By Laura Robb

Most schools had twenty-four hours to close down. There wasn’t time to consider checking out books for students or ensuring each child had a computer or handheld device before leaving the building. During the sheltering-in period, no one could enter a school. Closed. For. Safety.  The first goal: provide breakfasts and lunches for the children. Within a week, school leaders figure out how to make meals available to students from preparing and bagging them to notifying parents of pick up times and places.

Second goal: Teachers and school leaders collaborate to figure out how to use technology in ways most never envisioned—to develop and deliver meaningful and engaging lessons to students at home. Daily, these educators tap into their creativity and innovative thinking to create engaging teaching and learning experiences for students.  School leaders offer support to their staff and repeatedly acknowledge the effort and dedication of teachers. Meeting change with courage, determination, grit, and thoughtful reflection is what educators do every day, but during this pandemic, they triple their efforts and work tirelessly to support children’s learning at home.

            Often, articles in newspapers express worries over students losing the gains made in reading if they’re not learning in schools.  There is one way to ensure that all students hold onto their gains in reading skill and achievement: twenty minutes of reading self-selected books every day. Yes! The research on daily independent reading indicates that if students continue independent reading at home, they can improve their reading skills.

 In April 2000 the National Reading Panel publishes a report stating that they couldn’t endorse independent reading because the studies they review don’t meet scientific research standards. What a blow to classroom teachers who year after year observe that students with rich independent reading lives at school and home also develop large vocabularies, more background knowledge, and outperform peers who don’t’ read independently.

The good news is that Dr. S. J. Samuels and Dr. Yi-chen Wu respond to the National Reading Panel by completing a scientific study on independent reading in 2004. Both conclude that the more time students spend reading, the higher their achievement compared to a control group.  Samuel’s and Wu’s scientific research corroborate the conclusions in Anderson’s, Wilson’s, and Fielding’s 1988 study (not considered scientific):  a strong correlation exists between the amount of daily reading students complete and their reading achievement. Reading volume matters!

Perhaps, the best advice teachers can offer students and parents during remote learning is this: read 20-minutes every day and choose books that provide pleasure and enjoyment. By increasing reading mileage, learners not only improve reading skills, but they also develop a lifelong habit that benefits them in the fifteen ways that follow. Share this list with parents, so they understand why setting aside time at home for their children to read gives each child a lifelong gift.

15 Benefits of Independent Reading

1. Refines students’ understanding of applying strategies, for during independent reading, students have multiple opportunities to practice what they learn during instructional reading.
2. Develops an understanding of how diverse genres work as readers figure out the likenesses and differences among realistic, historical, and science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thrillers, biography, memoir, informational texts, etc.
3. Enlarges background knowledge and deepens readers’ understanding of people as they get to know different characters.
4. Builds vocabulary as students meet and understand words in diverse contexts.  Independent reading, not vocabulary workbooks, is the best way to enlarge vocabulary because students meet words in the context of their reading.
5. Teaches students how to self-select “good fit” books they can and want to read.
6. Develops students’ agency and literary tastes. Choice builds agency and as students choose and dip into diverse genres and topics, they discover the types of books they enjoy.
7.  Strengthens reading stamina, their ability to focus on reading for 20-minutes to one hour.
8.  Improves silent reading. Through daily practice, students develop their in-the-head reading voice and learn to read in meaningful phrases.
9. Develops reading fluency because of the practice that voluminous reading offers.
10. Supports recall of information learners need as they read long texts that ask them to hold details presented in early chapters in their memory so they can access these later in the book.
11. Improves reading rate through the practice that volume provides.
12. Develops students’ imagination as they visualize settings, what characters and people look like, conflicts, decisions, problems, interactions, etc.
13. Fosters the enjoyment of visual literacy when students read picture books and graphic texts.
14.  Creates empathy for others as students learn to step into the skin of characters and experience their lives.
15.  Transfers a passion for reading to students’ outside-of-school lives and develops the volume in reading students need to become proficient and advanced readers.

