Partner Reading Board

Here is a photograph of the partner reading board I have created. Each class has their names written on popsicle sticks, which we use for cold calling and other random choice activities in class. These sticks also are great to use for our partner reading board. Here's our interactive board, showing each reading partner group in each class!

The holders are actually just old envelopes that I sealed and cut in half. Then I glued them onto poster board to make a set of pockets. I have a variety of volunteers that help pass out the sticks and  I call each table up to the board to place their sticks in the envelopes. The top row indicates which phase of collaborative work we are in during class. Although this isn't used for all activities, it's great for reciprocal teaching or literature circles.

Images of Student Work

Here are some student work samples of what my students have created this week with reciprocal teaching after partner reading. These are unedited/ungraded and in two stages of completion.

The Importance of Trust in Partner Reading

I have been working with my students to reinforce our classroom rituals and routines for collaborative reading practice through reciprocal teaching and partner reading. I realized why my students really have latched on to partner reading. When we read a text from our literature book as a class, I begin the lesson by using the text to model the focus benchmark (main idea, compare contrast, context clues, etc.) for the day and facilitate student practice. Then students finish reading the passage using what I have called partner reading. Each student chooses their own partner that is essentially their "reading buddy." As elementary as this sounds, this week has really shown my why my students latch on to this strategy. My students need to choose their partner for this activity because it is essential they have someone they can trust as a reading partner. For a struggling reader, reading aloud to even 2 or 3 other people can be extremely uncomfortable and discouraging. 

Trust is huge in reading partners, and students generally tend to stick with the same partners. I would say that building trust in each other is the most important element of partner reading in my classroom. It is essential to this trust process that students choose their own partners. In order for the students to take risks with their reading and accept feedback from someone else and really give their all, they need to work with a partner they trust who will not "discuss" their reading session and who can truly help them. It is so exciting to listen to my students all read to each other and listen to the great words they use to help each other along the way. For many of my students, it's the only time they really ever engage with a text. 

I have a few students who are still struggling with the process and end up having personal conflicts and other issues that impede their ability to participate fully. Although I allow students to always choose their reading partner, there are a couple of students who struggle to participate. I would say that I am at about 95% success with this strategy. 

I have one student who has stated to me several times that she cannot focus on reading the text at all if she hears other voices. This student has special needs for reading, and therefore I have allowed this student to use headphones to cancel the noise in the classroom and read the text independently. I'm not sure what a better scenario would be for this student to become involved in the partner process at this time, but the student is very successful and can read the text independently without any issues of being off task or over burdened by the reading level. This student does participate in the collaborative work that takes place after partner reading and is very successful and a great leader when given an opportunity to have a great read of the text. 

Reteaching

In yesterday's film sesson, I realized that I needed to really teach my stuents what it means to partner read. This was the weakest point of yesterday's lesson using reciprocal teaching, so I gave my students a mini-lesson on how to read with a partner. Firstly, my students took guided notes on exactly what I wanted them to do when they read with a partner. I did not pass out any materials other than the textbook we were using. The only ask in front of my students was to read the text with their partner, where partner 1 reads one paragraph while partner 2 listens and helps out. The partners then switch after each paragraph. When my students read the story together, it was really very successful - much more successful than the class where I did not explicitly teach my students how to read with a partner. I think I really took it for granted that they may not know the expectations for partner reading, or what this looks like or sounds like. Even as my air conditioner was being vacuumed out by maintenance with a giant piece of loud equipment in the room and dust everywhere, my students were still pushing through and READING passionately together. My students then went on to complete their reciprocal teaching roles and discussed the text in their groups. Overall, for our first time using reciprocal teaching in groups, it was highly successful. Also, I think it is interested to see that our students really often can read well - there are just some skills that need reinforcing. I think that often we get into a deficit mindset with our students and we only think about all of the social skills and academic abilities they may lack. I think this experience highlighted the fact that my students do actually want to read, and they want to work in a safe space where they can push themselves with a trusting reading partner whose job it is to help them.

At the end of the class (3rd period), I gave my students a survey in which they were asked questions about their reading engagement and their feelings on working in a group. I had 1 or two students who were particularly dissatisfied with their experiences, mostly because they were upset that there were consequences for being off task during their work - also one student who rated the experience very poor because they had a disagreement with a partner. Here are the questions and some results:

1. Does working in a group help you understand more from your reading? Why or why not?

-Yes, because my partner can help me. 

-Yes, it helps me because I'm not having to read a long story with big words by myself. 

-No, because someone is always too slow or just can't read. 

-A little, because you have to listen harder and it helps us read better out loud. 

-Yes, because it gives us more options. 

-Yes, because it helps me learn more. 

-Yes, it helps me get a better view of the story. 

-Yes, because you hear everyone's perspective on the work. 

-Yes, because I can read to somebody. 

-Yes, because we can all say something. 

-Yes, because it helps us get it done faster and understand more. 

-Yes, sometimes because if I don't understand the other one probably will. 

-Yes, because it helps me learn better. 

-Yes, because I'm not the only one reading. 

-Yes, because it will help me to understand it. 

-Yes, because it helps me a little more so I can ask them how or what it means. 

2. Are you more interested in what you are reading when you read in a small group? Why or why not?

-Yes, because working together can be fun. 

-Yes, because I don't have to worry about a big crowd and I focus more on the story. 

-No, because I can stay at my own pace.

-No, because sometimes they play too much. 

-Yes, because you don't have to worry about your group and you are into the story. 

-Yes, because it is fun when they make facial expressions. 

-No, it is still the same. 

-Yes, because you have more people helping you on the reading. 

-Yes, because your partner is helping you.

-Yes, because they help you. 

-Sometimes, because the stories are boring sometimes. 

