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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast Episode 47: Ending the School Year Strong
As the school year winds down, educators face a familiar adversary: the summer slide. But what if we could armor our students with the skills and habits they need to emerge even stronger in the fall? Join us as we unfold a treasure trove of strategies with Dr. Carrie Hepburn from Compass PD to prevent this seasonal educational backslide. From the importance of reading volumes to daily writing exercises, we tackle the challenge head-on, ensuring that every learner has the tools to succeed.
This episode is an ode to the power of momentum, focusing on the final six weeks of the academic calendar as a crucial period for solidifying reading and writing skills. Dr. Hepburn shares many approaches to ensure students don't just maintain but thrive, discussing the use of choice to engage reluctant readers and techniques to foster self-efficacy and independence in our young scholars.
As we wrap up, we celebrate the joys of summer reading programs and the literary adventures awaiting our students. It's a heartfelt tribute to the transformative power of reading and writing. We invite educators to join us in turning the page on the summer slide and writing a new chapter of academic resilience and joy.
Hello Compass PD community, dr Carrie Hepburn here. I am really excited because this podcast episode is actually going to be a webcast that I recently did for the Iowa Reading Association. It's all about ending the school year strong. It's something that I'm really passionate about and around some work that I had done before I left the school district where I was serving and came an open Compass PD full-time. I'm hoping that it gives you some ideas and some tips that you can do in your organization as a leader and support. Also, if you're a building administrator or a classroom teacher, things you might consider doing the last eight weeks or so of the school year. Thank you, thank you. I am really excited to be here. I'm going to be using my dot cam and I will do my best to. I'm going to do my best to make sure that I don't talk too fast, because what I found was that, as I was planning, I kept getting more and more excited, which means I just keep adding more and more, and I don't want to do that to you. I'm sorry. Could everyone make sure they mute, because I'm getting like some. I don't know if anyone else is getting. Is anyone getting like back? Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's get this started. I want to say welcome to everyone. A couple of things that I'd like to share with you as we get going are my how to connect with me so you can contact me at any time. Feel free to take a screen, a shot or a picture, or what. I would love to know who you are, where you're from and what your role is. If you could add that in the chat box, that's going to help me, like customize this in the moment so that I can be really targeted in what I'm sharing with you today. Basically, I want you to know about you. I'm going to, because I can't so in that chat. All right, I'll share this screen again. I just wanted to see if it was coming up.
Speaker 1:Great, coordinator, first grade, third grade Okay, third grade. I wasn't sure if we would have any secondary teachers Okay, sixth grade, or high school teachers too. You never know. Okay. 12 language arts Okay, okay, this is good. This is helpful. All the things right, that's what I'm seeing. We have all the things here, so I better be fully prepared. That's what I'm hearing. Great, oh, yay.
Speaker 1:Majoring in elementary ed so fun. Thank you first of all, everyone. Thank you for serving in education. I am so grateful for you and those of you that are entering the field. It is the most wonderful profession that there is. So, yay, keep going, keep serving. All right. So I'm going to start with just a little story One.
Speaker 1:I used to work in a suburban school district outside of St Louis, missouri, and we had brought a consultant to end to work with us in literacy, and one of the questions when I was I was used to be a second grade teacher, a third grade teacher, and then I moved into a curriculum leadership role, and when I was a curriculum leader, one of the questions she asked me was do you have a summer slide or a gap when kids return during the school year? And I said yes, and she asked me what does that look like to you? And so I was naming off some of the characteristics that we noticed when kids about what we called summer slide. It does I don't care what people they can call it like learning loss or gaps in learning or what not, but summer slide is kind of a term that some people use. So some of the characteristics that we started that we would notice when kids would come back after their summer break was that we had students needing more interventions at the beginning of the school year than we did as the school year progressed on. So early in the year we would do our fast-bridge screener, we would give a chrysum curriculum an assessment on curriculum standards at mastery levels, and then we would gather teacher feedback. You know what they were noticing, the anecdotal notes that they were taking, and we would start to notice that students needed more reading interventions at the beginning of the year. And then there would be a decrease in the beginning of year screening scores from the previous end of year scores. So students who were entering third grade would have lower test scores on those screeners than when they left at the end of second grade. So we would see that across grades it was K8, we would see that typical trend happening in our district and we would notice that teachers were spending weeks to months reteaching skills that students had mastered, according to our assessments, by the end of the previous year. So we're spending lots and lots of time needing to reteach.
