Lights, Cameras, Action...Engaging Parents with Learning Fun

With the title above, you may feel like you're heading to the movies, and sometimes, choosing something fun and inviting such as a movie night is just the thing to bring ALL of your parents in. We want our parents involved because we know it makes a difference in the learning of the child, right. Read on to learn about why their involvement matters and what you might try to bring them all in.

I am Carla from Comprehension Connection, and many of my teaching years have been spent working as a Title 1 reading specialist. Parental involvement as we know is an important focus of the Title 1 program. So just why do parents need to be involved, what type of programs give students the biggest benefits, and how can we as educators increase parental involvement for our students?  

Before preparing this post, I decided to see what the research says related to parental involvement.  I was curious what evidence is available to support the need for parents getting into the classroom, working with students, and helping with school activities and whether all types of parental involvement results in increased student achievement. In Title 1, the focus is on "capacity building" which means involving parents in the support of learning at school and at home.  It begins with just bringing families in the front door. Keeping things light and family friendly helps form relationships and establishes trust that we are all on the same team working together for the child.  It's so important to begin that in the first week with phone calls home, a welcoming smile and positive comments. Eventually, your staff may consider doing events in the community as well.  After a long day at work, many parents would be happy to attend if the event was right next door as opposed to traveling across town with hungry children in tow. You might consider a neighborhood church or community building as the meeting location.  Food always helps whether you are at your school or off-site.  

Now that your schema about parental involvement is warmed up, how about a little research.  G. Olsen shared this information  in The Benefits of Parental Involvement:  What Research Has to Say on Education.com. I love how the information shows that everyone wins when parents are involved, and I think most readers will find the information helpful.

Henderson and Berla (1994) reviewed and analyzed eighty-five studies that documented the comprehensive benefits of parent involvement in children's education. Here are a few they listed for the children, parents, teachers, and the school. 

Benefits for the Children

• Children tend to achieve more, regardless of ethnic or racial background, socioeconomic status, or parents' education level. 

• Children generally achieve better grades, test scores, and attendance. 

• Children consistently complete their homework. 

• Children have better self-esteem, are more self-disciplined, and show higher aspirations and motivation toward school. 

• Children's positive attitude about school often results in improved behavior in school and less suspension for disciplinary reasons. 

Benefits for Parents

• Parents increase their interaction and discussion with their children and are more responsive and sensitive to their children's social, emotional, and intellectual developmental needs. 

• Parents have a better understanding of the teacher's job and school curriculum. 

• When parents are aware of what their children are learning, they are more likely to help when they are requested by teachers to become more involved in their children's learning activities at home. 

• Parents' perceptions of the school are improved and there are stronger ties and commitment to the school. 

Benefits for Educators

• When schools have a high percentage of involved parents in and out of schools, teachers and principals are more likely to experience higher morale. 

• Teachers and principals often earn greater respect for their profession from the parents. 

• Consistent parent involvement leads to improved communication and relations between parents, teachers, and administrators. 

• Teachers and principals acquire a better understanding of families' cultures and diversity, and they form deeper respect for parents' abilities and time. 

• Teachers and principals report an increase in job satisfaction. 

Benefits for the School

• Schools that actively involve parents and the community tend to establish better reputations in the community. 

• Schools also experience better community support. 

• School programs that encourage and involve parents usually do better and have higher quality programs than programs that do not involve parents.

In my school division last year, our school board and superintendent introduced Give Me Five as a way to address the need for parental involvement, and I love how this became not just parental involvement, but also student and community involvement as well. The graphic to the left is included on the Parent/Student Overview of our website and is advertised through newsletters and morning announcements at our school.  At the same time Give Me Five was rolled out, we also introduced our division motto, "Every Child, by Name and by Need, through Graduation". Together, I believe these symbols send the message that we care about your child, value your family, and want you to be involved.  

