Pernille Ripp's Blog, page 10

Virtual Book Speed Dating – A Tool for Online Book Browsing

I am starting virtually all first quarter on Tuesday and getting actual books into the hands of my 7th grade students has been at the forefront of my mind. With the help of our incredible librarians, we have a twice a week pick up system set up after kids have requested books, but I wondered; how can I book talk a lot of books quickly like I normally would in our classroom so that kids can start reading?

Our book wall will not be browsed by students for awhile

Asnwer; virtual book speed dating. I happened to catch this tweet and share from Haley Lewis

[image error] To see the original, click the picture

And knew that I could do the same. I wanted to make sure I used a wide range of books both maturity level and format/genre, and I knew I wanted to make sure I had multiple copies of the books on this first round so that all kids can hopefully get the book they want.

After browsing through our book club sets, I had my list of titles and created this slide show for students to browse through. Using Loom, which is my favorite tool right now for recording my screen – it is so easy – I added a video explanation, and also created a simple Google form for students to be able to request a book.

So the second week of school, students will be asked to browse through this slide deck and find some great books they want to try. They will be able to request books and then pick them up the following week, if a child cannot pick up their book then I will get it safely to their mailbox or other pick up point. I am excited to try this method out to see if it will help get kids reading or keep them reading. I will keep track of who gets which books in a simple spreadsheet so that, hopefully, I will know where our books end up.

[image error] Click the picture to see it

I wanted to share this idea, in case you were wondering how to do something like this. I am so grateful for all of the ideas shared right now, so if you want, you can absolutely make a copy and change the titles to fit your students.

If your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually or live throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely and in-person as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in an in-person, virtual or hybrid model throughout the years and would love to help others as well.

Dear Teacher

Dear Teacher,

Perhaps like me, you are sitting behind your computer screen right now wondering what else you can get done tonight? Perhaps, like me, you just drank another cup of tea hoping that the warmth and caffeine will give you the boost you need to get through just a few more things. After all, the list grew today, as it seemingly has done every single day since the first decisions about the upcoming school year rolled in. Perhaps you just promised yourself to get up early, before the kids are awake so they don’t see you working again, but you can get so much done at 6 AM in the dark.

Perhaps this is not how you envisioned your night. Perhaps like me, you had promised yourself that tonight you would make a healthy dinner, you would sit down and listen to the stories your kids had to share, after all, you were gone most of the day working in your classroom for in-service. Perhaps you had planned a movie night but then remembered that one big thing you needed to get done before 9 AM tomorrow and now you sit with headphones plugged in trying to find the words you need to express just how heavy this load feels right now.

Perhaps, like me, you worry about sounding ungrateful, perhaps you worry that it sounds so much like complaining when in reality our situation could be so much worse. I am not forced to go back to teach right now, we go back virtually. I have a job, a roof over our heads, our health. I have resources and support in a country that doesn’t share freely of either. I work in a district that truly cares about not just the kids but also the adults in charge of their learning.

And yet, I feel like I am in pieces right now. Like my to-do list has a to-do list. Like every day something new needs to be done as we try to meet a moving finish line based on how great the educational experience should be for all of our kids despite the global pandemic and a nation filled with rightful protests and anger. Like my emotions are right at the surface, like sleep eludes me and I forget to eat because it is easier to just keep on working. Perhaps if I learn another idea, another tool, if I create another thing the kids that are trusted to me will feel seen, will feel valued, will care about our time in English this year. If I read another article, attend another session, collaborate with someone else, it will make all of the difference. It will make the biggest difference.

And I will reach them all through the computer because they will see my carefully laid out plans, my inviting virtual classroom and know that I am ready.

And my husband tells me to stop. My kids ask me to come play. My own body sends all of the signals that it needs for me to hopefully understand that this is serious. That this is not sustainable. That this is not what we signed up for when we chose to be educators. That it is time for us to raise our voices because perhaps finally this nation, with its emphasis on the perfect teacher myth has pushed us to a breaking point. I am at a breaking point. I know I am not alone.

I have never seen so many educators resign.

I have never seen so many educators retire.

I have never seen so many educators cry.

And you can say that we signed up for it. That we knew what we had to do. That we are in it for the kids and that should be enough. That everyone else is figuring it out so so should we.

That we shouldn’t project our fears. That we need to man up, buck up, pull up our big girl pants, and stop whining so much. Grow a pair, shut our mouths, and finally know what it feels like to have a real job where we don’t get to have the summers off or leave at 4 PM every day.

Or perhaps we should schedule more self-care. Go for more walks. Do more yoga. Take care. Take a break. Take a breath. Take a step back.

But back to what?

Because my brain doesn’t stop churning. My head hurts.

Because I care so deeply. We all do.

Because I want this to be the best experience that I can make it. We all do.

Because when you say that the kids can’t learn as well I want to prove you wrong. We all do.

So piece by piece, I am pushing myself to extinction. Piece by piece, I have blurred the lines between my work and my life. Fed into the American notion that you are your job. That teaching has to be the biggest calling for you to be good. Higher than being a mom. Higher than being a person. Teacher first, everything else second. That if you don’t sacrifice as much as you are asked then you must not care enough. That when we say enough we are immediately suspected of not being in it for the right reasons, for not being innovative, for not truly knowing how to be a teacher.

But piece by piece, I am going to reclaim my own existence. I am going to say it loudly so that I can hear it through my own stubbornness. My own dedication to doing just one more thing. My own crazy commitment to constantly pursue something more, something better. Rest, Pernille, reflect, Pernille, remember everything you already know and give yourself room to breathe.

This is my public plea for others to do the same. To set boundaries now before the year continues. To repeat to me that I will figure it out. To repeat to me that I don’t have to sacrifice myself for 7th grade English to be great. That I am only human and that I cannot and shall not do this alone. That I am only a piece of a larger societal puzzle that needs to engage in deeper soul searching about who and what we value in this nation.

We are all just pieces.

So perhaps, you have already reached this conclusion and you feel better. Perhaps you are not there just yet. Perhaps, like me, you doubt your own words and fancy commitments even as you write them.

Perhaps there are great moments where you know how exciting this year is for growth. Perhaps those moments will last, but they won’t if we don’t notice them.

