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Assessment, Reflections, and a New Year!

12/28/2015

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Happy Holidays!!! I hope you are all enjoying some down time with your family and friends and not necessarily worrying too much about getting back to work! I have been so lucky to have had our whole family together this year, including our son who recently enlisted in the army. I have been busy listening to the sounds of our house full of a soldier in training, an almost-two-year-old granddaughter, and the whole cast of characters coming and going this season! We certainly are blessed and looking forward to what awaits us in 2016.

But, today, I decided to steal some time in my office and approach the idea of scoring those lively ABC books written by our kindergartners before break. This is the part of teaching that makes my heart quiver. Quantifying learning is something of a conundrum. Especially with very young students, where developmental progress is different for every child. Do we penalize those youngsters who weren't fortunate enough to have two plus years of preschool? Do we slap a high score on the works of students who came in full of background experience and developed skills who then sat in our rooms and put forth little effort? Ugh.

This year, our district moved to standards-based grading in K-1. That means that the students' report cards reflect progress towards mastery of state standards. There is a 1, 2, 3, 4 upwardly scaled progression of mastery. The point scale moves from a 1 - student's performance below the standard/expectation with a frequent need for re-teaching - all the way up to a 4 -  student's performance exceeding the standard/expectation and consistent production of outstanding work. The goal for most students, as I understand the district's expectations, is the 3 scaled point - student's performance meets standards/expectation and the consistent production of quality work. 

Where I get a little jittery is the use of the words "outstanding" and "quality". While I greatly appreciate the district's clear confidence in each teacher's autonomous ability to determine what "outstanding" and "quality" work look like, it still feels a little too loose. What if my determination of what those criterion mean are different from my colleagues' determinations across the county, or even down the hall? This, to me, is where professional development on a county level would be so beneficial. Most teachers I know would embrace the opportunity to come to a consensus on what those defining terms look like in real-time, student work samples.

Okay. So, now onto the standards for this quarter for our kindergarten writers. There are four main standards to be taught and assessed for mastery -

     *  Student will write left to right and top to bottom;
   * Student will use letters and beginning sounds to spell phonetically words to describe pictures or write about experiences;
    * Student will draw pictures and/or use letters and phonetically spelled words to write about experiences;
      * Student will print his/her first and last names.

Below is a rubric that I might use to assess student mastery on those four standards and the scale I would use to assign a scored value. What is extremely important to remember for those teaching in my district, is that these scale points are to be considered in terms of formative assessment! These are not to be confused with traditional letter grades. They are not summative at this point, in that all students have until the end of the grading period to master the standards being assessed. The rubric below will simply give me a snapshot of how the student writers are progressing in their mastery of these four standards at this point in time. When I think about it like that, I feel better!

What I am actually doing is using a creative, authentic writing product as an example from which to determine how our writers are progressing on their learning journeys. I don't feel like I am giving this creative, inspired, imaginative, fun, playful, artistic learning a grade. Rather, I am offering 5- and 6-year old writers an engaging, self-directed opportunity to practice and learn the real-world writing skills they will need to master by the end of the year. My assessment of their growth and development as writers as evident in this ABC book is what will guide my teaching going forward.




I am excited to sit with these books today and reexamine the inspired work of our kindergarten writers. I will sink into their pictures and words and laugh right out loud at their senses of humor.

​As I reflect on this last unit of 2015, I am already skipping and hopping in my mind toward what's coming next in 2016! The classroom teacher and I both agree that the students need to focus now on putting words together, forming complete thoughts, making sentences - thinking and communicating. Writing :)

I have started gathering books - mentor texts and models for our next unit. Stay tuned and next time I hope to have some concrete ideas and lessons to share!

Happy New Year and, remember now and always....

#allkidscanwrite
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Wrapping it up!

12/21/2015

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And, that's a wrap! No, not the gift wrap kind of wrap...Our first grade Literary Nonfiction picture books are finished!!! We are published!

I could not be prouder of this group of writers. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating. I did not come into this classroom until November. This unit of study was my first with them, and it was not an easy one. The students and their amazing teacher jumped right on board with this work - and the results are stunning.

