How's It Going? (Part 2)

In reading the next two chapters of Carl Anderson's How's It Going, I have gained so many new insights on how to conduct Writer's Workshop in my classroom. Since I am the person who plans writing for the entire Kindergarten team, I think this book has become such a golden resource for me and not only provides the support needed in my classroom, but also allows me to share this resource with colleagues. In an effort to organize my thoughts, I have decided to split the two chapters of and reflect upon my biggest takeaways from each of them.

Ch. 4: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

"When we are successful in showing students how to learn from writing mentors, we teach students how to teach themselves." (Anderson, 2000, p. 110)

I was completely enthralled on this chapter about how to use mentor texts in an effort for students to learn writing strategies for their own pieces. As I was reading this chapter, I thought about myself and what strategies I use as a writer. Although I consider myself a fairly decent writer, I can think of countless incidences on where I felt as if I was completely stuck on a piece of work and I looked to other author's for inspiration and/or guidance. For example, I am not a great technical writer and for research pieces or writings that require you to be very technical, it is very imperative for me to see and example of what an exemplary writer using that strategy does so that I can then figure out how to do that for my own writing. When considering that, I thought about how much of an impact using that type of strategy could work on my students.

In continuing reading in the chapter where Anderson discusses his conferences with students who currently have mentor texts that they can refer to when they want to use a specific strategy for their writing, I began to think about my young writers and how they might be uncertain to what a mentor text even is, yet alone how to consider how to use it in their writing. Then Anderson lets us know that as the teacher, it is our job in these conferences to match students up to texts that our class has already read and studied in mini-lessons. I never even thought about how many stories that my class and I have read together and how they might use those texts in teaching them strategies. The only concerns that I have is whether or not my students will be able to pick up on what strategies that the author is using. I guess if they do not seem to, then using what Anderson says about directly naming what they do and then inviting the student to try it out will be beneficial.

The next idea from this chapter that I found to be challenging was where in the world was I going to get a collection of mentor texts from? How was I going to be able to find a set that would be appropriate for my students? And how on earth was I going to be able to pay for the texts? Luckily, I am going to have to put together my own collection of mentor texts that meets my needs as a teacher and the needs of the students that I teach. In thinking about this, I considered the idea of using wordless picture books in my collection for those writers who are still using mostly pictures for their writng and also incorporating student writing as mentor texts for my students who are using words and pictures.

Ch. 5
In this chapter of the book, I really enjoyed reading about the format of the mini lessons that Anderson uses for Writer's Workshop. In reading about the format, it reminded me very closely of the way that I planned for writing using the guidance of Lucy Calkins. I think the biggest component of the writing workshop that I have been taking for granted is the importance of the mini-lessons and the purpose of them.

"Mini-lessons are effective, then, only when we inspire and enable students to try out what we've taught." (Anderson, 2000, p. 139)

In the past, I found that my mini-lessons were too long and overemphasized the lesson and students hardly had any time to put anything on the paper or to try out the strategy. Or, I found that I rarely spent any time on the teaching point and when I sent students back to work, they were unsure of what they were supposed to be doing or was still very dependent on me to help them. In considering this, I really can appreciate how Anderson lays out the foundation and framework for mini-lessons.

"Within the predictable architecture, we noticed that teachers have parts of their mini-lessons in which they teach students, encourage students to try what they've taught in their writing, and equip them to do so." (Anderson, 2000, p. 140)

I think the most important part where the book discusses the architecture of the mini-lesson is where the steps are clearly laid out for you.

Steps:
1. Connect: Make a connection to what students are doing and why they're doing it
2. Teach: Explicitly teach the strategy that is being learned to students
3. Have-a-go: Let the students briefly discuss/try the strategy
4. Link: Link the strategy to students' independent work

These steps were very helpful in outlining a plan for creating mini-lessons. The only step that I am still wondering about is the teach part mainly because I'm trying to find a way to demonstrate how to use a strategy to students without them feeling the need to copy my ideas for their pieces and writing exactly what I write (I've noticed that they have done this in the past). This is something that I am still trying to navigate in my practice.

The last part of the chapter that I found to be really interesting was the importance of students being able to share at the end of the workshop and how impactful it can be for students.

