I always remember Don Graves using the word “nudging.” He talked about nudging students to give them that gentle push to try something new in their writing.  I loved the concept.  It seemed to offer the student a challenge, yet something not too overwhelming. With the gentle nudge, it meant that they were supported in what they were taking a risk to try.   Not only do our students need these nudges, but sometimes we, as professionals, do also.

I started thinking the other day about the people who have nudged me in my career.  I remember when teacher friends of mine, Mary and Carleen, who were trained in Reading Recovery several years before I was, suggested that I might like getting trained.  Thanks, friends — Reading Recovery changed my understandings forever about how children learn to read, what we can do to support struggling readers, and how to teach responsively to the child’s needs.

Then there was Kathleen, my niece and fellow teacher.  There was a time when I was feeling like I was stagnating as a Reading Teacher in the school where I worked.  Things had become too routine and uninspiring.  Kathleen nudged me to change schools and come to her school.  That nudge resulted in my spending the last 6 years of my employment working with teachers who were true learners, who never gave up on students, who were creative, inquisitive, and willing to face problems head-on.

There were several people who nudged me to write, among them a teacher friend, Susan.  I had been giving many successful workshops talking to teachers about a variety of topics related to teaching reading.  I told Susan one day that “I just wanted to talk about literacy.”  She answered by saying, “but you can reach a lot more teachers by writing it down.”  So, eventually, out came One Child at a Time followed by Catching Readers Before They Fall, co-authored with Katie Keier.

I have to give credit to Katie for being one of my biggest nudgers of late as Katie is always ten steps ahead of me in technology.  Though I had taken the leap to join Facebook to keep up with my 25 nieces and nephews, their spouses, and their 58 children, Katie nudged me to try Twitter to form my “professional learning community.”  Though I’m still not an avid tweeter, I do find so many interesting articles and websites about literacy that I would not otherwise find.  Of course, I also have Katie to thank for nudging me to become a blog reader and blog writer.  Her latest nudge has been for me to try VoiceThread that I highly recommend.  It’s easy to use and very adaptable to many classroom endeavors.  I recently sent her kinder class a voicethread about a hike I took out west in Red Rock Canyon.  It was so fun to make, featuring pictures of the canyons, rock climbing, and all the desert animals that live in the region.

Take a minute to think about all the people who have nudged you in your life.  I know that I wouldn’t be the same without all my favorite nudgers.  Thanks to them all! Or comment on a student that you’ve given a gentle nudge to recently.

In this fast-paced world of today, how much are we doing to teach our students about persevering? The idea of endurance, perseverance, and over-coming obstacles certainly seems worth discussing with our young readers, writers, and learners. Don’t we want students to stick with something even when the going gets tough?

The fifth graders I work with had the privilege of having a visit from Bernice Steinhardt, co-author of Memories of Survival. All her life, the author’s mother, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, told her children stories of her own childhood during the Holocaust. When the Nazis took over Poland and ordered all Jews to report, Esther escaped with her sister and never saw their family again. As she got older and was living in the U. S. Esther made a quilt with each square illustrating one of the stories from her life. Bernice then added the text for each story as it was made into a picture book. It is a fabulous book and the students were very intrigued.

Based on a recommendation from their website, artandremembrance.org, the classroom teacher decided on three things after the author’s visit: 1) to immerse the students in read alouds and discussions relating to the theme of persevering; 2) to teach the students about the interview process so that they could conduct interviews with their parents, grandparents, or other relatives; 3) have the students choose one story of perseverance from their interviews to write and illustrate.  The Art Teacher joined in with a way to make a quilt out of the children’s illustrations. The “Stories of Perseverance Lesson Plan” can be found on their website.

My job in this endeavor was to bring in and booktalk many of the children’s literature texts on the theme of persevering.  As I rummaged through my own books, I realized the books fell into several categories.  Several books had characters who persevered through personal challenges, real-life or fictional: Wilma Unlimited (the story of Wilma Rudolph), Thank You, Mr. Falker and Junkyard Wonders (both about Patricia Polacco’s difficulties learning to read and being in special classes), Stone Fox (both main characters strive to overcome obstacles), and Half-A-Moon Inn (a young, mute boy perseveres to find a way back to his mother.) Each book lent itself to further ideas from the students.  For example, Wilma’s story reminded the children of many other athletes who also endured personal challenges.

