In my latest book The Quickwrite Handbook (Heinemann, 2018) I described how I came to do what I called “quickwrites.” Year after year I noticed several kids, frequently boys, staring into space more often than they were putting words on paper. Talking to them, trying to help them with their ideas was not a big help. I read Don Murray’s work about writing fast to outrun the censor in all of us. Sounded good. But for those kids that continued staring into space, telling them to write fast didn’t help if they still couldn’t think of anything to write. That’s when I thought, if I put a short, compelling piece of writing in front of them to show them what someone else did, and encourage them to “borrow a line” and write as fast as they can for two to three minutes off that line, that might give them something to hold onto, something from which to build their own ideas. Write fast, I told them. Don’t think too hard. Don’t plan what comes next. You are writing to find writing—the words you didn’t know you were going to write until you wrote them.
Photo from Heinemann
And it worked, and has continued to work, for most of my kids.
Holding on to someone else’s line has been magical in helping my students find their own words. More often than not they can get rid of that line as they continue to draft their thinking in their words.
Maybe it was the notion of holding on to someone else’s line that led me to Nikki Grimes’ book One Last Word. In this book Grimes has found inspiration from many of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance to write her own poems. The poetry she is writing takes the form of what is called the Golden Shovel. In her words “The idea of a Golden Shovel poem is to take a short poem in its entirety, or a line from that poem (called a striking line), and create a new poem, using the words from the original. Say you decide to use a single line: you would arrange that line, word by word (one word under another), in the right margin. Then you would write a new poem, each line ending in one of those words.”
This is the first year I have tried this form with my students. We had just finished reading Refugee by Alan Gratz. As we read the book I asked them to collect lines that resonated with them from the three families’ stories. I asked them to write down questions that came to mind as we read, and to look up articles and pictures that might help them answer the questions. When we were done with the book I encouraged them to share response or reaction in any form they chose. But, I did show them One Last Word as a possibility.
Although this worked especially well after reading the book Refugee, because of its emotional topic, I imagine these examples could be used at any time for any kind of writing. These were the instructions and examples I gave my students, adapted from Nikki Grimes.
Write a poem by
using the line/s from a poem, each word of the line becomes the last word in each line of your poem, or
using a favorite quote from Refugee or any author or book you love, each word of the quote becomes the last word in each line of your poem, or
using a newspaper headline with a compelling lead or poignant photo attached, each word in the headline becomes the last word in each line of your poem
I gave the students several examples from Nikki Grimes book One Last Word. I showed them how she took the poem “Hope” by Georgia Johnson and used the first line of that poem to shape her poem “On Bully Patrol.” Then I showed them what I wrote.
I used the last line from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” because it is a line I use as a mantra in working with eighth graders: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
This is what I wrote, using that line:
Sometimes, in their writer-reader notebooks students tell
Truths that they are admitting to me
And so often I don’t know what
it is
That would help them cope with it
Whether the “it” is hunger or homelessness, self-doubt
or bullying or even dysphoria. As a teacher you
Try your best to plan
A strategy to
Help each child do
What they need to do, with
Compassion and sensitivity. Your
Concern and helplessness make you worry that one
Day this wild
Child, who is only defending herself and
Trying to make the world work for her, will know what to do with her one precious
life.
Linda Rief
Many students found poetry by crafting their poems in this form. Sophie asked, “Do we have to stick with that form, one last word?”
“Absolutely not,” I told her. “Form should never drive what you have to say. It is only a suggestion. Let your words take the form that best fits what you want to say.”
Sophie wrote:
Tallying the Daily Dead
Line from Refugee by Alan Gratz, p.195
When you were in kindergarten
you learned how to tally.
You thought nothing of it,
nor should you have.
It was just a way
to count the numbers
that were put in front of you by a teacher.
You were always told
tallying should not be used for big numbers,
like 65.6 million people displaced at the end of 2016 or,
the 40.3 million displaced
within their owncountry or
perhaps not
the 22.5 million forced to flee
to another country.
