Student & Influencer Investment in Centers

Hello! First, let me say I’m so sorry for the delay in my post. Things got a little crazy down here, and I apologize. If you’re looking at the vision document, I’m just collapsing two blog posts into one for the sake of time and the end of the semester. I know how crazy this time usually is (I felt like we had 15 Christmas programs…), so my intention is that this post will inform your planning during winter break and you’ll have something to implement when y’all get back.

This post is about easy, routinized way to share student-level data with students and influencers, to increase investment and individual accountability for our littles. Also, I know our focus is centers but this blog post will start with guided reading just because the content is so linked!

For those of you who DRA/F&P/BAS your students, you should have new reading levels for all of your kids heading into break. Celebrate their growth so much!!!!!! If they’ve moved up one level, great! If they’ve moved up four levels, great!

On the teacher level, new reading level data helps you re-create your guided reading groups and recalculate how many more levels kids need to grow to meet their end of year goal. (As a side note, if you teach Kinder, most of your kids should be on a B by early February to hit their EOY goal. If you teach first or second grade, kiddos are too all over the place so you just want to make sure they’re almost halfway to their EOY goal. Students grow more in Spring but it’s hard to plan for that.)

On the student level, be really specific with them what skills they have now that they can read a “G” text. Can they use context clues to determine meaning? Can they summarize with the most important important events from beginning, middle and end? Can they recognize word parts within challenging words to figure it out? I’ve posted a “Reading Behaviors Checklist” on the GoogleDrive that’s divided by reading level so you can give really targeted feedback.

For influencers, accessing what a “G” book is sounds really confusing. One thing I’ve found super helpful is a) annotating a guided reading book that your students can bring home with particular strategies or noteworthy word patterns. What are all the high frequency words in the text? How will the picture help a student decode a word? b) actually executing a guided reading group with parents there, and voice over how you’re coaching the reader. It’s a way to build influencers’ skill at reading with their students, and the impact you’ll see in the classroom is huge. Make sure you address word attack strategies and comprehension as influencers are watching, so they see both. I think this could happen during conferences, a parent night, or just asking parents to come in throughout the week whenever they can. It also helps influencers and you feel like partners, as opposed to one as the holder of knowledge.

I think tracking student growth in centers (especially for fluency, high frequency words, phonics/phonological awareness) is essential so you know they’re still doing meaningful work during centers time. For example, if everyone’s favorite high frequency word set is the purple one but you know 50% of your class knows those words, it might be time to coach students to make a different choice. You can assess (informally) high frequency words at your guided reading table, and their PPA growth should be evident when they’re reading with you. You can give a timed fluency passage assessment for your kiddos who you think really need particular fluency support.

Earlier in the semester, someone mentioned having a passport that tracks where students go when, which is such a fabulous idea. Once you have mid-year reading level data for your students, you can adjust whatever system you use to ensure that students are getting the practice in the skill they really need. For example, if high frequency words are why your reading couldn’t move from a H to an I, maybe she has three boxes for your HFW center and has to go there three times throughout the week, and practice with the yellow cards as opposed to the purple ones. If fluency is a huge gap, partner your more struggling student with a fluent reader so they can hear a peer.

Reorganizing guided reading groups and identifying reader needs is definitely difficult and time consuming so if you need any help, please reach out via phone or email! I’d love to help you figure it out!

Increasing Alignment in Centers & Making Work Meaningful

Hi ladies! Thanks in advance for reading, reflecting, and applying 🙂 Our topic is about how to increase alignment in centers: what are data-identified needs for your readers and how can you use activities created to address those needs. We started with what centers you already have, so now we can refine them to actually address the needs of our readers, and differentiate within the centers themselves.

One of the trends I pulled out from your responses to the first blog post was that phonics/phonological awareness, writing and vocabulary were centers you wanted more support on so that’s what I’m going to focus on!

The best place to start is with the assessment: which of your various assessments gives you data on which piece of the literacy rope? For example, the DRA measures fluency, comprehension, potentially vocabulary. MAPS measures comprehension, vocabulary and depending on the level, phonics/phonological awareness but students don’t have to produce anything so I’m always a little wary of the PPA score on MAPS. If you don’t have data on a piece of the literacy rope, that’s your place to start. (A note on vocabulary: there isn’t really an assessment of “your students now know all of the vocabulary words for first grade. It’s more that students can recognize commonly used words, have strategies to solve for unknown words and then use those words in their writing. This website gives some overview: http://www.learninga-z.com/commoncore/academic-vocabulary.html and Common Core has some resources, too!)

Next, I find it easier to think through a group of readers rather than a class holistically. Take your lowest group, and think through their skills in fluency, comprehension, PPA, vocabulary, writing. What do they need to be practicing during centers time and what do you need to do to set them up? You can gather this information from your assessments and anecdotal notes during guided reading time. I worked through an example below.

Lowest group: Level C
PPA: need to practice beginning sounds and recognizing “at” word family
Fluency: sight word practice
Comprehension: solid at retell, but struggling with text-to-text connections and determining importance of events
Writing: matching words to our pictures

Once I’ve identified the most pressing need for each piece of the literacy rope, it’s much easier to create activities that address that specific skill. I can put those activities into my existing centers and watch my readers fly!

