Your first four weeks

This page is a plan for your first month with Critical Reading Journeys (CRJ). It assumes your students will do about one story a week, in whatever way you chose on page 2, Fitting CRJ into your week. Each week has one thing for you to focus on. None of it takes more than a few minutes of your time.

Here are a few words you will see on this page. The Reading Buddy is the conversation partner on the screen that asks your student questions about the story. The transcript is the full conversation between the student and the Reading Buddy. The report is the one-page summary you get after each story. A grade band is the set of 36 stories for one grade level.

Before week 1: set up once

Try a story yourself. Go to readingjourneys.com/demo and work through the sample story with a Reading Buddy. It takes about fifteen minutes, and you will see exactly what your students will see. The story will look hard for the grade. That is on purpose: the stories are written to be read with the Reading Buddy, not on their own, and the Buddy’s questions send the student back to the text. Do not lower a student’s grade band on the strength of a preview.

Create your students’ accounts. Getting started walks you through it. Keep the list of usernames and passwords where you can find it. You will hand them out, and you will hand at least one of them out again.

Choose each student’s grade band. The stories for each grade are already written above that grade’s reading level. So an advanced fourth grader belongs in the grade 4 stories to begin with. Start there unless you already know that a student reads two or more years ahead. You can move any student up or down after the first story, and week 2 below reminds you when.

Test one device on the school network. Before the first session, have one student log in on a school device, at school. The most common reason a first week goes badly has nothing to do with reading: the district’s web filter blocks the site, or the classroom devices turn out to be phones, which CRJ does not work on yet. If the page will not load, ask your technology office to allow readingjourneys.com. CRJ works on laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets.

Pick the day. Choose the day and time, or the due day if it is homework, and tell the students in week 1. The routine forms in week 2, and it forms around whatever day you picked.

Week 1: the first story

Introduce it in five minutes. Students do not need a tutorial. Tell them four things:

• This is a reading program for students who are ready for harder stories. The stories will look hard. That is on purpose. The Reading Buddy is there to work through them with you.
• The first time you log in, you will pick a Reading Buddy. That is who you will talk to.
• The Reading Buddy will ask what you think. Say as much as you can, and use the story to back it up. If you are not sure, say what you are thinking anyway. You can type your answers or say them out loud.
• If you do not know a word, tap it. A definition will pop up.

The first conversation usually runs eight to ten exchanges and fits in one sitting. Above the conversation, the student sees a small map with four stops: Get the Story, Dig In, Weigh It, and Make It Yours. The Reading Buddy moves the student from one stop to the next. First it checks that the student has the story straight. Then it asks how the story is built. Then it asks for an opinion backed by the text. Last, it asks the student to take an idea from the story somewhere new. Page 4, The four phases, explains each stop. A student who shows they understand moves on quickly. A student who does not gets another question at the same stop. Nobody is told the answer.

First-time students tend to write too little. Some write one sentence when the Reading Buddy wanted a paragraph, and the Buddy keeps asking. Others are surprised that the Buddy pushes back when they say something vague. Both are the program working as designed. Say nothing yet; week 2 is the time to coach it.

When a student finishes, the report for that story appears on your side. It has four ratings, usually a quotation from what the student wrote under each one, and a link to the full transcript. Read the transcript first, not the ratings. The first story is a student learning a new kind of conversation, and the transcript shows you that.

Week 2: keep the rhythm, and check placement

Keep the schedule. The second story is where the routine forms. Same day, same time, no new instructions.

Now look at placement. With one report in hand, you can tell whether a student is in the right grade band. There are two signs to look for.

• If the story was easy for the student, move them up a band. The signs are a short conversation, the Reading Buddy moving them quickly from stop to stop, and high ratings. Page 1, Getting started, shows where to change the band, and the next story the student starts will come from the higher grade.
• If the story was a struggle, moving down a band is fine. The signs are the Reading Buddy asking the same thing several times at one stop, and short answers that do not use the story. The student is not told about the change.

Most students will be right where they are. Placement is not a one-time decision. Adjust it whenever the reports suggest it.

Watch for short answers. If a transcript shows a student answering in single sentences and the Reading Buddy asking the same thing twice, that is the one thing worth coaching this week. Tell the student, “A paragraph gets you a better conversation than a sentence. Next time, tell it more.”

Week 3: find something to say

Read one transcript closely. By the third story, a student has a recognizable way of talking to the Reading Buddy. Read one transcript from start to finish. Find the moment where the student said something you did not expect: a connection, an objection, or a piece of evidence you would not have picked. It is there in nearly every transcript by week three.

Then tell the student. One minute is enough. “I read your conversation about the story. When you said the narrator wasn’t telling the whole truth, that was a sharp thing to notice.” Students who learn that a teacher reads these conversations write more in them. This is the cheapest way to raise the quality of a student’s work in CRJ, and it costs you a minute a week.

Do not compare students to each other. With three stories each, the progress charts start to show a line, and it is tempting to rank students. The charts are built to show a student against their own earlier stories. A student who went from needing help at every stop to needing help at one stop has done more than a student who started high and stayed there.

Week 4: the reports fill in

The standards ratings fill in. A student’s progress page, the page that shows the student’s ratings across stories, lists the Common Core reading standards for the student’s grade band. After the fourth story, each standard is marked Developing or Proficient. A standard becomes proficient when the student has reached level 3 or higher, on the four-level scale the reports use, in three of the last four stories. That is why nothing shows until there are four. Page 5, Finding the reports, shows where the standards sit on the page and what they mean if your state does not use Common Core.

The charts now show a trend. Four stories is enough to see which direction a student is moving on each of the four measures the progress page charts (page 5, Finding the reports, names them). Look for the one moving slowest. That is where a question in class can help, and the Reading the Reports guide has two things to try for each measure.

Decide three things for the rest of the term. Is the pace right, or does anyone want two stories a week? Is everyone in the right grade band? Is there another student who should be doing this? Week four is a good time to add a student, because you now know exactly what to tell them.

What early success looks like

You will know the first month worked when three things happen. A student asks when they can do the next story. A transcript shows an idea the student did not have before the conversation. And you notice that CRJ has cost you less than ten minutes a week. All three usually happen by week four. If one of them has not, write to us at support@readingjourneys.com and tell us what you are seeing. A short note from a teacher in the first month is the most useful message we get.