It is 6 p.m. and I have just wrapped up a “laborious” hour of math homework with my daughter. Math homework is typically my husband’s “job,” but tonight he is at a meeting so I am in charge. Just like my daughter, I find reading work much easier than the abstract tasks associated with the math work that comes home every night. Students struggling with math is very real but has not necessarily gained as much attention as students struggling with reading. Math Response to Intervention—identifying students who may be at risk of falling through the cracks either in reading or in math—is redefining education. However, the challenges that exist in implementing RTI for math can be significantly different than those for reading.
In the video below, Lynn Fuchs, a senior advisor from the National Center on Response to Intervention (http://www.rti4success.org/aboutus/staff#lfuchs), talks about these differences. She reflects that reading intervention is, in some ways, more straightforward because learning in the early years provides the building blocks for later comprehension and fluency, whereas math knowledge can follow a more indirect path including fractions, geometry, calculus, and measurement that don’t all naturally emanate from one another.
It’s no surprise that teachers are leading the charge on innovative interventions for struggling students. Technology is a very simple vehicle teachers can use to support these students. For example, Gabrielle Smith from Etna Elementary School brought an iPad into her classroom and used an application to test math facts among her students, making it fun to practice facts over and over again while storing children’s scores and progress. Overall, as teachers I think we need to be aware of the differences between reading and math as it relates to Response to Intervention.
Reaching our students—easier or more difficult than before? To answer, go back to your first year of teaching or your freshman year of high school when your teachers were reaching you, or trying to.
In the digital era, we may feel like shouting or at least hitting Caps Lock before responding: more difficult! The sense of competition with digital tools breeds a kind of exasperation—how do I get my students’ attention, much less sustain it for an entire lesson and string enough of these together to cover the standards?
When we leverage the digital tools that define our students as digital residents and make their tools our tools, we get closer to reaching them at the very least. Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm have long advocated bringing together in-school and out-of-school literacies (Michael W. Smith, Temple University, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Boise State University).
The E-Book Experience
Daily independent reading on wide-ranging topics and across varied genres is a key way our students become proficient readers as they increase vocabulary, and apply metacognitive and comprehension strategies, while gaining information. This is not news to our ears! Using e-books can bring together our students’ digital residency with best practices we know that align to balanced literacy. CAN, but how? In conversations I’ve had with teachers in many school districts, I hear the concerns:
How do we provide students with appropriate texts, matched to their specific reading level with e-books? How do we support students, based on their reading levels so that they engage with text successfully? How do we address accountability?
As reading teachers, these questions haunt us—we want students to have the e-book, digital reading experience they will connect most readily to, but we also demand (rightfully so!) the same care we use to select print texts.
Consider an e-library, with precisely leveled texts, such that a student’s virtual library card provides access only to those texts appropriate to the student, taking reading level and (for our ELLs) language level into careful account.
Customization options in e-books are astounding and make differentiating the e-book experience easy and efficient. The ability to place support through virtual sticky notes on virtual pages at the point of use takes differentiation to a new level. You may have taught the vocabulary strategy of using context clues to determine meaning. So, in the e-book you have assigned to a group of students who need to practice this strategy, you notice the text:
Pourquoi tales often point out character flaws, or foibles, that people have, such as being boastful, proud, or impatient.
How helpful would it be to these students to place a virtual sticky note for them right in the margin that reads: “What is another word for “foible”? Give an example.” Students respond on the virtual sticky note.
With this feature, we serve quite a few “masters”: differentiation, strategy application, and accountability.
So, while the e-book experience may not replace the valuable experiences our students have with print books, they open doors that print books can’t and at the same time motivate and engage students, our digital residents who live in the same digital neighborhood as e-books.
You may enjoy perspectives on e-books from No Shelf Required as well as author Michael Pastore who has recently written, 50 Benefits of Ebooks, A Thinking Person’s Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution.
Here are some tips to help you adapt a Reader’s Theater script for your classroom needs:
- To use a script with the whole class, divide the class into several groups and have all groups read the script and then perform it for one another. Allow students who have the same part to work together to determine characterization, voice, and expression. Or use a script with a whole group by allowing several students to choral-read certain parts.
