Reading Workshop Routines and Structures

     The first week of school has finished, and the teachers at Hiawatha spent it getting to know their kids, building classroom community and positive climate, and adjusting back to the routines and schedules of school.  It was a great success.  If you would like to take a tour of our first week, via Twitter and Storify, here you go:
https://storify.com/leahod/first-week-success

     The second week, though, can bring some pressure.  It could even make you want to scream a little.

     Curriculum starts creeping in rather rapidly, and for our staff that means they are ready to start getting some feedback based on the curriculum.  BUT, let's start as a reasonable manner.  If we build reading workshop well at the beginning of the year, then learning can begin and continue to take off all year long.  That's why I like to focus my first feedback of the year on the basic routines and structures needed for a successful workshop model to occur.  It helps us know if we are on the right track, and it gets me in the classrooms to offer support and answer questions as they come up.

     When I come into a classroom for brief visits at the beginning of the year, I look for the things listed above.  Do I expect to see them ALL in place during the visit?  Of course not!  But, at least one of those things is usually either being actively taught, or evidence of it is seen in student behaviors or on the walls.  So, I simply circle the things I see and then write notes about what I notice or observe in that visit.  No judgements.  No evaluation.  I just let the teacher know that I can see that they are building workshop routines and structures in their classroom.  And, in the process, I get to see the students.

     Why did I choose to include those things in my list above?  Honestly, they just seem to be some of the lessons or structures that once you have in place, you can focus on content and the CCSS in your instruction.  If you don't have things like a meeting place, or a time for mini lessons, or partner routines, or anchor charts, etc. you will have a much harder time once you eventually start trying to cover the standards.  Also, if your students don't have stamina or are not engaged when they are reading, there will be management problems once small group instruction starts.  We are not planning for small groups or CCSS lessons now, but they will be much easier down the road if the workshop routines and structures are established in the first 6 weeks of school.

     On the post its on the right, I like to give compliments for things that are going well, and considerations for things that I have questions about, or perhaps things that I didn't actually see but might be in place.   Considerations are just meant to help the teacher reflect on the routines and structures they have established in their room.  They often just help us have a conversation about the workshop after the lesson has occurred, or jump start another routine or structure.

     I walk into classrooms with a growth mindset mentality.  I am looking to give high fives through my notes, and validate the hard work that has already been put in place.  I know that we all want to make sure we are headed in the right direction.  I am lucky to be a person who tells our staff that they are on the right path, and help them continue down it as well.  

     I am eager to get into the classrooms and start supporting the teachers by talking to the students and doing a little kid watching myself.  Here we go!

(Thanks, Bitmoji, for the Little Leah's in this post.)

     

Self-Assessment in 1st Grade

     We have a first grade teacher who has really embraced growth mindset, for both herself and for her students.  She is willing to collaborate and learn from her team, and other coworkers, and the friendly lit coach (me).  Her name is +Julianne LaFleur.

     Today, we were meeting because she had found a video with a lesson idea that she would like to try out in her room.  (More on that in a later post).  It centers around feedback, and we ended up talking about some lesson ideas we had planned in her shared reading block around reading with fluency.  We had met a few weeks ago to figure out how to split lessons between the reading mini lessons and shared reading so that they worked together in a balanced literacy way.  For reading workshop, the long term goal for the unit is to create "movie book clubs" around some drama and story reenactment.  So, for shared reading, we thought it might be nice to focus on reading with fluency and gestures to work toward that end goal.  Julianne also wanted to create a way for students to self assess and to give feedback to each other about their character performance.

     Julianne has a 1:1 iPad classroom, so her students are very savvy with tech.  But, what impresses me is how the students use that tech to self assess their learning.  Take this for example...

Here is a video of one of her students showing the facial expressions and gestures of a character from a just right book in his independent reading box.
Take 1!

     He watched his own video, then used this rubric to self assess his video and submitted it to his teacher through Showbie.  Oh his rubric, he marked himself as a frown for both eyebrows and mouth not matching the emotion.  Julianne then decided to use his video to model having the class give him feedback, and they also told him to add those two things as well.

Click Here for Full Rubric

So, he went back to iPad and did it over again!  Here is a video of her student, after he self assessed himself and the class gave him feedback to use his eyebrows and mouth more.
Take 2!

     Isn't that incredible!  Even in first grade, students can learn that we can always improve.  We can assess ourselves, we can ask others for feedback, and we can do things more than once.

