Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary - Chapter 6 Tracking Kids:Progress and Using Assessment to Support Instruction

A Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary Grades by Lucy Calkins

Session led by Kindergarten Team Leader, Debbie Harbour

BIG ideas in Chapter 6

Tracking Kids: Progress and Using Assessment to Support Instruction

Which assessments will you use at the beginning of the year?

	Assessment	Who is this assessment for?	What will you find out?
Emergent Readers
	Concepts about print
	Emergent Storybook Reading Stages (Sulzby)
Foundational Skills & Reading Levels
	Letter-Sound Identification
	Spelling Inventory
	High-frequency words
	Running Records
Volume, Stamina & Comprehension
	Tallies or book logs
	Writing about Reading

How will you get to know your readers at the start of the year?

•  a list of reading levels for incoming students
•  last running record from the year before
•  last letter sound identification and/or spelling inventory and high frequency work assessments from the year before
• end-of-the-year writing (on-demand from Units of Study) from the year before

How will you use running records to inform classroom instruction?

• Committing to  TCRWP’s QRI system for running records
•  Making running records an on-going part of Reading Workshop

o   Prepare in bulk ahead of time

o   Create a running record station

o   Have students sit in a line so you can progress quickly

o   Avoid doing more than one running record at a time with the same child

o   Use the old DRA as a back-up text when you are not sure                                      

• Accuracy -Using MSV for analyzing what systems a child is using – work from what a child can do and use this a jumping off point for what to teach
• Fluency - At level J begin checking for first reading fluency (accuracy, automaticity, prosody or expression)
• Comprehension – retelling and answering inferential questions
•  Use this data for guided reading and strategy groups and also to tailor shared reading, read alouds and Skills Block 

How will you keep notes and anecdotal records? Let me count the ways!

How will you assess volume and stamina?

• Running graph of the number of minutes the class reads each day
• Goals with tally book logs for K-1
• Reading logs in 2^nd grade
• Pulling back as the year goes along to get rid of reading too quickly and fibbing and then bringing them back periodically just to check

How will you assess writing about reading?

•  Keep student work in their portfolios or your assessment system
• Begin writing about reading at levels H/I
•  Use read aloud time for writing about reading, e.g., stop and jot, stop and sketch 

How will students self-assess, making reading goals visible?

• Talk explicitly in conferences giving students words for what they are doing
• Use anchor charts
• Leave a reminder , e.g., sticky note                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary - Chapter 4 Knowledge of Reading Development

A Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary Grades by Lucy Calkins

BIG ideas in Chapter 4

A Knowledge of Reading Development Can Power Your Teaching

1. Emergent storybook reading

• research of Elizabeth Sulzby gives 4 major levels to support
• develop concepts of print
• do the work of phonemic awareness before conventional reading 

2. Work of A/B books

• work at this level is about meaning
• should recognize 12-20 high frequency words, one-to-one matching
• do not hold students at this level, 2-4 weeks is appropriate

3. Work of C/D books

• introduction of visual clue (phonics)
• integration of M(meaning) S(syntax) V(visual)
• transition to book language, introduction of said and prepositional phrases
• addition of consonant blend and digraphs
• continuous teaching of high frequency words
• stop and think about the story

4. Work of E/F books

• stories with clear beginning, middle, end
• commas and questions introduced
• compound words and inflectional endings are introduced
• not ready to skip a word and read on and need better problem solving (M+V-looks at first group of letters and then next group) to stamp out "first letter guessers"

5. Work of G/H/I books

• monitoring for self-regulation
• more episodes (longer books, chapter books) requiring synthesis to retell
• full range of phonics
• multi-syllabic words (chunk and blend)
• addition of Tier II words

6. Work of J/K/L/M books

• longer, chapter books with illustrations disappearing
• greater variety of genres
• more character work
• figurative language

Channeling Lucy!

Try this activity to see how well you know the levels:

How well do you know the text levels?

