Vocabulary Their Way

I first heard about the Words Their Way series when I went on exchange to Mexico and had the opportunity to take a class from a visiting Western Washington State University professor, who also exposed me to my first experience with a writer's notebook. This year I tried it out for the first time with my 6th graders. While I am still working out some kinks and getting myself organized, I was pleased with the results. Having students receive instruction at their level was empowering for them. I pre-ordered Vocabulary Their Way: Word Study with Middle and Secondary Students as soon as I heard about it.

When I started reading it I was in the mind frame of it influencing ways to improve the way I was implementing Words Their Way, but I ended up realizing that it will encompass so much more. First, I was thrilled to see that there is a new upper-level spelling inventory, along with many other assessments to closely analyze older students' vocabulary awareness. This week will be our last week of summer school. I have around half of my incoming seventh graders and over half of my incoming sixth graders, so I am going to give them the inventory this week to give me a jump start for preparations for the start of the year.

In addition, it gave many content area specific suggestions that I will consider and weave into my social studies curriculum. This year vocabulary was a part of my social studies units, but I was not always as consistent with the vocabulary as I would have liked. Since all of my students are learning in two languages vocabulary is a huge key to their success. I am glad that this resource will help me strengthen that area of my instruction and build in daily vocabulary pieces in the social studies portion of our day. I am going to share this resource with my team teacher because of all the specific science and math suggestions.

I am glad to have found yet another valuable resource that is a good fit for my personal teaching philosophy. Bit by bit I am piecing together what my literacy and social studies blocks will look like next year. It is so exciting to blend together what worked well last year with suggestions to improve the areas where I reflected improvement was needed.

Making History Mine Wrap-Up

There is so much more that I could still say about Making History Mine, but I am going to wrap up my comments with a few more favorites. Lately, a lot of my resources have been for younger grades that I consider how to adapt or they are for a broad range such as k-12. I appreciated that this was for my specific grade range because then there were more ideas that I could use directly as they are. Cooper's understanding of middle schoolers is apparent throughout the book and reflected in the types of activities she suggests. I loved this quote, "Part of our job as middle school teachers is to know that our students are works in progress--to appreciate and challenge them for who they are right now, all the while keeping an eye out for who they might become tomorrow and next year and five years from now" (p. 93). This idea of both present, short term, and long term components was a clear goal. Cooper's curriculum is not only targeted to students being successful in their grade level curriculum but also as productive citizens. (This concept is also emphasized in Gallagher's Readicide with Article of the Week.)

I appreciated the framework explained in the text book, as well as all of the practical applications suggested for a wide range of social studies themes. I am planning on skimming back through the book later with my state's social studies curriculum maps and noting example activities as reference so that I will remember which pages to refer back to. Of course, it is set up as a resource to create similar activities with different content areas, but she not only explained the concepts, she also had examples of helpful resources that will help with the content in general that I do not want to forget about.

I expect Making History Mine to have a big impact on my social studies teaching. Now I will approach the year with the concept that my students are historians. I know I will refer back to the book often as I plan this summer and once the school year is underway.

Making History Mine Literacy Links

One component of Making History Mine that stood out close to the beginning of the book and came up over and over again was the integration of literacy into social studies content. This is pertinent in a time when teacher education programs such as the one I attended emphasize the importance that all secondary teachers are literacy teachers, not just the language arts teachers. When I chose my language arts power standards for next year I specifically grouped some standards that I would teach in social studies because they were a natural fit.

Cooper suggested integrating concepts I had already thought of (research and persuasion) but also seamlessly weaves in multiple other reading and writing activities starting at the beginning of the year when she introduces a poem that sends a valuable message that we can all make history (2). After explaining the way she presents and has students interact with the poem she gives her rationale, "This kind of activity--combining reading comprehension, literary awareness, historical context, and critical thinking--enables us to view the nuts-and-bolts details of history through a longer lens" (3). In much the same way, Cooper suggest opportunities to use reading and writing skills to help students be more competent historians.

The activities Cooper mentions will not only help students within the social studies context, but to be more well-rounded people with a lasting impact on their life. For example, the types of activities Cooper uses for students to gain a strong command of historical documents will transfer over into analyzing other reading genres. She blends primary documents with historical fiction to bring the content alive, realizing that both genres can have a great impact on students (9). She also talks about "unpacking language" in social studies documents (44). In additions, she has students do activities such as interring from a list of dates (70), yet another important literacy skill.

