By Lester Laminack

Enjoy, as Lester guides you from teacher-centered to student-centered teacher read alouds!

When you reach the end of an article, a story, or a book do you reach for your notebook to answer a set of questions written by someone else?  Do you feel that your understanding of what you have read, your worth as a reader, hinges on being able to give the answers to someone else’s questions?  Probably not.  Yet it seems that much of our reading instruction relies heavily on having our students answer a set of questions after they complete a reading assignment.  Following reading with a set of questions is a longstanding practice in literacy education.  In fact, many commercial reading programs follow this pattern.  One well-known program assigns a point value to each title, then has the children read and log on to a computer to read and answer a set of 10 multiple-choice questions. Other programs have students read then write answers to similar questions. And if we are teaching from a literature-based approach that doesn’t rely upon a commercially produced program we tend to have our own questions to hold our students accountable.

Questions Can Create Patterns

As teachers, most of us were introduced to Bloom’s Taxonomy as undergraduates in a teacher education program.  We likely practiced developing questions for each of the levels in the taxonomy and began our teacher careers believing that it was our charge to develop good questions that would hold our students accountable and yield proof that they read and understood the assigned text.

We sat with our notepads at hand and read the books, articles, poems, and various other texts our students would read across the year.  We paused at various points in the text to draft the questions we would give our students. We were attentive to character traits, shifts in the plot, nuances in word choice, the author’s use of simile and metaphor and figurative language.  We noted allusions to cultural references and other literature.  We were alert to the role of setting in the text, the way the author used dialog, bias, and narration.  We read closely and synthesized as we developed the questions we would present to the students.  Questions, whether presented by the program or developed by the teacher, may fall into a pattern or categories.  For example, questions about the main character, physical descriptions, main idea, vocabulary, opinion, evaluation, analysis, synthesis, inference, etc.

As students read and respond to the questions presented they begin to recognize the patterns as well.  Does this impact the way they read?  Does it shape what they tend to notice and pay attention to?  In other words, are they reading with the pattern of your questions in mind?  If the answer is, yes, then what are they failing to notice?  What is the cost to comprehension and attention and engagement?

Get In Touch With Ways You Read

Consider your own thought process as you read a text with the intention of writing questions for students to answer.  Are you beginning with a frame in mind? That is, do you begin with thoughts focused on Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?  Or do you begin with the intention of finding three detail questions, two questions about the character’s motives, three questions that require the reader to interpret, two that require analysis, and one that calls for synthesis?  If the answer is, yes, then how does this frame influence YOUR approach as a reader? How does that process differ from the way you approach a professional text or a book you have selected to read for pleasure?  How does the approach effect your engagement with and your comprehension of the text?  Chances are that you read differently when you read for pleasure than when you read with the intention of developing a set of questions for your students.

Who’s Doing All The Thinking?

I have come to believe that the person who is asking the questions is the person who has done the thinking.  As you read to develop the questions for your students you were summarizing the text at critical points.  You were evaluating the merits of details and the use of Literacy devices.  You were synthesizing information and generating new thoughts.  You were noticing were the text called for an inference or expected you to have adequate background knowledge to connect to a metaphor or allusion.  In short, you were doing the deeper thinking, the more thorough analysis as a reader in service to the development of questions that would yield the proof of your students’ connections and comprehension.

Time To Flip the Read Aloud

I invite you to try something the next time you are reading aloud to your students.  As the story draws to a close and your voice delivers the last line simply close the book and exhale.  Pause for a few seconds and let silence settle over the group.  Then, look at them and speak quietly:  “Think for a few seconds.  Don’t speak yet, just think if you could speak with (author, illustrator, character, expert—beekeeper if the story is about bees, etc) what are the three best questions you could ask?  Think about that, please.  I’ll ask you to share your questions in just a moment.”

Have your notebook ready to jot down the questions as they share. At the end of the day when the students have boarded their buses to leave, revisit those questions and place them into four categories: Vocabulary, Background knowledge, Schema/conceptual frame, and other.  Take note of where the majority of the questions fall.  Think about what this reveals to you about their understanding of the text.  

I’ve come to believe that I find out more about where their understanding fails by examining their questions than I ever got from checking their answers.  

Lester’s books are on Amazon!

Learn more about Lester Laminack, check out his website!

