ILA's New Digital Experience Is Here! Learn More

Literacy Now

The Engaging Classroom
ILA Membership
ILA Next
ILA Journals
ILA Membership
ILA Next
ILA Journals
    • Blog Posts
    • Teacher Educator
    • Literacy Coach
    • Job Functions
    • Student Choice
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Teacher Empowerment
    • Professional Development
    • Reading
    • Foundational Skills
    • Topics
    • Quiet! Teacher in Progress
    • The Engaging Classroom
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Administrator
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Content Types

    'Make It Work': From Fashion to Freedom

    BY MRS. MIMI AKA JENNIFER SCOGGIN
     | Jan 13, 2016

    shutterstock_210167587_x300When you’re a teacher, every minute of your day feels important. Because it is. Every. Single. Minute.

    Often, many of these minutes are mandated. As in, how many minutes you must spend on reading instruction. How many minutes you must spend on writing instruction. How many minutes you must dedicate to character development or math or word study or science or social studies…or basically “insert anything here” and it is all urgent.

    My personal tipping point was when I was told to find an additional 30 minutes twice a week to accommodate recorder lessons. Now, I am all for instrumental music but, one, the recorder sounds like a goose in the throes of death, and, two, those 60 extra minutes pushed my mandated minutes so far beyond the actual number of minutes I had with children that I could no longer stand the lack of common sense. I marched to my administrator and said, “I have 330 instructional minutes with students each week. You have now mandated 450 minutes of instruction.”

    She replied, “Huh. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Well, make it work.”

    So, in the wise words of Tim Gunn and my former administrator, I made it work. I made it work by choosing priorities for my students’ ultimate success. (Sorry, recorder.) At the top of my list? Independent reading and writing time. Kids get to be better readers and writers by actually reading and writing, not by listening to a teacher talk about them. These independent work periods also allow teachers the time to meet with students one on one or in small groups to address more personalized learning needs and goals. And I’m not talking about reading a pre-determined passage or writing in response to a prompt. Those have their place, but, for me, reading authentic student-selected texts and writing open-ended pieces were the minutes that mattered most.

    I began making these minutes a priority by keeping track of them over the course of the week. Every day for one week, I kept careful track of the number of minutes my students spent reading and writing authentically and independently. Then, I analyzed my data. (The Powers That Be just love that last sentence.) Was I happy with the number of minutes students were actually engaged as readers and writers? If not, where could I steal extra minutes? Could I tighten up my own instruction, get creative with time, or trim any fat?

    Let’s not get it twisted—this sounds much easier than it actually was in practice. I had to be very honest with myself about time-wasters and make tough decisions. Yet in the end, I was able to specifically diagnose my own redundancy and see how I could contribute to a solution, rather than continuing to complain about the problem of time.

    A recent article published in Education Week solidified my fear that I am not alone. Many classrooms struggle to “cram it all in” and, as a result, students are often left with very few minutes to fall into an authentic reading and writing life.

    So, yes, every minute is important. And no, there aren’t enough of them in the day. And of course, this reality is super easy to complain about—and complain you should.

    But maybe, in this new year of possibility, we can find some time to prioritize and be part of the solution, too.

    Mrs. Mimi, aka Jennifer Scoggin, is a teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

     
    When you’re a teacher, every minute of your day feels important. Because it is. Every. Single. Minute. Often, many of these minutes are mandated. As in, how many minutes you must spend on reading instruction. How many minutes you must spend on...Read More
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Teacher Educator
    • Job Functions
    • Writing
    • Reading
    • Comprehension
    • Foundational Skills
    • Topics
    • Tutor
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Student Level
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • Content Types
    • In Other Words
    • The Engaging Classroom
    • Blog Posts

    Finding Serendipity: Creating Authentic Writing Experiences for Young Writers

    By Paul Emerich France
     | Jan 07, 2016

    ThinkstockPhotos-179119406_x300The printed word often is taken for granted. It’s everywhere you look—billboards, signs, our mobile devices. We rarely stop to think about its origin, that print once was a commodity, a symbol of privilege, holding a clear and authentic purpose: to communicate with one another over distance, over time, and across cultures.

    The power of the printed word has become diluted through systematized and widespread dissemination of literacy in the Industrial Era, both in everyday life and in the classroom, dramatically changing the way children learned to read and write through phonics readers and handwriting books. It wasn’t long before these decontextualized and inauthentic forms of literacy were found virtually everywhere, used to teach children at large scale in the typical Industrial Era manner. In fact, using these resources, in addition to new at-scale resources such as basal reading sets and other prescriptive curricula, to scale effective literacy instruction to large groups of children is still commonplace in many classrooms today.

