Writing Workshop: Planning

I took a fantastic week long Writing Workshop course this summer. I wrote a blog entry about it in July. As I started reading the lessons on my own to plan, I realized that I needed to rewrite them in a simpler way so that they would be at-a-glance lesson plans to be used year after year. When I was done teaching the lesson, I was then able to write notes on the lesson about how it went and what I will do differently next year. 

The easiest system for me was a spiral notebook with perforated pages. I wrote the abbreviated lessons then ripped the pages out and placed them in my Writing Workshop binder. I used the same spiral for my reading workshop lessons too, so ripping them out and placing them in their respective binders made sense. I have seen other teachers create a template with the lesson sections and use that for their at-a-glance lessons. I prefer the notebook for many reasons including the fact that I don't have to bother with making copies of the template. Using the notebook is easier for me because I am not locked into the way I designed the template. Different lessons warrant more writing for some things and less for others, etc. No matter what format is used, all the teachers I have worked with in our Writing Workshop P.L.C. (professional learning community) have felt the need to simplify the lessons. Reading the lessons in full is extremely valuable, but the book is not set up for quick glance teaching.

It takes time to read through the lesson and plan how you will attack it so that it fits what you are doing with the kids. This was not an issue with personal narrative, but with the information writing unit, my students are working on the Age of Exploration. The book gives examples and mentor texts related to Westward Expansion. Reading and planning a few lessons ahead at all times has been vital to the success of my lessons. For instance, there is a section about writing with the lens of geography. The book uses a map related to the Oregon Trail. I read the lesson about a week ahead and had time to find a map that was age appropriate and related to the Age of Exploration. I used a map of the Silk Road that showed the routes and the students were amazing in analyzing the map and making connections to what they had already researched. Their questions and ideas motivated me to find more maps of the Silk Road that would continue their analysis. There is a fantastic website devoted to the Silk Road and it had maps of the religions along the road, the geographical features, countries along the road, climate, etc. Students worked voraciously to answer the questions they had from that first map. I followed the original lesson, but made it work for my students. 

http://www.silkroadproject.org/

 

Another reason to be a few lessons ahead in planning is that you can prepare the charts that go with the lessons. The charts are a took and allow students more independence when they are stuck. They can look at the charts and try something.

Charts are a tool:

My at-a-glance lessons:

 Original map I gave classes to analyze:

Students had questions about weather and climate, so this is one of the additional maps I shared with students:

It's Been a While

Happy New Year!

Here I am finally catching up on some blog posts. It is the night before school is supposed to start up again after a lengthy winter break. I put in some time over the vacation to write thank you notes to my students, do some planning, and finally read a book having nothing to do with education. 

I sat here this afternoon all ready to return to school tomorrow, but sad that I didn't make the time to catch up on my blog writing. Then it happened...Winter Storm Hercules! The call, text and email arrived informing us that we will have no school the next two days! I plan to get caught up on what has been happening in room 16 since my last post on August 5th.

At the end of August, I started a blog entry about my classroom set up and then never finished it because I got all wrapped up in school beginning and learning and teaching three new curriculums (new math program, as well as Lucy Calkins' writing workshop and reading workshop). I will start by finishing that post including classroom pictures.

I also want to share our progress in writing workshop including personal narrative and informational writing. This will include at least two blog entries and an additional one just to share pictures of our two celebrations. This is my first year teaching writing strictly from the Lucy Calkins series of books. I am teaching writing to three classes of fifth graders and it allows me to engage in some collaboration with the Social Studies teacher.

Along with Writing Workshop, I want to blog about my Reading Workshop with my homeroom class and my first try at book clubs instead of the guided reading group structure. I will share what worked and what didn't for me in this process and what my next steps will be.

I may also have time to blog about the organizational structures I have put in place in my classroom and how they are going. I have never been a binder kind of person, but I will share what is working for me this year with binders. 

We'll see what else I decide to write about in the next two days. It will be a valuable self reflection for me. I may even make some New Year's resolutions for my teaching. 

It's good to be back!

Classroom Set Up

I rearranged the setup of my classroom this past summer. It has been working out really well. There is plenty of table space for kids to work with partners/groups and a large area for meetings on the carpets (we use carpet remnants that I have collected from Building 19, Ocean State Job Lots and my sister in law! :-)

Summer Professional Reading

1. Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement

By Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman

This book was a quick read and very helpful. In our district, we have been working with the Common Core for a while. This book clarified the ELA portion of the new standards and provided a clear game plan for writing instruction, especially. 

2. How's it Going? By Carl Anderson

After the weeklong institute a few weeks ago, I jumped on Amazon to purchase some recommended books. This fantastic, thorough book by Carl Anderson was highly praised by our presenter and after reading it, I understand. 

Anderson leaves no stone unturned when dealing with the subject of conferencing with students. He focuses on one on one conferences being a conversation. He goes through the teacher's and the student's role during conferencing. It is fascinating when he shares the mistakes he made and the justification for how he runs conferences now. He has excellent chapters on mentor texts, gathering information for minilessons and classroom management. Valuable read!

