Tips, Tweets & Advice from Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst, Authors of Disrupting Thinking

It's been a while since my last post, but I am back. With the school year's end, there are more minutes in my day for relaxation, reflection on the year's journey, and READING (my favorite)! If you haven't read Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst, I glowingly recommend you do. 

I know...I know. I'm repeatedly recommending professional books to anyone and everyone. However, this book is now on the top of my resource pile for ALL teachers. It has genuinely disrupted and elevated my thinking, as well as caused me to further reflect on my practices as a Reading Specialist and soon-to-be Literacy Coach. 

The questioning techniques shared in the book place classroom discussions into the hands of students. Who wouldn't want a more student-centered approach to literacy? If you desire looking at teaching practices through an alternate lens and aspire to evolve your perspective on students' reading, writing and speaking habits, grab and devour your own copy! 

I love everything these authors have written. I'm quite confident you won't be disappointed. Listening to them speak a handful of times was very enlightening. They are funny, too! Below is a picture from the 2016 Illinois Reading Conference. My good friend Leah was with me in the picture. She's just as much of a die-hard fan of these two as I am! :)

Moving on. We all know there has been a shift in education since the introduction of the Common Core State Standards. The standards return the focus within the four corners of the text and away from personal connections. However, Beers and Probst view reading as a transformational experience and believe REAL reading encourages readers to be responsive, reflective and responsible. 

The authors put a strong emphasis on readers having the opportunity to respond with how they feel about a text. Try asking students, How did this reading change who you are? Have YOU ever asked your students that question? Here's my answer to that exact question (the rest of the questions and my responses are at the end of this post):

Like I said, this book has completely disrupted my thinking in a transformational way. I'm thrilled to have my thinking challenged. That's one way to grow as an educator and as a human being. Right? Before we jump into the tips, take a peek at Kylene's tweet regarding 9 research-based reasons for why reading is so important taken from p. 134 in the book.

Okay, bring on the quick tips, tweets and advice from Kylene Beers and Robert Probst:

• Pay attention to who’s doing the talking. Teach more by talking less.

• Value change in the classroom for both teachers and students.

• There is value in approaching reading as a transaction.

• Encourage and allow students to reread texts that interest them.

• Read from the book, the head, the heart.

• Give kids choice to empower them as readers.

• Allow students to read the same book, but be leery of reading the book the same way.

• Discuss books with students they haven’t read and offer strategies on the best way to do this.

• Both teachers and parents are encouraged to talk with students about what they don’t understand.

• Understand what non-fiction means and teach students to assess the quality of non-fiction texts.

• You can’t improve competence unless you start with confidence.

Discover any new insights? If you are on Twitter, my all-time favorite platform for impromptu professional development, you can track down some outstanding content. 

Check out the hashtags #readDTchat and #DisruptiveThinking for details, guidance, enlightenment and differing perspectives on the book.

I am actually participating in a slow chat within the hashtag #readDTchat. New questions about the book's content will be posted each week. Participants have the full week to answer the questions, unlike the format of a quick-paced 30-60 minute chat. Below are the questions and my responses (A1: is above) to week one, if you're interested. 

Questions on Canva created by @MargaretGSimon on Twitter

One last mention: There will also be a #G2Great chat moderated by Dr. Mary Howard alongside Kylene Beers and Robert Probst regarding their book on Thursday, July 20th. Check it out! 

Happy transforming! 

THANKS FOR THE SHOUT OUT, KYLENE! 

"What's in the Bubble?" Reading Strategy from The Reading Strategies Book

If you have been following my blog, you know how fond I am of Jennifer Serravallo. She started her educational career as a classroom teacher and has become, in my eyes, one of the most genius literacy consultants and authors out there. On the very first page of The Reading Strategies Book, Serravallo states, "The strategies I've crafted in this book stand on the shoulders of decades of research and master teachers from whose work I've been fortunate to learn." Educators can't go wrong with teacher tested and approved strategies that are backed by research!

After spearheading a book study dedicated to The Reading Strategies Book last year, I have since fallen in love with the book over and over again. I routinely review it in search of support strategies for my struggling readers. I am never disappointed and often feel I've hit the jackpot of resources. If you own the book, you know exactly what I mean. My copy (above) is highlighted, dogeared and tabbed all over the place. 

Since I'm a Reading Specialist servicing a handful of grade levels, I have invested time in making mini charts for strategies my RtI students often need. Invested time, meaning I've photocopied the images from the book, sized them to fit in my mini tabletop pocket chart, cut them apart and laminated them. When they are in the tabletop chart, I have the ability to swap the strategy visuals out for the different groups. However, I also place large anchor charts of the strategies most of my kiddos need throughout my room. 

