Notice and Note - Strategies for Close Reading!

Last night 7 other teachers and myself met in my classroom to attend the FREE webinar by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst on their book Notice and Note. The webinar was hosted by Heinemann who are also the publishers of this amazing classroom resource that is helping students across the country! If you haven't yet purchased or checked out this book you can purchase from Heinemann here!

The webinar was a short, but engaging 1/2 hour on Talking About Texts: What Matters!

Kylene Beers co authored this book and you can read more about Kylene on her blog here, you can follow her on Facebook here, follow her on twitter here and finally read about her on Heineman here. Bob Probst who also co authored the book can be read about on Heinemann here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

The webinar was focused on engaging students in authentic conversations about text. Bob and Kylene were discussing ways to move away from monologic questions (check for understanding) to a dialogic question where students are (creating understanding). They believe that monologic questions should still be used when a teachers goal is to check for understanding. However, when we want students to go deeper in their conversations and to really create understanding in their text, we need to be asking them dialogic questions.

As shared by Beers and Probst when dialogic conversations are used students really begin to create understanding. This slide was shared of the benefits of dialogic conversations!

If you are like me, you may be wondering how can I get kids talking in this way. It all begins first with getting our students to turn and talk authentically. Then as teachers we guide the class to change this language over time. However, according to Beers and Probst some of the students that are ready to move on will automatically guide other students in the process as well. We need to get our students to be independent thinkers and allowing them to work harder through discussion and dialogue is one way to get them there. We need students to slow down and think about what is happening in the text, and begin to question the text and notice the sign posts!

It was stressed if we can change how kids talk about texts, this will change how kids think about a specific text, and eventually this changes how kids think about any text! Bottom line: we must find ways to ensure kids are talking and thinking about texts!

According to Beers and Probst if you really want kids to have dialogic conversations we need to turn the questions over to them as well and we need to just let them talk!

After the webinar there was a Twitter conversation here is the link to the Twitter feed. Finally, for a link to more information about this great book and the webinar watched tonight, click here and for great resources on the Notice and Note Facebook page click here.