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What’s the Story?

2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00October 23rd, 2019|Classroom Teaching, General Education, Latest News, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Amy Smith

At the center of all advocacy work is a story. Reading Recovery has a rich tapestry of stories with compelling themes like renewal, transformation, and hope. Our data tells one piece of the story, but it obfuscates the human story. In the end, that’s the true story of Reading Recovery.  As a teacher leader, I understand the importance of advocacy. This year, my goal is to give teachers a more organized (and doable) way to collect the richest stories possible about their children. 

Teachers as Storytellers: The Sign Project
The teachers I work with are diligent, creative storytellers. In 2014, one of them, Alicia Kelley, came up with a brilliant idea based upon a Facebook campaign that shared personal stories of cancer survivors. Our teachers located over 200 current and former Reading Recovery students (from 1st grade to college senior) and asked them to describe something about their Reading Recovery experience. These messages were transcribed onto 8.5 x 11 signs and we photographed the children holding these. The Sign Project told their stories and helped us understand how profound our impact had been. We compiled all 200 stories into a book and used many in a video we shared with our school board, legislators, and community groups. This summer, I happened upon the book and stopped on the page with a beautiful, smiling child whose sign said “I can read, now.” Although I had seen that picture dozens of times, this time I realized part of this child’s story is missing. My mother (who is obsessed with renovation shows on HGTV) deserves the credit for my epiphany. Watching these shows with her helped me understand the most compelling part is the change, not the outcome. Think about it. Without seeing the house before the renovation, you miss the transformation. We need a way to tell the story of change, from the child’s perspective. 

As I thought about how to accomplish this, I looked for guidance from one of my trainers, Dr. Lindy Harmon. Her dissertation focused on the potential of Reading Recovery to shape children’s literate identities; a facet of our story we haven’t told well. Dr. Harmon and I adapted some of the data collection protocols from her study in order to capture children’s perceptions of themselves before, during, and after Reading Recovery.  We’re calling this effort, the Identity Project. 

2019-2020 Advocacy Work: The Identity Project
This year, teachers affiliated with Madison and Fayette County Reading Recovery sites in Kentucky will ask each child to draw a picture of themselves illustrating how they feel when they engage in reading in their classrooms. Then, using the adapted interview protocol, they will have a conversation with the child and record the responses. Although this is a work in progress, we plan to repeat this process in weeks 1, 5, 10 and at the end of the program. We are very aware that our children have unique paths, but selected these intervals to give teachers an organized process. I asked my teacher, Alicia, for her feedback on our plan. She suggested we also video our students reading at the same intervals to capture parallel changes in reading strength and feelings about the task. She said, “We have the artifacts that show their writing development and can show change with texts, but showing a child reading is much more compelling than the book itself.” Alicia is right! 

To organize this data, our teachers will upload scans of the children’s drawings, their interview responses and video clips to our Team Drive. Although analyzing qualitative data is complex (and we are grateful to OSU trainer, Lisa Patrick, for offering to support our analysis) I am excited to learn from the themes our teachers find! 

This is a single, tentative example of an effort to communicate the transformational potential of Reading Recovery. If you are reading this blog, I am certain you have additional ideas and examples to enrich this project or innovative ways we might share our story with stakeholders. Afterall, stories only resonate when they reach an audience. As an example, I was inspired by Michigan teacher leader, Maeghan McCormick, who shared that Michigan teacher leaders displayed posters with student stories in a gallery format during their regional conference. This Literacy Walk, arguably a much more poetic name than Sign Project, immersed conference attendees in the stories of their children. While I originally envisioned compiling another book of student stories, I’m suddenly thinking bigger about the eventual display! Maeghan’s willingness to share Michigan’s work led me to realize that even though the topic of this post is advocacy, the subtext is the importance of collaboration. Without colleagues like Maeghan, Dr. Harmon, Dr. Patrick, the Fayette County Teacher Leaders (Beth Magsig and Amy Emmons), and my always-thinking teacher, Alicia, our idea would be much less rich and exciting. 