In kindergarten,
you tallied numbers.
Now,
we tally lives.
Sophie M. 8th grade
I am always looking for a variety of ways to help students get words on paper. No matter what way that might be, we need to remember: try the idea ourselves, give the students examples (ours, professionals, other students), give them choices within the framework, and let the framework go if they have other ideas. The bottom line in writing: finding every, and any way we can, to help students communicate their thinking in order to grow their voices.
References:
Gratz, Alan. 2017. Refugee. NY. Scholastic.
Grimes, Nikki. 2017. One Last Word. NY: Bloomsbury Children’s Books.
Rief, Linda. 2018. The Quickwrite Handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Poetry! Many teachers avoid including poetry in a reading curriculum. Some teachers don’t use poetry because it’s unfamiliar and wasn’t part of their reading background. Others claim they don’t have time to expose students to poetry. However, I believe poetry is a powerful and important genre that should be integrated into the curriculum in all subjects throughout the school year.
Why poetry? Poems tickle the imagination and cause laughter! They tell stories like “Casey at the Bat” a narrative poem by Ernest Thayer, and “Lord Randall,” a medieval ballad. Poems capture feelings, a moment in time, and the variety is boundless: short lyrics, conversation poems, Japanese haiku, list poems, sonnets, small poems, and villanelles. They all have rhythm. Some poems rhyme; free verse poems don’t rhyme. Contemporary authors write novels in free verse. Check out Crossover by Kwame Alexander (HMH Books for Children 2014), Witness by Karen Hesse (Scholastic 2003), and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Puffin Books 2016).
What’s magical about poems is they beg to be heard! Read poems to students and invite them to read poems to each other. The photographer uses a camera and film to capture a moment or tell a story. The poet uses words and figurative language to help readers “see” through the poet’s eyes, mind, and heart!
Be a Risk-Taker
You don’t have to know a lot about poetry to bring this genre to your students. Explore together. Start by checking out dozens of poetry books from your school library. Spread the books out around the classroom and invite students to choose two they want to read. Then, set aside two to three classes for students to read and reread poems and choose a few to read aloud to a partner. Powerful poetic language and imagery can become part of children’s memories when you try some of the ten ways to bring poetry into students’ lives.
Start the day in self-contained classes by reading a poem. Offer one for dessert after lunch, and close the day by reading a class favorite.
Open and close middle and high school classes by reading a poem.
Ask your school librarian to find collections of poems relating to a subject: sports, science, history, math, music, art. Have partners read their poems to each other and discuss what they’ve learned about a specific subject.
Invite students to read a favorite poem to their group or the entire class.
Start a “poetry talk” project for an entire semester. Have students choose a poem to memorize, say it to you and reply back by sharing a poem you memorized.
Have students choose a favorite poem, illustrate it, and create a display in your classroom and/or the school library.
Share poems for two voices by Paul Fleishman with students and ask partners to select one they’d like to perform. After practicing, have pairs perform for the class.
Invite students to silently “do” or act out poems they select or you choose. A great resource is Let’s Do A Poem edited by Nancy Larrick (Delacorte 1991).
Choral read poems students and/or you select. Divide students into two to three groups that read a section of a poem together.
Read poems to generate ideas for students’ writers’ notebooks.
Reading Poetry Matters
Poetry tunes students’ ears to figurative language and imagery, all the time showing them how much words matter! For striving readers, it offers an open door into the reading life. Surrounded by lots of white space, the poet’s words invite instead of intimidate. Moreover, reading poetry builds students’ experiences with literary language, enlarges their background knowledge and vocabulary, and develops the self-confidence needed to tackle longer poetic and prose texts.
By reading, rereading, and listening to poems, students absorb and memorize the poet’s words and images, and the poems become part of their memory forever! Every time I see the sunrise I find myself whispering the first two stanzas of this poem by Emily Dickinson:
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
That must have been the sun!
