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One of the questions, I am asked the most often is, "What do you do if you don't have Accelerated Reader?" Or insert whatever computer program here. It is a question filled with emotion, after all, change is hard, and for some kids, AR and programs like it seem to work. For some teachers, it works. And yet, it doesn't work for all, it is expensive, and in my opinion, it is not worthy of the precious time we have with students every day.

Last night, as I sat surrounded by incredible passionate educators and leaders in the Imperial Valley in California, I was asked that question again, and here is how I answered it.

Giving up AR can be scary. After all, it is a program that seems to tell us things we need to know; has this child read the book? Have they understood it? It is a program that allows us to chart progress, to reward growth. To have an understanding of the complex process that is often hidden from view. And yet, how much of AR is actually a true view? How often are kids able to take the test without fully reading the book? How often do they fail the test despite having read the book? How often do we end up policing the testing, the book choice, the kids without actually doing meaningful work?

Our job as teachers is not to police reading, it is to support the love of reading. There is a huge difference.

So we start by looking at the components already in place. Every child deserves a classroom library, a school library staffed with a certified librarian. Every child deserves a teacher who read children's literature, who is knowledgeable and excited about reading. Every child deserves time to read a self-selected book in a supportive reading environment. Every child deserves to do meaningful work once they finish these books, building a reading community one book, one conversation, one connection at a time.

If we hold these components as rights, then the only thing AR really fulfills is the check off when it comes to whether a book has been read. When we remove that, we must find other ways to see whether children are reading and whether they understand what they have read.

In my own classrooms, we have different methods to see whether kids are reading. I have gone into more details about this here and also in Passionate Readers, but the first component is to simply kid watch. How are they picking up books? Are they picking up the same book day after day? Are they making progress in the book? We use Penny Kittle's page tracker to help us see the page kids are on in class. That way if a child is on the same page day after day, I know a conversation is waiting to happen. Perhaps the book is boring, perhaps they don't understand it, perhaps something is happening outside of class that is affecting them in class. Either way, that small sheet of paper allows me to see if they are making progress. I don't need it as a reading log, I need it so that kids can take control over their own reading habits and see whether they are making true progress as they challenge themselves. That way they have tangible data when we reflect at the end of every quarter.

We also set meaningful goals. I recently wrote about what that looks like at the beginning of the year, but it is these goals that I discuss with kids. While some may be quantity based, others are based on habit. You may notice that so much of what we do is conversation based. Not having a computer to tell me these things forces me to speak more to students, for them to actually reflect on their lives as readers, this is always a great thing.

When students finish a book, they often do what we adults do. They recommend it. They put it back on the shelf. They hand it to someone to read it as well. Sometimes they write about it in a reading response, but not often, because I have found that it is often all of the things we have kids do with their reading that actually makes them dislike reading. This year, I will also have them do reading ladders, an idea created by Teri Lesene, explained here, so that students can ponder whether they are challenging themselves or simply reading at the same rung. They also keep a list of books they have read, finished, or abandoned in their notebook and at any point, I can ask to see that. This list is something we update in class so that the kids that forget also have a chance to do it. For kids who are motivated by competition, I try to make it an internal one. Can they beat last year's numbers of books or some other goal? I do not believe that reading should be rewarded with a prize because it tells kids that reading itself is not worthy of their time. That it is something they are being bribed to do because it has no value on its own. Reading is its own reward.

And finally, when it comes to the assessment of skills, I don't need a test on a book to tell me whether they comprehend it. I can either discuss the book with them even if I haven't read it or I can use a common text, such as a short story, read aloud, or picture book to assess their skills of reading. After all, all of the independent reading we do is for practice, for building the love, it is not to be graded, the skills we are developing are what we need to grade and that can happen with any text that we know together.

Getting rid of any component that has been a cornerstone of instruction is scary, it takes work, and it takes a change in practice. But it is worth it for our students and the reading experiences they deserve. I would recommend anyone who is looking to get rid of a computer program to really speak about the experiences that need to replace it. How will that look on a day-to-day basis and also how it will help the students.

Teaching is hard work, it is easy to see how we can be persuaded to place children in front of computers to help us out. To see the short-term gains sometimes from these programs. And yet, what about the long-term? At what point do children, and adults for that matter, need to internalize what reading really is? A discovery of self? A discovery of the world? A transport into more understanding, more empathy, more imagination? Removing AR is a process, but one that is worthy of our time, because kids deserve rich reading experiences at every level, and computers, no matter how well-tested their programs are, cannot provide the same meaningful interaction as we get from a conversation, real assessment, and building a community of readers.

To see more thoughts on AR please see Jen Robinson's posts which showcase other work on it. Donalyn Miller's post on it and do take the time to read Stephen Krashen's discussion of the research that AR uses as a selling point.

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One of the questions, I am asked the most often is, "What do you do if you don't have Accelerated Reader?" Or insert whatever computer program here. It is a question filled with emotion, after all, change is hard, and for some kids, AR and programs like it seem to work.

