You Must Read The Alchemist

Book Reviews Notes from the Classroom

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, was given to me by a colleague, who said that the book is for the journey that our team is on. I had to admit, I had never read the text. It sat on a classroom bookshelf for years. Some students chose it for independent reading, yet I never had a kid use it during a reading unit, so it wasn’t ever on my book stack.  

And then, about a year ago, a popular song by Macklemore made some recommendations for life. One of them was, “I recommend that you read The Alchemist / Listen to your teachers, but cheat in Calculus.” I can’t speak to the math recommendation, as a person who avoided Calculus like the plague. But I can recommend that everyone from grade 7 onward read The Alchemist.

The Plot

Santiago is a shepherd who buys his own flock of sheep, even though it isn’t his family’s profession. While looking at his herd and making plans for his future, he meets a man who encourages him to look into his heart. Santiago must look for his true desire, or, as it comes to be known in the book, his “personal legend.”

The decision to achieve his personal legend takes Santiago on a journey. He visits other parts of the world, and meets many people who guide him on his quest. But the journey is not as straightforward as it seems at first. Coelho reminds us: “Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he has never dreamed of when he first made the decision” (p. 70).

Why It’s Worth Reading

The Alchemist helps us remember that everyone has his or her own journey. Sometimes these journeys intersect. Sometimes they may be different from our own.

This makes me think about every learner that I interact with. My journey may be to forge students’ independence in reading, and to empower them to achieve writerly voices. But their journeys may be different. I just have to appreciate the time in which we have intersected on our journeys.

As Santiago learns about another, “Everyone has his or her own way of learning things. His way isn’t the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we’re both in search of our personal legends, and I respect him for that” (p. 86).

Beyond this important theme, The Alchemist resonates because it’s a joyful read, and its language is beautiful. The ideas are structured like those in a fable, too. This allows every reader to gain meaning from Santiago’s experiences.

I mirror Macklemore when I say, read The Alchemist. I hope you realize that it is a book from which you can find meaning at any point in your life. I daresay that, with multiple readings, you may find a different journey for yourself. And it is a great text for students who are in transitions–including those transitioning between middle and high school, and high school and college.  

Book Details:

Reading Level: 910L
ISBN: 978-0062315007
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Harper One
Publication Date: April 15, 2014
Awards and Accolades:  Anniversary Edition, New York Times Bestseller

*Thanks to Bethany Bratney for the blog structure for a book recommendation.

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership from Oakland University. She is a Galileo Alumni. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

 

Growing Reading Practice

Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_140887543

I became an English teacher because I loved to read. My days would be filled studying the works of Hemingway and Fitzgerald–determining the link between a text’s historical setting and its plot, studying symbolism. I was so excited.

But with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards and my training in reading and writing workshops, I realized something. With the CCSS, I was not a teacher of literature; I was a teacher of skills to read literature. I’d like to share two experiences that helped me develop this realization.

More than Summaries

In my first experience, I was several days into an introductory unit on personal narratives. My teaching partner and I chose a Nick Adams story as the text of study. After three days reading the story together as a class (insert groan here), students wrote summaries of the stories.

But these summaries restated words I had used in class to explain key scenes. They did not reference the actual text, and they had no feeling. Each summary was dry in word choice, and the structure was repeated over and over again, across the 120 students who wrote it. It was clear that kids did not engage in the text, nor did I ask them to.

I realized that kids should and can do more with a text than just name its main idea. Second, a better teaching move would have been to model for kids how to read this text to find a main idea.  

Observing a Writer’s Craft

The next experience involved a literacy consultant who brought some texts that were so interesting in content and structure, that I had to find a place to use them in my classroom. The consultant shared these texts as mentor texts for middle school informational reading. The texts were news articles and introductions to books, on The New York Times.

As a teacher who has always taught without a textbook, these texts opened my mind to authentic genres and dynamic texts that were rigorous for my grade level. They were also the complete opposite of the dry, formulaic informational essays that I had been reading.

Now I knew that I had texts that were worth reading beyond the main ideas. They had a beauty of language and unique structures that related to the development of their main ideas. I needed to model for kids, then, how to read these texts–to appreciate the word choices, craft decisions, and structures.