Telling OUR Collective Story
As Reading Recovery professionals, we must be more intentional about sharing our ideas with one another. Imagine the tapestry of stories we can create with our collective voice. I encourage you to share your ideas by writing your own blog post. You can find more information about submitting a blog at Reading Recovery Connections. You can also share your ideas on advocacy with RRCNA Advocacy Committee Chair, Kelly McDermott.  And, if you decide to replicate the (still tentative) process described in this post, please share your findings with us.

 

Dr. Amy Smith is a Reading Recovery teacher leader in Richmond, KY. She has served as Chair of RRCNA’s Advocacy Committee and currently serves as RRCNA’s President Elect.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reading Recovery and the MSV Myth

2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00August 21st, 2019|Classroom Teaching, Latest News, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Jeffery Williams

Every culture across time has developed a set of stories, tales, and myths that were designed to help explain the complexities of the world.  Such lore is handed down across generations to explore how human strive for love, what happens when jealousy takes over, or to try to make sense of natural disasters or phenomena.  These stories, usually orally presented and often borrowed from others, evolve and change over time, helping to bring the wisdom of the ages to those who have had less time to ponder or less experience to gather from to understand the complexity around us.

We, as a Reading Recovery community, have one such tale in the oft cited myth that there are three cues readers use, meaning, structure, and visual, or that Marie Clay herself created this theory and the corresponding three-circle depiction that is familiar to most teachers.  Perhaps it originally was used to water down the complexity of the reading process for new teachers, in classrooms and in Reading Recovery, to make it easier to understand.  The purpose of this blog is to explore what Clay actually said and to remind us that such myths, though they may have been purposefully utilized at one time, also need to be checked against reality and not just adhered to because it is a story we have heard before that must be true.

 

“Three Cueing Systems”
Though other researchers have pondered the proliferation of the three cueing systems model, the most notable and thorough pondering came from Marilyn Adams’ 1998 chapter called, The Three-Cueing System.  In this piece, Adams examines the origins of the theory (finding that idea did not originate with Clay) and also discusses the pervasive misunderstanding that the three cues are not equal or that the visual system is somehow less important than meaning or structure. I agree that the view presented with the “three cueing systems” is limited for several reasons. Firstly, Clay did not advocate the idea that there are only three sources of information:

“According to the theory of reading behind these recovery procedures there are many sources of information in texts” (Clay, 2016).  Furthermore, she did not advocate the use of any one source as the sole basis of reading or making a word attempt, stating: “Different kinds of information may be checked, one against another, to confirm a response or as a first step towards further searching.” A careful reading of this statement uncovers that one source may be a first step towards further searching and that searching would always involve a close look at letters and sounds.

According to Adams (1998), the notion that the reader constructs the meaning of the text as jointly determined by lexical, semantic, and syntactic constraints had been a theme of the reading literature since the late 1970s.  She found that the problem was not with the three cueing systems schematic but with some interpretations that had become attached to it. For example, a common misinterpretation is that the position of graphophonic information in the Venn diagram with 3 circles as below the other two somehow diminishes the value and use of such information while reading. From a Reading Recovery perspective, we disagree with this interpretation and Clay spends an entire chapter on learning to look at print and states vociferously in the opening that:

Reading begins with looking and ends when you stop looking. Reading begins with passing information through the eyes to the brain. But the eyes do not just take a snapshot of the detail of print and transfer it to the brain,

  • The child must learn to attend to some features of print,
  • the child must learn to follow rules about direction,
  • the child must attend to words in a line in a sequence, and
  • the child must attend to letters in a word in left-to-right sequence.

    (Clay, 2016, p. 46)

Although Reading Recovery teachers analyze daily running records using meaning, structure, and visual, our analyses go well beyond MSV as we closely examine the records to better understand students’ strengths, to identify teaching goals, and plan the next lesson. To learn how to do this, as Reading Recovery teachers, we take weekly graduate coursework for an entire year during initial training and continue our learning through ongoing annual professional development six times per year. The depth of this training and the ongoing nature of a university support system enables us to identify the complexity of student behaviors and plan precise teaching to support increasingly complex reading and writing that goes well beyond just MSV.

