Diverted by Cranes: A Story in Pictures

Notes from the Classroom

Spring is one of my favorite times of year. Everything is in bloom. People are friendlier. There’s a certain renewal that the season brings.

And that’s why after a long day of teaching, I often hit the woods.


Here’s where I started to obsessively take tree pictures. Just imagine me gushing at the crisp blue and billowing clouds.

And here’s where I got scared of cranes blocking the trail. (They seemed rather territorial.) Initially, I started this hike pounding the ground. After all, I had to take this rare opportunity for exercise.

But the trail didn’t want this of me, and the cranes made sure of this. So I turned around, allowing my walk to be diverted by cranes.

After my detour, my mind started to soften and release the tension from the day.

Hiking slows my thinking down. I get away from the treadmill of my day, and I let my mind “wander lonely as a cloud.” I notice things more–like this bud just waiting to unfurl.

I thought of taking a trail that I realized was too long if I was going to make it to school pick-up. So I started running. And here the trail spoke again: slow down.

And when I slowed down–look what I found!


Baby cranes!!

Suddenly, all the stops and starts were worth it, even if they did lead to some rethinking and rerouting.

Often we meet standoffish cranes in our classrooms. We want to turn away. We want to avoid working with them because they take us out of our comfort zones.

But underneath every standoffish crane is a fluffy little chick who just needs to be gently shepherded.

The cranes I could never quite escape were much like a challenging student; there’s no avoiding either.

Afraid of the cranes no more, I took a wide arc off the trail for a moment and then took a series of baby crane pictures because I just couldn’t help myself (who can?!).

And thanks to the cranes, I even found my way back to my favorite tree!

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

3 Books that Boys Love—from the Boys Who Read Them

Notes from the Classroom

“I don’t read books.”

“Why are we reading this [To Kill a Mockingbird] anyway?”

“Reading is so boring to me.”

*Sigh* “I’m not a good reader.”

These are some of the comments I’ve heard over the years from boy readers. But, for every boy who makes remarks like these, there is a book that will save reading.

*Cue superhero overture.*

The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander

When I asked one of my students why he likes this book so much, he told me that “I guess I just like how they sound like people I know.” Students need to hear their voices in books. And for your students who don’t read because they don’t see themselves in books–this is a game-changer.

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander is the perfect book to give a boy who is easily turned off by long books. It’s written in verse, rather than prose, which readers like, since it allows them to move through the text easily. For readers who are easily distracted, the extra white space on the page helps them to focus on the text.

The plot helps, too. Alexander’s sharp verse tells the story of Joshua and his twin brother, Jordan. When Jordan gets a girlfriend, Joshua fights back jealousy as he vies for Jordan’s time. Add an ex-pro baller as their father in the midst, plus a little brotherly rivalry, and readers are easily hooked to the drama.

This book seriously glues readers, and warning–you might actually have to ask your student to stop reading it while you are teaching.

Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Over the years, Halse Anderson’s novel about a quiet kid turned school rebel, Tyler, has won over many readers. Halse Anderson is a master at capturing the voices of vulnerable teenagers who are at the crossroads of childhood and young adulthood. And she keeps her chapters short, which is great for readers who are building stamina.

Many of my students have liked this book for both its humor and relatability. The character Tyler deals with issues such as verbal abuse, alcoholism, and social media, yet Halse Anderson also places her characters in familiar teenage moments: dealing with a crush, confronting popularity, and enduring bodily changes in adolescence.

Being a teenage boy is hard. This book shows them that they aren’t alone in that struggle.

YA author John Green says this is a book that boys will keep “under their beds for years, turning to it again and again for comfort and a sense of solidarity.”

Decoded, by Jay-Z

Most times when I book talk Jay-Z’s Decoded, I preface it by saying, “This is definitely for a mature reader. It’s raw, but amazing.”

One student told me that this book was different from other books he had been assigned to read for school. Unlike those books, it wasn’t boring or too slow. Decoded pulled him in because it was about intriguing contemporary issues.

Decoded is a mixed-media masterpiece filled with lush photographs tinged with nostalgia. And from a literacy angle: The images break up the text, crucial for readers who are overwhelmed by walls of text. Part social history, part memoir, Jay-Z cracks open his lyrics for readers with detailed footnotes and annotations.

