Five guiding questions to help you take stock of your professional processes and priorities.

​It was early on a Friday morning, and Mr. Bower and I looked at each other through our screens. He had just stated that he felt like he was living in a pinball machine...and he was the pinball. This was not the first time this year I had heard an educator voice this feeling, and if you’ve said any of the following terms, you might be feeling the same way: scattered, not enough time, too many buckets, tired.

Although some call teaching a labor of love, it helps to highlight the labor part. I have seen many educators tackle new curriculum, leadership roles, and multiple club advisories due to vacancies at their schools, and all of these additional responsibilities can leave educators, well, feeling like a pinball. So what can we do? Every situation is different, and I don’t have all the answers, but I want to offer a few reflection questions that I have used in my coaching sessions with educators for your consideration.

​Is there anything you can pull back on?
List out all of the responsibilities you have, including committees, lesson planning, clubs, etc. Take stock. I find that by the middle of the year, some educators don’t even realize everything they have said yes to. If there is anywhere you can pull back — whether that means delegating tasks to someone else or requesting to leave a committee — the break provides some time for you to think on it.

Is there anything you can ask for help with?
In one of my coaching projects, many department leaders mentioned the same thing: lack of co-planning time. In their school, they were able to make time in their weekly meetings for this, and co-planners have been able to tackle plans for the week ahead. If that’s not possible, is there a way to split up planning with someone teaching the same courses as you?

Where are you spending the majority of your time?
By keeping track of how much time you are spending on specific tasks, you can compare this with the tasks that you want to prioritize. If you are a teacher leader, make sure your meetings are run efficiently with an agenda and a clear plan to split up the work. Although this is more upfront work, it will save you time in the long run. As a teacher, take a look at your daily routine. Are you spending more time grading than planning? Perhaps consider cutting back on how many assignments you are grading; you do not have to grade everything that comes across your desk, nor is it equitable to! Consider which assignments can be designated as practice or process and which assignments should be graded to demonstrate growth and mastery. Then, move to question #4.

Are there any systems that might streamline some of your tasks?
An example of this might be something as simple as creating Exit Ticket reflection questions that can be repeated for multiple lessons, such as “What is something new you learned today?” If you’d rather keep your Exit Tickets specific to each lesson with comprehension questions, doing so on a Google Form by using a quiz template or creating a multiple choice bubble sheet to use with a scanner can help save time and provide live data. If you’re a department lead, consider data inquiry cycles that have set agenda templates for each meeting rather than attempting to create new ones on a continuous basis. I’ve also suggested that department notes be kept in Google Sheets rather than a running Google Doc with each tab named as the date of the meeting. This avoids the dreaded scroll and keeps meetings organized and easy to access for reflection. 

Are there any webinars for curriculum that might help you navigate new resources?
Most of my coaching is within New York City, and most districts are being required to select curricula from a list of choices. If you’re working with an unfamiliar curriculum, check out its website for possible webinars. I also encourage you to ask your administration if you might be paid for attendance, and definitely ask for funding if the webinar requires payment. Another way to get help is through contacting a representative from that curriculum company and seeing if they are available to pop on a Zoom to answer questions.

The most important question to ask yourself is: What are you doing to take care of yourself? Are you setting time boundaries for work? Are you able to see friends and family? Are you making time for your hobbies? I would hope that the answers to all of these questions is yes, but if not, working through some of the above questions might help you reorganize your schedule in order to make time for whatever brings you joy.
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Find inspiration for classroom discussions that encourage students to make their voices heard. 

“So, what are your thoughts? Talk with each other.” 
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I remember asking this question many times, always expecting it to be greeted immediately and enthusiastically by the voices of many students, clamoring to share all at once. 

In some classrooms, that was the case. In most others, a deafening silence would stretch for several minutes. Eventually, I’d ask a new question or encourage them to write down their answers and turn them in so that I could read them. Most students had an abundance of thoughts, I discovered, when they handed in their written responses. 

I desperately wanted to create a culture of discussion in my classroom, one in which students could not stop talking to one another about our texts and topics of study. But, this open-ended question asking them to share their thoughts never seemed to stimulate the kind of discussions that I was searching for.

The question for me became, how can I begin to create a culture of discussion in my classroom? 

Questioning

To explore that larger question, I began with a smaller one: what kind of questions were the most exciting for me to answer as a learner? 

We all may have different answers to that question, and I encourage you to take a few moments to think or to write about what your unique answer might be. 

In my own process of reflection, I discovered that I am enthusiastic to answer questions that are open-ended: those that invite many different perspectives and clearly do not have one “correct” answer. 

I also love questions that get me thinking about something that hasn’t occurred to me before: thought-provoking questions that feel relevant to me in some way, connecting to my interests, my recent thought patterns, or some facet of my identity. 

And, most especially, I love answering questions when I can be assured that someone else around me will answer, too. There is something vulnerable about sharing thoughts and ideas in a classroom space, especially when there is no guarantee that others will do the same. 

Out of my own reflections came clear pathways forward — new things to try. 
​

• What if I asked focused, open-ended questions? 
• What if I asked thought-provoking questions that are relevant to my students’ lives?
• What if I asked questions and invited students to respond using protocols that expected reciprocal responses? What might those protocols be?

Paired discussion

The first protocol that I embraced consistently became the turn and talk. Rather than invite students to share in front of the whole class, I’d invite students to turn and talk to one person next to them, taking turns to share their responses. 

I can appreciate how many teachers mock the turn-and-talk discussion protocol as a favorite of administrators who believe that this discussion technique will solve all educational dilemmas. As teachers, it can be easy to become cynical quickly about those strategies most commonly suggested. 

With that said, the turn-and-talk protocol transformed academic talk in my classroom. By the third or fourth time that I implemented the strategy, I was stunned by all the ideas my students were willing to share with each other that they wouldn’t share with the whole class. 

But, it also made sense once I implemented the protocol, as so many things in retrospect often do. It’s much easier to share with a peer than with one’s teacher. It’s much easier to share with a peer when you know that they will share in return with you. 

Eventually, I knew that I wanted the turn-and-talk to grow into small group discussions. So, how? 

Small group discussion

“Save the Last Word for Me” was introduced to me by a colleague who was devoted to building a culture of discussion in her classroom. 

Her explanation was simple, and I do my best to recreate it here: 

1. Put students into groups of four
2. Each students reads and chooses one quote of significance to them for whatever the reason
3. Each student in the group reads the quote then theorizes aloud about why the quote holds significance
4. The student who initially chose the quote has the “last word” to explain their original thinking about why they chose their quote

I never implemented the protocol to fidelity, but it inspired lots of small group discussions in my classrooms. What if I tried it with images? With documents? With word problems? What if the groups were slightly larger or smaller? 

To me, one beautiful thing about teaching is that every protocol is an invitation to create and to re-create things until they feel like our own. I invite you to do the same — what small group discussion strategies might this one protocol inspire? 

Whole class discussion

I never gave up on my dream of whole class discussions. As many English teachers can appreciate, the Socratic seminar is often celebrated as the pinnacle of literary discussions. 

After many months of paired and small group discussions, I was terrified that our first Socratic seminar of the year would be a return to the silence. 

Students are always full of surprises. 

“But did you look here at what she says on page 23? It makes me think that….”
“I’m not sure I agree, but that’s an interesting point. Have you thought about….” 
“That’s a good point. Maybe we should think about….”

The voices, the laughter, the thoughts swirling around — it was everything that I had hoped for my students in a whole class discussion. 

I described this moment of success with a fellow teacher, expressing my surprise and amazement about how successful our first Socratic seminar was. 

He laughed, “I’m not surprised. Your kids are always talking.” 

An invitation

Creating a culture of discussion was not a linear experience for me as a teacher. I learned from the wisdom of fellow teachers and, no matter what protocols I used, there were days in which silence felt inevitable. But, I did get my students talking. 

If you’re interested in thinking more about how to create a culture of discussion in your own classroom, I invite you to join me online at Keep the Kids Talking, where you can reflect on your own experiences, and also acquire new, implementable discussion strategies.

I hope to see you there. 

Nurture confident readers by blending phonics into the fabric of your literacy instruction.

This is the third installment in our Science of Reading series

When it comes to early reading instruction, few topics have sparked as much debate and controversy as the teaching of phonics. Over the years, the pendulum has swung between extremes: some advocate for phonics as the exclusive focus of instruction, while others argue for its complete exclusion from the curriculum. However, the crux of effective literacy education lies in finding a harmonious balance. As part of my series dedicated to unraveling the science of reading and nurturing young readers, we embark on a journey into the world of phonics. What exactly is phonics, what role does it play in reading development, and how can early childhood educators incorporate it into their classrooms through a balanced approach?

Defining Phonics: The Foundation of Reading

At its core, phonics is the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the letters that represent those sounds in written language. It's the code that unlocks reading comprehension. Phonics instruction involves teaching students how to connect the sounds of spoken language (phonemes) to the symbols (letters or letter combinations) that represent them (graphemes). We dig deeper into this topic in my previous article, which examines how to nurture phonological awareness in emerging readers. 

Phonics equips young readers with the skills needed to decode words — without phonics, the process of learning to read would be like trying to solve a complex puzzle without understanding the individual pieces. 

The Purpose and Importance of Phonics

Phonics serves several crucial purposes in the development of young readers:

Decoding Words: Phonics provides the key to unlocking unfamiliar words in texts. When students understand the relationships between sounds and letters, they can sound out words they haven't encountered before.

Building Fluency: Proficiency in phonics helps build reading fluency. Fluent readers can read with accuracy, speed, and expression, which enhances comprehension, as we have discussed in previous articles. 

Spelling Proficiency: Phonics instruction also contributes to spelling skills. When students know the sounds associated with letters and letter combinations, they can spell words more accurately.

Balancing Act: The Key to Phonics Success

A balanced approach to phonics instruction is essential in literacy education for several reasons. Firstly, it facilitates a well-rounded development of essential reading and writing skills, encompassing phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing proficiency. This holistic perspective acknowledges and embraces the diversity of learners, accommodating various learning styles and individual needs. 

The integration of phonics within authentic reading and writing contexts is a critical aspect of this approach. By immersing students in real-world applications of phonics skills, it not only reinforces learning, but also enhances reading fluency. This equips students with a range of word recognition strategies, lessening their reliance solely on phonics, and thereby improving reading efficiency.

Furthermore, a balanced approach recognizes that the ultimate goal of reading is comprehension. It weaves phonics instruction together with comprehension strategies, ensuring that students not only decode words, but also understand and interpret the text they read.

Creating a balanced approach to instruction can offer essential support for struggling readers, tailoring instruction to meet their specific needs and providing a scaffold for their literacy development. Ultimately, it fosters a deep appreciation for literacy, nurturing lifelong reading and writing habits, and in doing so, it aligns with evidence-based practices in literacy education. 

A Balanced Approach In Action

As a third-grade teacher, I often recognized the need to teach phonics to specific groups of students, even though it wasn't a part of the standard curriculum. One approach I used was phonics through literature, where I selected books featuring specific phonics patterns, and integrated phonics instruction within shared reading sessions. For example, if I wanted to focus on the long a sound spelled with the silent e pattern (e.g., "cake," "gate”), I could use a book like Jake Bakes Cakes, which prominently features words with this pattern. I would then use this text to engage in a shared reading session, where I read the book aloud to the class, pausing at words with the target phonics pattern. For instance, when we encountered the word cake, I might emphasize the long a sound and point out the silent e at the end of the word.