"When students see that their classmates have tried what we talked about in mini-lessons, they are often inspired to try the same work." (Anderson, 2000, p. 153)

The biggest takeaway that I got from that section was the fact that it allows students to see which of their friends tried the strategy and how they used it. It gives them a clearer picture of what it may look like for them and also gives the student sharing an opportunity to discuss their process.

All in all, I think that there was so much to learn from these chapters and I'm so excited to try to use some of these suggestions and resources in my classroom. I look forward to exploring the final chapters of this helpful book!

February...Where Art Thou?

Wow! I can’t believe how short of a month February was! With all of the winter breaks, “unannounced snow days”, and me having to travel out of town, I never knew that I would learn so much and grow as an educator. As I look back and analyze my TiP chart from February, I have noticed that I have a lot of celebrations to make as well as a lot to still be working on.

Literacy

A very common pattern that I noticed for last month was the need for an increase in authentic literacy activities in my classroom. In the past, the SuperKids reading program was supposed to be the sole source for literacy instruction, however, I have seen so many gains by integrating other resources in the classroom in order to teach literacy to students. I have found a really great way to still use the SuperKids program in some aspects of instruction but also use activities such as interactive sight word games (drawing sight words in paint) and for students who need additional support with letter recognition (making letters out of Play Doh). The best thing about creating these literacy centers is the fact that I can make them as differentiated as possible from the independent centers to the guided reading small groups. I am exciting about seeing how much more smoothly things will go in my classroom in terms of literacy by initiating these centers.

A Call for a Change

Another big pattern that I saw in my chart was how often I was referring to behavior issues that were arising in class. By noticing this, I saw the need to revamp my entire Morning Meeting portion and making it more meaningful for students. I re-introduced our Morning Song to affirm each student every morning. We have also began to play a literacy or community building activity immediately after singing the song. This has started a new wave in our classroom and my students have been holding themselves more accountable of making sure they are trying their best to be a good friend.

This look at the behavior issues in my class also made me consider the actual behavior management plan that I use in my classroom which is not much of one at all. My students did not know the consequences for breaking a rule although they were very well versed in what the actual rules or expectations were. Reflecting on this, I decided to implement a unique reward system to acknowledge students who had been working really hard to follow directions and show kindness to friends. I implemented to use of Teacher Coupons where if students earned a certain amount of points, they would be eligible to receive coupons to do special things like walk around the class with their shoes off or sit at my desk. I figured out what students were really interested in and what they were willing to work for.

Need for Integration

Another common theme was not having enough time to teach all subjects or teaching subjects in isolation. This caused me to reflect on the need for integration. Because of that, I have spent more time trying to determine how to integrate subjects amongst lessons instead of departmentalizing each one. Thinking back on some of the literature from the summer class, “Whatever the motivation for integrating the curriculum, it is clear that the most common recommendation for effecting the transformation from fragmented, departmentalized, or isolated instructional periods to integrated contexts is to develop a theme approach. Authors and programs often assume that thematic teaching is a self-evident way to achieve integration in the curriculum.” (Lipson, 1993, p. 253),

I remembered how important it is to make subjects cohesive and meaningful to students. The text reminded me that the best way to do this was by creating thematic units and spending more time in the planning process.

Challenges Ahead

Although I have made many strides this past month, I still have some challenges ahead. I’ve begun to face the fact that I’m probably not going to have an actual para for the rest of the year and I’m going to have to start navigating ways to teach students as if there is only one teacher in the room. This wasn’t what I was expecting so this will be a bit of an adjustment for me.

Also, I am still trying to find my voice in my school community. Despite being a rookie teacher, I know that I have great ideas and have learned some phenomenal strategies for teaching kids. I am hoping that within time I find my voice and let my thoughts and opinions be heard in an effort to advocate for best practices.

