Reflecting on Writing about Reading with Kathy Collins

What's A Post-It Got To Do With It?

As teachers we have all asked that question as we tour our students bookshelves - What in the world do I do with all of those post-it notes? What am I looking for? What makes a "good" Post-It? 

                                             

What a beautiful fortune teller (sarcasm), so that's what was going on during independent reading . . . 

In our small group morning section with Kathy Collins, we are tackling this topic together.  We started out thinking about our questions and beliefs - What are our core beliefs about writing about reading?

As I consider this question, I think about the following excerpt from Janet Angelillo's classic book Writing About Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays: Grades 3-8, "Learning to respond powerfully to books is one of the great truths [we] will learn in school. It reflects [our] thinking and their learning lives. It takes many forms because it is so complex, as [our] learning lives should be. And it cannot be taught in one unit of three or four weeks, because it is too vital to [our] learning."

So here's what I'm thinking are some essential beliefs at the core as I reflect on writing about reading . .  . 

1. We need to provide students with multiple options for writing about reading.  Students responses to texts are so varied based on their personalities, experiences, intentions and learning styles.  

Question: How do we manage this as teachers? As teachers we depend on structures and routines that help us to look across the work of our students and hold against shared expectations, when responses are so varied, how do we provide students with flexible options and still 'manage it'? 

2. We need to practice what we preach.  If we want our students to write about their reading, we need to do it ourselves.  

3. This leads me to a third core belief, that our writing about reading needs to be purposeful and public. I think writers need an audience, and I think this is true for writing about reading, too. I know I write eager to see what others think about a book, article, poem etc. when I jot down thinking.  Students need to write to prepare for talk, 'think on paper', have others respond to their thinking. 

4. We are not satisfied with 10, which is the reason there is an eleventh CCSS in Reading for Literature K-5.  Students need to have a medium for responding to literature that supports deep interpretation ergo . . . . writing about reading.  

A fourth core belief is that in order for students to meet the ambitious expectations outlined in the CCSS, it important for us to create multiple opportunities for students to respond to texts - writing about reading is one possible path toward this goal.

CCLS RL 11. Respond to literature by employing knowledge of literary language, textual features, and forms to read and comprehend, reflect upon, and interpret literary texts from a variety of genres and a wide spectrum of American and world cultures.

Question: The standards seem to honor readers making connections to texts in the eleventh standard as we look across the progression at K-2, and then move toward interpretation and critique in 4,5: Do we agree with how the CCSS defines the eleventh standard in the progression?

5.  Writing about reading supports rehearsal for talk and if talk is so critical to learning, thinking and reading, then it is a non-negotiable for reading workshop teachers to provide students with explicit instruction in reading response so that the readers in our classrooms can prepare for grand conversations about literature.

Question: I am afraid that writing about reading can make reading feel cumbersome or rob students of  'reading for its own sake'. How do we ensure that writing about reading doesn't steal time from students just reading? I think this is a huge argument for teaching students to write-on-the-run, but at the same time I think meaningful reflection takes time - how do we strike a balance?

I hope to answer some of these questions this week and revisit these beliefs at the end of the week. How would you answer this question? What are beliefs at your teaching core for writing about reading?

Warming Up for July Reading Institute at TCRWP with an E-mail to Kathy Collins

Hi Kathy,

It is so great to hear from you.  I am in search of some of some of the items, but below are thoughts re: the questions that you posed in your e-mail. I am looking forward to a great week! Do you have a twitter handle - mine is @rscalateach. Thank you for reaching out and giving me this space to reflect.

Best,

Ryan

1) Where do you teach and what grade will you be teaching next year? How long have you been teaching?  If you're not a classroom teacher, what is your role in your school?

I teach in East Hampton, NY in a K-8 school known as Springs School.  It can be found at www.springsschool.org.  I have been teaching since September 2002 so this upcoming year will mark my eleventh year as a teacher.  I have taught fourth grade for the past ten years and will be teaching 3^rd grade next year.  This will be the first time I am attending a primary advanced section at a summer institute.  

