2010 Wrap Up

2010 has been an eventful year professionally, and it has provided ample time to reflect on my teaching career. I'm now in my 6th year of teaching and enjoying my students as much as ever. I have been with my 8th graders for three years, my 7th graders for two, and enjoying the fresh personalities of my 6th grade class. Each unique class pushes me in my teaching, and it has been fulfilling to better understand the 6th-8th grade range of readers and writers this year.

While doing some winter break organizing I have also been thinking about students from the other two (four counting student teaching) schools where I have taught. Each placement has been unique, but the one uniting theme has been the joy that students bring.

Aside from the everyday moments in my classroom that I often mention in my slices of life, here are some professional highlights from 2010:

• Being able to attend the Boothbay Literacy Retreat will be a highlight for years to come. I hope that someday I will be able to financially afford to go back. So many inspirational people in one place...
• I started my Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction this year; I have been growing as a professional because of it. I love spending time with my classmates talking about education, reflecting on my experiences, and further strengthening my own personal philosophies. 
• Implementing Push-In reading support with one of my colleagues, aligned with both of our literacy philosophies. 

I have a lot to look forward to in 2011 with my students and in my Ed.D. program. 

Day by Day Update

I had eagerly been awaiting the release of Ruth Ayers' and Stacey Shubitz's Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice. I imagined dropping everything and reading it cover to cover as soon as I got it. Then when it arrived, I finally got the full significance of the title. I realized that it would be better to read in smaller chunks, leaving ample time to ponder and reflect. I am not sure how long it will take me to read it, but I wanted to at least do an updated post to mention some of my first impressions.

First, I was surprised at the size of the book. It is pretty thick at a little over 300 and regular textbook size compared to the size of most typical Stenhouse books that I have read. When I skimmed the table of contents, I realized that the size was a good thing - allowing for a comprehensive resource. I immediately thought of the 4/5 teacher at my school who has mentioned wanting to learn more about writing workshop. The day after it arrived, I excitedly showed it to the instructional coach at my school who was also impressed with her initial impression and wrote down the title to order her own copy.

As I was able to read more, I realized that it is not an ideal introductory text to writer's workshop for my colleague. It is perfect for people who are more at my stage who already have a foundation in workshop teaching but are looking to reflect and refine. This is exciting for me as I am able to think through different categories of workshop resources - introductory overviews, those focusing on one component, and now books like Day by Day that help teachers zoom back out to the big picture in order to continually improve.

The same voice that I have loved on the Two Writing Teachers blog is consistent with the tone of the book. Overall, I am thrilled with the resource and am savoring each page. I am enjoying slowing down in order to fully absorb and reflect on their ideas. For the same reasons, I think it would be perfect for a school-wide or department book club/book study. Depending on how I progress through the book, I may do multiple posts at various points, rather than waiting until the end of the book.

Push In Support 5: Present Goals

As with any venture in teaching, a co-worker and I have been excited to do push in reading support this year as opposed to the pull out model that we did last year, but we know that it will be a continual process. We have been pleased with our progress but constantly have present areas of focus in order to improve, especially in this first year.

Right now we are still focusing on documentation. Since we recently refined our anecdotal records process, we are monitoring to see how the new system is working and to make any adjustments as needed. One huge advantage has been that my co-worker is very organized. I have always considered myself as being organized, but she sets a whole new standard for organization. That has been instrumental in our discussions about how we wanted to organize certain components.

Thus far, my co-worker has not been teaching focus lessons which was our original intent. It ended up working better to layer in different components though, and I think that we will be able to add in having her teach some of the lessons soon. Nonetheless, she has been doing an excellent job weaving in teaching points to book club discussions and conferring sessions. It is one more example, where we are able to talk about current goals for the classroom and collaborate to have multiple layers of support for students.

I am excited to see where our collaborations and discussions will take us in the rest of the school year. I feel so fortunate to work with a colleague whose literacy vision is so closely aligned to my own. I can tell how we push each other's thinking and keep each other grounded on our highest priorities for the literacy environment that we want to create for our students.

¡Sí Se Puede! Learning from a High School That Beat the Odds

This weekend I read Úrsula Casanova's ¡Sí Se Puede! Learning from a High School that Beat the Odds. The title caught my attention because coincidentally I had just titled my pilot study with ¡Sí Se Puede! as well. One reason why I wanted to buy it was because classmates in my doctoral program have talked about wanting to see more resources about what works in regular public schools, after seeing an overemphasis on charter schools in Waiting for Superman. I was also intrigued because it shares the story of a school with a high level of success throughout the school's history (a little over 20 years).

Casanova shares the story of Cebola High School, discussing its inception, as well as how it has evolved over the years. It was interesting to read about what the district did in order to provide the first leaders of the school with a foundation of success, such as talking to the first principal, Jon Walk, close to two years before opening the school, allowing for careful planning. Casanova detailed Walk's process of planning and leading the school in its first years. She also discussed the integral role the guidance office played, lead by the first director of guidance, James Sullivan. The high level of thought that went into the initial stages of the school, set the school up for long-term success with a strong foundational vision and core values. Though the leadership and staff recognized the need for change with time in order to improve, they stuck to their original vision and core values.

Though the book was repetitive with some phrases/sentences throughout the book, it is a valuable contribution to the body of school reform literature, especially at the high school level.

Push In Support - Post 4: Mid-Year Update

With the last week before the break, I got behind on my intended schedule for my push in support series of posts. Today I will pick back up by discussing how the year has been going since the TOSA at my school and I realized we had a shared vision about ideal reading support for students. One aspect that has been highly beneficial in making our push-in model be more successful is being able to meet together to debrief and plan. It works out in our schedules to meet two times per week during my prep period for about 45 minutes. We still meet on my Spanish weeks when needed to get ready for the next English week. We use the planning time to talk about whichever area of growth is most necessary at the time or to prepare. Topics have included:

• Conferring
• Book clubs
• A system for anecdotal records
• Discussing what we notice about students to collaborate on what we think would be the next best step
• Talking about data from multiple sources to determine which students are ready for the earlier rounds of state testing in reading

The year started off a little bit slow, as it typically does because I needed to do running records/QRIs in Spanish and English. However, it was so nice to have the TOSA in my classroom because she was able to begin conferring. Through her notes, I felt like I was able to get to know my incoming 6th graders' reading habits to a deeper level than I typically am able to during the time where I am mainly administering the start of the year assessments. Having access to her anecdotal records, along with my observations in class and during assessments and based on standardized test data was very beneficial. For returning students, I was able to tell the TOSA some background information about students based on what she was noticing as well. This was my TOSA's first year conferring, so the start of the year was also supporting her with conferring. I loaned her my copy of Patrick Allen's Conferring, and she quickly bought her own copy. She is a natural at conferring, and it has been a smooth transition.

Aside from being able to get a jump start on conferring because of the push-in model, she was also able to get started on book clubs with some students. We met to talk about different ways to group and select books, as well as the routines in place for selecting book club meetings and due dates for sections of the book. I shared my evolving philosophy of book clubs, and last year I had shared Kelly Gallagher's Readicide with her. This quarter, we have been able to have each student meet in a book club.

Our most recent meetings have centered around refining our anecdotal records process. We began with a Google Doc so that we could both access it at the same time and so that we would have access to it from home. The accessibility was ideal, but there were glitches with Google Docs that I had not noticed since I started using it last year. At times we would be typing and there was a big delay in the words showing up, and we could not move on to another column in our table until the words caught up. In addition, it was cumbersome at times because the area on the screen where it showed the cursor was not really where the words would start typing. At times this would be solved with a refresh, but other times it was not. 

