Your Reading Group Tapestry

You’ve completed your F&P Benchmark Assessments, and you sit down with all of that rich data and the
exciting puzzle of making groups that work.  It’s a puzzle because you don’t want too many groups,
you want the students to have like needs and be instructionally reading at a level similar to others in the
group.  When you add in the really tricky pieces (like a student who receives a tier three service in
reading and is out of the room part of the small group/independent time), it can feel a bit like one of
those complex jigsaw puzzles that only people who are retired have time to complete!  

Here are a few ideas on how to tackle this:

1. Set up a time with your Teaching and Learning Coach!  We geek out over this stuff! We would love to sit down with you and set goals using the Literacy Continuum and then make groups.  
2. There has to be a way to make it work and meet all of the needs of your students.  Believe that you can make it happen, and the pieces will fit together.
3. After goal setting, group readers who showed up as same level instructionally together.  If there are students who are demonstrating skills in between groups, check their fluency rate and see which group they would fit better with.  Remember, groups are flexible! I usually error on the side of pushing the student ahead and you can always shift groups later.

Recently I read an article that talked about how unconscious biases can impact how you place students in groups.  Really the premise of this article questions the effectiveness of grouping students by levels, partially for this reason.  It talks about how in several recent studies, teachers tended to put students back levels who come from families who are living in poverty and push ahead students who come from families who are not living in poverty.  With the best of intentions, teachers often make comments like, “This student is a hard worker, so they can handle the challenge.” In reality, this type of grouping kids tends to put some students in a holding pattern.  

Even though I may have just added one more piece to the puzzle, it is critical that we think about what will help each student to grow in their reading development.  It isn’t enough to say that we believe ALL kids can learn at high levels, we must dig deep into our subconscious and confirm that our actions are demonstrating this belief for ALL kids.    

As you dig into creating your first set of guided reading groups for the year, get in the mindset of fitting the pieces together, and remember, you have a team and a coach who would love to support you!  

High Expectations for All During Independent Reading

It's that time of year: the sun is shining and minds are wandering as we grow tired of winter and look forward to spring time!  Despite the weather changing, we still have several months of learning yet this school year.  I have recently been reminded of how critical it is to have high expectations always, even during independent reading.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it isn't just critical, if we want to provide an equitable learning environment for our students, we must have high expectations. Jennifer Serravallo has some helpful ideas for us as to how we can support our students with the skills associated with staying engaged in text.

After hearing from several teachers that students are just not engaged in text during their independent reading lately, I was concerned about the amount of time that those students might be disengaged during the day.  Math problems started running through my head, like if a student has 40 minutes per day of independent time, and there are about 50 days left of school, that's 2,000 minutes of independent reading left in the school year.  That coupled with my recent reading of chapter 12 from Glenn Singleton's book Courageous Conversations About Race, where he discusses his vision for equity, and states, "Above all else, they are expected to reach high and supported to succeed often." (page 235)  We must continue to have high expectations for our students.  During independent reading, that means we must expect that they are engaged in text.

However, high expectations without support are difficult to sustain.  I immediately turned to Jennifer Serravallo's The Reading Strategies Book.  (I often refer to it as the "target book" because of the picture on the cover.)  There is an entire section devoted to the goal of "Teaching Reading Engagement."  We teach children how to decode, summarize, read fluently, analyze text...but we must also explicitly teach them to engage with text.  Serravallo starts off the section by suggesting we begin with an engagement survey (kidwatching tool).  Then based on what is observed, she has several strategies she suggests in the chapter.  I'm going to highlight a few of my favorites (although I highly recommend you go straight to the source):

• Use reading logs (page 46) to provide you and your students with all kinds of information that can later be analyzed and helps provide accountability and something concrete to discuss in a conference.  (I'd leave off the "level" though.)  Reading Log Rate Reflection (p. 65) helps kids to analyze their stamina and what and how much they are reading.
• Break Reads (page 49) can be used when students love a certain type of book (like Guinness Book of World Records) and you are encouraging them to read another genre.  
• Retell and Jump Back In (page 52) is helpful for students who find their minds tend to wander when reading.
• Set a Timed Goal (page 55) and Party Ladder (page 57) encourage students to set goals and work towards them.

There are a host of other ideas in the section to explore as well.  Alright, so now there are ideas to support these high expectations, but you might be wondering just when you will get this done when we have been working diligently at providing consistent guided group instruction for our students this year.  Your literacy coach would be more than happy to connect with you to brainstorm how and when this might look in your classroom to teach these engagement strategies to those students who need support to reach our high expectations.  Imagine all that our students can learn and gain with 2,000 minutes of engaged time in text over the next few months!  

STEM Literacy

It's hard to attend a staff meeting, a PD session, review goals or instructional practices without the word "literacy" coming up.  And rightly so! While the word literacy has traditionally been associated with the ability to read and write, the definition we embrace more fully is that literacy is about a person's ability to use language in its many forms (reading, writing, speaking, & listening), manipulate numbers, analyze images, engage technical skills, communicate effectively, pose questions, gain and apply knowledge in any range of disciplines.  STEM literacy takes those ideas and considers them with a lens akin to what we see in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Recently a cohort of 17 middle school teachers began their journey toward earning a STEM teaching & learning certificate through Winona State.  In the first session, teachers explored the meaning of STEM literacy, and while definitions range, it comes down to the ideas outlined here: STEM literate individuals are able to use concepts from science, technology, engineering and mathematics to understand complex problems and to innovate with others to solve them. A STEM literate person considers how STEM can improve the social, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions of their local and global communities. Building STEM literacy ensures we have both the scientists and global citizens we need to thoughtfully build equitable and sustainable futures. https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/stem-literacy 

As educators, we have quite a task in front of us, to help shape those "...global citizens we need to thoughtfully build equitable and sustainable futures"!  While the group of middle school teachers are digging into this journey, it's important to recognize that a cohort of McKinley teachers completed a STEM certificate program just under a year ago, and as a district we continue to move forward in our understanding of STEM teaching & learning and what it will mean to bring this lens to ALL students.
STEM thinking means systems thinking, helping students to critically think about the relationship between parts and the whole.  It helps eliminate the practice of teaching content in isolation and, instead, encourages interdisciplinary connections.  Whether you call it STEM, STEAM, or ESTEM - the connectedness and integration of concepts from a variety of perspectives is key.  The OMS cohort is attended by teachers of many disciplines - special education, English language learning, math, social studies, science, language arts, and music.  That in itself is evidence of the interdisciplinary nature and applicability of STEM literacy.  We look forward to what this deep dive into our own learning will do for our students.