Not only will students be gripped by the story behind the lyrics, but this is a solid model of literary analysis that challenges the cannon and shows readers that a writer’s past informs his or her craft.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

Getting Students to Respond to Failure Like Olympians

Notes from the Classroom


While I watched the Women’s Moguls event during the Olympics, an Australian skier had a particularly bumpy performance (insert groan here), blasting through the orange flags. Yet as she stopped at the finish line, she gestured “oh well” with an unflappable grace, adjusted her goggles, and gave the camera a thumbs up.

So, how do we get our student to respond to failure like Olympians?

Model Live, Unprepared Writing

Imagine my fear when I wrote live in front of my middle school students for the first time. It felt like a daring move in my first year of teaching–to share raw writing with a crowd of thirteen-year-olds. Yet, to my surprise, these students were completely tuned into what I needed as a writer.

When I modeled, students were quick to throw out a word, phrase, or question that prompted me when I was stuck. I scribbled all over the overhead. There was a tremble as I wrote those first few times, and it was a tremble that showed my students that writing has fits of balance and chaos.

In being open to moments where I choked out words, I was able to show my students how a writer gets back up after tripping over words and how a supportive writing community can move a writer.

Resist the Urge to “Red Pen” Their Writing

The godfather of the writing process, Donald Murray, says that the standard approach to teaching writing is a form of “repetitive autopsying,” one that “doesn’t give birth to live writing.” For Murray, live writing is authentic and process based. It allows for growth.

The red pen, on the other hand, leads a student to identify as a poor writer rather than a developing writer–even though writing only gets better when students can take risks and not fear a punishing grade or comment.

Moving away from a deficit model of teaching, then, leads students to not fear feedback from their teachers and peers.

Provide Empathetic Feedback

What can help our students to get back up after a fall? The place to start is to help them recognize that all writers will hit a bumpy stretch at some point in the writing process.

For many students, this vulnerability is scary and paralyzing. And it’s even worse when the feedback is given postmortem–after they submit a composition for a grade. Yet, it’s those moments of moments of vulnerability, Brené Brown reminds us, that can lead a student to deep learning.

One solution is to offer multiple times to confer with a student in a low-stakes way. No grades. No red pen. Just a conversation between teacher and student. This formative feedback is essential to their growth.

All students will find an aspect of the process challenging–make that transparent to them. They will try ideas that may not work. They may delete passages that took time to compose. And they may feel a deep sense of frustration and tell themselves that they are not a “good writer.”

But always bear in mind how challenging writing can be.

When we really know the writer, and we know how much effort has gone into their writing, we will know how to respond generously. We will know that recognizing the strength in the risk they took as a writer will eventually lead them to growth.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

3 Early Literacy Essentials that Are Essential for Secondary Teachers

Notes from the Classroom


When I’ve asked students who identify as non-readers to recount a happy school-related memory, more often than not, they return to somewhere in elementary school. Most were happy because they knew what they were doing, and when they didn’t, someone explicitly told them what to do.

That changes by high school. At that point, we assume that they “know better.” But the truth is the same: kids don’t know what they don’t know.

So, how can we help these high school students, who may require more explicit skill instruction?

Earlier this year, the General Education Leadership Network published a handbook of “Essential Practices in Early and Elementary Literacy.” Though the document focuses on early literacy, it includes three practices that can establish equity and support for secondary readers and writers as well.

1. “Provisions of abundant reading material in the classroom”

As reading teachers, we must create spaces dripping with literacy. It’s in reading widely that a reader truly grows.

At the elementary level, this might look like readers’ workshops and students’ regularly “book shopping.” At the secondary level, this might look like daily independent reading and encouraging students to read appropriately leveled texts for pleasure.

In both scenarios, the key comes down to choice.

The idea of choice tends to drift off as students leave elementary school, and as class-wide texts become the bread and butter of ELA courses. Yet by incorporating independent, student-selected, teacher-approved texts, many of our resistant readers begin to feel a sense of empowerment.

2. “Intentional and ambitious efforts to build vocabulary and content knowledge”

Many high school students arrive with a rich bank of academic vocabulary to draw from, while some do not. Many may require explicit instruction on domain-specific vocabulary in order to access the content.

Here are some ways to instruct vocabulary:

As students work through vocabulary strategies, the Essential Practices in Early and Elementary Literacy see the value in encouraging “talk among children while learning and reading.” Talk allows for processing time and prompts students to use the vocabulary in a disciplinary context.

