BEST Practices: Re-examining Sustained Silent Reading

Dear Colleagues,

During a recent workshop, a participant who teaches special education asked the class about the value of Sustained Silent Reading in the classroom. He had recently learned that there is insufficient research to warrant its implementation. Our colleague's observation is correct, and Dr. Ray Reutzel of Utah State University and the International Reading Association (IRA) board addressed that topic last November at UCIRA.

(If you can't wait, click HERE to review the PowerPoint of Dr. R's keynote address, BUT if you want a PREVIEW before you REVIEW, read on!)

While Dr. Reutzel's research in this arena focuses on elementary students, his remarks were to k-12 teachers, and he addressed secondary concerns and needs which include the following:

• Lack of sufficient research about the effectiveness of Sustained Silent Reading
• National Reading Panel's determination that evidence which does exist demonstrates "insignificant or mixed effect for SSR on students' reading achievement/growth"
• Lack of student motivation/engagement during SSR
• Lack of accountability for students' reading during SSR
• Problems associated with students' reading selections in conjunction with their reading abilities/levels

Sometimes I am concerned that we secondary teachers only pay attention to research conducted in the secondary world. Instead, we should review relevant elementary studies and ask if we don't encounter the same issues in middle and high schools. If we do, then perhaps we should examine that research and the recommendations, regardless of grade levels studied.

While studying Dr. Reutzel's PowerPoint that summarizes his research and recommendations, secondary teachers might determine which findings apply to their students and how they might incorporate the recommendations into the curriculum to fit the needs of older students.

For example, Dr. Reutzel introduces Scaffolded Sustain Silent Reading (ScSSR) which includes several structured steps that a secondary teacher could implement in the secondary classroom. One critical component of ScSSR is Individual Monitoring Conferences (IMC). Rather than reading WITH students, teachers conduct short meetings to discover important information ranging from fluency to comprehension levels.

Some teachers may feel they cannot implement the recommendations with exactness, but may want to adapt or adjust suggestions. While such changes will not support the research, teachers can conduct action research to determine whether or not the ScSSR, as they implemented the program, is more effective than traditional SSR.

The main point is that SSR is a practice lacking effectiveness for MANY students. While teachers try a variety of plans to improve the results, it is important that we start with ideas that emerge from research.

After reviewing Dr. Reutzel's PowerPoint, I would appreciate your feedback. I also hope that you will find ways to scaffold the sustained silent reading that occurs in your classroom, based on the best research currently available. : D

BEST wishes!
Renae

Greet 2010 in the BEST Way!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, Colleagues!

I am a big fan of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)! In November I joined nearly 30,000 others in posting every day for 30 days. What makes NaBloPoMo unique is the chance to do that every month on a different theme. No one in their right mind would WANT to post EVERY day EVERY month, but when a theme hits home, I found it's a great way to organize and share thoughts and ideas on a blog - which is short for weB LOG!

BEST is the theme for the month of January, and it caught my fancy. (Oops! There goes a cliche'!) I decided it would be a great challenge to apply that main idea to Link 2 Literacy topics: BEST practices, BEST ideas, BEST tips, etc. So with that challenge, I PLAN to succeed in posting on L2L EVERY DAY this month. What a great way to start the year, don't you think?

I hope your holiday break was a great one. Mine certainly was - a perfect mix of work, play, and rest. Now I'm anxious to make the BEST of 2010 by doing my BEST.

BEST wishes,
Renae

UCIRA Conference: Highlighting Linda Gambrell

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!

Before you head off for feasting, I thought I'd share the HIGHlights of the Utah Council of the International Reading Association (UCIRA) conference that I attended on Friday and Saturday. WoW! What a conference ~ one of the best that I have attended here in Utah. The keynote speakers were informative AND entertaining - always nice! The authors were inspiring AND humorous - always appreciated! And the breakouts helpful AND funny - NOT always! 

