Immediately following the focus group session, all participating sites reflected upon and discussed what they had seen and heard.  Below are some specific questions and reflections that emerged.  Stamford’s Kim Still-Gilbert and Mark McCann, Cornerstone coaches and demonstration teachers, responded, and a partial transcript is offered below.  (For a full transcript of answered questions, please note the link at the bottom of this article.)

Mark your calendars for Cornerstone’s focus group on March 6, the last of a three-part series on “Helping Struggling Readers.” The network video-conference will address the needs of struggling readers around issues such as fluency and other best practices for struggling readers.  The focus group will be facilitated by Dr. Pat Paugh, Assistant Professor at UMass and co-author of A Classroom Teacher’s Guide to Struggling Readers. 

Mark McCann:
How/when would you address students’ misconceptions about the theme?
When looking at misconceptions, I think it is important to understand how the “misconception” has been influenced and shaped by the student’s experiences.  It becomes very difficult to claim that a student hasn’t identified the correct theme.  Students need to substantiate their theme thinking through the text and around their personal experience.  As a teacher, I want to get inside their head and understand how they are making meaning of the text.  The social interaction, questioning, and comments from peers impact their thinking.  They notice how others perceive the text and are influenced by their connections.  Similarly, having students get inside the head of the author allows them to see a perspective they might not share or have thought of. This social interaction is a critical part of helping students see the text from multiple perspectives.  In conclusion, I first try to understand the thinking of students. I ask a lot of questions and pose counter arguments to students.  They might adapt their thinking or I might change my understanding or they may hold tight to their ideas and back them up with more evidence from the text.

Most of the students seemed to be able to give an accurate summary of the story. What do you do for those students who can’t summarize?
Do you have other charts/story maps (differentiated) for those students who still really struggle with this?
The graphic organizer included in your packet is in its third revision with this particular group of students.  I think it is necessary to tailor the tool to the specific needs of students.  With each use, I noticed that a part just did not fit into students’ understanding and seemed to be counterproductive.  For example, students were tripped up with the idea of events that lead to the solution.  Their problem/solution did not match. I eliminated events and had them focus on problem solution first.  This really seemed to help.  I added events back in once they understood the problem/solution connection. Assessing students is key to instructional decisions.  With students that don’t get it, I try to identify what they don’t get and tailor a tool to meet their needs.

They also wondered how much planning time the ILS has with the classroom teacher. How/when do they collaborate?
All grade level teams have 40 minutes of common planning time daily. On occasion, I meet with the team or with individual teachers to plan and collaborate.  There is a great sense of community and focus when it comes to literacy- we are all on the same page and have a common understanding.  This shared language and pedagogy facilitates our work together with children. 

Fourth Grade Clip #2
We noticed the theme was not mentioned or pulled out by teacher in the reading selection of Barefoot, would you revisit to be sure student was aware of the theme?  Would you focus in on other miscues at a later date perhaps during individual conferencing?
~Was there a discussion of the different genres ie: historical fiction vs. narrative poetry?
In Barefoot, Andrade states the theme in terms of when there is danger, you need to run away from it.  I had conferred with him and he was pretty sure this was the theme of the story. He was certainly very confident about his thinking and thought I might well be misinformed if I didn’t see it his way!  He goes back into the text and makes a case for the theme.  I thought it was important to acknowledge his brilliant thinking rather than make him see the text my way.  I look at our many opportunities together to nudge his thinking rather than taking a sledge hammer to it. 
I certainly want to take note of  the miscues he makes and use them for future reference and instruction. As often as possible, I like to deal with miscues as they arise with two criteria.  One, I deal with the miscues that hinder his understanding of the story and as long as my interference will not interrupt his comprehension.  And two, I want to be quick and focused regarding his miscues rather than belaboring word after word after word which becomes the lesson. Then we never would make it to the higher level thinking. In hindsight, I might have had students use a piece of this text to reread and practice fluency, especially with a chunk of text that is difficult.  

We did have a discussion about the types of genre we were all reading.  We have really been working on genre, text structure and text features of biography and informational text.  While we did not go in depth, I always want students to think about the genre of all the text they read.  Knowing the type of genre helps inform how you approach the text.
                                     
How many crafting/ mini-lessons did you teach before this video?
Response (from discussion):             
Three, plus discussions/ probing that brought out students’ connections.
I read aloud and modeled using the graphic organizer with three different stories; William’s Doll, The Carpenter, and The Wolf.  I chose these texts for their theme, length and engagement. Furthermore, I wanted to use a variety of genres to look at theme; realistic fiction, folk tale, and a fable. Prior to this I had been following the Springfield District Reading plan and the focus Genre; biography.  I noticed some gaps in student learning and needed to work with students on retelling and theme so they could be successful with independent reading.

Question #2:  How did you scaffold “retell” (for a different genre)?
I use lots of modeling, think aloud, and a graphic organizer to help scaffold their thinking and understanding. Conferencing with students also provides invaluable insight into student’s skills and builds relationships to give us a mutual understanding of who we are. I always begin with books that they can be successful with and go from oral discussion to writing. 

What do you do to circle the students back around to a theme for books, so that students do not have misconceptions or so they can extend their understanding?
I just finished reading Patricia Cunningham’s new book, Beyond Retelling: Higher Order Thinking which is directing me on how to take students to the next level. Similarly, Joanne Wilson-Keenan has done work with reading coaches on Depth of Knowledge (DOK).  There are 4 levels to the Depth of Knowledge framework. Students identifying theme is a level 3 task. It requires students to reason and draw conclusions where there is more than one correct response. Level 4 is Extended Reasoning where students relate theme across texts. This model is really used in test construction but is quite important to how we teach. Theme thinking across text is my next step when we come back to fiction. I want to try using Patricia Cunningham’s ideas in her book such as Big Questions and Concept Maps to move student thinking to the next level. I will certainly continue working with students and developing their knowledge and understanding of theme when appropriate with their independent book bags.