 

Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
Perhaps because of the myth of the three-cueing system, critics have often supposed that visual information is not emphasized or taught in Reading Recovery lessons. This is quite untrue and is supported by nearly four decades of empirical research which show Reading Recovery’s strong effects across all domains, including phonics, phonemic awareness, and comprehension. For more information on some of these studies, please see the What Works Clearinghouse website. Also, on the What Works website is a recent 2016 publication from IES, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade, with Barbara Foorman as the chief author. It was commissioned to present recommendations “…that educators can use to improve literacy skills in the early grades…based on the best available research, as well as the experience and expertise of the panel members” (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 1). Research from Reading Recovery is cited 117 times by the authors in support of the panel’s four recommendations.  To demonstrate the alignment of some of Foorman’s key recommendations with typical Reading Recovery lessons, citations from Foorman (2016) and Clay (2016) are shown below:                                       

Foorman Recommendations Foorman Citations Clay Citations
Using Elkonin boxes in writing to develop phonemic awareness pp. 24, 26, 27 pp. 98, 100, 107
Procedures for learning letter-sound relationships through segmentation p. 19 pp. 58, 98, 100, 106, 107, 173
Procedures for using manipulatives such as magnetic letters for learning how words work pp. 19, 24 pp. 40, 58, 63, 68, 72, 91, 149, 151, 175
Teaching breaking words by syllables pp. 15, 16 pp. 95, 107, 149, 173
Teaching onset/rimes pp. 15, 16, 19 pp. 58, 107, 150, 153, 156, 160, 173
Teaching meaningful parts pp. 27 pp. 73, 107, 152
Teaching how to isolate and blend word parts smoothly p. 24 p. 96
Using writing to help with analogies with spelling patterns p. 26 pp. 90, 105
Within text blending by chunking or in smaller units within text p. 23 pp. 96, 144, 175
Avoiding guessing strategies p. 34 pp. 48, 101, 118
Reading connected text daily pp. 1-3, 22, 28, 32 pp. 20, 110-165

 

Interestingly, the Foorman document states, “When students encounter words that they find difficult to read, remind them to apply the decoding and word-recognition skills and strategies they have learned and to then reread the word in context … using prompts such as: ‘Look for parts you know.’ ‘Sound it out.’ ‘Check it! Does it make sense?’” (p. 34). These prompts are almost verbatim to Reading Recovery prompts (Clay, 2016) and seem to suggest that research favors using multiple sources of information to cross-check one against another and does not favor the use of any one source solely. 

A recent document for parents from RRCNA (2019), outlines how phonemic awareness and letter/sound relationships are taught in Reading Recovery:

  • Phonemic awareness is initially established with structured instruction during the writing component of the lesson.
  • Letter identification is taught using multisensory approaches and reinforced throughout the series of lessons to ensure fast, accurate recognition and discrimination.
  • Applying known letter sound associations and linking sound sequences to letter sequences is addressed in both reading and writing.
  • All new learning is applied and observed/analyzed in reading and writing every day.
  • Fast visual processing is supported as the child analyzes unknown words in stories by taking them apart on the run.
  • Your child will develop the advanced analysis skills needed for decoding multisyllabic words and will profit from classroom word work and study.
  • The teacher monitors your child’s daily progress in word analysis and re-teaches as needed. Many opportunities for applying new skills are provided daily across multiple reading and writing activities. (p. 3)

These references might clear up misunderstandings about Reading Recovery, particularly for those who think that Reading Recovery students are not taught phonics or phonemic awareness.

 

Value of Reading Connected Text
Reading Recovery’s daily use of connected, continuous text, where children cannot afford to rely on any one source of information entirely, is clearly an advantage  and is supported by Foorman’s report on the research: “Having students read connected text daily, both with and without constructive feedback, facilitates the development of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension and should begin as soon as students can identify a few words” (p. 32).  Two other recent publications—one from the International Literacy Association (ILA) and another from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA)—also offer suggestions that are supportive of the idea that reading continuous text daily, again because it demands that the reader not be able to rely solely on any one source of information, may be advantageous:

Students progress at a much faster rate in phonics when the bulk of instructional time is spent on applying the skills to authentic reading and writing experiences, rather than isolated skill-and-drill work. At least half of a phonics lesson should be devoted to application exercises. For students who are below level, the amount of reading during phonics instruction must be even greater. (Blevins, et al., p. 6)

And, in discussing the problem of “treatment resistant literacy difficulties” for students who have had a structured literacy approach and not shown evidence of success, IDA offers the following recommendation:

Another way to address this problem could involve placing a greater emphasis on text reading in intervention, which scientific investigators widely agree is an important aspect of intervention (e.g. Brady, 2011; Foorman et al., 2016; Kilpatrick, 2015), to help increase children’s exposure to real words.  This last idea might be effective if done early, before decoders have accumulated the enormous gap in reading practice characteristic of older poor readers in the upper elementary grades and adolescence (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Torgesen, 2004).” (International Dyslexia Association, 2019, p. 13)

 

Reading Recovery Research
While no single approach works for every child, Reading Recovery has the strongest evidence base of any of the 228 beginning reading programs reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse. Because of Reading Recovery’s impressive research base spanning decades, in 2010 the Department of Education provided $46 million to fund a 5-year scale up of Reading Recovery in schools across the U.S. In 2016, an independent research study of this scale-up was published by the Center for Policy Research in Education. The study was the largest randomized controlled trial “and one of the most ambitious and well-documented expansions of an instructional program in U.S. history” (May et al., 2016).

The results demonstrated Reading Recovery’s impressive effect sizes on comprehension and overall reading achievement. These effect sizes were replicated four years in a row and authors noted that “these are large relative to typical effect sizes found in educational evaluations. This benchmark suggests that the total standardized effect sizes…for Reading Recovery of 0.37, was 4.6 times greater than average for studies that use comparable outcome measures” (May et al., p. 42). This has been proven in both urban and rural settings, as well as with English learners. School districts invest in Reading Recovery training for teachers because of these documented successes for the past 35 years.

 

Myth or Reality?
The myth that Marie Clay was the origin of the three-cueing system model is certainly false as the readings of Clay demonstrate and as Adams confirmed.  And, the myth that Reading Recovery does not teach phonics or phonemic awareness, because the visual system is somehow less important, is also false.  So why then are these stories so closely linked to Reading Recovery?  I know that I saw a diagram of the three-cuing systems in my training nearly two decades ago.  I know that I have used a similar diagram when introducing running record analysis with classroom teachers.  I never intended it to supplant the idea of complexity, but perhaps had forgotten the essence of Clay’s warning when she wrote, “If literacy teaching only brings a simple theory to a set of complex activities, then the learner has to bridge the gaps created by the theoretical simplification” (2015, p. 105).  She was not only talking about children’s learning but our learning as well.  When diagrams or explanations water-down the complexity, we run the risk of learners ‘bridging the gaps’ on their own—filling in what is unclear with their own thinking or ideas that were never intended and that may or may not be helpful.  Clay believed that teachers wanted and needed exposure to the complexity of theory and research and once said, “…the challenge for me is to write those theoretical ideas for the academics and researchers but also for the teachers. I think they have a right to be able to read those in terms that they understand.  This has been one of my particular challenges…”  We must likewise refrain from over-simplifying the complexity of becoming literate with myths and stories for our explanations.

 

References
Adams, M. J. (1998). The three-cueing system. In J. Osborn & F. Lehr (Eds.), Literacy for all: Issues in teaching and learning (pp.73-99). New York: Guilford Press.

Clay, M. M. (2016). Literacy lessons designed for individuals (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (2015). Change Over Time in Children’s Literacy Development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov.

International Dyslexia Association (2019). Structured literacy: An introductory guide.  Retrieved from the International Dyslexia Association website: https://dyslexiaida.org/structured-literacy-works-but-what-is-it-introducing-idas-new-structured-literacy-brief/

International Literacy Association. (2019). Meeting the challenges of early literacy phonics instruction [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE: Blevins, et al. Retrieved from the International Literacy Association website: https://www.literacyworldwide.org/get-resources/position-statements

Reading Recovery Council of North America (2019). How Reading Recovery helps your child learn. Retrieved from the RRCNA website: https://readingrecovery.org/supporting-struggling-readers/

 

 

Jeffery Williams is a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader and K-12 Literacy Teacher Leader from Solon City Schools, Solon, OH.

How Do I Navigate the Roundabout in Reading Recovery?

