Vocabulary Their Way

I first heard about the Words Their Way series when I went on exchange to Mexico and had the opportunity to take a class from a visiting Western Washington State University professor, who also exposed me to my first experience with a writer's notebook. This year I tried it out for the first time with my 6th graders. While I am still working out some kinks and getting myself organized, I was pleased with the results. Having students receive instruction at their level was empowering for them. I pre-ordered Vocabulary Their Way: Word Study with Middle and Secondary Students as soon as I heard about it.

When I started reading it I was in the mind frame of it influencing ways to improve the way I was implementing Words Their Way, but I ended up realizing that it will encompass so much more. First, I was thrilled to see that there is a new upper-level spelling inventory, along with many other assessments to closely analyze older students' vocabulary awareness. This week will be our last week of summer school. I have around half of my incoming seventh graders and over half of my incoming sixth graders, so I am going to give them the inventory this week to give me a jump start for preparations for the start of the year.

In addition, it gave many content area specific suggestions that I will consider and weave into my social studies curriculum. This year vocabulary was a part of my social studies units, but I was not always as consistent with the vocabulary as I would have liked. Since all of my students are learning in two languages vocabulary is a huge key to their success. I am glad that this resource will help me strengthen that area of my instruction and build in daily vocabulary pieces in the social studies portion of our day. I am going to share this resource with my team teacher because of all the specific science and math suggestions.

I am glad to have found yet another valuable resource that is a good fit for my personal teaching philosophy. Bit by bit I am piecing together what my literacy and social studies blocks will look like next year. It is so exciting to blend together what worked well last year with suggestions to improve the areas where I reflected improvement was needed.

Making History Mine Wrap-Up

There is so much more that I could still say about Making History Mine, but I am going to wrap up my comments with a few more favorites. Lately, a lot of my resources have been for younger grades that I consider how to adapt or they are for a broad range such as k-12. I appreciated that this was for my specific grade range because then there were more ideas that I could use directly as they are. Cooper's understanding of middle schoolers is apparent throughout the book and reflected in the types of activities she suggests. I loved this quote, "Part of our job as middle school teachers is to know that our students are works in progress--to appreciate and challenge them for who they are right now, all the while keeping an eye out for who they might become tomorrow and next year and five years from now" (p. 93). This idea of both present, short term, and long term components was a clear goal. Cooper's curriculum is not only targeted to students being successful in their grade level curriculum but also as productive citizens. (This concept is also emphasized in Gallagher's Readicide with Article of the Week.)

I appreciated the framework explained in the text book, as well as all of the practical applications suggested for a wide range of social studies themes. I am planning on skimming back through the book later with my state's social studies curriculum maps and noting example activities as reference so that I will remember which pages to refer back to. Of course, it is set up as a resource to create similar activities with different content areas, but she not only explained the concepts, she also had examples of helpful resources that will help with the content in general that I do not want to forget about.

I expect Making History Mine to have a big impact on my social studies teaching. Now I will approach the year with the concept that my students are historians. I know I will refer back to the book often as I plan this summer and once the school year is underway.

Making History Mine Literacy Links

One component of Making History Mine that stood out close to the beginning of the book and came up over and over again was the integration of literacy into social studies content. This is pertinent in a time when teacher education programs such as the one I attended emphasize the importance that all secondary teachers are literacy teachers, not just the language arts teachers. When I chose my language arts power standards for next year I specifically grouped some standards that I would teach in social studies because they were a natural fit.

Cooper suggested integrating concepts I had already thought of (research and persuasion) but also seamlessly weaves in multiple other reading and writing activities starting at the beginning of the year when she introduces a poem that sends a valuable message that we can all make history (2). After explaining the way she presents and has students interact with the poem she gives her rationale, "This kind of activity--combining reading comprehension, literary awareness, historical context, and critical thinking--enables us to view the nuts-and-bolts details of history through a longer lens" (3). In much the same way, Cooper suggest opportunities to use reading and writing skills to help students be more competent historians.

The activities Cooper mentions will not only help students within the social studies context, but to be more well-rounded people with a lasting impact on their life. For example, the types of activities Cooper uses for students to gain a strong command of historical documents will transfer over into analyzing other reading genres. She blends primary documents with historical fiction to bring the content alive, realizing that both genres can have a great impact on students (9). She also talks about "unpacking language" in social studies documents (44). In additions, she has students do activities such as interring from a list of dates (70), yet another important literacy skill.

Later, Cooper mentions utilizing a text to help students recognize the way real historians "gather evidence to make an argument that often doesn't sound like an argument. They're almost fooling you" (33). This supports persuasive writing well, and I like the concept that she brings up time and time again the idea of "real" historians, making it a perfect fit for my literacy block where students will think about what real writers and readers do as well. Later in the book she has further ideas with opinion, persuasion, and reasoning and argument analysis as well (such as 40, 52-53). She also has a full chapter on research with sufficient scaffolding to help students successfully research and analyze a topic effectively (129-159).

Cooper's experience as a language arts teacher and strong understanding of literacy is apparent throughout the book. Her suggestions closely align with other mentors in the field that I value. For example, I often thought of the way her work complemented Nancie Atwell's by presenting one of Lincoln's speeches in a similar way to Atwell's poetry presentation (58-59) and Kelly Gallagher's resources including clearing up confusion (2). Making History Mine is a great addition to my teacher resource library. It easily fits with other resources, while bringing its own unique ideas.

Making History Mine Overview

I originally thought Making History Mine: Meaningful Connections for Grades 5-9 by Sarah Cooper focused on current events since I found out about it because of a conversation on the topic that also featured Kelly Gallagher's new Article of the Week video. When I received the book I was even more thrilled that it offered tips of integrating current events and so much more. Right now the full book is available to browse on-line on the Stenhouse website.