Later, Cooper mentions utilizing a text to help students recognize the way real historians "gather evidence to make an argument that often doesn't sound like an argument. They're almost fooling you" (33). This supports persuasive writing well, and I like the concept that she brings up time and time again the idea of "real" historians, making it a perfect fit for my literacy block where students will think about what real writers and readers do as well. Later in the book she has further ideas with opinion, persuasion, and reasoning and argument analysis as well (such as 40, 52-53). She also has a full chapter on research with sufficient scaffolding to help students successfully research and analyze a topic effectively (129-159).

Cooper's experience as a language arts teacher and strong understanding of literacy is apparent throughout the book. Her suggestions closely align with other mentors in the field that I value. For example, I often thought of the way her work complemented Nancie Atwell's by presenting one of Lincoln's speeches in a similar way to Atwell's poetry presentation (58-59) and Kelly Gallagher's resources including clearing up confusion (2). Making History Mine is a great addition to my teacher resource library. It easily fits with other resources, while bringing its own unique ideas.

Making History Mine Overview

I originally thought Making History Mine: Meaningful Connections for Grades 5-9 by Sarah Cooper focused on current events since I found out about it because of a conversation on the topic that also featured Kelly Gallagher's new Article of the Week video. When I received the book I was even more thrilled that it offered tips of integrating current events and so much more. Right now the full book is available to browse on-line on the Stenhouse website.

In my current position I will be teaching reading, writing, and social studies to middle schoolers. While I have a lot of experience and training with literacy and language learning, I have not had as much exposure to social studies education even though I always loved history. Earlier this year I started looking at my state's social studies curriculum maps for 6th-8th grade, and this summer I started more in depth planning to narrow down the standards to power standards and develop guiding questions and big ideas. Recent staff development helped me refine this process.

I still have a lot more work to do before school starts in the fall, so Cooper's book came at an opportune time and it is a perfect fit for the planning process that my school is already going through. Cooper explains, "The best answer I have found is to teach under the shelter of broad themes and global concepts, conveying ideas that connect content across topics and grade levels. With this approach, students are not focusing on the tiny details of history, although facts remain crucial to effective argumentation. Instead, adolescents see history through the eyes of individuals and then move outward to larger implications and patterns" (xi). By planning my 6-8 grade curriculum in such a manner I will have a scope and sequence that builds upon and supports the big ideas from one year to another. I will also be working with the 4/5th grade teachers to vertically align with them as well.

Making History Mine thoroughly explains seven components that Cooper thinks are conductive to creating students who think like historians and gain life-long lessons through the social studies content. I have too much excitement about this book to limit my reflections to just one post (it would get way too long), so watch back later in the week to see more thoughts on this great resource.

End of the Year Closure Ideas

It is hard to believe that we have already been out of school for almost a month, and tomorrow is the officially half way point for our four-week summer school. Each year I have closure planned, but often times the rush to wrap up loose ends makes it hard to complete all of the components on the final days that I would like to ideally. Also, the end of the year always seems to sneak up. Even though I know it is coming, it always seems surreal when it actually arrives.

Recently, I have enjoyed seeing what other teachers do for the end of the year, and I am taking notes for next year to make sure that I start planning well in advance for a better sense of closure as a classroom community, rather than just completing all of our academic projects.

At the end of this year I was reflecting on how extremely lucky I am to be in a school with such supportive families. I have really appreciated all of the interactions with families. I love how Stella writes a thank you letter to her families and gave them a DVD picture slideshow this year. My daughter's teacher did that this year for kindergarten graduation and gave each family a copy. As a parent I loved that gift, and would like to do something similar for my families next year.

On the student side, I love how Stacey writes a personalized note to her students in response to their end of the year reflections, making sure to include a hope and dream for each of her students. In the article that Stacey wrote for the Responsive Classroom newsletter and linked in her blog post, she mentions, "When I sat down to write them, I realized that I knew some of my students better than others. Some were easy to write for, but others were a bit of a struggle, even though I’d been with them for a year. So this project also helped me set a new goal for myself—to spend more time throughout the upcoming year focusing on each of my students as individuals." This is a good reminder for every teacher to take the time throughout the school year to reflect on making sure that he/she has made a good connection with each student, and something that I will improve on next year as well.

Stenhouse Tuesday Quick Tips

I have come to look forward to Quick Tip Tuesday on Stenhouse's blog. Just this weekend I was looking back on some of their older posts since I only recently started following the blog. Today they did a post that they are looking for feedback on how teachers utilize their tips. I was thrilled to see that they are even going to give the first 5 commenters who tell how they used one of their tips will win a free Stenhouse book of their choice!

Which Stenhouse book would you choose if you were able to pick any?