Place the level or levels  (A-M) by each skill or strategy that you would want to see the student using consistently at that level. 

	1. Retells and summarizes, making inferences, and commenting on story events
	2. Matches spoken words to printed words.
	3. Uses parts from known words to read unknown words.
	4. Envision the story to compensate for low picture support.
	5. Solve difficult words with relative ease.
	6. Moves from left to right when reading.
	7. Word solve with control and independence at the point of error.
	8. Makes a return sweep.
	9. Begins to monitor, cross-checking and self-correcting at the point of error.
	10. Begins to integrate sources of information: making sure it makes sense, sounds right, and looks right (Meaning, Syntax, Visual).
	11. Independently integrates all sources of information during reading.
	12. Thinks about more abstract themes and universal themes.

Next assignment:  1-7-15

Chapter 6 "Tracking Kids' Progress and Using Assessment to Support Instruction"

Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary - Chapter 1 First Things First

For those that want to follow along with our current book study, but are not able to attend...

A Guide to the Reading Workshop: Primary Grades by Lucy Calkins

BIG ideas in Chapter 1

 First Things First

“You cannot create what you cannot imagine.”

• Too many children are not learning to love to read. The longer kids stay in school, the less they like to read!

• What are the conditions that make reading bad for you?  What makes reading good?  It's the same for kids!

• Large, for-profit companies with core reading programs are not the answer.  We have 50 years of research saying packaged programs do NOT work.

• The most important thing we can do to lift student achievement is to support the professional development and retention of good teachers.

• Students need to spend most of their time reading in books that are just right.  We will not close the reading gap by having students read grade level text that is beyond their reach.

• We must model the professional learning as adults that we want in our classrooms.

Next assignment for 11-19-15: Chapter 2

From Post Its to Theories in the Reader's Notebook

Here in Florida, we have been talking a lot about how important it will be for our students to learn to write in response to their reading to meet the common core standards but we are still learning what that "looks like" and how to get the students there.

I was very interested to see what Cynthia Satterlee, from Teacher's College Reading Institute had to say during her session entitled:  From Post-its to Theories to Writing Literary Essays:  Help Students Write Quick Literary Essays in the Reading and Writing Workshop

The first question Cynthia posed to us was, "What do you do with all those post its that the kids are stopping and jotting on while reading?" <As I think of how I threw them away when students were done reading so they could start a new book> Thankfully she didn't really require an answer before she said, "Don't throw them away!  Have the kids use them to build theories and essays."  It's a gradual process.  They move from inference to interpretation.  They take the good work they are doing on those post its and make it a little better as they move to writing about their ideas together.

There are so many ways to use the stop and jot:  as an active engagement activity during the mini lesson, as an exit ticket before they leave for independent work in workshop, during their reading in their books...but for when it is used as a quick picture for the teacher to see their thinking such as the morning bellringer thought, active engagement or exit ticket try using it with a JOT LOT.  On the poster each student has an empty square with their "student number" and they leave their thoughts there.  Imagine how much more thought they will put into it knowing their peers with see!  This will also give you a quick look at who you need to meet with or form a small group for during the workshop.

First have them grow their surface thinking on the stop and jots.  Elaboration on thoughts:
character feeling...... to......character feeling with evidence
character trait.......to.......character trait with evidence
interpretation of character.....to.......interpretation through character

Be ready for quality conversations with your students and for them to have thoughts on their own and with each other by making sure they are reading quality literature.  By starting with their thoughts on characters they have someone to "get to know" to build theories on.  "How is your theory of this character changing?  Why" 

In 4th grade students need to make inferences about characters, develop theories about character and find big themes in the story. In 5th grade students need to make inferences about characters interacting with other characters in the setting, notice that author sets the story up in a certain way to reveal theme.

How to make worthwhile post-its to bring to conversation in book clubs:
Don’t come to book club or conversation club without post its to talk about
Boxes and bullets can work on post-its
Use those to build ideas about characters

If there a lot of post its with one idea on each, work with them to see how to make a big idea (How are these post its related - do theory work with them)

When they are ready to start "talking like an essayist" then they can use that language to build their essay.

