Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Tag: reader’s workshop

  • Planning, Projecting, Pacing

    I have a rare gift of a late-start morning, thanks to a doctor’s appointment, so I figured I’d take the time I still have before I head over there to write my slice.

    We’re coming off of a long weekend, and I happily spent some time on Saturday planning this week and next’s reading lessons and pacing out unit 2 (nonfiction). The lessons were the first that I’ve planned independent of Ana — huge step! Wow! — and I felt confident finally in how I was writing them. I used all the tools that I’ve acquired thanks to her:

    • The recipe for the perfect teaching point (the what + the how)
    • The TC learning progression for narrative reading (which I’m kicking myself for not using until now)
    • Rubric creation for the final assessment
    • Our pacing and planning guide with titles of each session

    And once I was done with that, I took a look at the next unit, even though I had many other things to do, because I’m geeking out over teaching it.

    To give some background, our school has not had a consistent reading curriculum since I started teaching there, so this year I’m planning out all new units using our power standards and other curricular resources (Shifting the Balance, Jennifer Serravallo, TC units of study) so that they reflect a) what our students need and b) are more digestible for them. This means that much of what I’ll be (and have been) teaching them asks them to raise the level of their reading and interpreting to a point they’ve never been asked before. Which is really hard. But I know they’re capable.

    For the nonfiction reading unit, I’m keeping in mind the fact that Adam Fachler highlighted during the Thinking Maps Training of Trainers course I took with him so many years ago: you can’t learn new skills AND new content at the same time. It’s one or the other. So, I’m choosing new skills. Rather than requiring students to read about topics they don’t know much about, I’ll have them choose a topic they “sort of” know about (as Ana said, lol), or really: a topic they know well, but can still learn more about. The goal of the unit will be clear from the get-go: to prepare for a “knowledge fair” where they’ll teach younger students about the topics they’ve researched.

    The skills I’ll be focusing on this unit are:

    • Note-taking to capture, organize, and synthesize information, using text structure to guide
    • Summarizing by identifying main idea and important supporting details
    • Writing about reading to teach others

    I’m hopeful that this nonfiction unit goes better than nonfiction units I’ve tried in the past. If the projecting and pacing stage is any indication, it’s already going well.

  • The Magic Happening

    I missed my slice last week, and it’s already 9:28pm, but Ana sent me a text saying she wants to show up even if it’s just for four lines, so I figured I could do that too!

    The last couple weeks have felt nonstop, more so than in years past, and in spite of us having a fairly easy class behaviorally. When my nervous system gets disregulated due to outside factors, I often feel like I won’t be able to get it all done and just want to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while.

    Our head of schools gave me the advice of being present and focusing on the magic happening right in my classroom, so that’s what I’m going to try to do for this slice—think of four magic things that are happening.

    Here goes:

    1. A morning meeting activity: sentence types. A BrainPop image of the two presidential candidates. Students turning and talking and sharing smart and serious and funny sentences.
    2. All four committees of our Flying Solo play adaptation, fully engaged and working in tandem towards our November show. Their wonderful ideas. Quieter students speaking up.
    3. The way a few of our students take such care of our space—keeping stock of supplies, making labels for everything, organizing the pillows, color-coding the library shelves, folding the table rags, knowing who has what job when, following *most* of our routines.
    4. A reading conference with a student, starting her book together and helping her monitor and clarify, then watching as she made an un-prompted inference, and with guidance, found text evidence to support it. 🥹

  • A Better Reading Teacher

    My hope and dream for 24-25

    This year, my ninth year as a lead classroom teacher, is the year I want to tackle reading. My first few years in the classroom, I focused on dual language learning, math, and classroom management. Then, project based learning followed by writer’s workshop.

    Every year I’ve held off on reading. I’ve dabbled in it, I’ve led interactive read aloud and book clubs, I’ve ensured access to books and (mostly) protected independent reading time. But reading instruction? It’s always been a struggle. First, because I was teaching in dual language classrooms, later because it was just one more thing on top of all the other stuff I was doing.

    And mainly, because it just felt hard! Reading is something I love, but I don’t know how to teach, at least for upper elementary. Upper elementary is challenging, because we don’t get the training in phonics to help teach our students who have gaps. The students who are still learning TO read, and aren’t yet ready to confidently use reading to LEARN.

    But it’s time. I have to face it.

    So this year, my goal is to become a better reading teacher. This will include designing and developing reading units that are aligned with our new power standards, as well as implementing age-appropriate small group lessons for those students who need fluency and decoding support.

    We started by designing a launching unit to get the students excited about reading. The lessons included: cuing students to notice that we see reading EVERYWHERE; asking students to get curious about how they and their grownups learned to read; sharing some of the science of reading for students; sharing some fun reading history facts so students could realize how reading is a privilege; and helping students take ownership over their reading journals and the why/how of talking and writing about their books.

    Ana jokes that we should sell the unit, and I shake my head, but then I think, maybe we should! Because excited about reading? They most definitely are.

    Student jots, later categorized. My favorite has to be the Twilight Gossip!
  • The Best Read Aloud

    The Best Read Aloud

    Tension building.

    Students leaning forward from their seats or the rug.

    Shocked, grinning faces.

    Squeals and screams.

    “Shh, stop, you guys! Let her keep reading!!”

    That was how today’s read aloud session went.

    It was almost exactly a month ago that we said “Take Two” and sat down with Ana to rethink interactive read aloud for our classroom. We took what we’d done before and tweaked it for our students’ needs, then tweaked it again to fit our planning. We revised our main anchor chart twice.

    How it started
    How it’s going

    The result has been the most engaging read aloud this year, all culminating in today’s session.

    We read the triple climax of Ellie’s story in Starfish by Lisa Fipps: ripping up her “Fat Girl Rules,” speaking up to her mom after exploding in the doctor’s office, and standing up to her bullies. The kids were clapping, cheering, and yelling out, “Slaaaay, Ellie!” and “She’s so sigma!” (a Gen Z slang word whose meaning is still fuzzy for me).

    We hardly had time for conversation or turn-and-talks, and we didn’t need them — the interaction was evident. Our students know Ellie so well by this point. They hate her enemies and they cheer for her newfound confidence and bravery. They see connections in their own lives and are learning to put some of that understanding into action.

    It’s Teacher Appreciation Day (and Week), and today I’m grateful to Kim for spearheading the comprehension planning across this book and being always willing to try new things with me, no matter what time of year; to Ana for making time in her way-too-busy schedule to have a brainstorming meeting with us; and to Gianna for her book club plans (because that’s how our day ended, and it was beautiful).

    Today was one of the best days, and I couldn’t have done it without my teacher team.