Think Space for Focal Student Conversations

Think sheet A – Focal student conversation      

1. What are you thinking about right now for your area of inquiry?

I am thinking about how I should start strategy/Guided Reading groups, or some type of partner/small group shared reading with academic conversation protocols.

2. What is one thing you learned when you had a conversation with your focal student(s)?

After my interviews, I began doubting the usefulness of my students writing post-its during independent reading to track their thinking, because they didn’t seem to understand the importance or usefulness of the post-it writing process. I want them to feel held accountable for thinking during reading, and I want a way to track their thinking. I want them to feel like writing post-its (or taking notes about their thinking in some way) is useful – and I realized, that for myself, I never take notes about my reading unless it is a difficult text that I know I’m going to have to retain information from and use in a discussion later. I want my students to have that feeling of urgency, or usefulness for post-its, and so I would like to start a partner reading routine where students can discuss their books during and after reading to help make sense of whatever reading unit we are working on.

3. Did you find out what you were hoping to find out in the conversation?

I had been hoping my interviews would show that my students were using post-its all the time and truly understanding how they were helping them – however, I knew that wouldn’t necessarily be true, because I knew many students weren’t actually writing post-its during independent reading. My interviews DID show me that my students were not understanding why they were supposed to write post-its, so that was helpful.

4. What do you want to know now?

I want to start partner reading and guided academic conversations – then, I want to know if post-it writing feels more useful to my students.

5. Where are you now in thinking about a repeating or routine data source?

I think the post-its can still be a routine data source, to show me if students are focused and understanding during minilessons, and also to see if their thinking during reading changes when they know they need to discuss their reading with a partner.

I also think that individual conference notes can serve as a reliable data source as I can more deeply understand student usage of post-its.

6. What do you want help with today from your small group?

I want my group to help me with figuring out how to hold my students accountable to thinking and writing their thoughts about reading. I also want help to think about how to structure the Guided Reading groups (or small strategy groups) to be able to differentiate for each student – who needs primarily phonics instruction? Who needs more self-guided literature circle protocols? Who needs me to put post-its in specific pages of their book with a sentence frame already written to help teach them where to “stop and think”?

After group conversation:

What are you thinking now? What are your next steps for your inquiry?

I am thinking that it is going to be really important to start working with my students in strategy groups that are differentiated by reading level, ELD level, and decoding/phonics instructional needs. I also want to take grammar and ELA benchmark scores into consideration when forming these groups. I think the groups could be flexible, but I’m not sure how exactly to do that and still have a consistent structure and routine in place for me and my students. My next step will be to sort students into these groupings, create an instructional schedule, and begin instruction. I think I really need a lot of time to sit down and think about how to do this (and do it well!) and I don’t know when I’m going to have that time. I work all the time and still feel like I never finish all that needs to get done. This is going to be the hardest part for me in terms of making all of this important instruction happen! I think these groupings will help the students understand why I want them to be taking notes about their thinking and give them a useful outlet for using their post-its.

Focal Student Conversation Reflection

Over the last week, I interviewed my four focal students. I used the same four questions with each of them, and asked a few follow-up questions on the spot if/when they gave me blank stares or I didn't totally understand their answers and wanted more information. These are the original four questions I asked, based on our last MTS meeting and group conversations about student work:

1. How do you decide when to stop and think about your reading?

2. When do you decide it’s a good time to write a post-it to track your thinking?

3. How do your post-its help you understand your book/text/character/unit-of-study?

4. What resources are you using from around the room when you think about your reading and when you write your post-its?

I think that I learned a lot from their responses. Individual student conferences with these students have shown me a range of complex understanding of the characters in their independent reading books, to very little understanding. However, even the students who were able to site examples from their books and provide evidence for their thinking during the conferences, told me during these interviews that they were not using the post-its in the ways that I had intended for them to be tracking their thinking about their reading. One student, a proficient level M reader who reads mostly chapter books, has only been writing post-its about her thoughts after she finishes each book. Another focal student, a level I reader, has been writing post-its after every single page of her shorter picture books. I wondered about how many meaningful and truly helpful thoughts she could be having on every single page of her short, simple picture books; alternatively, the level M reader could have a thought per page of her chapter book, because there are so many more words and ideas taking place on each page. They didn't seem to think that the post-its were meaningful to them, or at least the way they have been using them.

All four students reported reading their post-its after they had written them, but primarily when they were going to be returning the books to the classroom library and were taking their post-its out. They were not referring back to them to form arguments or deeper understandings of character traits while reading their book or another book in the same series. Additionally, students responded to question number four in a way that made me both frustrated and sad - I had hoped my students would all say they use the posters I spend hours thinking about and making to help them when they write their post-its (for help thinking about sentence frames and comprehension strategies, character traits, ways to think about their characters and the current unit of study, etc.) but it turns out my students do not use them. They know the posters exist, and that they should be using them, but it didn't seem from their responses that they are actually accessing the content of the posters in any real ways during their independent reading time. I began to wonder if I should really be asking myself a new set of questions, about post-it accountability. Here are my newest questions:

How do I support students to recognize key points in a fiction text where they should stop, think, and write? How do I hold them accountable for doing this?

I began thinking about these questions and I've decided to change some routines in my classroom during Reading Workshop time. I'm going to be more explicit with my students about my expectations for post-it writing; I'm going to set minimum numbers of post-its required during reading time (differentiated number of post-its depending on reading level/book length). I will not require specific sentence frames or comprehension strategies used on these post-its, except I will require students to use the comprehension strategy taught during that day's minilesson. I will also teach students how to take notes in different forms - after that, I will require students to take notes to track their thinking but they will be able to choose which format they want to use (post-its, charts, etc.) and help them figure out what format works best for them. I decided to do this because one of my focal students has not been writing post-its but has been able to retell me lots of details from her reading and has been able to cite evidence - clearly, she is able to do this and does not need to keep track of her thinking on post-its the way I believe some of my other students need to.

I also began asking myself about when are post-its high leverage for students? Are these post-its just evidence of their focus on and engagement with reading? Is it actually helping them understand their books better? In my own reading, I only use post-its or note-taking practices with more difficult texts - I don't typically take notes when I am reading at my independent reading level or with fiction texts. I'm wondering what other types of academic conversations I can facilitate in my classroom to support student accountability. At this point, maybe they don't think they really have to keep track of their thinking during reading. If they have structured academic conversations with their reading partner (another student at their same independent reading level), and have to use post-its as evidence of their argument, then I am hoping they will be more likely to believe in the usefulness of the post-its for tracking and proving their thinking and will actually use them. I'd love for my students to read the same book as their reading partner, so they can truly understand what their partner is reading and thinking about - I need to figure out how to get pairs of books at all the reading levels I have in my class!