After reading, I would engage the students in a discussion about the phonics pattern, asking questions like, "What sound does the e make at the end of the word cake?" or "Can you find other words in the story with the same pattern?"

To support word recognition, I would encourage students to identify and read words with the target pattern in the book. They might take turns reading sentences or identifying words on specific pages. I would also have students use magnetic letters or word cards to demonstrate how changing the vowel sound (e.g. cake to make) affects the word's pronunciation and meaning. Students would then manipulate letters to create new words following the same pattern.

If there was time, I would also ask students to engage in word play activities related to the phonics pattern, such as creating rhyming words or making word family charts, to reinforce the concept. As a follow-up activity, students might be encouraged to write their own sentences or short stories using words with the target phonics pattern. 

The key idea behind phonics through literature is that phonics instruction is embedded within the context of enjoyable and meaningful texts, fostering a love for reading and connecting phonics to authentic language usage. I found that my students were highly engaged in these activities, and they proved to be beneficial to their development as readers. 

In summary, the teaching of phonics is a foundational component of early literacy instruction. It equips young readers with the tools needed to decode words, build fluency, and enhance spelling skills. However, the key to effective phonics instruction lies in balance — it's not about choosing between phonics all the time or not at all; it's about blending phonics into the fabric of literacy instruction.

By incorporating phonics into shared reading, fun activities, and explicit instruction, early childhood educators empower their students to become confident and skilled readers. In the next installment of our series, we will explore comprehension strategies, bringing us one step closer to unlocking the full potential of our young readers. Stay tuned!

Navigate a four-part cycle that will help you develop effective assessments and determine students' needs.

Adapted by G. Faith Little from CPET’s Handbook: Design Your Own ELA Assessments, by Courtney Brown and Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang.

​As educators, we assess our students in multiple ways for many purposes: to evaluate what they know and can do based on the skills and content that we teach them, to make instructional decisions, and to reflect on teacher practice. Quizzes, in-class activities, homework, and writing assignments are all opportunities to find out how our students are achieving. By analyzing and interpreting the results of these tasks, we can determine the needs of students and adjust our teaching to help students succeed.

Periodic assessments are low-stake assessments designed to provide timely and detailed information on students’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as their progress over time. The results from the assessments are used by teachers as data to inform instruction. They can also be used to start and deepen communication with parents / caregivers who can support their students’ learning outside of the classroom.

Establishing learning goals

The assessment and rubric development cycle begins by establishing learning goals. Wiggins and McTighe (2005) pose these helpful questions: "What content is worthy of understanding? What enduring understandings are desired?" Addressing these questions will help teachers establish learning goals for the entire year, as well as individual units. Periodic assessments should be designed to measure students’ progress in these learning goals and relate directly to the content of teachers’ instruction, i.e., books, plays, stories, etc. These goals, in ELA, for example, should relate to the reading process, knowledge of literary conventions, making meaning (analysis), and communicating in writing. When teachers develop learning goals together, there is cohesion and focus in how the school supports students’ learning.

In any content area, learning goals specify the crucial understanding teachers expect students to develop and the key skills or competencies students should demonstrate. Learning goals for periodic assessments can be developed by teachers, often working together within a school, and referencing important resources, including state mandated learning standards and performance indicators, schoolwide learning standards, disciplinary criteria, and teachers’ own expectations for student performance.

Articulate learning goals by answering the following:

• Knowledge: What should students understand?
• Skills: What should students be able to do?
• What content do I plan to use?​
  

Developing assessments and rubrics

Assessments
Formative assessments are those that focus on the students’ performance as they develop important knowledge and skills — they’re meant as benchmarks or milestones along the journey rather than the final destination. Teachers can use the data from these assessments to determine future instruction.

​Periodic assessments should be aligned with student performance standards, learning goals, and the curriculum in each unique learning community. While each assessment (Fall, Winter, and Spring) may look different, designers should carefully consider how the assessments measure students’ growth throughout the entire year. These assessments will provide valuable feedback for teachers to improve instruction, align to standards, and measure student growth. These curriculum-embedded assessments have great potential to inform teachers and schools of the students’ progress toward established standards. Curriculum-embedded means an assessment is designed to reflect the actual curriculum being taught in the class. This is in contrast to most standardized tests, which generally do not pertain to the curriculum taught in individual classrooms. The chosen approach often influences the type of data accumulated.

​Rubrics
The rubric, a scoring guide that uses descriptors for every performance level, is an essential component to any assessment. While rubrics may come in many shapes and sizes, the most effective rubrics are those that encapsulate the focus dimensions of the assessment and clearly describe the strengths of the performance at every level. Rubrics are most effective when they are assessment-specific because they are created for the precise task and requirements of the assessment, unlike all-purpose rubrics, which are often broad or ambiguous to account for a wide variety of assessments. 

The following ten criteria (adapted by Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang from the work of Dennie Palmer Wolf of the Rethinking Accountability Initiative at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University) mark the foundations for creating an effective rubric that reliably evaluates student work: 

1. Three to six dimensions/categories for the rubric
2. Descriptors use qualitative statements instead of quantitative benchmarks
3. Descriptors are written from a strengths perspective, identifying what students do correctly
4. The first level is a standard performance base, instead of incomplete or failing
5. Levels of performance advance in equal increments, representing realistic increases in students’ skill levels
6. Rubric language is aligned with common class expectations
7. Rubric criteria are aligned with national/state/school standards
8. Students are involved in deciding particular performance tasks
9. Rubric is clearly written and understandable to students
10. Rubric is clearly written and understandable to an outside evaluator

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Frequent pitfalls of rubric design

Too much / too little information
Too much information and the rubric bleeds on to too many pages, the expectations are barely read, and it can be difficult to use. Too little information leaves too many qualities of the assessment undefined, and therefore, difficult to score. Consider aiming for 3-6 dimensions and performance levels with 3-5 consistent qualifying statements for each.

Vague, ambiguous, confusing or contradictory language
Consider using descriptions that clearly explain what the student did. 

Professional or exclusive language vs. inclusive language
Be careful not to exclude students from understanding the rubric by using ultra-sophisticated or academic language. The most popular buzzwords don’t always make the best rubric descriptors. Use student-friendly language that capitalizes on words and phrases commonly used in the classroom.

Expectations for assessment misaligned with the rubric
Be sure to align the rubric with the learning goals and the assessment. It’s crucial that designers pay close attention to the assessment requirements and the rubric language because if something is not on the rubric, it cannot be used as a factor for evaluation.

Scoring is inconsistent with performance levels
If scores seem inconsistent with the performance levels (for example, a student earned “Proficient” but only earns a score of 2 or 65%) it may be necessary to revise how the scores were assigned to each level. Consider testing the rubric scoring system to be sure numeric scores or percentages are accurate to their performance level.

Scoring assessments

All assessments must be scored in order to produce the data used to inform instruction. When scoring assessments, we recommend that schools use a team approach, which may include both teachers from the specific content area and teachers from other disciplines. This promotes school-wide collaboration, builds community, and supports reading and writing across the disciplines.

Team members should prepare to score by taking part in a “norming” process, reviewing and discussing the task to clarify what the students are asked to do and what teachers expect to see in their work and become familiar with the rubric. Next, it is useful to have a “norming discussion”: everybody reads and discusses several samples of student work from the assessment task, each teacher scores the work individually, and then group members share scores and discuss how they used the rubric to score the student work samples using evidence from the papers to justify their scoring. Once teachers feel comfortable with using the rubric, teachers should score the students’ work from the assessment. We suggest building in a “reliability check” process to make sure that the students’ work is being scored fairly and consistently so that the data will be reliable. 

Periodic assessments are most useful when scored as soon after the administration of the assessment as possible, so the data is relevant and timely. The longer the gap between students’ taking the assessment and the data report, the less useful in informing instruction the data will seem to teachers and administrators. 

Analyzing data

Data comes in many forms and is used every day by teachers to help plan instruction and adjust our teaching. Quizzes, essays, homework, standardized tests, and attendance records are all data. Teachers’ observations of students at work are also an important form of data. Students’ responses and behavior are data. No one form of data will give a complete picture of a student’s achievement. There is no shortage of usable data; however, it is how we collect and analyze the data wisely to inform teaching and learning that matters. This step in the cycle specifies a systematic process, one that allows us to look closely and analyze the data.

A careful analysis of the data will yield important information about our students’ strengths and weaknesses. Based on this information, schools and teachers can develop or revise learning goals, and teachers can plan specific instruction for a class and/or individual students to best address students’ needs. We suggest that data discussions be carried out among specific content area teachers and with colleagues from other disciplines. This will allow teachers across the curriculum to identify and address students’ needs — for example, organizing an argument in writing, using evidence to support their thesis, articulating rationale for a solution to a problem or a hypothesis, etc.
Data is any form of information collected together for reference and analysis. Another way to understand data is as evidence of desired results. In the case of periodic assessment data, scores from student work provide data for understanding how students are performing related to specific learning goals. This is where curriculum-embedded assessments can be most powerful. You actually have to anticipate the kinds of data that will be useful as part of developing a unit of study. The data may be used to answer questions about whole class performance and individual student performance. The data reports will also help teachers to adjust instructional strategies to address students’ needs — e.g., what might need to be retaught or taught differently? 

Continuing the cycle

Assessing students is most valuable as part of a cycle that begins with establishing student learning goals and involves developing curriculum-embedded assessments and rubrics, administering the assessments, scoring them, and analyzing the data they produce to inform instruction. Keep the cycle going from baseline to end of year assessments!
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Create clear and consistent procedures that communicate classroom expectations to students.

​The list of a typical teacher’s responsibilities is long — in addition to curricular work, lesson planning and implementation, monitoring and assessing students’ learning, offering feedback to students, parent communication, and so much more, teachers are also responsible for making sure that all aspects of learning and the classroom are organized and safe. The work can feel endless.

It is a hefty responsibility to plan for and implement procedures for all transitions or movements in and out and around the classroom. However, once you have developed and implemented some simple, clear, and consistent procedures, the work can feel less daunting and move more smoothly!

Locating routines

The initial notion of the Three Rs — Reading, (w)Riting and ‘Rithmetic — as the foundation of learning and education is clearly too narrow, especially as we move more firmly into the 21st century. Instead, reinterpreting the Three Rs as Routines, Rituals, and Relationships makes more sense as guiding principles for today’s classrooms.

First, let’s take a closer look at how routines, rituals, and relationships help us make key decisions as we cultivate our classrooms.

Rituals are different from systems and procedures, because their main goal is to create and sustain community and support an inclusive culture where all students feel welcome, safe and appreciated. Rituals may be instilled as you start up the year, and they will also develop authentically as you get to know your students.

Relationships include the development of connections between teacher and student, and also amongst students and their families. This includes developing and maintaining relationships with students, restoring relationships when conflicts or tensions arise, and sustaining positive communication. 

Routines are often where we begin, as they are a crucial starting point to creating the classroom culture. They may be defined as systems for managing the complexities of a classroom space and any procedures for making the class run smoothly. I like to think of classroom management not as managing students, but rather as managing the space, whether it is digital, hybrid, or in person. 

Setting up the space
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Before we establish classroom routines, we need to set up the physical space and make choices about how best to use it. The way we set up our classrooms creates not only organized and smooth classroom operations, but lays the groundwork for a welcoming environment for all our students. Many factors determine the set up of the classroom, including how much space is actually available! Remember to be flexible and adapt your classroom setup — including your students’ seating — based on how your students work best together, your instructional goals, and your students’ evolving needs.​

Shaping seating charts

Just as important as how the basics of your classroom space will function is where your students will sit. Some of us may be ambivalent about using seating charts, as they might conjure up old-fashioned, controlling images of classrooms and teaching. Some teachers, on the other hand, swear by a seating chart in their classrooms. 

