Knowing Your Readers

For the first month of school, I have struggled to recommend books to my new students. I've done a much better job reaching forward to the 5th graders who were in my class last year. I knew just who would want to read the new Worst-Case Scenario book:

Worst-Case Scenario Ultimate Adventure: Everest: You Decide How to Survive!
by Bill Doyle and David Borgenicht, with David Morton, climbing consultant
Chronicle Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher







I knew just who would want to read the newest Just Grace book:

Just Grace and the Double Surprise
by Charise Mericle Harper
Houghton Mifflin, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher










And I knew who would want to read the newest book in the Amulet series:

My review here.














But I haven't been able to do a satisfying job of matching my new readers to books.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I handed The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson (Franki's mini-review here--last one in the list) to the reader whose first book pick of the year was Cinderella Smith by Stephanie Barden (my review here).

You know that feeling when the puzzle piece you picked fits perfectly in the spot you chose for it? That's how I felt when she came up to me at the end of reading workshop and said, "I LOVE The Friendship Doll!"

SMARTBOARDS in the Reading/Writing Workshop-Thoughts and Questions

So, I have been thinking a lot about Smartboards/Interactive Whiteboards. They seem to be all the talk these days and I am loving learning about all of the new tools available. We have a Promethean Board at our school and I used it in the library for a week a while ago.  It was very fun and I loved lots about it.  The kids were totally engaged, of course! I could see so many possibilities after playing with it for a bit. I would love to have one for my classroom and for my family room--it is quite impressive. A little addicting, actually.  I can see why it is all the talk these days.

The thing is, I have spent lots of time online searching for great uses of the Interactive Whiteboard.  I think there are pretty amazing things that can be done with it to support literacy, especially in Reading/Writing Workshops.  I can also see huge possibilities for early literacy in general.  There must be people out there doing lots with interactive writing, shared reading, revision, etc.   But most of the samples and things that I am finding are pretty traditional things--a more interactive whole-class chalkboard, I guess.

So many literacy teachers have been looking for the same types of things--clips of Interactive Whiteboards being used in ways to support the way we know kids use reading and writing.

I visited a friend's classroom who did some great things with book previewing (She should  start her own blog so she can write about what she is doing with the board--hint, hint..).  Several teachers in our school are using it in very smart ways.  But the examples I find that really match what I understand about literacy development are not that easy to find.

When we visited our daughter's orthodontist a few weeks ago, I noticed that he has a very cool (small)  Smartboard in his office. He used it to show us our daughter's x-ray, to jot things down and play with the x-ray a bit.  It was very fun to see it being used. But I left there thinking hard about the size of the boards that I am seeing in schools. 

I loved the size of the Smartboard in the office--it was about the size of a 40 inch TV.  I started thinking about all that I could do with a board THAT size in class. I could use it as I do the easel--for minilessons, in small group work, kids could use it in booktalks, etc.  After seeing that small board in the orthodontist's office, I started to think of so many possibilities. I know that they are also possible with the larger board but a different size invites different work, I think.  The possibilities I imagined with the large interactive board focused more on whole group things and limited a bit of the way I thought about its uses.

So, here is what I am wondering--

Why aren't more of the Reading/Writing Workshop people out there writing about ways they use the boards to support literacy development?  How can we somehow collect great clips and posts of great uses of this tool in Reading/Writing Workshops?  I imagine it is out there but, why can't I find these samples easily? Am I looking in the wrong places?

Are Interactive Whiteboards for schools only available in the larger size? Has anyone invented a SMARTEASEL yet?  If so, where can I get one and how much are they? I have seen the tables but would love to find a SMARTEASEL.  Is there one out there?  

Does the size of the Interactive Whiteboard that I am seeing in most classrooms invite more whole class teaching because of the size? Or are lots of people using it with small groups, book talks, etc. I can see huge implications for student-led booktalks and am hoping to do more with that next year.

If anyone knows of sites or blogs that focus on Interactive Whiteboards in Reading/Writing Workshop or have answers to any (or all) of my questions, please let me know. I am fascinated with this tool and see huge possibilities. It seems that for people using this tool well, it is just embedded in all that they do, so they don't mention it much.  It is just an invisible part of their teaching just as all of the tools are.  But I am one who learns and thinks from seeing good teaching and I would love to find more clips/posts that show these possibilities in the Reading-Writing Workshop. I would love to find a place where Reading/Writing workshop teachers can go to see the ways in which people are using these.  (I know the National Writing Project is doing some great things with tech in general in lots of places.)  

Please share!

Engagement

Last weekend, I read two posts that really resonated for me.

The first was Katie's post, describing a conference with a young writer who has grown so much this year, but who was not able to put into words what she does well as a writer.

The second was Carol's post, in which she shared some of her thinking about reading engagement. (She has since expanded her thinking to include what we do as teachers to promote reading engagement. Check it out -- it's great!)

My 4th graders always have a hard time putting into words what they do well as readers. It's something I work on with them every year. At the beginning of 4th grade, my students typically think reading is simply about knowing the words. I was positive that this group has come long way from that, but when I gave Carol's Reading Engagement Survey, I learned that they haven't come nearly as far as I would have thought.

The first thing I noticed was in the free response questions. 8 of 19 students who took the survey were proud of or needed to work on fluency or word recognition. Nearly half of my students are still focused on reading at the word level!

Overall, read aloud was the highest area of engagement for my students, with a total score of 67. No surprise there -- I clearly value read aloud. Two other items -- reading longer independently and not wanting to quit reading at the end of reading time were also high with 62 and 63. We have often talked about their growth from the beginning of the year when they could only sit still for 15-20 minutes.

What did surprise me is that two of the items that probe the social aspects of reading -- talking easily about favorite books, authors and genres, and sharing books with "reading friends" were two of the lowest with 47 and 42. In my mind, the class has come a long way in developing as a community of readers who know each other's tastes and share and talk about books regularly. What have I not done to express this as a valued behavior?

This survey has taught me that I need to be far more explicit about the behaviors of an engaged reader. I need to build in even more time for talk in our reading workshop, and I need to teach my students how to talk about books.

I can't wait to have conversations with each of my students to learn more about their answers.

The behaviors on this survey are not what is "valued" about reading according to the achievement tests our students are required to take. But they are certainly more important in "growing a child's reading heart" and in nurturing life-long readers.

A Teacher in the School Library

There's a lot to be said for having a library school-trained librarian in the elementary school library.  

But there's also a whole lot to be said for having an experienced and thoughtful teacher of reading as the librarian in an elementary school library.

Case in point:  Franki's got an excellent article over at Choice Literacy this week, "A Workshop Model in the Library: Time for More Than Book Checkout."