Getting caught up on the overflow in my Google Reader while I wait for this baby to arrive! Earlier this month, Stenhouse’s Quick Tip Tuesday focused on Finding the Main Idea in fiction texts. It showcases ideas from Amy Greene and Glennon Doyle Melton in their book Test Talk: Integrating Test Preparation into Reading Workshop.
I like the explicit way Glennon introduces the main idea to her students while reading Thank You, Mr. Falker (what a tear-jerker, by the way). And it immediately brought to mind another teacher’s way of teaching theme in her classroom.
I’ve added a downloads section to the site to house some of the resources I have made throughout the years that help make my classroom run smoother, or teach important concepts/lessons. I find lots of great ideas online, so hopefully these will help someone else in return! Click on “Downloads” at the top of the page to see these resources.
Franki Sibberson shares some excellent resources in her article: New Mentor Texts for Word Choice BOOKLIST.
I think finding and keeping track of excellent mentor texts is one of the trickiest logisitics for teachers - there’s so many to keep track of! I’m hoping this blog will help me not forget the great texts I come into contact when surfing online.
I’ll definitely be adding these to my list for word choice mentor texts!
Amy at teach mama posted this week today about word sorts and lists this great resource for making your own:
This is from the Rockingham County Public Schools in Virginia. A little digging through their site revealed pages of great links for teachers - with even more resources. Check them out!
After hearing Jim Holt on NPR one day, discussing his essay “Got Poetry?” where he makes the case for memorizing poetry, I was inspired to sign up for Poem-A-Day at poets.org. I may not get around to memorizing many poems, but I thought it would be useful as a teacher of writing (and a literate adult) to get more poetry into my daily reading. Some days the poem comes and I don’t feel very engaged - the poet’s message and my mood just aren’t jiving at that moment. But sometimes the poem arrives in my inbox and it sparks all kinds of images and ideas. More after the jump:
Today’s poem was Ode on Dictionaries by Barbara Hamby. And while the poem itself is not appropriate for children, there are snippets that could be shared to show how a poet loves words - devours them.
I’m building
my own book as a mason makes a wall or a gelding
runs round the track—brick by brick, step by step, word by word,
jonquil by gerrymander, syllabub by greensward,
swordplay by snapdragon, a never-ending parade
with clowns and funambulists in my own mouth, homemade
treasure chest of tongue and teeth, the brain’s roustabout, rough
unfurler of tents and trapezes, off-the-cuff
unruly troublemaker in the high church museum
of the world.
I like the idea of students keeping track of words they adore - whether because of how they sound or what they mean - and building a poem “brick by brick, word by word” with their favorite words they’ve found over time.
We’ve been conducting and participating professional development sessions as final projects for my reading specialist class. My classmates have put together excellent presentations on a broad span of topics. In our discussions about the content of our presentations and the reactions of participants, it struck me that the most effective professional development addresses what I can only label the WHY. I think the WHY is what is most often missing from the PD we participate in our schools and at conferences. To explain:
- In a word study presentation, many teachers had some experience with word study activities. But it was the developmental spelling stages that had the greatest impact. Having a deep understanding of these stages is essential to choosing the right activities to use with students.
- One classmate presented to her teammates about the relationships and differences between Lexile Scores, DRA levels, and the Fountas & Pinnell reading levels. She reported that, even though these teachers used these systems regularly, they never knew how the levels were determined. They were all so appreciative to know the WHY behind this tiered system.
- Yesterday’s session focused on kindergarten comprehension. I haven’t taught that young of an age for a long time, but this topic has new interest for me as my daughter gets closer to kindergarten. In discussing ways to teach comprehension at this young age, we were all challenged by the simplicity of the kindergarten texts. And I kept asking myself, “Why is sequencing important to a 4 year old? What does it teach her when she’s reading or hearing a story?”
