Combining Old Learning with New

Today we start our new author study on Kevin Henkes books. Kevin Henkes is a favorite first grade author and one first grade teachers have studied for ten years. Today, however, the learning technique was new. Mrs. Ruark used "stop and jot" which is a new technique for first grade teachers and students to help them keep their minds active and engaged while they are listening to a read aloud. Now that's called "rigor."

It's All in Their Heads! Creating Mental Images

Debbie Miller refers to it as creating mental images. Elin Keene refers to it as using sensory images to enhance comprehension and in her newest work Lucy Calkins calls it envisioning. Regardless of what you call it, good readers create mental images as they read. For many readers, it’s more than just visual images. They also pay attention to the other senses by noting “smells, textures, sounds, mood and ambiance”. The images change as the words change. The pictures are fluid. Readers revise their images as they add new information, as they read new information, or as they discuss their images with others. Good readers are able to look at a movie of the actions in their mind or they are able to step into the book by stepping into the “skin” or “head” or “shoes” of a character. Good readers understand that visualizing the action of the story helps them understand and comprehend the words. Good readers use their mental images to draw conclusions, to make inferences, to fill in spaces. The images clarify their thinking. They combine the words from the text with their own schema to create their pictures. The images may come from the five senses and the emotions but they are anchored in the reader’s background knowledge. Good readers draw on those images to recall details after the text has been read.

Tracy has been doing lessons for several weeks trying to teach our children to visualize. We displayed two different activities on our bulletin board this month, one where the children visualized the scene from a passage in a book and another that showed how an image can change as a child talks about her image. Below are some pictures of our bulletin board and the thinking of the children and our thinking about the children's work.

It is important that children see action in their minds. If they don’t, they will never fall in love with reading because they won’t see the movie that other children enjoy. They miss the action and the details and wonder how other children can figure things out.  As a Special Education teacher, I know that for many of my children, the reason that they struggle with comprehension and even with math word problems is because they can't visualize what is happening in their mind. The way that students "see" text is what Tracy and I are were trying to capture with this month's bulletin board.

Inferring

We started a new reading unit this week on the comprehension strategy of inferring. After introducing the idea of what it is and how it helps good readers, Tracy selected a student and put a word on his back. The class could see the word but the chosen student could not. Tracy invited the class to give the chosen child hints so he could try to infer what the word might be. Nicholas got the first word on his back, "mad." The students gave several hints to Nicholas including situations that would make him mad, the synonym "happy," and Shawn even showed Nic his best mad face (on the right)! After several hints, Nic guessed the word. Tracy discussed with the children that it is the same way that good readers infer when they are reading. They have a word or words in the book. They take their own schema (background knowledge) which were represented by the "hints" and put those two together to come to a new understanding. In this case the understanding is the word!

Tan got the second word, "sad." He, of course, couldn't see the word and had to guess the word on his back from the hints that were given by the rest of the class. Once again the students gave him several situations that might make him sad. Jacob did a great imitation of crying and another student gave him a synonym.

 Tan soon guessed the word. Once again Tracy went through the explanation of how the students had used the hints to figure out the word.

The students thoroughly enjoyed this lesson on inferring and seemed to get the idea that the author might not always give them all the information, but instead might just give them hints so they could figure out what had happened. We'll see how the rest of the week goes with this new and complex comprehension strategy.

14 Cows for America:Book-of-the-Month September 2009

Once again, our Principal presented a Book-of-the-month that kept the faculty on the edge of their seats! The faculty walked into the Media Center as a video played to activate schema for this book presentation.

Then the Principal appeared via Skype! She wasn't even at school! She was in South Carolina and was Skyped in for the presentation. She explained why she had chosen this particular book to honor September 11 and the sacrifice that has been made by so many. Then she read the book to us that had been prerecorded. This same recording will be used throughout the day of September 11 so that our children can also see why this book was chosen and hear the Principal read it.