I encourage all teachers to start with a seating chart, even if it is simply alphabetical, so that you can get to know your students and also observe their interactions and dynamics. Then, after you’ve gotten to know the class better, you can make adjustments as needed. These adjustments can stem from observations about student behavior, but also from your instructional goals, as mentioned above. 

Ashlynn Wittchow reminds us to “let the space work with you, not against you,” and she encourages teachers to let students know that the seating and layout will change over time. Imagine Schools also offers some inspired ways to maximize classroom space while remaining flexible and student-centered.

Shifting to routines

During my time as a teacher, I learned pretty quickly that not only setting up routines, but discussing and practicing them with my students, was key to making them meaningful for my classroom. Once my space was set up, I needed to consider how students would enter and exit the classroom, how we would handle the distribution or collection of materials, and even how students would re-enter class after being absent. 

Each of these pieces have an influence on students’ understanding of the roles and expectations within a classroom, which in turn, can impact their learning experience. 

Below are some typical categories for classroom routines, as well as some factors to consider as you make decisions, and examples of what these routines can look like in practice.
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Ideally, we establish classroom routines at the beginning of the year, during a period in which both we and our students are engaging in a fresh start. However, it is never too late to re-evaluate or re-establish routines with your students, if you discover gaps in classroom management or that your students have outgrown existing structures.
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Encourage meaningful reading habits as you ask students to engage in a dialogue with their text. 

Over the past few years, I have heard more and more middle and high school teachers agree about how difficult it is to “get kids to read." I have observed myself that few students seem to be reading full length books independently, and by choice. Of course, there are so many reasons for these observations.

Let’s zoom out a bit to think about the state of reading for most of our students: in the past, reading was not only a major form of entertainment, but a crucial source of information. Time for reading was not in competition with an expansive, alluring digital world offering games, web surfing, Tik Tok, Instagram, endless TV and YouTube channels, etc. Even as adults, we know how easily accessible and comforting these modalities are. Technology offers us so many easy, even addictive options.
 
Technology has also made it easier for students to “read” or pretend they have read an assigned text by scanning summaries of chapters, Googling quotations from the text, watching video versions, etc. Information that we may have needed to access by reading a book is now available at the click of a finger or by saying a few words to AI.
We have all been there — we even have a term for this, tl;dr, or too long, didn’t read.
 
Research confirms my own observations that few young people are reading on their own or consider “reading for pleasure." The Pew Research Center asserts that, “few late teenagers are reading many books” and a recent summary of studies cited by Common Sense Media indicates that American teenagers are less likely to read ‘for fun’ at seventeen than at thirteen.”
 
The pandemic also seems to have derailed some students’ academic reading habits, which have proven to be like muscles that need to be exercised more regularly than we previously knew.
 
All of this means that if we want our students to read, to become strong, confident readers, and maybe even enjoy reading, it is crucial for educators to make reading meaningful and relevant for our students, and not simply “cheat proof."

Encouraging students to read

​Offering students choices of relevant books to read and discuss together in book groups or pairs is a fantastic way to encourage them to engage in reading. However, most educators agree that reading a book together — as a shared “anchor text” for the whole class — can also be important and lead to powerful discussions and collective learning.

Mike Epperson — a teacher with whom I work closely in the South Bronx — took the opportunity to bring a shared anchor text to his 10th grade classroom, introducing his students to Elie Wiesel’s Night. 

While Night is a riveting, significant story and a relevant choice for 10th graders, who are concurrently learning about World War II and the Holocaust in history class, that doesn’t guarantee that students will engage in the reading. Mike was concerned about ensuring that his students were both engaged deeply and personally in the important subject matter and took it seriously. He decided early on that he wanted students to read the entire book.

Mike strategically layered his teaching unit with Night at its core, along with supports and entry points to encourage high engagement, including: background building about the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, and Judaism, and a careful sequence of lessons that focused on a key topic in a section of the book.  
 
Additionally, to encourage reluctant or less confident readers to read daily and remain engaged in reading the whole book, Mike emphasized and taught annotation. Since the school had copies of the book left over from ordering during the pandemic, Mike was able to give each student their own book to write in and keep.

These two simple pieces — students having a book of their own and an opportunity to talk back to the text through annotation — created an environment ripe for close reading and high engagement.

Encouraging students to annotate

Getting students to annotate in their actual books wasn’t as simple as Mike had expected — he recalls that “when we first started annotating, some students expressed resistance because they didn’t want to make the nice-looking book look ugly. One student compared it to writing on a beautiful painting with crayon.”

However, as time went on, students were “able to find a way to annotate that helped them preserve the beauty of the original text. I believe that as students took on a self-appointed role as the book’s preservationists, they ended up developing a deeper respect for the content of the book as well.”

As the students connected more personally with the book and the character of Elie, Mike began to see that the act of authentic annotation was offering students an unanticipated opportunity for creative expression. He shared that “a lot of students like drawing, and there’s a similar appeal in annotation. While annotating is not drawing, a fully annotated page is visually pleasing. Some students’ annotations are neat, symmetrical, and visually appealing in a way that suggests that students take pride in how their annotations look. I think this fosters a sense of pride in the content of their annotations, too.”

Mike’s observations of his students’ annotations confirm the belief that writing as you read makes your thinking visible, and can create an engaging conversation as we talk back to the text. He puts it simply: “Annotation gives the students a more active role in reading. They get to have a voice, even if no one else will see their annotations.”

The students are no longer alone with a book. They are in dialogue. 

Suggestions for successful annotation

When I visit Mike’s classroom, students eagerly show me their annotations and explain the significance of both specific lines on a page and their connections to larger themes. A number of students also tell me how much annotation is helping them “remember’ and “understand” past parts of the story. They are clearly proud of their text marking and meaning-making. Based on my observations of Mike’s classes, I’d like to offer some simple tips for making annotation a successful approach with your own students:

Hopefully, you will feel inspired to introduce or continue using annotation in your classroom! As you encourage students to read with their pen and engage in a dialogue with a text, feel free to adjust any of the strategies above to match the readers and annotators in your classroom. 
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Equip readers with the tools needed to recognize and manipulate sounds embedded within language.

This is the second installment in our Science of Reading series

​As the science of reading becomes more influential in the field of education, it is important for us to not only accept and incorporate the principles in our practice, but also make sure we fully comprehend the essence and significance of what it means. Because I am an elementary educator and instructional coach dedicated to nurturing emerging readers, my commitment lies in breaking down the intricacies of the science of reading, while providing support for our young readers' development.

Phonological awareness — much like fluency, the topic of my previous article in this series — serves a crucial role in shaping a child’s reading journey. In this article, I intend to define phonological awareness and offer practical insights for fellow educators. Drawing from my experiences in the classroom as well as my own reading and research, I will explore its significance, its alignment within the science of reading, and provide guidance on fostering it effectively in early childhood settings.

Defining Phonological Awareness

Through my pre-service training, my experiences in the classroom, and ongoing reading and research, my understanding of phonological awareness has crystallized as the capacity to recognize and manipulate the sounds embedded within spoken language. Imagine it as a playground of sounds within the mind, where children identify rhyming words, dissect sentences into syllables, identify individual sounds (phonemes), and play with the rhythm of language. Like fluency, this skill is crucial, serving as the foundation for reading readiness.

Strong phonological awareness equips children with the tools to decode words, comprehend texts, and eventually become proficient readers and writers. In essence, phonological awareness is akin to the scaffold that supports the acquisition of language, empowering children to construct sentences, paragraphs, and stories with confidence. It encompasses the following micro-skills:

• Recognizing rhyming and sound patterns: A child distinguishes words that share similar endings or patterns, such as realizing that both "cat" and "hat" conclude with the "-at" sound.
• Segmenting and blending: A child effortlessly breaks a word into its individual sounds, such as saying /s/ - /u/ - /n/ for "sun," and seamlessly blends them to pronounce the word.
• Sound manipulation: Children manipulate sounds within words, altering a sound to form a new word, like changing "top" to "cop."
• Sound isolation: Children identify specific sounds at the start, middle, or end of words, fostering an awareness of sound positions and contributing to word recognition, as with recognizing the initial /d/ sound in "dog."

Strategies for Supporting Phonological Awareness 

Recognizing its significance, I have dedicated considerable time to identifying effective strategies and promising practices to support phonological awareness. Drawing from strategies I utilized as a third-grade teacher, coupled with observations from visits to flourishing early childhood classrooms, I want to share three promising practices: 

​These practices, while adding an element of enjoyment to learning, lay the groundwork for phonological awareness, preparing the stage for successful reading development.

Embracing Phonological Awareness

In the world of reading science, phonological awareness plays a vital role, mixing together words, sounds, and understanding. Just as fluency helps connect understanding and reading, phonological awareness serves as a crucial link between grasping the tiniest sounds within words (phonemic awareness) and linking these sounds to letters (phonics). When we nurture this skill, we help kids confidently deal with reading challenges and build on the fluency we talked about in article one. 

By recognizing the importance of phonological awareness and finding effective and engaging ways to teach it, we ensure every child embarks on their reading journey with a strong foundation, unlocking the power of literacy and lifelong learning.
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Overcome common language learning myths to view multilingual students as assets, not liabilities. 

Multi-Language Learners, or English Learners, are one of the fastest growing populations in our nation. Whether students are immigrating to the US anywhere in their journey from Pre-K to 12th grade, or English is not their primary language at home, educators are in need of support when it comes to language learning across grades and content areas. We examine this topic, dispel common myths, and discuss how to support these students in our Support for Multi-Language Learners episode of Teaching Today, where our host Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang is joined by Maria Garcia Underwood, Founder and CEO of M. Ideas Consulting, and yours truly, Lead Professional Development Coach here at CPET.

All terms for language learning are the same

In the episode, we highlight three key terms and define how they are different. Although these terms all have something to do with language learning, they are not synonymous. Here is a quick breakdown of what some language learning terms mean:

• DL: Dual-language. This refers to the program that students are enrolled in (learning in two languages).
• ESL: English as a Second Language. This term assumes that students whose primary language is not English can only speak one other language, which is not always the case. This term tends to limit our students.
• MLL: Multilanguage Learner. This term removes the assumption that students who do not speak English only speak one other language. It also highlights the importance that students should not only be learning English, but any other languages they already know to avoid imbalance in their language learning.

Throughout the rest of the episode, we use the term MLLs.

Teaching a foreign language is the same as teaching English

How we teach language matters when considering the context in which we are teaching. Teaching English when English is the dominant language of instruction requires different teaching practices than teaching a foreign language to students. Maria asks us to consider the motivator behind language acquisition when we learn our first language: communication. When thinking about our MLLs, their main goal is to “acquire English for communication purposes, for their everyday reality, for their everyday survival, both in those six hours at school, and outside.” This is very different from acquiring a language for the purpose of being able to communicate abroad when you’re on vacation or a business trip.

Unfortunately, some of our teaching practices for English learning do not always mirror this basic need. Think about a one-year-old. Are you teaching that child grammar and verb conjugation? I hope not. That’s not how language is exposed to children. We focus on communicating, forgiving their mistakes, and ensuring their access to language grows. How can we use this model for our MLLs? Consider their basic needs. What do they need to understand and communicate throughout the school day to feel comfortable and safe? This ranges from understanding the school schedule to how they indicate the need to use the restroom. This contextualizes the language for them and creates the space to continue learning.

