The Spanish Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide

Yesterday I talked about The Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide, and now I am going to talk about the Spanish edition and what it has to offer.

The Spanish version has explanatory text in English but provides the student prompting example dialogue in Spanish. Thus, the target audience is bilingual teachers, rather than monolingual Spanish teachers. This is also apparent when looking at the front covers and seeing the blend of languages on the Spanish cover. The tabs of both resources are exactly the same with writing in English for both versions. In addition, everything I loved about the crisp, clean lay-out of the English version, is also the same. Much of the introductory text is also the same in both versions, although there are some subtle differences appropriate to biliteracy in the Spanish edition.

Though not the main intended audience, the resource still has the potential to be a powerful resource for monolingual teachers, as well as a scaffold for Spanish speaking parents to become more involved in their children's literacy learning if schools provide sufficient background information to guide parents on how to utilize the tool.

The English and Spanish versions have much in common, but what stood out to me about Fountas and Pinnell resources provided in Spanish is that the authors don't just translate the English version to Spanish word for word. Instead, they make sure to consult with many native Spanish speakers to have high quality translations and they intentionally think about what is unique to biliteracy in comparison to literacy. For this specific resource they also have a statement in the introduction explaining the need for teachers utilizing the guide to be cognizant of regional variations of Spanish and the vocabulary that students will understand. Yet, they took it a step further by providing lexical variations in parenthesis throughout helping to raise the level of awareness for teachers while using the guide. I appreciate that they did not choose to just go by one variation of Spanish but instead took the time to really think about what would be most beneficial to students as individuals.

In my position at a dual immersion school, I teach in both languages, as does the kindergarten teacher. However, the rest of the Spanish immersion teachers only teach in Spanish, as they have a teaching partner that does the English side of the immersion. While Spanish immersion teachers would be able to take high quality resources in English that are relevant to Spanish and translate them (and often need to do so), it is so nice to find high quality resources already translated for bilingual teachers. It can often be draining teaching solely in Spanish in the United States, when there is such a disparity between resources in Spanish vs. resources in English. Thus, even though teachers could have taken the English version of the prompting guide as a scaffold for Spanish literacy instruction, I am grateful that the authors and Heinemann took the time to provide bilingual teachers will a little bit more support, especially since they are not just providing a word for word translation. I am excited to share this resource with teachers at my school.

Copy provided by the publisher

The Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide

In The Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide: A Tool for Literacy Teachers, Part 1 the authors provide a resource for teachers to aid in getting to know their students as individual readers and writers and then intentionally make instructional decisions to meet the needs of students. In the introduction they explain, "Your role is to notice each student's precise reading and writing behaviors and provide teaching that supports change in what she can do over time. As you infer from the behaviors how a reader or writer is building a system of strategic actions, you can make effective instructional decisions" (tab 1). I love that the authors refer to it as inferring from behaviors; I had not thought about it with that term, but it is precisely what teachers do when closely paying attention to students.

The guide is constructed on thick paper with a cover that can be used to set the guide up on a table for teachers to easily flip through it utilizing the convenient tabs during instruction. The tabs provide various summarized focal teaching points for both reading and writing, including left/right, voice-print, word beginnings, rate pausing, placing words, and monitoring/correcting. In addition, each tab lists the broader goals such as early reading behaviors, general problem-solving, and constructing words.

The pages have an easy to follow lay-out that is simple in order to avoid making the page too busy. Each section provides a brief introduction and instructions for teachers about what to observe in students. They also have headings with the full versions of the focal teaching points, as opposed to the condensed versions on the tabs. The pages are divided into three columns under each heading that mirror the cover words and color scheme: teach (in purple), prompt (in red), and reinforce (in green).

It is clear that Fountas and Pinnell decided to keep a clean, crisp layout to match their purpose of classroom utility vs. other professional development resources meant to provide detailed explanations. While the resource on its own is powerful, it would be even more advantageous for those using it to have a rich foundation in literacy learning as well. Luckily, the authors provide a list of professional references in the introduction which will be valuable for teachers who do not yet feel confident with their level of understanding behind the teaching points in this prompting guide.