Close Reading

I currently work with teachers, and help them choose texts with the rigor expected in the CCSS. These are real-life texts that students can later use as mentor texts for writing.

51AsrMeYOxL._SX402_BO1,204,203,200_I teach close reading strategies for fiction and informational reading. According to Fisher and Frey, “Close reading is an instructional routine in which students are guided in their understanding of complex texts” (2015, p. 1). As an instructional coordinator, I love that Fisher and Frey’s text is offered for grades K-5 and 6-12. Key ideas from the 6-12 text that I have used in classrooms:

  • 1st read: What does the text say? By underlining key ideas and details, develop an understanding of the central idea of the text.
  • 2nd read: How does the text work? By taking note of vocabulary, craft, and structure, understand why an author uses these moves to enhance the main idea.
  • 3rd read: What does the text mean? Consider the bias and purpose of the writing to determine how a reader receives this text.
  • 4th read: What does the text inspire you to do? Evaluate the action you will take, having read this text, such as writing or debating.

Reading can be relevant and exciting for students. At the same time, I can teach reading skills, like noticing an author’s craft, and the impact these things have on my reading experience.

A Farewell to Arms may still be my favorite book of all time, and I may read it everyday before I go to bed. But my job as a teacher of English is to help kids learn how to access meaning from any text that they may encounter in their lives.

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

What I Learned as a Coach

Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_461317267I recently had the opportunity to work with a teacher on a unit of study. I went into the experience knowing that I was going to take on the role of an instructional coach, which means I would assist the teacher to improve instruction and outcomes.

Knowing that work needs to start with the development of a relationship, I began this experience with a few conversational prompts: What might you say are the biggest strengths in your teaching? What are you wondering about doing differently?

From that conversation, we planned to work on a unit that the teacher admitted had not felt successful in the past. The next step was to develop some goals.

As anyone who has studied coaching knows, the development of goals is crucial for the work that will be done. The goal we developed was to increase student engagement in workshop structures.

We also agreed that we would use a coaching model for this work. I would model the strategies in the first hour. She would imitate these in the second hour. In the third hour, a planning period, we would reflect.

Eventually, this would shift to co-planning and my observation of teaching the plan, after which the teacher would take on the role of planning – keeping in mind her learning from the modeling phase.

In reflection on the goals, I would say that they were accomplished. The teacher reflects that kids know and can exhibit more knowledge on the unit skills, goals, and standards than others had on this unit in the past. In a personal reflection, though, I’d like to share what I learned from this experience, and how I will use this learning to guide my work as an instructional coach in the future.

The Goal Should Not Be too Big

When I heard “workshop structures” as part of a goal, I knew my daily teaching model would have a clear teaching point, an example of relevant work, group or partner practice, and independent practice. But there was more.

shutterstock_257430889Many other things play into a strong workshop classroom: classroom culture, student-teacher relationships, grading, feedback, and exemplars, to name a few. In my coaching, I began to model a classroom that ran like my own workshop classroom, with all of these structures in place.

I dove in too deep, though. The specific goal of modeling workshop structures became clouded in seating charts and notebook expectations and conferring notes. I learned, then, to choose a small actionable goal for the coaching work that would follow.

Clarify Your Roles

I’ve read about coaching. I’ve been trained as a coach. And I have been lucky enough to engage in work with an instructional coach.

I felt I knew my role as a coach. As I thought about this role, though, I only considered my own actions—and how I could achieve the desired outcomes.

I didn’t think about the broader scope of my role and actions. A coach does not act in isolation. Instead, coaches have to consider administrations, individual school goals, the community of learning, and the teacher’s goals and current actions.

A culture of coaching, I learned, needs to be established before any relationship of coaching can be forged.

Ground Learning in Old Experiences

This is not to say that coaching is meant to perpetuate old paradigms. Still, I recommend observing the teacher’s practices in place, as part of the relationship development and goal setting.

Adult learners can respond in a productive way when they recognize their old practice, compare it to the new practice, and reflect on the impact that those practices have on student learning. I learned, too, that a common language of practice can enhance these conversations.

In the end, no one can learn without the opportunity to do so. So, a big “thank you” to all teachers who take a chance on coaching, and to those who grow from it.

