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How I Foster A Reading Culture in My Classroom
Many years ago I came across the Daily 5 and liked the structure it provided. I focus on 3 of the original 5 blocks of the Daily 5 during my literacy block: Read to Self, Read With a Partner and Work on Writing. I read aloud every day, which I feel meets the needs of students to hear fluent reading. During our rotations I either meet with individuals, small groups or Book Clubs. I have found that this system work well and lots of students say that it was their favourite part of grade 5. There is lots of choice, times to read together and be a bit social in their discussions around literacy.
What's Not Working
There are still some students who fake read, tell you that reading is boring or are off task frequently. Often these are students who are reading below grade level. They do not demonstrate the effort and dedication that will push them forward in reading. They are not fully participating in our classroom reading culture and don't see themselves as a readers.
Where to Now?
Recently I've been learning about growth mindset. Dweck (RSA ,2013) states that students who act bored may have a fixed mindset. They seem bored because they are afraid to try and will do whatever it takes to look smart all the time no matter the cost. To them it's better to appear bored than to appear like they are putting forth effort because putting forth effort to them means they are not smart. They feel as if their potential to learn is finite.
I further foster a reading culture for all students there are 4 changes that I would like to make to my practice. It will take some time to implement them.
1. Teach Students That The Brain Can Grow
Students who see their intelligence as finite (fixed mindset) may believe they can never become smarter. These students need to learn that with effort they can grow their intelligence. Using read alouds are one method that I have been doing, but rather inconsistency. As a teacher librarian, I could work these into my times with students as well. There are many teachers who have complied lists of books that can be used to teach about growth mindset and the brain.
Big Life Journal - break down of 85 growth mindset books by age.
TarHeel State Teacher - annotated list of 20 growth mindset books for elementary students
2. Effort and Struggle is Part of Learning
Carol Dweck (2014) says that we must change the perception of effort and struggle away from being viewed as negative to something positive and part of the process of learning. She suggests making it a daily conversation with kids.
As a closing activity to our literacy block I could ask "Who has had a fabulous struggle when you were reading today?" or "How did you grow as a reader today?". Hopefully, it will help students to share their struggles and some of the ways they problem solved to overcome or if they are in the struggle still, they could receive encouragement or other strategies to try. This could be worked into the classes a teacher librarian has in the library on a regular basis.
3. Praise Progress Not Achievement
The research is clear that praise for process is the way to go. Dweck (2013, 2014) has stated that we should be praising effort, strategies, perseverance, focus, improvement rather than intelligence or achievement. During my conferences or discussions with students I will give process praise. I could recognize when students: 1) try new reading strategies 2) respond to reading in new ways 3) try a new genre 4) increase their reading stamina.
"It's almost small little moments you have with readers that then piece together to make a kid realize they can grow"
-Courtney Reagent quoted in Mindshift
4. Add a Progress Tracker to Reading Conferences
O'Rouke's (et al. 2016) study showed that when students could view their progress in solving problems in an online game, they were more motivated to continue to take on challenge, try different strategies and completed more problems. I created a prototype of the kind of tracker I was thinking of using (lines in each box for a description of the progress demonstrated and the check boxes to recognize continued effort and progress in that area). I am not sure I could use these as a teacher librarian, but could incorporate these easily as a classroom teacher.
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More Wonderings
Creating a school wide program seems like a daunting task. I am a classroom teacher in a large school of about 530 students ranging from K-7. While our school library is an inviting place that inspires our students to read, we do not have a school wide reading program. At one time our school had a Literacy Night where parents and students would come to the school and rotate through a variety of presentations and games structured to provide them with information on literacy, how to help their children at home and how they can help their children develop a love of reading. Perhaps reviving Literacy Night, is a good place to begin. Andersen (et al., 2016) have shown that parent mindset does affect a child's mindset and that an intervention with parents demonstrated a positive effect on the mindset of their child. A presentation regarding growth mindset could be added to Literacy Night.
This blog post by Buzzing with Mrs. B has some good ideas for activities for parents and students to do during a literacy night.
Big Life Journal has a printable guide for parents on growth mindset.
Oakland Literacy Coalition has a pdf that outlines steps schools can take to make Literacy Night happen.
Your Turn
Do you infuse your literacy instruction with growth mindset? What else can I do or how can I improve on what I have? How do you attempt to have students who tell you that reading isn't for them into your classroom reading culture?
Works Cited:
Dweck, C. (2014, November) The Power of Believing That You Can Improve. [Video]. https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en#t-608685%20
O'Rourke, Eleanor, Erin Peach, Carol S. Dweck, and Zoran Popovic. (2016). Brain Points: A Deeper Look at a Growth Mindset Incentive Structure for an Educational Game. In Proceedings of the Third (2016) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 41–50. https://doi.org/10.1145/2876034.2876040
RSA (2013, July 8)
(2021) Growth mindset development in design-based makerspace: a longitudinal study, The Journal of Educational Research, DOI: 10.1080/00220671.2021.1872473.
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Well done blog post! This was a good example of "Problem based learning"! You identified a key challenge in engaging your reluctant readers and did a deep dive into some understanding of the challenge, some research on potential solutions and approaches, as well as some excellent resources and guides on how to address your fixed mindset students. A good tour through some solid strategies, good guides and important role models.
ReplyDeleteHi Tina!
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog post! I really appreciate the four changes and your insight into them. I appreciate the links to the growth mindset books; what an awesome resource to have (I'll be saving it for the future). I love the point you make about changing the view of struggle from something negative to positive (it is a part of learning). It is definitely important for them to realize that it is a part of life, not just with reading; there will always be something that we struggle with and the quicker we learn how to deal with it and overcome it, the better and more smooth life will be! I also couldn't agree more with praising progress rather than achievement; this will allow those who do not feel as confident in their reading to be more positive and fearless!
-Chevon
DeleteHi Tina,
ReplyDeleteI loved your exploration on growth mindset and the challenge of engaging self proclaimed 'non-readers'. Gamifying and using a progress tracker as O'Rourke mentions are engaging strategies. I wondered could you mix your mediums? I had a really great elementary librarian years ago (euphemism - more like decades). We read The Secret Garden and he incorporated video with that unit. It still sticks with me.
In my English classes, I like to use audiobooks also. I found Salt to the Sea and The Marrow Thieves to have some dynamic parts in the audiobook. Students are expected to follow reading with the audio. I saw a lot of engagement from kids, that might not normally participate independently with this type of medium introduced. I like to leave off on an exciting part, leaving the students to want to find out what happens next - which they then can read.
- from Nicole
ReplyDelete