As I mentioned, parental involvement has been a focus for me for many years now. Some events have been more effective than other, but I learned long ago that even the events that seem ineffective at the time may work perfectly with a different age group, at a different time of year, or with a little more planning. Here are a few school-wide ideas you might give a try in your school setting.

If you want a high level of engagement, then this activity works beautifully.  It's one of  my all-time favorite events. Night for Family Literacy or NFL night has a football theme with a literacy twist. Yes, the children come dressed in their favorite sports team jersey, and we serve the families tailgating foods. With this event, we typically have a performer who incorporates literacy building ideas...using music to work on fluency, reading how-to literature to learn about magic, highlighting favorite books and characters, or singing about comprehension strategies. We've involved the local football team who share why it's important to be a strong student in order to play, and the evening is entertaining for the whole family.  

Last year, I had a great time planning a book club for our students. We called it The Magic of Reading Book Club. After all, what child isn't fascinated by magic? I loved this event because all levels of students could participate and learn from each other. The students ended up increasing the amount of reading they did during that period of time, and it involved parents in the running of the clubs. This was helpful to the parents as they were able to hear and see the types of questions that work well for discussion. We basically ran the clubs like literature circles. Students read to a predetermined point, discussed sections of the books, created projects related to the book themes, and enjoyed a guest speaker (magician of course!).  I hope to repeat this activity in the future with different themes and book options.

Now for the last event I'd like to share.  Last summer, I was perusing Pinterest (Don't we all??), and I came across this amazing reading fair idea from Read.Write.Mom!, and I instantly thought of parental involvement.  The original idea I saw was this one of Chocolate Fever, a book many of my students love, but you can check out close to 30 more at Read.Write.Mom!. I emailed my principal right away with the pictures and link to see whether she thought it would work.  Well, it was a huge success.  I sent home [this packet of information] for the families to sign up.  Once the students returned their form, we sent home a trifold display board (and they can be reused in the future) and a direction sheet telling what to include on the board.  The projects were brought in and displayed during our book fair week, so the reviews were perfect for little shoppers looking for book ideas.  Each child received a book for participating. In the spring, we plan to do something similar with cereal boxes.  The beauty of this activity is that all ages can be involved to the level that fits them, and parents can participate at home which makes it easier on working parents.  The sharing time was very special though, and the children were very proud.

Now it is time for me to share a few ideas from our readers.  I asked my fans about this topic, and it received quite a few responses.  Here are a few of the ideas that were new to me.

1) Left-Rebecca suggests Family Game Night.  Board games involve many educational skills, and sometimes it's good to try them out with a friend or two.  Her local educational supply store donated games for families to try, and set up to sell them to those who were interested.  Use this as a theme and add your own reading game ideas that parents can make and take home to use.  2) Center-Michelle shared that teachers at her school model with a favorite read aloud skills such as visualizing, cause and effect, and text features and the night ends with milk and cookies to celebrate all of the learning that's gone on. 3) Right-Mary suggests Theme Nights.  This one came complete with Hawaiian fruit rays, beach music, and souvenirs as parents work through themed stations and fill out their punch cards for door prizes.  

For more parental involvement event ideas, check in tomorrow for Five on Friday.  We'll be highlighting other parental involvement events our team has offered to our parents.

As Henderson and Mapp report in A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement ,

"Regardless of family income or background, students whose parents are involved in their schooling are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, attend school regularly, have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school." 

I think these are all wonderful reasons to reach out, get your parents engaged in your classroom activities, grade-level functions, and school-wide events.

If you have had great success with a special reading or math event, please share it in the comments below.  We look forward to the feedback, and so do our fellow readers.

Graphic Organizer App

 Hello Literacy Land!  Deniece here from This Little Piggy Reads.

I am a Texas Teacher and in Texas we are STAAR C-R-A-Z-Y right now!  STAAR is our statewide test. The Reading STAAR had a serious overhaul (compared to our previous TAKS test) therefore, every administrator and testing grade teacher is in a tizzy!  The reading test is no longer a comprehension test. There is also a mix of other genres not just fiction passages and a biography.  So, I have made it my mission to increase my students' exposure of non-fiction text through magazines, websites, online journals and pamphlets.  

