One Small Thing: Blind Grading

 

Last year, a 4th grade teacher dropped an idea that stopped me in my tracks.

He said, "You know, I've found that when I'm looking at and scoring student writing, I'm biased. I want to give them credit for how hard they worked or how far they've come over the year, instead of truly scoring this against the exemplar to see how their work is compared to the standard. So, I've started giving them a Post-It and asking them to cover their names on their work before they turn it in. After I've scored it, then I take the Post-It off and begin to think about next instructional steps."

We call this Blind Grading.

It's nothing new, or bright, or shiny, or particularly innovative. As with many things in ELA, it comes down to a pencil and some paper, a teacher and a student, and a thoughtful adherence to excellence. But my heavens is it powerful.

We owe it to our students to be truly academically honest with them. It's tempting, because we love them so, to want to "soften the blow" of feedback or scores we know will land hard. After all, he did work for a solid 35 minutes on this piece, and she has come from barely writing a sentence to a solid paragraph this year, and we want to honor that. I think we can, but we also must be truthful with them about how their work stacks up against what we know will be demanded of them at the end of the year, at the end of school, and when they go to apply to Harvard. As Dr. Ricky Gibbs says, "Never feel sorry for them. Pity won't change their lives. A great education will." 

And if I'm being really honest with my teacher self, giving positive feedback and scores makes ME feel good, too; I feel like I've succeeded as a teacher when they've succeeded. Then I have to remember that this isn't about me, or my feelings. It's about them and their future, and that's too precious a thing to sacrifice for feelings.

So, try the One Small Thing of Blind Grading. Whether it's the whole class or just a handful, try grading and giving feedback blindly, without student names attached - just their work held up against the exemplar. When we do this, we'll come so much closer to taking just the right next steps in instruction, and they'll come so much closer to doing the rigorous, challenging work that'll change their lives.

Here's to simply teaching well,

5 Ideas to Help with Lesson Pacing

It's everybody's nemesis ... pacing. A lesson goes too fast, and you feel like you haven't done it justice. A lesson goes too slow, and you've lost them. And with materials that are as thick and packed as ours, how do you get it all in, and well? If you've asked these questions, you're not alone. Pacing an EL lesson well, so that we know students have learned and worked AND we're able to teach one lesson in a day, is one of those things that novice and experienced teachers alike can find is a challenge. 

But strong pacing is incredibly important, especially at the beginning of the year. What can easily happen is that we have trouble pacing the materials to one lesson a day early in the year, and it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. After all, we have 36 long weeks of instructional time stretching out in front of us, and getting a day or two behind, or stretching a couple of early lessons across multiple days, isn't hurting anyone. But those days add up, and then, around Fall Break when Unit 3 begins, we begin to feel the crunch of needing to wrap up Module 1. So we condense those writing lessons at the end. After all, who really needs an entire day to plan and write proof paragraph 1, right? We wrap up Module 1 quickly and move on to Module 2, only to find that students are struggling to write well even with a short assignment. (Remember that skipped lesson from Unit 3 that we condensed because they "didn't need that much time"?) So, we add in a day here and a day there for some practice, and we have to stretch some lessons across multiple days because they're "just not getting it," but that pushes us even farther behind. And so it goes. Next thing you know, it's late spring, and we're struggling to even begin Module 4. We're frustrated and rushed, and the kids aren't producing like we want them to. 

What's a teacher to do? Here are 5 of my favorite ideas to help with strong lesson pacing.

1. Set and use timers - in places in a lesson where you know it'll be tempting to slow way down such as student transitions, protocols, turn and talks, discussions, and question sequences.
2. Reach out to your academic coach for a time audit. He or she can come in and time stamp your lesson to see where you might be spending too much time and how you can adjust pacing.
3. Don't spend more than 5-10 minutes on learning targets. If your pacing is brisk out of the gate, it's likely to stay that way, and it's easy to get bogged down early in learning targets.
4. Avoid adding things to a lesson, such as more questions, activities, or a spiral review, and avoid turning what's meant to be a "read for gist" into a "close read." The materials are designed to scaffold naturally.
5. Use the Prepare to Teach Cycle with your academic coach and grade level to make sure you're beginning a Module with the end in mind. When you know where you're going, and what's most important, you're less likely to get off track in the day-to-day.