Follow Lester on Twitter @lester_laminack

 

By: Harvey Smokey Daniels

The greatest source of tears and heartbreak in our family, over all of our child-raising years, was homework. Like by far. Like 90%. Those unbidden, meaningless assignments, mechanical worksheets, and odd-numbered math problems constantly led to friction, battles, resistance, weeping, and regret. It felt like the school was sending little hand grenades home with our kids, timed to explode just before a peaceful, playful, or relaxing evening could break out. That relentless assault on our family life still feels fresh, even though our kids are now 39 and 33.

        During this time, Elaine and I were both teaching, researching, and writing about progressive classroom practices – one of which was not worksheets. Nick and Marny knew very well what our professional principles were, so they could have called out our hypocrisy whenever we tried to enforce the evening’s dosage of drivel. But they didn’t often use that leverage; they knew we would marinate in our complicity. And we pretty much quit supporting school homework when they reached high school.

        And then there was the perennial pinch of being teacher-parents. You want to be a loyal employee of the district. You don’t want to accuse your colleagues of doing dumb or harmful things to children. And you recognize (or you should) that teachers get even fewer opportunities than normal parents to complain about things at school. When you are an educator, you simply can’t afford to be labeled, “One of Those Crank Parents.”

        If you resonate with these concerns, you may be fondly recalling Alfie Kohn’s entirely excellent book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2006). Kohn likens homework for kids to the Second Shift for workers at the factory. You come home after eight hard hours and surprise – you have to go back to work! Kohn skillfully deconstructs every official rationale for homework. Decades of careful research studies have shown only negative outcomes for elementary kids and glancing, temporary ones for certain high schoolers. Then he runs through the more likely reasons that homework has been sustained against all evidence: upholding tradition, fostering obedience, providing ritual hazing (we had to go through it, now it’s your turn), developing a tolerance for toxic tasks, keeping kids off the streets, and finally, the redoubt of all scoundrels, the notion that homework “builds character.”

      For all the good work our friend Alfie did a decade ago, unexamined homework is still with us, in arguably more toxic forms. It’s bad enough when homework is menial, meaningless, and repetitive–a mere compliance ritual. But the content of homework-sheets can be even more corrupting than the process. We have just lived through another “Black History Month,” during which millions of kids came home with worksheets, mostly focused on Martin Luther King, (apparently the only African American leader of whom worksheet makers are aware.) This year’s assortment included MLK word-finds, matching exercises, fill in the blanks, word searches, and many more. Among the tasks:

1. Crossword puzzle clue for #7 Across:

Martin Luther King was assassinated during the month of __________.

1. A short historical text about MLK, followed by these instructions:

“Circle ten proper nouns and underline ten verbs.”

1. Freedom, peace, march, speech, Atlanta, minister, equal, dream, boycott, leader.
2. “Read these words and place them in alphabetical order.”
3. True-False: “Martin Luther King was a farmer.”
4. For those ready to further explore black heroes, another worksheet confides that Rosa Parks was “a tired seamstress who politely declined to give up her seat on the bus” because of her fatigue. Needless to say, the profile doesn’t mention that Parks had been an activist and leader of the NAACP for two decades and that she was tired of racism, not sewing.

Just in case you’re wondering, I am not making this up. These and hundreds more worksheets are available on the web for teachers to use, and reuse, and reuse. And these are not just time-wasters: they are desecrations of history and a pretty good example of how ignorance is engineered.

Just last week, a suburban Chicago teacher whom I follow on Twitter bravely began tweeting out photographs of her own young children suffering over the daily load of second-shift misery.

This is the face of my five-year-old doing useless homework when she would rather be playing. Five-year-olds don’t need homework. #ditchthehw

Tonight’s useless homework: track how many words you can read in 1-minute #ditchthehw

Things my kids could be doing right now instead of useless homework:

-reading

-playing with each other

-drawing

-talking to me about their day

-playing with their toys

-relaxing after 8 hours in school

#ditchthehw

So let’s get real. Let’s say you may work in a district where there is a serious Homework Policy dictating how many after-school minutes or hours kids are supposed to labor after school. So, let’s start by changing the categories of what counts as homework. Then, let’s design a time that’s stress-free, that invites kids’ curiosity and choice, and that doesn’t start battles between parents and kids, ruin whole evenings, and sell more Kleenex. Possible ideas for kids:

–Spend some time reading a book or magazine you have chosen.

