Literacy Philosophy Based Upon the 6Ts of Effective Instruction

By Niki Briggs
Time
Richard Allingtons article focuses on how effective teachers have their
students reading and writing for as much as half of the school day .and that
extensive reading is critical to the development of reading proficiency. He goes
on to say that extensive practice provides the opportunity for students to
consolidate their skills and strategies that teachers often work so hard to develop.
(1)
If I could choose the way my district structured its school day, I would
implement a 90 minute reading/language arts block for all students K-8. We
currently have 90 minutes in grades K-5, but by middle school the amount of
minutes specifically allocated to reading is 43 minutes. Next year I would like to
try implementing a Readers and Writers Workshop framework using a 2 day
cycle at the middle school. Day 1 would be mini-lesson / guided reading and
independent reading, and Day 2 would be guided reading / independent reading
and writers workshop. However, if I could mandate a 90 minute literacy block K8 with the daily schedule that I wanted, it would look like this:

15 minutes: read aloud to the class with a mini-lesson on strategies for

reading. At the middle school level, we would still continue working on
comprehension strategies, especially the deeper level strategies of summarizing
and synthesizing. This year, we did mini-lessons using Stephanie Harveys
Comprehension Tool-Kit. It was brand new to me, so this year I followed the
lessons exactly as they were written. The kit addresses the following areas of
comprehension: monitoring your comprehension, activating your background
knowledge, asking questions, inferring, determining importance, and summarizing
and synthesizing. (2)
Next fall, I would like to incorporate more contemporary read-alouds with
my middle school students. For example, instead of teaching the strategy of asking
questions using the articles that Stephanie has in the kit, I would teach it using a
read-aloud. My hope is that the kids will be more engaged. Some of the young
adult titles recommended by the Journal for Adolescent and Adult Literacy are:
1. Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin. Recommended by Steven Layne,
Title 1 Conference 2013. It is about a 17 year old boy and his two younger
sisters who struggle with abuse by their mentally unstable mother.
2. Wintergirls by L.H. Anderson. It is about 2 girls, Lia and Cassie, who
struggle with anorexia and trying to be the skinniest.

3. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher about a girl's sudden suicide.

4. Hate List by Jennifer Brown about a boy who becomes a shooter in a
school as a result of being bullied.
5. If I Stay by Gayle Forman about a girl who has been in a car accident and
now has to make a long journey back to recovery.
6. Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Weiss about a girl whose father is in prison
for abuse. (3)
I am also trying to organize a middle school book club during lunch once per
week on Fridays from 12:21-12:51. I would like to open it up to all students at the
middle school. The book I would like to do is Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins,
the sequel to the Hunger Games. I specifically chose this book because so many
kids have seen the Hunger Games, and the next movie is coming out in November
2013. My hope is that it will bring an enjoyment for kids to just read for pleasure
and that coming to my room for book club would cut down on the stigma that
some of my students feel having me as their Title 1 teacher and having to go to
that room.
At the elementary level, teacher's would be able choose their read-alouds
based on the mini-lessons their students need. However, since only a few teachers

are currently using a Readers Workshop model, here are a few titles I would have
them implement in order to get started at the beginning of the year: (4)
1. Thank You, Mr. Falker to find out about the students feelings about
reading, and introduce a reading survey for their personal interests.
2. Goldi Socks and the 3 Liberians to show how to choose appropriate
books.
3. Have You Filled A Bucket Today? to introduce conferring
4. The Train to Somewhere to introduce the concept that reading is thinking.
5. The Diary of a Worm to introduce how to do a written response to
reading.
45 minutes: This would be a mixture of independent reading time, small
group guided reading (most likely 3 groups, but it would depend on student need),
and time to confer with students. Laura Candler recommends alternating; one
week the teacher works with guided reading groups, the other week is conferring
independently with students. (5) This is also a good time for students with
significant reading needs to have reading intervention (Title 1 or special education)
without missing core instruction for the mini-lessons.