Speaker 1:So what I would like for you to do right now is just tell me in the chat box do you notice these kinds of things happening in your school year. Do you notice a summer slide and, if so, what are some of the characteristics you notice at your district may be different than mine or similar. Take just a moment and throw that in the chat box. Very similar, thank you, thank you. Yes, lower reading, lots of letter sounds, number, yep, yes, it's not just literacy. It's not only literacy. Is it Same things? Lower test scores, review, reteaching at the beginning of the year? Yes, there's a lot of reteaches Literacy and math, exactly. Thank you, robin. Students we're behind during the school years have the largest. That's such a great point, such a great point. Thank you, amy, for that. Lower reading level. Yes, reteach at the beginning, similar to what you noticed. Thank you, beth. With decreasing behavior and attention skills, that's noted. So true, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, so we all saw or seeing these same kind of things, and this is the next question she asked me. She said so, if you know it, it's happening. What are you going to do about it? And I was actually like taken aback by like, what do you mean? What am I going to do about it? We're working all year long to push kids at higher levels and higher learning targets and reading and writing and math and science and social studies. I don't understand what more you want from me. And she just said I just want you to think about it. And so what that did was that question sort of put me on a quest on what can I do that will help, what can I do to help support my teachers and us as a district to end the year strong? And so we started having these conversations as a district like what are things that we can do at the end of the school year that can help support students all summer long?
Speaker 1:So what we discovered was our most important teaching was the last six weeks of school, and a lot of times testing ends and then we're just kind of checked out and sort of coasting. At least that's how it was at my school and when I was out of the classroom then how it was in my district. So I'm not sure how it goes in yours, so I'm not. I'm just telling you what it was like for us. So what we learned was those most important. Our most important teaching was happening right before testing through testing on, and we discovered that we're setting students up to continue to do the work independently. So we needed to spend the last six weeks of school, getting kids ready to be independent all summer long. We knew that this was important because when you think about the brain, when we thought about the brain, we knew that we needed to get these skills, these behaviors, in place so they were automatic for kids and moved from the short term into the long term so they could transfer what they needed to be able to do the following year, like there are some skills that you have to have mastered for next level readiness, and so we looked at what are the most vital skills in the grade levels that students need to have mastered that they can continue all summer long without us and be ready for the next year.
Speaker 1:And so some of the things that we talked about were teaching students about self efficacy. So I want you to think for just a minute what self efficacy mean. What do you think about when you think about self efficacy? Please mute, if you could. So when you think about self efficacy, what are some things that kind of come to mind to you? Yes, students taking responsibility for their own learning, problem solving independently Awesome. Setting goals and knowing how to achieve them I feel like you all wrote this day today Taking charge control of their own learning Excellent. All of these so good. Enable to self talk through problems, teaching them to begin with the end of mind big rocks first, self talk I want to write that down so I don't forget it. Growth mindset Excellent, excellent. So many good ones here, thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, some of the things I was thinking about when I thought about self efficacy, which we see. I thought about independence. I thought about students being helping students with motivation. I thought about students learning how to seek feedback and I thought about helping students have the drive to do the work. So many of these things were things that you all had mentioned within the chat box. So one of the things that our team started to do was how can we help end the year strong so that kids do this work again and again all summer long and we can reduce the gap, that learning loss, that's happening during the summertime.
Speaker 1:So we discovered our most important teachings the last six weeks. We wanted because that students up to continue to do the work independently and successfully. We wanted to move our most vital skills from short term memory and to long term memory and so that kids could see the transference from one grade level to the next and from school to home, and then we wanted to teach students about self efficacy. So these are some of the things that we started talking about as a team and as a district. So sorry about my little mess here, we'll just keep on moving.
