Scheduling, Scheduling, Scheduling

As maybe all workshop teachers, each year is a new opportunity to consider how to maximize the time that I have for each class period, determining how to prioritize. Over the last three years that I have taught the amount of time that I have had has varied as our school has grown and schedules have changed. The third year when trying to squeeze everything in, I ended up not including word study or a read aloud with my 6th-8th graders. Nonetheless, I wasn't happy with the shift. It was just one possible way to try to provide sufficient time for students to read and write, balanced with instruction/discussions. I continued to reflect on the impact of those decisions throughout the year.

Last year when I took a leave of absence, I let the teacher who was filling in for me know about the rationale for my decisions but also about how I discovered that I would have wanted to try to layer both back in if I was going to be in the classroom again. She met the same challenges with time though.

This summer when thinking through how we could reconfigure the schedule, one option that came up was having a common time where all students are doing their independent reading. I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand it made me nervous. It was hard enough for me and my push-in colleague to feel like we were able to confer regularly enough with all students. How would that feel with all three grade levels in one common time? Nonetheless, when I looked past that nervousness and considered the alternative, facing the time crunch, I realized that it was time to also consider the advantages of the change in the schedule.

The top advantage is that students will have a guaranteed time and space for reading independently four days a week (Friday the schedule is completely different for PBLs and Electives). Another huge benefit that I love about it is that students will get to see all of their teachers as readers and adults who care about them as readers. In addition, students receiving special education services for reading were pulled out during my reading workshop and did not have an opportunity to have choice in what they were reading during their pull-out session. Now they will be able to participate in the independent reading portion of the day and still receive their pull-out services at another time.

I also thought about how while my colleague and I won't necessarily be able to interact with each student as regularly, we will have at least three other teachers to help us. Here is the initial vision of how it will look:

• 6th, 7th, and 8th grade will each be in a classroom. The fourth teacher on our prep school team who does not have her own classroom will be in mine. The push-in teacher and I will have flexibility to rotate around the three rooms. I recently found out that we will most likely also have one special education assistant who will push-in as well.
• Our first priority will be making sure that kids are engaged and motivated to read. As a team of 5-6 adults, we will be closely observing to see who already has an established habit of reading and a high motivation versus students who can use more support to make sure that they have a book they will enjoy.
• My push-in colleague and I will be able to provide support with conferring. The great thing about conferring is that it will not require any outside planning/preparation (other than conversations about it and time to reflect) - something that we wanted to be careful about when considering how the shift would impact other teachers.
• Eventually we will layer in book clubs. Having one common reading time will allow for multi-grade face-to-face book clubs. The groupings will be more flexible. Other teachers will have the option of opting in or to continue conferring, as facilitating a book club would require time outside of the independent reading time slot in order to read a book along with the students. Other staff, such as administrators are interested in seeing if they can participate in book clubs at times as well. 

Reconfiguring how the space for students to have choice and read independently shifts other aspects of my typical routines and procedures. I have been thinking through the check-out process for books as well as status of the class. I have been thinking about goal setting and students playing a more active role through self-assessments and reflection.

I look forward to seeing how it all emerges as well as the deep reflection that is sure to come with a shift like this. Sometimes in education, it is necessary to try something even though aspects of it make us a little nervous. Looking beyond those feelings to consider how there is the potential for something great and then problem solving how the logistics of a shift can have a big pay off.

On-going Reflections & Workshop Components

Throughout the year, I am always reflecting. This year I realized that each change in order to seek refinement is not necessarily better than previous years. Instead, I found myself reflecting on what was working better, as well as aspects that I shifted away from that I needed to weave back in. For next year I will be moving in to a mentoring role as I take a leave of absence in order to fill in as a sabbatical replacement. This summer I will be working closely with the teacher who will be teaching language arts next year. Even though we are just getting started, I am already enjoying having a chance to work as a collaborative team.


Below are some components that I told her I have realized throughout the different years are most important, which we will discuss in more detail throughout the summer. These are considered some of our starting points for dialogue. 

Focus lesson:

Each day there should be a focus lesson in either reading or writing. Depending on your schedule, you may have a focus lesson for each every day, but this all depends on the amount of time that you will have for each class period. For reading, these focus lessons might focus on aspects such as: choosing books, purposes for reading, reading strategies (modelling/think alouds)... In writing the focus lessons will vary, but Nancie Atwell's resource (Lessons that Change Writers) is great because it provides a lot of support, including suggestions with examples of what she says to her students. In general, focus lessons will be on genres, looking at mentor texts, talking about the 6 Traits (on the Oregon scoring guide), focusing on a specific area, such as leads, transitions, conclusions... There will also be focus lessons where you are guiding students through writing activities with writer's notebooks and times when you are sharing your own writing with students.