So dear educators, this is me sending love out into the world, letting you know that it is okay to say no. To say no more. To set boundaries and stick with them. Just like we teach the kids. Just like we were taught so many years ago. Don’t let others make you forget that.

And perhaps, you can let yourself believe that it will be okay. That no amount of preparation will ever truly make us ready. That as we search for that one more piece what we are really looking for is the kids themselves. That once they are with us, we will feel better. It happens every year. It will happen this year too. We just have to believe it.

Love,
Pernille

Centering Reading Joy in the Virtual Classroom

Our class lists were released yesterday and with it came the excitement for the upcoming year. While it may not look anything like I have ever taught before, the year will still start, the 80 or so students will still arrive, and the work with kids will continue much like it has in other years.

This year rather than having a luxurious 5×90 minutes a week with every child, we are fully virtual for the first quarter at least, a decision I am inherently grateful for. That means that I will see my students 2×70 or 4×35 minutes depending on when I have them during the day. They will have 60-90 minutes of asynchronous work to do as well throughout the week. A huge reduction of time and thus also a huge need to really focus in on what we will do together, the learning journey we will be on. As I sat in a meeting with my fantastic colleagues last week, one thing immediately became clear, we all wanted to preserve independent reading during our live time, but not just that, we wanted to center it in reading joy.

But how do we do that when the students are not right there? When we don’t have the tool of proximity, body language, and being able to physically hand them a book? When the time is much shorter? When we can’t read the room or pull them in for a quick conference? When everything has to be pre-planned, pre-scheduled, and done from afar? Well, there is a way to do so.

We will center it in identity. I have written a lot about how (re)discovering and continuing the development of their reading identity is at the center of the work we do. With tools like our reading identity digital notebook which centers in discovery, goal setting, ad honest reflection, this is the work we do all year. That means that within the first week, our students will do their initial reading survey (slide 13 on) in order to establish a baseline for how they are starting and where they need to go. This also offers me a chance to get to know them and their journey up until now. I ask for their honesty but also know that some students rightfully so don’t trust me yet. After the survey, the very first reading conference we have discusses their answers and helps them evaluate the goal they have set. The survey offers me a place to start and a place for the students to reflect back upon as they grow.

We will center it in our reading rights. As a class, we will create our reading rights much like we have in the past, but instead of being able to post our reasons for why reading sucks or why it is magical, we will do it on Padlet. Students will then work in small breakout groups to notice patterns and decide what type of rights they would like to have as readers in our community. I know there are a few rights that they will have no matter what they come up with; they have the right to choose books that matter to them, they have the right to abandon any book, they have the right to do meaningful work, they have the right to read with others. Every year, the students create fantastic rights that create the foundation for our learning together, to read more about the process see this post.

We will center it in personal goal setting. For several years, I set all goals for students and then grew frustrated when there was no buy-in or little progress on the goal. Now, students set their own goals, determine steps for how they will reach them, and reflect at set times on their progress, fine-tuning what they need to work on and (hopefully) noticing their own progress and developments. (Slide 7 on). Diving into the 7th grade reading challenge and discussing what a goal may be beyond quantity has been instrumental to the work we do as it allows kids to see beyond the page number for worthwhile reading habits. Reading growth comes in many sizes and it is important that we acknowledge, protect, develop and praise that. To see more about our reading goal setting, read this post linked here.

We will center it in choice. Getting books in the hands of kids is at the forefront of our ELA departments mind and in collaboration with our incredible library staff, it will happen. We will book talk books during our live time; I do a quick read of the blurb and give my opinion encouraging kids to write down potential titles on their to-be-read lists. We also have static book recommendations as found in our class hub which is housed on our class website. Our librarian will also be booktalking and highlighting books. Students will be able to request books both from the library and from our classroom collection through a simple Google form (here is what mine looks like) and they will have the opportunity to be “surprised” – adding in additional books they may like with every pick up order. They will then have twice weekly pick-up times where books can be grabbed following safety guidelines. If a child cannot pick up the books, we will find a way to get them to them. Book access is paramount for all kids, no matter their access to transportation. For those looking to book browse and shop safely while in class, please see this post for ideas.

We will center it in time. Even though I will have less live time with students than normal, we will still spend time reading together. For the class that only has me for 35 minutes a day, it will be 10 minutes of uninterrupted reading time (mics off), for those with 70 min in a day, it will be 15-20 minutes. I will be working behind the scenes with kids who may not have books, don’t want to read etc during this time. I will say again; if we say we value reading as one of the biggest components of student growth then we have to spend time on it and not just assign it assuming it will happen. Of course, I will hope that the students will also read outside of class but recognize that for some that will simply not happen. The very least I then can do is make sure they have time to read with us when we are together.

We will center it in talk. Reading conferences usually happen when students are doing their independent reading and while that would still be super convenient to continue, I have a feeling that during that time there will be plenty of “in the moment” things to take care of. So instead, I will ask students to confer with me every two weeks where we will have a private ten minute conversation in regard to who they are as a reader and how their goal is progressing. Not only will it give me a glimpse into their reading life, but it will hopefully also serve as a way to get to know them better. Students will have a choice to do it virtually or via the phone, I wrote more about the set up and process here.

We will center it in read aloud. Using read alouds, picture books in particular, has long been a mainstay in our community. This year is no different as I kick off the year with a picture book read aloud, We Don’t Eat our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins, as a way to dive into what we need to feel safe. I will read it live holding it up to the computer, but as the year progresses, I will scan the pages in so the students can see them in a slideshow while they listen to my voice read it live. Reading aloud bring joy, invites reflection, invites conversations, and offers us a springboard into topics that matter to us; identity, consent, fighting oppression, curiosity and many other aspects of the world. Sharing texts, whether short stories, long form, or picture books, allows us a shared language so we can speak books to one another.

We will center it in time. Building a community centered on reading joy takes time. For some kids they are already invested and ready, others will work on it all year. I know that this year presents additional obstacles that make the road seem even longer, the climb even steeper, yet I can honor every child’s journey by giving them all year to grow. By getting them books. By helping them discover personal value in reading beyond what the teacher asked them to do. I can center our practice in what we know is good for children; choice, time, meaningful work, skill development, community, and access.

