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: tcrwp

  • 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!

  • On Letting Go and Watching Her Fly

    There’s something about teaching Writer’s Workshop that I feel oddly possessive about. It was something I grasped tightly to after meeting Ana, moving to Miami, and starting to work at KLA. It helped me through a tough couple of years in my personal life. It was something that I had control over, and which brought me and my students joy. It got me writing again, got me to see myself as a writer, just like I hope my students will see in themselves.

    So, letting go of it as a subject that I teach, that I plan, feels… scary, and uncomfortable, followed by guilt that I feel that way. It’s like a blanket being pulled off the bed that I’m still clutching to a corner of because I am desperate to stay snuggled up in it, even though I know the blanket is big enough for me and another.

    But that fear and discomfort gets replaced by awe and pride each time I watch Kim lean in and open up to the students, whose eyes light up with her stories. Every time I watch her implement all that she’s learned in just one year. There’s no doubt in my mind she will teach them so wonderfully. And I’ll be right beside her to support, to model conferencing, to be her mentor.

    “Writers, today I want to teach you,” she says, using that predictable language. And teach them she does.

    I can’t wait to watch her fly.

    Kim reading one of our student’s stories out loud, just like Georgia Heard did for us at the Quoddy writing retreat.

  • The First Writer’s Workshop

    It’s 5:30am and I’ve already been up for an hour. I’ve been struggling with morning insomnia for a few months now — waking up around 4 or 5 to pee, and unable to quiet my brain enough to fall back asleep. I have a notebook beside my bed to help me dump these thoughts, the goal being to train my brain to deal with them later, but tomorrow is moving day and so I’m too excited to settle back down.

    Besides, it’s the perfect time to get my slice of life out of the way. And I do have a goal for my Tuesday slices, now that the school year has started — I’d like to document a year in the life of a 5th grade teacher and her class and the learning we all do. So I thought I’d begin with the first Writer’s Workshop.

    ***

    This year is a little different. It’s the first year at KLA that I don’t have Ana in the classroom across from mine or down the long hallway, and it’s not because she’s on maternity leave or has moved away. Ana has gotten the job we’ve all been hoping for (and more!): instructional coordinator. This means she is more available to do coaching work with teachers, coordinate curriculum for the school, help streamline and align all-school practices, and so much more. This spring and summer, she also wrote a whole new WW launching unit for us: The First 20 Days of Writer’s Workshop, a beautiful unit that emphasizes talk, encourages teachers to join in the writing, and keeps writers in their notebooks to help them develop a strong repertoire of strategies for generating ideas of what to write about.

    To be honest, my head hasn’t been in the right place since starting school, what with everything that’s been going on (see my last post), but I knew I needed to start this year off right with a first Writer’s Workshop lesson that would hook my writers. That need became even more apparent when, during our morning meeting share, students expressed their feelings (good or bad) about writing — some saw it as something to enjoy, when they got to write made up stories or jot down their feelings to destress, while others cited it as being boring, hard, or tedious, unless they were passionate about the topic.

    I knew this first lesson would be important in convincing my reluctant writers that maybe, just maybe, there could be something to enjoy about writing this year. (And I have verbal — and written — proof from previous years that I’ve been able to do this. Many students who previously didn’t like writing either fell in love with it or found the utility in it.)

    So, as they gathered on the rug in rows for the first mini-lesson, I took a breath, told them I needed a moment to put on my writing teacher’s hat, and then leaned in close, as if letting them in on a secret: “Good morning, writers.”

    Envisioning language, a suspenseful story, big eyes and smiles, audible surprise — I wish I could have filmed the lesson from my perspective. It was a beautiful example of engagement, when every single kid is there with you, one of the utmost highs of teaching.

    And then, the planned conversations for oral rehearsal — one partner talking, the other asking follow-up questions. By the time I sent them off to write, there was no question that the notebooks would be filled. When the timer beeped, you could feel that they would have kept going.

    But it’s the first six weeks of school. The first 20 days of writing. And so we go slow to go fast.

    I’m ready for day 2.