–Go online to investigate a question that popped up in your life today.

–Interview family members about their work, interests, family-history.

–If you are in a literature circle at school, e-connect with classmates to discuss the book.

–Work on an ongoing “passion project,” something you have decided to look into long-term (animal extinction, volcanoes, the Cold War).

–Watch TV shows with family and talk about them.

–Free write in your personal journal (or work on your novel/poems).

–Pick an adult in the community you want to learn from and apprentice yourself.

Let’s grow this list together. Meet me at #DitchTheHW.

Learn more about Smokey!

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

In my previous blog posting for The Robb Review, I focused on what should be the real goal of phonics instruction – to get kids to the point where they don’t have to use phonics much in their reading.  We want students to be so proficient and efficient at word recognition that minimal attention is given to word decoding and maximum attention can be directed toward comprehension.   Staying with this theme of reading instruction goals, I’d like to focus on reading fluency and state right off the bat that the goal of fluency instruction should not be to make kids read fast.    It has been this incessant focus on increasing reading speed, I think, that has unfortunately given reading fluency a bad rep.

What is Reading Fluency?

Fluency has been called the neglected goal of the reading program (and it is) (Allington, 1983); it has also been called the bridge from word recognition to comprehension.     I like that bridge metaphor a lot. Fluency is the critical link to making meaning while reading. There are two components to fluency. The first is automaticity in word recognition – the ability to recognize words so effortlessly that most of a reader’s attention can be devoted to comprehension.   Automaticity is the part of the bridge that links to word recognition.

The other part of the fluency bridge is called prosody or reading with expression.  This is the link to comprehension. When a reader reads with appropriate expression that reflects the meaning of the text, she is striving to comprehend that text.    This is the part of fluency that is often neglected in instruction; yet it is critical for comprehension to occur, even when reading silently.

How Should We Teach Fluency?

As with anything we want to become fluent at (e.g., speaking, driving, golf, cooking), fluency is developed through practice.   In reading we have several forms of practice that can and should be employed. These forms of practice include wide reading, assisted reading where a reader reads while simultaneously hearing a fluent reading of the same text by a partner or recording, and repeated reading where a reader reads a text several times until she achieves fluency on that text (Rasinski, 2010).    In all these forms of practice the goal should be reading for meaning, and if reading orally, to read with appropriate expression that conveys meaning to anyone who may be listening.

How Does Reading Speed Fit into the Fluency Equation?

Reading speed (words read correctly per minute) is an indicator of word recognition automaticity and is often called the oral reading fluency (ORF) score.   The more automatic or effortless you are in recognizing words in text, the faster your reading becomes, AND the more attention you can devote to comprehending the text as opposed to analyzing the words in the text.    Reading speed is an indicator or consequence of the fluency component of automaticity, BUT it is not fluency. Our reading speed increases as our fluency improves, not the other way around. I often say that I want our children to become fast readers just the way I am and all of you reading this blog are reasonably fast readers;  but I want them to become fast the same way we all became fast readers – through lots and lots of authentic practice in reading.

So go ahead and use DIBELS and AimsWeb ORF scores, or Hasbrouck and Tindal’s norms (Words Correct per Minute) cautiously and sparingly as indicators of students’ growth in automaticity, but please please please do not let children think that you are trying to get them to read faster.   The increase in reading speed (as well as improvements in reading with expression) will happen with authentic reading practice, not with overt instruction or implied emphasis on reading fast.

Fluency is More than Automaticity

A few years ago I came across recordings of arguably two of the most fluently read speeches in American  history – Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address “Ask Not What Your Country…”     I subjected the oral readings of both of these speeches to an ORF (reading speed) assessment. In both cases, Dr. King and President Kennedy’s readings of their speeches may have landed them in a remedial reading class based on their very low ORF scores.     I am sure they were both automatic in their word recognition, and they could have read those speeches quickly. But doing so would have taken away from the meaning they were trying to convey. Because they were automatic in their recognition of the words in their speeches they were able to devote their attention to making and elaborating on the meaning they wished to share orally. They raised and lowered their voices, had dramatic pauses, changed volume and tone in order to more effectively to deliver their intended meanings to their audiences.   What truly made those speeches fluent was not the speed, but the expression (prosody) that they embedded in their readings.

