual National Conference in Syracuse, NY. I went with several others from our district. The goal of the conference is to develop a deeper understanding of the science of reading and learn about the implications for teaching and learning. In the coming weeks/months, I look forward to sharing with you some of my key takeaways from this conference. There were several amazing presenters!

One of the first sessions I attended was led by Pamela Snow. She is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology Much of her work is centered around the early transition from language to literacy and the ways this transition is supported in the classroom. In that session, she reminded me of something that I shared in our recent PD on the Science of Reading – Human brains weren’t originally meant to be a reading brain.

The chart below was one she shared during her presentation and served as a good reminder that less than 3% of human existence includes the use of written language.

What’s important for us to keep in mind given this information is the reminder that Language is a paradox (this theory comes directly from Pamela Snow) – “Humans have evolved a special facility for oral language, such that it is innate (biologically primary). We have a “language instinct.” However, it is highly vulnerable to a range of developmental conditions (e.g. hearing impairment, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, brain injury, or developmental language disorder). For humans, language is highly sensitive to environmental exposure.”

At times, when a reader is struggling with transitioning from an oral language structure to learning to read a written language structure, or as a student expands their reading skills beyond the oral language skills they have been exposed to, students may struggle with their reading. Literacy (reading and writing), builds upon oral language skills (vocab, speaking/conversation skills, syntax, phonological/phonemic awareness). When students lack language comprehension (remember the reading rope?), they will struggle to read fluently, which will impact their reading comprehension.

Readers with strong oral language abilities are more likely to develop strong reading abilities. Those strong reading abilities in turn will increase a reader’s vocabulary and background knowledge, which will further strengthen their reading abilities.

So what does this mean in practice? It means that our classrooms need to not only be a literacy-rich environment (lots of reading and writing), it also needs to be an oral language-rich environment (listening and speaking). Whenever possible, for all levels of readers, we can strengthen oral language skills by building opportunities for conversation, narrative discourse (think storytelling), procedural discourse (explaining a procedure), and expository discourse (informative or persuasive). Ultimately we can think of the oral language as the engine of literacy skills, while high-quality instruction in language development and reading is the fuel for success.

What are some of the ways you support oral language in your classroom? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

Connecting language to reading

In last week’s post, I was talking about the way the human brain processes language (you can see that post here). Those processes include the phonological processing system, the meaning processing system, and the context processing system. These systems help the human brain listen to what others say, respond with words and sounds, and understand what those words mean within the context of what’s being said. As homo sapiens, this brain has adapted over the past 200,000 years to process language that is spoken and heard.

As I shared last week, for most of human history, words only existed in verbal form, so the brain was ready to process that information. With the development of a written language, a new process had to be developed within the brain.

Now, I’ve got to pause here for just a moment to share just how fascinating the human brain is! It constantly is redeveloping itself, adapting one portion of the brain for new uses, and learning from past experiences. From some past learning, I know that a portion of what now makes up the orthographic processing system in our brain used to be used by the same part of the brain that helps us to recognize faces. When someone looks familiar to you, your brain is using similar areas of the brain as when you look at the letters on the device you are reading from right now. Think about how the human brain has had to adapt in the last 20ish years of the digital age. But the difference is that skills like reading must be learned by the brain. On the other hand, the language processing system is online for each human even before birth.

So here is how the brain had to change. With the development of written language, a new processing system had to be developed in the brain. We call this the orthographic processing system. This system is able to learn to recognize letters, and then eventually letter strings. In time, those recognitions come to feel almost immediate. To a proficient reader, most words seem to become sight words.

So what does this mean for us instructionally? It means that once our students have a strong foundation of language comprehension, the next step is to support them in phonemic awareness. This means that students need support in first noticing, articulating, and manipulating the smallest sounds in words. Eventually, after they have strong phonemic awareness, then we move into phonics where we begin connecting the sounds we hear in spoken language to the letters that make up those sounds.