3. Narrative Craft Unit of Study by Lucy Calkins and Alexandra Marron

I am about halfway through this unit of study. It is slow going because it is very thorough and I am note-taking with post its for my lesson plans as I go.

Lofty, hopeful plans for professional reading in August, a.k.a. Books on Deck:

- Finish Narrative Craft Unit of Study

- Independent Writing M. Colleen Cruz

- A Quick Guide to Struggling Writers M. Colleen Cruz

- A Quick Guide to Reviving Disengaged Writers Christopher Lehman

- A Quick Guide to Making Your Teaching Stick Shanna Schwartz

- Mentor Authors, Mentor Texts Ralph Fletcher

- Launch an Intermediate Reading Workshop Lucy Calkins

- Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres Troy Hicks

Day Five: Professional Learning Community Starts

Today, teachers from North Andover and Reading public schools met to start our work together as a Professional Learning Community. Our focus is writing workshop and the Units of Study presented this week.

I feel very supported now and know I am not going it alone. I have the two other teachers in my school for support, the fifth grade teachers from my district that were at the training, and a fifth grade "buddy" from North Andover as well. 

I also have a fifth grade partner from my district as well. We decided what to tackle first and when we want to get it done. Our focus is preparing a binder to refer to while conferencing. For instance, one divider could be "staying in the moment" In that section would be possible lessons/strategies you could teach to the child and a mentor text listed with page number to provide an example. We each took four strategies to do and will share them with each other before school starts. Then we will tackle some more. This task is made easier by the fact that there is a book in the Units of Study collection that gives if/then ideas for conferring. If the child ______, then ________.

I am very excited to get going with this work. Many of my blog entries this school year will be about my work on developing my writing workshop.

Day Four: The Last Day with our Fearless Leader

Today we role played conferencing one on one. It wasn't too hard, but my more pressing concern is gathering and organizing all the mentor texts. I am going to spend a lot of time doing that this summer and other colleagues will do the same and then we can share our work. 

I love the idea of spending time during conferencing to research the child and come up with a theory and lesson on the fly. I trust I can do that once I have a strong conferring toolkit to support my decisions including mentor texts. The If/Then book that comes with the units of study has a lot already done for teachers in regards to teaching decisions on the fly during conferences.

Along with role playing, we talked about small group instruction and watched a great video of it in action. All the videos we watched this week are on the following site: 

readingandwritingproject.com

- Click on resources

- Click on Common Core resources

- Click on CCSS videos (left margin)

- Click the link in the middle of the page

An aha moment for me was the idea of grouping by need, not level. Writers at all levels may need a lesson on staying in the moment, whether they have one paragraph written or three pages. If our focus is teaching students strategies, they should be grouped by what strategies they need. Duh, right? 

Assessment was another important topic we learned about today. Writers workshop and the rubrics that are used lend themselves well to the common core and standards based report cards. The learning progression charts are a tool that I will use often in planning, conferencing and assessment. 

What a packed day! An overview of informational writing was also taught today and we walked through a few pages of a fabulous mentor text, Oh, Rats!

We ended the day by celebrating our revision/final drafts with a museum walk set up. It was great to walk around and read everyone's work. I liked that we wrote comments for them to see when the activity was over. The comments for my piece were encouraging and some of my writing strengths were affirmed. I still feel I need a lot more instruction about how to get my writing to the next level. I am a good writer, but want to become a great one. 

Sadly, today was the last day with our presenter, Maggie Roberts. We all were left wanting more of her help and guidance, but we will have to use twitter or email to get it. :-)

The message she left us with was to not try to be the expert. We can all help each other and learn together. 

Tomorrow we are meeting from 8:00-12:00 to start our professional learning community work(P.L.C.). I am really looking forward to working with my Reading and North Andover colleagues to improve my teaching of writing.

Day Three: Mentor Texts and Revising

Another productive workshop session today. I am not going to write much tonight since I spent a lot of free time finishing my revision draft for tomorrow's session. It is supposed to be a final draft, but it really is still in the revision phase.

Today, we learned about how to use mentor texts with students. It was very cool to go through pages of a text, Hurricane, and write post its about what the author is showing us about what good writers do. This is also a great activity for kids to do with mentor text. Most importantly, these marked up mentor text can be used by the teacher to model when conferencing with a student.

We also went over how to confer with students. I felt relieved when the presenter said that she only gets 2-3 one on one conferences done each day during workshop time. Table conferences are a great way to confer more often with students  in addition to the one on one times. The goal is for students to become independent, so the minilessons and the charts that come from them are valuable tools for students.

The afternoon was about revising and editing. There are so many ways to go back in to your writing and make it better. I am not going to list them all here. Too tired. Will share in a later post though!

My writing brain needs to relax and watch some bad reality T.V.!