The ORAL READING RECORD, otherwise known as a Running Record or Informal Reading Inventory, is the best tool for assessing what our students know and can do as readers.

An Oral Reading Record involves simply sitting beside a student and listening to them read a passage, while recording any errors (“miscues”), evaluating fluency and noting reading behaviors. It’s also important to have students retell what they’ve read or ask a few questions to assess comprehension. (We’ve all had students who could call out all the words, but didn’t have a clue what they read!) But how do you find time to individually test every reader in the class?

A good time to conduct individual assessments is while students are reading on their own. That’s why it’s important to get those INDEPENDENT READING routines in place as quickly as possible. While the class is reading independently, we can be freed up to meet with one student at a time. Within a week, it should be possible to listen to every student and assess his/her reading level and reading needs.

 Ideally, we want to collect an informal oral reading record on our struggling readers once a month; for students on grade level or above, once per reporting period is generally adequate.

Why not just give a written comprehension test? Unfortunately, most of our struggling readers are also struggling writers, so a written response does not accurately reflect what they know about reading. The one-on-one test allows us to ask the students questions about their reading, probe their thinking, and invite elaboration or explanation from the text in a way that can’t be done with a pencil and paper test.

Assessment time is teaching time. Ten minutes of one-on-one time with every student each reporting period seems like time well spent to head off problems at the pass and provide every student with the instruction they need to become a better readers.

Read more about ORAL READING RECORDS here.

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But test scores aren’t the only reason that handwriting is back in style.

More and more classes are using keyboards for virtually all school writing. But current brain research tells us that writing by hand develops neural circuits that support learning to read, leads to more comprehension and retention than word-processing, and has even been shown to unleash creativity and promote positive thinking! Read more in “5 Brain-Based Reasons to Teach Handwriting in School” by spelling expert Richard Gentry.

The jury’s still out over the benefits of cursive writing over manuscript (“printing”), but experts agree that it’s important for every student to be able to produce some form of legible and efficient handwriting. As noted above, messy handwriting can seriously impede academic performance or test grades for students in middle and senior grades.

It’s pretty hard to fix bad handwriting habits once students are in middle school.  Occupational therapist and blogger, Miss Jaime, suggests giving students narrow-ruled paper and skip lines in between. She has found that writers take more care with smaller spaces.  She also recommends special “spacing paper” (RediSpace Transitional Paper by Mead) that guides writers in spacing letters and sticking to the margins. Moveable sticky arrows also guide writers in defining spaces between words.

For all your students, here are three ways to squeeze handwriting practice into even the most technologically advanced classroom:

• Have students take notes by hand, when listening, viewing or gathering information from another source.
• When doing high-frequency word work or other vocabulary or word-level studies, focus on letter formation and quality penmanship.
• Have students complete graphic organizers by hand. Handwriting slows readers down and forces them to synthesize and carefully choose the words they use.

And in case you’re still not convinced, it might surprise you to know that some doctors are actually prescribing handwriting to aging Baby Boomers to ward off dementia!

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And I’m not alone! I’m told that the readers will only tolerate about half as many words on a web page as they did when the internet was first introduced. Tweets were first limited to 140 characters so they could be consumed easily on any device. Although X has expanded its character limit (for paid subscribers), a recent report by Buddy Media found that Tweets under 100 characters are most likely to engage readers. What about the ubiquitous Facebook? One researcher found that the 40-character post (that’s not 40 characters, not 40 words) received 86% higher engagement than longer posts. Read more in this interesting article (with a surprisingly unwieldy title): “The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research.”

The question for us teachers is: In this world of brief news bytes, how do we get students to build the stamina to read a complete novel from beginning to end? What about students who are unable (or unwilling) to read novels that should be easy enough for them?

Without going into the foibles and flaws of readability, it’s not unreasonable that some readers who score at a certain level on a one-page oral reading record might be flummoxed by 70 or 100 of those pages bound together in a book. But there are ways that teachers can help.  Click here to read some tips for helping students build reading stamina.

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I think going to a workshop is a little like shopping for groceries. Some shelves I just breeze right past because I know my family isn’t going to touch those pickled jalapenos or liver medallions. Other shelves hold goods that my family loves and I probably already have them at home. I’ll usually check them out to replenish my stocks or to see if our favorite cereal is on sale or if there’s a new variety of ice cream treat. Frequently, however, there will be something new that my family might just like if I add a little spice here or some special sauce there.

That’s what workshop ideas are like. Some won’t fit my students or my teaching style. Others are golden oldies that I’m already using. But now and then there will be something a little bit unique, a new piece of research, a slightly different approach that I just might be able to spice and sauce and mix and stir to meet my tastes.

