Write Like This

Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts made me even more excited to be going back to my 6-8 language arts classroom next fall. As with his other books I loved his voice and convictions related to teaching. This is a nice complementary text to Penny Kittle's Write Beside Them, one of my favorites. Both of the books heavily focus on the value of teachers writing with their students.

Gallagher organized Write Like This by starting with a rationale chapter highlighting the importance of writing instruction, followed by six chapters explaining how to scaffold specific writing purposes, a chapter about revision and editing, and a concluding chapter. Each of the writing purpose chapters provided multiple layers of support in order to familiarize students with writing related to the purpose that students would be able to connect to in their everyday lives (as well as in their future lives as productive citizens). I loved that the ideas will provide me with a lot of different ways to explore in my own writer's notebook over the summer.

The final chapter highlighted Gallagher's ten core values that have emerged over time throughout his teaching career. Gallagher stated, "If I sit and think about how daunting it is to walk into a classroom with the intention of teaching wave after wave of adolescents how to become better writers, it can be overwhelming. One way I avoid becoming overwhelmed is by consciously returning to my core beliefs--the philosophical underpinnings, if you will, of my approach to teaching writing," (p. 223). I agree with Gallagher, it is energizing as a teacher to return to core beliefs, to think about our convictions and our students and focus on what really matters in education. I continue to be inspired by Kelly Gallagher and am excited that I still have another one of his books, Teaching Adolescent Writers, on my TBR shelf.

Deeper Reading

From the time I read Kelly Gallagher's Readicide, I knew that he was an educator whose writing would always catch my attention. It was a pleasure to finally read another of his books, Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12, and I am excited that I have a couple more of his books waiting to be read because once again I loved Gallagher's voice.

Last year, a colleague and I talked frequently about moving students toward a deeper level of understanding. As such, I closely connected with concepts I read about in Comprehension Going Forward this summer. As the title implies, Gallagher's book is another great contribution to an on-going conversation about moving beyond surface-level comprehension.

At the start of the book, he discusses baseball as a metaphor for the way that adolescents read. Drawing from experiences with his daughters, comparing their understanding of the game to his own, as well as watching them develop their knowledge-base over time, Gallagher made connections to adolescents as readers. Referring to his daughters and baseball, he stated, "They now read the game at a fairly sophisticated level, but they were taught how to do so. They did not acquire their skill spontaneously or randomly," (p. 3). The book continued on to explore implications for teachers to scaffold the way students read.

Published in 2004, this is one of Gallagher's earlier books; however, it is still highly relevant. While reading, I frequently thought about current discussion about the CCSS emphasizing a need for deep understanding. Gallagher's book is a blend of anecdotes, rationales for needs, and strategies to address needs. He explains each of the strategies and provides specific examples of many. It is evident that his suggestions are based on close-observation of students and intentional teaching over time. I have frequent notes in the margin of how I will implement his suggestions.

It felt great to finally read a professional development book for pleasure again. This break I am looking forward to reading more of the books that I have been wanting to read for  a long time.

State Testing Reflections - Stem Questions

In my first post in this series I talked about how it is essential to help students transfer their everyday reading skills to state tests. Some students are able to make this shift on their own, while others benefit from having some classroom time spent understanding the testing genre. I also previously mentioned how my state has blueprints and specifications, which includes stem questions for each of the reading strands, making it easier to help familiarize students with the test language.

Our director originally brought up the idea of having a 5 question quiz each week to go along with our read aloud using the stem question format. I liked this idea in that it would give students opportunities to get how the tests are set-up without using too much of classroom time on test prep activities. I think it ended up working really well for some of my colleagues; however, I struggled with implementing it consistently. It was hard to know exactly where I would be in the read aloud book on the day designated for the quiz. I also knew that hearing a book prior to answering questions and reading the text while answering the questions were two different skills.

Lately I have been reflecting on the possibility of having a text of the week. I got the idea from Kelly Gallagher's article of the week. I thought that I could adapt his original idea to include stem questions. I would be able to frame the text as they would be in state testing as well. Although this would incorporate many more texts than current events. It would include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, as well as texts that match up well with reading to perform a task.

This summer I will continue to think through this idea, but I know that in one form or another, I am going to try it out next year. Yet another example of King's concept of "two previously unrelated ideas [coming] together."

Social Studies Focus and World History for Us All

Over the summer I have spent quite a bit of time reading, reflecting, and planning. When I realized that the school year was coming right up, I broke down my to-do list and decided to split up the content areas I teach into days. This week when I go into the school for a couple days I will be focusing on social studies. I got a head start last Friday by spending an afternoon at the university I attended in the curriculum library skimming middle school social studies textbooks.