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Listen to my interview with Pernille Ripp (transcript):
Sponsored by Kiddom and simpleshow videomaker

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

If I had to pick one thing that makes the biggest difference in the quality of any person's education, the quality of their life, really, it would be reading. And I'm not really talking about basic literacy-not about the ability to read-I'm talking about reading for pleasure, to satisfy curiosities, to understand how people work and find solace in knowing we are not the only ones who think and feel the way we do.

That kind of reading.

But when I see what my kids do in school for "reading," it doesn't really look like reading. I ask them what books they are reading in school, and a lot of times they give me a blank stare. What they do in reading, they tell me, is mostly worksheets about reading. Or computer programs that ask them to read passages, not books, and answer multiple-choice questions.

Knowing this has bothered me a lot, and it led me to Donalyn Miller's book, The Book Whisperer, and then to Kelly Gallagher's book, Readicide. Both of these books show us that the reading programs and activities schools are using don't work very well to raise students' reading proficiency, especially if they take the place of real interactions with real books. And they certainly don't do anything to turn our students into people who love to read.

The only thing that can do that is books. Reading actual books alongside other people reading actual books.

What baffles me is that this message still hasn't reached so many schools. Schools are still shelling out thousands of dollars on expensive programs, putting pages and pages of passages and comprehension questions in front of our kids every day, sending them through the system without ever having them read a real book. Just excerpts. Just passages. Just reading-related "activities," but little to no time with actual books.

So today I'm going to do what I can to get the message out there by having my friend Pernille Ripp on the podcast. Pernille is a seventh grade English language arts teacher in Wisconsin. She has been blogging for years, she speaks all over the country, and she has written several books about teaching.

Her most recent one is called Passionate Readers, where she writes about her own journey from teaching reading through programs and activities to teaching in a way that honors books and develops a love of reading in every child. It's an awesome book. The best thing about it is how transparent Pernille is about her own doubts and struggles in this process.

In our interview we talk about why she made the change, what her reading instruction looks like now, and how other teachers can change their own practices. The key takeaways are summarized below. You can read a full transcript of our conversation here.

What's Wrong with the Way We Teach Reading Now?

In many classrooms that are feeling the pressure of high-stakes testing, instruction tends to emphasize what researcher Louise Rosenblatt called efferent reading, the kind of reading we do when looking for information, as opposed to aesthetic reading, which is done for enjoyment. Reading for information is a vital skill-without the ability to tackle challenging texts, locate evidence to support claims, summarize important ideas, and identify bias, students' academic progress will be stunted.

Unfortunately, our push toward developing close reading skills has had collateral damage. In far too many schools, reading for pleasure has been treated as an afterthought, something we encourage but don't really make time for. Instead of giving students time to read, we're giving them activities, projects, computer programs, reading logs, and worksheets that detract from actual reading.

"We're constantly reading for skill," Ripp says. "We're constantly asking kids to do something with their reading, and then wondering why they're choosing to leave us and never picking up another book. They can't wait to get out of school so that they don't have to read."

When she criticizes these practices, Ripp has no desire to teacher-bash. "I get it," she says. "We are all kind of facing the pressure of our districts and our government and our testing and our parents and everybody's focus on the data to show that these children can comprehend and compete with this global market economy that we're a part of."

"But unfortunately," she explains, "what that has led to is just this further step away from what we know works within reading instruction."

Even when we do have students read for enjoyment, we require evidence-reading logs, book reports, quizzes-to prove that the reading actually happened.

This was how Ripp taught for several years: "It was exhausting," she says. "When we did book clubs, it was all about me, and I was reading five different books and coming up with all of the questions. All the kids had to do was show up, read aloud. There was no discussion about which book we were going to read or anything like that. It was just all teacher-centered, all the time, book reports just to prove they had read rather than doing meaningful work after they had finished the book."

The Catalyst: What Caused the Change

Then one day a student said something that stopped Ripp in her tracks.

"I was doing the 'reading is magical' lesson that I think we all do at some point in the beginning of the year, and a kid in front of me whispered to his friends, 'Reading sucks.' And you know, I wanted to jump on him and be like, 'Oh, you just haven't found the right book,' because how often have we said that?"

Instead, she asked him to tell her why.

That's when the floodgates opened: Invited for the first time to honestly share their thoughts about reading, students told Ripp that they didn't like having to sit still. They wanted to be able to choose their own books, rather than being limited to a certain level. And more than anything, they hated the fact that every time they read something, they had to do some kind of activity related to the reading afterward.

Thus began Ripp's journey toward what she calls a common sense approach to reading.

Returning to a Common Sense Approach

Once her eyes were opened, Ripp found herself drawn to the people she calls the "pioneers" of a type of reading instruction: Nancie Atwell, Donalyn Miller, Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, Stephen Krashen, and so many others. She began to understand that scripted programs and reading-related activities-teacher-centered reading instruction-were not the way to help students become life-long readers. Over time, she shifted to a different approach.

When she talks about her current practices, she emphasizes over and over again that this is nothing new. "We have so many years of really great reading research out there, and yet it seems to be forgotten."

Here are the most important components of Ripp's reading instruction the way it looks today.

