Hacking the Common Core: Embrace the Novel

     The #d100bloggerPD crew is doing a blog study on Michael Fisher's Hacking the Common Core, in the #HackLearning series.

     The last 2 posts in the #d100bloggerpd series were written by fellow Hiawatha Husky +Kayla Kaczmarek last week (check it out  here) and by Freedom Patriot +Lauren Slanker (linked here).

     This hack started off with a quote (which I love) by Maya Angelou.  There are so many things that we do because we have always done them, not because they are in the best interest of the kids in front of us.  But, sometimes we change things just for the sake of change, and there really wasn't a need for something different in the first place.   The novel study seems to be in the middle.  When I first read the title of the hack, I was thinking this chapter would be more about the power of a novel as a read aloud, in addition to guided reading and strategy groups.  What it turned out to be was more of a chapter reminding us of the importance of literature in general.  In the elementary schools, I don't think we have forgotten fiction.  We have just added more informational texts, perhaps not even enough when it comes to read to self choices.  Kids in the upper grades still choose to read fiction, if given a choice (and maybe that is ok).

Hack 5: Embrace the Novel

     No, this is not a post where I tell you that it is ok to read a novel that does not fit the needs of your kids, has the teacher do all the actual reading work, and is picked because of a Teachers Pay Teachers packet.  I just want to be clear about that.  The one size fits all novel where that is the ONLY reading is not my intended message in "embrace the novel."  That brings me back to my own school experience, where the teacher spent MONTHS on a book that she loved, and did all the work.  The only reading that I did was the Cliff Notes version of the novel before the test.  There.  I said it.  This lit coach used to cheat on novels.  I was a busy teenager, with teenage things to do.  The Cliff Notes told me everything that I needed to know, anyway.

     As Maya Angelou said above, "now that I know better, I do better."  ELA instruction is not about getting the kids to says the things that YOU think are important in novels anymore.  It is about having the students realize they they as readers have their own ideas about text, and that they can share those ideas with others and GROW them into even bigger ideas through conversations and written response. Gone are the days where we want the students to say that the rose is a symbol of love, and here are the days where students name the symbols they themselves see as readers and explain their reasoning, with text and their life experiences in mind.  I don't think the Cliff Notes would have helped me with that...

     I have been a proponent of using a good novel to tie instruction together across the day for years.  As a literacy coach, I have seen how a great read aloud has tied together all the pieces of Balanced Literacy and created an environment where learning just multiplies in the room.  Here is a post I wrote a few years ago explaining how our 5th grade used The Apprentice to tie their day together.

     Michael Fisher discusses how in the Common Core they shifted the balance of literature and informational reading in the classrooms.  In primary grades, it's now 50/50, with the end of high schools shifting to 70/30.  By the time they get to high school, reading across the day should have an informational focus, but that doesn't mean that ELA teachers are the only ones who have kids read.  The 70% was intended for 12th grade students.  There is no reason to remove literature from the curriculum as we go up in grades.  In the middle and high school grades, Fisher suggests that we "spread responsibility for balanced reading among all teachers in the school."

Basically:

• All teachers should support literacy, in reading, writing, speaking, or listening.
• Informational reading across the grade should be integrated across content areas.
• Do not eliminate literature from the curriculum.
• Enhance the understanding of literary texts (like novels) with supporting informational texts.

     Michael Fisher also knows that professional development is critical when making these changes across our instructional day.  He says:

Schools often benefit from having a literacy coach on site.  This is a person who can provide ongoing feedback about balanced literacy, content literacy, the connections between reading and writing, and curriculum help to integrate literacy seamlessly into any content area.

      I like this guy!

      In all seriousness, my work as a literacy coach has diversified quite a bit since I started in my role.  While it started just unpacking reading standards, it quickly turned into unit planning with backwards design and content integration, horizontal alignment of reading and writing, and vertical alignment across the grades.  This is NOT the type of work that can be done quickly, and I have come to really enjoy the collaboration with teachers every week as we build relevant units for out kids.  I love my job.

