Differentiated Reading Groups

We are a few weeks into our differentiated reading groups project, and the feedback is very positive.  The students are doing well, and improving upon their individual reading abilities, and the teachers are loving working with same-ability groups.

To summarize:

• We created a literacy support team consisting of 4 classroom teachers, 1 LAT teacher, 1 teacher-librarian, and me, the Principal.  
• We focused on grades 2 and 3, but have added in a grade 1 student who is excelling in reading, and some grade 4s from a 3-4 split class. 
• The grade 2s and 3s were split into groups differentiated by ability, and then the grade 1 and some grade 4s were added to the groups where appropriate. The grade 3-4 teacher kept her strong grade 4s.
• We meet 3x per week, for 1 hour a day.
• The groups with strong readers are bigger (up to 18 students) and the groups with the struggling readers are smaller (down to 5-6).
• The students have already been tested for their reading level.  For example, my group has readers who are all exceeding expectations.  That being said, the Lit Group leader is spending 3 hours a week with those kids, so that person will provide a written comment to the classroom teacher for reporting purposes.

While the teachers with the most challenging readers have a tough job, the really appreciate the small groups and the time that they get to spend with their readers.  I like being able to really challenge the readers in my group where we practice reading out loud and to small audiences, where we work cooperatively with each other and where we challenge them to really push themselves with their reading, their comprehension, and their fluency.

In the future, I will post about some of the projects and the focus of each of the groups. Until then, keep reading!

The Calm Following the Storm

 

Wow, have things been busy lately.  Not necessarily bad, just busy.  It's when things get this way that it becomes so hard to see through the storm, and so easy to feel overwhelmed, under appreciated and--well--sorry for ourselves.

To a person, my colleagues feel the same way.  We all feel like we are busier than we have ever been, like we have no time to fit anything in.  For me, this is most evident late in the evening when I am not ready to go to bed, yet unable to switch my brain into another gear.  I don't want to blog, read a book or watch TV, and my usual brain-break hobbies--tying flies, reading, listening to music--seem to have lost their mojo.  Every time I get a small reprieve from the storm I seem to flop down and fall asleep.  I lose focus easily and the fun things become mundane.

But there is hope.

The more times I get caught up into these hurricanes, the more I realize that "this too shall pass".  I know that I have to fight through and continue to challenge my brain because there is always light at the end of the tunnel.  I have even learned that by poking, and pushing, and prodding that I can sometimes break through the dark wall faster.  Ahead of schedule, you might say.

This is a very important realization.  perhaps even more important than the "this too shall pass" mantra we have all heard over and over.  To self-realize that we can craft our day, that we can affect the outcome that we desire, that we can make chicken salad out of...well, you get it.

I sit here, typing away, taking stock of the mess around me and I realize that things are good.  Really good, actually.  Things will get busy again, and that will cause stress but stress is what brings the character out of us;  action out of stress defines us far more than an okey-dokey, summer vacation decision.  So, to any colleagues out there who are feeling overwhelmed, please remember:  this too shall pass (and, more importantly, you are in control of what kind of day that you are having.  If you don't like the way things are going, make the changes that you want to see.).

Everybody is a Genius

What's Old is New--Headphones and Reading

So, the title says "Headphones", but the image above is of a CD player.  How did we get here?

We are revamping our reading program school wide this year.  Our primary students have been assessed and assigned into differentiated reading groups based on reading ability and not on grade.  Three times per week, we are working in these reading groups led by our classroom teachers, our Learning Assistance teacher, our Teacher Librarian, some Literacy-Support teachers that we have added to our staff and myself.  The groups vary in size depending on the strength of the readers--the stronger groups are larger--and we have purposely placed the lowest (and smallest) groups with the classroom teachers.  It's a good plan for the entire school, because we feel that:

• we will improve the overall reading levels of the the primary students more efficiently
• we have the structures in place to best support the classroom teachers
• by supporting the classroom teacher we are supporting the learners in the best way possible
• a systematic approach to reading is better than trying to work on things in isolation
• by aggressively focusing our energy on reducing primary students assessed as "at-risk" in reading, our goal is to reduce the number of at-risk students in the intermediate grades.

Now, this is all good.  We are going to reduce reading problems at the primary grades to benefit the intermediate grades.  But, what about the intermediate classes now?  What about the students in those classes that need extra support? To that end, we have brought back a reading program that has been successful for us in the class.  It requires some trained staff and CD players with headphones.  So, I went down to a local electronics shop and purchased some inexpensive CD players for student use.  We got everything back up to the school and the room set up, only to find that none of these CD players had an audio out (i.e. none of them had a headphone plug in).  Of course, I didn't believe the reports and went into the room to show everyone how smart I was.  Guess what?  No headphone jack.  So, I returned the devices to the store and tried to exchange them for ones with headphone jacks.

Guess what? There weren't any!

How have we gotten to a place where headphone jacks aren't a standard component to a CD player?  I did eventually find some, for more than twice the price, but I had to go to 5 stores to finally find them.

This got me to thinking about the philosophy and the history of what we are trying.  We have used data (new) to identify a need (old).  The data has been collected (old) and analyzed and aggregated (new) so that we are using creating very specific intervention as a response to very specific data (new).  Differentiated reading groups is certainly not a new idea;  it's done all over the place.  The difference, here, is that it is new to us.  If I go back to my CD player fiasco, the CDs themselves (old) represents a traditional, tried and tested model of support.  I could have bought tonnes of MP3 players (new), all complete with fancy ear bud headphones (new), but then the CDs (old) couldn't be played.  I guess we could have transferred the analog program (old) into a digital format (new) to work with an MP3 player (new), but that would have been a tonne of work, and would have really only gotten us back to the same place that we started at.  Whew!

The best part about of new model of support isn't really any of the supports that we are offering our teachers and students, but rather the way in which we are offering those supports.  Our collaborative model of support is designed to pull staff together, during the regular work day, so that they can use the data we collect to create targeted responses to the challenges that we identify.  It's structured, it's systematic and it's school-wide.