ELLEN
BERG
Diary #25
I
Got It and the Kids Got It:
Amazing Things Began to Happen!
I am so excited!
What I have discovered in the six years I have been teaching is it is not enough to have the desire or even the information to change or implement something new in your classroom. Understanding of how it applies is key. Without true understanding, implementation is hit and miss at best. However, once understanding infuses those basic concepts, skills, strategies and structures, the real power of teaching is unleashed. I have been feeling defeated all year because I did not implement reading and writing workshop like I had planned. I began the year with the very best of intentions, but when the children materialized in all their challenging glory in September, my good intentions dropped to the wayside like sticky drops of strawberry ice-cream on a scorching summer's day. I found out quickly I did not really understand what to do or how to do it. Oh, I had all the tools in my toolkit. I had read and discussed countless books on balanced literacy and reading comprehension strategies. I had gathered websites, graphic organizers, think-alouds and countless books to help me. However, I did not understand many of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of teaching in a reading and writing workshop format. Some of the questions I had are:1. What do you grade?
2. How do I effectively link reading and writing instruction?
3. What do I do with my seriously struggling readers?
4. How do I teach the "hows" of reading and writing workshop to my students?
5. What if my students can't handle the freedom?
6. How will I know if they are really learning?
I stilll have many unanswered questions, and even the questions listed are not all fully resolved. However, because of what transpired in my classroom this week, I have a better picture of what reading instruction could look like in my classroom.
Teacher see, teacher do
I am one of those people who needs to see something to fully understand and own it. If I meet someone and do not immediately write their name down, I will forget their name within thirty seconds. I love to watch college basketball, but I cannot picture what is happening on the court if I am listening to it on the radio. You get the picture. Likewise, I have had a difficult time envisioning how my classroom and students would look if we were in a workshop format.All this week we have been practicing text-to-self connections. During the first session, I took primary responsibility for modeling my own connections to the text. During the second session, I continued modeling but then pushed them to make their own connections. During the third session, I withheld all but a few of my connections and recorded their connections on a class chart.
This coming week, I am going to release them to making connections while reading independently. We'll start with a common text, then I'll encourage them to select one text from several choices (and thus open a discussion about why some texts might elicit more connections from us than others).
An amazing thing began to happen. I explained text-to-self connections (renamed text-to-self hookups to assist their understanding of what a connection was) to my students, telling them that good readers automatically make these connections, but that everyone could learn this skill.
I told them they had to look for connections and expect to make them, and that although at first they may be difficult to spot, with practice the hookups would begin to pop up everywhere. The first time we tried, some of them got it quickly, but the majority still looked at me quizzically. However, by the end of the second session, almost everyone was making very specific connections and begging to share them with the class.
As the week progressed, their connections came quicker and required no prompting from me whatsoever. I could see their understandings with simple observation.
Energetic engagement
More shocking to me, however, was the energy with which my students attacked their assignment. Though I was only requiring four connections to these short stories, most of my students turned their charts over and even stapled extra pieces of paper to their original chart to hold all their connections. They did more work than I asked them to!
Even my most challenging student, a young man who rarely has paper or pencil, who makes every excuse to try to leave class and frequently tries to cut classes, even Dean filled his chart and volunteered to share one of his connections. I saw my students--especially my struggling readers--develop better understandings of what we had read, and I saw hints of confidence in themselves that had not been there before.
After we read "Thank You M'am" by Langston Hughes, I turned the discussion over to my students, wondering if they would use their connections to help explain their thoughts about the text. I tried a discussion technique suggested by Willy Wood where you simply ask students what they noticed, liked, disliked, or were confused by in the piece. I was a little doubtful this would work, still under the stereotypical assumption that kids do not like to talk about literature, but I was blissfully incorrect.
We had the best discussion we have had all year long, and all I did was open the discussion up to what they found important and asked follow-up questions to help clarify their thinking.
My students hit every major idea and inference in the text, just as every literature teacher hopes for. They also touched upon ideas of writing technique and style. Throughout the discussion, they referred to the text directly and indirectly and repeatedly explained their viewpoints by comparing their own experiences to the experiences of the characters. Magic.Reading-Writing Workshop really works!
It really is true. If you give students the structures and skills to access quality literature, they will participate and be able to be trusted. They saw our tasks this week as important and interesting, unlike so many other tasks I have used in the past. I think they see a realness, an authenticity in this type of instruction that is lacking from many traditional assignments.
I still have a lot of questions about reading workshop, but my biggest fears --that my students would not be able to handle the format and would require more structure -- have been allayed. I am also beginning to realize I will have to make up a lot of the "rules" as I go along and adapt reading workshop to fit my students and school. We were real readers this week, possibly for the first time this year. We read with no other purpose than to understand and share our ideas, not to answer questions or get a grade. It was good; Spring-Break-at-the-beach good.
