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What would schools look like if classroom management were focused more on communal care and personal accountability and less on exclusion and punishment? That's the vision of Carla Shalaby, coordinator of social justice initiatives and community internships at the University of Michigan, who advocates for a more humanizing approach to student discipline. Her research focuses on the critical role that students and teachers play in the ongoing struggle for justice. She is the author of the influential book Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (The New Press, 2017) and former director of teacher education programs at Brown University and Wellesley College.

You've said the phrase "classroom management" is loaded. Why, and what should we call it instead?

The role of "classroom manager" has a few problems. One is that a manager is a business-like term. It comes from a corporate mindset, which I would avoid when talking about the work of classrooms. And " managing behaviors" is also a phrase that I'd like to move away from. There are ways to shift that kind of language: We should see the teacher as a "community facilitator," working together with students in a shared space.

We want to break away from a model of classroom management where one person is setting rules and procedures and interventions that squash unpleasant behavior or community conflict. We want community conflict; we want healthy community conflict that is well-supported, well-scaffolded, and is worked through in democratic, community-building kinds of ways. We want the messiness of difficult and challenging behavior. We just want it in the presence of an educator who is well-prepared to facilitate a process of young people working together to heal and solve problems in ways that we would want replicated in the world beyond classrooms.

In your book, you compare kids who are labeled as problematic or noncompliant to canaries in a coal mine. Can you elaborate on that?

The book sets forth the idea that the kids who are most disruptive are drawing our attention to invisible dangers in our shared classroom space. I think of these kids as the canaries in the coal mine because they are the first to scream of poisons in the air that we may all be breathing in. They point us to harms that the rest of us are able or willing to tolerate more quietly or even silently. As educators, we tend to most appreciate the kids who are compliant. But they may be complying with a set of mistreatments.

Educators typically do not mean to engage in harmful practices, but when kids are demonstrating resistance-however unpleasant or however inappropriate the resistance-they draw our attention to that trigger, to that poison that we may not be able to see. The analogy there is really about helping to draw our focus and attention away from the kid who is suffering, and instead toward the poisons in our shared space that we need to address so that suffering is alleviated-not just for that kid, but perhaps for all kids.

How are so-called "troublemakers" most often misunderstood?

They are seen as bad kids that there is something wrong with. Because as a teacher, I'm caring and I'm trying everything in my power to take care of everybody in this impossible situation, in this impossible job-and this kid is refusing every single thing I'm trying. This student is being difficult and making my life stressful and upsetting the other kids. Of course, it's very easy to understand this kid as a problem. But all of that framing forces us to miss the opportunity to examine whether classrooms themselves are actually neutral and good spaces. When kids are giving us trouble, we have an opportunity to model for all the other kids how to respond to behaviors that are challenging, how to respond to people who are struggling in our community. Every one of those moments is an opportunity to model what love looks like in practice, especially when someone is making their place in the community tricky.

Teaching love would be world changing. To model something other than kicking a child out or telling them they're broken or intervening in every way on their mind and body. It's as if the only possible response we have is, "You either be like the rest of us and do what you're asked or you're out, you no longer have a place in our community."

We as educators have a responsibility but also the exciting potential to think about, What kinds of people are we trying to grow in our classroom spaces? What kind of communities are we trying to grow? What's the world we want and how do we use classrooms as an opportunity to practice that world?

What might a more loving in-the-moment response to a student's outburst look like?

I am imagining a whole set of work that's in place that anticipates those moments, so we have a different set of options when those moments arise. We might say to young people, regardless of their age, at the beginning of the year:

We are 30 people sharing a space together for more than 6 hours a day. None of us have chosen to be here except for me. We are very different; we have different families, we have different values, we have different needs, and we have different beliefs-and here we are thrown together into one room for 180 days. We're going to have to figure out how to share this room together. How to share resources. How to be together in ways that hold each other up. We're going to have to do the really hard work of being a community of people that shows unconditional care and love for every single person that's in here. It's a curriculum like any other that we're going to engage in.

We will have a morning circle every single day. We will work in that morning circle to read books and practice skills and do role-plays to have a safe and loving community. And we will have an end-of-day circle where we debrief and ask one another, What went well today? Where did we fall down? What are some things we need to practice? Who may be suffering? Who's had a tough day? Who's had a great day? It's going to be a part of our work.

Realize that you can't do this alone as one person in a class of 30. Rather than setting yourself up as the authority, set yourself up as a community of people all trying to figure out a very difficult thing together that most adults don't know how to do-and let it be messy. But let it not be a distraction from the rest of your work. Let it be your work. It's not something that's stopping us from getting to the math; it's the one thing that will allow us to get to the math.

Can you talk about the interplay between "hypervisibility" and "invisibility" that your book discusses?

One of the ironic cycles of behavior that takes place in classrooms is that the more I feel unseen or unheard-essentially, invisible -the louder and more visible I make myself. If I am feeling a lack of a sense of belonging, I'm going to go out of my way to demonstrate behaviors that are going to invite my own exclusion.

