The Power of Engaging in Genre Study as Readers

by Toni Czekanski, Intermediate/Middle School Trainer

Noticing, sorting, and classifying.  We start doing this when we are toddlers: putting red blocks in one pile and blue in another.  We call the piles by their names:  “the blue blocks,”  “the red blocks.”  Later on we notice that there are some letters of the alphabet that have tails and some that have stems.  Some have neither, and we sort them into groups as we learn to copy them and name them.  When people read to us, we begin to notice that some books have similarities, and understand that there are happy endings, villains, heroes, and magic.  We come to expect these things and even predict who will appear next or what the outcome will be.  We know it will be a happy ending no matter what.

Genre study is like that.  You collect many examples of texts within a genre and each day read one aloud to your students, allowing them time to enjoy the text and talk about what they are thinking about it.  Later, you come back to consider what they have been noticing about the books they’ve heard.  What are the similarities?  What are the differences?  You begin to create a list of common traits.  Once they begin to notice these characteristics, you provide even more texts within the genre that they can explore on their own.  They cannot help but notice even more.  You have activated their thinking and together you work to form a working definition of what a particular kind of text is.  Together, you define the genre.  How is this helpful to them as readers?

In their text, Genre Study: Teaching with Fiction and Nonfiction Books, Fountas and Pinnell say, “Through experience with texts, readers recognize common elements, as well as ways that texts in the same genre can vary.  They use their knowledge of the predictable elements as a road map to anticipate the structures and elements of the text they are reading”  (2012, p. 11).  Think back to your own experiences as a reader.  If you loved mysteries and read a lot of them, it was not long before you were spotting clues and differentiating between those that mattered and those that were potential red herrings designed to lead you off the track.

Readers who are hooked on one genre and read many texts come to learn the bones of that genre and anticipate what they will encounter even before they begin to read.  Being able to anticipate the structure or other elements of a text frees the mind to look more closely at other aspects of the text.  For readers, this is a helpful tool that can enhance not only what the they understand about the author’s message or meaning, but also how the author crafted the text to support and develop that meaning within the structure of the text.

If you make time in your reading instruction to delve into genre study, you will be helping students to investigate texts more closely.  This close reading and rethinking will help them consider how and why authors write books.  “Knowing these features helps you begin to comprehend a text even before starting to read.  You have expectations and a kind of in-the-head graphic representation of what the text will be like – how the information will be presented and organized” (Fountas and Pinnell, 2012, p. 11).  These expectations are not only applied to this text, but to other similar texts.

When studying genre in the classroom, many teachers do so through inquiry as outlined above.  This process of inquiry in itself teaches students that they can apply these steps to analyzing other genres as well.  Students learn that if they examine several texts from a particular genre, they will begin to notice characteristics that are true across the genre.

Even without your help, they will form conclusions about how the genre works and what to look for and expect as they read other texts that are similar.  “Taking an inquiry stance enables students to learn how to learn.  They become empowered and develop a sense of agency…they believe in themselves and their ability to find out, and the process itself is inherently pleasing to human beings” (2012, p. 5-6).

Learning about genre with your students can have far-reaching benefits.  As readers it helps them to look at texts more closely, and have meaningful discussions with one another about how the author’s decisions affect the way the text works.  Students can use specific examples to support their thinking about the text as they write about it.  As a teacher, you build the confidence in understanding the genre that will help you take your students deeper through your modeling and prompting as you engage in the work together.

Professional Development in Genre Study For Teachers

If you are interested in learning more about genre study, consider attending the four-day Summer Literacy Institute, Genre Study: Teaching With Fiction and Nonfiction Books in a Reader’s Workshop, Grades K–8 with Irene Fountas and Lesley University faculty from July 15–18, 2013 in Cambridge, Mass. This is a process-oriented, hands-on literacy professional development event. The format and structure of this institute will be very different than previous summer institutes. You will leave this institute with a genre study plan that you created, ready to use in your classroom.

Crafting Digital Writing

by Guest Blogger Troy Hicks

Author, Associate Professor of English, Central Michigan University, and 2013 Literacy for All Conference Speaker

They text, tweet, and meet.

They skim, surf, and share.

They post, pin, and share their lives through the screen.

They are our children and students, our digital writers. Their work can go from the palm of their hand out to the entire web in just a few clicks.

But, digital writing is about more than pushing buttons. Just because our students can text, tweet, or post doesn’t mean that they are always doing it in productive, responsible, or ethical ways. We want them to find, evaluate, and synthesize information from a variety of sources.  We can help them utilize the information that they have found to develop multimedia texts. We need to teach them how to be critical and creative digital writers.

In my article published in NCTE’s Classroom Notes Plus, I describe how students can explore the concept of “copyright” by using Wikis as a tool for collaborative inquiry. By creating a shared workspace, developing authentic scenarios for students to problem solve, and making their work public, you can take advantage of the Wiki’s convenience while also documenting individual students’ contributions to the overall project.

Another possible use for Wikispaces comes in the form of crafting digital essays. Built on an idea from Jim Burke that he shared on the English Companion Ning, we can think about how to help our students create digitally enhanced essays with appropriate hyperlinks, images, and videos. But, this is about more than just inserting links or images; indeed, we want students to think purposefully about how they are crafting their digital writing for different audiences and purposes. We need to ask critical questions about why and how they are including such media. For instance:

• How long is the writer’s overall digital essay, and what proportion of the essay offers links to outside sources?
• Did the writer create additional pages with original writing to support his or her ideas, or are all the links to outside sources?
• How do the images and videos chosen enhance the overall argument of the essay rather than simply decorate it?

By using questions like these during instruction and assessment, you will help guide your writers through the process of effectively crafting a digital essay where the sum total of words, links, and images really do equal more than the individual parts.

In his new book with Heinemann, Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres, Troy Hicks helps teachers understand and explore the ways that writers have traditionally used writer’s craft while exploring new opportunities for crafting web-based texts, presentations, multimedia, and social media. 

 Troy is presenting at this year’s Literacy for All Conference in Providence, R.I., sharing ideas about how to help your students to craft effective digital writing across multiple forms of media. His sessions on November 4 and 5, 2013 will include Creating a Classroom Wiki For Your Digital Writers and Raising Digital Writers. 

Mapping Writing Units of Study…GPS Style

by Jessica Sherman, Primary Literacy Collaborative Trainer

At our Early Literacy Institute this summer (grades PreK–1), Matt Glover will be spending time discussing his new book Projecting Possibilities for Writers: The How, What, and Why of Designing Units of Study that he wrote with teacher Mary Alice Berry. Those of us who have experience using a writers’ workshop- complete with minilessons, mentor texts, individual writing conferences, and sharing – have seen the multitude of benefits.  We also understand the underlying tension of what Matt and Mary Alice describe in their book as the “flexibility vs. planning dilemma.”

Writers’ Workshop has allowed teachers to meet the needs of the writers in their class by supporting them in whole group, small group, and individual teaching scenarios. Teachers have helped students read like writers. They have helped students notice the craft and conventions of writing used by mentor authors, so that students might begin to see themselves as authors and try to use these techniques in their own writing. They have learned about teaching the writers in their class rather than teaching how to improve the writing.

Navigating a successful writers’ workshop is a student-driven experience, and teachers have come to appreciate the benefits of being able to “follow” their students.  The day-to-day or week-to-week decisions that are part of this responsive path for teaching can feel incredibly freeing.  On any long journey, however, one questions always emerges -  “Are we there yet?” With no destination in mind, this trip can become meandering and endless.

Whether it is considering the proficiencies in The Continuum of Literacy Learning, meeting the demands of The Common Core State Standards or other state standards, fulfilling grade level genre expectations dictated by the district, or trying to coordinate cross-curricular units of study, teachers want to strategically coordinate their plans to take students where they need to go. Yet, they still want to be able to change course at any given moment to meet the needs of the students.

That’s why it’s always nice to have a map – not just a map with one straight line connecting the starting point and ending point through a series of sequenced steps, but one where teachers can “recalculate” at any point and still move towards their ultimate destination. Just like a good GPS provides us with a tentative route, but can reroute us if we need to stray, an effective writing curriculum map provides the same flexible guidance.

With Matt’s guidance, the primary grades faculty at our Center will spend four days taking teachers through a process for creating rigorous, responsive, flexible writing units of study across the year.  During their time at Lesley, teachers will design a (tentative) map for writing across the year and fully project a writing unit of their choosing.  There is still time to register for this exciting learning opportunity. Join us!

Articulating a Literacy Vision for your School

by Irene Fountas, Director, Center for Reading Recovery & Literacy Collaborative

What are your beliefs and your vision for the literacy lives of students in your school?

Take a few minutes to jot down your beliefs or brainstorm with colleagues. If you are a school administrator, you might gather your faculty team for this activity. Think together about how you believe students should spend their time in a school day.

My beliefs are that students deserve to grow up literate in schools, engaging in the authentic literacy activities of thinking, talking, reading, and writing about books. Books are the center of thinking and talking about ideas, and students learn that they are responsible for supporting the literate lives of their peers.

Each student has the opportunity to choose books to read and experience a wide range of topics and genre through read alouds and book discussions. All students engage with appropriate texts that are intellectually stimulating as they build their language power. Alongside the opportunities for age appropriate text experiences, students deserve texts that support their ability to expand their reading power ­­­­across increasingly challenging texts. With these leveled texts, the teacher can scaffold the readers and support forward progress.

Lastly, readers need frequent opportunities for choice, independent reading to build their mileage and tastes as readers.

Students also need to build their writing lives through frequent writing opportunities for real purposes and audiences. They learn to write from writers, noticing their craft and becoming their apprentices. With explicit teaching in minilessons and writing conferences, the teacher supports the expansion of writing power. Small group guided writing lessons support the student’s common writing needs.

I believe this vision of authentic literacy offers students the multiple layers of rich, meaningful learning that they deserve. Think about your vision of how students would spend the day enjoying literacy and gaining the competencies they need.

It may help to write your vision so it can be referred to and revised.

If you are a school leader, gather your faculty team to create your school vision. You may want to consider joining me and my colleague, Cindy Downend this summer for a four day seminar in Cambridge, Massachusetts to learn how to lead with a powerful vision that enables every student to succeed. Visit our website to learn more.

References

Fountas, I., and Pinnell, G.S. (2006). Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading, K–8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fountas, I., and Pinnell, G.S. (2011). The Continuum of Literacy Learning: Grades PreK–8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fountas, I., and Pinnell, G.S. (2001). Guiding Readers and Writers: Teaching Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Dive in, but don’t drown

by Wendy Vaulton, Senior Researcher

In an era of information overload, figuring out what to do with data can feel a bit like drinking from a fire hydrant. Not only is the volume of data sometimes overwhelming, but information from different sources often seem to conflict with each other. How often have teachers found that state test results don’t mesh with classroom assessment results? The end result can be confusion and paralysis. So, how can you move forward and find meaningful, actionable information in a sea of data? This is the first in a series of posts to help you figure out how to move forward in looking at data without getting overwhelmed.

First, it is imperative to be clear about your questions. When we take information in without a sense of direction or purpose, it is easy to jump to the most obvious and sometimes misleading conclusions.  Then, we take premature action and become frustrated with a lack of meaningful change. To avoid this, work with your colleagues to identify the questions that matter most to your school. These questions should be aligned with state and district goals, but should also reflect the concerns and issues that are unique to your school and/or classroom. Once you are clear about the questions that matter most, then you can begin to figure out whether they can be answered with the information you have.

Second, be assured that you don’t need special skills or equipment to dive safely into data. You just need honest curiosity and a willingness to explore (knowing how to use Excel doesn’t hurt, but isn’t critical). Empower yourself to examine one source of data in-depth rather than trying to take in everything at once.  For instance, spending time with colleagues examining state ELA test results by item may lead to more actionable results than looking at a stack of different assessments all at once and comparing results. Digging deeply into a single source will allow you to explore which kinds of questions seem to trip up which students. What do these patterns say about student learning? What implications do they have for instruction?

When digging into data, it is much easier to visualize trends using graphics. Pie charts and bar graphs are easy to make in Excel and can convey a world of information that it is impossible to absorb when looking at numbers in a table.

• Helpful resource #1: Several online resources can help you graph your data. All you have to do is choose the type of graph you want and input the information. A list of these web resources can be found at http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Graphing+Tools

• Helpful resource #2: If you don’t have a lot of tech capacity, think about using an online resource like Fiverr.com where people market their services for five dollars. Just don’t forget about student privacy if you are going to ask someone else to graph your data.

The idea of data driven decision making is not to try to understand everything going on at once. Better to get a real answer to one narrow, but meaningful question than a superficial answer to a dozen. By digging deeply into a single data source, we give ourselves room to think deeply and strategically. Stay tuned for next time when we’ll talk more about the process of digging into data to inform instruction.

How Can Complex Texts Ever Work for Below-Grade-Level Readers?

by Guest Blogger Jennifer Serravallo- Literacy Consultant, Author, and 2013 Literacy for All Featured Speaker

For readers, practice matters. Volume of reading matters. As we think about the Common Core State Standards’ goals, experience is a better word than practice—a word that carries baggage of activities around reading.  If we want children to be good at reading, they need long stretches of uninterrupted time to read[i]. Amount of time spent reading is directly linked to reading success[ii] and success as students overall[iii].

Yet all independent reading is not created equal. Research has shown that children’s reading time is often wasted when they are not matched appropriately to books that they can read with accuracy, fluency, and comprehension[iv]. If we wreck students’ motivation by presenting books at their frustration level we will simply make them feel deficient. Students who find pleasure in reading naturally take on books at higher and higher levels as they mature, and get book recommendations from peers and teachers. As they read, they do all the rigorous questioning, imagining, analyzing, and learning that is a part of being in an engaged state of reading. Students’ minds literally can’t get to higher-level thinking if their cognition is so mired in tackling vocabulary, content, and concepts for which they are not developmentally ready — or if they are bogged down trying to just figure out what the words say, being forced to use decoding strategies in every sentence.

So on behalf of all readers, but especially readers who struggle, we have to resist the pressure to meet this new mandate for reading complex texts by replacing students’ just-right reading materials with grade-level texts. It’s magical thinking to assert that every child will suddenly comprehend tougher texts if we merely raise expectations. Research simply does not support that this will make the biggest difference in improving their skills as readers. We need to have a strategic approach, supporting students’ reading of grade-level texts while also meeting students where they are.

First, use effective assessment tools to accurately determine a just-right independent reading level using whole texts and identify goals to support each study. Provide many hours each week for students to read independently — at their independent level — as they practice, and to support students with one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class lessons.

Second, give all students access to grade-level texts by carefully planning close reading lessons using short, “worthy” passages that offer opportunities for instruction. These close-reading lessons may be in small groups or whole class. In my view, close-reading instruction should never interfere with the sacred minutes set aside for independent reading; it is an additional time, as part of an overall balanced-literacy approach. Of course, what students learn can — and should — be applied to their independent reading. Keep in mind that it’s the high-level reflection and discussion we do with texts that cultivate students’ intellectual capacities to a large degree, and not the texts alone. Further, long and dense texts don’t necessarily trump shorter ones in terms of opportunities for college-level analysis.

For example, a teacher can take a level S picture book like Patricia Polacco’s Pink and Say, about a friendship between a Confederate and a Union soldier during the Civil War, and help students comprehend and discuss its themes and ideas with sophistication rivaling a Rhodes scholar reading Shakespeare. It’s not always the text; it’s what you do with it.

Jennifer Serravallo, a featured speaker at the 24^th Annual Literacy for All Conference (November 3–5, 2013 in Providence, R.I.), is the co-author of Conferring with Readers (Heinemann, 2007), and author of Teaching Reading in Small Groups (Heinemann, 2010), and Independent Reading Assessment: Fiction and Nonfiction for grades 3, 4, and 5 (Scholastic, 2012 and 2013).

Jennifer will be presenting two workshops, sponsored by Scholastic, Inc., at this year’s conference:

• Informational Texts: The Intersection of Complexity and Skills (Grades 3–6)
• Lenses and Lessons For Informational Text Reading (Grades 3–6)

We have launched our registration for this year’s event with more than 100 workshops for teachers, literacy coaches, and Reading Recovery educators.

 

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[i] Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1989; Haynes & Jenkins, 1986; O’Sullivan et al, 1990; Zehr, 2009

[ii] Anderson, Wilson & Fielding, 1988

[iii] Krashen, 1993; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991; Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993; Allington, 2001; Pressley, et al, 2000; Taylor et al, 2000

[iv] Gambrell, Wilson & Gantt, 1981; Allington, 2001; Ainley, 2006; Fink, 1995; Guthrie, 2004

Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Five-Paragraph Essay

by Elizabeth DeHaven, Intermediate/Middle School Faculty

The other day I was talking to a friend who teaches a writing course required for all students at Harvard, and it occurred to us that the five paragraph essay plagues writers at both the elementary and university level, and if I were to guess, middle and high school teachers feel the same way.  In elementary school, we strive to teach children to view themselves as writers, be risk takers in trying out literary techniques, and share openly with their writing community.  We introduce and help them construct a deep understanding of a variety of genres and make choices in pairing genre, purpose, and meaning. We teach them to read like writers in order to build the self-sustaining process of learning more about writing from real writers and real writing.  We provide time for experimentation and choice.  We look at the “rule breakers” and hypothesize their purpose and meaning.  We think about the effects those broken rules have on the reader. And then, we break the rules and join the ranks of the skilled rule breakers we’ve grown to love, admire, and understand.

Somewhere along the way in the academic careers of students, the rules become paramount and the key to their futures rests in a neatly packaged, five-paragraph essay, complete with an introductory paragraph, thesis, and body paragraphs that include topic sentences and supporting details, which are all tied together in the conclusion.  And, when they succeed at writing this essay, they gain admission to some of the most competitive colleges and universities in the country where they are enrolled in mandatory composition courses designed to break the rules of the five-paragraph essay.

So what happens when we let test writing interrupt and dominate the writing lives of our students?  Purpose and genre become unnecessary, revision obsolete, craft dispensable.  Enjoyment suffers and students lose their identity as authentic writers.  And, what’s worse, they allow a test to determine whether or not they are “good” writers.  As educators, if we allow test writing to be just what it is—a confined and discrete part of our writing curriculum–and continue to see beyond the limitations of the five paragraph essay, we will have time to teach our students to write well.