Dates Coming Up MAY
22 - Grade 5 Soccer Day
22 - Grade 5 Memoir Celebration
23 - Grade 4 Soccer Day
23 - Coaches Planning Day
24 - Grade 3 Soccer Day
24 - Shanghai Literacy Coaches Meeting
28-Jun 1 - China Alive Week
29 - China Alive Cooking Day
29 - Final Literacy Leadership Meeting
29 - Grade 5 Planning Day
30 - 5TB Memoir Slam
30 - China Alive Art Day
31 - Parent Appreciation Lunch
31 - China Alive Sports Day
JUNE
1- Moving Up Day
1 - China Alive Activity Day
6 - Grade 4 Planning Day
7 - Summer Sizzler
8 - Grade 5 Transition
12 - Report Cards Go Home
12 - Last Day for Students
13 - Last day for Faculty
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As part of learning it is important to reflect on our growth, and set goals to challenge our learning even further.
As teachers we spent some time yesterday reflecting on our year as educators of literacy. I asked the question “What evidence is there to support our success in literacy this year?” Teachers thought on a personal, student, classroom, planning and assessment, and school wide level.
Here’s what individual teachers celebrated:
I want to celebrate my ELL kids who challenge themselves by using luscious language and more sophisticated vocabulary.
I have an ELL student who was reading below grade level at the beginning of the year. Now this child is well within grade level expectations and sees herself as a strong reader.
Students are able to find just right books using Lexile scores and library databases.
Better equipped in Writer’s workshop by having mentors. Better at conferencing.
17 out of 18 of the students in my class have read MORE THAN 40 novels this year! #18 is almost there!
Discovering what an amazing writer (a student) is then nurturing that skill, advertising it and encouraging it, sharing his success, spotlighting him to make him proud.
Personal success as a teacher: Anchor Charts! Freeze-frame, thought tapping into characters, (A student) shining in poetry.
Nonfiction book clubs, Nonfiction UOS for Reader’s workshop, nonfiction celebration.
Participating in the literacy coaches institute.
Reading stamina-long and strong. Thirst for books, Student growth-everyone moving.
Rubrics!
One student, ELL-no English, some receptive nodding, started expressing (himself) by December. Now reading at DRA8 and writing beautifully.
Incorporating pop culture to reading lessons that are engaging and memorable to the students. Fun, exciting, and helps them understand the skill being taught.
I noticed this year that the students are able to clarify more what they are learning. Today, a student gave me a teacher appreciation card that said “Thank you for challenging me to push myself in my writing”.
Children who love both reading and writing, asking for more time! Children who identify themselves as readers and writers.
Self assessment.
Non-writers writing.
Progression of writing! Comics-Fractured Fairy Tales.
Increased love of reading. Developed a healthy reading culture.
What are some of the things you can celebrate this year?
 Mrs Dungan, my grade 1 teacher, is one of my first memories of school. I remember sitting on the rug reading a shared story about a chicken. I was studying the way she had colored the pictures, the magic of combining TWO colors of crayons, (remember when we had to make our own resources?) the way the brown and yellow blended together to make that chick come alive on the page. I don’t remember what the story was about. All I remember is how amazing I thought Mrs Dungan was, and how she made me believe anything was possible (even combining two colors!). I loved her with all my heart and I felt like she loved me! When I left that school two years later, Mrs Dungan visited my house (a big deal having a real live teacher in MY house) and gave me a small gift which to this day I still have. Mrs Dungan has a place in my balcony!
I attended my very first EARCOS conference this year, with the focus on Literacy. I was fortunate to hear a keynote speaker, Steven Layne.
The title of his key note was BALCONY PEOPLE.
Steven talked about identifying people whose contributions to my life have altered my direction, smoothed the path ahead, or guided me across treacherous ground? Those who have helped me become all that I am – my personal cheerleaders. These people deserve to be remembered. These people are my balcony people. Steven talked about how often we, as teachers have the opportunity to contribute to others’ lives, making a difference, having a passion not only for teaching, and learning, but for students, and life!
We are certainly not going to end up on everyone’s balcony, but I am wondering how I am making a difference to the people around me.
What about you? Who has made a difference to you? How are you making a difference to your students, your colleagues, your family and your friends?
For more information about steven Layne visit http://www.stevelayne.com/
Today at the Literacy Coaching Conference we talked about text sets: choosing sets of books to support your Units of Study.