     Fisher talks about assessing the the texts that you use, and how you use them.  Text complexity is NOT just a lexile, or an F&P letter.  Background knowledge is so important to many texts above a P/Q, and that has to be considered.  How teachers use a text, and the supports they provide while reading it, also drastically change the way a book is understood.  Using a novel as a read aloud, with front loading of setting if it is a different time or place, and use of accountable talk or sketchnoting, can make a text more rigorous and released to the students.  That just happens to be my 2 cents.  :)

     Fisher also talks about letting "Dorothy return to Oz" and bringing literature back to the ELA class, but not necessarily just teaching the same novels you have always taught out of comfort.  When I was in 7th grade, we did a unit on The Outsiders.  The middle schoolers in my district still read The Outsiders today.  I have a feeling, however, that the way they teach it is very different from my days in 7th back in the early 1990's.  Good books transcend time.  Good teachers modify the instructional delivery, and use resources that support them and their students.

     As soon as I close this post, my computer will be turned to writing a novel unit on Ghosts, by Raina Telgemeier, in collaboration with +Tyler Haar.  He noticed that his students LOVE graphic novels, but weren't quite reading them as rigorously as traditional novels.  He also discovered that Ghosts celebrates Hispanic culture, which is something we want to promote more at our school.  So, we are adding a new novel into the read aloud mix.  It will hit Common Core Standards, and it will add content and culture, and it will MATTER to his students.  Literature has the great possibility of showing students where they fit into the world, and that others struggle and overcome in the world as well.  Embrace the novel.  Create people who see other people, too.

     Just  remember, as we integrate the Common Core and content areas into literacy, do it carefully.  If we are intentional and purposeful, we will see the benefits of the novel in our students.  I see novels as windows to the world.  Let's open the windows up in our ELA classes!

The next post in the #d100bloggerpd series is up tomorrow!

Diona Iacobazzi will share her ideas about 

Hack #6: Prioritize on http://thebazzblog1.blogspot.com!

   

Out of This World!

Take a peek at this set of astronauts!

To infinity & beyond! My astronauts traveled all the way to see our solar system! #hiawathapride pic.twitter.com/ITrvNaQl4E

— Kayla Kaczmarek (@Kaczmarek_D100) January 8, 2016

At Hiawatha, we believe in balanced literacy.  We believe that teaching reading, writing and content areas (and, if we can, math) all fit together.   We believe in promoting literacy through units that have essential questions and provide experiences for our students.  We believe is starting from the standards and backwards mapping, planning with the end in mind.

This year, we are exploring a new format to plan our essential understandings for our units.  Below is what our talented first grade (+Amelia Sheers, +Vianney Sanchez +Kayla Kaczmarek +Shianne Gillespie +Melissa Alper) team created for their Space Systems unit.

After they created their essential understandings and unpacked the essential CCSS and NGSS standards into single point rubrics, THEN they began planning the activities for their unit.  It is so much more targeted to plan for great activities when you have the end in mind, rather than just finding lessons about space and hoping they hit the target.

But, what about the beginning of the unit?

 

So often, we launch into units, but don't take time to invest our children in the content.  When we have an emotional or physical connection to something, it makes our learning experiences much deeper.  So, our first grade team planned to send their students into space!  They turned our 100+ year old gym stage into the universe, and their 70 or so students into astronauts, and blasted off!

Do you want a little glimpse of what it would be like to be a space explorer?  If so, it's your lucky day!

They then went back to class.  But, they didn't just take out their math books and move on.  Oh no!  They used the excitement that they had gathered and started sharing what they already know for their space unit!  They started a Padlet wall and reported all that they already know about the sun, moon, earth, and outer space.  

I can't wait to watch this set of astronauts as they continue on their journey through space.  After all, this was only the BEGINNING of their unit.  With teachers as out of this world as theirs, they can go anywhere.  To infinity, and beyond!

The Marvels, and a Reflection of Myself as a Reader

I wanted The Marvels the second I heard @MrSchuReads talk about it.  I think he had an early copy of it, because I went to Amazon right away and tried to buy it.  No luck.  A few months later, it popped back into my head again, so I ordered it.  And it came.  It was beautiful, with gold embossed pages too!  That day, I say in the entryway to my house and read as many of the 400 pages of pure images for about half an hour before it became completely necessary to give my kids a bath.  Brian Selznick has created his own genre that combines visual literacy with text.

I call it awesome.

