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BOOK STUDY GROUP: Reading With Meaning, Debbie

Miller

Debbie Miller’s book, Reading with Meaning, is the primary teacher’s version of Strategies That Work (Harvey). In reading this text, one enters Debbie’s first grade classroom early in September and learns how she sets up her reader’s workshop and literacy framework. The reader follows Debbie and her young readers through a year’s journey in reading strategy practice. Primary readers share their thinking, learn to give language to that thinking and apply the comprehension strategies to understand other reading more deeply. Primary teachers will appreciate Debbie’s narrative as she ably brings to life a primary classroom which models a culture of thinking and learning in young readers. The discussion group will meet for five sessions:

Session 1 – Chapters 1-3 Session 2 – Chapters 4-6 Session 3 – Chapters 7-8 Session 4 – Chapters 9-10 Session 5 – Chapter 11-Epilogue

Be prepared to discuss first three chapters at Session 1.

If you need to purchase a copy of the text, area bookstores will order Reading with Meaning (ISBN #1-57110-307-4, Stenhouse Publisher). A 20% discount may apply with an educator’s discount card.

CREDIT 10 hours – Reading Time 10 hours – Meeting Time

2 PAC/10 DPI hours

Contact Diane Blum (663-4955), Program Assistant, Staff and Organization Development, to develop class roster for credit purposes. Submit roster to her following final session.

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STUDY GROUP ORGANIZATION Chapter 1: Guiding Principles

What are the principles or theories that guide you in teaching reading?

What is your understanding of the gradual release of responsibility model of instruction? See attachment.

Think back over your career in teaching. What new learning has occurred for you? What researchers do you look to for guidance? What are some of your beliefs and how do they align to your practices?

Review the Lucy Calkins quote at the bottom of page 7. Do you have deliberate, predictable structures so that the unpredictable can happen? What does that mean within the framework established in your literacy block?

Review the attachment, “Mosaic of Thought Strategies.” Think about those strategies as you instruct primary age children. How do you teach these strategies in your reading instruction? Share out ideas by charting responses. On page 10, Debbie writes about being surprised with her students’ thinking on a daily basis. She learns from them as they teach her to see and understand in new ways. Talk about that level of awareness. Is it common to have similar reflections among the members of your study group?

Chapter 2: In September . . .

Discuss strategies you use to build a culture and climate for thinking? How are you “deliberate” in building that community in September? (pg. 17)

“We’re trusting them first so that they can learn to trust themselves” (pg. 22). Respond to Debbie’s statement as you reflect on how you build trust and independence with your students.

Respond to the questions posed at bottom of page 22: What am I doing now that I could trust kids to do? In what ways could I trust children where I haven’t before?

Chapter 3: Reader’s Workshop: Real Reading from the Start Discuss the methods you use to develop or focus on students’ reading behaviors?

What reactions do you have to Debbie’s purposes for modeling and practicing reading behaviors? (page 31)

Talk about the two questions Debbie asks in relation to your work: What are the things that consistently interfere with teaching and learning? What procedures can be put in place to lessen or eliminate their impact?

Discuss your reactions to the section on sharing where Debbie takes the reader inside her classroom as children practice oral language and civility of conversation. What do you think about her attitude that children learn what she has taught them? Are your first graders real readers from the start?

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Chapter 4: Settling In

Do your young readers choose their own books? How do content, schema, motivation, and variety play in book choice with your readers? What are some effective methods for readers choosing books at instructional levels?

Debbie lists several ways she suggests books to students (pg. 45). Which do you use? What strategies would you add to the list?

Discuss how you have built up a collection of books. What methods can you share with new staff? How does a bookroom assist in both quality and quantity? How does the librarian assist staff with book selection and acquisition?

Debbie describes the use of individual 4-by-6-inch notebooks to monitor each student’s literacy development. How do you monitor your students’ reading and writing progress? Do you agree with Debbie’s philosophy of teaching comprehension and decoding side by side? Do you have a similar philosophy? or How is your different?

Chapter 5: Schema

What is your understanding of a read aloud? A think aloud? How is your understanding enhanced in Debbie’s description on pages 54-57.

Discuss Debbie’s First Schema Lesson (pgs. 57-59). What ideas do you take away from her modeling of thinking aloud? Discuss the eye-to-eye and knee-to-knee strategy for partner share. Is this a strategy that would work for you? Try it with your students and share out at next session.

Do you chart students’ thinking? How is Debbie creating metacognitive readers?

Debbie shares several ideas on how she teaches schema and connections. Share out the strategies that you found most powerful. What other instruction might you add?

