tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55577363666805972892024-03-13T20:16:32.500-07:00Cathy PressnellCathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-32272480280397824222024-03-01T13:55:00.000-08:002024-03-01T13:55:23.410-08:00The Power of Curriculum<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvwMt08MzickE7yw4H4pE7qx-IYMzftbnIfBUp_jRhIEXJNmES2S1ZqvdvX6P8p7yzIq5CBpNmHB0KZVdnMNF25EuYsInFhHM0Dt37Bbrslw7j2KMGDsiXLnFeMLEN2HR4XE-cXxsGsRocGH28ZxA1nIb9tWRQwAETh6TSC0_emED_qIYZIHWaK_pFRuQ/s5294/ed-robertson-eeSdJfLfx1A-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3529" data-original-width="5294" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvwMt08MzickE7yw4H4pE7qx-IYMzftbnIfBUp_jRhIEXJNmES2S1ZqvdvX6P8p7yzIq5CBpNmHB0KZVdnMNF25EuYsInFhHM0Dt37Bbrslw7j2KMGDsiXLnFeMLEN2HR4XE-cXxsGsRocGH28ZxA1nIb9tWRQwAETh6TSC0_emED_qIYZIHWaK_pFRuQ/w640-h426/ed-robertson-eeSdJfLfx1A-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am thrilled to share this guest blog post written by Jessica Codispoti, a 3rd grade teacher in our district. Here, she reflects on her use of curriculum and what she's done this year to get even better. It's a fantastic example of how a strong curriculum in the hands of a reflective teacher is a powerful force for change in classrooms. Enjoy!</span></h4><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Over the last 15 years, I have had the
opportunity to learn and grow from the many different curriculums, (or lack of
curriculums) that I’ve been asked to teach. My first year of teaching was
intimidating and stressful as I tried to figure out how to communicate with
parents, manage classroom behaviors, and frankly just teach! Luckily, my school
used a basal reading program that told me exactly what to do. We focused on one
text and one concept (main idea, vocabulary, character traits, etc.) each week.
At the end of each week, there was a comprehension assessment on the same text
that determined if students learned the concept of the week. At this point in
my career, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">I was stressed, but happy to have
a curriculum to follow.</span></span></p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A few years later,
schools started to realize that the basal programs had some gaps in covering
standards because students weren't performing well on state assessments.
We were asked to supplement the program to fill those gaps. </span><span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This left me searching each evening for
material that I thought would cover those standards. At this point in my
career, I was unsure and confused if I was addressing the missed standards
successfully and never felt as though I was doing the right things for my
students. It wasn’t a great feeling!</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Just as I was getting this down, wouldn’t you
know it, education shifted again. I was now asked to abandon the basal reading
program altogether and become a curriculum writer myself (not something I was
trained to be). I had to search for a science or social studies text every week
that would align with my ELA standards and that I could write tasks to. Students
would read the text the first day and spend the next few days working through different
tasks with the text. Tasks might focus on vocabulary, character traits, main
idea, etc. The final day had students take a comprehension assessment on the
text. That assessment was written by me and mirrored questions on the state
assessment. I was working harder than ever! It took hours to find a text that I
thought was rigorous enough, but not too hard, write tasks, and write
assessments. The real problem was though, I never knew if what I chose was
grade level appropriate, if the questions I was asking were on track, or if I
was doing what was best for students. This time in my teaching career was
EXHAUSTING!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although, I was becoming a better curriculum
writer and knew my tasks were better than the basal program, I still needed
experts to write a curriculum where the text was at the center and students
worked through many tasks to make meaning of that text. Enter…..EL Education!
I was given this curriculum, which was written in the manner I needed, however,
there…was…so…much! There were 4 teacher manuals, 4 supporting material books, 4
student work books, 4 additional center books, and 4 student center books. On
top of all the books, we weren’t given a whole lot of professional development
on how to implement the curriculum. It was overwhelming to look at and not
something I was excited to read. So, I turned back to my previous experiences
and began searching for something to make it easier and less time consuming.
What did I find? Premade PowerPoint slides that went through each lesson. I was
SAVED (or so I thought)! I followed the slides for each lesson and thought I
was doing a great job. However, when assessment time came, my students were
failing. Instead of thinking about how my teaching was affecting those
assessments, I started reaching out to coaches and explained that I wasn’t
covering the material that was on the assessments and I needed to change them
(because after all, I’m a curriculum writer, right?) That’s what I did, changed
the assessments to meet the needs of the PowerPoint slides. Finally, I thought
I had it all together.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Then, Cathy Pressnell asked me to attend a
summer literacy institute that changed my world! This institute focused on all
things EL Education. I learned why the curriculum was written the way it was
and then dug into everything within the lessons. I looked at the purpose of
each lesson and how that purpose was taught through tasks. During this
institute, I realized that by only following the PowerPoint slides, I was
missing the purpose of each lesson and that my students weren’t learning what
they needed to. I also realized that my questioning wasn’t quite what it needed
to be either. I was asking great questions and getting great responses, but the
questions were not guiding the students toward the purpose of the lesson. I
also realized that because I was missing so much, this was affecting their
assessment scores and causing those failing grades I mentioned before. This week
of learning made me realize that I needed to change my thinking and dig in to
that teacher manual if I wanted to get the most growth and learning out of my
students.</span></p>
<h4 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So, that bring us to this year. </span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I made a
commitment to myself at the end of the literacy institute that I was going to
teach the curriculum the way it was written to the best of my ability and
that’s what I’ve done! Here is what I’ve noticed:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Students are doing the work! I'm no longer standing in front of the class having students copy what they need on those graphic organizers. Students are doing the work, finding evidence to support their thoughts, and writing their thinking on the organizers.</span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">The lessons actually make sense! By following the close reading guides and what is written in the teacher manual, I'm actually teaching the purpose of each lesson and my students are able to connect ideas from day to day much easier.</span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">The assessments were perfect BEFORE I changed them! By following the manual, asking the scaffolded questions, and following the guides, I found that the assessment questions were appropriate and aligned to the learning done in the lessons. So, I started giving the original assessments and found that students weren't failing them anymore! They were prepared for them because the lessons did teach the concepts!</span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Digging into the lessons and really figuring out what I'm teaching is not taking as much time as I thought. When I was first presented with the curriculum, I was overwhelmed, but now, after really teaching it for the last 6 months, I've found that it's not taking as long to read and figure out what I'm teaching. There are many parts within the curriculum which repeat or use the same format and that make planning easier now on the tail end of the year!</span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Following the teacher manual instead of the PowerPoint slides has increased my class involvement and has given me more time to spend with my students asking questions and listening to their thinking. I'm no longer standing in front of my class running through slides. I'm at their desks listening to their thoughts and know more about what they know than I did when I was teaching from slides!</span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Students are growing and learning more! I've noticed a new confidence in my students. They understand what they are learning and are applying that new knowledge to benchmark assessments. My iReady scores are higher, their goals are higher, and I've set higher expectations that they are reaching! It makes me excited, them excited, and their families!</span></li></ul><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I know the stresses that come from teaching
and know that teachers don’t need one…more…thing…but if you are willing to take
on one more thing, let it be to dig into that teacher guide! Following the EL
Teacher Guided Curriculum has not only changed the way that I teach, but it has
changed the way my students learn. It was a long a road to get here, but one
that changed who I am as a teacher and one that I wouldn’t trade for anything!
At this point in my career, I KNOW I’m doing the right thing, I KNOW I’m teaching
the right way, and I KNOW I’m changing the lives of my students for the better!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><i>I couldn't have said it half as well, Jessica.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;">Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-78701425747248062352023-08-30T13:42:00.003-07:002023-08-30T13:43:00.219-07:00One Small Thing: Blind Grading<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj90CvblB0Mwiz9GZIs3tsBFKETTy4Nz2Tx7pwp9lHfccv8IOLIKBAoT6mVTKFeEQeXl4xDLv0qTaLxZWZHkqTab30vZduiDw0UYmon7oYVMN-Uqkxm1YtcFLyiio9ybPj9K1-WHVliRl5cViy-MX56Wi4CVBVvauk1eY2cTbs9dDYUcXVshp5IH3ic-vOx/s5905/pexels-cottonbro-3661473.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3937" data-original-width="5905" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj90CvblB0Mwiz9GZIs3tsBFKETTy4Nz2Tx7pwp9lHfccv8IOLIKBAoT6mVTKFeEQeXl4xDLv0qTaLxZWZHkqTab30vZduiDw0UYmon7oYVMN-Uqkxm1YtcFLyiio9ybPj9K1-WHVliRl5cViy-MX56Wi4CVBVvauk1eY2cTbs9dDYUcXVshp5IH3ic-vOx/w640-h426/pexels-cottonbro-3661473.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Last year, a 4th grade teacher dropped an idea that stopped me in my tracks.<p></p><p>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."</p><p>We call this Blind Grading.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <a href="https://twitter.com/Principal_Gibbs" target="_blank">Dr. Ricky Gibbs</a> says, "Never feel sorry for them. Pity won't change their lives. A great education will." </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-42400536337948983642023-08-09T13:27:00.010-07:002023-08-11T08:25:32.299-07:005 Ideas to Help with Lesson Pacing<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3i3F2fD6YjPnfDIsk81kvCoZ2XEqL5UxUE6Vpz_bc3wAJWjStEiJzjF3qnl3VQcxJXLloH6ZCgPmDI4VV4ErFaeFfrnwXuCLeo_2YwfRqXhlqqjchT93ltqgsxGjKZZRPurAhygg2KxLSvk6hdV6n6JNBKWN8R0Gl58utwmEDPheVV__R5W7g9_qzXaVv/s5472/pexels-monstera-6186123.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3i3F2fD6YjPnfDIsk81kvCoZ2XEqL5UxUE6Vpz_bc3wAJWjStEiJzjF3qnl3VQcxJXLloH6ZCgPmDI4VV4ErFaeFfrnwXuCLeo_2YwfRqXhlqqjchT93ltqgsxGjKZZRPurAhygg2KxLSvk6hdV6n6JNBKWN8R0Gl58utwmEDPheVV__R5W7g9_qzXaVv/w640-h426/pexels-monstera-6186123.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>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. <p></p><p>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. </p><p>What's a teacher to do? Here are 5 of my favorite ideas to help with strong lesson pacing.</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Set and use <b>timers</b> - 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.</li><li>Reach out to your academic coach for a <b>time audit</b>. 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.</li><li>Don't spend more than 5-10 minutes on <b>learning targets</b>. 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.</li><li><b>Avoid adding things</b> 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.</li><li>Use the <b>Prepare to Teach Cycle</b> 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.</li></ol><div>Looking for more?</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Check out <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10hckbFrQmIqczo0PuqXbVTWGRInMMCSO/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank"><b>EL Education's Module Pacing Recommendations for Grades 3-8</b></a>. They've got great ideas to help.</li><li>Read <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/17-2_fEGzdr-1YmRXpD3F5jdWfLZkK70X/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank"><b>ideas from teachers right here in our district</b></a> on how to pace lessons well. </li></ul></div><p></p><p>So, choose an idea, try it out, and see how it helps you improve at pacing lessons.</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-52690852872279945552023-05-19T11:21:00.003-07:002023-05-19T11:21:41.553-07:00Teacher Summer 2023 Reading<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9ENkXE0dNYT_ZX-oa_aCV1-7P5Liu2FhSQ8ZF-Imko-GC3fPCRh1ypOnv3A8lZEpXSZKr09bfw9wrMKY141wEPUxhK1sefOlkTbf1pnvGVE3mCZHM4zZ71VMq66tzUoEEWRUFRadIlfFTafCz38CenAsuW4jPQzpoP062RmQ6V4ahSVe2bvJsCtI9g/s435/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="435" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9ENkXE0dNYT_ZX-oa_aCV1-7P5Liu2FhSQ8ZF-Imko-GC3fPCRh1ypOnv3A8lZEpXSZKr09bfw9wrMKY141wEPUxhK1sefOlkTbf1pnvGVE3mCZHM4zZ71VMq66tzUoEEWRUFRadIlfFTafCz38CenAsuW4jPQzpoP062RmQ6V4ahSVe2bvJsCtI9g/w640-h412/Capture.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>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.<p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Reading Reconsidered</i> 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.</li><li><i>Teach Like a Champion</i> 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.</li><li><i>The Courage to Teach</i> 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. </li><li><i>A History of Literacy Education</i> 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.)</li><li><i>Assessing the Nation's Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP</i> by Chester Finn. This book will take you down a delightful rabbit hole of all things standardized assessment and NAEP. </li><li><i>The Vocabulary Handbook: </i>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.</li><li>"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. </li></ul><div>Whether you choose one or several, I hope your summer is filled with rest, relaxation, and lots and lots of good reading!</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-49312642420175980952023-04-29T07:36:00.001-07:002023-04-29T07:36:06.778-07:00One Small Thing: Read with the Eraser<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQ5pifMYpDYiH7dzCDyqm7F2_ahW_g2OjrM6rufAUa9HnEOnpKKJ-IEIxZT2GJLH7RnTseVcRdC_t9r5sXQ4kJ48ja1XIxagQSrZTxy3gKFLxwq46J_eYi1LbdXEJjVvzpAFh3dcnkS1ABG1W3pXD2m4GLC-Yac05LKclhPxjcnz7gjUN16dGBh76mQ/s6000/pexels-olia-danilevich-4982457.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQ5pifMYpDYiH7dzCDyqm7F2_ahW_g2OjrM6rufAUa9HnEOnpKKJ-IEIxZT2GJLH7RnTseVcRdC_t9r5sXQ4kJ48ja1XIxagQSrZTxy3gKFLxwq46J_eYi1LbdXEJjVvzpAFh3dcnkS1ABG1W3pXD2m4GLC-Yac05LKclhPxjcnz7gjUN16dGBh76mQ/w640-h426/pexels-olia-danilevich-4982457.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>This "One Small Thing" comes to you directly from <i>Reading Reconsidered</i>, and it's one of those things that made me automatically say, "Why, of COURSE!"<p></p><p>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.</p><p>If you've seen the same thing, try this:</p><p>1. Take away the highlights.</p><p>2. Instead, have students read with a pencil.</p><p>3. Have them read with their pencil in hand, and with the eraser end down on the paper.</p><p>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.