Speaker 1:So here are some things that we know about reading and writing. So we started thinking about what do we already know about reading and writing? Well, some of the things that we already know about reading and writing are that volume matters Like volume, and reading and writing are important, and we know that you can't really talk about reading without talking about writing and you can't talk about writing without talking about reading, because they work together. They're continuous, you grow one area and you grow the other. So we knew that that was important. So when we thought about volume, we were really thinking about the amount of text that we wanted our students to be reading, and so in kindergarten and first grade, we needed 12 to 15 books a week where kids were seeing that they were reading through about 12 to 15 books a week that were decodables, had high frequency words in them, that were just right and choice. Now I'm not breaking this all down for you, like how many of what, but just the volume of text that we wanted our students to get through. We also thought about for our second and third graders they needed to be getting through eight to 10 books a week that we want that happening in our schools, right, every week, every day. So again, we need that to be a mix of decodables just right and choice books Fourth and fifth grade. As those books become longer, more complex texts, we're looking at one to three texts a week just right, choice books, decodables. Decodables get tricky when we start to hit that fourth and fifth grade range, but they still are important for students to have available and access access to. So we've been getting really, if you struggle with finding decodable books, I don't our team has been really getting creative in how we're creating decodable books, where we're looking at the books that are the skills that students are practicing and then skills that they've had in the past, and so we're using that with chat, gpt to help us to create like small short passages. So that's just been something that we've been working on lately with some districts that are struggling finding decodables for kids in that fourth, fifth, sixth grade range and then sixth grade on, we like to see students reading at least one text a week. That is a just right and choice text. So if you have the opportunity for students to practice with decodable texts or passages at that sixth grade range, it's really helpful for them as they're doing some of those skills but it I know it's difficult to find. And so, besides just reading, when we think about writing, we want students to be writing every single day. So we know volume matters and that writing every day is critical and we like to see I threw this out there because not knowing the range 20 to 45 minutes of independent writing per day, depending on your grade level and what your structure, your timeframe, your makeup looks like. So that's how that looks. And then here's something else that we know about reading and writing Choice matters. We know that choice is really vital because choice increases student engagement and choice increases student motivation. So if we want to be able to do this volume of reading and volume of writing, then we need to offer choice as often as we can so we see higher levels of engagement and motivation with students.
Speaker 1:Take just a minute I threw a lot at you Take just a minute and share with us in the chat box what are you thinking so far Kind of what's going on in your mind. What are some thoughts that are coming to mind? Yes, thank you, amy. Give access to resources, books and databases so they can explore topics of interest. Great, thank you, eri. That's a great question.
Speaker 1:Do I give choice with limits? There's a it's so funny, I was just giving delivering professional learning yesterday in a school district. So when we talk about choice like in, you can give choice with limits. So a quick example regarding like writing, you could give choice on topic. You can give choice on genre. You can give choice on like the tools that they're using. You can give choice on. You can give choice on like the audience that they're presenting to, or, or you can give choice on different types of writing within a genre. Another thing that I think about when it comes to reading, you can give choice on like lots of different types of texts. You can give choice on. You know how they demonstrate their understanding, whether it's through processing, by writing, or it's talking about what they learned as they're studying a text. So there's lots of different ways that you can give choice. So, susan, that is, that is a valid point. So we're going to talk about some ways that we can help build habits, like it can be.
Speaker 1:It can be challenging when you have students who struggle with reading to get them to read this many, this many texts. What we do know about the science of learning is that that when we study the science of learning, when our brain, when things are hard, our brain has like two parts to it. So I'm kind of going off script right now. I apologize, but I think you can. I think you can handle it. So, or we wouldn't have asked the question right.
Speaker 1:So it has two parts. So we have the fast, the slow thinking brain and the fast thinking brain. And our slow thinking brain. Our brain is like lazy, naturally lazy. It doesn't like it when things are hard, and so you have to kind of trick it to get it motivated to do something that's hard. And you have to do it again and again and again and again so that it becomes less hard. And we do that in a variety of ways. So we can do that through setting goals, through setting purpose, letting kids know how it it aligns with real world relevance. When we set goals, we can make sure that they track the effort and they'll see that effort and goal setting like the amount of effort increases their ability to be able to do it and so that increases their motivation. So I could do. I spend days. Actually, days is where we talk and we learn and we study that.