I already know that I will be using a lot of ideas from Making History Mine, and that I want to use Kelly Gallagher's idea of Article of the Week (from Readicide and his DVD Article of the Week). I will be skimming through more of the examples of the ones he assigned to his 10th and 12th graders this year as I prepare. Even though he does this during language arts time, I will include it in my social studies curriculum. However, since I will teach both subjects, the two content areas will blend together in some aspects such as this.


I have been using my state's curriculum maps to match resources and ideas to our content standards. Since I do not have a textbook, I was excited to find World History for Us All, an on-line resource with lesson plans and supporting texts, which is a project of San Diego State University in cooperation with the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA. I love the ideas behind the curriculum, as well as the three essential questions and seven key themes. It is perfect because our school is focusing on developing essential questions for each of our content areas. I am excited to use the video History of the World in Seven Minutes that is available on their home page. I still need to go through each individual lesson, but from what I have seen so far, I will use this resource a lot. The only drawback is that it is all in English, so I will not be able to use it as easily on Spanish weeks (although I can replicate the concepts in Spanish).

I am looking forward to a couple of productive days to map out my social studies curriculum more.

Article of the Week

Kelly Gallagher's DVD Article of the Week is an excellent resource for teachers who were inspired by the concept that he presented in Readicide and would like to share it with their colleagues. The video format gives a chance to help other teachers visualize the concept. It shows Gallagher explaining why he started doing Article of the Week, as well as him and his students going through the process. In the short, concise DVD teachers can see why the process is beneficial and how to implement it successfully.

Even though the information presented on the DVD was familiar for me since I have already read the book, it was still beneficial to see it in action. Aside from seeing Gallagher's role as a guide to building comprehension and discussing text structure and features, I also loved seeing his classroom. I always love to skim the big picture of teachers' rooms with all the various components coming together, such as: student layout, bulletin boards, and organization.

The DVD comes with a workshop guide to facilitate the intent of using the DVD in professional development settings.

Excellent Professional Conversation

Earlier this spring I read Kelly Gallagher's Readicide. One of the ideas that really made sense to me was his thoughts on how it is essential that we have consistent support for students to build awareness of the world around them and world events so that they can develop into productive citizens. He discussed his article of the week where he assigns an article every Monday that students turn in Friday. They need to demonstrate that they thought deeply about the article. I have already been thinking about how I will integrate this into my curriculum as I develop how my language arts/social studies block of time will look next year.

Today I just found out via the Stenhouse blog that there is currently a conversation between Kelly Gallagher and Sarah Cooper about current events. It could not have come at a more perfect time to give me food for though in order to process and plan for 09-10. The format of the interaction, voice thread, is something new for me. I was just mentioning how blogging has opened up a great professional development opportunity for me, and I am thrilled that Stenhouse is offering such a unique experience for free and allowing others to jump into the conversation.

Even though it is just getting started, I have already got a lot of ideas. Gallagher's comments either reminded me of what I had agreed with so much from his book or helped give me a clearer picture of how he formats his class. I am excited that Cooper is coming from a middle school background. Here is what has been most helpful for me so far:
*I love Sarah's idea of having students present every Friday on a rotating, individual basis. She said 2-3 students present each Friday ending up to having 3-4 total presentations in a year. Since this is a formal presentation, not only are students learning about current events and developing valuable background knowledge for deeper reading comprehension as Gallagher mentions, but they are also learning to be good speakers. In addition, they learn to discuss current events with their class. Students are actively engaged and the teacher only steps into the conversation for clarifications when needed. I can find so many best practices in this seemingly ordinary classroom routine. We used to do current events in high school, and I never realized just all that it could do for me.
*Kelly mentioned that the math department at school is coming on board by doing a graph of the week. Students are reading every week through a math lens. I can't wait to mention this to my new teaching partner who will be responsible for science and math.
*It was great to have a summary of article of the week again. While it was one of the main ideas that stood out in the book, it was a good reminder of exactly what the main purpose was and what it looks like. I was reminded that I love that he focuses on who the intended audience is and what the author's main purpose is. This links back to not only good reading skills but also to being aware of their intended audience when they are writing.
*I will be checking out a site that Gallagher mentioned using as an article resource (izzit.org/events), keeping in mind that he gathers his articles from multiple sources.

Both Gallagher and Cooper have excellent ideas of ways to integrate current events on a regular basis. Their ideas span across many curricular areas to scaffold student growth and awareness in reading, writing, social studies, and speech. I can't wait to see the rest of the conversation. I am definitely intersted in Gallagher's new DVD Article of the Week that will be released mid-May and Cooper's Making History Mine. Because I can see a lot of value in what both educators are doing, I will be thinking about how I can incorporate their ideas into my curriculum.