Educators are so tired, overworked, and underprepared to handle extremely challenging behaviors. The best way to respond to people who are being hypervisible is to try to ignore them, right? That's what we do. People are conflict-avoidant in general, so we try to ignore bad behavior. When that fails because the child ramps it up and up, then we try to make the behavior invisible in some other way. Our immediate response is, let me get rid of this problem as quickly as possible. And if the only explanation you have for the problem is that it's the person, then it's let me get rid of this person as quickly as possible. And that is an understandable response given the constraints that teachers are under. But it is a bad response-not just for that kid, but for all the other kids in your classroom. Exclusion is a really dangerous practice.

The hard work is making space for everyone. And I don't mean in a kumbaya type-of-way. If you as an educator can see your work as part of a really significant societal shift, then you can expect for it to not be easy. You can be excited about bringing kids along in it, because you're raising a generation that is better prepared to respond to harm in ways that do not throw people away.

What do you say to traditionalists who think that more compassionate, less punitive methods of behavioral management have led to a lack of discipline and teacher authority in classrooms?

I don't disagree that we suffer as a society with people having the inability to take responsibility and accountability for their bad actions-it's a problem that we have beyond classrooms and in classrooms. The skill that we ought to hope for, and cultivate at all ages, is the ability to say, "I'm going to hold myself accountable to the harm that I've done and do what I need to do to correct that harm." That's the skill.

Now, do people learn that skill when we use punitive systems? No. We have decades of research both at the level of the prison system and school system that punishment does not actually change behavior. That people are punished, they are removed, they come back, they do the same thing. We've used this as evidence that those people are too messed up to save; it's actually evidence that punishment is a failed response.

There is such a thing as discipline without punishment. To me, that looks like support for teaching people to learn to hold themselves accountable when they have done harm and when that harm is named for them. That's a skill that people can learn, starting when they're young.

What you want to try to help students understand is:

Here's what happened. Here's how you participated in that harm. Here's how and why it was harmful. Here's who it hurt. Here's how it hurt those people. You need to sit and listen to those people tell you how what you've done has been hurtful to them and receive that information humbly. And then we need to think about what is required to make things right, and to restore our relationships.

When I'm thinking about compassionate discipline, I'm not talking about my being compassionate in the way I'm disciplining the child. I'm talking about teaching the child the kind of compassion required to be willing to hold themselves accountable for the harms they're causing through their behaviors.

How can school leaders support the kind of shift you're suggesting?

There are a number of ways. One is to name it as a value and to not be empty as you're naming it as a value. To not participate in traditional, punitive responses by suspending or expelling kids. Part of it is holding a radical kind of inclusion as a core value of the school. And doing that when you run into problems, like if you see a kid who has exhibited an extremely harmful behavior and you're choosing not to suspend them. Because who is going to come for you? The caregivers of the kid who was on the other side of that injustice. I'm not pretending this work is easy, but I'm saying a school leader has to hold the line. That means saying:

Here's how we do things here. We do hold people accountable. We do discipline children. But we don't punish. We use other kinds of strategies to support children in growing the skills and dispositions that they need to discontinue difficult behaviors.

I expect a school leader to hold the line because that's their actual job. It's not in customer service for individual families, but to be concerned about their responsibility to raise a "public," and to raise a public that knows how to be accountable for-and change-harmful behavior. That's something I expect school leaders can choose to do. And, of course, that they support teachers in learning how to do that.

Are you suggesting zero suspensions at the elementary level?

Yes. In an ideal world, you would have classrooms of 10 kids and then you would see problems diminished. Can we all admit that? That if we only had 9 or 10 kids to teach, classroom management wouldn't be as difficult as it is now? That's common sense. But we still like to blame kids when things go wrong. We think it can't possibly be the environment itself.

We need to get away from blaming the kid. We still need to hold the child accountable, but we also need to acknowledge that the child is not the reason why the environment-which is made up of 30 or more people-is not working for them. Because they would likely be fine in a different situation.

None of this is to say that all the responsibility falls to schools. I have a very different imagination for the kind of support that schools would get as public institutions in meeting the whole health needs of kids and families. A very different model is needed. And that's the biggest criticism of any of the work that I do: that I'm asking the teacher to change their behavior like they're the answer to all of the services and material resources that families need, that kids need. No, I'm not asking the teacher to be the solution to all those problems. I'm asking the teacher to stop being an additional one of those problems.

So, no suspensions across preK-12?

Right. Because kids are suspended at extremely high rates, and it does nothing to address root causes of challenging classroom dynamics. It's just as upsetting to me when a 15-year-old is suspended as a 2-year-old, to be honest. Why? Because we haven't done anything before that kid turned 15 to expect them to do anything different.

The part that also bothers me is that when young children see a peer being excluded or suspended, it literally becomes a part of their brain development. When you witness over and over the same kids being yelled at or removed from school, it becomes a part of the hardwiring of your brain to understand those kids as a problem. That to me is so dangerous and so irresponsible for us to be teaching day in and day out. That cannot continue.

If you could offer teachers one piece of advice for dealing with their most challenging student, what would it be?