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

Developing the Writing Habit

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

the knackWriting instruction has become my favorite part of teaching, though it didn’t always come easily. In the beginning, my own writing was stilted in structure and lacked voice. I wrote what I had been taught, which was a five paragraph essay and a five sentence paragraph. Not only was my writing boring.  The moves I made to create it were not defined enough for students to use as models, except for stilted, formulaic writing that also lacked voice and a sense of ownership.

It also took a long time to produce this writing because I didn’t care about it. I knew I needed to write more and I needed to write things that I cared about. Essentially, I needed to develop my writing habit so I could help my students develop theirs.

The Value in Habit

One summer, while planning for narrative-poetry writing in the fall, I ordered Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises. Here I found my dream writing. The challenge was to write for one minute without edits for 10 days. I found that after a minute I didn’t want to stop, so many days I didn’t.

I still use this exercise when I am stuck, or when I have more assigned writing than pieces I choose myself. Overall, it helps to clear my brain and return to the habit of writing.

It helps my students, too. They realized the power to clear one’s brain and write every day, as a way to generate topics. It helped my students set goals as well. If I can write 30 words in just one minute, then how many can I expect of myself in 15 minutes?

Using these exercises, my writing models came faster and my voice showed more than before. But my writing was still very one note. I needed some new craft strategies to vary the way I was writing.

So I studied my units of study, in order to really understand the writing skills and moves that I was asking students to use.

Detailed further in my earlier post “My Favorite Writing Strategy,” I also imitated mentor texts. As I have said before, when imitating mentors, you can learn what makes their writing great, but eventually the writing becomes your own. As I wrote in this way, my model texts became excellent mentors for my students. I used skills I asked them to use, and I explained how and why I made those choices. Metacognition became an integral part of my writing progress and the culture of writing in my classroom.

Other Steps to Keep in the Habit

Writing for students may be hard and it may be scary, but as a wonderful mentor told me once, “You only have to write slightly better than your students.” In the end, if we are going to teach writing, then we have to be writers ourselves.

With this in mind, here are a few other strategies that I have used to remain in the habit of writing:

  • Found Poetry. The idea is that you choose any text that is 50-100 words long. From there, you choose 25-50 words. Make a list out of those words, and use only those listed words to create a new piece of poetry. You have the opportunity to add just two words to your list that did not come from the text.
  • 50 Images. Make a list of 50 images. These can be things you see around yourself, like magnets lined up on a refrigerator, or a glass of iced tea with melting ice cubes. Make sure the list is labeled with numbers. Then have a friend choose two random numbers. Using the images on your list that correspond to those numbers, create a piece of writing that includes both of those images.
  • 25 “Because” Statements. Make a list of “because” statements. “Because I am almost finished writing this post,” or “because it is Monday,” and many others. Use these statements as a starting point for writing.

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

Using the Early Literacy Grant

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

interventions-that-workQuickly introduced to the intricacies of my new job, I was handed a well-developed grant plan to execute. The grant is known as the Early Literacy Grant and the funds must be used to enhance K-2 literacy instruction. From county-level conversations, I know that districts are using these funds in many ways, such as summer-school programs, purchasing formative assessment modules, and extended-school-day stipends. The plan in my district, written by my predecessors, has two components for 1st grade students and teachers:  

  1. Targeted intervention groups
  2. Enhanced professional learning for teachers

This blog is about our journey so far.

Targeted Intervention Groups

The targeted intervention groups include children with the lowest achievement on the Observation Survey, a series of six literacy observations including letter identification, word tests, concepts about print, writing vocabulary, hearing and recording sounds, and running records on leveled text. An Observation Survey of Early Literacy, by Marie Clay, is also one of the approved measures of achievement for the 3rd Grade Reading Law.

Most of the grant money is being used to pay substitute teachers to enhance this targeted intervention. With the assistance of a 1st grade assigned substitute, each 1st grade teacher has 45 minutes daily to run interventions with this group of children, for 90 days. The intervention typically runs for 20-30 minutes with the additional time used by teachers for formative assessments (progress monitoring) to set goals and next steps for the individual students.  

