Writing Resources

Here is a great link to a district that has aligned their writing units to CCSS, that was shared with me that help support our writing standards.
Writing Units

Words Their Way Guidelines

I have had many questions about where to begin with students on Words Their Way because in 1st and 2nd grade you won't have assessment data until after you PALS assessment.
Here is a link to a general guideline.  One suggestion is to start with one class sort that you use for your word work/Phonics Lesson.  Then differentiate for students that need scaffolding, support, or enrichment.  It was recommended to try this option in order to expose all children to grade level rigor.  This is an option we are exploring this year.  Please do not feel that you must do it this way.  We are still investigating the universal options for implementation that results in the best learning outcomes for our students.  Please contact me if you have specific questions.

Early Writing Units for Kindergarten and 4K

A great resource was shared with me today at the CESA 6 Literacy Leader's Meeting.  One of the presenters shared their experience with Ted DeMille.  He shared that in order for students to be able to use writing as a way to tell their story, they need instruction in drawing.  On the Heinemann site, he has a free chapter of his book, Making Believe on Paper.  Here is the link.  He also has a resource entitled: "Seven Initial Drawing Lessons."  You can access it under the Companion Resource tab on the bottom of this page.

Writing Anchor Charts for Conventions

Here is a great blog entry from Two Reflective Teachers:

Anchor Charts for Conventions

Last year, I worked with one of the teachers in our district on how to teach conventions to students so that they would not only retain the skills, but also use the skills in their writing. Together, we created a chart during an inquiry lesson that specified all of the conventions that her fourth graders knew. That chart held her students accountable for those skills whenever they wrote, and the skills on that chart were aligned to the Common Core State Standards.

Because her students did so well on both our district's editing and revising assessments as well as the conventions component of our district's analytic rubric, I have created a set of master charts for grades 1-5 that I am sharing. These charts align to grade level standards and increase in expectations going up the grades. Since these charts are cumulative, you wouldn't want to be a fifth-grade teacher if students haven't mastered the previous grade level standards!

mastered the previous grade level standards!

I would teach a separate lesson on paragraphing.

My hope is that these charts serve as anchor charts for conventions within classrooms. They can be introduced during writing workshop with the important teaching point that writers pay attention and use conventions in order to make sure that readers can understand their writing.  I also am creating smaller versions that can serve as toolkits for students to keep in writing folders or within notebooks. Depending on how teachers roll out the lesson, perhaps students' initials may appear on the charts in order to increase accountability and designate "classroom experts."

So one of the CCSS language standards is addressed within out curriculum. Now, on to parts of speech and grammar... If anyone out there has done work around integrating some of the grammar standards into workshop practices and writing units, I would love to hear about it. 

Happy writing (and punctuating!),

Welcome 2014 School Year!!

Welcome 2014!
     I know this is a time that you are building relationships and routines with your students.  You are beginning to find out more information about how to reach them as learners.  This year, my first year not having my own students and a classroom to set up, has felt different.  It has been exciting because I have worked with many of you over June, July, and August on Universal Reading and Writing Instruction, so it doesn't always feel like a new beginning.  During the last few weeks, as I have been out in schools and been able to connect with former students or summer school students, it has begun to feel like a New Year!  One of my favorite connections happened yesterday, when I saw a 2nd grade student that I had worked with on developing beginning reading skills, saw me and the first words from her mouth were, "I'm a good reader now!"  Her smile was priceless! Those are the successes I cherish!  When students have that pride of accomplishment! The hugs are also great too!

     As part of my Literacy Coaching Goals this year I am committed to helping teachers and students meet those learning goals and also experience that sense of accomplishment!  I am reminded of the importance to giving all students those opportunities to succeed and remembering that some of them don't have the skills "Yet".  But with guidance and instruction they will meet their goals!

Here is a link to the Fall Literacy Coaching Request Form.