Because I'm basically Pollyanna Salisbury, who believes participants can ALWAYS dig SOMETHING out of the most dismal presentation, I won't examine lowLIGHTS - tempting as that sometimes is. Here goes:

LINDA GAMBRELL ~

• Mission Possible: Reading All Readers - Keynote Speech, Friday morning
•  MONITORED SELF-SELECTED READING (MSSR)
  
•  During SSR students should have a CHOICE of reading materials, so give each one a large ziplock bag, and instruct them to place 3 books inside: 1. the book he/she is reading now; 2. the book she/he will read next; 3. some easy or escape reading like a favorite magazine - People? Hot Rod? Horse and Hound?
• At the end of SSR, students should be able to take a few minutes to share what they read that day with a partner. Such sharing expands background knowledge of both partners AND previews another book for each as well.
  
• Text Clues: An Intervention for Struggling Readers - breakout session
• Retelling is a good assessment tool to check comprehension, but students need to learn how to retell and summarize. Learning this strategy helps memory retention. 
• Retelling: 
• Provide words or lines from the text in the order they appear in the story or article, and then have students use those clues to help them retell.
• Move them to creating their own retelling clues.
  
• Summarizing:
• Students need to know characteristics of a good summary, so show them 3 different summaries and discuss which is the best and why.
•  After learning characteristics, teach students to write good summaries through modeling and then sharing text clues.
• Give them the first and last line of the summary and then direct them to fill in the middle 3 to 5 sentences.
• Next provide the first OR the last line and instruct them to complete the 4-6 lines the follow or precede those lines. 

I have lots more to share, but rather than write too lengthy of a post, I'll add more later. I KNOW I always write that, and then you never see part 2, but maybe this time I'll surprise you!

ENJOY your LONG weekend, and leave SCHOOL at SCHOOL.

Best wishes,
Renae

Challenging the Way We Teach Reading

I'm not sure which has been crazier - my work life or my personal life! Either way, I feel like I'm that chubby little gerbil running insanely in place on the wheel of life, wondering if I'm really making any progress on any front. The only solace is that I know I have many friends and colleagues who completely empathize as they are racing around their own gerbil world!

With that confession off my mind and just in time for Halloween, I want to share some insights I gained from reading Kelly Gallagher's latest book with the freaky title, Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. I first "met" Kelly via his book Reading Reasons: Motivational Mini-Lessons for Middle and High School - a must for your professional library - and have followed him ever since. (Not "followed" as in stalking, but as in Googling for updates about his work.)

Kelly Gallagher is a practitioner with more than 22 years experience in teaching and inspiring students and teachers alike. While some may challenge his credentials as lacking research experience, that does not mean Mr. G. doesn't do his homework. He backs up his opinions by quoting the research of education heavy weights as well as sharing teacher research from his own classes. Additionally, he is not hesitant to challenge poor programs or ill-advised ideas, be they from the US Department of Education or best-selling practitioners like himself. Because of these reasons, I value his insights.

While Readicide is a bit unnerving, the pages substantiate what many educators believe but no longer practice in light of the pressure of student performance - aka NCLB and standardized testing. Kelly's book maintains that schools are killing off the love of reading, often through the "mind-numbing practices" found inside classrooms. While we may be driving up test scores, we're lynching life-long reading, which is defeating the purpose of teaching and supporting reading in school.

The author reiterates the importance of reading through graphs, charts, and quotations from reported research. The strongest argument in my mind, however, is his concern over the lack of "knowledge capital" in the lives of so many of our students. "Knowledge capital" is what readers bring to the page - schema, background knowledge, prior knowledge are possible synonyms for the term. Kelly reminds us of "the large wealth of knowledge capital that comes from the voluminous reading of books, newspapers, blogs, and magazines" (p. 38).  If the systematic annihilation of the love of reading continues, so will knowledge capital dwindle.

What then are the factors contributing to the state of affairs? Kelly lists six:

• There is a dearth of interesting materials in our schools.
• Many schools have removed novels and other longer challenging works to provide teachers and students with more test preparation time.
• Students are not doing enough reading in school.
• The overteaching of books prevents our students from experiencing the place where all serious readers want to be - the reading flow (when a reader is so engrossed, he is oblivious of anything else going on around him.)
• The overanalysis of books creates instruction that values the trivial at the expense of the meaningful.
• The overteaching of academic texts is spilling over and damaging our students' chances of becoming lifelong readers.