</p><p>Here's how it could sound in your classroom:</p><p>"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."</p><p>I think it's often the small things, done consistently and precisely, that add up to big improvements for our students.</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-79948388817695771342023-03-21T09:32:00.006-07:002023-03-23T12:31:28.075-07:00The Best Test Prep<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjWrcSKtZdXi44k2USHEMD1l8BdK5zCcYd4BVNdq4JQ-3QExyThSrgvevh81wlLK3Zq_EGEyIXTFjLlH0-EB5f3CCTjn0ixOgjRvWLPGWIzSUjSrtlMvKfMS7KqTSoCy3Yzuw1Ed6aFW2OQgl0hMd56oeWi1BbWpTs411QDxqutrgmVyDlm7ZbjOLfg/s7734/annie-spratt-ORDz1m1-q0I-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5801" data-original-width="7734" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjWrcSKtZdXi44k2USHEMD1l8BdK5zCcYd4BVNdq4JQ-3QExyThSrgvevh81wlLK3Zq_EGEyIXTFjLlH0-EB5f3CCTjn0ixOgjRvWLPGWIzSUjSrtlMvKfMS7KqTSoCy3Yzuw1Ed6aFW2OQgl0hMd56oeWi1BbWpTs411QDxqutrgmVyDlm7ZbjOLfg/w640-h480/annie-spratt-ORDz1m1-q0I-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>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.</p><p>The Test is coming.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>But I am here to tell you this. </p><h4 style="text-align: center;">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. </h4><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>So, what is the best test prep? As usual, I'll turn to <a href="https://vlp.scsk12.org/docs/AugustDLD2015/Prepare%20Students%20for%20New%20Test.pdf" target="_blank">Tim Shanahan</a>, and here's what he suggests.</p><p><b>1. Have students read extensively within instruction across the school year. </b>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, <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2023/02/miles-on-road.html" target="_blank">miles on the road</a> type of reading.</p><p><b>2. Have students read increasing amounts of text without guidance or support.</b> Independence is our goal, always.</p><p><b>3. Make sure that the texts we put in front of kids are rich in content and challenging.</b> Lots of reading of easy texts won't prepare students for navigating difficult texts on their own.</p><p><b>4. Have students explain their answers and provide text evidence supporting their claims. </b>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.</p><p><b>5. Engage students in regularly writing about text, not just in replying to multiple-choice questions. </b>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>But in the end, really, it comes down to you. </p><p>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.</p><h4 style="text-align: center;">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."</h4><p>Want to learn more? Here's what I recommend:</p><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Shanahan, 2014: <a href="https://vlp.scsk12.org/docs/AugustDLD2015/Prepare%20Students%20for%20New%20Test.pdf" target="_blank">How and How Not to Prepare Students for the New Tests</a></li><li>Shanahan, 2017: <a href="https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/my-principal-wants-to-improve-test-scores-is-he-right" target="_blank">If You Really Want Higher Test Scores: Rethink Reading Comprehension Instruction</a></li><li>Shanahan, 2017: <a href="https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/my-principal-wants-to-improve-test-scores-is-he-right" target="_blank">Welcome 2017: Let's Teach, Not Test</a></li><li>Shanahan, 2018: <a href="https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/my-principal-wants-to-improve-test-scores-is-he-right" target="_blank">My Principal Wants to Improve Test Scores ... Is He Right?</a></li><li>ACT, 2016: <a href="https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/reading_highlights.pdf" target="_blank">Reading Between the Lines</a></li><li>Marzano, Dodson, Simms, and Wipf (2021): <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Preparation-Large-Scale-Standardized-Assessment-Instruction/dp/1943360510" target="_blank">Ethical Test Preparation</a></li><li>Freitag, 2023: <a href="https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/keep-tests-reform-test-prep" target="_blank">Keep the Tests, but Reform the Test Prep</a></li></ul><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-88130535268577089912023-02-23T10:01:00.011-08:002023-02-23T10:09:02.757-08:00Miles on the Road<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4yD5oBtQ3j_Iw-nQsHTeFMwiXy-j9hlobtxAWQdVZtvnSwlqlv16QbfethaaktkTE9N1VY3E4eLXsCPlBido7K0mAdT7vjJDX8DaCcu90m6mSCfEEs71clji-PDMel8ACW7LoV4uO-vhd2trOqxgYqszDuKbhJVVmGfHCTIizEpwnJZJNLypXJN41LA/s385/Capture.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="385" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4yD5oBtQ3j_Iw-nQsHTeFMwiXy-j9hlobtxAWQdVZtvnSwlqlv16QbfethaaktkTE9N1VY3E4eLXsCPlBido7K0mAdT7vjJDX8DaCcu90m6mSCfEEs71clji-PDMel8ACW7LoV4uO-vhd2trOqxgYqszDuKbhJVVmGfHCTIizEpwnJZJNLypXJN41LA/w641-h391/Capture.PNG" width="641" /></a></div><br />If you haven't read <i>Reading Reconsidered</i> by Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway, I can't recommend it enough. <p></p><p>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."</p><p>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? </p><h4 style="text-align: center;">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?</h4><p>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."</p><p>To start, there are three approaches to miles on the page in our classrooms, and each has its strengths and limitations.</p><p><b>1. Students reading independently.</b> 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.</p><p><b>2. Students reading aloud.</b> 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.</p><p><b>3. Students listening to oral reading. </b>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.</p><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>1. Students reading independently: </b>To keep this accountable, you can:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>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.</li><li>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." </li><li>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. </li><li>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." </li><li>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.</li></ul><div><b>2. Students reading aloud: </b>To keep this engaging, you can:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>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. </li><li>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.</li><li>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. </li><li>Spot check. Similar to cloze reading, teachers spot check when they read aloud, leave out a word, and the class chimes in on it.</li><li>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.</li><li>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. </li></ul><div><b>3. Students listening to oral reading: </b>To ensure that this builds students' capacity to read on their own:</div></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>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.</li></ul><div>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.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-68628865042680147632023-01-30T13:34:00.009-08:002023-02-23T10:09:26.576-08:00My Beef with Background Knowledge<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2kClaDXAl7fjAFn7ODowZo8npuuSyE0snMVYS96Tgz_ByJiGLTY47PIr6D_g8CWesQJR4mWEdXhv2jFuF2wq8fa4Fk0dcOtiXNvM61MAPtmq9_wTApwT14lR5qRC2jAe-ldCRzYdEXbplETxbh4yXNfJ_fj9OvpyYd5dUaiu3aVpbKTqKH89bC7g9NQ/s5557/suad-kamardeen-8PyNdtGL4Bg-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3705" data-original-width="5557" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2kClaDXAl7fjAFn7ODowZo8npuuSyE0snMVYS96Tgz_ByJiGLTY47PIr6D_g8CWesQJR4mWEdXhv2jFuF2wq8fa4Fk0dcOtiXNvM61MAPtmq9_wTApwT14lR5qRC2jAe-ldCRzYdEXbplETxbh4yXNfJ_fj9OvpyYd5dUaiu3aVpbKTqKH89bC7g9NQ/w640-h426/suad-kamardeen-8PyNdtGL4Bg-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><h4 style="text-align: center;">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. </h4><div><br /></div><div>If, as Doug Lemov writes in <i>Reading Reconsidered, </i>"... our responsibility as reading teachers is to ensure that students can create meaning directly from reading <i>on their own..." </i>(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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>But as Tim Shanahan <a href="https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/prior-knowledge-or-he-isnt-going-to-pick-on-the-baseball-study#sthash.FNTlGpjN.dpbs" target="_blank">writes</a>, 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? </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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." </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-35289793418917765932023-01-11T12:47:00.001-08:002023-01-11T12:47:13.524-08:005 Strategies for Active Engagement During a Read Aloud<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pSTz-9giC6TaCvFucTR_7ll8c1aaUPcODccOsOLyTUpPX34wfYqbYC-AG65V7B3OlujUMHhzAN_xn8hkykrYDnFwL5y-6MolQLWb3ZGnJl1Q6Se4_XMAVvVh7_Ex2XCV2AnQumhFJf7fJoFOTboSMsIwvNelrqqqEeGvE92mKNWViHmVJyy8Vk2sXg/s6000/gabriel-tovar-hOW9KAvQPd8-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pSTz-9giC6TaCvFucTR_7ll8c1aaUPcODccOsOLyTUpPX34wfYqbYC-AG65V7B3OlujUMHhzAN_xn8hkykrYDnFwL5y-6MolQLWb3ZGnJl1Q6Se4_XMAVvVh7_Ex2XCV2AnQumhFJf7fJoFOTboSMsIwvNelrqqqEeGvE92mKNWViHmVJyy8Vk2sXg/w640-h426/gabriel-tovar-hOW9KAvQPd8-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>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 <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2022/01/4-ways-to-release-reading-to-kids.html" target="_blank">ways to release the reading to the students</a>.</p><p>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.</p><p>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?</p><p>If that sounds familiar, here are some ideas you can try that can help press for strong student engagement during a read aloud:</p><p><b>1. Read it all the way through without stopping</b>. 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.</p><p><b>2. Read with appropriate fluency.</b> 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.</p><p><b>3. Circulate.</b> 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 <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/what-is-breaking-the-plane/#:~:text=The%20movement%20in%20Breaking%20the,you%20progress%20around%20the%20room." target="_blank">"Break the Plane</a>," and you can read more about circulating a classroom <a href="https://ravenhensleytlacproject.weebly.com/circulate.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p><b>4. Give them a purpose or question for reading. </b>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.</p><p><b>5. Establish a "student do." </b>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.</p><p>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!</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-55204009294020517942022-08-26T16:59:00.000-07:002023-01-11T12:15:20.316-08:00A Better Way to Look at Assessment Data<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlCXdd242QggnWVlj_WxEegb4k0eEpYL_BnrWi0sRjY_nhiix32esiwyNz5tRhaV2Yn3jt6XCMM6Tf9ubf43jTHYL-kynUw5G5kO0NYS89-laKMvcscKkUaNmVvJLLvzgWt8qao-6ZxaDTqI1k8lL4guhf-ERvZJsfZEoYpdU5rOntc7I9-j4npy-5A/s6000/pexels-mary-taylor-5896491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhlCXdd242QggnWVlj_WxEegb4k0eEpYL_BnrWi0sRjY_nhiix32esiwyNz5tRhaV2Yn3jt6XCMM6Tf9ubf43jTHYL-kynUw5G5kO0NYS89-laKMvcscKkUaNmVvJLLvzgWt8qao-6ZxaDTqI1k8lL4guhf-ERvZJsfZEoYpdU5rOntc7I9-j4npy-5A/w640-h426/pexels-mary-taylor-5896491.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I have been reading and talking and writing a lot about the shifts we need to make in how we think about our reading comprehension standards and our texts - how we need to move our focus away from the unsubstantiated idea that we can teach kids transferable comprehension "skills" and to the idea that the text needs to be at the center of instruction. You can read other blog posts I've written <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/12/how-to-teach-kids-to-find-main-idea.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/11/reading-comprehension-isnt-about-asking.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and Tim Shanahan does a fantastic job of tacking this topic in one of my favorite videos <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAs1lfpwhA" target="_blank">here</a>.<p></p><h4 style="text-align: center;">These shifts are nuanced and don't seem that big, but they are, and they impact everything we do in the classroom - including the way we consider and
respond to assessment data. </h4><p>Typically, when we get assessment data in, we analyze how students perform on items related to individual standards, see which ones they performed particularly well in, which ones not so much, and then plan a path forward. A lot of times, that path looks like, "These six kids struggled with standard 2, so we'll work with them in a small group and practice standard 2 some more, but maybe with a graphic organizer," and "As a whole, the class did well with standard 4, so we can move on from that."</p><p>In math, and even in ELA foundational skills, a
standard-by-standard analysis makes a lot of sense, because those standards
represent constrained skills that can be mastered. For example, I can master
decoding words with certain phonics patterns or solving algebraic
equations. However, in reading comprehension, the standards are not repeatable
skills at all. Each text has its own main idea, is structured differently, and
has different types of complexity, and what it takes to make sense of it and
answer questions about it differs a lot from text to text. In fact, the <a href="https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/reading_summary.pdf" target="_blank">2006 ACT study “Reading Between the Lines”</a> showed us that when we analyze reading assessment data to determine how well students can comprehend a text the type or category of
question varies little. There's no pattern that shows us that some students can answer inferential questions but not literal, or that some struggle with main idea questions but do just fine with questions about relationships between words. Either students can answer many different questions about a specific text, or
they can’t answer many at all. So, we aren't going to learn much of use by analyzing assessment results through a standard-by-standard approach.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, we still need to know how well students are
comprehending so that we know who and how to help. So, I like <a href="https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/how-to-analyze-or-assess-reading-comprehension#sthash.CMo7f9UF.LJWyiVbW.dpbs" target="_blank">Tim Shanahan’s idea</a> that it’s better to look at how students do with particular types of texts
over time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, for each assessment I give over a certain period of time, I’d want to know the:<o:p></o:p></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><b>Type and Topic: </b>What type of text they read on the assessment:
literary, informational, or poetry. If it was informational, I'd want to know the topic of the
text: science, social studies, connected to module content, etc.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><b>Complexity: </b>The Lexile level (and any other notations about
complexity)<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><b>Length: </b>The number of texts and the word count of the text(s)</li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then, when I look at student performance across different
types of texts over time, I can see who’s challenged by informational but not
narrative texts, who hits a wall at a Lexile of 820, and who tends to struggle
with longer texts and needs some work with stamina. When I respond to that
data, I can make sure those groups of students get additional practice with the
texts that pose the most challenge to them so they learn to work through them - not isolated comprehension standards.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you’d like to see how this could look, I highly recommend
Tim Shanahan’s piece about ELA comprehension assessment <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/how-to-analyze-or-assess-reading-comprehension*sthash.CMo7f9UF.dpbs__;Iw!!PRtDf9A!qmnK9A7LIgK_Jx4Sxf5Up3j2fn4x9HQack1yoLs2Rd6GT8DoaC9VgteYgOievZd25dAailn2cypF73t5SbW_BmmxJnbvdgbriYo69w$">here</a>.