 Make Access to the Finest Books Available During Remote Learning

At first, it can feel impossible to cultivate daily independent reading during remote learning, especially when families don’t have access to books from school’s media centers and classroom and community libraries. Some families have lots of books in their homes and enough money to purchase books online for their children. But there are large groups of children all over the country who don’t have access to books at home and whose parents don’t have extra dollars to purchase them. What follows are four suggestions for coping with this challenge, especially if remote learning continues when the 2020-2021 school year starts.

• Schools all over this country need funding for e-book libraries from federal state departments of education. It’s likely that students won’t return to school until there is a vaccine or medication that can cure COVID-19.  Now is the time for schools to consider purchasing at least two e-book platforms so students can self-select books.
• Broadband needs to be up to speed so that all children can use the Internet and participate in remote learning.
• Every child who attends public school needs a computer or hand-held device because every child deserves equity and access to materials and teaching.
• School media specialists and teachers can create lists of stories, myths, poems, folk and fairy tales, and books that are in the public domain and offer students and parents age-appropriate choices. 

Be a Change Maker

Now is the time for school leaders, teachers, and staff to collaborate to solve challenges for the upcoming school year.  My hope is that this will be a nation-wide effort with a goal of ensuring that every child in this country has access to books and opportunities to self-select books, so they can develop a rich, independent reading life! 

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By Laura Robb

Teachers, school leaders, parents, and children are facing many challenges after states shut down schools to keep everyone safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” has transformed educators, parents, and students into the pioneers of remote learning for primary, intermediate, middle, and high school students. We’re figuring out how to help different age groups learn and what kinds of materials teachers and students need. Time and schedules are issues.  Materials are issues.  Figuring out the WHY, WHAT, and the HOW of presenting lessons remotely are challenges we’re just starting to understand. Moreover, all of these are stress-makers that affect the emotional well being of teachers, school leaders, children, and parents. Here are some tips for maintaining balance and wellness.

• Stay connected to family, friends, colleagues, and students through social media, email, texting, and telephone calls and you’ll be able to hold onto that physical sense of community you had to give up.
• Get exercise. Walk, work out with a video, ride your bike, and try to get fresh air every day.
• Set aside time to do something for yourself: read, watch a movie, listen to music, play an instrument, paint, keep a journal.
• Try to establish a teaching schedule and know that you will have to refine and adjust ideas. Remember, you are a modern-day explorer trying to develop remote learning that works and redefining what community means!

Keep records of what you tried: save teaching videos, keep notes on lessons that worked and those that need improvement, collect student feedback, debrief with your school team, department, and/or colleagues you usually converse with.  Know how much students, parents, and your community appreciate what you are doing! Then, it’s important to prepare for the possibility that school might close again and discuss and reflect on re-envisioning teaching and learning.

Re-Envisioning Teaching: Remote Learning

It might seem odd for me to ask you to think about what might happen in the future now.  Unfortunately, due to the rapid advance of COVID-19, we were all caught with little preparation time.  Once things return to normal, it’s human nature to forget the difficulties faced by many. However, by keeping good records from your remote learning experiences, you will be ready to work with your school’s leaders and staff to help them plan for the future.  What follows are fifteen areas that will most likely need rethinking.  Read them. Choose those that apply to you and jot some notes that you can share so when your district is ready to discuss these, you will have much to contribute.