What can be done to stem the tide? Kelly declares that if students are to "discover what it is like to come up for air while reading, if they are to have any chance of becoming lifelong readers, they will need what all readers need when they read: access to great books and large doses of uninterrupted time to read them" (p. 73). Sounds simple, doesn't it? Raises lots of questions, too, right?

If you're interested in some of Kelly's suggestions for ending readicide, check out Literacy Link Up!

What are your thoughts about the way educators teach reading? What do you think we can do to restore the love of reading AND teach students what they need to KNOW and DO to become proficient readers?

Please respond; you have my attention!

Renae

Welcome Back!!!!!!

Hello Dear Colleagues,

WoW! What a start to the 2009-10 school year! Lots of changes, concerns, and controversy! Nevertheless, students return to the classrooms, and parents expect teachers to provide the same high level of education they always have. As I visited schools that first week before students returned, I was thrilled to see how many great teachers remained with Jordan School District. Knowing that, I feel confident that the expected level education will not only be maintained, it will be surpassed.

With that said, I want to welcome you all back! Regardless of the warm weather, September is here and cooler temperatures can't be too far behind, can they? (Did you notice the blog's new motif? More fallish, don't you think?)

Today, I have reprinted the latest information about MY Access and the online Direct Writing Assignment (DWA) that is rolling out this school year. The following statements summarizes Jordan School District's status with this online writing program. Hopefully, this message will answer some of your questions:

• MY Access subscriptions are available and recommended for 9th and 10th grades.
• Based upon the number of licenses our district purchased in 2008, your school has been allotted the same number as last year - with the exception of high schools.
• I will set up classes for your school again this year. Please let me know if you want this completed before last year's subscriptions expire on October 14, 2009.
• As last year's subscriptions will expire on October 14, 2009, I will need to deactivate any classes I create under the OLD licenses and reactivate them under THIS YEAR'S licenses.

As many of you know, the state legislature enacted a law that requires 5th and 8th graders to take the Direct Writing Assessment (DWA) online. This is what we know at this time:

• The USOE's committee of members from the assessment and curriculum departments awarded an online writing formative and summative assessment program to Measurement, Inc. Click HERE to learn more about "Writing Practice Program," the formative assessment tool, and be sure to watch the video.
  
• This means the state office will finance Measurement Inc. subscriptions for 5th and 8th graders in districts throughout the state.
  
• On September 18th a presentation to assessment directors will be held in Nebo District.
• The writing assessment will be a persuasive essay this year.
• Teacher training for Measurement, Inc. will be delivered online.
  
• So that we can collect data on this year's 9th graders, Jordan School District will set up a benchmark assessment using MY Access.
  

Authentic writing opportunity: You may have noticed the widget next to this posting. Yes, I did contribute an essay, a memoir of sorts, to the National Gallery of Writing AND it was accepted!!! (Yes, I am thrilled and most humbled.) BUT, that isn't why I pasted the classy widget on Link2Literacy. It's there because I want you, YES, YOU teachers, to contribute something as well. AND I also want you to invite your students to submit an essay, memoir, blog posting, etc. You must hurry as these will be published on October 20th ~ The National Day on Writing. Dr. Debbie Dean and I are trying to establish a local gallery, and I can't think of anything better to encourage young authors about the importance AND the thrill of publishing your own work. PLEASE check out the links and consider making this part of your writing curriculum!

Professional Book Reviews: Another change this year is my goal to summarize professional books and/or articles I read that I think will interest you. The first featured author will be Kelly Gallagher's works: Reading Reasons and Readacide, his latest book. I am not a speed reader, but I'll try to zip through some of these "best sellers" and tell you all about them. In addition, I hope to include any learning activities associated with the publications.

