11/13/12: Reflections on focal student conversations; next steps

1. What are you thinking about right now for your area of inquiry?

I’m still really interested in raising the level of students’ talk about reading, but the inquiry feels a little stalled right now. I think that’s because the bulk of student talk currently happens in partner shares and during whole-class read aloud discussions. The next step is definitely to start up guided reading and book clubs—I think the talk around a shared text that happens in those groups will really enrich this inquiry. It will be interesting to compare the quality of students’ talk with their reading proficiency and growth; I wonder how much of a connection there will be.

2. What is one thing you learned when you had a conversation with your focal student(s)?

I learned that what I thought I was emphasizing in my instruction about talk about reading was not what my focal students were internalizing — at least not the only thing they were internalizing. Much of my instruction had been about how important it is to listen carefully to your partner’s idea and then build on it, really working together to develop a single idea instead of just taking turns reporting your thoughts. My students mostly talked about how it’s important to share the most important thing that happened in the parts you just read, that you should share for a long time, and that you should ask your partner lots of questions. They also talked a lot about checking for understanding and determining importance: telling your partner “specifically” what just happened, and identifying the most important details.

3. Did you find out what you were hoping to find out in the conversation?

I got a better sense of how students are thinking about partner shares; it prompted me to do much more teaching into how to develop big ideas and theories about the text (and about characters in particular), and how to use those theories to have deeper, more powerful partner conversations.

4. What do you want to know now?

I think I’m really ready to see how this all plays out in student-led book clubs with shared texts. I’m interested to see how my focal students (all ELLs reading below grade level) develop in their ability to talk about their reading, and how this growth might be related to their reading proficiency.

5. Where are you now in thinking about a repeating or routine data source?

I’m thinking of periodically video-recording my focal students’ book club, transcribing that video, and coding it for different conversational characteristics.

After group conversation:

What are you thinking now? What are your next steps for your inquiry?

It’s clear that it’s time to get these book clubs going. I think the first step will be to ask students what they would want their book clubs to look like: what would make them fun, interesting, and help them understand their books better?

Then I’d like to show them a video of a fifth grade book club from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project website. The students in the video are having a really sophisticated, analytical discussion about a book, and I’m interested to see what my students make of it. What do they notice about what the students in the video are doing? Are they inspired? Intimidated?

Finally, I’d like to jump into the book clubs, with lots of time built in for reflection about them, and fishbowls where different book clubs get time in the center of the circle as the rest of the class analyzes their discussion. At that point, it seems like the class might want to develop a rubric for what a good book club conversation would look like. Maybe this could then lead into regular self-assessment at the end of the discussions.