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.

Conversations with focal students

My conversations with my focal students definitely illuminated some key gaps between what I hoped to communicate and what my students actually understood about what a good partner share in Reading Workshop looks like. For the past several weeks, I have been talking frequently with my students about how we "grow ideas" together: how when one person shares the seed of an idea about their reading, a good listener will hear that seed, and build on it, back and forth until the idea becomes well developed. I've stressed that a good conversation doesn't just involve people taking turns talking or retelling, that it should be a real dialogue, with both partners helping each other to develop big ideas. We've practice that in whole-class discussions as well as fishbowl discussions, with a small group in the middle talking and an outer circle observing.

But when I asked my focal students what a good partner share looks like, their responses surprised me. One student talked about how in a good partner share, both partners talk for a long time. He also mentioned that reading partners should ask each other specific questions about what happened in the book. Another student told me that reading partners should tell who the characters are and what happened — in other words, a basic retelling. None of the students talked about growing a big idea about a character, or about listening to their partner's idea and building on it: the two points I have been most focused on teaching in the past few weeks.

This makes me think that students' ideas about dialogue around reading are deeply entrenched, and that I will need to do even more explicit modeling and teaching in order to build students' understanding of what high-quality dialogue looks like. I'd be interested to do some contrastive analysis with students of two different conversations: one focused on partners retelling and asking clarifying questions, and one in which partners have a back-and-forth that results in higher-level analysis. I think I should also involve students in creating a rubric for discussions about reading: we could use the same rubric for students to self assess their conversations with partners, in book clubs, and in whole class discussions.

Probing Questions from my Critical Friends Group

I'm lucky enough to have an amazing critical friends group at my school that is focused on looking at how we might adapt a Reading Workshop model to fit the needs of English Learners. I shared my initial video data with them this afternoon, and they came up with these probing questions:

- What kinds of support in other academic areas might give students a chance to practice dialogue that's authentic?

- The students seem ready to think more deeply about character. What do you plan to have students look at/pay attention to in order to understand them?

- Based on the units you have taught thus far, how would you like to hear students sharing with reading partners?

- How can we ask students to hold their partners accountable for sharing on topic? What do they need? What do they do to keep the dialogue going when they are out of ideas?

- What are students thinking, doing, comprehending when reading independently? How do we know? How do we know what they know? How can partners elicit those responses?

Where I am now, and next steps

Think sheet – 10/06/12

1. Who do you think you might want to have has a focal student? What criteria will you use to choose your focal students? (Some teachers like to choose one high achieving student and two or three of their basic or below basic students.)

I’m interested in looking at sets of reading partnerships. Jesus/Diego and Erika/Abel are both representative pairs in terms of their reading level (low for the grade level, but representative of my class) and their language proficiency (all language learners at intermediate or early advanced stages of language development). I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to look at a high achieving partnership as well — maybe Julio and Danitza?

2. How would you know what is happening for your focal students? What are you doing now that would make student thinking/ student understanding visible?

I’m interested in investigating what it would take to raise the level of discourse in students’ talk about their reading: moving them from taking turns retelling to engaging in analytical, interpretive dialogue. Major opportunities to talk about reading include sharing time with same-level reading partners at the end of independent reading time each day, conversations in book clubs, and whole-class conversations about our read aloud.

3.  What data did you bring today? What does the data tell you about what is happening for your focal student? Pick one focal student’s work to consider.

For today, I videotaped two different reading partner conversations after independent reading time.

Jesus/Diego:

Jesus begins by retelling what he read today. Diego asks, “What do you mean…?” Jesus clarifies, continues retelling. As he finishes, there’s a short pause, and then Diego begins retelling what he read. Jesus asks several questions: “What is her name? What is the cat’s name? Where are they getting married?” He asks one “why” question: “Why did the cat run away?” Diego explains. There’s a short pause as Diego finishes, and then Jesus adds on to his retelling of his own book (no transition). Diego listens, and as Jesus finishes, Diego adds on to his own retelling. (Again, no transition).

It seems as though these students are successfully using this sharing time to clarify their understanding of what they read. They seem to understanding that a good partner share involves asking your partner questions, but their questions are primarily informational clarifying questions. The only evidence of interpretive, analytical talk is when Jesus asks why the cat ran away, and Diego infers to answer. Aside from this example, their talk is limited to retelling. They don’t seem to know how to move from initial retelling into a shared dialogue that supports the development of bigger ideas—I’m not sure if they even would identify that as a goal.

4. If you had the opportunity to ask this focal student a question about their learning what would it be?

I'd want to know what they understand about what a good conversation about reading looks like. I might ask, "How do you know if someone is good at doing a partner share with their reading partner?"

5. What are you thinking now?

I'm thinking that I'll need to create a rubric of what high-level student talk about reading looks like. The rubric will need to address the continuum of retelling --> interpretation, as well as the continuum of "parallel talk" to a dialogue in which both partners listen and build on each other's ideas. A rubric like this would allow me to have consistency in my data and measurement across the year by periodically videotaping my focal students' partner conversations and scoring them. 

I'm hoping to get help from critical friends at my school to think about what high level dialogue about reading would look like. I've been inspired by video of student book club conversations that I saw at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Institute I went to this summer; this video might be a starting place.  

 

6. What are the next steps?

Design my rubric, score my baseline data, think about what specific teaching points I'll teach toward next.