Passion-vs-Skill What kind of reader are you?

So, I had an interesting twitter conversation with a member of my PLN. The conversation involved teaching reading as a skill versus building a student’s passion for reading. We discussed the use of reading logs as part of a student’s reading routine. These reading logs include daily grammar checks where students list sentences, from their reading, that contain different parts of speech. For example, after reading, the student would find three sentences that contain a personal pronoun or adverb. I developed these logs to align with some professional development I attended. In this PD, it was stated that reinforcing grammar skills as part of a student’s daily reading builds comprehension, confidence, and grammar skills. My assertion was(is) that, a well-rounded reader must have well-developed grammar skills. I also want something to validate that a child is doing their daily reading. Accountability is important, and I feel as though a task like a reading log is a way to validate that the student is reading. If for nothing else than they are completing the log. Pretty basic right…But it seems others do not share this philosophy. Some feel that reading should become a student’s passion, and by making reading “work” it kills the potential to build that passion.

I continue to maintain my point-of-view, but I can also see the viability of the other side of the coin. Is there a happy medium, should there be a happy medium? In the article Motivating and Engaging Students in Reading by Jenna Cambria and John T. Guthrie the author's state, “A student with skill may be capable, but without will, she cannot become a reader. It is her will power that determines whether she reads widely and frequently and grows into a student who enjoys and benefits from literacy.” These are some powerful words and certainly a challenge to my perspective.

The authors go on to talk about a reader’s motivation. “An interested student reads because he enjoys it; a dedicated student reads because he believes it is important, and a confident student reads because he can do it”. I guess it comes down to what type of reader are we looking to build. Do we want a dedicated reader, a confident reader, or an interested reader? Which is best? Is there a best? The article goes on to list six techniques that help build passionate readers. I look forward to implementing some of them in my 2017 classroom.

After reading this article, I am now a believer that building a student’s passion for reading is the key. As with everything we do in the classroom, there is no single “best practice” method of building a passionate reader. As Guthrie and Cambria state, “research says that skill and will (motivation) go together. Usually, students who are gaining in skill are gaining in motivation as well.” So perhaps reading logs can and should be part of the solution? As we move into the new year, I will dedicate more of my time building passionate readers, but I will also continue to use reading logs to build reading skills and build confidence. Perhaps there is a happy medium!

The article can be found here: http://www.literacyconnects.org/img/2013/03/Motivating-and-engaging-students-in-reading-Cambria-Guthrie.pdf

My Reading Logs can be found here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Weekly-Reading-Log-and-Grammar-Check-2885507

Tastes Like Chicken...Why we should include sensory details to make our writing pop.

Writing is challenging!  Think of writing as an orchestra.  It can be beautiful, creating wonderfully soothing harmony.  Yet, if just one section, one instrument, is off key, the entire ensemble suffers.  Percussion must work with the brass section and the strings must be in harmony with the woodwinds.  The conductor must skillfully lead them all. 

Writing is no different.  The introduction must relate to the body, the body must tie in with the conclusion, and the writer must be able to synchronize them all.  Just as an orchestra has cellos, violins, and violas, the sections of an essay have different parts as well.   

One extremely important part of a well-crafted essay is sensory details.  Loosely defined, sensory details are those details that allow the reader to use their five senses to participate in the experience.  They can be difficult to include simply because everyone uses their senses differently. 

We all know the adage, show don’t tell, and including sensory detail from our five senses helps us drop the reader into our story world.  Here are some tips to consider for your next project.

Sight

The most often used sense when writing is the sense of sight. It’s what we use most and what comes naturally to us.  We write about what we see. But here’s a tip: Look beyond what others see-blue sky, green grass to the details of color, shape, size, to indicate something new. It is those extra details that make writing special.  Everyone knows the sky is blue, but what shade.  The blue sky of winter is vastly different than the blue sky of summer.  The green of a palm tree in the Bahamas is different than the green if the rolling hills in Kentucky.  When you describe the color of someone’s eyes are they just brown or are the burnt umber with cocoa accents.  Were her eyes green or were they like two emeralds glistening in the sun.  While sight is the most used sense, it should also be considered the most underused. 