Text sets can be created around a theme, author, or characters that are similar or anything else that combines a bunch of books together.
Some teachers shared their favorite books today, hence I have two new favorites to add to my looooong list!
The Big Elephant in the Room by Lane Smith
When one donkey tells his friend that they need to talk about “the big elephant in the room,” his friend wonders what this embarrassing issue could possibly be.
Is it that fact that he ate all the crunchy nut ice cream? Is it that he picked his friend last for soccer… and baseball, and volleyball? Is it the “going in the pool” incident?
Or is it none of those things at all?
This book made me laugh! Lane Smith is very clever in his word choice, with hilarious ideas of trying to name the Elephant in the Room!
Tanka Tanka Skunk! By Steve Webb
Tanka Tanka Skunk was another favorite today and for totally different reasons. It is a book with rhythm that just makes you move to the beat as you read it. You can help but make your voice sound like a drum! Also a GREAT way to teach syllables. Try this for size …
Skunka Tanka
Skunka Tanka
Tanka Tanka Skunk!
To Guide or not to Guide? … That is the question!
Today at the SAS Literacy Coaching Conference we talked about Guided Reading across the grades.
Guided reading is definitely a strategy of teaching for elementary students. The purpose of Guided Reading is to move students forward, while giving them stong support. One way to do this is to give a strong book introduction setting the students up for success, front loading students with tricky words, talking about what good readers do.
However, upper elementary students can benefit from Guided reading too. It can look a little different but the purpose is the same…to support students into a difficult text. One great way of getting started is giving the students a text introduction on how the levels look. For example you may say “At this level of text there is more inference into characters. The author is not going to tell you so much about what the character is thinking, it will be your job as a reader to interpret what the author is trying to say”. (Ask me about Bands of Text Difficulty.)
Another way to conduct a guided reading group in the upper grades is doing a genre or author introduction. Discuss with the group how this genre tends to go, or how this author’s style influences the text.
In both cases of guided reading in the upper levels, the students continue to have choice in their books, but they also have a strong support to begin reading their text.
Something to think about as we move forward in our teaching.
Anchor: support, comfort, attach, grip, hold, hook, bind.
Chart: diagram, graph, plot, map, scheme.
Today at the Literacy Coaching Conference one of the things we discussed was the use of Anchor charts.
Anchor Charts are an essential part of the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop Model, therefore, they are an essential part of YOUR classroom teaching and learning.
Anchor Charts help our students to hold onto their learning (Like an anchor holds a boat in place). they show a visual trail of learning within the classroom, they can support a student in their learning, and define teaching points, concepts, skills, and strategies throughout a Unit of Study.
What does your classroom environment show that you value? Students’ current learning that changes and grows throughout their learning journey, or machine printed posters that stay up al year round?
What do your Anchor Charts reflect about your current Units of Study in your classes?
Do your Anchor Charts act like a second teacher, supporting the teaching and learning?
A blog that is definitely worth checking out is ChartChums; Creative Classroom Charts. It has great ideas and even better visuals.
 Students have contributed to this chart  Pictures are essential for lower elementary charts (and important of upper too)  Sometimes it's ok to pre-make a chart and use it more than once  Visuals, few words, and space make this anchor chart easy to understand  Bold headings, and color make this chart effective
In the last few months we have had some hard workers in our Leveled Library, counting books, labelling books, and orginizing books.
We have gone from THIS…
To THIS!
Thank you to all the parents that helped to make this happen, especially my Monday helper, Debi!
Conferring during our workshop time can be tricky, and even more so in Reading Workshop.
The model of conferring is:
RESEARCH
COMPLIMENT
TEACH
LINK
- RESEARCH : ask open ended question about the strategies that the reader is using. e.g. “What are you doing as a reader today? What strategies are you using in your reading?” The student should be doing most of the talking in this part of the conference. Wait-time is a gift here!
- COMPLIMENT : it’s SO easy to skip this part and go straight to teaching, however the compliment is SO important. It connects the student’s ideas (brain research tells us this is important), tells them that you value their learning, and makes them feel like a reader or writer. Be specific, and compliment the writer/reader, not the work. e.g. “Wow, I can see you are really trying to make connections as you read because that’s what readers do-they connect to other books”, OR “You are so smart to be taking notes about the phrases that you love. Readers do that to track their thinking”.
