This is just a short message of encouragement for our reading teachers.

Let those levels go.

What am I talking about?

Reading levels and leveled books.

When students are learning how to read using explicit and systematic phonics instruction, they are taught to decode words and recognize a growing number of high frequency words. Students practice their skills with decodable passages or books. These books and passages are considered decodable because they contain all the grapheme/phoneme correspondences (letter/sound combinations) and high frequency words that students have learned, so far, in their phonics instruction. There are no other words of higher complexity. There are no surprises. Pictures are not needed to decode words. Students build confidence and fluency reading these decodables.

Leveled books are not aligned to explicit and systematic phonics instruction and high frequency word lists. Instead these books contain words that include grapheme/phoneme correspondences (letter/sound combinations) and high frequency words that students have NOT learned, so far, in their phonics instruction. This means that instead of using their phonics knowledge to decode words, they need to rely on context clues in the sentence, a predictable pattern or picture cues. Students are practicing in text that is not supported by the phonics instruction and decoding skills they have been learning. There is a mismatch between practice and skill application.

Best practice is to align phonics instruction with phonics practice using decodables. This is critical in the early stages of learning to read and for students who are struggling with decoding in higher grade levels.

When students move beyond phonics instruction, they no longer need to practice with decodables.

Until then, “let those levels go!”

I admit a Ferris Bueller’s reference is a bit of a stretch, but that’s how my mind works. The image of Alan Ruck as Cameron saying, “Let those levels go!” made me smile and I hope you smiled too.

Until Next Time,

Brandi

“They were so engaged!” I heard this on a Monday and a Friday. The lessons worked!

All of the students – all in!

So what happened, what did I do?

Here it is, I can’t wait to explain my two lessons this week. I am telling you. It was what I needed to know and hear right now.

Flashback, a few weeks ago.

My consultant job allows time for me to work directly in teacher’s classrooms. This is my favourite part of the job. Especially when teachers call me and say, “I want to try something different, what can we do?”

This time the request was reading poetry and inference.

I said, “Riddles, can I do riddles with them? Annotate and all that!” 

“Yes,” she said, “anything that gets them to understand inference applied to poetry.”

As we all know, I have been talking feverishly about the reading and writing connection.

I said, “Can we write riddles on another day?”

She said, “Yes, I know the other teacher would be all over that.” (Two teachers share this grade 3 classroom)

I said, “See you on the 12th at 9 AM.”

Years ago…

I had this lesson I would do in schools, during my first round of consulting (2007-2015) with the book Riddles Come Rumbling. I was beyond excited to try this throw-back lesson. I ordered the book, received it in short order and set to work.

I was excited about this reading/writing experiment.

I went into this classroom with a handful of mentor texts and paper, big chart paper. That’s it. That’s all. Oh and ENTHUSIASM and JOY! I bring that in large doses.

Here’s the recipe.

Lesson 1:

I said hello to the teacher. We used to work together. We reminisced in lightning speed.

First, I refreshed students on inference. What does it mean? How do we use it to read a wordless book? I reviewed inference through the book Chalk. The students had a good time unpacking that book and we talked about how inference has a lot to do with our background knowledge and what we know about a topic in order to make meaning. We had a great discussion, I knew they were ready.

I took a riddle and annotated it on chart paper, adhered to the front board with magnets. I read it, and modeled my thinking as I underlined words, drew pictures and wrote my thoughts down. They understood what I was doing. I invited them to help with their ideas. We figured out the riddle and matched the answer to the clues.

“Now it’s your turn. It’s the thinking I am looking for. You will find the answer but when you present to the class, you will be presenting your thinking.”

They gathered in mixed ability groupings, three per group. All groups were given an enlarged riddle glued to chart paper. All riddles were different.

“All of your bring a pen, color, pencil, whatever you would like. Though not yellow. Yellow is hard to see.” Choice of writing utensil is a game-changer for students. Also, all students could write and participate, this was not a share the pen situation.

The teacher and I walked from group to group, students were reading and rereading. You know how hard it is normally to get students to reread but they had a purpose, a mission. Students were underlining, drawing, connecting thoughts. Everyone, was working, engaged, on task. You could feel excitement and joy. They worked hard to figure out the riddles, though the power of group thinking and through our gentle nudges, “Have you considered this word?” “What are you thinking?” “What else could this part mean?”

