A Look at My Classroom

Now that school is out for the summer, I have some think to think back over the past year and evaluate my program.  I have begun to make plans for next fall.  So I thought I would give you a look at my students and tell you about what I did this year.

Reading Essentials Class is a reading intervention in our middle schools, grades 6-8.  The three classes each meet daily for 40 minutes.  Each session lasts for six weeks.  Because I am a part-time employee, we offer three sessions each school year.  The class has been set up this way because of funding.  There are enough students in our school of 350 students who would benefit from reading interventions to offer more sessions, but the school has not allocated money for that many days of staffing.

Each student usually attends one of the three sessions, although occasionally a student may repeat for a second time.  I had one student this year who attended all three sessions.  He has a several reading disability and his parents requested that he be included in each session.

Our classroom is less than ideal.  I have to use the computer lab because it is the only classroom available during my class time.  So my vision of a room with reading spots that allow students to get comfortable with pillows, lamps and overstuffed chairs had to be replaced with reality.

But my students are allowed to find a spot that is comfortable for them.  Here are some pictures of a typical class day.

Sue, shown below, has taken Reading Essentials as a 7th grader and again as an 8th grader.  When she began, she did not enjoy reading but has developed into quite a reader.  Her choice of Charlotte's Web seemed too easy for her.  However, she really enjoyed it and seemed happy every day to get in her spot.  

Sue is an 8th grader

 Each student meets for a conference 1 -2 times a week.  Here Jay meets with Chris who is my helper.  Actually she is very organized and I depend on her so much.  We don't use the computers in our conferences but simply push them back to give us desk space.  We use the CAFE menu to pick strategies to work on with the students.

Ann had some difficulties in school and liked to be out of sight when she was reading.  Actually she is sitting very close to Chris but the open door seems to give her a feeling of isolation.

Some students like to sit in the chairs.  You can see Lee's tub sitting on the table.  I follow many of the organize methods from the Daily Five book.

This student doesn't look comfortable to me but it is her choice.

Students are allowed to choose their own reading material.  I have a small classroom library.  They also use our school library.  Each Language Arts teachers has many books for the students too.  I have read The Book Whisper by Donalyn Miller and I've used this philosophy in my class too.  If you look closely, you can see this student is reading about basketball which was his passion.

Find a spot and get reading quickly is our classroom rule.  I use an I-Chart as detailed in Daily Five.

One of the most coveted spot is shown here below the teacher table.  We require the students to spread out throughout the room to minimize distractions.

(The names I used are not actual student names.)

I've heard from many of you this year.  I had mentioned publishing a newsletter for the use of Daily Five and CAFE Menu with middle school students.  However, I am beginning to think that a blog is a much better way to communicate with teachers.  It will allow interaction between us through comments.  I would love to hear about your experience with Daily Five.  I will share what I hear in furture posts.

Year-End Review

Here are some of my favorite photos from Reading Essentials Class 2013.  This is a reading intervention for middle school students.  These students are reading or conferencing about their reading.

The students are allowed to pick a spot for reading. The guidelines are to find a comfy spot where they are not distracted by computers or other students.  My classroom is less than ideal.  It is the computer lab so comfy spots are hard to come by.  My students do not use the computers-strictly reading during Read to Self or conferencing with an adult.

 The students have favorite  spots.  A couple of them always pick the area under the computer teacher table.

The above photo shows a student conferencing.  The key to Reading Essentials Class is found in these pictures.  Read, read, read, and then talk about what you are reading with an adult.  The students read out loud for the adult.  Then together they pick a goal off the CAFE menu to work on until they conference again.  Each conference always begins with assessing how much progress they have made to their goal.

I am currently reviewing the data from the students served this year.  This week of May is when all students are given a test of fluency and comprehension.  This is our universal screener.  I also use it to  identify students in need of interventions and then to  track their progress.  I'll post next week on this year's results.

I use the data to identify students , and I also use teacher recommendations and parent requests.  No data seems perfect for identifying reading difficulties.  It always has to be used with person-to-person observations.  Classroom teachers are so important to my program because they almost always have such a good idea as to why a student is struggling.

Ten Hours of Reading

Can you read for ten hours?

  I asked my students that question today.  They overwhelming felt that they could never read for ten hours.

