Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading: Shifting to a Problem-Based Approach

How do we prepare students for a world that’s changing so rapidly that a majority of those sitting in classrooms today will go on to hold jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet? For Vicki Vinton, the answer is to help build students’ capacities as critical and creative thinkers by shifting to a problem-based approach for teaching reading.

Problem-based teaching has taken hold in STEM classes across the country, but it’s not common in reading, where we tend to think of problems as existing only at the word level. Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading, however, will help you become more aware of the problems texts pose for readers at the literal, inferential, and thematic levels, and then show you how to create opportunities for students to read closely and think deeply as they wrestle with those problems.

Additionally, you’ll learn how to:

• Develop a repertoire of dynamic teaching moves that will help you probe student thinking and provide responsive feedback when students most need it.

• Shift your focus from the teaching of complex texts to complex thinking.

• Help students develop lines of inquiry as readers.

Chock-full of classroom examples and the voices of students figuring things out, Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading connects the practices in the book to all sorts of current thinking and trends―from growth mindsets to the Common Core State Standards and from productive struggle to educational neuroscience. That breadth and depth ensures that Vicki’s book is one that educators will be talking about―and you don’t want to miss.

Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing.  For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition.  She served as Deputy Director and Director of Literacy and Staff Development for the Cornerstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years. Ellin works with schools and districts throughout the country and abroad.  Her emphasis is long-term, school-based professional development and strategic planning for literacy learning.

Ellin recently published The Literacy Studio: Redesigning the Workshop for Readers and Writers which is focused on an up-to-date conceptualization of Readers/Writers’ workshop. She is the author of Engaging Children: Igniting the Drive for Deeper Learning (2018), is co-editor and co-author of The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning, and Teaching (Heinemann, 2015); co-editor of the Not This, but That series (Heinemann, 2013 - 2018); author of Talk About Understanding: Rethinking Classroom Talk to Enhance Understanding (Heinemann, 2012), To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Heinemann, 2008), co-author of Comprehension Going Forward (Heinemann, 2011), co-author of Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, 2^nd edition (Heinemann, 2007, 1^st edition, 1997) and author of Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies (Shell Educational Books, 2006) as well as numerous chapters for professional books and journals on the teaching of reading as well as education policy journals. 

Vicki Vinton is a literacy consultant and writer who has worked in schools and districts across the country and around the world.  She is the author of Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading: Shifting to a Problem-Based Approach (2017), and coauthor of What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making and The Power of Grammar: Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language.  Vicki is also author of the novel The Jungle Law. Additionally, you can find Vicki online, at the popular literacy blog To Make a Prairie (www.tomakeaprairie.com).