Come on in and read with us!

Posted on July 20, 2013 by carriegelson

It is no secret that I love books. Books, books, everywhere you look! That is one way to describe our classroom. But the best thing about books is the readers who enjoy them. Sharing the reading experience is an important way to build a community of readers. Time exists everyday for reading and the adults who work in my classroom or visit regularly love to be part of the action.

Come on in and read with us! The top ten benefits of shared reading with adults. There's a Book for that

Lucky for us, we have numerous volunteers who are a regular part of our week, spending time with us in the classroom. Often, that time involves a shared reading experience When children and adults read together, everyone benefits – the adults, the children and the teacher (lucky me :-)). Shared reading builds community at the same time as it helps to develop reading skills and a positive attitude about literacy. There are so many benefits – here are my top ten!

1. Fluent models: Opportunity to listen to an adult read. We all know how important this is to help students become more fluent readers. When reading with an adult, there is often turn taking with a story and so the child has the opportunity to sit back and benefit from the modelling of a proficient adult reader who demonstrates the importance of phrasing, expression and enthusiasm as they read.

2. Oral Reading Practice: The students also have time to work on their own oral reading fluency. Reading aloud to an adult is wonderful practice!

3. Enhancing conversation skills: All kinds of talking happens when sharing a book. “How about you read that page and I read this page?” “Can you help me if I get stuck on a word?” “I’ll be Piggie and you be Gerald!” “What was your favourite part?”

4. Vocabulary Development: As stories are discussed, new words and concepts are introduced. Children are exposed to more new words through reading books than just having a casual conversation. When an adult is working one to one or with a small group, there is the opportunity to talk about unknown words or concepts that are not clear.

5. Time for tangents: It is always wonderful when a story takes you off in a few directions, sharing stories and connections. “That reminds me of . . . ” “Did you know that I . . .?” “Have you ever . . .? ” Time reading with an adult means these important conversations can happen.

6. The gift of time: One to one attention that conveys, “You are important. I like this time we spend together. It matters.” Enough said.

7. Bonding over books: Books are the bridge that help connections form. It is easy to share and talk about books, laugh about stories and learn new things together. As the reading and learning happens, the connections and bonding does too. Magic.

8. Pride: Positive feedback from an interested adult directly impacts the confidence and pride young readers feel about their growing skills.

Come on in and read with us! There's a book for That

9. Making book love contagious: This happens when we share our love of reading with children. The more people sharing, the more that is shared! I am so thankful for all of the adults who help me ensure that students are catching the love of reading.

10. Reading = Enjoyment: The association of happy experiences and reading is essential if we are going to create life long readers. Not all children have had the experience of being read to by a loved one. Shared reading in the classroom with a caring adult helps students to have positive associations about books. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

During our busy school year, I don’t always have the time to properly celebrate all of the wonderful adults who share reading time with my students. This post is my tribute to all of them. What you do means so much!

A reading community is very important in my classroom.

Other posts on this topic:

The Grandparent Effect

Come see What I Celebrate

A Love of Reading Starts Between Us

Big Words, Little Readers

Posted on April 14, 2013 by carriegelson

There is something about those big long words that for little readers seem somewhat out of reach. Until it is revealed to them that actually they have all the skills they need . . .

When I listen to many of the children in my Grade 2 reading group read aloud, I often notice that long multi-syllabic words stop them outright or at least slow down their fluency. Yet, when we approach the word together, it doesn’t take much for them to realize that they can read it aloud by employing a few strategies.

Strategies such as:

looking for little words inside a larger word
removing endings and then adding them back
asking ourselves if letter combinations look similar to another word we know (i.e. knowing the word gorgeous helped us figure out advantageous)
applying “rules” we know like “y” at the end sounds like “ee”, rules for soft “c” and “g”, tion says “shun”, etc.
if one vowel sound doesn’t work, try the other
break the words into syllables

So, my job? To make sure they approach these words with the skills and independent ability I know they have!

How did we strengthen our confidence in our ability to do this independently? With some guided practice – together and then on our own!

First, we looked at a big list of long words on the board and approached them together – finding words and syllables we knew, using the strategies described above (and named by the students as we worked) and tapping out syllables.

Students then grabbed sticky notes and a picture book and began to read independently. They read and enjoyed the stories just like any day where we had picture book free choice reading ( I usually set out a large selection of new and familiar books I’ve grabbed from the library). My volunteer and I listen to different students read and discuss illustrations and plot. But, today the added job was to be on the lookout for multisyllabic words (we decided any word with four or more syllables should make the list) in the books we were reading and list them on a sticky note.

