Good to Great Teaching

Great literacy that works!  I've been reading Good to Great Teaching by Dr. Mary Howard. This book focuses on literacy work that matters and supports increased student achievement. Chapter one delves into the difference between bad work, good work and great work.

I have been guilty of bad work in my teaching career. It’s the stuff we do in our daily teaching lives that eat up a bunch of our time and have little effect on student achievement: worksheets, round-robin reading, irrelevant computer tasks and cut & paste are just a few.

Good work is Good. It is activities, practices and procedures that increase student achievement.  Good Work can lead to Great Work, but can also suck the time and energy we need for Great Work.

Great Work takes learning to its highest levels. It requires teachers to use research and translate it into best practices for students. Examples of Good and Great Work are: literacy rich environment, independent reading, guided reading, shared reading and read aloud. Many of these Good and Great Work examples can be found in my school. We've provided PD training on shared and guided reading and we've discussed ways we can get more read alouds into our daily schedule. I am confident we are doing Good Work.       

Moving Good Work to Great Work is a bit more challenging and requires deep knowledge of research and the ability to reflect on one's own teaching practice. Great Work is about how teachers make intentional choices to improve their practice. Great Work is teachers working towards making every minute count. Teachers ensuring that every student’s highest potential is met every day. Great Work is about teachers consistently engaging students in meaningful literacy every day.

Do I do Great Work? I certainly try to make every moment count. I constantly reflect, but may not move my reflection to higher levels of teaching. I try to help students meet their highest potential, but know that I falter some days. The study guides suggests recording an instructional sequence and then analyze the lesson for signs of bad work, good work and great work. I’ll keep you posted.

Goal 5: Supporting Comprehension in Fiction - Using Plot and Setting

Comprehension is a really important part of the reading process. It is the entire reason for reading. Understanding what you are reading can take you places, teach you new things and help you find your way. Many students I am working with have difficulty recalling what they just read. Jennifer Serravallo says, we have all had students who retell every little detail and other students who don’t retell very much. While, still, other students add all sorts of additional information that didn’t even come from the text. Jennifer says that “understanding (the) plot is the most basic of comprehension goals for students reading fiction”. This goal is where my students have difficulty retelling who, what and where. They either say too many details; add their own details or they don’t say very much at all. For example, “He went to the farm.” Ugh! The following strategies can help students understand the plot of a fiction text better.

Goal 5.1 - Lean on the Pictures:  This strategy is recommended for guided reading (Fountas & Pinnell) levels A-K, using a fiction text. The CAFÉ strategies are determining importance and retelling.

This is what I did this week. During reading groups, I asked students “What were the most important things that happened? Retell the story for me from the beginning.” When they struggled, I asked them to lean on the pictures. “Look at this page, what are the most important things that happened?” I guided them through the pictures in this manner until we had finished retelling all the pictures. During this time, I also included Check for Understanding - “Who is the character? What are they doing? using a visual aid – the check mark.

I can’t tell how it is going, yet. I still have more work to do. I’ll keep you posted on student progress.

Here are a few strategies I want to try.

Goal 5.2 – Title Power: This strategy is recommended for guided reading levels C-M, using a fiction text. The CAFÉ strategy is determining importance.

In this goal, students will read the title of the book. They will keep the title in their mind as they read. They will think about the events and how they connect back to the title.

• Check the title. What does the title connect to in the story?
• Think of the title. What is the problem?
• Keeping the title in mind. What are the most important things that happened?

Goal 5.3 – Summarizing What’s Most Essential: This strategy is recommended for guided reading levels E-K, using fiction text. The CAFÉ strategy is summarizing.

In this goal, students are retelling the important events in the order in which they occurred and in a way that makes sense.

• Say the beginning in a shorter way.
• Can you say that in a shorter way?
• Just tell me the one important thing that happened in the beginning.
• You told me 5 things that happened in the middle. Which two or three were most important?

We've been doing a book study through Facebook using The Reading Strategies Book, by Jennifer Serravallo. In an effort to try and "blog", I've re-posted my Facebook post here.

Confessions of a Reading Teacher

Confession. I don’t like to read. “What?” you say. “You’re a Reading Specialist. How could this be?” I did not like reading when I was a child and it is very rare that I find a fiction novel that grabs me.  I have and continue to read many books related to my profession. The authors include Richard Allington, Jennifer Serravallo, Regie Routman, Gail Boushey & Joan Moser, Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis. I’ve read books on teaching comprehension, teaching reading strategies and reading research. I follow blogs and tweets by leaders in the reading field such as Kylene Beers, Mary Howard and Linda Hoyt, to name a few.

But, when I had to read 4 novels and 40 picture books for a children’s literature grad class I was taking, I struggled. The picture books were fun, but the novels were not. I chose two novels that I had listened to on audiotape. It made it easier for me to get through the text because I had a sense of where the story was going. I chose Magnas Chase by Rick Riordan because my daughter had read it and I could lean on her to have conversations as I read the story to strengthen my understanding. The final novel I chose was Alice in Wonderland because we owned a copy and I didn’t have to mess with renewing it through the library. I purchased the audio version of Alice in Wonderland to help make the reading go faster. As I listened, I found my mind wondering to other things. I postponed reading the book as long as possible because I did not find it to be an interesting read. I decided to watch the Disney version of the book to gain some background knowledge. I also found short chapter summaries on Wikipedia. These two activities helped me visualize the events I was reading about and helped me predict what was coming up in the story. It was easier to get through the text.

I am envious of my friends who spend the weekend “lost in a good book”. As a child, I struggled to read. I saw reading as a chore, not as something fun. I always had books that were too hard as I was sounding out everything. I was/am a slow reader. As an adult, I need time to talk about what I am reading. I need to be able to visualize and make connections with what I am reading. I need to have texts that are predictable. I am fond of nonfiction text. They “grab” me. The text gets right to the point. They are predictable and usually have pictures that make visualizing easier. I don’t like to read, but I’m a reader.