#DigiLitSunday -- Conferring

My fifth graders did lots and lots of work on their narratives of "imagined experiences or events" in their writer's notebooks before we ever brought a draft into their Google Apps for Education account. While we were in the notebooks phase of these pieces, I conferred with writers on an as-needed basis. When we were planning, I could listen in on small group conversations or I could take a pulse during share time to get a sense of who was struggling and needed one-on-one help. I could borrow all of the notebooks for an evening and do a quick read-through of their possible leads to sift for those who needed help and those I could use for minilessons under the document camera.

When it came time for a handwritten draft outside their notebook, I didn't give my students much time to pull together all the bits and pieces of planning, leads, and snippets of dialogue. They had a tight deadline and I was brutal -- meet the deadline or forego Genius Hour. I wanted these drafts to be rough because I wanted them to understand that their work on the computer would be to create a new and better draft, not just type up what they had written on paper and call it good. By having every draft on paper, I could easily carry them all home, read carefully through each draft, and make +/- notes for each child on my clipboard chart. Once they began their drafts on the computer, I would gain the ability to have a quick conference with each student by leaving digital comments on their work.

I made sure the initial session on the computer was a short one. All they had time to do was log into their Google account, go to Drive, open a new Doc, name it with the conventions I gave them, and share it with me.

After that first quick computer session, I used my notes from their handwritten draft and left a comment for each student that might guide their work on this next draft.

Every day or two, I read through each student's work, taking notes on what they've improved and what they still need to work on. I have a little digital conference with every student in the comments, and I know exactly which students need my personal attention, and for what. I can group students who have the same needs and do small group work, and I have digital examples of exemplary writing, along with pieces that (with student permission) I can use in minilessons for craft, revision, and editing.

Conferring is the heart of writing instruction. It's what makes the teaching personal to the words the writer has put on paper or screen. Technology has given us another very powerful way to confer with our student writers.

Still Learning to Read: Sticky Notes!

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the 2016-2017 school year.

This was my favorite weeks so far because routines are set and I am just beginning to confer with kids beyond the initial assessments and reading interviews. We are also starting to build routines around reading behaviors that are part of reading communities. I love this time of the year when I can slowly begin to teach based on some of the information I've gathered and think together about ways to move forward as readers. And it seems that we've already gone through our year's supply of sticky notes!

I had a conference with a student who was reading "fat chapter books". She told me that she knew they were just right because if she missed one word on the first page, the book was too easy, if she missed two words, the book was just right and if she missed three, it was too hard.  This is so typical in the upper elementary grades--readers thinking reading is about "getting the words right".  When I met with her about the book, even though she was halfway through, it was obvious to me that she struggled with comprehension since the beginning. I never "fix" things like this for a child because I am interested in helping the reader grow--I am not worried about whether they understand a specific book. I believe strongly in building agency and I know that if I swoop in in September and tell her the things she is misunderstanding, she will not build the skills she needs to build understanding herself. Instead I file the  information and know where my instruction needs to go. I kept my eyes open during independent reading time and a few days later she was ready to start a new book.  We conferred for the first two days of her reading the new book--one to preview and think about what we knew and wondered from the blurb, etc. Then she started reading with sticky notes placed every few pages to help her keep track of her thinking while she read. We talked about the need for readers to take their time during the beginning of a new book because there is so much to take in and understand in those first few chapters. We've met briefly a few times and this strategy is working well. It is slowing her down and also giving her a tool to hold onto a longer story over time (by rereading the stickies before she starts reading the next day). It is evident that she is comprehending better and she is in LOVE with the book and reading.  

Readers love to share books and some readers LOVE books that are "hot off the press". I am one of those readers. I love to get books the day they are released and I love to read them before anyone else. So when I saw Dog Man from Dav Pilkey was due out,  I preordered it so it arrived on August 30. I knew they would be excited about this book--even if they weren't familiar with Dav Pilkey, this cover and idea would draw them in. They'd know the excitement of getting a book the day it is released! I shared the book and the blurb with students during our mini lesson and everyone wanted to read it.  I typically have bookmarks  that kids can sign when they want to be on a list to read a particular book, but at this time in the school year, I am not that organized. So I grabbed a sticky note and introduced the idea of being on the wait list for a book and that it would make its way around our room. Currently we have 5 books with sticky notes just like this being read by someone.  This idea is one that caught on quickly and is building lots of conversations as kids pass books along.   (I may transition to what Stacey Riedmiller does --raffles off books to first reader of new books--you can read about that here.)

Finally, I discovered this strategy last year.  I met with a reader who was struggling with finding a book he loved and with sticking with a book once he found one.  Sometimes kids are overwhelmed by the choices they have and they have trouble sticking with a book because (in the midst of reading) they see another one that they might like better.  I've found that it's sometimes helpful to plan with the child and to use sticky notes as visual reminders. Many of our kids don't have "next read stacks" as we do and they aren't thinking that maybe they can read a book that looks good in the near future. A simple sticky note on the front of the book with a number, helps students like this prioritize reading and begin to finish books. By deciding which book to read 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, the child can commit to finishing one book, while taking comfort in the fact that the others can be read soon afterward.