In Shifting the Balance, there are a few shifts in instructional practices that Burkins and Yates suggest. Here are just a few things you might consider:

High-leverage instructional routines – We might start with skills like noticing how sounds are made, then progress into putting sounds together to make words, then take words apart, then listen for similar sounds, then taking sounds off a word, and finally changing one sound to make a new word. These phonological awareness skills help build the sound knowledge that students need prior to bringing the orthographic processing system online.
Word lists – There are several different resources that I have seen that could be used at various grade levels to assess students understanding of the various skills. In the district where I work, we could utilize the differentiated spelling lists that go with HMH/Into Reading, or we have access to the digital teacher’s version of Words Their Way. If you’re looking for another source, there are some excellent decodable word lists sorted by skill that were put together by Burkins and Yates as part of their work on Shifting the Balance. You can find those lists on their website here.
Multisensory scaffolds – Utilizing tools such as Elkonin boxes with chips or counters, then progressing into letter tiles or magnets. Burkins and Yate point out that these multisensory tools might be especially important when a task is new or students are struggling.
Assessment plan – As with any other skill that we want our students to know, formative assessment should serve as our guide along the way. Are there phonemic awareness skills that some or most students still need to develop? Do we need to create or utilize a more formal assessment to check your student’s phonemic awareness? This information will help us to know when it’s time to make the jump from focusing on the sounds in phonemic awareness to the point where we add in the work of connecting letters to sounds in phonics.

Just as with most other forms of learning, there is a progression that most students follow, first learning the skills of recognizing words in a sentence, then breaking words into syllables, then noticing beginning or ending sounds, and eventually identifying all the sounds of the word. When students miss steps along this progression, they might struggle further down the line. What I’m recognizing now is that many of the students who came to my classroom as a 5^th or 6^th grader who struggled with reading skills were probably missing some of those early phonemic awareness or phonics skills. Backing up and supporting some of the early language fluency skills might have helped them develop the skills they needed to be more successful readers. Hopefully for those of you who are teaching students who have reached the stage that we expect them to be “reading to learn,” there are some steps here that you might be able to integrate into instruction for your students.

What are your takeaways from this? What will you commit to trying based on this new learning? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Thinking about reading

Not that long ago, I wrote a post called Science or craft (you can see that post here). One of the things I talked about in that post was the fact that I felt as an educator, being involved in a series of “Reading Wars” was not beneficial to the concept of learning and growth. In my view, one of our goals as an educator should be to learn as broadly as we can on the topics that matter to us. As an educator who has an impact on some of the earliest learners, literacy must be a big part of my focus, and therefore it must be an area I am seeking continual growth. That has in turn led me to ongoing learning about the Science of Reading.

In the post referenced above, I shared that it felt as though there are some who view the teaching of reading as having two sides, and neither one saw value in the other. It made me a bit uncomfortable because I had taught in a Balanced Literacy Classroom for years of my career as an educator, and while that format had worked for me as a learner, and felt comfortable to me as a teacher, I could also see that there were kids who were not learning to read at the level they needed to. You see, I spent all my teaching career as a fifth or sixth-grade teacher. Once students reach that level, for the most part, they are no longer learning to read, rather they are reading to learn. As a content area teacher – teaching both science and social studies over the years as an intermediate school teacher, I expected students to come with me ready to use their reading skills to learn about our topics and standards. I did not feel equipped at that level to intervene and support their reading skills.

Over the years of working with some talented colleagues, I eventually better understood how to support my students who came to the classroom without strong reading skills – finding lower-level texts on the same topics, providing students with read-aloud recordings of the text, and more.

But in my current role, I now feel the challenge of how I help ensure that the students who leave my school are prepared to read to learn in their intermediate school classroom. I began to look for ideas that supported my beliefs about a learning environment, while also fulfilling the needs of students as learners. Luckily, I have a wonderful coach who I work with that recommended the book Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates. I’ve been digging into that book for a little while and found myself texting our coach on the evening I started the book telling her that I had lots of things to talk to her about.

