LET’S TALK! How Accountable Talk Read Aloud can help our ELLs reach Common Core

1. LET’S TALK!How Accountable Talk Read Aloud can help our ELLs reach Common Core Linda Marshall mostmarsh@bellsouth.net

2. South Grade

3. What I do (and love doing)

4. My Amazing Family (and how we spent our summer vacation!)

5. Me and My Favorite Guy in My True Home!

6. Spencer

7. Meanest Cat in the World

8. Secret Ambitions (What I want to be when I grow up)

9. I believe in CELEBRATIONS!

10. “What we read to children should have charm, magic, impact and appeal.” Margaret Mooney

11. What school looked like when I was young! (ok maybe an exaggeration but close)

12. South Grade Elementary 1962

13. My School now!

14. True Confessions

15. The Stages of Common CoreResistance

16. 1. Denial • Maybe if I don’t pay attention they will just go away! • Lots of other things went away (like everyone on grade level by 2014?)

17. 2. Anger • REALLY! Yet another idea about how to make education better! From those folks who brought us: ESEA, IASA, Reading First, Blueprint 2000, NCLB, Race to the Top, etc……

18. 3. Bargaining – then the need to regain control • Ummm so if I get really good at teaching one part of Common Core, I won’t have to worry about the other parts? • So maybe if I keep moving up grades I won’t have to learn them so fast? • They are not going to beat me down! I am going to learn this junk! I’ll show them…

19. 4. Depression/Fear • I am old! How am I ever supposed to learn this new stuff anyway? • Everyone says Common Core is really hard, what’s wrong with me, they don’t look so hard! • I am old!

20. 5. Questions • What are these new standards really about? • What is at their foundation? So I started reading my mentors: Lucy, Dick, The Freemans, Cappelini, Fountas and Pinnell, Owocki, Folks at IRA and others My anti-mentors: David Coleman, ACT, Pearson, Parcc, Timothy Shanahan

21. 6. Acceptance • Here I am! But it is Acceptance with conditions. NOT JUST ACCEPTANCE – I AM EMBRACING CC! They are “a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century” • “The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”

22. WHY ACCEPTANCE? Because… “They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.

23. THEY ARE GOLD • Who doesn’t want their students thinking, reading, talking and understanding at high levels of complexity? • Who doesn’t want students inferring, thinking BIG ideas and supporting those idea, naming themes, synthesizing information, analyzing and critiquing (all in standard English)? • Who doesn’t want kids to have rich and exquisite conversations to grow and build ideas?

24. Another reason I can accept the Standards “The Standards are intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards will be revised accordingly.”

25. What are my conditions? • I will lobby for: • A fair assessment of Common Core – one that does not put ELLs, children in poverty, ESE students at a disadvantage • Assessment of CC that are not used to judge a teacher’s body of work • Negotiations about assessing at high text complexity levels when even the architects of the CC acknowledge there is not a lot of research to support putting students in complex text without scaffolding!

26. So To Common Core or Not to Common Core? • No matter what side of the philosophical divide you are on – to Common Core or not to Common Core – we are all on the same side. We want students who: “actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. “

27. Why Accountable Talk Read Aloud with Grand Conversation? One methodology that aligns with my beliefs and honors Common Core !

28. What is Accountable Talk Read Aloud Accountable Talk or Interactive Read-aloud is a powerful, research based, instructional tool in which the teacher not only reads aloud, but has predetermined stopping points where the teacher and students “interact” with the text There is always a clear instructional focus

30. Purpose? It gives : • Teachers and students a variety of ways to think and talk about text • Teachers the opportunity to model and students to practice planned reading strategies • Students an opportunity to talk back to and build upon each other’s thinking • Students the scaffold to develop a theory, or a set of ideas, this theory will drive student’s discussion • Students a model of how to develop ways to track and collect evidence in text around a theory • Classrooms a way to engage in behaviors that elicit and sustain meaningful conversations – a way to teach the “art of conversation”

31. WHEN • Accountable Talk Read Aloud EVERYDAY about 15 minutes • Whole Class Grand Conversation about 3 times a week right after the read aloud, takes anywhere from 3 -15 minutes

32. Instructional Focus Reading Skills and Strategies such as: • Inferring • Predicting • Previewing and accumulating text • Envisioning • Determining main ideas and key details (text evidence) • Synthesizing • Interpreting • Analyzing • AND MORE…

33. Instructional Focus is Determined by… • Student’s needs (assessments) • Common Core Standards • Units or Genres being studied

34. What Accountable Talk Read Aloud Looks Like Teacher Sitting with children in reading area Reading a purposefully selected and planned book marked with post-its Models strategies by thinking aloud Models explicit examples of responding to text (content of talk) AND also ways to respond to partners (social /academic context) Teacher “listening in” and sometimes recording partnership conversations Teacher ignoring raised hands

35. STUDENTS Sitting next to partner in circle or rows in reading area Observing how the teacher stops at strategic places in the text to think Turning and Talking, or Stopping and Jotting with partners at specified points Anchors ideas in the text

36. What Accountable Talk Sounds Like TEACHER • Reading to students with great expression and fluency, including gestures • Modeling comprehension and explaining vocabulary through “Think Alouds” while reading • Prompting and voiceovers that promote higher order thinking • Facilitating and prompting students thinking about strategies and text • Occasionally sharing something she heard during partnership talk

37. STUDENTS Students sharing their thinking/ideas related to what is being read to their partners Students listening, clarifying, elaborating, and building upon each others’ idea High engagement – lots of talking at once

38. Nonfiction might sound like

39. Fiction might sound like

40. WHAT AN ACCOUNTABLE TALK SOUNDS LIKE…

41. Why for ELL students? • Engages students with texts that have more challenging concepts and/or language than students can read independently. • The read-aloud strategy helps English-language learners develop new vocabulary and syntactic awareness. • Reading aloud builds good reading habits. It stimulates imaginations and emotions; models good reading processes; exposes students to a range of literature; enriches vocabularies and rhetorical sensitivity; elucidates difficult texts; helps to distinguish different genres; supports independent reading; and encourages a lifelong enjoyment of reading. 

43. Other ways to make Accountable Talk Accessible:

45. CAUTIONS • Too many interruptions during reading can break the flow of comprehension, making it difficult for students to hold on to meaning • Focus should not be too weighted on strategies without thinking about understanding the whole text

46. Reminders • Accountable book talk is student talk that is accountable to the learning, where the students discuss what is being read. • Community is vital – especially for ELLs. Accountable talk requires that students take risks among peers. It is critical that the classroom has clear expectations about sharing and responding to one another.

47. Followed by… Grand ConversationWhat is it • After the read aloud, students sometimes engage in a conversation in which they share their thinking about a text • Time for students to talk, minimal teacher talk • Students build on one another’s ideas and thinking about a text using specific sentence frames • Talk takes stamina building, just like independent reading

48. Purpose • Engage in behaviors that elicit and sustain meaningful conversations with their peers • Builds community, purpose and passion around books, ideas, and talk • Builds listening skills. Students respectfully listen to one another so that the direction and purpose of their discussion is between each other, not between teacher and student

49. What Grand Conversation Looks Like: STUDENT • Sits in circle next to partner • Shifts body toward and makes eye contact with speaker

50. TEACHER • Sits in or outside of circle • Takes notes • Will sometimes provide ideas for the conversation using clear concise prompts • Role is to facilitate students’ talking to one another and building on each others thinking