The product is marketed as a scaffold for k-6 teachers. While some of the tabs are definitely relevant only to emergent literacy, such as reading left to right or the verbal path for letter formation, I agree that many of the other tabs are appropriate and helpful for the upper grades. As a mom, I appreciate the resources for younger grades because it is farther from my comfort zone when it comes to literacy. For example, the verbal path for letter formation is helpful because I have never had to explain how to form letters as my students already know how, so it is a tool that will help me as a parent.

Fountas and Pinnell also have the prompting guide available with Spanish components for bilingual literacy teachers. Tomorrow I will post more about that version.

Copy provided by the publisher

Inside School Turnarounds

Last night I finished the third book on school reform for my summer school course, Inside School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories by Laura Pappano. The author is a journalist who has a lot of experience writing about education and tells the stories of various schools focusing on school turnaround efforts mainly in a narrative manner.

Although Pappano discusses many schools and their efforts, the main focus of the book is on Hartford, Connecticut. She explores turnaround from various angles, such as regular public, as well as charter schools and talks about the complexity involved in turnaround. Among charter school efforts, she frequently references KIPP and Achievement First.

In Pappano's words, "School turnaround--this adrenaline-charged movement that we are presently in--is about rapid and dramatic improvement not just in test scores but also in culture, attitude, and student aspirations. It is marked not by orderly implementation but by altering a lot at once and being willing to step in and change--and change again. It is a new paradigm for education, one not about trusting the process but about seeking results, both measurable and immeasurable" (p. 3).

Throughout the book Pappano discusses that each school is unique and it is not as simple as simply transplanting one successful model to another school and expecting it to work without intentionally considering each unique context. She explains that reform is messy and rife with complications. In addition, she brought up the need to consider both theoretical school design and implementation.

The focal schools discussed are still deeply entrenched in their reform efforts - thus the "unfolding stories" aspect of the title. It is too soon to know for sure what the long term effect of current reform efforts will be. Through the book Pappano brought up many relevant and timely issues in education, considering different points of view. I appreciated that the quick read left me with a lot to ponder and think about with regards to our current educational context.

Learning from Others' End of the Year and Summer Blog Posts

I always love this time of year when I am able to see so many ideas of how teachers wrap up the school year, as well as reflections and goals for continual growth in the summer.

Today the guest post on Two Writing Teachers by Lindsay Reyes shares insights into the cycle of writing in her classroom and how she brings closure at the end of the year with a sense of independence and hope that students will continue on their own.

I am also very excited for Ruth's (of Two Writing Teachers) new website where she is going to focus on herself as a writer, as opposed to the teaching focus of TWT, as she explains here.

Sarah at The Reading Zone also recently posted about her summer professional reading goals.

These are just a few recent examples of many. One of the reasons that I love blogging so much is that it is such a powerful avenue for reflection and growth, as well as building a sense of community among professionals.

Fulfilling Moments

As educators, there are often fulfilling moments, sometimes it is related to the day to day aspects of teaching, such as funny comments or actions that students do, leading to a communal laughter. While other times, they are quick comments that people make reaffirming our personal teaching philosophies. Sometimes it is those personal aha moments, realizations that something we do has an even farther reaching impact than we had initially imagined.