I want students to know, love, and be acquainted with so many poems that the words will be imprinted in their memory, ready to surface when an experience calls the poem to the forefront of their minds. When poems become part of students’ DNA, critical thinking develops as they associate a poem’s meaning with a personal experience. I recall Joshua scratching his head in class and shouting, “Fleas./Adam had ‘em,” and students’ reserved giggles transforming into ripples of laughter! Yes! Words embedded in memory link our experiences to the poet’s and our lives are richer for it!
I am always entranced by the sounds of reading—the turning pages, the rhythmic breathing, the steady movements. These sounds, intoxicating and inviting, are part of the language of book love. There is no tension, no aggravation. Just kids engaged with books. My teaching philosophy rests on the belief that all students want to read and have the capacity to develop an authentic reading life. Not all students enter my classroom prepared to live and to think beside books, though. The act of joyful reading, where they have time to self-select books, talk with friends about their reading lives, exchange books recommendations, and write about their reading, has too often been absent from their experiences. Opportunities to fall in love with books, in many cases, have been scarce. But I believe a classroom rich with literacy can change that. When kids have access to books, and that access is founded on choice, they migrate from the arid land of non-reading and wade into an oasis of story.
Authentic reading instruction, the work of real readers, is powerful. Beyond the walls of my classroom, books speak to people, and those people, moved by story and language, share their reading lives with those around them. There are no cumbersome projects or dense worksheets that accompany that type of reading experience. Instead, people read and fall in love with books and invite others to engage in joyful reading. That’s the type of environment I work hard to create for my students. Readers are complex thinkers—they analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and critique. Although I want students to think critically and to use their awareness of structure and craft moves to interpret text, I want more than that for them. I want them to read because they love books.
In thinking about my own classroom and the practices that have helped students develop a love of reading, I notice that conversations, writing, and reading are the most effective methods. There are choices I make as an educator, both pedagogically and philosophically, that give kids a stronger foundation in adopting healthy reading habits. The following ideas and routines are several of many that have helped my kids fall in love with reading. I hope you find them useful.
Provide daily time for free choice independent reading.
Students need and deserve time to read every day. In my classroom, we begin each language arts period with 15-20 minutes of reading time. There are times when students are asked to pay attention to certain details in their reading, such as unfamiliar vocabulary or characterization, but mostly, I want them to read and to fall in love with their books. Providing a consistent time for reading establishes routine. With this time, I am telling students that reading matters, and I am willing to set time aside for this purpose. And there are no strings attached to the reading. Just enjoy.
Surround kids with lots of books.
We adopt the habits and qualities of the people and things around us. I want kids to become readers, so I surround them with books. The bookshelves, ledges, and countertops have books on them. A diverse classroom library, full of books that represent a wide range of interests, cultures, and genres, is essential. Students need to see themselves represented in books and they need to be exposed to books with characters who do not look and sound like them. Diversity matters. At the beginning of the year, students complete an interest inventory and from these, I learn a great deal about their lives, their hopes, and the things they love. The inventories, as well as conversations with students, help me stock the classroom library. Additionally, there is a poster at the front of my room where students write the titles of books they have finished as a visual display of our class reading life. I want books to be visible in my classroom, and when a child finishes a book, I want them to be surrounded with options to continue their reading habits.
A quick note on book talks: To engage kids with reading is to talk about books–a lot. Providing time to read is an essential part of a classroom, but moving kids to adopt authentic reading lives means finding books that will speak to them and sharing them. Give a brief summary, read a high-interest part, and pass it off to students. Let them hear the language of the story. This gifts them with a beautiful reason to read.
Allow time for writing about books.
Students need opportunities to write about their reading. Students keep reader’s notebook in my class, and often, we go into our notebooks (I write with them) and record our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Readers will have visceral reactions to characters, and they will worry, hurt, and love alongside them. A notebook is a perfect place for those feelings to land. I have found that freewrites are powerful tools for students to examine their feelings and reactions to books. I also give students time to recommend through writing, either through adding an image and quick review on a Padlet or writing a note on a sticky and placing it in the front of a fascinating book. They solidify their reading and recommend a book to someone else. Simplicity is remarkable.