Time to Read

Ripp's students are given ten minutes at the beginning of every class period for independent reading. "Every child, every day," she says. Even though she only has 45 minute blocks with each seventh-grade class, she makes sure they get that time to read every day. "It is sacred time," she says. When she taught at the elementary level, she was able to give students 30 minutes a day, but she no longer has that luxury.

During that independent reading time, Ripp does check-ins with students. "I'm sitting down and I'm simply saying, 'What are you working on as a reader?' And it gives me that two-, three-minute connection with a child if they need to book shop, if they're not doing well, to see what their reading identity is, where are they on their journey, and then I kind of pull all this information to think about what I still need to teach them (during the other part of class time)."

Students are not graded for this reading. "We can't actually grade their independent reading, because that's practice," Ripp says. So there's no other work associated with that time: no worksheets, no logs, no written reflections. "Nothing to do except to read. I want them to fall into the pages. I want them to reach flow. I want them to be silent and in this moment of their book."

Ripp uses the remainder of the 45-minute period to have students work on the other things you'd expect to see in an English language arts classroom. "When they come back to me (after the ten minutes), we then do a mini lesson on reading or writing or whatever it is we're doing, 10 to 15 minutes. And then they go and do something, and that's where I assess them." But those first ten minutes are always, always devoted to independent reading.

Choice

"Whenever I ask kids," Ripp says, "'What's the one thing you wish all teachers of reading would do?' (they say) 'Choice.' And yet, what do we do time and time again? We take away choice from kids, especially kids who might not be where we would hope they would be at this time. We end up with these limited choices for them, and then we wonder why they're the ones that distance themselves from reading the most, because they never get to develop their reading identity. They never get to go through the selection process. They never get to just read and struggle with text and have meaningful conversations and sometimes yes, make the wrong choice."

Students in Ripp's class always have free choice of what they want to read during independent reading time. Through lots of conversations, students practice getting to know who they are as readers so they can make choices that work for them. "They're constantly evaluating their book choices just either through conversation or self reflection or just their habits," Ripp says.

If a student finds that a book just isn't grabbing him, he is free to abandon it. "We should be celebrating when we abandon a book," Ripp tells her students, "because we know ourselves enough as a reader to know that this will not provide us with a reading experience that will matter to us. And we need to start building up that stamina, so we need books that work for us at that time, and that's really important for my students to remember, and to know and to recognize that what they need at this moment might be different than what they need a month from now."

A Robust Classroom Library

Ripp's classroom library houses several thousand books that students can check out at any time. You read that right: several thousand.

Why so many? "I need a book for every reader," Ripp says, "and I teach kids that read from about a second grade level to a college level. I teach kids with lives that share no similarities at times and others whose lives are very much like my own. And so I need to make sure that every child has a chance of finding a book that will speak to them."

Where do they all come from? "(At the time I had) three kids at home, you know, on a teacher's salary," Ripp explains. "I can't go out and spend thousands of dollars on books, and my school didn't have a lot of extra money, but I would rather that a child can go up to this bookshelf and find a high-quality book pretty much any time they go there rather than have to dig through the junk and hope they find something. So it just became my mission that instead of buying things to make our classroom prettier or anything like that, I bought books. I used Scholastic, I went to library sales and parents donated books, and I was always really picky. It was big for me that the books were good, and then I just purchased books."

Why not just have students use the school library? Ripp believes students need both. "Kids need to see the books staring at them at all times, and I think that has made the biggest difference for some of my kids who would go through the motions of going to the school library and they would even check some books out, but then when it came down to actually sitting down and read it, they didn't feel that same need or urge to read it." Her experience has proven the research that says students read more in classes that have good classroom libraries. "I had a seventh-grader come back to me my first year at the end of the year," she says, "and he said, 'You know what made the biggest difference? The books were always right there staring at me.'"

Ripp's classroom library also includes an incredible assortment of picture books. Having lots of picture books in the classroom helped remove the "babyish" stigma many middle schoolers attached to them. "If you walk into our classroom, yes there's all those books, the chapter books and all of that, but then all around us are picture books. And it's just a vibe, right? You feel it when you walk in that this is a classroom where you can have fun and where you get to read and you can choose whatever you want. No one cares what you're reading in our classroom, because you can pick up picture books at any time." To start building your picture book collection, take a look at the tons and tons of recommendations for picture books Ripp offers on her website.

Culture and Community

A constant thread that runs through Passionate Readers is the sense that a classroom culture is constantly being built, that every day, Ripp communicates how incredibly important books are to a good life, and how, if we get to know ourselves as readers, and have lots of conversations about our reading, we'll really get to experience the true magic of reading.

The 7th Grade Book Challenge is one way she encourages students to build more reading time into their lives. This was adapted from the 40-Book Challenge introduced in Donalyn Miller's Book Whisperer. Ripp participates in the challenge herself, just one of the ways she shares her own reading identity with her students.

Outside of things like the challenge, the culture is ultimately built on a day-to-day basis. "Teaching reading is not supposed to be quick and easy," she says. "It's supposed to be about human connection. It's one conversation at a time."