We also need to consider the role of language when accessing content. As a high school English teacher, not only was I responsible for helping my students acquire a new language, I was also responsible for helping them learn how to write a personal essay for college applications. I worked with my bilingual students to create instructions on how to write personal essays and research papers in Spanish (the primary second language spoken at my school) because as far as I was concerned, the English could come later. Of course I wanted my students to feel confident in their English language abilities, but they also needed to understand the reasoning behind a thesis statement or how to use supportive evidence clearly. This content was essential, similar to the elements of a lab report or explaining a proof in math. Learning a language to access content is very different from learning a language as content.

It only takes a few years to master a language

To dispel this myth, we turn to the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen, an American linguist and Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. He outlines five levels of language acquisition (different from state determined levels for testing) and an average timeline for transition:

• Pre-production: 0 - 6 months
• Early Production: 6 months - 1 year
• Speech Emergent: Years 1 - 3
• Intermediate Fluency: Years 3 - 7
• Advanced Fluency (Native-like Speaking): Years 5 - 10

As educators, we must consider how long it takes the average language learner to reach the Advanced Fluency level. We might hear students having conversations with their peers in the hallway, but those social situations require what Dr. Jim Cummins, professor for the Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, considers Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, or BICS. These conversations require different skills from classroom language, which Cummins considered Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, or CALP. Students who are able to use conversational language are moving through the levels of language acquisition, but educators must be careful not to assume that just because a student is fluent in social language, they are also fluent in academic language. For more information specific to BICS and CALP, check out Colorín Colorado’s page.

If students have had interruptions in their education, you might hear the term SIFE associated with them, which stands for Students with Interrupted Formal Education. Interrupted schooling can contribute to slower fluency timelines and lower levels of literacy. Without strong language foundations, it can make learning another language more difficult.

“Exiting” means 100% fluent

Many states have different indicators that students are ready to “exit” language services, but this does not mean that they have reached the advanced fluency level. Usually, when students are deemed ready to exit, they are just broaching the intermediate fluency level. 

What does this mean for teachers? This means that every teacher is a language teacher and needs to consider the supports and scaffolds they are providing their MLLs throughout their curricula.

Literacy skills in a native language can’t transfer 

As mentioned above, it takes about 7-10 years on average to become fluent in another language. What might speed this up? If students have proficient literacy skills in their native language(s), this understanding can help unlock another language. For example, they might understand how language functions, and know how to follow certain rules. The rules might be different, but understanding a language system and how it works is transferable knowledge.

It takes longer for older students to learn a language 

It is a myth that older learners are not as competent at learning a language as younger learners. This myth is centered around the language that we hear. Younger students might feel more comfortable taking risks and producing verbal or written language more quickly, while older students might take a bit longer to demonstrate their learning. It is also important to note that older students — those who are around 13+ years of age — are more likely to retain their accent when speaking. This might make older students feel less confident or comfortable speaking, and talking with students about their accents and challenging the stereotypes about accents in our classrooms can help our older learners feel safe to take language risks.

You need a certification to support your MLLs 

If you are new to language learning and want to serve your MLLs to the best of your abilities, we highly recommend checking out the work of Stephen Krashen and Jim Cummins, which is linked above. Need something to start with tomorrow? Here are some actionable steps you can take:

Make your content comprehensible. You can do this in a variety of ways, but an easy way to do this is to use visuals. In my classes with MLLs who spoke three different native languages, rather than attempting to translate everything in those languages, I used pictures. I embedded videos. I had students create visuals for vocabulary words. This is something educators can do quite easily, and it has an incredible impact.

Contextualize language. Think about how to show students when and where they might use this language. You can provide sentence stems, have students act out the language in short role plays, or attach physical movements to certain words. This also looks like providing a rich language environment, whether it’s encouraging discussion, think-pair-shares, or providing labels for students both in the classroom and within content instruction.

Shifting your mindset

At the end of our episode, we spoke about shifting our mindsets when it comes to our brilliant MLLs. I brought up a tweet I saw:

​I think this ultimately comes down to a first language. For example, a native English speaker who is learning Mandarin and Spanish is seen very differently from a native Spanish speaker who is learning English. There are other biases that come into play, but that’s an article for another day. For now, I encourage educators to acknowledge that knowing multiple languages is an asset, not only for our students, but for our communities. 
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Five ways to frame care and appreciation in your professional partnership.

​How do you like to receive care? What makes you feel appreciated in a partnership? When you want to show appreciation for someone, how do you communicate that? 

These questions are often posed in the context of romantic relationships, but they are just as important to ask in the context of our working relationships with our teaching colleagues. Investigating the ways in which we like to receive and express support in a relationship can be especially valuable in the context of co-teaching partnerships, as humorous as that may sound. 

Teachers navigate high expectations and, often, high-stress situations on a daily basis. We support one another, forming community and connections through meaningful relationships. With that said, we all have different preferences and needs when it comes to how. 

In a romantic context, a common way to explore these preferences is the theory of five love languages, a concept proposed in Chapman's book The 5 Love Languages (1992). Chapman researched patterns in couples he was counseling and realized that many couple’s points of contention derived from a fundamental misunderstanding of each other’s needs: namely, how to receive and express affection. And so, he proposed the idea of five different love languages, paraphrased briefly below:

• Words of affirmation: expressing affection through spoken words, praise, or appreciation
• Quality time: undivided attention in each other’s presence
• Physical touch: holding hands, linking arms, being close physically
• Acts of service: helping one another with necessary tasks, like chores, errands, and so forth
• Receiving gifts: time and effort put into choosing an item to communicate that you are thinking of the other person

Caring for your co-teacher

One pathway to learn how to better support your co-teacher is to consider each other’s “love languages” in a school context. Let’s look at some examples of what these five love languages might look like in a co-teaching relationship: 

Words of affirmation: After a lesson, complimenting something that your co-teacher did particularly well, like asking thought-provoking questions of students or circulating the classroom consistently. These could be verbal or written comments that express your gratitude or valuing of your colleague.

Quality time: During co-planning meetings, focusing only on each other and the agreed-upon task at hand; not opening or discussing emails, text messages, calendars, or other lists of tasks that must be completed at a later point (unless there is an emergency). This is always a good norm, but can be especially valuable to those who appreciate “quality time” as their language of appreciation.

Physical touch: Agreeing upon a level of comfort with physical contact, like high-fives, fist-bumps or supportive hugs. I have met teachers who value hugs after especially long days, but I have also met teachers who don’t want any physical contact in a professional setting; everyone is different, and it’s important to respect individuals’ boundaries when considering this love language in a teaching context.

Acts of service: Offering some additional support to complete necessary tasks, especially when we feel like with have the bandwidth and motivation to do so. This might look like offering to cover a colleague’s lunch duty or doing just a little bit of extra lesson planning to remove it from our co-teachers to-do list.

Receiving gifts: As teachers, we don’t often have a lot of disposable income for gifts, nor should we feel expected to buy our colleagues gifts. With that said, I’ve given and received gifts from my colleagues in the form of borrowed books, shared classroom resources, and small pieces of favorite candy — often inexpensive or free gifts that communicate thoughtfulness and general support.

Chapman makes the point that love languages, once identified, do not necessitate that we buy gifts every day or provide endless amounts of quality time. Life happens, relationships change, and we often appreciate more than one of these love languages in our relationships. The same reminders ring true for considering languages of appreciation in teaching partnerships.

​I hope that this article serves as a silly starter to a conversation with your co-teacher about what their “language” of appreciation might be this year. Brainstorm together what each of these languages might look like in your particular co-teaching relationship and school context. 

There’s no need for us to “love” our colleagues, but we can certainly benefit from developing supportive relationships within our professional learning communities. Let’s give and receive a little more appreciation this school year.
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Three areas of focus for designing rigorous tasks that promote engagement and perseverance.

This article is part of our Close Up On CRSE series

“What motivates people to do hard things? Can you think of a time that you persisted in a difficult task, even if repeated efforts to reach your goal weren’t successful?”

This was a question we posed in a recent workshop as we were exploring the challenges of increasing student engagement. Why do people do hard things?

In response to this question, we got a wide range of amazing responses. Educators shared examples of everything from finishing their master's thesis, to running a marathon, and even childbirth. The common factor across these and the many other examples provided was that people persist through challenging tasks when they are able to make a clear connection to a personal goal, believe that they have the potential to reach that goal over time, and seek the sense of accomplishment and pride that comes as a result of hard work. 

The factors that motivate students to persist in challenging tasks are exactly the same! Whether it’s practicing for a sport, exploring a special interest or hobby, or even staying up all night to get through the next level of the video game, we do hard things when the task is motivating, relevant, and gives us a sense of agency or pride. 

Articulating the attribute

Centering Students: A Deep Dive into CRSE Practices outlines Rigorous Instruction as one of the five principles of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy.

It states: “To ensure instruction is truly rigorous, teachers need to be attuned to the specific learning needs of their students and be able to design and implement a wide range of instructional strategies and materials that are responsive to these needs.”

One of the key attributes of Rigorous Instruction is Embedding Intellectually Challenging and Diverse Content into curriculum, unit, and lesson plans. This means that teachers implement challenging tasks and use relevant resources that are responsive to the unique learning needs of their students. It also means that they're designing tasks and activities that are diverse, and reflect the real issues of the world in which we live today. This is important because learning occurs when students are intellectually engaged in culturally diverse and relevant content. 

In book Drive, Daniel Pink brings together decades of psychological research on motivation theory and helps us understand the mindset that cultivates intrinsic motivation, which leads to perseverance and pride. He outlines the three criteria of purpose, autonomy, and mastery as the keys to unlocking personal drive in adults. For students, this might look like relevant purpose, mastery moments, and structured autonomy.

This sounds nice on paper, but what does it mean in the real world? How do we create these conditions intentionally for our students?

​In the classroom, the first step to embedding intellectually challenging and diverse content is to design an intellectually challenging task connected to our students’ identities, interests, and instructional goals. This means making connections between our content area and critical thinking tasks that include the demonstration of higher order thinking skills, as found on frameworks like Bloom's Taxonomy, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, or The Cognitive Rigor Matrix, which is a combination of the two. Setting an intellectually challenging task that taps into students’ ability to analyze, synthesize, or evaluate content information takes time and practice. Choosing an entry point and topic from diverse source material is a key to making the task personally relevant.

After setting the task, then we can begin creating the conditions that cultivate motivation and perseverance. 

Relevant purpose

If we look back at the conditions that create perseverance through challenging tasks, we’re reminded that the common factor is people seeing the task as personally relevant to a specific goal or skill they want to achieve. So often in school, the goals we set for students are outside of their own interests. The state sets the goals on high-stakes exams, our district might set the goals for curriculum or course outcomes, and teachers set in-class goals for what students should accomplish, and why. There are almost no formal structures for students to engage in the process of determining what they want to learn, and for what purpose. While there are real constraints that we’re working with when it comes to content standards, there are many opportunities to tap into students’ interests, and to create relevant purpose for the tasks we ask students to engage in. 
​

• Diverse content reveals personal relevance: Part of creating an intellectually challenging task is to ensure that we’re incorporating diverse content, context, and perspectives into our curricular materials and tasks. When students recognize their culture and identity as part of the content, it is easier for them to make connections to the topic and see it as relevant in their lives. Including multiple perspectives or diverse voices has not always been a key priority for curriculum designers, so it may take some additional planning to build in these entry points for our students. 