Based on my reactions to the short time I’ve been reading this book, I’m guessing that this will not be the last time you see me referencing it here, but I want to share with you one of my biggest aha moments so far. And it has to do with how the human brain has developed.

Going back to the earliest humans, the only way to share information was through the passing of stories verbally. What this means is that our brain got good at listening to what others said (this happens in the phonological processing system) and being able to respond with our own words and sounds. Hearing someone else speak would then cause our brain to retrieve the meaning of the words we hear (this happens in the meaning processing system). Then our brain uses our background knowledge to help us understand what meaning fits the context of what’s being shared (this happens in the context processing system). I imagine these different parts of the brain as something of a triangle, with information passing back and forth through each of these processing systems.

These three processing systems are genetically wired into the human brain and are a part of the system of thinking that we are all born with. It’s why a young child can often understand words before being able to say them. It’s why, even though I haven’t taken a Spanish class in over 20 years, when I hear someone speaking it, I am able to make meaning of pieces of that conversation.

This combination of processing systems has developed in the homo sapien brain over the last 150,000 to 200,000 years. So what that means is that our brain has adapted over that time to make comprehension of spoken language to be a natural skill that our brains can do. But written language has been around a lot less time than that. You see, most scholars generally agree that humans began utilizing written language about 5,500 years ago. Let’s think about what that means – for a little more than 97% of the history of modern humans, words only existed in their verbal form. After being spoken, they would disappear into thin air. Then, somewhere around 3,400 BCE, in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), some of the earliest written language was developed. Now, the things that one person said could be recorded, exactly as they had said them, in the form of symbols, and be shared over and over again.

The huge aha moment for me comes from this point – written language is spoken language saved for later retrieval. Once retrieved, written words are put back into spoken language. I’m assuming that when you read, you can hear your own reading in your head. The speaking part of your brain is saying the words, and the listening part of your brain is hearing the words. What this means is that if our students cannot understand words and language when they are spoken, they will not be able to comprehend those same words and sentences when they read them.

As Burkins and Yates point out:

What Burkins and Yates go on to point out is that opportunities to grow oral language actually help develop the comprehension mechanisms of reading. Now, let me be clear, just because a student has strong verbal comprehension does not automatically mean that they will be strong in reading comprehension, but it is definitely a stepping stone along the way. So, what does that mean for us in practice in the classroom? The following bullet points are ideas shared by Burkins and Yates, along with some of my thoughts relating to them:

Have a way to support language comprehension in your classroom – This would include utilizing read-alouds with rich language, things that will stretch your students’ thinking. Next, think about gathering text sets on a topic or theme representing multiple levels. Finally, have instructional routines to build and extend language (this includes conversations started by the teacher in a one-on-one or small group setting, questions to get students to explain their thinking, wait time for students to think and process, and repeating back to students what you heard them say so that they might be able to expand on it).
Use interesting words – One of my favorite things used to be encouraging students to notice and share interesting words they came across in their reading. We would use these words to create a list of interesting words that we kept in our writing notebook. Depending on your level, you could do something similar, or you could help students notice interesting words in your read-alouds to create your own list.
Engage in dialogic conversations – In their book, Burkins and Yates share a graphic on dialogic conversations. Check out the graphic below for a little more about what this might look like.

Ultimately, as teachers, one of the best ways we can help improve the three processing systems above is to create time and space for language within your classroom. This might be during a gentle entry time where students can play and talk, it might be in a daily community circle where students speak to one another and respond to interesting topics, or it could be through one-on-one or small group conversations happening during learning time either with the teacher’s support or with peers (think a turn-and-talk or small group discussion). The more work we do to support students in language comprehension, the more we help those processing systems be better prepared for reading skills.

Next week I hope to take a look at the next step – what happens in the brain when we start to feed written language into it, and how that has changed the processing systems that developed in the brain.