It's very interesting. When I sat with my Assistant Principal for my post-observation meeting, he said something that surprised both of us. On one of the observation points, he said that he noted that the students were given choice in the work they were doing. And then he said that student choice is a practice  he  rarely sees during classroom observations.

What???

I was surprised. And then he repeated himself. He told me that when he is in classrooms doing observations, students are not usually given choice as part of the assignment/work he sees. He sat back in his chair and kind of thought about that for a moment. As did I. Then we shook our heads and moved on.

But as I reflect about our first grade writers' wonderful books, I am certain that their level of engagement in the writing process was due to their ownership of what they were writing about. When I work with student writers, the single most important piece of every bit of my instruction is that the writing is student-directed, purposeful and crafted to inform the reader. That is the foundational platform from which their writers' minds can begin to develop and grow. Without the belief that writing is communication between a writer and a reader, and that the communication is purposeful and driven by what the writer wants the reader to know, then what we are doing is just turning out students who can't think for themselves without a teacher making the choices.

Below are pictures of some of the pages in our authors' books. I am highlighting the craft moves the first graders made, some based on the mentor texts we read, others that they noticed in other nonfiction books they used as resources.




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This author included the craft move of using a flap to ask a question, teasing his reader with a partial picture, and then revealing the rest of the story when the flap is lifted.
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Every single choice these authors made was self-directed. There were no requirements for this picture book except to write about a season of choice that would both inform and entertain the reader.
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This writer noticed that words are often bolded in nonfiction books. He chose to emphasize the word "sometimes" with a bold effect. This was not a direct teaching point, but rather a technical move he had seen in other nonfiction resources.
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After I read a book that used a first person point of view to inform the reader, this writer decided to try her hand at the same craft move.
Can you read this writer's words? Hi. I'm winter. I'm one of the coldest seasons. I'm a cold cloud and I cry little ice tears. When I come in the sun moves away from me. I am winter.

Those gorgeous words from a 6-year old give me goosebumps. 
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This writer used a split illustration to show the changes in the trees from fall to winter. Stunning!
The last writer I want to highlight did a lot of revising! While some teachers may feel that this work is sloppy, I celebrated her ability to go back into her writing and objectively rethink what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. When I work with older children, revision is without a doubt the hardest skill to teach and the most difficult for them to master. 
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So, by giving these first grade writers a context - picture book - they were able to write and illustrate three to four pages on a topic of their choice. The process of writing their books included research, prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and they made tables of contents, glossaries, flap pages, fact pages, covers, and more decisions than we can count in that process! 

My fervent hope is that teachers of primary students see and believe that these writers are capable of so much more than just story starters, or journal assignments, or adding an adjective to teacher-directed sentences and calling it revision. I am not saying that these instructional moves don't have a place in our practices. We do often have to be explicit in our teaching, and use scaffolded methods to meet the needs of all of our students. 

But we must trust in the idea that even our youngest writers can and should think for themselves, from the choice of what to write about straight through the process. From seed idea to publication.

And, that's a wrap! 

#allkidscanwrite

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Real Work....Real Results

12/13/2015

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C.S. Lewis said, "You can make anything by writing."

Even a Kindergarten ABC book!

And, boy, have our writers done just that...or almost done that :) We have only 4 letters left to write and illustrate in our ABC books. W. X. Y. Z. Last week I said I was going to put the writers' books together and hand them back to the students. I wanted them to feel the weight of their work. To see the creative compilation of their day by day by day commitment. I purposefully built up the moment! I lowered my voice to a whisper. I leaned in. My eyes were big with wonder.

You could have heard a pin drop!

And then, I brought out their books. The whole big pile of them. I handed them out with reverence and asked the writers to sit and read their own writing. In silence. I encouraged them to savor the moment of holding their words in their hands. They were so proud of themselves!!! Bravo!!!

After we spent some time with the almost finished books, I collected them back up and got quiet again. I lowered my voice to a whisper.  I leaned in. My eyes were big with purpose. I slowly told the writers that their work was not quite finished. I had all eyes and ears on me as I talked to them like a conspirator. "We have more work to do. We have to finish this work for our readers." I spoke as if I were telling them a secret. And for that moment, they were all in.

But, of course, they are kindergartners. The moment passed, and they were quickly back to their squirmy, chatty, lively 5-year-old selves. That's okay. We had the moment. One that they will not soon forget.  And we needed to get busy again.

