I recently posted about how busy we are as a school, and mentioned I believe the expected, active collaboration between teachers is partly the reason we feel like there isn’t enough time in the day. (See that post here.)

After reading a recent post on Larry Cuban’s blog titled: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform,  I realized there might be another reason why teachers at my school (and everywhere I’m sure) feel like they are running on empty, while running behind: daily classroom interruptions and surprises, those things that “pop up” and derail your plans. (Sometimes they are great things, sometimes they aren’t.)

For teachers, being able to manage these “interruptions” is part of the job, but an unrecognized part by many parents, administrators and curriculum offices. Some teachers can keep these interruptions to a minimum, others can bounce back from them quickly and move their kids right back into learning. However, even the best of us, if hit with interruption after interruption find it hard to keep going.

I don’t know if we can prevent interruptions. But, what if we did take stock of and try to identify what derails our planned practice? For individual teachers, there might be a pattern she can alter or a strategy to use. As a school, we might be able to coach each other on ways to handle the pop ups, or even as a group, enact some control over them.

Most importantly, by thinking about those things that take away from the limited and precious time we have with children, we will have named a symptom of our stress. It is real. It happens. What can we do about it?

Photo credit

Yesterday I was in a workshop session about using ipads in the classroom. We are just beginning this discussion and one question has been “Where can we find out about new (and wonderful) Apps?”

No, there isn’t an app for that… yet.

However, there is a dedicated blog: Technology Made Easy, where you can watch videos about new apps especially geared for use in educational settings.

Check it out!

This week’s overview and photos of the charts is up and ready at the Word Study Wiki. If you are using Real Spelling and Structure Word Inquiry and have something to share, please consider posting it up on the wiki. If you aren’t sure what to post, or how to post, please contact me for details.

One quick but important note: For some reason I’ve left out of my overview, a potentially important part of both of the last two themes: The effect of the ‘liquid consonants’ <r> and <l>. Here is what to be concerned with…

• Words that end in <r> and <l> and contain graphemes for either ‘long <e>’ or ‘long <a>’ tend to have a different pronunciation.
• Say these pairs of words aloud several times: neat/near and wheat/wheel OR raid/rail and pain/pail. Notice the shift in the number of syllables in the second word. (The former word in each pair is most often pronounced as a monosyllable while the second word has two syllables.)
• When introducing the digraphs <ee> <ea> and <ai> avoid base words ending in <r> or <l> until students are ready. (And aren’t over-relying on pronunciation as the sole indicator of spelling.)

*Of course see Melvyn’s write up for more detailed information.

Have a great week!

I didn’t post a tribute to Steve Jobs earlier this year, but I did read several. I am a fan, and confess my ‘ilove’ for just about all things Apple. As a kid, my father-librarian bought an Apple IIe before there was much to do on it. Later, I had one of the first Macintosh computers as a college freshman. Today as a family of 3, we own and use 2 iphones, 1 ipod touch, 2 shuffles, 3 macbooks, and two 2 ipads. If I was asked why so Apple-heavy? Simple. The products do what we need them to do.

And my ilove continues to grow. As a parent who reads aloud every night, I’ve been amazed at how reading an ebook on my ipad has hightened the experience for both my daughter and myself. We easily and seamlessly pause our reading to: touch and define words, run over to Amazon to see other books by the author or look something up on a website. To be honest, it took me longer to transition from my book-book to an ebook. My daughter barely blinked.

So it was exciting for me both as a parent and as a teacher to learn about two new ideas coming from my guys over at Apple:

The first is digital textbooks. Although we don’t use a lot of “textbooks” in the elementary school, I can still easily see nonfiction and math books used to enhance learning:

The second initiative is a (currently) free App which allows you (or your students!) to create ibooks/ebooks for others to manipulate, read and learn from:

As our school begins to talk 1:1, I’m interested to see if we even need laptops, when ipads are starting to showcase real talent.

Like I said… ilove…

Photo credit: http://appleheadlines.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/apple-logo.jpeg

It’s been a long time since I blogged about writing workshop consistently. With this post… (I probably shouldn’t promise something weekly like I used to do…) I will try to write more often about workshop.

Writing workshop and specifically using Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study is still the number one thing people who read literacybytes email me directly about. It seems like there are many schools out there just moving into using the TCRWP units whether at the primary and/or  intermediate levels. In fact, over the winter break I was contacted by two educators who are busy coaching in different parts of the US (Kansas and California) asking for ideas on launching workshop. They are trying to plan for teaching teachers right along side students. The task seems daunting, but they already have great ideas and recognize the need to set up structures to support teachers.