Thus, we revisited and reflected many times how we could be effective with our anecdotal records. We recently prioritized our students into three groups: those who need the most scaffolding, those who still need support to be highly engaged readers, and those who are voracious readers with a variety of genres. We also recreated some forms for anecdotal records, going back to a paper/pencil version and keeping them in a binder with a conferring tracking chart in the front (students sorted in alphabetical order and by our priority levels). For now, we are only going to keep conferring anecdotal records on the two groups of students who need comparatively more support. For the students who are highly engaged and proficient readers, we will continue to confer with them on a less frequent basis without anecdotal records unless we observe something that we really want to record. These students often initiate informal conversations about the books they are reading as well. Much of the interactions with these students will occur in book clubs. For book clubs we created a rubric, as well as an anecdotal record form to store in our binder. 

Overall, it has been a smooth transition into having push in support, rather than pull out support of previous years. We still have areas in which we want to improve, but are both satisfied with the way the year is going. 

Research, Research, Research

Last week was the last class meeting for my fall semester courses. As I mentioned before, one class was a qualitative research course, and it inspired many different directions in which I could go for my eventual dissertation. Today is my first official day of winter break, and I have so many books to choose from for my two week break...

Among the books are some to continue thinking about research, looking at others' research and thoughts about research as mentor texts in building my own identity as a researcher. Here are some books that I have been revisiting recently, as well as others that that I just received and will be reading for the first time:

Revisiting

Literacy and Bilingualism: A Handbook for ALL Teachers by María Estela Brisk and Margaret M. Harrington, 2nd Edition

Language and Identity in a Dual Immersion School by Kim Potowski

Becoming Biliterate by Berta Pérez

New Books - Just Arrived in My Mail Box this Month

¡Sí Se Puede! Learning from a High School That Beat the Odds by Úrsula Casanova

Learning and not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools by Guadalupe Valdés

We ARE Americans: Undocumented Students Pursuing the American Dream by William Perez

Senate Live Feed & Senate Vote Update

Eagerly anticipating the outcome of the DREAM Act vote, I was just looking on the Internet and realized that CNN has a Senate live feed from their Politics page. Today is the long-awaited day to find out what will happen!

UPDATED:
The Senate did not have enough votes to bring the DREAM Act to a vote. Nonetheless, I am grateful for the hard work of all those advocating for the DREAM Act. Though it appears it will be more difficult in the coming year with the newly elected Senators that will take office in January, I am still hopeful that eventually it will pass.

The Time is Now - The DREAM Act 4

The time is now. I have mentioned in posts since last weekend that right now is a critical time for the DREAM Act. I talked about why I believe in the Act, as well as including links from Administration Officials' blog posts on the White House blog. The three most recent are from Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, Eric Holder, Attorney General, and Chris Lu, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary.

Tomorrow the Senate will be voting on the DREAM Act. You can make a difference now by calling 1-866-587-6101 to be connected with a senator still wavering on the DREAM Act. I am crossing my fingers for good news tomorrow!

DREAM Act 3

The White House blog now has two new posts advocating for the DREAM Act, one from Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and the other from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Dr. Clifford L. Stanley.

Push In Support - Post 3: Shared Vision

As I mentioned on Sunday, it did not take the TOSA and I long to realize that we were on the same page about push-in vs. pull-out support, so our conversations shifted to the ideal scenario, as well as a rationale. The following is some of our main discussion points that reflect our literacy beliefs.

• The TOSA would provide push-in support in a team teaching scenario. It was essential that if we were going to be doing push-in, it could not be that she was simply teaching the "pull-out" students in an isolated fashion within my classroom. Rather than having a separate curriculum for students who needed additional support, we would work together to differentiate teaching points based on our state standards. 
• It was essential to work as a team. Students needed to view us as both being their teachers, not that I was the teacher for all students, while she was only the teacher for those who had not met their reading benchmarks. She could lead some of the focus lessons/whole class instruction, and it would also be important that she interacted with all students. 
• If she was going to provide English instruction on Spanish weeks to target students, it would negate the hard work we were doing to intentionally blur the lines between "met" and "exceed" students from those who had not yet met. We decided to advocate that by close collaboration on English weeks, we would be doing more good than we had last year every week with pull-out. 
• Just because students have met standardized reading assessments does not mean that they would not benefit from additional scaffolding/support in order to continually develop a higher level of engagement and analysis with texts. Having a push-in model would give us the flexibility to truly consider the full picture rather than an arbitrary single data source. We can use our professional judgement to balance the level of support that each student needs as well as working towards goals for each student.
• The groups would need to be flexible. Just because students have not met their reading assessment does not mean that they have the same needs in order to improve as readers. Therefore, at times students would be grouped by need, while at others, they would be grouped by interest. It was up to us to do a lot of intentional planning behind the scenes to make sure that we were providing sufficient support to students without drawing attention to groups of students.

Now we are three school weeks away from the half way point in the year. We have continued to try, reflect, and refine. We have goals in place for continual improvement. Thursday I will give an update on how it has been going and what we have been learning. 

The DREAM Act 2

Saturday I posted about the DREAM Act and why I think it is essential and could have a positive impact for many students. I have been pleased to see the support for the Act coming from the White House blog, which is currently doing a series on the Act. If you would like to hear more why the it would be beneficial, I recommend you seeing the posts from Secretary of Education - Arne Duncan, Secretary of Labor - Hilda Solis, and Secretary of Commerce - Gary Locke.

I am also impressed with the students who have been working hard to raise awareness for the cause through marches and hunger strikes. It takes a lot of courage to draw attention to oneself knowing others will criticize you. Yet, these students are working not only for their own futures, but also for others who would benefit from the Act.

Here's to hoping for a good outcome in the Senate this week!

Push-In vs. Pull-Out

For this first post in my push-in support series, I will talk about how one of my colleagues and I ended up trying push-in support this year.

Over the summer I talked to various people for advice on how to best set up the time anticipated that I would have alloted for language arts this year. One of my main concerns was how to best accommodate that some students would inevitably be pulled out for additional reading support. Time and again, people said one powerful word - why? As I was explaining about our failed attempt at push in last year, as well as the challenges of alternating between English and Spanish each week when the push-in support was English only, I had a nagging feeling that it was not good enough to just accept that pull-out was the way it had to be.

Throughout the summer I was thinking through what would work since the year before we had a failed attempt at push-in, as well as why it was important to fight for it and make it work. Before I even got a chance to approach my director and the TOSA who provides additional support, the TOSA contacted me. She was taking courses for her Master's in literacy over the summer and was doing some reflecting of her own and wanted to meet with me.

Our philosophies aligned. We reflected over successes, as well as areas where we could improve in order to provide our students with the best possible literacy opportunities. While she created some excellent learning opportunities for students in previous years, we worried about the negative impact of the stigma of pull-out instruction, as well as the message that some of the policies/procedures with pull-out instruction sent to students. Most importantly, we worried about the over-emphasis on meeting state reading assessments over a genuine love of reading. Albeit unintentional and against the literacy philosophy at the school, it was apparent that many students perceived it this way. We were also worried about the disconnect between mainstream and pull-out.

Tomorrow I will share our vision that came out of our meeting in order to make positive changes in the new school year, walking out the door of the coffee shop with a bounce in our step knowing that we were moving in a direction that would closely align to our literacy beliefs.

