Pathways to the Common Core: Part 2

Here is Part 2 on Pathways to the Common Core that I shared on my staff blog in my Monday Musings Post.
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Monday Musings - Pathways to the Common Core: Part 2

Last week I shared my first reflection with you as I am reading Pathways to the Common Core. This week I'll share what I've learned about Reading Informational Texts. (I will warn you, since it is informational text, it is a "heavier" read than previous Monday Musing posts...at least it is for me!)

The common core standards have increased our expectations of how much informational text students read. They provide the following recommendation for reading

One important clarification here is that this does not mean  that the CCSS call for dramatically more nonfiction reading within the ELA classrooms/literacy block.  This literacy expectation should be shared responsibility across the content areas, meaning that 50% of a 4th grader's day (using the chart) would be reading informational text.

So, what is the CCSS expectations for reading informational text?  The CCSS emphasizes synthesis, evaluation, and comparative textual analysis. 

Got that?

I didn't.  What exactly does that mean?

Let's look at each standard...

The first 3 anchor standards for reading informational texts are the foundation for the rest of the reading work students will do.

Standard 1: Read closely and make logical inferences
This means reading the informational text to determine what it says and NOT focusing on how you can make connections to it.  This was a surprise to me, because I always taught my students to think of what they already know about the topic and make connections as they read.  However, the CCSS don't concern themselves with what you know, think you know, or how you feel about the topic.  You need to focus on what the text says explicitly.

Standard 2: Read to determine central ideas and themes
This standard asks readers to determine central ideas and summarize the text, linking key ideas and details.  This is hard to do if you didn't do standard 1 very well and you may have to go back and reread. (I found I had to go back to standard 1 several times as I read this book!)
To get to standard 2 you can ask yourself the same question that you would if you were reading fiction, "What is this article starting to be about?" Then as ideas emerge, gather up some of the information in the text as evidence for those ideas.

Standard 3: Reading to analyze how individuals, events and ideas develop and interact 
Here is where you need to notice the sequence of events, analyze relationships and connects and determine cause and effect.  As readers, you should be able to analyse all of the individuals and events and be able to see how they are connected.

I'm sure you've read enough by now, so here's a short summary of the rest (you can borrow my book if you want to read more!):
Standards 4-6 get into the the craft or how the text is written.
Standards 7-9 require the reader to integrate knowledge/ideas by reading other texts on the same topic.
Standard 10 read/comprehend those informational texts at grade level

If you've read this far, then I'd ask that you reflect on informational reading in your classroom...Are your students spending 50% of their reading each day in informational text? Are you teaching your students to apply reading skills aligned to these common core standards as they read informational text?  How do you support students that are reading below level to read and analyze informational text?

Pathways to the Common Core: Part 1

Each week I share a "Monday Musings" post on my staff blog.  I use this weekly post to share my own professional learning/reflections with staff.  I am currently reading Pathways to the Common Core and plan to share what I'm learning in several parts with staff.  Here is what I posted for them last week.
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Monday Musings - Pathways to the Common Core #1

I am currently reading the book Pathways to the Common Core, which I am finding to be an incredible resource to gain a better understanding of what the ELA Common Core Standards really mean.  Wait, don't close this yet, I know you're sick of hearing about the common core, but at least save it to read later when you have time!  If I could, I would buy this book for everyone to read, but there's probably not enough $ and I know that many of you would be worried about when you'd have time to read it. For now, I plan to share some of the "nuggets" from my reading in my next few Monday Musings posts to share my learning with you.  By doing this, it is also helping me to process what I'm reading.

My first take-away from reading this book is that it is not enough for us to have our Common Core binders and remember there are 10 anchor standards in ELA or even to know the CCSS really well for our grade level.  We need to really dig into what it means to apply each of the skills in the standards...How often do we we actually read complex text and apply the skills in the standards? You'd be amazed at what the common core expects!  We also need to know the standards for the grade level above and below so that we can differentiate for the variety of readers we teach.