  • The Joy of Writing Mentor Texts

    It’s my fifth year teaching fifth grade, and my third year teaching Writer’s Workshop to fifth graders. Last fall, I was excited to attend an online session with Hareem A Khan and Eric Hand for their new Graphic Novels unit for Grades 4-6. I was blown away by the work they did and immediately pre-ordered the unit. When it came in the spring, I eagerly launched into teaching it, knowing my student writers would love it.

    Last year, though, we were only able to do the first bend, as it was close to the end of the year and we had limited time. Instead of writing my own mentor text, I based mine off of Hareem’s, which is great, as it worked for all of the mini-lessons, but it wasn’t my own. I didn’t have to actually go through the writing process of generating an idea, bookmapping, considering panels as I sketched my thumbnails, or really working on my cartooning skills either when drafting. I didn’t have (or get) to experience the time-consuming yet rewarding process of creating my own short graphic novel. Until this year.

    This year, we had enough time to teach the full unit. I didn’t reinvent the wheel with the first bend, so I still used my Hareem-inspired graphic novel for that. For Bend II, in which the children write graphic memoirs, I knew I wanted to challenge myself to create my own, and I knew exactly the small moment I wanted to use for it: the fridge debacle.

    Throughout the unit, Kim has remarked over and over again how incredible it is to watch the writers’ engagement in this medium. As graphic novel lovers, they thrived (with only a few gripes here and there of “I’m no good at drawing!” — but once they realized they could get away with stick figures, it was full steam ahead). And for me, as someone who enjoys doodling herself, I was thrilled to be working in the new medium as well. I even enjoyed students’ feedback for revisions during mini-lessons, such as the lesson where I modeled how to build suspense by deciding on the number of tiers and panels within each tier. I revised an original thumbnail of 3 tiers, 2 panels per tier, to 3 tiers, one panel per tier, because as R suggested, it would be much more impactful: dun, dun, DUN! Or when E remarked that I could start the story right at the loud noise waking me up, and flashback to the preceding trouble later on.

    And the result has been so much more rewarding than creating a mentor text that I can use for future teaching: I used writing and cartooning to create art out of one of the more annoying and stressful moments of my adult life. It took lots of time, stolen at lunch, or while the children were reading or writing or taking a math test, or at home while I watched Netflix. The joy of sharing this piece with my students who have followed along and assisted me in the process has been so special, as has sharing it with my friends and family who experienced the debacle alongside me.

    I present to you, The Fridge Debacle:

  • All The Things We Do

    Today after eating with Kim and Ana and talking about reader’s workshop and writing conferences, I fell into a deep “I’m a terrible teacher” mindset.

    “I haven’t conferenced. I’ve sucked at reading their work,” I texted Ana. “And now I feel bad that they’re not reading daily, but we can’t change the routine again this year.”

    She grabbed me as we passed in the cafeteria: “I was literally having the same thoughts yesterday in the shower.”

    Then she suggested making a list of everything we are doing, so we can see where there’s wiggle room. What can we knock off our plates so we can do this?

    “But I also like my work-life balance this year,” I told her. “And I don’t want that to change.”

    I walked over to Kim and opened a new document on my computer.

    “I want to make this list, but also so we can see that we’re actually doing a lot.”

    “We do SO much. I love this idea,” Kim agreed enthusiastically. “I used to do this for parenting, too.”

    I appreciate Kim’s enthusiasm for all the things.

    So I started typing as we both shouted things out:

    ///

    ALL THE THINGS WE DO

    • Prep the materials we need for that day (copies, manipulatives, charts, post-its)
    • Plan lessons and units (writing, reading, read aloud, math, investigations, SEL, word study, sentence study, morning meetings, closing circles, integrated projects)
    • Create anchor charts for various lessons and units
    • Check and give feedback to their math work
    • Check and give feedback to HW
    • Email parents
    • Attend meetings during and after school hours (Hiring Committee, Literacy Committee, Tuesday PD, parent meetings)
    • Support students when they need help during independent work
    • Manage social emotional needs — conflict resolution, redirections, etc.
    • Transition them all over the school
    • Do mindful moments and brain breaks
    • Take them to snack and recess and lunch
    • Plan and execute field trips
    • Plan and rehearse for graduation / end of year things (middle school panel, blast off week, graduation rehearsals, etc.)
    • Write, direct, and produce a 5th grade show, which included rehearsals daily for the weeks leading up to it
    • Give kids band-aids (physical and emotional) when they need and clean poop off their shoes after recess sometimes
    • Collaborate with coworkers to do integrated learning
    • Do mentorship ALL THE TIME (sometimes formal meetings, sometimes informal, always happening constantly)
    • Take our own mental breaks (at our lunch and recess)
    • Brainstorm together constantly
    • Put out fires as they come up
    • Meet every other week with Male
    • Make each other laugh so hard we cry
    • Create partnerships and groups for collaborative work
    • Shepherd the children like wayward sheep at the end of the day
    • Manage time all the time (it’s like I have a TimeTimer living inside of me)
    • Manage arrival and dismissal (20 mins in the morning + 20 mins in the afternoon)
    • Take verbal punches from the children daily #FifthGrade
    • Get and give hugs (and a little bit of lice)
    • Document everything! (photos, videos, audio recordings, transcribing, creating wall documentation – printing, cutting, putting it up)
    • Work with small groups
    • Check in with students one-on-one during independent work
    • Create and modify assessments
    • Create rubrics for assessments
    • Grade assessments and projects
    • Grade writing (unit work + on-demands)
    • Hold celebrations for writing that often include other teachers and students
    • Write positive compliment post-its for each kid, almost every week
    • Find games and other early finishers activities
    • Complete progress reports (cumulative grades, comments/narratives, inputting them into Google Slides, saving them as a PDF and schedule sending to parents)
    • Hold parent teacher conferences
    • Do F&Ps three times a year
    • Complete middle school recommendations
    • Administer MAP exams, then download and send the results to parents
    • Reevaluate and reassess how our teaching is going, then adjust and shift based on what we think is best (sometimes involving whole new planning and prep, such as for read aloud, reading stations, etc.)

    WHAT WE’RE NOT DOING

    • Writing conferences and small groups
    • Reading their writing notebooks / using them as much
    • Protecting indie reading time
    • Aligning our investigations to the social studies and science standards explicitly (general topics, but not the nitty gritty)

    ///

    I shared the document with Ana.

    “OMG YESSS. This is your slice today :)” was her reply.

    I may still be ending this day feeling like a worse writing teacher than I was last year. But I do recognize that I’m doing SO much. And I hope that anyone else who ever feels this way realizes that they are, too.

  • The Final Slice (For Now)

    I tell people all the time one of the most beautiful paradoxes to me is writing. And the reason why is because in order to do it one has to live in an extraordinary place of humility, in the process of making something that perhaps might be shared with the world. On the flip side, the mere notion that someone wants to make something that might be shared with the world is rooted in ego.

    Jason Reynolds, from an episode of Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

    I can’t believe March is over. What a month to have documented daily. An exhausting month. A scary month. An emotional month. A month that finally, thankfully, is coming to an end, turning itself over to April and new beginnings.

    I was wary about this challenge, as it’s probably the most disciplined I’ve been writing in years. Maybe even a decade.

    I have always been a writer.

    As a kid, I would write stories and create fake newspapers on AppleWorks on my iMac. In middle school, I started blogging on Xanga and LiveJournal with camp friends. For years in high school and college, I wrote every day, whether journaling or free writing, or writing stories and memoirs. I surrounded myself with other writers and edited Caliper, Stuyvesant’s literary magazine, my senior year. I even went to college for Creative Writing. I started running an open mic with my friend, as well as a one-page flyer-style lit mag, and consistently participated in both. But in my final semester, I dropped the major because of a logistical conflict (and conflict between professors) with my other major.

    After that, I let writing fall by the wayside. I didn’t feel that I could do it, that anyone would want to read what I wrote. I journaled off and on, but could never quite get back into a groove.

    During COVID, I started journaling again more consistently, but I wasn’t producing writing for any audience aside from myself.