She admits that this new way of teaching is not perfect, and she's constantly reflecting on how she can do better for her students. "We cannot go in there and expect every child to change, but we can go in there hoping that we can help," she says. "I tell my students this: I'm not here to make you love reading. I'm here to make you hate it less. And if you already love it, then I'm here to protect it with all of my might." ♥

Pernille's book, Passionate Readers, goes into a lot more detail than I have room for here. It really walks teachers through how to implement a more reader-centered approach to teaching reading, complete with all the possible obstacles and pitfalls. I really encourage you to get a copy. To read more from Pernille Ripp, visit her fantastic blog at pernillesripp.com.

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Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Come on in!!

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Too many schools are producing non-readers at an alarming rate, but it doesn't have to be that way. Pernille Ripp and I talk about how to change things.

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Listen to my interview with Jen Serravallo (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Inclusive Classroom

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

A few weeks ago, a teacher named Isabelle O'Kane sent me a direct message on Twitter. She had been reading a debate that was raging all over social media, and she wondered if it was something I might want to write about. The debate took place in response to a single tweet sent out by literacy experts Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell:

The classroom library should NOT be organized according to level, but according to categories such as topic, author, illustrator, genre, and award-winning books. #FPLiteracy pic.twitter.com/hxJNDow3Qz

- Fountas & Pinnell (@FountasPinnell) September 21, 2018

Teachers responded to the tweet from all directions: Some shouted hallelujah, because it supported what they were already doing. Others agreed, but argued that their hands were tied because administration required leveled libraries. Quite a few insisted that the best approach was to do both; yes, students should be able to seek out books based on interest, but without levels, how would they ever find appropriate books on their own? And some threw up their hands entirely, wondering if a single, clear answer was ever going to present itself.

Because my training and classroom work has all been with students in grade 6 and above, I don't have a lot of experience or knowledge on this topic, but it definitely seemed like something teachers needed help with.

So it was pretty serendipitous when literacy consultant and author Jennifer Serravallo contacted me right around that time about her new book, Understanding Texts & Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled Texts.

In the book, Serravallo takes a deep dive into the question of how best to match texts to readers. She starts with a discussion of why we have leveled texts to begin with, what their original purpose was, and the missteps we often make as teachers when using them. Then she explores the levels themselves-for fiction and non-fiction-and unpacks the characteristics to look for in each one. Finally, she brings it all together, showing teachers how to combine their knowledge of text levels and students to assess student comprehension, set goals, and match students with books that are just right for them.

In our conversation, which you can listen to on the podcast player above, we talked about the mistakes a lot of teachers and administrators make in how they use leveled texts, and what they should be doing instead.

What Are Leveled Texts?

When schools first attempted to differentiate reading instruction, they did it with texts that were written specifically for that purpose, like the SRA cards that were popular in the 1960s and 70s. Although these programs offered different levels to match student readiness, "(they didn't) actually offer kids real language structures or really interesting storylines," Serravallo explains. "And kids were not able to read those with as much comprehension as real children's literature."

In the 1990s, a shift came when teachers started looking at ways to level real books, books that were not written with "levels" in mind. Two types of text leveling emerged around this time:

Quantitative Leveling: Systems like the Lexile Framework leveled texts through computer programs that measured dimensions like text length and complexity.

Qualitative Leveling: This type of leveling is done by humans, and while it considers things like text length and complexity, it also takes more nuanced qualities into consideration, like whether a text delivers information in a purely straightforward way or contains multiple levels of meaning. One popular qualitative system is Fountas and Pinnell's Text Level Gradient.

Common Mistakes with Leveled Texts

When leveled texts are used in classroom and school settings, teachers and administrators make some well-intentioned but significant missteps that can negatively impact students' growth as readers.

1. Leveling Readers Instead of Books

One of the biggest mistakes Serravallo sees is labeling students by text levels. "Levels are meant for books, not for kids," she explains. "There's really no point in time when a kid is just a level, just one. There's a real range, and it depends on a lot of other factors."

This misstep, she says in her book, has had negative consequences. "Kids nationwide have become aware of something that many would argue they shouldn't be aware of at all...causing some students to compete, race through levels, and experience shame."

To compound the problem, a number of schools have begun basing student learning objectives (SLOs)-part of teacher evaluation protocols-on these levels: "(Districts will) say, 'You come up with goals for your students, and then we're going to measure and make sure you met your goals.' And what's happening is that I find teachers are using levels (to measure growth)-'This student's starting off at an L and is going to end up at a P,' or something like that."

This type of system often prompts teachers to put books in students' hands that they're not quite ready for. "The teacher is going to be pushing the student into harder texts in order to meet the goal," Serravallo says. "You've got this kid being pushed through because they can maybe decode the text but not because they're actually getting everything they can from it in terms of comprehension and meaning making. If the kids are not thinking on that level, why be pushing them into harder and harder books? Why not work with them in texts that they choose to help them get more from the texts that they're reading?"

What to do instead: Rather than focus narrowly on text levels, teachers should get to know students as readers from a variety of angles. "Factors such as motivation, background knowledge, culture, and English language proficiency should all be on our radar when considering how to help students find books they'll love, and how to evaluate students' comprehension and support them with appropriate goals and strategies."

