responsive literacy giveaway!

You are going to love Responsive Literacy: A Comprehensive Framework! This book will not only explain in great detail what this framework is all about, but SHOW you in a multitude of colorful photos about every aspect of this framework.

If you're familiar with balanced literacy, you're right on track with responsive literacy. This framework is all about providing structures for students to engage in literacy via reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but thought a multitude of modalities. Students will find these experiences in the Reading, Writing, and Word Study Workshop formats.

The foundations of this framework rest in the Zone of Proximal Development, teaching students to be participants in active thinking, engaging conversations, and authentic reflections about texts. Students engage in this work as the teacher plans with the workshop model in mind:

• Whole Group Teaching in mini-lesson, including interactive read-aloud, literature discussions, and shared and interactive writing
• Workshop time, where students have an opportunity for application of new learning on their own, in pairs or triads, or in small-group meetings with their teacher
• Share time, which is typically a celebration of learning related to the mini-lesson and closure for the day's learning

This workshop model works for reading, writing, and word study instruction, each practiced overviewed in detail in this comprehensive text. This book in broken down into six sections:

1. Professional Learning
2. Organizing for Learning
3. Reading
4. Writing
5. Building Blocks of Language
6. A Learning Community: Students, Teachers, Principals, and Families

Some of my favorite parts of the book include:

• Discussion of Author's Craft, pages 44-55
• Starting the Reading Workshop: The first 30 days, pages124-147
• Systems of Strategic Actions Wheel, and descriptions of thinking Within the Text, About the Text, and Beyond the text, page 196
• All of the references to quality books that serve as mentor texts for students, which are found throughout the text
• Possible ideas for writer's notebook entries, page 266
• "Your goal is to lift the writer, not fix the piece." page 273
• A WHOLE CHAPTER on handwriting!! Page 305 and Specific and Consistent Language for lower and uppercase letter formation - a dream for all of the K-2 teachers who scaffold their students to write the letters correctly! Page 311
• The last section that is of particular use to Literacy Coaches and Administrators, so that a building-wide culture can be built around this framework

If you are new to this framework, this book has it all, and thorough explanations and so many photos of classrooms, organization systems, student work, student-teacher interactions - everything! This book is geared toward K-6, but ideas can be adapted up to seventh and eighth as well.

I have a copy of this book to give away to one lucky winner! In order to win, leave a comment or question on this blog post and follow me on Instagram (@bigtimeliteracy). Can't wait to share the wealth of information with someone from this book!

Happy Saturday!

conferring matters

Now that we've finished our Literary Essay unit in Writing Workshop, we're back in a reading unit, so our writing toggles back to blogging. This week, kiddos are writing a post inspired by the word PERFECT. (Thank you #TeachWrite and #DWHabit for the idea!)

After the explanation and my example, kids got to work. Some students had a topic easily and went to writing, others needed some tools to get started. I helped those kiddos out, then another student walked up to me and asked how long it had to be.

"As long as you need to make your point. Did you read mine? You need enough writing some your ideas are clear."

"Yes," he replied, "but mine is different." I asked him to go get his iPad so he could read it to me.

He came back, sat down at our conferring space, and read his writing to me while I followed along on the screen. It was really good! He basically wrote about how perfect is a fraud, because nothing is perfect, and how everything has a flaw. When he finished I told him that I really liked his ideas and that I thought it was great. Then I asked if he wanted coaching to make it better.

"You mean on the punctuation, right?"

"No, not at all!" I said. "My idea is more in the elaboration of your points. I was thinking that if you are saying nothing is perfect, and that there is a flaw with everything, a good writing strategy would be to show, and not tell. So what I would do if I were you is think of an example."

I was then thinking aloud to him. "Think of your perfect friend, and list three traits." Then I began to write in the air... "Katie is the perfect friend because she is fun, and we both like to write and teach so we talk about that stuff, and also because her jokes are funny." Then I went back to coaching... "But then, say her flaw too, to make your point." and I went back to writing in the air again. "But here's the thing, Katie lives in Phoenix, so far from me. So can I say she's the perfect friend, if there is a flaw? Wouldn't the perfect friend live in your zip code? This is what I mean about perfect. It's a fraud."

I continued, "What do you think of my tip, you know, to give an example to show  your point? Do you think you can do that?"

He smiled, nodded, and said yes. "Off you go then, try it out!"

He went back to his seat and then the class preceded on as normal, until it ended, and everyone had left. Except one of my other kiddos who needed a heart-to-heart. But my writer was still there, too. My heart-to-heart kiddo shouts at him, in a lovingly, middle-school-way, "Come on, why are you even still here?"

With a smile he shows the screen of his iPad to us, and says, "Because I want to show Ms. Brezek my blog."

My heart about exploded.