3. “Activities that build reading fluency and stamina with increasingly complex text”

In my work as a literacy interventionist, I see students struggle with complex texts on the daily. But I have noticed that when reading is a shared task, students are more willing to dive into this challenging work.

At the elementary level, this may look like paired reading. At the secondary level, the needs  often move beyond fluency and into comprehension. That’s why a strategy like reciprocal teaching works well when students read collaboratively. In this strategy, students are assigned roles to model effective thinking moves.

Another way to build stamina with challenging texts is by using other text types as supplements. Students will define reading by what we assign to them. Suddenly, a challenging and irrelevant text from the canon represents all of reading, and may feel unreachable to a struggling reader. But by exposing students to multiple genres and text types, alongside a more challenging text, we breathe relevance and resonance into what students may perceive to be beyond their grasp.

Teaching multimodal texts is an effective way to build understanding, particularly for students with weak literacy skills. Multimodal options encourage students to read about the same idea, but in a more relevant way. And after all, increasing relevance breathes life into learning, and positions even resistant readers to be lifelong readers.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

How To Use Talk as an Entry Point for Literacy

Notes from the Classroom


Many students need a temporary on-ramp to accelerate them through a literacy task.

For teachers of resistant readers and writers, creating this on-ramp can be a daunting task. Yet, I have discovered how talk is an effective entry point for students who are easily overwhelmed by a challenging reading or a complex writing composition, because it leads teachers and students to co-construct meaning.

Talk also reveals to students what they already know.

Over the holiday break, I worked with my son, a third grader, on paragraph writing. Though his composition was definitely different than my high school students’ writing, the process was familiar to me.

When I asked him to write a paragraph, I got one of those “I dunno” shoulder shrugs I often get from my students. When I asked him to tell me about something interesting he learned over break, I got one of those “I kinda know” pauses. Then when I asked him to tell me about seeing his uncle’s fencing equipment, I knew I had him.

Dylan started to rattle off a series of details about fencing–both European and Japanese. As he rattled, I wrote. And by the end of our conversation, what I had recorded became a piece of evidence for him that he did indeed have ideas that he could develop.

Yet I cannot be Dylan’s or my students’ Johnny-on-the-Spot stenographer every time they write.

And that’s why framing this exercise as an entry point works best. It should be used as a way to show students what they have rattling around in their minds. Talk should be used to help students to get comfortable with using their voices, and to see that they really do have something to say. Sometimes providing a space and a simple affirmation can encourage even the most resistant student.

Talk can also help students puzzle through an idea.

Recently I’ve been working with freshmen on writing a research essay that explains how an element of our world today is dystopian. One student I worked with had a hard time understanding a part of an article about China’s protectionist censoring of sites like Facebook and Google. I knew that in her U.S. History class, she had just studied isolationism and the U.S.’s closed-door policy, and as I brought up these terms, she was easily able to make meaning, and to interpret the significance of the evidence to her argument.

This is another area in which talk is important. A lot of students want to jump right into the writing before carefully thinking about the research. And that leads to a lot of out-of-context quotes and disjointed analysis!

But talk can create a space to puzzle through ideas first. This was true of my student who wrote about China–and it shows again why conversation is a necessary part of any writer’s process.


Another benefit of talk is this: it can offer students a path toward revision.

When recently conferencing with a student about a research paper, she remarked, “I have this paragraph, but I dunno–it just seems like a bunch of facts.” Something wasn’t sitting right with her, but she didn’t know how to process it.

This is the messiest stage of writing, and some of our students don’t know how to work through it without intentional conferencing during workshop time. So how did conversation help my student here?

We talked through her sources–articles about gun violence in school–and she pointed out an intriguing line from one of the articles. The line noted that violence seemed to be a familiar story. My student didn’t know what to do with the line, but when we looked closer together at the article, we noticed that it was written in 1999–after the Columbine Massacre.

Our reaction was the same–shivers. It made both of us jump because the story around school shootings has gotten worse, not better, even though it was “familiar” almost twenty years ago. Our astonishment led her to make a careful revision. She looked back at her paragraph that was just a “bunch of facts,” and decided to put it aside while she wrote a paragraph on violence in schools, because she could see how the impact was stronger on her audience.