Post its are important, it helps the teacher understanding your thinking, it helps you form big ideas

Don’t worry about essay structure first, get ideas.

Here's how they can see the structure with the stop in jots:

This will be a big move for us in writing this year.  I would love to hear tips and tricks from others that are successfully doing this with their students. 

Cross posted on ONCE UPON A TEACHER

Conferring with Readers

During the Reading Institute last month,  I learned some new ways to look at conferring with readers.

Kathleen Tolen had this to share:  You need to prepare ahead of time, not just conferencing on the

Kathleen Tolan

fly.  Keep notes and follow up on something they were struggling with, look at artifacts (post its) in what they are currently reading ahead of time, study data on this child, have the child tour you through the work they are doing with their reading.  Find a way to lift their thinking a level.  There are lots of ways a mini lesson is a lot like a conference.

What do you do in a conference if you don’t know the kid’s books?  Try to read as many books in your classroom as you can.  If you have a series and you read one you will have an idea about the others. In the beginning of the year have the books out in your libraries that you know.  Also, at certain levels there is a way the story goes basically.  We are holding kids too accountable for comprehending everything.  Do you comprehend every single thing you read in a book or every single part of a movie?  Sometimes when you are just enjoying something you don’t comprehend everything.  It’s ok.  Also, don’t hold a child to the accountability level of comprehension that you have.  An 8 year old will comprehend something differently than an adult.  Tour their post its in their book of stop and jots.  Pick a portion and have them read it to you.  You need to hear your kids read aloud to you at times you aren’t assessing.  If a child is reading a non-fiction text then you can look at questions they may have and say:  I see you have a lot of questions about alligators.  You can take these question post its and put them on the cover of your next alligator book and see if you find the answers to your questions there.  USE post its.  Their work will be better.

The important thing to do at the end of a conference is to leave a LINK.  Just like you do in a mini lesson.  What will the student do when you leave them on their own.  In a mini lesson you end with a link and that is how they go into work session. In a teacher/student conference you end your conversation with what they should do or where they should go next with their reading.  (Not necessarily an “assignment”, but more like a habit or action)  You should see evidence that the student is interpreting their reading.  Noticing, comparing and all reading strategies get them there but their goal is to interpret their reading. 

One thing that is important for us is to have reflection time about what we need to get better at when conferring.  Breaking habits is hard so you have to put it in the forefront of your mind.  You need to “hear” what you are saying after it is over.  Audio record your next conference with the student.  This is easy to do with a smarthphone!  Continue doing it until you are doing what you want.  Kathleen did this for weeks and realized she was doing too much of the talking and not enough of the listening.  At first she put a sticky note on her clipboard that said “Shut Up” until a student saw it and asked her why she had that written down.  So she ended up telling the class was she working hard on being a better listener than talker.  They all decided to have a code sign for Ms. Tolan is talking too much which was rubbing their nose with one finger.  It really helped her.  Finally one day after a conference a student said, “Good job!” and she said, “Oh, good, I taught you something?”  and she said, “No, good job not talking too much!”  LOL

A reflecting conference shows how your work is improving or maybe they are in a place they need to reflect and see why things are growing and improving.  The kids need to be involved in the learning.  Let them reflect and SEE what their next step forward will be. 
fly.   Keep notes and follow up on something they were struggling with, look at artifacts (post its) in what they are currently reading ahead of time, study data on this child, have the child tour you through the work they are doing with their reading.  Find a way to lift their thinking a level.  There are lots of ways a mini lesson is a lot like a conference.

Alexis Czeterko, staff developer for TCRWP,  had us reading chapter books and jotting our thoughts throughout so that she could model conferring with us.  
Can I just say this freaked me out?!?  What would she think when she read my thinking as a reader?  Was what I was writing "enough"?  Where should I stop and write? Wow, I wonder if this is how my students feel?  Well, the answer to that was probably no.  My students probably didn't worry about what I thought because I didn't spend much time reading their stop and jots or hold them accountable to deepening their thinking.  Hmmm....  I'm going to remember that.

