Teacher Tech: Three Ways Your Feet Determine Your Effectiveness

You might wonder what your feet have to do with your effectiveness as a teacher.  The truth is, where you put your feet has an enormous influence on your success.

The Doorway

If you put your feet by the door as students enter your classroom, you have a chance to greet each student.  This goes a long way in establishing an emotional relationship or bond with your students.  It gives you an opportunity to say something nice to each child and receive their greetings. 

For fragile children, this relationship will help them exert self-control when in danger of yielding to a negative impulse.  This bond can give confidence to a timid student who desperately needs to take some academic risks in order to move forward. 

One way to manage this greeting is to establish a routine whereby students have an independent task to complete each time they enter the class.  Maybe there’s a question on the board to answer, a worksheet on their desk, or assignments to copy down.  This way, you can remain at the door for the greetings and your already-greeted students have something constructive to do.

The Powerspot

Teachers may not know it, but they tend to have a place in the class where they deliver information or carry out discussions.  Typically this is near the document camera, white board or lectern.  When the teacher approaches this power spot, students are hard-wired into expecting to listen and learn.

Teachers should avoid standing in this spot unless they are delivering information to help keep its integrity.  To foster novelty in the your class, you can tell the class that today’s discussion will be held in the back on the floor, and students will enjoy the freshness of the venue change.

The Roam

I watched this happen: Mrs. Brown completed her instruction, verified that students knew what to do, then asked the class to begin their practice.  At that point, the elderly teacher could have gone to her desk to take a load off her feet.  Instead, she wandered past every student desk making sure students were on task and understood their assignment.  She often stooped and whispered encouragement or advice to students throughout the entire practice period.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more on-task class. 

Would this have happened if Mrs. Brown had sat down to correct papers or called a small group back for instruction?  Not likely.  Sometimes teachers need to perform small group instruction during class independent time and risk the decay of attention that happens when teachers don’t roam. 

Next time your students begin to enter the class, prepare to participate in instruction or begin independent practice, pay attention to where your feet are.

Teacher Tech:4 Steps to Boosting Reading Performance

It was my last third grade class before leaving the elementary classroom.  Like any class of lively third graders, they couldn’t be more different from each other.  Abby, my strongest reader, always had a book with her.  Carl, a bit on the immature side of the scale, barely registered at grade level when he entered third grade.  Douglas, having been enrolled at five different schools by the time he came to my class was nearly two years behind the rest of the class.  What kind of reading program should I have for these students?  How could I challenge Abby yet remediate Douglas?

 

Based on 36 years of teaching, I decided that my principal approach would be quantity.  I wanted my students to read a lot.

Our school district had just adopted a reading program with a stunning array of components including a basal reader, small sets of booklets for readers of varying abilities, workbooks to challenge, remediate and move along students.  If I read Volume I of the teacher’s edition correctly, our class should read one story a week, and we would work on skills using the supplementary materials throughout the week.  

It surprised me that publishers were still producing skill-based reading programs that suggested we group our students by ability.  This is exactly what was being provided teachers my first year of teaching.   Both skill-based reading approaches and ability grouping have been shown to be ineffective or even harmful to students.

I knew if I used that program, Abby would be bored (one story a week), Carl would probably do all right, but Douglas would be reading the fewest words of anyone in the class due to the remedial materials provided by the publisher.  The fewest!  Douglas needed to read as much or more in order to catch up.

This is the story of these three students and how a whole class reading program met the diverse needs of all of my students.

In order to make certain that my students did a great deal of reading, I knew my program needed four components: Sustained Silent Reading, Storytime, Home Reading and Whole Class Reading Instruction (RI).   I think most teachers understand how the first three components can meet the needs of students like Abby, Carl and Douglas.  The part that’s not so intuitive is how the RI part of class can be set up to help Carl and Douglas grow to the best readers they can be and still stimulate Abby.  This can be done in 4 quantity-boosting steps.

 Same Book

1.            Put your students in the same piece of literature.  I like to use novels for most of the RI time because they have more words than most other types of literature.  Still, we read essays, poems, plays and stories because we are trying to produce literate citizens.   Reading is not only about quantity.  And since most of the direct instruction given during RI is designed to make students more skillful writers, we need to use a variety of literature. 

