Reader/Writer

 How to Set Up Reader/Writer in the Classroom

and Make It Work

The following information is offered as a guide for teachers anywhere who expect to incorporate Reader/Writer into their classroom and need all the details.

Getting Ready to Get Ready

Things to Think About

Producing literate secondary students is too large a job for one educator to do alone.  Literacy, being a community and societal asset, should also be a community and societal responsibility.  So before you start in on the following steps, consider whom to include in developing this program. 

If you are fortunate, you’ll have a principal who sees the scope and possibilities for student growth, who will budget for the program, who will work with you to identify possible sources for good, consistent Readers and who will personally reach out to those sources.  That person is gold.  She or he can also likely connect you with a parent or two, another educator and/or community members who will promote the initiative.  If you have these people, setting up and maintaining Reader/Writer will be pure joy.

Another thing to consider is your approach to teaching, particularly writing.  If you love and need to have your pen on every piece of student writing that crosses your desk, if you enjoy spending many evening and weekend hours carefully reading and responding to student work, then Reader/Writer isn’t for you.  Conversely, if you wish to have someone else take ALL that off your hands, Reader/Writer also isn’t for you. 

This program provides an audience for the near-weekly personal essays that students should be writing to develop their voice and fluency.  It supplements direct instruction; it does not replace it.  Students will still likely write quarterly academic pieces for your eyes and pen.  The rest is ‘outsourced’ to volunteers who, like you, do develop a relationship with their young writers, but who, unlike you, don’t have the responsibility of instructing.  They support taught skills, and more importantly, individual ‘voice.’

How then will you incorporate Reader/Writer consistently into your curriculum and schedule?  And, how are you’re going to articulate that to administrators, teachers you may team with, and to parents?  Your large-view clarity will pay off when you and your students are pressed to achieve many things in many areas throughout the year forcing you to make choices.  

Finally, there is a practical issue to consider.  If you’re organized, packaging essays and return envelopes and mailing them for all your students each week takes about an hour, a little more at the start.  For most English educators, this is far less time than taking the essays home and thoughtfully responding to each on weekends.  Still, if you’re not that kind of organized person, or if you have just the right detail-oriented person on staff or parent to assist, perhaps you can pass that task to them.

Getting Ready

Recruiting Readers

Reader/Writer is essentially relationship-based and this includes finding Readers. Think of relationships you and your school have.  Cold-calling on potential sources of Readers such as businesses, bar associations, clubs, et cetera may find you a few volunteers but tends to be less effective than word-of-mouth.

First, think of your school’s associations.  Any business partners?  Higher Education partners?  District-level partners?  These are natural sources for Readers.  These partners can involve a lot of their employees at zero time spent away from work...and for good cause.  Participating in Reader/Writer is an easy way for them to either expand or enrich their current work with your students and make volunteer-time quotas.

Do you have a Parent Association?  All it takes is one or two parents who work at or are involved with a law firm, business or higher education to connect you with the right person to talk to. (Students don’t want parents as Readers…too close to ‘home.’) 

Second, consider your friends or relatives who work in community-minded environments.  Many companies, businesses and firms (large law firms particularly) include in their vision community outreach of some sort.  Again, Reader/Writer is perfect for many, as employees don’t need to leave work to volunteer and really impact people’s lives.  (That is your strongest selling point for some groups.)  Would anyone you know be willing to share and pass on information?  

Sometimes what happens is that you find two or three people who really ‘get’ the program and its value for potential Readers, and they drive recruitment.  For these wonderful folks, your job initially is to provide them with basic information, such as the Guidelines and the Program Overview documents included on this website, that they can email or hand out to others.  Your email address should be on everything so that all queries come to you. 

A third category of source for volunteers is stand-alone individuals.  These are people you know or who heard about the program from someone they know.  Some are retirees, some relatives, friends, or co-workers of current Readers.  While groups of Readers, such as employees at one business, yield immediate large numbers and make orienting simpler, individuals can become a major volunteer pool for your program, especially as time goes by.  Reader/Writer seems to have a life of its own and finds its way and weaves its web in its own time, with you facilitating and directing.

After the first year (or even semester), your current Readers often become your best recruiters for any Readers you need, say at the start of the next year, due to attrition.  In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Readers have been directly responsible for making the initial contact with about 80% of the program’s volunteers, which has enabled the program to include more teachers and students.  They do this because they see the extraordinary growth of their own student writers and want to spread the word and because they’ve been asked to do so.

Orienting Readers
Because you target writing-proficient adults, your work of ‘training’ is really a matter of sharing information.  Things to cover include:

·       What Reader/Writer is—how it works, its goals and benefits, what to expect

·       Who the students are (background, age, skill level, challenges and strengths)

·       Expectations for the Reader (consistency, communication, following simple guidelines, flexibility)

·       Possible issues and what to do if….