2. Restricting Book Choice Based on a Single Assessment

"One of the ways that levels get misused is that teachers administer one assessment," Serravallo says. "It's usually a short assessment. It could be a computer assessment that's a short text with multiple choice, it could be a running record where kids read a selection of a text and answer a few questions. So there's this one assessment, and then from that they get a level or a level range, and they say to the kids, you can only pick from that level range. But the problem is that's misunderstanding all of the different variables that kids bring to the table, things like motivation, prior knowledge, stamina, their command of English, the genre. There's so many variables."

What to do instead: Take multiple factors into account when pairing students with texts. "We need to look at a couple of different assessments," Serravallo recommends, "and we need to account for these variables, and then once we have a sense of about where kids are able to read, we still need to be flexible when they go to choose. So if I have a kid who knows a lot about dinosaurs who typically reads books around Level O-P, if it's a dinosaur book and he wants to read it, and it's a Level R or S, maybe that's okay."

3. Inflexibility

Even if we have a pretty thorough idea of what types of texts would be a good fit for a student, only allowing them to choose books from a narrow range of levels doesn't take other important factors into account. There may be times when a student wants to challenge herself by going for a book that will require more support to get through, and other times when students want to read an easier book for fun.

"Saying to a student, 'You are a Level __ so you can only read Level __ books' is deeply problematic," Serravallo writes in her book. "We can use reading levels to help guide student choice, but levels should never be used to shackle a reader."

What to do instead: Use reading levels as a shortcut to knowing some likely features of books, but allow other factors to influence book choices. In her book, Serravallo shows us how to adjust our language to help students make these decisions for themselves: Instead of saying something like, "That book is too hard for you," she recommends saying something like, "That book is harder than what you typically read. Let's think about how I/your friends can support you as you read, if you find you need it."

4. Organizing Books by Level

While Serravallo admits to organizing the books in her classroom library in leveled bins years ago, "I've changed my thinking after seeing the consequence of what that does to kids' reading identity. What ends up happening is kids go to the classroom library and they say, 'I'm a Q. I'm going to pick a Q book.' And they go to the Q bin and they only look in the Q bin."

What to do instead: "I would organize them by topic, by genre, by author," Serravallo says, "So the first thing kids see when they go to the library is identities. And they think about themselves first before they think about level: Who am I as a reader, and what am I interested in reading?"

For her own purposes, Serravallo would still keep text levels on books, but put them in an inconspicuous place on the book, like on the inside of the front cover. "That way, when a child is holding a book, it's not like everyone can see the level on the book, so it's a little bit more private. But I like that having them on the book, because if I haven't read that book, I can peek at the level and be like, oh yeah, okay. Complex characters in this one. And I can use that to guide my discussions when I'm working with kids."

To learn more, check out Serravallo's book Understanding Texts and Readers, join the Reading and Writing Strategies Community on Facebook, or visit her website at jenniferserravallo.com.

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What Are the Best Ways to Use Leveled Texts?

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Listen to my interview with Jen Serravallo (transcript): Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Inclusive Classroom This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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This is the year I'm going to keep better records.

I craved chocolate chip cookies, eight summers ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter. Despite needing compression stockings to quell the swelling in my legs, I had no qualms about standing in the kitchen to bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I was very pregnant and willing to try many recipes in the search of the perfect cookie. After tasting what I thought would be the best cookie yet, I was happy for a while, but after eating several cookies, I typically had a complaint. Some recipes were too crunchy while others were too greasy. Therefore, I'd try to figure out what to change (e.g., a different ratio of brown sugar to white sugar, softened butter instead of melted butter) and bake another batch.

Besides finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, there are a handful of things I've become obsessively passionate about getting right. One of the other things I've tried to perfect are my conferring records. In fact, I've obsessed over record-keeping forms even more than chocolate chip cookie recipes. When it came to record-keeping forms, everything I tried worked for a while for the purpose of organization and documentation, but the information wasn't truly driving my instruction.
Why does record-keeping matter?
Record-keeping can seem challenging. But, like anything else, it's important to think about why we keep records. Record-keeping helps you distribute your time equitably amongst your students. It allows you to see the tracks of your teaching. Record-keeping helps you monitor student growth. It also helps with goal-setting. Finally, keeping records of conferences and strategy lessons allows you to determine the next steps with each student, small groups, or the whole class.

Regardless of what kind of record-keeping form you use, it's helpful to jot down notes in the moment, rather than waiting until the end of the school day. I suggest teachers take notes when their students are actively involved in trying out the strategy you taught them or in-between writing conferences. Writing notes when you're in the moment allows your record-keeping to be accurate and detailed.