To decide that you're going to shift away from judgment and toward curiosity about that child. So, you would stop asking, What can I do to fix this kid? and instead ask, What do I actually know about them? What do I need to know? What questions do I have about who they are? What questions do I have about how they feel day in and day out in my classroom space? What can I be curious about? What can I learn? Not, What have I tried and what should I try instead?

Reflect on what you can do to change the dynamic between you and this kid from one where they are a problem that you're trying to solve to one where they are a human being that you're trying to be in relationship and community with.

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Carla Shalaby on Radically Inclusive Discipline - ASCD

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What would schools look like if classroom management were focused more on communal care and personal accountability and less on exclusion and punishment? That's the vision of Carla Shalaby , coordinator of social justice initiatives and community internships at the University of Michigan, who advocates for a more humanizing approach to student discipline.

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Truth, Love, & Racial Literacy | Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz | TEDxPenn

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Vol. 71

No. 3

Abstract

Reading for Multiple and Implicit Ideas

Developing Structures for Transference

Analyzing Craft

Developing Critical Stances

Constructing Arguments

Opportunities for Self-Directed Reading

Transforming Reading Practices in a School

Credit: Copyright(C)2000-2006 Adobe Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

Reading for Multiple and Implicit Ideas

Developing Structures for Transference

Analyzing Craft

Developing Critical Stances

Constructing Arguments

Opportunities for Self-Directed Reading

Transforming Reading Practices in a School

If you ever find yourself at a live baseball game with a dominant pitcher, you might experience one of those evenings in which you see no runs or even hits. Such games cause baseball enthusiasts to exult, and they drive the rest of the population into a torpid boredom. To the experienced "reader" of baseball, who is alert to what is happening on the field as well in the batter's box, a shutout game is full of intricacy and drama, crucial decisions, and debatable moments. To the novice baseball reader, it's a game in which nothing happens.

We want students to be positioned to read complex nonfiction the way the expert reader of baseball reads the game-staying alert to the nuances and challenges of complex texts, to the reading work such texts demand, and to how they reward close reading (or whatever you want to call such alert, attentive reading). "Like any other art, craft, or sport, reading becomes more rewarding as we master its intricacies to higher degrees," writes Robert Scholes (1989, p. 18). Scholes suggests that texts release their secrets to those who come ready to see more.

Our job is to instill in students a deep sense of engagement with the intricacies of complex texts, to rouse them to see more in the texts they read-and to do this in a way that makes them want to read more. That means that readers need to feel their work paying off. Threatening them with hard state tests or future tasks in high school or college is not an effective teaching methodology (even if students will face these challenges). You can't discipline students into becoming insightful.

John Dewey (1909/1975) asks, "Who can reckon up the loss of moral power that arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing in itself, but only as a preparation for something else?" (p. 25). More recently, Timothy Shanahan (2013) notes that although many versions of close reading have been espoused in the wake of the Common Core State Standards, we need to remember that close reading is an outcome, not a technique.

The truth is, learning to see more in dense and complicated texts is an end in itself. Discernment, perception, and heightened awareness all bring heightened pleasure.

This close reading work will pay off most, of course, on real texts, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches. It probably won't pay off on textbooks that are already summaries, or on tiny nonfiction excerpts. It will pay off most on texts that kids find inherently fascinating (Allington &amp; Gabriel, 2012); that seem relevant to the identities they are building (Tatum, 2005); and that they are reading for real reasons (Duke &amp; Pearson, 2002). That might mean periodicals such as Ranger Rick, Junior Scholastic, or Upfront Magazine. It might mean science trade books by Gail Gibbons, Seymour Simon, or Brian Greene. It might mean videos by Nova, National Geographic, or Ken Burns. That is, real texts that real people read for knowledge and pleasure.

Hattie's research (2011) suggests that when you want to accelerate students' progress toward a goal, it helps if they have a clear vision of what they are trying to achieve. The following close-reading practices will promote such a vision.

Reading for Multiple and Implicit Ideas

When we teach students to expect that most texts are about more than one thing, we lead them to read more closely. It's also helpful to alert students that a lot of the nonfiction they read won't make every idea explicit through a heading or subheading, so they need to read for underlying, implicit ideas as well as explicit, surface ones.

To get students to read this way, first choose a text that will reward this work. You're looking for text that is accessible, engaging, and complex: accessible because if you introduce new, hard thinking work using new, hard texts, kids will struggle on all fronts; engaging because if students are engaged, they're willing to work hard; and c omplex so that if they do the work, it pays off-they gain new insights and epiphanies. The act of personally deriving new understandings produces intellectual and physical satisfaction; it actually releases endorphins into the brain (Rock, 2007).

To create opportunities for these epiphanies, you'll have to look at possible texts and sort out the difference between difficult and complex. A textbook might be difficult, but it might not be sufficiently complex if it has already laid out the thinking work for its readers. A high-quality nonfiction trade book, on the other hand, might seem easier at first glance, but if it's well-written and conveys multiple ideas, its complexity will reward close reading. Our job is to teach readers to expect to do this thinking work. The book's job is to make it rewarding.