This year I'm working in a GT pull-out program.  We are lucky enough to have 10 iPad Minis.  It has been a learning experience having them.  I've changed a lot of my views about technology in the classroom.  I don't see the need to collect phones anymore, but I do think students should utilize their technology to further their education.  Today, I'm going to show you a new App that helps create graphic organizers for any grade level and any subject area. 

Last week, I used the App to work on Science TEKS 5.10 (C)  describe the differences between complete and incomplete metamorphosis of insects.  I began the lesson by accessing prior knowledge.  Some kids knew that morph meant to change or transform.  But none of them knew the difference between a complete and incomplete metamorphosis.  

Now, you're probably familiar with KWL charts.  I've used them in the past, but I have a major issue because what the students WANT TO KNOW is rarely answered in our reading.  So, instead I use a Prior Knowledge and New Learning t-chart. 

I explained that their lesson objective today was to learn the difference between complete & incomplete metamorphosis in insects.  They would use the iPad to go to the website, askabiologist.asu.edu.  There they could read all about metamorphosis, see videos, look at pictures and take notes.  After students completed their notes/research, they were given clay to demonstrate their learning.  

I want to tell you all about Popplet Lite!  I've heard about it from other bloggers and I decided to give it a try.  It's a FREE App that allows students to create their own Graphic Organizers or Thinking Maps (I wish it had circles, though).  I wanted the students to be creative and choose how they wanted to display their learning.  Shockingly, no two looked alike.  Some were venn diagrams, some looked like life cycles or flow maps and some were tree maps.  I thought it was awesome to see how students learned the same concept, but were able to demonstrate their learning in very different ways.  

Here are a couple of nifty things about Popplet Lite.  First, you can change colors.  The kiddos loved that. Next, I found out on Day 4, that you could press "VIEW ALL" to see all of the popplets on the page.  So, if your kiddos made 2 popplets about complete & incomplete metamorphosis, they could see both of them and use export to save them to the camera roll or e-mail them to you.

At the end of the day, our exit ticket was our "New Learning".  I wanted to know everything they learned about Metamorphosis, including the difference between complete and incomplete metamorphosis.  My favorite part of my current position is that every lesson involves cross-curricular learning.  We used a plethora of skills: note taking, technology, art, photography, text features, graphic organizers and science.       

Have you ever used Popplet Lite?  If not, what ideas do you have to use it in your classroom?  If you're a Texas Teacher, click on my blog button below to following my blog. 

You mean I have to THINK?

Hey there!  It is Jessica from Hanging Out in First!  I am back with you today and I am planning on sharing with you one of my favorite activities for my guided reading.

 I don't know about you, but I have so many students that do not realize that they have to THINK while they read.  I think this is one of the most difficult things for students to learn.  Students, especially the little guys, become so focused on decoding for sound that they forget to think about the text while they are reading. They get to the end of the page and have no idea what they just read! Even I am guilty of this "fake reading" from time to time.  It is easy to do.

So, how do we teach the kids that they have to THINK about the story?

One of my favorite strategies is the THINKmark.  I honestly cannot remember where I first learned about THINKmarks but I know that it has been several years ago now.  THINKmarks are bookmarks that students can write on and make notes on about their reading.  I spend a lot of time teaching students how to use these during our guided reading groups.  Then students can continue to use them during independent reading.

You can click on the picture above to hop over to my blog for a free copy of the THINKmarks.  The first page includes four bookmarks on the page (you can copy them front to back for longer books).  The second page has larger THINKmarks for your primary students that need more space for their writings and pictures.