The DREAM Act

I have been hearing about The DREAM Act since I was an undergraduate, and I always get excited about it potentially passing. Now, more than ever, it seems like it might finally become reality. Last week the House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act, and now it is up to the Senate. From what I have heard, this is a crucial time because if it does not pass now, it is unlikely to pass anytime in the near future. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote a post on the White House blog emphasizing the importance of the Act, and there have also been press releases about it (here and here).

As a teacher I am inspired by students every day - their drive, their dedication, and their dreams. Yet, I know that for some students all over the United States, their opportunities will be limited upon graduation because of their status as undocumented immigrants. Many who find themselves in this scenario were too young to be able to make the decision to come to the United States, yet as adults they have to deal with the consequences.

After dedicating my career to helping all of my students realize their potential and set high goals for themselves and watching students give their best effort, it is frustrating and disheartening to see them having eventual obstacles to becoming productive, contributing members of society. As a professional, I have also seen the injustice first hand with a classmates in college whose family poured all of their energy  into supporting their child through college without any federal help, only to realize that she would not be able to utilize her degree upon graduation. She had so much to offer, and sadly, she is not alone...

Secretary Duncan explained the situation well at the end of his post:

The students of the DREAM Act are some of the country’s best and brightest.  They were raised and educated in America.  They are valedictorians, star athletes, community leaders, and are active in their faith.  They text and go to the mall.  They are Americans in every sense of the word.  They have deep roots here and are loyal to the country that has been the only home they’ve known.  They are our future pediatricians, teachers, and engineers — if we give them a chance.  They are exactly the type of young people America should be embracing.

But, unlike their classmates, DREAM Act students are in a bind.  It goes against the basic American sense of fairness to punish children for the choices of their parents.  But thousands of young people find themselves in that position.  We can’t let them continue to live unfulfilled lives of fear and squandered hopes.  We need to act before we lose this generation.  It’s who we are as Americans, at our best.  The time is now.

President Obama's comment in one of the press releases also describes the importance:

The DREAM Act corrects one of the most egregious flaws of a badly broken immigration system. A flaw that forces children who have grown up in America, who speak English, who have excelled in our communities as academics, athletes, or volunteers to put their lives and talent on hold at a great cost to themselves and our nation.

I also congratulate the House for moving past the tired sound bites and false debates that have pushed immigration rhetoric into the extremes for far too long. The DREAM Act is not amnesty; it’s about accountability, and about tapping into a pool of talent we’ve already invested in. The DREAM Act is a piece of a larger debate that is needed to restore responsibility and accountability to our broken immigration system broadly.  My administration will continue to do everything we can to move forward on immigration reform; today’s House vote is an important step in this vital effort.

I urge those who are in favor of the DREAM Act to take the time to contact senators in this crucial time for the Act. For those who have not heard much about it, you have the opportunity to make a big difference for numerous students by seeking out information about the Act and taking action to support it if you find it aligns with your philosophy as an educator and sense of social justice.

Push-In Support Series

Last Monday was my official last meeting of fall semester for my Ed.D. classes. Now I will have a little bit of extra time for about a month. With the break approaching it is a great time to relax, reflect, and post about some topics that have been on my mind this fall.

This week I will be doing a series of posts about push in support. Here is what I have planned:

Sunday - Introduction to push-in vs. pull-out

Tuesday - Shared Vision

Thursday - Progress

Saturday - Short Term Goals

Classroom Blog Post Link

Lately I have not been able to read all of the notifications of EC Ning links that show up in my email inbox, but I could not resist the one titled, Three Reasons I Love Class Blogs. It ended up being a link to a blog post. I recommend it to others who are interested in weaving blogs into the classroom.

The Hunger Games Book Club

I just finished reading The Hunger Games on Friday night. It's one of those books that I can't believe it too me so long to read since so many people have raved about it. One of the most recent people telling me that I just had to read the book was a classmate in my summer YA lit class. She was talking about how it has been a really great cross over novel appealing to teens and adults. When I realized that I needed to get a few more book club sets for my 8th graders, The Hunger Games was at the top of my list. Right now I am reading it with a group of five students - a mixture of boys and girls.

When we were dividing up the pages, one of the boys was complaining about the amount, but I told him that would not be a problem because he would not want to stop reading. Sure enough, the next day he had already read to where he needed to be in a few days.  Before our first book club meeting one of the girls asked if we could just finish the book, which gave me an idea. 

At our meeting I proposed that we just finish the book and roll right into Catching Fire, which is what the group decided to do. They do not have to finish until after Thanksgiving because we are going to be in a Spanish week, but I know that some have already finished it. When I read the last page Friday night, I decided to pull out yet another proposal. If they want to have Catching Fire for the break, we could have a lunch time book club to wrap up The Hunger Games and pass out the second book. 

The book is rich with discussion points, and I just downloaded the question guide off the Scholastic website, as they will be interesting questions to ponder. I love that it also includes background information from the author's point of view. The link at the top of the post on the title goes to my review of the book if you would like to see my thoughts on it. 

Lucky Day

Today at lunch I checked my university email and found out that my class was cancelled for the night. While I was looking forward to class, I was thrilled to save myself the two hours of commuting. It is also a chilly fall day, so I was able to come home to have the lentil soup I cooked in the crock pot over night.

Then, to make it even better, just as I was getting ready to sort through my data again, the doorbell rang. It was the UPS man with my copy of Day by Day! Now I am even more excited that I didn't have class so that I have a chance to start skimming the book.

Update (about ten minutes later): And now I just saw that Nancie Atwell has some new resources coming out! Fabulous...

Make Me a Story

Since technology integration into reading and writing workshop has been a main area of interest over the last couple of years, I was excited to see that Lisa Miller's Make Me a Story: Teaching Writing Through Digital Storytelling was a new Stenhouse title this fall. I was equally excited to see that Linda Rief wrote the foreword and that Miller is a professor at the University of New Hampshire. At the Boothbay Literacy Retreat this summer there were brochures available about UNH's summer writing institutes. Since then I have been more and more aware of just how many of my favorite writing leaders have connections to UNH, so I knew before I even started reading that it would probably be an excellent resource, closely aligned to my writing instruction philosophy. I was not disappointed.

In this practical guide aimed at K-5 teachers, Miller breaks down the nuts and bolts of digital storytelling, as well as highlighting the benefits. She focuses on Photo Story 3 (free for PCs) as an example program for classroom integration; however, she also briefly mentions other options. Always with a clear picture of quality writing instruction in mind, Miller walks her readers through the process of what to consider in planning and implementing lessons with digital storytelling with plenty of resources for images and music on-line. Toward the end of the book she includes a detailed step by step explanation with Photo Story screenshots, which I loved. Thus, it is a comprehensive book for those who truly are starting from scratch in order to implement digital storytelling. Yet, for those who are already familiar with Photo Story or other similar programs, the book still provides plenty of practical advice on important concepts to take into consideration when thinking about the role technology should play in literacy instruction and how to scaffold students with digital storytelling. In addition, the book comes with a CD-ROM with examples that are referenced at different points in the text.

I am thrilled to add this book to my literacy resources and to share with colleagues. Though I just learned about Photo Story toward the end of last year, I only used it once with my students. This book was a great reminder to think about where I can weave it in to my curriculum.