What strategies do you use to bring language into your classroom? Share with us in the comments below.

Science or craft

If you’re anything like me and live in a world surrounded by elementary education, you have certainly heard about the “Reading Wars.” If you aren’t sure what that is, it’s basically a back-and-forth debate among many educators about what is the best way to teach students to read. A quick Google search will show that articles about the reading wars have been in existence for years. In a search today, I see reference to Horace Mann arguing a whole language approach in the 1800s, or Rudolf Flesch arguing in support of systematic and sequential phonics instruction in 1955. Since the 1980s, the debate has gone back and forth between explicit phonics instruction as compared to a whole-language approach. I learned to read in a school that bought into a whole language approach, but I know I had friends who struggled to learn to read that way. Personally, I started my career as a teacher in a school that utilized the Four Blocks Literacy Framework. For years as a classroom teacher, I referred to Guiding Readers and Writers by Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell constantly (my version is marked up, dog-eared, and tabbed from years of use). Most recently, the buzz has been around The Science of Reading, which refers to the research of cognitive scientists on how we learn to read and what is needed to reach a level of proficiency.

Now, I must be completely honest here, I feel I am relatively early in my learning about the Science of Reading, and that’s not really what this post is about. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the topic because I want to be knowledgeable, and as a former science teacher, I believe in the importance of learning from the most recent research available.

What I have learned about the Science of Reading drove me to a book by Mark Seidenberg called Language at the Speed of Sight. Seidenberg is a cognitive neuroscientist (in case you need a definition, cognitive neuroscience is the study of the biological processes that underlie human cognition – in simpler words, it’s the study of how people learn). His research has been focused on learning and early childhood development. While there are many directions that I could choose to dig deeper based on this book, the piece I want to examine first revolves around the role of teacher education as a potential lever to lead to further growth in the reading proficiency of students.

Before I dig too deeply into that, I want to say something first – I’m not sure how much I buy into the whole “Reading Wars” argument. I don’t know how we grow together in our learning when we equate something to a war. In general, based on my studies of history, there are no winners in a war. Ultimately, as an educator, I am constantly trying to grow so that I may have a greater impact on my students. One of the things that I have noticed as I dig deeper into articles and research on the “Reading Wars” is that it seems that there is little willingness to find a middle ground. People are entrenched in their beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. I have long believed in the power of growing together. At times I read and research topics I don’t completely agree with because if someone believes in that thing so strongly, maybe there is something I can learn from them, and often, I do learn something. That idea of being better together does not seem to really be in existence from the two sides of the “Reading Wars” argument.

There was something that Seidenberg said near the end of the book that stood out to me. In Chapter 12, he talks of “the absence of a strong commitment to basic science as a source of evidence within the culture of education…” He goes on to argue that this absence of science has potentially had detrimental effects on reading education. So often in education, decisions about teaching and learning are made in the classroom by teachers who truly believe that the steps they are taking will support students. Those decisions might be based on feeling, experience, or something that is working for a colleague. What Seidenberg argues is that those decisions need to be based more in the realm of science and research. But in most Schools of Education, prospective teachers were not taught to cultivate a “scientific ethos” that allows them to be able to identify meaningful and recent research, and then make teaching moves based on what the science says. I’d argue that unless you have an advanced degree in education, you probably haven’t learned a lot about how to seek out research-based tools and interventions. I know that before my master’s program, I don’t think I had a solid footing in what it meant to be an educational researcher.

I’m not ready to say that I completely agree/buy into all that Seidenberg shares about education, but I will say that this scientific ethos does seem to be lacking in some schools of education. Part of this point from Seidenberg relates to the fact that so much of what schools of education focus on is developing philosophical beliefs in educators. I know for a fact that one of the courses I took required me to write a philosophy of education. I don’t recall much work on learning how to be an educational researcher until I was forced to research while completing my master’s program.