- Assign a part, such as a narrator, to be read by several students together. If you pair a stronger reader with less-capable readers, you provide modeling and support for the less-capable readers. Change the name of a character to fit the gender of the reader.
- Assign a part or parts to the teacher, principal, or other adult helper.
- To add readers, assign groups of readers to read specific parts.
- For scripts with narrators, assign a new narrator or narrators per page or scene.
- Students who don’t have a part can take responsibility for turning the lights on and off, or bringing props onstage. They can also dress up and appear onstage as extras.
- Have students help you find additional speeches or parts, such as introductions and conclusions.
- Add songs so that more students can participate in the performance.
What’s New @ Benchmark Education?
Reader’s Theater Word Plays – Language arts instruction has never been so much fun!
More posts about Reader’s Theater:
Read the 5-part Reader’s Theater Series:
- Reader’s Theater Day 1: Multiple Reading Opportunities
- Reader’s Theater Day 2: Echo-Reading
- Reader’s Theater Day 3: Choral Read and Table Read
- Reader’s Theater Day 4: Repeated Read/Rehearsal
- Reader’s Theater Day 5: Performance
Reader’s theater often creates a buzz of extra excitement for your students. But if they have not learned how to channel their excitement, it can lead to behavior problems. Before using a script, explain your expectations to students, model correct behaviors, and provide opportunities for students to practice correct behaviors in a controlled environment. You can observe and make notes to provide feedback during these times. Provide independent practice time for students to demonstrate correct behaviors.
For a student who has behavior problems, provide guidelines that explain the consequences of not behaving. Monitor the student’s success. Privately acknowledge the student’s accomplishment.
Several scenarios follow; each has its own set of potential behavior problems. In each case, you will want your students to understand what is expected of them and learn the indicated behaviors so that they can become good performers and respectful, cooperative listeners.
When working with a teacher-led group, students:
- meet quietly with the group
- practice listening to others as they read
- wait for their turn to read
- follow along while the script is being read
- follow instructions for what to do outside of the reading group
- ask for help when needed
In a rehearsal group, students:
- act responsibly when the teacher is not present
- know when it’s appropriate to help another student or make suggestions
- ask for help when needed
When not in a reading or rehearsal group, students:
- know the purpose and expectations for the activity, including standards of quality
- follow instructions for what to do when given seatwork or other activities
- know what supplies are needed, where to get them, and how to use them
- complete and turn in activity work
- clean up after an activity
- ask for help when needed
When part of an audience, students:
- demonstrate active listening
- stay silent during a performance
- give appropriate comments regarding the story, characters, and performance, using character names rather than the names of the performers
When performing, students:
- speak and act their parts
- are courteous while others are performing
- speak in a loud, clear voice using expression and fluency
- enunciate for understanding
- prompt others if necessary
- accept both criticism and praise appropriately
Read the 5-part Reader’s Theater Series:
- Reader’s Theater Day 1: Multiple Reading Opportunities
- Reader’s Theater Day 2: Echo-Reading
- Reader’s Theater Day 3: Choral Read and Table Read
- Reader’s Theater Day 4: Repeated Read/Rehearsal
- Reader’s Theater Day 5: Performance
At Benchmark Education, we are all passionate about building literacy.
So when asked to select 3 words that best describe Benchmark Education, our team got to work and our brainstorming resulted in the following wordle:
What do you think? Did we miss any words that you may have chosen to describe Benchmark Education? Share them here!
I have been working with schools lately regarding Guided Reading, and one principal asked me to put together a list of tips (basically reminders) for teachers who are implementing Guided Reading. Teachers were so grateful; I thought I might share it with others. Below is my list!
- Guided Reading is the heart of Reading Instruction. It is the time where students apply all the reading strategies taught throughout the literacy block.
- Students should be reading independently most of the time during Guided Reading, while teachers monitor and make notations of reading behaviors.