·       Anticipated schedule for mailings

·       How to communicate with you

All of these and more can be presented in one or two documents.  Examples are included on this website under this tab (Program Overview and Guidelines for Readers.) These are tweaked from time to time to better fit a particular school, age group of student, or class. Feel free to use them as a base.

How to share this information depends on your situation and the Readers you anticipate having.  If your Readers come to you one by one, sending them documents by email followed up by a quick phone conversation or coffee is sufficient, as long as you feel you’ve made a connection.  Some Readers prefer that. 

Others like to meet you.  A half hour face-to-face meeting with an individual and/or a group of potential Readers reaps great dividends.  You encourage buy-in and commitment when you tell student stories, show them student writing, and show them how to respond and edit and therefore make a difference. 

People, many who have little spare time, want to help.  They feel good being needed and truly having an impact on someone, and it is to these two points that you most effectively speak.  Giving potential Readers an opportunity to ask questions at such a meeting builds relationship as well.  And that is why you are there: to build a community that connects caring adults with adolescents who need relationship to focus and work hard.

How do you find the time to meet in person as a classroom teacher?  Usually you set up Reader/Writer one time—the first year.  After that, you have far fewer Readers to orient and those most often have already been oriented by a current Reader. 

The first year is when a passionate principal is of great help.  If, through initial interactions with potential Readers or a person who links you to a possible group, it is determined that an in-person presentation by you is preferred, then you’ll need to take a morning, afternoon or day off from school duties to do that.  Sometimes these meetings happen right before the start of the school year. If so, the administrator may be willing to excuse you from school business.

But it is not uncommon to start Reader/Writer at any time of the school year, and for those times, most educators have found it possible to arrange their schedule to accommodate a meeting or two off-site.

Building a community of support—both for your students and for you as the literacy leader—takes reaching out to and joining with community members.  As you build your program, opportunities will jump out at you.  You may hear of someone who attends meetings at the League of Women Voters, for example.  Maybe they would like to hear about Reader/Writer and the difference one hour a week can make?

In time, orienting new Readers and sharing Reader/Writer stories and results will become an easy, fulfilling part of your week as an educator—and the more you extend outside the classroom walls—as an engaged member of the community.

The Registration Form

Offering a formal way for Readers to sign up as volunteers adds credibility to the process and provides you with needed information.  A simple form, such as the one on the Reader/Writer website, is sufficient, although for your purposes you may want to add or ask additional information.  Key things you need to know besides the obvious name and address are: an email address; the number of students the volunteer wants to read for (1-2); and if or when they will be unavailable during the school year.

Materials Needed

To operate Reader/Writer the following materials are suggested:

1.      Pink and blue essay paper (found at School Specialty).  Why this and not standard white filler paper?  Let’s admit it.  That white paper is thin, cheap and reeks of ‘school.’  You want to make the writing exchange different.  Quality paper encourages quality effort.  Also, tinted paper is much easier on the eyes under florescent lighting, especially for students with certain diagnoses. In addition, students get a choice!  Pink or blue.  They have some   control. 

2.      Stamps (or machine postage) for mailing out student writings and for attaching to self-addressed envelopes in which Readers return writings.  (Postage is the major cost of the program.)

3.      Envelopes.  A #9 size with the school’s return address for Readers to use to send back writings; a #10 size for you to use to mail essays and the return envelopes to Readers. 

4.      Address mailing labels.  One box should do it a year for mailing out essays.

5.      Fun file folders, one per student, to store essays and responses.  These can be found at School Specialty, Carson Dellosa and elsewhere.

Budget

Reader/Writer, if using all the materials listed above, costs from $1500-2000 per 100 students for 20 essays written and mailed.  The breakdown of expenses looks like this:

·       $1200-$1500 of this goes towards postage.  The variation occurs when students write more than one page (back and front)

·       $120 for decorative file folders (for about 110)

·       Usually schools and district offices have many excess envelopes. Some may have a rubber address stamp that can be used.  If not, you’d be hard pressed to spend more than $200 on new envelopes

·       $35 for Avery address labels

·       $200 for pink/blue essay paper (about $5.50, including shipping, per 100 sheets)

Scheduling Essay Writing

The more youth write, the better they’ll get at it.  Build Reader/Writer into your class time as a regular, expected event.  Sure there will be interruptions—a snow day, a field trip, testing, breaks—but the more accustomed students are to “Writing Thursday” or whenever you choose, the more readily they will bend their heads and put pencil to paper.  Fluency starts with that. 

Most teachers find that writing 20-25 essays each school year works for them, their curriculum and other activities.  Commit to a schedule and stick to it as best you can.