Many in education, myself included, have defined teaching as heart work and referred to it as a craft. But as I dig more into an understanding of cognitive psychology and the study of how people learn, there are certainly some long-held beliefs of my own that I’m being forced to reflect upon because the research tells me I might be wrong. We probably can’t get by purely on feeling and heart and craft. Those things are a piece, but we also need to have a solid grounding in the science of learning as well.

So, there’s a question that I’m left to continue to reflect upon: What if educators saw education as science, in addition to craft? I believe there are some important areas that all of us as educators might be able to learn and grow.

Part of the role of educators is to figure out how to support our students who are not growing as learners in the way that we might hope they would. Maybe they are reading at a level that we consider below proficiency. When this happens, as teachers, we put into place interventions to support our students. Too often, it seems to me, we put in place an intervention based on what we “feel” might work best. But we do so without making sure that the intervention is research-based, and at times without making sure that the intervention supports the area of weakness for that student. I think that part of why this might happen is that many educators were not trained to look at the research.

In addition, many of us may not know how to do our own action research on strategies we try within a classroom. In action research, you identify a question or problem, test out a strategy, gather data, and determine if it works. In true action research, there is a phase of literature review where we try to gain a deeper understanding of research that may have already been done that is tied to our question or problem. This is where I think that sometimes action research falls apart because many educators haven’t been trained in the process of reviewing research. Our background gave many of us a solid background in philosophy, but not as solid of a background in research.

And here’s the issue – learning to do this takes time! It isn’t insurmountable, but on top of all the other things that are on the plate of teachers, it is challenging.

As I continue to reflect on these points, I’m challenging myself to find ways to support teachers in their efforts to learn about research. I’ll be looking for ways to share knowledge and provide sources of quality research. Luckily, we live in a day and age where Google allows us to find scholarly articles quickly and easily on just about any topic in education. Hopefully, through this continued exposure, we can expand our knowledge as researchers. In addition, I’ll be seeking opportunities to help guide teachers through action research of our own.

I’m curious to hear from you – what is your experience with education research? On a scale of 1 to 5, how well prepared do you feel you were to do your own research on educational tools, interventions, and strategies? If that number is lower than you’d like, what do you plan to do so that you know the decisions you make in the classroom are rooted both in research and science, as well as feelings and experience?

Literacy as the foundation of everything

About a month ago, the Indiana Department of Education put on the Get Your Lead On (GYLO) conference for leaders all over the state. I heard about it, thought it looked interesting and signed up as soon as possible. I am a big fan of the learning that happens at events like this – there are keynote-style presentations, break-out sessions, and then a closing session. And of course, there’s also the time to chat with others in between sessions – those are some of my favorite moments (and best learning moments) at any conference! The first thing that I’ll say about GYLO is that it was fun!

One of the speakers that day was Todd Nesloney. I first heard of Todd as an author when I was introduced to the book Kids Deserve It! He was a teacher, elementary principal, and is now the Director of Culture and Strategic Leadership for the Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association. He led the second session of the day all about Literacy.

As an elementary principal, I see literacy as the key to everything we do at school, which was in line with what he had to share. In today’s post, I want to share with you some of what I learned from Todd, as well as some next steps that I want to lead in our building.

First and foremost, Todd made it quite clear that he sets the expectation that he will celebrate reading in all that he does. Let’s take a moment to reflect on how much we use reading and writing in our daily lives – from the start of my day check-in with my to-do list to some bedtime reading, text is something that I see constantly, and it’s going to be something that our students will use throughout their lives as well. Even more reason to put literacy front and center in our schools! One of the ways that he celebrated literacy during the day was that he took small moments out of each of his presentations to do a quick book talk. He’d share a title, a bit about the author, and a bit about the story. I walked out of the day with several new items in my Amazon cart!

Next, he talked about ways that he would celebrate reading as a leader. The bullet points below are just a few of the ideas he had. I encourage you to think about how/what you might implement in your setting to celebrate reading.

