Let It Go: Using Reading and Writing Workshop To Develop Reading and Writing LOVE

If you want to try Reading/Writing Workshop in a high school, consider this advice...

Two weeks ago my colleagues and I presented at the Illinois Reading Conference. Our focus - how we have started to change the culture of reading in our school by using reading/writing workshop. The highlight of the whole presentation was the advice that my colleagues gave to the attendees.  As teachers we all know that the hardest part of a reading and writing workshop is not reading how others do it, but instead actually implementing it with our own students.    

Here were my favorite "Must Do's" from our presentation:

#1 - Set aside 10-15 minutes everyday for independent reading.  By giving students time, we are acknowledging that we believe reading choice is important and we care about them growing as readers in our classes.  Our students now cherish this time in class.  They are actually reading and many times grumble when the timer goes off and we have to move on to the lesson.

#2 - Book Talk everyday.  The more we share books with students, the better our chances of helping them find one that they will read.  The best recommendation I learned from Penny Kittle is to hold the book, know the book, and share a passage with the students.  Every time I read a page or two of my favorite parts, it increases the likelihood of that book being checked out. We also do Teacher Book Talk Tuesdays where we switch up rooms and book talk in a fellow English teacher's classroom for the first 5-10 minutes.  Kids love hearing what other teachers recommend.  Book trailers are also a hit for hooking students into books.

#3 - Conference with your students.  To motivate our students to read more, we have to get to know them individually - their likes, dislikes, etc.  Our teachers conference with students any free minute that they have (before class, during reading, during writing, homeroom, after school, during sports practice, etc.) These conferences help us know what to book talk in your classes and can help you stretch a student to a more challenging text.

My colleague's electronic log

#4 - Hold your students accountable. Have your students fill out a reading rate log and a to-read list.  Our students set weekly page goals based on their reading rates.  As they become better readers, their reading rates increase and they are expected to read more.   We do give them a "stamina grade" each week.  If they are meeting or exceeding their reading rate goal they receive full points.  

An example of a to-read list

How to find your reading rate

       








#5 - Have your students reflect on their reading growth.  At the end of each term our students write a reflection.  All of our reflection prompts come directly from Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, and Teri Lesesne's books.  This writing gives us an opportunity to help our students set goals and evaluate how they are doing in class.  This is the most powerful writing I have seen from students. When I read these, I always make sure to have a tissue box nearby.

An example reflection prompt from last spring

I can honestly say that we are changing the reading culture of our school one student at a time.  It definitely isn't easy and in the beginning, students will push back.  But, don't give up. You will see a change too.

Let It Go: Using Reading and Writing Workshop To Develop Reading and Writing LOVE

Over a week ago I had the priviledge of presenting at the Illinois Reading Conference with three of my colleagues and my department chair on how in little over a year we have started a massive culture change in our school when it comes to reading. Thinking back to that day, I don't think any of us thought that we would have over fifty people attend our presentation.  There were plenty of other amazing presentations going on at the same time as ours so to see our room packed made me realize even more that what we are doing needs to be shared! Building an English classroom around reading and writing workshop is not a new concept at the elementary and middle school level, but is definitely not as popular among high school classrooms.

As a former elementary teacher and reading specialist, this is all I have known throughout my career. I have read everything by Nancie Atwell, Donalyn Miller, Linda Rief, Donald Graves, etc. When I tried to share these stories with my colleagues, many told me that high school is "different" and we couldn't do that because we are preparing our students for college.  Then Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle showed up in my life.  After reading all of their books AND attending their workshops, I knew that this could be done in a high school English classroom.  I just needed a few teachers willing to take the plunge.

Here is some advice on how to get started:

#1 - Read the research and books by all of the authors above and then get the support of your department chair.  Without her support, there was no way that the teachers I work with would have ever felt comfortable taking this risk.

#2 - Convince your department chair to do a summer reading book club with Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.  It is short enough and will get teachers to start thinking about their practices.  We started there and teachers implemented a few of his ideas throughout the next school year.  The teachers who really believed in Kelly Gallagher's work asked for his other books - Deeper Reading, Write Like This, and In the Best Interest of Students.