Also, <a href="https://achievethecore.org/page/3185/placing-text-at-the-center-of-the-standards-aligned-ela-classroom" target="_blank">“Placing Text at the Center of the ELA Standards-Aligned Classroom”</a> has a great section on how we should respond to reading comprehension data.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I know it’s a very different way of looking at and
responding to data, but it’s a change that can make a tremendous difference for
our kids. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-42614795518142032502022-08-20T14:47:00.002-07:002023-01-11T12:15:28.294-08:00Five Mental Models to Start Your Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTdgTt-x9kG9j2dr4aGWyE8oGi2aNSB2t1Mt0TZv6RR7yUwQVT1mpgHQ-EjtCj9lSEAL8b-c60zwrLk_cKwrsEGYwJ7pK0lrSH021ofsrvAu8coXJYFcK2FuaRNTyto0uxAaaFN_NTBa9IyllDmXtYdgZ-7RFp0yZ_XIniLa7qMi3WUcxX1oAhjvudA/s5184/pexels-kindel-media-7155303.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2920" data-original-width="5184" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTdgTt-x9kG9j2dr4aGWyE8oGi2aNSB2t1Mt0TZv6RR7yUwQVT1mpgHQ-EjtCj9lSEAL8b-c60zwrLk_cKwrsEGYwJ7pK0lrSH021ofsrvAu8coXJYFcK2FuaRNTyto0uxAaaFN_NTBa9IyllDmXtYdgZ-7RFp0yZ_XIniLa7qMi3WUcxX1oAhjvudA/w640-h360/pexels-kindel-media-7155303.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>I'm a big fan of Doug Lemov's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Like-Champion-Doug-Lemov/dp/1119712610" target="_blank">Teach Like a Champion</a></i>, and the third edition of the book has landed on top of my (towering) stack of To Be Read professional titles.</p><p>As I skimmed the introduction, I was struck by the five mental models he suggests for thinking about teaching, partly because it's the first of the year and I always find myself retooling systems now, and partly because it seems like we are facing more complexity than ever and I think these models can help us make good decisions for kids despite that. As Lemov writes, "In a typical lesson, you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row ... What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things and often under a bit of pressure in the form of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes' worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to remind you that you have fifteen minutes left in the class period?"</p><p>Sound familiar?</p><p>Lemov proposes that mental models, such as his five, can help us quickly make sense of the complexity, picture the ideal state, and make fast, smart decisions that'll move us closer to that. He says, "Your mental model guides you what to look for. The more we understand, the more we see. And when we don't understand what we're seeing, this too influences our looking."</p><p>Here are his five principles and how they play out in ELA instruction:</p><p><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><b>1. Teaching involves managing working memory and building long-term memory</b>.</span> Working memory is powerful, but it's also very limited; the human brain can only attend to a small bit of information at a time, and this poses a challenges for teachers and kids. If working memory is overloaded, our brain chooses what to focus on, and it doesn't always make a good one. In kids, this struggle leads to frustration, distraction, boredom, acting out, and less learning and engagement. As Lemov says, "We want them constantly engaged and interested, but not overloaded with more than they can manage." And for teachers, an internalized lesson frees up your working memory to pay attention and be nimble and responsive to students.</p><p>On the other hand, long-term memory is almost unlimited, so a main goal of teaching is to get the needed knowledge and habits of thinking from working memory to long-term memory, where students can draw on its stores and make sophisticated connections. And the more we ask kids to go to long-term memory and retrieve what they've learned, the less likely they are to forget it entirely. One study found that if students interact with new information three times, there's an 80% probability it'll be embedded in long-term memory.</p><p><u>What can teachers do?</u> Roll out complex texts in bite-size chunks, get all students actively and frequently thinking about what they're learning through discussion, do lots of checking for understanding, cold call so every student is expected to engage, and have everyone write responses to all-class questions BEFORE discussion.</p><p><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><b>2. Habits accelerate learning.</b> </span>Anything that's memorized becomes a habit, which frees up working memory so we can attend to other things. Lemov says "Making common, everyday activities familiar enough that we can do them without having to think about them makes it easier for us to do them - and therefore more likely that we will - and means we can free our minds up to think more deeply while doing them." </p><p><u>What can teachers do?</u> Have lots and lots of familiar routines to help students get to the important things. For example, a teacher with a routine for journal writing can make sure that within three minutes every student is hard at work, and more engaged in the deep thinking writing requires. </p><p><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><b>3. What students attend to is what they will learn.</b></span> In the study that showed an 80% chance that students will remember something they've heard three times, there was a caveat: students had to be paying attention. Lemov says that "Attending to attention - building habits of sustaining focus - is one of the most important things that teachers can do."</p><p>Easier said than done, of course. He goes on to write, "We aren't just struggling to help students learn to concentrate on what's important; we are struggling against a massive and pervasive technology that acts on our students - and ourselves - to erode that critical capacity in almost every minute of the day." Adults now switch tasks about every two and a half minutes; students switch even more frequently. Our brains are being rewired for constant distraction and surface-level attention. </p><p><u>What can teachers do?</u> Lemov says that we should provide "steady doses of screen- and distraction-free time sustained by meditative reflection - pencil, paper, book ..." So, less focus on including technology with every lesson and more time to read, write for sustained periods of time, student-to-student discourse, and "minds on" time.</p><p><b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">4. Motivation is social.</span></b><b style="color: #3d85c6;"> </b>Humans evolved to survive socially, and social norms in classrooms are more important than we often realize. All relationships matter to kids, but the peer-to-peer cultures teachers build through strong classroom norms are "at least as important" as the relationship between students and teachers.</p><p><u>What can teachers do?</u> Set classroom expectations such as: making eye contact with classmates when they speak; setting models of engaged thoughtfulness for peers; and making high quality, exemplary work the classroom standard. And of course, we must model these ourselves, too.</p><p><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><b>5. Relationship building is at the heart of good teaching.</b></span> Lemov says that "the assertion that no teaching can happen until a relationship exists is inaccurate, in part because teaching well is the most effective way to show a student that you care and to establish a relationship with them in the first place ... A teacher who pushes students to work hard, to write an essay they are truly proud of, a teacher who does not have to shout at students for work to get done, a teacher who, by teaching well, builds a student's interest in and then love for a subject, builds relationships." He goes on to write, "... teaching well ... is the primary tool by which teachers build relationships with students." </p><p>He reminds us that we are building teacher-student relationships, not friendships. And be sure that the relationships we build are meant for the students' well-being; the goal shouldn't be for us to be the teacher they never forget, but for us to help them learn the lessons they'll never forget. Lemov quotes Adeyemi Stembridge: "A relationship is a tool that helps students understand how to connect to content."</p><p><u>What can teachers do?</u> Set the right environment for strong relationships, such as immediately dealing with a situation where some students subtly mock the way a classmate speaks, and connect in simple ways, such as smiling, knowing and correctly pronouncing students' names, and making authentic family connections. Students in a strong core teacher-student relationship should feel safe, successful, and known.</p><p>Five mental models that can help us see through the complexity to what really matters in teaching and learning ... and make good decisions to get closer to making a difference.</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-76757046990788639962022-05-13T14:02:00.010-07:002023-01-11T12:15:43.345-08:00Teacher Summer 2022 Reading<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhvNu97IGSmHae_15CFt9VzZP2MhTN4NcS3HUH9hvH-zh1OhSnGNRk87L7AHdCC5pRROtAGYEtjTbqUPLq-GW7i_KCqU_msKeMD6tI5mVHNwlXJc7Kl0zvBddxF6oSkTa6Upz9t6jPybttYbG2cx5XDdwnqisfMP0NXRLUJUSzbw71zn7HTK_TXNOIg/s5184/link-hoang-UoqAR2pOxMo-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="5184" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhvNu97IGSmHae_15CFt9VzZP2MhTN4NcS3HUH9hvH-zh1OhSnGNRk87L7AHdCC5pRROtAGYEtjTbqUPLq-GW7i_KCqU_msKeMD6tI5mVHNwlXJc7Kl0zvBddxF6oSkTa6Upz9t6jPybttYbG2cx5XDdwnqisfMP0NXRLUJUSzbw71zn7HTK_TXNOIg/w640-h426/link-hoang-UoqAR2pOxMo-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>There's no reading quite like summer reading. There's just something about the longer days, warmer temperatures, and natural laziness to a summer day that makes you sink into a book a little differently than you do at other times of the year.</p><p>If you're looking for a good teacher title to add to your stack this summer, here are a few that I recommend:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Reading Reconsidered</b> by Colleen Driggs, Doug Lemov, and Erica Woolway. This is a research- and evidence-based collection of best practices in literacy instruction that are actionable and timely. I turn to this often.</li><li><b>Transformational Literacy</b> by Ron Berger, Libby Woodfin, Suzanne Nathan Plaut, and Cheryl Becker Dobbertin. Ron Berger leads the vision for teaching and learning at EL Education and is a former Harvard Graduate School of Education professor. This book will help you understand more deeply the philosophy and instructional rationale behind our curriculum.</li><li><b>Teach Like a Champion</b> by Doug Lemov. If you're looking for a refresher on solid, easy to replicate classroom practices, this is the book for you.</li><li><b>How to Read a Book</b> by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. This book has been in print for over 80 years, and folks in reading circles still refer to it (including my beloved Tim Shanahan).</li><li><b>The Writing Revolution</b> by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. This is great for getting to the nuts and bolts of writing with easy-to-implement practices.</li><li><b>The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Minds Reads</b> by Daniel Willingham. I'm excited to dig into this one as I think about our move away from thinking of reading as a set of skills and toward how we teach kids to tackle and unpack complex texts.</li><li><b>Total Participation Techniques</b> by Himmele and Himmele. This will be a focus area of mine next year, and this is the book I'll be turning to.</li><li><b>Checking for Understanding</b> by Fisher and Frey. This is going to be another focus area for me for next year, and this is on my TBR list for the summer.</li><li><b>The Teacher Wars </b>by Dana Goldstein. I really think every teacher should read this book. Whether you're interested in education policy or not, this well-told history of the teaching profession will help you understand how the challenges we face today came to be.</li></ul><div>So grab a lawn chair, a Sonic drink, and a stack of books. Summer's almost here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-10255394106962699232022-04-08T11:07:00.013-07:002023-01-11T12:14:34.025-08:00One Small Thing: No Hands Up<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5TCkFuwpBHU8dg1MzsPNBMVOQKUXJ20N6rtFDg1f-htMIyEdhXMCMwU8-rZ2BiS-tw31k0eemDZ9OXsPM25iQ8cc1Lx3YzjAfkzkd73uJaaI6aKQFyMepmIYvq4AUMCpofMCO5hUOlCRPQb8UaGDI69k-mEnsqWnpMda3t2BQbqxP5RBDGmPag24Sw/s6720/pexels-monstera-5063001.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4480" data-original-width="6720" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5TCkFuwpBHU8dg1MzsPNBMVOQKUXJ20N6rtFDg1f-htMIyEdhXMCMwU8-rZ2BiS-tw31k0eemDZ9OXsPM25iQ8cc1Lx3YzjAfkzkd73uJaaI6aKQFyMepmIYvq4AUMCpofMCO5hUOlCRPQb8UaGDI69k-mEnsqWnpMda3t2BQbqxP5RBDGmPag24Sw/w640-h426/pexels-monstera-5063001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>If you want to improve student engagement, one incredibly simple strategy is to implement a No Hands Up policy in your classroom. It means exactly what it says: Students don't raise their hands to answer a question or contribute to a conversation. You call on students regardless of whether they have raised their hands or not.<p></p><p>It sounds simple, but it can be incredibly hard to break our teacher habits of only calling on the kids with their hands up. Yet, only calling on students who volunteer by raising their hands means that lots of kids in your classroom - really, anyone without their hand up - can opt out of the work. And you likely aren't getting good data back when you check for understanding to see if you need to make adjustments in your lesson, because you're not hearing from a fair sampling of your students. </p><p>So, a No Hands Up policy - or, as <i>Teach Like a Champion</i> calls it, Cold Call - establishes the expectation in your classroom that all students should always be ready to share their thoughts and participate, that to be in your class means they are expected to be a part of the conversation. It allows you to check for understanding effectively. It can increase your speed and pacing since you're not waiting for volunteers. Delivered with warmth and a smile, it communicates that we genuinely care about what all of our students say and think and that they have valuable thoughts to contribute. Perhaps most importantly, it's a practice grounded in inclusiveness and equity; when you call on students whether or not they have volunteered, you are more likely to include students' voices equitably and fairly.