Now that we've established that record keeping matters, I want to share my record-keeping journey with you (complete with a variety of forms you can download at the end of this post).
Class-at-a-Glance Grids
I started obsessing over my conferring record keeping sheets when I was a fifth-grade teacher in Manhattan. I tried using a class conferring manifest , which is a single sheet of paper that has all of the students' names, dates you conferred with them, and the teaching point you delivered on one sheet of paper. Thing is, I taught 26 - 32 fifth graders so I couldn't fit all of my students on one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper! Therefore, I had to keep two sheets of paper on my clipboard, which meant I couldn't glance at the manifest quickly. In addition, the manifest didn't feel detailed enough for me since I couldn't keep track of the compliments I gave to my students when I met with them.
Three-Column Notes
Next, I created sections for each student in a spiral notebook that allowed me to or the track my observations and teaching points compliments and teaching points I delivered every time I met with a student. I used stick-on tabs to separate each child's section, which was four back-and-front pages, from the next. I used a sheets like these on and off for a few years. What I didn't know then, that I understand now, is that these pages were too sparse for me.
Carbonless Notebooks
I went through a period where I used this same three-column system, but housed it in a carbonless notebook so my students could have a "carbon copy" of my conferring notes. (They housed their carbonless copy in their writing folder.) Eventually, this system became cumbersome since there were always a handful of students who misplaced their carbonless copy. Once I learned about the idea of leaving behind a tangible artifact for students at the end of a writing conference, my carbonless notebook became obsolete. Another idea, which I learned about recently from Melanie Meehan, are conference cards , which can be a useful tool for a teacher as s/he has a conference and for the student to recall what s/he discussed in the writing conference after the teacher has departed.
Forms for Three-Ring Binders
After studying with Lucy Calkins and Carl Anderson in the summer of 2008, I realized my conference record keeping forms needed a massive reboot. I bounced around a lot that year, going back and forth between my old three-column chart and using a three-ring binder to house a variety of record-keeping sheets in every student's section that captured more information (e.g., , next steps mentor texts) .

I took a week-long course in at the 2011 TCRWP Summer Writing Institute. After studying with Carl, I realized conferring record-keeping sheets should have a space for students' writing goals so they can be kept top-of-mind. Therefore, I updated one of my three-ring binder forms so it had space for each student's name, his/her writing goals, and then ample space to record a compliment, teaching point, and future teaching plans. Finally, after seven years of tinkering with record-keeping forms, I Assessment-Based Writing Instruction with Carl Anderson finally felt like I got a record-keeping sheet right .
Digital Records
In early 2013, my PLN was a buzz about Evernote. (I purchased a premium subscription that same summer and have allowed Evernote to transform my life by digitizing all of the paper that used to surround me.) Cathy Mere shared her expertise for using Evernote to keep digital conferring records in a December 2013 guest blog post here on TWT . Once I read her post, I decided digital conferring notes would be a smarter way to go for me since I see kids in different schools due to the nature of my life as a literacy consultant. Having paper records just doesn't make sense for me at this point in my career.

Initially, I created templates for 1:1 conferences and strategy lessons on . However, when Kustomnote was bought out by , I started keeping more simplified notes in Evernote. This was ineffective since I often forgot to write down key information. Eventually, I came across an Evernote . Therefore, once I created Kustomnote Transpose how-to about creating templates conferring and strategy lesson templates, all I have to do when I want to use a template from my template library notebook, is to right-click and choose "copy to notebook" from the pop-up menu. Then, I select the notebook I want to copy a template into and I'm ready to keep my records.

What's great about Evernote (BTW: I don't work for Evernote. Simply put, I love their product!) is that you can take photos of student work to embed in each student's note file. Also, you can record audio clips of your conferences or strategy lessons and place them in your notes. Not only will this help you hold onto what students are working on, but your digital conferring notes can make parent-teacher conferences come alive since parents will get to see and hear their students in action.

Why did I take you on this journey? I could've written this post and included links to a variety of record-keeping forms (You'll find links to all of the above-mentioned forms below!) with the hope one of them would transform your record-keeping this year. However, I wanted you to realize that even if this is the year you're going to keep better conference records, then you must understand that you, too, will go on a journey to find a record-keeping system that works for you. Don't let anyone tell you what form to use! You must find a system that works for you even when it feels messy and giving up (and not keeping records) seems like the better option. Therefore, pick something and try it out for a week. Reflect. Refine your record-keeping tool or start anew. You'll know you have a record-keeping system that's working when you regularly examine your notes in order to plan for future conferences, strategy lessons, and mini-lessons. Don't be afraid to tweak your record-keeping system until you find one that feels as right as the perfect chocolate chip cookie tastes.
Let this be the year you're going to keep better conferring records!
Ready to get started? Here are some action steps to take depending on how much (or how little) you've kept records in the past.

Links to Record Keeping Forms:

Bonus Links to My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes:

This giveaway is for a copy of . Thanks to Kids 1st from Day 1: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom Heinemann for donating a copy for one reader. (You must have a U.S. mailing address to win a copy of this book.)

For a chance to win this copy of Kids 1st from Day 1: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom, please leave a comment about this or any blog post in this blog series by Sunday, August 12th at 6:00 p.m. EDT. Melanie Meehan will use a random number generator to pick the winner's commenter number. His/her name will be announced in the ICYMI blog post for this series on Monday, August 13th.

Please leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment so Melanie can contact you to obtain your mailing address if you win. From there, our contact at Heinemann will ship the book to you. (NOTE: Your e-mail address will not be published online if you leave it in the e-mail field only.)

If you are the winner of the book, Melanie will email you with the subject line of TWO WRITING TEACHERS - KIDS 1ST. Please respond to her e-mail with your mailing address within five days of receipt. A new winner will be chosen if a response isn't received within five days of the giveaway announcement.

