How to Teach Better: Master Reading Differentiation Strategies
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This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis. Episode 803, How to Teach Better, Master Reading Differentiation Strategies,

Today's sponsor is Propello, a remarkable K-12 teaching and learning platform which combines high quality curriculum with built-in student differentiation and supports. Stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more about these free resources that also include language translations, level text, and hands-on activities for your students. If you teach science, you'll want to check out Propello.

Propello. So today we're talking with Jennifer Cerevalo. She's a best-selling author, educator, and literacy consultant who creates research-based resources to support differentiated literacy instruction for teachers. Her popular books are the Reading Strategies book, Teaching Writing in Small Groups, and a Teacher's Guide to Reading Conference. She also has a podcast called

to the classroom conversations with researchers and educators. And today, Jennifer, we're going to talk about your new book, the Reading Strategies book 2.0, the 2023 version. So why did you feel the need to update to a 2.0 book? And what are the key differences between your new book and the first edition?

Great question. Well, first of all, it's great to be back with you, Vicky. The Reading Strategies book, the first edition, New York Times bestseller, why mess with a good thing, right? I felt like I'd only go to the trouble of doing the revision if I had a lot of new content, new information, and I could really make it super current and relevant for today's classroom. So there's been a lot

of changes in the last eight years since that book came out in terms of what people are focusing on and how people are approaching supporting kids with their reading. Some of the key differences include incorporating over 700 research citations across the book. So I worked with a phenomenal research assistant. In place of the text levels, used skill progressions to organize the chapters. I had a fantastic editor, Katie Ray, who worked with me on doing this massive reorganization and revision. And part of

The work of aligning all the strategies to skill progressions showed places where there were some gaps in terms of the progression of how to move kids along. And I found some opportunities to support stronger readers in eighth grade, ninth grade, to the higher level end, as well as some more foundational skills work that wasn't as present in the first edition. So altogether, there's over 100 new strategies plus 100 new pages of additional content

beyond those strategies. I replaced all the children's literature with children's books published in the last five years that make up the lesson language. So the lesson examples throughout the book, there's over 200 new charts in the book. It is just a really new book. That's just why I called it 2.0 rather than second edition. It's really rethinking, revisioning a new look at the same topic.

Let's talk about text levels versus skill progressions. Let's say a person doesn't know anything about either of those. Explain text levels, explain skill progressions and why skill progressions is an improvement. Well, I think...

One of the things that we're always trying to do as educators is make sure that kids are successful when they're reading. We're matching kids to books that they can be successful in and making sure that we have an eye on text complexity so that they're encountering and grappling with grade-level material. So these text-level systems...

were very popular, whether you're using a letter system like the Fountas and Pennell text level gradient system or Lexile leveling system or DRA leveling system. There's so many leveling systems out there, right? In the first edition, because people are using these leveling systems and it was a way to kind of organize within the chapter, you know, these are strategies that will help kids reading easier books. These are strategies that will help kids reading more complex texts. That's the system I used.

But what I found when it was out in the field is a couple of things. One is some people just weren't familiar with those leveling systems at all, and it confused them. Another thing I found was that people misunderstood the use of those levels as being about leveling kids, which was never the intention. It's more about highlighting text complexity challenges and what kinds of strategies help kids to understand those different challenges. But the

third big reason why I shifted from levels to skill progressions is that sometimes you'd have a student reading, let's say, a level M or Lexile 300 or whatever it was, text, and there would be 20 different options for what they could teach within this one particular goal. And it just wasn't a very elegant way to help teachers find the just right strategy for kids in that moment. Skill progressions, on the other hand, are a description of how work becomes more and more complex over time.

So, for example, if I'm looking at the goal of fluency, which is one of the chapters, and I look at the skill progression in that goal, I might see reads choppy word by word, then reads in two or three word phrases, reads in longer phrases, attends to ending punctuation. Those are increasingly complex things.

skills that kids can take on as they become more and more fluent, both with their phrasing and their prosody and their expression and their intonation. So by using that as the organizing principle and matching up strategies in an if-then scenario, so if the student is doing reading like this,

Then here are the three strategies you can teach. It helps teachers to be even more targeted and even more responsive to student needs. So what are some of the most effective strategies in the new book? How do they relate to research? So just kind of pull out some of your new faves.

It's a hard question to answer what are the favorites or what are the most effective because they're all effective depending on the kid. And that's the key that I want everyone to understand is that there's over 300 in this book, not because you're teaching all of them, but because it matters which ones you're teaching to which students.

So the child in front of you needs to dictate the strategy that you're teaching them. And what's right for one child is going to be different than what's right for another child. So for one child in your classroom, you might teach a strategy to help them with the goal of engagement. So it's a whole chapter on engagement motivation. Maybe you've got some learners in your classroom that you notice during reading time, they're not doing a whole lot of reading. There's research around helping students manage more complex tasks and support their

executive functioning skills by breaking up longer tasks into smaller chunks. So one of the researchers that I love in this area is Dr. Kelly Cartwright, who has a book on executive skills and reading comprehension. Some of the research she cites in her book is around helping kids to chunk longer tasks into shorter ones. So there's a strategy in the book helping kids to either set a timer or

and take breaks after every five, 10, depends on how long they can sustain reading, or place sticky notes in their book as little flags to stop and pause and take a, could be a body break. It could be just a quick meditation break. It could be a look around the room and refocus yourself break. So that's a research-based idea that is made practical for the classroom. For some kids, that's going to be what they need. But for a different student, like what about a student who needs help with understanding nonfiction texts and being able to determine what's

what the main idea of a text is? Well, there's a lot of research around the value of helping to teach kids text structures. And if we can help them understand the structure of the text, it can give them a clue to what the text is mostly about. If the text is set up in a cause and effect structure, then the way that I phrase my main idea statement should show both the cause and the effect. So by giving kids that frame, that language frame and that

clue to thinking about how the information is organized, that can really set them up to being able to determine the main idea. It depends on the kid. You believe in differentiated literacy instruction. Do you think that when a teacher has 30 kids in a room that it's possible?