Encourage talk among students.
Reading is a social act. I ask students to write about their reading often; however, I want them to talk about their reading, too. After independent reading, I may ask kids to turn and talk to a neighbor about the section they just read, a character they are connecting with, or a word that stood out to them. Talk encourages rich thinking and deep comprehension, and it nudges us forward in our reading lives.
Discuss and share your personal reading life.
Reading and our reading lives are not static. Readers do not read with consistent vigor or engage in an academic close reading of every text they encounter. Students often assumed that was my reading life, and even when I confronted their bias with the truth (I read widely and intrepidly), they assumed that their judgment was the same. So I came up with a helpful solution—I decided to invite students into my personal reading life. And I was honest. I shared that there were books I did not like and books I abandoned because they did not speak to me. When I finished a book, I shared it with kids, even if it wasn’t one I felt they would pick up and read. I began listing my reading life on the door of my classroom so students could see that I participated in the process of reading alongside them. Sharing our reading lives with students humanizes the experience. It shows them that we do not read for school. We read read for life.
Encourage reflection.
All readers need time to think about their reading lives. Each week, I invite students to consider their reading lives and write their thinking inside their notebooks. Students are allowed to write about characters, big ideas, lessons they’ve learned, goals, and how they have grown and changed as readers. I also invite students to consider the ways that they have challenged themselves and to write about the types of books they may want to explore. Reflection provides clarity and direction for all readers, but developing readers grow beside this practice. Through writing or conversation, kids verbalize where they’ve been, and when they do, they have a better idea of where they need to go.
Sit beside kids and talk with them about their reading.
Helping kids grow as readers and thinkers means sitting beside them and talking with them about books. I have conversations with students constantly about their reading lives, asking them to describe how books make them feel, how they connect to characters, and what book(s) they want to read once they finish with their current read. Conversations foster deeper thinking.
I think about talking with students as ways to nudge them further. By sitting beside them and talking about books, I am validating their humanity. I am saying, “You matter and I want to talk to you about your reading.”
Promote reading, not books.
Esteemed librarian, author, and educator Jennifer LaGarde first brought this phrase to my attention. Since then, I have marinated in the idea that as a teacher, I am not a teacher of literature. I am a teacher of students. There are books that I have read and loved, and each year, I talk about those books with students. I read and share, brining in books that I am certain will speak to my kids’ interests. I am careful when I talk about books in my classroom because I want students to know that in my room, their reading choices are valued. I may not enjoy a genre or format that they love, but that doesn’t mean their choices are wrong or irrelevant. It just means that we are different people. We come together to read common texts often, but I try to bring it back to their independent reading lives. I am responsible for readers, not books.
Although we are in the middle of a school year, the beginning of 2019 is alive with possibility. This is a beautiful year to fall in love with reading. I ask you to join me in guiding students to a sense of book love, of self-awareness, of joy. Join me in believing that kids want to read, and through their interests and hearts, we can open a world of language and story that will captivate them for years to come. Moving kids to adopt reading habits is not always easy, but nudging them a little each day has great power. During a mini-lesson earlier today, I noticed Mark was still lost inside his book. Part of me wanted him to pay attention, to be polite, during instruction about delivering information through the use of second person narration. But I let him read. I have watched him strive this year to find a book that will speak to him and today, he did. Those nudges–sitting beside him, talking about books, and time to read–moved him to engage with a text, and I am confident that he will find more books that will enhance his growing reading life.
I hope my suggestions give your classroom life and possibility. This work we do is important. To learn beside students is a precious thing. There are many times when kids are not willing to read or are more engaged with something else. I keep trying, though. I refuse to give up. I continue to believe that there is a book that will move them into a love of reading. I invite you to believe alongside me.