Looking for more?

• Check out EL Education's Module Pacing Recommendations for Grades 3-8. They've got great ideas to help.
• Read ideas from teachers right here in our district on how to pace lessons well. 

So, choose an idea, try it out, and see how it helps you improve at pacing lessons.

Here's to simply teaching well,

Teacher Summer 2023 Reading

 

My favorite reading is almost here ... summer reading. There's something about the slower pace and longer days that leads me to read more slowly, carefully, and reflectively than I tend to at other times of the year. If you're looking to add some good literacy-leaning books to your summer stack, here are some I recommend.

• Reading Reconsidered by Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway. Whether you read it with us last year during our book study or it's landing in your stack for the first time, this is a book that deserves reading and rereading. You'll want a pencil nearby, because you'll be scribbling notes all in the margin. It's one of my favorites because of all I learn that's practical for the classroom.
• Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. This will be our book study for this coming school year, so if you want to get a jump start on it, this summer would be a great time to do that.
• The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. This one has been around a while, but if you want to take a philosophical step back and think deeply about what it means to be a teacher, this is a wonderful, beautiful, poetic look at it. 
• A History of Literacy Education by Robert Tierney and P. David Pearson. If it sounds super teacher nerdy, it's because it is. But if you're interested in digging deeeeep into literacy education and how it's led us to where we are today, this is the book for you. (Note that P. David Pearson is one of the primary architects of the CCSS.)
• Assessing the Nation's Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP by Chester Finn. This book will take you down a delightful rabbit hole of all things standardized assessment and NAEP. 
• The Vocabulary Handbook: This book, from the trusted folks at the Consortium on Reaching Excellence in Education, is one I'll be leaning heavily on for vocabulary work districtwide next year. If you want to get an advance look at what our "Year of Vocabulary" will look like, you'll love this part textbook, part practical handbook.
• "The Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast": Sometimes I'm in the mood to pop in some earbuds and give something a listen, and you'll love every episode of this podcast. It's become one of my favorites, but I've learned to listen when I have a notebook nearby because I'm wanting to capture so much. 

Whether you choose one or several, I hope your summer is filled with rest, relaxation, and lots and lots of good reading!

Here's to simply teaching well,

One Small Thing: Read with the Eraser

 

This "One Small Thing" comes to you directly from Reading Reconsidered, and it's one of those things that made me automatically say, "Why, of COURSE!"

If you've ever given your students a text and a highlighter and said, "Highlight what's important," and immediately seen them to begin to highlight every. single. thing., you know what I'm talking about. I've had students highlight so much that the paper was literally damp with highlighter ink, and it was clear that they were not able to identify what were truly the most important ideas in the text. After all, if everything is important ... nothing is.

If you've seen the same thing, try this:

1. Take away the highlights.

2. Instead, have students read with a pencil.

3. Have them read with their pencil in hand, and with the eraser end down on the paper.

4. Tell them that when they encounter an important idea, only then should they flip their pencil over and use it to underline or mark it up. If you've got students who want to underline all the things, give them a limited number of times to flip their pencil over and underline. This will give them a constraint that may lead them to think a bit more critically about what they mark, and it will make it a bit more obvious to them when they're marking by requiring them to physically flip the pencil.

Here's how it could sound in your classroom:

"Kids, today we're reading the text 'Hearts and Minds at Work' by Jackie Robinson. As we read, I want you to pay attention to the devices he uses - words, phrases, or punctuation - to express his opinion. I'm going to ask you to read this all the way through with your eraser down, and flip your pencil to mark no more than 5 places where you see him expressing an opinion. We're doing this independently, and I'll meet you back at the top of the page in 10 minutes so we can talk about his opinion."

I think it's often the small things, done consistently and precisely, that add up to big improvements for our students.

Here's to simply teaching well,

The Best Test Prep

It's spring. The trees are greening, we're having more warm days than not, and Spring Break is right around the corner. All of this means it's that time of the school year.

The Test is coming.

To begin - and to be perfectly transparent - the purpose of this post isn't to debate whether or not we should administer standardized tests, argue about the heavy accountability they carry, or rail against the system of assessments in general. No matter how we feel about them, they are here, they have a purpose, they are a reality, and they carry weight. 

