Inspiring Readers

My kids are really loving reading workshop! It was a thing of beauty to finally roll it out this past week and see them all so excited about their books. After explaining how it was going to work one of my students' said, "Wait, you are giving us time to read?" I said, "Yes!" I could feel their excitement in the room (this was a class of mostly readers already). The few students in this classroom that had previously told me they did not like to read or did not have time for reading are changing already. 

I noted on Friday that after asking the students to go ahead and put up their journals, post-it notes and books that two of my reluctant readers were still engrossed in their books. I let them continue and did not bother them. The bell rang to switch classes and it wasn't until then that they put their books down and scrambled to pack up! :) 

One other happy story to share. On Friday's we give a character ed. presentation to our 6th hour class. The theme of the month is friendship and we are e-mailed a PowerPoint to teach and discuss with the students. My mom, who teaches Spanish at my school, had popped in to ask me a question and asked if she could stay to observe. She took a seat and I continued to teach and talk to the students and get them involved with the lesson. One of my students from 3rd hour had asked if he could check out a book from me earlier in the day and said he really liked it. Of course I told him yes. In class he was engrossed with the book during the whole lesson. When my mom brought it up later I was a little sheepish and said, "I know, I should have asked him to put the book away and pay attention, however he is a reluctant reader and I don't want to discourage him at this point. Also, it was a character ed. lesson, so although it is important I felt like it wasn't vital to his doing well in class." She too agreed and said she couldn't believe how engrossed he was in his book--she noted that he didn't even look up once. SUCCESS!

I think reading workshop will really change the way I teach forever. My advanced students love having time to read and cozy up with a book. Meanwhile, they are still proving to me that they can grasp the concepts through their journal entries and through small-group lessons.

I am sorry I am not updating more--between lesson planning, grading assignments, responding to e-mails and keeping up with my school blog for parents I feel like I have not had a chance to keep you all in the loop. Hopefully I can find some balance as the school year continues.

The Book Whisperer

My mind is completely blown. How can everything that we are taught in college be so drastically different and yet still get test results? I have spent this summer pouring over Laura Robb's Teaching Reading: A Differentiated Approach and Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey. I have been reading so many research based articles on reading I think my mind can't handle any more.

Last night I finally picked up The Book Whisperer by Donalynn Miller which has sat on my coffee table for 6 weeks now. I dusted off the title and grabbed my pad of paper ready to read.

I couldn't put it down. Just like everything else I have read this summer she talks about the exact same things. Her book is an easy read--I stayed up until 5am to finish it. She doesn't give you a bunch of research and methods practices like most of the other books but instead gives us a window into her classroom to peek into as she tells us about books and conversations with her students.

I love Laura Robb, Stephanie Harvey and Nancie Atwell because they DO give you the research support to differentiate this kind of reading in your own classroom. However, Donalynn Miller practices all of these same concepts.

I still have a few questions to help wrap my mind around some of this thinking. How is it possible that this will not only make my students readers who enjoy reading but also get the test results on standardized tests? I have to say, it will take time to implement.

Laura Robb stresses that you do  not have to read the same books at the same time as your kids. You can tell when they know what they are talking about or not..I like that Donalynn Miller does read many of the same books. It helps to get the "reading bug" and to make it contagious.

I talked to my students one day last week about how we are going to do book talks this year and they will be reading different genres of books.

"But I don't have time to read. I have football practice after school and then homework for other classes," complained one of my students."

"I promise, I will give you time in class to read your book. However, you will have to do some of the reading at home too," I said.

He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. He was an advanced Language Arts student that was not reading?

"I'm just going to read Dr. Seuss," I heard him mumble.

I came home and poured over my students reading/interest surveys. A few things stood out to me about my kids. One was that they DO have time to read, they are just too busy doing "other" things. The student mentioned above was spending 3 hours a day watching TV because "I'm bored" he wrote.

I was just the start of my "ah-ha" moment. I made my students some guidelines for our book talks in our classroom, just some basic ones that Laura Robb has shared and a combination of some of my other reading this past summer.

I spent hours this past week looking for books that fit into the Realistic Fiction genre. I put them together into a PowerPoint even finding some awesome book trailers.

The kids seemed a little stumped when I told them our first book talk was on Realistic Fiction and I noticed they were looking at me like I was just adding more onto their plates. The student that said he wanted to just read Dr. Seuss looked like he was even defeated trying to figure out how he could get out of my project and reading every day since he was so busy doing other important things.

How could they go through 7 years of school and not find reading enjoyable at all? 

The next day at school I gave my students a paper to keep track of titles of books they wanted to read in the future. I called this the To Be Read "TBR" list. I told them that today all we were going to do was discuss books and they needed their TBR lists.

I then started discussing books with them going through my PowerPoint where I had collected "cool" books that fit into the Realistic genre category. They quickly scribbled down all the books they wanted to read.