At this point, we are nearly done. Today I want to highlight how important the authenticity of this project has been to the quality of the product and to the commitment of the writers to their work. When we started the ABC book, our objective was for the students to learn, to practice, and to strengthen their handwriting skills. But, we did not do it in a typical kindergarten handwriting book. We embedded that fundamental learning within the context of a real writing experience for a real audience. It changed everything.

Below is one writer's pages. If we are just looking at handwriting and letter formation, notice how this student moved from using all uppercase letters in his first word Australia (typical in early kindergarten), to the correct use of upper- and lowercase letters in the word Thursday. And, yes, that is a koala bear illustrating Australia!




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Remember, we are not looking for perfection. We are looking for growth!

Next, while creating a Kindergarten ABC book, our writers practiced writing word(s) that are not typically written by 5-year olds, like educate, quick and understand. Is the ability to write these words transferrable in some future writing work? I am going to say "Yes!" Some of these writers may very well use these higher level words in another context. Never forget to always believe in the possible!!

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I have layered the pages on top of each other to better show the progression of the writers' handwriting skills. But, the compositional work of the illustrations cannot be forgotten. We have seen creative, humorous, and layered illustrations in many books.
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The "quick question marks" is an example of this writer's attempt to make his reader laugh!

So, this week we will finish up. I know the writers are ready to move on. This has been a long unit of study. Especially for kindergartners! But they did it!!! I could not be prouder!

Next time we will talk about assessment. How do we use this work to assess our students' growth according to district expectations and report card grading categories? It is not my favorite subject. But, as teachers, we are required to assign a scored value to children's art. 

In the meantime, savor the joy of teaching young writers! The value of a kindergarten writer's work is in its effort and truth and simple existence.

#allkidscanwrite

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Writing as Inquisitive Exploration

12/9/2015

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This new English speaker asks her readers to wonder what to do with "that tree" and "that food"? Look under the flap to find out!
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This writer gives her reader a sneak peek of a clue as to "What starts to bloom in [Spring]."
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I am going to have to borrow a quote from a post I saw shared on Facebook the other day. If you go to http://www.creativitypost.com/education/what_drives_childrens_creativity you can read the whole article, written by Joanne Foster, EdD. The title of the post is the question "What Drives Children's Creativity?" Dr. Foster interviews artist Rina Gottesman and the two discuss their thoughts about the answer to the title question. My favorite quote, and the reason I bring it up tonight, has to do with the importance of allowing children to simply try when it comes to the creative process. No worries about the end product. Just concentrating on the artistic process. Here's what Gottesman has to say:

"Artists often say, ‘"[It] is the journey not the destination that is important.'"We say this so we do not become attached to the end product but rather enjoy the process of painting itself. When you worry about the outcome, the painting becomes tight and forced rather than spontaneous and free. When thinking about children's creativity it’s important to emphasize this idea. The child should enjoy the (painting) process, play with the media, experiment, make mistakes (there are none), be inquisitive, ask 'what if,' and just be curious." - See more at: http://www.creativitypost.com/education/what_drives_childrens_creativity. 

Never has this been more true in my teaching experience than this year! I am creating a kindergarten writing curriculum as we go, teaching writing in a first grade classroom for only the second time, and designing a brand new unit of study on graphic narrative writing for first grade to be taught in the second semester and shared through a grant project. I feel very much like I am flying by the seat of my pants most days on this writing journey. Each and every day, I ask 5- and 6- and 7-year olds to be writers. To be authors and illustrators who have ideas and to share them through text and pictures with readers.

Such a lofty goal...but maybe, on the other hand, really just a simple and authentic invitation to "be inquisitive, ask 'what if', and just be curious". I absolutely love Rina Gottesman's words!

Today I read, What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page to the students. This is a wonderful book in which the authors present parts of animals on one page (tails, noses, mouths, hands, eyes, ears, etc.) and ask the reader to imagine what the animals who belong to those body parts do with them. When you turn the page, the animals are shown in their entirety and there is text to teach the reader how each animal uses their tails, noses, mouths, hands, eyes, ears, etc. in unique ways. The students loved hearing the book read aloud, and I challenged them to try using a variation of the craft move in their own books about a season.