I brought the book to school, showed it to some teachers, and then it sat on my shelf.  Waiting.  Waiting for life to calm down so that I could enjoy it fully.

A few weeks ago, I found my niece's copy of The One and Only Ivan, and I got incredibly excited.  Abby is old enough to read books that I enjoy!  The literacy coach in me couldn't help but go home and order her Crenshaw and The Marvels for Christmas.  Crenshaw, because she loved Ivan, and The Marvels because I love it.  Even though I hadn't read it... yet.

Then, finally, an ice storm hit Chicago.  We are on winter break, and winter arrived in the form of sleet and ice and rain.  There was no chance that I would head outside today.  It was finally time to read The Marvels.  Now that my niece has a copy of the book, what if she wants to talk about it?  I felt driven to read it.  Plus, we are reading with a Husky paw over break and tagging the pictures with #HiawathaReads.  It seemed perfect.

So, this mom hid in her bedroom, covered in blankets and with a cup of hot cocoa, and read it from front to back.  672 pages or so in one day.  There was a stop for lunch when my husband made us spaghetti, and a stop for a performance of the Nutcracker by my kids.  At some point I also had to take some pictures of a LEGO creation for my son, because he wants to be in their magazine.  And, there were sections of the book where my kids played around me as I continued to turn the pages.  I was going to read this book.

And I did.  And it is glorious.  (So was my cocoa.)

I would love to tell you about the book, but I won't.  Amazon calls it a narrative puzzle of pictures and prose.  I think it is something that needs to just be read.  But, if you read it, I'd love to talk to you about it.  In case you wanted a sneak peek, here is a Vine made by Mr. Schu with a little preview:
https://vine.co/v/O0gDxF31DHT

The one thing I will mention is how much I love the message it sends about the impact books can have on us.  I found this section of text early on, which was perfect since I was in a snowstorm of my own a few days after Christmas:

The character regularly got lost inside stories, quoting excerpts of famous books and carrying texts with him like his prized possessions.  He spent a lot of time "lost inside stories" and on this wintery day it was easy to say that I did the same thing.  Later in the text it quoted Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and said:

You will not regret the time you spend reading this book, in a land of Marvels.

However, the reason for this post is not for a book review.  It is for a reflection of myself as a READER.  The reader that hid from her family so that she could continue reading to find out what was going to happen next.  (My husband was home, but still...  This mom tries to be present with her kids.)  But, I HAD to keep reading.  I kept doing what good readers do, and had questions and predictions in my head and I just HAD to find out what came next.

When is the last time your students read like that in class?

The truth is, they usually don't.  They usually read books that they enjoy, but stop and start and sometimes stop and never restart.  So what makes the difference?

I think that the more we put ourselves into the role of readers ourselves, the more we can figure out the answer to that question.

I never once stopped to name a trait of any of the Marvels.  Nor did I track his change over time, or compare them to characters in other novels.  RL3
I never came up with a big theme in the book, and found key details to support that theme.  RL2
I did stop and snap pictures of some favorite quotes alone the way, so I was on my way to analyzing the craft of the book.  But, that would be a stretch.  RL 4 and 5
I wished I could compare it to Hugo, but I left that in my office at school.  No RL 9 today.

I guess my point is this:
While I did not specifically do any standards work today, I could certainly do any of those standards if I was put into a conversation with someone about The Marvels.  I might have to refer back to the text, or think about it a little before I respond, but I can do it.  Since I have been taught those strategies already, I can apply them to any book I read.  But, that doesn't mean that every book I read needs to be picked apart and reduced to standards work to prove that I read.  Trust me, I read that book.  My kids are relieved that I finished, in fact.  :)

Sometimes, readers need to read for the enjoyment of it.

I was thinking these thoughts, because I think sometimes as a literacy coach people think that I will be happy if the Common Core standards are always front and center, and that the kids are showing their ability to do them.  BUT...  I think that first and foremost we need to have kids who consider themselves READERS.  Kids who know the standards today, and USE them as they grow into adult readers.  The standards make students think critically, and those critical thoughts will help them living in the world, both in books and in the actual world.  But, if learning the standards means reading is always a chore, will they actually continue to read on their own?

