Reading Workshop Reflections

We are now five weeks into the year and just wrapped up our fall conferences. The first quarter has been flying by. Last week I finished up administering QRIs in English and Rigby running records in Spanish (for those who were still within the level range available for the assessment). This weekend I have been able to analyze my data and decide my students' strengths and needs as I transition from setting up expectations and administering assessments to small group instruction and one on one conferring.

I have also been reflecting on the CAFE Menu in general. For my middle schoolers who are already reading above grade level, I am planning on having them participate solely in book clubs and independent reading. At this point, I do not think that it is necessary to provide CAFE Menu strategy lessons because they are already comprehending what they read and utilizing many of the skills. Up to this point they have been getting exposure to the concepts through our whole class lessons.

However, over the last couple of weeks I have been reflecting on how it is hard to fit in all the components that I thoughtfully considered as I was developing my literacy block this summer. This weekend an idea popped into my mind that maybe I do not need to do the whole class CAFE lessons. It may be better to use them solely in small group settings, as needed. Yet, I am not completely sold on this concept because I also like the idea of all students in my room getting exposed to the different areas. As it is, I already narrowed down the items on the menu. I kept all of the comprehension strategies, but I reserved some of the items to only use on an as needed basis in small group meetings. For example, many students are at the stage as readers that they do not need as much support in accuracy. They have already developed these skills as readers.

Initially I am planning on cutting back on my whole class lessons, which will make more time available for work in their reader's notebook using Buckner's ideas. The time will also be utilized to extend the independent reading/small group instruction time on some days. I will also be able to dedicate more time to much needed book talks, an area that has been scheduled in but then often skipped over when there was not enough time to do everything. I know making book talks, a hallmark of reader's workshop, a priority is essential. I can't continue to skip over them in my lessons.

Whereas, The CAFE Menu concepts will be essential for my students who still need assistance with comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary, established students have different needs. With book clubs I will make sure that they continue to utilize strategies to comprehend more challenging texts. Some of my students have expressed interest in classics, such as Jane Austen and Shakespeare, but they are not accessible for them to read on their own. I may integrate some of these books into their book clubs later on this year, so that that they will challenge themselves as readers with the support of their peers and an adult.

I am excited to start this new phase of beginning small group instruction. I am comfortable with the goals that I have for each of my students and the groupings. The area where I need to closely monitor and adjust is during Spanish weeks. It was easy to group my 7th graders according to need because I know about them as readers from last year. A large portion of my 6th graders are beyond the scope of the Rigby assessments we have, and I have not had a chance to really get to know them as readers in Spanish yet.

Getting a better grasp on my new students' Spanish literacy needs and continuing to adjust and adapt the components of my reading block to best utilize the available time will be my primary goals over the next few weeks. I will also have to keep a close eye on making sure that the expectations for independent reading time continue to be apparent as there is a chance for a higher level of distractions with the noise generated from small group instruction.

The importance of analyzing literacy data and utilizing it to guide instruction is one of the threads on the discussion group about Jennifer Allen's new book A Sense of Belonging.

Reader's Notebook Responses

It has been so interesting to get to know my students more as readers through their reader's notebooks. It is especially fun to see the reasoning behind some of my returning students' reading behaviors/interests that they demonstrated last year. For the start of the year I used ideas from Nancie Atwell and Aimee Buckner. After modeling my own reading territories (inspired by Atwell) for my students, they wrote about their territories in their reader's notebook. Because I made a point of showing books that I read and enjoy from a range of personal difficulty levels, many of students reflections were aimed toward explaining about reading that is relatively easy or hard for them. While this is not quite like Atwell's territories, it was great information for me. On a different day, we discussed Buckner's "What I Know is True About Reading" concept. I was really pleased with how both of these turned out, and I highly recommend resources by both authors. It was helpful to see students' personal philosophies about reading.

Here are some of the student comments inspired by the prompts.

Reading Territories:

“I like to read about smart, witty characters usually now about my age or older. I also like it better when the main character is the narrator, not just a voice who does not exist. I like to be able to get inside the characters’ heads (or head) and read about their emotions and thoughts.”

“I really like to read about adventures and action, not like some books where its just girls liking boys, or growing up problems. I live through that stuff every day. I don’t want to read about it. I want to read about things I’ve never seen before, places I’ve never been to.”

“Some books can be hard for me if they have more than one narrator.”

“I like reading books where the main characters are trying to accomplish something.”

“It’s hard for me to read when there is a lot of noise. I like to read when it’s quiet.”

“Something that I am reading is Eclipse, and it is a little bit hard. It helps to have a lot of friends that have read them.”

What I Know is True About Reading:

“Sometimes when I read a book that’s really well-written, I can almost believe (even if it’s fantasy or a faire tale) that that stuff is actually happening in the real world. I just can’t see it.”

“When I read a well-written book, usually I can see the story going on in my head, so I don’t have to focus so much on reading the words. I see it like a movie in my head. The details have to be well-explained though.”

“If you enjoy a book, you can’t stop reading.”

“It helps my spelling.”

“Books can teach you how to be a better writer.”

“I love books that I can relate to. If I have nothing in common with the book or the character, chances are I’m not going to like it.”

“You can read different difficulty levels.”

