Coincidental to this week's assigned readings -- chapters 1-3 of Regie Routman's Writing Essentials -- I received an e-newsletter from Edutopia (is it clear by now that I love this site? ;)) about the writer's workshop as an excellent tool for differentiation. Similar lines of thinking are pursued in both Routman and in the Edutopia article, titled The Writing Workshop: A Valuable Tool for Differentiation and Formative Assessment. The author of the Edutopia article, Todd Finley, states that we need to get students past a fear of not writing correctly and to instead write from a place where right and wrong aren't the ultimate criteria. Like Routman, Finley asserts the need for students to experience false starts, make mistakes, collaborate, and adjust. Both authors see good writing as the result of this process, which doesn't start and end with skills formation.
The writer's workshop is used in my own main placement classroom. The ideas contained in Routman's first three chapters -- about simplifying the teaching of writing, celebrating student writing, and showing students your own writing life, respectively -- were all clearly modeled by my master teacher. As I was reading Routman's ideas, I found that for most of them I could point directly to an example in my main placement classroom. Writing small moments? We did that. Modeling the writing process for students on the overhead? My teacher did that, too. Open sharing? Celebration of writing? De-emphasizing "skills" like spelling everything right the first go? Yes, yes, and yes. So far, I like the writer's workshop and see it as a great tool for inspiring our kids to view themselves as writers and enjoy writing.
My nascent understanding of the writer's workshop leads me to believe that differentiation should more or less naturally happen -- it seems inherent to the model. To an extent, that is what I see in my 4th grade classroom. Everyone's writing at their own level, and everyone has both their own strengths and areas they could work more on. However, I am also noticing some kids shutting themselves out of the process entirely. One boy, in particular, didn't write more than a few lines in his writer's notebook the entire four weeks I was there. I know, as Routman says, that for some kids simply getting down a title is an achievement. We've celebrated that for this boy. No technique seems to help this boy see himself as a writer, though. He's so set against the notion of writing that sometimes he literally rolled around on the floor to avoid it. I'm very curious to see what he's doing -- whether he's writing more, less, or the same amount -- when I return in January. If he's blossomed, I'll definitely want the low down on what my master teacher found to inspire him.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
rappin' math
I've been enjoying our math articles these past few weeks. They've been giving me great food for thought about mathematizing and approaching math in new ways. I recently received a e-newsletter from Edutopia about math in the classroom, which included information about writing your own math raps. I enjoyed the rap they posted, PEMDAS Boss by Rappin' Mathematician Alex Kajitani, so much that I thought I'd share another one with those of you who follow my blog. This one's called The Number Line Dance. Enjoy!
I don't know if I have what it takes to be a rap master of math, but I'm willing to consider it (or at least use the Rappin' Mathematicians CD ;)). If you want to take a look at the Edutopia resource, visit How to Write Your Own Math Rap. While you're there, look around. Edutopia has tons of fantastic resources!
I don't know if I have what it takes to be a rap master of math, but I'm willing to consider it (or at least use the Rappin' Mathematicians CD ;)). If you want to take a look at the Edutopia resource, visit How to Write Your Own Math Rap. While you're there, look around. Edutopia has tons of fantastic resources!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
fun with phonemes
Last week we had our first literacy class in the elementary school we'll be working at for the rest of the quarter. My cohortmate, Amelia, and I met our kindergarten reading buddy, Nathan*. What a fantastic little boy Nathan is! I was quite astounded by Nathan. We had great fun filling out our "getting to know one another" questionnaire. Once we got started on it, Nathan insisted on writing down everyone's answers all by himself. I was quite impressed with his thoughtful concentration and ability to spell out words phonetically. I didn't realize until yesterday, when I read Fox's chapters on phonemic and phonological awareness in her book Word Identification Strategies, that we were being wise when we let him try to spell out words phonetically. Apparently, this exercise built up his phonemic awareness as he tried to identify the sounds he heard in the words and write them down. This seems a particular skill of Nathan's, as he came very close to correctly spelling a lot of the words he was recording for us.
His ability to identify sounds in words became even more apparent when it was time for us to read him our book selections. Nathan turned the tables and insisted on reading to us! My book selection, The Very Busy Spider, had some words in it that were pretty sophisticated for a kindergartner, and so did Amelia's. However, I can't recall more than a few words that Nathan couldn't manage to sound out correctly on his own. He also recognized word patterns in the book, such as phrases that regularly repeated and he surprised me when, a few pages into his reading, he announced the connection between The Very Busy Spider and another book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar - both were written by the same author. I was quite impressed with Nathan. As precocious as he is, he will need to allow us to read to him in the future, in order to practice his comprehension skills. Although he could sound out words, he didn't always understand them and he wasn't really reflective in his reading because he was too focused on sounding out the words correctly. I am not sure how well he could have summarized or re-told the stories he read to us.
In all, I think it's going to be an absolute pleasure working with Nathan (and with Amelia, too!). It's clear his kindergarten teacher has done an excellent job promoting literacy in her classroom. Literacy was highlighted in many ways that spoke to its importance, such as the alphabet charts on desks and on the walls, a lite brite for spelling out words, and signs and sight words posted throughout the room. I'm excited for next week.