We will center it in acceptance and celebration. Our students come to us with so many different emotions tied to reading. I will not help them if all they feel is judged within our virtual walls. I will not help them if I determine their path or tell them how to be a reader. Instead, I can create a space where kids feel that wherever they are on their journey is okay, that however they feel is okay. We will do meaningful work together, we will share read alouds, we will speak about what it personally means to be a reader and develop the skills we need to be stronger readers. We will use reading as a tool of transportation, as a tool of growth, not just in the skills we develop but also in how we view the world. There is room for every child’s reading journey on this mission, there is no one size fits all approach needed.

I know it can be tempting to create a lot of accountability measures in this virtual/hybrid Covid-19 teaching time. I know that it may seem like no big deal if we have kids log every minute, every page. If we ask for adult signatures to prove that they are, indeed, reading like they say they are. If we tell them all to read the same book over and over in order to create classroom conversation. If we ask them to write a short summary, do a small recording, take a quiz every time they finish a book. But what may seem insignificant quickly becomes a potentially damaging requirement. Writing one small summary about a book does not do a lot of harm but having to repeat the process every time one finishes a book can quickly lead to disdain for the reading process itself. Asking kids to log often leads to kids only doing the bare minimum rather than paying attention to when they have the capacity to read longer or the desire to. Asking kids to only read the same books does little to develop their independent reading identity and often makes them liars. The short-term gains from many of these accountability measures are not worth the long-term damage. So rather than focus on the quick accountability tools, take the time to really build the community. To invite the students into the governing decisions. To take stock and change course when it doesn’t work. To continually keep the dialogue open. And to give yourself grace as well. This year for many is not what we had hoped it would be. For many of us we are in entirely new territory. But we got this. We will do our best and then we will return the next day and try again. We don’t need to have all the answers just an idea of where to start.

Building reading joy is possible in virtual teaching, it may just look a little bit different than it has in the past and if there is one thing I know we educators are good at, it is embracing change and making it work. So one step at a time, we got this.

If your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually or live throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely and in-person as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in an in-person, virtual or hybrid model throughout the years and would love to help others as well.

Getting Ready for Virtual Reading Conferring with Students

[image error]The top of the reading check-in form I use in class

In three short weeks, the new school year kicks off in our household. No one thought at the end of last school year that we would be going back virtually but I am so grateful that this is the decision my district has made. The notion of doing everything we normally do in our day-to-day lessons virtually has been overwhelming but rather than get stuck in the emotions, I have decided to prepare as many tools and processes as I can. After all with everything I prepare, I can breathe a little easier, not because it is perfect by any means but because it gives me a pathway forward, a structure to try as I get to know the 80 or so new students that I will try to create a community alongside.

Our daily reading conferences have been a cornerstone of our literacy community for years. Just like the work we do in as we dive into our reading identity, sitting down with a child to discuss who they are as a reader and how the book they are currently reading plays into that journey is something I love and hold sacred. I know it is something I want to continue doing but also face a much different reality; going from 90 minutes a day of in-person instruction to 70 minutes twice a week virtual live instruction, going from sitting next to them and being able to hand them a book to connecting through a computer or a phone call. The coming quarter will certainly be an interesting educational experience.

So how do I plan on conferring with students?

The focus continues to be on their reading identity rather than individual skills. I have written about this before but I usually do not use my individual reading conferences to teach skills, I reserve that for our small groups which I will also be using in some way but that’s another post. Instead, we use this reading check-in as a way to hear how they see themselves as a reader and how the book they are currently reading is helping them work on their selected goal. There is a much deeper discussion of all of this in my book, Passionate Readers. This means that time-wise, I can keep these conferences to less than 5 minutes in class. Online, I envision them to be less than 10 minutes depending on tech access etc. This may need to change once we get going. I also have them choosing whether to meet with me virtually or over the phone on this form.

Students will choose their every other week time. Students are “only” in live instruction until noon every day, after 1 PM they have time for asynchronous learning and I am hoping to have students select a time slot that works for them every other week for our conferring. I used Signup.com for an easy way for them to select their ten-minute slot that also sends them a reminder of it. The slot they choose the first week will mostly stay the same for the quarter. While I normally do reading conferring while my students are independently reading, which they will still do as a part of my live instruction, I am choosing to keep the conferring separate from that for now. I have a feeling that at least the first few weeks will need a lot of extra attention and so while we are live, I will not be conferring with students then. For my students who have me 70 minutes a day, they will have 20 minutes of reading time each time, for the block that has me 35 minutes every day, they will have 10 minutes reserved for independent reading. I cannot ask students to read independently and tell them of its value and then provide no time for it while we are together.

I may use a form rather than my normal conferring sheet. While I normally take all of my notes on this conferring sheet, the first quarter I am considering using a form to fill in their information. This will hopefully allow me to organize our conversation a little better as students will not be met with alphabetically and I want to make sure I pay full attention when I am meeting with them. The form linked here is just a working example as I do not know the names of my students yet and the form I would use would have their names in a drop down menu for easy retrieval. I am also not sure I like the form quite as it is so consider this a rough draft.

We will discuss their next read and book access. While this is typically an ongoing conversation and a casual one woven throughout our classroom time, I know that virtually, I need to make space for it. This is why it will be a specific question asked during our reading check-ins so that I can guide them to the right step to make sure they have physical books to read. Our fantastic district librarians have created a safe plan for all kids to be able to pick up books from our collections, this will happen twice weekly and will be one of the components I will showcase to students in first two weeks. The pick up times also provides me with an opportunity to add any books from the classroom that they might like and I have a book request form that looks like this housed on our class website. Our awesome librarian, Christine, is creating a hub for the students that we can use with students in order for them to be able to pick up their books. We also have options in place in case students are not able to pick things up and we need to get it to them instead, all following CDC guidelines for safe handling.

Throughout the years, I have tried to hone my conferring skills, moving away from “just” focusing on the practical skills to looking more at the whole child and what they may need to discuss when it comes to their reading identity, centering them in their goals and the habits they have formed. These brief conversations, while never enough, offer us both an invitation into a partnership and relationship that is centered on the needs of that individual, their hopes for our year together, and the specific needs they have for me as their teacher. While the tools and access may look different, the heart of what I am doing does not. This is still about human connection, about finding time to just meet and discuss who they are and how reading fits into their life. This is one of the components I am looking the most forward to as the new year kicks off; meeting all of these new students, speaking books with them, and hopefully traveling on this 7th grade journey with them.

