Literacy Builders

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Reading Workshop

Planning and Organizing for Guided Reading: Blog #3 in the Guided Reading Series

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A Guest Blog by Leah Weissinger

I am a first grade teacher and do guided reading daily with my first grade students. Some of the questions posted are very appropriate for someone trying to envision how to begin, organize and plan for guided reading.

Pacing (getting it all in-meeting with as many groups as possible) and the management of the class are two of the most commonly asked questions about guided reading. Pacing is one of those things that you have to work on and fine tune as you work with groups year after year.

The best way to make sure you have the most efficient and effective guided reading sessions are pre planning. This takes time. Visiting your book room and spending time choosing appropriate books for your student’s guided reading level and interest is key. Sitting and looking at the books to decide your introduction (an introduction should be 2-3 min. to support the students reading and clear up unfamiliar vocabulary and read the cover discuss what the book may be about/prior knowledge of a topic/ if it is fiction or non-fiction), try to determine how the students will interact with the text, and what types of comprehension questions/discussion the text lends itself too as well as word work options. Be sure to vary genres at every level (children need experience with different publishers and genres).

If you have planned well you can call your groups quickly, be prepared with you entire lesson and move quickly to your next group (all guided reading books should go home with your students to be read again to build confidence, fluency and expression).

A guided reading session is a bit different than a conference in the respect that you are sitting back guiding as opposed to being an active member of a conversation with the student (except at the end when you discuss the story to access and even model deeper thinking), you need to listen and only prompt when it is necessary (children should be displaying independent strategies taught and self correcting as they read). If the child is at the appropriate reading level, I have found that they are making meaning as they read. You need to listen in on every child to assess throughout.

A running record can be done at different times (my thought is that you need to know the strategies they are utilizing and future teaching points for each child). I do running as often as possible (I pull a student back after a guided reading session or at other times of the day) But I do take anecdotal notes on every student during each guided reading lesson.

A onetime reading for guided reading is “ideal” because you can quickly assess, support and follow through on the book/lesson. There are plenty of great books and magazines at the higher levels that can be read in one guided reading lesson. Obviously for higher readers chapter books are a genre that need to be supported, so this can look like a literature circle (but you can use guided reading time to call these groups to meet) More advanced readers also don’t really want to reread their chapters at home-so having them read the next chapter and meet is perfectly appropriate . The students should be taking the books home as well to make reading a part of their home life. You do need to monitor reading strategies, fluency, expression and comprehension- character/ plot development and vocabulary strategies at these levels. I would just look at chapter books as a different genre. Explore some higher level one day reads (there are plenty available and you can expose these students to so many genres this way).

What level do you teach? How do you plan for your guided reading instruction?

Thinking About Pacing: Blog #2 in the Guided Reading Series

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One of the issues I am perplexed by in guided reading is pacing. I recently had the experience of planning and executing a guided reading session for a group of Level N fourth grade readers. (Click here to see the plan verbatim). Going into the lesson, I wanted to make sure to balance the amount of time I spent teaching and talking with the amount of time students actually spent reading. In the introduction, we previewed the book. I briefly touched upon and taught compound words in context, and I taught students how to notice figurative language and think about how understanding figurative language contributes to meaning making. Afterward, I asked the students to read the story, and as they did, I pulled alongside each member of the group (there were four students) and listened to them read a bit and talked to them about their interpretation of the text. At the end, we came back together, talked, and I sent them back to the large group. All of that took thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes.

To me, thirty minutes seems a bit long. If all of my groups take this long, I am never going to have time to meet with all of my groups and there certainly won’t be enough time to see my strugglers as often as I know they should be seen. I am nervous that if I don’t pace my guided groups correctly, I am not going to meet the needs of the readers in my room.

This experience leaves me with a lot of questions:

  • How can I reign in the length of my group but maintain the quality of the meeting?
  • Is it imperative to check in with each group member while they are reading independently?
  • During the time that I am pulling alongside readers, is it like a conference? Am I doing too much by supporting meaning making? How do you make time for running records and comprehension support?
  • How do I know if the introduction is too long?
  • Is the objective of guided reading for students to finish the selected text in one day or is it okay to continue the same story on another day? (I’m especially confused by this.)

I NEED to hear from the masses. Do you share similar concerns and questions? How have you reconciled these issues in your guided reading instruction?

Reader + Long Book = Good Reader?

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Do you know this scenario?
You have a student who struggles a bit as a reader. When she heads to the classroom library, she picks the longest book that she can find. When you try to steer her towards something a little less daunting, she insists that THIS is the book that she wants to read.

What about this scenario?
You have a student who is a proficient grade level reader. Mom and dad are very proud and want to continue to “challenge” this reader so they take him to the bookstore and find the thickest book in the children’s department, buy it, send him off to school, and insist that this is the reading that this child not only wants to be doing but SHOULD be doing.

While these scenarios are different, they have a thread of similarity running through them: they share the notion that good reading is synonymous with book length.