Speaker 1:But but you're right, so it can be hard, like that's why we try to get kids through the writing process again and again and again, and in kindergarten and first and second kindergarten and first especially, we practice like generating ideas, rehearsing and flash drafting again so many times before we ever start teaching them about revising and editing. We try to get them where it's easier to be able to do that hard work and so the more that we can get kids to do it, the easier it gets and you can get them toward that volume. So first thing you do is set goals and track like effort toward those goals and that can help change the mindset where, even when it's hard, they'll do the work. So I'm just looking through this. I want to make sure make them be more. For 18 years, let me submit reading challenges.
Speaker 1:Books, that is a lot of books, yes, it is a lot of books, yes, and helping them read and use their time wisely outside of their school time is really helpful. So you might wonder okay, I didn't mean to, I hope I didn't rock anyone's world too much, but what can I do right now with my students, right? So I want to take us from like what do we know? What can I do right now with my students? Well, we can remind students of what we've taught them, we can reteach things that they need retaught and we can reinforce the habits of a reader and writer. So maybe we've been extra scaffolded or helped, but now it's like where the rubber hits the road, where you have to be able to do this independently.
Speaker 1:I want to talk to you about some reading habits that I would be working on the last six weeks of school with my students. So the last six weeks of school, these are the habits I would be working on with students. I would be setting goals with them. We can set goals on about the amount of time read, the number of pages read, the number of books read, the amount of books finished. You can set all kinds of goals around reading, but you could set goals on volume. So think about building your stamina.
Speaker 1:Other things that we can do is help kids reading habits that we can work with them on. Or what do I do when I'm stuck? So I'll give you some examples in just a little bit. But what do I do when I'm stuck as a reader? Another thing that we can do with students is we can help them, remind them that they need to think about what they're reading. So how do I engage in the text? One of the things that we can do is asking and answering questions about the text and jotting, like taking down notes. We could be sketching out what's happening and how a character develops from the beginning of the story until the end. We could be taking notes, using boxes and bullets, about big ideas, about nonfiction texts and ideas that we found that support it. There's a lot of different things that we can do that help us think about what we're reading and think about when we lose sight of or we start to get confused in our reading, after reading habits.
Speaker 1:Literally, I was in a high school teaching two weeks ago. I was teaching kids about finding their reading spot and setting up their environment for reading and what tools they needed to have close by to be effective during their reading time. So literally, I said if you need a spot that there's nothing around you, or you might need a comfy spot, you might need to have your headphones on and if you block out any distractions, but when I talked with middle school and high school kids, I said if those headphones are on, you can't have music that has words in it. You have to have music because that's going to confuse your brain. You can't focus on this and have all of these other things going on, and so I understand blocking out the noise, but make sure that you're blocking it out effectively and efficiently in ways that aren't distracting you from the big work that you're doing as a reader. So, talking about their reading spot and the tools that they need to be effective as readers, we practice that in class and we do that again and again, and you need to advocate for that. That's what I tell kids. You have to be an advocate. We tell kids that in the primary levels as well.
Speaker 1:Like what do you need? You know, do you need to be close to your reading partner? Do you want to have your book stacked in the order that you want to read them from easiest to hardest? You know there's a lot of different things that we'll do, and then we teach kids readers make plans. So maybe you have a goal and your goal is to finish one book by the end of the week a chapter book. And so if your goal is to finish one chapter book by the end of the week, well, how many chapters do I need to read throughout the course of the week in order to be able to reach that goal? Or maybe you have a goal of being able to read for 30 minutes straight. Well, tracking that goal and being able to make sure that you're reading for 30 minutes and in your independent reading time is one way that you might do that.
Speaker 1:Another hat and when I think about writing and I think about writing habits, they're going to be doing a lot of the same things that we just talked about in reading. That's the beautiful thing about reading and writing. So we want them, in reading or in writing, to start setting goals. Right, we want them to be setting big, ambitious goals, like I'm going to write for 20 or 30 minutes every single day and then be able to sit down and be doing that work. We also want them to have a plan. What do I do when I'm stuck Like, where do I go? Who do I call for for support? We want them to have a spot with all their tools. So writers have writing spots, they have a place that has all of their tools. I want to make sure you can see this without messing it up. Sorry about that. We want them to have a spot, like for me, when I'm writing, I like to have my anchor charts close by, I have different pens, I have some post-its because I like to add, like, different ideas as I'm making my plan or I'm working on my writing. I like to have a mentor text close by if I'm trying to mimic some of the things. So you can have all of these things close by.
