Great Reading Comprehension Assessment

So, this year I have been really focused on "beefing" up my reading program in my classroom. I am trying anything and everything. I want my students to have the education that I didn't have growing up. As a kid, I remember being labeled in K, 1st, and 2nd as a good reader. I was quite interested in books WAY before I ever started school (and I started kindergarten at 4). But, I was really good at answering the teacher's questions. When I got into upper grades, middle school, and high school (don't even mention college), I have slunk back into being an average reader. Either my primary grade teachers didn't understand what makes a good reader, I wasn't challenged enough, or I wasn't taught what skills I needed to stay on top. By the time I hit middle school, I was completely turned off to reading. I remember when I discovered CliffNotes, it was like a present sent from the heavens above. It meant I never had to read again, just graze over the notes and take the test.

In college, I realized very quickly, I had a huge whole in my comprehension. I was never fully taught (or in my case, I never learned) how to read below the surface. Never had a seen the importance of that... until it was too late. Struggling through my literature and composition classes, I was at a loss when I was to analyze a Shakespearean sonnet or write a story with a deeper meaning or a hidden storyline.

It is for this reason that I want my students to be better than I was/am. I am learning, as my students learn, how to become a better reader. Good readers question, make connections, make inferences, make prediction, analyze unknown words, find parts of text that they love... I just answered the checklist of questions. No wonder I hated books... no wonder some of my students hate books. I would too if this is all I was expected to do with words on a page.

So... this is not an original idea. Paula had just returned from a conference and she shared a way a high school teacher assessed her students for their learning. This teacher would copy the same text for each of her students and have them write on the copy connections, inferences, questions, and any other ideas that came to their heads as they were reading. They would hand it in and she would know where to go from there with her teaching as well as know where her students are.

I decided to do the same. I took an article the kids have all read from the National Geographic Magazine about volcanoes... or so I thought. The kids had read through this National Geographic Magazine on their own, but I wanted to read it to them (especially for the struggling readers... give them all the same base point). Before I told them what they were going to do, I put the "I can..." statements on the board for each reading topic we have covered so far this year (WOW... it was a lot!). I told the kids that I had to do their report cards and I needed a way to see if they could do these things. I told them we were going to take the article, read it, and write all over the page about anything they thought was interesting, any connections they could make, or anything else that showed me they could do the things on the board. They took 25 minutes to dissect the article. They used pens (which they LOVE to do). They wrote in the margins. They asked questions. They underlined words they didn't know. They wrote about the author's purpose. They made connections. They used Post-Its. It was pretty amazing. High readers and low readers alike were both analyzing the text beautiful.

I realized that I don't give enough credit to these AMAZING minds. These kids are totally cool. Their minds are FULL of questions... I just don't give them enough time to explore and expand on those questions.

What worked: this idea... one of my favorite things I've done
What didn't work: this article was kind of lame, not enough background knowledge, too many abstract ideas, not enough practice to make it an assessment for the report card

What now: I want the kids to buddy up and talk about it some more. I can't leave it at that. I have too many questions and so do they. I can't wait to hear more... from them individually. We'll talk about some of the things I noticed with the class... and then I'll try to conference with the kiddos about it. Hmmmm... I don't know... so many ideas. Glad I got at least these down.

What is a question?

My reader's workshop mini-lesson today was about questioning. I've been reading the book "Reading With Meaning" and am attempting something I have never really done before... I'm actually trying to TEACH what questioning REALLY means. It's so much more than asking literal questions.

Suggested by Paula, I started the lesson with "What is a question?". We had a little discussion with what a question is and why we ask questions. (Look at all the questions I just asked!! :)) Then we came up with a list of question words, words that begin an asking sentence. I'm going to come back to these question words later and we are going to talk about important questions and not-so-important questions. We'll dissect these words and find out which words get us to the "deep" and "meaty" part of what we want to learn.

Anyway, with the list on poster paper, and a book Paula loaned me about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I had each student use the question words and ask a question about the book. We have already read "Oil Spill" and now we are just about to start "After the Spill". Each student stuck their question on the board and we read each question to prepare us for the reading.

I started with the first few pages and the kids started to realize some of their questions were answer, but ALL of my kids were SO into the book. They even began to think of more questions to add to our board. This is exactly what I was looking for. Anyway, we really didn't have much time to read the book. That's ok because we are going to pick up right where we left off on Monday (tomorrow is doughnut date.. no reading).

Anyway, I am documenting how this is going so I can refer back to it later... what worked and what didn't.

What's not working: Some of my kids picking where they get to sit on the rug.
What is working: Having the front row of my class take three skooches back and the back row (those kids that are ALWAYS sitting back there) move right in front of me.

Making Connections

Here are some children's books I have used for MAKING CONNECTIONS:

Text to Self
- Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Voirst)
- Edwurd Fudwupper

Text to Text
- The Stinky Cheese Man
- The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza
- The Jolly Postman
- The Princess and the Pizza
- Any version of Cinderella (The Korean Cinderella, Cinderhazel, Cindy Ellen)

Let's Get Back Into This...

I am back, ready to jump headfirst into the blogosphere. Last year, I managed to make it to day 2 of the school year before I was completely engulfed with teaching and my Masters program. But, let's just try this again.

Over the past few weeks, I have been meaning to start up a blog not realizing that I already had one. To my surprise, I found this blog (which needs a serious name overhaul). Anyway, I wanted a place to put my thoughts about teaching, funny moments, things I want to remember, and other random thoughts to share with anyone who cares to read about it.

So, here goes round 2...
I'll update on the beginning of the year and then share some ideas I am having. You know in the beginning of every school year... all the copies, labels, folder-making, organizing, and inputting... it always seems as if you have too much to do and not enough time to do any of it. Well, this year, for me, it seemed even worse. It seemed as though I already had a stack of papers and my year hadn't even begun.

A new school was built just down the street from us and opened just in time for the new year. Our school boundaries had changed and with that, our school was in mass transition, bringing kids in from another school and transferring them to the new school. On top of this, our district decided to implement a new software program for school management which has been nothing less than a migraine for everyone. Needless to say, this was a recipe for quite the bumpy beginning of the year. As educators, we are expected to be flexible, but everything felt so chaotic and disorganized, I was really struggling to hang on this year.

Now, it is nearing the end of September and I feel as though I am slowly catching my breath. Not quick enough. The other day, I started to fret about the end of the school year rapidly approaching (yes, I know. It's only September). You see, October's coming quickly which marks the beginning of the holiday season. You can pretty much say goodbye to October, November, and December with all the holidays and other festivities. Before you know it, it's January and by that time, you only have about 3 months to prepare for the end of the year testing. Does anyone else ever feel this way or is it just me?

Besides my beginning of the year "freak out", I have some other ideas that I am excited to try this year. My focus last year was "beefing" up my writer's workshop. I was really happy with the results from last year and my new focus this year is actually understanding reader's workshop and creating an effective literacy block. I am currently reading a book called "Reading With Meaning" and I LOVE this book. The author is amazing and it is super "reader-friendly".

One thing that has been constantly pressing on my mind is this notion of understanding ourselves as learners. I had quite the eye-opening experience in the beginning of my masters program with this concept and yet more ideas came to me while reading this first chapter. Applying this to reading, if we can understand what type of reader we are, how we read, why we read, and what we do with what we have read, we might have a better gauge on how our students feel about reading and what they do with the information. I would really love to conduct some sort of professional development on understanding ourselves as learners as a way to get teachers to feel like a learner again, inviting a deeper understanding.

My ideas are spewing out of my head so fast that I can barely keep up. Over the next few days, I'll update on how my reading is going and some of my thoughts.