How's It Going? (Chapters 1, 2, and 3)

When I initially found out we were using this book for our Book Blogs this semester, I was extremely exciting. Writing has always been something so very important and personal to me that I even use it as an outlet now as an adult whenever I need to express how I am feeling. Becoming an educator, I became particularly interested in the writing continuum, especially since I teach beginning writers. My first thought was "How can I teach someone how to write?" The thought was a scary thought for me. Joining my team at the school that I teach in now, I volunteered to plan writing for our grade level. Everyone warned me not to as a first-year teacher because of how difficult it is to plan writing and how they felt as if the curriculum used for writing wasn't as structured for Kindergarten. That's when I was introduced to Lucy. Lucy Calkins, that is. Upon looking through her texts giving teachers direction as to how to launch Writer's Workshop, I am became thrilled yet anxious. Although I agreed with the format and the way in which to introduce the mini lessons to students, I began to wonder how my particular group of students would adapt and respond to it. I think it started off great and I loved how my students got the chance to really show their skills as writers. However, I noticed that I really didn't know how to help my students or where exactly they were in the writing process. It was then I realized that I was lacking the most important part of Writer's Workshop, initiating writing conferences with my students. Now that I have read the first few chapters of Carl Anderson's How's It Going, I have a more solidified understanding of the importance of the writing conference.

One of the biggest takeaways that I got from the first chapter is understanding the purpose of the writing conference. Anderson focuses on two main points for the structure of the conference:

Conversation about the work the child is doing as a writer and Conversation about how the child can become a better writer (Anderson, 17, 2000). 

The author then dives deep into the three steps of conferencing where we focus directly on the work that students are doing as writers, making an assessment of what they are doing as writers, and putting together a detailed picture of the work that the child is doing as a writer.

From Chapter 2, the biggest takeaway that I got was the examples of the kinds of work that writers do when they compose pieces and the strategies that they might use to compose them. I thought that this was extremely helpful when thinking about ways to help students figure out what tools they can use when they are working on a certain piece of writing.

Also, the questions suggested on page 29 of Chapter 2 were really helpful in thinking abut how to start conversations in conferences because one of the main things I was pondering about was how to initiate conversations with students during their writing so things such as "How's it going? or What are you doing as a writer today?" seem to be really great lead in questions to initiate conversation and get students to begin talking through their writing process. I particularly liked the rationale that Anderson uses behind starting conversations this way. He states, "By using a predictable opening, I'm simply taking advantage of students' implicit knowledge of the nature of conversation, and that some conversations begin in predictable ways" (Anderson, 29, 2000). This then creates routine for students and they know what to expect during writing conferences.

In chapter 3, I was particularly interested in teaching students about their role in the conference. The chart on page 83 breaks down what is expected of the student in the first and second part of the conversation. In the first part, the student sets an agenda for the conversation by describing their work and then responding to the teacher's questions. In the second part, the students listen carefully to the teacher's feedback. I particularly like the way Anderson breaks down each role respectively so that everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing. I think the most important part of all this would be to explicitly teach and model for students what and how this conversation might look so that they understand when they begin their conversations.

All in all, I am really excited to continue reading the next few chapters and understanding how to make all of these great ideas practical in the classroom. I look forward to exploring ways to monitor which conversations to have with certain students and how to keep track. This book has given so much insight thus far and I'm sure it will become a very helpful tool for me in the near future.

New Year, New Beginnings

Commonalities Across the Board

What a month January has been! I can't believe so much time has gone by with my girls and that the year is almost done. There has been so much that I have learned from my girls thus far and we still have so much more work to do. Reflecting on my TiPs chart, I've been focusing a lot on my actual instruction and the lessons that went great and why they went great and they lessons that failed horribly. The main commonality that I noticed among last month was the fact that the lessons where I really prevailed consisted of students interests and choices being a main factor around the successes. In areas where I wasn't so successful consisted of times when my understanding of what I wanted students to gain wasn't clear or students lacked clarity of the objective or if it was just plain out boring to my students. Looking at all of these reflections give me better insight on how to plan for next month.

Venting and Frustration

I felt as if January was such a transformational month for me because not only did I have a better understanding for my class and what resources were available to me to meet their needs, but I had also enlightened myself about the parallel I had been facing at my school. I had been torn between the struggle of following suit with what the rest of my grade level team had decided to conform to because it is "easier" or stepping outside of the box and challenging myself to dive deep with my students and stimulating their inquiry. The issue that I have been constantly battling with is playing it safe or actually finding and making the time to do what I know works best for kids. I have become extremely frustrated with the ever-so-cumbersome testing that is "mandatory" for all grade levels.

