Schoolwide Blog

At the end of story time, just before we check out library books, my kindergartners and first graders clap their hands and sing with me.  . (song available on www.jacquelinejules.com)

It’s a ditty I made up with the expressed purpose of creating an ear worm—a repetitive phrase to loop in my kids’ heads and share with their parents. Many of the students I teach come from low-income families. Reading at bedtime may be something the adults in their lives haven’t even considered, with all the demands of making a living wage. More...

Starting the year off with establishing routines and procedures for reading and writing workshop will get you and your students off to a successful year.  It took me years and lots of research to find the most efficient way to get organized with setting routines.  I like to start both workshops on the first day of school with a mini lesson on routines.  For example, on the first day of school the mini lesson for reading workshop may have to do with how to choose a book and enjoy reading it.  I start off by showing my students a variety of genres I enjoy.  I’ll bring in magazines, newspapers, novels, professional journals, etc. for my students to see the kind of reading I do.  One of my goals is for them to notice my enthusiasm for reading and that we can make choices of what to read. Your classroom library would be set up ahead of time by putting books into bins.  More...

As a sneak peak to the launch of our upcoming video site (The Schoolwide Network) Literacy Consultant, Rory Cohen discusses different ways for teachers to help students with the immersion phase of writing workshop.

Look for more videos on this blog in the weeks to come.

When I entered junior high school in the fall of 1946, everybody who had come from the sixth grade in our school was literate. We weren’t all equally literate, and we weren’t all equally in love with books. I was, but my best friend wasn’t. But we were all literate. Why was that? None of us were on Ritalin. None of us were in a remedial class, because there wasn’t one, and there were 40 people in the sixth-grade class with one teacher. How did they do it? More...

After you’ve written 38 books you begin to discern some of your themes. I don’t think I did that at the beginning. I think I do now, because for one thing, in all of my novels for young people there is an elderly person reaching across a lifetime to touch a young hand. It’s an unsentimental portrait because sentimentality is the enemy of what we do. Even 100 years ago Beatrix Potter knew that childhood was a jungle, not a garden. But an elderly person has toughed it out and paid his or her dues. And indeed my most popular character, the one who has changed my career, is a woman named Grandma Dowdel More...

I’ve been working with a group of teachers putting together a curriculum map comprised of units of study for reading workshop. One of the units that came up was a “Testing - Genre Study”. I’ve come across this in other curriculum maps as well, but I never had an opportunity until now to have a conversation around what exactly that genre study would look like. If the unit includes having students examine the structure and format of the Language Arts test they are expected to take, or have students learn to pace themselves during a timed-testing session, or even using a scan tron sheet, then I see the importance of putting testing into a curriculum map.  If however, for example, it involves teaching students how to possibly recognize and then answer certain types of questions, or how to figure out an unknown word in a reading passage by using context clues, then I don’t see a “Testing- Genre Study” being placed as a unit of study for a month or so in a yearlong curriculum calendar. To me, it would be like putting a “Thinking – Genre Study” in a reading workshop curriculum map.  The skills and strategies that kids need in order to be effective test takers are linked to the skills and strategies needed to be an effective reader. If we agree with this thinking then test taking strategies and skills need to be taught alongside all the reading strategies and skills units we introduce across the year. For example, if you are modeling which clues in a read aloud text helped you to determine the main idea of a text, or what the author wanted us to know the text was mostly about, then it is a great time to say, “If I was answering a test question about main idea which asked me what the passage was mainly about I would use the same strategies and skills I use as a reader to answer the question.  I would look at the clues in the passage and decide if what I think the main idea of this passage is matches one of the choices.” I’m thinking that the essential elements necessary for getting kids ready for a test may be embedded in the great teaching we do, but I think it needs to be extracted and the application of that thinking needs to be explicitly taught during all the units of study. This philosophy is the backbone of the Testing Fundamentals units of study. The lessons in the units explicitly teach kids how to become effective test takers by applying what they are learning in reading workshop to test taking situations. Becoming an effective test taker is not about answering the question correctly, but about knowing and being able to explain how you derived at the answer. This kind of thinking can’t be neatly wrapped up in a month long unit called a “Testing- Genre Study”

Several teachers and I were discussing the value of teaching students to use specific graphic organizers to plan a written response to a question that requires them to extract information from 2 pieces of text. Of course, the Venn diagram leaped to the top of the list. 