I praised her for doing the hardest thing a writer can do–letting go of her writing when it just doesn’t fit. Because we had talked through her new ideas, it was easy to let go of what wasn’t working. And by talking, she was able to make a purposeful revision that considered her audience and purpose.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

Still Looking for Holiday Gifts? These Books are Perfect for ELA Teachers.

Book Reviews Notes from the Classroom

The holidays are upon us, but don’t despair! It’s not too late to find that perfect gift for an ELA colleague–or even yourself.

To help with your quest, our bloggers have put together an easy holiday-shopping list full of award winners. Now go get them!

If You’re Looking for Picture Books

With the holidays coming, teaching curriculum in any cohesive fashion can be challenging–at best. That’s why taking a break with a Mock Caldecott unit is the perfect way to have some really meaningful conversations about books, while exposing kids to some of the best picture books of the year. I did this last year and it was amazing. The kids really got into it and even my reluctant readers engaged because this was about the pictures, not the reading. (Sort of.) There are so many resources out there once you start to Google: book trailers, videos about the making of the books.

Some standouts from last year that I would give as gifts:

Shy, by Deborah Freedman

It Is Not Time for Sleeping, by Lisa Graff; illustrated by Lauren Castillo

The Airport Book, by Lisa Brown

The Night Gardener, by The Fan Brothers

They All Saw A Cat, by Brendan Wenzel

-Beth Rogers

If You’d Like Page-Turning Nonfiction that Deftly Tackles Social Issues

I’m not even finished reading The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater, and I can’t wait to give it away. As each chapter passes, I see more and more power and potential in this engrossing nonfiction narrative, and I want to get it into the hands of students and teachers everywhere. Whether you give it to teens or teachers, there are a lot of reasons to put this book under the tree this year:

  • Its mentor text opportunities are endless. If nothing else, check out that first chapter. If that doesn’t model an engrossing strategy for hooking readers, I don’t know what will.
  • It tells stories of those whose voices often go unheard–because #representationmatters.
  • It honors the complex nature of social issues, and respects its audience’s ability to wrestle with them. It’s too easy to treat social issues as black and white and ignore the gray areas, in favor of teaching teens a lesson. One of the things I love most about the YA lit that’s been coming out lately is that it honors the gray areas. Slater respects her teen audience enough to let them grapple with multiple perspectives and difficult questions.
  • It uses the power of story to make an argument, allowing readers to explore issues that they now feel connected to.

-Megan Kortlandt

And if You’d Like a Page-Turning YA Novel That Deftly Tackles Social Issues

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, is the beautiful story of Starr, an African-American teen who’s caught between two communities: the community where she lives and the community where she goes to school. When I read the novel, I knew that it would be my first book talk of the school year, because I could see many of my students in Angie Thomas’ characters.

When I shared the book with a class, I explained how the title was inspired by Tupac. Later when I saw a student from the class, she asked to borrow the book. I can never turn down a student who’s asking to borrow a book–even if it is a crisp new hardcover edition. Even though I made her promise to return it, I had a quiet feeling that it just wasn’t my book anymore.  

My premonition was right. Recently, she withdrew from our school. But something tells me that the book is right where it belongs–with someone who may read it and see herself, her friends, and her family in the book. The Hate U Give was not my book to keep, but to give.

– Lauren Nizol

A Novel that Can do Double Duty in a History Unit about Katrina

Regulars on this blog are probably betting all the money in their bank accounts that I’m going to suggest a graphic novel (just kidding–what teacher has money saved up in a bank account?!). I’m going to branch out in a new direction, though, and recommend a tough but beautiful read by Jesmyn Ward called Salvage the Bones. It’s gorgeously written and tells a compelling story of a poor African American family struggling to prepare for the devastation that readers know Hurricane Katrina is going to visit upon their home and community in mere days.

The book is a tragic masterpiece, whose dramatic irony relies on our awareness of the storm, stacked against the doubt expressed by many of the story’s characters. But I also love sharing it with my classroom readers because of its beautifully rendered portrayals of the adolescent perspectives. It’s definitely a book for more advanced teen readers, but that’s exactly why I thought to highlight it here: I’m often so devoted to finding the next gripping story for my reluctant readers that I completely neglect to challenge (or even engage!) with my eager ones. This book offers readers not only a diversifying worldview, but a context that is at once modern and foreign to them; we don’t realize sometimes that events like Katrina that feel modern to us are somewhat distant (and meaningless!) to our current HS students.