What we’re reading – When Todd was an administrator, he created a graphic in Canva that he then printed out for every staff member. At the top it said “What is Mr. Behrman reading?” then there was some space, and then at the bottom, it said, “What are you reading?” The document was laminated. If you wanted to, you could print out a picture of the book cover, or you could just use a dry-erase marker to write the title of the book. This was for all staff members, not just teachers. He included secretaries, custodians, cafeteria staff, and more! This is something I hope to get rolling at my school soon!
Book Talks – Todd started adding short book talks to the morning announcements. In time, he asked teachers to share their own little book talks for the announcements. Eventually, they got to the point that students were creating book talks on the things they were reading. What better way to celebrate the reading that was happening than allowing students to share the books they loved!
Reading Photo Wall – Each time a student finished a book, they could bring their book down to Todd’s office. He’d take their picture, print it out, and then hang it on the reading wall in the cafeteria. It made reading visible to all students. What if you did this within your own classroom? Or on the wall right outside of your classroom?
Guest Readers – Anytime someone visited Todd’s school, they were asked to bring a book along. Before they did anything else, Todd would take them to a classroom and have them read their book. If someone forgot, they’d go to the library to pick out a book! A variation of this is the mystery reader. As a teacher, you can ask parents to sign up for a day to come and read. Have them share a few clues about who they are so the class can try to guess. Then, on the day of the reading, the class can find out of their guesses were correct or not.
Email signature – Those of you who are reading this blog and who receive emails from me may have noticed I already implemented this. At the bottom of my email signature, I added a place that says “What I’m currently reading:” Then I went online, copied an image of the cover of the book, and pasted it into my signature. If you notice that the same book is in my email signature for more than a few weeks, let me know you noticed! That means I’m not reading enough!

There were a ton of other ideas shared during this hour-long session, and while I’d love to share more of them, I think this is a great place to stop for now. One thing I would leave you with was what Todd shared about high-interest books:

One of the most difficult conversations for me to have with a student is when we are in the library, and I offer to help a student find a book, and when I ask them what they want to read they say something like “I need a level L book.” Where is the celebration for reading that comes from that? As a fifth grader, I read Garfield books like crazy, but wouldn’t challenge myself. My 6th-grade teacher allowed us to pick what we wanted, and I read a ton of Stephen King books. Something about the suspense kept me engaged, and I read more that year than I ever had before. Because my teacher allowed me to pick a book I loved, I became a reader who always had at least one book to read at any given time (currently I’m reading 4 different books, and will pick up a different title depending on my mood).

What are your thoughts? Do you have ways to celebrate reading that are not included here? Let us know in the comments below. We can all learn from one another!

The innovators

I’ve recently been reading a book called The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. If you don’t know anything about Isaacson, he’s written biographies about Ben Franklin, Henry Kissinger, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo Da Vinci, but several of his other books are more about groups of people who have played a role in some way – one book, titled American Sketches, is about some of the great leaders and creative thinkers of our society.

The Innovators has the subtitle “How a group of hackers, geniuses, and geeks created the digital revolution.” This book caught my attention for a couple of reasons – first, I’ve always been something of an early adopter of technology. I love to check out new and exciting innovations. A second reason that this caught my attention is that I’m always curious about how people made the leaps to take us from the earliest computers (devices that took up entire rooms in the basement of college buildings or at military bases), to the technology that I can hold in my hand every time I pick up my iPhone.

Innovation is something that we often think of in terms of those big leaps. When I was in sixth grade, my elementary school was renovated, and one of the classrooms was converted into a computer lab. The first time we walked into the computer lab as a class, we saw a room with about 30 IBM computers. The only thing that I remember being able to do on those computers was a keyboarding program that began the process of teaching me to type. For me, this felt like a HUGE innovation. Little did I know how much more our students would be able to do in the future.