Upcoming Events:

• September 14th is the first Jordan Council of International Reading Association (JCIRA) meeting. I pledged to bring in more secondary presenters/topics, and I think I have succeeded. So please join us at JSD's new professional development center at 4:30 P.M. to hear about the latest in YA and adolescent literature, as well as picture books, non-fiction, etc.
• October 23rd is the Utah Council of Teachers of English Fall Conference. Presenters include Debbie Dean, Tom Romano, AND award-winning author, Gary Soto! Please circle the date and beg your principal to send you to this conference!

I look forward to chatting with you again via Link2Literacy. Please take a minute to comment and tell me how I can make this a better place to learn.

Take care, Friends,
Renae

Saying Good-bye to '08-09 and Many Colleagues

Dearest Friends,

Memorial Day has come and gone; June grass is colorizing mountainsides; and temperatures are rising – in and out of the classroom! School year ’08-’09 is nearing the end. But this culmination is different than any other as we not only say good bye to students, but we bid farewell to many of our colleagues who will be part of the new Canyons School District. While this can't help but be a melancholy occasion, it is my hope that we keep in touch through email correspondence, mutual opportunities for professional development, blogs, wikis, websites, and professional organizations.

I am happy to announce that the Jordan Council of the International Reading Association (JCIRA) will remain the local council for teachers in both Canyons and Jordan Sistricts. Next year, I am working with the JCIRA board to provide more secondary presenters. Already I have lined up Terry Jensen of Valley High to share information about his wildly successful "Book Affair." I am also inviting teachers from other schools to talk about their "literacy nights" and poetry slams.

Cindy Mitchell, host of the blog site, Kiss the Book, will also review dozens of YA novels at one of our meetings. She reads and reviews more than anybody I know! You won't want to miss this opportunity to learn about the latest and greatest in adolescent literature.

I am also working on scheduling Sara Zarr, author of National Book Award Finalist Story of a Girl and Sweethearts, to speak to us in March. I've gotten to know Sara a little, and I'm quite confident she'll be able to join us. She is awesome as is her writing. Be sure to add her works to your summer reading list. (If you want to check out a teen online writing experience hosted by Sara, click here. It's looks like great fun!)

Brad Wilcox, author of the children's picture book There's Always a Way Annie McRae, will give tips on becoming better writers and better teachers of writing. I attended Brad's presentation at Valley High, and if you think he can only present to elementary students and teachers, he'll really surprise you.

That's just a hint about what's coming next fall in JCIRA. You'll want to participate for the following reasons:

• Great presenters and professional development opportunity
• One-half credit hour of professional development can be earned
• Membership of one of the strongest organizations that promotes literacy in our area
• Opportunity to mingle with current and former colleagues in both districts

Before signing off, I invite you to go to the Literacy Link-up Wikispace to find a list summer reading titles for your students. You can copy and paste the info and give it to them as a farewell gift. I also invite you to revisit the blog I posted last year about reading for pleasure.

If you're wondering how to make the most of your summer, check out Dr. Deborah Dean's UCTE/LA Teaching Tips for May. She provides some great ideas for professional growth in our chosen profession.

This summer I will continue posting to Link2Literacy and will notify you of the topics in case you'd like to drop by and say hello! In the meantime, enjoy the rest of June, July, and most of August.

Wishing you all well,

Renae

PS. Other LiteracyLink-up Booklists: Novel Links; Graphic Novels; and "Guy" Books

Read 180 Revealed

Image created at Wordle.com

Hello Colleagues,

Scholastic’s Read 180 curriculum is a reading intervention program to help students at the Tier 2 level, as described by the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. It is designed to support secondary students who are two or more years behind grade-level reading. (Scholastic also offers System 44, a program for Tier 3 students.) To follow the Read 180 model as prescribed, teachers are assigned no more than 20 students per class, which lasts for an 80-minute block.

During that time period students participate in whole group instruction for 20 minutes, and then divide into 3 groups that start at different stations or centers. One group may be sent to the computers to practice reading fluency, listening, comprehension, and word work. For example, students may choose to develop comprehension skills by watching a short video that introduces the text and builds background knowledge. Next, he will read a related passage at a rate that challenges but does not frustrate him. Finally, he’ll answer some comprehension questions.

