Stenhouse - So Much to Love

Heinemann has always been my favorite professional development resource. I was hooked in by authors such as Freeman and Freeman and Nancie Atwell. I loved that their books were easy to read and connect to with so much practical advice. Lately Stenhouse has been giving me a lot of reasons to reevaluate that "favorite" status. There is so much to love about all their site has to offer: full books available for web preview of many books and excerpts of others, their blog with regular updates (just discovered), and the creative use of technology.

The access to books can be dangerous with my lack of control when it comes to spending money on books. Like my Heinemann favorites, I have noticed that Stenhouse books have the conversational feel with many innovative ideas that make sense. I recently bought and loved Readicide and The Daily Five. The CAFE Book is on its way, and I would love to read Spaces and Places, Notebook Connections (I read Notebook Know-How last summer and will be pulling it out again this summer to reflect upon and rework my curriculum), and Making History Mine. I have to hold myself back from clicking over to Amazon right this instant to order them all!

I just added their blog to my list of favorites so I could monitor it for a while and decide whether or not I would follow it regularly or not. With less than a week I can see how it will be an invaluable resource. I like how it has posts from a variety of their authors that I can easily connect to and find ideas that I can easily relate to my own classroom. I appreciate all that Stenhouse has to offer and am glad I realized that it has so many components to offer on their site that I had not noticed before.

Excellent Professional Conversation

Earlier this spring I read Kelly Gallagher's Readicide. One of the ideas that really made sense to me was his thoughts on how it is essential that we have consistent support for students to build awareness of the world around them and world events so that they can develop into productive citizens. He discussed his article of the week where he assigns an article every Monday that students turn in Friday. They need to demonstrate that they thought deeply about the article. I have already been thinking about how I will integrate this into my curriculum as I develop how my language arts/social studies block of time will look next year.

Today I just found out via the Stenhouse blog that there is currently a conversation between Kelly Gallagher and Sarah Cooper about current events. It could not have come at a more perfect time to give me food for though in order to process and plan for 09-10. The format of the interaction, voice thread, is something new for me. I was just mentioning how blogging has opened up a great professional development opportunity for me, and I am thrilled that Stenhouse is offering such a unique experience for free and allowing others to jump into the conversation.

Even though it is just getting started, I have already got a lot of ideas. Gallagher's comments either reminded me of what I had agreed with so much from his book or helped give me a clearer picture of how he formats his class. I am excited that Cooper is coming from a middle school background. Here is what has been most helpful for me so far:
*I love Sarah's idea of having students present every Friday on a rotating, individual basis. She said 2-3 students present each Friday ending up to having 3-4 total presentations in a year. Since this is a formal presentation, not only are students learning about current events and developing valuable background knowledge for deeper reading comprehension as Gallagher mentions, but they are also learning to be good speakers. In addition, they learn to discuss current events with their class. Students are actively engaged and the teacher only steps into the conversation for clarifications when needed. I can find so many best practices in this seemingly ordinary classroom routine. We used to do current events in high school, and I never realized just all that it could do for me.
*Kelly mentioned that the math department at school is coming on board by doing a graph of the week. Students are reading every week through a math lens. I can't wait to mention this to my new teaching partner who will be responsible for science and math.
*It was great to have a summary of article of the week again. While it was one of the main ideas that stood out in the book, it was a good reminder of exactly what the main purpose was and what it looks like. I was reminded that I love that he focuses on who the intended audience is and what the author's main purpose is. This links back to not only good reading skills but also to being aware of their intended audience when they are writing.
*I will be checking out a site that Gallagher mentioned using as an article resource (izzit.org/events), keeping in mind that he gathers his articles from multiple sources.

Both Gallagher and Cooper have excellent ideas of ways to integrate current events on a regular basis. Their ideas span across many curricular areas to scaffold student growth and awareness in reading, writing, social studies, and speech. I can't wait to see the rest of the conversation. I am definitely intersted in Gallagher's new DVD Article of the Week that will be released mid-May and Cooper's Making History Mine. Because I can see a lot of value in what both educators are doing, I will be thinking about how I can incorporate their ideas into my curriculum.

Blogging as Professional Development

This year discovering the blogging world has ended up being more helpful than I ever could have imagined as far as professional development is concerned. I have the blogs that I most frequently visit on my own blog to notice when there is a new post. I love getting glimpses into other people's classrooms as a means to reevaluate what I am doing and ways to constantly improve. Tonight I just added one more to my list.