Two sticky spots:

1. “This sounds like a crazy amount of work.” I absolutely agree! Focusing on one reading group per week, and putting more energy into your most struggling readers is the best way to go about it. Also, not every group needs a differentiated center for each center. If sight words are the key for your Level C readers, focus on that. If writing is the #1 goal for your N readers, focus on that. Make it work for you!

2. “How did you figure out what your C readers needed?” First, anecdotal notes are your best friend, especially if you’re listening for connections you can make to centers. Second, I put a fabulous resource in the folder for our group and it has skills and potential gaps for readers by reading level. Start there!

Know that I’m available by phone and email! 🙂

Making Centers Sustainable Through Systems

Hi y’all- here is our first content post for our course!

One of the things I heard in all of your introductory materials is that you love centers, your students love centers but it’s occasionally overwhelming to keep up with, and you want to make sure you’re spending your time on the most impactful things. I so agree, and know that centers can be an overwhelming beast of a thing if not managed on the teacher level in an ongoing way. I distinctly remember sitting in the middle of my classroom library- now Natalie’s classroom! love! – on a Saturday morning, with all 22 book boxes spilled out around me. I was probably crying, and trying to stop Jackson from eating crayons. Sound familiar? Below are some quick tips and strategies that will not only ensure the basics are up and going in your classroom, but also gives you some options for sustainable systems.

To get us started, I really value scholarship and learning from those who walked before us. I found this great excerpt from a (huge) study about quality elementary education. Nothing was super surprising to me, and probably won’t be to you, but I think it’s a good reminder and strong framing for the rest of the post:  http://www.readingrockets.org/article/six-ts-effective-elementary-literacy-instruction.           I would love for all of you to read through, and include some reflections in your questions and responses next week.

With the Six T’s in mind, onto our work!

First off, do you have absolutely great data that holistically represents your students as readers? The DRA2 and Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (BAS) are probably the best options to get your students’ reading levels. It’s really difficult to create meaningful, responsive centers without their reading levels, so just in case you don’t have that…prioritize assessing right now!

If you do have your students’ accurate reading levels, do you have a center that addresses each piece of what we call “the literacy rope?” To read, students need:

1. vocabulary: not only words I know and can use in my writing, but strategies to solve for unknown words

2. fluency: I can read at an appropriate rate and expression for my reading level

3. decoding: I have word attack strategies to break down words I don’t know, relying on what I do know about language

4. phonics and phonemic awareness: I can manipulate, break apart, put back together words. The easiest way to remember it is that phonics you need to see- “take off the “M” in man, and write what’s left.” Phonemic awareness you can do in the dark- “I’m going to say the word “man.” if you delete the mmmm sound, what’s left?”

5. writing: I can put my thoughts and feelings on paper, working through process and genre

6. comprehension: I understand what I’m reading, and can apply it in numerous scenarios

What these centers look like can vary greatly, but students need to be practicing these skills in centers time. Do you have at least one center that addresses the pieces of the literacy rope? If not, what are you missing? Let me know and I can help you brainstorm!

If you have solid student-level data you trust, and at least one center that addresses the most important reading skills, we can start thinking about sustainable systems. One of the things I heard from a few of you is that you spend so much time introducing a new center, it cuts into instructional time. Or, students are struggling to truly internalize what to do at each center, so your instruction is being interrupted. My best piece of advice is to choose centers where what students are doing stays the same, just the content changes. An example of this could be: that cute center with different word families written on spoons and students add the first or last letter? That’s really easy to sustain, because you can just add in more challenging word families, but what kids are actually remembering to do stays the same. Your writing center can be the same: students choose a topic from their heart map or paint sticks with topics on them, work through the writing process and get to “publish” with a fancy pencil on Friday. Again, what kids are doing stays the same, but the skills can change. There’s a lot of research that shows why this works- unscientifically, baby brains rely on routines and pre-existing structures to add new knowledge, so we can help our kids out by keeping as much the same as possible. If you do need totally new centers, the most effective thing I’ve found is to be as specific as possible (searching “fluency activities for level E readers” is way better than “fun literacy activities for centers”), and set a timer! One episode of The Mindy Project is usually my limit 🙂 Also, try not to introduce more than 1-2 new centers per week.

The very best resource I’ve found for centers (even better than Pinterest!) is the Florida Center for Reading Research: fcrr.org. They organize all of their pre-made centers by part of the literacy rope, and by reading level-ish. They include the template for their centers, so you can just add in new words, sounds, word families, etc. It’s AMAZING.

Alright friends, this is all I have for you for this week. Please comment, reply to one another, reach out to your MTLD and to myself with specific questions. Can’t wait to hear from you!

Welcome!

Hi ladies! 🙂

I hope I’ve communicated just how excited and grateful I am for this opportunity- to engage with all of you, learn from you, and stay connected to the people and place I love so  much. I chose a blog-style learning experience because I think it’s a way for us to differentiate better, and I love the level of freedom it gives all of you. I’ve found that self-directed learning with support options is the most effective form of corps member development, so I’m excited to take it for a spin.

I’m going to send an email this afternoon with the link, vision and access to the folder where I’ll compile resources and where you’ll upload your evidence. Also, I know your MTLDs are going to be working and following up with you on questions that come up, but please know I’m in your corner and I’d love to answer questions, hop on the phone, SKYPE IN TO SEE YOUR BEAUTIFUL BABIES!, and basically do whatever you need to make this work. The first content post will be coming this afternoon! 🙂

All my SD love,

Sarah