As of January 21st..

After today's Mills meeting, I have decided that I am going to focus only on my higher reader/s and on what growth in reading looks like for them. I have dropped 2/3 rd of my target learners in order to pursue an understanding of differentiated instruction for the higher readers. I hope that is okay.

I started the year with the question: In what way do my students need to grow in their reading? What do they know? What do they not know? What do they need to learn?

I realize that for the most part students who are lower or and mid readers make the appropriate progress or visible progress... it is easy for me to see they came in reading at level A and by the end of the year they might be reading level E or if they are mid level readers they might have come in reading E and leaving at I or J... usually they make visible, tangible progress.

The progress or lack of progress that higher readers make is less visible. These are students I find the hardest to get to since I am focused on the struggling ones; these are students I rarely do running records with, or give least feedback to. I have been astonished in the past that at the time of conferences I am found without very few data sources to back my assumption that they are doing well.

I realized that I need to figure out what do these students need in my class?

These are students who come in with strong reading, fluency, accuracy and comprehension. These students consistently read series books like Magic Tree House, Junie B. Jones etc. that have a predictable format and not a whole lot of character development; and although they may miss a lot of the story, manage to get the gist and retell partially. They do have trouble summarizing what they have read at these higher levels. These students do not like to retell and I am wondering if they don't like to retell because they are really not fully grasping the story and it is then harder to summarize, or they love to read and don't want to take the time to respond or it is something else?

My focus is on Jasper. He is really into reading Magic Tree House books. When I sat down early in the year, I could see that although he doesn't use higher level vocabulary, he is really tuned in to new words he wants to know; able to think and talk about his own understanding and struggles while reading -- "words that don't follow the spelling rules are hard to figure out, like light" he said. He is self aware. At the same time, he really resists retelling. And although in principle in believes in reading a variety of books, when I look in his book bag, I find anywhere from 4-7 Magic Tree House books.

I need to do rethink… what the next steps are…

As of January 19th...

My current version of my question is what does differentiation look like for my range of students... How are they growing as readers? ARE they making the appropriate growth? What are the next steps in comprehension?

 The data I have collected between the December and January meetings is: Running Records, some retellings, and contents of student bookboxes to get a sense of what they are most comfortable reading.

What I am thinking (or wondering) now about my students’ learning is... what else is important? What do they need to learn? How else are they able to show their comprehension beside retelling?

Blog for Dec. 6

1.      What question are you thinking about?

My question at this point is what are the students telling me about what they don’t know. What do the range of my students need to do? What sort of differentiation are they asking for?

2.      What specifically do you want students to learn and be able to do?

I want the students to be able to make appropriate growth and I need to figure out what that growth looks like.

3.      What is something that you have learned about your focal students’ learning that has surprised you or been unexpected?

What surprised me was that when I asked students to do a reading response to show comprehension, my high student/s did not necessarily show their competence in that. My assumption was that my higher students would breeze through and their overall writing competence will reflect in their comprehension piece.

 

What I learned from this conversation is that things are not clear in my own mind. It is not about my own learning but it is about theirs. Teaching comprehension is not about expecting them to fill out comprehension reflections but for me to think about how they can show their understanding.

To attain comprehension they need to learn about the different elements in a text. They need to learn about different kinds of texts and their purposes and learn how to read texts differently. I was mainly focused on sequencing when I was trying for students to do retelling. They need to learn how to pull out the important pieces of the story and separate them from inconsequential details. So, they need to think in terms of what parts of the story if left out would change the story. I haven’t taught them in that way. Before retelling they then need to learn about these elements, create a rubric to refer to before they turn it in.

To me, now retelling has less to do with filling out a sheet so I know that they understood the story and more to do with how they tell the story.

 Retelling is not such a simple process. Students actually do not know the different pieces that make a good retelling. They don’t know the thread that connects the beginning, middle and end. They also don’t have a rubric to use to ensure they can show their comprehension.

My next steps are to clarify in my own mind what I am trying for them to do.

Examples and building rubric

Blog for Dec 4

Here's what I'm planning to do on my inquiry between now and the December meeting

·       Introduce a second reading response (other than Retelling) about Favorite Part. “My Favorite part of the story is … because…”

·       I will also assemble all the focal students’ reading responses and look at the progress in retelling, spelling and reading sight words. I’d like to look at what students are doing or not doing in their retelling. Once they solidify their basic retelling skills, I plan to move towards scaffolding retelling which requires them to articulate the problem and resolution elements of the retelling.

I am a bit concerned about where some of my lower students are in their reading and how they will get to the end of the year reading standard and how can I get them there. More than a third of my class is reading at level D or level 6 and by the end of the year they need to be at Level I/J. What do these students need—what will need to be taught, what kind of instruction and feedback and support system do I provide for them that will get them there? More rigorous sight word work, guided reading, front loading and familiarizing them with books they will be reading at their next level, reading both non-fiction and fiction, constant specific feedback, reading comprehension work to build a strong foundation. Good Teaching is what they need right now with the specific goal of providing a strong foundation and moving them forward.