I have always had a problem with using the Venn just to recognize similarities and differences between texts.  I believe that making text to text connections is a necessary comprehension strategy, but if we want our readers and test takers to stretch and deepen their comprehension they need to learn how to synthesize information and then come to a conclusion based on the evidence they find and use to fill in the sections of the Venn.  

For example, if we read two different versions of Cinderella, after deciding on the similarities and differences between the two fairy tales one conclusion might be:  

Authors can use the same idea to tell a story in a different way.  Another conclusion might be: 

Similar stories exist in different cultures. 

If we take this learning back to the test it will most likely enable our kids to fashion a better response to a question that requires them to synthesize information from multiple sources rather than just recognizing the literal similarities and differences across multiple texts. SOOO a good suggestion from the teachers for increasing the value of using the Venn is to pull out those diagrams sitting in a folder in your file cabinet and under those connecting circles write the word CONCLUSION!

At a truly enjoyable Schoolwide Workshop at Fordham University a question came up about how and how often to best use traditional test prep material (which are sometimes called “THE PACKETS”) when getting kids ready for statewide exams.

My best response is that the problem is not with the practice material itself, but rather with what is done with it. I don’t recommend using the material for independent practice or homework until it has been used for small group scaffolded instruction. The passages themselves provide good short text material across genres for guided instruction.

I would cut off the questions on the initial introduction of the passage.

After discussion about the passage I would reintroduce the questions without the answer choices (as I suggested in an earlier blog) and have the students write in their answers.

In a follow-up discussion I would have kids share their thinking by showing places in the text that provide evidence to back up their responses.

Finally they can do the practice material with the choices either independently in class or for homework.

I’m very curious about how much and how often this type of practice material is used before a state exam.

…is what my 6^th graders would say to me everyday when they walked into the room.  That year, I had taken over a maternity leave of a teacher who never did interactive read-alouds with her students.  That was “baby stuff”.

I started reading to these students from day 1 in that middle school classroom and the ate it up!  They looked forward to hearing the story, as well as how it would lend to our writing.  They could see the connection.

            We had a lot of great dialogue at the Literacy Workshops in Staten Island on March 20, but what stuck in my mind was the topic of middle school students and their generally negative attitudes towards reading and writing in particular. 

What happens to that enthusiasm that oozes during elementary school? 

The love of books, authors, drawing, creating, sharing? 

What happens to our students as they cross through the doors of  middle school, that they dread when they are asked to read or write?

A few things I am sure of;

“activities” (as they are referred to in elementary school) become “assignments”,

“reading” becomes “homework” and

“discovery” becomes “research”.                                                                

And I suggest that us teachers have the power to change that mentality.

        How?

We can show our students how we engage ourselves in the reading and writing process and how we are passionate about our own reading and writing by:

·        sharing good literature and reading aloud to our students on a regular basis

·        humanizing authors by reading about them and their passions for writing

·        writing in our writer’s notebooks, as our students write

·        sharing our notebooks with our students

·        encourage risk taking by reducing the assessment of every written word

What other ways can we show our students our passions and that we are lifelong readers and writers? How can we revise the ideas in our middle school classrooms that reading and writing are nothing but classroom tasks?

We want all of our middle school students asking, “When are you going to read to us again?”

When I started teaching there was a debate going on, whole language vs. phonics. Now we are all for “balanced literacy”. We all agree when it comes to teaching reading we need to address phonics or “word study” as well as comprehension strategies. Kids need to be able to read the words off a page and make sense of them too. 

What I see happening now, in big and small districts alike, is often a frenzy to figure out how to do this. Teachers are frequently given a list of things they should be doing in a day (see below), and no training or resources to do it.

• Shared Reading
• Guided Reading with Literacy Centers
• Independent Reading
• Reading Workshop
• Word Study
• Interactive Writing
• Interactive Read Aloud
• Writing Workshop

So what are our choices when trying to implement a balanced literacy approach to reading instruction? Are there materials and curriculum guides teachers can use when teaching children to become proficient readers who understand the power and purpose of reading?

I know what has never worked for me is an anthology (sorry Scott Foresman but your anthologies focus on teaching a book or theme, not teaching readers. You throw in a lot of buzz words to make it seem like you do it all but it has never made sense to me.)  However, I also know administrators and teachers both want something to hold onto, a common curriculum that considers standards and how children learn best.

So what is working for you or your school and how do you know it is working? Are there materials out there that I need to get my hands on because…..