GAVIN READS. A Focus On Active Reading at the Gavin www. gavinreads GAVIN READS! A Focus On Active Reading at the Gavin www.gavinreads.wikispaces.com Talking To The Text

REFLECTION QUESTION WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING TO TEACH READING OR SUPPORT READING DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR CLASSROOMS? Think: Take a moment to think and jot down a few ideas. Pair: Partner with somebody nearby and share out what you are doing in your classroom. Share: Share out some ideas with class.

ANALYSIS What are we doing well? What could we improve?

School-wide Active Reading Focus Talking to the Text Sept – Nov Inferring and Summarizing Nov - Dec Cornell Notes Jan Outlining Feb - April

Sound Familiar??? Or Not??? “As a principal, when I would suggest to my teachers that our kids were not reading at the level necessary for success, I would get responses like “Not my job!” Their responses were not because they were cold and uncaring, but because they didn’t know what to do to help.” Dr. Gayle Green, Macomb, MI

K-T-W: Talking To The Text: Please form a group of three and create a K-W-L with at least 8 total ideas. What I Know What I Think About It What I Want to Learn

OBJECTIVES 1) describe talking to the text as an active reading strategy 2) explain why talking to the text is valuable in increasing comprehension 3) explain how talking to the text can be used to teach specific active reading strategies such as questioning or identifying key ideas 4) describe the resources available to you and reflect on how you can use these resources in your classroom

Why Talking To The Text? “Teaching students to carry on an internal dialogue with the author and text as they read is vitally important. “Talking to the text” significantly increases reader comprehension and promotes retention as well. However, this is not a skill acquired by osmosis. It requires effective modeling using the Think-Aloud strategy. “Good readers are adept at practicing many metacognitive strategies. That’s a big word that means “thinking about thinking.” Research shows that 50% of reading comprehension is based on what the reader brings to the text by way of prior knowledge and internal dialogue.” Mark Pennington, MA reading specialist

Still Not Convinced??? “TALKING to the TEXT - My young adult students are very much at ease 'talking back' to difficult people and activities. Teaching them to Talk to the Text - TttT - enables them to similarly voice their concerns and misunderstandings about the words they are trying to read. Through the process of TttT, they use marginal notes and other forms of annotation to comment on what they do or do not understand in their reading. With the writing of ideas and expression of feelings, understanding comes!” www.cfkeep.org

Still Not Buying It? “Much of what happens with text in classrooms gives students the mistaken impression that reading comprehension happens by magic. To begin to build a repertoire of activities for reading comprehension, students need to have the reading process demystified. They need to see what happens inside the mind of a proficient reader, someone who is willing to make the invisible visible by externalizing his or her mental activity.” Dr. Gayle Green, Macomb, Michigan

Talking to the Text PSA

MISSION FOR GAVIN READS: To implement a consistent strategy throughout the school that can be used by teachers to teach key skills (i.e. identifying key ideas) and used by students to actively analyze and make meaning of their reading.

Practice: Talking To The Text Read the article “Dorothea Lange” AND as you read: 1) underline words, phrases or sentences that resonate with you 2) each time that you underline, explain why you are underlining it (i.e. why is it important to you?) 3) make at least EIGHT comments on the text as you read (would ask students for 12+)

Gallery Walk Please stand up and walk around the room to look at the work of others. Compare your work to others: Did others make more comments? Less comments? Were their comments longer or more involved? How could a gallery walk be useful to use in teaching talking to the text for the first time?

Peer Assessment Exchange your work with a neighbor. Look at your partner’s work and fill out the rubric and then hand it back. What do we notice about the rubric? How is it helpful? How could it be improved?

Plus/Minus How Could Talking To The Text Help A Middle School Reader? What’s Limiting About This Strategy? What Could Be Improved?

Talking To The Text Strategies Please go to gavinreads.wikispaces.com/Talking+to+the+Text+Strategies and take a few moments to read about the strategies that we will be working on in the first quarter. Next, go to “Calendar: Talking to the Text” Finally, go to “Rubrics for Talking to the Text”

IMPLEMENTATION In implementing this strategy schoolwide, we are hoping to find an intervention strategy that is THE MOST ADVANCED YET MOST ACCEPTABLE…

IMPLEMENTATION At least twice per week Introduce strategy, practice and then assess whether students understand and can utilize the particular strategy. Assess using rubrics. ELA teachers should be regularly assessing whether students comprehension is improving by using the strategy This should be a natural process: if students aren’t getting it, don’t move on… Go back and re-teach.

Sample Schedule Previewing: Tues, Sept. 21: 1. Think Aloud on Previewing 2. Show Models 3. In pairs, students make FIVE preview comments on C 9 Fri, Sept 24: 1. Students read, preview and talk to the text on supplemental article 2. Students self-assess with time to fix problems

What Readings Should I Use? PRETTY MUCH ANY ARTICLE OR READING CAN BE COPIED AND USED FOR TALKING TO THE TEXT LESSONS… 1) Use one to two page supplemental articles from magazines, books, internet, etc. that fit into the curriculum. 2) Take an important page out of your textbook. 3) Take a poem, song, etc. that relates to your curriculum (occasionally, but not always) 4) When Xeroxing, consider copying at 80% or 90% to allow more space in the margins for comments.

A Few More Tips Getting started: Start with short, high-interest readings. Teach the strategy without confounding the students with complicated context. Poems, songs, articles on controversies are fair game… Modeling: Model strategies for students explicitly. Exemplars: Circulate exemplars through class. Post exemplars. Let students critique exemplars. Teaching the WHY: Ensure that students know why they are using these strategies and how talking to the text can help them. Work on buy-in…

Student Empowerment SELF-ASSESS SELF-REFLECT Provide regular opportunities for students to: SELF-ASSESS SELF-REFLECT What are they doing? Why are they doing? How can it help them?