 

• Explicit importance: Oftentimes, the relevance of an activity is clear to us, but we aren’t being explicit about the importance with our students. Creating space on a daily basis to discuss the importance of what we’re learning — and why — can create a shift in our students’ engagement and willingness to persevere through challenges. Whether we’re making a direct statement, or asking them to make the connections to the importance of the activity, it only takes a few minutes of a class period to make a case for what we’re doing, and why. And these moments help students connect the dots between their personal interests and long-term goals, and can influence how they show up in the lesson for the day.

Mastery moments

Creating mastery moments means that as we look at our arc of instruction throughout a lesson, a week of lessons, or a unit plan, we identify key moments of the learning process and identify those as micro-targets or mini-goals along the route. Creating some built-in celebrations or rewards for hitting these targets inspires a growing confidence and positive pride that comes from meeting a goal.

• Explicit learning targets: Whether they're built into the lessons’ slide deck, part of the students’ work period, or as a closing task, we create mastery moments through making an explicit learning target and drawing attention to it in student-friendly language. Marking these moments with catchphrases like, “level up,” “mastery moment,” or “main point” will grab students’ attention and increase their focus on the topic or question being posed. These moments can be revisited in an end of class formative assessment, weekly review, or through homework reinforcement. When students meet these targets, celebrate their success! 

 

• Short & long-term goal setting: We can help our students set short- and long-term goals related to our content area. These might be general goals like “think critically to solve problems,” or they may be more content-specific like, “write argument essays to persuade a reader on a topic.” When we articulate the goal setting process with our students, we can link our learning activities to these goals so students see the relevance as directly impacting their goals. Even better, invite students to create their own goals, and link the activities to goals that students have set for themselves. 

Structured autonomy

Autonomy is the ability for a person to choose their own process. Students may not have developed all of the skills needed to stay productive with unstructured autonomy, but structured autonomy is empowering and cultivates skills to help students learn how they work best. Structured autonomy means creating pathways that maximize student choice, preference, and independent work with increasing time on task. 

• Flexibility in process: One of the easiest ways to create structured autonomy is to create options for how students complete their tasks. Giving students a choice between two or three processes allows them to make a personal investment in their work, which should expand the amount of time they will persist. For example, if the task is to complete a reading, the teacher might offer students the opportunity to use a notes template to record key ideas, or to use sticky notes to write down important facts. Both tasks hit the same target goal; having students engage in different modalities creates flexibility in the learning process and gives students structured autonomy, which is empowering. 

 

• Self check — when do I need help?: The ability to self-assess doesn’t come naturally. Students need practice reflecting on their learning process so that they can increase their self-awareness in relation to their ability to engage in a task successfully. Without this self-awareness, students may complete an assignment without following the directions, or they may feel frustrated early in the process and give up quickly because they aren’t sure what to do if they get stuck. By creating structured moments during the work period to check their work with a partner, consult a group of their peers, or confirm their responses to an answer key will help students increase their self-awareness. With increased awareness when they’re struggling, students can be more proactive in asking for help when they need it, rather than giving up after getting stuck the first time. 

When it comes to student engagement, in an effort to create student-friendly tasks, we often associate more engaging with easier. We don’t want our students to struggle or get frustrated during the learning cycle. But easier isn’t necessarily engaging — and it rarely builds the critical thinking and content knowledge that students need to motivate them to take on the next learning challenge. 

Embedding intellectually challenging and diverse content into curriculum is critical to engaging students in a productive learning experience that is equally intellectually challenging and engaging. We can all do hard things when we see the purpose, own the goal, and believe that our success is possible.

Navigate reading mastery and the science of reading to create meaningful instruction for young readers. ​

This is the first installment in our Science of Reading series

In the realm of reading instruction, fluency acts as a foundational cornerstone, shaping the way readers interact with written language. Often hailed as the bridge connecting decoding and comprehension, fluency plays an instrumental role in molding a reader's overall understanding. This article takes a comprehensive look at the concept of fluency, delving into its significance, practical implications, and its alignment with the science of reading, with a particular focus on the role of guided reading.

Defining Fluency: Beyond the Basics

​Fluency in reading goes beyond just being able to read words correctly. It involves reading in a way that is smooth, precise, and with expressive intonation. It also includes accuracy in understanding the text, maintaining a suitable reading speed, and paying attention to prosody, which refers to the rhythm and melody present in language. When all of these elements come together, they transform reading from a basic recognition of words into a skill that allows you to effortlessly comprehend the deeper significance of a text.

Why Fluency Matters: Bridging Decoding & Comprehension

Fluency acts like a bridge that connects two important parts of reading: decoding and comprehension. Decoding is the process of breaking down written symbols into recognizable words, while comprehension involves understanding the true meaning of the text. When a reader becomes fluent, it means they can decode words effortlessly, which in turn frees up mental energy. This newfound mental capacity can then be directed towards better understanding the content of the text. 

Research has shown a strong connection between fluency and comprehension. Readers who have developed fluency are not only able to grasp complex ideas easily, but also engage in critical analysis of the text. This skill in turn helps them develop a genuine fondness for reading. This dynamic relationship between fluency and effective reading instruction is a central focus within the science of reading.

Guided Reading: A Path to Proficiency

In the array of strategies aimed at promoting fluency, guided reading emerges as a standout approach. Within a guided reading context, small groups of students engage in shared reading experiences, guided by their teacher. The strength of guided reading lies in its ability to:

• Customize learning: Texts are thoughtfully chosen to match each group's reading level, offering challenges while fostering growth and promoting fluency.
• Enhance comprehension: Through guided discussions, students delve into layers of meaning. Fluency becomes interwoven with comprehension, leading to authentic understanding.
• Provide personalized support: In the intimate setting of small groups, teachers provide tailored assistance, rectifying errors, and enhancing expressive reading.
• Expand vocabulary: Guided reading introduces new words in context, promoting vocabulary enrichment.

Guided Reading in Action: Effective Approaches

• Group dynamics: The creation of small groups with similar reading abilities ensures the selection of appropriate texts.
• Activation of prior knowledge: By tapping into students' existing knowledge before reading, a foundation for understanding is established.
• Interactive engagement: Encouraging students to read aloud in turns, accompanied by thoughtful questions, ignites discussions that foster engagement and critical thinking.
• Thoughtful text selection: Opting for texts that align with students' interests cultivates a connection that fuels engagement.
• Fluency assessment: Regular assessment of fluency progress not only tracks growth but also informs future instruction.

Elevating Fluency: A Reading Journey 

Fluency goes beyond a mere skill; it's the foundation of satisfying, meaningful reading. Guided reading plays a key role in nurturing this skill, supporting capable readers, and fostering a genuine passion for reading. As educators embrace the principles of guided reading and other fluency-centered approaches, they empower young minds to confidently navigate texts. This involves actively connecting and interlinking various elements within the text, much like weaving threads into a fabric. This journey blends the art of reading with the science of effective reading instruction, resulting in a community of skilled and enthusiastic readers. 

If you are interested in exploring guided reading further, join me at Best Practices for Guided Reading, which will provide you with an opportunity to experiment with designing and implementing guided reading lessons of your own!
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Four pieces of advice to keep in mind as you settle into your classroom.

​Dear Math Teachers, 

I hope you’re entering your classroom rested and relaxed. I am going to start this letter by thanking you. Thank you for everything you have done in your previous years of teaching. Thank you for everything you will do this year.

If you are open to it, I would like to share some advice with you as you continue to navigate what works best for your students this school year.  

Come to peace with lack of time 
I want you to remember that you will never have enough time, and that is okay. We allow time to really grab hold of us, tangling us in a sense of urgency unfulfilled. I see teachers stress so much about time; not enough time to cover all the content, not enough time to do this fun activity, not enough time to explore something students care about. Find a way to accept that you will never have enough time and free yourself from this immense pressure. 
​

Embrace curiosity 
Curiosity was what made me fall in love with math; I always wanted to know why something worked. Unfortunately, we are so stressed about covering as much content as possible that in math classrooms we are often ignoring our curiosity. If a student has a question or wondering, stop the previous plan and engage in it. Did a student come in talking about a car they really like? Let’s learn everything we can about this car. How fast does it go? How did they figure that out? How much would it take me to save up to get it? Is the price of the car unreasonable? What about student’s favorite musicians — how much do we think they make? How do they use patterns to make their music?

The best way to prepare a future mathematician is to grow their curiosity; take advantage of every opportunity to do this in your class. 
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Find your community 
Teaching can feel isolating to many lately. Find a community that sustains and supports your practice. It doesn’t even have to be in your school; community can take on many forms. Find some accounts of math teachers on social media that are interesting or inspiring to you. Subscribe to some websites that have shared resources you enjoy. I learn a lot from the newsletters and resources at YouCubed and Math Medic. I also love following Howie Hua. Find those who make you feel seen and inspired. 
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Make room for joy
Take a moment to think about what brings you joy. Ask your students what brings them joy. Now add those things into your class. Dance to music with your students. Make silly jokes. Play games. Gholdy Muhammad in her recent book, Unearthing Joy, says “Joy is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning, not test prep or graduation.” The lessons we truly learn, the moments and memories that we never forget, are centered around joy. We have to make sure we have room for them in our lessons. 

I am excited for the journey you and your students are embarking on in your math classroom. Let go of the stress of time, fumble through curiosity, find your people, and have so much fun.

​Keep up the great work! You’ve got this! 

With lots of love and support, 
Victoria

Amplify small group instruction and strategic student grouping with this interactive approach.

​Three years ago, we were quickly shifting our classrooms to online platforms as instruction was going remote for an indefinite amount of time. We tried to keep teaching throughout the pandemic and survived the snafus that happened throughout the day. (Remember that time you thought you were muted, but you weren’t? Bleh!) Our learning curves for online teaching grew exponentially, and many of us have incorporated the most promising practices into our classrooms today, such as using Google Docs for group projects or editing and commenting on a student paper in live time. 

Although there is an educational app for just about everything, we suggest resisting the urge to default back to solely online learning (even while in person), and instead consider the unique benefits of being together in time and space. Let’s design opportunities for students to collaborate, and embrace the physical classroom by creating learning opportunities that take students away from the Chromebooks and into a live setting. 

Characterized by movement, interaction, and small group learning, station teaching is one of the six established co-teaching models that takes advantage of being together within the four walls of a classroom. As with all models, station teaching comes with its own unique benefits, challenges, and logistics — let's walk through this method in an effort to support you and your co-teacher in planning and facilitating this meaningful approach to learning. 

What is station teaching? 

Station teaching is when content and instruction are divided into distinct components or strands. Students are divided into equally sized, typically heterogeneous groups. 

Each teacher teaches a specific part of the lesson/content to different groups of students as they rotate between teachers. Students also rotate through center(s) where they complete an independent task. 

What promises does this model offer? 


​Station teaching provides an opportunity for smaller group instruction and strategic student grouping.
One of the more obvious benefits of station teaching is that teachers have an opportunity to work with a small group of students, thus allowing for more responsiveness to individual questions, preferences, and needs. Stations also allow us to leverage the benefits of strategic student grouping, where teachers are intentional in the way that students are grouped together in service of the learning goal. Typically, heterogeneous groups, in which students with a variety of learning traits and needs work together, work best for the station teaching model; at the independent stations in particular, students have the opportunity to learn from and teach each other. 