Eventually, they were all done. Choruses of “Can our group present first?”. I loved hearing the excited voices!

They gathered at the front of the room in groups to share their thinking. Then they asked for classmates to volunteer answers. Eager hands shot up. All students listened. All students invested.

At the end the teacher said, “They were all engaged! I noticed the students who tended to disengage, did not. Students who tended to struggle with learning, did not.”

Win – Win!

I left telling the students that I would return on Friday to write riddles.

“Yay!” they said.

On Friday morning, I told my daughter about what lesson I was heading in to do.

“Mom, why don’t you dress as the Riddler?”

Of course, like any family we have a Riddler costume.

Unfortunately, it was not to be found in time when I left that morning.

Next time, there is always next time.

Lesson 2

Again. I said hello to the teacher. We used to work together, too. We reminisced in lightning speed.

First, I refreshed students on inference, again. This time I used the book, Rhyme Crime. We had a great discussion. They were warmed up and ready to go.

This time we needed to create a riddle. I told them they needed to choose an object, a person, an animal a place that all students could guess, that students would know about.

I used the Canadian Flag as our model. We brainstormed a list – red and white, shaped like a rectangle, represents a place, hangs up high outside, waves at me, maple leaf on it etc.

We talked about how some clues were more general – could be many things, like red and white, that can be first in the riddle. A maple leaf was more specific, that should go last. We reordered the clues. When it was done, we had a student from the other class come and guess our riddle. The anticipation was real! When the student guessed the riddle after some waiting time, we were thrilled. It was solved and not too fast.

They were ready to go write. Back into the same groups from Monday, the students brainstormed to come up with ideas. It did not take them long. They got down to work listing clues and then reordering them before a final draft. The teacher and I checked in with groups, all were on task and needed little support. The groups they were in provided most of the support they needed. Our roles were more helpful writing peers and eyes to review their work. All of this writing and thinking took about 20 minutes.

They were visibly proud as they shared their own riddles. So much fun listening to their discussions and guesses.

The best part of this experience was the joy I felt in myself, from the teachers and the students. It was fun, light and so useful for future learning and projects.

Extension Ideas

• Collating their riddles into a class book.
• Writing riddles in the other subject areas.
• Presenting riddles to other classes.

So why do this work so well?

Why it worked!

• Fun mentor texts for inference: Chalk by Bill Thompson and Rhyme Crime by Jon Burgerman. Starting with literature helps students to warm up their thinking and is a great way to review many things, like in this case, a comprehension strategy.
• Riddles are a short text to read and write. The best way for students to write a form is to unpack the form first. Students don’t often write riddles but they are seen everywhere and throughout many children’s magazines. Consider perusing children’s magazines for other fun forms.
• Desired audience – “Hey, do you want to hear a riddle?” So much of the new curriculum is to create for a variety of audiences, purposes, forms and structures. This lesson duo hits the mark. So much of riddles is to entertain. We tend to do a lot of story writing but that usually means a teacher audience or fellow students. Riddles tend to transcend the classroom.
• Mixed ability groupings – collaborative supports. We have other students in groups supporting their other group members. It’s not necessarily the ones that are the most highly academic who lead, sometimes it’s the ones that are the most verbal. Students who struggle with reading and spelling can contribute their ideas orally. Other students love to create the written part, some enjoy drawing pictures. A group effort that is achieved by design and organically.
• Gradual release of responsibility model – We do – times two – We wrote together, they wrote together. Note this video provides an excellent explanation of how the GRM can be done in the way it is needed. It doesn’t always have to be I DO at the start. I found that the support they needed was in starting the process together, not just watching me first.
• Paper and Pens – Remember in this tech era, students still love and appreciated old style paper and pens. We lose them sometimes with tech. Delayed logins, not enough devices, or devices without charge. Paper and pens are super reliable and fun too!

I left that school at the end of the week feeling like the ending scene from The Breakfast Club.

I can’t wait to continue this discussion.

Until Next Time,

The Lit Maven 🙂

(Picture credit: David Rock Design)