Fitting CRJ into your week

This page helps you decide where CRJ goes in your week. Critical Reading Journeys (CRJ) is built for the advanced readers in your classroom, and it runs on its own. A student logs in, reads a story, and talks about it with a Reading Buddy. The Reading Buddy is a conversation partner on the screen. It asks the student questions about the story and waits for the student to answer. When the student finishes, you get a report and a transcript. The report is a one-page summary of how the student handled the story. The transcript is the full conversation, word for word.

You do not need to teach a lesson, prepare anything, or grade anything. You set up the accounts once, and then you look at the reports when you have a few minutes.

So the question is not “how do I add CRJ to my lessons?” It is “where do my strongest readers already have time that could be better used?” Most teachers find that time in independent reading or in homework. Both are described below, followed by three other arrangements some teachers use.

One reading a week is the pace CRJ is built for. Each grade has 36 stories, one for each week of the school year. The stories open in order. When a student finishes one, the next one becomes available. In our spring survey, every classroom teacher said once a week was a realistic pace. A student who wants more can do two a week. Less than one a week, and the habit never forms.

During independent reading

This fits any teacher who already has independent reading or choice time in the week. It works best when two or three students finish everything early and read well above the rest of the class.

Once a week, your advanced readers do their CRJ story during independent reading time. They use a laptop, Chromebook, or tablet. The rest of the class reads as usual, and nothing about your routine changes. Those students spend one of their reading blocks on a challenging story and a conversation about it, and when they finish, they go back to their own book. Later in the week, you open the transcript or the report to see how it went.

It works because independent reading is where advanced readers most often coast. They are reading, but nobody asks them anything about it. A CRJ story gives one reading block each week a text that stretches them and a conversation that asks them to explain their thinking.

Here is what to tell the student. “This is your reading for today. Your Reading Buddy is going to ask you what you think. Say as much as you can, and use the story to back it up.” That is the whole introduction. The Reading Buddy takes it from there.

As weekly homework

This fits teachers whose advanced readers have homework anyway, and who would rather it be a story and a conversation than a worksheet. It also fits a teacher who has no spare device in the room but knows the students have one at home.

Tell your CRJ students that the next story is due by Friday, or whichever day you choose. Each student logs in at home, reads the story, and talks it through with the Reading Buddy. This usually takes one sitting of about 20 to 30 minutes. The next time you look, the transcript and the report are waiting for you. There is nothing to collect and nothing to grade. The report shows you how the student did, and the transcript shows you every word the student wrote.

It works because reading homework has always had a gap in it. The student reads alone, and nobody is there when the thinking happens. With CRJ, the thinking happens in the conversation, and you can see it. If you want to, open Monday’s class with, “I read your conversation about the story, and I want to hear more about what you said at the end.” Most weeks, you will not need to say anything.

If a family asks what this is, one sentence usually does it. “It’s a reading program for students who are ready for harder stories. Your child reads a story and then talks about it with an online reading partner that asks questions instead of giving answers. I can see the whole conversation, and so can you if you’d like to look together.”

Three other ways teachers use CRJ

These come up less often, but each one works.

CRJ can be one station in your reading rotations, for the students who are ready for it. A rotation slot is often shorter than a whole story and conversation, and that is fine. A student can stop partway through and pick up where they left off next time, using the Resume Reading button on their home page. Headphones are not needed, because the Reading Buddy writes rather than speaks.

Gifted specialists often use CRJ as the independent work in a pull-out session. Each student works on their own story while the teacher meets with students one at a time. Because the stories open in order, a group that starts together stays roughly together, and when several students have finished the same story you have an easy group conversation ready to go. A Teacher Brief, a short page about each story that we are publishing in October, will give you a few questions to ask.

Some teachers add a short conversation the next day. Students do the story as homework, and the next day you spend five minutes with the group on one question from it. You do not need to prepare a lesson. Open the transcripts the night before, notice where students disagreed or where one of them said something surprising, and start there.

What stays the same, whichever way you use it

• The stories open in order, one at a time. You choose which grade’s stories a student works in. CRJ chooses the story. You can move a student to a higher or lower grade’s stories at any time. Page 1, Getting started, shows you how.
• The student does the thinking. The Reading Buddy asks questions. It never gives the answer, and it never points to the passage the student should have found. Everything in a transcript came from the student.
• You get a report every time. Every finished story gives you four ratings, usually with a quotation from the student’s own words under each one, and the full transcript. Standards ratings appear after a student has finished four stories.

Is CRJ an intervention tool?

No. CRJ is for the students who do not need intervention. It is built for the readers who are already above grade level and have run out of challenge in the regular program. An intervention program gives a struggling reader more support on skills the rest of the class already has. CRJ gives a strong reader harder stories and harder questions than the class is getting. If you are looking for something for students reading below grade level, CRJ is the wrong tool, and we would rather say so now than have you find out in week three.

Two situations look like intervention and are not. Some schools schedule CRJ during an intervention block, the part of the day when students split up by need. That works well, as long as the students on CRJ are the ones who are ready for more while the rest of the group gets support. CRJ is the enrichment half of that block, not the intervention half. And some strong readers struggle with CRJ at first, most often at Dig In and Weigh It, the second and third of the four stops on the small map above every conversation, where the Reading Buddy asks how the story is built and asks for the evidence behind an opinion. That is not a sign the student needs intervention. It is usually the first time anyone has asked them those questions, and page 4, The four phases, explains what to expect.

If someone asks where CRJ fits in a tiered system such as RTI or MTSS, the plain answer is that it is enrichment for students already above grade level, not a tier of intervention.