</p><p>To use this strategy, you really only need one tool - a random name generator. <a href="http://mikeschmoker.com/index.html" target="_blank">Mike Schmoker</a> recommends a set of popsicle sticks with kids' names written on them in a can with two discreet sides that the students can't see. I like this set up because it gives me much more control than a tech tool. When I draw a students' name, I can call on him or her and then move their popsicle stick to the other side so that I know I've called on them and have temporarily taken their name out of circulation ... but the kids don't know that. That way, if I want to call on them again I can easily do so, and I'm the only one who knows I've done that strategically. Popsicle sticks also give me wiggle room to not call on a student if needed. For example, let's say that I know Cindy has had a hard morning and she needs a bit of space for a bit. With popsicle sticks, I can intentionally not draw her name until she gets warmed up. </p><p>Here are a few important things to keep in mind when you implement this policy:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Be consistent:</b> Cold Call or No Hands Up needs to be consistent and predictable. Over time, it will change behavior because students will know that they need to be prepared to contribute at any time. If you use it randomly or as a "gotcha," students can feel ambushed or caught off guard, and it can become more of a discipline tool than an engagement strategy.</li><li><b>Be systematic: </b>Using the set up I mentioned above, students know that there is a fair and equitable system to be called on in class that is used every time. The message this sends is, "This is how we do business here." </li><li><b>Be positive:</b> The purpose is to generate positive engagement in the work of the classroom, so we want to be sure to leave out judgement or emotion. Questions should be asked clearly, calmly, and universally. A Cold Call isn't a punishment; it's a student's chance to shine and a class's chance to hear from every single member of the community. We want students to succeed and feel proud of what they've contributed.</li><li><b>Be prepared:</b> There's no shortcut to knowing in advance what question you're asking and what the ideal student response is. When we Cold Call with unclear questions, students could feel unsure or caught off guard as they struggle to understand what's being asked. And if we don't know in advance the student answer we're listening for, we don't know when to <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/12/attending-to-precision.html" target="_blank">press for precision</a> or <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2022/02/pause-pose-pounce-bounce.html" target="_blank">bounce the answer</a> to another student. </li><li><b>Sequence your questions:</b> This technique is especially effective when you think about the sequence of questions you have in hand and ask them carefully, quickly, and in a logical progression of difficulty. This improves not only pacing but also presses for productive struggle as they stay minds-on through everyone's questions and answers, ready to add on and take the thinking to the next step.</li></ul><div>About No Hands Up, formative assessment guru <a href="https://www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html" target="_blank">Dylan Wiliam</a> writes, "Everyone hated No Hands Up at first. Teachers hated it because it disrupted their routines. The students who had their hands up all the time hated it because they couldn't show off that they knew the answer. The students who never raised their hands hated it because now they couldn't stay 'below the radar' and instead had to pay attention. But over time, the class became more cohesive. One high achieving student, William, said, <b style="color: #6fa8dc;">'I never knew my classmates were so smart.' </b>When students were allowed to raise their hands, the classroom dialogue was dominated by the quickest students, not necessarily the ones with the most important or interesting things to say. And the students who used to have their hands up all the time (actually, just most of the time, not all the time) said they always seemed to get called on when they didn't know. The result was that students saw that everyone got things wrong at times, which made the class more supportive of each other as learners."</div><div><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: "Franklin Gothic Demi Book", MyriadPro, "Myriad Web", Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></em></div><div>Want to learn more about making this work in your classroom? Here are some resources:</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Teach Like a Champion</i>: <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/two-clips-want-master-cold-call-technique/" target="_blank">Two Clips for Those who Want to Master Cold Calling</a></li><li><i>Teach Like a Champion</i>: <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/bradi-bairs-cold-calling-models-positivity-and-rigor/" target="_blank">Cold Call in Action: 5th grade Math</a></li><li><i>Teach Like a Champion</i>: <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/the-first-days-of-cold-call-with-bradi-bair/" target="_blank">The First Days of Cold Calling</a></li><li><i>Teach Like a Champion</i>: <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/cold-call-inclusive/" target="_blank">Cold Call is Inclusive</a></li><li>Dylan Wiliam: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtZ1pmY0VzI&t=92s" target="_blank">The Classroom Experiment Lollipop Sticks</a></li></ul><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-43661297824186060462022-03-15T13:46:00.004-07:002023-01-11T12:15:53.962-08:00Why Students Need to Get the Gist ... A Lot<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhy24EQyFF4ta0sqbljIVK7qwCoDqkIt27faQxd6CQq0L2a2d97srvjosFTd_9y6ZIm-9Ju_0SDQLs0jzUmcZ5hIx-djMBJFwPx3c2RY_Q3yK7kCIW4Bl2OOwSMRt5O-eAFyyRl47c5X4G7R2qn-IJdNO9AqK2HevBWP41nqCb3bbQlgRXlqlT1NGcTbQ=s3500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2333" data-original-width="3500" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhy24EQyFF4ta0sqbljIVK7qwCoDqkIt27faQxd6CQq0L2a2d97srvjosFTd_9y6ZIm-9Ju_0SDQLs0jzUmcZ5hIx-djMBJFwPx3c2RY_Q3yK7kCIW4Bl2OOwSMRt5O-eAFyyRl47c5X4G7R2qn-IJdNO9AqK2HevBWP41nqCb3bbQlgRXlqlT1NGcTbQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>I get asked a lot about the practice of getting the gist of a text. Why do we ask students to do this? Why do we ask them to do it SO MUCH? (In some cases, lesson after lesson?) After all, our standards don't mention gist, so why on earth would we spend so much time on it? Good, valid questions all around.</p><p>There are some very important reasons why this is a critical practice for our kids to learn to do well by doing it often. </p><p>Before we get into that, though, let's talk about what a gist is not.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>It's not the main idea.</b> I've blogged about the difference between the gist and the main idea <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/08/gist-and-main-idea.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and it includes a fantastic video from 5th graders explaining the difference.</li><li><b>It's not a skill. </b>Skills are those things we can learn, master, and then check off (think phonics or grammar). Gist isn't a skill.</li><li><b>It's not a new thing. </b>Folks have used the word for years, just not always in the context of elementary reading lessons. We may have asked for the gist of a movie, conversation, or event, but not thought about the practice as it relates to reading comprehension.</li></ul><div>Now, let's talk about what a gist is.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>It's a first understanding. </b>On Sunday mornings, we get <i>The New York Times.</i> There is no way I can read the entire paper, but I want to read the articles that matter most, and carefully read a small number of those. So, I skim the headlines to see the topics and then I do a first, light reading of the articles that stand out. Once I have the gist of the article, I know whether I want to read it again more closely, abandon it, or recommend it to Claude.</li><li><b>It's a reading practice. </b>While finding the gist of a text isn't a skill, it is a critical reading practice that is a precursor for more careful analysis of a text, such as determining the central idea or writing a summary.</li><li><b>It's the first step in the process of close reading.</b> When we read closely, we return to a text multiple times to squeeze every drop of knowledge and understanding we can from it. Reading for the gist is the first step in that process of reading closely and carefully.</li><li><b>It's a habit we need kids to develop. </b>Finding the gist is a practice we need our kids to do well independently. We want it to become a habit of reading, so we need them to do it ... habitually.</li></ul><h4 style="text-align: center;">In its simplest form, getting the gist is a reading comprehension practice to help students identify their initial thinking about what the text is mostly about.</h4><div style="text-align: left;"> And it's a practice that's critically important for several reasons. First, we need students to monitor their comprehension while they read - to track their understanding or lack of it - and if they are stopping periodically to think about and write the gist, they're more likely to do that. Second, the practice can help kids integrate information across a text as they think about what each section of the text is communicating to them. Third, it can help students access the most important information when they read. As expert readers ourselves, it's easy to forget how much cognitive effort our kids are putting in when they read really complex text; inviting them to stop and jot the gist at logical intervals helps them get that their ideas of their working memory and onto the paper so they can free up mental space and come back to those ideas later.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Think of reading as peeling an onion. If you want to peel back the layers of the onion to get to the core of it - in our case, the depth of knowledge and understanding students need to get out of a text - we have to begin by peeling back that first layer. That's the gist. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I was in a classroom recently and saw how finding the gist served as an important precursor to a text-based discussion later in the lesson. Check out the picture below.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimE7VEP_MdimUKDKe6OjGtvUGKhGzIVuGEo_l7iD6TNfbTjlILkk_Hapd4WTRXlbTJnaEuqV-s6sNVKR2RbUGXRiyiaLoRfmL3mRnz87KRsbwMhHcfngRVeZIgBe_vGagIqh33JM1hzEq0gh3vmO34CFYEZGEWSfzepLnsfL1fuHknDMWw5aYvyuuh1g=s2016" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimE7VEP_MdimUKDKe6OjGtvUGKhGzIVuGEo_l7iD6TNfbTjlILkk_Hapd4WTRXlbTJnaEuqV-s6sNVKR2RbUGXRiyiaLoRfmL3mRnz87KRsbwMhHcfngRVeZIgBe_vGagIqh33JM1hzEq0gh3vmO34CFYEZGEWSfzepLnsfL1fuHknDMWw5aYvyuuh1g=w480-h640" width="480" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">As you can see, students started with an initial reading of the text in which they wrote they gist of each paragraph in the margin. On a second read, they underlined reasons the author gave for their argument. With this understanding in mind, they then wrote notes to help prepare them for a rich, text-based discussion. At each layer of the work, students are digging a bit deeper into the meaning of the text through some pretty complex thinking. But it all begins with that first, initial read and gist, and I don't think the later work would have been as rich if they hadn't done the first.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When you work with this practice in your classroom, here are a few things to keep in mind:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Use the language of "the gist." </b>This is a practice that builds consistently across the grade levels in EL, so it's important that we use that vocabulary consistently. You'll be saving your kids from confusion - and teachers in later grade levels will thank you, too!</li><li><b>Keep it short. </b>The gist should be very short - some folks say no more than 10 words. Don't hamper your students with a harsh word restriction, but the idea is to get their thought on the paper and then move on with the reading.</li><li><b>Use it as a check for understanding.</b> Use the gist as a check for understanding to see who's getting at least a surface-level understanding of the text in front of them. If they are, you're good to move on to deeper reading and thinking. If not, you'll need to adjust your instruction.</li><li><b>Use it for accountability. </b>If you are working to release the reading to your students and you wonder if they're actually reading, circulating to note their gists is a great accountability piece.</li><li><b>Honor the power of the quiet.</b> Readers need quiet to decode, link, synthesize, and think. That quiet can feel weird to teachers sometimes, but just take a look and see the effort your kids are putting into what they're doing and resist the urge to fill the quiet. Don't interrupt that first reading with vocabulary, comprehension questions, or the like. It's a skim, and it's okay to give your kids the mental space to do it. It's a powerful quiet.</li></ul><div>I hope you see that getting the gist is purposeful and important work for our kids to do. Repeatedly. Because it's the kind of thing we want them to do for the rest of their lives to be good and careful readers, and it all starts in our classrooms.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div></div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-67404063336279151582022-02-21T11:03:00.007-08:002023-01-11T12:13:52.059-08:00Pose - Pause - Pounce - Bounce<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvGHY6pYnw0rZO1xwCSRjNiB0H1w4cTz39B7KBFg3nR3auhA12uJo08KU7ZVt3yTAb25Fa54dutKivKhA_DAnGFdNYKOnRfaJUY_ZfJNEI_2nZ_V15uKgDMuHsDs-9V_q61z2Clu62e9FrSLb_AdGyiG7T8EPdcn13K59VphklPqnRmzkX8LnJZxl9JQ=s6720" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4480" data-original-width="6720" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvGHY6pYnw0rZO1xwCSRjNiB0H1w4cTz39B7KBFg3nR3auhA12uJo08KU7ZVt3yTAb25Fa54dutKivKhA_DAnGFdNYKOnRfaJUY_ZfJNEI_2nZ_V15uKgDMuHsDs-9V_q61z2Clu62e9FrSLb_AdGyiG7T8EPdcn13K59VphklPqnRmzkX8LnJZxl9JQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>I've been thinking a lot about concrete ways in which we can improve at releasing the work to the kids, especially when we're asking them to dig deep and think in sophisticated ways. I ran across this strategy - Pose-Pause-Pounce-Bounce - from the British educator <a href="https://www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html" target="_blank">Dylan Wiliam</a> recently, and it seems to fit the bill: simple, doable, and effective at moving the cognitive lift to your students.