How I Teach Reading AND Writing in 58 Minutes
I Can’t Do It All...But, I Can Try. Right?
The phrase that I have heard so many times in meetings and throughout professional developments is: “We have to stop going a mile wide and an inch deep.” I will often keep track of how many times I hear this in meetings on a sticky note. Not kidding. The alternative to this is of course that we need to be focusing on an inch-wide worth material while going a mile deep in the quest to find mastery. As this idiom relates to teaching, secondary English Language Arts teachers have the particular problem of being tasked with teaching both reading and writing in small blocks of class time. Here are some particular questions I often get on the blog, in my classroom, and the questions I ask myself on days when I am pulling my own hair out:
How do I fit it all in?
What gets left out if I can’t do it all?
How am I building readers AND writers?
Is reading more important than writing?
Does my curriculum guide provide that balance of reading and writing for me?
These are just a few questions that cause any ELA teacher to pause and reflect and perhaps think, “how is this job even possible.” My brain often looks like a tangled Pinterest feed with ideas about strategies and resources. I don’t have any hard answers here. I just want to provide how I attempt to “fit it all” into my blocks of class time each day, week, and year. I have many things I love and will continue to do, and I have things that I try out all the time. This goes back to my non-negotiables because I have things that I will always continue to do because I can visually see learning taking place in front of me, and I have things I try to improve on all the time. My goal with this post is NOT to try to say what the correct strategies are for “fitting it all in,” but simply offer a way one teacher is doing it in the spirit of collaboration and sanity.
Strategy #1: I create a weekly routine.
I love swapping weekly routines with teachers. It shows what we value and what we prioritize on each day of teaching. I talked about my planning process in my back-to-school bullet journal post in August, but this plan can be a candidate for change based on the group of students each year. Here is my current weekly routine:
Monday
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
Mentor Text Routine (Book Talk, Notice, Name, Write)
Introduce Weekly Content
Tuesday
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
Class Read Aloud/Write Into the Day (Journals)
CONTENT ROTATION 1
Wednesday
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
CONTENT ROTATION 2
Thursday-Library (My class goes almost every single week to the library on Thursday. We have a library focus each marking period or every six weeks.)
Library Activity
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
Thursday-No Library
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
CONTENT ROTATION 3
Friday
Independent Reading/Read-Aloud
Friday Free Write
Weekly Wrap-Up of Content Rotation/Class Binder Organization
I will note that independent reading can be rotated with a read-aloud for a class or even poetry exploration. The first 15 minutes of class is dedicated to reading either it is by ourselves or together. I always rotate back to independent reading because it is the best gift I can give my students: Time to look at books on their own.
Strategy #2: I big picture rotate reading and writing.
The standard model of English Language Arts is to read something and then respond to that reading with a mode of writing. There is a pattern. Read. Write. Read. Write. And so on. However, teachers are curriculum writers are realizing the constant application of both skills is the key to creating readers who write and writers who read. I am currently in the process of piloting out a new curriculum for the district I teach in. This curriculum attempts to blend reading in a variety of genres (novel, short story, poem, etc) and also writing in many different genres as well. The goal is to expose our kids to reading and writing in a variety of ways and expose them to a variety of skills. The mess can start when we start exposing them to too many texts and too many strategies. If we are confused, they are going to be confused.
I do the big picture rotation each marking period. What I mean by this is that there is a big anchor text we focus on together as a group for each of the six weeks, and we have a larger writing assignment after we read together. While we are reading, we do smaller writing practices. While we are focusing on writing, we do smaller reading practices that supplement the anchor text. Reading always feeds writing. Writing always feeds reading.
Let me give an example. For the next marking period, my general English class is going to be reading Iqbal by Franceso D’Adamo. I always have goals in teaching a novel.
Novel Reading Goals:
Analyze character traits (reinforces work from the second marking period with adjectives and snapshot writing with personal narratives)
Sequence plot elements
Identify theme
Discussion Goals:
Identify what is child labor
Discuss the role of child labor in consumerism
Connect social injustices to activism
Writing Goals:
Introduce research with studying people
Create a biographical report on a chosen person or a “change-maker”
Practice paragraph organization
So using the example above, while we are reading Iqbal as a group, I am going to be helping them learn how to organize paragraph writing with other prompts. I am also going to model how to talk about a person with paragraph writing with my biographical read-aloud books. While we are working on our own biographical reports, I am going to supplement the lessons with excerpts from:
“A Schoolgirl’s Diary” from I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Patricia McCormack (Memoir Excerpt)
“The First Day of School” by R.V. Cassill (Short Story)
“Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward by Gwendolyn Brooks (Poem)
“Harlem” by Langston Hughes (Poem)
I put this material into my content rotation for each week. If you go back to my weekly routine, you can see that this material is covered mainly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with introduction days being Mondays and clean-up days being on Fridays.