Let's forge ahead to the strategy called "What's in the Bubble?" found on page 167 in the book. This strategy falls under Goal 6- Supporting Comprehension in Fiction: Thinking About Characters. It is best used with students reading at Levels C through M and is focused on the skill of inferring. If students are to fully comprehend fictional texts, they need to better understand characters by being able to infer character feelings and traits. In Serravallo's words, here is how she explains the strategy to students:

We can pause and think, "What's my character thinking here?" or "What might my character be saying here?" Even when the text doesn't tell us, we can imagine, noticing what's happened so far. Pause on the page and put a thought or speech bubble above the character in the picture, point to the bubble, and say what the character might be thinking.

The student pictured below is in 3rd grade and is reading at a Level I. I service him one on one for various reasons. When asked a question, he often responds by reading the text, which of course isn't a true response because he's just reading words. For instance, if I were to ask, "What do you think is happening here on this page?", he would automatically begin reading the text without even trying to answer the question. Since this is the case, I modified the activity when working with him to better meet his needs. 

I first placed sticky notes over the text and had him just look at the pictures. I asked him "What might this character be thinking?" in various spots in the book as we flipped through the pages. We discussed his thoughts orally before I had him write anything down on the thought clouds using some of the suggested prompts below. After just looking through the book, I gave him four thought clouds and explained to him that he may begin reading, but throughout the reading he will need to stop to write down what the character on that page may be thinking. 

He did an amazing job with the activity and was able to write character thoughts that went well with the images. He loved the thought clouds and wanted to reread the story. (Yay!) To switch it up a bit, I had him remove the clouds from the correct page and jumble them up. He then reread the book while placing the clouds onto the page that correlated with the image. I was able to use "Yes! That thought matches with what's happened so far." from the suggested prompts below.

Overall, it was a successful strategy for this student. I'm pleased with the results. If you would like to try this strategy with any of your students, but don't own the book (Why don't you own the book?!), you will find the recommended student prompts Serravallo suggests below. 

• What just happened? So, what might your character be thinking?
• What words is your character saying in his or her head?
• Before you turn the page, pause and think about what he or she would be thinking.
• Put your thought bubble on that page.
• That's what's happening. What might she or he be thinking?
• Yes! That thought matches with what's happened so far.
• Pausing there helps you think about what the character's thinking.

One last tip: For students reading at the lower levels (Level C, for example), Serravallo mentions using thought clouds on tongue depressors. Students may place them on the book pictures to orally tell about the characters' thinking, which can be done independently or with partners. The image below shows the thought clouds I created for my students.

Happy reading!

What I Learned from Dr. Roz Linder's Writing Jumpstart Conference

I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Rozlyn Linder  speak at the Writing Jumpstart Conference in Chicago.  When Dr. Linder contacted me via Twitter in early October to let me know she'd be in the Chicagoland area and that she'd offer a discount code for my followers and me to attend her workshop, I was ecstatic!  I own her K-2 and 3-8 Chart Sense books for informational text and literature. 

Both books are dog-eared, highlighted and tabbed.  Needless to say, she's well respected in my book.  After meeting her in person, I can say she is one of the most down-to-Earth, brilliant and amusing gals I've had the honor to meet.

She discussed how the Common Core Standards have caused shifts in writing, which not only impact writing but reading scores as well. Since this is the case, she began to deconstruct the state tests to see how she can better support her students and to get them to be better writers.  She tested many ideas and collaborated with teachers from all over.  After much thought and hard work, she documented her useful tips and created anchor charts and strategies that align with Common Core via Chart Sense for Writing. 

Dr. Linder's main focus for the day was evidence-based writing.  Since state tests ask students to communicate their ideas via constructed responses, they need to be able to explain or argue a particular point using the text.  They are required to go back into the text and show evidence for their thinking.  Text evidence is the cornerstone for everything in constructed responses.  What we did ten years ago is not working anymore, now that the standards have changed. 

How does this connect to the reading standards? Anchor Standard One states "refer explicitly to the text".  In terms of finding evidence, students seem to snag anything they can and call it text-based evidence.  As we know, what they snag is not always necessarily from the text and may merely come from their background knowledge.  As teachers, we need to get students into the habit of supporting their thinking, not just regurgitating what they feel is text evidence without real proof.  

Dr. Linder commented on how some kids just want to give teachers exactly *what they want*.  Ever hear a student say, "Well, how many sentences do you want me to write?"  The best response to this question is, "Write how many sentences it will take you to support your thinking."   

How school tends to work to DIScourage evidence based thinking:
Teachers tend to model evidence quickly within the text and then have students go back to their desks and write down their own evidence. This brief modeling is very ineffective for most students, especially those who tend to struggle in reading and writing.  She claims, "It's tempting to go straight to writing, but consider how much more effective it is when you scaffold and help students move into something is small chunks."  Her suggestion is to have students jump into hands-on activities to practice finding clues or evidence before any type of writing even begins.  Teachers need to get into the habit of "Teaching evidence ALL day, EVERY day."

