Hint cards...

Blueprints

Questioning Texts

A great example of how teaching students to question texts fosters deeper comprehension

Jeff Wilhelm talks about Inquiry in the Secondary Classroom

Book Recommendations

On her blog www.allaboutcomprehension.blogspot.com, Heinemann author Sharon Taberski has listed some recommended books for different instructional purposes and reader interests, here they are as of today, but check back there as she adds to the lists often:

Short and Sweet Chapter Books: Older Elementary-Grade Readers

• Joey Pigza series by Jack Gantos
• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
• The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger
• Riding Freedom by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Picture Books to Help Kids Infer

• The Goat Lady by Jane Bregoli
• The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting
• Charlie Anderson by Barbara Ambercrombie
• The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
• Elephant and Piggy books by Mo Willems
• Hurricane by David Weisner
• Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts
• Tight Times by Barbara Shook Hazen

Books to Help Kids Visualize

• The Eyes of Gray Wolf by Jonathan London
• Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman
• A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood
• Atlantic by G. Brian Karas
• In November by Cynthia Rylant
• Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher
• Hurricane! by Jonathan London
• The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Patricia Harrington
• Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack
• The Five-Dog Night by Eileen Christelow
• Down the Road by Alice Schertle
• Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
• I'm in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor

Books That Give Kids Something to Think and Talk About

• The Goat Lady by Jane Bregoli
• Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne
• Martina the Beautiful Cockroach by Carmen Agra Deedy
• The Yellow Star by Carmen Agra Deedy
• 14 Cow for America by Carmen Agra Deedy
• How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham
• Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting
• The Three Questions by Jon Muth

A word about working with WORDS

If you have not yet seen it, I would highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, & Christopher Lehman.

The truth is, somehow in the course of the last few years, most classroom educators have lost track of the movement around Common Core. Most of us in MN were initially told that we were not adopting the CCS for ELA, but as you know that has changed, we have. From my perspective, many of us have found ourselves responsible for teaching these standards with very little professional learning about their stark difference to the old standards we used. This book helps to answer the questions you are too embarrassed to ask and provides you answers you can discuss with colleagues and families.
Anyway, one of the most helpful chapters for me has been Chapter 10: Overview of the Speaking, Listening and Language Standards,  because one of the major shifts that comes with these new standards is the way we approach teaching conventions, knowledge of language and vocabulary acquisition. These 3 points are the most meaningful to ponder in light of the actual day to day instruction in all grade levels:

1. "Students need immersion in rich oral and written language, meaning they need to read a lot and be involved in literate conversations in literacy-rich classrooms"
2. "Students do need some words to be specifically taught, but teachers should select words that cross many content areas and will be current and visible in students' experience. This is because, for these explicitly taught words to stick, a students must experience them across contexts at least twelve to fifteen times on average. This means words of the week will not have lasting power unless they are attended to in reading, writing and listening across the day as well as across the year."
3. "Students need to learn how words work and gain the sense that words can be formed from other words and that words with similar spellings often-though not always- can have meanings derived from one another. This means that vocabulary instruction should not just be centered on word lists but should teach students to be active word solvers."

I am not sharing this to dismiss the teaching of sight or content specific vocabulary. I share it to prompt thinking about why we spend as much time as we do on individual words, their structure and meaning when the reality is, students can often find the meaning and have the spelling corrected as they type it faster than they can access the background knowledge we hoped to build. Instead, these new standards want is to focus on guiding them to be meaning makers and word solvers. 

Writing Units- Review before your writing day!

Disciplinary Literacy- 7-12

"How can adolescents think and learn like mathematicians, historians, or biologists if we do not teach them how to read, comprehend, and think deeply about the texts of each discipline?"
TIMOTHY SHANAHAN & CYNTHIA SHANAHAN

This year we have focused on content area literacy in our Professional Learning as 7-12 teachers. This topic is essential to our view of ourselves as teachers of reading and our desire for students to truly understand and internalize the content from their classes. So when I stumbled onto this article by Timothy and Cynthia Shanhahan, I was delighted to read about the work that was done with content area teachers, content experts and reading specialists to create a cohesive approach to disciplinary literacy instruction. Disciplinary literacy refers to the ability to recognize the purpose and strategies best used in each of the disciplines and apply them so as you more successfully read like an expert of that subject would. The article summarizes the a research project that strategically gathered groups of people to discuss, analyze, reflect and focus on reading purposes and strategies in individual content areas in order to better prepare students for the types of reading they will encounter in their various courses.

The article begins with the explanation of the difference between the literacy instruction received prior to middle school, and the increased need for more specified literacy instruction in grades 7-12. The following figure is provided as an explanation of the literacy grow and stages at Shanahan sees it. 

Shanhan explains that the project "has challenged us to rethink the basic curriculum of adolescents literacy instruction, particularly with regard to reading comprehension strategy instruction within the disciplines." This seems to be the most logical way to approach instructing our students. Rather than asking students to make the jump from a Basic to Intermediate Literacy and then tossing them into the world of very complex content text to "figure it out", the results of this project support the need for explicit instruction of reading strategies specific to content and purpose. 

Teachers, disciplinary experts and reading specialists gathered to look at the textbooks being used, record their own think-alouds as they themselves read portions of the text, and then identified the most important strategies for readers to master and apply when reading science, history, and math texts. The representatives in each team were able to synthesize what they knew about the topic, curriculum, and reading to create frameworks for instruction that were aimed at providing students what they needed to be successful in the top portion of the pyramid. 

The following article sites this project and more simply explains what is necessary to consider in the topic of Disciplinary Literacy. Additionally, this author includes some questions that could be used in a PLC conversation or in collaboration with your site's reading specialist. 

Eyes on Disciplinary Literacy

"If we are knowledgeable about the distinct differences among content areas why are we using generic literacy strategies across the content areas?"

PLC Discussion Questions

Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy

Vicky Zygouris-Coe, Reading Today Online

A look at the Reading Workshop in action- 5th Grade