Strategy #3: I multipurpose plan with my mentor texts.
The reason I love mentor text work is that it teaches both reading and writing skills. I have a sequence of grammar skills and writing skills each marking period that I want students to know. These become the points that I grade on writing assignments as we are looking specifically at word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. Overall, when I walk through the mentor text sequence I am serving both reading and writing in a variety of ways:
Book talks are walking advertisements for my independent reading program
Noticing helps young readers learn to read like writers
Noticing helps young writers learn grammar skills NOT in isolation
Noticing helps young writers learn writing skills NOT in isolation
Naming gives time for practicing new skills in both reading passages and writing out examples
Writing empowers young writers to feel like they, too, can write like authors (In turn, this leads to more writing which leads to more reading during sharing of writing and so on)
Strategy #4: I prioritize independent practice with a focus on stamina.
Let me give an example. For the next marking period, my general English class is going to be reading Iqbal by Franceso D’Adamo. I always have goals in teaching a novel.
Novel Reading Goals:
Analyze character traits (reinforces work from the second marking period with adjectives and snapshot writing with personal narratives)
Sequence plot elements
Identify theme
Discussion Goals:
Identify what is child labor
Discuss the role of child labor in consumerism
Connect social injustices to activism
Writing Goals:
Introduce research with studying people
Create a biographical report on a chosen person or a “change-maker”
Practice paragraph organization
So using the example above, while we are reading Iqbal as a group, I am going to be helping them learn how to organize paragraph writing with other prompts. I am also going to model how to talk about a person with paragraph writing with my biographical read-aloud books. While we are working on our own biographical reports, I am going to supplement the lessons with excerpts from:
“A Schoolgirl’s Diary” from I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Patricia McCormack (Memoir Excerpt)
“The First Day of School” by R.V. Cassill (Short Story)
“Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward by Gwendolyn Brooks (Poem)
“Harlem” by Langston Hughes (Poem)
I put this material into my content rotation for each week. If you go back to my weekly routine, you can see that this material is covered mainly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with introduction days being Mondays and clean-up days being on Fridays.
Strategy #3: I multipurpose plan with my mentor texts.
The reason I love mentor text work is that it teaches both reading and writing skills. I have a sequence of grammar skills and writing skills each marking period that I want students to know. These become the points that I grade on writing assignments as we are looking specifically at word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. Overall, when I walk through the mentor text sequence I am serving both reading and writing in a variety of ways:
Book talks are walking advertisements for my independent reading program
Noticing helps young readers learn to read like writers
Noticing helps young writers learn grammar skills NOT in isolation
Noticing helps young writers learn writing skills NOT in isolation
Naming gives time for practicing new skills in both reading passages and writing out examples
Writing empowers young writers to feel like they, too, can write like authors (In turn, this leads to more writing which leads to more reading during sharing of writing and so on)
Strategy #4: I prioritize independent practice with a focus on stamina.
I put independent reading and Friday Free Write on my non-negotiables list for this school year. The reason for this is both of these practices feed into my students’ abilities to read without me and write with me and also balance autonomy and choice. They get to choose the books that they read each day, and they get to choose what they will write about on Fridays. The goal should always be can you do this work without me? The vehicle that we are in should be a self-driving one by the end of each unit and each school year. In the past, I have said that I can feel a shift in March and April when my sixth-graders feel like seventh-graders. I am focusing on the power of the micro-shift that happens when my students get more and more independent with skills during class and strategies by the end of the unit. Celebrating these successes drives my teaching.
Strategy #5: I shorten my formative assessments.
Truth: I am still working on this one. I am guilty of wanting to make sure that my students finish a giant project through to the end, even if it means sacrificing time for something else. I have to get better about making sure that my formative assessments stay short and sweet. I am a happier grader if they are shorter, and my students get better feedback because they are receiving interaction from me more often. When I say formative assessments, I am talking about the daily and weekly check-ins I am making with students to monitor whether or not they are understanding the material. These check-ins can be in the form of a journal entry or simply a class discussion around a particular topic. Formative sounds a little too much like the word “formal.” I have to get that out of my mindset. Simultaneously, if I take the stress out of formative assessments and increase my frequency, I will be able to engage with my students on both aspects of reading and writing more often throughout the day, week, and year.