Alexis Czeterko

Alexis shared these points to remember:

Architecture of a Conference
Research the reader
Decide
    what will you compliment?
    what will you teach?
    how will you teach it?
Give a compliment
Teach the reader something and have them try it
Rearticulate what you’ve taught and encourage the student to do this often as she or she reads (LINK)

Alexis says to look through the stop and jots of their independent book before your conference.  If you notice the jottings on post its are not connected in any way that can be ok but try to get the student to connect their thoughts.  Get a theory about the story or character and continue to see where your thinking changes. Help them make that connection the first time if they are struggling with it. 

Documentation is important.  She logs a date under the students page in her data binder and writes her compliments on left of 2 sided paper and right she rights the teaching point.  Sometimes she will pull out the current read aloud or a mentor text to demonstrate what she is trying to teach the student to do in their book.  Go to the student where they are reading, don’t call them back to your space.  Meet them where they are and if other students are nearby hearing what you say it’s ok. They are actually learning too. When the student is done reading they need to do something with their post its.  They may take a few to a new text to build on their thinking. They may use some to tape in their reading notebook and write about their thinking.  They definintely shouldn’t throw them away, staple them in the reading notebook and grow more thinking!

What are your best tips or tricks for conferring?

Cross posted on Once Upon a Teacher

Close Reading

So let's be honest here.  I do have a fundamental understanding of what close reading is but I have been avoiding speaking the words out loud in conversations for a reason.  I don't know if it's because I'm from the south, or because I got it confused with cloze reading in the beginning, but I didn't know if it was pronounced close (as in - close the door) or close (looking at something closely).  Well now I know for sure.  Look at that reading closely! 

Kelly Hohne

Kelly Hohne helped refine my thinking to seeing close reading as a way to see more in text than you did before to help you grow new thinking about it.  Use different lenses to do this.  Then they take these lenses to new texts.  It’s not about understanding the text only.  It's about learning to do something that you can do again on your own later.

When to do close reading?  You don’t want to do it all the time or you will never finish reading!  Do it purposefully.  Maybe look across the introduction of texts, or maybe kids in book clubs might make a decision to do a close reading of this part where they think it is really an important part.  Or maybe if there is a passage of text they think is not important, then why would the author choose to add it?

Think about why, what will kids get out of it, and how will this help my kids with other texts reading independently. 

Stop at the part you want to look at closely and talk about why that part is powerful. Point out which part they can look at to support their thinking about that part.  With informational text the author chooses illustrations, headings, subheadings and possibly even a word bank for a reason.  Does that support your thinking about this important part you are looking at closely? Is the word choice helping make this part important? 

Lenses to Use with Close Reading:
craft
relationships/interactions
point of view - What is the perspective of the author on this topic?  What perspectives are included in this text?  Missing?
language author used - How has the author used language?  (Non-fiction - How have experts quoted in article used word choice?)  What words stand out?  Why jight the author have chosen these words?  What do they show?  Are the words creating a positive or negative tone?
text structure - How has the author organized the text?  Why might he/she have made these choices?

Go close with very small portions of text

You could do close reading with an except from an article using the lens: what does the author want you to think, then show them an opposing article or text.

As a teacher read the passage as a reader.  Stop  and then reread it and think what part do you want them to look at closely.  What part do I want them to see more in....look at the standards and see what they need to work on.  That’s the part you base the lesson on. 

You may have the students take that portion of reading and write a response connecting their new thinking with evidence from the text. 

Close reading can be used in a mini lesson, while conferring with students, in the closing of a workshop and during book clubs.  When do you use close reading?