As I think about my career so far, here are some of those moments that make the profession so valuable:

• My first year of teaching one of my students was resistant to being in my class all year long because it was supposed to provide additional academic support, and he (like many others) would have preferred to be in the "normal" classes with all his peers. Close to the last day of his senior year he mentioned that another teacher complemented him on his writing. Then he thanked me and said that he thought his improvements were a result of the regular writing we did as a class. Six years later, I still frequently think back to that student and all that he taught me throughout the year.
• I had read books and blogs of various teachers talking about the power of workshop teaching and its capabilities for inspiring a love of reading; yet, I don't think hearing about it could have ever prepared me for how good it feels to see students who previously did not care for reading to become engaged, passionate readers and to be a part of that process. It is equally fulfilling to have students who already were engaged readers become even more avid.
• I was expecting to impact my students as readers, but this spring one of my student's moms thanked me for all that I had done in my classroom to instill a deeper love of reading in her daughter and then also shared that through her daughter, I had impacted her as a reader. Through the books her daughter was reading, she added more books to her TBR list. When her daughter placed Scholastic book orders the stack was usually composed of books for parents and children in the family. Previously I had thought about the advantages of impacting older siblings who would hopefully be models of reading for younger brothers and sisters; however, it had never occurred to me that the impact would also reach to parents, though it makes perfect sense that it could. I have always loved the idea of fostering family literacy. I just overlooked the impact that individual classrooms have on whole family units.
• I always think about reading as a safe place for students to explore how different characters navigate obstacles and challenges in life, and I think of writing as an avenue to sift through emotions, to learn from life's experiences. I had not thought of the power of writing to teach older selves. This year I noticed how my students' realistic fiction was a means for students to think through the what ifs and realized that sometimes those what ifs end up impacting the students' lives. I would like to think that by writing and exploring those emotions it helps to prepare students in the event that something similar actually ends up happening. 

What have been some of the most fulfilling moments in your career as an educator?

On-going Reflections & Workshop Components

Throughout the year, I am always reflecting. This year I realized that each change in order to seek refinement is not necessarily better than previous years. Instead, I found myself reflecting on what was working better, as well as aspects that I shifted away from that I needed to weave back in. For next year I will be moving in to a mentoring role as I take a leave of absence in order to fill in as a sabbatical replacement. This summer I will be working closely with the teacher who will be teaching language arts next year. Even though we are just getting started, I am already enjoying having a chance to work as a collaborative team.


Below are some components that I told her I have realized throughout the different years are most important, which we will discuss in more detail throughout the summer. These are considered some of our starting points for dialogue. 

Focus lesson:

Each day there should be a focus lesson in either reading or writing. Depending on your schedule, you may have a focus lesson for each every day, but this all depends on the amount of time that you will have for each class period. For reading, these focus lessons might focus on aspects such as: choosing books, purposes for reading, reading strategies (modelling/think alouds)... In writing the focus lessons will vary, but Nancie Atwell's resource (Lessons that Change Writers) is great because it provides a lot of support, including suggestions with examples of what she says to her students. In general, focus lessons will be on genres, looking at mentor texts, talking about the 6 Traits (on the Oregon scoring guide), focusing on a specific area, such as leads, transitions, conclusions... There will also be focus lessons where you are guiding students through writing activities with writer's notebooks and times when you are sharing your own writing with students.

Independent Reading:

During independent reading students choose a book to read, while the teacher walks around conferring with students. I recommend starting independent reading with a status of the class (from Nancie Atwell's In the Middle) to find out the title and page that each student is on. This helps give you a quick snapshot of how students are progressing. For example, you can see if they are sticking with the same book and progressing well vs. picking up a different book each day. You can also see if they are reading the same book but making very slow progress. This is also an ideal time to have book clubs at times. We can talk about setting up book clubs later, but they are a great opportunity to create a better sense of a community of readers and to see how different students interact with the same text.

Independent Writing:

Similar to independent reading, students will all be writing while the teacher goes around to confer. In the past, at times it is hard to get students used to the idea that they need to write the whole time. They are never simply "finished". This goes back to start of the year writing workshop launch, which we can talk about more together, but students should know the expectations for workshop time and know that though they have options, they should always be writing. I typically have one writing that is due that is the first priority, such as a personal narrative or an imaginative short story, but students know other options in case they finish that. You can also start independent writing with a status of the class to see which phase of writing students are starting with and the topic of their writing. This helps to see trends in their progress and growth over time.