</p><p>Typically, when we pose questions to kids, it follows a predictable pattern of Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE). So, I may ask, "What central idea do we see the author developing in this section of the text," (initiation), a student may say, "Jackie Robinson had characteristics that made him well-suited to serve as an agent for change," (response), and then I might say, "Yes! We see that in his calm demeanor, his clear mission, and his ability to communicate well," (evaluation). If you notice, I asked the question, the student responded, and then I evaluated the response and went on to fully answer the question myself. One student (maybe) and I did the thinking and learning here.</p><p>Instead of this, Wiliam calls for the Pose-Pause-Pounce-Bounce (PPPB) questioning sequence that's better at eliciting deep thinking. In it, the teacher:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Poses</b> a question</li><li><b>Pauses</b> to give suitable think time</li><li><b>Pounces</b> on one student for an answer</li><li><b>Bounces</b> that answer to another student who builds on the response</li></ul><div>If I rework my above example with PPPB, I might ask the same question (pose), give the kids some quiet think time (pause), then call on one student to answer (pounce). That student may say, "Jackie had characteristics that made him well-suited to serve as an agent for change." I'd then say, "Thanks for that start! Jordan, can you build on what Emily said?" (bounce) and after Emily added on say, "Lola, would you like to add on or react to Jordan's thoughts?" (bounce again)</div><div><br /></div><div>If IRE is the ping-pong of questioning, then PPPB is the team-centric, basketball version that can help deepen student discourse and thinking.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you try this in your classroom, here are a few things to keep in mind:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Use an open-ended question</b> that requires some thinking and discussion from your kids.</li><li>Be sure to give that <b>silent thinking time</b>. </li><li>Use Bounce as a form of <b>check for understanding </b>to informally assess progress. If you're not getting a lot from bouncing the response around the room, you know you need to back up a bit and reteach. If several are really digging in and they know their stuff, you may be good to move on.</li><li>Try preparing the Pounce and Bounce ahead of time, <b>anticipating the responses</b> you think you'll get and how you could push another student to take the idea farther.</li><li>Implement a <b><a href="https://chrishillblog.com/2016/02/16/no-hands-up/" target="_blank">No Hands Up</a> or <a href="http://teachlikeachampionch4.blogspot.com/p/technique-22-cold-call.html" target="_blank">Cold Call</a></b> policy to make sure you're hearing from as many students as possible</li></ul><div>Want to learn more? Check out what Dylan Wiliam has to say about the strategy in a video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMBsTw37eaE" target="_blank">here</a>.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-39479163692931041152022-02-06T11:20:00.001-08:002023-01-11T12:13:34.728-08:00Make Your Lesson Opener Like the First Lines of a Novel<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqt2KcquceJG5M3feKd-V8-NvF-yxpeoqBP6A01SAnG8KFZtN68c8XMYYPJbXQ5OY2EIKR_H6OyuSnboOyEUWk8zGcS-nIQKUojfcm_e_rYs5raaIVcnGX0xT0WrCFVwCWqCf2lPUSFtcOCzGAFoF8zDd3nsJ24Cx2FHlm79fbc6iW-7rvgqB7BWIkWQ=s4500" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4500" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqt2KcquceJG5M3feKd-V8-NvF-yxpeoqBP6A01SAnG8KFZtN68c8XMYYPJbXQ5OY2EIKR_H6OyuSnboOyEUWk8zGcS-nIQKUojfcm_e_rYs5raaIVcnGX0xT0WrCFVwCWqCf2lPUSFtcOCzGAFoF8zDd3nsJ24Cx2FHlm79fbc6iW-7rvgqB7BWIkWQ=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>"Call me Ishmael."</p><p>"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." </p><p>"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."</p><p>"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."</p><p>"I wrote this sitting in the kitchen sink."</p><p>"I am an invisible man."</p><p>"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly norma, thank you very much."</p><h4 style="text-align: center;">From <i>Moby Dick</i> to <i>Harry Potter</i> and great literature in between, there's something extraordinary about the opening lines to a well-written novel. </h4><p>Writers know that these opening lines are critically important - they can set the tone, foreshadow, introduce a key character, establish point of view, share a bit of the craft that makes the author and their work stand out, and serve to capture the reader's attention in a sea of literary competition. It's no wonder that people often collect opening lines to novels and that writers pay a lot of attention to them. They're that important and impactful to a story.</p><p>And I think this same idea can translate well to instruction. That opening to a lesson can serve many of the same purposes as those first sentences of a novel - it can establish a purpose, give a peek into what's going to be accomplished, set the tone of the work for the day, share how the work today builds toward a culminating task, and capture your students' attention. It's the opener to your work, and it can be just as important and impactful as a novel opener.</p><p>Here are a few lessons to take from crafting a well-written novel opener that we can apply to lesson openers, too:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>State your theme or purpose:</b> Jane Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> opens with "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." We immediately know the centrality of her story before we know the particulars. In a lesson, we should think about ways to set a very clear and central purpose for the day's work before students dig into the nitty gritty of it, so they can see their way through to its goal and their work toward that.</li><li><b>Set the scene:</b> In <i>The Bell Jar</i>, Sylvia Plath uses both sensory details and concrete events to set the scene for her main character. In a lesson opener, students want to know not only how that day's work will look in general, but also how it connects to work that has already been done and work to come. It helps establish a throughline that makes sure the important learning gets done - and the unimportant can fall by the wayside.</li><li><b>Establish a tone: </b>The first chapter of <i>The Catcher in the Rye</i> clearly sets an irreverent and jaded tone that weaves its way throughout the book. In a lesson opener, we can set the tone of the work through learning targets or work structures. Will today be a whole class close read with close annotation? Or is it a bit looser, with students at varying stages of finishing up a piece of writing? </li><li><b>Communicate the expectations: </b>When Gabriel Garcia Marquez opens <i>One Hundred Years of Solitude, </i>Colonel Buendia is facing a firing squad, and we immediately know what the stakes are in the story. When we think about opening our lessons, we want to be sure to clearly communicate the end product that's expected of students. It could be notes taken during research, a gist statement of a critical piece of the text, a rough draft of a piece of writing, or a summary of that day's reading. Whatever that end product is, it should be clear to us and to students what we're looking at to see how well we're moving toward that day's goals and the goals of the unit as a whole.</li><li><b>Be unexpected:</b> In <i>1984, </i>when George Orwell opens with the clocks striking thirteen, that unusual detail immediately captures our attention. This idea may be the hardest to put into practice without derailing your opener. Fun "hooks" and attention grabbers can easily go awry when they focus students' attention on something other than the purpose at hand. For example, in a lesson opener in a module about the American Revolution, dressing up as George Washington for the day may capture the students' attention, but it can also keep their attention on the novelty of the costume rather than the breakdown of the first parts of the Declaration of Independence. So, use these - but judiciously and well.</li><li><b>Be quick:</b> Herman Melville has one of the most memorable opening lines in all of literature, and it's simply three words: "Call me Ishmael." Many acclaimed novels' opening lines are brief, carefully crafted, and to the point, and a lesson opener should be the same. The opening to both is important, but it's just the entry point; the real work begins when we're engaging deeply with the text. </li></ul><div><br /></div><div>Here's how all of that can come together in a lesson opener:</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>State your theme or purpose: </b>"All right folks, today we are continuing to dig deep into the work of J.M. Barrie and the world of <i>Peter Pan. </i>We're going to read the first chapter of <i>Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens</i> which is another book about Peter Pan by Barrie<i>. </i>We'll determine the gist of it and the meaning of some words that are new to us. Then we'll compare and contrast this chapter with <i>Peter Pan.</i> </li><li><b>Set the scene: </b>So far, we have read plenty of <i>Peter Pan</i>, and we've practiced this reading habit of first thinking about the gist, then figuring out the meanings of unfamiliar words, and then reading it a bit more closely. These are habits that close readers use all the time to really understand what an author's trying to tell us. We'll take what we learn from J. M. Barrie today and use that to understand chapter 2 tomorrow. </li><li><b>Set the tone: </b>We'll start by reading the chapter with a partner and coming together to talk about vocabulary. Then we'll do a bit of independent work to think carefully about both texts. </li><li><b>Communicate the expectations: </b>I'll be doing a quick check of your compare and contrast T-chart today, and I'll be looking for at least two ways the stories are alike and different, textual evidence, and your explanation to connect your evidence to your idea.</li><li><b>Be unexpected: </b>So, let's put our best British thinking hats on, take a moment to close our eyes to picture our cast of characters before us, and let's see what they'll do in this new-to-us story today."</li><li><b>Be quick: </b>This can all be communicated, with total participation techniques with the students, in under 5 minutes.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div>And what can be more full circle, than taking lessons from great literature and applying them to the teaching of great literature?</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-36310503939196442132022-01-24T13:29:00.012-08:002023-01-11T12:16:03.510-08:004 Ways to Release the Reading to the Kids<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd5oU-QEfB_esNc4faxPVmeUqc_3o6PV3d8cGA1Tqguzxhlikr6SpykNOSsKXus8MhLygINViKcHWx_iEVz63hl4ax2r3TJiqt1R6XhYdzA3Aik4r1JopCQ0SeJ1Z07zZJB00f0OSlRNQdh7h-89OYtZf4WioRNrjShQO8ES0oWXw6RVPpkfNrqcMHnw=s6000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd5oU-QEfB_esNc4faxPVmeUqc_3o6PV3d8cGA1Tqguzxhlikr6SpykNOSsKXus8MhLygINViKcHWx_iEVz63hl4ax2r3TJiqt1R6XhYdzA3Aik4r1JopCQ0SeJ1Z07zZJB00f0OSlRNQdh7h-89OYtZf4WioRNrjShQO8ES0oWXw6RVPpkfNrqcMHnw=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the questions I get asked most often by administrators, coaches, and teachers, is how we can release the reading to the kids - how we can make sure our kids are doing more of the reading on their own in class - with our EL materials. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">After all, if the lesson plan tells me to read this text aloud to the students, shouldn't I do that if I'm expected to use these materials with integrity? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Before I get into the nitty gritty of instructional practices that can help you release more of the reading to your students, let's first think about why this is something we should be talking about at all. Why does it matter who does the reading that happens during an EL lesson?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">First, I think it's important to always begin with our vision for literacy, and for us, that vision is:</span></p><h3 style="text-align: center;">All students will be able to independently build knowledge and understanding from fresh, complex texts.</h3><p>At the end of the year, this is what our students need to do. And if we need them to be able to read and reason independently at the end of the year, we need to give them plenty of opportunities to do that in our classroom routinely throughout the year.</p><p>Second, many times the materials will note that the lesson is designed to be a read aloud because the text is very complex and many students will benefit from an expert reader reading it aloud at least once. After all, why would we put texts in front of our students that they can already read well? If we want them to grow as readers and thinkers, we should be putting meaty, complex, challenging texts in front of them while they have our expertise close by to help them navigate the language. However, we should be mindful to release the reading to students when we can, and that's often noted in the lesson materials. So, know that flexibility in these ways is accounted for in many of the lessons.</p><p class="MsoNormal">If we think about the different ways a students can access
a text, we can consider this continuum based on how much support students
receive from the teacher, and these are in order from most support (1) to least support (5).<o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal">Teacher read aloud or listening to audio of the text: This is the most heavily supported, and it's essentially the same whether kids are
following along or not.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Echo reading: The teacher reads and the students echo. This doesn't suit the upper grades as much as the lower grades, but you could use this with poetry or smaller, strategically selected sections.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Choral reading: All students read aloud at the same time. The