Using consistent data sets, like running records and checklists from Interventions That Work, by Dorn and Soffos, the teachers know if a student is progressing toward grade-level independence–or possibly if they have reached independence with the intervention. In this way, the groups are malleable. Students may remain in the group or move out to the general classroom groups.  

In December reflections, following 18-32 days of intervention (dependent on substitute start date), teachers observed that students were growing in their literacy skills, based on common assessments. Many teachers reflected on the wish for this opportunity with children whom they had last year. I always assure them that we can only be our best that day and we can always hope to grow, which most would say that we’ve done with this program.  

Enhanced Teacher Professional Learning

Other important uses of this grant money are days of professional learning, because the best way to enhance achievement in a district is to increase the professional capacity of the teachers. We conducted three days of learning for each teacher throughout September and October, so that teachers could start this practice in a common way. Teachers have remarked that the learning days were valuable and something that they look forward to. One teacher notes, “Leaving kids at the beginning of the year was hard, but the rewards are there; learning new practice and implementing the learning has had the biggest impact. I am happy to have been trained and been able to use that to impact students.”

Additionally, in conversations across buildings on our learning days, teachers see the value in common practice and the common language of practice while having professional dialogue, and they hope to increase that capacity among their kindergarten and 2nd grade colleagues in the coming years. The topics that we have covered so far include observation surveys, progress monitoring, and specific training on Assisted Writing and Guided Reading Plus intervention groups from the Comprehensive Intervention Model portfolio (Center for Literacy UALR). As we continue with the year, I will continue to reflect with teachers, and we will have additional learning days. I’ll let you know how the story turns out, but so far the journey is powerful.

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

 

Imitation: My Favorite Writing Strategy

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project
fullsizerender

The author’s imitation of a Haydn poem. Click the image to enlarge it.

Several years ago, I participated in the Oakland Writing Project. Here, I learned a strategy that enhanced my writing and my study of authors’ craft. I began to understand how writers wrote, and I learned to use those same moves in my own writing.  

Last week, I spent some time in my friend’s classroom, and she was using the same strategy with her students. The strategy is imitation, and it helps student-writers to develop their voice and enhance their ability to make choices.

Walking into the room, I smiled when I saw this learning target on the board: “I can imitate a mentor poem.” I immediately thought back to the first poem I imitated in The Oakland Writing Project. It was “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden.

This is a short poem with only three stanzas. It describes a routine morning where a dad gets up early to light fires to warm the house. There are also underlying messages like the speaker’s lack of gratitude and a fear of his father.

Through imitation, I could mimic the topic or theme of the poem, or I could imitate the structure and style of the poem. In the picture above, you can see that I imitated the structure by keeping the same number of lines and words. 

Imitation in the Classroom

Learning from my own writing experiences, I teach imitation to students.

fullsizerender-004

We start small and grow when students are ready. We start by using the same topic as the writer. We imitate the same number of words per line and the same number of lines in a stanza. To model for kids how to begin this work, a template might look like the one listed to the right. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

At this point, you’ve given students something successful which they can strive to imitate, but they haven’t made any personal writing choices. As you conference with students, you’ll notice that some are ready to move forward. A great next step for student-writers is to choose a topic of his/her own within the same structure as the mentor poem. This allows the writing to begin to be the student’s.  

Another next step is to study the words and imitate craft choices like alliteration and assonance, verb and noun placement, and words that share similar syllables.

Breaking Away from Imitation

In a later draft of my own poem, I used a standalone line. The poem I was imitating doesn’t have a standalone line, but as a writer, I felt that my writing needed that line, which took me out of imitation. So, I started using the strategy and continued by making decisions of my own.

Later, another writing piece became my own, even though I started with imitation. I began with “Patterns,” by Anne Atwell-McLeod. Here is a finished piece of writing that began with imitation.

You’ll notice while conferencing that, as they’re ready to move forward with imitation, some students will continue to use these strategies. They will also grow the strategies they use throughout the year as you expose them to excellent mentor texts.  

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

What’s Your Vision?