Word Study:

I did not end up doing word study this year because of the time crunch, but I realized many students still need it, so I recommend finding a way to weave it back in this year. Again, we can talk about this when we meet.

Everyday Editing:

This is a way to focus on conventions of writing in context, but it also extends to other traits. This can be incorporated into writing focus lessons or something separate on its own. I can show you the Jeff Anderson resource texts for this from Stenhouse.

Read Aloud:

Read aloud was another area that I did not do consistently all year long for the first time this year because of some challenges with the amount of time and with switching between languages. I think that Nancie Atwell's idea of sharing a poem a day together would be a great way to have the balance of sharing a text. I can explain more about this as well as other read aloud options that I have tried.

Reading Response Letters:

Students can complete reading response letters weekly either with time provided in class or as homework. I have done both, and I can talk to you about advantages/disadvantages of both. This has seemed to be the best way to have consistent insights into students as readers. I can share with you the rubric that I used this year for their reading response, as well as talk about logistics. You can either respond to all of their letters or you can do a combination of teacher/peer responses. 

Writing Sharing/Celebrations:

This is an area that I consistently do not do as well as I would like to as schedules seem too packed, but we can talk about ideas to make sure that students are sharing and celebrating their writing on a more consistent basis. It is also fun to do class books, and when I have done this, students have enjoyed reading each other's writing during reading workshop.

What have you found to be some of the most essential components of your classrooms?

Writing as a Gift

Throughout the last three years with my students that just graduated as 8th graders, I tried to weave in writing as a gift at different times, including letters of appreciation, poems, and scrapbooking. When I was thinking about their graduation, I decided to give them a gift of writing mixed with a tool to work toward their long term goals. Earlier this year I ordered writer's notebooks from Office Depot. I wanted to have designs that were different than the standard marbled composition books that we use in class.

The designs that arrived were mostly different than the example pictures on the site when I placed the order, so I was a little disappointed. Yet, the students seemed to like the different designs, which is what was most important. They each picked out a style (without knowing what it would be for). On the first page I glued in a letter to my students in an envelope and on the second page I glued in a separate envelope with notes that they wrote to each other, stating what they appreciated or highlighting best qualities that they see in each other.

The intent of the notebook was for them to record different activities that they are involved in as high schoolers, as well as recording their everyday ups and downs as inspiration for future scholarship essays (as well as the benefits of documenting their lives). I also gave them fun sized chocolate to go with it and to celebrate their sweet successes. Though I know that not all students will use them and they probably appreciated them at varying levels, I was glad that I was able to do something small in order to show that I appreciated having them in my classroom as well as providing them a tool to get themselves one step closer to their future goals. I have also considered offering a scholarship essay writer's workshop for them when they approach their senior year.

Here is an excerpt from the letter that I wrote to them, which in many ways ties back to a lot of our classroom discussions:

I look forward to hearing about your future successes. As you get ready for high school and beyond, here are some thoughts that I have found to be essential, as I have navigated different levels of school and through life experiences:

• Always try your hardest, and be content with your best. Nobody can be the best at everything, so realize that you will excel in some areas, while other areas can be just for fun. Celebrate in your individual growth, even if it does not seem like much in comparison to others. You too will have areas in which you will shine. Never allow fear of failure to be the best hold you back from experiences and opportunities where you can grow and contribute.
• Decide what is most important to you and work hard to set your priorities in order to work toward your goals. Surround yourself with others who will support and encourage you along the way as well as help you to make positive decisions. 
• When you meet challenges, take a deep breath and think about different areas of support. List out all you need to do and prioritize them so it does not feel so overwhelming. Spend time with family and friends. Laugh hard. Cry. Focus and refocus on what is important, and no matter how difficult it seems to reach your goals, keep on making steps toward accomplishing them. Eventually you will get there. 
• Words are powerful. Use them to make your community better and to inspire others to do the same.
• Above all, remember who you are and what is important to you.