30 minutes: This time would be devoted to writer's workshop, so that

students would have a chance to write about their reading or topics of their choice.
This would also be set up similar to reader's workshop where students would have
a mini-lesson on a particular craft in writing, and then be given guided practice in
how to apply that to their personal writing. I would include the components of
writer's workshop that we learned about from the textbook, Classrooms That Work,
by Richard Allington. The most important components listed in the chapter were:
taking time to think of a topic, building up a student's stamina gradually, writing
about topics of your choice, learning how to edit with a peer, setting up a date to
confer with a teacher, writing several pieces before publishing one, using author's
chair to get feedback from peers, and publishing a final piece. (6)
Students would be reading books at their level during both independent reading
time, and also throughout the day in other content areas. I address this more in the
next section under text.
How the students would benefit: Richard Allington states that extensive practice
at reading and writing is critical to developing reading and writing proficiency. (7)
If I want my students to become better readers then I have to allow them time to
practice that skill at their level.
Text

Richard Allington states that, If children are read a lot throughout the
school day, they need a rich supply of books they can actually read.and that
there is a potent research base that supports supplying children with books of
appropriate complexity. (8)
If I could choose how our district would operate, every classroom K-8 would
have a wide selection of books for independent, choice-time reading. Classroom
libraries would be leveled, but would be grouped by genre, rather than level. For
example, you might have a box that was labeled "animals" with books ranging
from A-P inside it. All the books would be individually marked on the inside
cover, so students would choose the appropriate level for them. There are two
advantages in organizing a classroom library this way. One is that all students can
choose books quickly. The other is that classmates wouldnt know as easily who in
their class was a struggling reader. Peers would know what types of books other
students were interested in, but not that that an individual always had to choose
books from the "D" box. Just like at the middle school, my hope is to take away
some of the stigma that students with unique needs have to face.
I would also like each classroom to have a monthly subscription to a current
student magazine like Scholastic, Time for Kids, or National Geographic for Kids.
I have ordered a new one from Scholastic called, Scholastic Action which is

specifically designed for middle school reading intervention. It supports common

core standards, and comes with smart board ready lessons for approximately $130.
After reading the article on using the Ipad in the classroom, I would like
every student to have their own classroom Ipad. I would use it to download books
digitally using IBooks or Kindle. Again, Ipads are an excellent resource to reduce
the stigma that struggling readers feel. Having worked with EEN students for 14
years, this is always a concern for me. Reading books on a devices like a Kindle or
an Ipad makes its content anonymous to others.
Another advantage of Ipads is the ease at which to track your thinking. I
recently downloaded the Rules of Survival, and I loved how easy it was to use the
digital "sticky notes". I would also use it for teaching reading strategies. For
example, in the Ipad article we read, when Mrs. Dill wanted to teach a lesson on
visualizing, she used an app called "Doodle Buddy" to have the students create
mental pictures of the text and then sequence them. (9)
I would also like to have enough money to differentiate the content area
textbooks that students use for social studies and science as well. Richard
Allington's article states, "No child who spends 80% of their instructional time in
texts that are too difficult will make much progress academically." (10) When I
first started teaching special education back in 1990, we used low-level readability

texts for these areas by companies like Steck-Vaughn. In my ideal school, all
teachers would be required to use differentiated textbooks as part of those content
areas. My hope is that someday textbook companies will make all of their
textbooks available on Ipads, and that the readability of the text would be able to
be adjusted, much like the font size or background screen color. At the very least, I
think that all text books should have an audio feature so that the text could be read
aloud to the student.
Finally, if I had an unlimited supply of money, I would have a book
mobile of sorts that could give out books around our community once per week
during the summer to low income students. One of my biggest concerns for this
summer is that my students will not pick up a book until September, and that they
will have regressed. In a recent Reading Today article by Richard Allington and
Anne McGill Franzen, Allington states that poor children do not read because
they have much more restricted access to books at home and in their communities.
Simply providing children from low-income families with self-selected books for
summer reading eliminated summer reading loss and spurred reading gains
comparable to those experienced by middle class childrendistributing selfselected books for summer reading improved reading achievement as much as
attending summer school. (11)