Do you have any questions or ideas? Leave them in the comments or join our Facebook community for Passionate Readers.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely and in-person as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in an in-person, virtual or hybrid model throughout the years and would love to help others as well.

Final Free PD Masterclass: Getting Ready for Going Back – How Do We Learn Best?

This summer has been one of worry. Of anxiousness. Of too much time spent thinking about possibilities that seemed to shift every day. Of waiting for answers. Of too many times trying to not think about the fall. But the countdown to go back to school has started for many of us, the future, while still uncertain, has at least been hinted at, and I still have so many questions.

A few weeks ago we were told we would be fully virtual for the first quarter and with that information I knew that I could stay overwhelmed and anxious or I could move into solution mode. To take it day by day, rather than try to figure out my whole quarter; focus on the first week, and then have an idea for what might come after. It has helped calm me as I think of all of the unknowns. (Not that I am feeling calm by any means).

And so, as I move ideas into action, it is time to invite you into the thoughts and discussion in my final masterclass of the summer: Masterclass – How Do We Learn Best – Embedding Authentic Choice and Voice. While some of the underlying research and ideas will not have changed from May when I offered it last, I have updated it with ideas of how I plan on establishing conditions to build community, to determine how we can feel safe with one another, how I will embed choice and space for students to speak up and change our time together as we start fully online. This class dives into why it is vital that we center the voices and identities of students as we plan on our instruction and interrogate the systems we have in place. It is meant to inspire, spark discussions, and also offer practical ideas. The accompanying office hours will allow you to ask follow up questions, to share your ideas, and also to have a collective of experts help you with your problems of practice.

So join me for this free PD session offered through CUE and sponsored by Microsoft, just hit the “Join this Session” at the time listed and it will allow you access. Spread the word if you think this masterclass will be helpful to others. This will also be the final free PD I offer for a while as the school year looms large and I have to balance the virtual schooling of my own four kids with the needs of my 80+ students while also trying to keep my sanity.

The class sessions will be:

August 13th 7 PM PST/9 PM CSTAugust 20th 7 PM PST/9 PM CSTAugust 27th 7 PM PST/9 PM CST

The office hour sessions will be:

August 15th 8 AM PST/10 AM CSTAugust 16th 8 AM PST/10 AM CSTAugust 23rd 8 AM PST/10 AM CSTAugust 30th 8 AM PST/10 AM CST

Don’t forget to check out the other incredible free PD sessions as well that are still being offering during the month of August.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely and in-person as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in an in-person, virtual or hybrid model throughout the years and would love to help others as well.

A Work in Progress: Digital Notebooks for Reading Identity Development

[image error]Just the front cover, to see the whole notebook, press this link

While my district gathers information as we try to determine what the fall can look like my wheels have been spinning. While I may not know whether I will be in a hybrid setting or completely virtual, I know that it will not be school as usual and so a huge question I am wrestling with is how do I translate what we do as a community face-to-face into this new mode of teaching? How do I continue to center our classroom on reading and writing identity when we won’t have the same opportunity for daily discussion and community exploration? When I won’t be right there to kid-watch and adjust my instruction and care of them accordingly?

Every year our readers’ notebooks become a trusted place for many of our students to reflect on who they are as readers, how reading impacts them, and how reading fits into their lives. It is all-year work that ties in with the overall focus on identity, how they see the world, how the world sees them, and how our lens of the world impacts our action. It is at the heart of what we do and yet, this year, I don’t know when I will be with them to do this work. How do we still do meaningful work in our notebooks without kids having to upload every image into our learning hub, how do we center our work in our identity and see how we grow throughout the year?

Enter digital notebooks which really are just fancy templates to make slide shows look like notebooks as my husband pointed out. And yet within the fancy template also comes a familiarity. These templates look like the notebooks we would use with kids, they can be organized in ways that will hopefully make it easier for kids to navigate the work and will ground our work for the year whether we are face-to-face or online.

And so last night, I created a digital notebook for our reading identity work based on a template created by Laura Cahill and while it is a work in progress I wanted to share it here as I know a lot of people are trying to wrap their heads around this work as well. As I write this, my former students are assessing it to give me feedback, I have also asked for feedback from other educators. I know it could be better, I know that collaboration will always improve my teaching.

In this work, I also know that I need to be careful with my students’ reading lives. That year after year they tell me how much they hate to write about their reading, how when we attach to-do’s to their reading it becomes a chore rather than a journey. That when we are constantly asking kids to prove that they are reading they start to not read. This is not anything new, I have written and shared the words of my students for years and it grounds me in every decision I make as the teacher who starts our journey and guides it throughout our year.

With this in mind, I had components in my instruction that I wanted to address as I created this tool.

How will I support kids through this tool? Each component is a separate lesson that we place the foundation for in the beginning of our year together and then return to throughout the year. I have written about all of them on this blog throughout the years as well as gathered all of my thoughts in my book Passionate Readers. So when I ask students to use their to-be-read list or reflect on who they are as a reader, they are not going into this unsupported, instead we weave lessons throughout these conversations such as about our reading journey, which emotions tied in with reading we carry, and many other things. It is also so much bigger than this notebook, this is work embedded in the conversations we have, the media we surround ourselves with, the quiet reflections, the surveys, the connections, the trust, the community, and everything else that we do with the realizations and questions we have. Please do not think that this notebook is all we do or encapsulates all of the work that happens throughout our year, it can’t be and it won’t be.