And if you were REALLY betting on me to give the gift of graphic novel recommendations, check out Ta-Nehisi Coates’ reimagining of Black Panther ASAP. Happy Holidays!

– Mike Ziegler

I Almost Left Teaching. Here’s How Teacher Research Saved My Career.

Notes from the Classroom

About 17 percent of new teachers will leave the profession in their first five years, research shows. I never thought I’d be one of those teachers, but I felt doubt bubble up around year six, when I had my most challenging group of students to date. On top of that, I was a new mom and finishing up my graduate degree.

Yet, luckily for me, my graduate capstone seminar cracked open a whole new world of thinking that inspired me to become a teacher-researcher.

Teacher research is a systematic, careful, and strategic way to collect contextualized data on teaching and learning. While quantitative data is helpful to understand a student, teacher research goes a step beyond and provides the story behind the data. Here’s how teacher research revolutionized my practice and saved me from leaving.

Teacher research helped me notice why some students didn’t want to write.

All teacher research starts with a question. The question often evolves over time in response to data trends.

When I started my research, I wanted to know more about how to narrow the achievement gap through writing instruction. My class included many students who were underperforming as writers.

When I began to examine my data with my classmates and professor, a significant trend emerged: my students’ resistance to writing had more to do with their lack of opportunities to express their authentic voice than it had to do with not wanting to write.  What started as a broad question became more specific, as I explored how multigenre writing changed how my students viewed themselves as writers, and moreover how it helped them to improve their writing skill set.

Teacher research helped me see students’ strengths, not just their weaknesses.

Teacher research views student artifacts as among the most valuable pieces of data to understand a student.

Many of my students in this class were resistant and underperforming writers. When I sat down to grade their papers, I found myself comparing their writing to some of the more proficient and advanced writers who I had in another class. In doing so, I was assessing what wasn’t there instead of what was there.

When I shared several artifacts with my grad-school classmates, we focused instead on what the student was able to do in their writing–not just what was absent. Instead of noticing how one writer had multiple run-on sentences and weak transitions between ideas, I began noticing how she had multiple ideas and was in the process of developing and expressing her content knowledge. Adopting a growth mindset toward my students helped me to move beyond this deficit model of teaching.

Teacher research gave me empathy for frustrating students.

One of the key tenets of teacher research is that running records and field notes need to be written in a neutral voice, focused on what the student is doing—not how the teacher feels about it. When I was able to remove my own bias and frustration about students, I suddenly began to view my students with a newfound empathy.

As teachers, it is so easy to take personally the behavior of challenging students. But what happens if we don’t respond personally to student behavior, but instead simply observe it? This shift empowered me to make decisions that redirected behavior rather than punishing it. Instead of viewing one student as defiant, I began to look for outlets for his anger–via his own writing.

Here’s the Takeaway.

Looking back, I realize that these challenges could have broken me. But thanks to teacher research, these experiences trained me for my work today as a literacy interventionist and academic support coach. By embracing observation and removing my bias, this challenging group transformed my pedagogy and practice.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

Why We’re Thankful This November

Notes from the Classroom

A wise, literacy-loving turkey reflects on gratitude

The world may be full of strife, but this November, our ELA bloggers spent time reflecting on what they’re thankful for.

From generous colleagues to a twist in parent-teacher conferences, these are the reminders that we need–the reminders that can’t help but lift us up this time of year.

Our Lasting Impressions on Students

Driving into work on Halloween, Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” was playing on the local classics station. (Some mornings, I listen to angry rap music–but that’s another piece for another time.) As I heard the intensity of the opening organ chords, I suddenly remembered my seventh grade music history teacher, Mrs. Moyes. I only had her for twelve weeks, but ever since that class, nostalgia would always wash over me when I heard those chords. Mrs. Moyes taught us a greatest hits of classical music, and to this day, my learning remains lasting and vivid for these songs. Every time I correctly identify one of these songs, it’s the same feeling I have when I know the final Jeopardy question. And every time, I smile to myself and think of Mrs. Moyes. As teachers, we only have our students for a small window of time. By early November, most of us are fatigued and counting the days to our Thanksgiving break. Sometimes I even question if all that I’m doing will make a lasting impact on my students. I’m thankful for this gentle reminder that my first twelve weeks with students is almost up. What will their “Toccata and Fugue” be? – Lauren Nizol  

