Elevating Instruction: Enhancing Literacy Practices for Advanced Readers in Primary Grades

Ms. Snow’s Typical Classroom Practice

To infuse more opportunities for authentic choice within Ms. Snow’s classroom, Ms. Rivers suggested that the writing portion of Ms. Snow’s literacy block might be a great opportunity for promoting authentic choice while also encouraging students’ creativity. To do this, Ms. Snow considered the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool to help her accomplish this goal. Her typical writing instruction included giving students specific writing prompts, which she acknowledged do not give students choice regarding the prompt or process. For example, after reading a book about pumpkins to her students, her initial approach was to provide them with a handout that included the following directions: “Draw and write about a pumpkin” (see Figure 1). This handout included a box for students to draw a picture and then a fixed number of lines for students to write a corresponding story.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Student prompt with limited choice.

Ms. Snow’s Improved Classroom Practice

When looking at the excerpt from the Planning Tool in Table 1, Ms. Snow reviewed the various questions listed and identified the third reflection question as an area of literacy instruction that she could implement into her instruction to improve her classroom practice: “In planning for my literacy block do I provide multiple avenues for my students to approach an assignment?” Once she determined the specific area she wanted to work on, she considered the various ways in which she could address it. She reviewed the recommendations provided in Table 1 under “To promote choice I can . . .” and identified the third suggestion which is to “move beyond choice in content (e.g., different books, open-ended writing prompts) towards choices in process (e.g., read to a stuffed animal, draw pictures before writing, dictate ideas into a tablet).”

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Promote Authentic Choice

In planning for my literacy block do I . . . − provide opportunities for students’ choices within centers? − create structures in which students can select how they work and with whom they work? − provide multiple avenues for my students to approach an assignment? − allow my students to show what they know in multiple ways?

To promote choice, I can . . . − implement a mixture of required and self-selected centers − allow students to decide the order in which they will complete work − move beyond choice in content (e.g., different books, open-ended writing prompts) toward choices in process (e.g., read to a stuffed animal, draw pictures before writing, dictate ideas into a tablet) − provide choices in products (e.g., students can write letters, conduct interviews, draw and label scientific drawings, write speech or thought bubbles, create maps or graphs, write a sequel to a favorite book, caption photos)

Ms. Snow realized that although the prompt encourages moving beyond choice in content, this is a good starting point for her to embed more choice into the writing portion of her literacy block. Specifically, she thought to herself: one simple way to infuse choice into student writing is to give students more choice regarding the content they write about by providing open-ended writing prompts. As a result, she redesigned her writing prompt to include the title “October Me” and invited students to write about a topic related to themselves and October. Students had the opportunity to make connections to the classroom read aloud, as well as the choice to make connections to their own experiences and knowledge. Figure 2 depicts what one student elected to draw and write about, which is his love for skeletons. By allowing for choice in writing topic (i.e., content), students are able to write about something meaningful to them. Instead of being limited to writing about the same topic, students might choose to write about annual hayrides, celebrating dia de los Muertos, or Trick-or-Treating. This can also be a great opportunity for Ms. Snow to collect informal data related to her students’ interests and writing skills so that she can further support them throughout the literacy block and embed these interests into instruction when possible.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Student prompt incorporating choice bounded by content.

Ms. Snow’s Elevated Classroom Practice

After improving practice by expanding students’ access to authentic choices, Ms. Snow and Ms. Rivers were pleased by the novel directions students pursued when writing, but the educators both believed she could still provide even more opportunities for students to explore content aligned with their own passions within her literacy block. Once Ms. Snow restructured her approach to the writing task by removing limitations on choice in content, Ms. Rivers suggested she design instruction so that students would be empowered to determine the processes they use in addition to choice in content. To this end, Ms. Snow decided she would encourage students to move “towards choices in process” (see Table 1) by engaging in their own approaches to the writing process. She did this by encouraging students to write with a partner, plan their writing using a storyboard, or use a tablet to auditorily or visually record their stories. The teachers found that students selected a topic they are invested in and engaged with a process that helped motivate their writing through the promotion of authentic choice, elevating literacy instruction for all students, including advanced readers.

Before using the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool, students in Ms. Snow’s class were provided structured, topical writing prompts connected to a read aloud. However, this type of writing instruction was limiting to students. By using the tool and altering her writing instruction, Ms. Snow elevated her literacy instruction by allowing students to exercise choice regarding content and process, while promoting voice in the writing process and still making connections between students’ reading and writing.