Fifteen Aspects of Remote Learning to Explore

1. Preservice Education. Colleges and universities need to have remote learning classes for different subjects and age groups in order to prepare teachers to teach and support students online.
2. Remote Professional Learning for School Leaders and Staff. It’s beneficial for staff to meet, and pool what they’ve learned from their remote teaching experiences. Equally important is for school districts to develop remote learning online classes teachers can take as well as lead.
3. Create a School Pandemic & Epidemic Playbook. Develop “to do’s” for school leaders, teachers, staff, students, and parents so if you only have a short window prior to closing your school, everyone leaves with the materials they’ll need.
4. Broadband for All. Ensure that all of rural America and urban families living in poverty have access to the Internet.
5. Access and Equity. All students need to have access to computers and the Internet for equity and access to lessons to exist with remote learning.  District and school leaders need to explore ways to connect all school children to online learning.
6. Attendance Issues. Districts need to determine ways to require attendance to online lessons.  Some teachers tell me that only 1/3 to 1/2 of their students are joining lessons even though they have computers.
7. School E-Library. Consider having a part of the library’s books and magazines in e-book format, too. This can enable students to access books for independent reading and for research projects. Try forging a partnership with your community public library to gain access for students and teachers to their e-books.
8. Independent Reading. You’ll want to maintain students’ volume and interest in reading.  Teachers can send books home with children before schools close, but schools can also explore websites that have e-picture books and e-chapter books for all subjects.  With students’ help, teachers can find ways for students to share one to two books a month online with classmates.
9. Instructional Learning in All Subjects. Departments can collaborate to pool ideas and develop remote learning techniques that work when a teacher is not present.  Sharing what you find works with colleagues is important.
10. Conferring.  Discuss whether this can occur for middle and high school where teachers can have 70 or more students. What accommodations should be made? What will it look like for grades K to 5?
11. Interventions. These are important for all students who require assistance and some re-teaching. Will there be a daily time in the schedule? Will interventions be scheduled as needed?
12.  Teaching & Learning Schedules. Make these reasonable and consider that most parents are working remotely or on a job. How can flexibility be integrated into schedules?
13.  Television Classes. Look into state or county-run television stations to explore how these can be used for remote learning and reach larger audiences.
14.  Teachers Meet & Dialogue. Finding time each week to have a virtual meeting to discuss teaching techniques and students’ progress.
15.  School Leaders Provide Support. School leaders can explore ways to support teachers, students, and parents so all maintain a positive outlook.

Closing Thought

As you embark on this unchartered journey, let me share a reminder–care for your emotional wellbeing and your health, so you can support your students and colleagues, and also have time to connect with family and friends.  This is your new frontier! By collaborating and reflecting on your teaching and students’ learning, you will make a huge difference in their lives and construct the foundations of remote learning for future generations!

Laura has written many excellent books! Check out The Reading Intervention Toolkit

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

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by Laura Robb

Each year, education publishers, promote programs that offer guarantees for boosting reading scores and transforming striving readers into students who read well and widely. These programs require total fidelity from teachers if students are to show progress on assessments. The problem is in order to show progress, most program’s assessments focus on collecting data only on the program’s materials that students have practiced. And data includes phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency exercises; syllabication practice and worksheets with a short text and questions that test recall of information.  I take issue with these programs because:

1. They don’t know anything about the children you teach: their strengths, needs, interests, and feelings about reading.
2. They include short texts that don’t build the stamina students need to concentrate on reading a book.  Moreover, a diet of recall questions makes reading boring and fails to engage students in analytical and critical thinking.
3. Reading wonderful books is not part of their intervention protocols.

Fragile learners—students three or more years behind their grade level—continue to lose reading ground because they aren’t reading.  Instead, they’re practicing skills in isolation, out of the context of reading.  In fact, they don’t have opportunities to practice and apply strategies and skills because their reading volume of books is close to zero. In his 1977 article, “If They Don’t Read Much, How Are They Ever Gonna Get Good?” Richard Allington wrote:

“Too often the procedures commonly employed in remedial and corrective reading instruction seem to mitigate against developing reading ability by focusing more on the mastery of isolated skills with relatively little emphasis on or instructional time devoted to reading in context. To become a proficient reader, one needs the opportunity to read. “

Allington’s words ring true today! For striving readers to improve and move forward, they need fifteen to twenty minutes every day at school to read self-selected books they can and want to read.  Teachers help them select “good fit” books that they can enjoy and that inspire them to read more!

What’s the Purpose of Interventions?

A question that teachers and administrators should revisit a few times a year, so they remain grounded in responding to the kinds of interventions appropriate for each student.  For me, the answer to this question is to help striving readers thrive and become proficient readers who love to read and choose reading at school and at home.  The best way to accomplish this is by helping students find books they want to and can read and enjoy. This means having a rich classroom library, with multicultural books on diverse reading levels that are relevant to students’ lives.

Once Students Are Reading, What Else Can Teachers Do?