Instead, the purpose of this post is to talk about what we should - and shouldn't - do when we begin to feel the testing crunch that comes around every spring.

Here's what often happens. Right around Spring Break, text-centered lesson preparation talk turns to "comprehension skills" we think kids are lacking, the Test-like writing prompts they need to learn to unpack, and how much time there is before The Test to have kids practice taking The Test with passages that come from ... you guessed it. The Test. Usually, you can cut the stress and tension with a knife.

And I get it. As a third grade teacher myself, I've done these things, and they're an understandable reaction to the anxiety we can feel related to The Test. There is a lot of accountability tied to it, and we all want our students (and, if we're being honest, our teachers and schools) to do well on it.

But I am here to tell you this. 

Reacting to The Test with lots of test preparation activities will not help students do well on it. It hasn't in the past, and there is no evidence to support the idea that it will now. 

After all, as a nation, we have had about 1/3 of our students reading at proficient levels since at least 1992, and we have done a LOT of test prep since then. 

Now, I'm not saying that students shouldn't have some familiarity with the format of standardized tests or the types of questions and tasks they encounter on them. The purpose of an assessment isn't for our students to do well; it's for us to see how well they can do. And I don't want the format of a test or question to be a barrier to students performing as well as they can so that we can make good decisions based on what we see. That's why, in our district at least, we give students occasional practice with cold-read passages throughout the year, using items released by the Tennessee Department of Education. 

But I am saying that stopping regular instruction with the curriculum after Spring Break to test prep, or spending large amounts of time during the school year using The Test passages or instruction targeted to specific skills or strategies, will not help our students. In fact, it can actually harm their ability to learn at levels that will help them do well, because each time we make a decision about how to spend our time, we are choosing what we will do and what we will not do. If we choose to spend our time doing lots of Test-related activities that don't work, that means we're choosing not to provide the kind of instruction that research shows actually makes a difference for kids.

So, what is the best test prep? As usual, I'll turn to Tim Shanahan, and here's what he suggests.

1. Have students read extensively within instruction across the school year. These tests measure reading ability, and you are not likely to develop reading ability without letting students read. A lot. I'm talking time in text, miles on the road type of reading.

2. Have students read increasing amounts of text without guidance or support. Independence is our goal, always.

3. Make sure that the texts we put in front of kids are rich in content and challenging. Lots of reading of easy texts won't prepare students for navigating difficult texts on their own.

4. Have students explain their answers and provide text evidence supporting their claims. They need to engage with the type of thinking that moves past simply picking evidence and to reasoning about why they chose it, how it supports their ideas and thinking, and whether they could choose something better.

5. Engage students in regularly writing about text, not just in replying to multiple-choice questions. Want to give student a chance to process their own learning AND see visible evidence of what each and every student is thinking and what misconceptions they've got, so you can make adjustments accordingly? Let them write. A lot.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. It's the type of instruction that happens every day when we use our curricular materials really well. And when we do this - when every single day, every single student gets their hands and heads in complex texts and does increasingly sophisticated work and thinking with them - then The Test will NOT be the hardest thing they've done all year. The daily work they've done under your guidance will be the most rigorous thinking they've done, and The Test will seem simpler by comparison.

There are lots of reasons why what we typically do to prep for The Test doesn't work, and why we should instead choose to continue to give all kids access to very complex texts, challenging work, and strong instruction every single day of the school year. I encourage you to read through the articles and resources cited below to learn more about them. They are research-based and have stood the test of time. 

But in the end, really, it comes down to you. 

You have the power to control how you choose to spend your precious time at this point of the year and put The Test in its place. You can choose to react to The Test with stress and anxiety and a narrowed focus on what we've typically done - even though it hasn't moved the needle for our students. Or you can choose to respond with trust and confidence that the work you've done all year - and that you continue to do until the very last day - is preparing your students to do well on whatever task is put in front of them. Then, the Test will be just a matter of course.

As Tim writes, "If you want your students to perform at their best ... you will accomplish that not by having students practice items ... but by teaching students to read."