You guys! Conferring matters - yes, it matters because you help kids make their writing better, but even more so, it matters because you create a space for kids to be heard. They sit in front of you, gather all their courage, and read their writing to you. Their writing is their heart. And they put it out there for us to read and critique.

And so when they have positive experiences and they grow, they want to revel in that glow.

And we must create the space needed to let them.

Actionable Steps

My coteacher, Andrea, and I are wrapping up a literary analysis paper with our middle school kiddos. One of our colleagues shared an awesome organizer for analyzing quotes from a text... TIQA. Kids write a TOPIC, INTRODUCE the quote they found, include the QUOTE, then complete ANALYSIS on the meaning of the quote.

Meanwhile, one of the other coaches in our district asked me to deliver a brief PD on writing to her third year teachers. I got to reading the front of the Writing Strategies Book (Serravallo) and remembering listening to her speak at the Illinois Reading Council Conference - about actionable steps. And so, the writing PD became a session on creating actionable steps for writing tasks, and then my instruction was enhanced when I realized I wasn't doing awesome at this with my students.

You guys, EVERYTHING has to be broken down to a set of actionable steps. EVERY TASK. Telling students, "write a thesis" - that's not an actionable step, that's the goal. You have to show them how to do so. Let me elaborate a bit on goals vs. actionable steps with some examples:

Goal: Punctuate correctly.
Actionable steps: (1) Read your paper aloud, listening for the pauses you will naturally take. (2) When you find the pause, add punctuation. (3) Reread your work with punctuation and decide if if looks right and sounds right. 

Goal: Introduce the quote (for literary analysis)
Actionable steps: (1) Identify who spoke / thought the quote. (2) Think about the setting when the person spoke or thought the quote. (3) Write a sentence that shares the setting and/or action that had just happened prior to the quote. (4) Add that sentence before the quote in your draft.

Goal: Complete Analysis for your quote

So Andrea and I were extra prepared today for our mini-lesson, and we had modified one of Serravallo's strategies. We did a great job with mini-lesson, but then as I was conferring, and sitting with students attempting this, I saw HOW HARD ANALYSIS IS. Friends, so so hard...not impossible, but kids will have to sit and understand that ideas might not just pop up super fast. Analysis, like all the other things we ask our kids to do, would be taught best when we tell our kiddos the specific actions they should take to accomplish the task.

So to recap the big ideas I've learned this week:
1. You can't just tell kids what to do, you have to SHOW THEM. (I knew that, but am reminded again.)
2. Even when you write out great actionable steps, the task can still be super hard, and probably, your teaching can be revised further!

I already have evidence that the analysis our kiddos are doing are going to take them from basic to extra (as I told my kids today, which was met with some giggles and a few eye rolls.) The final drafts will tell it all...including how I can teach it even better next time.

Anyone have more ideas for actionable steps for Analysis? I'd love to hear them and enhance what I've got! We're always better when we're putting our heads together!

Happy Friday Eve! :-)

making small groups work in the middle

I'm 15 years into teaching and I've finally figured out small groups in the middle school classroom. Of course, I've been seeing small groups in some way or another over the years, but they haven't been as systematic as I've finally figured out this year.

In the past, I'd get kids learning with the activity and then I'd bounce around haphazardly, usually helping kids who were struggling, and leaving the higher-performing kids to their own devices...with no anecdotals about anything I was accomplishing. It was the best I could do at the time, but now I'm able to see all the kids in my class in a smaller setting over the course of 4 sessions of class.

I am lucky to teach on a block schedule, which affords me 88 minutes of ELA every day. We've got a lot of different things going on in 88 minutes, but no matter what we do, I try to save time for workshop: mini-lesson, workshop, and share time:

As much as I'd love my pacing to go like this, it just doesn't always work out that way. The past two weeks, my coteacher, Andrea and I were teaching the Signposts from Notice and Note - those are not mini-lesson lessons - they take a lot of time to teach and model. But this week, we've finally released that work off to pairs and small groups, which is happening in that 12:30-1:00 time frame.

There is one other important routine I set in place to make this work, too: Accountability Buddies, which I originally learned about on this blog post. Cliff's notes is that kids pick a partner that they want to work with for the long term. When we read poetry, they work with this partner. When they get confused and a teacher is unavailable, they go to this person. And, when Andrea and I are seeing a small group, we make sure a pair is either split between the two of us or both independent, and we require them to work together.

Side note about these buddies: when I was evaluated last year, I saw a small group, and my principal observed the buddies asking so many high level questions to one another about their task. What I love about this system is the long term partnership (and choice in the buddy) creates a lot of trust which allows for risk taking. I had no idea that this would be one of the many awesome results of this forming these long term pairs!