How will I know whether they are actually reading? I won’t. That comes down to trust, where they are on their journey, as well as which role reading plays in their life. There is no single tool that is worth me implementing for all kids that may not cause more long-term damage to their reading identity. When we are face-to-face, I usually have kids sign in for attendance with their page number that day, this allows me to get a quick glance at their reading that then is deepened in our reading conferences, that is not a fully viable option this year. So instead, the “Accountability” tab offers them an option to choose a way to show me when they have finished a book, and the “Reading data” tab gives them a way to keep track of what they are reading. I will be stressing to kids that their reading data is not meant to capture every minute or page read like a traditional reading log would, but instead to let them give a broad statement about their reading life the previous week. It is the two sections in particular I am still not loving, that will probably change as the year gets going and that I will be keeping a deep eye on as far as potential harm to reading habits. I also know that some kids will not want to use this reading notebook at all, that they would rather refuse than engage, so then that will simply be where we start our conversation. I will be utilizing reading check-in conferences as well, I am just not sure what they will look like yet since I don’t know my school year will look like. I will share my ideas for that when I have them.

How can we get ideas for what to read? Book shopping and surrounding kids with books is a cornerstone of what we do and kids need more than audio and digital books to really continue their reading journey. I have already written about ideas of how to help kids get books in their hands if in a hybrid or virtual learning environment and I will be sharing more ideas as I plan with our incredible librarian and other colleagues for when we know more. I know I will be doing live book talks whenever possible, but also dedicating time in our instruction for kids to book browse virtually, as well as continue to suggest books whenever I can to individual kids. Another idea that I am loving is that when students pick up or drop off books, we add extra books to the bag that they may also like, so that instead of just one or two books, kids get a bag of five or so.

How can students set reading goals that matter to them? For too long, I set the reading goals for my students. Luckily, I saw the light several years ago and I haven’t looked back since. Having students set meaningful reading goals, though, takes time. Many kids, even kids who have fantastic relationships to reading, want to hurry through the goal part and set it just so their teacher will check it off on their to-do-list. This is why setting a 6-week goal at a time and following it up with conversation will be so important in our year together. This is why our goal is not just focused on quantity but habits. Yes, they should read more than they have in the past if they can, but “more” encompasses many different things not just quantity. Kids can use the same goal for more than one round of 6-weeks as needed, some of my students work on the same goal all year. I just want to ensure that we have built in reflection time for the goals and will add dates when I know what my school year calendar looks like.

How will they develop their thinking about who they are as a reader? “Who are you as a reader?” is a question we have used for a few years now in our work with students. At first, many of my students have no idea what to answer, they don’t know necessarily what the question means or are not sure what I am looking for in their answer. That is why this is a year-long reflection question and one that we unpack together, especially because reading identity really just equals identity and so when I ask who are you as a reader what I am really asking is who are you? Since trust is something we build, I see a significant change in students’ responses throughout our year together.

While this is not a finished tool, it won’t be finished until we start using it because my new students will surely impact the work we do and how we do it. For now, this is my best draft and so I share it with the world in the sense of collaboration. That also means that you can certainly make a copy of it and use it, but please do not sell it or forget attribution. This is the work that I along with others have developed over several years. I am grateful that Laura Cahill shared the template for free, so this work is shared, as always, in the same spirit. Feel free to leave questions or comments for me.

To see the full reading identity notebook, click this link.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in a virtual and hybrid model throughout the summer and would love to help others as well.

And Then You Say We Failed…

Go on any social media platform and inevitably you see the discussions cropping up about how the teaching during the shutdown was not enough. How educators failed their students. How kids are now so far behind. How removing grades meant that kids didn’t learn anything. How we must open schools up for face-to-face instruction for all or else our nation will fall even further behind, or else our children will suffer. How dare schools want to teach online? How dare educators try to put their own health into the equation, after all, we knew what we signed up for when we became teachers.

I had hoped that the conversations online wouldn’t be so predictable. After all it was not too long ago that educators were held up as heroes, as people who were part of the solution. And yet I knew that within the adoration would soon come the backlash. The predictability of how we had failed, how we were not enough, that we better get back to to work or leave the profession. It happens every time educators are held up as heroes.

I get the panic driving many of these conversation. I have four children of my own whose school district has just declared that they will be virtual for at least the first quarter. We don’t know how we will make that work. We don’t know how we will pay for childcare, who will be with our children as we both work full-time as teachers. How our children’s education will be changed because of the online format. How will the social components work? How will their services be met for my two kids with IEP’s? We have a lot of questions, but we also have a lot of faith, because we saw how their entire school rose up to the challenge the spring presented to us all.

And so, I just want us to take a moment to remember what did happen during the shutdown in many places. How educators and school districts rose to the challenge and will continue to do so as we face an uncertain future because while I was never trained to teach online, I don’t know many educators that were, we still rose to the challenge.

Because we educators tried. We did our very best when the world shut down around us. We lost sleep both literally and figuratively as we worried about the students we would no longer see, how we would translate what we had built face-to-face, how our students would still be able to learn at home facing unknown situations, some navigating life or death situations and we were no longer there to help.

I wanted to make it work for every child, for every child to feel that I was right there with them supporting them through all of this new unknown while myself grappling with a really scary time: a major family emergency, and also being presumed positive for COVID-19. This is while we lost more than half of our income, much like many other families. And yet, I showed up with a smile every day because that is what we do as educators.

We took what we were supposed to be teaching live and tried to transform it to digital teaching, knowing that we had to cut back on our curriculum because it would be overwhelming otherwise. Many of us were told to not do synchronous teaching because it would be inequitable to kids. We were told to make it all accessible, to go deep but make it short, to not assign too much because the kids were barely managing it all.

We recorded videos for read aloud, lessons, check-ins and anything else we could think of to help kids understand and stay connected with us.

We created different paths for kids to choose their learning so they still had choice and voice in their education. This meant finding extra resources, creating extra resources, and then scaffolding kids through with extra resources. That takes time, time that we put in in order to somehow make this unfamiliar territory more familiar and inviting.

We set up opportunities for live question and answer situations whenever we could. We invited students to show and tell, to record videos, to kahoots, and any other games and events just to give them a space to connect with one another in a way that had nothing to do with academics.

We mailed letters and sent postcards with encouraging notes, funny stickers, and quick hello’s.

We met one-on-one with students whenever they needed us, at all hours of the day. My husband would have to remind me to turn my computer off every night at 10 PM, urging me to let it wait until morning. It was hard because I knew that some kids would be up late at night sending emails, I didn’t want them to feel alone.

We found time to sit in professional development to learn new digital tools in order to increase understanding and engagement. Then made time to implement it into our teaching on the fly whenever we could.

