These are some of the questions Jan and Kim get frequently from teachers.
Are the Lesson Sets available for upper elementary grades?
How do these Lesson Sets correlate to state standards?
How do these Lesson Sets work with other programs or materials I am using to teach reading?
Which Lesson Set do I teach first?
Do I need to teach the lessons in each Lesson Set in order?
How do I schedule these lessons? Do I do one or two a day? Could I teach them all in one day, if I wanted?
What do I teach if I’m not teaching one of these lessons?
How important is it that I present the lessons exactly as they are written?
Do I need to use the texts that you suggest and provide in this kit?
What is The Prompting Funnel and why is it important?
Do I need any special materials or classroom setup?
How long do I wait before prompting students during Guided Reading?
How do the Who’s Doing the Work? Lesson Sets support ELs?
What is next-generation instruction?
You frequently use the term turn-and-talk. What does that mean?
Are the Lesson Sets available for upper elementary grades?
Yes! Lesson Sets for Grades 3-5 will be available in 2019.
How do these Lesson Sets correlate to state standards?
See how the instructional practices in the Who’s Doing the Work? Lesson Sets align with:
- Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Standards
- Virginia English Standards of Learning
- Common Core State Standards
How do these Lesson Sets work with other programs or materials I am using to teach reading?
This resource is meant to supplement instruction in classrooms where teachers are using other programs and/or working to develop their own curriculum. However, it will work with any instructional model you are using. These lessons can serve as an instructional complement in many different types of classrooms, from those using a balanced literacy framework to those committed to Reading Workshop to those who follow a traditional basal program closely.
Which Lesson Set do I teach first?
These Lesson Sets are designed to be independent of one another, which means that you can teach them in whatever order best suits and supports your instructional goals. To facilitate your decision making, the following chart provides an overview of the three instructional goals—one for each Lesson Set—taught in the Lesson Sets and the ways they are connected across the grade levels.
| Kindergarten | First Grade | Second Grade | |
| Reading is Thinking | Rereading to Understand More | Asking and Answering Questions | Monitoring Comprehension |
| Reading to Connect | Character, Setting, Events | Inferring Feelings | Problem/Solution |
| Reading to Learn | Main Idea | Making Inferences | Synthesizing Details |
Although we don’t favor any one Lesson Set for any time of the school year, you may find that you will need to adjust for different times of year. For example, Independent Reading at the beginning of the school year will look different than at the end of the school year. One text may be a little more challenging in the fall—requiring more discussion and making the lesson stretch across two days—than in the spring. Because these Lesson Sets are meant to supplement your curriculum, we expect you to adjust them in ways that best support your students and fit with the other literacy instruction in your classroom.
Do I need to teach the lessons in each Lesson Set in order?
Yes! The lessons in each individual set are designed to build upon one another. The Reading Art lesson lays the foundation upon which the Read Aloud lesson builds. The Shared Reading lesson takes the learning still further. And finally, Guided Reading and Independent Reading build on what is learned in the previous three lessons. The second cycle of five lessons is connected to the first five lessons and is designed to deepen understanding of the overarching goal. Because of the sequential design of these lessons, it is important to teach them in the order that we present them.
How do I schedule these lessons? Do I do one or two a day? Could I teach them all in one day, if I wanted?
One of the foundational principles upon which these Lesson Sets are built is the belief that children learn best through repeated practice. However, if we inundate children with too much of a single concept at one time, we risk oversaturating them. Our goal is to present information in small, manageable chunks, which means that we recommend being mindful of the pace at which the lessons in these sets are presented. Use what you know about your students as readers and thinkers to help you decide whether to teach one lesson or two a day. If you teach more than one lesson in a day, make sure to plan something different for a break in between the lessons. We do not feel it is in the best interest of students to teach all five lessons of a cycle in a single day. However, you may decide to pause a lesson one day and continue it the next, if your students indicate they are interested in continuing a discussion or there is more for you to teach.
What do I teach if I’m not teaching one of these lessons?