teacher can come in and out of the reading as needed or appropriate.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Partner reading: Students can take turns reading aloud, or they
might even choral read together.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Independently reading: Just what it says.<o:p></o:p></li>
</ol><div><p class="MsoNormal">So, a general rule of thumb is to move as far down the list
as possible as often as possible for the given text, purpose and
circumstances. Since the goal is independence, the more opportunities
students have to engage with texts successfully with the least amount of support
the better. <o:p></o:p></p></div><p>How to do that? Here are four practices you can use to move kids from more support to less and release the reading to your students:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Strategically read aloud portions of the text. </b>Let's say I'm teaching third grade, and we are reading <i>Peter Pan</i>, and the lesson calls for me to read aloud chapter 5. I could preread that chapter and decide that I'm going to read aloud the first page to launch the reading, but then release the rest for the students to read independently. I could also preread that chapter and see that there are 3 paragraphs that have some complex ideas and plot moves in them, so I could decide to release all of the reading to them except for those 3 paragraphs.</li><li><b>Work with a small group. </b>If most of my students are capable of handling the text fairly well, I could release the reading to the whole class and strategically pull a small group of students who need more support. When I work with them, that support could look like cloze reading (I read aloud but delete a word every now and then and the students fill it in), choral whisper reading, or student whisper reading with me leaning in and helping as needed.</li><li><b>Whole class whisper read. </b>It may be that the text is somewhat difficult, but my kids have enough of the storyline, general understanding of the text, and decoding skills to navigate it fairly well. I could have the entire class whisper read the selection, while I circulate to listen in (especially with students who I know will need some support). I could also have the entire class whisper read it to a partner, alternating paragraphs, while I circulate to listen in. Note that if you choose this option, it's important that your students know what to do if they finish ahead of the others, that they launch it independently, and that it's good and meaningful work. For example, they could reread for fluency, write the gist of what they wrote, or begin working with some text-dependent questions.</li><li><b>Read aloud with active engagement.</b> Perhaps the lesson calls for reading something especially complex - say, an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence - and I know it will be read multiple times. So, for the first read, I may want to do a whole class read aloud so that they can get used to the language and general content, and then release subsequent readings to my students. In that case, I want to plan for some kind of engagement. That could be a guiding question that's posted and students will take notes as we read and then answer it at the end. It could be using cloze reading for students to fill in deleted words as I read. It could be that I read aloud while students whisper read along. Whatever the engagement practice is, it should ask something of the students - either navigating the linguistics of the text with me or thinking about the content as I read.</li></ol><div>The more we release the reading to the students, the more opportunities they have to develop stamina, learn to grapple with complex text, and see that they can, indeed, meet the high expectations of our standards and materials. And that is a beautiful thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-87518360514943324872021-12-09T13:12:00.011-08:002023-01-11T12:13:13.076-08:00How to Teach Kids to Find the Main Idea<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaJC9WCKgk_7C1bsQdwRf0kBOaUw686G7Y6y_SCYcmJMVoOJgkmW9r_mLsDdei0UUiPrz6NIPVgNuV2fWJ7mTsZBp27A0nqpAPtYizExnRuT7N7odks7lg4nQNYat04Vr5y3-U72dLxsR-7nYhFQSDO37kaJX7dPUU0RxRn0LPR547EX0KJNsGsYr4RA=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="2048" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaJC9WCKgk_7C1bsQdwRf0kBOaUw686G7Y6y_SCYcmJMVoOJgkmW9r_mLsDdei0UUiPrz6NIPVgNuV2fWJ7mTsZBp27A0nqpAPtYizExnRuT7N7odks7lg4nQNYat04Vr5y3-U72dLxsR-7nYhFQSDO37kaJX7dPUU0RxRn0LPR547EX0KJNsGsYr4RA=w640-h428" width="640" /></a></div>You shouldn't.<p></p><p>Sort of.</p><p>Well, let's start at the beginning.</p><p>First of all, what is a main idea? Tim Shanahan has written at length about it <a href="https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-literacy/dazed-and-confused-main-idea-main-ideas" target="_blank">here,</a> but for our purposes we'll define it as the big ideas an author is trying to convey, whether in a section of text or an entire work. It's different from a gist, in that a gist is a first initial reaction to what you think a chunk of text (or the text as a whole) is about, while a main idea is the actual idea an author is communicating. Your gist may not be correct at first, because it's a surface-level skim of what a text is about, but the main idea should be correct because it can only be determined after a careful analysis of the text in question. (I've blogged about the difference between gist and main idea <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/08/gist-and-main-idea.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) In general, it's synonymous with central idea. And, in general, its counterpart in literature is theme. </p><p>(Let me issue a word of caution about getting too granular with the standards. These aren't legal documents, and we shouldn't approach them legalistically by making fine distinctions or closely analyzing the words. It's also important to know that these terms are treated very broadly and often interchangeably in the materials students will encounter. So, it's best to keep these terms more general for kids.)</p><p>Second, what is a main idea NOT? (Bad grammar, I know, but let's go with it.) </p><h4 style="text-align: center;">Determining the main idea of a text is not a skill that can be learned, mastered, and then applied to a different text.</h4><div>There is no research that supports that idea that there is such a thing as a set of transferable "comprehension skills" that can be mastered and then applied with a new text. And our standards tend to be treated just like that ... a list of skills to be mastered one at a time, with the idea that once kids can do these things, they will be prepared to use them to understand other texts. (Strategies are another thing - though not too different - and I'll tackle that topic in another blog post.) Thinking about main idea specifically, we can encounter an author's big idea in really different ways in really different texts; determining the big idea an author is saying isn't a highly repetitive act, and there are no tricks to make it repetitive.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I'm being REALLY honest, that idea blew me away when I first encountered it, and I rejected it because teaching comprehension skills is what I had been told to do - by my professors in my program, by the basal materials I used early in my career, and by some well-meaning literacy folks I turned to. And as a profession, we've been teaching this way for a very long time ... some 30 years or so. But we've got about 1/3 of our kids nationally reading on grade level, and we've been there for about ... 30 years.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I thought about it, this idea confirmed what I saw in my own classroom. When I would get some set of data back, I'd typically identify my lowest standards and focus heavily on those specific ones, treating them as "skills." We'd practice them repeatedly until I thought they had it. But when it came to testing time and a fresh, long, and complex text, they never did, because it's not a skill that can transfer.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, why do we even talk about determining main ideas or central ideas or themes? Well, because if a student can tell us the big idea an author is trying to convey, that's a very good indicator that the student has a certain level of understanding about the text that they are reading. (That is, after all, the whole point of what we're doing.) And the role of standard 2 is to help us understand how deep or how sophisticated that big idea should be when we hear a student share it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me give you an example I've heard recently. A teacher was teaching with a text about World War I. A student was really struggling to determine the main idea of the text, and so the teacher sat and worked and discussed and taught. Finally, that student was able to select the correct main idea and supporting details. Then, the teacher asked, "So, what was the primary cause of World War I." The student looked back and replied, "I dunno."</div><div><br /></div><div>But guess what. That had been the main idea! The main idea of that text had been the primary cause of World War I, and the student had (finally) been able to determine that ... but then he had completely missed the point and an understanding of the text. Could he find that main idea? Maybe. Had he understood what the author was trying to say? Certainly not.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, what to do?</div><div><br /></div><div>There are some research-based ideas that we can use as guidelines to help kids comprehend complex texts better, and as a result be able to understand the big idea an author is sharing. Borrowing from Shanahan, here are 5 big ones:</div><div><br /></div><div>1. <b>Teach students to find the gist and summarize.</b> This is a strategy that has a good bit of research behind it. And if you think about your own reading, when you're absorbing something meaty and complex, you likely stop every now and then to think about what you've read so far. I've even borrowed professional books from friends who write their own quick synopsis at the end of each chapter. If we can summarize a bit, we are getting closer to that key idea an author is sharing.</div><div>2. <b>Chunk it up.</b> Start by summarizing a paragraph or few first, showing kids how to identify the important ideas, delete trivial or repetitive information, and paraphrase the key point in a single sentence. Then, move to longer chunks of text.</div><div>3. <b>Use gradual release of responsibility.</b> Model how you think about a paragraph, cross out trivial information, paraphrase, and think through to the essence of what an author is trying to communicate. </div><div>4. <b>Read this way widely. </b>Vary the text type, topic, difficulty, length, etc. Give them lots of practice to think in big idea ways, always asking, "What is the author trying to tell me here?"</div><div>5. <b>Rank the ideas. </b>Any text at a complexity for 4th grade and above (and often lower) will have multiple main ideas. As students think about these big ideas an author is communicating through their work, have them rank them in order of importance to the text as a whole or the quality of the evidence that an author is using to support it, explaining their thinking and their reasoning.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>And <b>always, always, always focus on making meaning of the text. </b>The whole point of literacy instruction is to prepare students to glean knowledge or understanding from a fresh, complex text independently. We want them to constantly ask themselves while they're reading, "What's important here? What's the author saying to us? What am I learning? What is important for me to remember?" The more kids get the chance to do these kinds of things with a whole lot of different texts, the better they'll do overall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because it's not that we teach them to determine the main idea so they can understand the text. We teach them to understand the text so that they've understood the main idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Want to read more? Check out Tim Shanahan's blog post about teaching main idea <a href="https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-literacy/how-do-i-teach-main-idea" target="_blank">here</a> and piece from Edutopia <a href="https://www.edutopia.org/article/it-time-drop-finding-main-idea-and-teach-reading-new-wayhttps://www.edutopia.org/article/it-time-drop-finding-main-idea-and-teach-reading-new-way" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-49802677721680525362021-12-06T11:20:00.001-08:002023-01-11T12:13:01.893-08:00Six Ways to Improve Turn and Talk<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSQ70_IOsMkdC26s0bS1AY1f9ygOSEkQuuBUMUH3dZKEaLN-SVzg71zRenYOOpV-jK-_WY1fFqEvEFxrhHeh1j3JygI7JuT_Xf7FK_70T8QDsHJnawVjdXCTuVR5bKnljX2SasF8juK3G5tdFEI_I7sm_Bi8wvsyWaiHtmv1EsSYkjDRFuNfx5ysyM5A=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSQ70_IOsMkdC26s0bS1AY1f9ygOSEkQuuBUMUH3dZKEaLN-SVzg71zRenYOOpV-jK-_WY1fFqEvEFxrhHeh1j3JygI7JuT_Xf7FK_70T8QDsHJnawVjdXCTuVR5bKnljX2SasF8juK3G5tdFEI_I7sm_Bi8wvsyWaiHtmv1EsSYkjDRFuNfx5ysyM5A=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div>If I'm being perfectly honest, turn and talk has typically been one of those things I pull out of my back pocket when I get the blank stares from my kids or it gets weirdly quiet in a discussion - especially if there's an "observer" in my room.<p></p><p>It'll go something like this.</p><p>Me: "Okay, based on the character's actions and feelings, do you think she's a Loyalist or a Patriot?"</p><p>Kids: *Blink, blink</p><p>Me: *Scan the room and pray for a good response in the middle of my observation. Try to make eye contact with the kid who can always pull out something but they look away.</p><p>Kids: *Blink, blink</p><p>Me: "Okay, let's turn and talk."</p><p>And sometimes it works, and it kind of primes the pump of the conversation to get it going. Which is fine. </p><p>But sometimes, it feels like a filler in my lesson that I plopped in because it felt like it needed something - that little dash of hot sauce on top of the chili - but not necessarily because it was just the right instructional move at just the right time. I know this is the case when the kids' talk is surface-level, or not 100% on topic, or when they talk for just a second and then stop. Then I wonder, should I have given more wait time, or asked everyone to write, or asked a clearer question instead?