When teaching my kids to use THINKmarks, I have them stop reading every page or so to make a note about their reading (As students become better readers and better users of THINKmarks, they will not have to stop this often.  They can use more of their own discretion with their note taking.)  They write the page number that they are on.  Then they decide what type of note they will be making.  This fun anchor chart gives symbols that students can use to mark their notes with:

(Disclaimer: This is not my anchor chart, but it sure looks good!)

So, for example, if a student does not know what a word is on a page, they can make a note with a question mark followed by the word.

This is such a great way to get students to be thinking about what they are reading.  When my students finish the story, we look over the notes they have made and discuss any questions they have and any important things they have noticed from their reading.  It also helps students to remember important details for when they are retelling a story!


The website The Curriculum Corner has so many fantastic resources, but one of the resources that I use is actually the small bookmarks/anchor charts that they have with all of the symbols for students to use when making their notes.

BTW: This can also be done with sticky notes!! =)

Reciprocal Teaching in English and Maths

Hi everyone!

I am Kylie and I live in Brisbane, Australia.  I am so honoured to be a part of this amazing collaborative literacy blog and to be networking with such a talented group of literacy specialists!  I am learning so much every day from their posts.

I have worked in adult literacy, numeracy and ESL, in primary teaching and as a Head of Curriculum.  I am currently a lecturer, working with pre-service teachers, which I just love!!!  I am studying my PhD which is around what constitutes intellectual demand in the teaching of reading across the curriculum - that was a mouthful!!!  In a nutshell, it's examining rigorous pedagogies for the teaching of reading.

Today, I am going to be talking about Reciprocal Teaching in both English and Mathematics.  I am really passionate about dialogic approaches that encourage classroom interaction, accountable talk, close reading and higher order thinking.

 

What is Reciprocal Teaching?

Reciprocal Teaching (Palinscar & Brown, 1984) is an evidence-based approach that improves reading comprehension through small group discussions.  It involves reciprocal dialogue between teachers and students.  Teachers can use the Gradual Release of Responsibility model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) and through explicit modeling of the strategies, can gradually increase leadership of the groups to the students, to the point where eventually students can lead the groups themselves. 

Reciprocal Teaching is also an excellent approach to use if you have para-professionals, teacher aides or parents helping with reading groups, as it scaffolds the process through prompts on each role card.  You can read a review of the Reciprocal Teaching research here.  Lori Oczkus has cited the following results from the research into Reciprocal Teaching:

In 15 days students are more confident. (Palinscar & Brown, 1986)
Low-performing students do well with reciprocal teaching. (Carter, 1997)
Struggling readers grow 1-2 years in 3-6 months.  (Cooper, Boschken, McWilliams, & Pistochini, 2000).
In 16 studies reciprocal teaching proved consistent and effective. (Rosenshine & Meister, 1994).

So how does it work?

Reciprocal Teaching traditionally uses four reading comprehension strategies - predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing (summarising for those of us in Australia).  The approach can be used in whole class lessons or during guided reading.

We usually have six students in our guided reading groups, so as a group, we predict what the text will be about before reading, using the title and images to assist.  If it is a book, we might look at the blurb or sometimes the contents page if it is a non-fiction text.  Students usually use a prompt like, "By looking at the cover and the title, I predict this text is going to be about..." Other students add to their predictions giving evidence from the text to justify their predictions.

Students then read a section of the text silently.  They pause at a pre-determined place and identify any words or concepts that need to be clarified.  This may also involve looking up words in the dictionary, using the glossary if the text has one, or searching an atlas for a location.  Students are encouraged to clarify for each other at this point.  The group leader (teacher/teacher aide/parent) may also help to clarify unknown words or concepts after the students have had a go.

Next, the students ask questions about their reading and attempt to answer each others' questions.  Student-generated questioning is an important part of higher order thinking and deep comprehension.  I sometimes mix this up and I may use an interrogative die (which is just a die with who, what, where, when, why and how on each face).  The students take turns to roll the die and ask a question beginning with the prompt.  This really encourages them to think deeply and laterally when formulating questions.  Other times, I might use a die that has "thick" or "thin" written on each face and the students take it in turn to ask a "thin" (literal, 'right here in the text') question or a "thick" (requiring deep engagement and thinking, beyond the text) question of their peers.  You can find a lesson on thick and thin questions from Read-Write-Think here and free posters here.  The students then summarize (summarise) what has been read so far and add to each others' summaries.

