Teaching Signposts with Patricia Polacco

Several years ago, along with friends and colleagues, I learned about "signposts" by reading the book Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E Probst.

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Close Reading

Close reading is a process that typically involves re-reading a text to progressively dig deeper. The initial pass allows the reader to understand what the text says, which correlates with the first three Common Core Reading Standards: key ideas and details. The second read compromises an analysis of the author's craft and the text's structure (CCSS standards 4-6). Last, students are invited to revisit the text for a third time to integrate knowledge and ideas (CCSS standards 7-9).

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In their book, Beers and Probst argue that whereas these three reads help students examine texts more closely, the process is often teacher-driven and doesn't provide a gradual release of responsibility so that students eventually apply these reading behaviors independently.

Instead, they suggest readers look for six signposts that "alert readers to significant moments in a work of literature and encourages them to read closely."

To introduce these signposts to my fourth graders in the middle of our author study on Patricia Polacco, we read Pink and Say, a book where all six signposts were present.

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Introduce the Signposts

First, I divided the class into six groups and assigned them each a signpost. They were responsible for defining their signpost to the class, along with sharing the question readers are to ask themselves once they've identified a particular signposts.

• Contrasts and Contradictions: Sharp contrasts between what we expect and what we observe characters doing or feeling.
• Why is the character doing that?
• Aha Moments: Characters’ realizations that shift their actions, understanding or thinking.
• How might this change things?
• Tough Questions: The characters ask questions that reveal their inner struggles.
• What does this question make me wonder about?
• Words of the Wiser: Advice or insights wiser characters, usually older, offer about life to the main character.
• What’s the life lesson, and how might it affect the character?
• Again and Again: Events, images, or particular words that repeat over and over again.
• Why does this show up again and again?
• Memory Moment: Recollections by a character that interrupt the forward progress of the story.
• Why might this memory be important?

Identify the Signposts

Next, I hung up six pages from the book around the room. These were selections from Pink and Say that represented each of the six signposts. I asked the groups to find the page where their signpost was and be ready to justify their selection to the group.

Once every team was stationed at a page, we went around the room to see if the students had correctly identified the signposts.

Invitation to Independence

To finish the mini-lesson, I gave students a signposts bookmark (printed on cardstock) and encouraged them to look for these signposts in the texts they read and those that are read to them.

Since that initial lesson, we continue to look for signposts in the books I read aloud to them (first Front Desk by Kelly Yang and now Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins), along with books we read in book clubs. The conversations we have, spurred by the signpost questions, are some of the deepest, most student-driven conversations that I have had in my 16-year educational career.

The (lucky) 13 benefits of reading aloud to your students

Delivering reading instruction in a comprehensive model requires a balance of student and teacher responsibility.

YOU DO IT: Reading independently and working/thinking through literacy stations are both necessary parts of any balanced literacy approach. During those two components, students are completely responsible for employing the strategies and skills taught to them during whole- and small-group instruction.

WE DO IT: During the SHORT whole-group mini lesson and during guided reading, students have considerable responsibility, but the teacher is there to scaffold the experience for the students to varying degrees depending on the task and the student's unique needs.

I DO IT: The one literacy event that the teacher should continue to hold the majority of the responsibility is the sacred "READ ALOUD". This essential part of the balanced literacy model shouldn't constitute a large part of the instructional day, but it is nonetheless crucial that students be read to, regardless of their age.

To learn more about the balanced literacy model that we're using at the school in which I work, click here: Balanced Literacy Expectations.

On September 10, 2015 I participated in a Twitter Chat (#ILAchat & #GRA15) that focused on reading aloud to students. The chat, sponsored by the International Literacy Association (formerly the International Reading Association), allowed me to think about the benefits of reading aloud to students. Below are 13 benefits I was able to capture from that discussion.