This year I have seen Sarah at the Reading Zone frequently mention Two Writing Teachers. I know that I had glanced over the site before but am baffled at why I did not start watching it consistently. It has a wealth of information. This summer I am going to really reflect on my current reading and writing practices and develop a strong plan for next year of how I want to improve and changes I want to implement. Blog posts will be a key component to my reflections.

Although it is my fourth year teaching, I have been to three different schools. The one position that I was at for two years felt different both years because the mandated curriculum changed. My positions ranged from high school English Language Learners support and Spanish, middle school reading specialist, and my current 6th grade self-contained in a dual immersion setting. Next year I will have both 6th and 7th graders as our school grows.

My current position is my ideal job where I have the opportunity to implement my own curriculum, but it is also a challenge to get the vision of best practices from various sources, to blend them together and achieve a good balance. Next year I will finally have the benefit of being in the same position for multiple years. While my position will change for next year, it will actually get easier by being able to just focus on language arts, social studies and English Language Development rather than all subjects. I am really excited about how much I will be able to improve just by having processing time over the summer before the start of my second year. It is so nice to be settled in a position with the plan to be there for multiple years.

Being able to have a combination of professional development books, the blogging world, and talking to friends in education provides me with the support to not be afraid to try something new and to get a wealth of ideas on how to fine tune the components that I want to implement.

I am excited to continue following blogs such as Reading Zone and Two Writing Teachers, as well as discovering more education blogs to add to my blogs to follow list.

Education Professional Organizations

My choices of professional organizations in education reflect how my roles/focuses have evolved. When I was student teaching I joined my first organization - AATSP (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese). I was doing my Master's literature study on Spanish for Native Speakers classes, and the organization was a good fit for me. During my first teaching position, I was not a member of any educational group, other than NEA and OEA, which I had also joined as a student teacher.

When I switched to my second teaching position as a middle school reading intervention teacher while also completing coursework for my reading endorsement, the International Reading Association was a great resource. I am still a member, but I just received my renewal notice in the mail. After three years, my question is, to renew or not? It is the only organization I currently belong to because my current school does not have a union, so I no longer receive mailers from NEA and OEA.

Lately I have been considering joining NCTE. Now that I am a regular mainstream language arts teacher this seems like it may be a better fit. While I still enjoy reading IRA's newspaper when it arrives in the mail, I have been hearing a lot about NCTE such as in this post over at A Year of Reading, which prompted me to ask them their thoughts on the benefits of being a member of NCTE. Here is Franki's response to me:
"I have been a member of NCTE for 20ish years. It has been my anchor professional organization. For me, the people I've learned from all of my professional life are key people in the organization. I believe in what NCTE stands for, love the journals, enjoy the convention each year and am currently thrilled at all they are putting out there as a support for our work. If you aren't sure, spend some time on the NCTE website. For me, it is a perfect match--my professional beliefs and what I need to grow. I think that's the case for lots of people. Hope that helps!"

I do not necessarily want to pay for two memberships, and right now I am leaning toward NCTE. Franki's thoughts along with seeing educators/authors I respect as members and leaders in the organization such as Kylene Beers and Sharon Draper make me think it has a lot to offer.

What educational organizations are you or have you been a member of? Which has been the most helpful?

Learning from the President

A post over at a The Reading Zone just caught my attention and led me to an article about President Obama reading aloud Where The Wild Things Are for some children on Easter. The writer, Tegan Tigani, was applauding the president and using it as a teachable moment for ideal read aloud characteristics:
Start with a connection to the book
Point out illustrations
Pause for audience participation
Make Sound effects
Act it out
Encourage the audience to act like the characters
Contextualize and reassure



It is fun to see President Obama being so visible and setting a good example. I can clearly remember examples of active administrators in various positions in contrast to those who do not focus on building relationships, and President Obama is clearly setting a precedence for a presidency with a high level of interaction. Throughout his campaign it was evident that he has a talent for public speaking, and it is nice to see him putting it to good use to inspire readers.

FOUR WEEKS!

After this week I will officially only have four weeks of school left, and every single one of those weeks has at least one atypical day which will make each week fly by even faster. On top of that, spring is officially here. This week the weather has been so nice. When I go to pick my students up after their lunch break outside I no longer freeze while waiting for them to line up, and I actually have the urge to stay outside for a while longer to bask in the sun!

