Five for Friday and an Announcement!

What a great week...busy, but got so much done and now I have time to relax a little bit. I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs to share my Five for Friday!

First, I was happy to work with second grade coteachers to begin implementation of word study following Words Their Way. The kids did a great job learning the procedures of the lessons and learned lots about special vowels: short a, i, and o. Here's a few pics from our time together this week:

A word hunt in Just Right Books

Playing games with short a, i, and o

On Monday I presented at our Institute day - and I wish I had a picture of my co-presenter and I, but I didn't take one. But, Rachel, I have to tell you that I love, Love, LOVE working with you and I'm so happy to have you as a colleague and friend!

Rachel and I presented about close reading to middle school and then I did another session on Reading Workshop based on an article by Combs. After my Workshop session I realized how un-interactive it was, so definitely going to have to work hard to make my next one more hands on. Either way, good info in both!

This week I also had another presentation - with a Kinder teacher for our second Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting. We presented to parents about comprehension and how the kids are assessed with the Fountas and Pinnell benchmark assessment. We showed parents books from levels A-D (and boy were they surprised at how much the kids learn in kinder!) Then we showed classroom data related to sight words, letter name fluency, letter sound fluency, and comprehension. Parents set goals and then the kids taught them how they did their word study. Such a great night for parents, teachers, and students to be working together!

Here's a pic of one of our families...nothing but smiles!

This week in my research class at grad school, we had a guest speaker from the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce (CGCT). 

I'm not going to get into it in detail here...I'm planning on writing about it more in depth later.... but they are a group who writes relevant curriculum for students. Their first unit of curriculum is called Urban Renewal or Urban Removal: A Grassroots Look at Chicago's Land Grabs and the Struggle for Home and Community. This unit starts waaaay back in history and explains how land was taken right out from under the Native Americans who lived here (in many cases through trickery) and still some of the same issues are going on where groups of people are being displaced by campaigns to "renew" our city.

These readings are appropriate for 8th grade and up, but I wanted to have it to learn about the history of Chicago for myself, and maybe share with some of my middle school colleagues! More to come on CGCT soon!

Last but not least...I'm excited for the Loving Literacy blog hop coming up next weekend! I'm linking up with all the reading specialist/literacy coach bloggers again to share our loves of literacy - favorite books and freebies to go with them! Make sure to check back on my blog next weekend to hop through all our blogs and collect lots of great freebies!

And, just a reminder - the 30th of every month is book club! Please link up with BigTime Literacy to share whatever you've been reading lately!

That's all for this late edition of Five for Friday! Thanks to Doodle Bugs teaching for sponsoring the Link Up!

Until next time...

Awesome Teacher = No Assignment too Big

When you have an awesome teacher, you pretty much have no problem doing any assignment they ask.

Case in Point:

I was kinda dreading one of my new classes: Research Design & Analysis of Educational Data.

But then, I went to class tonight and this happened:

First thing, Dr. Cortez says, "Okay well, I care about my students and it's 7:05 already so I want to help you reduce your stress. You've had a long day, and we still have over two hours of work to do. So, we are going to do some deep breathing and stretching. If you don't want to participate, that's okay, but if you do, please stand up."

He then led us through about 5 minutes of this, which was awesome.

Then, we watched this youtube clip:

That brought us to the fact that all you have to do is some research, so pick something you love and then it won't be so bad.

Is it nerdy that I'm (a little) excited to do my very own research study? So far I'm thinking about possible topics: Close Reading, something related to blogging and teaching and learning or - I actually like this stress management idea with teachers...and maybe kids, too! More to come on that later though.

This teacher continued the class in a laid back, yet strict way. Laid back...said things like, "I don't want people talking out of their butt," and "Can you believe some people do research studies like...'Do students like to come to school earlier or later?' Umm...what do you think?" Then, "Please don't do s*** research." 

But he was strict, too: "I'm going to need you to close your computers when we have discussions. We're a classroom community and I love when we're really getting down exchanging ideas," and "You're going to need to make sure you follow the outline for your paper. It helps me grade it when it's formatted just. like. this.