In student-centered classrooms, teachers have an abundance of interventions at their fingertips. Confer with students to discover their feelings toward reading and whether their reading is fluent and expressive.  Listen to students’ discussions with a partner and small group to gain insights into how they view characters, conflicts, problems, and why characters change. You’ll notice whether students are inferring and drawing conclusions, pinpointing big ideas, etc. Read students’ notebooks for their written responses reveal their reactions, questions, and depth of comprehension and understanding. Then decide whether you need to meet with individuals or small groups to think-aloud, model, or re-teach a lesson.  Or, you might pair-up students who can support one another with notebook writing, figuring out tough words using context clues, etc.

Note that the interventions grow out of the needs each child exhibits based on their instructional and independent reading.  Everyone won’t need the same interventions. You, the skilled teacher, can develop interventions that are flexible and respond to and meet the needs of each child.

Why is the Classroom Teacher Important? 

The classroom room teacher is the most important interventionist. The research completed by Gretchen Owocki  (2010) points out that a skilled core curriculum teacher can improve the reading of 80 percent of his/her students.  Daily interactive read alouds, where the classroom teacher thinks aloud to model how he/she feels about a book, reacts to the story, figures out tough words using context, and applies strategies are interventions. Students’ self-selecting books for daily independent reading is an intervention that offers them time to practice and apply strategies. Instructional reading, supporting students’ growth as they read books that stretch their reading capacity with their teachers’ support, is an intervention. Notebook writing about reading that asks students to analyze and think deeply about texts is an intervention. Discussing books to develop critical thinking is an intervention.  Conferring that invites teachers to model and think-aloud and then asks students to practice, is an intervention.  

Somehow we’ve lost our way and bought into the notion that worksheets, isolated skill-and-drill lead to reading proficiency and joy in reading. Unfortunately, the results of the 2019 NAEP (The National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests in reading for grades 4 and 8 show the opposite. Scores have been flat for ten years, and 67 percent of fourth-graders who took the NAEP in 2019 read below proficient.  When students achieve a proficient score on the NAEP, it indicates that they have learned enough in fourth or eighth grade to do well in the next grade.  This. Isn’t. Happening. The result? Too many students are being left behind!

We Can Do Better

We can and must do better. It’s time to listen to Richard Allington who cautions teachers that our most fragile readers need to have texts of appropriate difficulty in their hands all day long (my italics). This means that schools invest in books at diverse reading levels so that every child will be reading throughout the day in social studies, science, math, electives, and during library classes.  Yes, reading is an intervention! And when students practice the skills related to reading expertise in the context of wonderful, inviting and engaging books, teachers can change the trajectory of their students’ reading lives.

Laura has written many excellent books! Check out The Reading Intervention Toolkit

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

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by Laura Robb  (names are pseudonyms)

“All we do is read a few chapters and do worksheets. We never ask questions. No discussions. I hate worksheet packets and memorizing vocab for tests. I haven’t heard what my friends are reading. I want to talk about our questions. We never talk about anything much in class.”  

            Sorel, an eighth-grader, wrote these words in his notebook near the end of the first semester when his teacher, Ms. Walters, asked students: What changes would you like to see in reading?  The responses of most students repeated thoughts similar to Sorel’s. To her credit, Ms. Walters heard and absorbed her students’ comments. She had noticed their lack of interest and recognized the need to change. To students’ credit, they were honest and their candid comments nudged Ms. Walters to ask for coaching and risk the challenges of change.  At the end of October, Ms. Walters invited me to help her bring inquiry and student-led discussions of different books into her reading curriculum.

Reading and discussing professional materials, watching videos, and having frequent conversations about Ms. Walter’s myriad questions related to planning and observing lessons, supported change. Gradually, she moved from “my class” to “our class” by negotiating with students learning expectations and deadline dates as well as offering choices in independent reading. This short literacy snapshot illustrates the power of questions as a tool that can drive changes and foster a self-evaluative stance.

Why Pose Questions?