I was debating this post, and then I jumped into a #learnLAP Twitter chat and this tweet by @Kevreaddenn made me think, "YES!!!"

BALANCE.  We need to teach them how to read deeply, but also how to love reading deeply.

If you are looking for a book to enjoy, I do suggest The Marvels.  :)
It's glorious.

If you want to let your kids love reading and escape into the world of a book, let them do just that.  Let them just read sometimes.  

Trick or Treat?

     This trick or treat is coming from the 3rd grade team at Hiawatha!

     Every year, Halloween comes, and so do the costumes and the parties and the boundless energy that seems to exude from the students.  Pumpkins and music and Halloween read alouds fill the classrooms in anticipation of the big day.  Oh, Halloween.  We either love it, or we hate it.  

     This year, our third grade team decided to let Charlotte's Web take over their Halloween festivities.  There is not a whole lot of Halloween in the book, except for the fact that the main character is a spider.  But, when that novel falls as your read aloud in the month of October, it only makes sense to make a big deal about it.  

     So, what did they do?

 

     For starters, they made the characters come alive by dressing as Charlotte, the web, Wilbur, and Fern on Halloween.  They even "recreated" the cover of the book in costume for a team picture.  :)

     

    The messages from the web were their classrooms decorations, both on windows and in costume.  

    They have also been using Charlotte's Web as their anchor text for developing character.  They are working on RL3.3, and have been developing strong character traits across the grade using Charlotte's Web as their example.  Before their party in 3ROWA, they had the kids write about an assigned character on giant writing paper.  Then, at the party, they were give a pumpkin to decorate as their character for their Character Pumpkin Patch!

Welcome to the Character Pumpkin Patch!

Wilbur

Charlotte

Templeton

Charlotte

Wilbur

     Thanks to our third grade team ( +Anna Waszak +Christine Flowers +Kathy Ross Theresa Carrillo)  for bringing their love of literacy into fun activities for the students!  They will certainly never forget this book!  Thanks for modeling that reading can be FUN, and that when we read books that we enjoy, the possibilities are endless.

Shifts in Assessment and Learning

     On another "Cold Day" here in Chicago, I wonder which of the people in the cartoon above is asking that question...  To be honest, being a student and being a teacher these days is HARD.  Expectations are high for both.  Sometimes, we just have to see the reasons for getting up and facing the world.  This week's building meeting gave me that motivation, despite the frigid temps we are facing.  

     Our building meetings at Hiawatha have all been focused around looking at student work.  Sometimes we compare it to a specific standard, sometimes we sort it into categories, sometimes we just talk about the information we gained from the samples.  We have done that for reading, writing, and math on a rotating weekly basis for a few months.  This week, we were talking math and were led by the fabulous +Christina Betz.  She is our math core leader at Hiawatha, and leading the math charge towards the CCSS and utilizing workshop model.  

     Christina started the meeting with the cartoon above, really being honest as to how hard school can be, for both teachers and students.  She then talked about why we are sorting work, and how there have been some major shifts in assessment recently.

     Christina is so right!  We are currently on a DACEE committee together, led by +Bill Davini and +Sue Butler, and we are right in the middle of a major shift in D100.  We have spent quite some time talking about Standards Based Learning, and how formative assessment and feedback given regularly are what our students need to move closer to meeting the standards.  Standards based learning is about being responsive to the students WHILE they are learning.  Using Christina's words, we want to give descriptive feedback that empowers and motivates students to create their own goals and find their own success.

     Her message was very powerful and positive, and really speaks to the shift we have seen at Hiawatha in the purpose for our assessments and the collaboration we have around them.  

     I cannot state how proud I am of the Hiawatha teachers for embracing the shift.

     She then had the teams discuss whatever formative assessments they had brought.  Here are a few sneak peaks into current math instruction at Hiawatha!

     But as I was walking around, I heard some pretty amazing things being discussed by the teams.  3rd grade was talking about self assessment, and how they are starting to have their students self assess their thinking on the back of the exit slips.  I heard a first grade teacher say that she could just recycle the whole stack of assessments, because they pretty much told her how to reteach the concept so that they will understand it.  The 5th grader teachers were talking about their math responses and their rubric for their math journals.  And then I got to 4th grade....

What do you notice about these 3 fractions?  Explain below.