We continued meeting with colleagues to discuss needs of students and figure out crisis plans for the many kids whose mental health spiraled. We tried to think of new ways to reach kids who weren’t answering our phone calls, our texts, our emails, we tried to get them reconnected with their learning until the very last day. We continue to reach out over summer vacation.

We continued to communicate with all adults supporting their kids so that they felt included but also not overwhelmed, navigating a tight balancing act where the adults at home both needed information but also didn’t need all the information at the same time.

We continued to recreate resources that were locked in our classrooms without the necessary tools needed (even things like tape, posters, whiteboards, printer ink and such were things we had to find or pay for).

We coordinated and sent supplies to students so they could participate on an equal footing. We dropped off books on porches, brought food to those with no transportation, got internet to those whose applications were denied.

We purchased better internet plans or other tools for ourselves so that we could do our jobs, knowing that is was one more expense we would not be reimbursed for. We sat in parking lots when the wifi went down or when we needed to record videos and home didn’t have anywhere quiet. We searched for solutions to make it work whenever a new problem inevitably arose.

Many worked 12 hour+ days while trying to navigate online school with our own children as well. I had to place all of the needs of my students in front of my kids because that’s my job, and my job is our only income. I know many others in the same situation, whose own children were set aside because of the demands of work and not just within education.

We fought for the kids to not be unduly assessed on situations that were outside of their control. It’s easy to say that removing grades means kids were not motivated when your child has few obstacles to access their learning.

We tried to reach every child and provide the tools they needed to continue their growth.

We adapted, innovated, created, collaborated, grew, and rose up to meet the challenge that we were given little time or funding to prepare for. And we did it. And we will continue to do it, no matter what the fall brings. We will spend our summer preparing for a fall that many of us still don’t know what looks like. We will show up for trainings. We will create resources and lessons. We will collaborate. We will plan. We will dream. Not because we are getting paid to do so, because most of us aren’t, but because we care deeply about the education of our future students even if they cannot be with us face-to-face.

I know it will be better, after all, we now have more experience, we have had some time to think. We have had more training and hopefully have more access to tools, to ideas, to resources.

So to say that we failed, or that we didn’t do enough, once again diminishes the extraordinary work that many educators and school staff put into a situation that none of us could ever have predicted. Was it perfect? No. Did everyone do all of these things? No. But did many go above and beyond because it is what we do? Yes.

I know that the fall will bring more challenges. I know that even as I plan for either a hybrid model or full online teaching experience that I have a lot of things to work out, a lot of obstacles to navigate. And yet, I saw what my own kids’ teachers did in the spring, how their school rose up as a community, and we will, forever, be grateful. So thank you to all who rose up, who tried, who continue to do the work, despite being in a nation that prefers to defund schools and blame staff rather than work on solutions.

So if we want to talk about failure, let’s discuss how a school system founded on inequity and systemic racism continues to push out children every year. Let’s discuss how schools are funded. Let’s discuss how in the US our population poverty is so large that many families depend on schools to feed their children. That in one of the richest nations of the world we have schools with unsafe water, with crumbling buildings, with unfilled positions because there is no money to hire staff. That the cost of living is so high that many people cannot afford childcare. Let’s discuss how education as a profession is disparaged rather than supported. How the voices of stakeholders are easily dismissed whenever procedural decisions are made, whenever federal changes are implemented. Let’s discuss that before we proclaim the crisis teaching that did happen as a failure. Perhaps then we can actually see some changes that we all could get behind.

Book Shopping and Handling Books in Our Classrooms During Covid-19 – A Few Ideas

If there is one thing that is considered the cornerstone tool of what I do with students it is the sharing of the books that we read throughout the year. Our classroom and school library collection is vast, it is varied, it is inclusive, and it is always a work in progress. For many years the books that we read are what brings us together, what centers all of the work we do within our reading identity and the time we spend on independent reading is what students tell me year after year makes the biggest difference in their own reading lives. I spend a lot of time watching kids and how they handle their books; do they dive right in, eagerly open up the book when it is time to read? Do they hesitate? Do they ignore my request to find a book altogether? Do they avoid touching books at all costs? How a child handles a book will often give us great insight into how they feel about reading. That is something that e-books and audio, while both amazing, simply doesn’t provide us in the same way.

We know that COVID-19 is cruel in many facets. We know more about the potentiality of spread and the risk of exposure due to the diligent research happening globally. What we know today may be further refined tomorrow and so this post is not meant as a guidelines post, but rather as an idea post, ultimately, whatever guidelines we are handed from districts or other governing policies trump any ideas. There are ways to still have kids book shop and browse books, there are ideas we can implement to keep them safe. We know that COVID-19 lands on surfaces including paper but the CDC has told us, “Children’s books, like other paper-based materials such as mail or envelopes, are not considered a high risk for transmission and do not need additional cleaning or disinfection procedures.” (CDC, Apr 21, 2020).

I am not as worried about kids getting exposure by touching a book briefly and then another child touching it, at least not if I read what the CDC has to say about it: There is still a lot that is unknown about COVID-19 and how it spreads. Coronaviruses are thought to be spread most often by respiratory droplets. Although the virus can survive for a short period on some surfaces, it is unlikely to be spread from domestic or international mail, products or packaging. However, it may be possible that people can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads...but more about the social proximity that tends to come when we book shop and such which can lend to increased exposure. While all people in our school are required to wear a mask if/when we open, I still want to minimize risks as much as possible. So how can we still have kids book shop and browse books without increasing their exposure risk, because surely, telling teachers and librarians to close their book access and solely focus on digital is not the only solution. And neither is going crazy with ideas without knowing the risks.

So I wanted to share few ideas but also direct you toward ALA’s guidelines (some of them are from the spring and the guidelines may have changed since then.)

My own ideas for my classroom collection include:

A quarantine space for books that have been handled. If I am teaching in a hybrid fashion, I will have three classes a day with the the same kids for two days, then a different cohort with also three classes another two days (Online will not be with live, they will be in a separate cohort – so some kids will start with me at the the beginning of week and the other cohort will end with me live. So cohort A: Live M + T, Virtual W + R + F, Cohort B: Virtual: M + T + W, Live: R + F, it’s a lot to navigate. I plan on having a basket for kids to place books they have touched into and then removing them from the room with gloves if I can get some. Then books will be left to wait it out for at least 72 hours before being placed back in our collection.

