Personas/Lenses: Take these same kinds of ideas and do planning with colleagues. Ask, "What is a goal we have for our kids in reading?" Then, "What is a person that matches?"
The role names that are best are when it's related to what is happening within your classroom.
Word work is much more effective in small segments across time. It's better to do 5-10 min. mini lesson and then revisit it for 2 min., 2 min., 2 min. across the week. When you have a literature-rich, language-rich classroom, you are constantly bringing it to their mind so they use it while they are reading, writing, and other work across the day.
Planning: What? It depends on your goals.
Be careful. Many times people put texts before kids (especially test makers). The texts are NOT more important than the kids!
First, start with kids' needs and strengths.
Then, think about students' (and your) interests.
Then, look at instructional goals. This is one of the last steps. The kids are what matters the most.
Finally, choose the texts you will demonstrate with.
Great resources:
What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making
by Dorothy Barnhouse et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/0325030731
by Dorothy Barnhouse et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/0325030731
Readers Front & Center: Helping All Students Engage with Complex Text
by Dorothy Barnhouse
Link: http://amzn.com/1571109676
by Dorothy Barnhouse
Link: http://amzn.com/1571109676
If you have to find a particular book to help you with a particular lesson, it's probably not a good message. Your lessons should be broad enough to impact students in their reading lives, so it should fit within texts that kids really might be reading.
Close reading does not need be (nor should it) a daily occurrence. It's something you do when it is needed.
Conferring with Readers
Conferences are really, really awesome, and yet they are also incredibly challenging.
There are different ways that you can confer:
1. Emergency room conferring. (When you go to the emergency room, you go there because something has gone really, really wrong. They take all your vital signs, they ask you a bunch of questions. Their goal is to keep you alive, then send you on your way.) In the classroom, it might feel like: Stop that! Go over there! Put that away!
- It only works on keeping you going right now. It doesn't work on long-term goals.
2. Family doctor conferring. (Their larger purpose is for you to have better health down the road. Dr. will pull up previous notes to help look at all of the things that have happened in the past, checking up on previous appointments, and check on long-term goals. At the end of the meeting, the Dr. will record notes to document long-term growth.)
- If every time you meet with kids feels like something new, how will they ever feel like they can practice something to get good at it?
Having a structure in a conference helps provide a strong purpose.
1. Research. (What is this child good at? What do they need help with?)
- Could do this live. "What are you working on right now?" and "How did you do that?" (reveals their thinking process.
- Could be ahead of time. (Things you notice during a read aloud, from collected notebooks, etc.)
2. Decide.
- Pause to think: What is one specific thing we could work on? and/or What is a goal?
3. Instructional Compliment
- Find things that really matter.
- Intended to say, "This work is hard. You've been working hard. Here's something you've made growth on."
- It makes them want to do it more.
- You are trying to describe something in a way that builds awareness. Peter Elbow: "Catching kids on the edge of greatness."
- **He keeps at the compliment until the child smiles.**
4. Teach
- Demo something (or refer to previous demo)
- Active Engagement (they try it with you)
- Link (help them know what they will do after this conference)
- If kids aren't making changes based upon conference, look at your Link.
Jenn Saravallo conferring with a student:
Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Student's Growth and Independence
by Jennifer Serravallo et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/032501101X
by Jennifer Serravallo et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/032501101X
If all you do is confer, it's hard to meet with every kid every week. Forming small groups is often the only way. Small groups can feel like 4 conferences put together.
Teaching into Parts of the Ritual: Lessons and Small Groups
- Who are kids who notice/wonder something, but don't really spend time to think about it?
Take foundational lenses (Text Evidence + Word Choice + Structure) and combine them to create more sophisticated lenses (Argument, Point of View, Cross Text Analysis, Fluid Close Reading)
Example:
"Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!" by Rick Reilly
His argument: Cheerleading is dumb.
What types of text evidence do you notice? Word choice? Structure?
- After the first bit, he doesn't use a lot of evidence to support his opinion. He is using mostly word choice.
This works really well when you find a movie that all of the kids really like, then find a review where the reviewer really didn't like it.
Planning:
1. Make a list of the units you are doing
(Launching, Character, NF-expository, NF-bio, Genre (Fantasy), Test Prep, Content Area)
2. What lenses could really live well and support that particular unit.
- Character study: Word choice would fit really well!
- NF Expository: Structure
- NF/Biography: Text evidence
- Character study: Investigator
- NF Expos: Engineer
- Genre (Mysteries): Friend (to do some comparisons)
- Content Area: Text evidence
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