It would be hard for me to choose. This year I have bought six new Stenhouse resources, and I loved them all (I am still in the process of reading the sixth). There are many others on my wish list or that catch my eye. Below are some of them.

I am excited to see this upcoming resource and the blog tour that will accompany the release.


Since I loved Gallagher's Readicide, I am sure that I would get a lot out of Deeper Reading and Teaching Adolescent Writers.



When I was visiting schools to look for good fits for my first teaching job out of college, one of my friends and I visited a classroom using socratic seminars. I always wanted to know more, but I have never read a resource specifically about the process, so one of the archive tips on the subject caught my attention this weekend. I am sure that I would learn a lot from Copeland's resource. (A teacher also mentioned use of the seminars on the recent current events discussion.)


When I saw Teamwork featured on the blog, I instantly added it to my wish list.

Writing Inspiration

Earlier this spring I started typing up the first part of my YA novel. However, I have not been writing in it consistently. Earlier I mentioned that I wanted to write a lot in June; however, then I signed up for summer school and I am still in my busy school mode. Once summer school is over I will be focusing a lot on planning for next year, and I will have to make a point of carving out time to focus on my personal goal of writing a complete novel, regardless of whether or not it eventually gets published.

This week a summer school discussion with my students gave me more motivation to put writing my book as a priority. For summer school I am teaching units from Inside, and my students had just watched a clip from the digital library about Gary Soto. One of the analysis questions was something like: "What do you think are some of the challenges that authors face?" While we were reflecting as a group one of my students asked how long it takes to write a book. I explained how there are a lot of factors, including whether or not the writer is a full-time writer or a writer who has a full time career.

The career comment reminded one of my students about how I mentioned that Ellen Jensen Abbott wrote Watersmeet with her students in mind and how I said that I was attempting to write my first novel. He wanted to know how my novel was going, and all of the others in the group started in with a load of questions too.

Because of this discussion I thought about how balancing time between writing and planning this summer will not only help me fulfill a personal goal, but it will also have great benefits for my classroom. Changing the discussion from any book to a book that I am trying write instantly captured their attention. I can also model for them to explain how I initially got my ideas, how my ideas evolved throughout the process, how I am taking my life experiences and twisting them into fiction (including inspiration from myself around their age through my old diaries), the role of my writer's notebook, and my revision process. I can also model for them receiving constructive criticism and have them take ownership in the final product by providing input. I am excited about the teaching points working on my own YA novel will add to our classroom community.

School - Always Thinking Ahead

I was surprised to see the title of The Book Whisperer's (author of a book by the same title as her blog) latest blog post on my blog roll, The First Day of School, since this is the time of year associated with winding down rather than schools just getting started. However, as I was reading I could connect so well to the reason behind the title: "Teachers do this, too, reflecting and thinking ahead. One school year ends, and the new school year begins the next day, it seems. We hang up our teaching hats for a few months, but we never turn off our teaching brains. Taking a break to refresh ourselves and recharge, we consider how to move forward in our own teaching and learning. What did our students teach us this year? How can we improve the reading instruction in our classrooms? What can we read and study now that we have time? And most importantly, how can we support each other as learners like my students support each other as readers?" It reminded me back to my first official day of the break and how I did three posts in that day, and even joked at the bottom of the third post how hard it is to just stop and enjoy the break!

She ended her post by inviting teachers to join her in a discussion with the following questions that I thought would be fun to answer:

As you lie by the pool, wait in airports, or work in your garden, what questions and ideas percolate in your teaching brains?
Most of my thinking is focused on literacy and language learning, as I am always trying to think of ways to fine tune or completely implement a component that I have been envisioning.

How do you seek answers?
I love getting new resources, especially from my favorite two publishers Heinemann and Stenhouse. My latest favorite is also reading other blogs. My favorites are listed on my blog roll so that I can frequently remember to check up on them. My school also has a lot of quality professional development that always keeps me thinking.

What would you like to do differently next year?
This year was my first attempt at doing reading and writing workshop. Because of scheduling and/or school structures, and most importantly because I was in a new position and learning all the ins and outs, I did not fully implement them as I had wanted to when I was planning last summer. However, it was a great chance to get my feet wet, and I reflected a lot throughout the year. I mapped out how I would love for my language arts and social studies block to be structured next year and checked in with my director to get her approval. Now, I am ready to plan away, evaluating what worked well, what did not get implemented, and how I can plan on implementing the important pieces. One of my biggest shifts is that I was able to get the okay to switch SSR (which is a current school-wide practice at our school) to a reader's workshop. This seemed to be one of my biggest barriers to really being able to have reader's workshop this year. I also requested to see if I can have a reading intervention push in that supports our in class literacy philosophy rather than a reading pull out, and it sounds like it may happen that way. I will also be using writer's notebooks and writer's workshop on a regular basis whereas this year it was not as consistent.

