Electronic Anecdotal Notes 2: A Sample Document

Yesterday I wrote about why I decided to switch over to electronic anecdotal notes. Below is a sample draft document. I actually have 8 separate documents breaking down reading and writing by language and grade level. I may eventually need to look into a system where I can just have one document per grade level with a way to filter the way I want to look at data at any given moment (such as Spanish writing or English reading). In this document I placed an example English and Spanish draft on the same page, but they are actually in separate documents. I will also tab to a new row for each date to easily navigate between dates.

At the top of the document I left a space for language goal with the target literacy skill. For example, some students are avid readers in English able to read from a wide variety of genres and lengths, while in Spanish they are still developing vocabulary and find realistic fiction to be their best fit books right now. While they are able to transfer their reading strategies between languages, unknown vocabulary in some genres such as fantasy, make it hard to access it in their second language. Yet, other students are still developing comprehension strategies in both languages. By having a language goal at the top I will be able to maintain a focus on each student's strenghts and weaknesses in each language. Then I have columns for date, type (with codes), notes and next step. In this reading document I will write information that I gain from conferences, reading response letters, book clubs, and blogging.

When I open any given document there is a table with a class list to record dates that I meet with each student. I found that with a general table although I might have been meeting with students in a balanced manner when looking at meetings in general I had some gaps when looking at it broken down by language. I am hoping to be more mindful of when I meet with students by filtering out by language. In addition, I plan on highlighting the names of students that I want to meet with for various reasons. For example, if I notice through a book letter that a student is struggling with a book, I can make note of what I discovered in their individual chart, and then highlight their name to remind myself to check their anecdotal notes and conference with them.

As with any new system, I am sure that I will be making at least some adjustments, but as I mentioned, I have high hopes that it will be what works for me long term. I am thankful to all of the authors and bloggers who inspired me along the way to develop my system, such as The Two Sisters, Patrick Allen, and Two Writing Teachers. By sharing their ideas I was able to try out different suggestions and then adjust and mold them into my current set-up.

Electronic Anecdotal Notes

Electronic Anecdotal Notes

This year as I have been experiencing my first ever full implementation of a workshop approach, deciding exactly which system will work for me to record information about student conferences has been key. Many of the books I have read emphasized that each person has to decide what works best, as one person's ideas will not necessarily work for other people. This is so true, as I have gathered and tried ideas from teaching blogs and books. I have also noticed while one author explained how writing on labels was a disaster, another wrote about it being her perfect system corraborating the idea that I cannot just take someone else's system and expect it to be perfect for me.

While I am fairly new to a workshop approach, I am not new to anecdotal records. Even when I was teaching in a position with a mandated scripted reading program where I felt I could do little adjustments based on my observations of students as individuals, I kept anecdotal records. The system that worked for me at the time was to have a clipboard with a page with a table for each student to record observations. This year I first tried to have a binder as recommended by The Two Sisters, but I quickly realized a couple of problems trying to use this system. Even though I had a binder for each class, they were filling up quickly. Also, it was too bulky and hard to take to where students were. I ended up switching back to my trusty clipboard. However, I did not want to have four clipboards (one for each class in both reading and writing), so I decided to have reading notes on one side of the pages and writing notes on the back. I thought I was so clever as I just flipped the stack of papers over when it was writing time. However, some students' pages filled up quickly on one side while the other was still just getting started.

Nonetheless, none of these systems worked great for me. I considered using a notebook with a few pages dedicated to each student as I had seen others do. One of the great benefits of reading education books is that ideas usually pop into mind, even if it is not directly linked to something the author said. While I was reading Middle School Readers an idea came to mind to use a laptop. I am able to log on as myself on a student laptop to have access to my files. Last week while on break I took advantage of some time allotted to prepare for the rest of the year to set up my anecdotal records electronically.

I am excited for many reasons and think that I may have finally found my ideal system, even though I will still have to test it out to know for sure. Here are some reasons why I think it will work great:

*I teach in a dual immersion setting, and I need to pay close attention to literacy in two langauges. I did not want to have multiple clipboards for each class, but I also realized that it is nice to have notes separated by language. With a laptop, I can have a document for each language and easily navigate between the two.