Independent Reading:

During independent reading students choose a book to read, while the teacher walks around conferring with students. I recommend starting independent reading with a status of the class (from Nancie Atwell's In the Middle) to find out the title and page that each student is on. This helps give you a quick snapshot of how students are progressing. For example, you can see if they are sticking with the same book and progressing well vs. picking up a different book each day. You can also see if they are reading the same book but making very slow progress. This is also an ideal time to have book clubs at times. We can talk about setting up book clubs later, but they are a great opportunity to create a better sense of a community of readers and to see how different students interact with the same text.

Independent Writing:

Similar to independent reading, students will all be writing while the teacher goes around to confer. In the past, at times it is hard to get students used to the idea that they need to write the whole time. They are never simply "finished". This goes back to start of the year writing workshop launch, which we can talk about more together, but students should know the expectations for workshop time and know that though they have options, they should always be writing. I typically have one writing that is due that is the first priority, such as a personal narrative or an imaginative short story, but students know other options in case they finish that. You can also start independent writing with a status of the class to see which phase of writing students are starting with and the topic of their writing. This helps to see trends in their progress and growth over time.

Word Study:

I did not end up doing word study this year because of the time crunch, but I realized many students still need it, so I recommend finding a way to weave it back in this year. Again, we can talk about this when we meet.

Everyday Editing:

This is a way to focus on conventions of writing in context, but it also extends to other traits. This can be incorporated into writing focus lessons or something separate on its own. I can show you the Jeff Anderson resource texts for this from Stenhouse.

Read Aloud:

Read aloud was another area that I did not do consistently all year long for the first time this year because of some challenges with the amount of time and with switching between languages. I think that Nancie Atwell's idea of sharing a poem a day together would be a great way to have the balance of sharing a text. I can explain more about this as well as other read aloud options that I have tried.

Reading Response Letters:

Students can complete reading response letters weekly either with time provided in class or as homework. I have done both, and I can talk to you about advantages/disadvantages of both. This has seemed to be the best way to have consistent insights into students as readers. I can share with you the rubric that I used this year for their reading response, as well as talk about logistics. You can either respond to all of their letters or you can do a combination of teacher/peer responses. 

Writing Sharing/Celebrations:

This is an area that I consistently do not do as well as I would like to as schedules seem too packed, but we can talk about ideas to make sure that students are sharing and celebrating their writing on a more consistent basis. It is also fun to do class books, and when I have done this, students have enjoyed reading each other's writing during reading workshop.

What have you found to be some of the most essential components of your classrooms?

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.

Scheduling Ponderings

Last Friday was our last day of school, so I am officially in the reflecting/refining/planning for 2010-2011 school year mode. Next year will be the first year that our school will have grown through 8th grade. The exciting piece that comes along with that is that I will be teaching all three grades 6th-8th in language arts only. While I will miss social studies, I am glad that I will not have to try to fit reading, writing, and social studies into a shorter block of time.

One of the major areas that I am pondering right now is with the schedule. I am anticipating that I will have about 1 hour 12 minute blocks daily with each class. My priorities are to have time for read aloud with a reading focus lesson, writing focus lessons (writer's notebooks, Everyday Editing, traits, etc.), independent reading time, independent writing time, and word study. Then there are also other components that are not daily, such as Author Tip Tuesday, that I am trying to figure out exactly where they will fit.

Here are some initial thoughts running through my mind for options. I would love any feedback/thoughts on the different options. I am going to try to work through in my mind about what my preference is by the time I go to Heinemann's Boothbay Literacy retreat (only 33 days away, but who's counting?) because I know the retreat will be a great time to reflect on my ideas/thoughts.

Option #1: Have both independent reading and writing every day but only enough time for either a writing or reading focus lesson

• 20 min. Independent Reading
• 20 min. Read Aloud with focus lesson or Writing focus lesson
• 20 min. Independent Writing
• 10 min. Word Study

Option #2: Have focus lessons in both areas each day but only enough time for either independent reading or independent writing

• 15 min. Read Aloud with focus lesson
• 10 min. Word Study
• 15 min. Writing Focus Lessons
• 30 min. Independent Reading or Independent Writing

Option #3: Have time for everything each day but with shorter durations for some areas, such as independent reading and writing

• 10 min. Word Study
• 15 min. Read Aloud/Focus-Lesson
• 15 min. Independent Reading
• 15 min. Writing Focus Lesson
• 15 min. Independent Writing Time

My initial thought is that I would go with either option #1 or #3. It is hard to justify not having independent daily reading and writing. I have not completely ruled out #2 yet though.