Hey everyone, Rachael here.  Before we jump into today’s episode, I wanted to say a few words to reflect the current time.  When I record these episodes for you, I do so well in advance, and when it comes time to publish them in real time, they sometimes feel out of place or even irrelevant.

I had several episodes recorded for you that I thought would be great for you about the end of the school year and had to pivot due to the coronavirus epidemic.  And now – in light of another tragedy, I want to hop on ahead of the episode to express my sadness for the most recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

When I think about things like this, quite honestly, I feel paralyzed because I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what to say or how to respond.  It makes me angry that we still live in a world where things like this happen.

But, when we are faced with these terrible situations, I have to come back to what I know.  I think about what our role is as educators in times like these.  And what I know is that when you know better, you do better.  And as teachers (both of our own children and of other people’s children), real change comes when we teach others to do better.  This is so important, especially at an early age.  As educators of young people, we have the privilege to mold their minds while they are still moldable and while they still learning and forming opinions about the world around them.  We do this by modeling an attitude that represent inclusivity.  We do this by teaching kindness.  We do this by modeling acceptance.  We do this by being honest of our own prejudices and showing a commitment to change them.  

And – one of the most effective ways we can do this is by building positive community in our classrooms.

So – although I recorded this week’s podcast episode weeks before the current situation, I still think it’s the perfect time to share it.  In this week’s episode, I talk about establishing reading partnerships in your classroom to help build a strong community of readers.  What better way to get students talking about things that matter than through meaningful and relevant literature.   And of course, in order to do that, you’re going to need literature in your classroom that represents diversity.  You going to need age-appropriate books that aren’t afraid to address tough issues, like prejudices.  We need books that celebrate differences and promote an accepting of all people in our community.

So, of course, I want to help you to take action in all of this.  I put together a curated list of book titles that other teachers have recommended as well as some of my own favorites that you may want to consider adding to your classroom library.  I’ll link to that list in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/20.  And these aren’t books that you only pull out during Black History month or other months devoted to raising awareness about certain cultures, races, and ethnicities.  They are books that should be part of your everyday collection and used regularly as part of your instruction. So, I hope you’ll look at that list and add to your collection.

And if you’re like me, and you feel lost as to what you role is in all of this.  Come back to what you know as an educator.  You are teaching the next generation to know better, so that they can do better.  Alright – let’s jump into the show.

Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.

Hello, hello, welcome to Episode 20 of the Classroom Commute Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel. Thanks so much for joining me... Wherever you may be joining in - whether it be on your ride into school, your ride home or anywhere else. I'm so glad that you've decided to spend a little bit of time with me today.

Today, I'm going to talk with you about something that I think could be a game changer in your classroom when it comes to developing strong readers and a strong reading community. Way back on episode one of this podcast, I talked about how to create a classroom community of readers. And I gave three simple strategies for how to cultivate that community of readers in your classroom. So if you missed that, make sure you go back and check out episode one, because there are some really solid, but simple and easy tips for you to use in your classroom to help cultivate a community of readers.

Today's strategy is a little bit more advanced, but I don't want you to be scared off because it's something that you can do and I'm going to give you the tools and the steps to do it. So what is this strategy? Well, it's called reading partnerships. If you've been around for more than three minutes in your teaching career, then you're likely familiar with buddy reading. The idea behind buddy reading is great and it can definitely be used effectively if taught correctly and practiced over and over with intention.

However, too often time spent buddy reading lacks purpose and can easily turn into wasted time in the classroom. In my experience as a teacher, I found that if I didn't explicitly set the purpose and intention for an activity in my classroom, I might as well have not done it at all. Students don't assume our purpose and therefore they don't know what we're expecting from them unless we tell them. Let's think about the reasons why we have our students buddy read. Primarily, we want our students to have authentic fluency practice, right? We hope that by using buddy reading in the classroom, students will be engaged in meaningful discussions about the book. And these are both great reasons. But sometimes we don't relay this purpose to our students. We send them off buddy reading and we just hope for the best. I've been guilty of it more than once.

If you're wishing that the time your students spend buddy reading in your classroom was time better spent, than maybe you want to consider implementing a reading partnership in your classroom.