In my current position I will be teaching reading, writing, and social studies to middle schoolers. While I have a lot of experience and training with literacy and language learning, I have not had as much exposure to social studies education even though I always loved history. Earlier this year I started looking at my state's social studies curriculum maps for 6th-8th grade, and this summer I started more in depth planning to narrow down the standards to power standards and develop guiding questions and big ideas. Recent staff development helped me refine this process.

I still have a lot more work to do before school starts in the fall, so Cooper's book came at an opportune time and it is a perfect fit for the planning process that my school is already going through. Cooper explains, "The best answer I have found is to teach under the shelter of broad themes and global concepts, conveying ideas that connect content across topics and grade levels. With this approach, students are not focusing on the tiny details of history, although facts remain crucial to effective argumentation. Instead, adolescents see history through the eyes of individuals and then move outward to larger implications and patterns" (xi). By planning my 6-8 grade curriculum in such a manner I will have a scope and sequence that builds upon and supports the big ideas from one year to another. I will also be working with the 4/5th grade teachers to vertically align with them as well.

Making History Mine thoroughly explains seven components that Cooper thinks are conductive to creating students who think like historians and gain life-long lessons through the social studies content. I have too much excitement about this book to limit my reflections to just one post (it would get way too long), so watch back later in the week to see more thoughts on this great resource.

End of the Year Closure Ideas

It is hard to believe that we have already been out of school for almost a month, and tomorrow is the officially half way point for our four-week summer school. Each year I have closure planned, but often times the rush to wrap up loose ends makes it hard to complete all of the components on the final days that I would like to ideally. Also, the end of the year always seems to sneak up. Even though I know it is coming, it always seems surreal when it actually arrives.

Recently, I have enjoyed seeing what other teachers do for the end of the year, and I am taking notes for next year to make sure that I start planning well in advance for a better sense of closure as a classroom community, rather than just completing all of our academic projects.

At the end of this year I was reflecting on how extremely lucky I am to be in a school with such supportive families. I have really appreciated all of the interactions with families. I love how Stella writes a thank you letter to her families and gave them a DVD picture slideshow this year. My daughter's teacher did that this year for kindergarten graduation and gave each family a copy. As a parent I loved that gift, and would like to do something similar for my families next year.

On the student side, I love how Stacey writes a personalized note to her students in response to their end of the year reflections, making sure to include a hope and dream for each of her students. In the article that Stacey wrote for the Responsive Classroom newsletter and linked in her blog post, she mentions, "When I sat down to write them, I realized that I knew some of my students better than others. Some were easy to write for, but others were a bit of a struggle, even though I’d been with them for a year. So this project also helped me set a new goal for myself—to spend more time throughout the upcoming year focusing on each of my students as individuals." This is a good reminder for every teacher to take the time throughout the school year to reflect on making sure that he/she has made a good connection with each student, and something that I will improve on next year as well.

Stenhouse Tuesday Quick Tips

I have come to look forward to Quick Tip Tuesday on Stenhouse's blog. Just this weekend I was looking back on some of their older posts since I only recently started following the blog. Today they did a post that they are looking for feedback on how teachers utilize their tips. I was thrilled to see that they are even going to give the first 5 commenters who tell how they used one of their tips will win a free Stenhouse book of their choice!

Which Stenhouse book would you choose if you were able to pick any?

It would be hard for me to choose. This year I have bought six new Stenhouse resources, and I loved them all (I am still in the process of reading the sixth). There are many others on my wish list or that catch my eye. Below are some of them.

I am excited to see this upcoming resource and the blog tour that will accompany the release.


Since I loved Gallagher's Readicide, I am sure that I would get a lot out of Deeper Reading and Teaching Adolescent Writers.



When I was visiting schools to look for good fits for my first teaching job out of college, one of my friends and I visited a classroom using socratic seminars. I always wanted to know more, but I have never read a resource specifically about the process, so one of the archive tips on the subject caught my attention this weekend. I am sure that I would learn a lot from Copeland's resource. (A teacher also mentioned use of the seminars on the recent current events discussion.)


When I saw Teamwork featured on the blog, I instantly added it to my wish list.

Writing Inspiration

Earlier this spring I started typing up the first part of my YA novel. However, I have not been writing in it consistently. Earlier I mentioned that I wanted to write a lot in June; however, then I signed up for summer school and I am still in my busy school mode. Once summer school is over I will be focusing a lot on planning for next year, and I will have to make a point of carving out time to focus on my personal goal of writing a complete novel, regardless of whether or not it eventually gets published.

This week a summer school discussion with my students gave me more motivation to put writing my book as a priority. For summer school I am teaching units from Inside, and my students had just watched a clip from the digital library about Gary Soto. One of the analysis questions was something like: "What do you think are some of the challenges that authors face?" While we were reflecting as a group one of my students asked how long it takes to write a book. I explained how there are a lot of factors, including whether or not the writer is a full-time writer or a writer who has a full time career.

The career comment reminded one of my students about how I mentioned that Ellen Jensen Abbott wrote Watersmeet with her students in mind and how I said that I was attempting to write my first novel. He wanted to know how my novel was going, and all of the others in the group started in with a load of questions too.

Because of this discussion I thought about how balancing time between writing and planning this summer will not only help me fulfill a personal goal, but it will also have great benefits for my classroom. Changing the discussion from any book to a book that I am trying write instantly captured their attention. I can also model for them to explain how I initially got my ideas, how my ideas evolved throughout the process, how I am taking my life experiences and twisting them into fiction (including inspiration from myself around their age through my old diaries), the role of my writer's notebook, and my revision process. I can also model for them receiving constructive criticism and have them take ownership in the final product by providing input. I am excited about the teaching points working on my own YA novel will add to our classroom community.