2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00April 10th, 2019|Reading Recovery Teaching|

by Kim Reynolds

You know that feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when things are uncomfortable or unpredictable? It is not a feeling that I get very often, but it happens as soon as I’m trying to enter one of those crazy roundabouts. Wikipedia defines a roundabout as “a type of circular intersection or junction in which road traffic is permitted to flow in one direction around a central island, and priority is typically given to traffic already in the junction.” As soon as I’m ready to enter the roundabout, I start to panic and feel pressure to move quickly. Hysterically, this is the same uneasiness that I experience when I teach behind the glass.

Last year, I was given the opportunity to bring a challenging student behind the glass to provide a learning experience for my peers at our teacher leader ongoing professional development at The Ohio State University. I reluctantly accepted the invitation, remembering during my Reading Recovery training that I will always need to be tentative, flexible, and willing to problem-solve and collaborate. So there I was — ready to enter the roundabout and starting to panic. Surprisingly, the results of the lesson led to an invitation to participate with Mary Fried in one of the 2019 preconference sessions at the National Reading Recovery and K-6 Literacy Conference. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was a ‘what not to do’ or ‘try this, not that’ session. I pictured myself as the poster child. Fortunately, Mary didn’t agree with that mugshot image of myself. She wanted to focus on the problem-solving process that we use when we are working with a student who is challenging us. Her process included identifying the problem, issues, and weaknesses, and then seeking collaboration and more analysis. This is exactly what I needed. One of the quotes she referenced for this amazing process was from Charles Kettering: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

The Reading Recovery student who I taught in that behind-the-glass lesson was an English learner who had made accelerated gains but had plateaued. The lesson was pleasant, but I knew that I needed to make a shift in my teaching to lift her learning. I had entered the roundabout and was circling, knowing that my teaching and my student were the priority. I needed to listen carefully to my peers’ feedback as we problem solved together and remember that I had accepted their invitation for my learning and teaching. Their recommendations led to the biggest shifts in my teaching during the following two days. I was able to tentatively exit the roundabout with a plan of action. My videos over those next few days, which Mary insisted that I do, were powerful and revealing! I had actually not stunted my student’s literacy growth but was ready and empowered to support her next steps.

Those next steps also lead to my participation in the 2019 Reading Recovery preconference session entitled “Problem Solving Together: Learning from Children Who Challenge Our Teaching.” I was thrilled to work with my Ohio State University trainers, Mary Fried and Dr. Lisa Pinkerton, and teacher leader Jennifer Layne from Marion. Apparently, Mary wanted to highlight my roundabout journey and those of my colleagues. We didn’t realize it, but we were headed into the largest roundabout that we had ever encountered. It wasn’t just a single lane, but multiple lanes, and Mary was going to guide us through it. We would be able to navigate those lanes together through our collaboration and problem solving.

My school’s conference room became our think tank. As I sat in that room, I remember asking myself “What the hell am I doing?” and “What on earth can I contribute?” Mary had a vision and she wasn’t going to let anything get in our way, even my own insecurities. As we began to discuss the students who challenged us, Mary patiently, eloquently, and brilliantly tied it all together into an amazing learning opportunity. She methodically led us to utilize Clay’s work and helped us—through her questions and guidance—to better understand our students’ challenges, often redirecting us in a charmingly negative way. Mary’s notetaking, time management, and eye and ear for detail is astounding and focused us on our endless learning, questioning, and revising of our own teaching.

At the end of each of our sessions, I was exhausted and exhilarated! I realized that I will always be a learner and should not be afraid of the challenges — those roundabouts. Nothing is impossible when we work collaboratively and tentatively. My great uncle’s college roommate, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, said “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” Mary helped me to better understand this quote. I’m not afraid of those roundabouts anymore, not even the big ones.

 

Kim Reynolds is a Reading Recovery teacher leader in Dublin/Southwestern Schools, Dublin, Ohio.

The Power of the Cross-Check: No Penalties in the Reading Process

2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00March 26th, 2019|Classroom Teaching, Reading Recovery Teaching, Teaching|

by Jamie Lipp

My oldest nephew is a Division One college lacrosse player (proud aunt). Recently, we traveled to a game to watch him play. In the middle of an intense play, one of his teammates used his lacrosse stick with both hands to push another player from behind. Apparently, this is frowned upon, as whistles blew, flags flew, and an announcement was made that an illegal cross-check had occurred. One minute in the penalty box he went!