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This is the year I'm going to keep better records.

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Want to keep (better) conferring records, but don't know where to begin? This post will help you discover analog and digital record-keeping systems. Read all the way through since there will are lots of downloadable templates to help you get started.

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The Five Senses Essential Questions: How do the five senses help us understand the world around us?

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Idea Library | Reading, Writing, & Content Areas | Smekens Education

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Articles and helpful guides on topics like pre-reading, the 6 Traits of Writing, research, and more in the areas of writing, reading, and content areas.

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You want your students to read more, but the books aren't exactly flying off the classroom bookshelves. A book talk may be just the tool you need to engage your students in a new book. A book talk could sell your students on the idea of picking up a new title or author or give them the push they need to find a book they love and convince their peers to read it.

[📷: Top image by mrs._cronk on Instagram.]

What is a book talk?

A book talk is a short presentation about a book with the goal of convincing other people to read it. It's not a formal book report or review. And, it's more persuasive than expository-think sales and marketing. In a book talk, the goal is to engage the listeners and present a fun, exciting, and even suspenseful commercial for your book. A book talk could highlight the plot, like this example featuring the book Smile by Raina Telgemeir. It could focus on a character, like this talk on the book Matilda by Roald Dahl. Or, it could recreate a book's mood to ignite readers' curiosity. Teach your students how to do book talks by modeling the practice. Then hand the reins to students by assigning them book talks in partners or as presentations.

What are some good book talk examples?

Books talks can take many forms. Here are some of our favorite examples:

As you get started, use a book talk template to help students organize their talks.

Choosing a book to talk about

Probably the best way to choose a book for a book talk is to find one that you really like. If students need inspiration to find a book to talk about:

Provide a box of books that are recommended for their grade level, like this list for 4th grade.

As you get to know students, slip them a note card with a personalized book recommendation. The personal touch will give them the confidence to know that they can read the book and that it's a good choice.

Focus on a theme, like Women's History Month, by providing a shelf of books inspired by the topic.

Ensure that students will connect with a book by having them choose a book written in first person with characters that reflect their experiences (check out this list of diverse titles for ideas).

Planning the best book talk

You have a book and know you have to sell it, but students need more guidelines than that. Here are some parameters that will maximize the book talk format:

Don't give away the ending (the exception may be for a series or book of short stories where incorporating the ending to one story might excite readers about reading more from that author).

Similarly, show the book, title, and author at the end of the book talk. Don't lead with it! That'll keep the audience engaged and wondering, Have I heard of this book?

Start with a hook that will get the audience's attention. This can be verbal, like reading a portion of the story (perhaps a cliffhanger), or nonverbal, like reenacting a major fight scene.

End with a hook. Leave the audience wanting to know more by creating a cliff-hanger, like authors do at the end of a chapter, and ending with it. A book talk is successful when the audience has questions.

A book talk should be short. Aim for between one and five minutes, depending on your audience.

No two book talks should sound the same! Bring your own personality and voice to the book talk and encourage students to do the same.

Choose a book that has a strong theme that will be of interest to your class. In middle and high school, books about love, humor, magic, friendship, and problems they deal with every day (breakups, family, school, etc.) are likely to resonate.

Prepare for a book talk while you read by taking notes and placing sticky notes at cliff-hangers, quotes, scenes that surprise you, and parts that you connect with.

Think about craft: What does the author do to keep you engaged?

Like any good presentation, don't memorize it but do have your major points in mind.

Engage your audience-ask questions, take a poll, have them guess what will happen next. The author kept you on the edge of your seat, get your students on the edge of theirs.

Practice, practice, practice! (Teacher bonus: Unlike your students, who take your class only once, you can perfect a book talk and give it year after year.)

Book talks = learning and love of reading

So they're fun and spirited, but there are also real academic benefits to incorporating book talks into your classroom:

They get kids reading-really reading. When students do a book talk, they have to know the book and know it well. A book talk will fall flat if they haven't read the book and can't talk about it.

They get kids sharing reading with others. Reading can be contagious, and book talks are a great way to spread a love of reading throughout your class, one book at a time.

They teach note-taking. As students prepare for a book talk, taking notes and using those notes to summarize the story is an important skill they'll develop.

They build presentation skills. The process of reading the book, thinking through how to present it, and practicing are good rehearsal for later presentations.

They build listening skills. When students aren't presenting, they're listening. The practice of participating in book talks, listening, and asking questions refines students' listening skills.

Bringing book talks to the next level

Already do book talks? Here are some ways to kick it up a notch:

The cardinal rule of book talks is to talk about a book you like, but challenge your students to give a book talk about a book they don't like. Can they convince people that they actually liked the book?

Partner book talks: As students get comfortable with book talks, you can pair them up in class or across classes for them to have conversations with peers. As they talk about different books, encourage them to find similarities and differences between what they're reading.

Picture-book talks: Challenge older students to hone their presentation skills by having them give a book talk on a picture book.

Peer review: Create a rubric or checklist (like this one) and have students give each other feedback.

Come and share your book talk ideas in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, check out 8 ways to amp up book talks.

