Secret Ways : Character Building

Helping readers to choose just-right books is always an uncomfortable conversation - especially with our youngest of readers.  Sometimes I feel like I am talking out of two sides of my mouth.  I want you to read everything, but....

I want you to choose, but...

Spending time with texts they can read significantly supports growth in reading.  How do we honor their interests as readers while they are still taking those very first steps into books?  How do we put books in their hands they will love and they can read?  How do we help them to find books that will help them grow as readers?  I want to honor their choices.  I want to see them fall in love with authors.  I want them to want to take home the book I read aloud to the class.  I want them to come back from the library excited about their new choices.  I also hope a significant portion of their reading time will be spent on books they can read instead of books which are too challenging.  What to do?

Self-selected reading is something I want my readers to have the opportunity to do.  At the same time, I know the importance of students reading books that are a good match for them as readers.  Experience has taught me if I can help students to make smart choices, they make faster progress as readers.  I do want them to learn to make these choices on their own.  I've never been one to want my students to shop for books from leveled baskets.  I want them to be able to select books from our classroom library so they can go to a library or bookstore utilizing the same strategies to find a book that works for them as a reader.

This is always a tough conversation because I want my words to be just right.  I want students to hear the love of reading in my voice.  I want them to know that I pick books for a variety of reasons.  I want them to know I sometimes choose books that are more challenging, but that I can't spend all of my time reading challenging books.  It's actually exhausting.

The conversation to help students self-select doesn't happen magically in a day.  It's a series of conversations woven together across time.  In the beginning days, there are picture books I love to read to help students understand there are books that fit us now and books we will grow into later.  To help them to begin to think about balancing their choices, I use a system where students determine who will read a book going home at night:

• me (I'll read it)
• you (mom or dad will read it)
• us book (there are parts I can read)?  

This has helped to honor their choices as readers a bit, but it has never felt concrete enough.

This week I was talking with a first grade teacher after school.  We began to talk about this challenge of honoring students hearts as readers while helping them to choose books they can read independently for understanding.  We don't want to limit our libraries.  How could we support young readers in this conversation?  As we talked we began to think about what we wanted students to be able to consider in these beginning steps.  As we talked we realized we wanted students to make choices based upon their heart, head, and eyes.

HEART:  A book should always feel good to our heart.  There's just something that made us pick it up.  Maybe we can relate to the character.  Maybe we love the author.  Maybe the illustrations are calling us.  A book that is a good match for our heart will be a book we want to tell other readers about.

HEAD:  A book needs to be a good match for our thinking.  When we read we are trying to determine what the author wants us to know.  This means paying attention to the text, understanding characters, inferring meaning, and thinking deeply about text.  A book that is a good match for our head will be one we can think, talk, and write about.

EYE:  A book needs to have readability.  We need to be able to use our eyes (and some good reading strategies) to read the book.  This is quite simplified, I realize, but we want students to be able to choose a book they can read independently.  I don't want students to think reading is about getting the words right, but I want a way to help them understand readability is one part to consider in making book selections.

As we talked we felt that talking about these three aspects of book choice with our readers will allow us to honor all students and their choices, while giving us a way to talk about the aspects of our selections we may need to think more about.

In this way, we can honor the choices readers make for a variety of reasons in our conversations.  We can talk more about the reasons for our selections and begin to help students to think about book choice in new ways.  It will allow us to also work toward finding the sweet spot for choice where books work for our heart, our head, and our eyes.  This will allow us to talk about balance in our reading lives.  It's okay as beginning readers to pick books that speak to our hearts as that is what readers do, but some days - and more and more days - we need to choose books that bring all of the pieces together.


Other Post of Interest
Catching Readers:  Leveled Books - Questioning Our Practice Part I and Part II
Reflect and Refine:  Home Reading: It's a Reader's Choice
Reflect and Refine:  Real Reading
Jennifer Serravallo:  Choice During Independent Reading:  What's a Teacher to Do?
Education Week:  Roadblocks to Reading:  An Interview with Richard Allington

As I work with primary students it seems most of the digital tools they use independently are for creation.  Where would we be without tools like Padlet, Pixie, Educreations, Voicethread or Kidblog?   Among other things, these tools allow students to share their thinking in reading, publish their writing in ways we can share with the world, and build thinking around topics.  Digital composing is a part of our literacy workshops.

Finding sites for primary digital readers is something of greater challenge.  Many of the sites we use work well for shared reading.  Some of these sites students can return to, but for emergent and early readers many digital reading sites are too challenging.  Just as in reading print books, I do work to find digital texts that students will be able to engage in independently.  This is a much greater challenge when we are talking about our youngest readers.  Since participating in the #cyberPD conversation around Digital Reading:  What's Essential by Franki Sibberson and Bill Bass, I've been working to build the possibilities for the young readers I support to experience digital texts.  Here are a few of my favorites sites for emergent and early readers:

Tumble Books:  Tumble Books is a "read to me" site.  I have been a fan of this site for beginning readers for years as it has a wide variety of books available.  Many digital sites have books created specifically by developers for their sites, but Tumble Books has many of the popular picture books and early chapter books students might check out at their library available.  The only challenge of Tumble Books is that it is a paid site, but it can be accessed through many libraries including our local Columbus Metropolitan Library Tumblebooks site.

National Geographic Kids Young Explorer Magazine  Looking for informational text for young readers?  National Geographic has really kept up with needs of student readers.  No matter their product, print or digital, students enjoy finding out more with National Geographic.  The Young Explorer digital site allows readers to view and/or listen to past National Geographic magazines.  There are two versions available for reading:  Scout and Voyager.  Of course, a stop by the National Geographic Kids website can always provide additional digital material for students.