The chapter that I am reading right now is all about software, and one of the big names in the development of computer software was Bill Gates. Early in the chapter is a quote from him about what an innovator is:

An innovator is probably a fanatic, somebody who loves what they do, works day and night, may ignore normal things to some degree and therefore can be viewed as a bit unbalanced.

Reading about Gates, and many of the others who appear in the book, I can see how this definition certainly applies to innovators. Here’s the thing though – I think there are times that you could substitute the word teachers for innovators and that definition would still work (I know my friends think I’m a little unbalanced to spend so much of my time with 10, 11, and 12 year olds!). We are all something of a fanatic about what we do – we’re fanatics for our kids. We love them, we want to help them learn and grow, and we want them to be successful. I know that our efforts to get there make us all feel a little unbalanced at times.

One of the things that I have taken away from the book The Innovators is that the transition to the digital revolution was NOT made up of several giant leaps. Instead, the innovations that have led to the amazing technology that I am able to carry in my pocket has happened because of little steps layered on top of one another. And more often than not, those innovations were not made by any one person. People such as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Robert Noyce, Grace Hopper, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Page (along with so many others) all played important roles in the digital revolution, but the steps of each of these people built on the ideas of others.

We as teachers need to remember that as fanatics, it may not always be easy to get our students to learn and grow as quickly as we want them to. They may not be immediately successful, but if we continue to innovate in our teaching, if we continue to try to reach kids in new and exciting ways, we are going to be able to reach more of them. We also need to remember the value in teamwork for our students to learn. Just as so many of the innovators mentioned above found success by building on the ideas of others, you may find success with a student through strategies others share with you. Whether it be a teammate, your PLC team, someone down the hall, or any one of the multitude of other people in the building, there are others who might have an idea that helps you get that kid to move forward.

What are some of the things that you are fanatical about? Have you ever tried something new that seemed to be the key to reaching that kid? Share you experiences in the comments below!

What did you do this summer?

It’s that time of year – my summer break has ended and I am back in the office preparing for a new school year and the new group of Hawks that will be coming into our building. As I’ve been at school, I’ve been running into a lot of people that I haven’t seen much during the summer. Invariably one of us ends up asking “What did you do this summer?” It’s exciting to get to hear about the awesome things that my friends have been doing, or to share the fun things that I did with my family.

In all my years as an educator, there is one other thing that I have done consistently every summer – it’s been an opportunity to learn. I always have a stack of professional reading that I want to complete (currently there are 12 books in that stack). At the beginning of the summer, I grabbed a couple of books from the stack that I really wanted to read, and they came home for the summer. When someone asks about what I did during the summer, this isn’t something that I always think to share in those conversations, but I think there’s great value in sharing our learning.

The first book in that stack was one that I had started reading prior to the end of the school year. Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani was so intriguing that I ended up putting together a PD session to share at Launching Inquiry. Design Thinking is all about creating the conditions to allow students to use their curiosity to find things that they can make and share with a real audience. Innovative activities like this will empower our students to find problems in their own world, and then seek out meaningful solutions – we can help to give them the tools.

My second book this summer was Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst. In this book, the authors lay out a framework (called Book, Head, Heart) to help us all understand that there are multiple types of thinking going on when they are reading. While it is important that kids know what’s happening inside of the book (able to summarize, notice what the author is doing, and understand the theme of the book) Beers & Probst also point out how important it is to recognize what you’re thinking about in your head, and how the book makes you feel. Each piece is an important part of the interaction that takes place between a reader and the text.

The third professional book, and one that I haven’t yet finished, is Daring Greatly by Brene’ Brown. In this book, Brown pushes us to understand that vulnerability, or the willingness to put ourselves out there, is part of what brings meaning to our lives. Without being vulnerable, and willing to dare to do great things, we risk not really living. It’s scary to make ourselves vulnerable, but only through going out on that ledge can you accomplish great things.

