Staring a New Trimester-Goal Setting in 4th Grade

This week seemed like a perfect time to set goals, revamp a few things and move forward in our workshop.  Our elementary schools works on trimesters so our first set of report cards went home this week and we are at the beginning of our second trimester.

My class is filled with readers. They read lots, talk about books, etc. But many seem stuck in a genre or series right now. This is typical and not necessarily a bad thing but I wanted to talk to kids about expanding their lives as readers. So we had a few conversations about ways readers can expand their reading lives a bit. My thinking was that we'd have the conversation and it would revolve around tastes as readers and it would get some kids thinking beyond the kinds of books they had been reading since August.

Boy, was I pleasantly surprised. The kids definitely talked about tastes as readers and the need to find more authors and series they loved. But they also decided that finding one author or series and knowing it well was a way to expand your life as a reader. Then the conversation turned a bit and they started talking about the ways in which they think when they read. They decided that one way to grow your life as a reader was to change the ways you think while you read. They also talked about changing the habits of your reading life.  It was a fascinating conversation.

The next day, after kids did a quick write of their personal goals, they summarized a goal in a talking bubble that is posted in our room for the next several weeks. One thing I have learned as I started my life as a runner, was how important it was to make my goals public.  They seemed bigger once I did so I thought posting them in a semi-formal way made sense. (And the self-portraits make me happy:-)

We also formed reading groups based on goals.  We had groups set based on goals and kids chose the groups they thought met their goals. Then I looked at assessments and decided on some groups. I met individually with each student this week looking at the groups they had signed up for as well as the new ones I put together. I shared some general assessment information and the things I thought they could use some support with. Then together, we decided on a few groups and they signed up. These conversations were great and the kids were so smart about themselves.  It is always amazing to the kids that I have noticed what they are doing. I also love the conversations that happen after I meet with a child. Sometimes hours or days later, a child approaches me and says, "I was thinking about the groups I signed up for and I think I want to add one. I could really use help on finding evidence in the text to support my thinking. Can I sign up for that one too?".

So we are set for the next several weeks. We have great things in place and great places to go. I love the time of year when the conversations become honest because trust is part of it.

Cris Tovani on Rigor/Hard

One of my favorite sessions at the All Write Summer Institute was Cris Tovani's talk "Rigor and Hard are not the Same: Redefining Terms to Engage More Students."

Cris started by challenging us to think about whether we believed that our time should be spent covering vast amounts of content, or engaging students in purposeful work. It's kind of a no-brainer to choose between those two based on our personal philosophy of teaching -- of course we want the engagement and the purposeful work, but the pressures we are under because of testing push us to act in ways that don't always match our philosophy.

To help us to redefine what a rigorous curriculum might look like, and the kind of rigorous work our students might embrace with engagement rather than compliance, Cris led us in an activity where compared and contrasted reading that's hard, and reading that's rigorous. We started by listing things that make reading hard. Most people's list included

• no background knowledge
• unknown vocabulary words
• not invested in the work
• too many words or too much data
• no choice

Next we thought of a hobby in our own lives that is at times rigorous and at times just plain hard. I thought about baking. When I've planned well and have all the ingredients and tools I need, when I get to share the outcome, when I have the choice of what I make, and when I have the support of more experienced bakers, the work is rigorous. When the work is rigorous, I have internal motivation to do it, it energizes me, and I linger with it. When baking is hard, I don't have a choice, my time is crunched, things go wrong in a domino-effect way, and I drop or avoid the project. Can you hear how similar that is to when reading is rigorous vs. hard? The important factors to hold onto  are

• good planning 
• the social nature of reading/learning
• choice
• support

In the same way that reading levels change based on background knowledge, interest/motivation, and purpose, rigorous reading varies from child to child and from moment to moment. My work is no small feat: I need to help each student learn to tell the difference between hard reading and rigorous reading. I need to teach them to embrace rigor. I need to know books well so that I can help each child find the right book at the right time.

It's a big job, but the work, for me, is RIGOROUS, not hard!