I became a part of our school's Assessment Team in an effort to better inform myself about how grade level assessments are created and how the data is used to better plan for instruction. Although I believe assessments give us very valuable and usable data, I found the Kindergarten assessments particularly to be extremely problematic. Some of the questions I think were biased and did not cater to students' specific and unique experiences. Also, I felt as if the assessments were way too long for the attention span of Kindergarteners and that it was not thoughtful at all to only give them a multiple choice test. I could go on and on about the problematic factors of these tests and how much time from instruction was taken away because I had to complete them. I feel as if I was doing a disservice to my students and missed out on critical instruction time. Now I am grappling with how to meaningfully assess my students without it requiring them to miss so much valuable instructional time.

Celebrations
Besides some of the frustration that I have felt this past month and some of the criticism among peers, I have learned that my students are uniquely themselves and they enjoy coming into a classroom environment that they are welcomed to bring in all facets of their lives.

Using writing to teach others has been particularly exciting as students explore the meaning of American symbols

 

I also noticed that students lacked the opportunity to read books of their interest and engage in them just for fun

Lastly, I know my classroom may look very different from "traditional" classrooms but if there's one thing we know how to do well.....it's how to get down! :-) 

I'm excited to see where February takes us!

October Book Blog- Pathways to the Common Core Ch. 1-4

"Pathways to the Common Core" Reflection

Square

"The Common Core Standards are a big deal. Adopted by forty-five states so far, the standards represent the most sweeping reform of the K-12 curriculum that has ever occurred in this country. It is safe to say that across the entire history of American education, no single document will have played a more influential role over what is taught in our schools. The standards are already affecting what is published, mandated, and tested in schools--and also what is marginalized and neglected. Any educator who wants to play a role in shaping what happens in schools, therefore, needs a deep understanding of these standards. That understanding is necessary for anyone wanting to be a co-constructor of the future of instruction and curriculum and, indeed, of public education across America." (Calkins, 1)

When reading this book, this is one of the very first quotes that stuck out to me, mainly because the Common Core Standards are such a big deal. I remember when I was interviewing to become a teacher and every single principal must have asked me "So what do you know about the Common Core?" I remember being bewildered not having a clue what they were even talking about. I quickly learned and became very familiar with the standards. This quote resonated with me particularly because of what it says how the standards are affecting what is marginalized and neglected in schools. The new standards call for teachers to not just teach students the "what" and the "how", but it also requires them to dig into the "why" as well. For many years, that was often the big piece of the puzzle that many students were missing and were just in school just to be in school but not really understanding why they were learning what they were learning. Because of this was the main reason that this quote squared with my thinking about the implementation and use of the Common Core State Standards.

Triangle

"When NCLB expectations became the law of the land, there was zero emphasis on writing. Writing was not even mentioned in those mandates. What a reversal! Now, in these new standards, the emphasis on writing standards is parallel to and equal to the emphasis on reading, and furthermore, one can't help but think that reading will be assessed through writing, making writing even more critical." (Calkins, 10)

When I read this quote I initially got excited! Anybody who knows me, knows how passionate I am about writing and why I think it is so important especially with young children. The fact that in the past there was zero emphasis on writing really concerns me on how my generation and the generation before me was taught when the subject of writing was considered. It excites me to know that with these new standards, an emphasis is placed that reading and writing somewhat go hand-in-hand. As Flint says, "Children learn to read and write by reading and writing." Being that I am a Kindergarten teacher and that I plan writing for my team, I am grateful to have been able to engage with the text and understand how to better make use of the standards in the classroom and help my students to understand them as well.

Circle

"Undoubtedly students will need explicit instruction in high-level comprehension. They'll need a repertoire of strategies that undergird these reading skills. They'll need skills broken down into manageable steps, and then they'll need to practice these steps and get expert feedback along the way. They'll need lots of repeated practice, on a variety of texts. As they do this practice, teachers will need assessments that will allow them to carefully calibrate their teaching, to move kids up levels of skill and text difficulty. They'll also need structures that will make reading work visible--structures such as reading partners and clubs, which give students opportunities to have the rich literary conversations about fiction and nonfiction that the standards call for. Teachers will also need to focus on methods of giving feedback while kids are practicing these skills, with gradual release and decreasing scaffolds, to lead students to internalize these skills." (Calkins, 30)

This particular quote still circles around in my head because it describes the methodological process of how to explicitly teach high-level comprehension. Although I agree with the build upon process the author has set in place, that still doesn't lower my anxiety about properly executing this in the classroom. For some reason this year I feel as if I am constantly being observed and instead of focusing on if whether or not what I am doing is truly benefiting students and meeting their needs, I am more focused on "Am I doing this right?" I am working to shift my mindset about this but I can't help but to feel if I am one step off that my students might not fully learn and master all that they need to know before they leave my care and head toward First Grade. Because of this, I am thoroughly excited about continuing to read and learn about how to use the Common Core Standards in an effort to inform my practice and work for the betterment of my students.