When I was a classroom teacher, I taught in New York City and the cap there was 32, but sometimes I get an extra one or two beyond the cap. So yeah, my own experience is working with large classes. And it's because of that experience that I know how essential it is to differentiate. Because I'd have 32 third graders in my classroom, some reading on a first grade level, some reading on a fourth grade level. How am

going to do all whole class instruction all the time? How is that going to meet the needs of every kid in my class? So it's essential. And I think teachers need tools. They need their curriculum to understand their grade level expectations, grade level standards, and there needs to be some whole class instruction around that.

But they also need tools to be able to look at their students, figure out what their individual needs are, and whether it's pulling groups or doing parallel teaching with a co-teacher or working one-on-one in conferences, whatever structures you're using, you need different strategies to meet kids where they are.

So what cautions do you have for teachers? These are the biggest mistakes I see when people implement reading strategies or try to implement differentiated reading strategies. What are those mistakes? Yeah, I remember as a student myself being in a small group and that group I was in in September was the same as in June. And you had these groups, whether they called them by bluebirds and red group, yellow group, whatever. And they were just

I think we've outgrown that. We've seen that kids are going to be growing in all different kinds of dimensions throughout the year. And the biggest piece of advice I have is to keep groups flexible, keep them dynamic. Kids move in and out of groups and they change goals. The book is organized according to 13 goals and goals.

what your goal is in September may not be what your goal is in October. Like, let's say, let's take that engagement example. Hopefully we get through a strategy instruction and practice, we get that student engaged, choosing books they love, able to manage their distractions, focused on their reading. Well, then what's next for that particular reader? It's not about

their level at all, by the way. You could have a child who's capable of reading very complex texts who struggles with their engagement. It's really about what's my need right now. So keeping the groups flexible, changing up the goals, and really involving kids in the goal setting process whenever possible. I have a tool on my website that's free. You can download it. It's a self-reflection form. One page form. Kids answer a series of self-reflection questions and helps them to set their own goal. That can then be the driving force for how teachers create groups and the kids ask for it.

So it's not about being labeled with a level or a bird or a color, right? I'm in charge of my own learning. I'm taking ownership over what it is that I want to work on as a reader, what I think is most important. And my teacher's there to give me support in the form of strategies and guided practice and prompting and feedback.

So Jennifer, you talk to teachers every day and you know that teachers everywhere are stressed. The substitute teacher problem is impacting every teacher I know everywhere in every type of school. So teachers who already didn't have enough planning time have even less. As we finish, is there a strategy or two or a concept or two that you can speak to those stressed teachers of, okay,

everything blows up and you end up with without enough planning, which is pretty much every day. Really start in my book and just dig into these two areas because they're going to help you. What would those places be to start? The Getting Started chapter, which gives you an overview is only 30 pages.

And each chapter, each of the 13 goals has a very short introduction. So I'd read the getting started chapter, 30 pages, read the first two, three, four pages of each of the subsequent chapters. So you get a sense of what are your possibilities and then carry the book around with you. Don't take the stuff, write it into a plan book.

figure everything out, just carry it with you. Have it on your lap. And as you're weaning with a child, you sit down next to them. Fluency? Okay, flip to the fluency chapter. Main idea? Okay, flip to the main idea chapter. Many teachers I work with do this. They just carry it around with them and you can read right off the page. So I think that hopefully will save some planning time too.

Awesome. The book is The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 from Jennifer Cervalo. Your stuff is so great. I know the last time I had you on the show, we got such a great response to the podcast. So I hope that they will check the show notes, look at your bio, converse with you on social media and really dig in because our students, we talk about AI and I've got a lot of stuff of AI going on the podcast and in the

apps and writing about it, my newsletter, but all of it is requiring us to read and to comprehend. Thanks for coming on the show. Today's sponsor is the free and amazing tool Propello. Middle school science teachers, do you ever struggle because you feel like you're creating lesson plans instead of actually teaching? Propello is here to help you. Propello is a

free online platform that offers an amazing NGSS aligned science curriculum for grades six through eight with ELA lessons coming in the fall. With built-in student differentiation and support, every student gets a personalized learning experience that's designed for their unique needs. And the best part, you get time back in your day.

Propello's curriculum is focused on inquiry-driven instruction with high-quality resources and embedded supports like language translations for English language learners. Even if you already have a science curriculum, Propello is an excellent classroom-ready supplement with everything you need for a personal, fun learning experience for your students. So what are you waiting for? Head over to Propello and create your account today. Go to propello.com forward slash coolcatteacher. That's P-R-O-P-E-L-L-O.

P-E-L-L-O dot com forward slash Cool Cat Teacher and sign up today and stay tuned for their ELA curriculum coming in the fall. You've been listening to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. If you like this program, you can find more at CoolCatTeacher.com. If you wish to see more content by Vicki Davis, you can find her on Facebook and Twitter under Cool Cat Teacher. Thank you for listening.