Witnessing this, it occurred to me the that the phrase ‘cross-check’ has multiple meanings. A homonym of sorts. The English language is funny like that. In sports such as lacrosse and hockey, a cross-check will send you straight to the penalty box. As for the reading process, the cross-check has a more positive connotation. And there are certainly no penalties for cross-checking while reading.

The dictionary defines the act of cross-checking as verifying one source of information against another. Cross-checking when reading is just that. Clay (2016) defines cross-checking as a strategic activity in reading where a child notices a discrepancy in his own responses and checks one kind of information with a different kind of information. It is an awareness, a closer look, a second glance, another attempt. A “something’s not quite right” observation resulting from self-monitoring.

So, why is cross-checking important? Cross- checking signals the child is becoming more active while reading. He is no longer inventing text, but rather, attempting to integrate multiple sources of information (meaning, structure, visual). He has self-monitored and is now ‘weighing up’ the possibilities. This increased awareness allows for attempts that become better, then more accurate, and ultimately, correct responses. Cross-checking requires the child to monitor the ‘bad fit’, search for alternative sources of information, and integrate these sources by checking the initial information he attended to against some other source of information (Clay, 2016). Essentially, the ability to cross-check is a golden ticket to reading independence.

Cross-checking must be taught for, observed, praised, and expected as our students progress as readers. We can teach for the development of the strategic action of cross-checking in a variety of ways. When reading, we must encourage students to use multiple sources of information at difficulty. Doing so requires careful modeling, prompting, and thinking aloud. Teachers can specifically point out when students have initiated cross-checking behaviors, and even when they have not. In the classroom, we can observe for cross-checking behaviors during guided reading lessons, shared reading, and especially through analyzing running records.

An observant teacher will identify the hesitations or multiple attempts that signal the child has self-monitored and is attempting to cross-check. This teacher will carefully analyze running records to notice where this occurs, how frequently, and what information sources were being integrated. When patterns emerge, the teacher can support the student to attend to the sources of information he is frequently neglecting. The cross-check challenges us to move our thinking beyond, simply, “he just doesn’t know that word” to teach for all that is happening within their processing systems. Further, attention to cross-checking behavior forces our awareness beyond an accuracy and self-correction rate, as it should be!

We expect our students to do more than simply decode the text at hand, as reading and decoding cannot be used synonymously. There is more than visual information to attend to while reading. Clay (2016, p. 135) tells us, “cross-checking on information is an early behavior.” Good news, this means we don’t have to wait until a student is reading high levels of text to expect it. And when we see it, we praise it, because we want it to continue.

Most importantly, we must acknowledge the power of the cross-check as a powerful strategic action that occurs throughout reading. In the classroom and beyond, understanding that hesitation a student makes, or a second (or third) attempt at difficulty to be a signal of higher-level processing is critical. Supporting this strategic action to become more frequent and sophisticated can “level the playing field” for our readers. The ball is in their court, or in the case of lacrosse, the stick is in their hands.

To our growing readers, cross-check away! To my nephew, stay out of the penalty box.

Go Knights!

Reference
Clay, M. M. (2016). Literacy lessons designed for individuals. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

 

Jamie Lipp is a Reading Recovery trainer at The Ohio State University. Follow her on Twitter @Jamie_Lipp.

Writing Workshop: Potential and Possibilities for Cultivating Purpose, Power, and Passion

2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00February 6th, 2019|Classroom Teaching, General, General Education, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Wendy Sheets

Writing Workshop is a context that has the potential to help students develop as writers within a literate community. As students learn to live as writers, building a repertoire of tools and strategies, teachers have a role in cultivating purpose, power, and passion in meaningful ways. All three are necessary and impactful elements of an exceptional, gratifying Writing Workshop.

Purpose
First, as teachers, we must consider the purpose of the workshop. Let’s face it: Our hope is for students to become increasingly better writers who create thoughtful, interesting, well-crafted pieces of writing, and who love doing it. Our purpose, then, is to provide daily, momentum-building opportunities for writers to experience something new so they may extend their repertoire of generative tools related to craft and conventions.