Pairing Readers with Writers

Once you have your Readers, you begin the process of matching them with your students.  If you already know each student’s writing skills, you are ready to assign two—a lower level and a middle-to-higher level student—to each Reader.  You want to give each Reader as balanced an experience as possible…and keep them busy.

Reluctant writers miss school more and turn in work less consistently than do others, which is why you cover yourself by assigning diverse kids the best you can to volunteers.

If a volunteer chooses one student instead of two, assign a consistent writer who will keep the Reader engaged.  You don’t want them to quit next year.  Often a Reader will take two kids one year and one the next, or vice versa, to accommodate demands on their time in other areas of their life.  Expect to be flexible.

If the students are all new to you, sit samples of their writing in front of you and select two per Reader that way.  However you do it, make a two-column table for each period with the pairings on it that includes the students’ and the Readers’ full names.  You will use this chart every week you write to stuff out-going envelopes.

Implementing R/W in the Classroom

Introducing Reader/Writer

Orienting students to Reader/Writer and having them write their first essay will take about one-and-a-half periods.  Of course you’ll do this in your own way; the following are steps offered only as suggestions.

Briefly present Reader/Writer as a unique opportunity to practice writing and so improve and enjoy it much more. Cover:

·       an overview of how it works

·       the ‘why’ behind it

·       who the Readers are

·       sample student writings and Reader responses on overhead. Discuss

              the Reader’s role, light editing, supportive comments

·       that this is an essay, not a letter

·       that, while personal, some topics are off limits (more on that below)

·       the writing portfolios (hand out)

·       the blue and pink paper

Writing Essay #1

Using a template if you wish, have students write an introduction of themselves for their Readers.  This shouldn’t be perfect, but a true example of where the student is writing-wise and can be a valuable baseline piece of data to which to compare essays written later. 

How can you encourage students as they write that first (and subsequent) essays?  Providing them with a student example and a clear format is the best thing you can do. (See appendix)  Show more than tell.  Then, as they write, walk around to redirect daydreamers, jump-start blocked thinkers and answer questions.  Be fully focused on students and their writing, even as the desk and paperwork call.

(More on writing essays in the website article: “A Shortlist of Tried-and-True Ideas to Facilitate Good Writing.”)

One Draft or Two

English teachers do this differently.  Some ask students to write just one draft for their Readers.  The thinking behind this is that Readers get to see more clearly their youth’s needs and so know what patterns and issues to point out and work on.  Also, Reader/Writer is about developing fluency, not so much about corrected final drafts.  Finally, many teachers find that the number of students turning in their writing dwindles after the first pass.  The effort to get a second draft from everyone outweighs the loss in class time for other learning activities.

On the other hand, some teachers demand—and receive back—homework and so send a second draft to Readers. If homework is an accepted expectation in your school, second drafts are great.  To implement this, you could: introduce topics and write on Monday or Tuesday; record these and give credit; receive final drafts, scan and mail on Friday with additional points awarded.

A neater, more edited second draft may be nice for Readers’ eyes, but thousands of essays—first and second drafts—sent to and received back from Readers have shown that both ways result in large growth by the end of the school year.  Keep in mind that Reader/Writer presents a supplemental opportunity for self-expression and writing practice.  You could say the rallying cry is: Just Write! 

Subsequent Essays

Students like best to write about themselves—their lives, their dreams and struggles, people they know, what they want and like/don’t want and like.  Almost always whatever book or theme is being explored in class can be used to generate relevant, personal topics.  (Please see the website article, “What Makes Students Write.”)  In this way the R/W essays can be used as tools for reflection on curricular themes and can move integration of them inward.

Mailing of Essays and What to Include

Are you going to be the assembler?  If so, plan on about an hour on a Friday afternoon (or whenever) to prepare everything for a trip to the post office or to the school office for the postage meter.   If you have a firm or business that has many Readers, you may find it easier and cost effective to put all of that site’s envelopes (unstamped!) in one large 10 X 13 mailer.  Mail everything to a pre-arranged contact (a Reader, most likely) at that site who then distributes the envelopes.

Some teachers regularly or occasionally include in each envelope a summary of the assigned topic and suggestions for editing. (See appendix for samples.)  Consider doing this when and if you think it useful for information to be shared.  Most Readers like to know the context for student writing and appreciate any hints you have. 

When Essays Come Back

Essays, which are returned to the school, arrive sporadically; some teachers hand them out immediately as they come in while others wait until “writing day” and hand them all out at that time.  For all essays, scan them lightly before handing back, especially for the first few mailings.  Check for quality, appropriateness, legibility and length of response.  Once in a while, you’ll need to check in with a Reader or two—almost always for legibility or length (they write back too much!).

