Reading Refresher
By Maryann Manning

Small group discussion after independent reading is a big hit in Mazie Marchiony's classroom.

Mazie Marchiony is like almost every middle school reading teacher I know: she's still searching for a better way to teach. Mazie will tell you that during her more than 25 plus years of teaching, she has tried every form of book report, journaling, and discussion technique that she's read or heard about.

When Mazie decided to refine her reading curriculum, she wanted to improve reading comprehension and her students' attitudes toward reading so they would become life-long readers. She had five non-negotiables for her reading curriculum:

• the need for self-selection of quality literature
• volume of reading
• peer interaction
• individual conferences
• strengthening of the reading/writing connection

Mazie wanted a reading workshop where most of the time was spent reading real books. She had experienced so much success with class novels that she decided to increase her use of literature study groups with lots of discussion. The students self-selected their own books and the students who chose a particular book became the discussion group. It was interesting to observe the students choosing books because they listened to their friend's recommendations when determining which book to read.

Book discussion groups
In the beginning, Mazie participated in the discussion groups, but as the students became more adept at conducting their own groups, she eventually moved to being more of an observer. She tried constantly to improve her questioning skills so that the students heard her asking good questions. The students loved to talk and showed no hesitation in participating in the discussion groups. Mazie encouraged her students to use sticky notes to identify places in the text they want to discuss, and places where they think others might disagree and have a different point of view.

Mazie found that during the course of a semester, students increased their thinking skills and were more willing to share their ideas with each other.

Individual conferences
The students thrived on the attention they received during individual conferences. From Mazie's perspective, the conferences were her best form of assessment because she was able to really evaluate and observe students' understanding and enjoyment of text. In the beginning, most students were reluctant to say anything negative about a book or author, but as the semester went on, they became more honest. She tried to have a five-minute conference with each student once a week while the other students were reading.

Journals
Journaling provides a window on the student's minds. Mazie's students liked the immediate response she was able to give them. Since reading is the purpose of the reading workshop, Mazie only spends a little time writing. The last 10 minutes of each 45-minute period was spent writing on the computers. She then typed her response, printed and gave it to the student. She found that her students enjoyed writing on the computer and usually wrote more. In fact, the more she wrote to them, the more they wrote to her. Some students wrote thoughts that they weren't willing to say in a discussion group. There was usually at least one student each semester who didn't want to write on the computer and preferred pencil and paper. Mazie accepted the physical journal and responded by writing in margins as she had always done.

Increasing confidence
Mazie felt that the literature discussion groups, individual conferences, and the use of journals helped her to realize many of her classroom community instructional goals. Her revised program resulted in an increased feeling of confidence in her classroom. Now she wants to expand her collection of multiple copy books to include more on contemporary topics because those are the ones her students seemed to enjoy most. She also wants to find more magazines that middle schoolers enjoy to include in her library.

Mazie, like most good teachers, is still searching for the perfect plan. Teachers must continue to reflect and refine before making curriculum decisions based on very individual circumstances. We all work in different classroom situations with different mandates from the principal, school board, state department of education, and federal program guidelines. We all are informed by our philosophy of how children learn, the needs of our students, our teaching experiences and the new ideas that enter our world in the form of ideas from magazines, journals, books, professional development sessions in our school, in the district and in various organizations.

Excellent professional books
I'm glad that Mazie used literature discussion groups as a major reading strategy in her reading workshop. Almost all of the well-known reading authorities recommend literature discussion in small groups after students read independently. I've been enamored with that concept since reading the book Grand Conversations by Maryann Eads and Ralph Peterson (Scholastic, l989). Many excellent professional books on literature study have been written. Try Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom by Harvey Daniels (Stenhouse, 2002), The Literature Circles Resource Guide by Bonnie Campbell Hill et al (Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2001), and Book Club: A Literature Based Curriculum by Taffy Raphael et al, (International Reading Association, 2002).

Thank you, Mazie, for sharing your successful middle school reading program with us. Your story helps us all as we refine what we do in our own classrooms.

Maryann Manning is on the faculty of the School of Education, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.