What about Douglas?  He can’t keep up with Carl and Abby.  What about Abby?  Would she get bored in a class where everyone reads the same book?

First Douglas’s needs.  It’s unlikely that he could read the material without a great deal of support.  However, if I pick an age-appropriate novel for the class, the story will be developmentally perfect for everyone.  Abby and Douglass are far apart when reading ability is measured, but, like matching tuning forks, their brains both vibrate when a third grade story is told.

When my students’ minds are humming with the magic of a great story, I can use this interest as leverage to get them to read more.  Also, most students like Douglas, who are behind the rest of the class, are acutely aware of their shortcomings and are happy to be placed with the rest of the class.  Lower skilled students will want to be with the rest of the class.  Douglas will have greater interest in reading and motivation if I keep him in the same book with the rest of the class.

Abby bored?  I don’t think so.  She’s a third grader developmentally and will respond to great literature that is written for her age group.  When you yourself read a Robert Frost poem, like Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, you are not thinking that it only has a second grade vocabulary in it.  You appreciate the beauty of it.  Use good literature and your high ability students will be interested and motivated as well.

Prereading

2.            Typically, my goal when teaching a whole-class reading lesson is to prepare students to understand the material.  I give students the necessary vocabulary and background information to foster curiosity and allow them to connect the story to their lives and experiences.  For a Beverly Cleary novel, I’ve brought in 1950’s style bikes, balls of bubble gum, milk bottles and twirling batons.

Read Aloud

3.            Read the book aloud to the class while they follow along in their own copy.  You will need to train your students to track with you.  Many teachers play the “Next Word” game where the teacher stops reading and asks the class what the next word will be.  Once most of the class has their hand up, a student is called on, the next word given and the entire class is at the right spot.  The teacher can continue drawing the class through the story.

Initially, Douglas had problems with this, but I had him read with Carl for a few days, and he caught on.  In fact, by the end of the year, he proudly became one of the best in the class at keeping up with me.

Read it Again

4.            When enough of the story has been read aloud, I think of a reason for the students to read the material again. A list of sample reasons to reread the section is posted at the end of this article.   If you do it right, your students will be motivated to reread.  If you just tell them to read it again, all interest and motivation will drain out of them.

Remember our goal here is quantity—raising word count.  I tell my students that they need to find a different chair in the room to sit at for this silent rereading.  I want to get them out of their seats to increase their blood flow and raise their energy level. 

I suggest you have all students find the exact spot in the text to begin reading and start them together.  Once the class is on correct page, I make a show with a timer, a starting signal and I tell them that they have only X number of minutes to do their reading.  If they finish early, they can read it again, read ahead or read something else.

Abby.  She likes our story, but she doesn’t want to read this material again.  Nor should she.  Abby doesn’t need to practice; she needs to read materials more suited to her abilities.  I tell my students that anyone who reads the whole book and passes the test, is excused from most of the re-reading.  Sometimes I’ll just kneel next to Abby and whisper to skip the rereading and read something else.

While your students are reading the material again, you can monitor their progress.  You can see who’s actually reading and who’s not.  Who’s skipping ahead, and who needs you to refocus them with a little guided reading.  If you are attempting to teach reading using groups, you will be unable to do this precious monitoring.

Now think about how many words your students have read during RI so far.  Let’s say your reading text is an Amber Brown book by Paula Danzinger.  You read a chapter with the class as they follow.  They’ve read about 1,000 words.  When your students read it again, it’s another 1,000 words.  If the follow up activity is pairing up and reading the book to a buddy (so you can hear each student read aloud), they’ll get another 1,000 words.  This is 3,000 words in a single lesson vs. the reading program that doesn’t have any real reading until the fourth day of the week. 

My students and I truly love RI.  There is no sense of drudgery present as if we were all doing skill sheets (which I would need to manage, correct and record).  It’s lively, fun and rigorous—3,000 words. 

Think about your students reading 3,000 words, and they haven’t even had their Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) period yet.

