Uncovering Engagement

Do you ever sit at your table with your small group and look up at the rest of the students and wonder who is and who is not engaged in their book?  Do you see kids chatting and wonder if they are talking about their books or about what they did over the weekend?  As a classroom teacher, it is difficult to run your small group and keep tabs on all of your students to monitor their engagement.  As a literacy coach, one of the things that I have been doing recently is coming into a classroom during independent reading and tracking engagement utilizing Jennifer Serravallo’s Engagement Inventory. 

The inventory provides information on who is engaged, smiling/making other facial expressions in response to their text, switching books frequently, zoning out, looking at the teacher or other students or other categories that teachers specifically requested.  After sharing the data with one teacher, she commented: “I didn’t know my students were spending so much time responding to text in writing and less time reading.”  Another teacher commented, “I thought those girls were off task with their chatting, I didn’t realize they were talking about their books and their words.”

Many of you have read chapter 3 from Jennifer Serravallo’s book Teaching Reading in Small Groups titled: “Without Engagement We’ve Got Nothing: Helping Children Want to Read.”  Having engagement data can help determine what types of small groups (or mini lessons) might help students move forward. 

If you are interested in having your literacy coach come in during independent reading (or another) time, contact Libby (ezeman@owatonna.k12.mn.us) at McKinley and Wilson, Joanne Harmsen (jharmsen@owatonna.k12.mn.us) at Lincoln and Washington or Katie Coudron (kcoudron@owatonna.k12.mn.us) at Willow Creek or OJHS.  We’d love to help you gather some data!