For our writers, their work only becomes relevant when there is a purpose for writing. Writing provides an outlet for writers to share thinking that is meaningful to them in some way. Purpose increases the level of investment. Therefore, writers need to have freedom and flexibility, along with guidance, to make choices about their topics, the genre and structure that best communicates their message, their audience, the research necessary to plan for their writing, the details they include, the paper, graphics, text features, font, and decision to publish. If a goal is for students to become lifelong writers, their writing should fit them personally, with ties to their own lives, experiences, and interests. As members of a writerly community, students learn about one another and more readily share what is personally meaningful as well. Within this context, writers engage with purpose each day as they work on creating that which is meaningful to them.

Power
Within the Writing Workshop, students gain power as their writing process is strengthened. This happens through experiences that include daily writing minilessons, independent writing and the use of a writer’s notebook, writing conferences, and share time.

Daily, whole-group writing minilessons provide explicit strategies for writers to extend their understanding about craft and conventions. Craft minilessons may be related to organization, idea development, language use, word choice, and voice, and all serve in making writing better and more captivating. Conventions minilessons may include any aspect of writing mechanics and grammar, allowing for writing to be understood and appreciated by an audience. Mentor texts enable authentic, meaningful demonstrations of craft and conventions. As writers take on new learning about craft and conventions, they add to their repertoire of possibilities to potentially try out with every piece of writing. Check out some examples I share in chapter 18 of the text Responsive Literacy (Sheets, 2018).

When writers plant seeds within their writer’s notebooks or apply new learning from minilessons to their own pieces of writing, they gain power and agency in constructing their work. Writing conferences support the thinking of each writer as instruction is differentiated during a writer-to-writer conversation. With opportunities to provide feedback, teach something new, coach as the writer gives it a go, and make explicit links to ways the writer may apply the learning to independent work, the instructional possibilities are endless. While writers gain power as their teacher comes alongside them to lift their thinking about one focus at a time, conferences offer additional benefits. According to Carl Anderson (2018), ““The relationships that grow out of writing conferences are not the by-product of conferring – they are one of the important goals, since these relationships are so central to students’ growth as writers” (p. 10). As students gain power as learners and also find meaning in discussing their work with you, their teacher, they are positioned as writers who have agency in making important decisions. The share time at the end of the workshop offers another opportunity for writers to share their work, learn from others, and for you to glean important insights that further inform your instructional decisions.

Passion
When writers engage with purpose and continue to develop in powerful ways, they often find themselves passionate about their work. Writing should be a joyful occasion. When it is viewed as drudgery or simply a school task that must be completed for the teacher, it is difficult for students to feel invested. I find that the reciprocal nature of reading and writing is important to tap into for many reasons, including building passion. When sharing and discussing a variety of high quality texts during Interactive Read-Aloud or Guided Reading, learners begin to engage differently. As they think deeply about texts – literally, inferentially, and critically – they may read with the eye of a writer. For instance, if I appreciate the way Ralph Fletcher uses the craft of metaphor in Twilight Comes Twice, I can try it out in my own writing. That’s exciting!

Passion develops when writers have choice, share the stories that are meaningful to them, and explore options for improving the craft of their writing. All of this is in service of communicating their message to their audience with purpose and power. Remember that hope I mentioned earlier in this article? Writing Workshop as a time and space where purpose, power, and passion are cultivated does offer the potential for students to become increasingly better writers who create thoughtful, interesting, well-crafted pieces of writing, and who love doing it. It’s up to us to cultivate – fertilize, plant, sow, grow, develop, and foster – that purpose, power, and passion. Think of the possibilities you’ll reap!

Anderson, C. (2018). A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conferences: Classroom Essentials. Heinemann: Cambridge, MA.

Fletcher, R. (1997). Twilight Comes Twice. Clarion Books.

Sheets, W. (2018). Writing workshop for grades 3-6. In P. L. Scharer (Ed.), Responsive literacy: A comprehensive framework (pp. 262-280). New York: Scholastic.


Wendy Sheets is an Intermediate & Middle Level University Trainer with Literacy Collaborative at The Ohio State University.  She will present two sessions during the upcoming 2019 National Reading Recovery & K-6 Literacy Conference in Columbus, OH: Coaching Around the Reading Process on Sunday at 1:30 pm and Literate Identities: The Power of Classroom Interactions on Monday at 3:00 pm

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