The wonderful thing for me was to watch how intent students were on finding and decoding words all on their own. Not one child came and asked me how to read a word. They just came and shared statements like:

“I found another one! Listen: un ex pect ed ly , unexpectedly! That has 5!”

“I’m finding 4 syllable words everywhere I look!”

“These words can’t hide from us right Ms. Gelson! We are finding them in lots of books!”

“Hey! We are really doing it! We can read these words!”

“I think we all got smarter today. Or . . . maybe we already could do it? Did you trick us?”

My students are exceptionally keen and hilarious, I must admit 🙂 But, they are also very competent and with this little bit of encouragement to do what they already were capable of, they are approaching words that used to intimidate them with confidence!

Now, we can spend time slowing down to talk about meaning. I would rather them stop to be sure they understand what is happening in the story or to ask a question about what a word means, rather than be held back by a word that just happens to be longer than most. We have done lessons about how to handle new vocabulary and will continue to practice this important skill.

My little readers can handle many big challenges and I love being a witness to it!

Come and see what I celebrate

Posted on February 16, 2013 by carriegelson

Every Wednesday afternoon the kindergarten class comes to my Grade 2/3 classroom for buddy reading. It is easily one of the highlights of my week. Smiles abound. We share books and spend happy time together reading, talking and learning. A peek at what I see:

huge amounts of oral language practice

leadership skills developing

giggling and laughing through a book

playing games with books (Eye Spy, Can you find a . . .?)

spontaneous songs

excitement over books and learning

turn taking, negotiating, working it out

getting lost in a book

growing confidence in reading skills

beautiful fluency and expression

“telling” a book

building relationships

Recently our kindergarten teacher and other classroom assistants have been absent and so various other adults have been attending buddy reading with the Ks. Some of them have made comments to me that made me think we couldn’t possibly be in the same room.

“Well, they don’t really sit in their seats.”

“They are jumping around so much, I don’t think they are concentrating.”

“So many of them don’t stick to a book.”

“Those two aren’t really reading the book. They are just talking.”

“They can’t focus for very long.”

Don’t they see what I celebrate? In a room of 5 – 8 year olds, there is energy, noise and movement. But look closely, it is all meaningful. Learning doesn’t look or need to look one way.

Children do so many wonderful things in a day of learning. If you can’t see this because you are looking for something you have decided is more important, wow are you missing out.

Celebrate children. Embace their growing, development and learning styles. Enjoy their smiles. Notice their new skills. Laugh with them. Be with them where they are. Don’t rush them on to what is “next.” When you stop, slow down and notice what is in the now, it is often pretty great.

And every Wednesday, when I have a front row seat, my view is absolutely joyous.

For those who visited and saw something different. . . I wish, for you, to see what I see.

Developing visual literacy skills

Posted on February 8, 2013 by carriegelson

What is visual literacy?

As defined by Wikipedia: Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text . Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.

So how do we go about teaching students to use observation to notice the details and nuances in illustrated stories? As we learn how to ask questions and to infer to deepen our understanding of stories, I also want my students take time, slow down and really focus on their observation skills with the illustrations in picture books.

What do we see when we look closely at an illustration vs. quickly flipping the page? I remind students that these books are picture books for a reason – the story is told through a partnership between author and illustrator. Both pictures and words are important – together they make the story whole.

Wordless books are great to practice these visual literacy skills with but I wanted to have students use these strategies with picture books with text. The trick? Cover the text! So armed with sticky notes, and some fantastic picture books, we began to practice paying close attention to the illustrations and asking questions, inferring and predicting based on what we noticed.

Note: What is described below is what took place over a series of lessons with my Grade 2 reading group

We started with two picture books that I shared with my reading group and I charted our observations and questions as we discussed what we saw. Then the students went through the same process working with a partner and writing their own questions/predictions/inferences. It is always so interesting to go back and read the text to see how close our predictions were and which questions got answered.

The first picture book we practiced with was The Cloud Spinner by Michael Catchpool, illustrated by Alison Jay. This book has so much going on in the pictures – we could have spent half the class just on the cover. Students wondered about the birds flying in all different directions. They wondered whether the boy was making clouds from his loom or making fabric/material from the clouds themselves. We noticed a castle in the background, birds flying in multiple directions, things looking one way but actually not what they initially seemed (for example the faces on the hillsides that are just objects temporarily grouped a specific way). Students had many questions and each wrote a prediction about the story before we sat down to read the book with both text and illustrations. Many of the children commented that we might have missed some details in the illustrations that were clues had we just read the text.