These last three years have gone by quickly, and in the same amount of time you will find yourselves as seniors in high school – almost ready to make another big transition in your educational careers. During your senior year you will have an opportunity to apply for scholarships. A couple of essential components for scholarship applications are essays and lists of your involvement in a wide range of activities in and out of school.

I hope that you will take the time to use this last writer’s notebook from me as a tool to document your life, which will aid you in writing your eventual scholarship essays. You can reserve the first few pages to list out different activities in which you are involved. Often committees want to know how you have been a productive member of your school and community, such as clubs, sports, and community service. I had not realized that when I was a freshman and it was a little bit hard to go back and try to remember everything. With the rest of your pages, you can record your ups and downs – your strong emotions, those defining moments in your life along with the everyday slice of life stories. Consider how you face challenges and how you stay focused on your goals. Let your personality shine through. 

The Practice of School Reform

The Practice of School Reform: Lessons from Two Centuries by James Nehring is the first of the four books that I will be reading for one of my summer school classes. From reading the book, I can already tell that I am going to love the class and its discussions; I think it might be one of my favorite courses in the program.

In the first paragraph of the foreword, Larry Cuban describes Nehring as being, "a thoughtful, passionate, progressive educator who prizes well-being of children and youth while seeking ways to counter existing antihumane, test driven school policies and advance social justice. He wants to subvert traditional schooling because the prevailing ideas that drive the existing system squelch what he prizes" (p. ix). The literature review of my dissertation is going to have a focus on the impact of testing on curriculum, so these introductory lines caught my attention.

Continuing with the same topic, Cuban mentioned, "Nehring lays out a map for 'mindful practitioners' to crack the 'mindless adoption' of traditional practices in district offices, schools, and classrooms that squelch students' inquiry, creativity, and desire to learn" (p. x). As a teacher, I always want to be able to explain the theoretical background for any component of my classroom, with a strong focus on making intentional decisions based on what I know from research and experience to best serve my students. As such, mindfulness, has always been a top priority, a concept that my undergraduate courses instilled in me before I even stepped in the classroom. I know how frustrating it can be to have to utilize a mandated curriculum, so I truly value teaching contexts where I am able to be a "mindful practitioner". Thus, before I even got to Nehring's own words, I was hooked. I could tell that the book was going to focus on areas of interest.

Throughout I enjoyed the tone and content of the book. Nehring describes five different schools at various points of history demonstrating how many of the present reform efforts actually go far back in history. He takes a close, analytical look into the historical and cultural components contributing to education in our country. Each school was a focal point of a chapter, and the portraits of the schools that he shares illustrate one of his six conspirators against thoughtful schooling. The chapter focusing on the sixth conspirator, the failure of generosity and justice, revisits each school to examine from this lens. Then Nehring concludes the book with a summarizing the main points.

I appreciated the range of contexts for the schools that Nehring selected to illustrate various reform efforts, as well as their levels of success (or lack there of) and factors contributing to their long-term impacts. Furthermore, I liked that he mentioned areas in which the schools excelled, as well as downfalls or obstacles to carrying out their visions.

He also did a good job of taking different stakeholders into consideration, as illustrated when he referred to Michael Fullan's thoughts saying, "[...] it is the height of arrogance and insensitivity for initiators of change to deny to others the emotional response that they themselves have experienced. Therefore, one important key to the successful initiation of change is to grant room for the emotional response to work itself out" (p. 47).

Nehring emphasized the importance of thoughtful professionals, and his book gave me plenty to ponder. I am glad that I am taking this course later on in my program since I have a much stronger foundation in curricular decisions from a historical and big picture perspective than I did a year ago. One week from today I will commute for our first class session. I can't wait to see what my classmates were thinking as they read the book. I have also been enjoying reading opinions on similar topics on the NCTE Members Open Forum emails, Susan Ohanian's news emails, and Diane Ravich's and Deborah Meier's joint blog Bridging Differences, as well as always appreciating dialogue via blog comments.