So what's the difference between traditional buddy reading and reading partnerships? Well, buddy reading is often assigned on the go without much preparation ahead of time. On the flip side, careful preparation is needed for a successful reading partnerships. Reading partnerships take into account the reader's interests and abilities in order to form a partnership, whereas buddy reading often doesn't focus too much on the pairing of the students. In buddy reading, most of the time that the students spend together is spent reading, leaving less time for discussion and text analysis.

However, reading partnerships encourage students to do most, if not all, of the reading on their own. And then they spend most of their time together discussing the book using some talking guidelines, which I will talk a little bit more about later and I’ll give you some resources.

Now, if you're thinking that because they're doing most of the reading on their own, they're not reading together and therefore not getting that fluency practice, well - It doesn't really actually have to be that way. It should be encouraged that during their reading partnership time together that they're going to reread some of their favorite parts or go back and reread an excerpt in order to support something that they're talking about in their discussion.

I'm not suggesting that you should totally abandon buddy reading, because I do think it is important to give students that chance to just read with each other. And sometimes it's just something you decide to do on the fly where you have students maybe read an article together really quick. But I am suggesting that you add in reading partnerships as another way to give students an opportunity to read with each other and to build your classroom community of readers.

 

So let's take a moment to really define what a reading partnership is. With reading partnerships, students are paired up with other students who have similar reading abilities and interests. Each partner is going to have their own copy of the book. And for older students, partners can typically choose chapter books, while younger students can typically choose picture books. It doesn't have to be that way, but oftentimes that's what ends up happening.

Partners are going to spend time reading the book, both individually as well as together. The majority of the reading will be done individually and the time spent together will be used to reread their favorite parts to discuss important details, ask each other questions, and so on.

Partners will meet with each other three to five times during the reading of the book. So however it fits into your schedule: maybe they can meet on Fridays. Maybe they can meet in the morning a few times a week - however, it works out. They need to be doing the reading mostly on their own and then they're going to get together a few times during the reading of that book to discuss it and reread parts together. When students complete their books, they can complete a reading project together that they can then share with their classmates. We'll talk more about this a little bit later.

Reading partnerships can be an ongoing process in your classroom that students can flow in and out of, meaning you don't need to be worried about having all of your students starting and finishing their partner books at the same time. Instead, when a student is ready, they can begin a reading partnership. When they're done, they can take a break for a little bit and you can have different partners working around the room at different times throughout the school year. There will also be times during the year when you'll want to take breaks from reading partnerships all together to pursue other reading projects. And that's OK, too.  Reading partnerships are designed to be just one component of a complete reading program and use them when appropriate.

So let me take you through starting the reading partnership program with your students. The first thing that you're going to need to do when implementing the reading partnerships is to set up a special area in your classroom library where you are going to have duplicate copies of pre-approved books that you have chosen and set aside for reading partnerships specifically. So you can look within your own collection of books. If you have double copies and pull them out of any baskets they may already be in and put them in this special area. You can easily keep these books together by just wrapping both books up in a rubber band, that way they won't get separated and students know that they are meant to be used for reading partnerships. You might even want to place a matching sticker on each book so that students know that those books are part of the duplicate copies section of your library in case they were to get misplaced.

You want to make sure that you have copies of quality books that promote higher level thinking and will support deeper conversations. If you don't already have a selection of duplicate copies of books, which most of us don't, then perhaps your school librarian could help you find some within their collection in their school library.

And that being said, if reading partnerships are something that you think you want to continue in your classroom, then always be on the lookout for double copies of popular books that are found at book sales or on Scholastic Book Club orders or book sales at your local libraries in your community. You can even refer to Amazon.com and they often have used books that are very inexpensive that you can purchase to help stock up on your duplicate copies library within your classroom.

Once you've got a good selection of duplicate copies of books in this special area in your classroom, it's time to prepare your readers for reading partnerships. Now, I suggest that you hold off implementing reading partnerships until you have a good amount of time to get to know your students as readers.  Once you're more familiar with their reading abilities and their interests, then you can begin pairing students together based on those abilities and interests.

Now, I created a tracking sheet that you can use to keep track of the partners and the books that they're reading as well as any notes that you have about that partnership and you can get that in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/20 - And it's completely free.  

