What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Nonfiction, Grades 3-8: Your Moment-to-Moment Decision-Making Guide

by Gravity Goldberg, Tobacco

Overview

Streamline formative assessment for readers in just minutes a day

With What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Nonfiction, discover how to move your readers forward with in-class, actionable formative assessment. The authors provide a proven, 4-step process—lean in, listen to what readers say, look at what they write, and assess where they need to go next.

Next-step resources for whole-class, small-group, and one-on-one instruction, include

• Reproducible Clipboard Notes pages for quick assessments
• More than 30 lessons to get you started
• Reading notebook entries and sample classroom conversations
• Online video clips of Renee and Gravity teaching and debriefing

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506351216
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	02/15/2017
Series:	Corwin Literacy Series
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	53,444
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Gravity Goldberg is coauthor of Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Students’ Growth and Independence (Heinemann, 2007) and author of many articles about reading, writing, and professional development. She holds a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a former staff developer at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and an assistant professor at Iona College’s graduate education program. She leads a team of literacy consultants in the New York/New Jersey region. Gravity is the author of Mindsets and Moves: Strategies That Help Readers Take Charge, Grades 1-8.

RENEE HOUSER is co-founder of Growing Educators, which provides customized professional development to schools in the Los Angeles, California, area. She holds a Masters in Education from Old Dominion University and a Masters in Curriculum and Teaching from Fordham University. A former staff developer at Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, Columbia, University, Renee says it was her years teaching at PS 126 in New York City that most shaped her vision of student-centered teaching and collaborative professional learning.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Quick-Start Guide for Easy Access
Chapter 1: Each Classroom Moment Is an Instructional Decision
Acting Without a Script: Embracing Our Role as Improvisers
Answering the “What Next?” Question
Intentional Teaching: Decision Making With Students at the Center
Self-Reflection Questionnaire: What Type of Decision Maker Are You?
Decision-Making Styles
Three Common Teaching Habits
Let Students Be Your Guide
Getting Started: An Action Plan
Chapter 2: Decisions About Book Selection
Making a Choice to Read Aloud a Nonfiction Text
Narrative Nonfiction
Persuasive Nonfiction
Expository Nonfiction
Mash-Ups
5 Ways to Engage Students in Nonfiction Read Alouds
Chapter 3: Decisions About Reading Notebooks
Why We Really Use Writing as a Tool for Understanding
Current Reality: Why Students Write About Reading in School
Writing About Reading: An Important Tool for Readers and Their Teachers
How to Collect Thinking in Notebook Entries
Self-Reflection Questionnaire: Reading Notebooks
What We Might Let Go of When Asking Students to Write About Reading
Reading Notebooks: An Action Plan
Chapter 4: Decisions About Discussion
The Benefits: Making Meaning in Texts and Our Lives
Teach Students to Have Meaningful Conversations
Making Decisions Based on Student Conversations
Effective Nonfiction Conversation Characteristics
What We Might Let Go of When Asking Students to Talk About Their Reading
Self-Reflection Questionnaire: Student Conversations
Authentic Conversations: An Action Plan
Chapter 5: Decisions About Synthesizing Information
What Is Synthesis?
Why Is Synthesis So Important?
What Other Reading Skills Fit With Synthesis?
What to Look for When Students Synthesize Information
Thin-Slicing Students’ Synthesis Thinking
Decide What to Teach Next: Focus on Three Main Choices
Synthesis Across Texts
Synthesizing Information: An Action Plan
Chapter 6: Decisions About Understanding Perspectives
What Is Perspective?
Why Is Understanding Perspectives Important?
What Other Reading Skills Fit With Understanding Perspectives?
What to Look for When Understanding Perspective
Decide What to Teach Next
Reflecting With Students: How Understanding Perspectives Helps Us
Understanding Perspectives: An Action Plan
Chapter 7: Becoming Confident and Intentional Decision Makers
Appendices
Appendix A. Nonfiction Book Rating System
Appendix B. Some Favorite Nonfiction Texts
Appendix C. Clipboard Notes: Reading Notebook Entries
Appendix D. Clipboard Notes: Student Conversations
Appendix E. Synthesizing Nonfiction Texts
Appendix F. Clipboard Notes: Types of Thinking About Synthesizing Information
Appendix G. Understanding Perspectives in Nonfiction
Appendix H. Clipboard Notes: Types of Thinking About Understanding Perspectives
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Goldberg and Houser—both former staff developers at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project—have perfectly combined theory and practice to help teachers put students first in their decision-making process. Best of all, they’ve provided the tools necessary to assist teachers in making those decisions become a reality right away.”

