Grouping Kids: Let's Not Make It Just About Reading

One of the things we teachers do best is putting kids into groups by what they know and what they are ready to learn. This is important work. It's how we give kids what they "need" in what feels like an equitable and efficient way. Or at least that has always been MY thinking and I've popped a few brain cells spending a huge amount of time planning academic differentiated lessons for those damn reading groups. I'm so over reading groups.

As teachers the more efficient we can be, the easier our day. Right? What if grouping kids only through reading levels is the least efficient way to teach them? What if instead we think about students who have similar social-emotional needs as a group? Or kids who learn in similar ways? Maybe even the kids who function better in the morning instead of the afternoon. What about kids with very little adult supervision or kids who are marginalized in similar ways? Educating children effectively comes from more than just grouping kids by academic level. With all of this talk about equity we must look at and understand who these children are that enter our rooms daily. Using insight through conversations with and observations of students see them in ways that will support students in more than just academics.

Lucky for us who are ready, willing and excited to put equity at the front of our teaching a brilliant educator named Cornelius Minor has created a book called "We Can Do This". In this book, we are invited to rethink the role of the teacher and the way we learn about and know our students. To make it much less daunting, he has given us simple templates on which we can layer our knowledge and think about our students, their wonderous diversity and their learning so we can create meaningful and equitable classroom communities and lessons for our unique groups of students.

I used one of these templates to help me discover new ways to view my students. I know when I looked at my 20 kinders through a multitude of lenses I realized the myriad of ways that I could group them to better support their needs, not just in reading or math, but throughout the day. In 20 minutes, my IA and I came up with at least 6 different ways to group 10 of our kiddos. Our various groupings came from reflecting on our students abilities in creative and critical thinking, their socio-economic needs, their academic and behavioral needs, their learning style and their teacher attention needs. I had one child I could have put into four different groups. None of these had the word “leveled” in them. Or used the words, high, mid or low to define the students in them.

I’ve decided that being a better teacher means it’s time for me to put the reading group teaching to the side and start looking at my students through multiple lenses. I am going to do better than putting kids into academically based groups. I'm going to look carefully at my own teaching and how I "group" kids. I'm going to look at and group students in a myriad of ways that will keep equity at the front and center of my classroom. I am going to create more opportunities for them than moving from level A to level B in their reading groups.

Cornelius Minor's book, "We Got This" and the resources he shares are now my teacher bible. As CLT lead on the Kinder team, I can share these resources with my teammates and we can use them to help guide our conversations about our students and our PLC, which should have equity at the base of anything we do in our teaching, assessing and reflecting on student learning. As a member of our school leadership team, I am able to share Christopher Minor's work with school leadership in order to create awareness about these materials and other team leads so that they can then share them with their teammates. As a member of our school's equity committee I can bring these resources to our planning

meeting and create ways to put these ideas into our SIIP goals. As a member of our SIPP-NIC committee I can not only do the above, but share out the information with other schools in our county. One rock can create many ripples. im hoping if we as teachers can all follow this authors ideas about equity, we can create a tidal wave of equitable change for all students.

If Ya Don't Know, Now Ya Know.

I've always wanted to be the best teacher I could. To me being the best teacher means: "You only know what you know.", "Know better, do better." create tons of credit card debt by ordering every professional book you can find even though you don't have time to read them, and my favorite, "If ya don't know, now ya know (Mr. President)".

This last semester, I decided I needed to know more, do better and take a class that doesn't require me to buy more books. I mean - like everyone else in this country I watched the Black Lives Matter movement go from a low simmer to a rolling boil. For good reason. I watched in horror as black boys, women and men were slaughtered... "by mistake" and on purpose. I watched our president spew careless words not fully knowing the impact those words would have on our country. Or maybe he did. Maybe he was more cunning than he was stupid, but that's for him to know and us to guess about. I watched as white, Trump loving "patriots" stormed the Capitol building as police stood and watched. Not one "accidental" shooting there.

I watched as Covid killed more black and Hispanic men and women than white men and women. I watched as my young Hispanic kindergarteners who did NOT have the benefit of being in the classroom fell desperately behind my white students who had consistent adult support and plenty of preschool experience. I felt helpless and sad and just pissed. off. Because of Covid, the equity we had been working so hard for in our school was gone, and we had little to no control over how or if it would reappear. Our kindergarten team brainstormed ways to make on-line learning equitable and we dug into everything we knew as teachers. I'll tell you one thing, none of the hundreds of professional books I own covered equitable online learning during a pandemic. In the end, we were disheartened by our lack of options. But we pushed on, knowing we could only control our end of the inequitable cards we were dealt.

So I did all the things to make me feel like I could do something, anything. I marched and spoke at BLM rally's. I signed petitions and started watching the YouTube series The Next Question. The link attached is a crushing review of the systemic racism in our public school system. I found myself adding more black voices to all of my social media. I read Jason Reynolds version of Stamped From The Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi, and then White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. " I binge watched all 10 episodes of America To Me . All day, for three days straight.

After all the marching and reading and watching I did the hardest of all the things. I looked inward and recognized that I myself had a boatload of implicit bias and racism. I realized that most of what I thought I knew about racism was wrong and until I started working for change, I would have to put myself in that category where white fragility and racism reign. Reading and watching all of the things gave me the opportunity to learn about what I didn't already know. Even so, I felt blind about how to put these ideas into my 16th year of teaching. Encouraged by a close friend to take a class on Anti-Racism, I took a deep breath, held my nose and dove head first into my "How To Be An Anti-Racist Educator" class. I began to know what I didn't know. I began to internalize as an educator what I knew, what I was learning and at the same time wished I didn't know. I began to see that some of the practices I'd set up to acknowledge all children did not acknowledge their differences in a positive way. "Color doesn't matter kids! We are all the same inside!" This phrase, although well intended, was an accidental U-turn on the VERY bumpy road of acknowledging the differences between white, black and brown skin. I'm pretty sure I pictured a rainbow over my room and all little white skinned children when I said that. As if they were better than a room full of black or brown skinned children.