Speaker 1:And then we teach kids how to make a plan. So one of the things that I just talked with teachers yesterday about about making their plan was I told them I want you to start taking your share in your writing workshop time and for the next week I want you to teach them how to make a plan. So at the end of workshop during share time, say you know what writers do? They make plans, writers make plans and I do the same thing in high school to. So think about writers, think about where they are right now. They think about what do I want to accomplish? What do I not want to forget? And they write that down on a post. It literally they'll go like first, I want to do this. Third, second, I want to do this. Third, I want to do this. And kids will write out the plan and they stick it in their notebook so that tomorrow when they come back, they have it right there available for them and they don't have to try to go back and remember.
Speaker 1:And so we do that same thing that I just shared with you, like I want to do this, this and this, and that's how they make their plan super simple, doesn't have to be difficult or complex, and something you need to know that I think about reading habits and when I talk with kids about this all the time is it's way more fun with friends to set goals or when I'm stuck wherever that is, when I'm stuck it's way more fun to sit down with my friends and talk with them like I'm stuck. What would you do? Can you help me out? It's a great strategy we can use in the classroom and it's a great strategy for us to really reinforce with our students right now as a reading and a writing habit. What else can we do? Well, I want to talk more about teaching students what to do when they're stuck. I really want to spend a couple of minutes in this and so things that you can teach students when they're stuck and I literally this is from Nell Duke and this was in a CDs at leadership, so this was one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that we can do when readers get stuck now do says is give students prompts for word identification. So we give these really simple prompts to them, like look at the word, slide through each sound by a different sound, break the word into parts, take that part off there. So we do these four. We teach them these four steps To be able to go through identifying how to do a word. This could be an anchor chart or if whatever resource you have in front of your students right now, whatever strategies you teach them, could be an anchor chart that they have available to them during their reading workshop time. It could be in there. If they have a take home folder, it can be something that you share on your website. Keeping it visible to kids so that they don't forget is really helpful. And again, this is from at leadership 2020.
Speaker 1:So it was kind of when all of the stuff was coming out regarding science of learning or science of reading, and so she was sharing like just be thinking about this. So prompts that we can use this comes back from Nell Duke again to prompts for monitoring comprehension and fix up strategies so we can teach kids to check it and think about does this make sense, did that make sense? Did it sound right? So when we're working with kids, something that we want to do is we want to wait, we want to give them time to be thinking about what's happening in the text. Sometimes we jump in too quickly. So teaching them teaching teachers really is the hard thing and reading partners not to jump in and try to solve the comprehension problem that that students have any having. And then teaching kids to reread again just to see where am I losing my understanding of the text, and maybe rereading that part of the text can be really helpful for them. And then, finally, another part that I loved from that same article I wanted to share.
Speaker 1:So these are again straight strategies I would have kids have down pat before the end of the school year because they can practice this again and again is prompts for the application of vocabulary, knowledge and strategies. So having them think about what the word means, have them think about context clues that they have within the text, like are there clues to what the word means within what I've read? And then are there any word parts that give me clues about what this word could mean? I've actually been teaching these strategies in high school classes lately, because it's almost like kids have kind of lost that and need to be reminded of it. When I work with kids in intermediate on through high school, I also teach them about when they read more complex maybe passages like on the text to look for repeated language because that can help them determine maybe the mood, the tone, the theme, the feeling of the speaker within a speech or something. So we'll talk about doing conceptual vocabulary sorts. I didn't have time for us to go into that today, but we will look for repeated kind of words. We'll look at for words that have a lot of emotion or meaning and that will oftentimes help us determine the meaning of some of the words that are surrounded within that text. Okay, so what I did just right now, I want to remind you, is like what we could teach students right now when they're stuck regarding reading. These are some things that we could teach them right now. We can practice between now and the end of the year so that they can continue this work in the summer. And before I, when I wrap up, I'll give you some ideas of what we tried to help kids keep doing this over the summer.