#3 - Hand Penny Kittle's book, Book Love, to those jumpers in your department who are tired of their students "fake reading" and "spark noting" everything.  I gave a short presentation about her work at an end of the year department meeting.  That summer I had one teacher buy her book and completely change the format his classroom.  He was the "lone nut" (If you haven't seen the First Follower You Tube video - you must if you are wanting to implement change.) and jumped in head first.  But once he was in, others followed.

The change in his approach

If we can do this at our school, you can too!  In an upcoming post, I will share the best advice our teachers have for making this successful.

Assessment: How Do You Assess Students Using Reading Workshop?

Assessment:  How Do You Assess Students Using Reading Workshop?

Assessment has been on my brain a lot lately.  After I wrote a guest post for the Three Teachers Talk blog about the effects of giving students choice in what they read, one of my mom's friends (a retired teacher), asked my mom, "I love what Melissa is doing with the teachers in her school, but HOW do these teachers assess what their students have read?"  That question is a tough one and I think teachers would have varied answers depending on their philosophy of the purpose of a high school English class.

My philosophy:  Straight up - I am not an English teacher.  I don't believe that every student must read Lord of the Flies or The Great Gatsby to be a productive member of society or to be able to understand literary terms.  As a child, I loved to read, but I wasn't very good at it.  I was what many English teachers would call a "surface level" reader.  I got the basic plot, but missed all of the symbolism, similes, metaphors, figurative language, etc. that I was supposed to understand to get to a deeper meaning of a text.  My teachers made me feel so stupid that I refused to read the required books, instead I was just like many of the students I work with today.  In order to pass my English assessments, Cliff Notes and I were best friends.  

I vowed that I would never make my students feel the way I did about reading. Instead, when I taught 4th and 5th grade, I embraced Reading Workshop and literature circles with my students.  My ultimate goal as a teacher was to spark my students interest in books and to push them to challenge themselves as readers.  As a classroom teacher, my reading assessments were simple:  I had my students talk about their books with each other and write A LOT.  The students and I wrote letters to teach other every week about what they were reading.  They researched their authors. They researched the time periods or events that occurred.  They created their own group discussion questions based on their analyses of the books they were reading and then reflected in writing on what they learned more deeply about the book from their group members.  When asked, "Have you read all of these books or how do you know if they are truly reading?" I always told the doubters to come into my classroom and talk with my students. Ask them about the books they are reading and why they chose the books they did to read? They will tell you.

Now that I am helping teachers implement Reading Workshop in high school English classes the question of assessment has popped up again.  Many high school teachers struggle with not being able to keep up with all the books their students are reading or are worried that the students are not reading them "beyond the surface level."  I believe high school students can still be assessed through conversation and through writing. There is no need for reading quizzes on the minute details of a text.  The teachers I work with are assessing their students daily:  We touch base with students individually as often as time allows to really delve into what they were reading.  We use shorter texts to teach deeper analysis and ask their students to apply analysis practices to their own books.  We encourage students to create book clubs and record their group conversations to show them how deeply they have connected with the novels.  Our students create book trailers, give book talks, and of course, write.  No matter what method, our students are constantly being asked to reflect on the books they have read and how they have grown as readers. These assessments are exciting to hear, read, and grade!

I am always looking for new and creative ways to assess students.  How do you assess reading workshop?  Please share in the comments below.

My Favorite Resources for Mentor Texts

My Favorite Resources for Mentor Texts

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of posting about my experiences building a culture of readers on one of my favorite blogs that I religiously follow, Three Teachers Talk.  Several of our teachers have transformed their classrooms from a traditional whole class novel English class to a readers/writers workshop approach.  One of the hardest tasks for teachers when making the switch is finding mentor texts to use in place of the whole class novel.  Here are some of my favorite resources that I have found texts for the teachers I work with:

Three Teachers Talk

Amy Rasmussan, Erika Bogdany, Shana Karnes, and Jackie Catcher (@amyrass, @ErikaBogdany,  @litreader,  @JackieCatcher) are four high school teachers who firmly believe in using readers/ writers workshop in their classrooms.  Each morning I wake to find a post that I can use to support the teachers that I work with in our English department.  They share resources like 51 Beautiful Sentences and how they use them to teach author's craft. They share excerpts from books like Brown Girl Dreaming, The Glass Castle, and Impulse and how they use them to teach rhetorical devices and book talk books at the same time. Their ideas and lessons are simple and easy to adapt to any level English class.  I highly recommend following their blog if you are looking for ideas.