    But what many have not realized is that literacy has lost a great deal of its authenticity by making it a decontextualized, rote chore, one with which many students comply but actually despise. I think there’s a relatively easy way to amend this through contextualized tasks that promote an authentic desire to communicate with one another—just as the printed word was originally intended.

    As I began working with 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds this year, my primary objective was to foster a love of writing. Our school was new, having just opened in Palo Alto, CA, filled with fresh, bright faces and budding friendships, immersed in a town waiting to be explored. A writing project seemed like the perfect way to do it.

    We conducted a study of Palo Alto, where we walked the neighborhoods, took pictures, asked questions, and even built a small three-dimensional model of the city, all culminating with a writing project that documented our findings.

    “We’re going to make a magazine,” I told my students, “so we can share with our families what we’ve learned about our new community!”

    “I want to write about City Hall!” one student exclaimed, sending my students into a flurry of chatter. Soon enough, all of our tablets were out and my students were flipping through pictures from our community walk, writing and drawing about buildings and other places they saw.

    Although the project managed to unite us as a class, it also made it incredibly easy for me, as the writing workshop facilitator, to personalize for content, learning process, and ability level. I worked with some students on paragraph structure, sentence ordering, and identifying independent clauses and with emergent writers on word building, letter formation, and fine motor skills.

    By gaining the momentum for a love of writing in this first project, we were propelled into our next learning arc when we studied stories. We partnered with a local nonprofit preschool and wrote stories for preschoolers who didn’t have access to as many books as we do. My students’ eyes, ears, and brains lit up when I read the list of names of children they’d be writing for, once again igniting the need to write for a real audience—and for an authentic purpose—within them.

    This may sound like a whole new way of planning writing, but getting started is quite simple.

    Start with resources you know. Lucy Calkins’s Writing Workshop model is great for creating the structure for a real-world writing workshop. When I began teaching writing, I followed a curriculum and found that it gave me a framework for strong lesson structure and helped me plan with the end in mind while constantly assessing through conferring. With time, I slowly removed my own curricular scaffolding, and you can, too, as you become more fluent with planning and preparing real-world writing workshop lessons, unique to the environment around your classroom. These structures then support both you and your students, even in the face of new content and opportunities that can arise only out of real-world serendipity. It is through this serendipity that you can bring the outside world into your minilessons, and your minilessons into the outside world.

    Somewhere, literacy lost its purpose in the classroom. Educators forgot that literacy not only is a means for greater opportunity down the road, but also has a greater social purpose: It allows us to connect with one another, to develop empathy with the outside world, and to make sure that each of our voices are heard. In this manner, serendipitous literacy is everywhere; you simply have to find the right serendipity.

    Paul Emerich France, an ILA member since 2011, is a K–5 educator, National Board Certified teacher, reading specialist, and freelance writer. On his blog, InspirED, he writes stories from the classroom as well as commentaries on current policy and social justice education.

     
    The printed word often is taken for granted. It’s everywhere you look—billboards, signs, our mobile devices. We rarely stop to think about its origin, that print once was a commodity, a symbol of privilege, holding a clear and authentic...Read More
    • Librarian
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Blog Posts
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Comprehension
    • Foundational Skills
    • Social Studies & History
    • Children's Literature
    • English Language Arts
    • Content Areas
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Topics
    • Putting Books to Work
    • The Engaging Classroom
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Reading Specialist
    • Job Functions
    • Content Types

    Putting Books to Work: Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation

    By Laren Hammonds
     | Jan 06, 2016

    Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation. Edwidge Danticat. Ill. Leslie Staub. 2015. Penguin/Dial.

    Ages 7­–18

    Summary

    pbtw mamas nightingaleEdwidge Danticat’s words and Leslie Staub’s vibrant images combine in Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation to tell the story of Saya, a young girl whose mother, a Haitian immigrant, has been imprisoned because she is undocumented. Saya’s father petitions the local mayor, congresswoman, and news outlets for support in bringing his wife home, to no avail. No one ever responds.

    During this time of separation, Saya’s mother begins recording bedtime stories and mailing them to Saya to help maintain their connection. In particular, she tells a story about a nightingale who goes on a long journey to return home to her baby, paralleling her desire to return home to her own child. One day, as Saya watches her father write yet another letter on his wife’s behalf, she decides to write her own letter to share her story. Instead of the silence Saya’s father’s letters elicited, Saya receives a response almost immediately, first from one reporter, then another. Soon after, members of the community send their own letters and make calls advocating for Saya’s family. After only one week, Saya’s mother is brought before a judge who rules that she may go home to her family while she awaits her papers.

    Cross-Curricular Connections

    English/language arts, social studies/history

    Ideas for Classroom Use

    Analyze Nonprint Texts

    The rich illustrations found in quality picture books offer opportunities for students to analyze nonprint texts. Students can examine the book’s illustrations, identifying elements that help to reveal character, underscore the author’s message, and symbolize big ideas and explaining how these elements help to convey the story. Students may also comment on visual motifs such as the key, the nightingale, and the rainbow.

