Hello Again

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted.  Over a month since I've really read blogs either.

So, hello again, bloggy world!

I've been super busy and haven't really wanted to think about school when I got home.  Major drama going on at my school.

The super busy is not subsiding.  Report cards are due one week from today.  Yikes!

The drama is somewhat subsiding, so I'm not running to hide from anything education related.

What better way to step back into (hopefully) regular blogging than to link up with Tara for a Monday Made It (ignore that it is Friday, please)?

I posted this summer about some professional development books I read (Book Whisperer, Notebook Connections, Daily 5).    I have been integrating those with our curriculum (Treasures) to make my own Reading Workshop.  One part of it is our reading notebooks.

I feel like I'm getting really good at teaching those lessons.  One day I teach the comprehension strategy.  Students practice when they read.  The next day, I teach them how we write a response using that strategy by modeling it with a text we all know.  Then, they write a response, either on the same topic as our model, on the same book but focusing on a different part, or on their independent reading book.

Then, during Reading Workshop, they are supposed to write a response on any book using any of the strategies we have learned.

"We were supposed to remember how to do those?"

Well, yeah, I'd like them to, but if they've only done it once, I get that it'd be hard to remember.

Enter the Reading Response Strategy Binders.  There are two of these in our Work on Writing drawer for students to reference.

Instructions for setting up every entry.  Formatting matters, kiddos!

On the back of each instructions is a typed up copy of the one we wrote whole class when I taught it.

Do you want a copy of my oh-so-pretty (if I do say so myself ... I'm rather proud of these) pages?  Well, here they are!  I already need to add more strategies so check back soon for an updated version!

Happy Veteran's Day Weekend!

Trying Out Daily 5

Daily 5 has been like a whisper on the wind for a few years now for me.  When I volunteered in a 2nd grade classroom during my undergrad, it was something the teacher down the hall did.  During my credential program, it was something some of my fellow teacher-candidates were experiencing in their placements.  Last year, it was something mentioned at every single district literacy meeting.  I started to get more familiar ... it was a way to do Universal Access.  Then, I started reading blogs and saw how so many of you used it.  Finally, last month, I went to a one day Daily 5/CAFE training/workshop and got the book.  

The training/workshop was super helpful.  It was for 4th-6th grade teachers in my district.  That meant we were all working on adapting it for slightly older than The Sisters teach and dealing with integrating it with the same curriculum.

A brief overview of my "Reading Workshop" last year:

1. I went week by week with the curriculum, except for grammar because I just couldn't find a way to teach what a complete sentence was before I taught what a noun was.
2. I used some activities from the curriculum, but also haphazardly tried to create hands on, fun activities that mostly confused students.
3. Using the theme and strategy for the week, I found more difficult reading passages for my advanced kiddos.
4. I typed out instructions for each station.
5. I made students a checklist.
6. I was exhausted and never actually planned what I would teach small group.

This process took basically an entire day each weekend.  

In the beginning of the year, the kids rotated through the stations, including small group.  Later on, I let them choose the order and just called groups back.  Kids were off task and my small group was tossed together last minute.  It wasn't very differentiated in anything but reading level difficulty.  

Reading was where I felt the worst last year.

Now I'm trying aspects of Daily 5 and so far it is fabulous! I'm still calling it Reading Workshop ... I like that better.  We are working up to doing Daily 4: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, and Work on Writing.

As most people I know and bloggers I follow do, I give students a bit more structure about what has to be completed than The Sisters do.

Read to Self: This is the one I'm keeping the most open - the kids read what they want and their only recording is the title and author.  I'm playing around with the idea of letting them take one AR test each week during this time, but I'm not sure yet.  Suggestions?

Read to Someone:  This is where I'm having them read stories from our curriculum, but I'm not necessarily going in order.  I'm picking what works best with the strategies I'm teaching and with our social studies and science curriculum.  I like that by using curriculum stories, both partners can have a copy of the same thing to read.  This is also where I'm having kids use graphic organizers based on strategies we're working on.  They will have something to turn in from this station each week.

Word Work:  This station has must-dos and may-dos for grammar/vocabulary.  The must-do so far has been pages from their workbook and the may-do is more hands on.  Again, they have things to turn in from this station.

Work on Writing:  I'm going to introduce this today!  Each week, they will have to write a reading response (a la Book Whisperer meets Notebook Connections).  Then, if they do more Work on Writing, they'll have lots of choices, such as another reading response, continuing what they're working on in writing workshop, writing a letter, writing another story, writing something persuasive ... you get the idea!

I made a recording sheet, but it will look the same each week (I already have the next two weeks photocopied!).  On Mondays, the students and I will fill in the must-dos on their checklists and they'll keep track of their progress during the week by marking when they do what and recording what they read.  The kids are getting a bit confused by all my Must-Do/May-Do categories (because each Daily has them plus some Dailies are must-dos and some are may-dos), so I'm thinking I need to tweak this.

 Click HERE for the google doc!

I also have this pocket chart up with must-dos and may-dos for the kids to reference.  Work on Writing isn't up yet since it isn't a workshop choice yet.  We're practicing whole class this week!  I'm not sure how I'll fit it on there ... going to have to get creative!

I posted these before, but click HERE if you didn't get them the first time!
Another genius idea from Clutter Free Classroom:  Use whiteboard markers on pocket charts!

I'm really enjoying taking the time to set up the procedures and practice stamina, but I am also feeling panicky about not having taught a lot yet during reading.  It's also really hard to keep whole class lessons to 10 minutes, but I'm getting better.

This year vs. last year:

Planning takes less time than last year.

The kids are more on task than last year.

There's less busy work than last year.

