#cyberPD Week 2- Reflections

I am so happy to be participating in #cyberPD for my third summer! This community always pushes my thinking and encourages me to dream and plan for the new school year.

This year's selection, Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading by Vicki Vinton has led to so many thoughts and ideas about how to teach children to think deeply and be problem solvers when it comes to reading. 

Last week, I pulled together my thoughts on Chapters 1-4 in a padlet you can view here. 

This week, I created a Top Ten List of Quotes for both Chapters 5 and Chapters 6. There were so many important lines that spoke to me, so this was easy to do!

Chapter 5: Creating Opportunities for Readers to Figure Out the Basics

Top Ten Quotes

1. page 60: "In addition to reading books they had chosen themselves at their assessed level, all of these students had received instruction- sometimes over years- on comprehension strategies such as monitoring comprehension and envisioning. Yet none of them could consider the deeper layers of meaning in their chosen books because they hadn't figured out the basic who, what, when, and where of the story line. And none had any idea that they were, in fact, completely lost."

2. page 61: "Many writers, in effect, hit the ground running, tossing names and information at readers like balls in a batting cage, alluding to events that have already happened and relationships that may come with baggage, trusting their readers to field those balls and somehow make sense of it all."

3. page 62: "The thing, though, is this. Readers have to know they're confused or don't know something, and students who continue reading without actively connecting details or being aware of what they don't know often wind up lost in books that are supposedly just right for them."

4. page 65: "Sometimes writers don't come right out and tell us exactly what's happening, so readers need to be aware of what they don't know and then try to figure out what hasn't been said by paying close attention to the details the writer gives them."

5. page 76: "But once again, if we want students to take risks and become flexible thinkers, we must be flexible risk-takers too."

6. page 77: "But by asking students not only what they think but how they arrived there, you open the door wide enough for them to show you both what they're able to do and what they still may need to learn."

7. page 77: "Thus, the more opportunities students have to talk about their thinking, the more likely they are to transfer that thinking from one text to the next- and isn't that just what we are after?"

8. page 78: "A problem-based approach acknowledges that readers need to time to think creatively before they critically assert- especially if we want them to see reading as a complex act of understanding, rather than of staking out and defending claims like prospectors during the gold rush."

9. page 79: "I (mostly) am able to keep my mouth shut because I choose to trust that when we slow the process down, students can put the pieces of a text together in ways that allow them to see connections, relationships, and patterns of interaction."

10. page 80: "The important thing about a problem is not it solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution."

Chapter 6: Creating Opportunities for Readers to Experience Deeper Meaning 

Top Ten Quotes

1. page 88: "...this suggests that readers need to attend to and fit together the threads and patterns the writer has woven into the story."

2. page 100: "Why questions can help us dig deeper into characters' motivations and feelings..."

3. page 103: "And this is the contagion of thinking, where you can almost see synapses firing in students' brains, is precisely what can happen when give students the time and space to think without evaluating through collaborative talk and low-stakes writing."

4. page 104: "Making students more aware there's a writer behind the scenes calling all the shots- and that their job, as readers, is to consider why she made the choices she did- helps students understand and internalize the concept that writers choose details purposefully to convey whatever aspect of people and life they're exploring through the story."

5. page 104- "When students share their thinking with you, a small group, or a whole class, it's important to respond in a way that doesn't communicate judgment."

6. page 105- "...studies have found they retain even more when they get to teach others, which is exactly what students  are doing when they share how they figured something out."

7. page 105- "...you want to create a culture of thinking where multiple ideas can exist side by side, without needing to find consensus."

8. page 106- "That's because curiosity needs to come from inside, which is why it's seen as an intrinsic motivation, unlike grades, fancy stickers or a threat to call parents, all of which come from us. But through your responses and the environment you create in your rooms, you can nurture the very conditions curiosity needs to thrive."

9. page 106- "And that steady decline in students questions is matched with a drop in their engagement and their ability to think creatively as they move through the grades."

10. page 107- "...so that students can experience what it means to read closely in more authentic and meaningful ways, using the exact same thinking processes they'll need for college, careers, and citizenship."