When I think about how this notion was born, I realize it’s pretty transparent. As emergent and early readers, we look at our reading role models (parents, teachers, older siblings). We notice that their reading is infinitely longer than the Dick and Jane books that we are reading. It seems like those readers, the ones we want to be like, are toting around much bigger books—they are longer, they are thicker, they have more words, the print is tinier. Those readers are way better than us, so therefore, when we are able to read stuff that looks like that, that must mean we, too, are good readers.

In the same way that good spellers almost automatically earn the title of good writer, people carrying around long, thick books earn the title of good reader, regardless of whether it’s deserved. What the girl who struggles in the first scenario and the parent who insists on the long text in the second scenario are failing to realize, however, is that good readers choose books for many reasons, and length is but one factor. Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson (amazon affiliate link) is a really short book. I can read it in less than 45 minutes. Most Harlequin romances are much longer than Who Moved My Cheese but I can assure you, Who Moved My Cheese is a far more taxing read in that I ask myself a lot of questions, infer, and use it as a mirror for looking at my own life. It’s the thinking and skills that a text demands that determine whether a book is a good fit for a reader or not. And it’s all those factors combined that add up to what makes a reader a good reader.

Teach them Well

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Left to their own devices, my boys, aged 10 and 7, would grunt hello in the morning, leave their pants of the floor for me to pick up, and command me to fix them a snack when they were hungry. I find these behaviors rude and appalling and work very hard to correct these obnoxious habits. When they bark orders, I remind them to say please and thank you. In spite of their angry protests, I make them clean up the bits of construction paper they sprayed all over the floor in the great confetti experiment. They are responsible for putting their clothes in the hamper and their dirty dishes in the sink and as a result, people often tell me how polite and pleasant my boys are. I am always flattered and hear myself saying, “yes, they are such good boys,” as if their affability were innate and had nothing to do with me at all.

I recently visited a first grade classroom and modeled a lesson about how to help children recognize words they don’t know in their reading. Following the lesson, the six year olds in this class grabbed their book baggies, found their cozy spot in the classroom, and read for fifteen minutes. There was a quiet buzz in the classroom as children spoke softly into their whisper phones or shared something too good to be missed with a friend sitting near them. The tenor of this independent reading period was focused and productive. When I complemented the teacher on the efficacy of her reading workshop, she smiled and said, “It’s because I have such a good group this year.”

It surprised me to hear her say this. Implied in her comment was the notion that what I saw might not be possible with a different group of students. In the same way that I attribute my own children’s pleasantries to something they were born with, she saw her success as a workshop teacher as dependent upon her students. I quickly reminded her that while it’s always nice to work with a “good group,” our successes as educators are directly linked to what we know about best practice and the daily decisions we make about how to implement this knowledge. While “a good group” might facilitate implementation, what I saw was directly linked to good teaching.

As educators, we need to think hard about educational responsibility. When things go well, it is not just because our students are “smart” or “working really hard.” It’s because we are doing something right as teachers. In the same sense, when things are not going well, it’s not just because children are “difficult” or “come from poor homes” or “distractible.” It’s because we need to do something different to reach those students. While it is easy, and arguably natural, to attribute both positive and negative learning outcomes to children, there is really but one direction to point the finger for the success and failure of our students: at ourselves. What students learn and how well they learn is dictated by the quality of the person delivering the instruction: children’s educations are our responsibility. The more we know, the better we teach. The better we teach, the better they learn.

Rethinking Curriculum Refuse

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I spent some time revisiting some of my old blog posts and came across this one from last August. As I sift through my own files and ready myself for the school year, being reminded that every lesson I teach doesn’t hold equal weight was humbling.

My good friend once said to me that in the life of a teacher, July is like Saturday, a time for relaxing and regrouping; and August is like Sunday, a time to start thinking about and preparing for work.

Well, it’s here. It’s August. While many of us are still enjoying outings to the beach and riding roller coasters with our hands up, in the corner of our minds, we are entertaining thoughts of September. We are thinking about unpacking dust-covered books and decorating bulletin boards and readying our classrooms for the first day of school. In addition, we are organizing our materials, paging through professional resources, and thinking about what we will teach this year.

So many teachers start the school year with good intentions. We vow that children will read independently every day. We promise to make time each day for writing. We will conference and assess and plan meaningful instruction. But then, we have our first faculty meeting and we receive the laundry list of directives for this school year. Then, there’s the pressure of back-to-school night and parent-teacher conferences and report cards. Next, it’s prepping for the ELA, the math assessment, the Terra Nova, and whatever other standardized tests are coming down the line.

There go our good intentions.

Feeling like there is too much on our plates is a common lament. As you start this school year, I urge you to keep your eye on your best intentions. Years ago, I heard Lucy Calkins speak about making time for the teaching you know is important. She said that sometimes, “you have to take carloads of curriculum to the dump.”

As you sift through your thoughts and plans and ideas for this school year, think carefully about what you do. If you’re not sure if a piece of your curriculum is worth keeping, ask yourself this question: How does this benefit my students? If you can’t think of at least three good reasons, take it to the dump.

So, don’t forget to share—what ideas, practices, and lessons will you file in the trash this year?