For instance, take Shark Attack! by Cathy Dubowski (Dorling Kindersley, 2009), a nonfiction text that moves back and forth from narrative to exposition. It starts out with the true story of Rodney Fox, who was attacked by a great white shark while spearfishing in Australian waters. The first chapter presents Rodney's struggle with the shark as he is first bitten, then nearly swallowed, then dragged into the deep. It's a gory, Homeric epic. Through it all, Rodney fights back, eventually making it to the surface damaged but alive.

After that harrowing tale, Shark Attack! offers facts about different species of sharks, especially the ones that are "really dangerous" (p. 15). Then it offers another true account of a shark following his victim up onto the sands of an Australian beach, where the shark savages the swimmer as six lifeguards wrestle with it. And in case you would consider ever swimming again, you next read about a bull shark that made its way into a freshwater creek in New Jersey. (Nothing good happens there, either.)

As the book moves from narrative to expository text, it also moves from an ominous tone to an oddly cheerful one (as you find out about handy shark repellent and protective metal cages) that's somehow even more chilling. It's the kind of fascinating and horrifying book you'd find on many shelves for young readers, alongside the eagerly read books on weather disasters, venomous snakes, and lethal insects-books that get kids interested in nonfiction by terrifying them. It's also the kind of complex nonfiction-full of dense information, implicit ideas, and multiple perspectives-that will reward close reading.

To do this reading work, first identify the book's central idea-that sharks are dangerous. It doesn't take much reading work for students to recognize that idea, so don't name that as close reading. To teach students to work harder and see more, you have to transform their expectations. You might say something like, "Chances are that this book, like so many, teaches more than one thing, and some of those things may not be obvious at first. The question readers ask themselves is, 'What else does this text teach?'"

Even though your teaching point aims to be transferable across texts, your demonstration needs to be specific so that students see what close-reading work actually looks like and realize that it's worth it to read this way. So next, do a bit of a demonstration that is specific to the text. In Shark Attack!, for instance, you might demonstrate how you could return to the account of the New Jersey creek attack and think aloud that although it's true that this section teaches that sharks are dangerous, it also suggests that people often help each other when there's danger. Leave room for students to build on your work, saying something like, "I wonder whether that idea runs through any other parts of the book-whether any other details support it? Hmm ... and what other ideas does this book suggest?" The feeling in the room will be that you are coauthoring this work with your students. But you're also shifting their expectations of what it means to think as you read.

Then you want to give kids a chance to practice in your shared, familiar text. When they try reading this way in Shark Attack!, young readers tend to articulate implicit ideas like, "It's true that it teaches sharks are dangerous, but it also shows that you can survive shark attacks-that people can be tough." Whatever ideas students propose, you want to pose two questions: "What in the text makes you say that?" and "What other ideas does the text suggest? What details support those ideas?"

You'll probably want to offer this instruction in a minilesson, in which you do some shared reading of parts of a text that you've already introduced through a read-aloud (Calkins, 2010). That way students can work on close reading instead of working on initial comprehension. You might return to certain pages of the book by flipping through them on a document camera, showing them on an interactive smartboard, or giving kids copies to share. You might model how you look back over some pages, pushing yourself to name more than one idea by reconsidering what the stories, illustrations, lists, charts, and statistics teach (Calkins &amp; Tolan, 2010). Then turn to other pages and invite students to give it a try.

Developing Structures for Transference

Chances are, if a teacher does the work described above using instructional read-alouds and shared reading, the teacher and the students will discern more than one idea about sharks and humans. But if that's all that happens, students may not realize that the reading work they did was transferable. They'll think it was Shark Attack! work.

One method to increase transference is to pay attention to the language you use as you're teaching and to consistently refer to the students' reading experiences outside the shared text. Use such phrases as, "Just like the nonfiction books you're reading independently, this book probably has more than one central idea," and "Whatever you're reading, I bet you're learning more than one thing."

You can also shorten the time between when students do this work with a teacher and when they try it out on other texts. Invite kids to bring the texts they are reading independently to the minilesson, and say,

You know, this is not just Shark Attack! work. This should pay off in the other books or articles you're reading. So right now, get your book or article out. First, remind yourself of what you've been reading, and tell your partner one big idea your text is teaching. Then, go back to the text and see if you can find another idea the text suggests. Put your finger on the place where you realized the text was suggesting that new idea, and then argue your point quickly with your partner. Show what details in the text support your idea.

One more structure that will aid transference is the opportunity for repeated practice on a variety of texts, with calibrated feedback along the way. Hattie (2011) found that feedback in the midst of work, followed by the chance to put that feedback into play, dramatically improves student achievement. You should therefore ask yourself, Once I teach this, where in the curriculum will students get a chance to keep working on it? In middle and high school, that undoubtedly means planning curriculum strategically across the disciplines.

Analyzing Craft

As readers learn to ask themselves what a text is teaching them, we also want them to analyze how the text is teaching them. One way to do this work is to trace not only the ideas the text suggests but also the emotional response of the reader and what causes it. Reading is transactional-the text has an effect on the reader, and the alert reader pays attention to his or her response (Rosenblatt, 1982).