A highly requested and read book cart. The titles that tend to fly off the shelves, like the ones listed here, will be on a separate cart so that kids don’t have to dig through anything to get them. I will have some form of electronic synopsis available for kids to browse through in our Google Classroom so they can read the blurb and not handle the book. They can then grab the book they would like when they have found one to try. I can also be the one handling the book and act as curator when we are bookshopping.

Touchless browsing. Another idea I have is to grab collections of books and leave them out with the back or blurb facing up. Kids will be encouraged to write down potential titles on their to-be-read list and then check out a few books to try. When they leave us for the week, they should bring the books home to try as part of their online learning.

Lysol and Clorox browsing. Every students browses books with disinfectant wipes in hand. If they touch a book and they end up not grabbing it, it gets wiped down by them right after and then handed to me to be set aside. Books should be cleaned if dirty and then disinfected. (Do at your own risk, me wiping down a book once in a while in my classroom is not the same as a book in a school or public library being wiped down all of the time).

Electronic browsing. I don’t have a digital library collection of titles but will start working on one for the coming year, that way students can browse through titles we have in our classroom and put in a request through a google form for a book they would like. I may even just do this in Google Slides. While I am not going to do anything super fancy, I know there are fancy ways to do this.

Video book talks. There are many already made and to be found on Youtube which will help me speed up the processing time, but I also want to start recording electronic book talks to have for throughout the year. Besides, we all do book talks differently and I want to use them as another way for students to create connection to our community. This approach not only allows me to curate a collection that I can use year after year if I want, it helps me audit what I am book talking since I will be pulling specific book stacks to use. I am allowed into my classroom right now for the sole purpose of grabbing books and I will be grabbing as many inclusive titles as I can to use.

A video tour of our library. I will be recording a tour of our classroom library when I head in so kids can see different genres available, how it is organized, and also just get ready for using it at some point. This will be part of their online learning so they are preloaded with some info before they are in the classroom. That way I can also pull out books to show, showcase how things are shelved, and build some book excitement.

If we are fully online, I am hoping to set up some sort of concierge service to drop off sanitized books for kids. Much like librarians have done throughout the country, kids would be able to request books and then have them placed in quarantine for a drop off or pick up. In the spring we were not able to get into our schools which greatly limited physical book access for all of us. We were able to get some books in the hands of kids who had none through a google from and mailoing but it was nowhere enough to what we would have liked to see. We know book access in a major inequity and so my district right now is also discussing ways to get physical books to all kids and not just e-books.

Also, I am hoping to drop a book off to each student as we begin the year if we start online. I would choose selections from Books4School under $3 each and then drop them off when we do our scheduled “yard visits.”

I asked on twitter what other people were doing and was once again deluged with wonderful ideas, thank you to everyone who shared!

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While we wait for districts to release our fall plans, I know we will find a way to get books in the hands of kids. We have to so feel free to share more resources and ideas in the comments.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in a virtual and hybrid model throughout the summer and would love to help others as well.

But How Do We Build Community? Ideas for Virtual and Hybrid Learning

While my district has yet to release its plan for the fall here in Wisconsin, things are not looking so good. The last two days we have set new records in my county for positive test results for Covid-19, as a family we went through our own wait-time to get results this week so we have continued to stay at home with very limited movement. And while there is a lot of uncertainty that are furiously being discussed and planned for as best we can, one thing is practically certain; our year will not start in the normal sense.

And it shouldn’t, we have changed. Our world has changed.

Community lies at the heart of everything we do, the threads that bind us together create a learning space that will hopefully work for all of the children in our care. I know most of the learning success I had in the three months of crisis teaching was dependent on the community we had spent all year establishing and maintaining. On the trust we had built, on the care for each other, on the fun we had had. We know that building that community is hard work, it is not just simply putting together fun activities and hoping kids will buy into it and immediately build trust. There is so much that goes into creating the space that we hope kids will flourish in throughout the year. But how do we do that when we are not face to face? When we perhaps are both teaching live and online at the same time?

My hope every year is that the children in my care feel safe within our community. Safe to be who they are. Safe to challenge themselves. Safe to take risks. Safe to disagree. Safe to speak up. Safe to show up even if they are not at their best. Safe to go on a year long identity journey together. One that hopefully will matter to them beyond “just” developing their English Language Arts skills.

And yet the whole determination and definition of safe is something that has been weighing on me. When we say that we want our classrooms to be safe, what do we really mean? I have been reading the brilliant book Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in Classroom by Matthew R. Kay and he writes about this as well, “…for most students, a teacher’s safe space designation doesn’t mean much.” Because we don’t definite it, because we don’t think about our cultural norms that at times exclude kids, because we don’t think about the extent of the required needs to be met for someone to feel safe. And so when I think of community building work, I want it to be meaningful, it want it to be real. Yes, there is room for fun, for get-to-know you activities, but how do we go past that? How do we get further?

For me, I plan on spending our face-to-face time on a lot of the community building we usually do. As it stands, it sounds like my district will be hybrid with some face-to-face and some online, where I teach both at the same time (no, I am not sure how that will work). This means that as always we will spend the first few weeks laser focused on laying the groundwork for our year-long identity work. We will do the work we do every year. We will reflect on our reading and writing identity. We will discuss when reading sucks. We will create our reading rights together. We will set meaningful goals for our own growth. We will read and discuss personal essays that speak to not fitting into the world, into being seen as different, into finding your people, finding your own strength. We will start our focus on whose voices are missing and how that impacts our understanding of our world. We will do all of this together so that online can become work time. So that online can be manageable for the kids who can access it. So that the online work becomes a time for kids to go deeper with what we are already doing rather than further to-do’s. And yet, the community aspect also needs to continue to be developed while we are apart, so that we can feel connected, so that we can grow together.

