- State College Area School District
- State College Area School District
Building a strong foundation for reading
Children’s books decorated tables across the Mount Nittany Elementary School all-purpose room — fitting centerpieces for a workshop on teaching young readers.
The occasion was a visit from Jennifer Serravallo, a prominent New York-based literacy expert and consultant. For an inservice professional development day on Jan. 16, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Serravallo presented two two-hour training sessions for the district’s K-6 teachers on using authentic assessments to plan conferring and small group instruction.
“I hope we can leave here today with a lot of practical information,” she told the assembled K-2 teachers at the start of the afternoon session. Grades 3-6 teachers attended a similar session in the morning.
Booking Serravallo, a sought-after name in education, was a coup for the district, according to Director of Curriculum K-6 Deirdre Bauer. The district has drawn from Serravallo’s books and resources, such as blogs, podcasts and Facebook learning community, while working with teachers to support literacy initiatives, Bauer said.
“All teachers have Jen’s ‘The Reading Strategies Book,’ which is one of the most useful resources we have found to support the teaching of reading, and particularly for differentiating instruction,” Bauer said.
Serravallo began her afternoon session with a simple truth.
“All of this conferring and small group instruction only make sense when kids have long stretches of time to read independently and they’re having lots of time to practice,” she said.
For each grade, Serravallo shared daily recommended reading amounts, ranging from seven minutes for kindergarteners starting out to 35 minutes for second-graders by mid-fall.
“This amount of time means that kids need a lot of books,” she said.
That translates to about 15 unique titles a week for kindergarten and first grade, and about six to eight books in second grade, she said, stressing that maintaining a “really healthy classroom library” is critical to success.
She took time to note that evidence before her suggested daily reading and book selection wasn’t a problem in the district.
“I said this morning that I can tell by all the beautiful children’s literature on the tables that this is a district that invests in classroom libraries, that knows children’s literature, that invests in books,” she said.
Tips for organizing classroom libraries followed before Serravallo moved on to independent reading time. She emphasized that it’s not free time, when children are “doing whatever, reading whatever.”
Rather, she said, some call it “instructionalized independent reading” or “accountable independent reading.”
“It’s basically what a workshop is,” she said. “Independent reading time is important time for practice. It’s also the time where you’re working with kids individually and in groups, and it’s the time, I’m going to say, where they’re working on your goals, where they’re practicing the things that they need to practice, based on your own individual assessments for them.”
Teachers subsequently reviewed using formative assessments to set reading goals for students and to devise strategies for attaining them. For practice, they discussed an actual first-grader’s assessments at their tables and collectively.
Bauer couldn’t have been happier with how the day went.
“Over lunch, she met with elementary principals and instructional coaches to talk more in depth about her presentation and how to make all the components work in a day,” Bauer said. “Her presentation was jam-packed with ideas and information teachers can use in their classrooms immediately, and the feedback in My Learning Plan was excellent. Teachers shared that this was one of the best inservice days they have had. We will be able to build from this learning as we continue to support teachers’ professional learning needs.”
By Chris Rosenblum
jcr19@scasd.org
Photos by Nabil K. Mark
nkm13@scasd.org