*I will be able to record my notes much faster. Just as typing my reading response letter replies on the computer has been an excellent timesaver, electronic notes should also help me make the best of the valuable amount of time that I can spend conferring with students.

*I gain valuable insights from students through multiple avenues. An electronic system of notes will facilitate keeping track of different sources of observations in one location.

I realized that this post was getting way to long, so check back tomorrow to see my example document with an explanation of how I will use it.

Bella at Midnight - Medieval Connections

I have been reading Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley with a group of my 6th and 7th grade girls as part of a book club. With book clubs I have found that I love it most when I am reading the book for the first time along with my students, so that my comments are an authentic initial reaction, rather than rereading or trying to think back to a book that I read a while back. While I would not read aloud a book without first viewing it, I have come to see that it has been effective with book clubs. I had bought the book last year and did not have a chance to have a group read it yet.

It was a fun surprise as I started reading to notice that there were many connections to our social studies unit on Medieval Europe and even more exciting to see that the students brought up the link before I was even able to mention it. Many of the events and descriptions fit perfectly with our units on the structure of feudalism, daily life, chivalry, and the role of the church. The setting made the book even more engaging, as the students looked forward to picking up on these details while also discovering the direction the plot would go. The book would have been a fun read anyway, but I especially recommend it to other students who are studying Medieval Europe.

The Chet Gecko Mystery Series

I just posted a brief review about the latest book in Bruce Hale's Check Gecko series, Dial M for Mongoose on my review site. I wanted to add a few more thoughts on this blog. Aside from being a quick-paced, humorous read from a series that my students from a range of reading levels read and loved last year, I also noticed that the book has a plethora of similes and metaphors. For my students who already love the series, I am glad to know that I will be able to use that hook to point out these literary devices.

Here are just a few of the examples from this book, but I assume that a quick skim of any of the books in the series would result in many more:

"But by this time, the odor had tiptoed on its little stink-footed feet throughout the class" (5).

"He was a tough-looking mole with a nose like an exploded eggplant and paws like a pair of catcher's mitts" (40).

"The heat swallowed me like a hungry python after a fast" (61).

Middle School Readers

I have to admit, I bought Middle School Readers: Helping Them Read Widely, Helping Them Read Well by Nancy Allison without even reading that much about it. Seeing the title, knowing it was specifically about reading in middle school, as well as the fun picture was enough for me to click right over to Amazon and place my order. Though I knew the book would be focused on student choice in reading, I had no idea that it would be such a perfect fit for my personal professional development right now. With the first chapter I was ready to burst with excitement when I realized that the whole book was centered around the concept of supported independent reading. While Allison does not call it reading workshop, the concepts aligned with the components of workshop. She discussed scaffolding to help students make good decisions about the books they read, linking mini-lessons to conferences, reflections she has students do in their notebooks to practice strategies discussed in the mini-lessons.

I can not think of a better time that I could have picked up this book. I am a couple of school weeks away from completing the second quarter. It is a great time for me to reflect about what has been going well and what I want to improve. Over the break I am spending some time in my classroom to plan for the second half of the year for each content area. I had wanted to strengthen my reading mini-lessons. Allison gave me so many ideas on how I can do this, as well as how I can make sure that reflections and conferences are linked to the mini-lesson. What I love the most is that Allison advocates starting out conferences with a connection to the mini-lesson, but then of course it is individualized. If the student is already confident in the mini-lesson topic the teacher can push them further in their reading with whichever area they need. On the other hand if the teacher notices the need to go back and reteach, that is the direction the conference will take. It seems so obvious to have the mini-lesson as a starting point that as soon as I read it, it made perfect sense, but I had not been doing that intentionally with my conferences.

I thought the book complements other books I have been reading lately well, such as The Book Whisperer and Conferring. The three books read together each helped me delve deeper into the topic. While they have some conflicting views, such as Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer) being against reading logs and Allison advocating them, for the most part they support each others' ideas. I am actually leaning toward the benefits of logs and/or status of the class because they have given me valuable data about my students' reading habits that I might have missed otherwise. Reading the book also made me think about how I need to go back and revisit some of my favorite books on comprehension, such as I Read It, But I Don't Get It, When Kids Can't Read-What Teachers Can Do, and Mosaic of Thought.