Ms. Snow’s Typical Classroom Practice

Another major component of the literacy block in Ms. Snow’s class is center time. With the guidance of Ms. Rivers, Ms. Snow used the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool to reflect on her typical approach to implementing centers. Usually, she spent time explaining the four centers to the whole class as her teaching assistant prepared the different areas around the classroom. After she explained the different literacy activities, students would move to their first assigned center with their group members. As students in Ms. Snow’s class are grouped by reading level, during center time, Ms. Snow worked with one group at a time using different leveled books for guided reading, including more complex texts for the advanced readers in her class. While Ms. Snow led the guided reading center, her teaching assistant rotated between the other three centers. After 15 minutes working at one center, a timer set by Ms. Snow would go off, and students knew that they were expected to rotate to the next center with their group. Figure 3 depicts the center time routine to which students were accustomed. Although the different centers students engaged in were aligned to literacy foundations, Ms. Rivers suggested that Ms. Snow consider some ways to infuse more agency and ownership into this portion of the literacy block, while still ensuring students work on foundational literacy skills.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Limitations for student agency and ownership within centers.

Ms. Snow’s Improved Classroom Practice

As an approach to increasing student ownership during her literacy block, Ms. Snow considered the prompts and recommendations on the Planning Tool under the section “Encourage Student Agency and Ownership” listed in Table 2 and decided that center time provides an opportunity to infuse these ideas. In particular, the following caught her attention, “In planning for and during my literacy block do I hold students accountable while still allowing for them to be in charge of their learning?” When looking at suggestions from the tool, she identified the prompt “To encourage student agency I can allow students to determine how long they want to work on a given task or the order in which they complete work” as something she could incorporate into her existing center time. While still ensuring students spent a certain amount of time at each of the centers, Ms. Snow encouraged student agency during centers by allowing students to choose the order in which they engaged in the various centers. This was something that the students were given ownership over by allowing them to complete the My Center Check-in Sheet themselves (see Figure 4). Although this opportunity for choice may be seen as minor, in making this instructional change to how she approached literacy centers, Ms. Snow took one step toward providing students with greater agency and ownership of their learning. Once Ms. Snow and her students become accustomed to this modified and improved approach to centers, she can then consider next steps for further increasing student agency and ownership during centers (e.g., creating more flexible protocols for centers such as not mandating switching at a designated time and allowing students to provide input in the development of centers and center resources) and differentiating centers. Differentiating literacy instruction will be explored further in the final section of the tool, Collect and Use Formative Data. However, for this section, the idea is that students are taking ownership of their learning.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Encourage Student Agency and Ownership

In planning for and during my literacy block do I . . . − allow my students to voice what they are curious about and cultivate personal interests? − provide time for students to explore their ideas in more depth? − hold students accountable while still allowing for them to be in charge of their learning? − provide tools that help students assess whether they are producing high-quality work?

To encourage student agency, I can . . . − allow students to determine how long they want to work on a given task or the order in which they complete work − create more flexible protocols for centers (e.g., do not mandate switching at a designated time, allow students to provide input into the development of centers and the resources within them) − provide students with accountability tools such as choice boards, learning contracts, and learning menus − provide students with self-assessment tools such as rubrics, checklists, and anchor charts

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Increased student agency and ownership within centers.

Ms. Snow’s Elevated Classroom Practice

Because of the agency students exhibited when she altered centers (e.g., a student choosing the order in which they complete required centers), Ms. Rivers recommended that Ms. Snow elevate her practice even further by enacting another recommended practice from the Planning Tool excerpt in Table 2: “To encourage student agency I can provide students with accountability tools such as choice boards, learning contracts, and learning menus.” By elevating her instruction in this manner, Ms. Snow increased opportunities for student agency and ownership, while simultaneously supporting instruction of advanced readers as they engaged with literacy practices that were challenging and personally meaningful. By supporting student agency in this manner, Ms. Snow was also providing students with a choice to engage in literacy learning in a way that aligned to their learning profile, including cultural and gender differences (Tomlinson, 2005).

Prior to embedding recommended practices from the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool (Hobson & Kreamer, 2017) into her class’s center time, Ms. Snow’s students followed a routine in which they had limited opportunity to take ownership of their learning. By altering her approach to centers based on using the Planning Tool, Ms. Snow now provides opportunities for her students to exercise agency and ownership of their learning.

