VSRA
allowed me the opportunity to learn from several of my personal mentors:
Pernille Ripp, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst, Laura Robb, and Penny Kittle. These
amazing educators have each had an impact on my classroom practices. What an honor
to talk with them in person (OK, I didn’t actually get to TALK to Kylene and
Bob…I just basked in the brilliance during their General Session. But I promise
you…one day, my copy of Disrupting
Thinking WILL be autographed!).
The
overarching theme of the conference is that OUR KIDS NEED TO BE READING. Each
session that I attended presupposed that we are giving our students time IN
CLASS to read books of their choice. It sounds like such a simple thing, yet it
continues to surprise me how rarely choice reading happens during the school
day.
Pernille
Ripp presented the General Session, “Passionate
Readers” and “Now What? Helping
Students Become and Remain Passionate Readers”. What drew me to Pernille’s
writing, both on social media and on her blog, is that she actually SAYS what I
know so many of us are thinking. One of my major takeaways is that 24% of adults reported not reading a
book in the past 12 months. “There are 24% of people who can’t wait to
never read another book.” Pernille explained, “You know what scares me? Those
people are having kids.” And what scares ME the most is that some of those
people are educators.
It’s
scary how many times I have seen teachers on Twitter make decisions on behalf
of their students like “graphic novels are not REAL books.” Or they limit
students’ book choices to a certain Lexile band. Or they complain that students
are just reading “easy books.” Pernille’s response? “They’re not just reading
EASY books; they’re working on finding their love of reading again. And instead
of calling them EASY books, how about if we use the word ENTICING?” As someone
who has spent the last 14 years with VERY reluctant middle school readers, I
can tell you that I celebrate ANY reading that our students do.
Picture
books? No problem.
Graphic
novels? They’re the majority of my book budget!
Want
to reread a book that you’ve already read? Please do.
Want
to abandon a book because it’s not a good fit? You have my blessing.
Let’s
try really hard not to judge what kids are reading, and celebrate the fact that
they ARE reading.
Pernille
asked us to consider what we are doing or have already done that may have
harmed the LOVE of reading. This was an excellent place to reflect on one of
her earlier statements, “If a program we are using effectively harms a child’s
love of reading, then we need to question that program, not just the child or
the practitioner implementing it.” And my personal favorite, “Teaching with
fidelity doesn’t mean fidelity to the program, but to the kid in front of us.” Can
I please get an AMEN???
These
are the rights that students have as readers in Ms. Ripp’s classroom:
a. Choose
freely
b. Challenge
yourself
c. Abandon
books
d. Reread
books
e. Discuss
your reading
f. Share
your reading
Another
question we were asked is, “What does your school value in reading? How do you
know?” Please take a moment to reflect.
I
am trying DAILY to get my students to believe what Pernille said to us,
“Reading should not be something just to get through.” I have spent huge
amounts of time reflecting on my students’ reading behavior. When we give them
reading passages and multiple choice questions, they know when they get to the
last question, they’re done. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But once they finish a book, I want them to start another one. We're never DONE reading. Sadly, not all of my
students seem to feel a sense of accomplishment when they add a title to their "Books I've Read" list like they do when they complete an activity or assessment. I'd really like that to change.
In
all honesty, I sometimes get very, VERY frustrated in this job. A great deal of
my time is spent trying to convince students that they should WANT to read…not
just to PASS THE TEST, but for the sheer JOY of reading…to let yourself sink
into a book and be transported somewhere else for a little while, to appreciate
the language, to feel something, to THINK, and to let the author’s words change
you somehow. I believe that a huge part of our problem is how “reading” is
presented in school.
Kylene
Beers and Bob Probst recommend three
critical changes for our classrooms:
1. Increase
VOLUME of reading
2. Rethink
SKILLS taught
3. Increase
accountable student TALK
Here's something
to think about. “When we go to a school and there are rich conversations going
on in some classes, and in other classes students are sitting on a computer
answering questions, there is no equity going on in that school.” They referred
to this as “segregation of intellectual rigor”. Think about your school for a
minute. Which students are having rich, academic conversations? Which ones are
sitting at computers answering questions? Might there be a discussion that needs to happen?
During their session, Ms. Beers and Mr. Probst modeled the Three Big Questions.
1. What
surprised me?
2. What
does the author think I already know?
3. What
changed, challenged, or confirmed my thinking?
When we practiced reading a passage
using these questions, we were actually THINKING about what we read rather than
just extracting information from the text. At the end of the day, isn’t that
what we really want our students to do?
On a
personal note, if you have not read their book Disrupting Thinking, I highly recommend it. The BHH (Book, Head,
Heart) Framework hangs in our classroom, and it is a quick, easy way to have
students connect with a text. I wrote a post about it here: How We Read Matters
At
Laura Robb’s session, “Bringing Striving
Readers into the Reading Life”, she and a team of 5th grade
teachers explained how they totally rewrote their literacy program using BOOKS
(no basal reader of any kind).
1. Self-selected
choice reading book (EVERY DAY at the beginning of class)
2. Anchor
Text (picture books used to teach the mini-lessons for the reading strategies
3. Independent
reading book (at student’s instructional reading level for practicing the
strategies in their own texts)
Their
“striving readers” have 90 minutes of ELA every day PLUS an additional 73 minutes
of intervention. Both teachers and students write in their notebooks daily. Ms.
Robb explained, “No computer can do this…you need a SKILLED teacher.”
In her session, “Book Clubs”, Penny Kittle mentioned, “Freshmen in college have As
and Bs on their transcripts, but can’t read and write.” (If this fact doesn’t
scare you, WHY NOT???) She said that according to Pedro Noguera, the wrong
question to ask is, “What can we do to raise student achievement?” The RIGHT question is, “What can we do
to challenge, stimulate, and engage readers?”
Ms.
Kittle recommends three steps:
1. ENGAGE
the kids
2. INCREASE
volume
3. Eventually
increase text COMPLEXITY
It is
so important to remember that reading VOLUME has to come first. After the students
have become more engaged readers, then we can begin to introduce more complex
texts.
Some
of my favorite quotes from Penny Kittle’s session:
“The
best intervention is a good book.”
“If
they’re not writing, it’s probably because they’re not reading.”
“READING STRATEGIES ARE USELESS IF YOU’RE
NOT DOING ANY READING.”
“In
our work as teachers, we are agents of change.”
