Teaching and Learning in HSE: Confidence and Competence

Bob Probst and Kylene Beers

On opening day, all of us were at Fishers High School to kick off the school year, and we all had the privilege to hear from Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. They shared some thoughts about their most recent book.

Kylene said something that morning that has stuck with me: “You cannot get to competence without first getting to confidence!” In response, I put together a series of blog posts for teachers at Riverside Intermediate to help build confidence in the ways we teach nonfiction reading strategies.

Today’s entry is summary of these three posts. If you’re interested in the full versions, I’ve included the links at the bottom.

1) Three Key Questions: Taking Students Further

After the opening day celebration, many of us were able to gather for a longer professional development session with Kylene and Bob. One of the things that Kylene said was, “Some teachers don’t realize that if they just stay out of the way, the kids who do well will keep doing well. How do we take them further?”

Throughout the day we were pushed to think about how we could help our students dig into the text, think deeply about it, and take away their own understanding of that text. Reading, especially nonfiction reading, requires an interaction between the reader and the text.

Best-Practice takes students further....

In order to get students to start that interaction with nonfiction, Kylene and Bob suggest we should start with three simple questions:

1. What surprised me?

2. What did the author think I already knew?

3. What changed, challenged, or confirmed what I already knew?

Kylene made a distinction between interest and relevance: “Asking these questions makes the reading more personal and relevant. Interest is not relevance! Getting kids’ attention is about interest. Keeping their attention is about relevance.”

This is what the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model is pushing us to do: Make learning authentic and relevant for our students.

2) A Question for Us: How Do We Define “Nonfiction” to Students

Kylene and Bob led us in a conversation about the definition of nonfiction. Take just a moment to answer these questions.

If you’re anything like me, the definition you are likely to share would be something similar to “not fake” or “factual” or “real.” I took a quick survey of the staff in my building, and created the word cloud below based on the definitions they shared with me. You’ll notice that many others define “nonfiction” the same way I did.

Kylene and Bob, however, pointed out a problem with the definitions many of us use with students. In Reading Nonfiction, Beers and Probst suggest variations on this definition:

“Nonfiction is that body of work in which the author purports to tell us about the real world, a real experience, a real person, an idea, or a belief.”

The key word here is purports.

For those of us who enjoy reading fiction, we know the excitement that goes with getting lost in the story of a book. We should not get lost in nonfiction writing in the same way that we get lost in fiction because the author’s purpose may slant the writing in some way. Not all nonfiction is “factual,” “true,” or “real.” In fact, some is intentionally untrue or misleading.

In their book, Kylene and Bob suggest age-appropriate ways for students to develop a deeper understanding of what nonfiction is and just as important, what it is not.

3. A Question about Purpose: Why is the Word “Purports” so Important?

To help understand how an author’s purpose plays a role, think about today’s coverage of the election:

All the major news outlets likely covered the same stories today. Since most of us can’t watch live, we can tune in to the news to see what happened. Depending on what station you turn to for your news, the message will be different. If you watch coverage of the story on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS, you will almost certainly see vastly different slants on the exact same event. You can find the same variations in the print media.

Why is it important to teach our students to take a
questioning stance when reading nonfiction?

If we teach our students this definition: nonfiction = not fake (something I specifically remember one of my teachers writing on the board), then how do our students process those varying takes on a news story? How do they read that email from a prince in the Middle East and realize that it’s a hoax? How do they become participants in a democracy when democracy relies upon an informed public? We have to challenge our students to enter reading with a questioning stance, to always look for the ways that authors might be trying convince us that their version of the message is the correct one.

If you have not yet read Reading Nonfiction, I can’t recommend it highly enough. This year I have seen examples of nonfiction reading instruction taking place in math, science, history, music, art, and language arts classes in our building. No matter what you teach, there are times that students will do some form of nonfiction reading in your classroom environment, and the strategies you use have the ability to impact the nonfiction reading skills of your students.

Help them see the value of strong reading skills by integrating the three questions, talking about the author’s purpose, and seeking out and discussing the nonfiction signposts in the materials your students are reading.

And don’t forget to sometimes just get out of the way of your students. If you teach them the tools, their conversation will be just as deep, if not deeper, than any our planned questions could generate.

Click the link to see Brian's Blog

If you’d like to read the three complete posts that I put together for the RSI staff, here are links. Feel free to add your thoughts on this topic in the comments section!

Post 1: How do we take them further?

Post 2: Defining nonfiction

Part 3: Finding the author’s purpose

Respond to Brian at bbehrman@hse.k12.in.us

We hope your week is a great one, HSE. Keep taking students further....

Your HSE Teaching and Learning Team