Good Readers? Or just Readers?

          One of the things we talked about a couple of weeks ago in class was that we aren't necessarily trying to make good readers, we are trying to make readers.  Oftentimes as a teacher we use the phrase, "you are such a good reader" and we don't think about what the long reaching consequences of that phrase are.  We need to focus on "you are a reader" instead.  What a boost of confidence that can have to a student.  Maybe a student who has had difficulty adjusting to a typical way of learning.  To be told, one time, that they are a reader may be just enough to have them open a book and try on their own.

          The same can be said for writers.  I discussed in my last blog about how we can use social media to help struggling writers.  Anderson discusses in his book "Assessing Writers" the need to link our assessment with our instruction.  As educators it is important to figure out what the student was already do and then go from there.  If we have struggling readers, struggling writers, let's find a way to help them on their level.  It is much easier to teach a student when we get on their level and push them up versus pulling them up right away to ours. 

          I would like to leave with one of my favorite quotes from the Anderson book.  "If we see students' errors as something bad, we overlook what some of these errors are telling us about the ways that students are growing as writers."  What an awesome view to teaching.

Technology is taking us....where?

          This past weekend I went to a conference and we discussed the uses of social media for our church.  The more I sat there I thought this could be completely translated into uses for school.  Then we sat in class on Monday talking about writing styles and I realized that social media was a great way to get kids to write.  Now my mom keeps thinking social media will leave.  Of course her phone is still a flip phone with no data or texting capabilities.  When she went to upgrade her phone I didn't realize they even had those anymore.  But she has what she has.  She writes emails, sits at her computer online most of the day.  Gets on discussion boards which in reality is the same thing.  Her problem comes with the need to have the instant communication at your fingertips.  Traveling with her is rough for my teenage boys who have known no other life than a connection with their friends at all ours of the day.  

          So there is probably a place for it all.  I'm a huge offender.  I have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare and many more.  I thrive with my phone in my hand and need a charger at work and home.  I need that connection to what is going on.  So now the task is to bring it into our classrooms without it taking over.  For this class we have a Pinterest account.  We are linking with people from around the world to find some things about our future classrooms.

          What about writing?  Kids are writing texts to their friends, they are tweeting in a certain amount of characters.  We are building a group of kids who can be concise in their thoughts. So to ask them to write a narrative could be a challenge.  What about our reluctant writers?  Why not give them a prompt where they can give a tweet back to a political statement.  They can give what their Facebook status would be about a certain issue.  We need to embrace kids and know what they are doing so we are at their same level.  Spelling and cursive aren't as important because our thoughts are autocorrected via a tablet or computer.  

          Just some random thoughts anyway.  Some things to think about.  Letting kids know that reading and writing are parts of their everyday world already.  If kids can see this then maybe then can embrace the idea of putting thoughts down in words.