Want to learn more? Here's what I recommend:

• Shanahan, 2014: How and How Not to Prepare Students for the New Tests
• Shanahan, 2017: If You Really Want Higher Test Scores: Rethink Reading Comprehension Instruction
• Shanahan, 2017: Welcome 2017: Let's Teach, Not Test
• Shanahan, 2018: My Principal Wants to Improve Test Scores ... Is He Right?
• ACT, 2016: Reading Between the Lines
• Marzano, Dodson, Simms, and Wipf (2021): Ethical Test Preparation
• Freitag, 2023: Keep the Tests, but Reform the Test Prep

Here's to simply teaching well,

Miles on the Road

If you haven't read Reading Reconsidered by Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway, I can't recommend it enough. 

Recently in our book study around chapter 5, I was struck by the idea of literary miles on the road. In the book, the authors write, "Students must read not only well but also widely and extensively. Running is a decent analogy. Sure, you can improve your results by studying up on the science of training. In the end, though, there is no way around the fact that success requires a lot of road miles. In the case of reading, we sometimes refer to this as 'miles on the page.' Quantity matters."

It's easy to look at our lesson plans or reflect on how a lesson went and think that our kids have done a lot of reading in the course of an ELA block. However, the authors pointed out some startling statistics. In a typical school day in New York City public schools, students were reading for TWENTY minutes per day; almost 40% of students did not read at all during the school day. Seems astonishing, no? 

But I wonder. How much of our time is spent getting ready to read, discussing what we've read, getting the supplies we need to read, finding the right page to read, reflecting on what we read ... and how much is spent actually reading? Actual eyes on the page, quiet classroom, minds on, purposeful reading?

If this is making you pause, too, here are some ways they recommend to maximize those road miles: "to help students read more, enjoy reading, and accrue the benefits of extensive reading."

To start, there are three approaches to miles on the page in our classrooms, and each has its strengths and limitations.

1. Students reading independently. The strength here is that it's sorely needed. However, keeping kids accountable and making sure they are reading well are a couple of limitations.

2. Students reading aloud. The strengths are that it gives students time to practice fluency, you can get data on how they're doing, and there's simply pleasure in reading aloud done well. The limitations are that it's tough to keep all students engaged when just one is reading and doing this a lot may not translate to students reading independently.

3. Students listening to oral reading. The strengths here are that is provides an expert reading model, it can ignite real passion for what's being read, and it gives kids access to texts that are much more complex than what they could read on their own. The limitations are that students don't get the practice they need, modeling can embed meaning (taking that rigor out of the work), and it keeps everyone at the exact same place.

All of these approaches are important; each type of reading should be used in classrooms depending on the text, kids, and purpose. So we want to use each in ways that let us reap the rewards from their strengths and avoid their limitations. Here are some solid, concrete ways they suggest doing that.

1. Students reading independently: To keep this accountable, you can:

• Limit text and gradually release. Have students start by reading smaller chunks during class with greater accountability, even if that means starting with just a few lines of text at a time. Then, increase the amount of independent reading done in class, and gather data through questioning, observation, and written work that showed they've comprehended it.
• Find a focal point. Tell kids what they should be reading or looking for before you launch independent reading. For example, "Take one minute and read paragraph 6 on your own. I'm going to ask you what Loyalists believe, so make sure you're looking for it." 
• Set time limits. Give students a finite period of time to read without telling them how much text they have to read. You can say, "When you hear the timer, mark the spot you've read to." This can help when kids rush to simply get through the text but don't read carefully. 
• Assign an interactive reading task. You can say, "I'm going to release you from here. Meet me at the end of chapter 12 and be able to tell me how Peter Pan responds to Hook in the chapter. Have at least one piece of evidence marked with a sticky note to support your answer." 
• Confirm and scaffold comprehension. The best are written checks, because they allow you to see evidence of every student's level of comprehension with the text and make adjustments accordingly. The best way to approach this is to allow kids to read, write, and THEN talk. So it can sound like, "Read back the part that introduces a factor the contributed to Jackie Robinson's success and then write one sentence that explains what that factor is." Only after you've spot checked everyone's work do you release them to talk.