A few ideas I am contemplating using:

Ready-Set-Go conferences before the year starts, we offered these up last year face-to-face and had a good turnout. This year, depending on access, they will either be face-to-face or virtual for a chance for us to meet.Yard visits, for those who are okay with it, I would like to say hello from a distance before the year starts. Either by standing in the street, a public park, or some other decided place. This will be an option to see each other from a far and say hello.A welcome video for the students hopefully shot in our classroom so they can get a sense of what it looks like. If not it will be from my home with my kids.Welcome postcards. I wrote a lot of postcards in the past few months, I think they made a difference, and even if they didn’t, it is one more way to say hello. I am playing with the idea of including a postcard they can mail back to me with the postage already paid. I don’t know how many kids would take me up on it but perhaps some would.Weekly surveys checking in worked well for me last semester. Here is a sample of one.I want community to be built through the work we do, not just as an add on feature, so the work we do needs to be worth their time and dedication. This is huge as I start to plan the work and our year focus.Easy accessible Google Slides to work through every day they are online, only a few items but I want to focus on sharing either through video, audio, or written form. We will use Padlet, Flipgrid, or whatever else we can use to respond to each other.I won’t be able to do morning meetings live because I will be teaching at the same time, I will be doing recorded morning messages every day though and keep them short! My own kids scoffed the minute their morning videos were longer than 3 minutes.

I will be offering free PD on how I plan on embedding authentic choice and voice throughout our year in August, I will be definitely sharing more about my ideas for building community authentically. To sign up and see more information, please go to this website and search for my name. This is also the heart of my work alongside students and I write extensively about it in my book, Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Learners.

I want to be mindful of a lot of things:

Virtual teaching is inherently more inequitable than even live teaching.Not all kids will be able to access virtual teaching for many different reasons.Kids have no reason to trust me.Having a device (provided for all kids by my district) does not mean you have space to or time to use it.Students are in many different places in their journey of learning and also in how safe they feel at school. I want to be acutely aware of this and let it guide my work.The world continues to be overwhelming, kids are in a lot of different places when it comes to their mental health. Everything we do has to be shaped through equity and care.I will be one of many classes.We, teachers, need to deeply collaborate especially when it comes to how much work we are asking kids to do.We need even more safety nets such as trusted adults for every child.We need to find ways for students to connect with one another, not just in an academic sense.I keep thinking about this webinar: A conversation with Bettina Love, Gholdy Muhammad, Dena Simmons and Brian Jones about abolitionist teaching and antiracist education. I have been a part of a lot of learning this summer and this was one of the most powerful hours I spent, their voices are definitely resonating loudly as I plan for my upcoming year.

Yesterday on Twitter I asked for ideas for building community online because surely others have been grappling with this idea as well. I promised I would share the ideas here as a list not to take credit, but instead to highlight all of the ideas floating around. So thank you to all who shared. Thank you to all who took the time to share new or tried and true ideas. May we all be able to find something that will help us out.

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Major take aways from ideas shared:

Identity work and creating learning conditions that honor each child is a must.Having access in many different ways to allow kids choice.Making yourself available in many different formats.Scheduling virtual drop-in times where kids can hang out and also interact with you works well.Don’t require video or their face to be shown.What works for your students will depend very much on your students.Don’t be afraid to try things and then change them or not use the idea if it doesn’t work.

What were other ideas shared?

The brilliant Julie Jee also asked this question, here is the thread with all of the ideas shared.

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I am grateful for all of the ideas shared, there were even more than were posted here, to see the original thread, click this link. We may face an uncertain future when it comes to our school but one thing remains; the kids will show up and need us to be fully human, to be present, and to be safe. I hope that you can use some of these ideas to help you move toward that.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in a virtual and hybrid model throughout the summer and would love to help others as well.

But They Still Hate Reading: Establishing and Cultivating a Personal Reading Identity – A New Free Masterclass Offering

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Note: I have been made aware that the link to register is not available yet, I am told that it should be available Tuesday (tomorrow).

As summer continues here in the Northern Hemisphere, I am excited to move into my next free Masterclass focusing on developing and supporting an individual student reading identity. This is the work I have been invested in with my students for the past six years in particular and I am so excited to offer others a deep dive into all of the components that we integrate into the curriculum as we try to create and maintain experiences that center on the individual student’s journey in reading. These sessions will be live as well as recorded for later access if the times do not work for you.

This masterclass is in 4 parts:

July 8th at 11 AM PST – Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child.

This first 1-hour session is focused on the birdseye view of the entire year, the research behind why student identity needs to be at the core of our work as well as practical ways to start or continue the focus on reading identity. This will also focus on how to do an all-district or school reading audit and how we can align practices better so that students are not victims of an educational lottery where some get access to meaningful reading experiences that center on personal reading, and others do not.

July 15th 1:30 PM PST – But They Still Hate Reading: Establishing and Cultivating a Personal Reading Identity- Part 1.

July 22nd 11 AM PST – But They Still Hate Reading: Establishing and Cultivating a Personal Reading Identity- Part 2

July 29th 11 AM PST – But They Still Hate Reading: Establishing and Cultivating a Personal Reading Identity- Part 3.

These three parts will focus on all of the components that make up our year together: Creating and maintaining an inclusive book collection, supporting independent and joyful reading, reflection and goal setting throughout, scaffolds and supports we can use to help kids whose reading experiences have been negative, using book clubs as a meaningful way to discuss the world, individual reading challenges, and of course, how to help students find space for reading in their life outside of school. The three sessions will take place on the following dates. This is an invitation into the work I do behind the scenes, the work my students take on, as well as planning for a virtual or hybrid school start.

While the sessions will take on the form of presentations, there will be office hours to go along with them. These office hours are meant for questions, discussion, resource sharing, as well as anything else related to the sessions. These are also free, but not recorded.

Office Hour July 12th – 8 AM PST

Office Hour July 19th – 8 AM PST

Office Hour July 26th – 8 AM PST

Office Hour July 29th – 7 PM PST

I hope that these free PD offerings will be helpful to you. To sign up, please click on the link embedded in this sentence and you can sign up

The final masterclass after this one will be embedding authentic choice and voice as we start the year together with students. It will be focused on all of the things I am trying to wrap my head around as we prepare for our new year together. The information for those can also be seen on the website and sign up will be open soon.

Also, if your district or conference are interested in bringing me in virtually throughout the school year, please see information here. I have been supporting teachers remotely as they plan for meaningful literacy instruction in a virtual and hybrid model throughout the summer and would love to help others as well.