    It wasn’t until I started teaching writer’s workshop that I rediscovered the love of writing within me, through teaching kids how to go through the writing process themselves. Their excitement and nervousness inspired me to write mentor texts, and then their feedback to those mentor texts fueled me further. In our memoir unit this year, one student said, “I don’t understand why you’re a teacher. Why aren’t you a writer?”

    Well, I am both. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I write for me, I write for audiences (blog followers, my students, my friends when I write love letters to them). I am a copywriter, using words to advertise and persuade.

    This writing challenge wasn’t easy. It was quite difficult in fact. And not every post was a real “piece,” if you will. But it was something. And I put myself out there. And for that I’m proud. I hope to keep the momentum going — Tuesday slices? SOLC 2024?

    I wrote every day for the 2023 Slice of Life Story Challenge run by Two Writing Teachers.

  • Rihanna’s “Croch”

    Today I got to see my older sister, Tillie, for the first time since Thanksgiving! She’s here on a “moms getaway” weekend with 3 of her best friends, resting and relaxing by the poolside. We met for breakfast and when she told me a story about my nephew, John Henry, I knew it was perfect for today’s slice.

    Apparently, my niece and nephew are obsessed with Rihanna’s halftime show (I mean, who isn’t?) and have requested for my sister and her husband to play it for them a million times.

    “And he’s been drawing so much lately,” my sister told me. “Every holiday, he makes a new drawing for our front door. On Thanksgiving, it was a turkey. On Christmas, a tree. On Valentine’s Day, we cut up a bunch of hearts. And this weekend he even made a St. Patrick’s Day drawing of a leprechaun with the belt and the pot of gold and everything!”

    Super cute, I know. He’s also been writing a ton, thanks to his amazing kindergarten teacher who teaches him writer’s workshop.

    Recently, they’ve learned that writers label their drawings.

    Here’s where Rihanna comes in.

    “So he drew a picture of Rihanna in her halftime outfit,” Tillie said. “And—wait, I think I have the picture on my phone, hold on.”

    And that’s when she showed me the detailed drawing — with labels! — of Rihanna in her halftime show outfit.

    “He labeled her crotch!” Tillie exclaimed.

    John Henry’s drawing of Rihanna

    And he sure did.

    “What does that say at the top?” I asked.

    “Rihanna,” Tillie laughed. Ah yes — Reeona. Gotta love phonetic, inventive spelling.

    “Wait — is that her baby?” I asked, pointing to the stick figure in a circle inside Rihanna’s tummy.

    “Oh my god, I didn’t even notice that!”

    Man, do I miss my nephew!

    Day 18 of 31

  • In My Feels: Anticipation

    All. The. Things.

    At the launch of every new writing unit, I feel a wave of anticipation that teeters dangerously between excitement and overwhelm.

    Excitement because it’s a new genre, and there are so many great tools and resources, and I have some new systems I want to put in place, and this time I swear I’ll be more intentional with picking the mentor texts and modeling in my own writer’s notebook.

    Overwhelm because there are TOO MANY great tools and resources! And how will I teach all the new systems and still give writers time to write? And how will I get these on-demands graded in time? And, oh god, there are so many things to teach them, where do I even begin?

    So I’m taking a break from the grading to write this post and remind myself to BREATHE.

    To just take it “bird by bird,” as Anne Lamott says. The unit will pick up speed as the writers step into it, and I will know how to sift through the tools and use what I need once I see what they’re producing.

    I am leaning towards excitement as I gear up for tomorrow, for two main reasons.

    First, Consuelo and I have decided to split the class in half for reader’s and writer’s workshop, aligned with their book clubs and their writing partners. This way we can take advantage of both instructors and get a 12:1 student:teacher ratio. We’ll also have more time and freedom to conference with students, which I’m really excited about. After attending the TCRWP’s Virtual Saturday Reunion, as well as Ana’s last WW meeting on the teacher work day, I’ve got so many ideas about how to make small groups work better for both me and the kids. That’s a big goal for me as a teacher this unit.