I have really enjoyed my school year. I learned so much, and I cannot wait to have some time this summer to reflect and plan for next year. Just a little bit ago I was skimming through some of my earlier posts, and I found another fun reason to blog - it is like a journal of my experience and took me back to my thoughts at the beginning of the year (#1 and #2) (and also reminds me that I started out the year with an actual teaching journal that I was faithfully writing in every day, which turned into every once in a while, and eventually a vague memory sparked by thoughts of reflection!).

I will be doing a month of summer school early on. I will have some of my 6th graders as well as get to know some of my incoming students. It will be a perfect opportunity to familiarize myself with my incoming students' levels and then have a chunk of time afterward to continue planning and setting up the framework for next year.

The Great Scavenger Hunt

This week I started seeing multiple mentions of Kay Cassidy's The Great Scavenger Hunt (such as here and here). I instantly thought about how much fun it would be for my students to participate, but there was one small glitch. Our school only has classroom libraries rather than a regular school-wide library. While the students do get to go to the public library once every two weeks, we will only be able to go one more time this year since the last month of school has so many special events.

Luckily, Kay Cassidy agreed that my students could participate using our classroom library. It is perfect because many of the books with available scavenger hunts are in our library. I noticed that there are a lot of Class of 2k8 and 2k9 authors, as well as Buzz Girls authors. I am excited to see what my students think of the contest.

Poetry Introduction

Last fall I was all geared up to start a poetry unit, but then my units were shuffled around a bit and it was not possible to begin when I had originally thought. I recently did a post over on my original blog about buying Nancie Atwell's Naming the World: A Year of Poetry Lesson. Yesterday and today were the first two days that I introduced our daily poetry; it has been so great. When I watched the DVD that accompanied the book and read about the implementing the resource I remember how Atwell said that the video was taken after the students were very used to the daily poetry routine, so I was not sure what to expect for the first day. I did not know how receptive my students would be to the poetry and how thoughtful their post mark-up comments would be. To my delight, it seemed natural even from the original attempt. I will definitely do this daily all year next year, rather than just the last few weeks.

We are also reading Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, and I put a twist on the journalling assignment that my students have been doing all year long. Now all of their journals will be in verse. It was a perfect segueway into introducing Creech's book because many of the boys comments fell right in line with Jack's when I first mentioned the change (poetry is for girls) and from both girls and boys I heard (I don't know how to do poetry or I refuse). Because of their comments they could identify even more with Jack and it made the reading that much more enjoyable. I am excited to see their first poetry attempts and how they evolve as we continue with the unit.

Tomorrow I will be featuring other classroom library books that are novels written in verse such as Heartbeat, I Heart You, You Haunt Me, and The Poet Slave of Cuba.

Upcoming Freedom Writers Book

This summer I heard that there was a Freedom Writers book in the works from the first 150 educators who participated in the Freedom Writers Institute because on of my co-workers was working on his submission. I just saw an announcement that the book, Teaching Hope: Stories From the Freedom Writer Teachers is scheduled for release this fall. I can't wait to get a copy!

Reading and Writing Connection

"Read like writers and write like readers" is a popular phrase that I love to share with and explore with my students. Author Mary Castillo just did a blog post that ties in well with the concept. She said:

"When I'm lucky to find that special book or movie that make me forget that I'm a writer, I reread/rewatch it to spot how the author structured the story. I even take notes and ask myself the following:
1. What does she reveal about the characters? But most importantly, how and when does she reveal what they're trying to keep secret?
2. How does she work characters against each other and create conflict that make me hold the book tighter, or lean forward towards the screen?
3. Where are the pulse points of the story? (One could call them plot points, turning points ... whatever floats your boat."

I love reading examples of how different authors craft their stories and analyze works of others. It would be fun to have my students do a similar analysis of one of their favorite books to influence themselves as writers.

Over before you know it!

I am officially on the home stretch of the school year. With our langauge breakdown I have four more English weeks and two more Spanish weeks. This time of year always flies by with different field trips and activities. I can hardly believe it is almost time for the end of another school year.

All year long I have been reflecting about my first year teaching in a self-contained setting. I am proud of a lot about this experience, but I am also relieved that as our school continues to grow I will be closer to my comfort zone next year. I will be responsible for langauge arts, language development, and social studies while a second teacher will be the science and math teacher. It is exciting that I will be able to focus on the content areas that I feel passionate about, rather than feeling stretched to cover all the bases.

