Reflections on VSRA19 Part 2

     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 5^th 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.”

Reflections from VSRA19 Part 1

I was blessed to be able to attend writing sessions by Pernille Ripp and Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Both of these incredible women had similar messages: in order to teach writing, we need to be writers. Now I’ve been saying the same thing about reading for years, but when someone says it to me about writing, I get incredibly nervous. In the interest of full disclosure, when I’m observed on a day that I am teaching a writing skill, I break a sweat. A monster sweat. A “walking out of a hot yoga studio” kind of sweat. Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.

In Pernille Ripp’s Pre-Conference session, “Passionate Writers”, she first asked us, “Who are YOU as a writer?” This is something that she also discusses throughout the year with her students. Here are some things to consider:

a.    When do you write?

b.    Where do you write?

c.    What do you write?

d.    For whom do you write?

e.    With whom do you share?

f.     What is your writing process?

g.    When do you like writing?

She gave us three minutes to reflect on those questions, and actually complimented us on being able to follow through for that long (apparently what normally happens is that after about a minute people start to “get squirmy”). We didn’t do a whole-group share, but I’m guessing that everyone’s answers were different. This got us talking about how we teach “the writing process” to students (spoiler alert: in real life, the writing process doesn’t necessarily happen neatly in this order: prewrite, draft, revise, edit, publish!).

Ms. Ripp listed things we do as teachers that can HARM the love of writing:

a.    Assume there is only one way to do it correctly.

b.    Force all students to use the same process.

In case you were wondering, I was the one in the second row quietly saying, “PREACH!” For years we have been forcing students to fit THEIR writing into OUR TEMPLATES. If adults don’t all approach writing the same way, why do we think our kids will? Laura Robb even said in a later session, “If we give kids a worksheet that organizes their writing for them, they won’t learn how to organize for themselves.”

My favorite thing that Pernille said is that teachers tend to “edit the student right out of the piece.” YES!! In our class, I’ve been working on just getting the students to find the joy in writing. When they write in their journals, my feedback is mainly asking questions to help them elaborate. Pernille explained that if we got a paper back completely marked up with pen (and let’s be honest, the color of the pen makes absolutely NO difference), it would make us not want to write. Our kids are the same. It is very important for the students to feel confident enough to share their ideas with me without worrying that I’m going to rip their writing apart. As Pernille said, “Writing means belonging. In order to belong, we must feel like we matter.”

One of the session participants asked about the use of rubrics. Pernille makes sure that the students know SPECIFICALLY what she is looking for in their writing. Here is a link to her blog post on Single Point Rubrics:

https://pernillesripp.com/2019/02/24/using-the-single-point-rubric-for-better-assessment-conversations/

Something else that I took to heart was this: let’s be careful of saying, “GOOD writers do this…”
and just say WRITERS (because if students aren’t doing those things, they may internalize that they are “BAD” writers)! We also, according to Pernille, need to offer more CHOICE in writing (try to offer at least ONE of these choices EVERY time):

a.    How they write

b.    When they write

c.    What they write

d.    How they share

e.    What is assessed

In our curriculum, students may not always get to choose their final product, but we CAN give them some choice during the writing process!

I also attended Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s session, Keep a Notebook: Romp, Risk, Rehearse. She emphasized that writing has to come from a place that is meaningful to students. “Notebooks”, she explained, “are a safe place to play.” Students need to know that they are not going to face judgment on the things they choose to write about. At the beginning of the year when we start working in our journals, I give the students a mix of prompts and freewrites. Their freewrites are always my favorites! These are a great way to get to know new students, because they share things in their notebooks that they might not be comfortable enough to share aloud.

My favorite quote from this session was, “A notebook is a gift to your future self.” After the first few days of school, we usually use our journals for reading responses…making predictions, practicing strategies, keeping notes about story events, etc. I jot something each day during independent reading time, and encourage our students to do the same. You would not believe how much I love looking back at all of the wonderful books I’ve read, the quotes that I copied and shared, and my impressions about the books. It’s been so helpful for making book recommendations to students, or for pointing out particular craft moves made by authors.

One thing that Ms. Ludwig VanDerwater stressed was the importance of showing students our writing PROCESS. She said when we model our writing for students, it’s not to show off a gorgeous final product, it’s more like, “I wrote this, and I want to show you what I’m TRYING to do here.” This is something that I’ve been trying to work on in our class this year, but I have a long way to go!

So, how do we get students started writing in notebooks? The following suggestions were offered.

a.    Write from a sketch

b.    Write from a read aloud

c.    Write from a quote

d.    Ponder a question

e.    Freewrite

f.     Write from an object (ex. Pick a button out of a bag)

g.    Create lists

1.    Favorite words

2.    Books read

3.    Books TO BE read

4.    Ideas for future projects

5.    Character names

6.    Thoughts

7.    Dreams

One of my book club students is a writer, and we talked about how he didn’t like one of his stories, so he “scrapped the whole thing”. I told him what I had just learned in this session…always hang on to an idea because one day you may decide to come back to it. He told me that he in fact HAD kept a couple of the characters to use in a different story. I believe that Amy Ludwig VanDerwater would have approved!

My takeaway quote: “Reading often begets writing.”