A great way to think about the ELA standards  reading standards is to picture a ladder, with standards 1 and 10 as the crucial struts that form the two sides of the ladder.  Standard 10 carries increasing levels of text complexity up the grade levels and into College and Career Readiness.  Standard 1, the other side of the ladder, asks readers to "read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it."  The remaining reading standards form the rungs of the ladder.  The authors write that it is the rungs linking the 2 main standards that are important, because "although it is crucial for students to be able to handle increasingly complex texts, reading must never be mere word calling; accuracy without strong literal comprehension is not reading."

As I read the authors' section on implications for instruction, it affirmed all of the literacy work that we have been doing.  The following steps for schools to put in place are things we are already doing with Daily 5/Cafe:

• Assess your readers and match them to books that can be read with 95% accuracy, fluency and comprehension.
• Make reading plans with students and help support them to reach those reading goals.
• Provide students with an extensive collection of high-interest books and allow them choice. 
• Provide students with long blocks of time to read. 
• Provide students with explicit instruction in the skills of effective reading.

If you made it this far in reading...good for you and Thank you!  Next week I'll share what I've learned about Reading Informational Texts.  I am also considering using one of the reading activities (for teachers to get practice in the standards) in our next grade level meetings.

On another random note, I wrote a post on using Goodreads, which is one of my Reading Resolutions. You can find it HERE if you're interested in learning what Goodreads is.

Everything I love about Goodreads

One of my Reading Resolutions for 2013 is to use Goodreads to track my books, maintain a to-read list and connect with others for reading.  I used Goodreads years ago, but switched to Shelfari when I wanted to have a widget on my blog to show what I have been reading.  Over this time, Goodreads came up with that widget I was missing and a lot of other really cool features that make it the best place for book nerds to go!

When I first started my account I was a bit overwhelmed. I didn't want to lose the books I had tracked in Shelfari. I was able to import my list, but 7 of them didn't transfer and I couldn't figure out which ones they were so I got over it and moved on. Then I was amazed by how many different shelves people create in their accounts and had to make a decision.  Am I book nerdish enough to create a shelf for each genre? The Book Whisperer would (and does) so she can easily refer back to it to help students find books, but it's not ultimately my role each day as principal to do so.  I decided to stick with the 3 main shelves you are given--read, currently reading, and to-read. I added 2 additional shelves: Professional ed books and Books I read with my sons.  We'll see in 2013 if I change my mind and decide to add other shelves...you can do that whenever you want!

When it comes to reading I am notorious for having several books going at one time. Ok, not at one moment in time, but you know what I mean...a book at my home desk, a book at my office desk, a book on my kindle, then quickly purchase a book from amazon that someone tweeted out for a book study.  Whenever I see a book title recommended by someone I respect greatly on twitter I go out and get it immediately and start reading. It's time to get control of myself and utilize the to-read function on Goodreads.  I love how you can continue to add titles and then easily change the order they appear in.  

A few other features I've already been enjoying about Goodreads...

*You can enter your goal # of books to read for 2013 and will keep track of your progress as you update your books read.  I've added this as a widget on the right side of my blog.  Here's what it looks like:

*When I am logged in I see the updates of any of my Goodreads friends. This lets me see whatever they have just added to their bookshelves or To-Read lists.  I've already found myself adding books to my To-Read list thanks to my friends.  Here's a small screenshot of what this looks like:

*I am just beginning to explore the Groups and Discussions feature.  In discussions you can see what others have written on books and you can add to the discussion.  You can also join a group that looks similar to any other type of message board that people subscribe to.  I was invited to join the following group:

The only issue I have encountered with Goodreads is that when I first set up my account, I used the option to start an account using my Twitter account. Makes sense, since I planned to tweet about it anyways, right?  Unfortunately, Goodreads hasn't fully figured this feature out yet, because I can't update all of my profile or change my password. When I try, I get this message:

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It won't take my Twitter password  and it only gives an option to confirm with Facebook...even though they let me use Twitter to start my account! Very confusing. You can also not login to the iPad app using Goodreads if you started your account through Twitter. I'm hoping it gets fixed soon, but I'm still using it now just going through the browser. 