2. Students reading aloud: To keep this engaging, you can:

• Keep durations short and the reader unpredictable. When you ask a student to read aloud, that student is the "primary reader," and all other students are "secondary readers." Move quickly and randomly among primary readers. Students shouldn't know who you'll call to be a primary reader next or how long they'll read. Behind the scenes, you can control the game by assigning shorter pieces to some readers and longer ones to students who are ready for a bit more. 
• Reduce transaction costs. Transaction costs are the time you lose in moving from one thing to another. To reduce transaction costs here, when you are ready to switch primary readers, simply say, "Andrea," as her cue to begin reading. If Andrea has lost her place and can't pick up, call on another student just as quickly, move to her desk and get her recentered. Then call on her again soon.
• Bridge. Bridging happens when the teacher hops in between student readers to read a short segment of text. This could be a segment that's particularly hard, important to read with a lot of expression, or a key point of the text. 
• Spot check. Similar to cloze reading, teachers spot check when they read aloud, leave out a word, and the class chimes in on it.
• Rely on a placeholder. If you are close reading, this is critical as you move in and out of a text. So, you may say, "Finger in your book, and close it for a moment," before you discuss how Esperanza and Miguel reacted differently to a train ride. You could also say, "Finger freeze," or "pen to page to hold the spot" as a cue.
• Correct decoding errors. Reading carefully is an important skill to build, and that means reading every word accurately, all the way to the end. So, if a student misreads the word "inspection," you could quickly correct with "In-SPEAK-tion?" as a cue to self correct. I have also been known to hold a clickable pen in my hand as students read, and if they make an error they don't self-correct, I simply click the pen as a cue that they need to return and reread correctly. What you don't want to do is make the correction and have the student echo what you said, because they don't actually learn from fixing the mistake themselves. 

3. Students listening to oral reading: To ensure that this builds students' capacity to read on their own:

• Model really beautiful, fluent reading. This seems like a no-brainer, but it's critical. If you choose to read aloud to students, that means the text is very complex and new to your students. So, read it yourself in advance and think about how you'll chunk phrases together, what punctuation you want to punch, the words that may be difficult to pronounce and you want to decode slowly, and how you'll use the words to convey the tone and intention of the piece. These are moments when students are exposed to rich and varied syntax, collegiate-level vocabulary, and genres they may not be able to tackle independently yet (think Shakespeare). Invest the time in advance to read and practice them so your students see the level of attention to detail they need to approach difficult texts on their own.

No one way of reading is inherently better than the others; it's the varied diet of reading in service of miles on the page that'll really make the difference for our kids.

Here's to simply teaching well,

My Beef with Background Knowledge

 

The texts and topics we put in front of our kids are challenging. Through these texts, students are learning about topics as wide-ranging as issues of water access around the world, Native American boarding schools, and the ratification of the 19th amendment. The vast majority of the time, students enter a module of study with very little background knowledge about it, and the vast majority of the time, our response is to build some background knowledge before students engage with the texts.

Pre-loading this background knowledge can look like showing videos, reading additional articles, or leading classroom discussions before we engage with a text, and it is done with the very best of intentions.

But I argue that doing this - giving kids background knowledge about the texts before they have the chance to read it for themselves - actually does a disservice to our students. 

If, as Doug Lemov writes in Reading Reconsidered, "... our responsibility as reading teachers is to ensure that students can create meaning directly from reading on their own..." (my emphasis added), then giving them our knowledge before they read makes them more dependent on us and moves us farther away from that goal of independence. Our goal is for them to - at the end of the year or the end of school altogether - be able to approach a brand new, really difficult text, and make sense of it all by themselves ... whether or not they have background knowledge about it beforehand.

Now, you may be thinking, "But what about all the research pointing to the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension?" And you'd be right. There's research going back to 1932 that shows readers use their knowledge to understand text, and it's why we know that teaching social studies and science content, reading meaty texts, smart consumption of educational media (think more PBS and less Minecraft), and the like are all no-brainers. 

But as Tim Shanahan writes, in literacy instruction, our goal isn't immediate comprehension of today's text; it's to build independent readers. If I'm always giving them background knowledge, instead of helping them develop the habits and behaviors they need to build knowledge from a text themselves, how do they ever learn to tackle a text on their own? Especially when they don't have a lot of relevant knowledge? 