Another reason to scan responses is to pick one or two per period that you can put on the overhead as examples of good topics, student growth, etc.  Showing student work and Reader responses motivates young writers and gets them in the mood to write.  This is great material to teach from.

Students love getting ‘mail’ and reading their responses.  Give them time to share responses with others around them and to store them in their writing portfolios.

Grading and Other Details 

Most teachers give full credit for essays turned in on time.  The goal, the point is that they write. 

As you receive essays and enter them as such in your records, SCAN the writing for appropriateness, length and legibility as well as for evidence of growth and effort. It’s best to catch a call for help before the Reader does. 

You may want to keep a record also of responses that have come in; however, most teachers don’t do this formally.  When necessary to check whether or not a student is receiving essays back, a quick chat with the student and a look at their portfolio tells the story.

Communicating and Engaging with Readers

Communication is a challenge…and a joy.  How much is enough and how much is too much?  You’ll find your way as Readers reach out to you with questions and ideas and as you have things to say to them—as a group and to individuals.  Usually, you will write, per 100 students, 1-3 short emails a week to Readers. 

In addition, you’ll write an informational and welcome letter at the start of the school year; maybe an appreciation letter at Winter Break; and a thank you at the end of the year.  For best receive-ability, include these in your mailings.  (Some Google Docs are junked automatically at some work sites.)

A note on how to communicate: Love thy Reader.  If you do, they will, through your words and tone, feel appreciated, included and needed and will repay you many times over. 

Celebrating the Relationships

Many Readers and Writers want to meet each other.  Give them the opportunity in an end-of-the-year gathering at your school.  Pick two dates that work for you and the school and send these out in an invitation (students can make them or you can include a simple one in a mailing).  Ask Readers to come if they are able and to RSVP for one of the dates.  (You may find that many Readers are unable to come.  Make it clear to them that this is not a requirement of the program and make it clear to students ahead of time that Readers may not be able to take time away from work.)

These events are more fun than you might think.  Provide some lemonade and a treat, nametags, maybe some decorations such as balloons and the party’s on. Activity idea: Have students bring their portfolios and ask both Readers and Writers to look at first and last essays and talk about growth.  A half hour is plenty of time.

Of course there are some logistics that need planning, but the rapport and dedication that is built between Readers and the program and their delight in meeting young writers is well worth it.

This is also a good time to invite administration who will be impressed and support you all the more.

What to Do If…

1.      Readers are on vacation or otherwise gone for a while.  Often Readers will give you a temporary address to send essays to.  If this doesn’t work, let the student know what’s up and that they won’t receive responses for a while.  They do handle that as long as they know.  If the Reader is gone for more than a couple of mailings, you may want to be the student’s Reader for a short while.  It always works out and is not an overwhelming issue.

2.      A student stops writing or is absent a lot.  You can’t waste a Reader.  Nor can you force a student to write.  They have a choice and so do you: pull their Reader and reassign them to a new student as she/he shows up.  This is relevant as well for when a student moves.  If the Reader already has two Writers, they’ll be happy to have just one for a while.  Communicate whatever steps you take with both Reader and Writer.

              If you have students that are several years behind grade level and they barely

              write sentences, you may not choose to assign them a Reader.  Some teachers         are fortunate to have Readers who were special education or ELL teachers   

              and so are willing to take on these students.  For other Readers, the quality

              and lack of writing isn’t engaging enough to keep them in the program.  For

              these youth, you may be their best Reader.

3.      You have inconsistent Readers.  Expect that very year a few Readers will have life events that keep them from responding promptly (babies, moves, illness).  Check with them via email and share results with the affected Writers.  Readers will either kick in again or have to leave.  Never fear; someone will come forward as replacements.

4.      A student writes an essay that shocks or makes a Reader uncomfortable.  Three things should be off limits for kids to write about:  hurting themselves, hurting someone else, criminal activity.  If you hear from a Reader about such an essay, apologize (it shouldn’t have been mailed); assure them that YOU are the mandated reporter and will look into the situation; and follow through.

              Sometimes an essay will just feel too personal. Head this issue off by:

·       telling students from the onset that they should not write about hurting themselves, hurting others, any criminality or very personal topics because you are a mandated reporter and will report;

·       telling Readers from the onset what you’ve told students (the above), and also that adolescents will and need to write about their own concerns and lives so to expect this to be a real experience.

              At times, you may hear from a Reader who asks how to respond to              problematic content.  You are the expert in this; in that spirit, share with        them some possible responses and together, as partners, find your way.

In Conclusion

Don’t let this long explanation of what is a very simple process deter you.  Most teachers adapt and develop the Reader/Writer idea to suit their own approach and environment.  This is offered for those who want ALL the details and who don’t have a Reader/Writer facilitator or participating teacher nearby to assist in the set-up. That said, please remember we are only an email away.