#growthmindset
#proudlitcoach

Compliment Conferences

     Conferring with children is one of my favorite things to do.  I think it is the closest thing that teachers can do to continue growing those readers, after they have grown up a bit and no longer sit on their parents' lap to read.  Sitting next to a child, one on one, and reading with them (even if just for a few minutes) shows that you value them as an individual reader.  It also really helps you be responsive to their needs as a reader.

     Last summer, +Felicia Frazier and I taught a PD on conferring, and the summer before that +Marilyn McManus and I did.  The truth is, there are many ways you can go about conferring with kids.  My teacher bookshelf is filled with books giving me protocols for reading with students.  

     With so many ways to confer out there, we came up with a template that took what I felt were the key points of all those gurus.  This is what we came up with...

Research: In order to be responsive, we have to take time to see what the student is actually doing.

Compliment: Giving the student an affirmation as a reader will create a more positive conversation.  It will also make sure that you are focussing on their strengths as a reader, and what they can actually do.

Decide: What will help this child move along right now, based on strengths?

Teach: Model the strategy, and use gradual release.  Think "I do, we do, you do." 

Link: Remind the student that this strategy can be practiced beyond the conference.

     If you have 3-5 minutes to read with a kid, you can get through those steps and really be responsive to them as a reader.  Even if you skip a step, or add a step here and there, you most likely will still be responsive, because the simple act of reading one on one with a student gives you information about them as a reader.  

     I think most teachers would agree with me.  Conferring with kids is something important and valuable.  But... where do you find the time?

     We just had mid year check in meetings with the teachers in my building, and meeting after meeting described all the fantastic work they are doing in guided reading, strategy groups, and with intervention groups.  But, with all those pieces in their day, many were struggling to get to conferring.  So, we discussed the idea of a compliment conference.  The steps are a little different than the ones above.

Research: In order to be responsive, take some time to see what the student is actually doing.

Compliment: Notice a behavior that you want to continue, and compliment them on it.  

Link: Remind the student that this strategy can be practiced beyond the conference.

     In a compliment conference, you could walk around and spend 90 seconds talking to each child, and get quite a few conferences done in a small amount of time.  In the process, you will be giving accountability to the readers in your class, as well as specific feedback on what they should continue to do to be successful readers in your classroom.  Along the way, you will also notice things that are not going as smoothly, and taking note of those things will help you determine mini lessons you need to add, strategy groups you need to pulls, formative assessments you need to give, etc. 

     There is a FANTASTIC video of a compliment conferences in action, done by Jennifer Serravallo, here:

     Serravallo also has a video of a longer Research-Decide-Teach conference, like the one Calkins describes in her Units of Study.  Here is a video of that:

     

      Serravallo also has a video of what she calls a Coaching Conference, seen here:

     No matter what structure you use when conferring, I highly suggest that you keep notes in some way.  Either in a binder (like the Sisters' Pensieve), a sheet of labels, a clipboard, in Evernote, etc.  You should always take a moment to jot down the feedback you gave and behaviors you noticed.  Below is a snapshot of some conferring notes from this week in +Katie Cardelli's class at Hiawatha.  The sheet she uses gives her a spot to write the compliment, but also jot down possible teaching points for next time (if using a compliment conference format).  

     If the longer format conference is taking too much time, think about trying Compliment Conferences out and see how they go!

     Happy Reading!

What is the Purpose of Grading?

     Last week, I wrote a post about our staff using the narrative writing standard of the common core and annotating evidence of it on grade level exemplar samples, provided by the Lucy Calkins Units of Study.  You can find that post here.

     Jane DeCaire and I had done that activity to help up get ready for a task that had been assigned by our district Writing Core group.  They had asked that every school pick exemplars of their narrative writing so that we can group them and look at samples from across the district.  In order to do that, we felt that we had to familiarize ourselves with grade level expectations.  All too often, we compare the samples in the room with the other samples in the room, and pick soley based on comparing them to each other.  By looking at the standard and a grade level sample (most of which were more developed than our kids produce), we began to see where the "bar" is.

     For this week, we brought some of our student writing and had the teachers look for evidence of the standard in those samples, and determine what were samples that meet the standard, and if we had any that exceed.  In a previous meeting, we had used these terms to sort work into categories:

1: Below
2: Approaching the standard
3: Meeting the standard
4: Exceeding

We had asked our staff to bring the top 3 samples from their class.  So, is the work they brought a 3 or a 4?

