REady to Go Ela strategies
Secondary Literacy Induction Group
change packages
Overview
Literacy Lovers is a group of phenomenal human beings who are DANGEROUSLY IN LOVE with supporting student readers at the secondary level. They realized how important it is to LISTEN to students in order to genuinely understand their interests, passions, and needs. Through collective inquiry we discovered that PDSA cycles are not FLAWLESS, but our drive for continuous improvement in literacy is IRREPLACEABLE. Student challenges can often include lack of fundamental reading skills, difficulty with content comprehension, limited access to diverse literature, minimal opportunities to read, unfavorable spaces to read, and so much more! Thus, we are not SORRY for wanting to get students’ reading skills in FORMATION because we know that with literacy improvement comes the FREEDOM to explore, understand, advocate and challenge posited ideas. We see a HALO above each student that reminds us how much they matter to the future, thus our change package includes a few practices that will help students take joy in the SUPERPOWER of loving literacy. WHO RUNS THE WORLD? Readers! Inventory and reflect on the work done by your group.
Readers notebook
Alyse Calcagni & CHris barrera
Non-Fiction Reading​
Using the Readers Notebooks allows students to find specific pieces of information during different sections of reading that are predetermined by the teacher or spontaneously discovered. Research shows that students who use visual supports when taking readings notes, are better able to visual the text. In addition, research has shown that students who are asked higher level thinking questions, are more inept to provide relevant on-topic conversations and build on prior knowledge to gain better understanding of their reading.
Habits of successful readers
Polett Schafer
As a spin-off of the Reader’s Notebook program, here are three different activities to tailor the Habits of a Successful Reader to the needs of your secondary students.
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As teachers, we all know that our learners are at different levels and have a wide array of needs as readers. These three strategies were developed to support students gain a deeper understanding of informational text which was tested in a full inclusion classroom. After consulting with students about their experiences with these different iterations of the Habits of a Successful Reader, I found that the strategies could be offered as options to students and students can choose which one suits their needs as a reader. This is adapted from Lucy Calkin’s Tapping the Power of Nonfiction curriculum.
Conversation Starters Bookmark​
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Using digital portfolios for digital discourse
Samantha heller
This strategy helps give new purpose to student DPs (digital portfolios/websites) while offering a chance for online conversation among students. This strategy providing ample think time for students to comment on the analysis and thoughts their colleges provide in their blog post.
Do this to give new life and purpose to your students’ DPs and to practice collegiate conversations online.
Direct quotes and evidence with claim, evidence, and reasoning
Colleen Stevenson
In speaking with humanities teachers, there seemed to be a trend in which students were making claims about texts, but could not find the evidence within the text that supported their claim. The reason for studying evidence use in text is that this is ultimately an multi-discipline issue since many, subjects in school require evidence from the text to support claims or solutions.
Reading roles & strategies for collaborative reading
Teaching reading can present a lot of challenges--especially in the upper grades when reading is often used as the primary mode of learning content. I tried several strategies to promote reading comprehension, accountability, and text-based discourse in my 12th grade Humanities classroom.
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Reading in class can be such a gamble--some students will read extremely fast, others will feel anxiety over reading slower, and a portion will do an excellent job looking like they are reading. Furthermore, it can feel really stale if the class does the same structures everyday. As teachers, we want to promote student-centered learning, discussion, and overall comprehension of challenging texts, but this is no easy feat. I wanted my students to enjoy reading with each other, too, while maintaining rigor. The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo is a great resource for lots of different reading strategies and in-text examples.