Another category was made of all the holocaust-related books, like: Let the Celebrations Begin, The Story of Anne Frank, Hilde and Eli, The Number on My Grandfather’s Arm, Number the Stars, and so on.

I booktalked or read aloud a few picture books from the Civil Rights Era: Freedom Summer, Freedom School, Teammates and books about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

Patrick Allen (author of CONFERRING: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop) taught me about the book called Spirit of Endurance: The True Story of the Shackleton Expedition to the Antarctic by Jennifer Armstrong. This book will probably remind students of other true-life adventures books about climbing Mt. Everest, searching for the Titanic, and so on.

Many of the children in our school have families that have recently come to the United States from other countries and speak another language other than English as their first language.  Although this project is still in the making, we feel confident that the students will uncover many family stories of perseverance to share with the class.

Many teachers use some form of literature circles or book clubs, but many others do not and are even afraid to get them started. Literature circles are “small, peer-led discussion groups whose members have chosen to read the same story, poem, article, or book” (Daniels, 2002.) Some teachers worry that the kids will just fool around and not really run their own discussions. Setting up literature discussion groups in your classroom takes time, planning, modeling, as well as reflecting, reevaluating, and making changes when necessary.

One teacher I work with has decided to play around with book clubs now, at the end of the school year, then read and think more about them over summer break and get a great start with them next school year.  Previously her reading workshop looked like this: daily time for individualized reading, conferring 1:1 with her students, presenting mini-lessons on reading comprehension strategies, encouraging students to branch out and try different genres, having students write in response to their reading as well as keep a log of what they are reading, occasionally meeting with a small group with a non-fiction text, and so on.

Here are some of the ideas we talked about so that she can give book clubs a try.

1. Start by making a class chart with the students.  Make a T-chart and put “Interaction” on one side and “Interpretation” on the other side.  Tell the kids that interaction means ‘what a good discussion group might look like and sound like.’  The interpretation side means ‘these are some of the things we might be discussing in our group.’  The children make suggestions of what to put on the chart.  This acts as your anchor chart.  Here is what one class came up with.

INTERACTION

•Eyes/ears on the speaker

•Speak clearly, loud enough, slow enough

•Sit in circle; invite others in; make room

•Ask shy ones to share

•Don’t be the discussion hog

•Speak into the silence

•Ask for clarification

•Add on to another person’s thought

INTERPRETATION

•The plot

•Exciting, interesting, sad parts

•Predictions

•Characters thoughts, feelings, agree or disagree

•Reactions

•Connections

•Lines you like; author style

•Confusing parts

•Ask questions of each other

In Harvey Daniels second edition of his book Literature Circles he uses a similar chart, but the headings are “social skills” and “thinking skills.”

2. I tend to NOT use the roles that are sometimes suggested in certain books – for example, Connector (makes a connection), Literary Luminary (share words or phrases you liked), Summarizer, etc.  The ultimate goal is for kids to have deep discussions around texts and the roles sometimes sidetrack them.  They begin to think that the group’s purpose is to meet and have each person “do” their role job. (In my next post, I’ll share how Daniels clears up the misunderstandings about role sheets.)

3. Use picture books to model and practice the elements of a good discussion.  Read the book and break the class into small groups for discussion.  Then afterwards refer back to the anchor chart to see how the groups did.  Sometimes doing a fish bowl also works (a small group of students have a discussion and everyone else watches and makes notes about what the group did well).

4. Develop sheets for the groups to keep track of what they are reading, how far they should read between times, when the next meeting of the club will be,  and what to bring with you to the club meeting.

5. Allow groups to choose to read the same book or various books by the same author.

6. Suggest that the groups don’t OVER-meet.  Sometimes just meeting 2 times during the reading of the text is enough.  Then the club can have several meetings after the book reading is completed.  Once everyone has completed the book, the discussions are richer; students can return to various parts, develop theories about the texts, search for evidence of their ideas, and so on.  When students meet too often, after every chapter or every 10 pages, the book drags on and children loose interest.

In my next post, I’m going to review some professional books and their highlights. Perhaps you might want to read one over the summer if you wish to implement book clubs in your classroom next school year.