I continue to boost word count by displaying other books by the same author, an award for reading two or more books by that author (with stars for books beyond the first two).  I assign Douglas a reading buddy during SSR to make sure he and his buddy get the Paula Danzinger Award.  Douglas and his classmates become amazingly enthusiastic about whichever author we are reading at time.  We view ourselves as readers.

What about Abby’s mom?  She might have concerns.  Of course she’ll be happy that Abby loves reading, but if she’s used to Abby being in the high group, she may ask me about why Abby is not in an advanced book.  I would have previously explained in a class newsletter that students like Abby are seldom required to do the rereading and that she can try for a star-studded award. I also explain that Paula Danziner is a brilliant author, and that Abby and the rest of the class are studying how to be a better writer by examining Danzinger’s style and imitating it.

What about reading scores?  Having fun with reading is fine.   Avoiding the humiliation of being in a low group is fine.  What about those scores at the end of the year?

My last year of teaching, every student, Abby, Carl and Douglas, all exceeded state standards on our reading test.  The exception were two special education students who were pulled out of class for special classes during parts of my reading time.

Teacher Tech: Re-Reading

Picture this, you’ve just read a story to your class as they followed along with you in their copy of the book.  Knowing that, with all the concept and vocabulary development you did prior to reading and having them read along with you, they are completely ready to read the material independently.  So you put down your book and ask them to read it again.

What happens next?  They complain and resist reading.  Wouldn’t you if you were a student in your class?  What about Kendra, the avid reader who already could read the material without any vocabulary preparation?  What about Gerard, one of your low readers who is shaky on grade-level material?

These issues can be dealt with if you build into your reading lessons an expectation that they will re-read after the class reading.  However, not only should they expect to re-read, but they should have a very special purpose for re-reading. 

An example of this might be to explain that their eventual class project will be to write 100 words that sound just like the author of the class story.  To do this well, they are to collect the author’s action words in their writing journal as they re-read.  That way, when they begin their author-write-alike, they will have some of her actual words in their collection.

This has an added benefit of making the study of parts-of-speech actually useful to your students.  Instead of teaching a dry grammar lesson on verbs, students learn about how verbs can be useful in their writing.  They are motivated to learn and understand parts-of-speech.

You still have the problem of Kendra and Gerard.  What I do is to whisper to Kendra, that she can skip the re-read if she reads another book by the class author during that time to build her action word collection.  She’s happy. 

As for Gerard, I have him re-read with me, a partner, a volunteer, a recorded book or some other support.  Sometimes this re-read session is done with several students who need extra support.

Research has told us that students who read the most, make the most reading progress.  Putting everyone into a developmentally appropriate book captures the attention of all students.  Thinking up excuses for students to re-read a story should be part of every reading teacher’s job.  Watch this blog for other excuses to have your students re-read.

Teacher Tech: Six Elements of a Highly Effective Reading Program

There are any number of publishers who claim that if their materials are used with fidelity, the result will be a student who will make adequate progress in reading. 

When my first child was a toddler, one of her favorite activities was story time.  She loved to hear her stories over and over as well as explore new books.  Without explicit reading instruction, we found her able to read these books based on memorization and picture clues.  Then something wondrous happened; she began to read new books as well.

When kindergarten started, she entered as a reader.  Then came the reading program.  She was given a workbook and told to sound out unfamiliar words.  This slowed her down and her comprehension and confidence plummeted.  It wasn’t until fourth grade that she began to view herself as a competent reader despite keeping up with grade level expectations from first grade onward.

Sometimes students progress in reading because of what we teachers do and sometime they learn despite our actions. 

Now in America we are at a place where teachers are under pressure to close the achievement gap between middle class and impoverished children.  No Child Left Behind imposes severe and ineffective sanctions on schools which fail to produce adequate yearly progress.  The response by many policy makers is to buy a packaged reading program and insist teachers implement it with fidelity.  Nearly all these programs treat reading instruction as a series of skill lessons. 

