Reading and Workshop Training: Teachers as Writers

One aspect of workshop philosophy that I wanted to make sure and highlight was the importance of focusing on teachers as writers, a subtle difference from writing teachers, emphasizing that teachers should be exploring, experimenting, and developing as writers right alongside their students. Based on our team builder, most teachers were more comfortable with teaching reading or read more in their personal lives vs. writing. Other teachers mentioned that they know they are more passionate about other subjects and know it is apparent for their students and would like to develop a stronger passion for writing, which will spill over into their classrooms. This seemed to be consistent with many of the teachers when I experienced this activity as a student in a writing course for educators.

Inspired by Penny Kittle, I shared with teachers about how they can serve as powerful mentors of process, while also reading like writers as a class with mentors of product (published texts). I also talked to them about supports to grow as a writer, such as Two Writing Teachers, Ruth Ayres Writes, and Laurie Halse Anderson's Write Fifteen Minutes a Day. I mentioned Donald Murray's philosophy that when it comes to writing, it is not limited to those who naturally have talent, a message that is important for both teachers and students to know.

Thus, teachers had chances to write, share, and celebrate. I would love to have something more sustained to have teachers continue to write and share their writing with peers. In this specific context where many did not have established routines of writing regularly, it would be a nice scaffold to build routines in a community.

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Setting the Tone

The workshop training had five participants, so it was a small group, working out well for discussions. To start the training, I decided to use a team builder that one of my professors at Boise State University used for a writing course. I started out with a ball of yarn and talked about myself as a reader and writer - sharing glimpses into my journey, areas in which I am confident, areas in which I want to grow. Then I tossed the ball of yarn to a colleague while still holding on to my piece. After each person shares, the yarn has made a web, which can be linked to the classroom community and sense of supporting each other that is vital in classrooms. Participants pull back on the yarn until it is taut to show that there needs to be a strong undergirding of support, both teacher to student and student to student.

I enjoyed starting the training with this activity. Though I knew each of the participants and already knew some of what they said, I also learned a lot. I bet they learned something new about me as well. Hearing them talk energized me as well as provided insights into what they might need to feel successful during the training.

Next we switched over to a discussion about current issues in literacy education, prompted by quotes excerpted from Richard Allington's third edition of What Really Matters for Struggling Readers. This opened up a lot of comments, prompted reflection, and gave us a chance to consider the big picture before zooming in to workshop teaching. While Allington does not specifically advocate for workshop teaching, I transitioned into a overview of workshop teaching by explaining that while reading the book, I noticed how many of his suggestions are apparent in workshop teaching, such as time to read, choice, focusing on building teacher capacity, and differentiated instruction. It helped create a stronger sense of the why behind workshop teaching.

I created a presentation about workshop teaching that had brief statements related to workshop philosophy. An adapted version of the presentation is below (the words are all the same, but I swapped out pictures of students because of permissions). I noticed that it sometimes takes a while to load up the full slide. If you click pause on the player until the present slide is fully loaded and then click play, it seems to run through all slides fully loaded.



The combination of a quick introduction of ourselves as readers and writers, followed by Allington's quotes that prompt thinking about the purpose of education, and an overview of workshop teaching seemed to work out well. At that point, I had participants pause to do a written reflection and have a chance to gather their thoughts before transitioning into thinking about themselves as writers.

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Schedule and Posts to Come

Last week I taught a K-8 Reading and Writing Workshop course to some of my colleagues. While planning I thought back and forth about how to organize it and utilize the time available since workshop teaching encompasses a lot. I considered the time allotted (2 days) and the timing of the year (almost 2 weeks before teacher work days begin) and tried to decide what would be most helpful. I knew that it was essential to share the rationale behind workshop teaching, allow teachers to experience workshop, encourage them to focus on themselves as writers, and be able to differentiate to different grade levels. There were many ways that I could have organized the training, but this is what I decided:

Day 1:
Literacy Team Builder
Discussion of Current Issues in Literacy
Overview of Workshop Teaching
Writer's Workshop Focus (Experiencing as Learners)
Lunch
Writer's Workshop Conclusion
Reading Workshop Focus

Day 2:
Overview of Available Resources
Time to Plan/Collaborate with Grade-Level Teams

I debated back and forth about whether to have two "instructional" days or whether to have the second day be for planning and collaborating. I am glad that I decided to allow a portion of time, knowing how it feels to love ideas in a training but then feeling overwhelmed trying to plan to integrate the ideas while also juggling other aspects. While a day is not enough time to completely plan out the year or even the fall, it provided an opportunity to reflect, set up goals, and begin planning, as well as collaborating with peers. We will have follow up meetings in the fall to continue to check in and discuss successes and challenges as they implement their ideas.

I will be doing a series of posts reflecting on the workshop training. It was a valuable experience for me thinking about what is important when thinking about growing into a role of being a literacy leader beyond my own classroom. It was also important in thinking about my own journey as reader, writer, and workshop teacher.