Does the student’s interpretation of the author’s theme depend upon the student’s schema?
Absolutely!  Student interpretation is influenced by their race, class, gender, and all their life experiences. Student meaning is constructed in the dynamic interaction between the text, author, teacher and student.  Meaning is negotiated in the context of the classroom and the social interactions that take place. 

Stamford Questions

Kim:
What kind of notes was she writing? How will she use those?
I was taking running records and writing some anecdotal notes down while listening to the students read. These running records and notes help me to determine students’ strengths and weaknesses in word solving and comprehension strategies and therefore help me to determine my next instructional steps. They’re also very useful as assessment information when viewed over time and they’re great for showing parents exactly what it is that their child is doing as a reader. - Kim

What would be the focus for the next lesson?
The focus of the next lesson was determining which questions were answered in the text and which were not. This was followed by a lesson on inferring the answers to some questions and using other resources (other texts, the internet, etc.) to answer other remaining questions. - Kim

How do you determine how much wait-time to give students vs. when to redirect?
My first response is to say that it’s very instinctive, but thinking about it a bit more I would have to say that it becomes instinctive once you get to know the individual children and their dispositions. Coming from a strong ELL background, I tend to give a lot of wait-time and to paraphrase students’ statements. I think I give more wait-time to the students who sometimes (already in first grade) think they’re “out of the game.” I want these students to know that they are in the game and that I’ll give them all the time they need to process their thinking. I redirect when I think I may have asked a “dead end” question or when the students’ responses are leading us on a tangent. - Kim

When would you (or do you) chart students’ questions/thinking during small group instruction?
Small group instruction time is so precious to me as a time for really listening to and observing students, that I rarely chart during this time. What I will do sometimes is jot down the students’ questions and thinking and chart it later. Then we can come back to it during our next meeting, or if I think it would benefit the whole class I can refer to it during a whole-class lesson. - Kim

Freedman’s Questions

First Grade Clip #1
~Were children taught non-fiction text structures before embracing this genre?
First I want to make a distinction between non-fiction text structures and non-fiction text features, just for the sake of clarity. I consider non-fiction text structures to be organizational structures of text (enumerative, sequential, chronological, compare-contrast, cause-effect, and question-answer). (Kristo and Bamford’s text, Nonfiction in Focus, is a great resource for teaching text structures.) While I see non-fiction text features to be those features outside of the traditional realm of “text” that provide information (photographs, glossary, diagrams, etc.). (Hoyt’s text Make It Real is helpful for teaching features. Also, there are two texts by Boynton & Blevins that are great for teaching features and structures – Teaching Students to Read Nonfiction & Nonfiction Passages With Graphic Organizers for Independent Practice.)
So, to answer the question, the children were explicitly taught some of the non-fiction text features before embracing the non-fiction genre, but instruction in text structure was only an implicit part of the whole-group instruction and was explicit only for a couple guided reading groups (primarily DRA Levels 16-24). The reasoning behind this decision was that in the majority of the texts the children were reading, the text features provided them with a richer source of information than the understanding of text structures would have. - Kim

~What activity were other students engaged in during small group instruction?
On the day of this lesson, the other students were engaged in independent reading of nonfiction texts and each student has his/her own KWL chart to fill out. After the KWL chart was completed, students engaged in buddy reading. – Kim

~Did teacher select books for this particular lesson or did the students have input?
I chose the books for this lesson primarily due to the shortage of leveled nonfiction text in the building. We are trying to build a larger collection of leveled non-fiction text and the fairly recent increase in the publication of such texts is helpful in this endeavor. The texts that were used in this lesson were all from Pioneer Valley Educational Press, a local and favorite publisher of leveled text. (No, I’m not getting any perks for this little promotion.)
- Kim

~Why did teacher basically target in on one student (Jose)?
I focused in on Jose in this lesson because he seemed genuinely interested in the text and this isn’t always the case with Jose. I really wanted to give him some positive reinforcement for showing so much interest and enthusiasm. - Kim

Harris Questions

Question #2:  Was there a purposeful decision to turn the pages of the student’s book?
It was a decision I made in the spur of the moment. This student was engaged in the discussion of the text, but was physically antsy. I thought that if I redirected his physical behavior, it might interfere with his engagement and I didn’t want to take that risk so I turned the pages for him as a way to maintain his engagement. - Kim

Question #3:  Vocabulary was rich.  How do you embed the vocabulary?  What are the next steps?
Some of the vocabulary is placed in our Word Jar for students to refer to at another time and also for students who weren’t a part of that guided reading group to learn and have access to. One of the next steps taken with this vocabulary was to teach the students to draw on it and use it in their writing, specifically around the writing about animals at the beginning of Unit 3 in the Springfield Learning Center plans. - Kim

Key Elementary

For Kim:
What introduction did you give the students in the use of the KWL charts? Was this the first time for them to use a KWL?
I introduced the KWL chart by using language the children were already familiar with. I framed the K section of the chart as a place where children could write down their schema for the topic and draw on their connections. I framed the L section of the chart as a place where students could notice their new learning and jot it down. Activating schema and noticing new learning were two practices the students had already engaged in and had success with in their reading of nonfiction text, so the only new practice for them would be to write down their questions, which they had had an introduction to the previous day. This was the first time this school year that the children had used KWL charts. - Kim