As students interact with text through annotations and acquire the language to name their thinking, consider how to extend this work. The final stage in the framework focuses on assessing and expanding strategy work in order to deepen comprehension. In this post, we will explore ways to continually assess progress by looking for and evaluating response patterns to determine their reading and language goals.
ASSESSMENT
Assessment doesn't have to be formal. Teachers can glean useful data from ongoing informal assessments of student reading behaviors and activities. Here are few things to consider when conducting informal assessments.Look For Patterns
Analyze responses for patterns and themes that reveal a particular strategy students are ready to explore in greater depth.
- Are students beginning to make connections between text and their personal experiences?
- Are Post-its covered with questions about the text?
- Are students moving past emojis?
- Are students overusing one specific annotation?
Evaluate Effectiveness
In Part 2: Building an Awareness of Thinking, we discussed how metacognitive readers choose which strategies to use and when to use them depending on what they are reading and for what purpose. Effective readers use the right strategies at the right time; moreover, they utilize them flexibly between reading events in order to boost cognition.
It may be necessary to help students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies they are using. For example, while reading Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems, a student may make a connection between the monster's teeth and the tooth she lost last week. Once we affirm her thinking we can guide her to increase the depth of her response using prompts like the ones below:
- "What did you read that made you think of that? On which page?"
- "What happened to you that reminded you of what happened to this character?"
- "Did you feel or behave the same way? How?"
- "Can you describe how the setting in the story is like the place you have been?"
EXPAND STRATEGY WORK
As language teachers we not only have to consider the literacy needs of our students but their language needs as well. In other words, what language features do students need to know and be able to control in order to communicate and expand their thinking about text? Teachers can target specific literacy and language needs that expand or widen students' range of effective comprehension strategies. Strategy work may occur in reading groups, through writing, or during other curricular activities.Foster a Community of Thinkers
Make Post-its public. Begin to build larger menus or charts that display student thinking. One student's responses may prompt others to think differently or more deeply about text the next time they read. Peter H. Johnston, author of Choice Words and Opening Minds, suggests using language that affirms the student's response and at the same time frames it as a strategy all students can use in the future.
For example, after reading Big Smelly Bear, by Britta Teckentrup, a student wrote "Yuck" on a Post-it.
Teacher: Katie wrote 'Yuck' when she noticed flies buzzing around Smelly Bear's head. Why did you write that, Katie?
Katie: (makes a disgusted face by sticking out her tongue) Smelly bear is gross.
Teacher: Katie felt disgusted (imitates Katie's expression) when she saw those flies around Smelly Bear. She recorded, or wrote about, how Smelly Bear made her feel. One thing that readers do is think about how characters make them feel. [Students], what might you write or draw on a Post-it when you see those flies?"You might consider creating a chart that displays the strategies students demonstrated in kid-friendly language.
As your menu begins to fill up, consider categorizing students' Post-its into types of responses. Look for patterns. Which strategies are students using most frequently? What language features would they need to be able to control to utilize these strategies successfully?
Plan language lessons to help shift your students' knowledge or control over academic or metacognitive language at this stage. For example, you may decide to expand their knowledge of emotive vocabulary (e.g. mad, angry, furious) with a word gradient chart. Begin with words recorded on student Post-its. Recast what students say to convey nuances of feeling with new vocabulary words (e.g. frustrated, annoyed, irritated) and add them to the list. While developing the chart below, we observed that many students needed additional instruction on forming grammatically correct questions. As a result, we shifted our teaching focus to address those needs.
Small Groups
Students benefit from up-close-and-personal reading and language support in small group instructional settings. Organize your students into Guided Reading or strategy groups to help language learners improve their ability to access text and express their thinking by incorporating specific language goals lessons. For example, if emerging students in a Guided Reading group are able to draw emojis to record their reactions to text, then expand their vocabulary during the second reading of the book by matching emotive words to the pictures they drew.
Teacher: I noticed you drew many faces to show how you were feeling while you read.
What are some of the faces you would like to share with the group?