Next we used Gorilla by Anthony Browne. This title is the perfect book to use when having students practice their ability to infer – even more powerful when we explored just the pictures.

With this story, each student had their own notepads to list their questions as we explored the pictures and we stopped frequently to discuss what we thought might be happening with this story.

For those who don’t know this classic Anthony Browne tale, a quick summary: In this story, Hannah wants to see a real live gorilla at the zoo but her busy father never has time to take her there. He gives her a toy gorilla on the night before her birthday. Hannah is upset and disappointed. But in the middle of the night, Hannah and her “toy” gorilla have an amazing adventure.

Some of the students questions included:

Does Hannah have a Mom?
Did her Mom die?
Does Hannah’s Dad have a job? Is he worried because he doesn’t have one?
If he does have a job, does he work too much?
Does her Dad never have time for her?
Is the gorilla lonely too?
Does the gorilla love Hannah?
Does the gorilla have magic?
Will the Dad freak out if he finds out Hannah is gone all night?
Will the gorilla save all of the apes and monkeys at the zoo?
Why does the gorilla seem sad?
Is this just all a dream?
Is it just in Hannah’s imagination?
Why are they out dancing in the middle of the night?
Did the Dad and Gorilla change places?

At the end, even when we read the story, we realized that the author does not tell us what is actually real. “Well,” one clever child observed, “if the author doesn’t tell us, we can choose. That’s the magic of books.” Again, students felt that we got so much more from the story by focussing first on the details in the pictures, asking questions and talking about what might be happening. Students loved listening to the story after this to see how close their idea of the story was to what actually happened.

Now we were ready to begin to go through this process with more independence! Working in partners, the students chose a picture book, markers, chart paper and scrap paper to cover the text and got to work exploring just the pictures and noting down their questions. These students used the book Woolbur by Leslie Helakoski and illustrated by Lee Harper.

Questions started out quite simple, but as the children began to have a sense of the story, they started asking more complex questions. the questions below are about the book Hurty Feelings by Helen Lester.

The story A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham inspired a lot of questions! There was so much in the details of what was happening inside and outside of this bus. The students who used this book read it two times through after exploring the illustrations.

I was impressed by how focussed the students were. All of them were engaged with their books, their partner and the discussions that they were having.

Snippets of conversations I heard as I circulated:

“Quick! Cover the text!”
“We have so many questions I can’t believe it.”
“We know so much!”
“We’re sure predicting so much stuff.”
“Look really closely. You will notice more.”
“I think I see better when I don’t get distracted by the words.”
“I think this makes us smarter.”

Really . . . what more do you want to hear during a lesson?

As I share picture books in whole class lessons, I have noticed that students who are in my reading group are raising their hands to share details they notice in illustrations. This keen attention to detail has become contagious and the whole class has been paying more attention to pictures. We have to stop frequently to share with those around us what we notice and what we predict! I love all of the talking this has inspired!

The Grandparent Effect

Posted on December 25, 2012 by carriegelson

This post was first published on The Nerdy Book Club Blog December 14th, 2012. I am sharing it here on Christmas day as a gift to all of those who share the joy of reading with friends, family and anyone who needs it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Two years ago, I taught a little boy named Emilio in Grade 3. In his first week of Grade 4, Emilio showed up at my door every day at 3 p.m. He would stand there and give me a big smile, sometimes a hug and tell me quite seriously, “I really miss this class.” When I asked him what he missed, I thought he might say that he missed choices time at the end of the day or the picture books we shared together or maybe even that he missed me. Nope. “I miss Mr. and Mrs. Gelson.” He didn’t even need to think about it. Mr. and Mrs. Gelson are my parents. They come in every Tuesday afternoon to listen to my students read. They sit outside my room at a long table that holds two big baskets of carefully selected picture books. Children take turns having their reading time throughout the afternoon. This reading time with two very special volunteers is what Emilio missed.

