Reading

People are surprised that I skipped a lot of school my junior and senior years. What's not surprising, perhaps, is that when skipping school, I stayed home to read.

I don't just like to read. I get so wrapped up a book that I stop responding to the outside world. I read widely and for many different purposes: to learn, to reflect, to grow, to be entertained, to write, to envision. I tell my students, that if they just came to school and read, with a little guidance perhaps and some writing and discussion about what they're reading, for seven hours a day, five days a week, they would learn a great deal, maybe more than they do now. I believe that.

My life as a reader is the foundation of much of my reading instruction. Much of the rest is a result of watching my students and coming up with ways to create reading and thinking habits in ways that will serve them well, not just during my class, but for the rest of their lives. I define the word text loosely: film, paintings, photos, slide shows, prose, poetry, lists, websites, etc. For me, it's not about the textbook selection or the standardized test; it's about the act of thinking in relation to text and all future acts of thinking and all future texts and text choices. What you see below is also informed by my own professional reading: Robert Marzano (Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, McREL, 2001), Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis (Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement, 2nd ed., Stenhouse Publishers, 2007), Janet Allen (Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading 4-12, Stenhouse Publishers, 2000), and various other texts and conference presentations.

Low-level Readers
Most of my ten years at Piedmont, I requested and taught the lowest-level section of our eighth graders, those that had not yet passed the NC End-of-Grade test for reading. What I noticed about my students was that they could decode, but they could not make meaning from what they read. For the most part, they also hated reading and would do it as little as possible, and they became quickly overwhelmed by extensive assignments or requirements. I needed to keep it simple and I needed to teach them how to think as they read. What I came up with by the 2004-05 school year at Piedmont was what I called "Stop and Think," basically a set of five reading/thinking strategies my students used as they stopped periodically in their reading to think. I would demonstrate and have my students practice each thinking strategy, first as a class then individually (using color-coded post-it notes). We started with visualize, then visualize and question, then visualize and question and make a connection, and so on. It took most of first semester to have them able to use all five well. Once I felt certain a student understood and could use a strategy, I never forced him/her to use it. As readers, I recognize we all have cognitive preferences. I wanted my students to think about their cognitive preferences as readers and take ownership of their own improvement.

Stop and Think Overview
Stop and Think Sheet
used during reading after all strategies
understood and practiced
Stop and Think Reflection
Stop and Think Assessment

Reading independently was especially important for my fragile readers. Every 90-minute class, I held a 30-minute silent reading time during which my students were required to choose something interesting to read. During the reading time, they were to complete a purposely-small summary sheet. I assessed it with a pre-established rubric and we tracked points on the wall. They were also required to complete the same summary sheets at home (just copied on blue paper instead of white), one due at the beginning of each class. It was the same sheet, same rubric, same due date, same procedure every time for consistency. Two times a quarter, students would organize their sheets and reflect on their growth as readers.

Summary Sheet: Front, Back, Rubric
Individual Turn-in Record
Reading Goals and Self-Assessment
     completed twice per quarter after
     students had looked back through
     and organized their summary sheets

Classroom discipline has never been much of an issue for me, though I have to admit that my low-level reading classes were a challenge, especially because I was looking for more than good behavior. I wanted them to engage. I wanted them to want to be better readers and go about it in a sophisticated, reflective manner. For many of my students, that kind of sustained intellectual focus on reading was a problem. So we created a rubric and worked on it.

Reading Focus Rubric and Tracking Sheet

Reading Process Tools
Plot Comic
Triple-entry Journal
Visualization/Summary Sheet
SQ3R Helpsheet (POMS 1997-98)
     SQ3R steps = Survey, Question, Read,
     Recite, and Review
Discussion Transparency and Questions

Literature Circles
I have also been heavily influenced by Harvey Daniels. See Literature Circles, 2nd ed., Stenhouse Publishers, 2002. I designed the following in 2003-04 for use with Edith Hamilton's Mythology.
     - Guidelines
     - Contract, evaluation sheets, and roles

Reciprocal Reading
     - Explanation
     - Instructions
          Transparency for students
     - General Reflection Questions
     - Student Guide Sheet

Seminars
     - Guidelines and rubric
     - Seminar Record sheets for teacher
     - Possible Seminar Discussion Questions

Independent Reading
I strongly believe reading is the key to improving virtually every skill in the English Language Arts and in almost all other academic subjects as well, including math. The research tends to back me up, so over the years I have become a pusher of reading. I want kids to get addicted to reading. I leave student choice as open as I can while helping my students see the importance of choosing challenging books and classics.

My first step in setting up an independent program is to establish the importance of reading by sharing research. In 2008, I saw Jason Turner of MetaMetrics give a great presentation about the ways in which lexile reading levels can be correlated with job requirements and income.

Real World Reading, Real World Consequences (PowerPoint)

Then, I give students their reading indicators (usually MetaMetrics lexile levels) and we talk about how they might improve themselves as readers - mainly practice, practice, practice spiced up with a little challenge. Then it's time to enable them to make informed choices with book talks, book suggestion lists, a well-stocked, organized classroom library (with the classics marked), etc.