Ms. Snow’s Typical Classroom Practice

Another central tenet of Ms. Snow’s literacy block is a daily read aloud, in which she included texts representing a variety of cultures, genres, and passions. In this literacy-rich environment, she and her students enjoy engaging in these high-interest texts thematically related to what they are learning. However, Ms. Rivers noticed that much of what Ms. Snow typically did during read alouds followed a similar pattern of question, response, and evaluation: She initiated a discussion with a question, one student responded, and she evaluated the student’s response with a follow-up comment or question to the same student (see Figure 5). Ms. Rivers expressed concern that this process limits the text-focused discussion to just one student and resulted in missed opportunities for all of the other students, including advanced readers, to engage with the read aloud and with their peers. As such, she invited Ms. Snow to consider ways for all students to engage in meaningful discussions centered on the daily read aloud that fostered collaborative learning among students.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Question, response, and evaluation between teacher and student.

Ms. Snow’s Improved Classroom Practice

To identify ways that Ms. Snow could improve her read alouds, she reviewed the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool (Hobson & Kreamer, 2017) and identified the section “Support Meaningful Peer Interaction” in Table 3 as an area of the Planning Tool that could help her to increase student participation during read alouds. Specifically, she reflected on the question “In planning for and during my literacy block do I help my students see each other as learning resources?” She realized that during her read alouds she was not encouraging students to view each other as learning resources and ultimately learn from each other. She identified that this was an area that could be improved upon to further support advanced readers in her class. In Table 3, the right side of the tool provides the following prompt: “To support meaningful peer interactions I can expect some level of noise during the literacy block so that students can interact with each other (e.g., during a pre-writing activity, while writing, or buddy reading).” As a result of this, she changed her read aloud to encourage students to see each other as learning resources and to be talkative and lively when discussing the book. To this end, she identified two sections in a read aloud where students could turn and talk to their buddy about the text (see Figure 6). When Ms. Snow did this, she realized that this activity improved her literacy instruction because it allowed all of her students to engage with relevant questions about the text and the activity helped to infuse the classroom community with a desire to work with each other when learning content.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 3.

Support Meaningful Peer Interactions

In planning for and during my literacy block do I . . . − help my students see each other as learning resources? − encourage peer interactions? − provide tools that support meaningful peer interactions? − take time to teach and model what effective peer interactions look like and sound like?

To support meaningful peer interactions, I can . . . − provide students with tools to guide their interactions (e.g., sentence starters, checklists, or questions) − expect some level of noise during the literacy block so that students can interact with each other (e.g., during a pre-writing activity, while writing, or buddy reading) − teach students how to peer conference and provide feedback on each other’s work

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 6.

Turn and talk activity that supports peer interactions.

Ms. Snow’s Elevated Classroom Practice

To further help students see each other as a resource and improve the read aloud experience, Ms. Rivers suggested that Ms. Snow revisit the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool (Hobson & Kreamer, 2017) and consider additional ways to further elevate her classroom practice. In doing this, Ms. Snow saw Table 3 included a prompt that stated, “To support meaningful peer interactions I can provide students with tools to guide their interactions (e.g., sentence starters, checklists, or questions).” During her next read aloud, she provided students with a checklist to guide their discussion about the text (see Figure 7). This checklist directed students to engage with their peers regarding the read aloud text in one of three ways: make a connection to yourself, to another book, or to the world. Ms. Snow and Ms. Rivers found that this checklist helped students utilize each other as resources, make meaning of the text during a read aloud, and make connections to the varied texts utilized in Ms. Snow’s read alouds.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Discussion checklist to foster meaningful peer interactions.

Ms. Snow’s read alouds used to be focused on her asking questions about a text with one or two students providing answers. With help from the Planning Tool, she elevated her literacy instruction to encourage students to view each other as resources when making meaning of a text. She did this by asking students to discuss the book during a turn and talk activity and by creating a checklist focused on text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections that students can refer to when discussing a read aloud text.