Upcoming Posts:

• Wednesday: Setting the Tone
• Thursday: Teachers as Writers
• Friday: Launching the Workshop: Narrative Genre Study
• Saturday: Power of Seeing
• Sunday: Resources - Where to Start?
• Monday: Teacher Collaboration
• Tuesday: Other Possibilities

Writing as a Gift - Parents to Children Possibilities

The last three years I have talked to my students numerous times about writing as a gift. They have written letters and poems to their parents, notes of appreciation, and a letter to invite someone to apply to a position at our school. I wrote the 8th graders a letter for their graduation present.

Earlier this summer a mom of one of my students shared a birthday poem that she wrote for her daughter - a powerful poem about growing and emerging into who she is becoming. I commented to her that it hit me that I have talked so often about writing as a gift and students have had experience writing it but that many probably do not get to experience writing as a gift from their parents.

I thought back to a retreat that I went to in either junior high or high school and unbeknownst to us, our parents had gathered letters from family and friends to us that they bundled into pillows with a pouch. My mom made my pillow, and it was one of those gifts that is still so meaningful today.

The parent and I started talking about the potential for weaving in a parent project to create writing as a gift for their children as graduation gifts. So many possibilities...

Reading and Writing Workshop Resources

Yesterday was the first part of the class that I am teaching on reading and writing workshop this week. I will post more on that later, but for now, I wanted to share the list of resources that I will be emailing to the teachers attending the class. They are some of my favorite resources related to literacy and workshop teaching (or that align with workshop teaching if not directly marketed as workshop resources).

There are so many valuable resources available, and more created all of the time, so this will in no way be a comprehensive list. I mentioned to the group and will reiterate tomorrow that with workshop teaching (and literacy teaching in general) that building capacity is an on-going process. I shared my journey of first reading and exploring as much as I could about workshop teaching and then moving into on-going areas that I wanted to understand more, such as writer's notebooks and conferring. The intent of this list is to have ideas for future areas of support since they will not be able to familiarize themselves with all resources at once.

The grade levels are where resources most naturally fits, but I have learned a lot from resources not targeted at my age group. If I have already talked about a listed resource on my blog, then I linked it here. I will be talking about the resources in our face-to-face meeting.

Primary Grades
Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum (from Heinemann)
Catching Readers Before They Fall, as well as the blog by the same name
A Place for Wonder
***I have not had a chance to read any of Katie Wood Ray's books, but I frequently hear her referenced when hearing about primary workshop teaching. I bet all of her resources are great.

Upper Grades
Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5 (from Heinemann)
When Writing Workshop Isn't Working
Intermediate CAFE in the Classroom DVD

Middle School

Reading Ladders

Middle School Readers

Nancie Atwell resources:
In the Middle (from Heinemann)
 The Reading Zone
Lessons that Change Writers
Reading in the Middle 
Writing in the Middle

Multi-Grade Resources

Comprehension Going Forward

Igniting a Passion for Reading

Conferring

The Book Whisperer

What Student Writing Teaches Us

The Common Core Reading & Writing Workshop Series

This new series created by Lucy Calkins and others at Columbia University's Teacher College Reading and Writing Project has an individual eDoc for kindergarten through 8th grade in reading and writing that is aligned to the new Common Core Standards. 

Day by Day *This book is an excellent resource for writing workshop once you already have a foundation and are looking to reflect and continually grow. The authors, Stacey Shubitz and Ruth Ayres created the Two Writing Teachers blog noted below, as well as Ayres' blog focusing on writing. I will be watching for Ayres' forthcoming book Celebrating Writers that will come out in 2012 from Stenhouse.

Fountas and Pinnell resources:
The Fountas & Pinnell Prompting Guide (and the Spanish version)
The Continuum of Literacy Learning Grades PreK-8 (and the PreK-2 Spanish version)


Aimee Buckner Resources:
Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook
Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader's Notebook


Jeff Anderson Resources:
Mechanically Inclined
Everyday Editing


"The Sisters" Resources:
The Daily Five
The CAFE Book

Resources to Focus on Yourself as a Writer (as well as a Teacher of Writing)
Two Writing Teachers blog
Ruth Ayres Writes blog
The Stenhouse Blog
Laurie Halse Anderson's blog (as well as other author sites and blogs)
The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America's Greatest Writing Teacher (from Heinemann)
On Writing by Stephen King


Penny Kittle resources:
Write Beside Them
Public Teaching One Kid at a Time and The Greatest Catch

What are some of your favorite literacy or workshop resources? Please comment to share some of your favorites.

Your Child's Writing Life

Lately I have been thinking a lot about education from a parenting and teaching lens. It has been fascinating to watch my daughters grow and develop, gradually approaching my comfort zone of tweens and teens. I have been paying attention to what is consistent among age groups, as well as unique differences. Pam Allyn's Your Child's Writing Life: How to Inspire Confidence, Creativity, and Skill at Every Age fit in perfectly with these wonderings.

Throughout the book what stood out the most was the sense of a patient, nurturing environment embedded in her advice and ideas. She also emphasizes that aside from all the academic benefits, active writing lives serve as an avenue to strengthen parent-child bonds, as well as preserving memories. There was a close match to my writing philosophy.