 OR ?

     That seemed to be the question that arose.  We are just getting our feet in the water with standards based grading, and our report cards do not necessarily match the work we are beginning to do with our staff.  So, in my opinion, it comes down to our PURPOSE for grading in the first place.  The great Bob Marzano wrote about it in his book, Transforming Classroom Grading.  Here is a link to a piece of it about purpose for grading.  

He names 5 purposes:

1.  Administrative purposes (promotion, retention, class rank, etc.)

2.  Feedback about student achievement (one of the typical primary purposes of grading)

3.  Guidance (guidance for choosing placement, like a guidance counselor would do)

4.  Instructional Planning (to help determine groups and instructional plans)

5.  Motivation (for the students)

     So which is most important?  Marzano said, "In short, there is no clear pattern of preference across the various sources except for the importance of feedback. Consequently, schools and districts must undertake their own studies of teachers and administrators regarding the purpose of grades." Hey, he must be eavesdropping at our meetings!  :)

     Back to that "Is it a three, or is it a 4?" question...  It depends a bit on our purpose at Hiawatha.  If we are using that 3 or 4 to show whether our students should promote to the next grade, or be retained, then we really need to know what a three or a four is.   Our report cards are not there yet as a district, though, and that is a conversation that really should be held district wide.  

     What if our purpose is feedback about student achievement?  If we look at student work to see if they achieved the learning goals of our lesson, then it is also important to really know what would be considered a 3 or a 4.  If the majority of the class does not get that 3 or 4, should we then use the information to plan for instruction and revisit the missing concepts?  But, if we don't have a clear understanding of what a 1, 2, 3, or 4 really mean, it could be possible for kids in one class to get a 4, and kids in another class to get a 2, for doing relatively the same quality of work.  How do we know what to reteach then?

     What if our purpose of grading includes student motivation, but the 4 is marked for performing at the next grade's standard, and no one in the class can even perform at grade level?  How does that affect motivation?  

     There are many, many, many questions that come up when we start to have conversations like the ones we are beginning to have at Hiawatha.  I really think that all of those purposes for grading are relevant to our conversations as we begin a journey towards standards based grading.  I think the most important factor right now is the collaboration of the grade level teams.  The answer might be different if the task is a pre-assessment, a response journal, a writing sample, or a math problem.  The fact that we are talking with each other, and trying to align our expectations, is critical.  

So, here is a question for your team:

What was your learning goal for the lesson/ assessment/ unit?  What did you expect for them to be able to do?

Perhaps that is your 3.  And it is good to get a 3!  The 4 really should be all that you expect in the 3, but go beyond what was taught to the whole class.  

In short, here are some goals for us as we move forward:

1.  Use the standards in the conversation.  The more we reference the standards and talk about them as a team, the more we understand their potential impact on our kids.

2.  Know that we are in the early stages of this process.  It is OK if, for now, we use this process to just help us decide what to teach next.  It does not have to be about report cards right now.  

3.  Get to know your kids and what they can do.  Move them along to where they can go.

4.  Give yourself permission to figure out your learning goals/ targets and then communicate those to your students with student friendly checklists.  (More on that soon!)

5.  Use our conversations to give better feedback to your students, and less to grade them.  

Thank you, Hiawatha staff, for starting on this journey!   

Feedback is...

     We keep hearing that word... Feedback.  But what is feedback?  Is it a "Great job!" or a high five after a job well done?  While we all want positive compliments and praise, feedback is a little more that that.  I have been collecting ideas from Twitter posts and blog entries that I have read, and decided to compile them into a quick list to help me better define what good feedback can be, both to students and staff members.

Feedback is...

• timely, relevant, and action oriented (John Hattie)
• personal and fast!
• not about the person (as a person)
• given during lessons, or very soon after
• practical
• a resource that allows students to take active steps to advance their own learning (Margaret Heritage)
• non-evaluative
• related to learning goals
• an opportunity to revise work and deepen understanding
• a teaching opportunity
• collaboration, not correction
• a formative assessment
• not advice
• information that includes what works and why
• not praise
• not about right or wrong
• feedback towards the summative assessment (Wiggins)
• based on student strengths

What am I missing?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

RISE Model by Emily Wray