Cross posted on Once Upon a Teacher

Ramping Up Readers' Workshop

Most of us who are elementary teachers know we are going to have to teach readers to grapple with complex text in order to help them meet the more speedy growth that common core requires but we don't know yet what exactly that will look like in our classrooms.  We can't go faster or squeeze in more lessons so we need to be very prescriptive about what strategies we use to move our students through text levels and help them respond critically writing about what they read. 

Kathleen Tolan

On Day 2 of Teachers College Reading Institute, Kathleen Tolan reminded us about not forgetting to use the important metacognitive strategies in our lessons but showed us ideas to help students dig deeper for more complex work. 

*  Visualization and Envisionment help students be more engaged in their reading because they see it in their minds eye.  What you envision may be wrong until the text corrects you.  As a reader, you adjust to what the author is showing you with their words.  This is why reading fantasy can be so hard because you don’t have a schema for what something may look like.  You can practice this with kids by reading aloud and having them close their eyes while you read something.  They can sketch what they are see in their mind movie.  This is a whole part of reading that can be lost to some students.  Build the world of the story.  When you can do this and you really understand the character you can better make predictions.  Prediction engages students.  It makes them want to find out if they are right.  Kids can be unspecific about what they think “I think she will be able to do it”  Make them predict the steps that leads to their prediction.  When the prediction is wrong, then you have some work to do about why they predicted wrong. 

* Character work is important because it helps us understand why characters do the things they do.  What are the traits of this character?  Help kids understand which traits might be positive or negative, what happened in the story that might change the character’s traits.  Find text evidence to support it or things that are evidence to the contrary.  Read over your jottings during reading and find out how they go together.  Group your jottings together to make new ideas.  Look at your jots through the eyes of another character.

*Theme in a book is not looking at what book is about.  It is about the aspect of that topic.  Example:  Book is about Friendship.  Theme is how friends can be there for you when you are going through a hard time.  Don't let kids get away with broad statements.  They should be used to you saying, "Say more...".

*Make a chart of sentence starters for students to dig deeper and tell more about their noticings and judgements after reading.
To add on...
This makes me realize...
My other theory is....
The bigger idea I am having now is....
In other words...

Digging Deeper

How do we help our children know that there is hard work that will have to be done for a book?  Tell them.  When you are modeling for your students you need to point out what you are doing specifically, because this is hard work and they need to know exactly the steps to do.  It is possible to over-scaffold or over-coach but you need to be honest about the hard work they are doing so they expect to struggle and reach for the answer.

Because reading is invisible, we have to make it more tangible for kids. There is not a reading skill that we don’t use in life.  Watch their actions and point out when they predict and infer and make connections when they are just living their lives as readers.

Cross posted on Once Upon a Teacher

World of Workshops

A World of Workshops
Presented by Barbara Heard, Debra Palmer-Gyebi, Gail Polak and Kiatonya Wormley: Leonora P. Miles Elementary School, Atlanta, GA

Miles Elementary School is an America’s Choice Model School in Atlanta, GA. Their focus was on using a thematic approach to teaching reading, writing, science and social studies. When forming a new unit they begin with the standards. Right now they are teaching a school wide unit called Freedom and Change. Martin L. King is the icon they use to connect the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop, Social Studies and Science. We watched a clip of a mini-lesson in a 1st grade class. They were using a KWL chart on a book about Martin L. King. After listening to the story, the students went to their seats to respond to the story for the work period. During the closing the students shared their responses.

Next, a 4th grade class used a poem around the theme of Freedom and Change during Reader’s Workshop. Ms Gyebi uses a Poem of the Week to work on Echo Reading, Leader and Chorus reading, and small group reading. We watched a clip of a lesson. The students were doing a Choral Reading of a poem about Martin L. King. The lesson was on fluency.

Ms. Wormley used the Book of the Month to teach Writer’s Workshop in a 5th grade class. The students wrote connections to the story. The story was Feathers and Fools by Mem Fox. They choose this story because it is about war and peace, which fit into their unit of Freedom and Change.

At the end of each two week unit the teachers are required to display artifacts about the unit that are displayed in the hallway.