Really, what did we do before sticky notes!  Even with all the digital tools my students will use for thinking and annotating, sticky notes are still the most important tool in our classroom.

(You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLficuciaryTRead or you can join us for a book chat on Facebook that began this week by joining our group here.)

Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released last week!  

You can order it online at Stenhouse!

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Readers Front and Center by Dorothy Barnhouse

Readers Front & Center: Helping All Students Engage with Complex Text by Dorothy Barnhouse
     Stenhouse, 2014

This is a book about LISTENING.

"We can't teach people if we don't know them and we can't know them if we don't listen to them." p.4

Dorothy Barnhouse takes Lucy Calkins' three components of a writing conference -- "research, decide, teach" -- applies them to reading conferences, and puts each phase under the microscope.

RESEARCH (chapter 1)
In the research phase, Barnhouse describes how we listen to a child read a small bit of text. Rather than focusing on issues of fluency, we focus on each student as a reader, listening to what they have to say and asking questions to understand what's behind their thinking. In this phase, we also refrain from probing to see if they "got it" or can retell the plot. We are listening to what students say about their thinking with an eye toward what we will teach about the way texts work, not just fixing some small misunderstanding in that particular text. "...correcting is not teaching. Correcting is small. It's about one word, one sentence, one text. Teaching is bigger. It attempts to take that moment and contextualize it." p.22

Questions we might ask (with a "tone of curiosity rather than interrogation") in this phase of a conference (p.24-25):

What's going on here?
What made you think that?
Where did you get that information?
How do you know?

DECIDE (chapter 2)
In the introduction to this chapter (p.28), Barnhouse writes, "...how does one decide what to teach?" and my marginal note reads, "Indeed!" The sections of this chapter are "Reading with Vision," "Reading with Agency" (I love how Peter Johnston's work informs Barnhouse's thinking!), "Reading with a Flexible Mindset," "Teaching with Vision: Noticing the How Not Just the What," "Teaching Readers to be Problem Solvers," "Setting Texts Up as Problems to be Solved," "Learning from Errors," and "Building Identities as Thinkers and Learners." This is the chapter that will change the way I conference with students. This is the chapter that lifts my eyes up from the text the student is reading and helps me to remember to keep my eyes (and my teaching decisions) on the way ALL texts work. This is the chapter will help me frame all conversations about texts around the way readers solve different aspects of the puzzle that texts provide. This is the chapter that will keep me grounded in Carol Dweck's "growth mindset."

TEACH (chapters 3-6)
These will be chapters to which I will return often for ideas about how to move students as individuals and in groups to texts of greater and greater complexity. The ways Barnhouse diagrams student thinking will give me new ways to capture the essence of a conference. And even though she gives a shout-out to Cathy Mere on the topic of using Evernote to track conferences, I'm going to try Google Docs this year. Or just stick with my tried-and-true clipboard and not obsess about record-keeping. (I'll update you about my record-keeping again once the school year is underway.)

The most important take-away from these chapters on teaching (for me) would be a deconstruction of the title of the book:

READERS Front and Center (it's about the reader, not the text):
Helping ALL Students (because it's about students, there will always be a text a little more complex than the one they are reading into which we can help them to grow)
ENGAGE (such a smart verb choice, because we want active involvement with authentic purpose)
with COMPLEX TEXT (which is a student-driven moving target, not a list in a program or even the exemplar texts in the CCSS).

Vicki Vinton on Conferencing at #dublit13

I don't know about you, but I can NEVER get too many tips on effective reading conferences.

I was thrilled when Vicki Vinton (check out her amazing blog, To Make A Prairie) gave us 5 quick DOs and DON'Ts in her C session at the Dublin Literacy Conference. I've given these a try in the last two weeks and they work like charms!

(First of all, Vinton's metaphor for a reading conference was brilliant. She likened it to "parachuting into a text" and having to find your way around.)

DO focus on the reader's thinking about the book.
DON'T focus on the plot. 

(Do you know how hard it is not to sit down by a kid and say, "What's your book about?" Do you know how much more thinking the child will have to do if you don't give them this easy way out? Read on for the question that will stop them in their tracks and make them T-H-I-N-K think.)

DO begin by asking the reader what they're working on as a reader. (What are you wondering about, trying to figure out…)
DON'T open the door to a retelling of the book. Don't even let them get started with it!

DO ask the student to read a little right where he left off.
DON'T ask the student to re-read something they've already processed. (In one of the first conferences I did when I put this into place, I was thrilled that the reader anticipated the times when she would need to stop and explain things to me! Is that comprehension, or what?!?)

DO read a few paragraphs or page alongside the student.
DON'T take a running record as the student reads.

• As you read alongside the student draft your own understanding:
• What have you been able to comprehend? 
• What did you have to do to do that (infer, connect details, make a connection, etc)?
• Have you picked up any clues about possible themes or big ideas? 

DO ask the student to SUMMARIZE what you just read together.
DON'T ask the student to summarize or retell the whole story. After all, you want the conference to last about 5 minutes so that you can get to 3 or 4 more students that day and every child in the room every week!

Vicki Vinton is the co-author of

What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making
by Dorothy Barnhouse and Vicki Vinton
Heinemann, 2012

(I'm thinking I need to re-read this book.)