So I challenged them.  My Reading Essentials Class has 20 minutes of Read to Self every day.  Twenty minutes of silent reading every day.  Five days a week for the six weeks of this middle school exploratory class.

That equals 100 minutes per week.

Read 20 minutes a day times the six weeks of the class= 600 minutes of reading.

600 minutes is 10 hours.

Would you be better at playing sports if you practiced for 10 extra hours?
Would you be better at your musical instrument if you practiced for 10 extra hours?
Everyone knew that 10 extra hours of practice would make you better at sports or music.

You will be better at reading if you practice for 10 extra hours.

I explained that Reading Essentials is a class with laser-focus on reading.  We use every minute to help improve our reading.

I even guarantee results.  I've never had a student who took advantage of the time we give them to practice and takes to heart our goal setting in conferences that didn't improve their reading skills.  I've had students who didn't improve but they also used Read to Self for goofing around or day dreaming. 

How many classes give you a guarantee?  I'm confident of this because I have seen it work.  Over and over students improve with laser focus on improvement.

What fun it is to see this growth in my students.

3 Ways to Read a Book

One of the first lessons I will be teaching my students this fall is 3 Ways to Read a Book.

I use the Daily 5 format for a middle school exploratory that I call Reading Essentials. Reading Essentials is a reading intervention for our struggling readers in a Michigan middle school for grades 6 - 8.

The students are supplied with books and magazines in their interest areas when we begin. I've found that many of them gravitate toward the magazines. But as I observed them reading, many students were just flipping through the pages and glancing at the pictures.

I developed a lesson called 3 Ways to Read a Book. I use the lesson to emphasize how making meaning from the text is very important whether you are looking at pictures or reading words.

I offered the PowerPoint to my readers earlier but I have now revised and expanded it. I believe it is much improved.

If you are would like to use the PowerPoint, just send me an email. In return for the PowerPoint, I ask two things.

1. Share with me if you have been able to use Daily 5 or the Cafe Menu with middle school students. We can all learn from each other.

2. Give me suggestions how to improve the PowerPoint and how your students reacted to it.

We're all working together and I'd love to create a network of middle school teachers who are using the Daily 5 for this age group.

Brenda Benedict

mydaily5journey@gmail.com

The Importance of Teachers in the Lives of Their Students

In addition to my duties at Hopkins Middle School, I also am adjunct faculty at a local university. This year I needed to spice up my lessons on recognizing child abuse in our students. As you know, teachers are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. We are required by law to notify Child Protective Services the moment we think a student may be experiencing abuse or neglect.

I wanted to bring an actual protective services worker into class. So I interviewed my niece and videoed it for presentation later. She has been in the field for several years and has a real heart for kids.

I learned so much from talking with her. But one statement really stuck with me. She said,

"Teachers are our best ways to help protect kids. Their students spend more time with them during the school year than some do with their parents. Our referral numbers are way down in the summer."

She went on to explain that child abuse doesn't slow down in the summer but the teachers who interact with their students daily are no longer making calls about suspected abuse or neglect.

Teachers-you may be the lifeline for one of your students this year. You may be the only adult who is recognizing the signs of abuse.

If you have any questions, this handout, Mandated Reporters Resource Guide will answer the questions of what to look in children who may be abused.

AIMSWEB Testing

Reading more brings stronger readers. I want to shout it from the rooftop.

This past week we completed our universal screening instrument for all our middle school students. It takes considerable time and dedication of personnel. But the results allow us a snapshot of how our students are progressing. It also helps us be proactive with students and make certain they are offered an intervention when their progress is not what we would like it to be.

The results have been very encouraging for our Reading Essentials Class students. The average gain for the Reading Essentials students was 2 - 3 times the average gain for each class.

I am so happy for our students. I had assured them that if they followed my suggestions, their reading levels would improve. And it did!!

Reading more brings stronger readers. I want to shout it from the rooftop and now I have the data from our school to prove it.

Satisfied Customers

I have been compiling the data from our second session of Reading Essentials Class which was held from Nov. 30, 2011 to January 29, 2012. The results were very encouraging.

Our students made great gains in both comprehension and fluency.

The average gains for comprehension and fluency were nearly three times the expected growth/benchmark score for all three grades-6th thru 8th grade.

The students did the work. I provided an opportunity for them to read and gave them reading material that they were interested in-all of this was done in a non-threatening environment where reading is valued.