What We Build as Teachers

I am thankful
for time spent building a culture;
a connection with my students,
my colleagues,
my family.
For in this time, we
build a community of respect,
responsibility, and reflective
peoples.
We build a place where individuals listen to understand,
not listen to respond.
We are in pursuit of more.
We work with purposefulness.
We are risk takers.
For this time,
I am thankful. – Tina Luchow

A Surprise in a Parent-Teacher Conference

I’m thankful for failing technology. At the start of this year’s parent-teacher conferences, as I rushed to log in to my grading program, I realized that I’d grabbed a Chromebook that wasn’t charged. No grades. Rather than waste the parent’s three-minute, pre-scheduled conference looking for a new computer, I opened up my workshop notebook and shared my notes about her student. We talked about the independent novels she’s read, the writing pieces she’s working on, the struggles I’m noticing she is having, and the successes she has had so far. It was one of the loveliest conversations I’ve ever had at conferences. The parent left knowing more about her daughter as a writer and reader, and we talked about her learning, rather than discussing a grade report that the mom can access anytime she wants. I never went back to get a new computer that night, and I don’t think I will ever use one at conferences again. I’m thankful the technology snafu forced me to talk about my student rather than just my students’ grades. – Hattie Maguire

How Educators Lift Each Other Up

I am writing this reflection after a whirlwind few days at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention and the National Writing Project Annual Meeting. First, I am incredibly thankful for this network of brilliant, dedicated, inspiring educators who offer so much of themselves to this profession. Once again, I have returned home with a pile of half-baked ideas, free books (!), and, most important, lots of hugs and joy to carry me through the months ahead. It takes a village to support an English teacher, and I am very thankful for my NWP and NCTE Village. I am also thankful that I can learn beside the incredible educators of Oakland County, especially the bloggers who share their stories here, who teach me and encourage me to continue to learn, question, and push for excellence in all opportunities for our learners. I leave work exhausted every day–in the best ways, because of the ways you inspire me to do better. If I had one wish for all you it is this: I wish you could set aside the grading for the long weekend and enjoy a well-deserved break! Happy Thanksgiving. – Andrea Zellner

Filling in Context Gaps

Notes from the Classroom

The other day, my eight year old was brimming with questions about the Revolutionary War. As I went through each, I found myself using vocabulary that he needed me to explain, like alliance–after which he quickly said, “Oh, I get it! My buddy is my alliance on the playground.”

My son is lucky that I majored in history in college. Yet, as teachers, we need to recognize that many of our kids do not have these experiences when they’re young. This opportunity gap explains why some students arrive to high school prepared to grapple with text complexity, while others continually struggle.

The Common Core State Standards state that ninth graders must be able to “[c]ite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.1). This ability to infer depends greatly on the student’s prior knowledge.

So how do we play ten years of catch-up in four years of high school?

Teach Kids to be Resourceful

As an academic interventionist, I’ve learned that many students who struggle to understand the course content are also struggling to read the textbook.

Many students simply read the text without paying any mind to the accompanying images, graphs, charts, and summary boxes. In Text and Lessons for Content Area Reading, by Harvey “Smokey” Daniels and Nancy Steineke, the authors explain that reading is easier when “the text makes ample use of pictures, charts, and other visual and text features that support and add meaning.”

When I work with underperforming students, I first show them how to use these features. I show them how to preview the text, by modeling an image walk, observing headings and bolded words, and reading the end-of-the-chapter summary before actually beginning the reading. This helps build context for students who may be unfamiliar with the content.

Create a Collaborative Culture

Context in any subject area often begins informally through conversation. Creating a classroom based on discussion, then, effectively engages struggling learners by giving them an entry point. When I taught English 9, I incorporated frequent, low-stakes discussion opportunities. When students discuss content, they make their thinking visible, and teachers see what gaps need to be filled.

Early on in the school year, I introduced my students to the “think-pair-share” protocol. My students could anticipate and prepare to verbally discuss ideas, and soon this routine was normalized.

Some teachers may feel hesitant to put an underperforming reader on the spot, but there are ways to scaffold discussion:

  • I often had students spend a few moments writing down their ideas on paper before sharing with a partner.
  • I arranged my room in either pairs or quads, so that turning and talking was natural.
  • My students also needed processing time, in which they could ask questions and grapple with the content.

Authentic context is built upon multiple sources–not merely upon the teacher quickly rattling through facts. Having this time to discuss with peers and think aloud was important for resistant readers.