Allyn starts the book establishing why it is essential to dedicate time to write with our children and foster a love of writing. Then she talks about suggestions for different ages. Other chapters included helping kids work through challenges and stress with writing, mentor texts, and writing prompts. She weaves in experiences with her own daughters, as well as interactions with students through her experiences being a literacy advocate.

I especially loved her suggestions for setting up places to write and supply areas, seeing how it evolved and emerged with the growing ages. Though she often references books throughout all of her chapters, the chapter specifically highlighting twenty mentor texts does a great job of sharing about the books, as well as assets and how they can serve as springboards to writing. Her knowledge about books and skill of connecting them to kids was just as apparent as it was in her Pam Allyn's Best Books for Boys.

I would love for every parent to read this book and implement ideas into their lives. Yet, while reading, I kept on thinking about parents who would buy the book, and it seems like it could potentially be a fairly narrow range, depending on the community, considering that it would be parents who are literate in English and who seek parenting books.

Yet, I also like the potential the book has for teachers to share with parents, whether it is through book talking it to raise awareness or sharing ideas at parent meetings. For example, at our dual immersion school, teachers have bilingual parent meetings. This year I loved a writer's workshop evening hosted by my daughters first grade teachers. Any of Allen's ideas would be beneficial to layer in for the different age groups. It could also be a resource for other community organizations, such as Healthy Start and Head Start that focus on raising awareness for helping develop literate environments and family literacy, which seems appropriate given Allyn's own organizations, LitLife and LitWorld.

Comprehension Going Forward

In a recent Heinemann email advertisement, I heard about Comprehension Going Forward: Where We Are/What's Next, and I was instantly excited upon seeing so many well-respected contributors, as well as Harvey Daniels as the editor. I could not believe my luck when I saw it at my university library as I was skimming the literacy area for resources for the reading and writing workshop class that I will be teaching. Last night once the girls had fallen asleep and I finished another book I have been reading for my dissertation methodology, I was already tired but could not resist at least glimpsing through the book.

Right from Harvey Daniels' Welcome and Introduction I was hooked. He stated, "In these pages, sixteen distinguished authors show what comprehension instruction looks like when it is 'done right'" (p. 4). He then described a meeting in which the contributors got together to talk about comprehension and the possibility of writing the book. When reading this I was thinking about the energy and buzz that must have been surrounding the meeting, thinking it made me exited to read the book. Shortly after Daniels stated, "I've tried to edit this book so that it feels like the meeting in Denver--conversational, energetic, reflective, principled, forward-looking, and leavened with humor," (p. 6). He also mentioned that one avenue to keep this tone was by having the contributors comment on each others writing in the margins. I thought back to how I loved that aspect in Adolescent Literacy and was glad they decided to weave that component in.

As I started reading Ellin Oliver Keene's first chapter, I could instantly connect, as it focuses on a school closely examining strategy instruction and making sure that the strategies were actually enhancing understanding, rather than students just using strategies to use them. My colleague and I had very similar conversations this year, so I loved being able to catch glimpses into the other teachers' conversations, adding more depth to the voices. It was in that first chapter that I realized, I couldn't read this book as a library copy. Pen in hand and paper beside the book, I was worried that I was going to get so engrossed in the book that at any moment I was going to fly forward with the pen to underline or make a note in the margin before remembering it was not my copy. I also thought about how I would want to have my own copy with my notes right in the book for future reference.

Instead of continuing to read page by page, I started to skim through. I noticed more and more that I loved about the format of the book, as well as noticing many engaging topics. Here are some of my favorite aspects of the book's layout:

• The front flap and first page are a heavier weight of paper, containing a picture of each contributor with a quote and their signature.
• The start of each chapter has the author's signature, which I liked as a more personalized touch.
• Just as with Adolescent Literacy, I did love the comments aspect, but as I ran across them and saw how each comment was signed at the bottom with the commenter's first name, I loved this feature even more. It made it feel even more like a conversation among friends and indeed functioned to give the sense of energy and excitement about being part of the dialogue with each other.
• At the end of the book they compiled a list of the contributors' three favorite books or articles. It is in alphabetical order with and annotation and the contributor's initials at the end.

In her annotation about why Adolescent Literacy is one of her favorite books, Ellin Oliver Keene stated, "How can you not love a book that includes writing about adolescent learning from some of the most learned and practical people in the field today? I think this book sets a new standard for edited volumes. It covers a very wide range of topics and is so reader friendly and useful," (p. 256). I thought to myself that Comprehension Going Forward did an excellent job of meeting up to this new standard for edited volumes and demonstrates many of the same superior qualities as Keene was mentioning.

I have been trying really hard to not buy books until I catch up with the piles and piles of books that I already have waiting to be read. However, the farther I moved forward in the book, I realized that there were multiple links to my dissertation, the one loop hole I put for myself in being able to buy new books. From reading the books list at the end, I decided to also buy Apple and Beane's Democratic Schools, as well as Bracey's Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality.

I noticed on the Heinemann site that Comprehension Going Forward is also offered as a book study bundle. For schools doing a book study, this would be an excellent choice for k-12.