Read Aloud

Sarah over at The Reading Zone recently did a post on read alouds in her classroom that inspired me to do my own post on the topic using many of the same concepts that she explored, as well as adding some of my own.

I started doing read alouds because...
My first experience with read alouds in middle school was during my student teaching experience, and I have to admit, I was skeptical. I would skim the classroom and wonder whether or not it was really valuable or not since a lot of the students did not seem to be fully engaged at all times. Luckily, I did not go with my first impressions. My cooperating teacher was going through coursework to get her reading endorsement and had suggested that I should take courses right away since they were invaluable. I took her advice, and as soon as I could fit in the courses I did. The importance of read alouds came up frequently, and now it is a part of my classroom every day and I no longer question its validity. Thinking back to my earliest impressions make me laugh.

My read-aloud set up is...
I read aloud to my students daily for about 15 minutes. However, since I try to stop at natural points sometimes it may be a little more or a little less. The physical set-up of read-alouds in my class has changed depending on my job assignment and layout of my classroom. In my original student teaching room the students sat in their desks that were in straight rows while I stood at the podium. When I was a middle school reading specialist my room was a converted locker room, so there was not any other option than to have my students sit in their desks because of the space. I did, however, decide to sit down in front of my small class (no more than twelve students). This year I enjoy my read alouds more than ever because my classroom is large enough to accomodate a meeting area. My students move over to the carpet for read-alouds, making it easier for them to hear and enjoy the book.

I select books by...
I often consider what books will catch the interest my students and also serve as a good model of writing. A lot of the time the themes tie into concepts that we are studying in class. For example, we just finished a Take a Stand unit, so we read The Giver/El Dador and Bat 6 to go along with our unit. I find that there are a vast amount of books that easily tie into any unit that we do in our class. There would have been many other great options for the same unit. We read Bat 6 as part of Oregon Reads 2009.

Dual language considerations...
This year my read-aloud experience has also been different because I am in a dual language immersion school, so I also consider whether or not books are available in both English and Spanish. The structure of the 6th grade this year is one week in English and two weeks in Spanish. It is always hard to have a week away from a book that the students can't wait to see what is going to happen, and even worse if it is a Spanish book that they would have to wait two full weeks on. My first read aloud of the year was Esperanza Rising. I did not initially intend to read it in both languages, but decided to try it out so that the students would not lose momentum with the books. Wherever we were at the end of an English week, I found the same spot in the Spanish version and continued right along through the Spanish week, moving seemlessly through the book in both languages. It worked so well that it is something that I take into considerations for all of my books.

However there are some books that I do not have available in both langauges that I still want to read aloud. In such cases, during Spanish weeks I typically choose short stories that I can read during the week or books that are more like vignettes and not as hard to come back to after a two week break.

Occasional assignments tied to the read aloud...
Typically the read aloud does not have any assignments attached to it, but every once in a while I will have them do activities such as drawing a quick sketch of an image that the book created for them. This is really fun for them, but I do not do it too often because the read aloud is meant to enjoy the reading experience. In our school we also started asking short, multiple choice comprehension quizzes with state test stem questions for test prep, but again, it is not every day and not the main focus of the session.

My favorite part about read-alouds...
I love the shared experience of enjoying a good book and seeing my students get swept up into the story.

Branching Out

Welcome to Snapshots of Mrs. V where you can catch glimpses of my classroom practices, teaching philosophy, and ideas that I am considering to continually improve as an educator.

When I entered the blog world last summer, I quickly realized that my blog was being outweighed by book reviews, which led me to start a separate review blog. Recently I have been going back and forth on whether or not my original blog was the best platform for my teaching posts. Because there are some teaching blogs that I love to follow that just talk about teaching, I decided there may be readers who would enjoy a separate blog rather than wading through a more eclectic blog. Thus, it was time to have yet another spin off from my original blog. Here's my plan:

*At In Search of Balance I will do my parenting and hobbies that are not career related posts.
*Mrs. V's Reviews will continue to be a book review blog spanning from books I enjoy reading to my girls, additions to the classroom library, and adult reading. Here I will also post about students' comments and reactions to books.
*With Snapshots of Mrs. V I will target my posts to professional development I am doing, reflections on my practices, resources I enjoy, and other educational related ideas.