Above is the work of some brave writers who weren't afraid to ask "What if?" 

I am including the plan for this lesson that we worked on today. Our first grade writers are so engaged in this work that we are seeing writing that far exceeds our expectations in terms of composition and craft. 


Literary Nonfiction
Lesson 5 - Interactive Features

Objective    Students will create texts that engage and entertain readers, but that also inform about a topic. In this session we will consider how we can present information to our readers by writing an illustrated interactive guessing book.

Materials    What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?, Steve Jenkins, Robin Page
                     Literary Nonfiction class chart
                     Markers
                     Student books

Connect    Remind students of our discussion yesterday when we read and talked about Supermarket, by Kathleen Krull. Refer to our chart where we added:

Literary Nonfiction


Bat Loves the Night
  • a story about a bat
  • facts about bats

Atlantic
  • gives topic (ocean) a voice
  • fact page at the end

Supermarket
  • information presented as text written on the illustrations

Teach        Tell students that today you are going to read and study another book, What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?, by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. Invite students to first listen to the book as readers, listening for information about animals, and then as writers, looking for techniques and strategies Jenkins and Page use to entertain and teach. Read the book twice. During the second reading, remind students to be on the lookout for writer moves.

Active Engagement    When you have finished the second reading, invite students to turn to their neighbor and share something that they noticed the authors try in the book that helped either entertain or teach their readers. Listen in on student conversations to find some ideas that you want the whole group to access from this book. Call the group back together and ask a few students to share, making sure to include all the points you wanted made. Add these to your chart.

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?
  • questions to engage the reader on one page/answers on the next
  • written like a riddle

Link    Tell the students that the new idea you added to the chart today is something they may try in their writing, too.

Share    Walk around the room as the students work and choose one or two writers to share their work at the end of the session. Be sure to highlight the good writer and illustrator work they are doing.

Assessment    You may want to carry around an anecdotal note observation sheet upon which you can keep notes on what you see the students are trying as you begin this new unit. These notes can inform your teaching going forward.

Resources


Jenkins, S. and Page, R. (2003).  What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

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Dr. Joanne Foster ends her conversation with Rina Gottesman with another quote that speaks to my heart,

"Parents and teachers can help children learn to trust themselves, to take sensible risks, and do what they love to do. They can encourage children to be innovative and playful with pen, paint, crayon, paper, stone, clay, musical notes, sand, or whatever medium for creativity they choose. This will empower children to want to create—fueling that initial spark with a variable mix of passion, chaos, and clarity so it can ignite and become creative expression."
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In the classrooms in which I am privileged to teach, I want innovation and playfulness and passion to be more than just present. I want those things to drive all that we do with our students. Every single child deserves that.

#allkidscanwrite
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Building a Sense of Authorship

12/6/2015

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"Stories happen to those who tell them." - Thucydides.

Lucy Calkins shared this quote in her transformational work, The Art of Teaching Writing, New Edition (1994) on page 23, and I used it for the cover of my very first writing binder. For me, it holds so much truth and single-handedly forms the foundation for what I believe to be the most critical and non-negotiable pillar of writing instruction - in order for all kids to write, they each have to believe that they have "stories to tell". They have to believe in themselves as authors. Once they identify themselves as people who write words and/or draw pictures to convey meaning to an audience, they can begin to see their own lives as rich with stories to tell or facts to share or arguments to make.

Building a sense of authorship in young students is challenging. I have been in many, many upper elementary writing classrooms where most students had no idea of what to write unless the teacher directed them with a prompt or other writing activity. They no more saw themselves as authors than as doctors or lawyers. Their context of being writers was the limited work of completing assignments designed by other people. They did not see themselves as the thinkers and creators and composers of what they wrote. And because they did not possess the habits of mind of writers, they did not see their lives as full of stories. Their eyes had never been opened to seeing the value of their own life stories. 

Don't get me wrong. There is a real need for student writers to be able to write to a prompt, or to complete a writing activity embedded in a quality STEAM or PBL project. Our teachers are providing lots of opportunities for students to write. 