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

shutterstock_193135235I am lucky to have a new job this year as a Curriculum Coordinator for English Language Arts and Social Studies in a new school district. Since I am new to the district, I found myself at New Teacher Orientation. At these sessions, the upper administration focuses on the district’s vision, and how the new teachers are going to be a part of that vision. Having progressed through the ranks with a lot of time in classrooms, administrators tend to share anecdotes about times when they helped to develop this vision, or instances in which they found satisfaction in keeping this vision.

Subsequently, I buy in.

They say good things, they’ve done good things, and I nod along as I listen. I know that this is what’s good for kids, and that I can be a part of this work.

In these initial days, I have also worked with several groups of teachers. Here, I have had the opportunity to learn about their visions and what their classrooms look like on a daily basis. I see the beginning-of-the-year excitement and the true belief that they can do good things for kids. I believe in these teachers too.

This raises a question for all teachers: As the year progresses, and demands increase, and yes, you get a little tired, what visions of your classroom will you support no matter what comes your way? What will you fight for because it’s good for kids?

A Vision for Literacy Instruction

I’d like to promise that I will uphold these beliefs in my new role:

shutterstock_115746919Kids should be given an opportunity to write consistently. This writing should be varied and open to student choice. This choice may be in the strategy they use to produce writing, the length of the writing, the topic of the writing, or even the genre of the writing. Why is this important? Students who write and make choices about writing develop critical thinking skills needed in our world.

Kids should be given the opportunity to read every day. Reading can be a collaborative process. It doesn’t have to be silent and individual. As teachers, we have to expose kids to texts they may not have chosen on their own. This can look like strong mentor texts that guide writing and reading, as well as genre-specific texts that mirror student interests. This is important because students who read consistently and with variety do better in school.

Reading, writing, word study, and grammar are not separate entities in literacy instruction. They interact together and should be taught together. Students who can make connections between these topics are exposed to more real-life opportunities and will be better able to transfer these skills outside the Language Arts classroom.

The most effective tool for developing the reading and writing abilities of kids is feedback. Feedback or conferencing should be connected to standards, and should offer skills to increase the depth of the work produced. Feedback should guide students toward mentor texts and class materials that will assist them in high-quality achievement. As with all of my vision statements, students should have a choice in the feedback they take and the action-steps they enact after feedback.

These are a few of the beliefs that I will fight for in literacy instruction. What are yours?

pic 2Amy Gurney (@agurney_amy) is an ELA and Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator for Walled Lake Schools. She has a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in Educational Administration and is currently pursuing an Education Specialist in Educational Leadership at Oakland University. She is a current Galileo Leader. She worked on the MAISA units of study and has studied reading and writing workshop practice and conducted action research.

 

The Writing Inclination

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

shutterstock_248057314A recent article in the School Library Journal addresses a commonly heard statement in education: “Kids hate to write.” The article suggests that kids do write, and that the Internet is offering more opportunities than ever before to do so. The article even suggests some online writing tools and apps to use with kids, many of which I use in my classroom.

Still, though, the author wrote, “How do we help our students harness the inclination–the cultural imperative to write–so that they can become better academic writers?”

Five Strategies to Use with Students

I want to share several beliefs and practices about how I entice kids to believe in writing and see themselves as writers.

  1. As the teacher, I write.
    I complete every assignment along with my students. Sometimes I prepare examples before class, while other times I write on-demand as we contribute to writing ideas together. As students see me as a writer, they gain confidence in their own writing.
  2. I let kids choose their own topics.
    I have standards that I have to cover and model curricula to use, but those resources never say that I have to have all of my students complete an essay on the same topic. Rather, these resources say that I have to give students opportunities to write in various genres over different lengths of time, so I give students opportunities to do that. A student’s writing is much better when she chooses a topic that interests her.
  3. I teach students to use reading as a guide for writing.shutterstock_332181653
    I have learned so much from using exemplars for writing–from sentence structures and the organization of an argument, to word variety and character creation. I offer student these same opportunities to explore their reading to use for writing. For many students, this practice gives them the structure they need to make a personally important topic shine.
  4. I offer consistent writing opportunities.
    We write every day. Sometimes it is genre-specific work, sometimes it is just a quick write, and sometime we just doodle. But we write every day. When students can have a consistent experiences with writing, they begin to look forward to writing.
  5. I give feedback on writing.
    The feedback a teacher gives writers should encourage growth. I use a very defined structure each day with students: a compliment related to a recent standard (I notice…); a question about the feelings of the writer; a suggestion, sometimes with an example (Can I offer a next step?); and an offer to revisit the writing when the writer has made a decision. Kids say that they enjoy feedback and want as much as possible.