How the students would benefit: students need much more high success reading
than difficult reading. It is high accuracy, fluent and easily comprehended reading
that provides the opportunities to integrate skills and strategies into an automatic,
independent reading processin the classrooms of exemplary teachers, lower
achieving students spent their days with books they could successfully read. The
highest achieving students received a steady diet of easy text, consistently
outgained other students each year, and that motivation for reading was
dramatically influenced by their success. (12)
Teaching
According to Richard Allingtons article, Exemplary teachers routinely
gave direct, explicit demonstrations of the cognitive strategies that good readers
use when the read. They modeled the thinking that skilled readers use when they
decode a word, self-monitor comprehension, summarize, or edit while composing.
(13)
In my own personal teaching, this has really helped me reflect when I am
teaching my students a new concept. I have become more aware of the need to
model each step in a process. I used to assume that kids inherently knew certain
things academically and behaviorally. Participating in this class, reading the 6Ts
article and teaching the Comprehension Tool-Kit this year has helped me become

much better at demonstrating my thinking out loud with students. It has helped me
move away from the assign and assess model to using the gradual release model.
Next year, I would like to incorporate the use of peer buddies 2 times per
month. My 3rd graders would come over to the middle school and read to my 8th
graders during 10th period. My 8th graders would then coach them on decoding,
fluency and comprehension. I think this would instill confidence in my 8th graders
ability, give them a feeling as purpose, and give my 3rd graders someone to look up
to. It would also help me gauge how well I am teaching, because students tend to
teach like their teachers have modeled for them.
Theres a quote by Maya Angelou that says, When you know better, you do
better. Therefore, if I were an administrator, I would want every teacher in the
district to have professional development on how to teach reading strategies. This
could be accomplished by having a professional speaker come to the district
several times a year (like Stephanie Harvey) or professional development DVD's
like "Strategy Instruction in Action", "When Students Write" and "Improving
Adolescent Writers" available through Stenhouse.
I would also provide every teacher with their own personal subscription to a
professional reading journal like Reading Teacher or Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy, so teachers could stay current on the best practices for reading.

Each teacher would participate in professional learning community and discuss

what they learned from the journal they read. More importantly each team would
discuss how they were going to apply it. I would mandate that each grade level or
content area had to try one new strategy in their classrooms each month, based on
their PLC research.
Finally, as an administrator, I would want each teacher to be videotaped or
observed one time per month by the district literacy coach. The district literacy
coach would then give the teacher feedback on how they were doing implementing
Reader's/Writer's Workshop. I would also want the literacy coach to help teachers
move towards the demonstration/modeling technique vs. assign/assess.
Richard Allington states in his article that demonstration is especially
important for lower achieving students. (14) While it may be intimidating to be
videotaped or observed at first, none of us can get better in a vacuum. I believe
that most teachers want to teach in a way that is considered best practice and
research-based, they just don't always know what that is supposed to look like. If
teachers have been in the classroom for a long time, they may still be using
practices that were current when they graduated from college decades ago.
How the students would benefit: Allington also states that Studies show that
active teaching, especially for those who struggle, involves not only how to teach

strategies, but also how to transfer those strategies to independent use by the
student.
He goes on to say The assign and assess model is of little benefit to all but the few
students who have already acquired a basic understanding of the strategy being
taughtonly students who already know the correct response can successfully do
the task, and they dont need the practice. Children who do not know what to fill
in the blank cannot acquire this knowledge from a worksheet. Similarly, when
students are assigned to answer questions at the end of a story, they must be taught
how to do it through modeling. (15)
Talk
Richard Allington states that, exemplary teachers foster much more student
talk. They modeled, encouraged, and supported lots of talk across the school day
that was purposeful problem solving related to curricular topics. It was
conversational rather than interrogational and teachers posed more open
questions. (16)
I must admit, fostering a lot of student talk is still something I continue to work on
in my own classroom. When I graduated from college in 1990, the teaching
philosophy was geared more towards the belief that: the teacher was in charge of
the learning, classrooms had to be orderly, and that students should be listening,

not talking. The teacher knew all and that knowledge should be imparted to the
students. I taught middle school special education from 1990-1997, and this is the
way I taught. At times, I still teach this way, although I am trying to incorporate
more student talk, and let go of being the one who does all the talking.
My philosophy as being the disseminator of knowledge began to change
in 2006 when I returned to work after a break in teaching. Previously, I left
teaching to become a stay at home mom after my son was born. When I went back
to teaching after 9 years, I was amazed at how technology had advanced in the
classroom. To be honest it was humbling and scary. My thinking about knowing
all had to change because it was very evident that my high school students knew
way more about technology than I did. I found myself asking them how to do
things, because they were much more proficient than I was.
I really liked some of the strategies we learned about to encourage student
talk like turn and talk" or talking "elbow to elbow and knee to knee." I also liked
how the videos we watched demonstrated the use of reading partners for students.
This is something I could easily do with middle school students and use the clock
buddy system for example.
As I mentioned under the teaching section, I think videotaping or
observing teachers would be very beneficial. It would show how much purposeful