Universal Writing and Reading Updates

Here is a brief overview and update on the Universal Writing and Reading curriculum work that is being developed to ensure that we have a systemic guaranteed literacy curriculum for our students.:

Universal Writing

     

This summer we worked on refining the Universal Writing Curriculum, with the creation of a sample "Launching" Unit.  We will continue our work in November to provide an outline for you two narrative writing units.  I am so pleased with the amount of time during professional development days that we have been given to continue our work in the area of writing.  I love that we are not using the "one and done" philosophy, but continuing to build upon our work.  

Universal Reading

We had a group of over 30 teachers and administers attend a universal reading framework workshop for three days in August.  We worked on analyzing our current universal reading instruction and began to develop belief statements and reading frameworks for the five pillars of reading instruction: Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.  Here is the literacy vision/belief statment we created: 

Pulaski Community School District Literacy Belief Statements:

All students will be college, career, and community ready readers provided:

• equal access to quality, balanced- literacy instruction
• interaction with a variety of high-quality texts in all disciples
• instruction and multiple opportunities to communicate, in a variety of ways, for a variety of purpose, about reading, in a culturally-responsive environment
• all staff will be engaged in on-going professional development and collaboration in order to implement research-based literacy practices

This vision is what will be the anchor to guide our district universal literacy work.  The reading committee will meet several times throughout the school year to work specifically on universal Reading Pillars of Comprehension and Vocabulary Instruction.  As part of the process we will review our current practices and begin to make sure that we are aligning our curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessment to research-based practices and the current reading standards.  Our goal is to develop a scope and sequence and units to guide our universal reading instruction and provide for system-wide consistency.  

We realize that this process is a multiple year process. We will keep you up to date along the way.  

Thank you for your patience as we work through this process.  We would rather get it done the right way, than to be fast and have too many gaps to go back and patch.  

  

Grit and Growth with Debbie Miller

A group of 23 teachers were able to attend the Wolf River Reading Association's Spring Meeting with Debbie Miller, author of many early literacy resources including, Reading with Meaning- Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades.

She shared a story about how she help transform an inner-city classroom.   She focused on providing a physically positive space to begin their work on building grit and a growth mindset.

Here are the notes from the shared Google Doc from the evening:

I love how she reinforced that learning should be joyful.  

We need to look at helping our students improve the non-cognitive skills like perseverance, stamina, agency- these are all part of Grit.  

Loved the TED talk video re: Grit by Angela Duckworth. Definitely worth viewing again.

http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit

Post-Assessment- Student Reflection

I love the four questions she had students answer:

1.  What does it mean to work hard?

2.  Why should I want to work hard?

3.  What will help me(or what do I need) in order to work hard?

4.  How does it feel to work hard?

Growth Mind Set- failure is not a permanent condition (the belief that ability to learn can change with effort) Along with this I also loved how she said you have to be willing to fail and start over.

We need to help students see themselves in a new light.  

“I am the kind of kid who. . .(can help myself learn, shares with others, helps others learn, can work hard, etc.)- Choice Words by Peter Johnston

Conferencing and Sharing questions:

During whole class sharing- Students should share about themselves as learners(readers/writers).  This is a different approach than just sharing what they read or wrote..  Have two or three students(those you met with that day) share about themselves as a reader.

• What did you learn about yourself today as writer/reader?
• What did you do?  What exactly did you do to figure this out?
• What problems did you have?
• What did you learn today that you will do tomorrow?
• Then pose to the group:  Who wants to try what(student’s name) did tomorrow? Use language like- (Student’s names) was inspired by (Student’s name)

Question I asked Debbie:  What was the student tallying during his reading?

I found out what the students were tallying- They were tallying each time they read the a section of the text.  She wanted them to dig deeper using some close reading strategies.  She had the boy pick one section to read and then tally each time he reread it.  He was working on fluency and comprehension.  She had him reflect how his understanding and fluency increased as he reread it more.  She said he reread a section about 3 to 4 times.  

Picture book entitled Those Shoes is a good mentor text for the “Good Fit Books” lesson in the Daily 5 book

Use wordless picture books and have kids tell the story (“The author trusts us to go beyond the words.”)

Encourage students to think of themselves as readers and draw pictures: This is what I look like when I am an engaged reader.