Word study is another area where I want to improve. This year was my first year using Words Their Way in English. I brought the pre-made resources available in English and had extra help that I had at different times throughout the year help transfer many of the sorts over to sentence strips for small group instruction. This summer I would like to finish up the rest and write on the back of the title card notes to myself to remember about each sort. I also want to create a more systematic way to track my students' progress and to make sure that they are in the "right" group. I will also create Spanish word sorts to use for next year.

With social studies, I feel like I was not able to consistently do what I know is best for language learners, providing sufficient scaffolding. I want to plan my social studies units over the summer so that I get all the important pieces in place. (Of course, next year will be different anyway because as our school is growing to one more grade level I have a partner teaching for the middle school piece that will be taking over the math and science components, making it easier for me to really focus on the concentrations that I am responsible for.)

As I plan over the summer I will be posting and reflecting about different aspects.

Which practices will you keep and which ones need an overhaul?
Some of my thoughts on this question were already mentioned above. I will definitely keep homework as being nightly independent reading. However, I am planning on switching a journal two nights a week to a more open writing potentially as often as every school night for fifteen minutes. I am still thinking this piece through.

After reading Notebook Connections, I would love to integrate a reader's notebook into my curriculum as well.

I want to start a class blog, and am exploring exactly what role the blog will play in the classroom and whether or not to have the students have their own blogs as well.

So much to think about...

Gearing Up for Summer School and a Look Back

This weekend I am looking forward to enjoying my last bit of early summer vacation before starting a month of summer school on Monday. I have thoroughly enjoyed my break. Even though the two weeks off included our scheduled teacher work day for grading and two days of training, I still found a lot of time for family, rest, relaxation, and little projects around the house.

Tomorrow I will be going back to the school where I taught my first year as a high school ESL/Spanish teacher four years ago. I will get to see the last of my students still at the school graduate. While I was there, I saw my seniors graduate, and the past two years I was not able to go back for my juniors and sophomores. Many of my students were freshman, but I am not sure how many of my students are still there. It will be my first time back at the school since I taught there, and I can hardly wait. Seeing my students and how much they have changed from their freshman to senior year will be a fun surprise. I have seen one of my students about a year ago because he is related to my husband's side of the family and he was so much taller. I can only imagine how much everyone will have changed.

My first year teaching was a very memorable and positive experience. While I ended up not staying in the community long-term because it had a high cost of living, that year has had a huge impact on who I am as a teacher and I am very thankful to have had such an ideal situation to shape my education career.

Fun Stenhouse Contest

Stenhouse announced on its blog that they will be hosting a contest this summer for people who take along their books to different locations and document it with photos. Then readers can submit their photos with a chance to win in one of three categories: 1. The book that traveled the longest distance from our offices in Portland, Maine, 2. The most exotic location, and 3. Best overall picture. Winners will receive $25 towards a Stenhouse purchase. Based on my summer plans, I think best overall picture would be my best chance (or potentially longest distance from Maine if people do not do international submissions). I wish that I was able to go somewhere exotic, but it does not look like it will be part of my summer yet! For full details on the contest, see the original blog post here. It will be fun to see the winning pictures in the fall!

Interactive Notebooks and English Language Learners

I was interested in reading Interactive Notebooks and English Language Learners: How to Scaffold Content for Academic Success by Marcia Carter, Anita Hernandez, and Jeannine Richison for ideas for helping all students access content and develop academic language in social studies next year. I had heard of interactive notebooks, but I either never heard a detailed explanation or I heard it too long ago and did not implement it in order to retain the information, so I was excited to see a resource focusing on this tool.

The book had more of a formal feel with a lot of theory, rather than the conversational style that I prefer, but I still gained a lot of valuable information. (I guess I should clarify that it is still user-friendly and a comfortable read.) A lot of the theory was not new to me, but it was an important piece since their target audience was for mainstream content teachers who may not have an ESL background. Nonetheless, I am glad that I bought the book and it is a worthwhile resource. Even if you do already have a strong ESL background, it would be helpful if you are unfamiliar with interactive notebooks but would like to see how they can help your students and the ins and outs of implementing them in your class.