Borrowing the idea from Ruth Ayres’ video, I have created a video to take a look at the notebook life in our middle school classroom. I hope that you can find use for it to encourage your classes to write every day.

pic 2Amy Gurney is an 8th grade Language Arts teacher for Bloomfield Hills School District. She was a facilitator for the release of the MAISA units of study. She has studied, researched, and practiced reading and writing workshop through Oakland Schools, The Teacher’s College, and action research projects. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education at Central Michigan University and a Master’s in Educational Administration at Michigan State University.

Setting Individual Goals for Readers

Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

shutterstock_171474932At my school, we had a reading goal of 20 books a year for each student. This goal was further broken down into page goals for grade levels — 400 pages each month for 6th graders, 500 for 7th graders, and 600 for 8th graders.

These goals were set for vertical consistency, and for my first few years, I heeded the expertise of my colleagues, and I did as they did. I kept my own reading log. I meticulously tallied student totals for books and pages. I helped kids choose books.

I realized, though, that page and book goals were not complementary. Many of my students’ favorite 8th-grade texts were 200 pages or less, so they were meeting the book total, but not the page total. Then there were texts that were far more that 200 pages, causing students to not meet the book goal.

There are many ways to finagle this information, but I was left questioning what this school-wide goal actually meant for my readers. Also, I saw my struggling learners feel defeat each month when they didn’t reach the goal, or their reading-level-appropriate books were much shorter than those of their peers. Additionally, I had to grade these reading logs, but the grading wasn’t aligned to any standard, except the arbitrary number that my colleagues set.

I couldn’t keep allowing students to fail in this task, so I changed my approach to reading logs.

Personalized Goals

I used the following strategies with students:

1. Students, working with me, set a personalized monthly reading goal.
2. I provided a variety of logs to choose from — monthly, daily, even yearly.
3. Conferences became about setting good goals and making good book choices.

The first month, we started with just a two-week goal. Students were eager to repeat their previous goals, but as I conferenced with them, many admitted that they didn’t often meet those goals. So I asked, What goal can we reach to be successful? They paused and breathed, and set a goal they thought they could achieve based on prior knowledge and experience.

As a result, more students than ever turned in their logs and reached their goals.

shutterstock_323492543As we continued, for many it was easy to double the two-week goal. For others who struggled to meet their goals, the common theme was that they didn’t make time to read daily. So we used a daily reading log, a visual tool that allowed students to see their amount of reading.

This wasn’t a punishment, though. It was a learning activity. Students who felt they established a good reading routine could switch logs at any time. One student, an avid athlete, found the daily log more beneficial because she could see her progress each day, just like her training. She has kept that log all year.

The types of goals also had to shift for students. Some kids set page goals, some set book goals, and some set goals based on the books they chose to read that month. Others have learned to look at the events going on in their lives, and to adjust their goals accordingly.

You may wonder whether students set purposely low goals. I didn’t see that. Each month as we revisit these goals, students who reach their goals set higher goals for themselves. One young woman started with 250 pages monthly and has successfully increased to 600 pages monthly. She wants to finish the year with 700 pages in a month. She says this is the most she’s ever read because she feels successful and in charge of the success.

Outcomes and Recommendations

This is just my experience with a new reading mindset in my classroom. But consider my students’ responses to an open-ended survey with two prompts. For the first prompt, students explained “what I like best about reading logs in this class.” The second prompt was, “What could be improved on in reading logs in this class?”

Student responses included:

  • “I like setting my own goals because it gives me motivation to read more.”
  • “I love that we can set our own goals because we can accomplish what we think is good. There are no easy or impossible standards.”
  • “Your goal is specific and achievable.”
  • “Goals make me feel accomplished.”
  • “We set honest goals.”