Because the Who’s Doing the Work? Lesson Sets are designed as a supplemental resource, if you’re not teaching one of our lessons, you would teach something from your main curriculum or something from your regular instructional practice. Ultimately, we advocate including all components of balanced literacy—word work, read-aloud, shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, and writing. How you piece these together from your main curriculum and our Lesson Sets is at your discretion.
How important is it that I present the lessons exactly as they are written?
In creating this teacher resource, we used our general understanding of children’s reading development to help us make decisions about what and how to teach. We collected field research and used that feedback to help us revise the lessons to make them stronger and better. We believe that these lessons are a solid guide for helping your students achieve the stated objectives. However, we also believe that teachers teach children, not programs or teacher resources. We have tried to anticipate different instructional contexts and student needs, and we have offered suggestions in the “Formative Assessment and Responsive Teaching” section of this resource, as well as in the commentary section of the “Teaching the Lesson” section in the Lesson Sets. We know your students may have needs, strengths, and interests we have not anticipated. Furthermore, your teaching style and foundational beliefs will drive your work with students, giving your implementation of these lessons their own flavor. For all these reasons, we want you to adapt these lessons as you see fit, in order to serve the children in your classroom.
Do I need to use the texts that you suggest and provide in this kit?
We feel that text is the backbone of great reading instruction. In fact, selecting the right text is a key step in our planning process. We scrutinize texts carefully to ensure they meet our standards in each of these five categories:
- Complexity—What does this text give students to think about?
- Accessibility—Will students be able to read and understand this with the support provided in the relevant instructional context?
- Engagement—Will this text fill students with energy, awe, or inspiration?
- Representations of people—Can children from different racial, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds see themselves in the characters presented across our collection of texts? Will these texts help develop empathy in young readers?
- Relevance—Does this text fit with the other texts in the Lesson Set?
In addition, we look for texts that are connected across the gradual release of responsibility so that students can use one book to support their understanding of another while they work to apply new reading skills and strategies.
As we developed these Lesson Sets, we drew on decades of experience working with K–2 children and with picture books to make decisions about which books would be best for students in different grade levels. Because we don’t know your students specifically, however, it is possible that our selection may not be what works best for them. Whenever that is the case, we encourage you to select other texts using the criteria we outlined previously, the text descriptions in the “Materials” section of each lesson, and your own knowledge of current children’s literature. We never want students to read anything but the best texts for them.
What is The Prompting Funnel and why is it important?
In Who’s Doing the Work? How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More (Stenhouse 2016), we posit that to help children become increasingly capable readers, we must teach them to rely on themselves and the text—not on the teacher—at the point of difficulty. The Prompting Funnel is a tool that we’ve designed to support teachers in helping children independently tackle the tricky parts of a text.
When helping children, The Prompting Funnel cues us to first ask big, open-ended questions that require the most work of students. Because more specific prompts, such as “Does it make sense?” and “Look at the picture” are at the bottom of The Prompting Funnel, it cues us to use these as a last resort. The Prompting Funnel reminds us instead to begin with questions like “What can you try?” and “What will you do first?” Prompting in this way helps children develop agency (Johnston 2012) and a growth mind-set (Dweck 2006), as they assume responsibility for identifying, tackling, and cross-checking their solutions when tricky spots arise.
Do I need any special materials or classroom setup?
You should have a place in your classroom for whole-class Reading Art, Read Aloud, and Shared Reading. There need to be places where you can conduct Guided Reading lessons and spaces where students can do partner work and read independently. It’s important that you can project some images using a digital projector. Classroom libraries are key to achieving our instructional goals and to children’s developing a lifelong love of reading. The materials list, outlined at the beginning of each lesson, includes everyday classroom materials such as anchor chart paper and stand, markers, sticky notes, and baggies for children to store their books in. You may use your existing teacher’s notebook for taking anecdotal notes.
How long do I wait before prompting students during Guided Reading?