Side note: I felt rather creepy writing down what he was saying. I knew I wanted to write this blog when I came home, and wanted to remember...but, nevertheless, creepy!

Dr. Cortez let us introduce ourselves first and didn't spend a whole hour on himself. He's going to give us feedback on our one assignment (the research paper) as we go, so by the end, there will be no surprises. The guy has a PhD, along with his Master's and Bachelor's all from University of Illinois. He is from Chicago and knows all kinds of history of our great city...he's smart. I admire smart people!

So all of this got me thinking: If you are a good teacher...rather, if you care about your students, and you do things (i.e.: are funny, do deep breathing and stretching, use different media to give your lecture...etc) to make your students like you - you can pretty much get them to do any kind of assignment you want, and it's no big deal.

Write a 15 page paper?

With a title page, abstract, table of contents, introduction, and review of literature?

Add in the methodology?

Don't forget your findings.

The same is true for us as teachers and our students: Show them you care about them, make it a point to learn their names ASAP, and let them have a piece of the lesson - kids will do anything.

Me: Which letter is the vowel?

Kids: <sing-songy> The A!

Me: How does it sound?

Kids: /aaaaa/ !!

Me: For homework, sort and say the words again and read the Thunderstorm book.
Kids: YES!!!

Love being a teacher. Love being a student.

That's my slice of life for today. Link up every Tuesday with the Two Writing Teachers.

That's all for now. It's 10:13 and I'm cashed.

G'night,

Rethinking Parent-Teacher Conferences

In November, I held my first Academic Parent Teacher Team (APTT) Meeting with one of the kinder teachers and the families of the students in her class. We met in the evening - all the parents and Melinda and I. The kids were invited too, but went to a childcare room with another teacher and National Junior Honor Society students from the middle school. The kids got to play games while the parents got to learn about what their kiddos were doing in class.

The APTT meetings were developed by Maria C. Paredes from the Creighton School District in Phoenix, Arizona. Maria was working on her PhD at Arizona State and developed this system for parent teacher conferences. Her meetings are different than your traditional parent-teacher conference in a few ways:

First, parents meet as a whole group - all parents in the whole homeroom come together for 75 minutes and learn together with the classroom teacher.

The picture above was from our first meeting in November. Because this was a kinder class, we held the meeting in our library so the parents had a little more space for working (and sitting!)

For this kind of meeting to be an APTT meeting, you have to have three parts: student data, goal setting, and aligned activities.

We decided to show data in two categories: sight words and letter names and sounds. This data was collected the week of the meeting. It was translated into a class-wide bar graph that was shown to parents, but the individual student data was anonymous. As you can see below, data on the whole class is presented, but each parent only knows their child's scores based on the letters along the horizontal axis of the graph.

In an APTT meeting, you start with student data like this. Each parent is given a folder with all of the materials as well:

In the folder, the parents can find the documents I used to collect data so they can see exactly which letter names, sounds, and sight words the children did and didn't know. In addition to the data sheets, there are lists of sight words and sounds, goal setting sheets, and the materials that go with the aligned activities.

Which brings me to the second part of the APTT meeting....

Based on the data the parents see, and in comparison to the child's peers and the expected benchmark norms, the parents set goals for their child. The goals are expected to be met by the time we meet for our second meeting, which in our case, is coming up this month.

After sight-words and letter names and sounds were described and data was shown, parents were asked to write a goal for their child in each category. Parents recorded this goal on a sheet that we gave to them, which was to be turned in to us at the end of the session. We wanted to make a copy of this form so we had it and then we would send it home on the following day.

Now, in order for a goal to be accomplished, we had to provide parents and their children activities to use to reach the goals. So, we gave them two ideas, in addition to the materials that they would need to complete them.