*Copy provided by the publisher

Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary

I have not been able to do nearly as many blog posts as I would have liked to lately. More than ever I am constantly walking around with multiple potential posts in my head but can't seem to find enough time to get my thoughts down. I knew starting my doctoral program that blogging would be one of the areas that I would not be able to dedicate as much time to, and I have been missing it.

Last night when I was skimming my blog roll I came across this vocabulary post on the Catching Readers Before They Fall site. It really captures what has been a recent focus with our staff lately, so though I am not able to share all of my thoughts on it right now, if you read it, you can get a glimpse of one area that has been on my mind lately.

Waiting for Superman

Tomorrow I will be going to watch Waiting for Superman with my curriculum class. I am excited to see it because I had originally looked to see if it would be playing anywhere close, and it was not. I was glad to see that it was going to be playing after all. I would be curious to hear what others who have seen it think. I will post again after seeing it.

This is also the last week of the first quarter! I will probably be doing a post toward the end of the week/weekend reflecting on the year so far.

Learning from Personal Narratives

I am down to the last two weeks of the first quarter. Students submitted their Spanish and English personal narratives, and I have been able to give all students feedback on their Spanish narratives via email. I had them email their published copies as a Google Docs attachment. It was so convenient. That coupled with having a web based gradebook this year made the whole process so much more feasible.

Being able to sit and really look at their writing as a group has been beneficial in many ways. First, it is a great feeling to see how my 7th and 8th grade students continually grow, remembering back to where they were as 6th graders. With my 6th graders, I am constantly trying to remind myself to slow down and remember the natural evolving process of where they are now and where they will typically be at the end of the year, next year, and the year after... It is easy to forget how the process evolves at times - almost like watching my own children grow. Since I am with them all the time, the daily changes build continually but since I watch the different steps along the way I sometimes lose sight of the drastic changes they have made over time.

This is my first year having 6th-8th, and it is a great opportunity to really focus and reflect on this process and how to best scaffold student growth. On the flip side, seeing where the 6th graders are at right now reminds me more of how much there is to celebrate about my older students' growth. Certain students across grade levels remind me of each other, so not only do I love to think about their own personal growth, but it also helps me to be mindful of the different components that led to that growth.

Teaching is such a journey.

Vocabulary in Context Focus Lesson

I often feel like the focus lessons that have the most impact are those that weave in personal experiences. One of our focuses this quarter is on vocabulary in context, so I decided to have some post-it notes sticking to the inside front cover of Cruzando al Pacífico while I read it this week. Reading in Spanish gives me even more examples for understanding vocabulary in context since it is my second language. While marking down words that I thought about as I read, I noted the word and page number on my sticky note. Once I completed the book, I went back through and made some notes of different strategies that I used while reading to make meaning of the text. Some of my processes were obvious and that I had thought of frequently before, while others were slightly different and I felt like reflecting on my own process helped better highlight the complexities of what goes on in a reader's mind.

Here are the strategies that I shared with my students, each with examples from the text to link the concept to a text. I know that some ended up straying from the "context" and were other types of strategies to figure out unknown words, not necessarily limited to context.

• Think about what has been happening in the text. 
• Think about the connections you have with the topics discussed in the text.
• If you are unable to imagine exactly what the unknown word is, at least try to figure out which category of word it is, such as: person, food, location, game...
• Notice if an unknown word is mentioned more than once. Test out your developing theories of what the word means. See if your definition fits for the new contexts in which it arises. 
• Think about how the word or a part of the word is similar to other words you know to see if that can help you figure out the meaning. 

While sharing my processes with words I encountered in Cruzando el Pacífico, I emphasized that strategies work together in order to make meaning. After sharing the strategies and my examples, students recorded examples from their own reading during reading workshop and/or while reading at home. 

Being an avid reader and writer has had such an impact on my ability to enjoy teaching reading and writing. While there are many, many areas where I still want to improve, dedicating time outside of class to read and write for pleasure and pay attention to my own processes to convey to my students has helped me to better understand how to be a reading/writing teacher. I can't imagine just following along a teacher's guide and disregarding my own experiences. 

Google Sites Books Read List

Earlier this fall I wrote about my journey to find a platform for my students to share the books that they have been reading and how I ended up going with Google Sites that is available through Google Apps Education Edition. I also did a follow-up post to explain how I envisioned students writing about their books. Yesterday when I wrote a first quarter update post, Tara requested more information about how I set up student Google Sites, so I thought it was a perfect time to share how the process has been going.

Since Google Sites was new to me, I have been experimenting right along with the students, making sure to try out everything that I request they do before hand in order to share an example and walk them through the process. As always with technology, it is so nice to have a classroom set of laptops and a SMART Board where I can walk students through the process of exactly what they should be doing.

Students created their sites, which was super easy since they already had their education edition email accounts, so it was as easy as clicking a few buttons. I had each class categorize their site by the year they will graduate from our school as eighth graders, making it easy for me to skim through sites by class and for them to look for their classmates' sites as well. On the welcome page they wrote a statement about themselves as readers and writers. This gives me as a teacher a lot of insights into them.

Next, each student created a new page, set up as an announcements page (functioning like a blog) titled 2010-2011 Book List. Every time they finish a book, they are supposed to write a post reacting to the book. I have a rubric posted on my site, as well as maintaining my own book list for them to use as examples. This has not been too much work for me because I can often copy and paste responses directly from my book blog, often with just a few adjustments to tailor it to my students as an audience instead of my wider open blog audience.

Each post is supposed to be titled with a number and title. The number reflects the amount of books they have read this year. For example, a title might be: 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, which would mean that it was the third book the student completed since the school year started. Each month I have two deadlines. One is for students to choose one English book response, and the other is for a Spanish book response. I have them write the one that they want me to look at on the bottom of their weekly self-evaluation form. Then I skim through their selected posts.

We just completed our first round, and I was able to make note of areas in which I can scaffold them to improve. Topics range from remembering conventions to adding depth to their reader reaction to hooking their readers with their summaries without giving away too much of the book. Right now I kept the posts simple without adding book cover images or links in order to focus on the content. Later on I will layer in these aspects.

A few students have already begun to visit each other's sites and leave comments for each other, but I have not demonstrated this yet. That will be one of the next steps so that they can start enjoying the benefits of having a community of readers sharing about books they love virtually to complement the ways that they share about their books in person.

I will try to remember to add additional posts throughout the year as I continue reflecting and improving, but please feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions or questions you might have that I can post about in the future.

Researcher Reflexivity #3

The last couple of weeks have been exciting as I have been uncovering more and more what it means to be a qualitative researcher. I realized that coming into the class I still had the vision of the researcher always trying to be an outside observer, but with various class discussions I have come to realize that with qualitative research, the researcher is able to define their role. The concept of qualitative researchers trying to make sure their participants benefit from their studies has really opened my eyes to view the whole process differently.

This week I checked out a copy of Berta Pérez's Becoming Biliterate from the library - the book that made me realize a few years back that I was not ready to leave the classroom in quest of a doctoral degree yet, that I wanted to have the opportunity to teach in a dual immersion school. It was fascinating to reread about her process as a researcher and her methodology now that I have been studying about the topics and better understand those aspects. I started a document to record the ideas that I notice in different research studies. I also revisited a couple of articles that stood out to me and plan to reread Kim Potowski's Language and Identity in a Dual Immersion School sometime soon. I would have looked at it this weekend, but it was at the school.