The margins of the book are filled with notes of ideas that I want to implement in order to strengthen my existing reading block. I know that I will be revisiting this book often and that I will be a better teacher because of Allison's ideas that I will be able to easily weave into my classroom. Her ideas will help me weave together the different components of my reading workshop in order to help my students even more. I highly recommend this resource!

Blogging at 8!

Usually when I receive a comment from someone on a blog that I do not recognize, I click on their profile to see what they are blogging about. This morning by doing this I realized that a mom from my state has her own blog, as well as a blog for her 8 year old son. It looks like they have not been able to do any new posts since the summer, but I am still really impressed. Next quarter I am going to start blogging with a group of my middle school students. It is exciting to see that a parent (and I am sure there are more out there) is exposing her son to digital literacies from a young age. This might be something fun to start with my daughter, even if it was digital pictures of her writing, that usually goes along with a drawing.

The Break is Here

Today is my first official day of the break. Last night I watched my daughter and my students perform in their winter holiday performance. The set-up has evolved since I started a year ago, but I loved the format last night. One class danced on stage while two other classes were on the side stage risers singing the song. It is always fun to see the creativity of the dance teacher blended with student input on the choreography. There is always a mixture of traditional Mexican dances (the predominant culture of the families in our dual immersion school), with a wide variety of other styles. It was an excellent way to celebrate before going to break.

When we return we will have two weeks, and then second quarter will be over. With my students we will be having one week in English, followed by a week in Spanish. We will be wrapping up our unit on Medieval Europe before moving into one on The Rise of Islam. It is also time for the first round of state testing in reading, starting a little bit later than we did last year. In writing we will also be gearing up for the 7th grade state writing assessment and 6th grade writing work sample that will take place in Februrary. At the start of third quarter I will be moving into incorporating some student blogging and podcasting. There will be a lot going on upon arrival.

Over the break I will be dedicating some of my time to working in my classroom. I want to spend a day on each content: reading, writing, and social studies. I will start the day with an agenda to focus my planning and to make sure that I use my time productively. It will mainly be to organize myself and to set the framework for 2nd half of the year planning. Though I started the year with an annual plan, it is time to revisit it now that I have worked out many kinks, made adjustments, and learned from what has worked and what needs improvement.

Many pieces are starting to click together, and I am looking forward to spending part of my break getting organized for a successful rest of the year, while spending the other part of the time focusing on family.

Book Response Letters

I just completed my fourth week of book response letters, and I wanted to post about how it has been going. I previously mentioned that I did not start the letters sooner because I originally found the idea of responding to my 50 students on a weekly basis daunting, but I found a system that made the process feasible. While it is still time consuming and a bit stressful at times to keep up with, I also find that it is one of my most enjoyable non-student contact activities. I love having this added level of insight into my students as readers.

Here are some quick thoughts on my ponderings as I am still new to letters:

*It is helpful to have a web page open to Amazon while reading/responding. I can quickly look up a book a student is talking about or answer questions they have, such as whether there is a sequel. I also double check information about books that I want to mention to them.

*Some students automatically wrote with the level of insights that I want to guide all students toward, while others still mainly write a summary. I have had discussions with the class about what the letters should be like. I can see that they will be on-going discussions to continue to nudge students in the right direction. After mentioning to students that I wanted them to be writing about what they think about as readers, including strategies they use, some students started to write about strategies in a generic way. For example, they listed out different strategies without connecting them to a book they are reading. As I have more experience with book response letters I will know how to introduce the concept better.

*I am planning on having some students start their own blogs fairly soon after the winter break, and I will have them write book reviews, rather than a book response letter. While these will not be exactly the same, it will still require students to process information about their books. They will still have a response from me, as well as the added possibility of peer feedback.