Now, although you will have the ultimate say on who the partners will be in your classroom, you do want to take into account student input. You may even consider having students complete a reading survey to help you better understand their individual interests. Then you can use their answers from the survey to inform your decision. And I also have a reading survey already prepared for you that you can grab for free over on the show notes as well.

Once students have been paired up, you may want to give them some time to quickly meet and discuss their reading interests and ask them to discuss their favorite reading genres, authors, or topics that they like reading about. Or maybe they both enjoy a favorite book series.

Before having students choose their books, conduct a short mini lesson that shares some tips and strategies for how to preview a book to make sure it's a good fit for them. Helping them to decide on things like, ‘is this the right reading level? Does the title interest us? What can we learn from the back cover summary? etc…’  This modeling will help students when they go to choose their own books. Once they're ready, invite partners to choose a book from the duplicate copy section of your classroom library. Or if they need to be sent to the school library to choose their books, arrange for that to happen as well.

After they've chosen their book, I do suggest that you still make sure that you see the books that they've chosen and that you approve it before they get going, just to make sure that they're on the right track and that they've selected a book that's appropriate for their reading level.

Students will begin their partnership with an initial meeting. It might be helpful to give students a little guideline to follow when they conduct their meeting. Even a checklist of questions that they're going to ask each other may be helpful to get them started. Questions like, ‘what do you think the book will be about? Have you read any books by this author before? What about the title or the front cover grabs your attention? What page of the book will we read before we meet again?’

Students will need to select a number of pages or chapters that they'll read ahead of time before they meet again. If students are reading a picture book, students might agree to read the entire book before meeting. And then if you want, you can have them reread it again, depending on how long it is when they meet for their next meeting.

After their initial reading, students are then going to spend some time independently reading the book that they've chosen and the pages that they've agreed upon with their partner. I also like to provide students with a bookmark that they can write on to keep track of their meeting dates and the pages that they are to be reading before they meet next.  And I've included that bookmark in the resources that are available over at the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/20. And it's in there along with that reading survey as well as the teacher tracking sheet to keep track of partners.

It's all waiting there for you to help you get started.

Now, when your partners meet is completely up to you. Depending on how you've set up your reading block in your classroom, you might decide to have specific dates in your reading schedule allotted for partnerships to meet, or you can allow them to meet as they finish each section of the book.

If you plan time in your schedule for all partnerships to meet at the same time, just be sure to let your students know ahead of time so that they can have their reading completed in time. If you choose to allow students to meet on an “as needed” basis, just be sure to tell them appropriate times for them to meet, such as right away in the morning, at the beginning of your reading time, or any other teacher-approved time during the day.

And again, you might want to provide guidelines for their discussion.  Just like you had them follow a checklist for their initial meeting, you may also want to give them a checklist or some book-talk guidelines to help guide their discussion when they meet each time. Things like: telling a summary of what they read so far, sharing and rereading their favorite parts, sharing questions, thoughts and insights about the character and the plots, making predictions about what's going to happen next, etc…  

And then, students should always end their meeting by agreeing upon the pages that they're going to read next before they meet again.

And once again, I've got you covered there because I created a book-talk guideline poster that you can use and put up in your classroom for students to refer to. So once again, you can get all of those resources in the show notes.

 

All right. I want to move on beyond the setup of your reading partnerships. Once you have your students in their partners, they've chosen their books, and you've given them the book-talk guidelines poster to help get them going. It's really important that we keep in mind that the whole purpose of reading partnerships is to help students start having quality discussions about the books that they're reading. So I want to move into some strategies that you can model for your students to help them develop the ability to engage in good conversations about the books that they're reading.

At the beginning, it's easy for student discussions to fizzle out, especially if they haven't been taught the art of conversation. The book-talk guideline poster is going to be a great starting point, but if you want to take them deeper, you really have to model some strategies that are going to help them take it beyond the poster.

For starters, you're going to want to model how to retell a story. One of the first things that students should be doing when they meet is to retell the portion of the story that they've already read. Retelling is a skill that all students need to know how to do. So you can practice retelling the story by modeling the ‘retelling formula.’ It's essentially a set of phrases that help students to stay on track when retelling.

