Struggling readers think that people who read well look at the page and understanding magically occurs. They don't understand that a reader needs to interact with a text, that a reader must
do
something to "get it." My job then is to make that thinking visible to the students by at first modeling my own thinking through think-alouds and then by directly teaching students the kinds of thinking that readers do (see Appendix for "What Good Readers Do"). Listening and voicing are part of what we do as readers. Most of the strategies I use are from Kylene Beers'
When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do
.
The first strategy I use is called a Say Something. A Say Something essentially teaches students how to recognize their thinking and talk about it in pairs. I always model this with another teacher (whoever is free that period). I'll tell students today they are learning a strategy called Say Something and that this will be the foundation for the reading we do in class. I usually use some vignettes from Sandra Cisneros'
A House on Mango Street
. After I model one, I put the students in pairs and handout the rules for a Say Something (see Appendix). Beers also provides prompts/starters for each type of thinking the students are practicing: comment, clarify, question, predict, and connect. You can give students a copy of these or make flip charts as I do. I print them out on card stock and then cut them into squares, each square representing a different type of thinking. I punch a hole in the top corner and attach them with a key ring. Students can then constantly use them easily as they flip through them to help them articulate their thinking.
While students are practicing their Say Something with "A Rice Sandwich" I walk around with a transparency entitled Kid Talk. I script, capture word for word, two to three good thoughts I hear from students throughout their mini-discussions. When students are done, I process the activity, having students share strengths and weaknesses of the Say Something. I then add my observations and put the scripted thoughts on the overhead. In the left column I have the quoted conversations and then in the right column labeled "thinking good readers do" I have students figure out what kind of thinking they see. For example:
Kid Talk Thinking Good Readers Do
"If I were her, I would have told the woman that house wasn't mine."
Connection
"The woman was treating her badly because she assumes she's poor. That's discrimination!"
Comment
By doing this, students begin to see themselves as good readers, because I'm telling them they are thinking like good readers. Especially, with a class of students who have failed at being students, I need to take every opportunity to recognize the behaviors I want them to continue. I try to be sure to do this in a way that directly shows them how their
effort
brings them closer to the goal, rather than just saying "Good job."
The next step is then to teach students how to express their thoughts in writing through reader response. As they build their fluency as readers, I also want to build their fluency as writers. I start with the Write Something strategy, which is the same as Say Something except they write their thoughts instead. I'll take a short story that I can find online and then place strategic breaks in it, providing space to write. In class or at home, students will read and write something. The next day in class we will use these responses to begin developing a culture where students express their thoughts to each other by reading word for word their responses to a peer and then by sharing with the whole class through discussion.
The next two strategies come from our district curriculum, as well as current research: The I Wonder Why Question and Theory and Text Rendering. Using I Wonder Whys forces students to question what they read using higher-order thinking. After reading a text, students ask a why question - one that cannot be answered in the text. Then students need to create a theory for that question; basically they make an inference drawing a conclusion based on evidence from the text. Once they have a solid theory, I teach them how to show their reader and themselves why their theory makes sense by helping them trace their theory back to the text and to their world. In other words, once they've created a theory, they will then figure out what in the text and what in the world makes them think their theory makes sense. This is the beginning of a line of reasoning. What's great about this strategy is that students who normally aren't strong at making inferences get better at it before I even teach it. Students learn how their voice, questions and theories in this case, can interact with the voice of the characters and the writer.
Text Rendering, as described by Sheridan Blau in The Literature Workshop, is a multi-step process that teaches students to strategically reread. The poem "Two Kinds of Intelligence" by Jellaludin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, I read once out loud for students as they follow along with their eyes. Next, students will "Jump-In Read." "Jump-in requires one student to begin reading the piece for a short time, and stopping at a natural point in the text (the end of a sentence or paragraph). At this time any given student can jump in and continue reading. As our curriculum states, "'There is no hand-raising or protocol for determining who reads' (Blau 128). During the jump-in reading, students will also be underlining any words, lines or phrases that resonate with them" (9th Grade Curriculum 32). Students will then conduct a Pointed Reading where as I read, they join me reading aloud the parts they underlined. We then process why a pointed reading is an effective share-out strategy: learning what others think immediately, and seeing which words/phrases resonated with whom. This part is the beginning of hearing and being aware of the author's voice, and provides a nice transition into the next section of the unit. Lastly, students then look at their underlined passages and choose the most important word or phrase and write a healthy paragraph explaining why. Once students complete this, I explain to them they have begun the process of analysis, again showing how student effort is leading them to become strong readers, to finding their voices and those in the text.
The share out process, as we call it in class, is doubly important. One, because the poem itself discusses the difference between being academically smart and being intelligent, students can begin discussing their own academic ostracism indirectly. The contrast can be seen in the very first three lines of the poem: "There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,/ as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts/ from books and from what the teacher says," where Rumi explains/defines school-learning, the intelligence with which "you rise in the world." He discusses how this kind of intelligence is "ranked." In the first two lines of the third stanza, Rumi introduces this second intelligence: "There is another kind of tablet, one/already completed and preserved inside you." He describes this kind as "a spring," "[a] freshness." He ends the poem focused on non-academic learning, presenting it as "a fountainhead/from within you, moving out." Yes, academic knowledge and success are important in life, but the students need to realize they already have so much knowledge to share, so much intelligence already. What voices do they hear that convinces them of this? What voices tell them otherwise? How do we begin to listen to the voices that support and encourage us, while we drown out our own voice that tells us we cannot succeed? Further, they can begin to try to "hear" the writer: Which intelligence does Rumi hold in higher esteem? How do you know? Which does society hold in higher esteem? Your parents? You?
As often as I can I want them to start being metacognitive about their own academic careers so they can change the way they perceive themselves as students and so they can improve the way others perceive them as students. This issue of not being successful in school also is a thematic issue in the novel I will be starting with,
Bottled Up
by Jaye Murray. Students will already be thinking about the issue before they begin reading. Also, I want students really to pay attention to the voices of their classmates, and to learn to hear their voices in response. Thus, whenever we have discussions, students must listen with a pen - take notes, actively listen. I need to teach them directly what listening looks like (see "Finding Our Voice in the Classroom" for more on this) so I model listening with a pen and I
use their notes
all the time in the classroom. Once students have shared their most important word or phrase and explained why they chose it, the students then write in their journals "about whether or not they have changed their minds about the most important line or phrase. If they have, students will record the new passage and write why their thinking has changed. If they have not, the students will write about how and why their original thinking was affirmed" (Curriculum 32). (See appendix for prompts for this response.) We also need to be aware of the effect others voices have on us, on our thinking, and the affirm and adjust exercise focuses students' thinking on this matter.
All of the strategies I use here, I repeat throughout the year, building upon skills and helping students create more sophisticated responses to class books and their independent reading books during SSR, sustained silent reading. Students will continue the strategies as they read
Bottled Up
and as they begin learning how to find the author's voice.