So after I have the buddy system set up, and after we have the routines down, and after I have explicitly taught whatever is the thing we are learning, when we're ready to release work to kids, then we are able to follow the pacing guide above. When we get to workshop time, I let the kids know where they will be working on a rotating basis, so each day I show them one of these charts:

Side notes about the charts if you want to try: Make them different colors - it will be easier for you and the kids to see the differences. Also, I prefer to name these "Conferring Day 1, 2..." instead of by the days of the week. Biggest reason is holidays - We probably miss a lot more Mondays than any other day, so this system just uses an ongoing, rotating basis for the groups.

With this schedule, every other day kids are working with a teacher. On the days away from the teacher, they have their Accountability Buddy as a support. They are taught they cannot interrupt a small group, and they don't! It's been great getting into a routine with this schedule.

And the best part? I get to see kids in smaller settings. All kiddos in my group get very specific feedback about their work, which I can see easily as they sit with me at the horseshoe table. They use guided writing practices (Jan Richardson) to orally rehearse the notes they are about to take. They learn to share to their small group (rather than just to me) and ask for clarification to the small group (rather than just from me). The quiet kiddo speaks up. And when awesome predictions or comments about theme or plot are made, I have the ability to take anecdotal notes that inform my knowledge of what kids know and can do.

Win. Win.

Of course this isn't the only way to make this happen...what are you all doing out there in teacher blog land? Leave a comment below with some ideas so we can keep the conversation going!

Happy Wednesday!

in love

It has been my dream for years to have a 7/8 combo ELA class where the seventh graders loop, a la Nancie Atwell. My dream is beginning to take flight this year!

Last year I had a combo class, but it was small. Mostly 8th graders, with three seventh graders. Those seventh graders are now in eighth, but my new combo class is a 50-50 mix of seventh and eighth, including my three from last year. The brilliance behind this plan has been found already, just in week one.

In four short sessions of ELA, I can already see the potential for this combo class design. This week, we began some procedures that will turn into daily routines. The first one is poetry, which is another recommendation from Nancie Atwell. Have kids study poetry every day because it packs big meaning in short text.

So there I was sitting with the kids in our meeting space, and after reading our first poem, Human Family to them, I asked them to partner read with their Accountability Buddy (long term partnership chosen by kids). The kids of mine who were with me last year knew exactly what was coming, and so it was such a delight to have them get right to work by prompting their partner to begin.

The choral reading of the poem we did, no complaints this year, no feelings that it was weird, because I had kids who were already accustomed to this practice. If I have just three kids looping this year, imagine the impact when I have 14 models next!

It's just the beginning, and I believe in my heart that this is such an effective way to deliver ELA instruction! I can't wait to see what other little insights I'll have as we move forward this year.

And to top it all off, on an exit ticket, one of my seventh graders wrote this:

"The highlight of ELA was being with the 8th graders."

Totally, #allthefeels.

Does anyone else have a combo, looping class? I'd love to hear more about your experiences!

Happy Saturday!

sol17 #26: three sizes

If you're a teacher like me, you've had more than your fair share of bad days. But that's not what this post is about.

This post is about those moments when, like the Grinch, your heart grows three sizes.

Case in point #1:
I was sitting and conferring with a writer when I looked up and across the room. I saw two of the girls in my class working together. This was a few weeks ago, and so I don't remember what we were working on exactly, but what I saw was one of them coaching another one on the thing. It may have been introductions or conclusions for our Argument paper. Even from a distance, I could tell that one was most certainly teaching the other how to do it better.

And my heart grew.

Case in point #2:
There I was, again, sitting at my conferring table, and I looked up and saw this:

The one was just this week. We're in our Holocaust unit, and the kids were reading picture books together to review plot and theme, and also identify the bystanders, upstanders, perpetrators, and victims in the mess.

On one hand, it's not that special, since I told them to do it, but on the other it so is. They are reading a book, read aloud style, as if I were to the whole class. Totally engaged, helping each other, participating. And enjoying their work.

And my heart grew.

Case in point #3:

Yesterday, I handed back a third draft of reports to my 8th graders. I do not write on final copies, but I totally do on their drafts, it's a written way to do feedback with kids, plus, I never want to wait until the final draft to be the first time I look through their work.

And so, when I looked up, I saw a few kids talking about the revisions and edits they were going to make, showing their drafts to one another, marking them up with tracks of their learning.

And my heart grew.

When did your heart grow this last week?

Check out the padlet for ideas or leave a comment for another blogger!

Want another idea? How about a color poem? Check out this link for an example!

my planning to the kids' papers

Today I taught my kids how to use a narrative lead in their introductions better than I ever had. I did more demonstration than I ever had, which made all the difference. Here's the scoop from planning the mini-lesson to delivery and beyond.

Planning Process
I grabbed my notebook and started to think about how I would draft the introduction of my essay with a narrative lead. Just explaining to kids what a narrative lead is and showing some examples (what I've done in the past) isn't enough, you need to actually demo the whole thing. So I got to thinking, how would I draft my introduction? Here's how I thought through the planning of this mini-lesson.

