I have been embarking on an instructional journey, which in full disclosure, started for mostly selfish reasons. It had been a while since I taught in a classroom and I missed it. However, the major idea I had been thinking about was the connection between reading and writing. I was wondering how planning to make this relationship more explicit by having students move in and out of texts to prepare for writing would impact writing to learn from an informational text. In addition, I wanted to see how modeling and feedback could impact teacher learning.

 

I read and reread some of the research on the reading and writing relationship and best practices for writing instruction (Anderson, N. L., & Briggs, C., 2011; Hampton, S., & Resnick, L. B., 2009; Tierney, R. J. & Shanahan, T., 1991; Stead, T. & Hoyt, L, 2012) and decided to use third grade classrooms as the test group.

 

The lesson had the following objectives and I told students that this is what they were responsible for:

The lesson was not designed to teach students how to write well. It was an exploration into what happens when you set students up to write about what they read by having them engage in reading, speaking, listening and writing throughout a lesson.

 

This article is not about the lesson itself. That will be in another piece. This is about the magic of modeling a lesson with teachers and critiquing it together to consider maximum impact on children's literacy learning and teacher learning. I conducted the lesson in three classrooms with very different makeups. Teachers actively engaged with their students throughout the lesson as well as just observed and took notes. Thinking about each classroom and then across classrooms has my wheels turning about the learning that can happen for professionals through modeling and critiquing. The ideas that surfaced for me through this experience are the following:

 

Knew and New: Teachers seeing their students respond to a different teacher and different type of lesson brought out new understandings about their students and solidified what they already knew. Some were surprised about their students' level of engagement or thoughtful sharing with peers. Some confirmations about students' ability to read across several texts and write were had. In all, the lesson afforded teachers the opportunity to observe their students' thinking, reading and writing processes without the additional task of teaching.

 

Defining Rigor: After one debriefing session, a teacher remarked that the lesson helped her define rigor. She has a lot of students who struggle with literacy and need additional literacy supports. Some of the students are repeating the grade. By watching her students tackle the text and stay engaged with the text with minimal direction, she saw that her students can "do more."

 

The Right Question: The use of questions to target learning objectives helped teachers think about the different ways they approach their instructional targets. Teachers discussed how listening to students' responses to questions and listening to the different types of questions posed would be useful for future planning. They also were able to see if concepts they had taught students over the course of the year were mastered.

 

Teacher Talk: All three teachers commented on how little I talked. It surfaced their own wonderings about their talk time and if their teaching is dominated by their voice versus students. Our discussions around talk were tied to asking the right question and teacher preparation (knowing the text). The questions in the lesson prompted students to ask questions and supported student-led discussions and helped students unpack their own wonderings about the text. The teacher talk and questioning led to conversations tied to final thoughts I will share around classroom structures.

 

Structure: Teachers enjoyed how the lesson was organized but did question the length (One hour and a half, mainly because of my availability. The lesson could easily take a week) and the openness of the lesson. They wondered about the freedom students had to choose how they wrote in response to texts, lack of parameters on the what and the how of writing and that I didn't respond to all of the students' thinking. "How do you do that?" one mused. Another talked about how at different points she would have gone into explicit instruction (e.g., when it was time to write, when students had difficulty responding to a question). This led to conversations about teacher control and high structure versus low structure -- two teachers remarked, "they need to let go" (but only a little bit).

 

Another piece around structure was that each teacher's classroom represented a culture of learning. The work that the teachers put in from the beginning of the year allowed me to model. Similar characteristics across all classrooms were 1) students' respect for each other as learners, 2) students sharing ideas with each other or the teacher, 3) enthusiasm for learning, 4) student roles and responsibilities, and 5) fairness in how students are treated. The biggest differences across classrooms were 1) student to student talk and 2) how students approached writing. It was clear which were the classrooms where students had more opportunities to talk with each other and to write about their reading.

 

My thinking is not tied neatly in a bow just yet. I apologize to readers who thrive off closure. The professional learning that occurred amongst teachers from different classrooms and schools was a huge take away for me and I just had to write about it. It was a reminder of the power of modeling, the importance of grounding instructional practice in research, taking risks and being open to critique. This allowed teachers to have rich discussions about student learning and how different lessons can provide more opportunities for students to do the real work:  "the person who does the work is the only one who learns" (Wong & Wong, 1998). It also opened my eyes to the importance of building relationships with colleagues. For readers, whether you are a teacher, coach or administrator I urge you to consider or reconsider the opportunities afforded for peer observations, feedback and safe practice.

 

A heartfelt thank you to the teachers who opened the doors of their classrooms.

The Illinois Reading Council and the Wisconsin State Reading Association are pleased to offer the FREE Webinar series for IRC and WSRA members again.  This year's topic is Culturally Responsive Instruction. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2016      

7:00 p.m.  

Identity, Equity, and Literacy:  Focusing on Struggling Readers
with Doris Walker-Dalhouse and Victoria Risko

• Description:  This webinar is based upon the premise that teachers need to better understand the lives, language, culture, and educational practices of the diversity of struggling readers in their classroom if they are to scaffold their literacy learning in an age of increasing educational demands for academic accountability. Our intent in this webinar is to promote educational equity for struggling readers by supporting their acquisition of foundational English arts skills and higher order thinking abilities that are required for making sense of literacy and informational texts that are present in both online and offline literacy environments. The strategies presented can be integrated into the classroom in ways that support all students' ability to: attain high levels of comprehension and the ability to critique, analyze, and reconstruct meanings when reading and producing disparate text types and organizations, and engage in reading, writing, and speaking to generate texts that address multiple purposes.

Register today for the upcoming webinar!

Teach Spelling and Sentence Construction Skills  

(to improve reading fluency)

Teach Spelling Skills  

(to improve word reading skills)