It's up to the teacher's instructional purpose, how much text is read in the reading session and whether the cycle begins again for the next section of text or if that is enough for one day - the important thing to note is that it is not a race to get through the text.  This does take time and the purpose is to generate thinking and deep comprehension, not to speed through the text at a surface level.

 

How does this apply to Mathematics?

I have had great success using the Reciprocal Teaching approach to support the comprehension of Mathematics word problems in small problem solving groups.  

I have extended the process from the original four strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing (summarising) to include: Predicting, Clarifying, Questioning, Visualizing, Connecting,  Calculating, Summarizing, and Giving Feedback. This draws on my research around Reciprocal Teaching and also the high yield active comprehension strategies.  I think the "Giving Feedback" role is important as it allows students to monitor how the group is working and helps to support a positive culture in the classroom.

The students predict what the problem is going to be about (based on the Maths in the problem, not whether it is about bees or butterflies etc. LOL).  The students clarify any tricky parts in the problem or maths symbols/language.  They ask each other any questions about the problem; they visualize (visualise) what the problem is asking, perhaps drawing diagrams or tables to assist; they make connections to other similar problems they may have encountered. Next they do the calculations and check the reasonableness of their answers by going back and re-reading the problem and checking they have actually done what the question asked.  After this, they summarize (summarise) what the problem was asking, how they solved the problem and justify the reasonableness of their solution based on the problem solving strategies used. Finally, they give feedback on the group's problem solving session, focusing on the positives and giving feedback on improvements for the future.  

You can read more about the Reciprocal Teaching resources I use in reading groups and Mathematics problem solving groups, in my blog post here. 

Resources to support Reciprocal Teaching

Adrian Bruce has some free role/strategy cards that can be used for Reciprocal Teaching on his website. You can find them here.  The Ontario Literacy Secretariat (love their work) provides a summary of Diane Snowball's approach to Reciprocal Teaching here and webcasts on Reciprocal Teaching, Accountable Talk and the Gradual Release of Responsibility model can be found here.

Lori Oczkus has done a lot of work with Reciprocal Teaching and has four puppets ("The Fabulous Four") that she uses to introduce each of the four reading strategies. Click on the image above to find out more.  Her puppets include:  Paula the Predictor, Clara Clarifier, Quincy the Game show host, and cowboy Sammy Summarizer. 

You can view a video of Lori demonstrating this approach here. This is a link to her free video guide where you can download some great resources, including bookmarks to support the Reciprocal Teaching approach.  You can view some vimeos of her approach here.  She uses hand signals as well in her approach.  There is a free professional development study guide that can be downloaded here, and a free chapter from her book is available here to help teachers get started with Reciprocal Teaching.  Ideas for lesson planning and a rubric can be found here, and there are guidelines or advice for classroom organisation, text selection, and planning using the approach here.   

Other terrific suggestions can be found on the Utah Council of the International Reading Association site here and here. There are also some excellent videos from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood here.

If you are interested in my approach for extending Reciprocal Teaching to include the high yield active comprehension strategies, you can read my published research here. 

I would be really keen to hear from anyone who has used the Reciprocal Teaching approach in either reading groups or for supporting the comprehension of Maths word problems.  Please comment below, as I know there have been many different versions of the approach over the years.

Many thanks to my graphic artist Iva from etsy (nahhan73) for the custom clip art used in my post. I love her work!  Click on the link in brackets to find out more.

No More Robot Reading!

Hi everyone!  I am thrilled to be here collaborating with the talented teachers at Adventures in Literacy Land! It is such a fun journey we are embarking on and I am excited that you are joining us!