Speaker 1:So I want to move into writing, though I want you to think about the writing process. So, when you think about the writing process, we generate ideas, students rehearse and plan. We flash draft, we revise, edit, we celebrate. Now, when we work with kindergarten, first grade students, we spend a lot of times in this space here where they generate ideas, they rehearse and plan, flash draft generate ideas, rehearse and plan and flash draft and we do that again and again and again, and sometimes people will get upset like why don't we do this so much in kindergarten and first grade? Well, when it becomes remember the brain automatic and when we get to the strategies that process down which processes are hard, then it makes it easier as they move into writing more complex text. So when we get kids getting used to this habit, it really is where that's easy. It really does make their life a lot easier.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk to you about predictable problems in writing that you can work on based on the writing process. So these we wouldn't expect kids in the summer to be writing like complex text or anything, but maybe they would, but not chances are high. They probably are. So some of the predictable problems we face when it comes to generating ideas we can alleviate by teaching students multiple strategies strategies for idea generation you have some that you've been teaching students already. Your resource, if you have have one hopefully has lots of strategies. I highly recommend Jennifer Cerevello's the Writing Strategies book. I know that's not a new book. That's a book that has tons of simple things that we can teach kids that they can go do immediately. I literally taught teachers, had them choose like three strategies two to three strategies that they could work on per genre and some that might work across genres and said I don't want you to to try all of them, I just want you to try a couple of them that have some flagged in case you need to work on it for, like, reteaching for kids. So teaching kids a couple of strategies for idea generation would be really helpful, teaching students different types, different types of writing and different purposes of writing. So they'll need to know, like what are all the different ways I could write in narrative writing? What are all the different ways I might write in informational writing? How about, like persuasive or opinion writing? Helping kids see and connect it to real life is really motivating for them, and giving them choice within those genres and showing them that they do have choice can help increase engagement and for them to apply those strategies more.
Speaker 1:Another place that gets really tricky for kids is when it comes to rehearsing and planning, that rehearsal planning phase. Oftentimes, if we see students struggling with drafting what we will, when they struggle with drafting, it means that they need more time in generating ideas and rehearsal and planning. So they need more time in this space and so when it comes to that rehearsal and planning, we try to teach kids multiple planning strategies, like the beginning, middle and end. So yesterday I had a special education teacher who was like my kids are really struggling with composing a text that has organization. So I have kind of a mess. I'm sorry. I was just telling Danny. I'm not like even at my house. I'm on the road right now, so the lighting isn't what it normally is, which is throwing me off and I don't have all my things close by, so you're getting a little improvised version of me. You know navigating this, but with that I was showing her like her notebook.
Speaker 1:I said something you could do is as simple as taking like a piece of plain paper or your notebook, put three post-its on it. And I do this with little kids, I do this with high school kids, I do this with all kids and I'll say okay. So when I talk about a planning, strategy could be tell me the beginning of your story. It's touch and tell. Tell me the beginning of your story, okay, tell me the middle of your story. Tell me the end of your story. So that's touch and tell. You can do that on post-it notes. I've done it physically with three sheets of paper.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I can do is say hey, I want you to sketch me the beginning part of your story here. Sketch it out, right. Sketch the middle part of your story out here. Sketch the end part of your story out here. Just sketch it. And then I'll go work with other kids and then come back to them. So I'll let kids sketch it, or I'll say what's the beginning of your story about?
Speaker 1:It's gonna be about the time I went to the park and then here, so they might just write it out like that, so they could touch and tell. They can sketch it out or they can just write down an idea. So this is the time I went to the park. I went down the big slide, giant slide, slide, and then the end I broke my finger, broke my ankle, I don't know. I just totally made this up, but you get the gist. So you can use just three post-its or three pieces of paper and teach kids a planning strategy. Okay, another planning strategy that we use is boxes and bullets. So I might, when I'm working with kids for informational text or persuasive opinion, they'll put the main idea of their topic and then the supporting details, just like that A box, main idea, supporting details, bullets. So that's just a couple of strategies that I have right off the top of my head as I'm sitting here talking with you and I'm sure that you have even more than that and then I had another thought about that. Oh, another strategy that I teach kids when it comes to rehearsal and planning is talking with their partner and working with their partner to make a plan. That's something that is incredibly helpful and really beneficial to kids.