Benefits of Reading Aloud

1. To allow students to focus completely on understanding the story instead of decoding the print.

2. To improve listening comprehension.

3. To read books at a higher level than what they independently can.

Reading aloud benefits everyone, especially our non- and struggling readers because it allows them to develop high-level thinking skills, even though they cannot (yet) fluently decode print. Allowing students to build these critical comprehension habits, skills and strategies is essential - even if they're not yet reading themselves, because they'll need them once they eventually break the code.

4. To build background knowledge of the concepts studied during the other parts of the day (like in the Unit of Inquiry in a PYP school).

5. To expose students to a variety of vocabulary.

6. To kick-off a mini-lesson.

It is no secret that we teachers are busy and there is a lot to get through! So why not make our read aloud an integrated part of the learning we're doing, rather than a random selection, separate from the other learning we're doing in the classroom?

7. To build community through a shared experience.

Especially at the beginning of the year, everything we do must be done to build relationships, establish trust and create community. Reading the same text, having shared discussions and contemplating together what will come next builds community in our classrooms.

8. To develop a love, enjoyment, interest, desire & motivation for/of reading and books.

9. To hear a model of fluent reading.

10. To see the authentic contexts in which particular strategies are used by thoughtful readers.

11. To understand the rewards of reading.

Our students look up to us. It is inevitable that we're their role models. Reading aloud to students allows us to show them through our actions that we're good readers and we're passionate about reading.

12. To honor diverse populations and establish an appreciation of others.

13. To recognize students’ own experiences, lives and struggles by reading books to which our diverse student population can relate.

The books that we choose to read aloud are important. As authors write and publish texts that better represent the diversity that mirrors our students and their lives, it is essential that we pick texts that reflect the students in our classroom. Our hope is that these choices lead to acceptance, empathy and tolerance.

Through the Twitter chat with ILA, I was able to gleam 13 benefits to a read aloud. But what do you think?

• In your opinion, what are the benefits of reading aloud that I missed?
• What are books you plan on reading aloud to your students this year? What have you read in the past?
• Who wants to be a part of the Global Read Aloud: one book to connect the world?

The 4C's

The 4C's is a Visible Thinking Routine used to synthesize and organize ideas. It comes from the book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison (p. 140). According to the authors, the 4C's is used to make connections, identify key concepts, raise questions, and consider implications. It is a text-based routine that helps identify key points of complex text for discussion that demands a rich text or book.

What are the 4C's?*

Connections: What connections can you draw between the text and your own life and/or other learning?

Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue in the text?

Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding on to from the text?

Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?

*Click here for a more detailed description of the this Visible Thinking Routine.

In fifth grade, a teacher was looking for a learning engagement that would allow her students to get into issues related to human and natural changes to the environment. She was noticing that there was a lot of news that connects with this topic every day.

Specifically, the teacher decided she wanted to focus on water scarcity. In her class, the students were investigating how human development affects the water supply and water quality because there are so many obvious global connections to make. After doing some quick searching, the classroom teacher quickly learned that there was a lot of content out there on water scarcity. The trick was finding the right resource that contained enough information but was still fifth grade appropriate.

After finding some sources that fit the "rich text" description that this Visible Thinking Routine demands, the teacher identified a conceptual understanding she wanted her students to develop during the learning engagement: Students will understand that the availability of water affects human interactions with the environment.

In planning the learning engagement, the teacher used the inquiry cycle developed by our staff recently during a professional development day.

The staff in our building used the Visible Thinking Routine "I used to think .... Now I think" to show their understanding of inquiry. Their responses were then synthesized together and fit under three major parts of inquiry: invitation, investigation, and demonstration.

Invitation: During the invitation stage of an inquiry, the teacher is responsible for igniting an authentic interest in the students and capturing their hearts, brains, and spirits. 

In order to do this, the teacher had the water fountain turned off after gym class so the students didn't have access to water, especially when they needed it the most. She gave the students a Dixie cup that they could use to walk upstairs to the office to get some water.

Investigation: During the investigation stage of an inquiry, students need to discover information from a variety of sources, construct knowledge and understanding by digging deep into the material, and make their thinking visible.