</p><p>To move turn and talk from being just a thing to being just the right thing, here are a few moves you can make:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Post a good question where it's visible.</b> It may seem obvious, but give them a thoughtful question to really respond to. Instead of "What do you wonder about this?" try "What is new information to you here?" or "How does this build on what you already know?" or "What might someone disagree with here and why?" And always post it so it's visible. With turn and talk, the room can get loud and kids are having to take turns, and that can overwhelm some brains. Posting the question on the board gives them a place to go back to and remember what they're actually supposed to be talking about.</li><li><b>Give time to process.</b> Give the kids a heads up that a turn and talk is coming and then give them some time to think before they have to talk. Odds are that about 50% of your kids will be more introverted and need a bit of time to collect their thoughts before they interact with someone else. Try, "Here's your question. In a minute, I'm going to invite you to talk to your partner about this question. I'll give you a minute of quiet think time to consider what you want to say and how you'll listen."</li><li><b>Set up partners or triads early.</b> I have probably wasted hours of classroom time in coming up with cute ways to pair my kids up. "Who's peanut butter? No, Charlie, you're jelly. Brayden, your jelly partner is missing today, so find another one. There isn't one. Just join another group. I don't care if you're jelly or peanut butter - just talk to them, please." It's best to keep this super simple and adaptable for when kids are out. Try elbow buddies, row buddies, or anything else that takes less than 15 seconds to organize and get going.</li><li><b>Have a standard in-cue and out-cue. </b>Have one standard, verbal (and/or non-verbal) cue that lets students know it's time to talk and it's time to stop. A simple one could sound something like, "The question to talk about is on the board. Take a moment of quiet time to think of your response. And we'll talk in 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1." When it's time to bring them back together, give them a minute or so of warning and bring them back with the same countdown. </li><li><b>Use your out-cue at the crest of the wave. </b>Often, we wait until the turn and talk conversation fades a bit so we're certain they've finished, and then we bring them back to the whole group discussion. Instead, try bringing them back when they're not quite finished - when they're at the top or crest of that discussion wave. Doing so can help bring that discussion energy productively back to your whole group discussion.</li><li><b>Try <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/wp-content/uploads/TLACinfographicsGG.pdf" target="_blank">Everybody Writes</a> instead or in addition to</b>. Instead of so much turn and talk, try this strategy from <i>Teach Like a Champion</i>, where you give kids time to write their responses to a question or prompt. It takes about the same amount of time, gives kids independent time to think and process, and makes their thinking visible to you. Or, if you see that some ideas need to be fleshed out through discussion, you could do Everybody Writes and then have students turn and talk about it what they wrote.</li></ol><div>And always know why you're using your turn and talk strategy. If it's a filler or just a way to get some discussion going, consider whether there's something else you need to do - or whether you just need to let a question sit for a bit. On the other hand, if partner discussion is just the thing that's needed for kids to process, press in on their thinking, practice some speaking and listening skills, or even rehearse writing, then maybe turn and talk is perfect. Either way, know exactly why you're using it before you do so you're making the most of every instructional minute you've got.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-75395598732545922932021-12-03T13:40:00.006-08:002023-01-11T12:12:56.475-08:00Hexagonal Thinking<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCVp65uuY10doQtyXo1D8tngpofxBoCInmOCXKPCZxPn27lJBv-5ibm2bAQb4ZaiNqhHsb9upotCLpikR9xrKLIfXvRhZm2CyU_jquZvvlWMk7gjky3FqnqMT1aIVWbD6C5Nd4O3NDid2fBYvloh-Sz5Jocg2_YLpJ78K_3MgAl6Sc1zfJKly2Mrc6dA=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1537" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCVp65uuY10doQtyXo1D8tngpofxBoCInmOCXKPCZxPn27lJBv-5ibm2bAQb4ZaiNqhHsb9upotCLpikR9xrKLIfXvRhZm2CyU_jquZvvlWMk7gjky3FqnqMT1aIVWbD6C5Nd4O3NDid2fBYvloh-Sz5Jocg2_YLpJ78K_3MgAl6Sc1zfJKly2Mrc6dA=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Jennifer Gonzalez from <a href="https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/" target="_blank">Cult of Pedagogy</a> wrote about <a href="https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hexagonal-thinking/" target="_blank">hexagonal thinking</a> recently, and it's a powerful way for kids to consider the connections between ideas and nuances in word meaning as they're exploring a topic of study. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fifth grade teacher Stephanie Fontaine at Siegel decided to use it in her classroom as a way to review some work in social studies, and I want you to look at the connections her students made between ideas as disparate as immigration, Ellis Island, Henry Ford, yellow journalism, labor unions, and constitutional amendments. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This may seem very similar to concept maps, and you wouldn't be wrong. But the nature of a hexagon means you've got multiple opportunities to connect ideas or concepts in ways that can be very close or farther apart. And you could give the same set of hexagons to different groups of kids, as Stephanie did, and the connections are going to be different every time. Because while the connections are important, it's the conversation, thinking, justification, explaining, and attention to precision behind those connections that develops the habits of mind our students need. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hexagonal thinking can be used in any subject area - or across them - to really push student reasoning and logic. You could introduce hexagons at the beginning of a unit of study, and adjust the connections as you go, or use them at the end to review and solidify thinking as Stephanie did. You could also leave the hexagonal connections posted in your classroom throughout a unit and ask students to write out their justification for or disagreement with specific connections. There are SO many possibilities for deep, critical thinking with this. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Shapes and words in the hands of a skilled teacher and eager students. What a beautiful thing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Here's to simply teaching well,</div></div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-33924448505948435122021-12-02T13:55:00.003-08:002023-01-11T12:12:49.757-08:00Attending to Precision<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim7UzjdNAx4jBw2u3tvWODoEp3KD2ZjYvWOXsg8r-zS1XDmw9JFPd4tRakzJzq7BLUOm2AOJ5tSdWtIq0NyKUJ9EUyoTWd5k5tNI03T13Zdmswr_cU2dtVl_LpcryAsSj_VMRcRF0mYg4xQTQ8k1wuAVdgeB8AmXJSafIkmigcmx2VFNLmu9fPbU3Q4g=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1690" data-original-width="2048" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim7UzjdNAx4jBw2u3tvWODoEp3KD2ZjYvWOXsg8r-zS1XDmw9JFPd4tRakzJzq7BLUOm2AOJ5tSdWtIq0NyKUJ9EUyoTWd5k5tNI03T13Zdmswr_cU2dtVl_LpcryAsSj_VMRcRF0mYg4xQTQ8k1wuAVdgeB8AmXJSafIkmigcmx2VFNLmu9fPbU3Q4g=w640-h528" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>It may sound like a mathematical practice - because it is - but I will argue that attending to precision is a critical literacy practice, too.</p><p>Take, for example, an assessment you're going to give to your students. When you <a href="http://www.cathypressnell.com/2021/09/eat-chicken-nuggets.html">take that assessment yourself</a>, consider not just the correct answer and how students will have to think to choose it. Also consider the most common wrong answer you'll get and how students need to think to NOT choose it. What you'll find almost every time is that students need to do things like read the entire question, read all of the answer choices, think carefully about precise word meanings, read every part of the word (even the ending), pay attention to all of the punctuation, make sure the answer is fully correct. In short, they have to attend to precision.</p><p>I'll also argue that it's easy to let precision slip. There is such a sense of urgency about the work in the classroom - there is so much to complete, and so many things that need our time and attention - that it's easy to go light on precision. But pressing for precision is one of those habits of mind that's like a rising tide - it'll lift a lot of ships.</p><p>One habit you can foster that will help students attend to precision is what Doug Lemov calls "Right is Right." As he writes, </p><h4 style="text-align: center;">"Right is Right is about the difference between partially right and all-the-way right - between pretty good and 100 percent. The job of the teacher is to set a high standard for correctness: 100 percent."</h4><div>It sounds simple, but here's what it can look like when we let this slide. </div><div><br /></div><div>Let's say that I'm teaching with the book <i>The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind</i>. I ask the kids how William used design thinking in his solution to providing access to water, and one student says, "He designed a windmill." It's not wrong, but it's not all the way right, either - it's only partially correct. And a couple of things can happen here. I might say, "Yes, that's right," and then move on to another question. Or I might do what Lemov calls "Rounding Up" and say, "Yes, he did design a windmill, and he did it by first identifying the problem, doing some research, and designing and trying out some prototypes before he arrived at a final solution." Basically, I have "rounded up" the student's answer and I have done the thinking and speaking that they should have done. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are a few ways in which students will give you not-100%-correct answers:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>A partial answer:</b> As above, they started a correct answer, but it's not fully developed.</li><li><b>Answer a different question: </b>A student may do this when they don't know the answer or don't understand the question. If Katie's confused about William's design thinking, she might say, "His windmill was really important to the people in his village, and it showed how much he cared." It's not wrong, but it's not an answer to the question you asked.</li><li><b>A non-answer: </b>A student might also give you an example rather than an answer. For example, Katie might say, "Design thinking is when you go through the steps of the design process to arrive at a solution." That's an example of design thinking, but not how William used it.</li><li><b>Right answer, wrong time: </b>A student might get ahead of you and answer a question a few steps down the road. Katie might have said, "William's design solved a critical problem and had a profound impact on his village, showing his empathy and commitment to community." Great answer, but you don't want to take the class there yet.</li><li><b>Imprecise vocabulary</b>: Katie might say, "William designed that thing that spins to get water to his house." What's the thing? Can you use better vocabulary than spins? Was the water going to his house or to his village as a whole?</li></ul></div><div>When students do these things - and when I pay attention, I see them do them all the time - we need to get into the practice of holding out for all-the-way right. Here are a few ways you can do that:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Know the ideal student response you're looking for: </b>As you study the EL lesson, don't just study the questions - study the exemplar student responses, too. It's hard to know what all-the-way-right looks like unless you've thought about it beforehand.</li><li><b>Rephrase your questions: </b>For hard questions, the first student answer is rarely 100% correct. So, try rephrasing some questions with stems like, "Who can get us started in talking about how frogs' behaviors help them survive in different environments?" or "Katie, would you kick this off by sharing some of the ways Jack is feeling in this part of the book?"</li><li><b>Ask for an add on:</b> Say, "Good start; thanks for that. What can you add on to your thinking to get us closer?" or "Good start; can you get us the rest of the way?" or "Can you develop that?"</li><li><b>Press for specific details:</b> Say, "Thanks for that answer. What specifically about William's work on the windmill shows design thinking?"</li><li><b>Press for more specific language: </b>Say, "Thanks for that answer. Can you use a more precise word than X?" Or ask them to replace a pronoun in their answer with the noun it's replacing. For example, "Katie, you said, 'It was spinning.' What is the 'it' you're referring to?"</li><li><b>Pitch it to the group: </b>"Katie gave us a strong start here. Who can take us another step?"</li></ul><div>And if you want to see it in action, here's a <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/maggie-johnsons-right-right-warm-supportive-relentlessly-rigorous/" target="_blank">video</a>.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>As I'm finding with most things in literacy, this isn't flashy or new or particularly innovative. It's just an old idea done very, very well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-23498632135233624352021-11-06T10:17:00.006-07:002023-01-11T12:12:43.106-08:00Reading Comprehension Isn't About Asking Certain Types of Questions<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQxUo75McBksVJdbJPNvZnQx600ml65UM9SwwZB65_upxR6nwyiJfuj7xDvEVvlgUU4wyfj0hw4dD91BRGQ0PxE0JbA_m5RPJVUNqEDcKOVMbKZgsbcCOuG1uzNBmlKU4s03bnUhqWYbHgB4R119GNiiAB0s6pHFowRw_lTLwNTAbTR2RzJr2emy_L8Q=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1363" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQxUo75McBksVJdbJPNvZnQx600ml65UM9SwwZB65_upxR6nwyiJfuj7xDvEVvlgUU4wyfj0hw4dD91BRGQ0PxE0JbA_m5RPJVUNqEDcKOVMbKZgsbcCOuG1uzNBmlKU4s03bnUhqWYbHgB4R119GNiiAB0s6pHFowRw_lTLwNTAbTR2RzJr2emy_L8Q=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Recently, <a href="http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog#sthash.owdB9xLt.dpbs" target="_blank">Tim Shanahan</a> blogged about his top 10 pet peeves when it comes to teaching reading, and per his style, it took two separate posts (<a href="http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/do-you-have-any-pet-peeves-about-reading-here-are-my-top-ten-pt-1#sthash.iOKs7Ws9.dpbs" target="_blank">post 1</a> and <a href="http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/do-you-have-a-pet-peeve-about-reading-here-are-my-top-ten-pt-2#sthash.UKnOTsrB.dpbs" target="_blank">post 2</a>) to get them all in. His Pet Peeve #7 resonated with me most:</span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pet Peeve #7: Teaching Reading Comprehension by Asking Certain Types of Questions</span></h4><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's what he had to say about it:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Here is another issue that I get a lot of mail about. Principals (and sometimes teachers) are often seeking either testing or instructional materials that will allow them to target specific reading comprehension standards or question types from their state’s reading assessment.