But, what I am talking about today is a sense of authorship. An identification with a person who sits at a desk, stares at a white piece of paper (with or without lines), imagines text and illustrations, thinks deeply about meaning and purpose and audience, and writes. And writes. And writes. And then rewrites. And rewrites. And on and on.

Authors write stories. Authors write picture books. Authors draft. Authors spend days and weeks on one piece. Authors are purposeful about every single mark that they place on the page.

Which brings me to this morning...

I have been smiling and laughing and celebrating as I compile our kindergarten writers' ABC picture books! We have made it to the letter "Mm"...halfway there. :)


But the glass really is more than halfway full. Something is building in our room. Something big. Authorship! Our kindergartners have authored one half of their  picture books! They can hold in their hands thirteen pages of text and illustrations. I have every intention of placing these halfway finished books in their hands tomorrow. I want to tell them to just look at what they have done!

They have each worked for the past two weeks on one book.  I want them to be amazed and awed and absolutely agog with their accomplishments. 

Below is one of our new English speakers' ABC book...I can only imagine the smile on her face and the pride in her eyes as she holds the book she is writing. I will tell her she is an author just like Giles Andreae and an illustrator just like David Wojtowycz! I will compare her beautiful ABC book to their ABC Animal Jamboree. And I will tell her that I loved reading her book as much as I loved reading theirs.

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This writer and her colleagues have been making one or two pages each day during writer's workshop. They have no idea of the magnitude of their body of work. When they are holding the first thirteen pages of their very first book, clipped all together, with weight and substance, they will begin to believe in themselves as authors.  Even my heart swelled with pride as I read through these ABC books.

I am determined to build in these writers the knowledge that they are authors. That they compose ideas, and then write the text and draw the illustrations to share those ideas with readers. And, most importantly, that they are the storytellers of their own lives. 

"Stories happen to those who tell them."   All kids have stories.

​#allkidscanwrite



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Reflect, rethink, refresh...

12/3/2015

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Wow, it has been two weeks since I've written about our first grade writer's workshop. Life happens, right? Traveling for Thanksgiving precluded me from getting the blogpost written last Wednesday. And then, well, then eating got in the way, and then family, and then football, and then traveling again!

But, now I'm back, and I wanted to share some of the work that our students are doing with nonfiction writing. You may remember that we began our unit of study on Literary and Practical Nonfiction writing the week before Thanksgiving. We began with a scope and sequence lesson in which we introduced our mentor text, Whales and Dolphins, by Judy Allen and Mike Bostock. We talked about the way nonfiction books are organized and highlighted text features such as tables of contents, headings, indexes (or indices), glossaries, etc. Next, we began to gather content information for our books on seasons. Below is the lesson plan that I used to set up this research.


Literary and Practical Nonfiction
Prewriting Research Lesson
(2-4 Days)

Objective    Students will create texts that engage and entertain readers, but that also inform about a topic. In this lesson, we will set students up to do research on their nonfiction topic.

Materials    Sky Tree, Thomas Locker
                     Brainstorming Grid for Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall
                     Chart Paper
                     Markers
                     Stacks of books about the seasons

Connect    Tell students that you have noticed how much they have been learning about the seasons in science recently. Specifically, they have done a lot of noticing about the season of fall. Remind them of the brainstorming grid they filled out for fall last week.

Teach        Tell students that when authors get ready to write about a topic, they generally choose one that they know a lot about, one in which they are considered expert. For example, you are going to read the book Sky Tree, by Thomas Locker, who says in the Author’s Note:

“I have spent most of my life learning to paint trees against the ever changing sky. After all these years I still cannot look at a tree without being filled with a sense of wonder.”

Read the book to the students, asking them to pay attention to how Locker’s drawings show how much he knows about trees and the sky and the seasons. Discuss students’ reactions and observations. You may want to make a chart of what they noticed while you read.

Active Engagement    Tell students that today you are going to ask that they do some prewriting work for their nonfiction book on the season they each picked. Give students time to choose a book that is all about their season. Ask them to go back to their seats and start to take notes on their brainstorming grid.

Link    Tell students that you want them to capture as much information as possible about their topic from the books they are using today. There will be additional time for researching in the next day or two, but writers don’t waste any time when they are researching for a book.

Share    Walk around as students are working and take note of students who are doing a good job writing notes on their note-taking grid. Share with the class as you notice this good work.