Moving Writers and Mentor Text Dropbox
My other favorite teacher blog to follow was created by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell (@RebekahOdell1, @allisonmarchett). These two teachers have focused their blog on writing workshop resources and lesson ideas. What I love most about their blog (beyond the posts) is the Mentor Text Dropbox that they have created. You can find articles by genre, technique, topic, etc. in this folder.  When teacher's are looking for something specific, I send them here first.

Twitter
Twitter can be very overwhelming if you don't have it organized.  I tend to use Hootsuite to follow hashtags like #engchat, #elachat, #nerdybookclub, #aplangchat, and #aplitchat.  Teachers are constantly posting ideas and articles to use in the classroom.  Don't feel obligated to check it all the time.  Even when I open it up once a week, I find wonderful resources here that I can share with teachers.

Newsela

If you haven't checked out Newsela for nonfiction articles, you are missing out on current events that can be read at multiple lexile levels.  I tend to turn to Newsela for current events and articles of the week as the topics are very appealing and relevant for students to understand. Newsela also posts Pro/Con articles which helps our students look at a topic from multiple perspectives. All of the articles are free and you can create a class account (our students sign in with Google) where you assign specific articles to the students to read.  What I love most is that I may say to the students that they have to read the article at ____ level to take the quiz, but they can start at any level that they prefer.  Many of the students will start at a simpler level to get a basic understanding and then read it at the assigned level.  

Flipboard

Another place I find unique articles to share with staff and students is on Flipboard.  Flipboard is a tool I use to create multiple "magazines" with various topics.  It used to be only available on the iPad, but now can also be used on the web so our students have access to it 24/7 from their Chromebooks.  The best part of Flipboard for me is that it does the curating of articles for me under the topics I have tagged to search.  I can open up Flipboard and have resources at my fingertips.  I am even working with a teacher right now who is having his freshman AP World students collect reliable resources for their themes using Flipboard.  

Strategy of the Week (SOTW): Hierarchical Analysis

SOTW:  Hierarchical Analysis

Want to have your students think about the concepts you are teaching at a higher level?

Try having them rank them in hierarchical order of importance… 

I came across a video of the strategy in action on the Teaching Channel: 

Directions: 

Student Example from a Spanish 1 Class

1. Students read a text highlighting important words/concepts (give them a specific purpose).
2. Individually students list the most important concepts found within the text in the boxes.
3. Students partner up and discuss rationale for why they included the concepts in the boxes.
4. Students join another partnership and together place the concepts in hierarchical order of importance (triangle) and provide rationale on the lines next to it.

Graphic Organizer Link

Want Teachers to Grow? Provide In-House Professional Development and Instructional Coaching

Want Teachers to Grow? Provide In-House Professional Development and Instructional Coaching 

For the past three years I have offered monthly hour long workshops to our staff during their planning periods. Because we are on a 4 x 4 block schedule, the teachers voluntarily attend this workshop and still have between 30-45 minutes of plan time to get ready for their next class.  I do this along with meeting individually with about six to eight teachers per week.  

The workshop model can be a crucial element for teacher growth.  We all know that our teachers care about their students and want to help them in any way they can.  Attending outside workshops can be difficult for teachers because they don't want to write sub plans or lose a "day of content" being gone. Workshops outside of school are also tough for teachers because they are run with a "one and done" approach.  There is no follow-up, no presenter who they can run to with questions after they try something in class for the first time.  The teachers who attend my workshops love them because they don't have to miss school and usually walk away with one idea that they can use in their classroom that day.  Providing in-house workshops for staff has given them an opportunity to work with me without committing to weekly or bi-weekly individual meetings.  They come with a willingness to learn and know exactly where to find me when they have questions or need help.  