1. Write your claim. (Mine was, "I believe people create their own happiness.")

2. Make a list of things related to claim. (in this case, things that make me happy, including but not limited to glitter, puppies, tacos, teaching, friends, church, family, traveling)

3. Look back at your claim (creating *your *own happiness) and then choose something from the list that could go with it. I choose church.

4. Close your eyes and picture that moment. Think about how you feel, what you saw and heard, who was there. This makes the writer show rather than tell. On the anchor chart below, you can see my ideas in green.

5. After you have a list of ideas, quick write about that moment on your google doc.

6. Add your claim to the end of it and your introduction is complete.

Teaching Demonstration
When I did the demonstration, I created this chart with the kids. On the left hand side of the chart, I did the steps I listed above, first. The kids watched me. After I finished all the steps, I asked them to look back at my work and tell me the steps for this process, and so they helped me author the right side of the chart.

Which brings me to my Quick Writing, which I did on the third draft of my essay. I show you this picture below because I want to make clear that this first version of my introduction is definitely far from perfect. It needs some simple changes to make it better, but it's important for kids to see me create a first draft that isn't perfect, so they understand that I myself don't just arrive upon perfection.

Workshop
After all of that (I didn't watch the clock but I'm guessing I did this in 10 or 15 minutes) the kids went to work on their own introductions. And again I was reminded, the clearer my demonstration, the more specific I get, the more I put myself out there for kids to see... the better they do, the less disruptions I get in workshop, the better quality work I get.

Teaching is such a journey, isn't it? I couldn't have ever even envisioned the teaching I'm doing today 10 years ago when I was just trying to keep my head a tiny bit above water. I wonder what my instruction will look like 10 years from now...?

What does your planning process look like for mini-lessons? Leave a note in the comments below!

Happy Friday!

a day in my ela (class)

I teach an 88 minute ELA block each day. Eighty-eight minutes is a lot of time, but we have so much to do. Here's how I spend my time most days.

10 minutes: Do Now
Students start the day by working on a Vocabulary as a Do Now. Our building has created school-wide vocabulary lists, so as as they study words for the week, I take attendance and status of the class, pass back work, and answer any burning questions they might have.

2-3 minutes: Book talk
First quarter, I gave a book talk each day. Now that students are used to it, each day, one of them delivers the book talk. My students keep a "books I want to read" list in the front of their notebooks, so the goal here (as advised by Penny Kittle) is for kids to have books on deck, so when they finish a book, they know what is coming next.

10-15 minutes: Silent Reading
If you want students to read at home (I do, their homework is 20 pages a night) then you have to dedicate time in your class (preferably every day) so that they can read. These minutes are not free time for me. Now that kids are in a habit, I can confer with students about their books, but this time is also used for anecdotal observations. When kids are reading at home, they can easily get into their books for 10-15 minutes at a time in class, and quickly. Since I take status of the class, I know who is beginning a book, in the middle of a book, has finished a book and is writing a book blog, or who is spending time selecting books. There are no longer days when kids are wandering, swapping books every day, or forgetting books at home or in their lockers. These 10 or 15 minutes along with status of the class and conferring sends a message: In this class we read and finish books.

5-10 minutes: Poetry

Tiny packages full of big ideas. With poetry, kids are forced to peel back layers of meaning and determine what the poet is *really about. Additionally, it's time for me to read aloud to them on a daily basis, time for them to practice oral reading with a peer (after I read the poem to them, they read it with the person sitting next to them), time to determine meaning of unknown words, and time to be blown away by what poetry can do. Yesterday I showed them my favorite spoke word poem, Poet, Breath Now. I get chills every time I hear this poem. They listened, then they were give a copy of the text. Because they are used to reading poems with a peer or choral reading as a class, many of them were reading the poem aloud with the author the second time. After the reading and uncovering meaning, we then "say something" about the poem, what it might actually be about, what we're confused about, if we like or dislike it. This discussion part is still a work in progress, but with consistency, I'm hoping it continues to improve.

I usually share two poems each week, but in the case of Poet Breath Now, we'll probably spend a whole week uncovering meaning.

10-15 minutes: Mini-Lesson
Next we move into workshop. Mini-lessons are just brief teacher demonstration and direct teaching about a topic we are currently working on. This past week, we were reading argument articles and my mini-lessons included:

• Vocabulary instruction on argument terms (claim, evidence, statistics, testimony, anecdotes, elaboration, counterargument)
• How to do note-taking with argument articles (list claim, evidence, counterargument, and then tell if you think the argument is weak or strong)
• How to locate evidence (look for key words: researchers, studies, universities, journals, scientists, etc)
• Revision on argument note-taking: Instead of writing the claim first (How can you even do that if you haven't read the text?) list all the evidence first, then think about the claim and counter argument at the end.
• How to make evidence mirror the claim - I had noticed some kids were listing evidence that was irrelevant to the claim they were hoping to cite, so we practiced sorting some evidence and deciding that if it doesn't necessarily fit with the claim you're thinking, you should throw it out
• Remembering that not all of an argument article is just evidence, some of it is elaboration, too!