To the Left of the Box

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I admit it. When kids read, I am always wondering what is going on in their heads. Do they get it? How can I know for sure?

I know that I am not alone in this concern. Teachers everywhere worry about comprehension and that’s why if you visit reading workshop while teachers are quietly conferring, you will hear murmurs of the inquisition. What’s your story about? Where does it take place? Who’s the main character? What’s the problem? Has it been solved yet? How?

When kids read, we want proof—are they getting it or aren’t they? When I was a classroom teacher, I had my kids keep a reading response journal. I’d have them jot a few notes—EVERY DAY—about their thinking about their book. I shudder to think how many kids I might have turned off to reading because they hated writing. Ugh.

That said, I do think that writing in response to reading is a good thing to do in moderation. It teaches kids to reach deeper into their thinking. Many teachers have wisely adopted the practice of reading response letters where students reflect on their books in a letter to the teacher and the teacher writes back. Children are invited into a dialogue about reading and write for a real response. Literacy utopia.

But, there are those kids whose writing seems uninspired no matter whether they jot down a thought or write a letter. Are THEY getting it? Do their responses lack depth because their reading lacks depth? Or is it simply a matter of not wanting to write? These are the times when I wish I had a window into kids’ heads so that I could see what is going on. I need to know—do they understand?

My colleague, Danielle Erardy, has found just that window. Inspired by a strategy that was shared at a recent Teacher’s College reunion day, Danielle invited her students to fill a page of their reading response journals in an interesting way. She modeled by sharing a flow chart that she created for their class read aloud, A Dog’s Life by Ann Martin. Then, with little guidance, she asked the students to try it. Their insight was astounding. Hunter gave a glimpse of how he saw Squirrel’s heart. Emma illustrated Squirrel’s voyage, including the significant events that allowed Squirrel to grow. Throughout the journey, Squirrel’s voyage was represented by isolated paw prints. Once Squirrel met her final caregiver, Emma drew footprints alongside the paw prints to indicate that the two had bonded.

Trying this out reminded Danielle, and in turn, me, that sometimes we need to think outside of our box. Writing letters and stopping to jot might work for the masses but what about the Hunters and the Emmas? There may be amazing thinking going on in their minds but unless we change the box a little, we may never know.

A Different Point of View

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When readers say “huh,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are completely confused. There are increments of “huh” that range anywhere from “I don’t get it at all” to “I get it a little bit” to “I get it but I have some questions” to “I get it but there’s this one little thing I don’t understand.” In order for kids to know which strategies to use to fix the problem, it is important that we help them to see the subtleties in their understanding.

This week, I introduced some second graders to a tool I call the understand-o-meter® that illuminates these subtleties in a way that makes sense to eight year old readers.

After this lesson, Nick, a bright second grade reader picked up Andrew Clements Dogku from the chalkboard ledge and said, “You see this book? I read it the other day. It is definitely a one.”

This was such a curious statement to me. I was surprised Nick saw this book as challenging. With only three lines of text on each page and only a handful of two syllable words, I couldn’t understand why he found it confusing. My gut reaction was to say, “Oh, you can read that. Surely you understand it better than you think you do.” But I held back and looked again at the book—this time through the eyes of a second grader.

As I read Dogku, I noticed that it is told from the dog’s point of view. It is also written in haiku (hence the title). Clever as it is, it does demand a certain level of sophistication, or instructional support, to be understood by a transitional second grade reader.

As I sit here writing today, I am reminded that in order to be the best teacher that I can be, I need to step past what I THINK kids need to know and listen to my students. Only they can tell us how to plan and what to teach and when we do that, we go from being good teachers to being great ones.

Generation B

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Have you ever asked a child what he thinks of a book? Did he shrug his shoulders and mumble, “I don’t know.” Or, did he just say, “Good.”

Over the years, I have heard the term “Generation X” used to describe the children of the baby boomers. As we’ve begun to age, I’ve read about the next generation—Generation Y. I don’t know which letter the media is up to now, but I propose we’re looking at Generation B. B for boring.

“Good” and “I don’t know” are not thoughts. In fact, they are completely thought-less. Children can say them without using their brain at all. Yet, when it comes to classroom conversation, “good” and “I don’t know” seem to be what children say most and as frustrated, impatient teachers, we accept it. When they don’t know, we tell them what they should know and move on. Then, we tell them it’s time for literature circles.

Over the last couple of months, I have been working with some fifth grade teachers on establishing book clubs. Typically this process begins with learning roles—Harvey Daniels dubbed terms like “Word Wizards” and “Literary Luminaries.” My feeling is that until we teach children the art of conversation, there isn’t going to be much wizarding and illuminating going on.

Our book club work has begun with conversation. What is an opinion? When someone shares an opinion, how should we respond? Conversations happen when people agree and say more, disagree and say why, question, connect, and share these responses. The reason we have discussions around books is to help us go deeper into the text and walk away with new understandings.

Our fifth grade work has had its ups and downs, as you can well expect; however, some of our lessons have been really effective. If you’re just starting book clubs, these lesson plans,”Sustaining Conversations” and “Finding our Opinions” your students have better book discussions.