It’s More Than A Renowned Buddy Reading Program!

Posted on February 9th, 2008 by Samantha Lundin Thom.
Categories: Pro-D, Literacy.

Ever dreamed about having a classroom where each child was taught in a one-on-one environment? Where every student contributes to classroom discussion? Where one student takes the initiative to walk over to another who’s struggling with a new concept to teach them a strategy that they feel they’ve mastered? Are you familiar with the old adage: “the best way to learn something is to teach it”? Well, Glenview Elementary School in Prince George District 57 has established a learning culture throughout the entire school that is based on these principles.

I went to Glenview to learn their award-winning strategies for Buddy Reading; but what I found was a school of educators and learners, across all ages, that is typical in every way but one: they have greased the wheels of learning and maximized their time and resources to build a school that does its job so well, it exceeds expectations (I hear your growns, but I’m so impressed and inspired, that I’m at a loss for words). I went to Glenview because I kept hearing about their Buddy Reading program.
While Deb Koehn and her colleagues have profoundly deepened students learning by using formative assessment and teaching meta-cognitive learning techniques, I believe that their students’ success is also due to the staff’s unified goals for their students, and the team-based approach they take to achieve them.

The staff at Glenview Elementary take on the task of teaching students head-on like an athlete setting out to win the World Championships. Using a district grant, the entire teaching staff takes a day roughly once a month to discuss strategies and develop plans for how they will meet the learning needs of every child at the school. This is not about developing policy to deal with behavioural issues, this is about refining pedagogy, striving to improve practice, setting learning goals, and deciding on unified strategies. They attend workshops as a team, they examine promising practice as a team, they develop their teaching goals as a team, and they recite a mantra every step of the way, to stay on track: focusing on “moving forward” toward ever-increasing student achievement.

Every classroom uses the same scaffolds to deliver their lessons: The Daily Five (for independent literacy work), Words Their Way (spelling), Reading Power, Tony Stead’s RAN research model, Word Walls, Math Makes Sense, starting each lesson with a clear learning intention, engaging students in regular reflection of their learning, and even a universal set of flip-chart posters. In this way the teachers at Glenview gain 2-3 months of learning time that most students at other schools devote to learning each new teacher’s systems and routines from year to year. This is the underpinning that supports the students’ success when they start coaching younger students in the reading, writing, and math strategies that they need to know. Older students truly become experts in the strategies they’ve been taught, because each teacher builds on the same scaffolds from year to year.

The reward for committing to teamwork and sacrificing a bit of our freedom to march to our own drum? Teachers are left with a great deal of flexibility during lessons to assist students and buddies that may need more attention because the class is actually working independently. At Buddy Reading or Buddy Writing time, each student is being taught one-on-one by an older student. The younger students are listening - truly listening - to their older buddies, absorbing not just advice, but instruction of the quality an adult can deliver. Student discussion parallels those being led by teachers; everyone is on-task.

As I walked from pair to pair listening to students of all abilities, it struck me how professional each discussion is, how deeply the students are learning, because their questions are authentic, and strike at the heart of the “big ideas”. Samples of student writing, whether from high or low achievers, plainly demonstrates that these students are deep thinkers, that they are engaged in learning because it is authentic. Don’t be intimidated. This is not an exceptional population. Picture your average school, with a typical cross-section of learners, but picture also, that over the course of their schooling, each of these students, in their own way and within their own “zone of proximal development” is getting a great deal more learning out of their time at school.

Let’s hear it for the staff at Glenview Elementary. A group of folks that work seamlessly as a team and achieve what all teachers dream of in their hearts.

I hope that this article has whet your appetite to learn more about the strategies and techniques educators use at Glenview. There is so much more to know. Download Deb Koehn’s Buddy Reading lesson plans, watch videos of Glenview’s buddies in action, or read what the Prince George Citizen had to say about them.

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