For fluency instruction to truly work we need to see the goal of fluency as expressive oral (and silent) reading that reflects the meaning of the text.    When we make expressive and meaningful reading of texts the true goal of fluency (and avoid putting emphasis on fast reading) we will see significant improvements in reading comprehension (as well as reading speed).

You can find resources on teaching accurate and automatic word recognition and expressive prosodic reading (i.e. fluency) at Tim’s own website – www.timrasinski.com

Please see also my new book on reading fluency (written with Melissa Cheesman Smith) – The Megabook of Fluency published by Scholastic.

References

Allington, R.L. (1983).  Fluency: The neglected reading goal.  The Reading Teacher, 36, 556-561.

Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. A. (2006) Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 636-644.

Rasinski, T. V. (2010).  The fluent reader:  Oral and silent reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency, and comprehension (2nd edition).  New York: Scholastic.

By: Laura Robb

Most of us view stamina in reading as the ability to concentrate on reading for at least 30 minutes. And indeed, that is part of stamina! But there’s more to it, and I’ll illustrate this additional aspect with a literacy snapshot.

            A student, Jenna, who I tutored for several years, left fifth grade reading a year above grade level. In fifth grade, her teacher had 15 minutes of independent reading of self-selected books every day. In addition, students had modified choice when selecting instructional reading texts, as the teacher offered students a range of texts to choose from with their instructional levels. Total time spent reading for fifth graders was 35 minutes a day in their hour-long ELA class.  By the end of the year, most students were getting the hang of reading longer books and enjoying them. 

In sixth grade, volume in reading stopped. Independent reading of self-selected books was spotty.  Students’ instructional reading was on a computer, and they read six to ten paragraph selections and answered 10 questions for each one. Just as Dick Allington’s research predicted, Jenna and her classmates began losing reading gains because they weren’t reading. Many showed this backward slide on benchmark testing and a criterion-referenced test administered mid-year.

            Recently, Jenna called me. “Will you help me with reading this summer?” she asked.

            “I’d love to read some books together and talk about them, but you’re reading is fine.”

            ‘That’s the thing,” she said. “I’m having trouble reading longer books at home. I get through three chapters, then I can’t remember stuff, so I stop.”

Readers Need This Kind of Stamina!

            Jenna describes a type of stamina that relates to focus and concentration and improves with practice. To read a long novel, students have to remember characters that appear in the beginning and pop up later in the book. They also have to hold in their memories different settings, plot details, conflicts, and decisions made earlier that affect a character in the middle and near the end of the book. Informational texts pose similar problems when learners have to recall names, places, data, and myriad details.  Students on a steady diet of short texts don’t meet or practice these types of reading demands. Reading. Long. Books. Does. Develop. Them.

What Good Readers Do

            Students expected to improve by practicing on computer programs often don’t make progress because they are missing what students who read long books do to continually move forward:

• discuss texts with peers;
• compose their own discussion questions;
• write about reading in notebooks;
• develop analytical and critical thinking skills;
• take time to reflect on their reading;
• connect ideas between and among books;
• confer about their reading with a teacher and peer; and
• explore authors and genres and develop personal literary tastes.

So, over the summer, Jenna and I will read longer and longer texts. We’ll discuss chunks. We’ll make connections. We’ll do some writing and analytical thinking.  Hopefully, she’ll regain her losses and develop both kinds of stamina. It’s interesting to note that in a research study published in ILA’s Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (2000), educators identified indicators for students who scored high in reading on the international PISA test (The Program for International Student Assessment). The top indicator was that students read long texts. The second was that they completed a great deal of independent reading.

A Call to Action

It always amazes me that schools invest in programs that totally ignore the research on how and why students develop reading expertise. Exemplary teachers continually enlarge their knowledge of best practice and their skill set. Teaching skill develops with experience and through ongoing, self-directed professional learning.  Students need skilled teachers who respond to their needs. Students need skilled teachers who read aloud every day and invite students to learn from relevant books representing diverse cultures.

STAMINA…Readers Need It! INVEST in teachers! INVEST in books! And develop the stamina students require to become lifelong readers and critical thinkers.

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

Check out Evan’s blog posts on ScholasticEDU!

Learn more about Laura’s ideas on reading- check out- Teaching Reading in Middle School