I am currently not working with a Calkins unit - middle school only has the writing units so far (they are writing the reading units, now, fingers crossed!) So, you might be wondering where I come up with the ideas for mini-lesson. It's all in the workshop and conferring!

20-35 minutes: Workshop

During workshop, kids do the work of the day...remember, whoever is doing the work is doing the learning! Each day last week during workshop, a group of students meet with me and another group meet with my co-teacher. Students who are left work independently, but because of my low numbers and two teachers, kids are lucky to see an adult every other day:

Conferring schedule - I have four different ones that alternate every day.

 So kids come to confer with me. Sometimes I confer one at a time with the four or five kiddos seated with me and sometimes we work as a group. But through these conferences or group work, misconceptions about what we're doing really stand out, and I'm able to do some note-taking of my own, which informs my instruction. And even better than finding misconceptions, is when kids share ideas about their thinking that are even better than my own thinking. This week, as we were talking about evidence from an article, one kiddo said, "Well this sounds like it's going to be evidence to support the counterclaim, so should we write it at the end of our notes?" Such brilliant thinking!

I think many times, us adults are limited in our thinking, we're not as free and creative as kids are because we've been around longer. I would have never been able to draft the set of mini-lessons I delivered without the kids working at my side.

I'm lucky also to have some alternative seating, so the independent kids are free to move around and work together, after all, there's really 20 teachers in the classroom, not just the two adults.

3-5 minutes (or 1 minute if I'm being honest): Share Time, exit slip, homework

I need to be better at share time. It's so important for kids to share the work they did, but many days the time slips by and we, in a hurry, just get the homework out. (Homework is always the same - read 20 pages and write two blog posts a week.) 

Some caveats

• On Mondays, my schedule is different. On Mondays, they have more time to read independently, like 20 or 25, and my mini-lesson is always focused on blogging. Again, I can't expect kids to write two blogs a week if I don't give them any time in class to accomplish this work.
• In order to accomplish Reading & Writing Workshop, I teach them by weeks. We just spent a week in Reading Workshop reading argument articles. Next week, we will switch to Writing Workshop and write argument papers. To me, this makes the most sense and flows best.
• Sometimes poetry time get absorbed into other things we have going on, but I try my best to share at least one poem a week.
• Sometimes I get stuck in a rut and don't even realize it until I visit classrooms of my colleagues, like my Vocabulary Do Nows - I've had them doing this work in their notebooks, but then I was just in a room and they have them on google slides. Making that change on Monday, don't know why I was missing that. This is one of many reasons it's so important to visit classrooms of your colleagues! (Check out the Pineapple Chart on this post if you're unfamiliar.)
• Sometimes kids don't want to come work with me in our group during workshop. In this instance I pick my battles - if they conferred with me recently and are doing well, I'll let them work independently.
• On the other hand, sometimes kids are not on my conferring list and *ask to come join our group. This is awesome when it happens, but I also want to build their sense of independence, too.
• Sometimes it's an off day - either I'm off with some anxieties unrelated to ELA or the kids are off for a multitude of reasons. Once in awhile you could stop by my room and I'm not conferring and kids are not working together. We're human and this happens at times, I'm not going to sweat it though. I teach in real life ELA, not a perfected version of reading and writing.

So that's my day! It's taken me about 5 months to get the routine going, but I think it's effective for the kiddos and me! What about you? Are you block scheduled? How is your pacing similar to or different from mine?

Happy Weekend!

Tree Thoughts

I don't know why I am so drawn to trees, but I am.

One summer day I sat on my couch and could hear the leaves rustling behind me and I loved it so much I took an Instagram video of it.

When I wake up in the morning (when I don't have to leave early for work) the light that is cast through my kitchen and living room windows is so pretty - the light comes through the leaves outside my windows and dances around my apartment.

I love fall. (I know, so basic.) But seriously, look:

This book, of course.

And is it a coincidence that Arbonne, a product line and health and wellness philosophy I have come to love so much, means beautiful tree?

I'm drawn to art that includes trees, too. About 5 years ago at the Frankfort Fall Fest, there was this artisan who created these beautiful mosaics, and my favorite one was a tree. If only I had $300 at the time, that piece would be here on my wall at home.

And then just this week, on Twitter, I saw a tree that was part of a writing workshop, and etched into the trunk was "Writers grow together," and I am in love:

Speaking of etchings, I've always wanted to etch initials into a tree trunk with some special someone, you know, like this:

The past few days I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what it is about trees that draws me so much to them...?