Teachers should want students to think and have ideas, not just strive to "have the right answer".  Dr. Linder stated, "Don't create a culture of thinking outside the box as being wrong.  Create a culture that gets students to support their own thinking."  Students are allowed to have an opinion, but get them to prove why they think that or have that opinion.  Get students to think in terms of evidence.  PROOF,  PROOF,  PROOF!  

Teach students to use clues by asking, "What clues do you see?"  Let students know it's not about people agreeing with them, it's about them showing or providing evidence for their thoughts.  Students shouldn't strive to just get to the teachers point of view.  They should have their own point of view as long as it can be supported.

Teachers can prepare an evidence based class by using these two *Big Questions*: What do you know? and How do you know?  Teachers need to immerse students in finding evidence without even using a text at first.  Dr. Linder tells students, "When you tell me something, I want to know how you know!"  She claims this is a necessary precursor to evidence biased writing.  "Evidence based TALK has to happen."  Teachers need to make sure students know how to point to evidence before they can write about it.

At the conference, Dr. Linder had us looking at images then sharing our observations (what we knew) and then explaining how we knew what we knew.  One of the images used was a painting by Norman Rockwell.  We made inferences and noted evidence for why we thought what we thought.  This gave us first-hand experience of how to implement *Reading Images* with the students. 

 

The next day, I tried this out with my own students.  You can use post-it notes of explicitly named evidence on chart paper containing the image and use it as your anchor chart. Remember students should be asked to find evidence before reading and writing even begins.

For this reason, I photocopied a few illustrations from a story we were going to read and placed them onto chart paper.  I then asked my students to look at the picture and answer the question What do you know?  Their responses for what they knew were "He is messy", "It's morning", "It's around the holidays", "It's winter" and "It's cold outside."  I then asked the students, How do you know? What makes you say that?  The students began to tell me how they came to their particular conclusions.  For example, when they said "He is messy", they proved their thinking by saying "There is stuff all over the floor", "His drawers are all open with things hanging out of them", etc.    

I made hand-held signs, in addition to the sign below, to reminder my students to stop and think about the two *Big Questions*.  Click on the image for a copy of your own, if you're interested. :)  

Dr. Linder went on to share additional ideas for students to practice, so they get the hang of finding text evidence in meaningful ways. Below are some of those ideas.
Strategies to introduce evidence in FUN ways: Out of the text ways to get kids to give evidence:

• Use movie trailers!  According to Dr. Linder, "Because movies are visuals, all students have access to the information and it doesn't matter if they are a great readers or writers.  They still get to practice thinking and supporting their thoughts with evidence from the text."

• Use concrete and tangible experiences for making inferences, such as comparing shoes.  Here's the image used at the conference.
  
  Ask students, "What do you know?  How do you know?  What makes you say that?  Tell me more!"  

• Have students Read Images: For example, take a look at magazine covers of the same topic and explain what they think and why they think it.  The example used at the conference was O.J. Simpson.
  
  Of course, it's best to pick images your students can connect with to make it more powerful.  Dr. Linder mentioned using interest surveys to find out what impacts or connects to students.  It's also okay to allow kids to bring their schema into the conversation until they've had some practice for the purpose of getting them talking.  However, make sure to require the students to stick to evidence in what they see in an image, not bringing in other schema, once they get the hang of it.  (If you'd like more information on inferring from visuals and multimodal texts, see my previous post HERE.)

• Use sentence frames when asking and responding to questions.  For example, "So you're saying...", "Based on the image, you think...", "Based on the cover...", "According to..." , "___ explained..." , "One point made (in the news)...", etc.  This will allow for a smoother transition when the students begin writing their constructed responses.  Give students lots of  time to chat about images then ask, "Tell me what you know and how you know it."  Have them practice using the sentence frames in their oral responses before their written responses.
  
   

• Play *Get Trashy*! The idea is to gather random items that may get "thrown away" from two separate types of people (A.K.A. "your neighbors") and have the students infer what types of people they are.  I heard of this idea at the Illinois Reading Conference from Tanny McGreggor.  So fun for the students!  Dr. Linder mentioned, "Kids remember these things.  If you skip the effort and time connecting with kids outside of the pen and paper, you are missing a chance to teach skills they need to write thoughtfully and thoroughly."
  

Well, there are a few ideas Dr. Linder shared at her conference.  There were a ton more, so if you're ever able to see her speak in person, I highly recommend it!  You'll walk away with easy-to-implement ideas for your classroom, no matter the subjects you teach.  Be on the lookout for Dr. Linder's soon-to-be-released book called Big Book of Details to help students elaborate when writing.  If it's anything like her other books, it will be a must-own resource!