    Additionally, as I was preparing a “This Unit’s Mini-Lessons” anchor chart, an idea Ana and I had for student accountability, Consuelo gave me the idea to make small cards to give to the students for each teaching point. That way, it could live on the anchor chart AND in the students’ notebook for reference.

    Here are how the first three lessons’ cards turned out. I’m looking forward to seeing how this helps cement the teaching point for each writer!

    It’s important for the card to include a visual, and I also added in which stage of the writing process it applies to. I’m hoping this helps empower students when we confer!

  • Arc of Story: Week 2/3 Reflection

    My weekly reflection got postponed a bit from our days off for Hurricane Ian. It didn’t end up hitting Miami too badly (thankfully), so it mostly gave us teachers and the students a mini vacation to rest and recuperate. Which was much needed, especially as I was nursing a cold at the time.

    So sessions 7 and 8 were pushed to last week, which was completed with two mini-lessons on leads and setting. I had one successful and one not-so-successful small group, and a bunch of successful conferences.

    My plan this week is to finish conferencing on Monday and Tuesday with the students I didn’t get to last week, and then offer a couple small group sessions on Wednesday and Thursday where students can “sign-up” to get support with revision strategies.

    Next week, students will be editing and publishing, and I’ve offered typing as an option for their final drafts. I think for small groups/conferencing, I’ll do another “sign-up” but this time with editing conventions (like, punctuating dialogue correctly, or reading your piece out loud to catch run-on sentences).

    The week after that, we’ll finish up with our intimate class celebration, a more public celebration, and our narrative on-demand to see the growth from the beginning of the year.

    This is a short blog post, but it’s been a busy weekend. I hope to have a more thorough post by the end of the unit!

  • Arc of Story: Week 1 Reflection

    It’s Saturday and I’ve just finished planning the lessons for the second week of our realistic fiction unit and creating some tools to help my writers.

    Tools, plans, a story arc in my writer’s notebook, and my two handy professional texts.

    Mini-Lesson Breakdown

    This is the week where I’m going to attempt to really tackle each of my goals in mini-lessons:

    • Session 5 – Plotting with a Story Arc (I’ll be emphasizing the importance of just a few scenes, and how the problem can still intensify in such a short time period)
    • Session 6 – Show, Don’t Tell – Planning and Writing Scenes (I’ll introduce a show, don’t tell chart that includes examples of telling vs showing as well as dialogue; I’ll also provide students with a tool that Ana made to show feelings by using actions)
    • Session 7 – Feeling and Drafting the Heart of Your Story (This lesson is all about losing yourself in your story while you draft. Last year we did some envisioning, enacting, and drafting, but this year I’ll try having them ask themselves what the heart of the story is before/while they envision and embody their characters)
    • Session 8 – Using Transitions to Give Your Writing a Flow (While the first 3 sessions of this week are adapted from the TC unit, this lesson I created based on the needs of my students. We’ll take a look at the narrative checklist and then I’ll give writers a transitions tool to keep in their folders. They’ll re-read one part of their draft during the active engagement and look for where they might need transitions)

    “How’s it going?”

    One thing I’m proud of myself for this last week is that I checked the writers notebooks every day, keeping track of where students are in terms of trying out the mini-lessons, doing writing at home, etc. This helped me to schedule some small group sessions, which was super necessary, because I realized that with 23 students, and realistically only 25 minutes of independent writing each day (I know, it’s short — our day is tight), there’s no way I can conference with every writer every week.

    I also purchased Jennifer Serravallo’s Teaching Writing in Small Groups to complement my professional reading with the Carl Anderson book. I’m really excited about the Skill Progressions that Jennifer has outlined, because they’re a really easy tool to know what to teach next based on a particular student or group’s goal.

    I still have lots of room to grow in small group instruction, but at least for right now I can say:

    1. I know what my students are writing and where they’re at in the writing process.
    2. I met with all students last week (except one who was absent for two days), either in a conference or a small group. Hooray!

    Now I just need to assign goals to each student and make a plan for this week’s small groups! But first, I’m going to take a break.