When you introduce this work, choose a text in which the emotional response is quite visceral so that readers get a sense of what it feels like to actively respond to nonfiction. Young readers who do this work on Shark Attack!, for instance, will often say that the book instills feelings of fear and tension. When you ask them to analyze what causes that fear, they may begin by noting the illustrations, especially those indelible images of Rodney caught in the shark's jaws. Some will also say it's the stories of horrific attacks. Some will note the shocking statistics. If you give students a chance to go back to the text and look closely at parts of it again, looking for the writer's craft, they'll often notice the capital letters, violent language, and exclamatory grammar: "Shark attack!" "CRASH!" "SNAP!" (pp. 4-9).

Here, you are teaching students that there are predictable questions readers can ask as they read to get more out of their reading: What does this text teach me? What does it make me feel? When students read with these lenses, they'll begin to notice that nonfiction authors use persuasive techniques and literary devices to make their points and get their readers to care. So they can also ask themselves, What techniques or craft does the author employ? What effect do these techniques have?

Choosing texts that make the writer's craft visible will help students see how informational texts work. When adults read nonfiction, we read it with years of experience with lots of other texts in our minds, so it's easier for us to see what the author is doing. Kids are building that store of knowledge with each text they analyze and each task they set themselves.

Developing Critical Stances

Many kids, on the basis of years of learned belief, subscribe to the notion that nonfiction is true; fiction is not. Once again, your teaching is about shifting readers' expectations. You'll want to teach students that nonfiction is not just "the truth"; it's someone's perspective on the truth. Students can only come to this realization if you ensure that they have opportunities to read more than one text on a subject. (See " Paired Texts on Shared Topics " for some ideas.)

As a starting point, assemble text sets that offer different perspectives on shared topics. For example, when you put Cathy Dubowski's Shark Attack! next to Seymour Simon's Sharks (Harper Collins, 2006), the content, craft, and perspective of each become more apparent. Or gather sources on some controversial topics, and then add to students' reading lenses questions such as those in " Some Questions Readers Might Pose ."

Ultimately, we want students to feel that they haven't really read about something if they've read only one text on the topic. We want them to actively seek out varied perspectives-to be dissatisfied with limited knowledge. We are educating them not for that state test, nor for that college class, but for the contributions they'll make to this world.

You may wonder whether teaching readers to question is reading instruction. That's really what reading is, though: a constant, quiet questioning of the text, of the reader's response, and of the meanings that emerge in this interaction. Questioning also includes the ability to reflect, to revise thinking, and to remain open to new ideas. When we teach readers to come to the text with a questioning attitude, we are teaching them to develop not only close-reading practices, but also intellectual stances.

Constructing Arguments

Another method that leads students to read nonfiction more closely is positioning reading work as the work of weighing and evaluating evidence for arguments students are deeply engaged in. When students are invited to research and debate authentic arguments-arguments about search and seizure, the legal drinking age, deployment of the atom bomb, nuclear energy, or whether the class should go to the zoo or the museum for the next field trip-they tend to research with a fierceness that you don't often see in school. You'll see them circling parts of articles, combing websites, replaying newscasts, and comparing and contrasting evidence.

Searching for the evidence that most clearly makes their point and that stirs up their audience is the real reading work here. Whether they are writing essays or letters, preparing speeches or panel presentations, or debating, teach students to be alert to juicy quotes-to notice when an author says something with such compelling language that they want to use his or her exact words. As they hone their own arguments, teach them to compare how authors use facts and statistics, and how they use stories as examples and also to stir up sympathy. Teach them to read closely for evidence and also for parts of the text where the author might serve as a mentor.

When students are composing compelling arguments, they have reasons to go back to the texts, to glean every possible detail that might be important, to compare sources, and to align with or reject points of view. They also have reasons to consider the other side so that they can better defend their own. They become more alert to detail and perspective in their reading. When you teach research-based argument, you teach students "what it means to be a citizen in a participatory democracy ... to become discriminating and credible, influential, and engaged" (Calkins, Ehrenworth, &amp; Taranto, 2013).

Opportunities for Self-Directed Reading

A cautionary note: Keep in mind that you want to set kids up to work on their reading by doing a lot of reading. The goal of this reading work is not to produce kids who spend hours on a single page of text, poring over the language at the wordsmith level like postgraduate students in literary theory. They could end up like an athlete who spends a lot of time thinking about running but rarely runs.

After all, the goal of reading nonfiction is to learn, and the best way to do that is to read a lot. Allington's research (2012) shows that to grow as readers, kids need protected time to read, access to books they find fascinating, and expert instruction. So if your "expert instruction" slows down students' practices initially as you coach them to sharpen their vision, you'll want to then let them loose on lots of fresh texts. With experience, readers do begin to naturally see more as they read-just as that experienced reader of baseball naturally notices a lot during the game, because he or she is alert to what there is to pay attention to.

Transforming Reading Practices in a School

Finally, if you want to get this work going with students, you might want to start with the adults in the building. Choose a text you'll find engaging, and try out these close-reading practices together. You're much more likely, then, to get more transference across the curriculum, including more opportunities for students to practice this work. You're also likely to change the discourse around close reading, so that it becomes a discourse of hard work and beauty. For you are not setting out to tinker with kids' reading skills, adding a strategy here or there. You are setting out to transform their ideas about what it means to read.

