Cafe Hooray!

I just can't get enough of the sisters this fall. Gail Boushey and Joan Moser at www.the2sisters.com/the_daily_5.htm have really started me off on the right foot this year with my second graders. I love absolutely everything about them, from their no nonsense philosophy to their ability to bring the importance of aesthetic to the classroom. It has been such a pleasure to work so directly on reading and writing this first quarter and not feel like I am wasting student's time with filler skill work that doesn't have any context. With all the assessing that dominated my student's time this fall, thank goodness not one extra minute of our instructional time was spent on unimportant paperwork!

I feel like it was my best start in my 15 years of teaching. Now, I ache to adequately record what I've done so I don't forget! I am desperately making notes in my lesson plans about the read alouds I chose and the writing samples I use to model real reading and writing for kids.

So much of my summer and early fall are full of anxiety to make just the perfect recipe for the school year during those first few weeks (months) of school. Jackpot! The Sisters!

Their website, Cafe Book and DVD of helpful templates for recording student progress have knocked me on my behind. I'm so excited, I can't stand it!

Naturally, I'm dying to share my discovery. And slowly but surely I'm beginning to have conversations with other teachers about the power of their approach to literacy in the classroom.

Thank you Joan and Gail for your insight and simple, straight forward management of authentic and individualized learning for the elementary student. You have truly captured the magic ingredients to empower readers and writers to engage deeply in learning.

Using Real Writing Contexts to Teach

Recently, I have been challenging myself to make the learning contexts I create for my students as authentic as possible. For example, I was modeling how to revise writing when there are too many uses of the word "and" to use more transitional words. Here is the writing I wrote for my second graders:

Even though the weather today is nice, fall weather is coming soon. Since I run outside each day, the cold weather makes it harder to run. So, here’s my idea. My daughter is going to be in the swim team. The aquatic center is where they practice. Well, I have to pick her up anyway. Why don’t I just kill two birds with one stone and run at the aquatic center before I pick her up? That’s it! Then, I can stay running and take care of picking up my kid. Whew!

Just getting my writing juices flowing for this silly lesson got me excited. It seems like such an epiphany to think of providing for my students the contexts they need to learn new skills. I think I need to use more well written children's literature to find these examples. I just haven't had my radar pointed in this specific direction while reading children's lit.

So I ordered Lois Lowry's new Crow Call, Tum Tum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearns and Sharon Creech's newest. I am hoping to look more carefully at my favorite titles for examples of little skills I have to teach.

Assessing and Assessing and more Assessing

Wow!

I don't think I have given more assessments in the first four weeks of teaching in my whole career! I barely have had a chance to get to know these cuties. But instead of teaching reading, I feel like I have been managing children with books for the last four weeks. I squeeze a reading lesson in, the children sit and "read" and I try to get as many running records in as I can in the time they are engaged. Too much time is being spent assessing and not enough time has been spent modeling for students, providing time for practice, developing thinking as they are reflecting on their learning. And I am a fortunate person who has a class full of well-behaved children. (I can't tell if they are really reading, or just being very polite.)

I'm not even a first year teacher. Managing all of these assessments along with fulfilling leadership roles within the district gives me barely enough time to think about what I am really teaching and learning with my students on a daily basis. Something's gotta give.

So, I'm somewhat hopeful that the next few weeks are going to be more realistic. I think my next post is going to be about the successes of the first few weeks now that I have gotten the load off my back.

There's always something cleansing about venting. Now, I think I have moved from feeling like someone with whiplash to someone in recovery.

Teaching and Momming

Day and night, teaching and parenting are consuming my life right now. The back-to-school-transition this year at home and school was quite the roller coaster. We are two weeks into the school year. Yet, it seems as though those two weeks had about six months of emotions and activities packed in. I must make an effort to stand back, get the big picture and adjust my speed. My new students are amazing, my family, wonderful. But, I feel like I have whiplash from the first two weeks of school.

Teacher as learner

Again and again I come back to the idea of learning as such a critical part of teaching. I'm pleased as pie to have a teaching friend join me in the blogosphere. Welcome Anne! I look forward to learning a lot together.

Writing Discussion Topic Possibilities

Since we are all at different places in our understanding of teaching and learning in the area of writing, I don't think there will be one topic alone all teachers want to discuss.  So I thought I would list some specific areas I would like to learn more about from other teachers in my building.  I truly believe we can all be resources to each other.  Although the Barry Lane, Lucy Calkins and 6+1 Traits books can be helpful, learning from the teachers I work with about more specific writing lessons has been the most powerful learning to impact my classroom recently.  I don't want to throw these resources out.  I just want to know how other teachers are teaching writing in their classrooms.  

1. More lessons with story boards (helping students to plan for more detail in the middle of the story by diving the middle frame into four parts)

2.  Using common graphic organizers for non-fiction text

3. Planning for writing across the year  (What GLCEs do we do well already?)

4. Planning for writing in science (Julie talked about this at retreat I think)  

5. How are teachers modeling for writing?  What are some effective ways to model?  (Charts, computers, using a notebook, using student work) How can we do a better job of modeling specific parts of writing?  

Please share your thoughts

I think David and Vickie developed a great mini lesson's template similar to the lesson worksheets used in the 6+1 Traits books.  There are a variety of ways they have used it to teach everything from grammar to how to give good names to characters.  

Summer Opportunities

We have so few opportunities as educators to talk during the school day.  All of us, so focused on our students and our families, neglect to meet our own personal needs of intellectual growth.  The idea of professional learning communities, may seem like just another education trend.  I think in our wold of multitasking we sadly need an official decree to validate how critical it is to hold meaningful, teaching and learning related conversations with other educators.

In a world of facebook, email, twitter and skype, teachers have the opportunity to take the summer and talk to each other as they learn about social technologies that will directly effect the classroom and the way people communicate in our changing world.  This is a win/win situation.  It just takes a few teachers to reach out to other teachers just like we reach out to our students, in a non-threatening exciting new way.  

So this summer, I hope to develop a more personal relationship with other teachers through reading and writing in hopes that it can lead to direct and explicit teaching about reading and writing in our classrooms.  I think that teachers need more time to develop their own understanding of themselves as readers and writers in order for change to happen in their classrooms.  

My hope is that others will see this blog as a possible forum to discuss and reveal their own journeys as readers, writers, teachers and learners.  Even if you are not an educator, many of you may be parents. This role serves a valuable perspective about reading, writing, teaching and learning.

Please post your thoughts!