- An instructional leveled text is a text that students can read with 90% to 94% accuracy. Any percentage below that is frustrational level. Students reading 95% accuracy or higher are reading on an independent level.
- Running Records and observations of reading behaviors help teachers determine when students are ready to move to the next level.
- Running Records should be taken on leveled texts recently read in Guided Reading. Conducting Running Records on each student weekly allows the teacher to make necessary instructional decisions regularly.
- Students access fiction and nonfiction texts differently. Nonfiction is more difficult due to the text features such as captions, tables, graphs, maps, etc. Students need many opportunities for application of strategies with nonfiction.
- Selecting an appropriate leveled text plays a vital role in reading instruction. Teachers must determine the purpose or focus of the lesson based on the needs of students. Students’ needs are always first priority.
- For longer texts, teachers should give an introduction to the section of text being read that day. A discussion should always follow the reading in order to assess comprehension.
- Meeting with all reading groups daily is definitely ideal. However, that may not be possible. Schedule your groups throughout the week, making sure that struggling readers meet daily. Students on grade level could meet three times a week, while students above grade level could meet twice a week.
More on Guided Reading:
Every one of us recognizes the book introduction as a key aspect of the “before” reading component in guided reading. Imagine you are introducing Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers to a group of 3rd graders. You activate their schema about Native Americans, tapping into their prior knowledge and making connections to their life experiences. You frame it this way: “Tell me some things you know about Native Americans.” Their responses vary, most are on point, a few surprises! In other words, a typical beginning to your small-group lesson and one that starts your students on their journey of successful reading into the world of Native Americans. All is well, right?
These students most certainly are being set up for success in this reading, of this book, on this particular topic: Native Americans.
Could we be doing more for our students? Could we get more from these instructional minutes? I think so! And the answer lies in portable strategies, focusing on strategic moves successful readers make whenever they read.
The shift is small. In addition to the particular book and its theme or focus, what if we also considered the reading behaviors of successful readers at the strategy level? With this small shift in our thinking, changing our focus and language only slightly, we change the game significantly for our students.
Portable Strategies
Let’s keep our lesson and small group-text the same, Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers. We recognize that good readers think about what they know about a topic before they begin to read a book. With that consideration in mind, pinpointing a strategic behavior of successful readers, the book introduction to the same group of 3rd grade students now includes this language: “Good readers first identify the topic of the book they’re about to read and think about what they already know about that topic. So, I want you to practice this. Turn and tell the person sitting next to you something you know about the topic of this book, Native Americans.”
As you listen in, your immediate results are the same: most students giving ideas on point, a few surprises. The key difference is that you have reinforced for students the portable nature of the strategy—so that whether you, as a student, are in Mrs. Boyle’s English class or Mr. Pedryc’s social studies class, or Ms. Graham’s science class, you carry the strategy with you.
So, the more we include strategy instruction, the better equipped our students will be to engage in strategic reading behaviors.
You CAN take it with you is our message to students into every class, for success across the curriculum!
More on Guided Reading:
We just came across a fascinating editorial piece in Education Week that addresses the need for professional development as part of the new shift toward the common core standards.
The commentary, entitled Common-Core Work Must Include Teacher Development and written by Stephanie Hirsh, cleverly asserts that ”the dramatic shift in teaching prompted by the common core will require practical, intensive, and ongoing professional learning—not one-off “spray and pray” training that exposes everyone to the same material and hopes that some of it sticks.”
In addition, she reminds us that new technology resources make professional learning all the more accessible via shared learning platforms and “emerging tools such as classroom video capture, earbud coaching (in which teachers receive real-time coaching via an earpiece while they work), virtual classroom simulations, and online tutoring.”
Hirsh sites the state of Kentucky as one to watch — having recently claimed to be initiating improvements to professional development as part of the commitment to the common core standards.
What about your schools? As the 2013-14 school year approaches, (and it will be here before you know it) what is the buzz in your hallways about preparing staff for the shift to common core?
More Common Core topics:
- Common Core: Emphasis on Complex Text
- Using Genre to Teach Informational, Narrative and Persuasive Texts