Paired Texts on Shared Topics

To show students how different texts can give different perspectives on the same topic, have them compare these texts.

Unlocking the Secrets of Complex Text-table

Note: For access to more nonfiction texts sets assembled around shared topics, see the Reading and Writing Project , which lists digital nonfiction text sets offering multiple perspectives on disputed issues; Buzzle , which offers accessible texts sifted by topic and issue; and Newspapermap , which provides access to front-page newspaper articles from around the globe.

References

Hattie, J. (2011). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York: Routledge.

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Vol. 71 No. 3 Abstract Reading for Multiple and Implicit Ideas Developing Structures for Transference Analyzing Craft Developing Critical Stances Constructing Arguments Opportunities for Self-Directed Reading Transforming Reading Practices in a School Credit: Copyright(C)2000-2006 Adobe Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Get Started | Teachers College Advancing Literacy

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Maybe you’ve heard of reading or writing workshop, or critical literacies, but haven’t known how to begin this work. Welcome, we hope you’ll join our community through one or more of the paths described below.

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Jo Boaler's website from Stanford University dedicated to shifting the mathematical mindset in students. Has many resources to build mathematical mindsets to create mathematicians in the classroom.

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At youcubed, we inspire, educate and empower teachers of mathematics, transforming the latest research on mathematics learning into accessible and practical forms.

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Steve Wyborney's Blog: I'm on a Learning Mission.

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Welcome to Splat! You are only moments away from a VERY POWERFUL, highly interactive number sense strategy that can be used at any grade level!

This post includes 50 (fifty!) free, downloadable PowerPoint math lessons!

Watch the video, download some (or all) of the lessons, and experience what happens when you unleash this resource in your classroom!

I've been excited to click the Publish button on this post for several weeks! It's time!
UPDATE: The Fraction Splat! Series (with 20 more downloadable lessons) is now available!
After reading this blog post, take a look at THE 12 MOST POPULAR MATH STRATEGIES AND DOWNLOADS ON THIS BLOG.

Splat Through 10
How many dots are under the Splat?

Splat Through 20
How many dots are under the Splat?

Multiple Splats
(Note: Splats that are the same color must cover the same number.)
Splat 3.1 - multiple splats Splat 3.2 - multiple splats Splat 3.3 - multiple splats Splat 3.4 - multiple splats Splat 3.5 - multiple splats
Instant Multiple Splat
(Note: An additional feature of this level is the opportunity to ask, "What could the total be?")

Splat 4.1 - Instant Multiple Splats Splat 4.2 - Instant Multiple Splats Splat 4.3 - Instant Multiple Splats Splat 4.4 - Instant Multiple Splats Splat 4.5 - Instant Multiple Splats
2-Color Splat
(Splats of different colors must have different values.)

Splat 5.1 2-color Splat Splat 5.2 2-color Splat Splat 5.3 2-color Splat Splat 5.4 2-color Splat Splat 5.5 2-color Splat Splat 6.2 Instant 2-color Splat Splat 6.3 Instant 2-color Splat Splat 6.4 Instant 2-color Splat Splat 6.5 Instant 2-color Splat
Instant 2-Variable Splat
(Splats of different colors must have different values. Splats of the same color must have the same value.)
Splat 7.1 Instant 2-variable Splat Splat 7.2 Instant 2-variable Splat Splat 7.3 Instant 2-variable Splat Splat 7.4 Instant 2-variable Splat Splat 7.5 Instant 2-variable Splat
Number Splat
(Note: Only the numbers circled on the screen may be used.)
Splat 8.1 - Number Splat Splat 8.2 - Number Splat Splat 8.3 - Number Splat Splat 8.4 - Number Splat Splat 8.5 - Number Splat Splat 9.1 - Instant Number Splat Splat 9.2 - Instant Number Splat Splat 9.3 - Instant Number Splat Splat 9.4 - Instant Number Splat Splat 9.5 - Instant Number Splat
Instant Number Splat with 2 Variables
(Note: Only the numbers circled on the screen may be used, and Splats of different colors must have different values.)
Splat 10.1 - Instant 2-Variable Number Splat Splat 10.2 - Instant 2-Variable Number Splat Splat 10.3 - Instant 2-Variable Number Splat Splat 10.4 - Instant 2-Variable Number Splat Splat 10.5 - Instant 2-Variable Number Splat
NOTE: I wrote each of these lessons using PowerPoint, so I recommend playing them in PowerPoint. If you do not have PowerPoint, you may want to download the PowerPoint viewer so that you can play the lessons.

UPDATE: The Fraction Splat! Series (with 20 more downloadable lessons) is now available!
Other Posts and Resources Which May Be of Interest Tiled Area Questions The Maze Hundreds Chart
Introducing Cube Connectors
Provide Massive Space to Notice
Primary Tile Questions
3 Powerful Tile Strategies (and 40 new downloadable pages)
Please take a moment to subscribe to the blog so you'll be notified each time new resources are posted!