When I first proposed offering these workshops to our staff, my focus was strictly on infusing reading strategies into the teacher's classrooms.  The teachers were being told that they must teach reading in their content area courses. Many came to me frustrated that their students were unable to comprehend these complex texts, and they had no idea how to teach students to summarize or synthesize materials.  Sound familiar?  This was something that as teachers they assumed the students had been taught in middle school and reality proved that even if they have been taught, they simply were unable to transfer their skills to new courses.  The workshops evolved over the years from a reading and writing focus to a digital literacy focus since our school has gone 1:1.

Each workshop follows this same simple format:

• Introductory activity to get teachers thinking 
• Workshop objectives
• Quick review of the research (why we need to teach these skills)
• 2-4 strategies - we will model and practice at least two specific ones
• Closing debrief - thoughts and take-aways

Planning Ideas:

Over the course of three years doing this I have learned a lot about what makes a worthy workshop for teachers.  

#1 - Don't share too much research or talk at them for to long.  We aren't supposed to do this with our students so I know better than to do this with teachers.  Teachers need to be engaged and doing things.  They don't want to hear more than 30 seconds on why it is important to teach our students these skills.  They need to know how to do it.  

#2 - Narrow down to your favorite strategies to share in the workshop.  Don't overwhelm the teachers with too much.  Have you ever been to a conference where you received an enormous packet of materials that they presenter never went over or rushed through at the end to make sure you got it?  I have been to plenty of them and I always walk away with my head spinning.  It is important not to do this with staff.  Pick a few and save the others for another year or when you meet individually with teachers.

#3 - Pick two strategies to model and then have them practice.  In one of my favorite workshops on vocabulary, I had the teachers in small groups moving around the room completing a carousel brainstorming activity using ACT vocabulary.  Of course they grumbled at first about having to get out of their seats, but by the end of the second round of brainstorming, they were engaged and having fun learning the vocabulary.

#4 - Plan out your workshops ahead of time.  I am already starting to think about what workshops I want to offer our staff for next year.  After spring break I sit down with my department chair and the curriculum director and organize the future workshops based on staff needs. At the beginning of the school year, I share workshop topics and dates at our first staff meeting and remind them to block their calendars for the ones they are most interested in. Teachers are organized by fault and giving this information to them on day one reminds them that I am here to support them in any way that they need.

#5 - Don't be afraid to send out reminders numerous times.  For each workshop, I send out at least four reminders and I ask teachers to RSVP to me.  This may seem like a lot, but I choose different times of the day to send out the emails and am amazed how I always get responses back from each email.  Teachers get bogged down with school so they may miss the first three reminders but then see the fourth.  

#6 - Provide some snacks for each workshop (my school reimburses me.)  I don't provide drinks too often, but the snacks always go a long way.  Bagels, fruit, granola bars, snack mix, chips, hummus and veggies, and of course - chocolate.  Teachers are so grateful for the little pick me up during the day.  

#7 - Offer to model or co-teach the strategies from the workshop in classes.  This simple gesture helps teacher's comfort levels and builds trust.  Not everyone takes me up on the offer, but they do appreciate my willingness to show them (and their students) the scaffolding process in class.  

In-house professional development has been essential for the growth the teachers in my school have made.  When they talk to teachers who work elsewhere about the professional development offered to them in school, they realize how lucky they are that our school offers workshops and coaches to meet with during the school day.

Book Love_The Importance of Reading Choice in a Secondary Classroom

Book Love_The Importance of Reading Choice in a Secondary Classroom

As a former 4th/5th grade multiage teacher, I have always believed in using a readers workshop/ writers workshop approach to teaching English, but convincing high school teachers to read books like Donalyn Miller's, Reading in the Wild, and The Book Whisper and try it in their classes was difficult.  They had not been taught high school English in that way and many felt like this was an elementary/middle school approach.  That changed when I came across Penny Kittle's book, Book Love. From the moment I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.  My book is filled with post-it notes, highlights, and annotations. Here is a high school English teacher who approaches reading and writing in the same way was I taught and is finding success.  I was so excited about this book that I could not stop talking about it in the English office.  I carried it with me all the time and tried to share her ideas anytime I could during my literacy coaching meetings.  I honestly think my department chair thought I was crazy. 