Station teaching allows for exploration of a topic or skill through multiple perspectives, entry points, and modes of expression. 
In Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework designed to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities, one of the guiding principles is that learners differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them. Therefore, it is essential that teachers provide students with multiple means of representation of content. Stations easily allow us to provide representation of a topic in multiple ways; each station could focus on a different text, visual, or audio source. Similarly, each station can allow students to express their learning through a different medium or modality; another important principle of UDL. 


Station teaching allows the opportunity for natural “brain breaks” and movement. 
Research has shown that regular, short breaks in the classroom can help students increase their focus and reduce stress. With shorter “chunks” of academic engagement and clear, natural transitions between tasks, the station teaching model inherently incorporates breaks for students. The time it takes for students to travel to the next station could be leveraged to provide students with the physical or social engagement they might need to sustain focus: perhaps you play a song that students enjoy, or invite them to do a particular stretch. 

Station teaching can help strengthen a co-teaching relationship by providing the opportunity for shared ownership of planning and facilitation. 
Anyone who has co-taught before knows that it can be difficult to find a groove in which both teachers are easily and equally sharing the workload of lesson planning and facilitation; obstacles like lack of common planning time, unclear goals, and difference in teaching styles and preferences can often get in the way. If you and your co-teacher are finding yourself in a stage of your team development in which roles feel lopsided or undefined, a stations lesson can be a helpful way to help redistribute some responsibility. The ways in which content and instruction are divided in station teaching offer a clear path for delegating planning and teaching duties; each teacher can be responsible for the designing and facilitation of one station (with coordination and communication, of course!). 

What are some potential pitfalls? 


​Noise level and space limitations can create challenges.
With several groups of students working on different tasks simultaneously, some students (and teachers!) might find the level of noise and movement in the room to be an adjustment. Preparing students for this might be helpful; you might say something like,  “Today’s class may be a bit louder than our typical class, but there will also be quiet moments at the end of the stations so you can collect your thoughts via writing.” 

It’s also helpful to think strategically about where each station is set up in the room; having the two teacher stations as far away from each other as possible is often the way to go, since teachers often have the loudest voices in the room! 


Careful attention must be paid to pacing. 
In contrast to learning centers, where students are moving between learning engagements at their own pace, station teaching is often characterized by coordinated rotation, where everyone moves on to the next station at the same time. This means that all stations need to take roughly the same amount of time, which can be challenging to anticipate in planning. All stations should have flexible tasks that can be shortened or extended with enrichment options or additional discussion questions, depending on how quickly a particular group engages in them. 


Not all content is well-suited for stations. 
One of the trickier dynamics of station teaching is that not all students will begin their learning in the same place; some will begin at the independent station, while others will begin at the station led by co-teacher A, while still others will begin at the station by co-teacher B. Because of this, it’s important that the topics or tasks at each station are non sequential — that one station is not a necessary prerequisite to engage with another. Therefore, stations are not ideal for topics or skills that require a specific or strict sequencing of tasks or texts. It’s also not ideal for tasks that require deeper and more sustained investigation or attention, since time spent at each station is relatively brief compared to a full class period. Rather, stations work great for topics that are broad with multiple strands, perspectives, or approaches, or for introductory explorations or final reviews. 

How can independent work be structured?

​Recent research has highlighted the benefits of letting kids do things on their own, and station teaching offers the opportunity for practicing independence. 

We have generally found independent stations should be built on familiar territory: a concept, graphic organizer, or task directions that students have seen before. Be sure to have all of the supplies ready at the independent station, and try not to overcomplicate the directions (this sounds obvious but can be challenging)! 

Here are just a few ideas for independent work: 

• Cut up key terms and ask students to research the terms (using dictionary or technology) and take notes on them using Cornell notes or a Frayer Model
• Practice doing more problem sets on a problem set they have previously been taught
• View images and ask students to take notes on what they see and wonder about
• Watch a brief silent video with closed captions and ask students to write their thoughts/ takeaways
• Read a grade level (or slightly below) engaging text on the topic, and ask students to annotate it (if this is something they are familiar with) 
• Write a letter or explain a concept they already know that relates to the overarching topic of the stations lesson

What can this model look like in action?

Given the promises and potential pitfalls of this co-teaching model, we can determine the kinds of lessons and learning objectives that will be best suited for this instructional approach. Here are a few examples: 


3rd grade ELA
Students engage in stations that support them with the skills of determining the main idea of a text. At one teacher-led station, students are creating titles for chunks of text. At the second teacher-led station, students are reading a short text and asking: what is this story mostly about? At the two independent stations, students are sorting pictures into categories, or listening to an audio book and answering multiple choice questions. 


7th grade Math
To begin a new unit, students are engaging in an opening inquiry around the question: Why are surface area and volume important concepts in everyday life? At one teacher-led station, students make observations about water displacement when an object is dropped in a glass of water, and make predictions on whether the tray will be able to catch the displaced water; at another, students are tasked with wrapping a present; at another, they must choose the best tupperware container for leftover “food.” After visiting all the stations, students reflect on the guiding question and discuss with their peers. 


11th grade US History
Historians often teach an era through a variety of lenses, such as the culture, the key events and figures, and the different perspectives of an era; this approach lends itself easily to a station lesson. When studying the Progressive Era, for example, students can investigate: How did the growth in industrialization and urbanization lead to positive and negative changes in American society? At one teacher-led station, students can look at images from the time period (from photojournalists such as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine) and notice the subjects and stories these photographers may be trying to tell about urban life in the early twentieth century. At an independent station, students can define key terms, such as “muckraker,” “progressivism,” “industrialization,” “modernization,” and The Gospel of Wealth. Students can look up these terms and record what they learn in the form of Cornell Notes or a Frayer Model. At another teacher-led station, the teacher can facilitate a reading of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or The Story of Ida B. Wells, and ask students to make meaning of the text, and take notes on what the text conveys to the reader. After visiting all three stations, students can compare their notes and discuss the positive and negative impact of industrialization and urbanization during the U.S.’s Progressive Era. 

The devil is in the details

The more you and your co-teacher can plan in advance for the logistics of station teaching, the more successful your lesson will likely be. How long will students spend at each station? How long will they be given to transition between stations? Which teacher will be responsible for keeping time and cuing the students? How will students know where to go next? (We suggest a slide or poster indicating the direction of rotation for that one!) 

Preparing all the materials in advance and having a clear and brief set of directions at each station is crucial (particularly at the independent station).

Practice pays off

While this article details the logistics of station teaching with an eye on co-teaching, we cannot overemphasize the importance of designing opportunities for students to interact with each other and with the physical space of the classroom in all classrooms. We know that students missed years of face-to-face interactions due to the pandemic; we suggest being proactive and creating moments for students to embrace a shared space and interact with each other in a low-stakes way. 

With all these dynamics and logistics, your stations lesson might not go perfectly the first time; don’t give up! We encourage you to reflect on the challenges, tweak it, and try it again. Stations might be a bit of a learning curve for your students as well, but as with any classroom protocol or routine, station rotation and engagement are skills that can be explicitly taught, scaffolded, and practiced. It’s our opinion that the work pays off, as we’ve found this approach to be an interactive and engaging way to punctuate particularly compelling topics in a curriculum. 
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Four ways to cultivate student connections through stories, personalities, and interests.

It’s the first few weeks of school. New students are entering our school’s hallways and sitting in our classrooms. Fresh paper, pencils, and (hopefully) charged computers are perched on desks. Awkward glances and shuffling feet and uncertain pauses fill the air. As teachers, we are faced with this challenge: how do we begin to build a learning community in our classroom, one that invites trusting dialogue and encourages intellectual curiosity? 

I often received one, seemingly simple answer: “find a good icebreaker.” 

An icebreaker is an activity or engagement task designed to get people talking and learning about one another — in other words, a task to “break the ice” of social awkwardness. A fellow teacher in my school swore by “Would You Rather?” as the icebreaker that had withstood the test of time, asking students to answer a series of extreme either-or questions like, “Would you rather fight a bear or a shark, and why?”

I don’t think there’s one best icebreaker for all students or for all teachers. It’s difficult to know definitively what will resonate with your particular students. With that said, I knew that it was possible to find an icebreaker that invited students to get to know each other in a meaningful, personal way.

Below you’ll find four activities that will help you “break the ice” with your new students and begin creating genuine connections within your classroom community. 

The Neighborhood Map
Discovering & Writing About a Memory

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This first activity, invites students to make a memory map of their childhood bedroom, apartment, house, or neighborhood. Then, it asks students to look for stories they can share, inspired by places marked on their map. 

​The memory map was developed by Stephen Dunning in the early 1970s and later articulated in his book Getting the Knack (1992). His workshops led to other educators across the country creating various versions of this practice, including by members of the South Coast California Writing Project.

Ask students to draw a birds-eye view map, then “walk” a partner or small group through descriptions of the places on their maps. After doing so, students number and label these “story places” on their maps and choose one story to write about further.

Students are invited to share their written story in a partnership or in a small group. For younger students, I encourage using some sentence starters to scaffold the sharing process, such as “This place stays in my mind because…” or “The important thing about this story is…” 

A possible set of directions are included here and here, but I encourage you to develop directions that will work best for you and for your students. For those who may not feel comfortable drawing their own memory map, perhaps imaginative or fictional map drawing could accomplish a similar goal of learning about your students.

If writing is a central component of your classroom, consider transforming this activity into a writing benchmark for your students at the beginning of the year to gain insight into their writing abilities. This activity can work in an elementary, middle, high school, college, or even adult-education setting, and is especially inclusive for English language learning students, given the opportunity to tell stories through drawn visuals. 

The Cultural Tree
Getting to Know Yourself and Your Students
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In this activity, students are asked to create a “cultural tree” that represents their culture. Originally envisioned as part of Zaretta Hammond’s work in Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain, the drawing of cultural trees asks students to identify three levels of their culture: surface level — aspects of culture you can see like food and dress, shallow culture — aspects less explicit, like concepts of eye contact and personal space, and deep culture — unconscious beliefs and norms like concepts of fairness and spirituality. 

My colleague at CPET, Lauren Midgette, has used Hammond’s work to write and to reflect on the possibilities it has for getting to know students, but also ourselves, better in the classroom this school year. Midgette makes the point that the drawing of cultural trees — and the discussions inspired by them — provides a healthy soil to help our students grow. Each level of culture — surface, shallow, and deep — is visualized on the tree as leaves, trunk, and roots, respectively. 

For younger students, I don’t think the framing of the tree as “cultural” is necessary for the activity to be an effective tool for discussion. Students could certainly label a tree with aspects of who they are that are surface (easily seen by others), shallow (not as easily seen), or deep (entirely unseen). 

Telling a Story Through An Object

This third activity requires slightly more teacher preparation than the first two, but is one that I have found particularly effective with students of all ages. I created the directions to facilitate this activity — linked here, but the premise was inspired by fellow educators: objects, even the most simple ones, are imbued with our stories.

First, find an ordinary cardboard box. Label it “mystery box.” Next, fix it with a bunch of objects — they can be commonplace things like birthday candles, hair ties, or chewing gum — or more particular objects, like sports paraphernalia or local fruits and vegetables. Lastly, close it and place it in a very visible place in the classroom and say nothing about it to your students until you begin class. 

Explain to students that inside the box are a bunch of objects that you will pull out one at a time. As soon as students see an object that reminds them of a story, memory, or experience, encourage them to start writing that story. 

The final thing that I pull out of the box is a slip of paper that says, “the object that you were hoping I was going to pull out.” It’s a catch-all invitation for students to write about an object close to their heart that you may not have been able to acquire. 

Invite students to share their stories with one another after they have written them. 

