From Striving to Thriving: Book Match Relentlessly!
You've seen those students in your classroom - the ones who roam around looking for the "perfect book" to read. They pick up the ones that everyone else is reading, but you know they can't read them. Then they get frustrated because they just can't seem to find a good fit book. Anger sets in because they know they can't read and do what everyone else is doing. What do you do?
Now that we have gained trust with our students, it's time to teach them how to find and enjoy reading at a whole new level! Though this chapter seemed like a "no-brainer" for me, I realized I had been book matching all wrong. Find out the BEST ways to get the right books in your students' hands!
Teaching Reading in Small Groups Ch.4 Strategy Lessons
The official title of Chapter 4 is Guided Practice Toward Independence: Strategy Lessons for Comprehension, Print Work, and Fluency.
To start this chapter Jennifer Serravallo talks about learning to be a clown for a high school production. She chooses to be a plate spinning clown, which is a perfect way of thinking about teaching children in strategy groups (or really teaching in general if you think about it!) You have to get one plate spinning on its own before you can move on to the next. Then, you have to go back periodically and give the plate a bit of a spin to keep it moving independently. You teach (spinning originally), Assess (go to check to see if it is still spinning) and then reinforce (give that plate another little spin to keep it going). Hence, Strategy Lessons. These are the With (or coaching) part of teaching students independence. You've got to keep them spinning if you want them to stay up!
FROM STRIVING TO THRIVING: CHAPTER 4 "PUMP UP THE READING VOLUME"
"The best intervention is a good book."
READING MAKES READERS
Volume reading is crucial to transforming striving readers into thriving readers, say Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward. They believe that voluminous, pleasurable reading is the key to literacy development. In this post we'll look at Chapter Four, "Pump Up the Reading Volume." The authors discuss how voluminous reading changes lives, reasons to add more reading to our day, how to build in more reading time, and review the research.
Teaching Reading in Small Groups - ch. 3 Engagement
From Striving to Thriving: Ensuring Access to and Choice of Books
Raise your hand if you have ever had a student say to you, "I hate reading." Most likely, every single one of us has had this heartbreaking experience with a student. But according to James Patterson in the following quote and the authors in Chapter Three, these students have just not yet found the right books. It is our responsibility as educators to provide all of our students with access to and choice of books, which is the focus of this chapter.
Teaching Reading In Small Groups - Chapter 2: "Forming Groups: Making the Invisible Visible Through Assessment"
When I signed up for this summer book study, I immediately gravitated towards chapter 2! I have always struggled with small group reading instruction (hence, the book study participation) and one of my biggest struggles is HOW to get the kids into groups that make sense AND allow for the greatest amount of growth in all students. It seems like my reading groups tend to stay static for a loooong time and then abruptly change. Jennifer Serravallo has laid out some great ideas for how to create the best groups for your students and keep them flexible as their needs change.
FROM STRIVING TO THRIVING: CULTIVATE CURIOSITY
Curiosity matters.
This simple statement by Harvey and Ward is the focus of Chapter 2 in From Striving to Thriving. The authors believe that questioning is the strategy that moves learners forward, especially striving readers, and that it is our job as teachers to convince them that we value their inquiries.
This simple statement by Harvey and Ward is the focus of Chapter 2 in From Striving to Thriving. The authors believe that questioning is the strategy that moves learners forward, especially striving readers, and that it is our job as teachers to convince them that we value their inquiries.
Analyzing Reading Behaviors: A MUST for Every Teacher of Reading
How can you tell a student is reading a text that is too hard? What signs do children give that they've met their limit? To learn the "look fors", head over to Comprehension Connection where you'll find this blog post. (it has been relocated to Carla's blog).
Chapter 1 -- 2018 Summer Book Study: Teaching Reading in Small Groups by Jennifer Serravallo
This year The Reading Crew chose Teaching Reading in Small
Groups: Differentiated Instruction for Building Strategic, Independent Readers
by Jennifer Serravallo as one of our professional development book studies for the
summer of 2018.