Once again dissertation ideas are swirling around in my mind, and I am excited about the possibilities but still unsure about all the logistics, which is only natural since it is still early on in the process. I still catch myself wanting to do longer-term studies, so I will have to really make sure to put a limit on what I do for my dissertation. Yet, one of my professors talked about how her dissertation led into a longer study, as she continued to follow her participants. I have been considering how that might work for one of the topics that I have been thinking about the most lately.

For now one of my biggest questions is, out of all of the exciting areas to research, how do researchers decide on their topics? My multiple writer's notebook entries and Word documents with different ideas for research are a testament to the many different directions and angles that I could look at the topics that interest me. It will be a fun journey to see where my research leads me.

First Quarter Update

Once again, the school year is flying by. This week we had parent-teacher conferences, and it was a great feeling to have all of my scheduled families show up, which is typical for my school. We are now officially in October, and by the end of the month, the first quarter will be over. This year my main adjustment has been a nice shift to only teaching reading and writing, but having less class time for the content areas. I have been carefully balancing how to best utilize the time available, and I can tell that I will continue to adjust and readjust, still trying to weave some components in.

I also had a realization in the first few weeks that over the last three school years my content responsibilities have narrowed, as well as the amount of time that I spend with each class. As a result, I inadvertently focused more and more on my content, rather than taking the time to firmly establish a sense of classroom community, so I did some back pedaling after the first couple of weeks to try to compensate for trying to dive into academics too fast, at the expense of getting to know you activities. This was especially essential for my 6th grade class, since my 7th and 8th graders were returning students, so we already had a greater sense of community.

One of the most exciting changes this year is that I have been collaborating with our TOSA for reading support to have her push-in to my classroom instead of pulling out students. So far we have both been very excited about the possibilities and it seems to be going very smoothly. We are both learning together and meeting frequently to discuss how we can best support all of the readers in our classroom in flexible groups. Our first round of book clubs are up and running, something that I always love.

I finally let go of having a reading log, and instead chose to focus on a books completed log with a reading reflection post on a Google Sites page for each student. I am still reflecting on this change, but my initial thoughts are that it has been positive. One initial challenge was that it was a few weeks into the school year before we had our technology parent meeting to get technology agreement forms signed and returned from parents and students. In that span of time some 6th graders had read multiple books and then felt overwhelmed about the prospect of updating their site with every reading reflection. Instead, I made updating the site optional. Instead, they were required to at least list the titles of the books but gave the option to maintain a paper/pencil copy of the response, rather than adding them all on-line. I am assessing one English and one Spanish book response each month. We already have a note to ourselves to have parents fill out technology agreements in our 5th grade spring parent meeting so that we can start the year ready to utilize technology.

No More "I'm Done!"

When reflecting on Catching Readers Before They Fall, I mentioned how being a parent has prompted me to want to explore more about the earlier phases of literacy. Now that we are about five weeks into the school year, I am relieved that I decided to have my daughter stay in her mainstream classroom, rather than adding pull-out special education services. She continues to progress well and to have a high level of enthusiasm about school. It is a testament to the importance of listening to what teachers and parents know about a student in combination with formal test results, rather than over-relying on standardized tests alone. It has felt great to leave work earlier this year and to spend extra time with my girls as well.

When I was reading Catching Readers Before They Fall, I could not wait to read Jennifer Jacobson's No More "I'm Done!": Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades. It seemed like a perfect companion text to Catching Readers. Since writing and reading are so closely connected, both texts alluded to the two areas, but reading both, each with a main focus on either reading or writing, provided a fuller picture. Both texts are great introductory texts for teachers without a lot of background on providing support for readers and writers in the primary grades or as a quick review for experienced teachers to prompt reflection on current practices.

No More "I'm Done!" starts with a rationale for writer's workshop rather than teacher-directed writing before outlining how teachers can create an environment that values student choices as writers and allows students to flourish as independent writers. Through description and pictures Jacobson gives us glimpses into her classroom - its set-up, its routines, and her role as a teacher and a writer. After giving foundational information chapter five gives ideas for a year of mini-lessons, something that I have always appreciated in other books when the content is still new.

I was going to say that chapter five was the most important/helpful chapter in the book, but then I thought about how the foundational chapters are also essential. I had the same urge to say that chapter six was the best chapter because it has great reflective questions for teachers to ask themselves as they get going in order to continually improve through continual assessing and reassessing, as well as a question and answer of common concerns/issues with workshop teaching. I realized that it would not be possible to choose a favorite section - each provides an important piece, and together they form an excellent, comprehensive introductory text for primary teachers wanting to incorporate workshop into their classroom.

I see this book as an overview to help teachers get their feet wet and begin fine-tuning workshop; however, they would also want to supplement it with other books about workshop and talk to other teachers implementing workshop as part of their continual professional development. I am excited to add this book to my growing collection of literacy resources to use as a parent, colleague, and teacher.

Complimentary copy provided by the publisher

Researcher Reflexivity #2

This week I continued to think about the roles of researchers. The same questions that I was pondering last Sunday were some of the key discussion points brought up in class by others, and it was interesting to hear others' opinions, as well as our professors thoughts on the topic. One suggestion from my professor was for researchers to remember their purpose at the onset of the research. A potential scenario is that researchers often notice multiple trends, some negative, others positive. The researcher can decide to not pursue the negative aspects, especially if the negative aspects were not the initial purpose for the research. I loved this idea, and with each discussion I have a better sense of ethical issues.

Yet, I know that there is still so much to consider about these ethical research questions that come up, and our classroom discussion was not enough to answer every scenario. As I was doing the readings for this week, Shulman (1990) was questioning who her "clients" were when pondering where her loyalties should lie - whether it was the research participants or consumers of research.

Then at the end of Friday Night Lights, a book that I chose as one of our novel options, H.G. Bissinger also broached the subject of the controversy surrounding the way he represented the community of Odessa in relation to football in his book. He said, "When I first arrived in Odessa, I anticipated a book very much in the tradition of the film, Hoosiers, a portrait of the way in which high school sports can bring a community together. There were elements of that bond in Odessa, and they were reflected in the book. But along the way some other things happened--the most ugly racism I have ever encountered, utterly misplaced educational priorities, a town that wasn't bad or evil but had lost any ability to judge itself. It would have been a journalistic disgrace to ignore these elements" (pp. 353-354). It would not have been the same book if Bissinger only showed the glowing aspects of Odessa football. Instead he showed various angles.

Again and again, throughout my readings and reflections this week I have been going back to my professor's comment in class about the importance of keeping purpose in sharp focus. Based on the first weeks of class it is apparent the questions that have been at the forefront of my mind will not be easily answered. I will continue to pay attention to how researchers deal with this through course readings, class discussions, and interactions with researchers.

Bissinger, H.G. (1990). Friday night lights. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Shulman, J.H. (1990). Now you see them, now you don't: Anonymity versus visibility in case studies of teachers. Educational Researcher, 19(6), 11-15.

Researcher Reflexivity Introduction and Entry 1

Reflexivity Introduction:
For my qualitative research course we have an optional assignment of keeping a researcher reflexivity journal. I decided to start recording my emerging thoughts about myself as a researcher as blog posts. One of our first assignments was to reflect on who we are as researchers, and as far as formal research goes, I am a novice. My master's program focused on a literature review, rather than conducting research. In my undergraduate I did a few projects that incorporated research, but I had not had research courses, so they would not be considered up to standard. In my classroom, I constantly have an itch (or typically itches) that I am scratching. My blog has been an integral part in the last couple of years of teaching to record my thoughts and reflect. That is why I thought it would be appropriate to consider thinking about this new phase in my professional development here.