While at the computers, students may also practice fluency by quietly reading the passage aloud. A microphone records the read-aloud, and then the program plays it back so the student can hear how smoothly she read the paragraphs, the intonation of her voice, and the speed at which she reads. Spelling is another option, and the program pronounces the word, states it in a sentence, reviews how to spell the word if she misspells it, and the student tries again.

Another group will go to a designated area in the room to read books at their independent reading level. With the exception of one student, all chose non-fiction from the library of leveled books on the day I observed Lisa Morey's class at West Jordan Middle School.

"Hey, do like this book?" I asked one girl who sat with her friends on a comfy couch.

"Yeah, it's pretty good," she answered.

"Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?"

"Fiction, but this is pretty interesting," she added.

"What about this class? Do you like it?" I changed the subject. Her "yeah" held a smile in it, and when I asked why, she told me it helped her be a better reader.

Another young woman seemed to be engrossed in King of the Hill. Surprised to see this animated sit-com in book form, I asked her if it was anything like the series. "You know, a little naughty?" Perplexed at my question, she turned to her friend who translated my question into Spanish. She laughed, shook her head and said no.

Lisa's Read 180 classes include many English Language Learners, and the teacher is very pleased at the progress her students are making. The student who translated for me started school knowing very little English, and now she's helping a new student who just moved here from Mexico.

The third station is small-group instruction with the teacher. I watched, listened and participated as Lisa read an from from Bad Boy: A Memoir by Walter Dean Meyers, found in the Read 180 anthology. She asked the 6 students in the group to review what had happened earlier in their reading and then started to read, stopping on occasion to allow the students to say the next word in the sentence in unison. The easy instructional strategy helps Lisa know who's following along and who isn't. (It didn't take long before she warned one embarrassed girl to quit texting and put her cell phone away!)

Throughout the session, Lisa modeled "think-alongs" as well as going back into the text to answer questions. She also invited students to demonstrate their understanding through comprehension questions and context clue analysis.

When interviewing Lisa after class, she enthusiastically endorsed this program that she skeptically took on two years ago. Because of her extensive education and experience in reading research and teaching, she remarked, "I was out to prove Scholastic wrong." But she's happily eating her words.

"This program has saved these students lives," she emphatically added. There is not a support program for many students who "miss something along the way" in learning to read. Maybe 5 students of the 40 she teaches in 2 different blocks have not progressed as much as they could have. "But that's because they really didn't care, and so they didn't try." Lisa is especially thrilled at the progress of her ELL students. While the books are not written in Spanish, the computer program features a Spanish tutorial that is especially beneficial to them.

With 2 years under her belt, she knows what she will and won't do next year. Here's a peek:

I will ~

• continue to change up groups every 3 weeks instead of every week.


• continue to change their starting stations once a week.


• assign "during reading" and "post-reading" learning activity sheets to monitor silent reading.


• require students to finish reading a book a week.


• continue to celebrate our class goal to read 1,000,000 words with a trip to McDonalds where we will read and discuss the nutrition labels.


• work to keep this class for 8th-grade tier 2 striving readers.

I won't ~

• combine 7th and 8th grades; 7th graders really need to be with their peers their first year in middle school.

Lest any reader of this blog thinks this is the panacea they have been looking for, please realize there is no such thing. Of course, there are many critics of Read 180 as there are with any program that smacks of scripting or replacing the teacher. One school in our district tried the program several years ago, but it has fallen by the wayside. Whether that happened because of limited success or teacher turn-over is not certain, but another school besides WJMS has also successfully implemented Read 180. The common denominator in both successful instances is the teacher.

"I just LOVE this program," Lisa repeated. And the students love her. When I interviewed them, they all endorsed the experience, but they also said they really liked Ms. Morey. She makes this program work, and various teachers from the district who have observed her classes second their opinions!

Bye for now,

Renae