And those phrases are “In the beginning... Next....Then... After that... In the end…”

Students use these prompts to help them move through the story so that they can retell it in order and include only the most important pieces of information. You can have this formula on a small poster next to your gathering area or any place that your students can refer to it. Model it using a book that you have already read with your students or even invite your students to participate by using the phrases in the retelling formula.

The second component of the students’ time together during their reading partnerships is to be sharing their favorite parts of the story. So once again, you're going to need to model this for students. This portion of the book-talk is where they can incorporate some fluency practice because they might reread some of the parts to their partner. Explain to students that they'll be expected to share a part of the story that stood out to them. Students should also be sharing why that's their favorite part.  And again, you'll need to model this using one of the books that you've already read together as a class. Model, sharing your favorite part and why it was your favorite part.

Now, the meat of their conversation is going to come when they are discussing their questions, their thoughts and wonderings, and their insights about the characters and plots in their story.  And this is probably the hardest part for students to really grasp when it comes to having a great conversation around those topics

I like to use the Accountable Talk method that helps students go beyond the surface level meaning of the book's content. We don't have a ton of time to go into Accountable Talk today, so I will link to a resource in the show notes about what Accountable Talk is.  But, essentially Accountable Talk is intentional, open-ended conversation where the participants listen to and add on to each other's comments and use clarifying questions to make sure that they are understanding what each other is saying.

And when students participate in Accountable Talk, this allows them to have richer and deeper conversations that go beyond surface-level of thinking. So Accountable Talk may sound something like this:

“When you said ___, I didn't understand ___. Could you explain...? Can you explain what you mean in a different way? Have you ever thought about... I agree or disagree because... I like what you said about…”

This type of talk keeps the conversation going instead of fizzling out too soon. And again, I have a whole resource that I will link to in the show notes about using Accountable Talk in your classroom and how to teach it to your students.

One of the components of Accountable Talk is teaching students how to ask thick questions versus thin questions. Thin questions are those types of questions that typically have one answer.  They have to begin with who, what, where, when. Those are the questions that maybe students will ask each other if they need to quickly clarify something.

But the majority of their conversation should be thick questions. Thick questions include things like:

‘What might happen if... How would you feel... Do you think…’

These types of questions have several potential answers based on the students’ thinking and it's going to allow students to have a deeper conversation. And again, this has to be modeled over and over for students. So be sure to plan a mini lesson or two or three or four that helps model how to have this kind of conversation.

All right, I want to wrap this up by giving you some ideas of projects that students can complete after they've finished their book. But before we do that, let's just take a quick moment to review some of the strategies that you're going to want to model for your students to help them have deep, meaningful conversations.

One, you're gonna want to model for them how to retell the story using the retelling formula. You also want to model for how to share their favorite parts of the story and to share why it's their favorite part.  Model how to use Accountable Talk in their discussions by using open-ended discussion prompts and questions that will take their thinking a little deeper. This includes them asking thick questions, things like ‘what might happened if…’ versus thin questions, like ‘who, what, where and when.’ 

And certainly you're not going to teach all of these strategies all at once. You're going to teach them a little bit at a time, and then you're going to need to reinforce them again and again.

All right, so once your students have finished their book with their reading partner, a nice way for them to end their time together is to complete a final project together and then they can present it to the class. So here are some possibilities of things and projects that you might consider.

You could even put all of these ideas together on a choice board to allow students to choose from them. And then you can reuse that choice board over and over throughout the year with different reading partnerships.

I have a resource that includes choice boards for fiction and non-fiction books, if you want to check it out. They're already done for you. And I will link to those in the show notes as well.

And finally, let me leave you with this thought: Having quality reading partnerships is going to take a lot of time and a lot of practice. So don't give up too early. The first couple times may not feel super successful, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try again. Reading partnerships can be a valuable component of your reading program as it allows your students to really just take the reins on their reading.

The first time you have students conduct reading partnerships may look a little messy. Make note of partnerships that you know are going to need a little extra support and didn't work out so that you can make the appropriate changes for the next round of reading partnerships.

All right - remember that I'm here to support you. I've got a ton of resources over for you in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/20. You don't want to miss this resource. It's going to be super valuable in getting you started with reading partnerships in your classroom.

All right. I hope that you have some ideas and some fresh inspiration to take with you into the classroom. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and I will see you again next week. Bye for now.