Think, Think, Think; and then Think some more

          When first presented with this idea of Think Aloud while reading, I thought, I got this!  Unlike the last activity this was something that I was familiar with.  I took an entire, semester long, class on Explicit Instruction; and I was good at it.  The thing that keeps jumping out at me though is not how good I am but how good the student gets when they do this thing.  I selected "Theresa" again, she and I now have a reading relationship and she is willing to be my guinea pig in these studies.  Probably because I go into letting her know this is a trial for me and not for her.  As a student in a behavior focus program I find it important to let her know that she is in the right.  She struggles academically but more because she hasn't had a consistent education than anything else and I'm hopeful when I meet with her to give her a small amount of personal success.
          I didn't have a book chosen for this.  She is a high school student so I knew it would be further reading than a picture book.  So I have a stack of books in my office that are on my list to read for another class, adolescent literature.  That seemed an appropriate stack to pull from.  I knew we probably wouldn't read a ton so I wanted something that we could grasp quickly and learn from.  I pulled off "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" a National bestseller by Mark Haddon. 
          I started things off with my reading aloud first.  I went along just naturally, pausing as I should to read aloud.  Not realizing of course that there was a better course of action and I wasn't taking it.  What I should have done, is given her a copy of the text while I did this.  Asked her for her feedback as I released.  Instead I pushed through, content with what I was doing and not reflecting in the moment on if she even had any idea what I was doing.
          The reason I bring that to the forefront is that I wasn't clear on what I was expecting from her.  I thought aloud, did it as a perfect instructor should do, inferring and questioning.  Then she took over and just read.  I had to stop her a paragraph in and explain again, oh wait clearly it was for the first time, on what I wanted.  At that point she seemed to grasp what I was wanting.  I explained that the reason for doing this was when we read we think those things anyway, thinking it aloud makes it clear in the mind what we are looking for.
          I coudn't ask for a better test subject.  She is not interested in pleasing me, just doing what is asked of her.  That helped me locate the mistakes that I made much easier.  I'm excited to go forward with this kind of thought process though.  I think that Think Alouds do a great job of slowing the reader down and finding what can be pulled out of the process.  I'm hopeful that "Theresa" and I will be able to work again in the future.

Ashes to Ashes

          As a little girl I was raised Lutheran.  As a grown adult I'm not on the church council and actively involved in many different things at church.  When first dating my husband he was very gruff and said, "if you want someone in your life that will go to church with you, we better break up."  I didn't think it was the biggest breaking factor and I didn't think that it was important to me.  He had enough other redeaming qualities that I was willing to live with the fact that he didn't go to church.  As the years have progressed, he now goes to church with me, sometimes even without me.  Not too shabby for a conversion in only five years:). 
          I digress, the entire purpose of this post is this.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.  I didn't realize it was  Catholic thing, I have always done it.  But when I went to class last night, having missed any kind of service myself with my crazy schedule, someone else had been able to make it.  I smiled, I knew what that meant.  But then as someone asks her the question of what it is for, I realized that it must be a secret club or something.  The other girl had no idea what it all meant.  Someone else pointed out that they didn't either.  Something so ingrained in my life, something that means so much, and not everyone even knew what that meant. 
          So I started thinking about how in a way we all go through life like that.  Thinking that we are part of a big group, and we may be, but in ways there are so many that don't have any idea of the underlying factors involved.  Teaching adolescents is similar to that.  In fact I would say it should be like that.  We should be able to point out to them, to help them find, the ways that they are like their peers, then the sense of isolation may be gone.  Ashes is an outward, easy sign to find, most aren't like that.  As teachers we need to find those.  Help the students connect to one another and connect to the world at large.  How best to help a student become an upstanding citizen?

Learning Spaces; Learning Rules

          One of the biggest things that I have been interested in is what my classroom will look like.  Not the walls, the desks, those types of things, but what will the space include.  I have so many thoughts, so many ideas that they just seem to run together.  I have tried to come up with categories to help focus as much as possible.  Ask questions, I encourage you to and only because I'm hoping that it will help me narrow in on what I am looking for.
         1.  Specific learning space; small groups, large groups, individual work.
         2.  Computer space; I understand that there are lots of different ways to have this brought into the classroom.  Until I have my only actual space I am going to research the ways that these can be included.  Whether these are student owned tablets, computer space in the room, etc.
         3.  What will the book area look like; I'm interested in finding out the different ways to groups books together.  Trying to find the ones that will work for me.
         4.  Centers; I know that having different areas in the room help children focus their attention.  What does this mean if you only teach one subject?  Can these go across subjects if you have that type of classroom?
         5.  Research behind this; I am hoping to gather the research behind what will make learning spaces the best for learning.
          At this point, I have a Pinterest board where I am going to collect the ideas as they come across.  I see it as a three stage process.  Find the things that are interesting, and meet under my inquiry.  Sort through what the best practices are.  Decide on what the best for me is going to be.  I invite you to my board while I work on this progress.