Quote(s) of the Week:
“A shared vision is not an idea…it is rather, a force in people’s hearts…at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question ‘What do we want to create?’” Peter Senge
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
Lessons:
Teachers worked on finishing up the lessons in this unit. They helped students put the essays together, and worked on revising, editing and publishing these pieces. Our goal was to have this unit finished in time to move into unit 4: Writing Fiction, next week.
Reflection:
Although this unit has been difficult to teach at times, I think our Staff Writing Celebration last week showed we are getting this. The rich, rich discussions between teachers working with 3, 4, and 5th graders are making this work rewarding. I’m sure, there are moments when each teacher questions our move to Units of Study and believes this is never going to work. However, at the end of the unit, after the planning, teaching and reflecting, we see growth. The students are stronger. The spiral is becoming more apparent. The teachers are seeing how to improve the work next year and taking good ideas/lessons learned from one unit to the next.
The best part? None of us is alone on this. Every teacher is taking this step, this risk really. WE are stronger than we would be if we were doing this independently and without the collaboration with our colleagues. There are moments when I’m jealous of these educators. I was very alone when I was teaching UOS in G. 3-5. Not only was I the only teacher at my level working through the units, I was also the only teacher in the building. I had no idea, and no right really to know what 2nd grade was doing or what 4th and 5th planned to do. When I think back on my own journey as a teacher I realize how ineffective this was. This is clearly the better model.
Hints/Tips:
Step away and remember the big picture. For our school, that means that we have to remind ourselves our goal is to implement writing workshop this year. We have 3 simple agreements at this point:
- We will teach every unit in the series. (We planned a year-long calendar.)
- We will meet in grade level teams at the beginning the unit for a “walk-through” and discussion of what this will look like.
- We will meet in a vertical team (all teachers in g. 3-5) near the end of the unit to talk about how it went.
These agreements have given us a plan for simple, effective collaboration. The time we spend reflecting on how the unit went is valuable professional development. It is at these times that we support each other on this journey. Thinking about next year I wonder… can I convince them to continue meeting?
Communicating with parents about the work. This week teachers at the different levels I work with planned for their grade level celebrations. Third grade decided to invite parents in to hear the essays read aloud. While this idea seems simple, wonderful, and successful, I worried about the outcome. We have provided very little communication to parents about this implementation and I worried that inviting parents would in fact be inviting criticism of something simply because it wasn’t understood. Third grade held their celebration, and I attended as a parent. It was wonderful. Part of the success was due to how the teachers set the tone for parents as to what they were seeing/hearing from their children. As I reminded teachers at our celebration, our job is to make the work clear to both the children and the parents. We can and will get better at this. For now, I think knowing we need to scaffold for parents too will help us craft the right message and lead to increased parent-school collaboration. What a journey this continues to be!
Next week: I’ll post on our first week implementing the unit Writing Fiction: Big Dreams and Tall Ambitions
