Study Groups with Jennifer Allen

Julie Schwartzbauer contributed this post. Click here for more of Julie's thinking.

I recently attended a professional development with Jennifer Allen. Jennifer is a literacy coach and professional developer. You may be familiar with her book Becoming a Literacy Leader or A Sense of Belonging. Jennifer uses a layered coaching framework. At the workshop I attended, Jennifer focused on coaching through Study Groups. If you are not familiar with the term Study Groups, think Book Study.

Though Jennifer typically has four different study groups running from October - April, you may want to start with just one or two. Jennifer meets with each group once per month, for an hour at a time. Her study group budget includes the book, office supplies and food. Jennifer purchases fun office supplies as study group giveaways and everyone appreciates food.

During the study group, Jennifer uses a detailed protocol/agenda that encourages participants to move through the hour quickly and accomplish everything they set out to. She reminds us not to exhaust every idea. “Leave teachers wondering,” says Allen.

I have included the protocol for Study Groups below or click here.

Comprehension Focus Groups: Looking at Child Labor with a Focus on Word Choice

Heather Zimmerman contributed this thinking. Click here to read more of Heather's thinking about Comprehension Focus Groups.

If you read my post about managing your learning, you might recall I decided this year I would have a stack of go-to texts.  With all my new learning, I sometimes feel I do not end up applying the learning in a consistent and strategic way.  I created a stack texts that would be my go-to for my lesson planning this year.  I have found this to be a successful way to manage my new learning.

One of my go-to texts is Chris Lehman’s book Falling in Love with Close Reading.  I read this book last summer and a co-worker friend of mine told me how wonderful this book is.  I decided I had to make sure to use this in a Comprehension Focus Group (CFG) this year.

The time came when I looked back at Lehman’s text to see if it could guide my student’s learning in a CFG for my 8th graders.  My school uses Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Writing and my 8th graders would soon be working on the informative unit and starting letters on an important issue.  I decided to get the ball rolling.  I found texts about child labor that centered around a book my students had picked from our classroom library that they wante to read- Iqbal by Franceso D’Adamo.  After digging back into Lehman’s books and thinking about my students’ needs, I decided word choice would be a powerful next step.  I also wanted to incorporate some open journaling on the topics they read about regarding child labor with a focus on their own word choice while they wrote.  

I was very happy with how this unit came together.  I felt this gave them resources for their literacy class if they chose to use the topic.  It also got them thinking about how word choice can show the purpose and tone, which can make an impact in their writing.  

Here is the outline to the CFG if you are interested:

CFG- Word Choice (Child Labor focus)

Do you or your intervention teachers tie the intervention work to other classes?  What classes do you usually connect the work to?

Reading the Research: Educational Implications of the Science of Reading

Barb Novak contributed today's post. More of her thinking about research can be found here.

I mentioned a PLC I'm part of in a previous post. We meet monthly and discuss a piece of research (selected by one of the members) at each meeting. The study I'm writing about today will be discussed by my PLC.

I'm sharing the study simply to give access to how I process research when I read - how I organize my thinking before, during, and after reading research. This post is not intended to be an endorsement of the research or its conclusions.

"The Science of Reading and Its Educational Implications"
Mark Seidenberg (2013)

The article can be accessed in the following ways:

• Badgerlink does not include the full-text of this article. You can request the article, as published, by contacting your local public library. Click here for a link to the citation.
• Click here to access the full text (posted by the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab). (The page numbers below correspond to the PDF available at this link.)
• Click here to access a manuscript-version of the article, published through the National Institute of Health.

Why this article?
The perspective offered in this article - that of an educational psychologist - is one I am not overly familiar with. In addition, the author, Dr. Mark Seidenberg, is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Argument:
This article is not research. Instead, Seidenberg forms an argument in responsive to this question: "If the science [of reading] is so good, why do so many people read so poorly?" (p. 331).

Main Points:
The "intrinsic properties of English" (p. 334) are not to blame for America's low levels of literacy. Instead, ". . . how reading is taught is indeed a significant part of the literacy problem in the US and other countries" (p. 340). 

Seidenberg argues that current classroom practice is guided by educational practice rather than science. He writes, ". . . science and education occupy different territory in the intellectual world. . . The cultures of education and science are radically different: they have different goals and values, ways of training new practitioners, criteria for evaluating progress. The two cultures communicate their research at separate conferences sponsored by parallel professional organizations attended by different audiences, and publish their work in different journals. There are publishers that target one audience and not the other. These cross-cultural differences, like many others, are difficult to bridge" (p. 342). This cultural divide is characterized by differences in what evidence is accepted by educators and scientists, educators' reliance on a socio-cultural approach, and a lack of educator understanding of science.