In my facilitation of this activity, I found that students often worried that their story wouldn’t be “good” or “significant” enough. I explicitly invite ordinary stories from students, which have never been “ordinary,” but rather extraordinary insights into the students and their backgrounds and interests. 

As the year progresses, I invite you to experiment with this activity in the reverse: invite students to bring in their own meaningful objects that have a personal story attached to them to add to a classroom box. They can share their objects and stories before placing them into the box.

Beginning With A Two Sentence Story

​The fourth icebreaker requires no teacher preparation and the prompt for students is incredibly simple: write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day today. This activity, as well as these questions, were introduced to me by Professor Ruth Vinz at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Invite students to write in the present tense as a means to place themselves back in the moment they are writing about. Remind students that the purpose is not to assess their writing skills, nor to write the most significant story possible. The story starter can be simple, so long as it is about some event from their day. 

This icebreaker would work especially well for an afternoon class. Alternatively, the prompt could be modified to read, “write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day yesterday. Even though the story happened yesterday, please write in the present tense, as though you are living the story at this very moment.”

After writing their two sentences, invite all students to read them aloud in no particular order and without any further explanation. Next, invite students to consider how their stories might be threaded or connected together.

Consider these facilitation questions: 

• What do you notice or wonder about these stories?
• Whose story remains with you at this moment?
• What are some ways these stories are connected? 
• What can we learn from our class through these stories if we think of them all together? 
• What did we not include in our stories?

Dive a Little Deeper Under the Ice

Icebreakers can be wonderful ways to start connecting with new students — they alleviate nerves and provide an entry point for relationship building. 

This year, I invite you to not only “break the ice,” but also to dive a little deeper under the surface, creating ways for students to connect in genuine ways through their stories, personalities, and interests. 

Please modify these activities — they are intended to be transformed for you and your classroom. And the best part? These activities can be used at any point in time to learn something new about your students.
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Three essential questions to explore as you navigate connecting a curriculum to your classroom. 

​As the start of the 2023-24 school year approaches, many K-8 educators will find themselves faced with the challenge of adopting a new curriculum. This task can feel overwhelming, leaving teachers and school leaders uncertain about where to begin. To help navigate this process, we can examine three powerful questions that can serve as entry points for understanding and evaluating a new curriculum, helping educators to gain valuable insights needed for making informed decisions that align with their goals and values. 

Does it align with school mission & vision?

When introducing a new curriculum, it is essential to ensure alignment with the school’s mission and vision. Consider how a new curriculum reflects the core values, educational philosophies, and goals set by the school. Evaluate whether it supports the desired educational outcomes and adequately prepares students to meet the school’s vision for the future. A curriculum that aligns with the school-wide mission and vision contributes to a cohesive and purposeful educational experience for all students. Evaluating alignment can provide valuable information to inform a school’s decision-making process regarding the adoption of a curriculum and the necessary adaptations and revisions.

Does it support differentiated instruction and diverse learner needs? 

Recognizing the diversity of students in a K-12 setting is crucial. It behooves schools to inquire about if and how the curriculum addresses differentiated instruction and caters to students with varying abilities, learning styles, and interests. I would advise schools to look for evidence of accommodations for students with disabilities, support for English Language Learners, and opportunities for personalized learning. Evaluate whether the curriculum provides a range of resources, materials, and strategies that meet the needs of all students. A curriculum that embraces and supports diverse learners promotes equitable access to education and enhances students’ engagement and success. In my experience, differentiation is often a shortcoming of most curricula, so these suggestions can be particularly helpful when it comes to identifying the additional supports and materials that will need to supplement the curriculum. 

What assessment methods are incorporated into the curriculum? 

Assessment is a vital aspect of any curriculum. When it comes to evaluating and potentially adjusting a new curriculum, inquire about the assessment methods and tools used within the curriculum to measure student progress, understanding, and mastery of concepts. Determine whether the curriculum includes formative assessment to provide ongoing feedback and inform instruction, as well as summative assessments to evaluate student achievement at the end of a unit. Additionally, consider if the curriculum incorporates various assessment formats, such as performance tasks, projects, portfolios, and traditional tests that provide a comprehensive view of students' learning. Understanding the assessment methods and measures helps educators gauge student progress, identify areas for improvement, and tailor instruction. Based on this investigation, you can make the necessary modifications or additions to the curriculum. 

As educators embark on a journey of adopting a new curriculum, these questions can serve as valuable guideposts for evaluation. By considering alignment to the school’s mission and vision, supporting differentiated instruction, and assessing evaluation methods, educators can ensure that the chosen curriculum reflects their values, addresses the diverse needs of their students, and provides effective means to measure student learning. Embracing these questions will empower educators to make informed decisions that foster a purposeful and inclusive educational experience for all learners! 

Three ways to create a supportive environment that nurtures students' academic, social, and emotional growth. 

The beginning of the school year presents a valuable opportunity to establish a positive classroom culture and forge meaningful relationships with our students, creating an environment that nurtures learning, collaboration, and student growth.

Let’s start the year headed in the right direction! 

Creating your classroom

The design of your classroom space plays a pivotal role in setting the tone for the entire year. One key aspect to consider is your classroom library. In my own classroom, I loved creating a library, as I believe a thoughtfully curated collection of books has the power to ignite a love for reading and literacy. I aimed to select diverse and engaging books that reflected the interests and experiences of my students, and I worked to make the library easily accessible by using colorful baskets or organizers to store the books. By making the library the centerpiece of my room, I encouraged students to explore and immerse themselves in the vast world of literature. To foster a sense of ownership, I also involved them in identifying trends and connections between texts and let them create themed baskets with corresponding titles.

Another important aspect to focus on is the arrangement of desks or tables in your room, aiming for a collaborative, warm, and inviting setup that eliminates students feeling isolated or overlooked. Experiment with different configurations in your room, and assess how they feel from a student's perspective — walk around the room, sit in the chairs, and consider the visibility and opportunities for interaction each arrangement offers. Creating an inclusive and effective physical environment contributes to a positive classroom culture where students feel valued and supported.

Understanding your students

Every student brings their unique experiences, interests, and identities to the classroom. Taking the time to get to know them as individuals helps build meaningful connections and can help us tailor instruction to meet their needs. One approach that I love to use is intentionally selecting mentor texts to inspire student storytelling. For instance, I found Sandra Cisneros' "My Name" from her book The House on Mango Street to be a powerful text that encouraged students to reflect on and share stories about their own names. By analyzing the author's writing style and reflecting on their own experiences, students gained a sense of empowerment and ownership over their personal narratives.

Engaging students in activities that explore their surroundings can also provide valuable insights into their lives beyond the classroom. Consider asking students to create maps of their neighborhoods, homes, or any significant spaces in their world. This activity can not only foster a sense of belonging, but also encourages students to reflect on their personal histories and connections to their communities. 

Getting to know your learners

Understanding our students' strengths, needs, and learning styles is essential for effective instruction. One way to do this is by gathering any available data from the previous year, including academic performance records and input from previous teachers. This kind of information can help you identify areas where students may require additional support or enrichment. 

However, we know that data alone cannot provide a comprehensive understanding of your students' learning profiles. Prioritize one-on-one conversations with each student within the first few months of the school year. During this time together, ask about their interests, learning preferences, and goals for the year. By building personal connections and listening to their perspectives, you can better connect to their individual needs and aspirations. This knowledge will enable you to tailor your instruction and provide the necessary support to help each student thrive. 

Additionally, consider using low-stakes diagnostic assessments to gain insights into your students' abilities. Find opportunities to engage students in games and competitions that allow you to understand their skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. When possible, utilize technology to record and/or analyze their responses. These types of activities can help you avoid overwhelming students with tests while still receiving information that can help you grasp their foundational knowledge and strengths. 

​Creating a positive classroom culture, establishing personal connections, and understanding your students — both as individuals and as learners — all require intentional effort at the start of the school year. By incorporating these promising practices into your teaching approach, you can help to create an inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Here’s to a new school year. I hope it’s one of growth and success! 
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Understanding your co-teaching partnership through the four stages of group development.

​In my work as a coach, I get the pleasure of visiting many co-taught classrooms. Like with all classroom visits, I’m interested in what students are learning, and how, and what teachers are doing, and why. But I’m also interested in the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) dynamic between teachers; I notice the polite smiles and awkward silences; or the shared glances and inside jokes; or sometimes, the eye rolls and cold shoulders. The state of the partnership itself is an important piece of the puzzle to understand how to help teachers — and therefore students — grow. 

It makes sense that co-teachers are having a wide variety of experiences with each other at any given moment. Sharing a classroom with another teacher can often feel like living with a randomly selected college roommate in a tiny dorm room; there is potential for connection and camaraderie, and also so much to navigate to make the arrangement remotely functional. And with co-teaching, the goal far surpasses peaceful coexistence in a shared space, as it involves the incredibly complex endeavor of working as a team to help a diverse group of students learn and grow. 

Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development — a framework developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 and since often discussed, revised, and extended — helps us understand that discomfort and tension are an inevitable part of working with others towards a common goal. The frameworks’ four stages — Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing — can help co-teaching teams understand where they are in the development of their partnership, and what they might do next to grow the team. 

Forming

What it is
In this stage, team members are focusing primarily on orienting themselves to each other and the task at hand; lots of energy is spent on identifying “the boundaries of both interpersonal and task behaviors” (p. 396). 

What it may look like in a co-taught classroom

• One teacher makes an error when going over a math problem; the other teacher catches the error but is too nervous to step in and say anything.
• Both teachers adhere strictly to their predetermined roles in the lesson, but do not act flexibly or improvisationally.
• Team members spend lots of time going back and forth when deciding how to assess students’ work.

What you can do
​Teachers in the Forming stage often benefit from additional time and space to get to know each other. These five questions can spark discussion around core values, collaboration, content, communication, and care with your co-teacher. Another option — especially if you are drawn to exploring things visually — is to create and share with each other a co-teaching body biography, as my colleague Dr. Laura Rigolosi and I have invited teacher teams to do in our workshops.

Storming

What it is
Storming, according to Tuckman, is “characterized by conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues” (p. 396). This can manifest as power struggles and clashes, confusion, or lack of interest in the group. 

What it may look like in a co-taught classroom

• One teacher may forge ahead with a lesson despite the lack of input from their co-teacher, thinking, “I’ve always done it this way and it always works.” 
• One teacher may disengage from co-planning and co-facilitating, thinking, “What’s the point? None of my ideas are heard anyway.” 
• At varying points throughout a class or lesson, teachers may be communicating mixed messages to students around expectations based on their own beliefs. 

What you can do
If you and your co-teacher find yourself in the Storming stage of your partnership, it is first and foremost helpful to remember that this is an inevitable — and even necessary — stage in becoming a functional team. In order to move through it, reflection, listening, and collaborative problem-solving become key. 

Dray and Wisneski (2011) have created a mindful reflection protocol to help teachers unpack their interactions with students and examine their own assumptions and biases in order to become more culturally responsive educators. A version of the protocol I have adapted for co-teachers can be helpful in reflecting on the assumptions we are making about our colleagues, imagining alternative explanations for their actions, and hopefully gaining more understanding of where they are coming from before broaching conflict. 

Norming

What it is
According to Tuckman (1965), Norming is the stage in which “ingroup feeling and cohesiveness develop, new standards evolve, and new roles are adopted.” There might be mutually agreed upon processes and procedures, shared problem-solving, and a sense of belonging to a team. 