Speaker 1:What else can we do? I'll throw this out here at you. We can teach kids how to access text when there aren't any, which I saw in the chat already. That's already on your mind right now. Something that we can do right starting tomorrow, is we can start reading series books in our classes and read only the first book of a series of different series books.
Speaker 1:Pick different series, pick different books series books with a couple of things in mind. So keep different levels of series, okay, the amount of books within a series so a series maybe with three books in a series versus oh, and maybe four or five books in a series or eight books in a series, something like that at the different levels, because there's a couple of things. One, finishing a series. Think about how you feel when you finish a series on Netflix or you finish watching friends, like the whole series, all the episodes, like that feels like a badge of honor, like, oh, I finished the series. It's the same in reading. So you want to be really intentional about different series books that you're putting in front of kids. You want to read that first one to them to get them hooked and help them continue wanting to read the rest of that series so they get that badge of honor. Also, something that we know about series books is if you can get kids hooked on reading a series people who are readers for life are often series book readers and so that if we can get kids hooked on a series, that helps them have that reading identity of being a reader for life. And then another thing that we can do is we can set big, ambitious goals and explain the importance of being a reader and writer and how it impacts life, how it impacts you as an adult, how it will help them next year set them up for success.
Speaker 1:So I want to go back to my story of the consultant asking me what do you have summer slide? What are you going to do about it? So we started doing all of these things. What can we do in our classrooms right now? But then we sat down and we said we need to find a way to encourage our students to read and write all summer long. So they're going to leave us. There's only so much within our locus of control. Right, they're going to leave us, but what are some things that we can put in place as an organization that might help encourage these habits, these behaviors that we want. That would decrease that summer slide. So I'm going to share with you don't try all of them. Try something. Maybe, if you want, some works better than others. It's trial and error. You're doing your action research right.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that we did was and people do this during the school year and there's schools all the time is one book one school or one book one district, where everyone got a copy of the text and we all the families did, and then we had opportunities for people to come together and talk about it and celebrate. A lot of times it was virtual learning, sometimes it was getting. There would be maybe literacy nights somewhere in the district that people could could join, but one book one school when district, the opportunities to talk about those. But something that was a hit was we set up we had opportunities for kids to join different clubs, reading and writing clubs, because what's more fun than being part of a club? We had support from our library media specialists. We had some teachers that wanted to take this on. You know, maybe like a specific series of books that they were like, hey, I'll do a reading club on this, and it didn't have to. It was open to any kids within the district but or some different writing clubs like writing for a purpose or creative writing or some sort of almost like a camp kind of thing. But the clubs were virtual meetings, right, it wasn't something that they had to meet in person.
Speaker 1:This was a hit at my school so we started doing this quite a while before we started thinking about this. We thought it was just fun. But we were like caught you, we caught you reading and writing, like in public places. So we would. We would strategically have a sign up for the library because we were trying to get kids to go to the library so we would have teachers at different times be like hey, who can be at the library? But we wouldn't tell kids when we would be there. But it would encourage families to go and when we would catch them reading or writing or they're reading or writing at a library or a restaurant.
Speaker 1:So we tried to encourage our restaurants. Like kids would write, create reviews for restaurants that the restaurants could, you know, highlight or whatnot. We would give them things like coupons so the coupon could be to. Some of our schools had book vending machines. Most of them didn't, but our title. Schools could use funds on book mt vending machines where our other schools couldn't. It could be a coupon for free ice cream at McDonald's or slushie, or everyone around us likes certain stuff at our, our gas station, like they love gas station slushies or gas station food, food or something. So we would do that and then we would try to highlight all of this and encourage our families and students to highlight reading and writing on social media. So these were some things that we were just really trying to get buy-in from our stakeholders and get them to think about the importance of continuing this all summer long.