Resources

Locker, T. (1995). Sky Tree. New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.


The next day, we began to read other Literary and Practical Nonfiction texts in order to study the craft moves of nonfiction authors. I started with our mentor text, Whales and Dolphins, by Judy Allen and Mike Bostock, highlighting their use of flaps throughout the book. They wrote questions on one side of the flap and wrote the answers on the pages beneath the flaps. Several students asked if they could try that, too. "Of course!!!" I answered (with a fist bump!!).

At this point, I thought the writers were ready to begin their picture books. I stapled five sheets of blank white paper together, landscape. Together, we talked about what should be on the cover of their books - title and author name. After checking back into our mentor text, we added a Table of Contents on the first page inside our books. Each student chose 4 subtopics from their brainstorming grids to include as sections in their books.

The next day, I read Bat Loves the Night, by Nicola Davies. Below is the lesson plan for that day.

Literary  and Practical Nonfiction
Lesson 2 - Including Factual Information

Objective    Students will create texts that engage and entertain readers, but that also inform about a topic. In this session we will consider how factual information is included in text.

Materials    Bat Loves the Night, Nicola Davies
                    Chart Paper
                    Markers
                    Student Books

Connect    Remind students that literary nonfiction means writing a book that is fun to read but that also teaches readers about something. Yesterday we looked at many books that engaged readers but also informed about a topic. Today we will read and study Bat Loves the Night, by Nicola Davies.

Teach        First, take a picture walk through the book. Look closely at the cover, inside the jacket, and the first pages. Ask students to share what they notice:

  • Cover - a picture of a bat flying at night - looks real.
  • Inside - sketched pictures of different kinds of bats.
  • Facts about bats and the names of different bats written around the pictures.
  • Any other noticings from students…

Read Bat Loves the Night. Ask the students to first listen to the story as readers, enjoying the text and listening for facts. Discuss. What did they see in the pictures? What did they learn about bats from the words? Was it a story? Next, read it again and ask the students to try to listen as writers, being alert for specific strategies and techniques that Nicola Davies used to make her book informative.

Active Engagement    Invite students to share their thoughts with their neighbors and listen in. Call the class back together and share some of the students’ ideas. Add them to the Literary Nonfiction Chart.

Link    Tell students that they may decide to include their nonfiction facts like Davies did by placing them around the illustrations in the story. This is one way writers teach readers about a topic.

Share    Walk around the room as the students work and choose one or two writers to share their work at the end of the session. Be sure to highlight the good writer and illustrator work they are doing.

Assessment    You may want to carry around an anecdotal note observation sheet upon which you can keep notes on what you see the students are trying as you begin this new unit. These notes can inform your teaching going forward.

Resources

Davies, N. (2001). Bat Loves the Night. Somerville, MA:  Candlewick Press.

And this is where the game plan shifted...

As I walked around the room, I noticed that the students were overwhelmed with the blank space in their books. Their handwriting was sloppy because there were no lines. There seemed to be a lot of hesitation as they tried to understand what they were supposed to write about. Not much was being written. At all.

Uh-oh...

And then, thank goodness, there was Thanksgiving break. Thank goodness because over the break, I had time to reflect.  And I came to the conclusion that this class of writers needed more support. A lot more support. So, I switched to a type of paper with handwriting lines across the bottom half of the paper and less white space at the top.  When we came back from break, I introduced the new paper to them and retaught the lesson above. 

The results were stunning! Most of the students got busy writing their sentences immediately. The hesitation and confusion of the week before was gone. Below is one author's page on Outdoor Activities in summer.

​So, that's where we are right now. I will catch you up on the next few lessons next week. But, I am feeling much better about this unit of study now that the students are fully involved in the writing. In my memories of the year I taught first grade, the writers didn't seem to struggle with the blank pages. But, this class of students was clearly at  a loss. I have to remind myself that this is the first picture book for these authors and that confidence in facing a blank page is a learned skill. It will take time.

As teachers, we must also take time, time to reflect on our practice. To notice what is and what is not working and to tweak our instruction to match our students' needs. We can pull out last year's lesson plans; but we sure better be thinking about this year's students as we design our learning progressions.

Reflect, rethink, refresh.

#allkidscanwrite



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