    Determine Theme and Write Thematic Statements

    Picture books like this one are a great way to introduce students to the skills of identifying theme and writing thematic statements. Saya herself says, “It is our words that brought us together again.” How do the writer’s words help to convey her message?

    Write to Persuade

    Saya’s story demonstrates that every child has the power to make a difference. Individually, students can explore a cause meaningful to them, research the cause, and then write to a local leader advocating for their cause. Collectively, students might develop a campaign for a cause of their choosing.

    Research the Effects of Immigration and Separation

    The author herself grew up in a family that experienced separation caused by immigration, and the topic of immigration continues to be a part of national and international discussions. All students can learn more about the human side of immigration, and older students can examine the role immigration will play in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    Additional Resources

    U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website has information about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including data on the number of people deported, detained, or both each year.

    Edwidge Danticat’s “Stories of Haiti”TED Talk in which the author shares her wealth of knowledge about Haiti’s culture and people.

    Laren Hammonds has been a classroom teacher since 2004, working with students in grades 7–12. She currently spends her workdays with eighth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL, and every other moment reading books and seeking out adventures with her preschool son Matthew and husband Erik. A two-time graduate of the University of Alabama, she holds a master’s degree in instructional technology and is currently pursuing National Board Certification. Her professional interests include the intersection of video games and literacy, cross-curricular collaboration in secondary schools, preservice teacher support, and the impact of classroom design on student learning. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.  

     
    Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation. Edwidge Danticat. Ill. Leslie Staub. 2015. Penguin/Dial. Ages 7­–18 Summary Edwidge Danticat’s words and Leslie Staub’s vibrant images combine in Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of ...Read More
  • ILA Membership
    ILA Next
    ILA Journals
    ILA Membership
    ILA Next
    ILA Journals
    • Administrator
    • Blog Posts
    • Topics
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • Student Engagement & Motivation
    • Nontraditional Learning Environments
    • Teaching Strategies
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • Science
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Teaching Tips
    • The Engaging Classroom
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • Teacher Educator
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • Job Functions
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Student Level
    • Tutor
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Reading Specialist
    • Content Types

    Finding the Relativity in the Classroom

    By Mark Weakland
     | Jan 05, 2016

    ThinkstockPhotos-84516475_x300As a science nerd and lover of nonfiction, I’ve turned my reading attention recently to Albert Einstein while marking the 100th and 110th anniversaries of his theories of general and special relativity. Mulling over the oddities of space-time and quarks, my mind has drifted to teaching, and I have found that physics sheds some light on my educational endeavors. Leptons linked to literacy, you say? Yes.

    When Einstein theorized that light exists as a particle (or quanta) a century ago, he laid the foundation for the fields of quantum mechanics and cosmology. Since then, scientists studying bosons, the Big Bang theory, and black holes have come to understand that certain aspects of our universe can be measured precisely, w other aspects are beyond exact calculation. On one hand, the circumference of a circle strictly determines its area. On the other, there is absolutely no way to know when the nucleus of a radium atom will decay. What can always be predicted and what will forever remain random coexist in a universe that is both determinate and indeterminate.  

    In education, researchers have made great strides toward making the field more deterministic. Methods of assessment have been advanced and data have been disaggregated. Theories have been tested and refined through replicated experiments to the point where we can now say with confidence that a young child’s ability to master phoneme-grapheme association determines his or her early reading acquisition and the quality and expertise of a child’s teacher determines the degree to which she or he will learn.

    Yet there are limits to the degree of determinacy education can reach. As the field travels the path of reductionism, striving to identify what is strictly quantifiable in reading development or determine which instructional methods lead to perfect learning every time, reflecting on these limits may be helpful. After all, associating sounds with symbols is not the only skill a young child brings to bear on reading, and although we may know that a student’s learning is determined by the quality of the teacher, we may never know what qualities are present in all highly effective teachers.

    This is not to say I am an advocate of randomness in education. I am not. Determining through research which type of instruction works best, which materials lead to greater learning, and how best to formulate an effective program of teacher training are worthwhile and even necessary endeavors.  Education needs rigor, data, and quantitative analysis.

    But we should be wary. Educational systems love the cutting edge and the paradigm shift, but neither necessarily involve rigor. And our love affair with everything new and different leads often to uncertainty and heartbreak. A multitiered system of support supplants Response to Intervention, heterogeneous grouping is swept away by mass customized learning, and the latest version of a core reading program flies in with more subroutines and monitoring systems than a space capsule, but are we really sure that any one of these complex systems definitely determines learning?