Hearing

Loud, soft, yell, whisper, angry, and all kinds of other adjectives are used for sound. But have you thought about using something more personal? “She spoke with a lover’s voice, not a cat’s, making me want to listen closely to every syllable.” Or, “He sounded like freedom. Not just his words, but the way they tumbled gently from his lips.” Or use a little synesthesia: “It was a bright red noise, repeating stop, stop, stop continually, until I couldn’t go on any longer.”  Sound can also be used to elicit emotion.  Shouting can’t be heard by the reader unless we include emotional words such as bellow, roar, shriek, squeal, or screech. A whisper provokes diverse emotions as well.  Emotions like calm, fear, or sympathy can be felt with the word whisper.  Change whisper to murmur, sigh, moan, or whimper help the reader experience the writing.

Smell

Smell is one of those senses that’s different for each of us. What I think is a bad smell, someone else might not be bothered by it. So, words like stink and pungent are great to use, but you can easily go deeper into an explanation. For example, “The alley smelled of old socks and Cracker-Jacks, an assault to the nose and eyes alike.” Or how about this: “the forgiving aroma of freshly brewed coffee cut through the pungent odor of seared toast”.

“The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind.” – Thalassa Cruso

Touch

The way things feel is more than just texture and temperature. Like the other senses, it can be personal: “His handshake was my father’s handshake, not to meet you, but the rough callousness of someone showing you who’s boss.” Or try something like this: “It felt like the memory of something long forgotten, thin, almost invisible.”

Taste

Taste is something that is different to each of us and is difficult to get across in words. Yes, we all know what bacon tastes like.  What about doing something unique with that idea? If you think about it, taste is more than just something your brain interprets from your taste-buds. It’s texture and smell and sight and even process, all mixed together. Try this: “The undercooked bacon felt like a wet sponge placed on my tongue, only grease leaked into my mouth instead of water.” Or this: “I could smell the mold even before I put the cheese into my mouth.” Of course, you can always use a metaphor or simile, like, “Like the comfort of hot cocoa on a cold winter morning, the taste of the chocolate brought me back to my childhood.”

As a writer, your ultimate goal should be to create an emotional response in your reader. They need to connect, and they need to feel. The best way to do this is to throw out those vivid details; rather than telling the reader the character is afraid, show their heartbeat. Show the sweat glistening, their hands shaking, a rotten smell in the air. Show the darkness, show the errant sounds that drift around them. When you think of a feeling, you don't think of love or happiness themselves. You think of images and experiences that translate into that feeling. When you embed those images and experiences into your writing, the reader will feel it as well.

Text Feature Surgery

For the Love of Reading...!

What makes some children want to pick up a book during leisure time when some prefer to pick up a video game controller.  The answer seems simple; the love of reading.  That being said, as we like to make our students do, let's dig a little deeper.

Motivation is the driving force behind anything.  We need the motivation to get up every day to go to work.  We need the motivation to eat healthy, to exercise, and to fly straight.  Personally, I need the motivation to read.  It would be nice if motivation was transferable, to click on a button and wha-la instant motivation.  But al-las it is not.

In a nutshell, the problem of motivation is this: we want our students to do something we think is important, but they may not "choose" to do it. Some students (and adults for that matter) see reading as a task that must be done to fill a checkbox, be it homework or classwork, they see reading as work.  This is, of course, not an unusual problem in classrooms. The student who doesn’t do the required work will receive low grades. An unmotivated reader tries to persuade themselves that reading is not all that important.

We want our students to read, and surely we want reading to be a positive experience. What if I offered a reward? Say I told my students, “If you read that book, I’ll give you an ice cream sundae!” The student might take me up on the deal, and they'd probably have a positive experience. So won’t they then be motivated to read? It sounds so simple that it might be too good to be true.

In the short term, rewards do work. If you find a reward that the student cares about, they will read in order to get it. But what we’re really concerned about is their attitude toward reading; we want the student to read even if we’re not around to dole out sundaes. Are we motivating a student to read or to get a reward?  Research indicates that the answer is probably the reward.  In fact, the reward is likely to make the attitude less positive.

How Do We Inspire Our Kids to Love Reading?

1. Meet students in their comfort zone.

Talk to them about their favorite movies, TV shows, or video games. Find books that expand on those universes and characters that already have kids captivated. Show them how dynamic visuals and written storytelling work together in comic books and graphic novels. Have kids make their own comics or write their own fan-fiction, and share their work with their classmates.