Ms. Snow’s Typical Classroom Practice

Another component of Ms. Snow’s literacy practice included collection of formal student data a few times a year through district-mandated reading assessments. She noticed that when Ms. Rivers conducted push-in gifted enrichment lessons, she frequently collected student data in a variety of forms. As such, Ms. Snow decided she wanted to do more in the way of data collection by routinely collecting different types of information about each of her students. Doing this would help her to better target specific literacy areas on which to instruct her students and to differentiate based on students’ academic needs. She knew formative data collection should happen during all aspects of the literacy block (e.g., read aloud, writing, centers), and she considered ways to incorporate this into her classroom practices.

Ms. Snow’s Improved Classroom Practice

To increase instances of formative data collection during her literacy block, Ms. Snow referenced the “Collect and Use Formative Data” section of the Planning Tool in Table 4. This section is focused on how teachers who engage in data collection to inform instruction can help improve student outcomes, differentiate instruction, and is a way for students to demonstrate their learning. Ms. Snow knew that her formative data collection system could be improved during all aspects of the literacy block, including during read alouds, centers, and writing, especially in regard to using data to inform future instruction. She scanned the left side of the “Collect and Use Formative Data” section of the Planning Tool and asked herself the following question: “In planning for my literacy block do I use data to meaningfully differentiate literacy activities for students based on interest, readiness, or learning profile?” She was aware that differentiating literacy activities aids all students’ learning because it allows for instruction to best address the wide range of students’ literacy needs found in a classroom. She then looked at the right side of the section and selected the following idea to incorporate throughout her literacy block: “When planning for my literacy block I can use student interest inventories to inform writing choices, book selection, or to create an interest center.” She created a preassessment that allowed her to collect information on student interests. Specifically, her students participated in a read aloud that used a book by the author Mo Willems and were about to begin a writing activity building from the read aloud. Students were given a preassessment that read “We are about to finish our author study of Mo Willems. If you were to write the next Mo Willems book, which characters would you want to write about? Circle one” (see Figure 8). She then grouped students based on similar character interests. Ms. Snow initially designed this interest-based activity to more strongly align with different parts of the literacy block, specifically the read aloud and writing activity. The formative data from the preassessment allowed her to group students by what they were interested in, and students engaged in a collaborative story-based writing experience. She found that this activity was beneficial for her advanced readers because this supported the complex process of integrating reading and writing. In addition, all students were intrinsically motivated by the topic they elected to write about and were invited to use their peers’ writing knowledge as they developed their own voices.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 4.

Collect and Use Formative Data

In planning for my literacy block do I . . . use data to inform activities at centers? − use data to meaningfully differentiate literacy activities for students based on interest, readiness, or learning profile? − include a way to collect evidence of student learning when they are not working with me?

When planning for my literacy block, I can . . . − use formative data to differentiate resources by readiness (e.g., provide different spelling words or leveled prompts, scaffold tasks and instructions) − use student interest inventories to inform writing choices, book selections, or to create an interest center − have students fill out a weekly center check-in sheet to report what they have been accomplishing and to inform follow-up teacher conversations/conferences − use technology to capture what students are working on at centers (e.g., have students or the teaching assistant take photos of completed work or work-in-progress) − look at student work that has been purposefully designed

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 8.

Ms. Snow collects student data based on a character interest survey.

Ms. Snow’s Elevated Classroom Practice

Pleased with student outcomes, Ms. Snow decided to elevate her centers further by using formative data to inform these literacy activities. To do this, she revisited the Elevating Instruction: A Planning Tool (Hobson & Kreamer, 2017) and her attention was drawn to the following recommendation in Table 4: “Use formative data to differentiate resources by readiness (e.g., provide different spelling words or leveled prompts, scaffold tasks and instructions).” Based on student writing outcomes, she elected to design centers based on a continuum of writing readiness where each of the four small groups represent a different writing focus: ideation, fluency, word choice, and editing. Ultimately, these elevated centers helped students to become stronger writers in relation to where they were on the writing continuum, and Ms. Snow will use this information to continue to inform her future instruction.

Previously, Ms. Snow engaged in mandated formal data collection during her literacy block; however, she rarely collected informal data with the explicit intention of using it to inform instruction. After acknowledging that she could elevate her collection and use of data throughout the literacy block, she implemented ideas from “Collection and Use of Formative Data” in Table 4. She improved her instruction by creating interest-based writing groups aligned to a classroom read aloud and further differentiated writing centers based on a continuum of student readiness. These changes in her instruction led to a more natural and iterative process of frequently collecting formative data that she can use when working with students throughout the school year.