Now I know that these goals for my readers encourage their growth and commitment to reading. I recommend allowing kids to set such personal goals, which increase students’ engagement and lifelong skills.

pic 2Amy Gurney is an 8th grade Language Arts teacher for Bloomfield Hills School District. She was a facilitator for the release of the MAISA units of study. She has studied, researched, and practiced reading and writing workshop through Oakland Schools, The Teacher’s College, and action research projects. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education at Central Michigan University and a Master’s in Educational Administration at Michigan State University.

Newsela: A Nonfiction Resource

Literacy & Technology Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

newselaAs a workshop-model Language Arts teacher, I am always searching for excellent mentor texts to guide students’ writing and reading. The hardest mentor texts to find are informational texts that are grade-level appropriate, as well as high interest in content.  

But there is a great new resource for Language Arts teachers at all grade levels: newsela.com, an online resource that can be upgraded through subscription. I want to share some information on the resource as well as some ways I used it during an informational reading unit to meet the needs of all my learners.

How the Program Works

Within Newsela, you can search topics, and you can refine that search to include grade levels or a particular Common Core State Standard in reading.

From this search, you’ll get a list of articles that have been redeveloped for kids at an appropriate age level. Each article has five levels. You’ll notice, for example, that 3rd grade and 4th grade titles have a statement of the main idea of the article and a lower word count. Eighth grade texts of the same article, on the other hand, have a more complex arrangement of text, as well as an increase of almost 200 words.

At the max level, which is the text as published in a newspaper, you’ll see more complex arrangements of text, as well as the use of advanced punctuation that is not part of the lower-leveled texts. Texts at the “max” level no longer include section headings, and while the word count remains similar to the 8th grade texts, the language is more abstract.   

When citations are necessary, the author of the revised texts is always listed as “Newsela Staff,” and the article titles are not capitalized, which forces explanations for kids. 

Within each grade-level text, you’ll also get four standardized-test-like questions: two for the CCSS standard you searched for, and two for another standard. All of the questions are labeled for the standards, so there is no guessing on the teacher’s part. These questions also vary slightly by grade level.  

If you have the pro subscription, you can send the quizzes to kids’ devices, and you can gain their answers. Additionally, the pro subscription allows the teacher to assign articles, see who reads the article, and allows the students to annotate texts digitally.

Using Newsela in the Classroom

Screen Shot 2016-04-25 at 4.10.35 PMFor the informational reading unit in my classroom, I chose 8th-grade-level texts from Newsela. The students enjoyed the texts, which looked at: the use of fit furniture for increased movement; schools that use gardening programs to improve health awareness; and school elections and democracy. The texts from Newsela allowed me to create a text pack to use with kids. Since we review these texts together, all students used these 8th-grade-level texts.

Newsela next helped me align texts with informational reading standards, by suggesting a complementary standard for each of the texts I chose around our critical issue. The site also offered me multiple-choice reading questions for each article and standard.

As a class, we read the texts, while modeling reading strategies associated with the standard we were working on that day. Later, students practiced these same skills independently, using texts at their independent reading level with a critical issue of their choice. Newsela offered many resources for student reading materials.

As we read and practiced strategies with partners, I also formatively assessed students using the Newsela questions. Following this practice, we reviewed the features of the questions and the answers. We discussed why particular answers were correct, and how a question’s wording informed the type of answer that was desired. This practice was to give students more experience with test question language, not to get right answers.  

In my classroom, this practice became a small competition with little stress for students. I also used these materials to assess my students in a summative way on the reading skills they learned during this unit. I provided personal texts for a student’s reading level, along with 8th grade assessment questions; throughout the course of this unit, I realized that students could be assessed at grade level even if they couldn’t read the 8th-grade-level text. At the same time, providing students with an appropriate reading level text allowed them to be more successful on grade level experiences.

In the past, I’ve struggled to find informational texts that are reading-level appropriate and high interest. Newsela offered me these. I recommend the use of this resource for all ELA teachers.

pic 2Amy Gurney is an 8th grade Language Arts teacher for Bloomfield Hills School District. She was a facilitator for the release of the MAISA units of study. She has studied, researched, and practiced reading and writing workshop through Oakland Schools, The Teacher’s College, and action research projects. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education at Central Michigan University and a Master’s in Educational Administration at Michigan State University.