Recently, I was interviewing candidates for a language arts position. Several candidates just finished college and were eager to start a teaching career. Included was one question all candidates had to respond to: How would you teach a particular short story to a group of students? A frequent answer I received was, “Read it to the students or let the students read it out loud.” Letting students read out loud in front of the class is commonly referred to as popcorn or round-robin reading. One candidate proudly explained a reading game called “bump,” where students would read out loud and could intermittently call on another student to continue the reading. Bump permits students to embarrass one another or to catch another student not paying attention. No student should graduate from any college or university and bring such archaic and at times hurtful methods into a classroom. Popcorn, round robin, and bump reading should never be part of an elementary, middle, or high school classroom!
As a middle school principal, I am often asked what types of reading should occur in a middle school English classroom? What is a balanced literacy program? My answer is not that complex: “Reading can and should be taught.” In addition to the teacher reading aloud for students’ enjoyment, every middle school classroom should have three types of reading:
Instructional Interactive Read Aloud
Instructional Reading
Independent Reading
Instructional Interactive Read Aloud
An interactive read aloud allows the teacher to model in a think aloud how to apply a reading strategy. This modeling during a read aloud builds and/or enlarges students’ mental model of how a strategy works. For this aspect of instruction, I suggest that the teacher models with a short text that matches the genre and/or theme that ties a reading unit together. Short texts can include a picture book, an excerpt from a longer text, a folk or fairy tale, myth or legend, a short, short story, or an article from a magazine or newsletter.
Here are six of many skills and strategies that you can model in interactive read-aloud lessons:
Making inferences
Linking literary elements to a text
Identifying big ideas and themes
Locating important details
Skimming to find details
Emotional responses
The interactive read aloud is teachers’ common text. Once teachers complete the modeling over five to eight classes, they have a reference text to support students by reviewing a lesson. Then, they move to reading aloud from texts that resonate with students.
Instructional Reading
Instructional reading occurs during class. Students need to read materials at their instructional reading level, which is about 90 % to 95% reading accuracy and about 90% comprehension. Organizing instructional reading around a genre and theme—for example biography with a theme of obstacles—permits students to read different texts and discuss their reading around the genre and theme. One book for all does not work. Based on a false assumption, one-book-for-all assumes that no one has already read the book and everyone is on the same reading level.
As an example, the class opens with an interactive read-aloud lesson that lasts about ten minutes. Next, a transition to instructional reading. Find books for students in your school library, your community public library, in your class library, and the school’s book room (if you have one). Instructional reading books stay in the classroom, as students from different sections may be using the same materials each day.
Instructional reading asks students to apply specific skills and strategies to texts that can improve students’ comprehension, vocabulary, and skill because these texts stretch students’ thinking with the teacher, the expert, as a supportive guide.
Independent Reading
Students should always have a book they are reading independently. By encouraging them to read accessible books on topics they love and want to know more about, you develop their motivation to read!
Have students keep a Book Log of the titles they’ve read and reread. Do not ask students to do a project for each completed book; that will turn them away from reading. Reflecting on the value of independent reading is important. Getting hung up on how you will hold students accountable is not valuable. Remember, enthusiastic readers of any age do not summarize every chapter they read in a journal. Neither do you!
Students should complete twenty to thirty minutes of independent reading a night, and that should be their main homework assignment. If you’re on a block schedule, set aside two days a week for students to complete independent reading at school. If you have 90 to 120 minutes for reading and writing daily, then independent reading should occur every day. This is not wasted time. When students read the teacher can read part of the time which communicates a great message to students: adults read independently, too! Equally important during this time, teachers also confer with a few students about their reading.
Including the three types of reading in a middle school curriculum brings balance, engagement, and motivation to the curriculum and holds the potential of improving reading for all students. We must be better than popcorn reading as a go-to-method for a teacher to use with students. We must be better than reading out loud for an entire class. We need a balanced framework, a balanced literacy program. Encourage your teachers to give the three types of reading a try. The goal is to increase students’ reading skill and help students become lifelong readers. But the goal is also to reclaim the professionalism language arts teachers and students deserve.
