Whirlwind Holiday Weekend

This last few days rather than basking in the idea of having an extra day off with a long holiday weekend, I have been going non-stop. Friday evening and Saturday I went to my once a month writing course. Early Sunday morning I caught a flight with five of my colleagues to attend a technology conference. What a weekend of discoveries!

Though draining, I got a lot out of my writing class. It has been great to see ways to improve my workshop approach and different pieces are clicking in place. It has provided an avenue for additional reflection and to analyze what is working, what needs improved, and where to focus my energy next.

On the technology side, my colleagues and I are all exhilerated with all of the possibilities and debriefing on the best way to spend our technology funds. The area that we are most excited about now is iTouch capabilities. We had originally been planning on iTouch labs as more of a long term goal; however, this weekend we are realizing that they can do what our planned short term technologies can do plus so much more. It is always so beneficial to figure out how to best utilize technology without having a plethora of different gadgets if there is one that is all-encompassing. The confrence is changing the way we view technology and what will be the best fit for our classrooms.

Later today I will be going to a Google presentation that I am also really looking forward to. Lately I have been experimenting with Google Docs, and I will be posting about why I love it later. This week my students will be setting up their Google accounts (Gmail, Blogger, etc.). I am excited to see what I will learn this afternoon that I haven't already discovered on my own.

Traits of Writing

I feel very fortunate to have received my NCTE publication right in time to notice that Ruth Culham's new Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for Middle School was just released. A class that I am taking this semester requires a trait book, whichever is appropriate for current placements. Before I noticed the ad, I would have bought the grades three and up edition.

I just finished Culham's book this weekend, and there was so much to love. First and foremost, it is a good fit pedagogically. My school emphasizes teachers basing curriculum decisions on standards, and the majority of curriculum is teacher created with the standards as a guide. Our state's writing scoring guide revolves around the traits. Thus, the traits have already been front and center in my classroom this year.

However, as with many components, this school year has been one of figuring pieces of my literacy block out, and I was excited to have so many great ideas to more effectively familiarize my students with the traits and to help them grow as writers. Some of my favorite features of the book were: Think Abouts that accompany each trait (guiding questions for students to analyze their own writing), suggested comments for conferences for each trait based on different levels of current proficiency, and mentor texts. While reading I also made a lot of notes on how I will be able to adapt the ideas for my latest venture of student blogging that I will be starting next week.

I will refer back to this book often. It complements my other favorite resources well. The lesson ideas Culham explains give me many new fresh ideas to bring the traits to life, yet I will also still rely on other resources and my own ideas to fill out my curriculum, just as Culham suggests.

A final reason for excitement is that other teachers in my building are also implementing Culham's ideas. It is always beneficial to have vertical alignment, and since her books support our state's standards so well it is easy to get teacher buy-in. I expect that before too long school-wide we will be integrating her ideas. It will be great to share ideas across grade levels and to have a common language to discuss what we are doing to foster a love of writing in our students.

On March 2nd from 3:00-3:30 EST there will be a free webcast with Culham via Scholastic. I signed up in hopes that I will be able to have someone cover my class for a half hour since it will be during student contact time at my school.

This weekend we will be discussing the traits at my class, and we are supposed to bring in mentor texts that we can use to demonstrate one of the traits. I have not decided for sure yet, but voice is one of my favorite traits, and I have been thinking of bringing in one of Simone Ekeles' books as a mentor. Another book that came to mind was The Luxe as an excellent hook (organization) by starting out at a funeral but then mentioning that the casket is empty because the body could not be found after the character supposedly drowned. I was instantly sucked in analyzing how each funeral attendant was acting and thinking about all the possibilities of what was really going on.

YES Prep

The staff at my school has been contemplating a recent Edutopia article about YES Prep. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it and would love to hear your feedback. It is always refreshing to read inspiring articles and to have discussions with my colleagues reaffirming what we already do well and to plan how we can continually improve. One of the many reasons I love my school is the level of willingness to always improve our practice.

Sheltered Instruction Presentation

Today I presented to a local group of middle school and high school teachers about sheltered instruction. My presentation is below. Of course seeing a Power Point for a presentation is never the same since the slides are more of an outline. However, if you are interested in knowing more, just leave a comment. The resources and links are all from the Oregon Department of Education, with the exception of a link to show the TCI social studies text that I use.

On a side note, this is my first time embedding with Google Docs rather than via Scribd. It seems like it will work really well, and if it really works as smoothly as it seems, I don't see any reason why I would ever need to use Scribd again when Google Docs is so easy.

Reading Workshop Reflections

Today was one of those magical days in reading workshop. Lately during the day it has felt more like spring than winter, and today we were able to crack the door open a little and have a breeze of fresh air while the students were spread out around the room with their independent reading books. As I scanned the room ready to start conferring I noticed one of my students that I have had since last year in the corner quietly reading the words aloud to his book. He was in the zone, absorbed in his book, taking steps each day to building a life-long love of reading. Around the rest of the room I saw many other reasons to celebrate. I always love conferencing with my students and seeing the wide variety of books that they are reading at any given time.

Lately, I have been thinking back a lot to Steven L. Layne's "Alliteracy Poem" and about the goal of fostering that sense of life-long reading, rather than having the majority of the focus on meeting on a standardized assessment. Seeing Reading Countess' post also made me think about the same concepts.

Reading Countess Comments on Atwell

From The Reading Zone, I saw a link to Reading Countess' recent post about standardized testing and the amount of time it takes away from regular instruction. She was lucky enough to spend a week in Maine with Nancie Atwell - what an amazing experience! I can only imagine how beneficial that would be.

What's Missing in my Writer's Workshop?

As I am starting the third quarter tomorrow, I have been mapping out this next phase of the year. I will be busy preparing students for their state writing assessment and/or work sample that they will complete in February. At the beginning of the year I decided to take the suggestion of others to teach prompt writing/writing assessment writing as a genre. I am also doing a lot of groundwork to begin student blogs with my 7th graders in the near future.

While there is much to celebrate with different components that I have incorporated and put into place this year, there are also areas where I have definitely been lacking. Although in many respects I have more fully integrated writing workshop this year than last, one area that I actually did better last year was peer revisions. Back in August and September I was trying to start all components of the writing workshop at once and realized that I needed to take a step back and firmly establish each piece of the process. One area that I stepped back from was peer revisions; however, now I am at the third quarter, and I never implemented it back in! This quarter creating more opportunities for my students to share and confer about their writing with their peers will be a major area that I will focus on improving.

I am looking forward to next year because I feel like I have been figuring out so much this year that next year I will have a smoother start from the beginning of the school year. It is always nice to feel a sense of making progress and figuring out different components.