From Striving to Thriving: Table the Labels
Not all intervention programs are equal! There! We said it! In the opening of chapter one, Harvey and Ward describe a beautiful classroom scenario where Anthony makes the connection that "Reading is thinking!" In that classroom, there are great things happening. Students are turning and talking, jotting thoughts, questions, and new learning on sticky notes, getting to know each other as readers, conferring with their teachers, and reading books that they are totally engaged in. Anthony's realization that reading is thinking goes beyond calling out the words and shows he's connected the importance of comprehension.
In this post, we'll look at intervention programs and ideas to help make the most of classroom reading instruction.
From Striving to Thriving: The Introduction
When you think about readers in your classroom, what do you see? What are successful readers doing? How do they demonstrate they are reading? In the coming weeks, eight of our bloggers will help readers delve into these topics and the teaching tips offered through the book, From Striving to Thriving: Growing Confident, Capable Readers.
In this post, we'll be taking a look at the introduction (a chapter all by itself) . The authors of From Striving to Thriving, Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward, have coined the terms striving readers and thriving readers to describe our students, and in the introduction, they explain why they have chosen to abandon the term strugging reader for the preferred term, striving reader. So let's begin by looking at the difference.
Sowing The Seeds Of Vocabulary (Part Three)
Sowing The Seeds Of Vocabulary (Part Two)
As we discussed in Part One research says children that struggle with comprehension also struggle with vocabulary. This three part series lends quick and easy ways to expand your students' vocabulary and also strengthen their overall comprehension. Please revisit Sowing The Seeds Of Vocabulary (Part One) to help you understand and implement vocabulary in your classroom. This post (Part Two) will remind you how important it is to use Marzano's Vocabulary Process and Multiple Intelligence Theory to reach all students!High Five Writing: An Easy Method for Complex Sentences
What are High Five Sentences?
While working with some second grade teachers last year, they voiced concerns about their student's sentence structure and feared it was too simple. We made a plan: High Five Sentences. As you would suspect...high five sentences are so great, you want to give someone a high-five. During this one day lesson, we challenged students to High Five Sentences...supporting them all the way. We broke the students into partners and we gave them a Who? and a Did What? puzzle. Acknowledging that we had the makings of a good sentence, these sentences were deemed "kindergarten sentences" by the second graders. We needs to amp up the sentence before we could call them High Five second grade sentences. First, we added more details to the Who? part of the sentence. We added a gold piece of puzzle and added adjectives. These students decided the lion was BIG and MEAN. Once we added the gold puzzle, we decided we only had a High 2 Sentence (whomp, whomp).
Summer Reading: Getting Books in Their Hands
One Game Board Plus Many Games Equals Stronger Students
As a reading specialist, I get to do things that other teachers may not get to do all the time. I use games to help my students with many of the various skills we focus on. As I wound down my year, I spent my final day with my students celebrating our successes with games. And I used the same board for every single game!
Support with Ice Cream
Ask a student to support their reasons for an answer can sometimes be as fun as dental surgery. (No offense to all of you wonderful dental surgeons out there--it is an utter fear of mine!!) Over the years, I have come to realize a few things. Providing support for an answer can be difficult because it certainly requires a higher level of thinking, it requires language skills, and it may not be an inherent skill for many students. Formulating an answer to that question..."Why?"...just isn't as easy as we would like it to be for so many; therefore, it may be important for us to provide a visual to help out.
Sowing The Seeds Of Vocabulary (Part One)
Research says children that struggle with comprehension also struggle with vocabulary. Wouldn't you like to have quick and easy ways to expand your students' vocabulary and also strengthen their overall comprehension? Sowing The Seeds Of Vocabulary (the first in a series) will walk you through understanding and implementing vocabulary in your classroom. Read this post and your students will thank you profusely. (See what I did there?)
Spring Books that Will Make You Flip
Graphing Success: Preparing for Those State Assessments
It's that time of year again! Testing season is not far away, and we are all getting ready to help our students prepare for the standardized tests. My job as a reading specialist has shifted a little to help students as they work on those all important test taking strategies. This year, I am trying something different.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