Model Strategic Reading

This year, I have worked closely with U.S. History students to engage with the content. Many of them tell me things like, “I can read this, but I don’t get it” or “I just can’t pay attention.”

I began to notice a difference in how my students were performing on tests when I taught them how to text code. This strategy, also from Daniels and Steineke, instructs students to label details of the text with symbols, engaging in an abbreviated reader response. Daniels and Steineke offer a general list of text codes that students can use to monitor comprehension, and I adapted this strategy to text code for content-specific details.

I worked with U.S. History students studying America’s entry into the first World War, for instance, and helped them develop the text codes (N and DW) shown here:

chart
As students went through the text, they used these codes, and categorized the actions leading up to the U.S. entry into WWI.

Text coding provides students with a framework, which is especially important for those who lack prior knowledge. It also serves as a scaffold to show students which details matter, helping them to pay better attention to the text and prepare them to annotate independently.

Moving Forward

Teachers can’t turn back time. But they can establish routines and norms that create growth for underperforming readers.

There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for students who lack contextual knowledge. Still, by teaching students to read strategically and collaboratively with others, we include–rather than exclude–developing readers in the secondary classroom.

lauren nizolLauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.

Selling Reading to Kids Who Hate It

Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_307383305Strong words, right? Whenever I see the words hate and reading this close together, my skin crawls.

And yet, I have known many students who have resisted reading with a vengeance. But instead of throwing my hands up, I learned how to strategically market books to students who fought the process.

Give Books Street Cred

“Wait-wait. He read this? He read a book?”

This was a student’s response when I book-talked Boy 21, by Matthew Quick, to him. I ended my spiel saying how much his friend and fellow “non-reader” liked it.

The student was shocked that a.) his friend had read a book and b.) he had actually liked it. That conversation did more for the student than my simply telling him that Boy 21 was one of my favorite books from that summer. Of course I love books. I’m the English teacher. But a resistant reader, reading the book while he was home sick–instead of watching Netflix?

Books need street cred.

Talk a Lot About Books

More than ever, resistant readers need exposure to new books. They also need repeated invitations to read.

When I taught seniors, I made it my point to talk about a new book every day for the first unit. I wanted kids to see my genuine interest, engagement, and happiness that a book gave me. Even though some kids’ eyes glazed over, others were quietly taking note of my recommendations.

In fact, in his final reading reflection, one student described how my daily book talks unexpectedly piqued his interest. This student had struggled to find a book to hold his interest. Add this to frequent absences, and it was easy to view him as a disengaged student.

But by the middle of the semester, he ended up selecting Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried to read. Talking freely about a wide range of books opened a door for membership into the reading community–for a student who did not see himself as a reader.

Let Them Hear Other Resistant Voices

Penny Kittle's interviews of high school students. Click to view on YouTube.

Penny Kittle’s interviews of high school students. Click to view the interviews on YouTube.

Every semester, I introduced independent reading to my classes using Penny Kittle’s interviews of resistant readers. Kittle’s interviews are raw, and students freely share their disdain for books.

At one point, a boy confesses to all the fake reading he had done over his schooling. Kittle follows it with simple empathy: “Has reading always been hard for you?”

I always loved watching kids react to this clip. First, it was interesting to watch many nod their heads when the student began talking about the fake reading he had done. But most of all, I noticed how freeing it was for students to watch another be vulnerable about his reading baggage. I would watch relief cross their faces as they realized that they are not alone in their vulnerability.

If I say reading is hard for me, kids don’t buy it. But if they hear others say so, it has a deep resonance. And then when they hear that same voice share a book they love: it’s magic.

Let Them Quit

The worst thing teachers can do for a resistant reader is force them to read a book they hate. The main reason kids tell me that they don’t read: “’cause it’s boring.” What they really mean is that they don’t like to read boring books.

When students quit, it is key to have another book waiting in the wings. Recently, I book-talked Twisted to a student who admitted he doesn’t read alongside his classmates at the daily read. One of my big selling points was that he could quit if he disliked it. We set a deal: if he read three chapters and disliked it, he could come back for another book. When he left, he assured me that he’d give it a try.

Kids who struggle to read often need to experience a book that makes them feel successful. Repeated invitations to read, exposure to a wide variety of books, and reading autonomy are empowering ways to position non-readers as readers.

lauren nizolLauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.