Looking back at our work here, these were my recommendations to my new professional friends:

• Plan for how teachers will learn about writing workshop. It isn’t easy at first because so many of us were never taught how to write ourselves. It takes time to see it. It takes even more time to feel proficient at it. Provide the time to learn about… the reason for month-long units, the importance of process over product, the need to teach a minilesson but not to expect all kids to do the work you’ve just shown right away, the steps in a conference, how to pull small writing groups, and how to assess the work. (Whew! It takes TIME.)
• Plan for doing this work across grades. Period. This is a spiral. If grade 1 and 3 are teaching the units and grade 2 isn’t, there is no opportunity for students to practice and get better and practice some more. Nor are there opportunities for teachers to talk about “our kids” instead of “my kids”. (To be honest, I’m completely convinced that if you can’t bring this on school-wide, don’t do it at all.)
• Plan for sharing about the teaching and the student learning vertically. Ask K-2 and 3-5 teachers to show student work and talk about their own writing/use of mentor texts in vertical groups. Use this time to help teachers see the journey a student will go through as they progress through the units, over time.
• Plan for time for teachers to reflect on their teaching (and student learning) in relation to pre-determined, school wide goals which will facilitate doing this work. For example: Reflect on using charts: How did it feel to chart my thinking and write in front of kids? How can I make charting more manageable? How well did the students use the charts? Charts might seem like a small item to build reflection time or PD around. However, teachers new to this work, might not naturally see the importance of charting as a method for making your thinking visible and leaving a trail for students to follow when they need to access it. (When we started this many teachers didn’t have easels in their room and didn’t use charting as a tool at all.)
• Don’t worry too much about repeated stories. When teachers begin to feel more comfortable and knowledgeable about the units and the skills/genres they are teaching they will begin to find examples in books they are familiar with and will outgrow the early texts/Lucy stories everyone starts with. It isn’t about the content of the stories themselves anyway, it is about the skills the writer uses to write that way.

Ready or not! Here is the word study overview for the week.

I say that because some teachers have been worried they aren’t “on track” following our plan for the year and the week. If they aren’t on the theme I’m previewing, it is because they are delving deeper into past themes… and that is fine!

We selected about 20 themes from the PreK, K, and 1 kits (see Real Spelling for more information) to introduce across the grades this year. We have 32+ weeks to do it. Everyone will get where they need to be in the end.

I, however, can’t stop the previews because some are ready. If you are one of them, head over to the word study wiki for this week’s session on the graphemes of ‘long e’.

Why are we so busy?

Why is this school so stressful?

These are questions I hear often enough that I’ve wondered about them myself. To be fair, I don’t feel this school is any more “ramped up and busy” than my last international school. However, many here do. Looking at what we are doing here vs. there, I can only come up with one reason why this is… more:

Forced Collaboration

At other schools, I think collaboration between colleagues and across grades is assumed, possibly wished for, but it might not be actually happening. Here it is. No one can escape it.

Not only that, the collaboration is defined. It isn’t as simple as all 4th grade teachers are teaching to the standards and benchmarks, and are therefore collaborating. Instead, teams are asked to collaborate on everything from: designing units to analyzing assessments given… from crafting parent communication- together- to considering what should be posted on bulletin boards to show the world the work of the whole grade level. We collaborate on how we teach, learning together and by leading/coaching each other on new strategies. We even collaborate vertically to learn how students are learning in other grades, sharing our thinking and our work with the teachers teaching in grades below and above us.

We collaborate more than we work alone.

For us, collaboration has become a way of life, but it is also I think the main stressor. It is easier (maybe, but never better) to just do it alone. For many, this is a new way to teach. It is the first time to be asked to work together, let alone to agree and come to consensus on everything. It is hard work. But it is the best work. It is the work worth doing.

So yes. This school is ramped up and busy. But we are busy on the right things. (Most of the time.)

Collaboration is the key to unlocking our capacity as teachers.

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/people-network.jpg

Getting back into it! Our word study work continues with the whole school working on the same Real Spelling theme (for teacher collaboration and learning purposes) while differentiating for our respective levels. My overview this week reminds teachers to work from the most up-to-date Real Spelling kit, for the full benefit of Melvyn’s movies and diagrams.

Please visit the word study wiki to access the video of my overview and the pdf containing the charts I used.

This week was one of those weeks. We are running on empty, heading into a 2-week holiday after a quick start and long running beginning to the year. Combined with the fact that this week’s word study session was very similar to last week’s, no one attended my weekly “Lunch and Learn”. Without live bodies, I don’t really see the purpose behind making the video. Part of the effectiveness of those sessions is the conversation and collaboration after the tape is turned off and teachers, who are on the front-lines with this work, talk about their practice and share ideas.

Therefore, I’ve simply provided photos and captioned thoughts in a powerpoint this week. You can find it on the word study wiki.

Happy Holidays!

This week’s word study overview continues our work with suffixes, this time introducing vowel suffixing into the mix. One thing to note, we are staring to easily see how to investigate words in our other subject areas. In fact, it is becoming quite second-hand and natural. Just this week during our SS Unit writing meetings, we planned to investigate the words: history, community, and entrepreneur! Take a look at the Word Study PD Wiki to see this week’s lesson and charts.