The Digital Writing Workshop

I recently posted about buying four new books from Heinemann, including The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks, and I mentioned that I was excited to read each one for different reasons. Although I have not mentioned it at all on my blog yet, I am in the process of applying to a Ed.D. program that would allow me to continue teaching while pursuing my dream of continuing my education. When I met with the program coordinator, he mentioned that it is great if students start out the program knowing what they would like to be the topic of their dissertation because then assignments for different classes can contribute toward the dissertation or provide some initial research. After considering many different options, a few weeks ago I decided that I would like to focus on technology in reading and/or writing workshops. One week later I learned about Hicks' book, and I knew I had to order it right then!

When I received my books this week, I immediately started reading Hicks' book. It fueled my excitement for the topic. I had already been planning on starting up student blogs with a small group of students after winter break, so the book was an excellent resource to consider different ways that I can prepare in order to make the endeavor successful. Blogging is a technology that I feel comfortable and confident with, and this is my first year having a whole class blog. Mentoring students as bloggers is a natural next step.

He also opened me up to so many more digital possibilities that I am not familiar with, such as wikis and collaborative word processors, and reminded me that it is also time to layer in technologies that I am vaguely familiar with and have wanted to incorporate, such as podcasting. Best of all the book provides a wealth of links - sites (mostly free) that provide the digital tools he discusses, tutorials to understand the ins and outs of the tools, and example classroom projects. In addition Hicks has a blog, as well as a companion site for the book.

Other components of the book that I was very excited about were:
*Sample permission letter to parents about using Google Docs (49)
*MAPS heuristic to always remind students that as digital writers they need to consider mode, media, audience, purpose, situation for the writer and situation of the writing (57-58)
*Traits for effective and ineffective digital writers to share with students (110-113)
*Ideas for applying the six traits to summative assessment of digital writing (115-116)
*Be a Blogger! matrix that will help guide me in creating clear expectations and provide support for my students (118-123)
*Questions from a variety of categories to consider as I set up my digital writing workshop (129-133)

I appreciate that Hicks emphasized throughout that it is important to not just have students do the same paper/pencil assignments with technology but to really know digital tools and appropriate ways to incorporate them into the classroom in authentic ways. While my workshop will definitely change as I integrate these pieces, all of his suggestions still aligned with my concept of quality writing instruction. Pedagogically it is an excellent fit. He even organized his book around core principals of the writing workshop approach, facilitating this sense of alignment.

I was already headed in the direction of layering in more technology to my workshop, and Hicks resource came at a perfect time. His expertise and knowledge in the field makes me feel more confident by having sufficient resources and support to successfully infuse my classroom with digital literacies. I will be frequently referring to Hicks book and joining his Ning group because I know that he will serve as a great mentor for effectively utilizing digital tools in the classroom.

Reading and Writing Conference Conversation

I was excited to see that Stenhouse authors Mark Overmeyer and Patrick Allen just started a Voice thread conversation about reading and writing conferences. Conferring continues to be a hot topic for me right now as I am trying to gain more confidence and become more effective. I encourage you to join the conversation and am excited to follow this conversation as it develops!

Small Group Intervention

I recently received a copy of Linda J. Dorn's and Carla Soffos' professional development resource, Small Group Intervention: Linking Word Study to Reading and Writing. I initially underestimated the possibilities for the video because it is only 15 minutes long. While the topic caught my attention (word study has been one of my focuses the last couple years), I was not sure how much I would learn from the brief segments on word assessment, setting a purpose, modeling, guided practice in reading, guided practice in writing, prompting for transfer in reading, and prompting for transfer in writing..

The resource comes with two discs, one DVD and one CD with additional resources. After watching the DVD and taking notes of new thoughts to consider on how I could make my word study even more beneficial, I popped in the CD. I loved what I saw and instantly realized how there was so much more to the resource than I thought. The CD contains a power point presentation for staff development in both PC and Mac versions. All of the video clips from the DVD are embedded right into the presentation, making it easier for presenters to share the concepts with ease.

The Power Point begins with background resources, a guiding question to open up the dialogue about the topic and direct learning, and background information. Then it moves into the individual clips with discussion questions. I quickly realized that while the clips alone were only 15 minutes, the actual structured presentation set up would entail much more than just viewing the video and reflecting on the concepts. As I am building more interest in staff development and literacy leadership, I especially enjoyed this resource. I look forward to eventually sharing the DVD with others to support literacy instruction development.