Literacy Builders

For the Love of Learning

Writing

Learning for Free

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Early this week, I attended the best professional development I’ve been to in a long time. During this particular gathering, I wrote furiously. I jotted down book titles and mini lesson ideas. I left eager to get back to the classroom to try out these new ideas.

Now, you’re probably wondering where I was. If you are thinking that I was at Teacher’s College listening to Lucy Calkins or one of her cohorts, guess again. I was in the basement of my own home gathered with a group of colleagues who love literacy.

This week we focused on teaching with picture books. After talking with my colleagues, I can’t wait to go out and buy Car Wash by Sandra Steen so that I, too, can use it with young children to teach visualization and interesting word choice. I am looking differently at my own copy of Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee. Before, I always saw it as a great text for teaching noisy words, now I see its potential for teaching young writers about small moments. We looked at several of Charlotte Zolotow’s books and I learned about Say It, a book with a great ending, a crafting strategy I’ve been researching how to teach better. I teach a comprehension monitoring strategy called “Does it make you go EW” and I learned about a title written by Jennifer Rapp called Misery is a Smell in Your Backpack. This book will be another great text to use to model this strategy to growing readers.

As you can see, this was a productive and engaging conversation—exactly what I expect from good professional development. I very often encounter teachers who lament that there is not enough money in their school budgets to attend workshops or to do the learning that helps them become better teachers. When you’re feeling that way, remember that good PD doesn’t have to cost a lot. Assemble some like-minded colleagues around a table with a pile of picture books and go through them one-by-one. Take turns talking about how you use different books in your classroom. You’ll walk away with lots of new ideas and the only thing it will cost you is time.

Learning Boosts

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As teachers, we all need a lift at some time or another. Sometimes we attend a conference, sometimes we read a book, sometimes we collaborate with colleagues, but sometimes, none of that is practical. We’re busy; but yet, our teaching needs a boost.

Whenever I feel I need a lift and there’s no professional development on tap, I take out my tape recorder and press record as I teach. Long after the lesson is over, I play back the recording and transcribe what transpired verbatim. As I type, I relive the lesson in slow motion. Sometimes I cringe at my words. “What was I thinking?” I wonder aloud. But sometimes I find myself saying, “Wow, I can’t believe what happened there.”

My transcribing sessions of late have helped me realize some important things about my teaching including:
• When pushing kids to go deeper into their reading, they need time to think. Most of them don’t say profound things when I ask one question. They need time to think.
• Most kids need to summarize the text before they are able to reflect on the themes highlighted in a text.
• When I take the time to say, “Can you say more about that?” kids rise to the occasion. They seem to always reach deeper to find something new to say. That surprises me.

When we understand what works well in our teaching, we can duplicate it over and over again. When we understand what isn’t working, we can steer clear of the obstacles. If you feel like your teaching needs a boost, take out a tape recorder. You, too, may be surprised at what taking time to reflect might teach you about being a better teacher.

Change Happens

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As recently as 2007, email was a very small part of my life. I’d check in every third day or so to clear the spam and read the occasional note I’d get. But then it started to happen in my work life that people would say, “Did you get the email I sent you?” Shamefully, I didn’t and I realized I’d better start checking a bit more frequently.

Next, I started checking my email at the end of each day. By and large, I was keeping up with the updates people would send me and I was feeling pretty in the loop…until, I started missing the things people would jot off in the morning that I needed to know for that day.

From that point on, I checked my email morning and night. In fact, I now have a Blackberry so I can check it between classes and during lunch too. Never will I be out of the loop again.

The issue of assessment keeps coming up in the conversations I have been having with teachers.
They are jazzed up and excited about new ways to get students thinking and talking and responding thoughtfully in reading and writing but yet, they are afraid. They wonder, “How will I assess this? Our report card asks for letter grades or numerical percentages.”

And so, they retreat from good teaching practices because they cannot reconcile how to make their teaching match their report card.

I have begun thinking that assessment is a lot like me and email. At first, it was what it was. I didn’t have a lot of reason to change. It worked for me the way I needed it to work. And then it didn’t, so I tweaked it and it was working again. Then it wasn’t working, so I changed it a lot and now it runs like a well-oiled machine.

The same thing has to happen with assessment. It is important to remember that report cards and assessment practices are no more than ink on paper. They derive from conversations that have happened at some point in the past by some group of thoughtful professionals. When things aren’t working, it’s time to start having conversations to think about what is working and what isn’t working. Granted, the change may happen slowly, but change happens.

And most of the time, change is for the better.

Good vs. Great Instruction

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This week when I visited a teacher to do a demonstration lesson in reading workshop, the teacher said, “I love it when you come in because it gives me time to watch my students. When you teach, I notice things about how they respond and how they think that I never noticed before.”

This conversation continued and we talked about how those noticings influence our teaching decisions. Who needs to learn what? How should I group them? Who’s getting it? Who needs follow-up?

Our jobs as teachers demand a lot from us. At the end of each day, we are all worn pretty thin from teaching seven different lessons, managing behavior, and ushering students to and from the far corners of the buildings we work in. There barely seems to be enough time to get through the plans we made for our immediate day let alone making time to reflect on them.

But I can’t help but remember what my colleague said, “I notice things about how they respond and think.” These revelations help us to plan instruction that makes a difference in children’s learning. Granted, it is easier to turn to the teacher manual and deliver the lesson that comes up next in the program but can we neglect to factor in what our observations and experiences tell us about what children need to know?

Teaching is a frenetic business and while I hate to add one more thing to an already full plate of things to do, I ask you to think about making time to reflect. What we learn might be the difference between good and great instruction.