I would treasure hearing about your experiences using Splat! to promote number sense in your classroom!

All my best,
Steve

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Splat! - Steve Wyborney's Blog: I'm on a Learning Mission.

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Welcome to Splat! You are only moments away from a VERY POWERFUL, highly interactive number sense strategy that can be used at any grade level!

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Hundreds of thousands of teachers across the US teach mathematics using Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). At Heinemann we often get the question from interested educators, What is CGI? Today we'll give you an answer to help you decide if it might be right for your classroom.

CGI's classroom application is described in depth in the Heinemann titles Young Children's Mathematics; Children's Mathematics, Second Edition; and Extending Children's Mathematics. Yet if you flipped through the books, you might notice there's no heading in the introduction or the early chapters that says: What Is CGI? In fact, the term is never explicitly defined in any book of the Children's Mathematics series. That's because CGI isn't a framework for instruction nor a math program nor again a style of classroom. CGI is a way of thinking about how you teach math and the actions you take as a result of that thinking.

Let's turn to an analogy from a world many teachers feel a little more comfortable with than mathematics instruction: reading instruction. CGI is not analogous to, say, Reading Workshop. Instead it's analogous to the decision to teach that way and the decision making you do as part of teaching with the workshop. If you decide that workshop is right for you and your readers, you are taking action on an internal belief that children deserve choice in their reading, the opportunity to read for authentic purposes, and time to practice independently with your mentoring coming in the form of conferences and small-group instruction. We could sum up those beliefs as a child-centered or constructivist approach to teaching reading that is responsive to each individual child's thinking and needs.

The same is true for CGI in the mathematics curriculum. CGI simply means teaching that follows a child's mathematical thinking-as opposed to forcing every child to solve problems the same way (often algorithmically). A CGI teacher presents problems designed to help children express their innate mathematical ideas then listens carefully to a child's explanation of their problem-solving reasoning. "Children enter school with a great deal of informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics that can serve as the basis for developing understanding of the mathematics of the primary school curriculum," write Tom Carpenter, Elizabeth Fennema, Megan Loef Franke, Linda Levi, and Susan Empson, in Children's Mathematics, Second Edition.

It's just like a reading teacher listening carefully to a student during a reading conference. First they determine what a child's strengths and needs are, then they follow with responsive instruction. With CGI, only after the teacher understands what mathematical strategies a child uses, does she ask What's next for this child?

CGI depends upon student engagement with well-designed problems. What makes a good CGI problem? It needs to have relevance to students-just like classroom-library titles do for strong independent reading time. It also needs to start with a situation that children understand intuitively such as sharing five candy equally bars among four people. (Or worse, four candy bars among five people!) And it must help children make progress toward deeper understanding of the mathematical operation or idea they are building knowledge about so they can solve subsequent high-quality problems. "The critical consideration," write Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, and Empson, "is that students are engaged in deciding how to solve problems using what makes sense to them."

Here's another way in which CGI and the workshop model share instructional DNA. They trust teachers to know their students. "We believe that you are in the best position," write Empson and Levi in Extending Children's Mathematics, "to decide the focus and timing of instruction."

So Cognitively Guided Instruction is a way of viewing the interaction between teacher and student in the mathematics classroom and, thereby, provides a mental model for designing problems, assessing children's thinking, and planning subsequent instruction. "Developing the capacity to listen to children's thinking and act upon what you hear is an ongoing journey," write Empson and Levi, "but the rewards can begin immediately when you take that first step-whether it is asking a child to solve a problem and listening with an open mind or engaging in solving problem in this book with a group of teachers and listening to each other."

In the end, CGI boils down to a single idea: good, responsive teaching that takes children's ideas seriously and helps students develop a more robust idea of the mathematical world around them.

Follow us on Instagram @heinemannpub to stay up to date on the latest books, your favorite authors, and upcoming events!

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Hundreds of thousands of teachers across the US teach mathematics using Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). At Heinemann we often get the question from interested educators, What is CGI? Today we'll give you an answer to help you decide if it might be right for your classroom.

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How To Build Meaning for Fractions with Word Problems

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How To Build Meaning for Fractions with Word Problems

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The Ongoing Quest for Culturally-Responsive Assessment

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The Ongoing Quest for Culturally-Responsive Assessment

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Learning from our most challenging students

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Learning from our most challenging students

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Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

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Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School [Shalaby, Carla] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

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Discusses the importance of classroom environment and community

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Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom

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Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom [Hertz, Christine, Mraz, Kristine] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom

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An inspiring book about how to listen to what kids need from us

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The benefits and value of mistakes in the classroom

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Risk. Fail. Rise.: A Teacher's Guide to Learning from Mistakes

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Amazon.com: Risk. Fail. Rise.: A Teacher's Guide to Learning from Mistakes: 9780325112473: Cruz, M. Colleen: Books

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A fun way to open a discussion about being different.. or the same.

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Dougie has a secret: he's not a ground beetle.
He's a dung beetle, and he

Dougie knows he should be proud. Dung beetles help process waste and do other extraordinary things! But Dougie also knows that if anyone at school saw his lunch, he'd be an outcast.