talk and good questioning is actually going on in the classroom. It would help
teachers improve on the types of open, multiple-response questions they ask to
make childrens thinking visible.
How the students would benefit: According to Richard Allingtons article, more
thoughtful classroom talk leads to improved reading comprehension for students,
especially in high poverty schools. (17) Our elementary school currently has a
free-reduced lunch count of 70%. Therefore, if Allingtons studies are correct, we
should all be working on this skill.
Tasks
According to Allingtons article, exemplary teachers gave longer
assignments, with students working on a writing task for 10 days or more. They
read whole books, completed individual and small group research projects, and
worked on tasks that integrated reading, writing and content areas together. (18)
Work was challenging, required self-regulation and students were more engaged
because they were allowed to have managed choice, with differentiation.
In my own classroom, since taking this class and reading these articles, I
have noticed that my students are much more focused when they are able to read
what they like to read vs. what I have assigned them. Even if given a choice
between 2 things (like 2 articles on making inferences), my students respond better

simply because they have the power to choose. I have incorporated independent
reading time more consistently. Each of my students has their own book box or
bag filled with independent level books, and we read choice books each day for at
least 10/43 minutes. I have also ordered the new choice library from Leveled
Literacy Intervention. It cost almost $1,000, but comes with over 150 books at
different levels for students to choose and then read independently. I also ordered
readers workshop notebooks and bean bag chairs to make the classroom more
comfortable and coffee shop like. Next year, I would also like to do literature
circles. I would like to do two, one first semester and one second semester. I will
give the students 2 choices among the 6 I listed earlier under the time section if
we do not use them for a read aloud.
If I were an administrator, I would mandate that each of the teachers use a
reader's workshop/writer's workshop format K-8, so that students would be more
engaged and have choices. Last week our students had to do an end of the year
writing prompt, but they could write about whatever topic they chose.
We were taught to think of students as producers vs. consumers, and I think
writers workshop lends itself to that naturally.
How the students would benefit: According to Allingtons article, Choice has
been shown to lead to greater student ownership and engagement with the work.

Lower achieving students can also be just as successful in a project based

assignment as their peers, vs. when a teacher is comparing 2 students on the same
worksheet. (19)
Testing
Richard Allingtons article states that Exemplary teachers evaluated student
work and awarded grades based more on effort and improvement than simply on
achievement. All students had a chance to earn good grades. Achievement based
grading fosters a classroom where no one works very hard. Exemplary teachers
often use a rubric based evaluation to assign grades. Improvement was noted based
on where students started and where they ended up. Thus, it shifted the
responsibility for earning grades onto the students. Finally, there was no test
preparation activity in these classrooms. Instead, good instruction led to enhanced
test performance. (20)
This is another area that I will have to improve on. As I reflected on this
piece of the article, I realized that all of the grading I currently do is achievement
or standards based. I found it interesting that the article said that when using
achievement based grading, students sometimes think they are unlucky when
receiving a low grade. I have actually heard my students confirm this, and say I
got a bad grade because that teacher doesnt like me. Because of this, I have

taken time to show my students how achievement based grading works

mathematically, and how it is only supposed to reflect assignment completion and
quality (unless the teacher includes a portion on behavior as well).
I liked what the article said about having teachers grade on effort and improvement
vs. simply on achievement. I will have to carefully consider how to incorporate a
rubric into my next project based assignment. I will ask to see other teachers
examples of the rubrics they use. I think its also very important for the teacher to
show students concrete examples of what constitutes an exemplary product.
How the students would benefit: Students will feel like grades are less subjective
and that they are not being compared to their peers. They will take more
ownership of their own learning, because they will have more of the responsibility.
In conclusion, this article helped me reflect on the things that I would like to
change in my own practices. Sometimes as teachers we are so busy planning
lessons we dont always take the time to really be thoughtful about why we do
what we do. It was very helpful to read Allingtons article for my own personal
self-reflection, and also fun to think of how I would like to design things if I were
an administrator.

Bibliography
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3. Using YA Literature to Help Teachers Deal with Bullying and Suicide, Journal of
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2011).
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