April Theory in Practice Connections

April has seen to just come and go! With Spring Break taking up a week of our time together, I was nervous that my students would fall behind in this month, however, they surprised me so much with how far they have come! It's just very rewarding as an educator to see students who came in not even speaking have full on conversations about their learning and being very excited to share what they know to others. I am just honored to have had a helping hand in helping my little people blossom. I think that this month I was trying to make learning as fun and hands-on as possible also while trying to be culturally responsive to my students various backgrounds. I also have been trying to focus more on letting students take control of their own learning. The challenges I have been experiencing is their age level and them not necessarily knowing how to take ownership of their learning and looking to me for directions and answers all at once. I've been attempting to introduce strategies to show them just how powerful they can be even for little people.

I big subject that I really wanted my students to do more of this month was science. As I was going over the standards and everything we've covered so far. I noticed that they have had very little opportunities to really build their scientific thinking and act as scientists so I wanted to make sure that they got the opportunity to do just that.

                                                                

Recording the life cycle of a butterfly                                                        Experimenting with electricity

It was so great really engaging with a topic that they don't get explicitly taught as much and really being interested in the content.

In doing the Digital Storytelling Project, exploring my students' communities was also a big challenge for me as well mainly because my students do not come from the safest of neighborhoods. However, as I reflected when piecing the project together, I really that there are so many strengths that my students possess just by being a resident of their neighborhood and there is also value and knowledge that they bring with them to the classroom as a result of it. I wanted to expand upon this and let my students be able to see themselves and their communities within the realms of our classroom.

                                

I think that our classroom community has grown so much as a result of these projects! I am extremely excited to see how much further we will go together as we continue to learn and grow. By the same token, it saddens me to know that I only have one more month to make a lasting impact on these phenomenal students' lives. I am doing my best to make the most out of my time left with them and can't wait to witness their growth in the end.

March Theory in Practice Connections

March was definitely a month of growth for both myself and my students! I think collectively we learned so much about ourselves and what we could do individually and as a class! I can definitely say that this month was really centered on strategies around building students conceptual knowledge of mathematics as well as get them really thinking about their thinking. I can't believe how far we've come together and yet how close we are to the end. However, considering our late start I think that we've been making remarkable strides.

The biggest challenges that we were seeing in the classroom this month were getting friends to get along with one another and really learn how to show empathy towards each other. I remember discussing in our psychology class about how understanding the feelings and emotions of others can be a difficult trait to grasp for four-year-olds because most of them are still in that preoccupational stage. I really learned to leverage Bailey's text as a guide for a lot of strategies to help my students learn to be caring towards how they make others feel.

I think one of the coolest and most memorable lessons that we had during the month of March was watching my students learn to decompose numbers which I thought would be really difficult for them to grasp at first but they rocked it. I taught them all of the different ways to decompose numbers and then I let them explore with these different methods in their math stations.

They could find it in books!  

Build it!

Make it in the ten-frame!

Draw it on the number line!

And use the geoboards to make it!

Watching my kids actively engage in these math centers made me so very proud to watch! The only thing that didn't go as well as I would have liked for it to was the transition to the different centers the first time we engaged in the activity mainly because they were so eager to try all the centers because they were so excited! However, I can tell that students actually learned from these engagements because the assessments to follow up were remarkable.

      

My little people definitely surprised me with all of the great things that they were able to accomplish in mathematics and the biggest thing that I learned was when work is fun, engaging, relative, and hands-on to students, that is truly when they learn the best and are more likely to retain knowledge. Now my kids can spot the number four out a mile away no matter what form it comes in!

Can't wait to see where April brings us! :-)