So rather than avoiding or dismissing teacher workshops this year, here are four ways we can make them work for us:

1. Be open to the idea that the presenters might actually know something we don’t. Classroom teachers have to know a little bit about a whole lot of subjects; consultants are generally experts in one field. They have time to read the research and best practice and synthesize it for the rest of us. At worst, they might confirm what we already know. At best, they might say something that challenges our own beliefs.  It’s not a bad thing to disagree with what a presenter says if it makes us reflect on our own practice.
2. Network with other teachers. Even if the presenter doesn’t give us anything new, other teachers might. We so rarely get to network with colleagues who might have the same issues and problem students that we do.  Take advantage of the opportunity to sit in grown-up sized chairs and talk to other people with the same vocabulary levels as ours. We might just learn something from one another.
3. Take advantage of some “think time” to reflect on our own practices.  We in schools rarely have the luxury of time to just sit back and think about what’s working and what we can do better. Here’s an opportunity to get into the zone without the phone ringing or someone tugging on our pant legs.
4. Use them to build our own sustained professional development. Plant those seeds of ideas that were scattered at the workshop to nurture our own sustained professional growth over the rest of the school year. Try implementing one new routine or practice. Add your own seasonings. And turn it into a whole year of professional learning.

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Wait Time

• The length and quality of student responses increased.
• The number of “I don’t know” and no-answer responses decreased.
• More students volunteered to answer.
• Teachers asked fewer, but richer and more varied questions.

Some researchers have turned this concept into “think time,” a period of uninterrupted silence so both teacher and students can process the information and consider the response.  This is not just a waiting time, but an intentional thinking time to organize ideas.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.  Three seconds of silence can seem interminable.  But it’s also powerful.  So the next time you ask an open-ended question, do the count: “one-pineapple, two-pineapple, three-pineapple” before calling on a student. It just might create magic in your class too.

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My grandson has just returned from his first week at Kindergarten and he tells me that one of the most important things he has learned is to put up his hand if he wants to ask or answer a question. This is a time-honored tradition of simple courtesy:  it eliminates interruptions or individuals monopolizing conversations and (theoretically) gives everyone a chance to speak.

But it doesn’t always work that way. In fact, it comes to higher-level discussions, calling on only those who raise their hands can enable other students to disengage. If they don’t raise their hands, have they even thought about the question?  Is this time-honored tradition actually giving some students tacit permission to opt out of the learning entirely?

Try this instead:  Tell students NOT to raise their hands.  After asking a question or initiating a discussion, pause to give everyone time to think about a response. Tell the students that you will decide whom to call on for a response. If a student is called on and doesn’t have a response, s/he has permission to take a pass, but not to opt out.  You will come back to him/her later to elaborate on or add to the discussion.

Read more about 4 TIPS FOR GENERATING HIGHER LEVEL THINKING.

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I often tend to use the words “struggling” and “reluctant” readers in one breath.  But the reality is that not all of our reluctant readers are struggling. And, as one ELL teacher recently pointed out to me, not all struggling readers are reluctant. In her school, over half of the students are new to the country, most from refugee camps in the Middle East. Even at ages 10, 11, and 12, many of these students have never had any formal schooling. They’ve never learned to read in their own languages, much less in English. But, she explained, they are desperate to learn.

That’s why finding books that interest and engage English Language Learners – but are still at an accessible reading level – is so important. In an article on the ELL website Colorín Colorado, teacher Kristina Robertson says, “Our challenge is to help ELL students discover books and materials that are interesting and at a readability level that allows them to enjoy reading while exposing them to new vocabulary and making sure that they don’t become too frustrated.”  She cites research by Stephen Krashen emphasizing the importance of  school and public libraries having large collections of easy reading materials for readers of all ages and stages.

We know that the more you read, the better reader you will become. HIP Books give these struggling-but-far-from-reluctant readers the motivation and confidence to read more. Plus they build background knowledge and vocabulary. And here’s a bonus! Teachers tell us that HIP Books are great for helping English Language Learners understand slang, colloquial language and figures of speech.  (Download a graphic organizer on Figures of Speech from the Running for Dave Teacher’s Guide.)

HIP’s new HIP SR MEGA PACK offers a collection of 20 novels at basic Grades 2-4 reading levels, but on a variety of themes and issues to interest every student.  Together, let’s work to make every reader an engaged reader.

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When High Interest Publishing first received the manuscript for TERROR 9/11, we were hesitant.  Some of us wondered if publishing the novel was capitalizing on someone else’s tragedy.  But our our senior editor insisted that it is the human stories that engage young people and entice them to pay attention to the true facts of history.

Teachers Pamela Moran and David Socol agree. In an excellent article in the New York Times, they say that students who learn history only as a set of facts, names and dates never learn to really think about that history. Moran and Socol argue that “our students must learn how to look deeply and critically into multidimensional stories that are the building blocks of our shared understanding of history.”

There are many excellent sources of lesson ideas to help teachers navigate the political, sociocultural and emotional sensitivities around teaching about the terrorist attacks of September 11, starting with the official 911 Memorial website.

Moran and Socol suggest beginning with the concept of history as stories, and with students’ own knowledge and impressions. Asking students to read, listen to and compare the stories of 9/11 and to analyze the longterm effects of this tragedy in our own communities helps them become critical learners and historians.

That’s why HIP published TERROR 9/11.  And why it continues to be an important read today.

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The same goes for the order of a string of adjectives. Why does little red Italian sports car ring true to the ear, while red sports Italian little car does not? Forsyth says there is a very deliberate (and rarely wavering) order for adjectives:  opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose. We call it the “Royal Order of Adjectives.” That’s why you can have a beautiful antique French silver vase, but not a marble Greek modern unusual statue. (Well, you can have one, but other people won’t understand what you’re talking about.)

You can read more about teaching the “Royal Order of Adjectives” at www.hip-books.com.

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