Our activities included two games:

As we carried out our conversation about these games, Melinda ended up going over how all the letters sound - common mistakes that parents and even I make - like when you say the letter m: sometimes people say it /muh/ rather than /m/. It's little moments like these (and a parent saying, "Ohhhhmigosh! I've been saying it wrong all these years!) that are so great about the APTT meetings.

Our first meeting was a success and I know the next one will go even better. In our first meeting, parents probably weren't really sure what to expect and maybe even feeling a little out of their comfort zone (as was I!) But, by the end of the meeting, many parents had met and talked with other parents in the room. One other outcome of these APTT meetings is the networking that naturally takes place as parents get to know one another and discuss the objectives and activities students do in class. Someone even said on their way out, "Oh yeah, we were pretty quiet tonight, but I'm sure it will be different at our next meeting because we'll already all know one another!"

I think overall it was a great experience and I'm really looking forward to seeing the parents again this month!

Thank you to all the parents who participated and we're looking forward to seeing you later this month!

Hope you're keeping warm with this arctic blast across the country!

If you're interested in learning more about these meetings, you can google Academic Parent Teacher Teams or look at these websites:

Student develops successful alternative to parent-teacher conference from Arizona State University

Academic Parent-Teacher Teams: Reorganizing Parent-Teacher Conferences Around Data from Harvard Family Research Project

An Innovative Model for Parent-Teacher Partnerships from ED.gov

Family and Community Engagement: Academic Parent Teacher Teams from WestEd

The Power of Academic Parent Teacher Teams from edutopia

Going Deeper: Academic Parent Teacher Teams from Wisconsin RtI Center  - This link has a few videos of a teacher conducting an APTT meeting!

Take that, campus bookstore!

I just finished my first semester at Northeastern where I'm working on my Principal's Endorsement. Last semester I had a class about the theory of educational administration and I had to buy this awful book:

It's just so dense and full of lots of theories and guys like Maxwell Something-or-Another. That, and we worked on the theories in this book all semester, and then had an essay exam on the other book.

But, I digress.

Anyways, this book cost $146 when I bought it. Guess how much the bookstore wanted to give me when I went in to sell it back? $100? No. $75? No. (btw - prior to walking in that store, I decided that was the least amount I would take.) $65? Still no.

They would only give me $55 back.

Well, this chick thought they were barking up the wrong tree, so I told them that I would go ahead and keep it. I came home and looked up how to sell books online and made my way to amazon.com where I listed it for $140, $15 cheaper than anyone else who was selling it. I came to find out that Amazon would take a commission, but even with their $20, I would still make $120 on it. I just had to wait for it to sell.

I listed it on Friday, and it sold today. Boom.

I will not be robbed by campus bookstores! We're just college kids teachers, after all!

After that exchange, I thought I would look and see what books I'd have the pleasure of reading this semester. Something on Human Resources and Managing People, something about Qualatitive and Quantative Research. Yawn.

Then I thought I should at least take a gander at the books in the Literacy section...that wouldn't be being unfaithful to my new degree, would it? Just a quick look wouldn't hurt anyone....right?

 Jerry John's BRI? Love it!

Words Their Way? Own it!

Pathways to the Common Core? Winning!

All I wanted to do was look at all those books all over again. And buy the ones I don't have. But I didn't.

Which got me to thinking: Should I really be doing a principal's endorsement? I mean, I'm not even sure that's ever something I want to do. I love curriculum and teaching and classroom management and building relationships with kids and my colleagues. Evaluating teachers and figuring out budgets and management - doesn't get me all excited. But then I'm back at the point of having the time and energy to do it just in case....so I should continue, right?

Anyways, that's my story about the book and how I outsmarted the book store. Today was also good because I had another sale, but on Teachers Pay Teachers. And we got a snow day tomorrow. Here's my block:

And it just won't. stop. snowing. Tomorrow's high is -9 but when you factor in wind chill, it might be as cold as 35-45 degrees below zero! I will be in full hibernation mode, for sure.

Meanwhile, my best friend who lives in Southern California enjoyed a day at the beach with her kiddos and hubs:

Her kids were swimming today. SWIMMING!!