Is it because living without trees in Arizona all those years has me really appreciating them?

Or maybe it's because of their roots that has them grounded firmly. The best people I know know who they are - when you go out into this crazy world, if you don't at least know yourself, you can be easily manipulated...

Which brings up another quality of trees, flexibility and bendiness. While you do have to stand for something, it's also important to be flexible enough to compromise.

Is it because the leaves change colors and fall away? Last time I had a breakup, this quote spoke to me pretty profoundly:

Or is it because the courageous few, who sometimes, step out onto that limb? Like having that hard conversation with friend or family member. Or walking up to someone you'd like to know to say hello. Or sharing Arbonne, even when people are so judgy. Putting yourself out there isn't easy, but it can definitely yield some pretty amazing results.

So this fall, as you go about your busy days, slow down to notice the trees around you. And, in a few weeks, stop by my classroom to see my Writer's Workshop Tree. It's going to be a daily reminder of all that trees bring into our lives!

Am I missing any other awesome tree references?

Leave me a comment to share them!

illinois reading council review

Just came home from the Illinois Reading Council Conference. It was awesome. If I had to sum it up in three words, I'd go with volume, relevance, and giggles. Here's the story...

Reading and writing volume matters
I read Readicide years and years ago, but this was the first time hearing Kelly Gallagher speak. He talked about how we need to repurpose our middle and high school classrooms away from 4 big novels and 4 big papers to something different so that kids are reading and writing in crazy quantities.

His schedule looks like this:
2 min     Book talks
10 min   Reading and Conferring
10 min   Daily writing to launch units
8 min     Mentor Text Study
20 min   Writing Workshop and Conferring
3 min     Debrief and sharing of beautiful words

This was so reaffirming to me. I try and emulate the experts - Gallagher and Penny Kittle (they are co-authoring a book together due out next November!) and so now I have some ideas to tweak my schedule further. If he can do this with 53 minutes, I can definitely get down to biz in 88!

Our district is awesome and sends so many people to IRC, so we had to get a picture with the Selfie Stick:

And then I had him sign my book and I got to sit down and talk to him a bit.

He is seriously such a great teacher, I feel so blessed to have met him!

Authors Speak: Jordan Sonneblick & Laurie Halse Anderson
I had never heard of Jordan and am now super excited to read one of his books. His session was so great - about how your kids who drive you bananas need you to be there for them, and you might even turn them into writers! Jordan spoke these beautiful words, "Your writing feedback needs to be anointing and appointing - writing is a person's soul on paper." So so true, we can't rip our kids to shreds when we look at their writing or go nuts with a red pen. Read for ideas first, hear your writers!

And Laurie Halse Anderson has amazing books, my favorites to date are Speak and Twisted, but I saw a new side of her this time with her historical Thriller Series, Chains, Forge, and Ashes. I had always wondered how she writes books so different - realistic fiction with Speak and Twisted in Young Adult about sexual violence and then historical thrillers centered around slavery, so it was great to hear her stories. What really stuck out to me was when she said something along the lines of "keep pushing to learn about white privilege" if you have been thinking about that lately. (I have.) The current state of our country goes way back, back even further than slavery, back to when people took land from Native Americans. We have a long road ahead to fix the difficulties we face here in 2016, but it can start with books and conversations.

Enchanted, yet again, by Ralph Fletcher
Ralph Fletcher has easily been one of the most impactful researcher-teachers on my career. I would not be who I am as far as a workshop stance without him. So to have him reaffirm what I already know as a writer - that children need to play with writing to develop not only a love for it but also to be effective at it was so wonderful to hear.

We have to make time in our writing workshops for students to have choice and voice, and when our writing workhops work, we are like a hot air balloon flying away with energy. Our students' writer's notebooks should be a playground and hot house for ideas!

So with all the mandates we have from outside our buildings and our state departments, let's remember to keep writing joyful for our students!

Kyleen Beers and Bob Probst
These two are quite comical and super smart, sharing about their books Notice and Note. These books focus on close reading strategies in both fiction and nonfiction. What I am walking away with her is relevance. We have to make the work we do with kids relevant, and one way to do that is through an awesome strategy called Possible Sentences and then using Notice and Wonder.

Next time you're going to read an article with your students, pick out 15 - 20 words and phrases from the article and list them. Have kids, in pairs, write possible sentences that could be in the text. Then, kids share their sentences and teacher scribes them on the board. Next, teacher asks kids to look at one sentence and wonder about it - what questions do you have? what do you wonder? Kids turn and talk and then share out.

These wonderings create relevance for our readers, big time. When we did this exercise, we all wanted to read the article afterward! This pre-reading strategy is so powerful for our readers, highly recommend.