Last spring, the best thing happened - a Heinemann flyer showed up in my mailbox. Penny Kittle was coming to Wisconsin, just an hour or so away from where I live.  My department chair sent me along with another English teacher.  We were so inspired by Penny Kittle's stories that we came back to school and had to share what we learned with our department.  We approached it by sharing clips from her YouTube video with the boys sharing their thoughts on reading.  These boys are like many of the students in our classes and we wanted them to see how this approach can change student beliefs. Once they saw the connections, we were able to share her philosophy and approach to reading and writing in English.

Our Presentation to the Department

Then the magic happened.  One of our junior English teachers asked for the book, read it, and took the plunge both feet in this fall.  He relied a lot on ideas from both Book Love and Penny Kittle's book, Write Beside Them.  Taking the reading/writing workshop approach was not by any means the easy route.  All semester long he felt like a brand new teacher and was spending a lot of time searching for meaningful mentor texts, redesigning lessons, and reading tons and tons of books.  He enlisted other teachers to come to class and share their favorite books too.  I began to hunt down other Book Love followers, like Amy Rasmussan and her crew of teachers who write a blog called Three Teachers Talk.  These teachers inspired me with their posts and I began sharing these posts with him.

Little by little, Book Love started to spread.  In addition to the junior teacher, a few other teachers started adding book talks and independent reading into their daily routines.  By the beginning of second term, two more teachers decided to take the plunge and redesign their classrooms as well.  The conversations these teachers are having with each other is inspiring to me.  Students are reading more books than they ever have before and many are beginning to see themselves as true readers and writers. One of these teachers had over 300 different books read in her classroom during term two. 300! Our students are picking up books that stretch their thinking and challenge them. They aren't just reading "easy" books or only YA.  One student read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books this term. Another junior who has dyslexia and hasn't read a book all the way through since grade school, read over twenty books this semester.  They understand the importance now of building a reading and writing stamina as they prepare for their future.  Above all, these students were thanking their teachers for igniting a passion for reading and writing that they had lost a long time ago. Now if that isn't the best holiday gift for a teacher, then I don't know what is!

Patience and Time: The Most Important Aspects of Coaching Teachers

Courtesy of Pixabay

Every year, during the holiday season I like take a moment to reflect on how grateful I am for the job I am allowed to do everyday.  How many people can say that there job is to sit down and get to know their colleagues? I learn about their families, their students, and all the ways they want to be better teachers in the classroom.  There is not a day that goes by where I am doing the same lesson over and over again.  My job is constantly changing as the teachers I work with are growing and evolving themselves.

When I first started in this position, I was asked to help teachers infuse reading, writing, and vocabulary into their content area classes.  In the beginning, I was able to get a few "jumpers" who were ready and willing to become "reading" teachers in their content. Little by little, with a lot of patience and gentle nudging from teammates and me, I have gotten more and more teachers to join the literacy bandwagon. Teachers are thinking about purpose and skills and modeling and scaffolding more than ever before.  And because of this, our students are being asked to read and write and critically think and discuss arguments more than ever before.  I would be lying if I said every teacher in our school has changed.  That isn't realistic.  But what is important is that more and more teachers are now talking about these skills in their daily conversations.  They are asking each other for help and coming to me to create new lessons when they reflect on ones their students struggled with in the past.  They now see the importance of combining skills and content to help push their students to a higher level.

When people ask me how we do this at our school, the first words that come to my mind are patience and time.  This change has taken time - lots and lots of time.  It has taken four years of hard work, weekly meetings, and an abundance of in-house staff development to patiently help teachers see the importance of disciplinary literacy skills.  Now that we have gone 1:1 with Chromebooks, I feel like I am starting all over again with a new focus on digital literacy.  It is never ending, but that is where patience comes in.  Some teachers I work with are able to incorporate the skills into their lessons right away and for others, it has been a slow yet positive and encouraging process.

If I can offer one piece of advice, I have learned, please don't ever give up on the teachers who are not ready to work with you right away or those you meet with each week that don't seem to be doing anything different in their classes.  One day it will click - your voice will pop up in the back of their head as they are planning a lesson and they will take your advice and try something new in their classes.  You may even get a surprisingly email from a colleague who you have quietly been asking to work with you for years, all of a sudden ask, "Can we meet to talk about_____?"  It does happen and I am starting to see it more and more often.  Just be patient, encouraging, and give them time to ask for help in their own accord.