     The 4th grade teachers were sorting their samples using this question into 1, 2, 3, and 4.  After sorting a bunch, they started to see a few patterns in the types of answers they were getting.  After some discussion, one of the teachers said, "Maybe we didn't ask the question in the best way."  (OK, that was a paraphrase not a direct quote, but I was so giddy with excitement that I forgot to write it down.) 

     That is the point of the collaboration we are having.  By working together and looking at student work, and talking with our coworkers with clear targets in mind, we start to see ways that we can change our instruction to maximize learning.  

     After telling them how excited I was, they began to describe how they have seen a transition in their math assessments over the course of the year.  What used to be very lengthy and often time consuming pre-assessments, they are now using much shorter yet more useful formative assessments that guide their instruction.

CHILLS.  

      Building meetings like this make me want to find a big box of gold stars.  While stickers do not give the best feedback, sometimes they are just necessary.  Gold stars all around.

Christina ended her part of the meeting by saying this:

"Assessment, teaching and learning go hand in hand as each informs the others."

     I loved that statement so much I had to make a graphic for it.  Assessment, teaching and learning all go hand in hand.  Assessment guides our teaching.  Teaching guides learning and creates feedback and new learning. The learning generates new teaching.  Teaching does not necessarily mean learning has happened.  Responsive teaching is here in D100. There has been a shift, and it will do wonderful things for our students.  

What is a Main Idea, anyway?

     Let's be honest...
     How many of us have ever taught main idea as anything more than "Look at the first sentence of the paragraph."  That tells you what the paragraph is all about.

     Maybe I shouldn't admit that...  But it is true.

     That is actually how my 2nd grade teacher editions always instructed me, and it worked like a charm.  The thing is, the assessments that they created to "assess" that skill were created with that in mind.  Real books, however, do not always magically tell me what the main idea is in the first sentence.

     Perhaps I can admit that, because those days are gone.  I did a walk around our building let year during the non-fiction unit, and I noticed that the students were having a very hard time finding the main idea, or even determining what the topic was at times.  Was it because they weren't using text features as clues?  Were they not clear on what a main idea was, compared to supporting details?  Were the texts they were reading actually at their reading level?  Were they trying to find the main idea of an entire book, but the book didn't have a single main idea?  Could I come up with the main idea of a specific book with 100% certainty?

     The hamster wheel began to spin. I went to Twitter and the web and my teacher resource shelf and slowly retaught the idea to myself.  I was then able to help teachers add mini lessons in to target some of the deficits.  Learning is always occurring, even for the teachers (and in this case, myself).

     This year, I met with 2 teachers who wanted to discuss main idea one on one with me during independent plan time or after school.

     The first was +Virginia Burdett.  She is a 4th grade teacher, and wanted to give a main idea pre-assessment to her students after my Institute Day session.  We talked about the types of things we could assess for, and decided to go with a simple Boxes and Bullets type organizer and an article about teeth from Discovery.  We then met after school to sort the samples, as we did at the Institute session.  We actually had an open sort going of 5 or so categories.  Once we were done, we came up with some specific behaviors she could share with her students to move them along, based on both strengths and weaknesses.  This is the rubric/progression she then created with her class based on our analysis of the Common Core rubrics and the actual student work.

     +Lori Horne is another 4th grade teacher on her team.  She wanted to talk about main idea with her high achieving reading group.  We noticed that they do not always see the main idea when reading, even though they are fluent.  They tend to tell us EVERYTHING about the book. So we pulled out a new resource from Jennifer Serravallo called the Independent Reading Assessment.  It comes with actual texts and some questions that the students answer in writing DURING independent reading.  Lori and I met after her students had completed them and used Serravallo's rubric to compare her students' work to Serravallo's standard.

     We decided to use Serravallo's kit as the professional development that it is, and we used another text from her kit as a mentor text to build a similar progression/rubric with the students.  We figured that if  we could really show the students how to state a main idea at a 4th grade level, they might have a better awareness when they do it independently.  We planned a tuck in mini lesson, and I came back to observe.  Lori read an excerpt of the nonfiction trade book, and created a progression of main ideas with the students, going from approaching to exceptional.  To be honest, they are based on a Level P text complexity, so it is really at the beginning of 4th grade expectations.  But, based on student work both in her class and in Ginny's class, that is where they are.