They believed me when I told them that if they read more, they would become better readers. I believed it, and in turn, they believed it and then saw that it worked.

We've had 4 students ask to be part of Session 3 because they saw that Reading Essentials Class helped them become better readers.

There is no better gauge of success then satisfied customers. I couldn't ask for more.

More on Three Ways to Read a Book

I have a few additional comments to make about our 3 ways to read a book lesson which was my previous post. First, in case you are not aquainted with the Daily 5, here are the 3 ways to read a book.
1. read the words 2. read the pictures 3. retell the story to someone

After Mrs. Leep's lesson on three ways to read a book, I took the 6th graders on step further. I let each of them pick a picture out of their reading material in their tubs. Most of them had magazines with lots of pictures. They were to show their picture to the class using the document camera. The class had to guess what the picture was showing. Then the student read the caption to the class and they compared how close they were with their guesses.

This gave the students additional practice on reading & looking at the captions plus it was fun to compare the guesses with the actual caption. Sometimes they weren't even close.

If you are wondering why I used this lesson for middle school, you might want to read this entry from the Daily Cafe web site-thedailycafe.com. Why would I teach 3 Ways to Read a Book when so many of them are reading chapter books?

Three Ways to Read A Book

I had worried that the content of the Daily 5 program would be too elementary for my middle school students. But so far, I haven't found that to be the case. We recently covered the topic of Three Ways to Read a Book.

I had a literacy coach from our elementary school come and present a specially prepared lesson.

She found an article with four pictures that she used to present the lesson.

Mrs. Leep talked about the three ways to read. I had told her before she came that my students really enjoyed reading magazines during Read to Self but I was worried because most of them seemed to be only looking at the pictures. So Mrs. Leep tailored her lesson to meet that challenge. She emphasized the importance of reading the caption to use pictures to help you understand the article or book. She picked an article from National Geographic for Kids. We looked at the pictures which she had put into a Powerpoint. Then we discussed the pictures-first without looking at the caption and then after reading the caption.

If you would like the Powerpoint we used for the Three Ways to Read a Book lesson, just drop me an email and I'd be glad to share it with you. Email: mydaily5journey@gmail.com

Daily Five ™

I am new to the world of Daily Five but I can see how hard the Daily Five company works. They have a very effective distribution system to help teachers across the world access and use their material. I appreciation their great entrepreneurial spirit. That is why I contacted DailyCafe.com about using Daily Five in the title of my blog.

I received a warm response from them and learned that I must include a trademark symbol whenever I"m using the term Daily Five. So my blog title has now changed to include the trademark TM. However this blogging platform will not allow me to place the TM in the body of this blog.

The Two Sisters stated they would like to see my blog. It would be great to share my work with the greater Daily 5 world. But more importantly, I would like to hear from others using the Daily 5/Cafe Menu at the middle school level. Are you out there?

The Daily Five at Middle School

An unique opportunity came to me this fall. As a literacy coach, I typically work with teachers to increase their students' achievement. This work can take several forms such as consulting, researching or modeling lessons to their classes. But through a series of steps at one of my schools, I was given the opportunity to teach an intervention class-actually three intervention classes for a trimester in our middle school.

The teacher who had started working with our lowest readers was no longer able to continue her work here. So I spend time with her, observing how she designed an delivered reading interventions to these students.

She was using a hybrid form of The Cafe Menu which had been used at the elementary school where she spent most of her day.

The students were responding well to her work and I decided that I would build on her work.

But where to start? I started where most of us start now. I googled 'Daily Five in middle school". I followed up on every lead from Google and that is what I am going to share with you.

I also found that there were not many resources for middle-school specific information. That is why I am beginning this blog. I want to share my experiences with you. I also want to develop a network of educators who are using The Daily Five and the Cafe Menu at the secondary level.

Join me on my journey!

What is The Daily Five?

As a middle school teacher and literacy coach, I thought all the talk I have been hearing about the Daily 5 and the Cafe menu didn't apply to me. But when I was asked for advice from my principal as how to best meet the needs of our struggling readers, I came face to face with the Daily 5.

This has been a journey for me and continues to be a journey. This will be the record of that journey.

Please contact me with stories of your experiences with the Daily 5 especially at the middle school level. I want this blog to be a clearinghouse for information to help all of us.

Sincerely,
Brenda Benedict