If you're wondering, "how on Earth do you have time for this?"  I spent an hour or two (off and on) exploring Goodreads on New Year's Eve to find all this stuff. Now each day I just check in before bed to update my current reading progress and if I have time, see what other people's updates are. 

There are so many great features to Goodreads that I'm still learning about. Please let me know if you have something to share and help me out!

My Reading Resolutions for 2013

For 2011 I read 26 books and then almost doubled it this past year with a total of 51 books. Out of that 51, 30 were fiction and 21 were non-fiction.  These titles included professional education books, novels for personal enjoyment, parenting books and chapter books I read to my 6 year-old.  As I've previously written in THIS POST I have learned that the more fiction I read, the more I enjoy reading and the more I end up reading.

My Reading Resolutions for 2013 are:
1. Use Goodreads to track my reading.  I've been convinced by Donalyn Miller to use Goodreads to track my books, keep a to-read list, and connect with others on books I'm reading. I spent time today exploring this site and can already feel a blog post coming on about how neat it is!
2. Have family "Read-to-Self" time with my kids. Read-to-Self is one of the components of Daily5 in our school that my son is familiar with.  This will be a chunk of time (at least 15 minutes, because that's all he can handle right now) that he can read whatever he wants (not to me) while I also read myself.  This will be a win-win for both of us! (I realize I did say kids plural--I'm hoping that the 2 year-old can be quiet that long looking at books or listening to books on the iPad).
3. Read 1 professional book a month I will probably end up reading more, but I want to focus on reading more fiction so I'm not so boring!
4. Read 280 books. I'm not as crazy as I sound, I swear!  As I was exploring Goodreads today, my son thought it was cool and asked if we could keep track of the books I read to him (and his brother) on there too, so out of the 280 goal, I expect 225 to be for picture books and 55 to be for novels, professional books, and kids' chapter books.

Reading Resolutions - staff memo edition

In my last post I shared my learning from a full day workshop with Donalyn Miller and what ideas we will be implementing in our school as a result of this learning.  After grade level meetings and a full faculty meeting, here is a post on my staff memo that I shared with staff on Reading Resolutions.  I try to share some of my staff memo posts here, because I often gain great ideas from reading what other principals post for their staff.

My next post here will be my personal Reading Resolutions.
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Some of you asked about Reading Resolutions after the staff meeting...here are the answers. If you don't want to think about it until closer to January, then save this to read later. :)

Image from BOTNS

In yesterday's staff meeting we talked about school-wide ideas to continue building a culture of readers.  We already have great literacy practices, but now we want to go further to help out students develop the habits of lifelong readers/learners.

One of the ideas I asked all of you to do is start out January creating "Reading Resolutions" with your students.  This would start with you creating your own Reading Resolutions.  I haven't written mine yet (there are still 14 days to read for 2012), however, I did write a blog post in June in which I reflected on my reading half-way through the year: HERE is the post.  In that post I noted how last year I read 20 non-fiction and only 6 fiction books and that I needed to read more fiction or I would become a really boring person!  I do not at all expect anyone to write something as long as I did for a reading resolution, but I just wanted to share that with you.

HERE is a post that Donalyn Miller wrote last year on her Reading Resolutions.

HERE is a post with some actual reading resolutions from students. HERE is another one.

I don't want to tell each of you how to do this with your class, you have to do what works for you.  I'm sure that several of you will also come up with some cutesy little form for students to fill out (and others can steal from them) and others (if it were me) might just use index cards or old-school paper.  I would share with students my own personal reflections on my reading for the year and then show them an example of what format they should write their's in (showing your own resolutions).

Thank you for all your hard work and for sharing your reading lives with students!

An idea found on Pinterest--maybe usable for 5K students?

A Day with The Book Whisperer

I recently was fortunate enough to spend the day in a workshop with Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer, on Creating Classrooms Where Readers Flourish. I read her book over a year ago and immediately shared it with my staff in this post  and have continued to follow her on twitter, as well as the Nerdy Book Club blog and the monthly Twitter chat #Titletalk to gain book ideas.  So, you can just imagine my excitement of finally getting to meet her in person, greet her with a hug and get my picture taken with her:

Now, beyond my excitement...