When teachers see all the skills, recognizing hard and soft g for example, they respond by pretesting the class to see who already knows the skill.  Then students are broken into groups for instruction.  This system often degrades down to abilty grouping.  This may sound reasonable, but we need to ask: Is a skill-based reading program the best approach?

Studies are showing highly effective reading teachers do six things well: provide opportunities for children to select their reading materials, teach children to read accurately, make sure the children can understand what they read, insist that children write about something that is meaningful to them, make sure students talk to peers about their reading and listen to an adult model fluent reading.

I’m not a fan of skill-based reading instruction.  It clogs up what should be a nearly magical process for children and often results in the highly destructive practice of ablity grouping.  To find out more about the six elements of highly effective reading teachers, check out this article:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar12/vol69/num06/Every-Child,-Every-Day.aspx

Teacher Tech: Magic Words

You’ve been taught that the magic words are please and thank you.  These are indeed effective, but teachers need more than just two magic words.  There are certain words that tap deep into a child’s brain and, if used, allow a teacher to be more effective.

Raise your hand if . . .

Many teachers will address the class and say something like, “Did everyone understand?”  or “Anyone remember what we did last time?”  Questions like these do not tell a student how to respond.  Students might wonder if they should call out the answer or raise a hand.  Also, think about the first question, there’s a certain amount a shame involved when admitting that you are not part of everyone.

Show me the correct way to . . .

Contrary to the way many students behave, they are actually hard-wired into wanting to please their mentors.  Not only that, but most children have a need to show-off to the mentor.  When you ask a student to Demonstrate the correct way to line up/pick up supplies/share with a partner, you are tapping into basic needs seated in a child’s brain.

Think about . . .

Think about what a student does during a lecture.  Does the student just open his brain and allow information in?  Kids are active creatures inside as well as outside.  One way to keep their attention during a lecture is to make sure you, the teacher, control the activity in their brain.  To do this, make your lecture active.  Tell your students what to do, think about, draw or write.  Use magic active words like: think about, imagine, picture in your mind, and so forth.

I would like you to . . .

Children can’t help but want to know what would please their teacher.  Some conduct disordered children want to know this so they can do the opposite, but most children just want to know.  When giving directions, use phrases like: I would like you to . . . , It would make me happy if . . .,  I want you to . . ., and so forth.  Be open about what you would like to see happen and what might not please you.  When a student does something counter to what you asked for, you can use phrases like, It makes me uncomfortable when . . ., It makes me unhappy when . . .

When I’m making an observation in a skilled teacher’s classroom, I’ll always hear more than just two magic words.

Policy: School Vouchers

Vouchers, where parents receive a certificate that they can apply towards a private school, have been touted as a way to improve education.  The argument goes something like this; if students take public money and use it to attend a private school, the public school will improve due to competition.  The students benefit because they can leave a failing public school in order to attend a private school that is unencumbered by an elected school board or unions.

What may seem on the surface as a great idea has developed into a disaster for students and public schools.  In Milwaukee, home of vouchers for 21 years, black students in public or private schools have the lowest scores of any city.  The Milwaukee vouchers have not improved schools or given students a better education.  They have taken public money and spent it without the oversight of an elected school board.

Governors Scott Walker (WI) and Mitch Daniels (IN) have pushed through or expanded voucher programs knowing they don’t improve schools.  Experts speculate that their goal was to curry political favors or deconstruct public schools.

Jeb Bush’s voucher program (FL) allows public money to be spent on completely unregulated “schools” that allow “teachers” with criminal records to “teach” by having students do workbooks and watch TV in dingy homes.

Everyone benefits from strong pubic neighborhood schools that are held accountable to elected school boards.  School reform resources should go towards efforts that have proven to be effective like early childhood education, professional development for teachers and a strong, vigorous curriculum.

Policy: Is the Bluebird a Phoenix?

This appeared in Reading Today.

I held her shaking body and cooed daddy/daughter things until she began to relax. When she finally caught her breath, all she could croak out was, “I’m going to be a bluebird.” I mouthed to Sharon, “What’s a bluebird?” Mystified, I held my despondent daughter until she could breathe normally.