At the end of the day I looked at the same student who told me he didn't have time for reading due to football, other homework, etc. He wrote down every book I mentioned in class as one he wanted to read!

I had an ah-ha moment. It is not that my students do not  want to read, it is that they don't know how to find books on their own. No one has taught them this before.

If I can get them to first trust me and trust that I can help them find "cool" books I feel that when I do recommend other books that will be more "classic" or harder in complexity they will be more willing to give it a try.

On Friday, I had five students tell me they went out and purchased one of the books they saw in my PowerPoint because they wanted to read it so bad. One even shared he was almost done with the book! Lucky me, most of the books that I showed them are part of a series so they will have to read the next one to find out what happens. :)

To put the icing on the cake I got an e-mail from a student Friday night. "Mrs. Finley, my dad is going to get me _______ book this weekend. Is it okay to read it for my realistic fiction book talk? What do you think about the book?" I quickly responded back that it was absolutely okay to read the book and left off with a comment that said, "Happy reading!"

I think I've already got my high kids hooked--even those that were maybe a little reluctant or needed some high interest books to show them that reading is cool.

I'm about to flip my classroom upside down.

Stay tuned...

ISN's

Lot of great ISN covers and papers to share my kids have been doing in class!

First up, the boys........

Food and animals!

Dr. Oz made an appearance!

Lots of cars...

This one cracks me up! I love that the student cut out each letter to spell his own sentence! I also love the dog on the window of the convertible!

Inside page of the notebook....

I also had them fill-out the fakebook page that I created. This item is free on Teachers Pay Teachers! It let me learn a lot about my kids!

This is a student I had last year that I'm so lucky to have this year! I love that one of her favorite things about Language Arts is me! SO sweet!

Great to know what makes them enjoy a class too!

I also loved looking at their dreams for the future... I have some future doctors, engineers and even a musician!

THIS STUDENT MADE MY DAY! He had said one thing he disliked about Language Arts was "Reading." Look at his TBR list! It is full of almost every book I have discussed with the kids this year! He wants to read them all! :) 

This is a new student who is clearly trying to butter me up! :) 

This is an overview of the different genres and the definition of each genre. I used a lot of the ideas I found online, however I tweaked some things and added horror to the list!

Now time for the covers decorated by my girls! These are a lot more elaborate!

Lots of make-up and fashion....

and pets.....

The "Funkytown Exit" cracked me up as well as the lady from the viral video "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

I blurred out the student's name, however she had a really cute diagonal of her name!

This student spelled out Honey Boo Boo, her favorite show, because she couldn't find the words!

A quote written out in cut out letters.

Cats were on this composition notebook already so this student gave them sunglasses. HAHA!

The inside of the notebooks...

We discussed how to find a "just right" book.

These are some of our notes. I'm not picky with the left and right side rule because they will be doing so much journaling.

TBR list is taped to the back of the notebook.

This is the TBR list closed and the genre overview with definitions on the last page of the notebook!

Just a reminder to please donate to our classroom library through donorschoose.org!

Reader's/Writer's Workshop Middle School Style

It has been a busy 7 days of school for my minions! As I mentioned before, I am moving up from 6th grade to 7th grade this year. I have about 1/3 of the same kids from last year and the other 80 minions are new to me! I have spent some time the past few days getting to know my classes better and setting up procedures to make sure this year runs effortlessly. 

I don't think I've ever taken this much time to go over everything...usually I am already onto content by now and am freaking out about how to fit it all in for the whole school year! For some reason, this isn't on my mind this year. It has taken me five years to chill out and realize, the content will come, but if I have chaos the learning won't happen. They need to understand my rules and procedures to make this year run flawlessly and they need to know my expectations for this year since things are going to be very different.

I had mentioned that this school year I wanted to do more centers. After reading the past two weeks Strategies that Work and going back over my Laura Robb binder Teaching Reading: A Differentiated Approach I have decided to run with more of the "idea" of Reading Workshop. My collaborating teacher, Andrea, also attended a PD on this this summer, although hers was more on Writer's Workshop. We are going to merge these ideas together for the classroom this year.

One thing I did this week was play a game with my kids called "Survival Game." The kids had so much fun with it and really enjoyed this activity. While they thought they were playing a game discussions were getting heated! I actually had an observation during this game by my principal and one comment that was made was that this was a hard assignment that led to conflict and that I needed to go over my expectations with my students for group work. This was actually the exact point I was making to my students. I wanted them to get passionate about this and make it personal. I also wanted to put them in a situation where they were going to have to work together and compromise with one another. When the game ended towards the end of class I let the groups share out and then I dropped the bomb on them...I explained that there were no right or wrong answers for our activity, but that I was actually looking at the groups working together. We then came up with group rules so that we could work well together throughout the school year. I explained that sometimes you are going to be adamant about your opinion and feel that you are right, however you are going to have to compromise with one another. I jotted down notes as they talked and made notes of really passionate and argumentative students. Students who just sat back and were more "agreeable" and students who really took leadership. I wanted to make sure I broke these students up into groups next time. I also wanted my agreeable students together to sort of make them made a decision instead of sitting back so much. This was a really fun activity and I got to see a lot of personality! It told me a lot about my new students in a very short period of time.