My main area of consideration right now is how many notebooks are too many. I want to incorporate reader's and writer's notebooks into my language arts time block, and would love to utilize interactive notebooks for social studies. Yet, I worry that three separate notebooks might be a little too much. Thus, I am thinking about how I can reap the benefits of all three in a user-friendly format for my students. A 4/5 teacher at my school creates a booklet/journal for his students for each unit. I have been thinking of doing this next year for my social studies units, so my initial thought is that I may do this with an interactive journal format. It would be a booklet, rather than a spiral notebook, but it would contain all the important pieces of an interactive notebook. All of the other teachers at my school received GLAD training before I started, and I think that interactive journals was a piece of that which may have inspired my colleague's booklets.

I also want to have a class blog next year, and I am trying to decide which pieces of the teacher support/scaffolding can be best facilitated on the blog for students and parents to refer to later.

This is one more resource that will impact my instruction for next year, and I am glad that I had a chance to read it.

Revisiting Resources

Last summer I read extensively to plan for the school year. Since it was my first time teaching in a self-contained classroom, it was going to be a year unlike any of my other experiences. One of the areas that I read about most was reading and writing workshop, since literacy has always been my favorite academic area. As I was finishing up the school year I felt like I was not able to implement all the components as smoothly and consistently as I had envisioned when preparing over the summer.

Last week I was reading over the notes that I wrote for books that I checked out from the library, and I was encouraged by a comment from when I was reading In The Middle. Since I do not have a copy of the book, I am not sure exactly what Atwell said, but my note from when I was reading chapter one said, "Focus on always improving and don’t be too hard on myself as I start writer’s workshop." This helped me to step back and celebrate what I was able to implement this year, and how useful my experiences this year will be in informing my plans this summer.

Another thought that I had while reviewing my notes was that mid-year and toward the end of the year would have been a perfect opportunity to revisit the books; yet, in the school rush, I forgot to do this. I decided to order copies of the three most helpful books that I checked out from the library last summer: Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi, In The Middle: New Understandings about Reading, Writing, and Learning by Nancie Atwell, and A Fresh Look at Writing by Donald Graves. All three of these books are relatively older than my other professional development books but still very relevant and useful.

This summer I will be reading new resources, as well as revisiting many of my treasured books. I cannot wait to implement my new structure next year. I am also looking forward to have all of my favorite books on hand to refer to throughout the year.

Notebook Connections

Last summer I got Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook, so earlier this spring I was excited to see that Aimee Buckner had another book coming out, Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader's Notebook. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, and could hardly wait for it to come. When I received it earlier this week I read it right away. The book came at a perfect time as I am planning for next year.

As I was reading, I had an aha moment that I already do many of the strategies that Buckner mentions; however, having students do them in a reader's notebook will be an excellent opportunity to have their reading responses in one place in order to demonstrate student growth over time. Buckner explains, "I've developed a reader's notebook model that is flexible enough for students to respond in a variety of ways, yet structured enough to provide explicit instruction" (p. 7). I will now have my students use their reader's notebook as a central location to do the following activities that were separate this year: weekly reading log response, book club responses, occasional read aloud/independent reading response. Not only will this be helpful for me, but also for student and parent conferences.

Throughout the book I appreciated that Buckner made distinctions between the reader's and writer's notebook, while also making it clear how they complement each other in her classroom. The notebooks reaffirm to students the reading-writing connection.

As with Notebook Know-How, I loved Buckner's conversational writing style, the great strategies she shared, and the glimpses into her classroom that we see through her book. I will be pulling Notebook Know-How out again this summer and both books will have a large impact on my curriculum next year.

Summer School Language Arts Packet

For my first attempt at using Scribd, I wanted to share the packet that I sent home for summer. My partner teacher created a math packet, and I did the language arts side. I looked at examples from Two Writing Teachers and The Reading Zone before creating my packet. This is the first time that I have ever done a summer packet, so it was really a trial and error. Since I strongly believe in not assigning something that we would not do ourselves, I am doing the activities over the summer to help decide what I need to revise for next year.

I liked how both of the examples that I looked at referenced activities that they did in class. I was not able to do that as much because I only had one grade level this year and the other incoming class was with different teachers. For next year I am considering having two separate packets, one generic one for students who have not been in my class yet, and a more personalized one for returning students. Also, on week one, I forgot to add a reading response activity. The example of how they should head their papers (referenced before the activities) was hand written and copied, so it does not appear in the document.

Summer 2009 Language Arts Packet Scribd

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Nancie Atwell Recommendation

I have seen this book, Holding on to Good Ideas In a Time of Bad Ones: Six Principles Worth Fighting For mentioned before and thought it sounded like it would be a great read and that it would reaffirm teachers who are trying to stick to best practices even though there is a lot of pressure for one-size fits all programs. With Atwell's recommendation now I want to read it even more.