To investigate the topic of water scarcity, the students watched a video about Gladys and how The Water Project helped her village get access to clean, fresh water.

Students then were introduced to the 4C's activity and were given the article Food for the Hungry Establishes Clean Water Systems for 200,000 People Worldwide. Students individually read the article and were instructed to write down any connections, challenges, concepts, and changes they thought of while they read (a copy of their recording sheet can be found below).

Demonstration: During the demonstration step in the inquiry process, students are given the opportunity to reflect on their learning, while they generate additional thoughts and questions.

To demonstrate their thinking and learning, fifth graders came together and shared their connections, challenges, concepts, and changes in a discussion. Students continued to add to their recording sheets as they heard the ideas of others.

An example recording sheet of the 4C's.

The teacher continually asked students to back up their responses with evidence. As students would share their statements, assertions, or opinions, the teacher often would ask, "“what makes you say that?” or “tell me more about that", which is the Visible Thinking Routine, "What makes you say that?" also from Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison's book Making Thinking Visible (p. 165).

After reading about how 5th graders used the Visible Thinking Routine of 4C's to identify key points of complex text for discussion, how could you or have you used this Visible Thinking Routine to make your students thinking about key points in complex texts visible?

Learning about key concepts during guided reading

In the Primary Years Program (PYP), like in all elementary schools, much importance is placed on learning how to read and write. Learning these essential skills, along with other literacy skills of speaking, listening, viewing, presenting, and non-verbally communicating, is absolutely necessary. However, sometimes we forget why students must learn about, with, from, and through literacy.

Preparing our students for high-stakes, mandatory, standardized testing sometimes distracts us from providing students with literacy learning that is engaging, relevant, challenging, and significant. In reality though, the best literacy "test-prep" we can provide our students is meaningful literacy instruction that is learned in the context of life's biggest ideas; in the PYP, we call these big ideas key and related concepts.

Recently, in fifth grade, students were reading the guided reading book "Clean Up City Park!" (a leveled text from Benchmark Literacy).

The text is written as a persuasive letter, written from the perspective of a child to the mayor, urging the mayor to get the city park cleaned up.

The fifth graders read through the text under the guidance of their teacher during guided reading, focusing on the development of particular comprehension and metacognitive reading strategies. Afterward, the teacher encouraged the students to enter into the PYP Action Cycle: reflect-choose-act.

As students reflected on their learning, they were able to make a connection to their own lives: they too had been around green spaces that needed to be cleaned up; in particular, the school grounds. Once they had chosen their action, the students identified key concepts that would help them organize their action plan. The teacher recorded the students' thinking about the key concepts as the students came up with them.

Using their collectively-identified key concepts as a guide, students began to independently plan their action. They used the key concepts of causation, connection, function and change as a framework to think about and plan their action.

 

The students enlisted the help of second graders, telling them about their plan which allowed the fifth graders to develop their literacy skills of presenting. Together the second graders and this small, guided-reading group of fifth graders plan on cleaning up the green space around their school. Most importantly though, working with the key concepts in a meaningful context allowed students to develop a better understanding of these big ideas.

Giving time and space for students to engage in relevant, challenging, and significant learning, is the best way to develop deep thinkers and thus raise reading test scores. Many reading researchers, including Knapp (1995), Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, & Rodriguez (2003; 2005), and Taylor & Peterson (2008) have found that when teachers encourage students to think about texts at a higher level more than other teachers, they see more growth in their students' reading scores (as cited in Peterson & Taylor, 2012, p. 297).

After reading about how 5th graders developed a better conceptual understanding about life's big ideas - the PYP key concepts - during meaningful literacy instruction, how could you or have you incorporated learning about key and related concepts into your literacy instruction?

Works cited: Peterson, D.S. & Taylor, B.M. (2012). Using higher order questioning to accelerate students' growth in reading. The Reading Teacher, 65(5), p. 295-304.