Our lives as teachers are busy. Very busy. We know that good instruction relies on us reflecting on what our students need as readers and writers; however, when do we do that? On our prep? During lunch? In the car on the way to and from school? It seems like everything needs to fit into the cracks if it is going to get a check on the list of things to do.

Teaching Revisions

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During the past few weeks, I have been helping to launch the writer’s workshop in several classrooms. We are up to choosing seeds. For years, I have been fielding questions like “what do you mean I have to write more about an idea?” and “I know which idea I like best, but once I choose it, what do I do with it?” I enter into this knowing this is a difficult move for young writers; so this year, I resolved to approach it differently.

My first change will be to develop this concept over several days. I began today by having children reread their notebooks. As they reread, they wrote one to two words that summed up the content of each entry on post-its. When they completed that, I asked the children to think about whether each idea felt “worth mentioning” or “worth discussing.” This was a new step for me and I was amazed at the result.

By adding this new layer, children began to talk about which ideas felt “done” and which ones they knew they could talk more about. Some kids didn’t have any ideas worth discussing. They knew without me telling them that they would need to write more entries. Others narrowed down their many ideas to two or three worth discussing. Those writers are getting closer to choosing an idea that will become something bigger and different.

I have been teaching seed choice for sixteen years and today, I feel like I discovered a new path to what is at the heart of this concept. Sixteen years feels like a long time to get it right, but what I am realizing is that teaching is a lot like writing. Getting it “right” isn’t the ultimate goal. It’s about seeing bigger possibilities and making it better.

Teach the Writer

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When I run a writing workshop, I can count on there ALWAYS being at least one child sitting doing absolutely nothing. Without fail, I can predict why this child sits whittling away precious time. It’s not because he’s defiant or lazy. It’s because he’s experiencing the ubiquitous writing workshop problem: He doesn’t know what to write about.

There is something very uncomfortable about a child who isn’t working. When we begin conferring, these writers are our top priority. Very often, the conferences go something like this: “Johnny, I see you are having trouble getting started. What’s the problem?” (He shrugs). “Well, we’re writing about things that we want to convince other of. Let’s look at our list. Do you want to write about no homework?” (He shakes his head no). “How about longer recess?” (Another head shake). “Better cafeteria food? Saving the environment? Younger voting age?” (No. No. No.)

We begin to sound frantic. We start to share his frustration. We wonder, “Is he defiant after all?”

Because the problem of kids not knowing what to write about is so prevalent, we need to step back and ask ourselves about the quality of our conferences. Reread the conference I just shared. What did we teach this writer?

Answer: That whenever he is stuck, the teacher will do his thinking for him. That won’t be very useful to him when he’s at home trying to write something on his own.

Imagine now that our conference went like this: “Johnny, I see you’re having trouble getting started. That happens a lot to real writers everywhere. What we need to figure out here is how to get unstuck. What have you tried so far that isn’t working?
Instead of rattling off a bunch of things he could write about for today’s assignment, we’ve begun to help him recognize his problem and guide his thinking about how to solve it. The likelihood is that he will face this challenge again sometime. This conference will show him how to fix the problem now AND in the future. THAT’S teaching the writer.

The Key to Reading and Writing Success: Don’t Let Children Struggle

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When children struggle, parents struggle to help them. When children struggle with reading and writing, parents often don’t know how to help them. Literacy Builders’ Teaching and Learning Resource Center in Plainview, New York educates both parents and children.

Unlike other learning centers that provide educational support in all subject areas, Literacy Builders specializes in reading and writing. Staffed by reading specialists and expert teachers, Literacy Builders begins with understanding a child’s reading and writing abilities. A comprehensive evaluation assesses and identifies difficulties a child may have with reading fluency, decoding, and comprehension or with generating and developing ideas for writing, spelling, and other written conventions. This information is used to create the Reading or Writing Rx, a custom-tailored plan that targets a child’s individual learning goals.

Research has shown that in order to improve children’s reading and writing ability, they need explicit and systematic instruction. Literacy Builder’s Executive Director, Kim Yaris, is a veteran classroom teacher and literacy consultant. She has been creating programs that train teachers how to improve reading and writing instruction in the classroom and has now brought this expertise to the Literacy Builders Teaching and Learning Resource Center. According to Mrs. Yaris, “Literacy is the cornerstone to educational success. When reading and writing are constantly hard work, children learn to hate doing both. We specialize in figuring out what ‘hard’ is. We start with what children can do and build their repertoire of strategies from there. We want to cultivate a love for reading and writing. When children like what they are doing, they are inclined to do it more often. The more children read and write, the better they become at it.”

Increased time spent reading books that match a child’s independent reading level is the core of the Literacy Builders approach. By using books, magazines, poems, plays, and newspapers from the extensive in-house library, children are able to practice important reading goals including fluency, decoding, and comprehension without ever completing a skill and drill worksheet. Real reading materials help to generate greater interest in and passion for learning to read.

Literacy Builders offers a wide range of services for children in grades pre-K-12. Free consultations help parents decide what kind of intervention their child may need. Whether it be intense one-on-one tutoring or small group reading or writing clinics, Literacy Builders makes expert guidance in reading and writing affordable for everybody. They also provide parent training seminars that highlight effective learning strategies and give parents ongoing information about their child’s progress.

The Literacy Builders Teaching and Learning Resource Center located in Suite 309 at 88 Sunnyside Boulevard in Plainview, New York is an inviting, child centered environment that inspires children to want to read and write. With books displayed throughout the reception area and each of the individual classrooms, children can’t help but want to read.

Making a difference sometimes requires being different. Literacy Builders is a different approach to helping children become better readers and writers.

Visit our website, https://www.literacy-builders.com/, to find out how.