Speaker 1:Did we think kids were going to be reading eight to ten books a week or a novel a week? Probably not. But if we could get them to do more than they were, that was going to help us as teachers, and if we could get them to keep writing, whether it's for fun or journaling or creative storytelling in a writing club, it wasn't going to hurt. That's what we knew. So please know those volume numbers that I was sharing with you. We share those with parents and all of that, but we also know summer, summer, so we just encouraged it.
Speaker 1:So some things that you could think about are this Like how can we make sure that all kids have access to the materials that they would need? These were things that we had to think about, like books, notebooks, writing supplies. One of the things that we did was we were able to get our library to come to the school, so kids from for the library and then, if parents couldn't get them to the library, they could access books on like an app through Libby I think it's Libby, it's Libby, I know it's Libby, that's one, but they could have access to books that were online or if they could get to the library, or if you had a mobile library, kids could check books out through the mobile library. Some of our schools did have access to a mobile library our schools that had access to the mobile library. So we made sure that kids had notebooks and writing supplies when they went home. We also made sure that they had copies of the anchor charts and the things that we were using. So some of the anchor charts, like I shared with you. Those would be copies that would be sent home like in a notebook or a packet a summer literacy kit have you? That would set them up for success.
Speaker 1:We would think about, like, what do we already have in district right now that could help us with this initiative, you know, with when it came to those notebooks or those writing supplies or those books. What do we have right now that we could do? We have a surplus of books that we could give to kids that maybe don't have access to text. Do we? Have? We learned so many systems through COVID of like drive through and having things on hand. We always have a surplus of books that are printed. So when you think about decodable text and having decodable text available for kids, that was something that we typically had printed off, so that would be easy to send home because they would just be sitting in a, in a closet, in a box.
Speaker 1:So, and then we would think about who in our who could help us with this, like, who could be part of, who in our community could help us organize, celebrate, highlight all of this.
Speaker 1:So, whether it's restaurants, our PTOs, our PTAs, our parent clubs at that secondary level, who would be interested in helping us cheerfully this big work. So that is what we've started and started doing to try to help close this gap and and definitely there's been good We've seen highs, we've seen things work. We've seen things that were like, ooh, we're going to tweak this for the for the next year, but we found that this really helps get everyone involved, everyone buy in and supporting that learning all summer long, so that we're seeing a less, less of an impact on student achievement at the beginning of the year and that loss. So, as I wrap up, here's what I would love. I would love for you to take a minute to share, like as we're, as I just threw all this out at you, what are some ideas that are coming to mind to you. Throw those in the chat box so that we can grow this, this idea bank up and make it even better, moving forward.
Speaker 2:Sounds like Daniel. Who is that?
Speaker 1:Dr Kerry Heplin, you might want to mute. Yes, courage, that. Oh, the battle of the books, that's fun. We have, like Mark Twain nominees, or you know, books that that kids try to read over the summer. Oh, that's. By a self addressed stamped envelope, oh, perfect, march Madness, any other ideas? Oh, that's a little. The libraries, those are so fun, that's a great idea. Yeah, well, as we wrap up, I know I just want to tell you thank you. This was really. It was really fun talking about some of my favorite things reading and writing. I hope that you walked away with a couple of ideas that you could use and please do not hesitate to reach out. Have a good day everyone.
Speaker 2:All right, sorry, I almost forgot to unmute there. Dr Hepburn, thank you so much for the good information. I always feel like there's going to be this magical thing that I'm going to figure out sometime. This that needs to be done, and it's kind of heartwarming to know like the work is. The work that we do with reading and writing is important. So thank you for sharing so much good stuff. I did want to mention that Dr Carrie Hepburn is her company Compass PD. I'm not going to explain it well, but I just wonder, carrie, if you could just explain what Compass PD is, just for us in Iowa to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, compass PD is a professional learning organization, so we work in school districts across the nation and we teach them about the the science of learning. We teach them about evidence and research based practices in instruction. A lot of people know us regarding reading and writing. We work with all content areas, but we support schools with their implementation of curriculum, instruction and assessment. So we do lots of things. We would love your help. We have set an ambitious goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students in the 2023-2024 school year. Share this podcast with a fellow educator and reach out to us so that we can talk with you about how we can best support you and your school district and meeting those ambitious goals and providing professional development that meets your needs. So I'm going to have a great day.