My summer research class focuses on the continuum of research methods. It was a great introduction, but within the first couple weeks of my class focusing solely on qualitative research, I realized that the summer course truly just scratched the surface. There is still so much to learn, and as with anything in education, I know that most of my in-depth understanding will come from practice. I am looking forward to an assignment that my two fall professors have collaborated on for our classes, where we meet with a superintendent for dinner on a Sunday evening and then visit the district's schools all day on Monday. We will have opportunities to observe and conduct interviews. Prior to that assignment we will conduct a practice interview with a university faculty member about their research. I already know who I am going to interview and have been having fun thinking of some questions.


Reflexivity Entry 1:
Right now I am most concerned with the topic of my research for these fall classes. Potential dissertation topics have also been flowing through my mind for quite some time as well. When I am reading different research examples I have learned to keep a pen close by in order to record my ideas. I started this back in the summer, and I have many writer's notebook entries about possibilities. I have discovered that it is easy to get me excited about potential areas to explore, yet I am still unsure of knowing when it is a "good" topic or not. The areas that interest me the most are language, literacy, technology, professional development for teachers, and teacher philosophies.

At our last class meeting, about two weeks ago (we had last week off since it was a holiday), our professor talked about how she likes to make sure that her participants benefit from the research that she conducts. I had never really thought about this before, thinking more about potential contributions to the field without really thinking about a direct impact on the participants. The reason why this had not occurred to me is because I always think about the researcher as trying to blend in and not interfere with what is happening in the context. However, I like the concept of participants benefiting, so I am paying attention to exactly how this happens.

With my readings for tomorrow's class, I was thinking about how this seems to mean that in order to benefit participants researchers must go in ready to learn from participants and highlight what is going well/the participants' expertise. I am really grappling with how it seems like in this scenario that it would be hard to point out deficiencies. Yet, research also needs to be honest. The researcher would need to be forthright about whatever observations he/she ends up having. It seems like this will be a delicate area that is personal to each researcher - trying to honor their participants, while also contributing to the field in a forthright manner. Ideally, the observations will point toward findings that portray the participant(s) in a glowing manner. That would be the easy part. On the other hand, it would be awkward if the practices observed point toward a lack of awareness or support in the area of research.

Since I will be reading like a writer as I plunge into this new genre, I will be paying attention to these two main areas that I have been wondering about - topic selection and researcher-participant relationships. In future posts I will continue to reflect on how these questions are clarified, as well as about some of the other components of qualitative research.

Etched in My Mind - Remembering September 11th

This year, more than any other year, the events of September 11th popped up in my life in so many different ways toward the end of August/early September. One of the assigned books for an Ed.D. class on Monday is Forever After: New York City Teachers on 9/11. I had started reading it, and then a couple of weekends ago my sister and I rented a movie to watch at my parents. She had already seen it and when we were deciding whether or not to get it, she said that it was good but that the ending caught her completely off guard. I won't mention the title because I can see what she meant about an unexpected ending that linked into the events of September 11th. We were both surprised that all the previews and talk about the movie had not let that link slip out. As if that was not enough, a copy of Megan McCafferty's Second Helpings that I had requested on interlibrary loan over a year ago magically arrived at the library. I started reading it without realizing that Jessica Darling would be grappling with the events of 9/11 during her senior year in high school.

I don't know that I had ever written in depth to reflect on my experiences of the September 11th attacks, but the day is etched in my mind. For my class there were different options to respond to Forever After, and one of them was a narrative of where I was that day, how it compared to the teachers in the book, and the implications of my experience and theirs on my teaching. I knew right when I read the assignment sheet that I would choose the narrative option. I started my narrative before beginning the book. Tomorrow I will go back and revise and add in the ideas related to the teachers in the book, as well as teaching implications.

I have often thought about proximity and how my view of September 11th was deeply impacted by being on exchange at the University of Rhode Island. I always sensed that had I experienced it from back in eastern Oregon that I never would have fully gotten it. Reading Forever After makes me realize that compared to the teachers in New York City sharing their stories, I still cannot fully fathom the impact. While writing my narrative, I realized that in some ways it is so clear in my mind, yet I know some of the details that I would like to include in my narrative are fuzzy. I wish I would have been journaling while on exchange, but like most of my college career, I didn't document my daily life.

Here is my narrative that is still a work in progress that still ends a bit abruptly:

            I sat in the computer lab checking my email in anticipation of any messages from home. It was still early on in my semester on exchange to the University of Rhode Island, and though I could hardly contain my excitement for the experience, it was also my first time living farther than a 15 mile radius from my parents – my whole family on the opposite side of the United States. It was too early for any instant messaging, they would all still be in bed, so my only hope was email. As I switched between homework assignments and Internet distractions while waiting for class to start, there was instantly an automatic buzz in the computer lab.

            I could tell that something major had happened, but I could not tell what, and I barely knew anybody at the whole university, let alone at that early of an hour in the lab. I picked up on bits and piece, “A plane hit one of the twin towers,” “Oh my gosh, now another plane hit the other tower!” My mind was trying to piece together the eerie feeling that had overcome the laboratory and to figure out what all this meant. Hitting one of the towers must have been a horrible, terrible accident, but how did two accidents of that scope just happen to occur that close together, I wondered.

            As I left for class, the same sense of panic and frenzy was overtaking the campus. When I got to class I still felt like an outsider, not getting what happened, but luckily, I finally felt comfortable asking someone. Not long after our professor came in. The level of concern in the whole room was high. People were wondering about family members and friends who worked in or near the trade center. It was not long before our professor asked us whether we wanted to stay or go, including that she could not imagine conducting a class with this big of an event on everybody’s minds. Nobody protested leaving class, and the university president’s directive to continue on with classes as normal had not yet been announced.

            I made my way back to my dorm, emotions rising to the surface. By then I knew that it was not an accident, that it was a terrorist attack – something that was unfathomable to me. I always felt so secure growing up in rural Oregon. I instantly called my dad at work. As he said hello I could feel tears coming to my eyes and my voice cracked as I said, “Dad, have you seen the news?” In his brief response of a yes, I could also hear his voice crack. The vision of my dad cracking down raised my level of emotions even more. Next I called my mom, who was still sleeping and had not heard anything. She was not fully awake and even more confused than I had been in the lab, first thinking I was saying that there were terrorists at my school.

            The next call was to one of my college friends who was also on the east coast, continuing on for a Master’s program. The only thing I remember about our conversation was me saying, “I wanted to make sure that you were okay since you are in New York,” and she replied, “Mandy, you’re closer to it then I am.” Even though I knew I was close, in the frenzy of the day I had not thought about just how close I was. Thoughts started flashing through my mind, wondering if I should just go back home. After all, my university would not even start fall trimester until the end of the month. I could go back home and slide back into my old life, back to the familiar. However, as if my sense of insecurity were not high enough, my friend’s comment drove home just how vulnerable I was at that moment. My first time trying to go out into the big world, and all of a sudden realizing that even if I wanted to go home I could not because all public transportations were quickly shutting down – a scenario I had never considered when I flew away from everything that was comfortable to me.

            It took much longer for the impact of the events to sink in with me than it appeared to with my New England counterparts. Later that semester when I went on a day trip to New York City with my college for the first time I was in awe by all the skyscrapers. Images of the New York skyline with the Twin Towers were all over in various shops and stores, towering way over every other building. I could not fathom how that was even possible since even the “ordinary” buildings were breathtaking.