When Emilio started Grade 3, he recognized seven letters and knew two sounds. He was not a reader. But he loved books. Every week, Mr. or Mrs. Gelson, read to Emilio. Often, once he was out in the hallway, he wouldn’t come back in. He sat and listened to other children read stories. He asked questions. He got Mr. Gelson telling him about his life and had Mrs. Gelson laughing as he asked for favourite books to be read and reread. They all giggled over silly stories, pretended to scare each other on a spooky page and shared quiet moments when a book touched their hearts. Out in my hallway, on any given Tuesday afternoon, Emilio was gifted by what I have come to call the “Grandparent Effect.”

I teach at an inner city school in Vancouver, B.C. characterized by high child and family poverty. Many of my students have not had early literacy experiences. Nobody read to them at bedtime. They never attended library story times. There are few, if any, books in their homes. Families have limited income and limited time. Many parents are working multiple jobs, learning a new language and caring for a family with limited resources. Read aloud time is a luxury many families cannot afford.

Many of my students also do not have grandparents around. Grandparents live in another city or another country and visits are few and far between. I have students in my class being raised by a grandparent so their grandparent is in a parental role. The lovely experience of story time with Grandma and Grandpa that my own children were raised with has not been experienced by most of my students.

Fortunately, I have two amazing parents who have brought their grandparent love to my classroom. They share it through the magic of books with each of my students every week. As teachers, we know that it is a rare moment when we can just sit with one child and enjoy the experience of having a story read to us by an eager little reader. We are always scanning the room to make sure others are on task, we are taking mental or physical notes about the child’s reading skills and needs, or we are thinking about which book we are going to recommend next to this child. It is hard to turn off our teacher brain. We have a job to do with these little readers. Grandparents, though, have the gift of time. The time to give to each child with their full focus and attention. The time to go off on a tangent and answer a million questions or share connections. The time to read a story again and again just because it was that great. The time to joke and cuddle and coax and smile.

Last year, when I told Mr. and Mrs. Gelson that Emilio missed them (missed them so much, he showed up every day at my door to tell me so) they started coming in a half an hour earlier to read to Emilio, grabbing him from his new class before they began with my students. This year, in Grade 5, half an hour of reading with Mr. and Mrs. Gelson is still part of Emilio’s Tuesday routine. In these past few years at our school, Emilio has been getting daily direct instruction in decoding skills. Slowly but surely, Emilio has been learning to read. This Tuesday, Emilio read The Enormous Potato (written by Aubrey Davis) two times through. How do I know this? Two excited “grandparents” cannot stop gushing about it. “Emilio read the whole thing!” “Twice!” “He can sound out anything!” “He really perseveres.” “I just can’t believe it. He has come so far.” “Remember where he started?” “Emilio is a reader!”

I do my best to promote a love of reading in my room: daily read alouds, buddy reading, book talks, library visits, reading instruction, free choice reading . . . . But, one of the best things I do is to stand back and be in awe of how the “grandparent effect” helps associate reading books with love and happy experiences. I believe if we want to create lifelong readers, anything we do to make this association is a gift we give to our students.

I have shared this story of Emilio and my other little readers to remind us all that the magic of reading shared between generations does not just need to happen in our homes. And if it never happened, it isn’t too late. Find your students some eager seniors to come in and create your own “Grandparent Effect.” Everyone benefits.

**Emilio delivered a special card to my parents for Christmas. He gave me permission to share it here.

Let’s talk!

Posted on November 2, 2012 by carriegelson

There is nothing more exciting for me than watching students really talk about their learning. I love the debate, the encouragement, the giggles, and the interrupting. I love watching one student really listen to another and then jump in to share ideas. These type of exchanges happen more and more during our morning reading group. Especially when we have informative non-fiction texts in hand!

This week I pulled out a selection of non-fiction titles from the Ready to Read series including Dangerous Dinos, Slithering Snakes, Sharks and Bugs. All written by Sarah Creese. (I purchased these titles through Scholastic)

Students were asked to read the book aloud with their partner and to note down cool facts they learned and list any questions they had as they read. We had done this in two small groups (led by me and my teaching partner) the week before so the students were familiar with this process. Today though, they were in charge of the way this process would roll out.

Students took turns reading the text aloud. Some pairs wrote questions and facts as they read. Others read and then came back to the text for a second read through.

The rich discussions came out of deciding what questions were important and which facts should be noted down. Two boys reading about dinosaurs couldn’t stop laughing about one sentence that stated that a T-Rex had such short little arms that it couldn’t touch its nose. They included this as a cool fact and then went on to write a question about what use T-Rex’s short little arms had.

There was a lot of “Listen to this!” “Should we write that?” “Did you know . . . ?” I also heard “Look for the page that says . . .” “Can you read that again?” Lots of rereading and checking for understanding.