More learning experiences
I heard a lot of other great sessions, too: about dyslexia, about content-area writing tips, CRAFTS, the hot new lit for Young Adult, and an awesome presentation from a great friend and colleague about blogging with kids. I can't wait to get my students going on blogs!

Hilarity
In addition to learning so much wonderful information that can be brought back to my classroom on Monday, it's just so fun to be around amazing friends from work. We laughed and had so much fun and geeked out taking selfies with our literacy celebrities. On the way home, we sang songs from Lion King and The Little Mermaid. Who does that? Which brings me to...

Gratitude
So many things to be thankful for:

• A district who gets that ongoing professional development is such a must for our teachers and kids; thank you for sending me to IRC and allowing me to continue my training so my students can continue theirs:

• Friendships built around selfie sticks and reading and writing workshop!

• Cute bags from the conference! (You guys: chevron!)

• "ELA Squad" t-shirts, that were the brainchild of a #D100chat one Tuesday evening. Thanks Cap!

• for teachers who teach with a firm, loving insistence so that our students become readers and writers who can powerfully interpret and interact in such world where news, advertisements, informatoin is usually skewed one way or another.

• for Twitter that allows us to stay connected and continue to learn from one another. Check out the #IRC2016 feed and my twitter feed for more! Let's grow our PLN!

Did you attend IRC? What did you take away?

best week ever

No, seriously. You guys, now I'm back in middle school and I have a few of my own classes to teach. It's been three years without! I'm so happy!

Here's my homeroom on the first day. We're already a little classroom family and I love it! I can't wait to share our homeroom theme with you, it's not ready yet, but hopefully in the next week or two!




They're super cute as they learn the big middle school systems. They've done so well this week, I can't wait to see what comes next for them!

I'm teaching two classes: Challenge Based Learning and English Language Arts. This week, I've been working on two big things: Quick Writing & teaching kids to talk to and listen to one another.

Quick Writing
I learned Quick Writing from Penny Kittle's book Write Beside Them. It's prompted writing that happens in three minute spurts. There are three rules:

Rule 1: Write for the whole three minutes. Give the kids a prompt and then tell them that when they run out of things to say, that they need to listen to the talking in their mind and just write whatever that is saying. Main goal, to write furiously and not quit till time is called. Tip: Don't ask a question when you prompt, instead, give a sentence stem. Here are a few I used this week:

• What I like/dislike about this classroom is...
• Poetry is different than fiction/nonfiction because...
• Something I'm looking forward to doing this weekend is...

Rule 2: Don't let your head tell you what you're writing is crap. We all have that critic inside, but writing is messy, thinking is messy! In quick writing, the idea is to get it all to come out, and it doesn't have to be organized or correct or perfect. When you can't think of the next work, put a line to save the spot and keep going! Just don't stop writing.

Rule 3: Relax, have fun, play. Quick writing is meant to be the writer's playground. It builds stamina and fluency for writing, and it also allows a writer's voice to come out. But it has to be done consistently. One other point to note, if a kid has a great thing going after prompt #1, they can skip prompt #2 and stick where the writing is hot. It's recommended!

Quick writing is not collected or graded. Kids do the work, not the teacher. Even if we're not checking it, kids are still reaping the benefits. This week, on an exit slip, one student said this:

That was after session 1 of quick writing. Imagine the confidence they will have after a month of it!

Speaking & Listening

In the three years when I didn't have my own classroom, I read a lot of stuff without a space for application. This week I finally put some of that information to use! I read somewhere that when a teacher repeats what a soft-spoken child says, the message it sends to the other kids is that they don't have to listen to the quiet kid, because the teacher will just repeat them.

I no longer repeat anyone.

If a child shares to the group and is too quiet, I turn to a student on the other side of the room and ask if they heard what the soft-spoken student said. If they say no, I ask the second student to ask the quiet student to repeat themselves. It forces kids to speak up.

I'm telling you, my Challenge Based Learning kids thought I was insane the first day. There were like 50 times when I had to facilitate them listening to one another, but the underlying message here is so powerful: Each person's voice is important and deserves to be heard. So we're going to speak up!

I'm also having them work on eye contact, that rather than having it go from students to teacher and then back from teacher to students, it's one person (student or teacher) to everyone else. So that feedback sounds like this: "You did an awesome job speaking loudly, but can you say it again, and this time, instead of just making eye contact with me, say what you're saying to everyone?"

We will just keep practicing, but I know that the conversations in my classes this year will be wonderful, from kid to kid to me to kid to all the other kids and on and on. I just love it!