- TEACH : Be specific and explicit. Tell the student that you are going to teach them something, this prepares them to listen for your ONE teaching point. explain, model, get the student to practice in fornt of you. Remember to teach the reader rather than the text. e.g. “Today I am going to teach you that readers…” “Watch how I do it”, “Now you try, can you see a place where you could use this strategy?”
- LINK : Again, brain research shows us that the final Link is an important connection. The Link simply reiterates your teaching point, no need to teach something new. You want to secure what they have just practiced. e.g. “So remember that readers… this might be a strategy that you want to use as a reader”.
Reading conferences can be tricky as reading is an invisible task. Students can use logs to show volume, stamina, and genre variety, and take notes to track their thinking. This can be a great way to help in conferences. It makes reading more concrete and helps us to see the level of thought processes.
Think about your reading conferences. How are they going? What can you do to raise the level of learning during your Reading Workshop?
I have been thinking a lot lately about reading stamina and volume. We know that students learn to read by reading, but how much is enough?
Students should have enough books to sustain them for a workshop period of reading for a week. Students should have enough just-right books in their box or bag to read (and re-read in Lower ES) without having to spend precious workshop time browsing for new books.
Here is a suggestion that I saw while in New York…
Levels A-C = 10-12 books *
Levels D-G = 5-10 books
Levels K-M = 5-6 books
Levels N-Q = 3-4 books
Levels R-T = 2-3 books
Levels U-Z = 1-2 books
Are your students reading enough volume while building their reading stamina? Are they making the most out of their reading time?
* Levels are Fountas and Pinnell Levels
We know that read aloud is important, and we know that thinking and talking about texts raises the level of thinking and comprehension.
Here are some tips to help you when thinking about read aloud texts…
#1 Choose your texts carefully. What do you want to teach students from a text? I know as busy teachers we sometimes pick up an unseen book from our shelf, however, for read alouds it is important to read the text before reading it to the students. Read it once to enjoy the story, then read it a second time to decide where you will stop and teach (you don’t want to stop every few words and kill the story)
#2 Choose a variety of texts. Choose a book or stack of books that support your current reading and writing units. Also read aloud picture books, non fiction books, content area books.
#3 Think about your teaching point. What is your purpose? What do you want the students to learn?Just as in a mini lesson, we need to state our teaching point before reading, while reading and then focus on the teaching point after reading. You may want to say “As we read this book today I want you to focus on…”
#4 Model and Practice. Students need to see what thinking looks like. If you are wanting your students to talk about books, you have to model talking about books. If you want your students to wonder about a text, you have to wonder (out loud) about a text. If you want your students to think about an author’s message, you have to model thinking about the important message in a text. Practice the I do-you do method over and over again.
#5 Create Partnerships. Let your students a have turn-and-talk partner to practice with every day. Practice during read alouds. Practice during the teaching share in your Workshop lessons. Practice in the content areas. Practice talking long and strong on one topic area, growing ideas about a thought or a wonder. The partnerships can then lead into book clubs and give students an opportunity to practice before entering class conversations.
#6 Create Independence. Our ultimate goal is to have students thinking and talking about books, reading and growing ideas, stretching their thinking… all independently. We want to create LIFETIME readers, not just school time readers.
TROUBLE SHOOTING
“But I just want to read a book aloud for enjoyment”: This indicates that thinking isn’t enjoyable! It’s true that we don’t want to stop too much-Keep the magic of the story AND teach!
“My students can’t do it-they won’t talk or come up with ideas”: this is true… if you don’t model and practice! Students need to LEARN how to stretch their thinking, grow ideas, and talk about books. We need to TEACH, through the model of I do-You do.
How are you as a teacher stretching your thinking around read alouds? How are you improving your teaching practice today?
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My Reading Log Afar Magazine, March edition
Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting
The Color of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe
Jamie's Cookbook by Jamie Oliver
Igniting a Passion for Reading by Steven Layne
Empty Cradles by Margaret Humphreys
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Knuffle Bunny Free by Mo Willems
Matched by Ally Condie
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Pressured Child by Michael Thompson
Journey by Patricia MacLachlan
The Twits by Roald Dhal
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky by Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsian Deng and Judy Bernstein
Rules by Cynthia Lord
Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
Schooled by Gordon Korman
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsberg
The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto
How's it Going by Carl Anderson
Blubber by Judy Blume
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Kid in the Red Jacket by Barbara Park
The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan
Spaceheadz by Jon Scieszka
Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller
The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
My Name is Maria Isabel by Alma Flor Ada
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