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What Is a Book Talk?: Your Guide to Making Them Work in the Classroom

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What is a book talk and how can you use book talks in the classroom? Our WeAreTeachers guide is chock-full of teacher and student tips.

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https://www.americanreading.com/core-knowledge/

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Core Knowledge NYS PK-2 Read-Aloud Support Sets

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We have made it easy to equip your classrooms with support sets for the New York State ELA Curriculum, Prek to 2nd Grade. Sets are organized by teacher and shipped complete and classroom ready.

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Click the links below to view or download general and content-specific resources for educators using the student growth portfolio models.

TN Student Growth Online Portfolio Platform

Leaders and teachers are encouraged to regularly visit www.TNstudentgrowth.com for the most up-to-date information about the portfolio process and the Educopia platform. All rostered portfolio teachers should have received an email from Educopia with instructions for activating their accounts at www.TNstudentgrowth.com. Rostered teachers who have not yet activated their accounts can have this email resent by clicking on the "Resend Activation Email" link on the login page.

General Resources for Student Growth Portfolio Models

Fine Arts

First Grade

Physical Education

Pre-K/Kindergarten

World Languages

Additional Resources

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Click the links below to view or download general and content-specific resources for educators using the student growth portfolio models. Leaders and teachers are encouraged to regularly visit www.TNstudentgrowth.com for the most up-to-date information about the portfolio process and the Educopia platform.

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F & P Multi-Text Approach to Literacy presentation.pdf

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Do This, Not That

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Do This, Not That - Teaching Literacy in Tennessee

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In May 2017, the department released a practical guidance document called Teaching Literacy in Tennessee, which serves as the department's "how" resource for teaching literacy. The early learning team will be hosting a series of summer learning opportunities on the topics listed below. We encourage pre-K through fourth grade educators to attend, including ESL and special educators.

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Using Mentor Sentences to Improve Grammar and Mechanics

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During the last professional development session that I did with the middle school teachers language arts teachers, we dove head first in...

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Phonics charts and blends charts are a great way to teach difficult concepts to beginning readers. Keep them around the classroom, and your students will be able to use them independently for increased confidence and learning!

Here are 20 blends and phonics anchor charts we love.

Students will love putting words to the test both with a silent e on the end and without. Have students hold up a floating e so they recognize both words.

2. Hard and Soft C

The different sounds made by the letter C can definitely be tricky to understand. You might have your students help you create this anchor chart, coming up with words that fall into both categories.

3. Row Your Boat

We like how this anchor chart puts vowel digraphs that make the same sound side-by-side.

4. Explaining Consonant Blends

When you work on consonant blends, have students compare each letter's sound individually. Then have them pay close attention to what happens when they blend together.

5. Beginning Blends

The best part of this chart is that you can add blends as you introduce them in class.

6. Double E Tree

Take one single concept, like the double e, and come up with every single word that it applies to.

7. Vowel Pairs

Use this anchor chart to help define the rule, and then encourage your students to come up with their own examples to add.

8. Recipes for Blends

A cute analogy that will encourage students to try different letters together, creating and testing their own word "recipes" too.

9. It's Owl Right

This cute owl chart shows students the many words that contain an "ow" sound, whether it's spelled "ow" or "ou."

10. The Many Ways to Spell the Long A Sound

SOURCE: Jennifer Jones

One of the trickiest things about phonics for students to learn is how the same sound can be spelled lots of different ways. It helps to see side-by-side examples, like in this anchor chart that describes the different spellings of A.

11. Bring in the Blender

Put the current blends you are studying "in the blender." Cute!

12. The H Brothers

We love how this anchor chart creatively shows the different sounds digraphs containing the letter H make.

13. The Bandit Y

Try this anchor chart to help your kids learn how tricky Y can be!

14. Pairs, Digraphs, and Diphthongs

What are the differences between these different vowel pairs, anyway?

15. Sounds of G

Is it a hard G? Is it a soft G? Students will easily learn the difference between the two and get great examples too.

This chart shows the differences between words that contain a long O sound. We like how the beginning and ending blends are highlighted too.

17. Phonics Charts for Every Digraph

We love the idea of creating different phonics charts for each digraph you are studying and adding words as you learn them.

18. Lesson From a Pirate

Get your pirate voice ready because you're definitely going to want to use it when you go over words with 'ar' in them.

19. Long I Storytelling

It's fun to write a class story or poem using a certain sound as many times as possible.

20. Bossy R

Practice saying "Bossy R" words with your students. It really helps them hear it when you say it out loud.

Love these phonics charts? Check out our anchor charts archive for even more subjects and grades!

Plus, watch the video to see these phonics charts up close!

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20 Perfect Anchor Charts for Teaching Phonics and Blends

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Phonics charts and blends charts are a great way to teach difficult concepts to beginning readers. Keep them around the classroom, and your students will be able to use them independently for increased confidence and learning! Here are 20 blends and phonics anchor charts we love.

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password: loudonco

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Reading A-Z: The online reading program with downloadable books to print and assemble | Reading A-Z

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Award-winning reading solution with thousands of leveled readers, lesson plans, worksheets and assessments to teach guided reading, reading proficiency and comprehension to K-5 students