-Yes, because you have more ideas. 

-Yes, because we are all paying attention. 

-Yes, I'm more interested because I'm helping my partner. 

-Yes, because it helped me a lot on what I didn't know. 

3. On a scale of 1-7, how engaged were you during your reading today?

average: 5.36

This average includes two students who rated it a 0 because they essentially just had a bad day.
This is an entire point higher than the first poll of student reading engagement - their initial poll reported 4.32 before collaborative work...it's slowly working!

4. What would make our collaborative reading better? Give one suggestion that could help you learn more from this activity in class. 

-Listening to each other and asking questions.

-We want stories that make us not want to put them down.

-to work with who we want

5. Other comments?

-Reading can be fun if you work with your friends.

-I wish we could do more things and be in groups more and work together more than working alone. 

-I really like this class because I feel like it helps me understand what I am reading. 

-Put people in a group with others that they don't know well or talk to very much. 

First classroom video...

Today was the first day that I recorded one of my classes this year. We were reading a story from our textbook and using reciprocal teaching after reading in groups. This filming was extremely beneficial to me. I feel like I always tend to pick myself apart about different mannerism I have while teaching, or over-analyzing the ways I speak or say certain things. I also started to think about how badly I need my hair cut and how sloppy it looked today. I even noticed how my outfit was totally not matching at all with anything else I was wearing. What was I thinking this morning? Anyways...

I noticed many different things about the process of using reciprocal teaching with my students. I think that their cooperative work started to break down and lose its effectiveness because my students do not know what it means to read with a partner or a group. It took quite a while for students to get the hang of how to read the article together, which left a shorter amount of time for the actual reciprocal teaching work. I learned that I need to explicitly teach my students how to read with a partner and different strategies they can use. I will be doing a mini lesson with each class before we begin using reciprocal teaching again in class. It was difficult for students to have meaningful and learning-centered conversations about the text because they did not read it together effectively. I also think that I need to give students one set of things to do at a time. For example, before passing out any worksheets for their collaborative work, my students need to focus only on the partner reading without writing anything yet. It would be good if they could pass an object between each other that shows who is reading at the time, sort of like a talking stick. Once my students get this partner reading process down, they will be able to talk about what they read more effectively and it will prepare them for literature circles and novel studies in class.

I noticed a few other things about my instruction that I need to improve. I need to implement the use of cold calling in each class during questioning. I noticed in my video footage that it takes much to long to move students from low to high levels of questions and my students were showing very low engagement during this time aside from a few students. Cold calling will keep students more engaged and ready to answer. I also need to condense my directions into more brief words and stop repeating myself to improve the lesson flow. At times, the volume was very loud in the footage and there were some very clear off topic conversations that were occurring. I plan to implement a strategy using the word STOP. You write the word stop in the board and every time the volume gets too loud you erase one letter. Then if all the letters are erased, students work independently and silently rather than in their collaborative groups.

My key take-aways from the filming in relation to cooperative work in my classroom are as follows:
1) Students need to be taught how to read with a partner. Give a mini lesson on how this should work, focusing on what it looks like and sounds like and who is responsible for what during the reading. Perhaps give students an object to pass back and forth while reading to keep engagement up.
2) Use the timer while students are partner reading to keep them more on task and break up the portions of the cooperative process. For example, 15 minutes to partner read the story, 5 minutes to complete your role, 10 minutes to talk in your group.
3) Focus students on the reading by itself first. Then pass out collaborative materials.
4) Group management - use student points more during this time (none were awarded during the video footage, oops!). Also implement the STOP strategy during collaborative work.

Edmodo interest survey...

Follow up...

After I introduced Edmodo to my students yesterday, I polled one class to see how they felt about using it. I asked the following question.

Circle the number below based on how much you agree with the sentence (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree)

I believe Edmodo will help me be more engaged and interested in reading.

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

Average student response: 5.78

23 students polled 

Introducing Edmodo...

I introduced Edmodo to my students today. It went really well overall. I am using the website www.edmodo.com to post questions for my students to discuss about their reading, as well as quizzes related to class material and language arts benchmarks, and also for homework and small group assignments. I want my students to be able to use our edmodo page to collaborate with each other and build ideas, leading towards greater understanding of our reading. Today was a simple introduction where my students signed up for the website, joined the class page, and completed three simple tasks. The first task was a word of the day prompt using the word "persist" and students had to use it in a sentence and explain why it is important to persist in language arts class. Secondly, my students read a brief article about the 2013 Miss America pageant in which an Indian woman won the pageant, leading to some public controversy. Students had to identify her point of view on the controversy behind her win. Lastly, students took a 2 question quiz to briefly test their understanding of author's purpose and text structure. These sum up our major benchmarks we have covered so far this quarter. It was very easy for the students to sign up and comment to answer the questions.

One mini-lesson that I wish I would have given them beforehand would be about the difference between academic and friend speech. More specifically, the difference between formal and informal language. At first my students wanted to use the Edmodo site like their own Facebook page and respond to things other people were saying or shout out to them, etc, without answering the question asked. For the rest of my classes, I explicitly told them to only answer the question and not respond to the posts of others. I think this is an important step in teaching students responsibility using the internet for classroom learning because you have to scaffold them up towards responding responsibly to others. So, firstly, if students can post their own response to the questions asked using appropriate academic language then they can begin to master the art of responding to others' ideas in the forum. I only had 2 incidents of students posting inappropriate slang - nothing awful or hurtful - just slang that is not necessary in school. Students who did not follow instructions were asked to immediately sign off and we discussed what appropriate use of the forum looks like.

At the end of our activity, I asked my students to rate how much they believed that using Edmodo in class will help them become more interested and engaged in reading. Results will be posted soon once I type them into Excell and average them out.