Book Talk Sheet
     used with book talk by librarian to help
     students choose first books
Book/Author Lists (PDFs)
     Morrison's Classics List
     Frequently Banned Books
     Author Average Lexile Levels
     MCHS English 2 World Literature 2007-08
     POMS Guidelines 2006-07

I am not interested in cute projects. I want my students to demonstrate state standards, assess themselves, reflect and set reading goals, take ownership of their brains and learn to enjoy the responsibilities of that ownership. It's all about getting students to thinking in a directed and rigorous manner about their reading. I want them to go beyond summary and opinion to analysis and evaluation. The 2008-09 Independent Reading Assessment (IRA) sheet and rubric really are the culmination of the kind of thinking I've wanted my students to do over the years. Repetition makes habit, so after about four sheets, my students branched off into projects of their choice (powerpoints, posters, etc.) using the same rubric for assessment.

2008-09 Assessment Sheet (IRA)
     with Analytic Rubric and Student Sample

Reading Records
     MCHS 2008-09
          - quarterly, simple
          - you can ask students to reflect on
            different questions each quarter
     POMS 2004-05
          - quarterly
          - goal-oriented with progress rubric
     POMS 2001-02
          - year-long with parent component

Earlier Independent Reading Requirements
     MCHS 2007-08 (PDFs)
          Book Review, Passage Sheet, and
          Vocabulary Sheet (due twice/quarter)
     POMS 2006-07 (PDFs)
          Book Review (due twice/quarter)
          Project Alternative
          Vocabulary Sheet (due every 2 weeks)
          Guidelines 2006-07
          Early Guidelines (by # pages read)

Miscellaneous
Parent Independent Reading Assessment
     Note and Rubric (POMS 2003-04)
Parent-Student Journal Contract, Cover Sheet,
     and Instructions (POMS 2000-01)
Reading Legacy donation flyer

I've always looked for ways of having students apply budding literary knowledge and analysis skills to their independent reading. These journal sheets come from 1999-2000 at Piedmont. I think I assigned one about every two or three weeks.

Journal Sheets 1999-2000

Reading Strategies
Annotation
Double-entry Journal
Post-it Notes
Golden Lines
P-CASTT
for analyzing poetry; based on TP-CASTT
by the College Board

Literary/Critical Analysis
To teach adolescents to analyze text, you have to help them learn to see a text from the author's perspective, to consider the author's purposes, audience, and intended impact with the literary tools and elements of his trade. I start by making sure students know and can identify literary elements in texts. Early in my career I did this with copious notes, but it just became about knowing the terms rather than using the terms. My suggestion is keep it simple with mini-lessons and short, visual notes focused on the terms with which students have difficulty. Don't make it only about memorizing or out-of-context identification; give students the terms as tools and quickly make it about applying the terms to what they're reading, including independent reading.

Terms
      General/Literary
      Poetic
      Genre
      Grammar

Students will also need to know what they should be noticing while they read.

What to Notice Notes

In the next stage we practice identifying and discussing, first within easy (like children's books - see Children's Book Analysis sheet) or single texts then comparing/ contrasting across multiple texts. I try to move students from a focus on their own opinions to the author's techniques and intended impact. I also start moving them from analysis, separating out the literary gears of text to see how it all works together, to evaluation, making a critical judgment about whether a piece of writing works from a literary point of view.

Literary Analysis Matrix (MCHS 2007-08)
     one per text or chapter
Discussion Transparency and Questions
Style Analysis sheet (POMS 2004-05)
Text Comparison Matrix (POMS 2000-01)
     copy onto 11x17" paper

It is important for students to analyze and evaluate texts on their own. I believe a written analysis shows more about what students can do than multiple choice questions, so I focus on having them write out an analysis with a number of requirements (see analysis test checklist). Students usually need to practice a process for going through the text and writing the analysis. I start by demonstrating with a text myself, then having student groups work through a text and write an analysis together, then having students complete one individually. All steps require plenty of discussion and feedback, and a generic analysis sheet helps. I used the following material with an English 4 unit focused on British history's effect on the reading, writing, and speaking of English, so there's an added component about the effects of the time period.

Analysis Test
Blank Analysis Sheet
Sample Analysis using Beowulf
     Part 2 of excerpt in textbook
Other Samples/Demonstration Pieces
     Where the Wild Things Are
           includes double-entry journal
     Excerpt from The Lone Ranger...

It's not as though I don't believe in multiple-choice entirely. I have designed analysis tests that I believe do assess text analysis and evaluation (with some literary identification and application) rather than recall. Having students support their multiple-choice answers with textual evidence is key in taking questions to the next level.

     Test using "Mother to Son"
     Test using "The Creation" and
         "A Loaf of Poetry"
     2001-02 Final Poetry Test with analysis
         of "Moco Limping"

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