This is my first reflection on our work implementing Lucy Calkin’s Writing Units of Study for grades 3-5. As mentioned in earlier posts, I met with a Writing Team last year to prepare for implementing and differentiating our work. Using those plans, we have started the process of teaching/coaching/reflecting on Writer’s Workshop. At the end of every week I hope to post my reflections about this process as well as tips, hints, and things to remember or change within the lessons. Teaching UOS has never been the issue. Differentiating this work is the challenge. My hope here is to document our process and possibly get suggestions from others who have successfully made this work.

Lessons:

Our school-wide unit this month is Launching the Writing Workshop. This week grade 5 started out on the units and worked into lesson 3. Grade 4 introduced the work and taught lesson 1. Next week grade 3 will begin with lesson 1. As the literacy coach I modeled teaching many of the lessons and facilitated discussions among groups of teachers and with individuals.

Reflections/Thoughts:

All in all things went very well. The kids seemed engaged and motivated and the teachers felt that the work was manageable. Our only issue was time. As we are teaching on a reduced schedule for this first month, I modeled lessons which were roughly 40 minutes long. Although from a start-up perspective it might seem that the kids wouldn’t need the full hour block of time, every class contained a majority of students who wanted, needed to continue writing. Getting our time back will only make this good start even better.

6 Hints/Tips:

• “Teach the Writer Not the Writing”-This quote from Lucy Calkins is one I come back to over and over again. To me, “teaching the writer” basically means that you listen to and respond to what the child is trying to do. You help her make decisions and guide her toward making her plan a reality. (If the plan won’t work- you help the child see that and guide them toward changing it so it will be successful.) An example of “teaching the writing” would be when you sit with a child in a conference, read their work and correct or point out their mistakes. When you teach the writer you allow for differentiation and acknowledge that kids will be at different points as they work.
• Table Conferencing- is an excellent way to listen to and then teach one student while the surrounding children listen in and learn from your exchange. It is also fun for me as a teacher because I sneak in bits of information without directly talking at a student. (But I’m pretty tricky like that.)
• Use the independent writing time for these first few lessons to get to know your who your students are. If you read over a child’s shoulder and look at the content of what is meaningful to them or you approach a child with a smile and say “How is it going?” and simply listen without judging, you begin to create the kind of environment where magic can happen. These places allow kids to take risks, work at their own pace, and to learn by doing. It is also the kind of environment where kids produce quality pieces of writing and are held to high expectations by their teachers.
• Keep it moving. Minilessons are meant to be mini. This week I was recorded during the lessons I taught so I as able to get a time stamp on the length of time it took me to move from the lesson (with demonstration, active engagement, and linking previous learning) to releasing the kids to write independently. On average I was keeping my lesson to 11-15 minutes. (Which surprised me because I usually think I talk too much in a minilesson.) My goal was to give the kids time to write, and with the reduced day I felt a sense of urgency to “get it done.” Seeing that I taught a full-length minilesson (10-15 minutes is the recommendation) I realize that even when we move to an hour for WW I will need to keep to this pace.
• Write in front of them. Make it real. As teachers who are under pressure to teach it all in less time it would be easy to “tell students” what to do rather than SHOW them. Of the 5 lessons I taught this week, in 4 of them I actually wrote a small moment out right in front of the kids. It was FAST. It wasn’t neat. It was pre-planned. However, that demonstration teaching did the job I wanted it to and made an impact on the kids. If we are to make our kids believe everyone can write, then we have to prove it, by being writers in front of them ourselves. Remember, all writers pick lousy topics, mispell words, and leave out details in their first attempts. If you model and do the above, consider yourself to be teaching something valuable and real.
• Charts must be noticeable to kids. Reread that. I didn’t say pretty, fussy, or laminated. The reason we chart is for authenticity. However, I’ve heard several teachers mention how bad their handwriting is on the charts. So what? Is it readable? Does it show authentic work? Then you have done your job. The point about making it noticeable is to simply put the chart where kids can read it (touch it even) and write clearly with a marker dark enough to read. Viola! You are a charting champ.

My title is in reference to an excellent book about conferring with students by Carl Anderson called How’s It Going? This book is an important one to reference as you become more interested in and proficient at conferencing with young writers.

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These monthly newsletters contain news, pd info, and reminders for ACS Teachers.

Lit Coach Notes- Aug. 09

(It will open in Scribd- then you can either read the notes online or download them from there.)

Whew!

The teachers at my school have started off with the typical “Beginning of the Year” stresses: new kids, new parents, new teaching partners, classrooms needing to be set up, construction delays, orders which haven’t arrived, and NOT ENOUGH TIME TO GET IT ALL DONE!

However, in addition they have ME, the literacy coach, asking them to: meet about implementing writer’s workshop, try-out the first few hastily pulled together lessons in our new reader’s workshop program,  come together as a whole group for PD from Regie Routman’s: Transforming Your Teaching Through Reading to Understand, plan for word study development, give writing prompts and think about our first DRA window.

On top of all of that, the teachers are working a reduced schedule in observance of Ramadan this month. They are fitting it ALL into a day with 1.5 fewer instructional hours!

Can you believe it?

Give these people a medal! Or better yet- a week long vacation beginning September 17th.

This summer my friend and mentor, Bonnie Campbell Hill sent around an email asking if anyone had taught cursive handwriting in a sane, fun, productive way. I thought I had, so this is what I sent her:

Differentiated Cursive Work In Grade 3

I think handwriting is like all aspects of learning; children bring different levels of proficiency and therefore need differentiated instruction to grow in their mastery. To do this, I had my students focus less on learning how to write letters in isolation and more on writing words and sentences in cursive.

Early in the first month of school I asked students to copy the following sentence in cursive from the board onto a 1/2 sheet of lined paper: “I am excited to learn to write in cursive!” This sample was dated and kept in my teacher’s notebook so we had something to compare to later samples.
After reviewing each child’s sample, I ability grouped students. The early cursive writers were given the school purchased handwriting book to begin working on individual letter formation. The writers who had some control of cursive, but needed work on specific letters were grouped together with both the handwriting book and several sheets of large-lined paper. (The kind used in the lower grades with the red-dotted line down the middle.) The final group, who had a strong mastery of cursive handwriting, was given standard lined paper.
What followed for the rest of the year was a series of twice weekly handwriting sessions, which used poems, selected by the students for practice. With classical music playing, children worked at their own pace on either letter formation or copying poems into cursive. Ultimately, students would find that there were letters they needed to review and would use the alphabet guide in the back of the handwriting book or the individual letter practice pages in the handwriting book to help them review and work on that particular letter as they completed their poems. (Myself or another student would also demonstrate letter formation on the white board when it was requested.)
By the end of the year everyone had a “Poetry Pad” filled with large construction paper pages each containing a photocopied poem and the student’s handwritten copy next to it. Some students had 3 poems completed plus the bulk of the handwriting book. Others had worked on 20 poems over the year.
Finally, right before our spring parent-teacher conference, I asked students to write the sentence “I am excited to learn to write in cursive!” again on a lined sheet of paper and we compared this with the sample from earlier in the year. Students reflected on their improvement and on how their handwriting had changed and become more personalized. For many students they simply didn’t believe the first sample was theirs. Parents enjoyed seeing the growth students had made in handwriting over the year. By using the samples- it was readily apparent to all of us!

Photo credit: http://www.cowart.com/nikon/macros/page1/Handwriting.jpg