Not ready

This is the first year I was not ready - like, I'm still waiting on furniture and my new rug, I didn't have my bulletin board stuff until after the first day, my plans were written on a day-by-day basis, my library wasn't totally unpacked (in fact, 2/3 of it is still in my basement in a storage closet I'm afraid to go in bc I'm sure there's 100s of spiders in there!) And you know what? It was all ok. It was okay that my first day was more about making sure I remembered their names than showing the perfect power point presentation about rules. It's okay that there's a huge empty spot where a rug will soon be, it's okay that I only had planned for the few hours ahead of me. Every kid knows they matter to me, and that's the most important thing.

That being said, I can't wait till my room is ready for the blog reveal! It's coming along, day by day. I'm hoping that in the next three weeks it will be ready for a photo shoot to share with all of you!

That's about all on my end. My heart is seriously so full, I'm so thankful for the opportunities I've been blessed with. Working with kids puts me in that state of flow - you know, where there's nothing else getting at you, you're not stressed about anything, you're not thinking about missing out on anything, you're just living every moment and enjoying the ride.

How was your first (or second) week of school?

teacher talk

Hey all y'all! It's the BigTime Blogging Challenge. I'm writing every day in July to celebrate my blog's three year anniversary! Join me - write your post, link it up with mine, leave some love for blogging friends in the form of comments!

So my plan for today was to talk about conferring, but now it's today and I want to talk about some other teacher related topics. You can feel free to write what you wish!

I read this really great chapter last summer from Donald Graves about the conditions for effective writing. I've had this doc as notes on my desktop for over a month, time to finally get it on the blog!

Graves says that in order to have your students flourish as writers, you have to commit to these seven conditions to make that happen. Read on then share your thoughts in the comments!

Time

Graves says: Professional writers experience near panic at the thought of missing one day of writing. They know that if they miss a day, it will take enormous effort to get their minds back on the trail of productive thought. In short, it is extremely inefficient to miss a day.

Michelle says: If you want your kids to write, create time for them to do so every day. Minimum four days a week for 45 minutes. If you can't deliver on this, I say don't even bother. If a child knows they will write again tomorrow, his mind can go to work pondering his writing topic. Choosing a topic once a week is hard, writing every day is easy.

Choice
Graves says: When children choose their own topics, I can expect more of their writing. "What did you set out to do here? Did you have an audience in mind for this? From the beginning of the conference I can focus my questions on their initiative and their intentions. 

Michelle says: Maybe you give kids the genre and they choose the topic they write about. Or, maybe you're like my amazing friend Jennie who runs two self-directed units a year, where students have 100% choice in what they write.

Response

Graves says: Students need to hear the response from others about their writing, to discover what they do or do not understand. The need to help students know how to read their own work and the work of their peers provides further teaching and demonstration opportunities. They end-of-class Share Time experience reaffirms the essential condition for writing: in this class we experiment and learn.

Michelle says: Capitalize on the engaging quality of Sense of Audience to help students write not just for you, but for their peers, or maybe another class, or a child in a kindergarten classroom. Think about blogging, what keeps you at it? The comments, of course! For writing to flourish, we all need a response to it.

Demonstration

Graves says: You, as the teacher, are the most important factor in creating a learning environment in the classroom. Your students will observe how you treat writing in your own life, how you learn, and what is important to you through the questions you ask of the world around you. How you demonstrate values, how you knowledgeable show the meaning of writing as a craft will have a profound effect on their learning.

Michelle says: Yes, you will demonstrate during the mini-lesson. But walking the writerly life along with your students will provide an enhanced sense of what writers for to your students. You having a Writer's Notebook, you taking time to write often, you writing a blog and reading are all very obvious to your students. Walk the walk.

Expectation

Graves says: When you teach, your task is to find out what your students know, to show they how to put what they know into words, and to expect them to do it.

Michelle says: Kids can do whatever you think they can. I'm so tired of hearing people say, "Oh, Calkins is too hard for my kids." Baloney. If you realize there is a gap between your students and the curriculum, scaffold it back a bit, but still expect the kids do the work. They will rise to your expectations (or fall if you set them low.)

Room Structure

Graves says: A writing workshop requires a high degree of structure. When children face an empty page, they suddenly feel alone and want to talk or move around the room.

Michelle says: Structure your room in such a way that it allows students to help themselves when they get stuck. They should know where all the materials are, the routines for getting what they need (read: not interrupting the conferring schedule), and when you come across problems with students, debrief about them. You can create a T-Chart that you can hang up, problems on the left, solutions on the right. Teach them to be self sufficient!

Evaluation

Graves says: The teacher can show the student how to read their own work - by reading it on their own to decide if it's good and what needs work.

Michelle says: The student is the most important evaluator! They spend 99% of the time with their writing, teach them how to evaluate it to drive their writing further in the moments they are without you.

This information was from chapter 7 of A Fresh Look at Writing by Donald Graves. I have a copy but can't share it electronically until next month when I'm back at school, but email me if you want to read more!

Thoughts?

Share some teacher talk with me today!

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