What it may look like in a co-taught classroom

• A co-teaching team begins a routine of meeting during lunch every Friday to reflect on the week and outline the following week’s instructional goals.
• During a lesson, one teacher pauses in their mini-lesson to ask if the other teacher has anything to add.
• During a debrief meeting, one teacher expresses concern about the way students are grouped, and the other teacher thanks them for the feedback and asks for suggestions. 

What you can do
If you and your co-teacher are beginning to get into a groove, tools that help to concretize and ritualize your collaboration and problem-solving will contribute to growth. Consider adapting or developing a planning template, like this one, to guide your work together. 

Performing

What it is
In this highly productive stage of group development, roles become flexible and functional, and group energy is channeled into the task. 

What it may look like in a co-taught classroom

• During independent work time, teachers quietly confer about students who need additional support based on the formative assessment and make an in-the-moment plan for some small group instruction.
  
• A department head approaches one teacher with a proposal to host a new initiative in their class, and the teacher responds, “I’ll have to talk with my co-teacher and get back to you.” 
  
• During a mini-lesson, one teacher shares with the students: “This is Mr. _____’s favorite topic! I’m going to pass the ball to him!”
  

What you can do
Teachers don’t often get much of a chance to stop, reflect, and celebrate success, but doing so is so important for morale, for learning, and for transferring learning to new situations. If you and your co-teacher are at the Performing stage, consider engaging in a Success Analysis Protocol to better understand what made a particular practice so successful. Ideally, this would be done with a larger department, so that others can learn from the success as well. 

In much of the commentary on Tuckman’s original model, there is an emphasis on the fact the model is not strictly linear; particular events or circumstances may cause a group to re-enter or revisit a stage they’ve already moved through. In the co-taught classroom, it’s easy to imagine these circumstances: you have a new student who exhibits some challenging behaviors, you have a new curriculum you must adhere to, or there is an upcoming high-stakes event like a test or observation. As Judith Stein explains, “The four stages are a helpful framework for recognizing a team's behavioral patterns; they are most useful as a basis for team conversation, rather than boxing the team into a 'diagnosis.'"

WORKS CITED
Stein, Judith. Using the Stages of Team Development. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63(6), 384.
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Why simply adopting new programs will not guarantee improved reading scores.

Recently, the chancellor of New York City public schools, David Banks, announced a significant change in reading instruction by introducing three researched-based programs with a focus on phonics. While this shift aims to address the flawed approach to teaching reading, it also raises questions about the shortcomings of the current system and the potential consequences of relying solely on phonics instruction.

​In this article, I raise concerns about the new programs, the importance of a balanced approach, and propose investing in professional development to improve existing efforts.

Flawed approach to teaching reading

David Banks criticized the City's approach to teaching reading as fundamentally flawed and failing to align with the science of how students learn to read. However, the exact shortcomings are not explicitly defined. Was it the lack of phonics instruction or insufficient emphasis on it? Furthermore, the effectiveness of the current approach seems to be evaluated based on standardized exam scores, which doesn’t provide a comprehensive picture of student learning.

New programs and concerns

The new programs being offered to schools, such as Wit and Wisdom, Expeditionary Learning, and Into Reading, each have their strengths and weaknesses. Wit and Wisdom emphasizes knowledge building but lacks explicit phonics instruction, requiring schools to adopt an additional phonics program like Fundations. Expeditionary Learning includes explicit phonics instruction, but Into Reading has faced criticism for its lack of cultural responsiveness. It is crucial to recognize that there is no magic bullet. No single program can meet the diverse needs of all students, and simply adopting new programs does not guarantee improved reading scores.

Maintaining foundational reading practices

I am not against explicit phonics instruction; however, I want to advocate for the preservation of foundational reading practices, such as read-alouds, independent reading, and shared reading — all of which promote fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary development. While phonics instruction is necessary, it should not overshadow these essential practices that nurture a love for reading and promote student autonomy when it comes to book selection.
 
It is concerning to me that the science of reading is being equated solely with decoding and phonics, which I believe will lead to an overemphasis on this aspect of instruction. Given the limited time available for reading instruction during the school day, other important reading activities may be deprioritized or excluded altogether. This narrow focus could have negative implications for teachers, students, and their overall reading experiences.
 
To teach reading comprehensively, it is essential to consider the interplay between different reading skills. Chancellor Banks highlighted five essential skills reflective of a competent reader:
 

• Phonological Awareness
• Phonics
• Vocabulary
• Fluency
• Comprehension

 
But these skills are not sequential. They are interconnected and should be taught in a way that recognizes their interdependencies.

Investing in professional development

Rather than perpetuating the narrative of a reading crisis and introducing new programs in haste, I would urge us to invest in professional development for teachers and leaders. This approach would enable them to delve into the science of reading, understand its implications, and identify the most effective ways to teach reading skills. By focusing on all aspects of reading development — phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension — current efforts can be improved, specific curricula can be adapted, and supplementary strategies can be identified.
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Engage students in rich mathematical tasks that honor the process more than the solution. 

​I was recently sitting with a high school algebra teacher — who was preparing a lesson about translating sequences into functions or equations — and trying to encourage him to use this archive of visual patterns with his students. We discussed matching different groups of students to different images and asking them to try writing an equation for the pattern. As the teacher started practicing on his own, writing equations for some of the patterns that were offered, this picture came up, and we both began to struggle. 

​Neither of us could figure it out.

Other teachers started coming by to join:

“There has to be an exponent in there somewhere...”
“But just an exponent wouldn’t make sense…”
“Are we multiplying the exponent? Or maybe multiplying and adding?”

This had started with only one teacher, but soon there were five teachers huddled around this image, trying to find a solution. One teacher got out a marker and began writing possibilities on the board. Another started running through calculations in their head, shouting out theories. Finally, one teacher said, “Oh, it’s a quadratic!” 

The algebra teacher who had started with me stated, “see I can’t do this with my students, we couldn’t even figure it out”. But I had the complete opposite reaction. I was surprised at how many had engaged in our puzzle. We were all trying out different methods, debating and discussing throughout our process.

​This is what a math classroom should look like every day. 

Making room for authentic engagement

As math teachers, it can feel scary to introduce a problem to students that doesn’t have a clear and simple solution. But how else is authentic math engagement supposed to happen in the classroom? In our example, even if we had never arrived at a solution, all the math thinking and practice we did to try and get there would have been worth the struggle. Even if a student never achieved a correct equation or solution, they still would have stretched their thinking and understanding of patterns and functions just by trying to work through the task.

The inspiration for this task came from Jo Boaler’s work on Mathematical Mindsets. In her book, she reminds us how beautiful and rich mathematical thinking can be, and offers advice on how to bring that into your classroom. This task we were testing out among teachers includes many of the suggestions she offers for making rich mathematical tasks. Boaler describes these tasks as having multiple entry points, visual components, and options for inquiry and debate. 

As you incorporate these elements into the math tasks in your classroom, consider the following questions as you shift into a richer mathematical lens:

• Is there only one way to approach this task? Can I change this task to have multiple solutions or multiple processes for finding the solution? 
• Is there a visual component in this assignment? Can I add a visual representation or graph to help students work through the task? 
• Is there room for debate and discussion in this assignment? Could I add a place where students have to defend their mathematical thinking to a critic? 
• Do I show students how to solve the problem before presenting it? Can I rearrange my lesson to allow students to play with a problem before offering them processes and solutions? 

Our original task starts with a visual component and includes multiple methods of entry. Students have the opportunity to make sense of the visual in any way they see fit — maybe they prefer to focus on the numbers, or maybe they want to look at the way the shape of the image is changing. There are no clear steps to follow to solve this puzzle; students have to play and engage in multiple ways before they can predict patterns and solutions. 

Another great aspect of this task is that students of all math levels can participate and still walk away learning something from the experience. Maybe some students will leave noticing there is not a constant amount of change between the pictures. Maybe some students will consider the way addition and multiplication look different in patterns. Maybe some students will write a quadratic equation and then be able to predict future images. The possibilities are endless. 

When we provide math problems that have very clear and explicit steps, we may lead students to the correct answer, but we also limit the creativity they can experience. We teach students that there is a right and wrong way to do math. We contribute to the negative feelings and attitudes many students already have about math. And lastly, we take away the fun. 

Making room for rich mathematical tasks that have multiple entry points, opportunities for debate, and visual components can help make every student feel like they can one day be a real mathematician. It can help students of all levels rediscover the fun in math.

Encourage students to expand their repertoire of ways to read and respond to literature.

​As someone who loves to read and write, one of my favorite things to do is annotate texts — whether it be a few scrawled words in the margins of my most beloved hardcover books or endless questions written on sticky notes falling out of flailing paperbacks, my annotations capture the spirit of my hyper-personal engagement with a text.

When I became an English teacher, I knew that I wanted my students to learn how to annotate, in part because I wanted them to capture their noticings and wonderings as they engaged in their own distinctive reading process. In “Literature as Exploration” (1995), Louise Rosenblatt wrote that every person has a unique, transactional experience when they read a text, in which they “live through” something special. I think of annotations like mementos of this special reading experience because they capture a moment in time in the transactional experience that would otherwise be lost. 

Every time we read a text, even if it’s one that we’ve read hundreds of times before, we encounter a new transactional experience. As we annotate and re-annotate texts, we leave behind a trail of our reading experiences: our questions, thoughts, and wonderings. I desperately wanted my students to develop that experiential, transactional trail of their reading processes. 

The Traveling Text

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, as a new teacher, that my students often responded to my call for annotations with, “I don’t know how to annotate!” or “Can you tell me what to annotate for?” or, worst of all, “I hate annotating. It’s a waste of time.” I can recall my naive shock when I heard my students respond in this way. In a desperate attempt to show my students the value of annotating, I began tirelessly modeling annotation strategies and my own methods of annotation, but doing so yielded little success. 

With time, I developed an incredibly simple strategy for teaching my students to annotate. Essentially, I stopped teaching my students to annotate through direct instruction and, instead, encouraged them to teach one another. This instructional strategy was, in my teaching, a solution to the problem of students feeling like they “don’t know” how to annotate or that annotating has “no purpose.” I call this strategy The Traveling Text (download here).

The Traveling Text is simple, requires minimal teacher preparation, empowers students, builds community, and teaches annotation skills. And implementing this strategy with your students only takes four steps.

​The impact of The Traveling Text

In my teaching experience, here are some of the impacts of this strategy on my students and our classroom community: 

• Promoting belonging: when students are invited to respond to one another’s annotations, it promotes in them a new sense of themselves as intellectual members of an academic community. For students who are more introverted in verbal class discussions, this strategy can allow them to engage in a written dialogue with other students.
• Building students’ repertoire of responding to literature: as they read and respond to one another’s annotations, students’ repertoire of reading strategies expands. Perhaps this is because when we are given a window to see into others’ transactional reading experiences, they expand our own methods of responding to literature.
• Shifting the audience of annotations from teacher to fellow student: students no longer write annotations focused solely on identifying the literary elements that they think their English teacher wants them to find, like symbolism, for instance. Instead, their annotations become more honest, insightful, humorous, and personal, likely because students know that their peers will be reading them, not their teacher. 

Teaching students to read for meaning (and for pleasure) is a daunting task. Often, our students come to us already feeling like they don’t know how to read and annotate literary texts in the “correct” way, one that highlights what a teacher or evaluator might be looking for. 

The Traveling Text creates possibilities for students to expand their own repertoire of ways to closely read and respond to literature. But, even more importantly, the strategy encourages students to experience a sense of intellectual community and belonging with their classmates as they share with one another written artifacts of their own transactional reading experiences.
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