First Days of School - Week 2

Although I intended to do more posts during the week to reflect on the start of the school year, once again I am finding myself at another Saturday. Last week was my first Spanish week of the year. My planning over the summer has definitely paid off, but there is still a lot to get organized and in place. Over the last couple of weeks I finalized the rubrics that I will use for various regular routines/features in my classroom: reading logs, writer's notebook, reader's notebook, social studies interactive notebook, reading workshop, and writing workshop. It took me a while to decide exactly how I wanted to organize my thoughts and to pin point exactly what the expectations were and the behaviors demonstrated that would match up to letter grades. While I have had systems set up to assess all of these areas before (except reader's and interactive notebooks which I am trying out new for the first time this year), each year I reevaluate them and they get better with time.

So far this year, as I mentioned last week, I have been really happy with the turn out of some of the new ideas that I have been trying out. Soon I will be posting some of my students' comments in response to some of Aimee Buckner's ideas for reader's notebooks.

Until then, here is a quick overview of the same areas that I addressed last week.

WORD STUDY
This week I did our first whole class word study. We looked at gu+i/gu+e and qu+i/qu+e. When I chose and created this sort, I had not had my students complete the Spanish spelling inventory yet. I just chose an area that I thought would be helpful for most of the students. We emphasized the sounds they hear and how to distinguish between differences such as gi as opposed to gui.

On Monday I administered the Spanish inventory with my whole class, and my practicum student was able to complete the form to analyze how each of my students were spelling (both the inventory and analysis form were from Words Their Way with English Learners: Word Study for Spelling, Phonics, and Vocabulary Instruction). The information from this will help inform my decisions on the sorts we will do for the rest of the year. It looks like Ortografía de la lengua española will be a helpful resource when creating my Spanish sorts, and I just noticed that they have a newer 2009 edition out.

READ ALOUD
The read aloud of Cornelia Funke's El Señor de los Ladrones (The Thief Lord) has been going well. We are still getting to know the cast of characters in the book as a class. I am picking up on some of the clues that I missed the first time reading it that point toward the thief lord's secret. Once we have read the whole book as a class I will be able to use the text as an example of discovering something new each time you read a text. For now I need to bite my tongue and act like it is my first time reading it without pointing out the subtleties that Funke includes.

READING WORKSHOP
This week reading workshop went well. I was able to complete Spanish running records with all of the students that I needed to. Because the resource we have for Spanish running records does not go up as high as the QRI that I use in English, a large percentage of my students have already demonstrated proficiency in the highest level. I also had a chance to have one on one conferences with a handful of my students. I always love getting to know each of my students as readers in two languages through a wide variety of sources. Next week I will complete as many QRIs as I can in English. Once those are complete, I will be ready to start small group instruction and be able to have more individual conferences.

WRITING WORKSHOP
After completing a Slice of Life Story in English last week, this week they completed one in Spanish. Our writing workshop still does not look like it will long term throughout the year, but it is only the second week. Students still need a lot of guidance on knowing what they should be doing, so next week I will continue to work on writing workshop procedures as we move into feature article writing. Before I wrote about how I had wanted to get a newsletter started last year, and then one of my students wanted to start a school newspaper, so we are going to build it in as part of our writing workshop. I am excited about starting this unit, because unlike my quick Slice of Life Stories genre study, I have a lot of personal mentor texts from when I was the features editor for my college newspaper. I feel more prepared for this unit of study, whereas with Slice of Life I still want to improve it a lot before I teach it again.

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week I continued my general geography review. I used some lesson ideas from World History For Us All. I did not use them exactly as they were since they are all in English, but it was a good foundation for my lesson. I especially liked their teaching unit 0.1 Lesson 2, maps of space. We did the outside version, and I adapted the lesson to fit into our interactive notebook format. It was fun to see the students thinking about perspective, and I will be able to refer back to this key social studies concept of the impact of perspective often. I also formed another lesson based on their unit 0.2 lesson 2 How many continents are there? We also did a world map activity where students labeled the continents and key features listed on our state standards. Students will keep these maps in the back of their Interactive Notebooks all year long as a reference that we will refer to often in order to discuss how geography impacts history.

WHAT'S NEXT
This weekend I am going to take advantage of the holiday weekend to spend time with my family today and tomorrow. Then Monday I will go in as if it were a regular work day and get a lot of planning and paperwork done. I have a lot of notebook and writing assessments to do, and I also need to map out a plan to make sure that I can manage assessing them in a more time efficient manner. My 51 students have been producing a lot of writing and reflections. I love the thought that has been going in to these activities, but I need to figure out how I can give them sufficient feedback, as well as utilizing them to inform future decisions.

Notebook Connections

Last summer I got Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook, so earlier this spring I was excited to see that Aimee Buckner had another book coming out, Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader's Notebook. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, and could hardly wait for it to come. When I received it earlier this week I read it right away. The book came at a perfect time as I am planning for next year.

As I was reading, I had an aha moment that I already do many of the strategies that Buckner mentions; however, having students do them in a reader's notebook will be an excellent opportunity to have their reading responses in one place in order to demonstrate student growth over time. Buckner explains, "I've developed a reader's notebook model that is flexible enough for students to respond in a variety of ways, yet structured enough to provide explicit instruction" (p. 7). I will now have my students use their reader's notebook as a central location to do the following activities that were separate this year: weekly reading log response, book club responses, occasional read aloud/independent reading response. Not only will this be helpful for me, but also for student and parent conferences.

Throughout the book I appreciated that Buckner made distinctions between the reader's and writer's notebook, while also making it clear how they complement each other in her classroom. The notebooks reaffirm to students the reading-writing connection.

As with Notebook Know-How, I loved Buckner's conversational writing style, the great strategies she shared, and the glimpses into her classroom that we see through her book. I will be pulling Notebook Know-How out again this summer and both books will have a large impact on my curriculum next year.