Anthony: Mad (holds up a Post-it)
Teacher: That looks like a "mad" or "angry" face. Why were you angry?
Anthony: The cats made a mess.
Teacher: You were angry when the cats made a mess at the party. It's frustrating when
cats makes a mess and you have to clean it up. Let's write the words "mad", "angry"
and "frustrating" to our chart next to Anthony's drawing to show how we might feel
when something like that happens.
If a strategy group is working on asking questions while they read, for example, then examining the differences between the grammatical structures of questions and statements over a few days may be required.
Lesson 1: Define "questions" (asking) and "statements" (telling). Sort examples of both.
Lesson 2: Ask and answer "right there" questions about the text. Start "right there"
questions with a question word (who, what, when, where). Display these
words on a chart for students to use when reading and for future lessons.
Who is the main character?
Where/when does the story take place?
What does the main character want?
Lesson 3: Read aloud a page or two from a mentor text. Demonstrate how to ask
questions based upon what was read. Invite students to generate their own
questions. Refer to the question word chart as needed.
Don't forget to frame strategies taught in a way that helps students internalize it for use over time (e.g. I ask questions as I read. It helps me remember what happened in the text.)
No matter which model you choose, consult leveled reading resources like Jennifer Serravallo's The Reading Strategies Book for lesson examples and Fountas and Pinnell's Continuum of Literacy Learning in "Within the Text", "Beyond the Text", and "About the Text" sections for analogous reading goals.
Writing About Reading
Writing helps readers expand their thinking and improve their ability to reflect on their reading. It requires readers to redirect their attention to what engages them in a text and draws them deeper into its meaning.Use the following writing instruction techniques as needed to teach students how to support their thinking with text responses.
Shared Writing, a process developed by Moira McKenzie, is a way for teachers and students to construct messages based on shared knowledge and experiences. Teachers elicit information and ideas from students then scribe the developed text on paper. When the piece is completed, all participating students will be able to read it.
Teachers can utilize Shared Writing in both whole and small groups to demonstrate to students how to record their thinking. They model how to expand their reactions to text from simple images and comments on their Post-its to lengthier, in-depth explanations.
In your earlier Shared Writing lessons, prompt students with sentence starters that cue personal, emotional reactions to text.
Examples:
"I thought it was funny when..."
"I was upset when..."
"_____ made me angry when..."
"I was embarrassed for ____ when..."
As they get better recognizing and reflecting on their own reactions, prompt them with sentence starters that reflect characters' feelings.
Examples:
"Max was angry at his mom when she sent him to his room."
"Chrysanthemum seemed afraid to go to school after Victoria and her friends made fun
of her name."
"Henry was worried when Mudge didn't come home."
Provide lessons on language functions (e.g. transitions, conjunctions, prepositions) to improve writing outcomes for all students.
Journal Response
After a few demonstrations of Shared Writing, some students are ready to write journal entries on their own. Model how to go back into the text, pull two or three of their favorite or most interesting Post-its, and place them at the top of a clean page in their journals. Direct them to reread the text to determine what prompted their drawings and comments. Invite them to write a reaction to their comments and provide text evidence for their responses.
Interactive Writing
Use Interactive Writing techniques to scaffold the writing process for beginning or reluctant writers.
In Interactive Writing: How Language and Literacy Come Together, K-2, McCarrier, Fountas, and Pinnell define Interactive Writing as a “dynamic, collaborative literacy event in which children actively compose together, considering appropriate words, phrases, organization of text, and layout.”
Students can take on the role of writing apprentice, "sharing the pen" with their teachers to record messages on the page. With assistance and coaching, students are able to write more sophisticated messages than they could on their own.
THINKING is foundational to reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It is critical for culturally and linguistically diverse students to engage in experiences that build cognitive processes and habits of mind. We don't have to postpone this work until students become proficient in English. Working with language learners to build their English language skills alongside literacy development can be done with careful observation and the understanding that the process is messy. The road is winding and we may have to pause, shift and reverse along the way, but the journey is worth the effort. In fact it's crucial!