Billy White

"I love the we-are-right-there-with-you tone. It’s so clear these authors have been there, and remain right in the trenches. And I love the teacher checklists and quizzes—just the right light touch to use in professional development time. But perhaps most of all, I admire that Houser and Goldberg have taken a complex process—daily instructional decision making— and broken it into doable steps for teachers to try. Deciding what each reader in your room is ready for next will never be something a teacher gets good at overnight, but with these outstanding resources, educators are armed with the right questions to ask themselves, a progression of strategies that enhance the readers relationship with the text, and the theory and research from in and out of the literacy field that will help them build a community of readers."

Justyce

"This series is a must-have for every elementary language arts teacher! Goldberg and Houser have created a comprehensive support for teachers who want to provide their students with rigorous, thinking-centered experiences in reading and writing. Having these books is like having ongoing coaching and guidance from these two outstanding literacy experts at your fingertips."

Jerry Harris

"Goldberg and Houser offer an insider’s view of intentional decision making in action by making us front-row observers of their thinking process. We stand beside them as they show us student-centered reading instruction at its best, listening in on book conversations, gazing over their shoulders to analyze writing in reading notebooks. This step-by-step journey yields explanations of why, what, and how that we can use to plan next lessons for our readers. The What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? series is a testament to our professional responsibility to keep students as our compass, their 'right now' needs and wishes as readers as the destination, and engaging books as the vehicle that takes us there."

Dr. Mary Howard

"These books exemplify the intersection of excellent scholarship and practical application for teachers in the field. They beautifully illustrate those essential metacognitive processes in a progression, and this helps teachers see how instructional decisions become instructional moves that translate into high cognitive demand learning experiences for students. This series an invaluable teaching tool for those who want to implement authentic Balanced Literacy experiences for their students."

Cat

"Making decisions about reading in our classroom is not easy, even though we make hundreds every day. Often, we don’t give much thought to how we decide what we do, but with this book, we are taken on a guided tour of what it means to make super-intuitive decisions about what our readers need next. Each chapter addresses decisions about key aspects of building a literature-rich environment and a community of readers, including reading notebooks, teaching students how to synthesize ideas, and understanding perspective. The chapters on great nonfiction and fiction texts and on helping readers learn how to select involving books are favorites, as they give me a more focused method to rely on. The books are practical, friendly, and chockfull of ideas and lessons that can be readily implemented."

Keith Mason

"I love this series! Goldberg and Houser succeed at something difficult: freeze-framing their intentional decisions about teaching readers in a way that we can all “see”—and then do in our own classrooms. They provide a decision-making model that helps teachers feel confident in letting their own observations of students’ written and spoken responses to text guide them. They distill the ever-present what-do-I-teach-next question into three choices, and these choices all center on furthering students’ ways of thinking as they read fiction and nonfiction. Through classroom videos and notebook entries, we learn the authors’ intuitive process. They don’t just leave us pondering, but scaffold our ability to be responsive teachers by providing lesson ideas that work for every kind of tomorrow—every reading next step. For fiction, they share lessons on character and theme; for nonfiction, on synthesizing information and understanding perspectives. The bonus is this: when we study and reflect on the authors’ decision-making process, we enhance and improve our own. These books should become seminal works."

Laura Robb

"We know of no resource that promotes responsive teaching as well as these books do. Goldberg and Houser like teaching to improve, and then describe how teachers can learn to be fully in the moment of instructional decision making by focusing on a handful of things. From the detailed lessons to boxes titled, 'Decide to teach this tomorrow if your students . . .' these authors anticipate the content teachers want and the questions they raise. These thoughtful books show teachers how to make children’s reading needs central to instructional planning."

Dan Costa Orchestra