Many went on to add pictures to their chart paper. As they drew, the talking continued, using the vocabulary that they had just been reading about. “Look I’m drawing a shark swimming in the shallows.” “Do you think these scales look real?” “I made the sharks jaws open so we could see the rows of teeth.”

Question lists were interesting and gave me a basis to start conversations with each group.

The best thing about this activity? Lots of discussion, reading and writing all managed by the students themselves. My role was to circulate and enjoy the conversations I joined and to do a little learning too! (Did you know some snakes can eat an entire deer? Eew!)

Did you know that . . . ?

Posted on October 19, 2012 by carriegelson

This week when we looked at non-fiction text, I wanted my reading group to think about pieces of information that they deemed important as either new information or information that should be shared. We used a series of insect books from Capstone Press as these little books have gorgeous photographs and simple, meaningful information. I wanted the focus to be on the conversation, not on reading long sections of text.

Students worked in partners and took turns reading a page of information. I encouraged students to also talk about what they noticed or wondered about in the photographs. I was pleased to see students referring to the text as they had these conversations, often rereading for clarity.

The task was then to each choose two pieces of information to share and draw about on a recording sheet. Some partners focussed on the same facts, others chose very different things. All the while, they were chattering about what they were thinking about what they saw and read.

Students referred to a chart of sentence starts that we had brainstormed together to help organize their thinking:

I found out that . . .
I discovered . . .
I just learned . . .
Did you know that . . . ?

Having a “Did you know . . ?” phrase honoured those students who did not find out anything new when they read the text. Students also used this phrase because they liked the excitement it generated.

The children studied the photographs carefully and added details to their own pictures to convey things that they were noticing. We have been talking a lot about “reading the pictures” as much as “reading the words” on a page.

What I love about the picture below is the tiny label “close up padern”

What learning and experiences happened today? Students had the opportunity to:

explore a piece of non-fiction text
determine importance
distinguish between new information and facts already known
read aloud and listen to a peer read aloud
talk about information and photographs
share their learning in a picture and writing

Into the bins we go . . .

Posted on October 18, 2012 by carriegelson

With this goal in mind – read often and from a wide variety of sources, we are spending time each week exploring different reading bins in the classroom. My reading group is keen to explore and share picture books. This week we explored our Rhyme and Repetition bin using this format: 1. Explore the bin 2. Spend time reading some self-selected titles 3. Talk about what we noticed 4. Write a reflection

I brought out this bin and students predicted that many of these titles would have rhyming parts and selections of text that repeated (the title of the bin made this prediction a pretty easy one :-)) I read a few pages of a few books to model exactly that. We identified how often ending words rhymed and that sentence structure or specific phrases repeat. Students then helped me spread the books out on the carpet and every child spent fifteen minutes reading a variety of titles from this set of books.

We then gathered back at the carpet and shared what we had noticed focusing on this question:

Our list definitely included the rhyming and the repeating but students started with the fun aspect of the stories pointing out that they were often silly, farfetched and funny. It was clear that the word play brought a lightness to the books. One student even commented that the authors would have to work very hard to make all the words work together.

I then asked students to take just five minutes and write their own reflections about the books they read from this bin. This student was a big fan of these titles! He writes: “I noticed that they (meaning the authors) were worked very hard, They are the best in the world. They are very funny.”

Today during independent reading, some students returned to this bin. It’s all in exposing students to new titles and genres to broaden their reading choices. Each week, I plan to introduce a different bin of books and follow a similar process. It’s a great opportunity to work on our reading stamina and increase our knowledge of book choices.

What do we wonder?

Posted on October 13, 2012 by carriegelson

On Thursdays, our Grade 2 reading group is beginning to work with non-fiction texts. There is much to teach about how to interact with non-fiction text so that students best understand all of the text features. But generating excitement and the thrill of wondering and discovering new facts is an essential piece of our learning as well. Over the last few weeks we have been picture walking books and sharing all of the things we wonder.

These Pebble Plus books published by Capstone are fantastic for this picture walking exercise as they feature full colour photographs of animals in their habitats along with simple text to share together. I have the African Animals series and the Animals and Their Homes series and found both through Scholastic.

The great thing about Thursdays is that my partner teacher, Ms. Hibbert is in the room for the morning in a Resource Teacher role so we are able to work with small groups and can encourage lots of sharing and discussion.