    Think of this: Physicists postulate that the universe operates on levels of determinacy and indeterminacy simultaneously. Think of our universe as a layer cake. Each layer exists and operates on differing physical laws. On the bottom is the layer of quantum physics, where particles and waveforms arise, decay, and collapse at random. Upon this foundation of unpredictability are built atoms, rocks, and planets, which behave in predictable ways. Living on these very predictable rocks and planets are microbes and people, which evolve and behave in indeterminate, chaotic ways.

    We can acknowledge that certain aspects of education—how to motivate a child, how to inspire a colleague, how to find the exact and perfect way to teach reading—lie beyond the purview of strict determinism, even as we strive to define scientifically what works and what does not work. And we can work towards rigor even when we know that science can never totally quantify which specific practices and materials determine complete learning. Our field is an indeterminate one, focused on millions of freethinking beings acting in unpredictable ways. First graders give a hug without notice, third graders fall out of their seats unexpectedly, sixth graders come to school frequently with more than close reading on their minds. The beauty of teaching, which is both a science and an art, is that through the skillful practice of what we know, through our quest to gain greater knowledge, and through a lot of inspired and hard work, we can create order from chaos and help determine outcomes for all our indeterminate and oh-so-interesting students.

    mark weakland headshotMark Weakland is an educator, consultant, and author of books for teachers and children, including Super Core! Turbocharging Your Basal Reading With More Reading, Writing, and Word Work.

     
    As a science nerd and lover of nonfiction, I’ve turned my reading attention recently to Albert Einstein while marking the 100th and 110th anniversaries of his theories of general and special relativity. Mulling over the oddities of space-time...Read More
    • Job Functions
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Speaking
    • Reading
    • Listening
    • Comprehension
    • Foundational Skills
    • Teaching Tips
    • The Engaging Classroom
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • Literacy Education Student
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Student Level
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Blog Posts

    Be a Mentor: Coach Students Into Deeper Reading

    By Gravity Goldberg
     | Dec 22, 2015

    mentor chartHave you ever finished modeling a lesson, crossed your fingers, and hoped some of the students actually go back and use what you taught? We have all been there, no matter what grade level we teach. Once we have been a model and shown students new ways of reading, we hope they begin to try the strategies when needed in their own books. But we can do more than hope; we can coach readers and help them get started.

    When we become a mentor to readers, we sit by them and guide them as they go about deeper thinking, but we don’t take over their books or do the work for them. I see being a mentor as being a coach on the sideline of the field.

    As a former soccer player, I noticed two types of coaches I had over the years—“sideline” coaches and “on-the-field” coaches—and the two are quite distinct. Sideline coaches would stay off the field, where they would watch practice, pause the play, give us more instruction, and then set us back to scrimmage. While we were playing, the sideline coaches would comment and suggest—and sometimes even yell—but all of it was aimed at helping us players who were on the field make wise choices.

    On-the-field coaches would literally step on the field with us in practice and play with us. They would pass us beautiful balls and set us up to score, but most of the time our level of play was elevated because they were out on the field doing much of the work for us. I learned from both types of coaches, but I developed much more independence from the sideline coaches. Our team’s performance in practice and in games was similar with sideline coaches, but our team’s performance was much less successful in games when we had on-the-field coaches. We were so used to the coach doing a lot of the work for us we never learned to do it on our own.

    What kind of reading coach are you? If you are not sure, consider how much work you do in the students’ books and how often you pick up their books to get them started. Consider where you sit in relation to students when coaching. Be on the sideline by sitting next to a student. Consider how much you say as they try a strategy. Are you telling them every step or calling out “plays” in the moment and then watching to see what they need next?

    If you are choosing to be in the book with your students like an on-the-field coach, remember to eventually step back and coach from the sidelines.

    Here are a few qualities I notice about the coach who sets up independence and transfer:

    • Names one step at a time
    • Tells students what they can try (not asking a lot questions for them to think through while reading)
    • Focuses on what to do (not what to avoid)
    • Keeps language and prompts clear
    • Does less over time and expects students to take on more

    The chart in this post from Mindsets and Moves: Strategies That Help Readers Take Charge shows how you might do less over time.

    Gravity Goldberg is a literacy consultant and author of Mindsets and Moves: Strategies That Help Readers Take Charge (Corwin, 2015) and coauthor of Conferring With Readers: Supporting Each Student’s Growth and Independence(Heinemann, 2007) in addition to managing her blog. This post is one in a series on how teachers can create more independence in the classroom by embracing new roles. She also can be reached via Twitter

     
    Have you ever finished modeling a lesson, crossed your fingers, and hoped some of the students actually go back and use what you taught? We have all been there, no matter what grade level we teach. Once we have been a model and shown students...Read More
Back to Top

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives