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Using prompts for feedback

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Jennifer Serravallo's The Reading Strategies Book is out now. In this video, Jen discusses how teachers can guide the practice when students learn new strategies .

Jen talks about the awareness that, if she is doing most of the talking in a conference as a teacher, then she is also doing most of the thinking work. So, in The Reading Strategies Book, each strategy has a list of prompts-short questions, directives, compliments-that keep the student active in thinking and learning.

Find more blogs about Jennifer Serravalloand visit The Reading Strategies Book's official page.

Learn about Jennifer Serravallo's Professional Development offerings here.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A literacy consultant and researcher, Jennifer Serravallo is the best-selling author or coauthor of the Heinemann titles Teaching Reading in Small Groups, Conferring with Readers, and The Literacy Teacher's Playbooks, Grades K-2 and Grades 3-6. Her newest book is The Reading Strategies Book, out now.

Follow @JSerravallo
Visit the official Facebook group for The Reading Strategies Book

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How Prompting Helps Students Learn Strategies

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Jennifer Serravallo's The Reading Strategies Book is out now. In this video, Jen discusses how teachers can guide the practice when students learn new strategies . Jen talks about the awareness that, if she is doing most of the talking in a conference as a teacher, then she is also doing most of the thinking work.

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Goal Setting Conference -- Writing -- First Grade

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Edutopia blog post

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Free Resources & More

As districts close country-wide due to COVID-19 and teachers shift to teaching using distance or remote learning, it'll be important to maintain connection with students. I'm offering resources on my Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook Page and am inviting experts with digital and tech tools to join me in conversation. Click here for remote learning resources.

Click here for resources connected to my books: study guides, indexes, student self-reflection forms, reading and writing connections document, backline masters, note taking forms, class profile forms, weekly planning forms, and more. Also available at this link are quick links to my various online and in-person professional learning opportunities organized through my publisher, Heinemann.

"Go-To Books" Collections for Reading and Writing

Two collections (one reading, one writing) for each grade K-5, 15 books per collection. Some are old favorites, some are newer releases. They are many of the books I rely on most when teaching strategies. Unlike book collections that will be a part of your classroom library, I'm envisioning that these are the books that stay on your easel and get tucked under your arm, the ones that are returned to again and again as beloved class favorites that are rich with opportunities to demonstrate proficient reading behaviors and skills. These are my Go-To Books for Teaching Reading and my Go-to Books for Teaching Writing, and I hope they are helpful! View a webinar about them here.

Published Articles & Guest Blogs

What Considerations Should We Keep In Mind for Distance Learning? ( Heinemann Blog)

Effective 5- to 7-Minute Reading Conferences ( MiddleWeb)

Response: Reading Logs Should Be Tools for 'Students to Spy on Themselves' ( Ed Week)

Conferring Well-Even When You Haven't Read The Student's Book ( Shaped by HMH)

Jennifer Serravallo Shares Her Latest Thinking on Conferring ( Heinemann Blog)

Rethinking "Just Right": Reader and Text Variables That Impact Comprehension ( Nerdy Book Club)

How Our Teaching Can, and Must, Honor Our Students' Rights to Read ( ILA Literacy Daily)

Ideas to Match Kids Up with Stories They'll Love ( MiddleWeb)

Teaching While Parenting: On Kindergarten Readiness ( The Medium)

Author Interview with Jennifer Serravallo: Understanding Texts & Readers ( Ed Week)

Dropping Everything to Read? How about Picking Some Things Up? ( Voices from The Middle)

Supporting Independent Reading and Independent Readers ( Nerdy Book Club)

Goals and Goal Shielding ( Educator Collaborative Blog)

The Reading Strategies Book: An Interview with Jennifer Serravallo (Ed Week)

Choice During Independent Reading; What's a Teacher to Do? (ILA Literacy Daily)

Taking a Teacher-as-Scientist Stance in September ( Literacy & NCTE)

Expanding Our Approach to Reading Strategies ( Middleweb)

The Children in Front of Us ( Heinemann Catalogue and Journal)

Tips for Independent Reading (Scholastic Instructor Magazine)

Reading Time with Goals in Mind (ASCD Educational Leadership)

This Assessment...Not That Assessment (Ed Week Finding Common Ground blog)

What Standardized Tests Don't Tell You ( Reading Today)

Outline, Re-Outline, Outline Again ( Sharing Our Notebooks blog)

So Your Students are Starting to Read Chapter Books!... ( Chart Chums blog)

More of What's Meaningful: Formative Assessments ( Literacy Daily blog, ILA)

Focusing On Engagement (Heinemann Blog) <<-find often-requested logs and tools here

How Can Complex Texts Ever Work for Below-Level Readers? ( Lesley U Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative blog)

Podcasts and Interviews

Developing Reading and Writing Strategies en Español ( The Heinemann Podcast)

Problem Solving for Students' Needs ( Coach Lead Teach)

Interview with Jennifer Serravallo on The Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences ( doctorsam7 blog)

How to Support Your Child's Reading and Writing ( Konstella: Ask Educator Podcast)

Literacy Strategies: Q&A with Expert Jennifer Serravallo ( Room 241)

Taking the Fuzziness Out of Reading Comprehension ( Class Dismissed Podcast)

What Are the Best Ways to Use Leveled Texts? ( Cult of Pedagogy Podcast)

Understanding Texts & Readers Podcast ( Heinemann Teacher Podcast)

Understanding Texts & Readers Read Aloud Podcast ( Heinemann Teacher Podcast)

Writing Strategies with Jennifer Serravallo ( Class Dismissed Podcast)

Making the Most of Small Groups with Jennifer Serravallo (Choice Literacy: Podcast)

Jennifer Serravallo on Formative Assessments ( Choice Literacy: Podcast)

300 Ways to Help Students Love Writing ( Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis Interview)

Jennifer Serravallo on Reading Strategies and Writing Strategies ( Wired Educator Podcast)

Five Ideas for Improving Student Writing ( The 10-Minute Teacher Show, Vicki Davis)

The Writing Strategies Book: A Conversation with Jennifer Serravallo ( Heinemann Teacher Podcast)

Reading and Writing Connections (See episode 6 at this link) ( The Written Word Podcast by Turnitin)

Teachers Ask Jen Serravallo ( Teacher Learning Sessions: Podcast Series)

Book Reviews: Understanding Texts & Readers

Building Comprehension Using Leveled Texts ( MiddleWeb)

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants ( Third and Rosedale)

Book Review: Understanding Texts & Readers ( Coaching, Teaching, Always Learning)

A Review of Understanding Texts & Readers ( Teaching From the Left)

A Review of Understanding Texts & Readers ( Middle Grade Book Village)

Jennifer Serravallo's New Book is in Our Stack! ( Teachers for Teachers)

Book Reviews: The Writing Strategies Book

Easy to Use Strategies to Develop Young Writers ( Middleweb)

The Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers: A Powerful New Resource (Valinda Kimmel)

The Writing Strategies Book by Betsy Hubbard ( Two Writing Teachers)

The Writing Strategies Book, A Review by Russ Walsh ( Russ on Reading)

Jennifer Serravallo Has Done it Again! ( Teachers For Teachers)

Book Reviews: The Reading Strategies Book

Seeing the Matrix: The Reading Strategies Book ( Chartchums)

Serravallo's Reading Strategies Earn a Rave Review ( Middleweb)

The Reading Strategies Book Reviewed by Russ Walsh ( Russ On Reading)

The Reading Strategies Book Reviewed by Betsy Hubbard ( Two Writing Teachers)

It's Monday: You Don't Want to Miss this New Professional Resource ( Assessment in Perspective)

The Reading Strategies Book - An Invaluable Resource for Literacy Teachers by Erika Crowl (live.read.write.)

Review of The Reading Strategies Book by Jianna Taylor ( Oakland Schools Literacy)

Online Book Studies

Summer Writing Camp Summer, 2018 (Heinemann Teacher Blog)

Reading Strategies Summer 2016 Book Study ( An Apple for the Teacher)
Reading Strategies: Goal 2, Engagement (My First Grade Happy Place)
Kristin Richey's Reading Strategies Book Reflections ( Reading and Owl of the Above)

Literacy Teacher's Playbook: A Bloggy Book Study ( KTeacherTiff and links to 9 other bloggers at the bottom)

Book Up Edition #1: The Literacy Teacher's Playbook (A Sharp Teacher)

The Reading Strategies Book Study - Goal 3 (The Literacy Spot)

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As districts close country-wide due to COVID-19 and teachers shift to teaching using distance or remote learning, it'll be important to maintain connection with students. I'm offering resources on my Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook Page and am inviting experts with digital and tech tools to join me in conversation.

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post from Two Writing Teachers

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Using Assessment Tools to Teach Transference

A new Lucy Calkins resource just released by Heinemann, Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions Grades K-8, got me thinking. This book does not take the place of the Writing Pathways assessment books included in the Units of Study for Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing kits (Heinemann, 2013), rather it offers the same assessments, student checklists, teacher rubrics, and sample leveled writing pieces offered in the kits, but as a stand alone book. I can imagine this being a great tool for literacy coaches, principals, and other administrators who are supporting teachers using the Units of Study but who do not need their own kits.

I've digressed. My intention is to share how this resource got me thinking. A recent blog post about Writing Pathways on Heinemann's website says, "Not only will [the learning progressions] help you track students' progress across the three kinds of writing, locating each student's current level and determining the next steps the student should take, but they will also help you to see the cross-currents between the three types of writing so that you can help students realize that lessons learned in narrative writing can transfer to information writing, and so forth."

I hadn't thought so clearly about assessment tools being a great way to teach transference, but then it all came sharply into focus as I looked at the student facing checklists from all three genre sitting side by side. What if, I thought, a student used the narrative checklist to assess her information writing? Or the opinion checklist to assess her narrative writing? Or the information checklist to assess opinion writing? Would that work? And what lessons could be learned?

So, I gave it a try.

I took the checklists to a group of fourth grade students, and I asked them to join me with a piece of writing from each of the three different genres. The students had used writing checklists in the past, so were familiar with this kind of self-assessment. I told them I had an experiment in mind, and I wondered if they could help me. I reminded them that even though there are different "kinds," or genre, of writing, all kinds of good writing have a few things in common. We (OK, really I) named a few of the qualities of all good writing: clear organization, plenty of examples and details, an obvious topic. I told them that my experiment, then, was to see whether a checklist from one genre could be used to assess writing from another genre, since all good writing is so similar. I told them that part of my experiment was also to see wether using checklists across genres in this way could help writers to make their work even better.

Next, I gave the students all three checklists, and I encouraged them to use each to study writing in a different genre, and to talk to each other about what they were noticing. Here is a sampling of some of the lessons the students and I gleaned from this experiment.
Lessons Information Writing Can Teach to Opinion Writing

Let readers know some big picture information in the introduction about the topic of the opinion piece. Explain the different things you will share about the topic.

Consider adding headings or subheadings if it might help the reader to understand how the information is organized to make the essay more convincing.

Leave readers with some important information at the end, perhaps share how the topic of the essay fits with other opinions on the topic.

Development (Elaboration)

Include different kinds of information to support the essay's reasons, such as: facts, numbers, names, and examples.

Consider adding some visual elements to make the point more convincing, such as charts, diagrams, or bold words. (NB: I particularly love this one.)

Use deliberate word choices, including words that are important to the topic, to sound knowledgeable and convincing.

Lessons Opinion Writing Can Teach to Narrative Writing

In the beginning, orient readers to some of the important background information they need to know in order to understand the story.

In addition to using words and phrases to show time is passing, use words and phrases to show how parts of the story are connected. Use phrases like: for example, in addition...

At the end, bring readers back to some of the important ideas or images from the start of the story.

Development (Elaboration)

Make deliberate word choices or repeat words to try to make readers feel a certain emotion.

Use some actual facts to make the story feel more real.

Use you own experiences or knowledge to add details that make the story come alive.

We learned that each genre had something to "teach" the others. Additionally, using a checklist from each of the other two genres could help to make writing in one genre even stronger. From now on, I will keep all three checklists in my toolkit, and I won't wait to get them out until a matching unit rolls around.

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Using Assessment Tools to Teach Transference

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A new Lucy Calkins resource just released by Heinemann, Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions Grades K-8, got me thinking. This book does not take the place of the Writing Pathways assessment books included in the Units of Study for Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing kits (Heinemann, 2013), rather it offers the same assessments, student checklists, teacher rubrics, and sample leveled writing pieces offered in the kits, but as a stand alone book.

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copyright: Serravallo

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copyright: Serravallo

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Aim Higher: Why Goal-Setting Matters and Making Goals Visible
Why Goal-Setting Matters
Much has been written about the current environment in education. We can choose to focus on the ways in which fear is driving the work that we do, the ways in which we feel forced to take time away from what really matters to prepare for the hoops we and our students must jump through.

Or, we can accept the current trend toward high-stakes assessment and ever far-reaching accountability as an opportunity to help kids to have frank conversations with themselves and others about what they are good at and what they are working on. Kids typically discuss their strengths and weaknesses on the ball field, or with movie trivia, or with video games, with great aplomb."Marianne is so much better than me at free throws!" or "John totally nailed the seventh level in that game. I can only get to four," they might remark. However, when it comes to discussing academic strengths and weaknesses, they clam right up.

John Hattie, a leading education researcher, undertook a giant research study, a study of studies, really, in which he ranked, compared, and analyzed the data from over 800 existing studies in the field of education. He sifted through scores and scores of data in order to uncover the answer to the question we all seek: What really works best to help kids to learn? Hattie ranked a stunningly comprehensive list of factors that might contribute to a child's learning to uncover the factors that have the most influence. What he discovered makes perfect sense. The top influence on student learning is what Hattie deems student self-reporting, which essentially means students evaluating their own work. Also high on the list is receiving ongoing feedback from a teacher (what Hattie calls micro-teaching). These two factors scored much, much higher than factors such as frequent testing, ability grouping, class size, motivation, and homework. My takeaway from this is that we MUST, above all else, provide our students with ample opportunities to evaluate their own work, to set clear goals for their own progress, and to give them ongoing feedback about how to meet their goals.
Making Goals Visible
There are a few simple ways to utilize tools and systems that are likely already set up in your classroom to encourage students to reflect more deeply and more often on their writing goals.

1. Writer's Notebooks

Many teachers channel students to set up section in their notebooks for goal setting and reflection. This is certainly a crucial first step to guiding students to set goals for their work. However, even the best list of goals isn't worth much if it remains tucked in a notebook. Remind students to return to this section often, to reflect upon and update their progress toward their goals. They might use tally marks to record the number of times they worked toward a goal in their writing. They might jot a few dates notes with their thoughts on how they are progressing. A simple way to ensure students are referencing their goals often is to draw upon them and ask students to add to them each time you confer.

2. Charts

Even the best charts get just a little better when they are interactive. The list of teaching points, skills, or strategies on a chart can instantly turn into a chance for student reflection. Draw a line under a strategy, and ask students to write their names on a sticky note. Have them place their sticky notes on the line to represent how they feel they are progressing toward mastery of the strategy. A note placed toward the left means they have just started to try the strategy. A note placed toward the right means they have tried the strategy a lot. Encourage students to move their sticky notes as they try the strategy more, and encourage them to help remind each other to give the strategy a try so everyone moves together toward the right.

3. Bulletin Boards

Many teachers beautifully display students' finished work inside or even outside of the classroom for all to see and admire. One way to make students' goals super-visible and to emphasize the value of process over product is to have students add to their finished pieces a list of what they are proud to have accomplished with the piece of writing and a list of what they work on next. In a narrative unit, for example, one student might list that she is proud of the way she used setting to foreshadow the twists and turns in the story. She might also list that, as a writer, she would still like to work on more realistic dialogue.

4. Writing Partners

Countless research studies into the efficacy of any programs that involve progress toward goals, be they weight-loss, or fitness, or writing goals, have pointed to the importance of recruiting a partner to hold one accountable. Aiming to give students even just two minutes at some point during each day's writing workshop to share their progress toward their goals with each other will work wonders to lift the level of accountability, and ultimately, the work, in your classroom.

5. Share Sessions

Whether you follow a traditional writing workshop model with a built-in share session at the end, or you gather your students to share and celebrate their work in other ways, you might consider regularly reserving share time for students to discuss not their writing, but what they would like to get better at as writers, and the steps they are taking to get there.

Most of all, the more we encourage and create a safe place for honest, open dialogue about what is difficult and what stops students from meeting all of their goals, the more we can help them truly meet them. Celebrate honesty and reflection more than mastery. After all, according to Hattie's analysis, if we teach our students to become powerful self-reflectors, then this is truly the most important lesson.

For more on goal-setting and the kinds of goals students in a writing workshop classroom might set, see Tara's post on checklists and my post on using assessment tools to teach for transference.

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Aim Higher: Why Goal-Setting Matters and Making Goals Visible

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Why Goal-Setting Matters Much has been written about the current environment in education. We can choose to focus on the ways in which fear is driving the work that we do, the ways in which we feel forced to take time away from what really matters to prepare for the hoops we and our students must jump...