Anyways, hope you had a great Christmas break and that it's extended a day if you're in the Chicagoland area!

Stay warm and sell your books on Amazon!

My fave stories for Teaching Memoir in the Writing Workshop

A few days ago I wrote a post about getting kids to love writing through memoirs and literature and list making. You can read that post here. At the end, I said I'd be back with my favorite picture books to spark ideas for memoir....so here you have it!

Just a sidenote - I used all of these with seventh and eight graders, but since I've become a Literacy Coach, I've used them with almost all grades K - 5 as well. You might think it would be weird to have middle school kids gather on the rug in the center of our room, but that was a ritual that we developed, and they loved it after they got used to it! And, it totally works with primary as well - they just need *lots* of rehearsal. With K-1 - lots of drawing and talking about what they drew! After all, telling stories is the precursor to writing, right?

Anyways, onward with the books.... Enjoy!

I first heard this story during my Master's Program for my Reading Specialist certificate. I can't remember if a teacher read it to our class or another student in class did, but they did this super snotty voice for Lilly, the big sister to Julius. She's such a pain, and does some awful things to her baby brother, but then she learns an important lesson. This is one of my favorites to read! If you want to have your students write small moment stories about their brothers or sisters, this is a perfect read.

Well clearly there's a pattern here, because the teacher in my Master's Program who read this book to our class also did voices. (I highly encourage them - even with middle school kids!) Anyways, this is a story about the most unexpected friendship that forms between Amos, a mouse, and Boris, a whale. Boris helps Amos out in his time of need, and then wonders how Amos could ever repay the favor. Read to find out how a squeaky mouse does so, and to show a beautiful friendship that forms. Then, ask your students to think of, rehearse, and then write about small moments of friendship with their besties.

I found this book recently in Fletcher's Craft Lessons book. It's the story about all different kinds of courage - the courage to eat your veggies before you eat the part of the dinner you like best, courage to talk to the person who no one wants to... I actually modeled a Writing Workshop session with our Writing Core Facilitator and read this book to my staff. We then asked them to write about a time they had to use courage - and the stories that were composed would bring a tears to your eyes. This would easily work with all kids as well!

This book is stacked with beautiful language and a sweet memory of a child who is finally old enough to do that special activity (in this case going owling) with his or her mom (with both third grade and middle school kids we've looked closely to determine if this child is a boy or girl - this is great for inferring, too!) In addition to the beautiful language, the pictures are gorgeous and the owls are heard with their, "Whoooo, whoooooo, whooooooo-ing." Your kids, young or old, will love this, and then love to write about the special things they get to do with their parents, great aunt, cousin, or abuelita.

Ever had a teacher or another special adult help you learn something or grow in a particular way? Such is the story in Thank you, Mr. Falker. He helps the young girl to learn to read after he notices how she has such a difficulty with it. There's no doubt in my mind that your students have someone special who helped them out at some point. Word to the wise though: This particular book is pretty long - will probably need two sessions to get through.

Ohhhh I love this one, and Cynthia Rylant. This is a collection of short stories all about animals in some way or another. In the stories, the people help the animals, but the animals also help the characters learn to love and appreciate the blessings in their lives. Great stories to inspire writing about the special pets or other animals in our lives.

Well, this story is cute and will illicit stories for sure - but they really might turn out about enemies. (Hey, writing is writing, right?) In the story, the boy hates this enemy who lives down the street, so the boy's dad tells him that he will make "Enemy Pie" for him. The dad asks the boy to invite the enemy over and says he'll make the pie while they play for an hour or so. I'm sure you can guess what happens :-) Perhaps this book will inspire stories about unexpected friendships!

Well, those are just a few. My bookshelf is at work and so I'm struggling to remember others, but this is a good start at least.

Your Turn!
Do you have any other great literature you read with your kiddos? Please share with me...I'd love to add some more titles to my collection!

And now, I must go clean and take down the Christmas tree. No fun.....

Happy Friday!