Also, this upcoming year will mark the third year that I will be serving as a Literacy Co-Coordinator K-8.  Therefore, while I will be attending with a teacher’s hat, I will also be attending with the Literacy Co-Coordinator hat so that I can provide additional support for our K-2 teachers. 

I aspire to work as a staff developer with the TCRWP in the near future.  I was fortunate to find the project early in my career, and the TCRWP has been a source of knowledge and inspiration throughout my career.   We are an affiliate school with the project and our staff developer, Colleen Cruz, works with us several times across the year in grades 3-5.  In addition to our work with Colleen, we will have the support of a staff developer at K-2 next year.   I have had the privilege of hearing several of your keynotes over the past ten years, and love the blend of humor, inspiration, light-heartedness and wisdom embedded in them.  I am looking forward to spending the week learning alongside you and am delighted to be part of this group as we dig into this topic together.

2) What are your questions/concerns/issues about writing about reading/response to reading that you would like us to think about during our work together? Or what is your point of interest in this topic?

The idea of writing about reading has always been of interest to me and I want to study closely the possibilities of what this work might look like at the primary grades, in that, teachers at K-2 in my school have expressed the challenges of having kids use post-its, stop and jot and write about their reading in these earlier grades.  

I want to be able to support these teachers and show them the value of this work. 

The following are some questions that I have re: Writing about Reading and Helping Readers Craft Authentic Responses to Reading:

1. How can we ensure that writing about reading enhances the experience and is worth the time that it would take from reading?

2. What are some different options we can share with readers for managing the materials that support the work of writing about reading (think marks, post-its, charts etc.)?

3. At what point (grade), would we introduce readers to keeping a reader’s notebook? What are some of the differences between how K-2 readers would use the notebook to support their reading life versus 3-8?

4. Which (and how do the) components of Balanced Lit could support the writing about reading work students are doing (reading workshop, interactive read aloud, shared reading, guided reading)? How can social structures (reading clubs, partner work) support and further the writing about reading students are doing?

5. What are the horizons within the reach of K-2 readers in terms of interpretation and deeper reading of texts? What would a continuum of growth look like across the grades so that teachers could have a sense of what aspirations we might have for writing about reading across the grades?

6. One of the biggest challenges of writing about reading is that it often lacks audience with the exception of the teacher or a reading partner, what are some authentic genres for writing about reading that we can use with our K-2 readers?

7. What are some portable tools that we can make/use to support writing about reading in conferences and during small group work?  How can we design our classroom environment to support independence in writing about reading?

8. Technology is currently something I am very invested in so I am curious about how (and if) we can use technology and social media (Twitter, GoodReads) to support even our youngest students in responses to texts?   

3) What kinds of things do you need as a learner when you're participating in professional development?  In other words, what would help to make our five days together work really well for you?

I appreciate multiple opportunities to share thinking with partners and small groups of teachers. I like to leave these sessions with something to bring back to the school and artifacts that document some of the learning that we did, along with artifacts that I can use in the classroom to support students with their own writing about reading work.  

I learn through ‘doing’ so I appreciate a balance of seminar, and workshop where we have opportunities to plan and lead (practice) mini-lessons, conferences, small groups that will support student’s writing about reading.  

Summer is the perfect time to nourish our own reading life so I also value time spent reading both adult and children’s literature so that I can practice the work and speak to it as an insider, but also just to have the gift of enjoying stories and sharing our thoughts, questions, and insights about books with others.

4) What are your teaching strengths and struggles?

I think that a strength that I have is that I love getting to know students and connect with them as individuals, learning their interests and bringing that into our lessons, and conversations to boost engagement and motivation (but also just because I love getting to know the kiddos as 'little people'). 

I also have a deep investment in and ever-growing knowledge base of reading and writing workshop. I love to read, but I feel sometimes I am a bit unbalanced and read a lot of professional literature, when I should be reading more adult and children’s literature (reading for the sheer love of it).

I think that I can tend to take myself and the work we do too seriously and so sometimes I forget to find ‘the fun’ in my teaching.  

I feel like the pressures are so HIGH these days that sometimes it crowds out purpose and intention – almost causing me to lose sight (at times) of the reason I do what I do in the first place.

5) What are you looking forward to this summer?  

This year was one of the toughest of my career and I am looking forward to recharging my batteries and learning alongside like-minded colleagues.  I am attending the July Reading Institute and August Writing Institute.  I look forward to sunny weather, spending time at the beach and cherishing the time to read, write and spend time with family and friends.  

I hope to walk into the school in late August both refreshed and raring to go with fresh ideas and insights that will make me a stronger teacher than when I left school in June.

---

From: Kathy Collins 

To: Kathy Collins 

Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 5:38 PM

Subject: 2013 July Institute on the Teaching of Reading

Greetings, Everyone!

My name is Kathy Collins, and I'll be your section leader for your morning advanced section at next week's reading institute at Teachers College.  Our section title is officially, Writing About Reading:  Using Talk and Writing to Lift the Level of Comprehension.  I'm revising the title slightly to:  Responding to Reading: Teaching Children to Make Meaning and Find Significance in their Texts, Their Talk, and Their Ideas.  I will cover topics and details around 'writing about reading' but I also want to take a wider view of what is gained when K-2 children to respond to texts in a variety of ways. 

I'm really looking forward to our days of working and thinking together.  In looking over our roster, we have so many educators working in diverse roles in settings from all over the world.  It will be so wonderful to put our minds together to consider how to make response to reading (especially writing about reading) work for all learners...and all teachers!

In an effort to plan for days that will be closely tailored to your needs and interests, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions:

1) Where do you teach and what grade will you be teaching next year? How long have you been teaching?  If you're not a classroom teacher, what is your role in your school?

2) What are your questions/concerns/issues about writing about reading/response to reading that you would like us to think about during our work together? Or what is your point of interest in this topic?

3) What kinds of things do you need as a learner when you're participating in professional development?  In other words, what would help to make our five days together work really well for you?

4) What are your teaching strengths and struggles?

5) What  are you looking forward to this summer?  

Also, could you bring the following to  Teachers College, if possible ? (I know that some of you might be far from your schools at this point.)

a) an artifact from your classroom that means a lot to you or that represents you as a teacher (or a sketch/photo of an artifact)

b) a photograph (or a few) of your classroom and of a part of your school that you love (if possible)

c) your favorite read aloud book (picture book, chapter book, anything goes, as long as you and your kids LOVED it)

d)  a grown-up book you're reading 

Thank you so much for taking the time to consider these questions and list of items.  If you are able to respond before the institute begins, that would be great! I wish you smooth travels.  See you next week!

Warmly,

Kathy Collins

Courage

This year my word is courage – The courage to take risks and forge new paths. I find myself at a crossroads in many places in my life, and don’t want the decisions that I make to be shaped by a fear of the unknown (or the voices of others), but by courage and heart (my own inner voice). I appreciate the words of Steve Jobs in the quote below . . .

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs

"We will forever remember the places in which we've played" (Donald Graves comment from In the Company of Children by Joanne Hindley).  I also promise to remember that I chose teaching because kids are fun.  Even with all of the external pressures pressing down on us, I don't want to forget that we learn best when we are engaged in what we are doing, and what does it mean to be engaged, when all is said and done, engagement, at it's highest level, is about having fun, being interested, igniting passion, loving what we are doing and so I want to always remember to infuse work with a little bit of fun.

Workshop Resolution

Conferring is the heartbeat of workshop teaching.  In order to teach well; learn to confer well.  Although the coaching institute was interrupted due to a hurricane, what I learned in those few sessions will provide me with much to reflect on in the coming months. 

Over the next few weeks, I am going to really work at growing stronger at conferring.  It feels like a critical component of conferring is the research.  It can make you or break you.  The research lays the groundwork for all of the other components of a conference.  It is differentiation at its best.  When you research well, you provide yourself with a storehouse to draw on for your teaching.  Here are a few tips for researching well from the TCRWP.

• Try to be conversational in tone.  We are more likely to be honest and demonstrate investment when we feel comfortable, cared for, and at ease.
• Keep notes to help you forge a pathway of learning.  Otherwise, our conferences will be like a game of hop-scotch and will lack traction.  Traction provides students with additional practice and scaffolding – a trajectory of growth.  This will allow you to layer your teaching and ensure that your conferences are driven by visible goals and feedback.
• Always take a few moments to observe the writer – What are they almost doing? Skim their writing and look for patterns.  This will help you formulate strong research questions. Why did you  . . . ? What were you or are you trying to do here? Point to their writing when researching – It will help ground your teaching, but be careful to look for patterns – not too specific – otherwise you will fall into the trap of teaching the writing instead of the writer.
• Try to stay away from the content. Instead ask the writer: What strategies have you been using? What goals or plans are you working on? Ask: What do you plan to do next?
• It helps to think about lenses through which you can confer.  Find out what a student knows about a particular writing habit or skill.  This will help you stay within the students ZPD.
• Stay inside the research part of the conference for a while – after pursuing one line of inquiry – ask a question designed to take you on another.  Look for multiple learning pathways.  Only after researching for a while, should you decide and choose what to compliment and teach.

Things to Keep in Mind When Working with Striving Writers within a Whole Class Community

I have learned a lot about this particular topic from mentors, such as Lucy Calkins, Katherine Bomer, Mary Ehrenworth, Colleen Cruz, and Chris Lehman over the years.  Here are some of the bigger ideas I have extrapolated from conversations, speeches and/or workshops I have attended.

Principles We Can Reflect on When Working with Striving Writers

1. Expect ALL students to achieve goals in writing and celebrate milestones toward those goals.
2. When students are able to complete the work with independence, the modifications are successful.
3. Build on a student’s strengths versus focusing or working on areas of weakness all of the time.
4. Be explicit when teaching writing stamina (Quantity before Quality, at least, at first) – Teach into it – it doesn't happen overnight.
5. Help students discover his/her writing passions – Ralph Fletcher calls these life topics, which are topics we revisit again and again.

Some Practical Tips to Keep in Mind when Working with Striving Writers

• Keep teaching points the same for all students – the way that students access the teaching point will vary.
• Modify the levels of support needed for students to learn the teaching point according to the strengths and needs of all students.
• The work will look different from student to student, however, the process students will have gone through, will have been similar.
• Focus on the main objectives of a UoS (Unit of Study) and or m.l., rather than getting caught up in the small details – what are the big goals of the unit – see CCLS for direction with this in planning.
• Read aloud the child’s writing to him or her on a somewhat regular basis, and do it with an incredible read aloud voice (read it as literature).  Calkins calls this reading it ‘like it’s gold’
• It helps to think in 3s – What are three goals for this student inside of this unit?  Remember that we can build smaller milestones into larger goals.
• Provide students with alternative methods for planning and drafting: storyboarding/booklets, planning boxes, webs, index cards
• For ELLs, encourage sketching and labeling as an access point to expressive language.

Community is everything.  Build a place that honors struggle, reflection and goal-setting. Make all kids an expert at something, so that we have ‘go-to’ people for help.  Create charts that teach.  Recognize and celebrate the efforts of all, while nudging writers toward new heights and more ambitious goals.

Teaching Large Scale Revision: Working with Our Most Proficient Writers

Here are some more notes from the past, looking for principles that still hold true.  I think it becomes all too EASY to leave our most proficient writers to their own devices, after all, these writers "get it" and often do what we teach them, but how do we take them even further? It is our job to teach ALL of our students to grow.  Do our most proficient writers reach their full potential in our workshops? 

It would seem that the habit of mind that would most support these writers would be teaching them how to make their revision work in more meaningful and complex.  After all, revision is a habit of mind, and when writers develop this habit and learn to do it well, it causes them to approach writing with a more reflective stance, work with increased independence, and of course, lifts the level of their writing.

Trouble We Encounter with Proficient Writers

These writers often do EVERYTHING we teach them

At times, these writers are reluctant to take risks (teacher-pleasers)

These writers sometimes see revision as something I did wrong

These writers look at revision as too much extra work; and need to learn to see revising as an art.