There's fewer papers for me to grade than last year.

Yep, I'm loving it!

Notebook Connections

I'm loving having time to read some professional development books.  I posted about reading The Book Whisperer last week, and now I just finished Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader's Notebook by Aimee Buckner.  I really enjoyed this one as well and many parts of it went well with the ideas in The Book Whisperer.

Notebook Connections gives really concrete ideas of how to teach/organize language arts, which I loved!  I felt like it helped me bridge a lot of the ideas I have.  It is also great for all of us 4th grade teachers that she teaches 4th because it is written for exactly our level of students, and she gives lots of book ideas!

My favorite ideas from it:

• Start the year off teaching strategies and making students practice them.  As they get more comfortable with strategies, give them more choice.
• She gave three different ways of having students self-assess their notebooks: free response, guided questions, and using a rubric.  I love all three!
• The strategies in the book are awesome!  I also loved that she gave book ideas to introduce some of them.

Right now, I'm thinking that this is how I will have students do responses:  In the front of their notebook, they'll track what they have read, as suggested in The Book Whisperer.  Then, they'll have a section for strategy notes, so they're all together.  Then, the biggest section will be student responses.  I am planning on having students do three responses per week: one practicing that week's strategy done in class, one choice one done in class, and one choice one done at home.  I don't think I'm going to do reading logs this year (we'll see if my new principal is ok with that).  The Book Whisperer convinced me they weren't good and having a homework response makes me feel like students are still accountable for reading at home.

I don't know how often I'll have them self-assess, but I think that I will read 16 each week, so I will see each student's every other week.

This book really helped me feel like I'm getting a stronger grasp on how I will structure language arts this year.  I didn't feel successful last year and it took so much work every weekend for me to set it up.  This year is looking much more promising!

Still on my reading list:
Daily 5
Notebook Know-How (Buckner's writing notebook book)
and maybe some more!

What are your favorite teacher resource books?

The Book Whisperer

I just finished The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.  I heard about it here in blog-land during the school year, finally ordered it about half way through summer, and just got around to reading it.  If you teacher upper elementary or middle school language arts, you really really should read this book.  It was a super quick read because so much of it is written as a narrative of the author's experiences.  It read like a story!  


The picture she painted of how she runs her classroom, with so much independent reading and kids so engaged, made me want to be in her class!  I'm starting to force myself to think about how I am going to structure each part of my day this coming year, and this was a great jumping off point for language arts.  I'm not making any for sure decisions yet because I'm still going to read Daily 5 this summer (I know, can you believe I haven't read it yet?).


Here are some things The Book Whisperer made me think about:

• I need to put in more choice independent reading time.  Last year, my kiddos "read" first thing in the morning.  I put read in quotes because so many of them didn't.  It was definitely a "let's see how long we can hang out by the classroom library before we get in trouble" time for many of my students.  I occasionally gave them choice time to read during our Reading Workshop, but not often enough.  I remembering now how excited they got when I told them they could choose what book to read.
• How will I have them respond to what they read?  I like Donalyn Miller's idea of letters, but I'm not sure how often I would have them write letters.  Lisa at Fourth and Ten posted questions she has her students answer on the home reading logs, so that might be a good way to go about it too, maybe in class, maybe at home.  I like giving the kids some choice in how they respond, so maybe they'll have the choice between the two!
• Donalyn Miller talks about how Book Reviews worked okay, but not great for her.  I think I might try them in conjunction with the Book Commercials she talks about.  I think I will spread the Book Reviews out, like maybe 8 kiddos had them due each week.  That means each kiddo does one per month.  I like the idea of book reviews because one of our writing genres we do in 4th grade is Response to Literature, so we could practice that all year long!  (That would be good because my district says we should teach it April-June, but we have a state writing test in March that could ask the kiddos to write a response to literature!)
• I want to really make expanding vocabulary a big part of my class this year.  My school has a lot of English learners, though most have been reclassified as English proficient by 4th grade.  These students were some of my top readers and could often use sentence structures way beyond the 4th grade level, but as they got into their middle-school level books, they stumbled over vocabulary.  The books that had vocabulary they understood were too easy for them.  I'm thinking that I will make a word wall that each student contributes to on a regular basis (not sure how often yet ... maybe a word will be part of their Book Review?)
• Recording What They Read:  I loved how Donalyn Miller set up her students' response books.  I like the idea of having them tally the genres and list and rate the books in the front of their response journals.  I also loved the idea of having a "want to read" list in there!  I'm thinking about setting the 40 books in a year with the genre requirements like Donalyn Miller sets it out.  
• I'm trying to decide how to/if to incorporate AR in this.  My school is big on AR.  I'm indifferent.  If the kids wanted to, I let them.  I didn't push it.  I had only 1 computer in my classroom for most of the year, so those who were into it took the time on the computer.  I think I will approach it the same way this year.
• I'm definitely going to be doing more read-alouds for strategy lessons and conferences.  The Book Whisperer touches on these and, as I posted about before, I read and started to implement CAFE last year.  I like that it fits in well with students doing a lot of independent reading.  I will definitely be using it more this year!
• I'm not sure how to fit grammar lessons/practice into this structure.  I'm thinking that when I read Daily 5, I might get more ideas for this.  I could probably incorporate grammar into Word Work. My other thought is to move grammar into more of my writing time, since really, that's when they use it!
• And last, but not least, where does our curriculum fit into all of this?  My old principal didn't really care how much we used the curriculum.  We're getting a new principal this year, so we'll see what her stance is on this.  Some kids seemed to really enjoy the anthology stories, others certainly didn't.

I'd love to hear how you structure your reading time!