It’s okay if students struggle a bit. Students are natural problem-solvers who enjoy the gratification of figuring things out for themselves. Although our empathetic inclinations and our rescuing habits may compel us to jump in each time children encounter difficulty, doing so can rob students of important learning opportunities. Consequently, they can miss out on the confidence that comes from figuring something out. Experiencing some cognitive dissonance is not only good for learners, but it is also critical to their growth and development. Spending extensive time in frustration-level text, however, develops (and can habituate) inefficient reading processes in students. Finding an appropriate level of tension in terms of difficulty is one of the biggest challenges of our work.
How do the Who’s Doing the Work? Lesson Sets support ELs?
The Who’s Doing the Work Lesson Sets are designed in ways that support English Learners at all stages of proficiency, including children who are new to the language. Each component of the gradual release cycle offers opportunities for EL students to practice both oral language and reading processes. Teachers should value students’ native language(s), which can be an entry point to conversation, whether or not teachers speak the language. The Reading Art lessons are designed specifically to build vocabulary and teach reading strategies without the challenge of the written text. Students who are learning English can access and engage with the visual art, regardless of English proficiency. The Read Aloud lessons help EL students build background knowledge while exposing them to rich language and vocabulary through fluent modeling. Shared Reading meets the needs of ELs by providing a safe platform for participation, allowing EL students the chance to join in as they are ready and giving them a supportive space to practice problem solving the tricky parts of a text. Guided Reading, with fluid, flexible groups, allows teachers to both support and challenge EL students, selecting texts based on who they are as readers and learners, and providing opportunities for small group conversation, which is more comfortable for new speakers of English. Independent Reading is naturally supportive of EL students, as they can study the illustrations in texts and select books within a comfortable reading level. It is also important to incorporate home language texts into Guided and Independent Reading as often as possible.
In addition, the very design of the Lesson Sets across the gradual release of responsibility allows teachers to reinforce concepts across instructional contexts. This structure also encourages students to engage in repeated practice of new vocabulary and strategies. We include turn-and-talk opportunities in every lesson, and EL students can work with supportive partners to build their speaking and listening vocabulary. Most importantly, we intend (and explicitly state throughout the lessons) that these lessons be adjusted in ways that are responsive to individual students. Teachers have space within the Lesson Sets to consider all the students, including those who are learning English, and to make micro-decisions within a lesson in order to respond to their needs.
While we want all students to be supported and treated kindly, creating dependency in students will not help them become lifelong confident, proficient readers. Teachers should never assume that children who do not speak English fluently yet are not learning. Most new speakers of English need lots of time to listen and absorb information, and sensitive teachers realize this. Instead of jumping in with new language, it’s beneficial to provide additional wait time, to suggest that they try to respond in their home language first, and then to ask, “What can you try?” (and other prompts at the top of The Prompting Funnel), which will empower them to do the work of learning to read.
What is next-generation instruction?
We use the term next generation to describe conventional practices that have naturally evolved as educators reflect on student learning and respond to students’ needs. Next-generation reading instruction requires us to scrutinize our lessons through a lens of student independence/dependence and involves identifying places where we could let students do more of the work in read-aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. Next-generation literacy instruction minimizes text introductions, favors prompts that let students do the work, connects instruction across the gradual release of responsibility, and shifts away from other practices that assume work students could do for themselves. The term next generation does not mean that earlier practices were wrong, simply that our work, like that of all reflective practitioners, is continually on a trajectory of improvement. The lessons in these Lesson Sets are next generation.
You frequently use the term turn-and-talk. What does that mean?
Turn-and-talk is a classroom structure whereby children sitting close to one another engage in a brief conversation about what they are learning. In turn-and-talk, teachers give students a prompt for discussion. The prompt may be very general (e.g., “What do you notice on the cover of the book?”) or specific (e.g., “How do you think the main character is feeling, and why?”). Although turn-and-talk can be used in any content area, we feel it is particularly integral to the social nature of constructing meaning, thereby making it an invaluable tool in the reading classroom. You are likely to find that turn-and-talk is more efficient if you develop specific routines around it, teaching and practicing these routines in many contexts.