These writers might move through revision TOO fast, this work helps them to slow down

Think about them as professional writers, look at their writing with an adult lens (professional writer), but translate into words that are accessible to kids.  “At its core, the truth of the matter is, revision is matching what is in your heart with what is on the page.”  

Logistics and Content

It helps for students to write on one side and skip lines when drafting because it makes it easier to draft and revise across pages and manipulate scenes in order to revise on a larger scale versus a line or word here or there. The following are some tips for large scale revision shared at a TCRWP reunion in 2007 with an all-star staff developer (who happens to be our staff developer, Colleen Cruz):

1. Writers ask themselves questions about their writing to help plan their revision work, such as: Where is the trouble or tension (that's what makes it interesting to read)? Who is the audience? Does it make sense?
2. Writers experiment with different structures that highlight the important parts of their pieces (flashback, flash forward, framing etc.)  There are two parts to stories: the outer stories (actions/reactions); the inner stories (feelings/responses). Often call external and internal.
3. Writers consider the pacing of the text at different places and make changes (sentence structure, punctuation, content) to help slow the reader down, or speed them up.
4. Writers work with intention - uniting what seem to be unconnected pieces in order to create layers
5. Writers revise dialogue, making sure to break it up for rhythm and timing.  Ask: What work do we want dialogue to do in this scene? Again, we see we’re coming back to intention and the writer's purpose.
6. Writers use objects as metaphors that will match their intended meaning, making sure it is placed with care and weighted throughout the piece (don't bang the reader over the head with it) so that the message resonates with the audience.

Don't Forget the Craft

There's a Fine Line between Craft and Crap: Let's Not Cross the Border

In 2007, I attended a keynote address, Lester Laminack was the speaker, at the TCRWP August Writing Institute and was doing some fall cleaning and re-reading some notes.  It was the first time I ever heard Lester speak, and I must admit that, even now that I have heard him on several occasions throughout the years, I still feel like the kids (and teachers) are fortunate to have such a gifted orator and author in their midst.  I think it is powerful to revisit notes from several years ago and see what advice still holds true in these changing times, what gems we might have forgotten over the passage of time, and how thinking has evolved from that point.

Lester began with sharing that in "all forms of art; simplicity is elegance".  There is an inherent danger when we focus on craft in isolation - students tend to over generalize.  This is not surprising, in that, Brian Cambourne, the renowned Australian educational researcher, explained that approximation is one of the principles of learning.  It's that place where we're not quite sure if we've got it right, but because it's new and we're excited about what we are learning, we tend to overuse it.

Lester went on to encourage teachers to “bathe children in the language of the things we hope that they will write.” How often do we do this? How often do we invite children to write just like (name the author)?  In the 1980’s, during the whole language movement, teachers often made the mistake of drowning kids versus immersing them in language.  Here is where we fell into the trap of just teaching kids HOW to do it, and often neglected the more important WHEN and WHY of using it in our writing.

Lester explained, that “technique should serve the writer’s intention.” Encourage writers to form theories about WHY the writer applied the craft to that particular place.  What effect was it intended to have on the reader?  I think that when I enter classrooms where writers are having trouble find the heart of their stories, it is often because they're unsure about their intention. 

We need to make sure that, first and foremost, writers recognize that our classrooms, our schools and our communities are places where their stories matter.  An all important question to guide our conferring is: Why are you writing this PARTICULAR piece? Who do you hope will read it? What are you trying to show/say? 

According to Lester, “the teaching of and application of craft should be designed to fine-tune the writer’s intentions so that their readers are able to interpret the author’s meaning. Authors are intentional and deliberate about their craft decisions in a text, we can teach our writers to approach their writing with the same stance, and when rehearsing, choosing, developing, drafting, revising and editing it’s all about making the meaning clearer – it’s all about intention. How do you approach the teaching of craft? I think it’s an important question – in that – the CCLS seem to highlight structure, organization and elaboration? What about craft? Do we still feel like it has a place in our teaching?  To learn more about Lester's books and advice for writers, teachers and schools, visit the following website: http://www.lesterlaminack.com/index.htm