This series of posts is my final project for my How to Be An Anti-L class. To answer the first question guiding my thinking, "What did I learn that I want to hold on to?" Everything. And nothing. I want to remember how the word "race" was a social construct. I want to remember how slavery began and has traveled through time, insidiously morphing into different forms so that it masked itself and became unrecognizable to the average white American. And the nothing? Racism in all its forms and how it operates systemically in our country. Once the race puzzle is put together in your brain it is something that you can't unknow. Now, I see it everyday, everywhere.

My dog is crashed out on my couch. I wanna be him. Because now.. I know.

photo credits: Libby Bianchi

https://www.libbybianchi.com/

A Guide on the Bumpy Path of Learning to Read

Is my child behind in reading? Why is my child looking at the pictures and making up the words instead of reading what's on the page? GAH! I have NO idea how to do this! Sound familiar? Or not? Either way, here are some sweet secrets to helping your child learn to read.

The first thing you should know is that learning to read now looks NOTHING like it did when you were in elementary school. I would bet, that you didn't learn to read in Kindergarten. I'll bet, that you weren't expected to read like a seven year old when you were five. All the confusion and anxiety around whether or not your child is up to speed in reading is often driven by how hard or easy it was for you to learn how to read and the difference between how we teach reading now and how it was taught back then. I mean, it was all phonics right?

With all the reading baggage in your brain and knowing Melinda's child is reading above grade level (um, yeah, right) you will suddenly become quite concerned that you have ruined your child's ability to read job applications. Suddenly, you and your child's "nice quiet story before bed" becomes a knock down, drag out argument. Suddenly your child turns into a monster. Suddenly, YOU turn into a monster. In a sad twist of fate, your child WANTS to stop reading and go to sleep (which you know is a lie because what child EVER wants to go to sleep before their parents. 'cause, what if mom and dad bring out the ponies????). You leave the room dazed, confused and certain you want a glass of wine faster than you can pour it.

Let me be clear before we begin. As a parent, YOU are NOT their reading teacher. Nor should you be. Your job is to be that snuggly person with whom reading is a calming and fun experience. The purpose of this post, is to give you the information about how children learn to read so that when your kid is making up words as they look at the pictures in a book, you can keep your cool instead of worrying that they are behind.

Rule #1: although there is a progression of reading skills, no child moves through this progression at the same time. If your child is moving from one stage to the next no matter how slow or fast, they are a ok.

Rule #2: if you have concerns about your child's reading progress ask the teacher. Ask your child's teacher. Ask the teacher. Teachers know your child. The latest books on "How to Teach Your Child to Read Like an Adult" don't know your child. Just ask the teacher. ASK THE TEACHER! And did I mention you should ask your child's teacher?

So here it is, a brief road map to how a child learns to read:

Pre-reading Skills:

They will:

Listen to a story in a book and watch how a book is held and cared for.

Look at pictures in books and make up a story to go with them.

Listen to a book over and over again and then repeat it verbatim, without actually reading the words.

Listening, looking and making sh-- up. That's how it's done.

Next you may see them reading letters and words:

They will:

Begin to recognize the letters in their name, their friends names, and their families names. These names are a GOLD MINE for kids learning to read.

Reading books with ONE line and a pattern on each page come next:

"I see the dishes. I see the chocolate. I see the wine."

And did I mention they are also learning that you read from left to right? Cause they think that is a bit sketchy and aren't even sure which way is "left"!

Finally, they read the pattern in the story, "I see the bear". As they try to figure out that tricky word, "bear" they will look back and forth at the first letter (b) and the picture (which most likely be a picture of a bear). and at that point, make their best guess at the mysterious word that begins with a "b". They will most likely then say the word "bear".

Hold up teacher (as you suddenly sit up and put your wine down) ! They GUESS? Guessing is NOT reading. Bear (no pun intended!) with me here....

Actually, it is reading. It teaches them something REALLY important: to use the first letter of a word and the sound it makes, as well as the picture to figure out that word. This is called making "meaning". Making sure the word they have chosen makes sense in the context of the sentence. Both pictures and the beginning sound of a word are keys to unlocking reading and understand what is happening in the book.

Sight Words

They begin to recognize small "sight words"; of, be, look, the, see etc. These are the words that are most frequently read and written in the English language. Also words that aren't always spelled they way they sound, "Haveeee". The word "the" is the most commonly seen word. On the heels of "the" are "of" and "be".

"I" and "a" are just confusing to a kid because how can a letter be a word, and, isn't an eye something on your face?

Stretching Out Words

Phonics are tricky as hell. When you are learning to read you have to be specifically taught to read words like "like"... because the letter "e" in "like", just sits on it's ass and eats popcorn without participating in the actual word. Then just like that, in the word "lean", "e" is a bossy pants who refuses to let the "a" talk so "a" can't tell on him ("e") for eating popcorn and not helping with "like". Damn vowels, so many sounds and so many freaking rules.

Had enough for today? Me too. My wi.. coffee is ready to be iced and I have to clean this disaster of a house. I'm confused as to how this house is a disaster. I live by myself, both young adults off at college. I guess it's probably because I spend too much time figuring out how to spell and read the word "thermometer". Maybe I should just look at the first letter and the picture and make my best guess...

Stay tuned for how and when children learn how to break apart words, rhyme, and all that phonics crap. Sounds scintillating I know, but my hope in this series of posts will keep you from getting a subscription for Total Wine, and make bedtime for you and your child the snuggliest time of day.

. Cheers!