            Throughout that semester at Rhode Island I could not help but think that I would have had a completely different understanding of the events had I experienced it back in Oregon. Seeing pictures of New York City and images of the Twin Towers never really registered just what the scale was like, and being in Oregon would have distanced me from the panic that I sensed from the reaction of those concerned about family members.

Scholastic Book Clubs

I just took advantage of Scholastic's extra bonus point offers when placing my students' orders. I know that the first order of the year always seems to have the best promotions for additional bonus points, so I ordered more books to make it to the $200 mark for the TAB and Arrow orders to get the maximum additional points. I always love buying more books for my classroom library, and I also got some for my girls. I can use some others for holiday gifts as well.

Aside from being able to get more classroom library books from time to time throughout the year, the other main reason why I wanted to stock up on bonus points was because each year we have a school wide Día de los niños celebration in April, and we give each student a book as a gift. Since I am the language arts teachers for 6th-8th grade I coordinate all of our students' books. This year I have a little under 80 students, and I will get different books throughout the year to try to match books with appropriate reading and interest levels to each student. I am excited to see a big bonus points balance to start out the year in order to buy books from time to time.

When I went to place my order I was also excited to see the updates to their ordering site. It was much easier to place my orders, now that they allow to do as many different clubs on the same order. Last year it had a limit - I think around four or five. The process for making sure to take advantage of all special promotions was also a lot easier, clearly outlined at checkout.

Bring on the books!

Personal Narrative Genre Study Toughts

Today I started my third week of the school year, and yesterday was a great day to refocus and reevaluate my plans for the quarter. It is my second year teaching in a reading and writing workshop setting. Though I learned a lot from my experiences last year, there is still a lot more to learn. I found myself reflecting on some basic foundational steps that I forgot from the start of last year. Each year I have to remind myself to remember back to how 6th graders are at the start of the year, rather than my fresh memories at the end of the year. It has been a lot smoother with my 7th and 8th graders who have already been in my class for a year or two.

Many genre studies fall into the areas where I still want to improve a lot. This quarter we will be focusing on personal narrative. I have a lot of resources to draw from, and I am writing with my students. However, yesterday I felt myself getting frustrated by not having enough mentor texts in my classroom library. It was becoming very apparent that I do not have very much non-fiction, and out of that portion of my classroom library, there is even less first person narrative style non-fiction.

Then it hit me that my concept of personal narrative defined as non-fiction was too narrow. I thought of all the great first person narrative style writing in my fiction section, often filled with excellent examples of voice. Today I was reading Mark Overmeyer's Original Author Tip Tuesday on the Stenhouse blog and received some affirmation of this thought when he mentioned that Jeff Kinney's The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series are excellent to spark ideas for personal narrative.

Kid Blogs Follow Up

In my last post I mentioned that it would be hard to integrate blogs the way I had envisioned with Kid Blogs. In his comments, Joshua asked for clarification to see if I could explain more about that statement. My desire to integrate blogs into my classroom stemmed from the concept that came up over and over as I have been reading a variety of resources to help me teach in a writing workshop setting - the importance of having students write for authentic purposes. At one point in time I realized that my new blogging hobby would be relevant for students - a form of writing that "real" writers do.

I envisioned my students blogging for a variety of reasons, such as book reviews and slice of life stories. My own blog that I set up for blog reviews was a pattern for how I would have students use them. Tagging allowed for easily indexing different types of posts, such as including author's names and/or genres. I also love being able to have the image on the side bar that people can click on linking back to a post with a running list of books by author and title that I read by year with a link to the actual review post. These were the features that I was talking about that are not possible via Kid Blogs. I quickly realized that other differences, such as only having two choices for backgrounds, which I originally thought was off-putting, were not really that big of a deal and aspects that would not keep me from utilizing the platform.

For 6th and 7th graders who I had originally not planned on blogging until their 8th grade year, Kid Blogs would be a great introduction to blogging. Once I realized that Google Sites, which is already a part of our Google Apps Education edition would probably meet our needs, I decided to go that route so that students could access all their services from one site (email, documents, and sites).

Even though I decided against Kid Blogs (for now at least), there was a lot that I thought was great about the service:

• As the site says, it was very easy to set-up and is free.
• It has privacy control options that are ideal providing flexibility for schools and families to decide on what would be the best fit for their children, such as access to all visitors, class members and logged-in guests (such as parents), class members only, or teacher only. 
• Students do not need to have email addresses to blog. 
• When I created my class' blogs it automatically created a blog directory on all of my students blogs on the right hand side bar of my site. 
• I was going to be able to have a separate blog for each class, and there was a drop down menu option on the top of the screen to easily navigate among the classes.  

When I thought about using Kid Blogs, I imagined it would be a great location for recording books read. Since I would not be able to use tags and the side bar link to a running list like I do on my blog, I thought that I would just have students type the number before the title so that students would have an easy way to know how many books they read in a school year. It would not be as easy for them and other students to navigate among all of their posts, but it would still be functional. Students would be able to view each others' pages and leave comments. In fact, the simplicity that I was a bit disappointed in for older students is probably ideal as an introduction to blogging for younger students.

Joshua mentioned that his blogging goals are to "provide a nice hook to get my students to express their opinions more frequently and interact with each others' ideas. [...] It seems like an effective platform for book logging/reviews. Finally, I'm considering using it as a way to communicate to parents more about what we are doing in class." He wondered if Kid Blogs seemed to be a good fit for this for his 4/5 classroom. I would say that of the different platforms I have considered and am aware of, Kid Blogs probably is an ideal option for the age range of his class. By knowing the site for the teacher's page on Kid Blogs, parents could learn about what was happening in class and have access to the links to their child's blog, as well as their classmates.

The Student Blogging Saga Continues

Ever since my initial set backs with starting individual student blogs last winter, I have been thinking about different options. After our initial Blogger glitch, we signed our school up for Google Apps Education edition to at least have access to services such as email and Google Docs. I had been disappointed that Blogger was not included in that package. Yet I thought that it was okay - Blogger could wait until this year when my 8th grade students would all be thirteen. Most recently I talked about Blogger vs. Kid Blogs. I had decided that I wanted to go with Blogger. Yet, I was still going back and forth. I considered that even though Kid Blogs were not as visually appealing, maybe it was a better option to launch blogs. Then I realized that in an effort to simplify blogs for students, there were not any capabilities to put tags, labels, or widgets, which would make it hard to use them the way I wanted to. Thus, it was back to Blogger for my preferred option for 8th graders. I thought about how I could use Kid Blogs for 6th and 7th graders solely to record books read this year with a review/response post.

Today was the big day (again) to set up student blogs via Blogger. I was thrilled. I set up my own blog using my Google App Education edition email to make sure that it was going to work. It was all slick and smooth just like when I set up my personal Blogger accounts using a Gmail address. However, once the students were in the room it was not long before I started having flashbacks to last year's roadblocks. Rather than going from the initial information page to the blog set-up, it prompted students to verify their accounts either via a text message or voice call. I remained calm and told the students that they could do their independent reading while I went around to each student individually with my cell phone in hand to get their verification codes. I thought that was a pretty smart way to not panic and be a problem solver - that is until about the sixth student when an error message came up saying that the number provided had already verified the maximum number of accounts allowed per phone number. As a last ditch effort I had the other students click on a form to explain the difficulties with verifying the accounts.