*name changed to protect privacy
His ability to identify sounds in words became even more apparent when it was time for us to read him our book selections. Nathan turned the tables and insisted on reading to us! My book selection, The Very Busy Spider, had some words in it that were pretty sophisticated for a kindergartner, and so did Amelia's. However, I can't recall more than a few words that Nathan couldn't manage to sound out correctly on his own. He also recognized word patterns in the book, such as phrases that regularly repeated and he surprised me when, a few pages into his reading, he announced the connection between The Very Busy Spider and another book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar - both were written by the same author. I was quite impressed with Nathan. As precocious as he is, he will need to allow us to read to him in the future, in order to practice his comprehension skills. Although he could sound out words, he didn't always understand them and he wasn't really reflective in his reading because he was too focused on sounding out the words correctly. I am not sure how well he could have summarized or re-told the stories he read to us.
In all, I think it's going to be an absolute pleasure working with Nathan (and with Amelia, too!). It's clear his kindergarten teacher has done an excellent job promoting literacy in her classroom. Literacy was highlighted in many ways that spoke to its importance, such as the alphabet charts on desks and on the walls, a lite brite for spelling out words, and signs and sight words posted throughout the room. I'm excited for next week.
*name changed to protect privacy
Monday, October 11, 2010
reader's workshop
As I read the article Emergent Literacy: New Perspectives by Teale and Sulzby, I found myself noting parallels to the "Reader's Workshop" model that was implemented at my main placement school this year. Although the techniques in the article were generally prescribed for early childhood education programs, some of them were familiar to me as components of the "Reader's Workshop." One important aspect of the workshop is to clearly model a reading life for the kids. As teachers, we're encouraged to keep reading diaries right alongside the kids - noting books we've read, are reading, and want to read. This strategy is promoted to ensure that kids become aware of you as a reader with a reading life, and to let them see you reading and enjoying books. This sort of modeling is what came to my mind when Teale and Sulzby described the importance of encountering literacy at home, through having books around the house, through read aloud experiences, through seeing their family members engaged in reading activities, and through learning about and helping to construct shopping lists, to name a handful of ways in which literacy can be encouraged.
It appears to me that the backbone of the "Reader's Workshop" is a largely a continuation of some of the strategies described by our reading that encourage emergent literacy. I believe this approach will prove useful for developing strong readers, especially since many of the kids may not have, or have ever had, rich literacy experiences at home, nor may they have had beneficial early childhood experiences with literacy. I am interested to see how the workshop progresses over the year and whether it will engage the children effectively or prove beneficial, especially to some of our struggling readers. I believe the workshop's potential benefit will be enhanced by it's advice to have a wide variety of reading materials available in the classroom, dealing with diverse topics and at different reading levels, so kids can have books available that appeal to and are accessible to them. This may seem too common sense to mention, but it might be easy to overlook a genre that doesn't appeal to us when building classroom libraries. Also, kids need books with characters that look like them and reflect their own experiences.
Reading aloud seems another important component of the workshop, in the same way and for many of the same reasons given in Teale and Sulzby's article. I've noted most, if not all, of the read aloud strategies described by Teale and Sulzby implemented in my classroom, such as making predictions, drawing inferences, and examining vocabulary. However, I haven't really noticed that reading aloud to the kids is encouraging them to widen their reading horizons or to select books they may have otherwise passed over. Perhaps it's still too soon in the year for me to observe the benefits of reading aloud described by Ivey in her article The Intermediate Grades. Maybe the book we were reading last month just didn't grab them, or it could be that they were doing a lot of internal processing that wasn't apparent to me. At any rate, I am intrigued by the "Reader's Workshop" - and am interested to see how it unfolds over the year. My one concern is that I don't have a good feel for how scripted the curriculum is, and hope there is room to incorporate reading for other subjects, such as science and social studies. We'll see!
It appears to me that the backbone of the "Reader's Workshop" is a largely a continuation of some of the strategies described by our reading that encourage emergent literacy. I believe this approach will prove useful for developing strong readers, especially since many of the kids may not have, or have ever had, rich literacy experiences at home, nor may they have had beneficial early childhood experiences with literacy. I am interested to see how the workshop progresses over the year and whether it will engage the children effectively or prove beneficial, especially to some of our struggling readers. I believe the workshop's potential benefit will be enhanced by it's advice to have a wide variety of reading materials available in the classroom, dealing with diverse topics and at different reading levels, so kids can have books available that appeal to and are accessible to them. This may seem too common sense to mention, but it might be easy to overlook a genre that doesn't appeal to us when building classroom libraries. Also, kids need books with characters that look like them and reflect their own experiences.
Reading aloud seems another important component of the workshop, in the same way and for many of the same reasons given in Teale and Sulzby's article. I've noted most, if not all, of the read aloud strategies described by Teale and Sulzby implemented in my classroom, such as making predictions, drawing inferences, and examining vocabulary. However, I haven't really noticed that reading aloud to the kids is encouraging them to widen their reading horizons or to select books they may have otherwise passed over. Perhaps it's still too soon in the year for me to observe the benefits of reading aloud described by Ivey in her article The Intermediate Grades. Maybe the book we were reading last month just didn't grab them, or it could be that they were doing a lot of internal processing that wasn't apparent to me. At any rate, I am intrigued by the "Reader's Workshop" - and am interested to see how it unfolds over the year. My one concern is that I don't have a good feel for how scripted the curriculum is, and hope there is room to incorporate reading for other subjects, such as science and social studies. We'll see!
Friday, October 1, 2010
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