     These two teachers then shared what they learned about their students and main idea with their team at our building meeting.  We are using our building meetings to discuss student work and sort it based on Common Core rubrics.  Ginny and Lori shared their thoughts with their team, and then this progression/rubric showed up in +Diann Milford's room!  

     I had the most thoughtful conversation with Diann after school about how she created the progression/ rubric with her class, but also how giving the information to her students in useable pieces to move them to the next step seemed very helpful to both her students and herself.  She described to me the evolution of her thinking as a teacher about scaffolding of ideas, not just main idea.  

     Can I just say WOW.

     Collaboration.

     Reflection.

     Dedication.  

     These 4th grade teachers just blew me away.  I love that they all collaborated together, but their own teaching style is reflected in those charts.  They each also walked away with different take aways from the process that will undoubtedly help their students.  Thank you, +Lori Horne , +Virginia Burdett , and +Diann Milford, and all the rest of the teachers in my building, who give up their planning time, or time after school, to collaborate with their teams.  

http://www.jenniferserravallo.com/independent-reading-assessment/

Also, check out that Serravallo assessment kit!  Fantastic!

Why Sort Student Work Samples?

If you want to go fast, go alone.  

If you want to go far, go together.

-African Proverb

     This year, our focus for building meetings has shifted.  Instead of learning new strategies for lots of random things that are necessary in school, we instead shifted to one strategy that could be used across all subjects.  That strategy is looking at student work.

     More specifically, we are using a loose structure of the Collaborative Analysis of Student Work.  Each week in building meetings, and in some team meetings and the occasional 1 on 1 plan with the literacy coach (me), teachers at Hiawatha are beginning to look at student work with the standards in mind.  We sort the work samples into 1, 2, 3, and 4, with a few simple purposes:

1.  We want to come to common terms about our expectations for student work.
2.  We want to see what our students are getting from our instruction.
3.  We want to be able to plan universal instruction that fits our students' needs.

     The strategy of sorting work is meant to be collaborative.  In having discussions together, we are realizing that we do not all share the same thoughts about work, or process, or expectations.  We also don't have the same lenses to analyze.  By having conversations like this, we start to learn and collaborate from each other about our students and how to best help them.  We put value into our colleagues' thoughts, and in our students' work.

SIDENOTE:
Sorting work is meant to be a strategy done with someone else, either in pairs or as a team.  The strategy could be independently used by teachers, too, but we certainly do not expect you to sort every piece of student work that the children create.  Your purpose for sorting needs to be clear, and beneficial to you, before you choose to sort work on your own.

Back to the building meeting...
     This week, we just said to bring work that had a written response to reading.  It could be a whole group assignment, or work from a small group.

4th Grade worked together to sort main idea pre assessments, done in a Boxes and Bullets format.


 

First grade met to sort a formative assessment on character.  They call them Brain Blasts.

 

2nd Grade met to talk about an assessment they gave studying a character (Peter by Ezra Jack Keats) across multiple read alouds.

5th Grade discussed responses in a Reader's Response Notebook, comparing it to the CCSS rubric.


 

Kindergarten brought a "Book Report" written response.

 

Third grade brought their Reader's Notebooks, too.  Their responses were about supporting character traits with text evidence.

 

     As I walked from group to group, I heard a variety of conversations.  Some focussed more on standards, some talked about the qualities that made responses a "2" or a "3", some discussed where their next teaching points need to go, others just talked about if their current teaching point was understood by the class.  In actuality, this is a process that we are just starting.  We don't all have the same vision of what a grade level sample looks like with the Common Core in mind.  It's this type of conversation that needs to happen for us to get to commonality and equity in Standards Based Learning and/or Grading.

To repeat my beginning thought...

If you want to go fast, go alone.  

If you want to go far, go together.

-African Proverb

     I am thrilled that we are at the point where grade level teams can bring samples that they created in their own rooms to talk about next steps and reflect on where their kids are in the learning process. This is a slow process, but I think that if we give ourselves permission to talk to our coworkers about the work the students are actually producing, we will all be more effective teachers because of it.

     Thank you, Hiawatha.