Her session was AMAZING! You can read my full notes HERE (warning, it's a lot!).  I honestly wished I had a classroom to go back to and start implementing her ideas and inspiring my students to read, but I just had my office.  I did share my notes with all of the teachers in my building, but I know it is an overwhelming a lot of information to read.  I sat down and reread my notes, asking myself "what pieces can I share with all teachers in my building to continue to create a culture of readers in our building?"  I was still struck by the following statistic Miller shared:

"56% of unenthusiastic readers did not have a teacher who shared a love of reading, while 64% of enthusiastic readers did have such a teacher." (Nathanson, Pruslow and Levitt, 2008)

While I typed pages of notes with great ideas, my 2 biggest take-aways were that:

• The adults in the school need to model a passion for reading.
• We need our students to develop the habits of readers.

What are ways that adults can model passion for reading?  Aside from the teacher reading him/herself and sharing books with students constantly (just read The Book Whisperer!) some ideas I want to start are:

• Continue to share my reading life with staff and students. Here's a post in which I reflected on my Reading Life. 
• Including what I am currently reading in my email signature--each time you send an email you're also sending out book recommendations. 
• Write reading resolutions...I am asking all staff to do this in January for themselves and for their students. 
• Everyone with a door (that would be everyone in the building) display book covers on their door of either books they've read throughout the year or what book they are currently reading.  My door isn't visible to everyone, so I put mine up on the library door for all classes to see as they go to library. I also included a little blurb to explain why mine has 3 books of what I'm currently reading.
• Create a basket of "light reading" books (I'm thinking magazines, joke books, etc.) in the hallway where kids line up for lunch with a basket to turn them in at the lunch room. Last year we let students bring their books to the lunch room, but had a few library books get wrecked.

When I discussed these ideas with teachers in grade level meetings, they came with additional great ideas that we want to to implement:

• Leave a book, Take a book shelf in the hallway. (completely on the honor system)
• Stop, Drop and Read during February. Wherever students go they will need to have a book with them, because I could go on the announcements at any time and say it's time to Stop, Drop and Read!

I would love to hear what other schools are doing to model a passion for reading and helping students develop the habits of readers!

(By the way...just realized this is my 100th post on this blog!)

Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works

With the increasing rate of new tech devices and web 2.0 tools being developed each day, it is very easy for both teachers and students to get excited by something flashy and lose sight of the purpose.  We often have to remind ourselves to start with our learning objectives and THEN decide what technology can enhance the learning process.

I recently finished reading the 2nd Edition of  Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works published by ASCD and found it to be a great resource to maintain this focus on the purpose.  This book is a  follow-up to Marzano's original book of Classroom Instruction that Works. In Marzano's original book we learned about 9 research based strategies that can have a direct impact on the learning in your classroom.  In this technology resource book, the authors take Marzano's strategies and explain a variety of a ways that technology can be integrated into the classroom as a tool for these instructional strategies.  This book is chock-full of ways to integrate technology for:

• Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
• Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
• Cooperative Learning
• Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
• Nonlinguistic Representations
• Summarizing and Note Taking
• Assigning Homework and Providing Practice
• Identifying Similarities and Differences
• Generating and Testing Hypotheses

In the beginning of this book there is a simple chart that identifies which tech tools in the book relate to each of the 9 instructional strategies.  After seeing this, I was curious if the authors had done any similar work on iPad apps related to these strategies, so I simply asked one of the authors on Twitter and received a reply within hours (you've got to love how convenient Twitter can be!)...

You can find the Google Spreadsheet of iPad apps HERE

I am not one to typically read a book on technology (because I learn all about new technology from my Twitter PLN), but as I read through this book, I was constantly tabbing pages of ideas that I then shared with a variety of teachers in our district.  For teachers that are not connected online, this book is a great resource to get started with learning ways to integrate technology into the classroom with purpose.  

Will Richardson says it well in his forward to this book when he says "technology in all of its forms is no longer an add-on to the work that we as educators do. It is now a fundamental part of the way we live and learn and teach."  This book is a great place to begin the work of integrating technology into learning.