First, a bit about me. I'm Bex from Reading and Writing Redhead. I grew up in New England and after college went straight to Lesley College to get my M.Ed because I wanted to teach elementary school. Soon afterwards, I began teaching second grade. I love it but have always been an avid reader and had the idea of becoming a reading teacher in the back of my mind so a few years ago I began a program and got my M.Ed in the reading specialist program. I am looking forward to becoming a reading specialist or literacy coach. For now I am delighted to be able to use what I have learned to improve my teaching and help my second grade students. As a member of the teaching team, I also bring my skills and knowledge to the table when we collaborate, which I hope also benefits other teachers who read these blogs.

Today I want to share some ideas with you about fluency.

Teaching children to read can be a challenge! Once they start to get the gist, I start to think of what to do to encourage them to read with expression. It seems like some students just are naturally good at it but others needs more specific guidance than just my first strategy of teacher modeling.

There are a few things I have tried that really help students learn to become better at reading with expression.

I was discussing repeated reading with a colleague recently. Repeated reading of short stories and short non-fiction articles is terrific for fluency in general, as is rereading phrases, but working on phrases, especially those that go from one word, to two, to three, until the full phrase is great. It gives students opportunities to try different voicing.
For example:

I found that the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR)  website has some terrific resources in this area and I am using their phrases for my fluency partners right now. We are only using the single phrases, like here (pages 20-24), but I have uses the repeated  phrases like above in small groups with success. A link to their Fluent Phrasing which I use is here, on pages 1-7.

Perhaps one of the best ways to improve student's use of expression when reading is to start at zero on how emotion is expressed in dialogue.

A simple way you can work on this is to come up with a bunch of situations that students could act out in front of the class or in a small group. You could either wing it or write them down on index cards in advance - perhaps even on Popsicle sticks and have students draw them at random when you have 3 minutes to spare. For example, a situation might be: "You think your brother stole your diary and are going to accuse him". Ask the students what you would say (maybe "You stole my diary!", "I know you took it!", or "Don't lie!" ) and ask for volunteers to play the kid and the brother in a brief skit. Really encourage the students to imagine what they would sound like in real life and use that to put some emotion and expression into their voice. I can imagine maybe an example with you showing how it would sound with no expression would have an impact, too.

Here is a cool resource with little mini lessons by Nora Zabst (click here). She states that the goal for students is to work on "using different strategies to read texts with dialogue with expression and prosody". It is broken down into sections: Read fluently by noticing dialogue, understand different ways dialogue can be written, read dialogue by using dialogue tags and more.  Each includes kid-friendly videos that you can show to your students.

Somewhat related to the last idea is Reader's Theater. When you use reader's theater scripts, students are encouraged to use pausing, intonation, and inflection and to read with expression.  I found this is one of my favorite activities to do in RTI Tier 1 with all of my reading groups. There are so many great free resources out there that it makes it easy to implement and easy to differentiate. Little tip: To prevent arguments over who gets what part or having to decide myself, I take the littlest sticky notes, write parts on them, fold them in half, drop them in a plastic bag, and have students pick them randomly. Then I attach the bag to the scripts for the next time. If I have forgotten to do this in advance, I sometimes write each part on a small index card, fan them out upside down like playing cards and have students pick one.

Additionally, there are some videos that show students using great expression which are useful for teachers but also could be shown to students as an example. Check this one out from The Balanced Literacy Diet channel on YouTube:

Reading (and writing poetry) is one of my all time favorite things to do with students. It is so rich with opportunities. When reading poems like those of Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky, it can seem easier for students to use expressions. Rather than rephrase what someone else has explained well, check out this great resource from the site Poetry Teachers (click here). It has a terrific short poem ( I think short poems are great to start with when working on using expression- start short and work on longer poems over time) and discusses varying pitch, volume, rate, and what words could be emphasized.

What are your favorite ways of helping students learn to read with expression?