2. Surround kids with good books.

When we give kids access to a rich library, we provide hundreds of opportunities every day for their eye to fall on an intriguing title, or for them to see another student choose a book and become engrossed in it. When we surround kids with books, we show them that reading is something that permeates life, something to do at any moment of the day. When we give kids a library and let them choose their own reading material, we provide opportunities for learning that are deeper, more pervasive, more personal, and most importantly, student-driven.

3. Read books aloud.

The best thing that you can do to foster a child's love of reading is to read with him or her. Reading aloud is a low-pressure and foolproof way to engage the imagination through the written word. Once you have them well and truly hooked, leave copies of the book lying around the classroom and give them free reading time. How many students do you imagine will choose to pick up the book and finish it on their own?

4. Show students how much you love reading.

In my childhood, it was my mother, an avid reader, who was my first introduction to the joy of reading, but teachers are no less influential in the lives of their students. When I look back to my school days, I remember a few teachers whose passion for a subject inspired a similar passion in me. When teachers find ways to show students how important reading is in their own lives, it opens the door for reading to be important in their students' lives.

Only the Beginning

A love of stories is hardwired into every human being, and we have more media for receiving these stories than we've ever had in the course of human history. In video games, we get to guide a character through a story. In movies and television, we can see an entire life play out in front of us in a few short hours. And in books, we can read about the complex emotions and motivations that wrestle beneath the surface of a stoic façade. Each medium has its unique appeal and limitations. When used together, we can inculcate in our students not only a love for storytelling in all of its forms but give them a sense of how we as human beings have storytelling in our DNA.

Fun on Mad Scientist Day

Why Narrative Writing?

Narrative Writing

What is Narrative? 

Often, the word narrative is synonymous with a story.  A narrative is a story (fiction or non-fiction) told and the order in which it is told.   Sometimes, there is a narrator, a character or series of characters, who tell the story. Sometimes, as with most non-fiction,  the author himself/herself in the narrator. 

You are narrators of your own lives all the time.  Something happens in class. You go to lunch; then,  you tell the details that are important to you in the order that seems right to you.  The story that you tell is a narrative.  A reporter who tells a human interest story for the Olympics about an athlete that fought for years to get to the Olympics might emphasize his hardship, the time he had to sleep outside for a week, the eight hours a day that he worked out.  The narrative is shaped by details. These details offer clues about the author’s purpose. Clearly, the author who emphasizes the hardships of an Olympic athlete wants to show us that this person overcame adversity to succeed. 

Why Write a Narrative? 

Narrative writing is very important in your day-to-day life.  For the rest of your life, you will write texts, e-mails, cover letters, blogs, etc. about your beliefs,  your ambitions, information you know, and the feelings you have.  What could be more important?

Narrative writing in fiction and non-fiction (and even poetry) tells others the stories of our personal experiences and allows us to gain empathy and sympathy about the world around us. 

What does a good written response look like?

As we develop our writing skills, one of the most difficult skills to master is writing to explain.  We quickly develop the ability to pull relevant details from the text, and we are able to cite where we got that information from.  However, when it comes time to explain, we struggle. 

What exactly, do I mean by explaining?  Think of it this way, if I were to ask you do you like ice cream, and you were to respond yes or no, you are answering the question.  It is when you add to that answer, more details such as I like vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.  You have explained your response.  When you add I like Bryer's Vanilla, Blue Bunny Strawberry, and Ben and Jerry's Funky Monkey you have provided even more details. 

Anyone can answer a question, but good writers are able to provide that just right amount of detail that explains their answer.  We call this skill adding voice to our writing.  Ultimately, it should be the goal of every to have their own discernable style.  We can do this by adding voice. 

Here are the stages we look for in our students writing

1.  R = Restate the question
2.  A = Answer the question
3.  C = Cite where you get the answer from
4.  E = Explain, explain your answer by adding your own voice.  

Voice is explaining the answer.  It's adding those extra details, such as the fact that I like Ben and Jerry's Funky Monkey.  Up until this point in our student's academic career, the information has always been presented to them in a text or in a picture.  Now we must learn to combine the information presented within the text with our own voice.  It is difficult...but we can, and will work hard to get it write...or is it right?