Seidenberg also discusses the achievement gap, specifically for African Americans. He discusses how dialect could impact reading achievement, suggesting that "differences between dialects could potentially affect children's ability to benefit from classroom experience" (p. 353).

Limitations:

• The article focuses on English; no other languages are discussed.
• The article represents thinking from a single field, educational psychology.

Questions:

• Has anyone in the education community written a response to this article?
• What are other viewpoints about the impact of dialect on reading achievement and instruction? Do others in educational psychology and education agree with Seidenberg's argument?

Complete Citation:
Seidenberg, M.S. (2013). The science of reading and its educational implications. Language Learning and Development, 9(4): 331 - 360). DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2013.812017

Managing New Learning

Heather Zimmerman contributed today's thinking.

Some of you may have been following me since my first year of literacy coaching a couple years back. I remember entering this role and questioning what I got myself into when I was around my other literacy coach friends.  I remember our first meeting together and they were name dropping all these gurus in education, and I did not recognize hardly any names they mentioned.   I was so grateful for their wisdom, but I also felt overwhelmed and was questioning if I was qualified.  Sure, I had read texts as I went for my masters, but these were not the same texts they mentioned.   I am pretty sure no one mentioned the Cooter/Flynt resource I had used in my assessment course.  

So I started reading some of the names they mentioned.  I checked out who Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey are and explored many titles mentioned.  Now that I am in year three of coaching, I feel like I have a better grasp on the big names in the education world.  My new problem is that I am checking out different sources, but not consistently and strategically applying what I learned from all of these great educators.

My solution this year is to take a few books that I read over this summer and create my go-to pile on top of my file cabinet.  I see them every day.  I am not going to start reading other books, unless they are a part of a book club I am doing… or Kylene Beers and Robert Probst’s new Notice and Note book comes out… or Write Like This by Carl Anderson because I am using it for my PPG (professional practice goal) … OK it is easier said than done.  Of course, I will read texts that might help out my teachers, but I am not going overboard with my own professional text reading this year until I have applied some of the wonderful things I have learned in the books I have read.

I am really trying to manage my new learning and apply the professional texts I read this summer or are continuing to use from last year.  It is hard to not start a new book beyond my list that is already listed above, but I am doing a lot of online learning through blogs and videos.  And of course, I continue to read young adult books when I can squeeze them in.  

Here is my list of my go-to books this year:

• Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen- Book club book and enjoying it.
• Falling in Love with Close Reading by Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts- A summer read.
• Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst- Read this book awhile ago, but still use it all the time during my Comprehension Focus Groups.  Also, our literacy teachers 6-8 are reading this book this year.
• The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo-This book has so much of everything.  I got this book this summer, and I look forward to using this book over the summer.
• Read, Write, Lead by Regie Routman- A book club book that I am reading with the other 6-12 literacy coaches in my district.

How do you manage your new learning?  What are your go-to books this year?

Conferring and Goal Setting Made Easy

Jaimie Howe contributed today's thinking.

Last month I wrote about the potential of implementing the Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Teaching Reading in the district I currently teach in. In preparation for this potential implementation and also for use during this transition time, the district purchased all teachers (classroom, SPED, ELL, and more . . .) The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo.  

Until I came into this district I had never even heard of Serravallo and little did I know that she has done a ton of work with Lucy and The Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Project as well as written numerous other texts that support the implementation of a Reader’s Workshop model.   

The Reading Strategies Book makes conferring, goal-setting, and strategy groups so EASY.  Serravallo says:

“For years I’ve been getting emails almost daily asking, 'Isn’t there a book of the strategies themselves?' Now there is. Strategies make the often invisible work of reading actionable and visible. In The Reading Strategies Book, I collected 300 strategies to share with readers in support of thirteen goals-everything from fluency to literary analysis. Each strategy is cross-linked to skills, genres, and Fountas and Pinnell reading levels to give you just-right teaching, just in time.”

Recently I began coaching in a fifth grade classroom, supporting the teacher with the initial work of setting up a reader’s workshop.  A big hurdle to overcome was getting the routine in place in order to make time for meaningful conferring. Once this happened and we began conferring last week, the bigger question became, “How do I know what goals to set with students?” and “How do I know if it is the right one?” This is where Serravallo’s The Reading Strategies Book comes in.  Each of the thirteen goals within the text has a chapter with a brief, but detailed explanation about who the goal would be best suited for.  With this information in hand and the thirteen goals on a list right next to us when conferring, we were able to very easily select a goal with the student based off of the student’s oral reading behaviors and our conversations. We then recorded each student’s goal on a class list and organized them based on the goal. With the ease of the way Serravallo’s book is set up, we will easily be able to select the strategies we need to teach in order to achieve the goals and will be able to get started right away. 

I highly recommend, any teacher of reading, check this book out.