Ok, back on to the daily agenda for class....

I like Laura's model for 45 minute classes in her binder for Reader's & Writer's Workshop.

Monday, Wednesday & Friday will be Reader's Workshop.

Tuesday & Thursday will be Writer's Workshop.

Every day we will begin the same way. We will share a five minute read aloud for enjoyment with the kids. This allows them to see and hear good reading, enhance their vocabulary and, hopefully, get them hooked into a new book! I have lots of books in my classroom library to use for this activity, however I have no where near the 1,000 classroom library books that are recommended. I am planning on continuing to grow my classroom library for many years to get close to this one day. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm only at 200+ (which is really sad since I have approximately 120 kids in my classroom every day).

After the read aloud we will go over the agenda for the day.

On Reader's Workshop days I will be meeting with groups (and the class that my collaborating teacher is in the room she too will meet with groups). We will discuss their book, teach mini lessons on strategies that they need or teach a new skill to them, and then they will practice it using their book. Laura recommends two groups a day--each for approximately 20 minutes.

At the end of class we will all come back together for five minutes to go over what we learned, share what we are practicing, etc. This is more of a wrap-up.

The only difference between reader's and writer's workshop days are that after the read aloud and agenda we then go over a grammar lesson and teach a mini-writing lesson. The students will then work on this in their journals or on their writing piece. We will also regroup at the end of class.

I really love this model because the minions are reading books that are appropriate for their reading ability. Now, for this first time through I have pulled appropriate books for them. It is not a perfect science yet for me and I think this will be a learning process as I go through this. Our first unit is focused on greek mythology while we teach inferences, symbolism, etc. I have done so much research on different lexile levels of greek mythology books and kept a huge spreadsheet. I've then looked into each one to read reviews and see if other people liked them, age appropriateness, length, etc. This really took up a lot of time. I then pulled a list together from all over my district of what school libraries in my district have these books. My amazing school librarian is now contacting schools to gather these books for me. 

Hopefully the students will enjoy them or else I will get feedback on these books for next year. I have some that are as low as 200 lexiles and as high as 1,300 lexiles. This is my first time doing this, therefore I am going to have 3-4 copies of each book and the students will pick the book as a group they want to read. They are grouped based on their lexile levels. They will come up with a reading schedule together, however they will be reading independently--not sitting in a group reading to one another. They will regroup to discuss the book with me twice a week. They will also be journaling about their book in their Interactive Student Notebook (ISN).

Laura's binder has some very specific journaling ideas to teach the standards. My students will be using many of these, although I may have to alter some of them as I teach these lessons or scaffold them for my lower kids.

The area I have really been working on this week is my mini lesson books to teach the strategies. For example, I need to teach the students about symbolism. I would like to find a mythology book to use since that is our unit of study, however I don't have time to go sit at the public library and read through all of these and the internet has been lacking in a greek mythology book with symbolism. If push comes to shove I may just use a symbolism book, such as Fly Away Home and then just have the kids apply the symbolism to their greek mythology book. :( I wish I had a greek mythology picture book for this though to really make the unit tight.

This past weekend I was also working on my other favorite part of reader/writer workshop....the independent reading! Laura says that each kid should have a book that they chose to read for when they finish the class read. So, after they have read their assigned page length (determined by the groups) and journaled they will be reading their independent book. My favorite part of this is the monthly BOOK TALKS! It is similar to a book project, however they just have to read the book and share out about their book--it is like a T.V. commercial for a book. Each book talk lasts 2 to 4 minutes. I have been working on a rubric for this using some I found online as well as some of the guidelines from Laura Robb.

I found a really neat book talk that someone else had made and the recommendation was a different genre each month. Kids can pick the book they want to read from that genre, however it should still be age appropriate and reading ability appropriate for them. (I will be talking to my students more this week about "just right" books to help with this.) For example, September I am choosing the genre of Realistic Fiction, October will be Mystery (perfect for Halloween!), November they must read Science Fiction or Fantasy (we will be getting ready to read Hunger Games), etc. 

This is a big reason why I have been M.I.A. I have just really immersed myself into learning as much as I can about reader's/writer's workshop to make sure this year runs smoothly. It also takes time when you are a control freak like myself and want the kids to be on task all the time...I have that personality that has to research everything to the ends of the earth before I implement it.

Anyone else have experience doing this with middle schoolers? I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas! I'm going to need all the help I can get! :)