I guess my point is that because we are overwhelmed by the monumental task of teaching all we have to teach, we can become too focused on the WHAT rather than the WHY. While in reality, if we really understand the WHY - the end goal, the focus of our pursuits - then finding/creating activities to address that focus will become much easier. I find myself hoarding teaching materials so often - “Oh that’s great! Let me get a copy of that!” But if I focus my pursuits on the WHY of what my students need at this point, I won’t have to hoard everything I come into contact. I’ll be able to make focused, clear decisions and choose activities more wisely.
Favorite quote on writing/poetry?
Lisa: Guindon, the cartoonist, said: Writing is nature’s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.via The Miss Rumphius Effect: Poetry Makers - Lisa Westberg Peters.
This is a great quote on writing shared by Lisa Westberg Peters in her interview on The Miss Rumphius Effect. What a nice way to help students think about their purpose in writing and how we can use writing to clarify our thinking.
Lisa Westberg Peters also shares some of her poems from
Earthshake: Poems From the Ground Up
and I sure wish I knew about them back when I was teaching my earth science unit in 3rd grade! Great poetry to connect with science!
The April/May issue of Reading Today has a nice list of Children’s Book Reviews by Susan Dove Lempke that highlight great books for playing with language. I just added these titles to my wishlist…
by Anna Dewdney
by Chris Raschka
by Jack PrelutskyI really like this description of notetaking described on The Stenhouse Blog’s Quick Tip Tuesday. It helps to be so explicit with students when describing how to take notes - I don’t think I’ve been super successful with it in the past.\
At the end of the minilesson, the students create a list of what they learned about notetaking:
Ideas for Taking Notes When Reading Nonfiction
■ Make sure you read the text at least twice so that you really understand what the author has said.
■ Write down key words or phrases that you think are important on a retelling web.
■ Put the text away.
■ Using only the retelling web, try to retell the information.
■ If you have problems retelling, look at the text again and see what extra words you need to include to help you remember.
via Quick Tip Tuesday: How to model note taking - The Stenhouse Blog.
I think I’ll add Tony Stead’s book, Reality Checks: Teaching Reading Comprehension with Non-Fiction K-5 to my list of books to read!
I am having a lot of fun with Winston Breen’s Puzzle Party this week. It’s a great idea. Each day, a different blog posts one of the author’s puzzles, and one successful solver gets a free copy of the latest book, The Potato Chip Puzzles. I haven’t won a book yet, but I’m taking solace in the hope that my chances will be better for the final prize - every single one of G.P. Putnam’s Sons Spring 2009 children’s and YA books, plus advance reading copies of numerous Fall 2009 books. Gotta love that!
The format of this contest would be great for using with students when blogging as well. If multiple classrooms in a school have blogs, then you could have individual classrooms post puzzles on different days. Or if you are using student blogs in your classroom, you could create a scavenger hunt of sorts scattered amongst the different blogs. This would be a great way to generate traffic to and excitement around your online presence. Food for thought for later!
Last week, I gave a presentation in my “Role of the Reading Specialist” class about 21st century literacies, how they will play a more important role for us as language arts professionals in the future, and how becoming a reader of educational blogs can help those of us who are unfamiliar with the social networking space get better aclimated to this style of communication. I think we, as teachers, can’t even begin to think about how to prepare students for reading in the online environment until we are regular users ourselves. With that in mind, I presented a smorgasboard of blogs that I have found useful and introduced Google Reader as a way of keeping up with them.
Well I couldn’t do all that talking without a little action myself, so I moved the old blog that I had started tinkering with this winter to this new space with the intention of more regularly chronicling my learning about literacy. (Keeping in mind that I am nine months pregnant and soon will have only 1/2 a brain cell to contribute to this endeavor. Perhaps this is “online” nesting?) Hopefully this will be a space I can use to help me remember all of the great ideas I am encountering through my courses and online.
Here is the PowerPoint I used during the presentation which highlights blogs I find useful: Getting Ready for New Literacies