As I had a little more time to reflect during the day, I was ready to go with Kid Blogs tomorrow. I did not want to go through any more hassles with Blogger. Then I remembered that a teachers in one of my summer school classes talked about a professor using Google Sites in another one of her classes. I went into my education edition account and saw that Google Sites was an option. I was able to quickly set up my own site and played around just a little bit. I realized that they did have an option to add on announcement page(s) that functions essentially like a blog.

Tomorrow I will start the next phase of the process - setting up student Google Sites. In some ways it seems like it might end up being even better than Blogger for an educational context. It will just take me a little bit to get familiar with its different capacities. Hopefully it will be a case of "Third times a charm!" If not my students will probably get pretty skeptical any day that I tell them it is time to set up their very own blogs! I don't see any way that there will be glitches with Google Sites though since it is included with the education edition...

Catching Readers Before They Fall

This summer an educational topic that has been occupying a lot of my thoughts has to do with me as a parent and educator than with my own students. All the details could be a separate post (or multiple posts on their own), but here's a brief explanation. There are some concerns about my daughter's academic progress; however, I have noticed a lot of growth for her last year. She is a June birthday, so as a kindergartener she was one of the youngest in her class, but luckily my school has a track for two years of first grade (one year, which my daughter did last year, is a smaller setting of around 12 students before the academic first grade year). This was definitely a good decision for her. Her teachers also commented on her progress throughout the year.

Yet, looking into adding special education services was mentioned. Therein came my biggest conflict. I am not opposed to the concept of special education, but the only option available at my school is pull-out scripted programs that are a stark contrast to what I believe is best for students. I have concerns that missing a significant portion of the day would leave my daughter confused when she is in her class because of all of the gaps in her day. In the long run I do not feel a high sense of security that scripted pull-out would help move her closer to grade level expectations. To the contrary, I worry that it could move her further and further away. As long as I am noticing her making progress, I am very hesitant to have her receive scripted pull-out special education services. Instead, I am going to make sure that I leave work earlier this year to spend time with A providing additional support as opposed to always trying to spend time with her when she is already exhausted and ready for bed.

Since this has been on my mind a lot I have been ever-increasingly more interested in primary literacy so that I can provide further support for her at home. Pat Johnson and Katie Keier's new book Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers Who Struggle, K-4 was an excellent place to start. Though it is written for K-4 teachers, I found my thoughts alternating between wanting to help my daughter and thinking of my 6th-8th graders who still struggle with reading. The book provided me with many great ideas to think about, as well as resources for further exploration. In particular, I want to read more of Marie Clay's work. Part way through reading the book I went on-line and was ready to spend a lot of money on a lot of Clay's books even though I have been trying to limit my non-necessary spending. However, then I thought about utilizing library resources. My university library had plenty of Clay resources (more posts on those later).

Here are some take away points/favorite ideas from Catching Readers:

• The authors comments strengthened my personal literacy beliefs, including the power of licensed teachers who value on-going professional development, the need to recognize ways to support students in developing efficient reading processing systems that focus on meaning if they have not already done so, and the importance of teachers really knowing their students and focusing very closely on what they can do and what teachers should do to help move them forward.
• I was especially excited for Chapter 4 - Beyond "Sounding It Out". Since aside from my daughter, my experience is with adolescents, helping students who still struggle with decoding words has always been a challenge for me. I feel much more confident with comprehension support. (The authors talk about how they do not like the term decoding, but I can't think of another word to accurately express my thoughts.) Over the years I have picked up some considerations about this, but I wanted to know more. Their emphasis on focusing on meaning and the three different sources of information (what I am familiar with being termed cueing systems) complemented my literacy philosophy and helped strengthen my perspective for this important piece to reading. I loved their strategy poster example on page 65, and I plan on making one to talk about with my daughter. 
• Another chapter that I was thrilled to see was Chapter 11 - Sharing Information with Families, formatted as a Q&A of common questions that parents asked. What I loved about this section is that not only do they include the question and example answer, but then they follow that up with further background information for teachers on why they would answer that way. Many of these related to questions that I have and others helped me see other ways that I can explain to parents what I do in my own classroom, even though I teach older students, because their literacy philosophy so closely aligns to my own. 

Overall, I loved this book from different lenses - as a parent, a 6th-8th grade teacher, and as an aspiring literacy leader, helping me to expand my understandings to a wider age range. Most of my main points were from my parent/teacher perspective; however, when thinking about it as a resource in a literacy leader role, it is an excellent introductory text because it mentioned a lot of foundational ideas, such as literacy philosophy, zone of proximal development, and gradual release of responsibility. Yesterday, I was excited to see that the authors have started a blog. As soon as I click to publish this post, I will be adding their site to my blog roll. I am excited to continue learning with them.

Now, I am planning on continuing to read more books as I am able to, balancing between prep for my students, spending time with my family, finishing up my homework/assigned reading, and my professional development reading for fun. I know that I will not be able to read all the books that I want to as quickly as I would like to, but I will thoroughly enjoy any chance I get. With earlier literacy the books I will be reading in the near future are Marie Clay's books, Jennifer Jacobson's No More I'm Done (another new Stenhouse book that focuses on writing), and some other books that I found at my university library when finding all of the Clay books. 

Public Teaching

Even though I had vowed to not buy any books at Heinemann's Boothbay Literacy retreat because I have been trying to have a little bit more control in purchasing books all the time when I already have so many that I can't wait to read on my bookshelf, I could not resist buying more Penny Kittle books after she read aloud to us on the first night of the retreat. Because of my summer school classes, I have not been able to read through them as fast as I typically would have, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading her Public Teaching: One Kid at a Time every chance I got.

While I was reading her memoirs, I was reflecting on my own teaching experience. The set-up of the book was perfect for only being able to read a bit here and there. I was able to read a chapter/experience each sitting. They always left me wanting to read the rest of the book, yet there was a good sense of closure that facilitated not being able to read it all quickly. Instead I was able to linger with her thoughts, which often tied in well with the discussions we were having in my doctoral coursework.

The book also had me grabbing my own writer's notebook to record memorable teaching experiences. The final assignment for one of my summer school courses was to write an educational memoir, so I was able to start writing about some of my own experiences. However, they were rushed. Though I had been writing/listing in my writer's notebook, I did not actually start drafting until the week it was due. I ended up with 25 pages. As I was writing, I was realizing how much certain students, colleagues and experiences had impacted who I am as an educator. Some I had already thought about in depth before, but others were aha moments. Because of the time crunch, I ended up cutting out a lot of what I was going to write and did not feel like I had a polished product at the end.

Reading her book and having this assignment made me realize how enjoyable it is to go back and revisit different experiences. With my assignment, I chose to write in chronological order with reflections from different phases in my teaching journey. I see it very much so as a work in progress. There were some moments where I felt like my voice was shining through and that I was creating images of what was happening, while in others it was too much of explaining (back to the concept of show vs. tell). I considered Public Teaching as a mentor text for my own writing, and Kylene Beers' letters to George in her When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do also inspired the format of my memoir. I am glad that I have the document that I will be able to revisit later to craft and revise. When I revisit it, rather than trying to have it be a chronological order account, I would probably just organize different snapshots.

In addition, I have realized the joys of writer's notebook entries to capture moments. I know that this year I will not have a lot of time to dedicate to writing memoirs related to my teaching experience, but I want to increase the amount of writer's notebook entries to sharpen my memory for when I have more time in the future.