One day, the lunchroom bugs out over a classmate eating poop, and Dougie must make a choice. Can he stand up for his friend―and for his true self?

- Bullying and being kind
- Standing up for your friends and speaking up for your beliefs
- Being proud of your culture and heritage
- Embracing diversity and accepting and celebrating differences

The book also includes incredible, STEM-related facts about bugs.

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I Eat Poop.: A Dung Beetle Story [Pett, Mark, Pett, Mark] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. I Eat Poop.: A Dung Beetle Story

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Re-thinking the Reading Log

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Instead of measuring minutes or pages, these strategies guide students to see reading as an enjoyable activity.

Developing consistent independent reading habits allows students to practice reading skills, promotes choice, increases confidence, and develops a love for reading; however, many students need help to develop these habits.

Creating a classroom culture that shows students and families that you value independent reading along with classroom assignments and activities can provide the motivation, accountability, and encouragement students need to establish consistent reading habits without a need for reading logs.

Reading logs facilitate a culture around reading that promotes the idea that reading is such a chore that students can't be trusted to do it without getting an adult's signature. When students have to time their reading, they can hyper-focus on the timing of their reading instead of learning to stop at a natural stopping point.

Independent reading is a consistent focus in my classroom, and I've found various ways to hold students accountable and promote a love of reading without using reading logs.

Fostering a Love of Reading

Connect with families: Instead of asking families to sign a reading log, partner with them and ask them to encourage students to consistently read at home and create habits around reading. Be realistic and acknowledge that some days students may read for a longer period of time than others, and some days they may not have to read at all, but creating a habit of reading will benefit them as readers and as students in all of their subjects.

Make the connection to students and families that reading, like playing a sport, learning how to play an instrument, or learning any other skill, requires practice to improve, and while practice might not always be easy, it should be enjoyable. One way to help make it fun is to allow students to choose their independent reading books, provide access to high-interest books, and let students know that if they're not enjoying a book, they can abandon it and find a new one.

Weekly goals: Each Monday, have students set a reading goal for themselves and reflect on how they did with their previous week's reading goal. These goals should be individual and based on how they want to challenge themselves.

How did your reading make you feel?

What is one word you would use to describe the main character in your book?

Why did you choose your book?

Would you want to be friends with the main character?

Would you want to live in the setting of the book?

Quick responses: Ask students a question about their nightly reading that they can answer quickly. They can do this during a few minutes of class time a few times a week. For older students, it may be appropriate to ask "Why" to explain their answers and/or use details from the book to support their answers. Younger students may benefit from choices and/or the opportunity to draw their answers. Here are some examples of quick responses:

Reading partners: Assign or allow students to choose reading partners to share about the books they're reading a few days a week. Students may benefit from guiding questions to have these conversations.

Favorite Fridays: Create space and time in class for students to recommend to their classmates books they've read and enjoyed during their independent reading.

Reading chats: Whenever time allows, have informal individual conversations with students about reading. Share what you're reading, and ask them about what they're reading. Letting them know you're interested in their reading life and showing them how much fun it can be to talk about reading will encourage students to read and add to the conversation.

Reading webs: Get the whole class involved in sharing their reading by having one student stand up and share one thing about their book, then any other class member who can connect their book to the previous share stands up and shares how it connects and adds something new about their book. This continues until everyone has connected their book to someone else.

Quick connect: Ask students to make one connection between the book they're reading and themselves, the world, or another book. They can share their connection with a friend, write it down, or draw it.

Monthly reading challenges: Create a reading bingo board with different reading challenges, and have students fill in their board as they complete the challenges. Students can create their own monthly goals as to how many blocks they hope to fill in.

Reading pledge: Instead of parents and/or the child signing nightly that the child has read a certain number of minutes each night, create a reading pledge with your students and families that both sign at the beginning of the year, which states that they will make time for independent reading at home. You can personalize the pledge based on the grade level, needs, and goals of each student.

#AmReading board: Create a space in the classroom to display images of books that students have read or are reading. For younger students, who are likely reading shorter but more books, they can choose one book they've recently enjoyed to submit for the board.

Older elementary and middle school students who are likely reading the same chapter book over a longer period can submit each book they've finished reading to display on the board.

Providing students with the motivation, encouragement, and accountability needed to read independently on a consistent basis helps them develop reading habits that will lead to increased confidence, improved reading skills, and opportunities to find books that they enjoy reading.

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Promoting a Love of Reading-Without Reading Logs

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Instead of measuring minutes or pages, these strategies guide students to see reading as an enjoyable activity. Developing consistent independent reading habits allows students to practice reading skills, promotes choice, increases confidence, and develops a love for reading; however, many students need help to develop these habits.

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How to prompt a struggling reader

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There’s an art—and science—to providing prompts for young readers when they struggle.

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Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy K-3

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Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy K-3

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Jason Reynolds delivers Lesley University Commencement address

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What Doesn’t Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon

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The number one concern that I hear from educators is lack of time, particularly lack of instructional time with students. Although we can’t entirely solve the time problem, we can mitigate it by carefully analyzing our use of class time.