It turns out; Lindsey had read poorly with Mrs. Richardson that day. Afterwords Lindsey convinced herself that she would be moved into the low group: the bluebirds. We assured her, as teachers ourselves, that first grade teachers would not move a student just because of one mistake.

After school the next day, Lindsey chirped that she was still a red bird. Parent/Teacher conferences were coming up, and we put this issue on our talk-list. At the conference, Mrs. Richardson explained that she grouped the students according to their ability to read so she could better meet their needs. We were stunned when she told us that none of the students knew which group was high or low.

When I was student teaching, my master teacher showed me how to teach reading. I learned about the three reading groups, placement tests, the basal reader and workbooks. I was told that if I followed the teacher’s manual, my students would become strong readers.

By the time my daughter entered Mrs. Richardson’s class I had long abandoned ability grouping when the weaknesses of the practice revealed themselves to me. The low students, who needed to do the most reading, actually read less. Middle students were trapped in a group that lacked the spark of the high kids. The high readers, since they were usually independent, got less teacher-time than they deserved. It just didn’t work.

I remember looking at my low group and musing that, although they shared a similar score on the placement test, that was about all they shared. Roman was bright, but recently arrived from Mexico. Margaret had low cognitive abilities, but her parents refused special education services, Jimmy had attention problems and couldn’t seem to function well on a test even though he loved to read. Ricky puzzled me. He did fine in math, but struggled to read fluently. The other members of the group also appeared so diverse, how could one lesson be appropriate for all?

Another element of ability grouping that irked me was when I noticed that, in order for my students to work independently, I needed to spend precious group-time teaching them how to do the workbook pages or seatwork. As a result, when I got a group back to the table, we would discuss their seatwork from the day before, then I would show them how to do the next pages, and finally, we would use the last few moments to try to learn a skill.

My teaching colleague, Mary, told me to teach them how to score well on the placement test so I could get them out of the low group. This logical idea seemed counter to the notion that I should be teaching them to be better readers, not better test-takers.

My principal loved to schedule morning assemblies that seemed to occur just when we were doing reading groups. When an announcement about the latest assembly came over the PA system, I noticed that my students seemed happy to miss their reading groups. Worse, I noticed I was happy to miss it, too. I realized that reading was the one subject my students and I didn’t enjoy.

Later, we had a three-day week due to Thanksgiving. Too short a period to run my reading groups. Instead, we began a whole class literature activity with a short story written just above the ability of my average student. After providing motivation and preparation to read the story, we had a fabulous lesson where my lowest students actually read more words in a day than they typically did in a week. The high kids loved the well-written story.

We decided to do literature the next week as well. I found it interesting that the whole class groaned when an assembly was announced. My students and I were enjoying reading.

Something was going right. Even though I witnessed obvious progress by all my students, I remained uneasy about bucking the ability-defined-three reading-group model; I looked to see what research said about the topic. Slavin’s research seemed to be the most thorough look at the subject, and I found it supported what I was doing. It surprised me that years later, Mrs. Greenseth hadn’t gotten the message.

Now my daughter is a confident, capable educator herself. I’m passionately loving my 36th year of teaching and still meeting the needs of my students without using ability grouping. Still, countrywide, classrooms are full of sincere, well-intentioned teachers like Mrs. Richardson, who attempt to diversify instruction by ability grouping.

Policy makers and educational leaders are tacitly or openly approving an ineffective strategy that outwardly meets the instructional needs of a diverse population. Publishers print materials that support ability grouping in response to the buying habits of these educational consumers.

New teachers look around at what their more experienced colleagues are doing and assuming that, despite what they learn in their education classes, ability grouping seems to be the right way to teach reading. Robert Marzano, in his 2001 book, Classroom Instruction That Works, points out that research does not support ability grouping and that it’s probably less common than in the 80’s.

However, I’m seeing pressure on teachers to resurrect this grouping strategy out of its own ashes. Educational leaders need to give teachers permission to abandon this ineffective teaching strategy. Leaders need to provide their teachers with materials and research that will help the Mrs. Richardsons make good educational decisions for their students. We need to put an end to the bluebirds.