I also dispute the claim that readers can't understand texts unless they already know a lot about them. If that's true, how does anyone ever read Shakespeare? Or a college text on chemistry? Or the directions to reset the low tire pressure light on my car? I've been able to make sense of all of those, even without a lot of background knowledge. It wasn't easy, but I called on the behaviors and habits I'd been taught when I grappled with hard texts in a classroom to make sense of them on my own.

I'll also argue that it's this ... this ability to make real sense of a text even when I don't know much about it ... than can level the playing field for our kids. Our students from historically underserved populations - our students of color, students from poverty, students with disabilities - will not come to the table with the same breadth of knowledge as their more affluent peers. But if I can teach a student to make sense of a text even when they lack the background for them ... well, that's a game changer. They can build that knowledge for themselves. It's why Mario Vargas Llosa (2010) calls reading "a vaccine against populism, racism, and nationalism." 

Reading is more than finding information in texts that adds to or agrees with what I already know. In fact, we might do well to teach our students to question their prior knowledge, because research shows that knowledge can actually contribute to miscomprehension. If we really want them to learn from a text, they need to be able to set aside misconceptions they hold, approach a text with a sense of intellectual humility, and be willing to change their thinking with new knowledge from a text in hand. 

So, instead of pre-loading background information, I encourage you to (as a mentor of mine calls it), let the text do the teaching. Because, as it did for the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, reading well allows us to live beyond where we are and independently build knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. And that can change everything. 

5 Strategies for Active Engagement During a Read Aloud

 

I'm a big believer in beginning with the end in mind, and when we think about what we want our students to be able to do at the end of the year - and at the end of their education, really - independently reading really complex text is key to that. So, we want our instruction to include lots of opportunities for students to independently read and grapple with complex texts, and I've written in another blog post about ways to release the reading to the students.

At the same time, a part of our job as teachers is to be the expert in the room with them, to guide them through knowing how to make sense of the text and analyzing it to the depth that's called for by the standards. And we should be asking kids to regularly work with texts that are too complex for them to make sense of independently right now. That means that there are times when we put a really tough text in front of our students and it is most appropriate to read it - or portions of it - aloud to them.

The problem that we encounter a lot is: How do we keep kids engaged, even when the text is being read aloud? How do we make sure they are truly "minds on," so they can get what they need from the read aloud and then take it into their own, second reading of the text?

If that sounds familiar, here are some ideas you can try that can help press for strong student engagement during a read aloud:

1. Read it all the way through without stopping. This is especially true of a first, gist read. The purpose here is not to teach vocabulary, ask questions, or make note of connections or things you're thinking. The purpose is for readers to begin to get a picture of the whole piece - to get the lay of the land, so to speak - so that they are better able to deeply parse chunks of the text on a second read.

2. Read with appropriate fluency. Read alouds are incidental fluency instruction, so don't miss this opportunity! Be sure you are altering your pace, chunking phrases together, using volume as appropriate, attending to punctuation, read with good (though not overdone) expression, and the like. A boring, rote reading will lose them every time.

3. Circulate. Project the text on the board if you need to, but also have a copy in hand that you can use as you walk the room. One strategy I love for circulating is Teach Like a Champion's "Break the Plane," and you can read more about circulating a classroom here.

4. Give them a purpose or question for reading. Either establish a purpose ("We're reading this article so we can learn more about this type of frog and add it to our notes for our book") or pose a question ("Who were the Loyalists and what did they believe?"). Every time. It's easy to skip, but it becomes glaringly obvious how important this is when I'm in professional learning, am asked to read something, and I have no idea why.

5. Establish a "student do." Should they track the text with a finger or a pencil? Should they whisper read the text with you? Should they underline text that supports the purpose or question they're answering? There is a time and place for simply listening to a read aloud for pleasure, with no ask of the student other than enjoyment. I would argue that instructional time isn't it; make sure there is a clear "student do" during the read aloud, that students know what it is and how to do it, and that you're circulating (see above) for accountability.

It can be hard - especially if you're early in your career - to juggle teaching content and monitoring engagement at the same time. (Or maybe it was just me.) Try inviting your coach in to observe and note student engagement, or record a lesson and watch it to see what your students do during a read aloud. If engagement could use a boost, try the above and see how they work!

Here's to simply teaching well,