Reading With Meaning Workshop

I’m attending Reading with Meaning: Creating Cultures of Thinking and Understanding presented by Debbie Miller all weekend long. As a technology coordinator, I co-teach a lot with elementary teachers and figured that this workshop might help me more effectively work with students in the computer lab.

Here are some highlights that resonated with me and the questions that they made me ask:

Typed up on Evernote on my iPhone

• Provide support but then kids must do it … Learning doesn’t just happen in the hearing
• Thinking doesn’t just happen at the end. Questions are a means to comprehension not just for measuring comprehension
• Too much focus on covering and not enough on uncovering
• Release responsibly to students and get them in learning situations so teacher can learn about the students too
• Show your thought process to kids. Model what you want them to do or learn
• It’s not just about kids being active readers, it’s about teachers being active [in the classroom]
• Co-construct knowledge with students
• Reader’s Workshop model is based on principles of time and choice (what to read and how to respond), community, response and structure
• “Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself the child is kept from understanding it completely.” – Piaget
• ‘It is significant to realise that the most creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing ones. The artist’s studio, the researcher’s laboratory, the scholar’s library are each kept deliberately simple so as to support the complexities of the work in progress. They are deliberately kept predictable so the unpredictable can happen.’ Lucy Calkins
• “If nothing else, children should leave school with a sense that if they act, and act strategically, they can accomplish their goals. I call this feeling a sense of agency.” – Choice Words, Peter Johnson
• What your children take home in their heart is more important than what they take home in their hands.

Back-channeling on Twitter

• There needs to be a reason why you ask kids to so something Debbie Miller #earcos #wkend
• Keep things predictable so that the unpredictable can happen Lucy? #earcos #wkend makes me think of the simplicity of an artist’s studio
• Turn and talk is about conversation … The civility of conversation #earcos #wkend
• The value of stopping to check for understanding during reading, not just at the end #earcos #wkend
• Slideshows tool that I just learned about from a colleague … Photo Peach. She uses it with a Destiny catalogue in the library
• 18 grade 2 students came into school on Saturday for a live demo and learning with Debbie Miller on inferring. #earcos #wkend
• Adding the book Mindset by Carol Dweck to my reading list. Is being smart something that you are or something that you learn?#earcos #wkend
• When listening to children, we need to make sure we’re listening to and not just for. Debbie Miller #earcos #wkend
• How do we help students learn about themselves? Isn’t that as important as learning math or English or drama? #earcos #wkend
• Thinking about belief and practice … I used to, Now I, why the change? #earcos #wkend
• How well does your classroom practice match what you say you believe? #earcos #wkend
• How can we personalize instruction for students who need it? #earcos #wkend
• Have kids make story timelines of “now I’m thinking” and “then …” when teaching how to synthesize information from reading #earcos #wkend
• “It’s not just about kids being active readers, it’s about teachers being active [in the classroom]” Debbie Miller
• “Teaching kids is as much about what you don’t do as what you do, what you don’t say as what you say.” Debbie Miller workshop

General Comments

I love how Debbie Miller emphasizes that her method is one of several ways to read with meaning and for understanding. I also took away the idea that different strategies can be employed at different times depending on the goal of the lesson. She presented a variety of different TOOLS for teaching literacy in the classroom but the teacher still has to consciously decide which tool is appropriate and when for her students.

To do

• Look up efficacy institute
• Purchase and read Mindset by Carol Dweck
• Get Choice Words by Peter Johnson from the dictionary to read
• Get some thinking books for my young relatives

I’m wondering how all of this translates to a hypertext world. It’s 10:37 p.m. and I need to go to bed soon but will have to make some more time tomorrow to write down my reflections.

Other Posts that Inspire me to Make Connections

• Teachers as Master Learners
• Teaching in Social and Technological Networks