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Those requests seem to make sense, right?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">They want to know which comprehension skills their kids haven’t yet accomplished and asking questions aligned with those skills should do the job, they presume. Likewise, having kids practice answering the kinds of questions the tests will ask should improve reading comprehension performance. Again, it looks smart. It seems like a great idea to have kids practice answering those kinds of questions they’ll have to answer on the state tests.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">My mama told me that just because something seems right doesn’t make it right.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She was right in this case. There is no evidence that these so-called comprehension skills even exist. There is, in fact, considerable evidence that they don’t (Shanahan, 2014; Shanahan, 2015).</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Study after study (and the development of test after test) for more than 80 years have shown that we cannot even distinguish these question types one from another. Likewise, there is no evidence that we can successfully teach kids to answer the types of questions used on tests. </span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">If you really want your kids to excel in reading, get them challenging texts. Then engage them in discussions of those texts. Get them to write in response to the texts. Reread the texts and talk about them again. Come back to them later to compare with other texts or have them synthesize the info from multiple texts for presentations or projects.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">Ask them questions that are relevant to the understanding of those texts. Don’t worry about the question types. Worry about whether they are arriving at deep interpretations of the texts and whether they can use the information. Reading comprehension is about making sense of texts, not about answering certain types of questions."</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think Shanahan said it so well, and this is why I'm a proponent of putting the <a href="https://achievethecore.org/page/3185/placing-text-at-the-center-of-the-standards-aligned-ela-classroom" target="_blank"><b>text at the center</b></a> of instruction, not standards. Standards hold us to a common set of expectations for what well-educated students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade. They should be kept top of mind while planning and teaching students to plumb texts at the appropriate challenge. But the standards themselves are not the goal of daily instruction; understanding the text, gaining knowledge from it, and being able to express that understanding is. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you want to read more, Shanahan has (lots) more to say <a href="http://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/a-spirited-reaction-to-one-districts-approach-to-standards-based-reading-instruction#sthash.G1rLlsj8.dpbs" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/should-we-grade-students-on-the-individual-reading-standards" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/should-we-grade-students-on-the-individual-reading-standards" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 35px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's to simply teaching well,</span></p></div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-31482186547529627102021-11-04T12:50:00.004-07:002023-01-11T12:12:25.384-08:00One Small Thing: The Complete Sentence<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjD4XstQCQxiitQndh7ilph-aIAuRBJqWK-AUNS9G8EsBJFQM_kY_ObWxrPEPrN0RTVETjv6UBNJDF5VTOn-VpHnptvjGOMZrwBNQx1E_PfxErIh0PoZ3ZjaKRw_ok1TpAcVbBfaQUTSiiVwK29tzNrhpPNS-jakmTWejcV3cR793R2eBPfVxG5f5VHTw=s509" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="509" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjD4XstQCQxiitQndh7ilph-aIAuRBJqWK-AUNS9G8EsBJFQM_kY_ObWxrPEPrN0RTVETjv6UBNJDF5VTOn-VpHnptvjGOMZrwBNQx1E_PfxErIh0PoZ3ZjaKRw_ok1TpAcVbBfaQUTSiiVwK29tzNrhpPNS-jakmTWejcV3cR793R2eBPfVxG5f5VHTw=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><br />The work of teaching and learning is big, now more than ever, and teachers are feeling that pressure in big ways. Everything feels urgent and important and critical, and the challenges are complex, and the needs are many. And all of that "bigness" can make the work itself seem simply overwhelming. How do you know what the next right thing to do is when it's all coming at you so fast, and the solutions seem as big and daunting as the challenges themselves?<p></p><p>When I'm feeling that way, that's when I know it's time to turn to a One Small Thing. A very small tweak or change or adjustment I can make, easily and tomorrow, that can still create real change for our students. </p><h4 style="text-align: center;">Today, that One Small Thing is: The complete sentence.</h4><div><br /></div><div>In <i>Teach Like a Champion, </i>Doug Lemov writes, "The complete sentence is the battering ram that breaks down the door to college." Yet, we know that writing good, complete, thoughtful sentences can be a challenge for kids no matter the grade level. </div><div><br /></div><div>One powerful practice you can adopt is to insist that students speak in complete sentences consistently so that they get plenty of practice in hearing, using, and attending to complete thoughts. That means that no matter the instructional format - classroom discussion, small group work, close reading questions - students express their ideas and answer questions in complete sentences all. the. time.</div><div><br /></div><div>It can take an extra dose of patience at first, but I have seen this pay off big time when students begin transferring the skill of speaking in complete sentences to writing in complete sentences. And it will happen, but it takes daily, frequent, consistent practice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here are a few techniques you can use to prompt for complete sentences in your classroom:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Remind students before they start to answer.</b> ("Who can tell me in a complete sentence what the setting of this story is?")</li><li><b>Provide the first words of a complete sentence</b>, with the expectation that the student will use them to start his or her own ("The setting is ...")</li><li><b>Remind students with a quick and simple prompt after they answer</b> ("Complete sentence.")</li><li><b>Use a nonverbal signal</b> (Create a hand signal, such as bringing the fingertips of both hands together in an "A" shape to both remind students to use a complete sentence or to mark it when they do.)</li></ul><div>It's one small but mighty thing.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-37367403271755386882021-11-01T12:47:00.017-07:002023-01-11T12:12:01.685-08:00Are You Fishing or Hunting?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjBaBlwclvdNk1BWPxWjFKE-jRG6Bkpf4y4K3UtD1lzBlrnhC9B3DhCHv4Q34jLxRt-4xdb8idTABzNXgCITpPA3XZ-m6sbz-egd6xtlbaAWxKbP2X12eJl6s5xNuOpA66btaCfl5Jc6Zr93PAxVSuVmwJQ-7ZOiI9soM8PDOWMo-Ts5aPvu26236cKiA=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="2048" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjBaBlwclvdNk1BWPxWjFKE-jRG6Bkpf4y4K3UtD1lzBlrnhC9B3DhCHv4Q34jLxRt-4xdb8idTABzNXgCITpPA3XZ-m6sbz-egd6xtlbaAWxKbP2X12eJl6s5xNuOpA66btaCfl5Jc6Zr93PAxVSuVmwJQ-7ZOiI9soM8PDOWMo-Ts5aPvu26236cKiA=w640-h428" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I ran across this idea recently and I've been thinking about it nonstop since.</div><h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">When I'm teaching, and I pose a question to the students, am I fishing for an answer or am I hunting for one?</h4><div>Here's the difference.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I'm fishing, I'm tossing a question out there to see what student responses crop up. I'm not really certain of what I'll hear or what I'm looking for. I'm casting my line and fishing for an answer.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, if I'm hunting, I'm posing a question and I know exactly the ideal student response I'm looking for. If I hear it bubble up, I know we're good and we can move on. If I don't, I know how to press - what follow-up question to ask or the reteaching that might need to happen - to get a <a href="https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/right-right-starts-way-ask-question/" target="_blank">fully correct response</a> from the students. I know my question AND I know the student thinking I'm looking for before I ever ask it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I think there's a time for both. When we're looking for open discussion, some creativity, when we're building on some rich questions or ideas over time ... these are times when you might pose a question and fish a bit. But I think the idea of hunting with a question is critically important, and I just don't know that we do it enough. When we hunt with a question, we deeply know the purpose of the lesson, we know exactly what students need to learn from it, and we make the very most of every precious moment in our classroom because we can make real-time adjustments to our content in response. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you're looking to shift your questioning from fishing to hunting, here are a few next steps you can take:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Find an upcoming lesson with a sequence of questions that are already planned.</li><li>Review them and assess the balance of fishing and hunting.</li><li>For your hunting questions, write out the exact, fully correct student response you're looking for</li><li>Plan follow-up questions you can ask if you get blank stares or less than fully correct responses. Be careful not to give away the thinking.</li><li>Then think about 2 or 3 misconceptions you know students are likely to have that would lead to an incorrect or incomplete answer. Plan out the questions you can ask to move them past that misconception and toward a fully correct answer, again without giving the thinking away.</li></ul><div>As with so many things in literacy, it's good, minds-on stuff that doesn't require a whole lot: A rich text, well-planned questions, and the relationship between a teacher and a student. Yet it's the most beautiful and powerful work I know.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Fishing and hunting.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's to simply teaching well,</div><p></p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557736366680597289.post-74340194827672743892021-10-27T17:28:00.004-07:002023-01-11T12:11:53.414-08:00Language Dives with Jamboard<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEju0jIX9GPUcOz6Lj0fMBV3a7aV4yJ0zc4vPFQYYmUJDwWz1jiL94uJbbP7EOXd_GrJ5F4EgVqCNkuPJjIZD3kkbzduNinhDO34wZSaGmvAZv7niV_KBerddDML-dbc7wAsD1reBpvGuLotKuPS2n-K3NezGIq8dveGoo51JcX4FhMAJaVyc__1gyj0Ew=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEju0jIX9GPUcOz6Lj0fMBV3a7aV4yJ0zc4vPFQYYmUJDwWz1jiL94uJbbP7EOXd_GrJ5F4EgVqCNkuPJjIZD3kkbzduNinhDO34wZSaGmvAZv7niV_KBerddDML-dbc7wAsD1reBpvGuLotKuPS2n-K3NezGIq8dveGoo51JcX4FhMAJaVyc__1gyj0Ew=w640-h427" width="640" /></a></div><br />Kayla Stephens, who teaches 5th grade at Salem Elementary, had a <a href="https://vimeo.com/289601263" target="_blank">Language Dive</a> success recently that was too good not to share. <p></p><h4 style="text-align: center;">Instead of cutting out strips of the sentence and having the students arrange them in the correct order, she put the chunks on <a href="https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-ways-jam-jamboard-using-digital-whiteboard-hybrid-classroom" target="_blank">Jamboard</a> and had the students arrange them using this digital tool. </h4><p style="text-align: left;">Turns out, Jamboard isn't just for collaboration. Kayla made a copy of a Jamboard for each student in Google Classroom, and each one will have his or her own board where they can work with the sentence chunks during the practice part of a Language Dive. </p><p>Here's what it looked like when one of her students rearranged the sentence chunks in a different order than the original sentence, while still maintaining the author's meaning.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwE3CQGB2sQ3m0JS9EOLsUuF5b8a1R9gSEc0Gz7_kWC3MaOZbGbtzdMl2o9q3yA8zRg_XX5Rh31k5ECCEiwOR5J4me-fRY1lskW9apWFvxNYMoHvFZTNFc_3hJRSiMsm-u6grf92S5sGL1Sso6S4QEx3bmqlNTAr6QG2V_TQ2SOvU6KP-74pq0xsQj5A=s540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="540" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwE3CQGB2sQ3m0JS9EOLsUuF5b8a1R9gSEc0Gz7_kWC3MaOZbGbtzdMl2o9q3yA8zRg_XX5Rh31k5ECCEiwOR5J4me-fRY1lskW9apWFvxNYMoHvFZTNFc_3hJRSiMsm-u6grf92S5sGL1Sso6S4QEx3bmqlNTAr6QG2V_TQ2SOvU6KP-74pq0xsQj5A=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>As an extension, students could add another digital sticky note under each of the chunks to restate it in their own words, and the collaborative nature of Jamboard means that students could easily work together if you prefer even while socially distanced.</p><p>This is an easy, low-prep alternative to using paper sentence strips during a Language Dive that is environmentally friendly, maintains the intellectual rigor of the work, AND will save you a bit on your copy count to boot.</p><p>What's not to love? Thanks, Kayla, for the share!</p><p>Here's to simply teaching well,</p>Cathy Pressnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12412522764541155168noreply@blogger.com1