Anne and I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at the IRC Reading Conference. Maria Walther and Steven Layne were two speakers who inspired us with their reading and writing ideas, as well as their professional book suggestions.
Maria Walther teaches first grade, but many of her ideas about reading and writing can be adapted to any grade level. We plan on implementing several of her suggestions in our third grade classrooms. Her main message on Thursday was,"... reading aloud to students is a must if we are going to transform literacy instruction. The Common Core State Standards states teachers need to read aloud and do a lot of it." In her classroom, Maria kept a tally of all of the read aloud experiences she and her first graders had last year. At the final count they had 794 read aloud experiences! That's huge. This is something we would like to try beginning on Monday.
Maria spent the hour presenting book titles that would engage students in collaborative conversations and get them thinking deeper about the story or the craft and structure of the book. Some good book titles included Peanut Butter and Jellyfish by J. J. Krosoczka, which is a good for encouraging students to noticing amazing vocabulary words. Tough Boris by Mem Fox is great for modeling a close reading of a text. The illustrations have something entirely different happening in them than what is going on in the text. It is a short book and easy to read aloud several times for different purposes. The Secret Message by M. Javaherbin is great for helping students infer the big idea. They really have to think about what happened throughout the entire book and use their background knowledge to understand what the secret message is at the end. This book seems good to use with higher-level readers.
To get students' conversations going, Maria created anchor charts with them. They include:
When we think and share we...
*Look at one another.
*Keep quiet while one person talks.
*Stay still.
I can link my thinking by saying...
*Tell me more about your thinking.
*I have the same thinking because...
*My thinking is different because...
I can link my thinking by asking...
*What do you think?
*Tell me more about your thinking.
*Thanks, you really made me think today.
Maria said many of these wording ideas came from two professional reading books by Peter H. Johnston. One is called Choice Words and the other is called Opening Minds. According to Johnston, it's how teachers word their questions and their conversations that help students grow in their reading and writing potential. These are two titles we are definitely checking out.
If you are interested in anything we've mentioned above, you can find Maria Walther's handouts at her website under the calendar tab. The handout we received at the IRC is up there now. It might also be a good idea to follow her on Twitter. She always has some inspiring little tid bit to share.
Steven Layne's presentation was similar to Maria's. He talked about using picture books as spring boards for literacy activities. Again, he shared the importance of reading aloud to students of any age. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students at Judson University, but in the past he has used these ideas with students as young as third grade up to students in high school.
One of our favorite ideas for concept reinforcement was using the book Q is for Duck by Mary Elting and Michael Folsom. It's an alphabet book, but it's not written with the typical organization of an alphabet book. The letters of the alphabet have an unusual way of matching a concept. For example, the book begins-- "A is for zoo. Why? Because animals live in the zoo." Teachers can easily use this organizational format to have students create alphabet books based on any concept being studied. As Steven Layne stated, "You have to know why concepts are important before you can add them to the book." This activity would really encourage students to think about what they've learned and write about it in another way. This goes back to Kristina Smeken's idea that students need to reformat information they have learned through their reading. It is how they get to higher level thinking and understanding.
Another idea we want to take back to our classrooms is rewriting text. Layne used the poem Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out, by Shel Silverstein to model how students could rewrite text. He asked the question, "Why do we like this poem? Because Silverstein took a job no one wants to do and exaggerated what would happen if it didn't get done." He encouraged his students to brainstorm a white board full of "yucky" jobs. Then students would create poems that would explain what would happen if no one did them. This activity seems fun and challenging.
Thought squares was a final idea that we thought could be easily incorporated into our reading activities. It's what we already do with one minor difference. Thought squares involve students in writing down their thinking as they are reading or listening to a story read aloud. However, instead of having them write whatever thoughts pop into their heads, Layne suggests asking focus questions along the way, and having students write down their thoughts to those questions. We liked this because sometimes students miss what we think is important, and we have to go back and discuss those after they share their thoughts. Focusing their thoughts, at times, would help them notice important points in the text right away.
If you are interested in any of the ideas by Steven Layne you can learn more about them at his website, stevelayne.com
The reading conference kept us away from our classrooms for longer than we like, but hopefully incorporating some of the above activities will prove it was worth it.
Kim and Anne
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