I look forward to continuing my learning – it truly never stops. As you think about what you did this summer, I’m curious – what did you learn about? As educators, we’re all committed to being lifelong learners. Sharing with others, including our students, is a great way to further our own learning. Share below anything that you learned this summer!

#BookSnaps

This is a BookSnap I created while reading the second chapter of the book Launch by John Spencer and AJ Juliani

If you are on Twitter and follow any of the same people that I do, you have probably noticed people posting pictures of text, sometimes with highlighting, adding emojis, bitmojis, or text, and then posting it on Twitter with their own comments. Normally if you look at the comments, you will see the hashtag #BookSnaps linked to it. Even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can see what people are posting by clicking this link: Twitter #BookSnaps

If you go to Twitter and check this out, you will probably notice that most of the posts here are educators who are sharing their personalized professional reading with their Twitter followers. If you look closely though, some of what you will find is teachers sharing BookSnaps that students created in their classroom. It got me started thinking about how some of you might be able to use them in your classroom. Check out this student created BookSnap that the teacher then added some additional comments to:

This BookSnap was created by a student on SeeSaw and then shared by a teacher.

Most of the ones that you see are using SnapChat in order to create and share. For those of you that know what technology your students are using, SnapChat is a pretty popular app. But here’s the thing, there are ways that BookSnaps could be created using other apps that don’t involve the social network aspect of SnapChat. Any app that allows you to pull in your own pictures and add text, drawings, and emojis could be used in the same way. The student created example to the left was created using SeeSaw. Some other examples that come to mind are Skitch, Google Drawings, various PDF annotating apps, and even Instagram.

Think of the potential engagement for your students if you asked them to create their own BookSnaps. Could you imagine what they would say if you told them to open SnapChat or Instagram in class? In ELA classes, you could have students create a BookSnap when they run into a Notice and Note signpost. You could have them create one to identify the climax in the book they’re reading, or create one based on their own writing, identifying specific plot points.

And don’t say “I’m not an ELA teacher, this doesn’t apply.” I could see real potential for BookSnaps in nonfiction reading as well – identifying the main idea in a science article. Sharing things that surprised them as they are reading about some historical figure. Responding to the 3 Big Questions from Reading Nonfiction by Beers and Probst.

I could even see integration into math class – MathSnaps could be a thing (acutally I just checked, and it is a real thing on Twitter)! You could have a kid snap a picture of the answer to a problem and then add text describing how they came to that answer. Or there could be ArtSnaps, MusicSnaps, or GymSnaps. The limitations are only bound by the creativity of how to integrate this technology.

As for how to share, again, the options are probably endless. If you’re already using SeeSaw, that’s an easy option. Other ideas I’ve seen include Google Slide Decks, a class shared PowerPoint (these options allow everyone can see what BookSnaps other kids have created based on the same reading assignment), or even something as basic as emailing it to you (although a way to share with classmates would make the audience so much more authentic and meaningful). Once kids have shared them with you, find a way to share beyond the walls of your classroom. If you’re on Twitter, tweet it out with the #BookSnaps hashtag – others will see it. You could also put it out on Instagram or Facebook – both have people actively using this hashtag. If you don’t have social media, you could have students print them out and put on their locker, or create a BookSnaps bulletin board.

If you are still at a loss for how you even create a BookSnap, there are some great resources from Tara Martin. You can find her on Twitter at @TaraMartinEDU or @BookSnapsREAL.

On Martin’s blog, she’s also created some how to videos that could be useful to see how she puts a BookSnap together. Check it out here: http://www.tarammartin.com/resources/booksnaps-how-to-videos/

I know I’ve got some creative people in my audience. If you have an idea for how BookSnaps could be used in the classroom, please share in the comments below. My ideas above are simply ones that have come to me in the past couple of days. You might have something that I haven’t thought of – or possibly never would. Let us know!

If you begin using BookSnaps in the classroom, please share them! Use the #RSIHawks or #RSIReads hashtag in your post!

The View from 518

Tag: Reading