The Poem Farm with Amy Ludwig VanDerwater  It's true, I'm a bit of a poetry fan so I like to make sure digital readers have the opportunity to experience poetry.  Amy LV's site is the perfect stop for teachers as she shares so much about her writing process.  Honestly, Amy's site is one of my favorite stops for digital writing mentor texts.  You'll find her site to be helpful in planning for poetry mini lessons.  You can look up poems by topic and technique making it a great stop for shared reading as well.  However, this post is about digital reading for kids so I digress.  The reason I like this site for our youngest readers is that Amy always includes a SoundCloud version of her poem.  Students can revisit poetry and listen to her read it!  There's nothing quite like hearing a poet read her own poetry.

Storyline Online Beginning readers need to hear the sounds of books.  There's something about those wondrous words whispering in their ears through read aloud.  Storyline Online has many titles available to listen to as they are read by readers you just might know.

Unite for Literacy  This website is a must see for young readers.  Displayed as a digital bookshelf, readers may click on a title of choice.  Students can read the book independently or have a narrated voice read for them.  Words are not highlighted and the narration is a bit choppy, but this is an excellent stop for finding digital books.  Additionally, you can adjust the language to have different different languages read.  When I switched the narration I was still viewing the English text, but with the other language narration.

eBooks with Narration  Recently I noticed in my library's Overdrive site that digital titles are becoming available "with narration."  In a recent stop to Overdrive, I discovered that books are becoming available with narration.  This allows readers to view the text WHILE listening to the story being read to them.  Game changer for younger readers!  I've tried to find out more about this, but haven't been able to really get to the heart of what is available and if it will be sustainable shift in children's books.  Anyone know anything more?  Check out your library's digital reading section to see if titles are available.

Digital books with narration. Columbus Metropolitan Library

You can see how I have been able to locate titles available with narration.

I'm hoping to grow the list of sites available for my youngest readers.  I'd love your recommendations.

Here are some other favorite digital sites (not all are for beginning readers):

Follow Mrs. Cathy's board Reading Websites on Pinterest.

Walking into one of our first grade classrooms, the teacher has a Keep Book projected on the large whiteboard.  Students are gathered side-by-side on the carpet, their eyes focused on the text as the teacher points and reads.  Their voices chime in and out with hers as they enjoy the story.  None of them notice I have entered the room as they are so engaged in the story.  As I watch I can't help but think about the ways shared reading has changed since my first years of teaching.  In those days, shared reading truly was limited to the big books you had in your classroom --- and big books were pricey.

We are nearing our sixth week of school.  We've spent much time getting to know our students as we watch them interact and work in our learning spaces.  We've completed assessments.  We've build up our communities.  As we begin to look closely at the information we have gathered in our first weeks of school, we pause to celebrate all the strengths of our students and we begin to plan next steps.  In looking at information we've collected, we've noticed our students need support in solidifying concepts of print.  We need to help these young readers begin to build their reading strategies.  Of course, we also want to begin to open up new possibilities in reading to them.  As we've talked and planned we have spent much time talking about the power of shared experience.  Our conversations have started to focus on the possibilities through shared reading to help these students get started.

Gathering to read a text together through shared reading allows us to scaffold young learners and set the stage for the next steps in their reading.  This highly supportive learning context also helps students to feel safe in taking risks and making new discoveries.  It also provides opportunities for the teacher to put strategies and language in place that will support reading instruction in other contexts in the days and weeks to come.

Possibilites in Shared Reading:

• Build Community:  In the first days of school, shared reading provides a shared context for learning together.  This connected experience can continue to hold a group together across the year.
• Create a Common Language:  As we start our year, and as we introduce new strategies and concepts, shared reading provides a context for creating a common language across our learning community.  
• Master Concepts of Print:  With our youngest of readers, shared reading provides opportunities for us to develop concepts of print including:  directionality, return sweep, one-to-one matching, concepts of letter and word, and other important book handling skills.  
• Develop Reading Strategies:  Shared reading can allow us to teach and model reading strategies that young readers can use to sustain reading.  These strategies include using pictures, utilizing visual cues, thinking about meaning, rereading, reading on, and other strategies to help readers successfully read new text.  Shared reading also allows us to help students learn strategies to help them monitor and self-correct as they read.  It can help with strategies for improving fluency as well.   
• Support Word Study and Word Explorations:  As young readers develop the knowledge to utilize more visual information, shared reading can help them look at words in new ways.  Moving from using known words, beginning sounds, checking endings, using more efficient chunks, and looking through words, toward flexible utilization of visual information in reading can be supported in this context.  Word explorations and word study work can also be discussed in shared reading opportunities.  
• Grow Comprehension Conversations:  Of course, reading is always about meaning.  Understanding the author's message is essential.  Continued comprehension conversations can be developed through shared reading.  Comprehension strategies such as connecting, predicting, inferring, synthesizing, determining importance, and visualizing can be taught through careful text selection in shared reading.  
• Foster a Love of Reading:  Yes, this one maybe should have been first!  There's something enjoyable about shared reading.  Chiming in together as words flow with ease from our mouths and pour gently into our ears.  These rhythms, patterns, words, and stories shared together, often quickly find their way into our story telling and writing.  Being able to revisit our shared reading titles independently in other parts of our day can help students to grow in independence.  

Considerations for Shared Reading:

• Shared reading can occur with an entire classroom community or a small group.
• Choose texts that are just above where students can read independently, but will allow readers to successfully revisit these texts independently at a later date.
• Texts selected need to have the characteristics of the texts students will be reading independently. 
• Choose shared reading texts that fit student need and work toward your focus of instruction.  
• Have shared texts available for independent reading opportunities.

Follow Cathy's board Shared Reading on Pinterest.