Readers and writers ask questions. Scientists and historians ask questions. Administrators and teachers ask questions. Posing questions is a way of understanding information, data, and experiences. In addition, raising questions supports learners as they dig deeper into a topic and text. With practice, wondering can also develop students meta-cognition—the ability to think about their learning, know what they understand, and identify areas that require additional practice

Too often in classes, questioning is actually recitation where the teacher prompts students for the “one right answer” to questions he or she asks. However, to develop independent readers and thinkers, to develop analytical and critical thinking skills, students need to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to asking and answering questions. 

When quality, student-generated questions define a class, meaningful learning takes place—learning that defines reading, research, collaborative projects, literary discussions, and notebook writing. As students wonder to learn, they begin to raise questions while reading and generate questions to solve problems, to research a topic, to conduct interviews, etc.

When Do Students Ask Questions?

Opportunities abound throughout the day for students to pose questions. Here are a few:

Mini-lessons:  Invite students to jot questions they have while you present a mini-lesson and ask these when you’ve finished. Such questions clarify students’ understanding and help them absorb new ideas. In addition, students’ questions can offer you insights into what they do and don’t understand about a lesson. With this information, you can design interventions based on observed needs.

Teacher read alouds:  Pause during your read aloud and invite students to pose questions about conflict, theme, or how events connect. Reserving a few minutes for students to share and discuss their questions shows them how much you value their thinking.  You’ll also gather insights into ways students react and respond to the text; this information informs future think-alouds, mini-lessons, and interventions..

Setting goals: Help students understand that raising questions such as, Is there a strategy I should work on next? What do I have to do to reach this goal?” can improve their learning. Such questions can develop independence because they place students in charge of decision-making and developing a plan to reach a goal.

Self-evaluation: Questions can also drive students’ evaluation of their work over time. Ask them to review and pose questions about several notebook entries, their entire process for a piece of writing, several quizzes, and tests, or their participation in collaborative projects. Here’s a sampling of questions that students might ask: Did I improve? How do I know I made progress? Is there something I did that stands out? Why did I struggle? What did I do to cope with my struggles? Did I seek help from a peer or teacher if I couldn’t resolve the issue?

A result of self-evaluative questions is the development of meta-cognition, the ability of students to reflect on their written work, assessments, and collaborations. Often, the result is that students accept the need for additional practice from their teacher or a peer that can support their growth as learners, critical thinkers, and problem solvers.

Questioning the Author: Isabel Beck’s and Margaret G. McKeown’s strategy, questioning the author, provides students with questions for fiction and nonfiction texts. The questions help students link words, phrases, and ideas to construct meaning from a passage they find challenging. To question the author, students might ask: Why did the author use that word or phrase? How does the word or phrase connect to the information in the sentence or to information that came before the sentence? How does the paragraph or section connect to the title? The theme or the main idea? The previous paragraph?  I suggest you put these questions on index cards that students can access because the questions can develop independence in unpacking meaning from challenging passages. Inquiry-based learning: Before and during a unit of study, students generate questions that drive their reading, investigations, experiments, and discussions. Researchers like Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith, show that when student-generated questions steer the direction studies take, they are more engaged and motivated to learn. Inquiry fosters collaboration, understanding information, analyzing texts, and researching topics.

Students Write Discussion Questions: Teach students how to pose open-ended, interpretive questions and invite them to work as a team when reading an assigned or self-selected text. Open-ended questions have two or more answers. Verbs such as, why, how, evaluate, explain, compare/contrast can signal interpretive questions. Returning to a text to write open-ended questions deepens students’ knowledge of plot and information, but it also raises the level of discussions to critical thinking. In addition, discussing their own questions motivates and engages students in the reading and exchanging ideas.

The Teacher’s Role

Providing a model for students, one that shows them how to raise questions during diverse learning experiences is what teachers do. For most students, becoming a skilled questioner won’t happen quickly. However, turning the questioning process over to students gives them opportunities to practice and to make their studies more meaningful. Meaningful reflection by teachers and students-–reflection that considers improving questioning techniques and gathering feedback can create a learning environment that values students’ wonderings as a path to progress and independence in learning.

Laura has written many excellent books! Check out The Reading Intervention Toolkit

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

Follow The Robb Review Facebook Page!