A Place for Wonder

Although I often read books that are from younger age groups, knowing that I can adapt ideas to older grades, they are typically k-5 books. The last time (maybe even the only time) I remember reading a book targeted at the primary grades was because it was a required text for my reading endorsement coursework a couple of years ago. However, when I saw information about Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough's new book, A Place for Wonder: Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades, my interest was piqued.

I loved Georgia Heard's Awakening the Heart, and my students just finished making their own heart maps. I was eager to read more from her. Also, my oldest daughter is in first grade now, so I thought it would be fun to see insights into her literacy learning and stage of development. The book gave me plenty of inspiring ideas on how I can continue to foster and nurture the curiosity that is characteristic of my daughter's age.

In addition, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of ideas that would also positively impact my 6th and 7th graders. My margins are filled with notes intermixing ideas to use with my daughter and with my students. At home I now have fresh ideas on how to connect literacy and her love of nature. Each spring birds come to build nests in our porch, and we have always watched with curiosity as a family as the bird prepares, takes care of her babies, and when they are ready to fly off on their own. The nest is right in front of a big window in our door which can serve as a perfect observation window. In addition, she loves to look outside the front window to see animals such as squirrels. At school this quarter we will be working more on developing ideas. Last quarter we talked about the benefits of using sensory details but it is an area where my students could use more support. So many of the activities in the book will help foster this sense of tuning in to the senses as well as everyday details.

In addition, the book sparked more ideas on helping students develop research writing and the sense of wonder reminded me of Cris Tovani's lessons about wonder from her book I Read It But I Don't Get It. This led me to think about how the elements of wonder in Heard's book could also benefit reading comprehension.

I am excited to see the endless possibilities that Heard & McDonough's book offer with my daughter and students. I also look forward to sharing the book with my daughter's teacher, as I can imagine that she would be excited to see the ideas specifically targeted to her class. They ideas match the philosophy of our school and I can picture them being seemlessly integrated into her classroom set-up.

Wall Space

As Stacey previously mentioned, I have a lot of wall space to display student work. I was excited to display some of their work Friday evening. I had a long day at the school by staying late, but I left energized knowing that my students' work was finally up.

(Picture temporarily down - I realized that the photo I took shows one of the Heart Maps with the students name clearly showing in the picture, so I am going to take a different picture to add later.)
I put all of their heart maps above the counter/shelving. I wanted to have them in a location where they were very visible, yet not down low where someone might accidentally bump them. Students put a lot of thought into their heart maps, and I did not want them to get torn or scuffed up inadvertently.

 

Originally I was going to create our bulletin board for social studies, but then I thought about how it was a perfect opportunity for students to be involved with the creation. For each section, I post an essential question. Then students create visuals for areas that I direct them to represent key concepts from our chapters. The first one shows an introductory geography challenge to start out our unit. I created a lot of this, but a couple of students filled in the map.

The second section is a better representation of what it will usually look like. Students created a visual for four main areas that we studied in which the Roman Empire continues to influence modern life. They completed the visuals in small groups.

I look forward to utilizing other areas of wall space to display more student work. Friday I also set up an outline for our time line and students will be creating different dates to add to the time line as we move through our unit.

Monday Musings

Today I noticed Ruth's Monday Musings, and pretty soon after Shelly had her post up as well. Here goes my musings for the day:

*Today I was complemented on my lesson preparation. I am still trying to balance feeling prepared with spending too much time in my classroom on the weekends. I always keep on thinking if I just spend one more extra day in the classroom I will be set up for the year on another area. While this is true it seems like another new area of need pops up to press me to wanting to spend another "just one more day". It always feels so good to get one more level of organization in place or to feel just a little bit more prepared on a unit. Eventually additional time in my current position and classroom should lead me toward the pay off when I will have many pieces established that I am still working out now.

*I am so grateful to have a grade level teaching partner this year. This is the first chance that I have ever been able to really work closely with a teaching team. It has been so nice, and I could not have asked for a better fit. Best of all we are able to laugh together a lot, whether it is to share celebrations or to work through our challenges with humor.

*Today I realized that I don't have to keep moving through a news writing genre study that I had started with my 6th and 7th graders. Instead I am going to take a couple of steps back to better establish the workshop model and what it should look and sound like. I am using ideas from Ruth's post to create classroom blog posts and classroom charts on the process. We will still continue along with the genre study, just at an altered time-line. Even though it is always hard to decide whether to pause and take a step back or to keep moving along, in this case I think it will be well worth it. In addition, I have my reflective notes written down so that next year I will remember to add in this pieces in my yearly outline and have a smoother start to begin with. My students also started to work on their heart mapping today. I had wanted to do this for a long time but somehow forgot. Last week I ran across the idea and emailed myself a reminder to add it into my agenda. However, I will be using it to inspire any type of writing, rather than just poetry (as in Heard's book).

*Yesterday while at school I remembered to check out Nancie Atwell's video. What a special treat! She has always been so inspiring. Today I was reflecting on how much I try to fit into my day. Every piece is "essential", closely aligned with my philosophy of best practice, but I may need to incorporate some pieces on alternating days because there is not quite enough time in the day to incorporate it all.

*I loved my first TCI lesson in social studies. We started out with a geography challenge, which was a perfect follow-up to our start of the year geography intro on a world-wide scale. Now students are zeroing in on the specific geographic area that we will be studying. It was fun to see the level of interaction that the program incorporates. I can't wait to teach more of the lessons, but know that it will require more planning on Spanish weeks since not all of the materials are available in both languages. It will be one of my favorite parts of English weeks though.

*I am still trying to balance out the best way to have my environmental print fully reflect the language of the week, while also being time efficient. That is enough to be its full own post though.