Review book list on page 72. Are there other titles you would recommend? Chapter 6: Creating Mental Images

Make a list of your group’s favorite illustrated books which are strong for developing mental images.

How do you use poetry in reading instruction?

Debbie shares several anchor lessons. Which are ones you already use? Which are ones you might try?

Chapter 7: Digging Deeper

Discuss Debbie’s book club structure with first graders. How would this work in your classroom?

Describe the ways children in your classrooms respond to their reading. How do you provide for a variety of open-ended responses such as those suggested on pages 99-100?

This chapter includes colored photographs of Debbie’s classroom. What do you notice about the organization?

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Chapter 8: Inferring

List the book titles you use for the strategy of inferring.

Again, Debbie shares anchor lessons. Which lessons interested you?

After reading this chapter, what further understanding do you have on inferring?

Chapter 9: Asking Questions

How are you both a teacher and learner in the classroom?

Discuss the ways you encourage the process of children working together to actively construct meaning for themselves (page 132).

Review the list of “What’s Key for Kids” (page 140). Identify those addressed in your reading instruction. Which need more attention in your instruction?

Chapter 10: Determining Importance in Nonfiction

Share out lessons that you use to explicitly teach the genre of nonfiction.

Discuss Debbie’s use of wonder books and convention books.

What new understandings do you take from this chapter?

Chapter 11: Synthesizing Information

How do you define synthesis? How did the thinking of Debbie’s first graders enhance your understanding?

Discuss the anchor lessons. Which ones do you find most helpful for planning further instruction?

The Gradual Release of Responsibility The gradual release of responsibility comes from the work of Gallagher and Pearson. It focuses on teaching students strategies for thinking and comprehending instead of isolated skills. It describes how in Vygotskian assisted performance, the teacher provides strong support as a student is acquiring new knowledge or strategies; the teacher then gradually releases responsibility for learning to the student as the student becomes more familiar with the task. In continually assessing, teachers reflect on the level of support the student needs right now, and on how they can teach the student to become increasingly independent in learning. Powerful teaching comes from understanding what a student already securely knows and partially knows. Instruction then extends both the student's knowledge and sense of capability.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Vygotskian Education The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) Teaching and Learning Cycle The Gradual Release of Responsibility Social Construction of Knowledge 3-5 Teaching and Learning And just how did you expect me to do all this??? Organizing and Managing the Literacy Block Using Student Notebooks in the Reader's/Writer's Workshop

Strategies

Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Readers Workshop by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman Proficient readers are metacognitive. They think about their own thinking as they interact with text. Keene and Zimmerman describe this as a central piece in the mosaic of reading, "Metacognition is a turning inward, purposely at first and automatically thereafter, to reexamine our processes of comprehending, changing interpretations of the text and our reflections in order to elaborate and deepen our own understanding of a text." In Mosaic of Thought, the authors organize the text around the following cognitive strategies:

Activating relevant. prior knowledge (schema) before, during, and after reading text. Proficient readers "use prior knowledge to evaluate the adequacy of the model of meaning they have developed" and to store newly learned information with other related memories (Pearson et al. 1992; Gordon and Pearson, 1983; Hansen, 1981).

Creating visual and other sensory images from text during and after reading. These images may include visual, auditory and other sensory connections to the text. Proficient readers use these images to deepen their understanding of the text.

Determining the most important ideas and themes in a text. (Afflerbach and Johnston, 1986; Baumann, 1986; Tierney and Cunningham, 1984; Winograd and Bridge, 1986). Proficient readers use their conclusions about important ideas to focus their reading and to exclude peripheral or unimportant details from memory.

Drawing inferences from text. Proficient readers use their prior knowledge (schema) and textual information to draw conclusions, make critical judgments, and form unique interpretations from text. Inferences may occur in the form of conclusions, predictions, or new ideas (Anderson and Pearson, 1984).

Asking questions of themselves, the authors, and the texts they read. (Andre and Anderson, 1979; Brown and Palincsar, 1985). Proficient readers use their questions to clarify and to focus their reading.

Retelling or synthesizing what they-have read. Proficient readers attend to the most important information and to the clarity of the synthesis itself. Readers synthesize in order to better understand what they have read (Brown and Day, 1983).

Utilizing a variety of fix-up strategies to repair comprehension when it breaks down Proficient readers select appropriate fix-up strategies from one of the six language systems (pragmatic, schematic, semantic, syntactic, lexical, or grapho-phonic) to best solve a given problem in a given reading situation (i.e., skip ahead or reread, use the context and syntax, or sound it out). (Garner, 1987)