Day 1: On the first day, we split our group into two groups and had them picture walk a book with us and generate questions about the photographs. We used a book about bears and a book about rabbits as key texts. As the students asked questions, we charted them and pointed out when one question led to another or was an extension of another question so that students could think about how to extend their thinking and how their questions connected to someone else’s questions. After 15 minutes, we switched groups and the second group’s task was to look at the questions that had already been charted and as they looked through the text, to try and extend questions or wonder about things that had yet to be asked.

We then looked at both charts as a whole group and highlighted key question words (Who? Why? Could? Do? Is? etc.). We also talked about what questions were on both lists. A popular one? “How can you tell if it is a boy or a girl?” (although one group used the terms male and female so we helped each other extend the vocabulary being used :-))

Day 2: After reviewing and charting question words, we put the students into partners and had each group choose a book about an African animal. Students then studied the photographs in the books and charted their own questions. We circulated and challenged students to extend their thinking wherever possible.

Working with a partner allowed for a lot of great discussion. Often the partners stopped and shared what they thought an answer might be. There were disagreements, connections to background knowledge and lots of encouragement. (And charting on big chart paper with felts was pretty cool!)

We then had students display their books and charts and partners “travelled along” the display looking at the questions that other groups asked.

Day 3: On this day, students chose their own books and worked independently creating a wonder web. We reminded students to tap into their curiousity and study the pictures carefully. If they finished early, they went back and read the text and/or shared their questions with a peer. One little voice carried book and paper to a table muttering, “Just me . . . I wonder how many questions I will wonder?”

Here is Heman‘s wonder web about bees:

Sam asked some great questions about giraffes.

We have a long road down the non-fiction path ahead of us this year. But students are pretty excited that non-fiction titles can help us with all of those unanswered questions and even inspire more!

How do you generate excitement over non-fiction titles in your primary classroom? Please share!

A Whole lot of Literacy

Posted on October 7, 2012 by carriegelson

Recently I had a picture perfect day in my little reading group. Everything went so smoothly that I just mostly wandered amongst my students and snapped photos! They were engaged in the important work and I was lucky enough to just watch it all happen. 🙂

We had started to work on being able to retell and summarize stories and I found an easy to use anchor chart on pinterest that helped us with this process. (Somebody Wanted But So) During one class, I read two stories to the group and we filled in the chart trying to choose the best words to capture the essence of what happened. We read Boy by James Mayhew and Jojo the Giant written by Jane Barclay and illustrated by Esperanca Melo. Our thoughts are captured in the chart below.

These books were fantastic to use. Boy is the simple story of a little boy who wakes up cold and is determined to find a warm place to sleep. He encounters all sorts of intimidating creatures (mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, etc.) during his morning journey and ends up returning to the security of his parents after his brave and independent search. I have featured this book before in this post. Jojo the Giant (mentioned in this post) really impacted the students. As much as they were caught up in the story of a little boy who was determined to win a race despite the taunts of the bullies who doubted him, they really responded to the act of kindness Jojo performed for his mother. I love how when we talked about whether or not Jojo really did grow taller, one student commented that he grew bigger in his heart. Beautiful.

Students caught on quickly to using the chart so the next day I put out some picture books and had them work with a partner to read a book together and fill in their own summary chart (one chart for the partners).

I was so pleased by how independent and engaged the students were. They took turns reading aloud, negotiating how they should split up reading the text. Everyone listened keenly to his/her partner. It was wonderful fluency practice!

Also fantastic practice at attentive listening! I observed partners gently coaxing each other with decoding a challenging word. Lots of laughing together and stopping to talk about the text.

Students then got down to the business of filling in their charts together. Many took turns writing sections. I saw children going back and rereading to confirm ideas or search for a specific part in the text.

While the pages were filled out well (especially for the first time with just minimal guided prompts from me), it was the conversations I was most excited about. Students were really listening to each other. There was negotiation about what to say. Students had creative ideas about how to share the writing. They considered together how best to explain something.

So while I had set out to practice summarizing and knew that fluency practice was built into the activity, a lot of other things happened. This is the magic when students meet lesson plan and the sum is absolutely more! What else did I see?

active listening
stating opinions
asking and answering questions
rereading text for specific information
building on an idea
discussion/negotiation about how to approach an assignment
partner work practice
relationship building

What did students do who finished early? Found more books and engaged in buddy reading, happily extending the joy of reading with each other. Yep, a whole lot of literacy!