Of course, we always have to learn a new strategy through the Book-of-the-month and this book was no different. The Principal introduced a strategy from Kelly Gallagher's Deeper Reading. She taught us an advanced strategy using metaphors. Not only did groups, divided into grade levels, come up with touching metaphors, but they thought deeply about using such an advanced strategy with their readers and writers. Once again, it was a book to remember. For more information about the book and presentation, check out the Chets Creek Book-of-Month wiki.

Reading with Intention

When I read Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning in 2002, I couldn't wait to take it to school and show it to my colleagues. She took Ellin Keene's landmark work in Mosaic of Thought to a level that even I could understand. Debbie was a practicing first grade teacher, grappling with the same children and questions that I was. She understood my children. The book quickly became a grade level book study... and changed our practice forever. One of the things that we really loved was the way that she took reading strategies and spent time with each one. She didn't flit from one to another every day but spent weeks really teaching students to understand how to use the strategy in their own reading. We adopted her outline for the year and have loved the depth of her lessons (activating prior knowledge, drawing inferences, asking questions, determining importance, summarizing and synthesizing, monitoring, and creating visual images). Reading with Meaning became the first grade bible for our reading instruction.

When I heard the Debbie had a new book, Teaching with Intention, I was on the list to get the book long before it was released. When the book finally arrived, I took it out that very day and began reading. It was like catching up with an old friend! When she talked about "thoughtful, reflective, strategic teachers," I thought, "Exactly! That's what we have been trying to become!"

In this book, Debbie does not remind us of the specific strategies and yearlong lessons that she has already put forth in Reading with Meaning. Instead, she asks us to align our belief system to what we really do in our classroom. If someone walked into my room one afternoon after the children has gone, would they know that I believe that a literate classroom has to be organized, purposeful, accessible and above all, authentic? Would they be able to see the gradual release of responsibility in the way that I use read-alouds, shared reading, guided reading and independent reading? Could they find artifacts of each easily around the classroom? Would they see my notebook of formative, on-going assessment that includes running records, conferring and anecdotal notes along with teacher-made and more formal assessments and then see how that information is being used to design lessons in my classroom? Would they find the joy that the children and I share each day? This type of practice cannot come out of a Teacher's Guide filled with teaching tips, but must be based on an alignment of beliefs. As Debbie says, "it's hard to imagine the circumstances where prepackaged programs and scripts teach children better than I do." . Debbie reminded me to relax, slow down and be present in the moment.

Finally, in this test-obsessed environment Debbie reminds me to trust myself - to not lose sight of my intentions while I am trying to fit everything in. She reminds me to teach deeply and well and to "nix the juggling act." This book was like having a cup a coffee with my favorite teacher friend and leaving our conversation with a smile on my face!

Readers' Workshop in the New Year -2008!

In Readers' Workshop kindergarten teachers are teaching Reading with Strategies in January. These strategies are so very appropriate as most of the children are beginning to read in Level A and B books (Fountas and Pinnell leveling system). The strategies are meant to teach a child what to do when they see a word that they do not know by sight. The first six strategies that kindergarten teachers teach include:

• Does it make sense?
• Look at the pictures
• Get your mouth ready
• Stretch the word
• Point to the words
• Skip it and read on

The poster to the right illustrates the strategy, "Get your mouth ready." The print is shown with the first letter of an unknown word exposed because sometimes if you get your mouth ready by saying the first sound, the rest of the word just pops out of your mouth! In this case, the covered word is sailboats. Each strategy is introduced, demonstrated and practiced for several days during the short mini-lessons that open the Readers' Workshop.

During the work period you will see teachers giving DRAs (Developmental Reading Assessments) or running records to check a child's reading level, conferring with individuals, and working with small groups of children during guided reading. If children are not working with a teacher, they are reading independently out of their individual reading bin.

The Readers' Workshop ends with a Closing where teachers choose children who they have identified who practiced one of the strategies that the class has been studying during the Work Session. They allow the child to explain to his/her classmates how they used one of the strategies to figure out a word. In the picture to the left the teacher points to the word that is shown to the class with a document camera as the student explains how she used one of the strategies to figure out the word.

This is such a fun time in Kindergarten as children are really learning how to read and the children and their parents - and their teachers - are just so proud!