I’m a big fan of Ralph Fletcher’s books, both his fiction and his professional writing books for teachers. So it was exciting today when I received the Stenhouse Newslinks (bi-weekly news via email subscription from the publisher) with an opportunity to participate in an online book club to discuss Ralph’s new book: Pyrotechnics on the Page: Playful Craft that Sparks Writing. The book club will offer four opportunities to comment/discuss the book from July 12- August 2.

What a fun way to do some professional reading and collaborating this summer! ACS teachers attending TCRWP with me this June- I’m certain we can pick up a copy of this book while we are there.

For more inforamtion and to register, check out the Stenhouse Ning here.

Today I checked out the blog thxthxthx: a thank you note a day which features a series of thank you notes written to “everything and everyone”. What a simple, easy way to generate shared writing opportunities in your classroom!

Here is my first “thx” writing piece:

This year my learning curve is even steeper as I am leading our early-release day professional development sessions. To guide me through this work (I’m in year 2 as a coach and this is my first time working as a staff developer) we purchased Regie Routman’s Transforming Your Teaching Through Reading to Understand kit. It has been the foundation needed to define our work, but I’ve also been able to add some school-specific information. (Practice what you preach… I am a responsive teacher of teachers.) Two books I’ve shared bits from lately are Beyond Leveled Books and Still Learning to Read, both written by Franki Sibberson and Karen Szymusiak.

Which brings me to a blog I love… Franki’s blog: A Year of Reading: Two Teachers Who Read. A lot. This blog has reviews of new professional books, literature, weekly poetry posts (Poetry Friday) and sometimes even interviews with authors. If you are venturing into the literacy blogosphere, it is worth a look.

(Photo credit: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/images/electronics-computers/computers-internet/computer/computer-repair/easy-computer-repair-606/overview/0606fix001.jpg)

As I posted last week, we have started to receive bits of our shipment. My orders consisted of professional books aimed to help us grow as teachers in the areas of reading, writing, and word study. Here are the writing books we’ve received so far…

Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer’s Workshop by Jeff Anderson This book is going to be a favorite when we begin to write lessons specifically on identified grammar needs into our units. The author understands how to embed the teaching of these important skills in to a workshop format.

Text Forms and Features: A Resource for Intentional Teaching by Margaret E. Mooney- This is a little gem of a book. In it, the author details very deliberately each type of written text, such as “Procedural Texts” and then lists why it is written/used, what it is, and the features of that particular text.

The Power of Grammar: Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language by Mary Ehrenworth and Vicki Vinton- Thinking again about teaching grammar within a workshop framework, this book provides among other things, “a wealth of mentor texts that allow students to examine conventional and unconventional constructions from the work of published authors…”

Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6 by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli- To preview this new book I went directly to the last chapter titled “A Treasure Chest of Books” where there was an extensive bibliography of books to use as mentor texts for such topics as Discovering Personal Stories, Discovering the Heart of the Story, Zooming in on a small idea, and Analyzing and Modeling Syntax From Mentor Texts.

The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques That Work by Georgia Heard- This book is a favorite of many of my mentors. A quick preview tells me we too will find this book invaluable to our writing workshop work. In fact, I’m taking this one home tonight!

At ACS we have been back in school for about 3 weeks. Our elementary Back to School Night is coming up next Wednesday. As we are implementing some new literacy units and ideas I’ve been asked to help teachers prepare for parent questions and concerns. Here are two ideas to get us started…

From Mindy Hoffer of All Write!!!: Give parents a handout explaining how they can help their children at home with both reading and writing. (Clicking the link will send you to Scribd where you can download these documents to make them your own, giving credit to Mindy of course as the original document creator.)

On Thursday I asked for help with this topic on the blog: Two Writing Teachers. These ladies have a wonderful blog with a wealth of information, so I wasn’t surprised when they wrote back with several great ideas. (Click the link to read my question and their response.)

Do you have more good ideas to share? Please do so in the comment section for this post.

Over the past 6 months I’ve been working with representatives from grades 3-5 on an implementation plan for the Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study in Writing. We met weekly to:

1. read professionally about the writer’s workshop (from a variety of sources)
2. dig deeply into each unit in the 3-5 UOS package
3. plan for spiraling the units across the 3 grades

Recently, we presented our work to the rest of the teachers.
ACS WW 3-5 Implementation Presentation

Also, our work resulted in drafts of the following documents:

• a lesson binder for the first two units including a yearly and monthly plan (sample for grade 4 available here)*
• WW essential agreements
• a framework for possible ways for us to continue collaborating next year

*Next year, we will follow these plans while being ready to change and modify them as we become more proficient at both the UOS and writer’s workshop in general. As the start up book in the series states, these units are to eventually be outgrown, with schools and grades writing and implementing their own units. For now however, our plan is to use the framework of the units (along with the transcript provided in each lesson as a support) to help us align our teaching and build a learning spiral for our students.

If you download to view or to use any of the documents shown here, please provide your comments and suggestions. This work is a process which will be revised and improved. Imput is vital. Thanks!