WSRA Conference Learning

I want to share my learning from the Wisconsin State Reading Association annual conference in Milwaukee on February 5th and 6th.  

Rediscovering Reading

Patrick Allen

4th grade teacher from Colorado and author

How can we rediscover reading?

1. Develop and strengthen literary discourse
2. Think aloud about strategies and skills
3. Reflect on our own meta cognition
4. Confer with kids on a regular basis
5. Strengthen vocabulary within a meaningful context
6. Ponder your own flexibility with purpose
7. Engage in dialogue about our reading experience
8. Uncover tidbits of what perplexes us
9. Investigate our own reading identity publicly
10. Gradual release of responsibility:  think aloud, think together, guided practice, independence
11. Consider the relationships we develop with text and other readers.

"Where choice lives learning prospers!" 

Thinking about Conferring with Readers

Patrick Allen

What Can Conferring Do?

• Uncover attitudes as readers
• Readers stamina and work ethic
• Explore readers process
• Record a readers diet
• Build a relationship of intimacy and rigor
• Gather data for assessment and evaluation 

What emerges in a conference?

• Strategies and why you use them
• Text choice
• Connections
• Misconceptions
• Understanding
• Use evidence to support thinking in and authentic manner
• Relationships
• Vocabulary

Conferencing and Feedback focus

• K-2-  50% surface reading( accuracy and fluency) and 50% deep reading (comprehension) 
• 3-5- 10% surface reading and 90% deep reading

"Programs don't teach readers, teachers teach readers and readers teach readers."

He challenges you to videotape and analyze a session of conferring or coaching during guided reading.  

• Do you talk too much?  Students should do the majority of the talking.
• Do you ask too many questions?  You should ask 1-3 deep questions and students should be questioning.
• No wait time.

Conference structure RIP

R
Review progress, read aloud for accuracy, record something they say

What are you thinking about as a reader today?

Can you tell me something about you as a readers today?

I 
Instruction, insights, intrigue

I want to share with you a strategy that helped me...

P

Plan, progress, purpose

Your next steps and goals are...

How is this different from the praise and prompt structure we use? 

Nonfiction Reading

Donalyn Miller

Use picture books to teach nonfiction.

Genre Avoidance

1. Start with what they know and are interested in

2. Use magazines such as national geographic

3. Add more nonfiction in book talks

4. Use nonfiction as read aloud.

5. Use nonfiction as mentor text

6. Discuss authors as researchers and tie to inquiry

7. Introduce students to nonfiction authors and series.

8. Pair fiction and nonfiction

9. Pair text with images-   Library of congress, history channel 

Early Literacy

Debbie Miller

Literacy manifesto for early literacy

1.  Make my room a fun place to be and learn.  Belong

2.  Get to know them as a learner and as a child.  They get to know me.

3. Read aloud really good books.  Let kids hold them.

4. Opportunities to talk.

5. Let me choose.  Show me how!

Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School

Andy Hargreaves

Learning from other schools has a lot of leverage for change.

What are the top 2 things that impact learning and why?  

• Professional Learning district wide
• Coaching modeling
• Coaching feedback
• principal feedback
• day 6: PLC
• Lab classrooms
• Modeling
• Reading- professional journals, book studies, blog
• Videos
• Outside conferences
• Online learning

Human capital- gifts, strengths, intelligence,

Social capital- how we plan together, teach, examples, TRUST

Decisional capital- making judgements

Social capital raises HUMAN capital!!!
He says this should be our focus!  COLLABORATION TO MAKE US ALL BETTER!

Comprehension, Close Reading and the Common Core

David Pearson

Everyday you need to encounter text that is just right and a little hard with support of friends and teachers.  Hard texts test their skills and strategies which are most likely to encounter with new knowledge

Text Questions in CCSS-
Key ideas and recall- What the text Says- literal comprehension

Integrate of knowledge and knowledge of ideas- What the text Means- interpret

Craft and structure- Does- application- critique and evaluate

critic

How do we know that are understanding is good enough?

Does it square with the text?

Does it square with the world?

Strategies for Close Reading- 
                  
                   Evidence-  always require evidence from text
                  What do you think?    What makes you think so?
               
                 Questioning

What's the setting and what's going on?  How does the setting shape the action?

What's the problem?  How did they try to solve it?  Why were they successful/ unsuccessful?

How did the character change?

Stock taking

What do we know now that we didn't know before?

Summarize or synthesize.

What does the author want us to get out of the story?

2nd pass reading

Look for examples of figurative language and why the other may have used it.  Add other specific skills.

Classroom Catalysts: what do we really know about accelerating the growth of all readers

Michael Ford

What does a reading test assess?- Guthrie

40%Reading ability

20% knowledge

15% motivation

10% format

15% error

How can you Improve scores= read more         -Ed leadership 2015

Engagement activities

Track reading strong and struggling reader 1 month.

Look at texts for 2 students are reading.  Are they just right?

Where can we increase reading throughout the day?

Share good books

Repeated readings

Read 1 article day textproject.org/students/FYI-for-kids

What matters?

1.       Quality Instruction across all classrooms throughout the day- use time wisely, focus

2.      Teachers collaborate to problem solve together. Make practices public- data walls, collaborative PLC, school wide identity, gallery walks with goal setting,  hot reads.  Feedback from colleagues about classroom practices

3.      Core instruction strong- text complexity

Text complexity- Need some struggle in reading each day.  Need to be scaffolded and reread and support through the process,

Teaching up- Tomlinson- invigorate and advance students with more complex text With support! 

4. Small group targets instructional needs effectively- differentiation- phases or learning vs. different activities.  Think levels of support. 

REFOCUS- teaching learners not texts.

5.  Independent work matters

Part of our professional learning is to share new learning and resources with our colleagues. I want you to be able to share your new learning as well. You can be a guest blogger or share resources via the email.