PD Cycle: The Common Core, Reading Exemplars, and Writers' Craft

Today we tackled several subjects at once in our new PD cycle: we investigated the CCSS demands on readers; we explored the reciprocity between reading and writing growth; and we practiced using the first (of many!) alternative tools for teaching the craft of writing sophisticated sentence structure.  All in 100 minutes.  Really.  Check out the process:

First, we annotated sentences taken from several CCSS exemplar texts, noticing how the sentences worked as well their demands upon readers (we also guessed at their grade level band.)

Little Women is a 6-8 exemplar

A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder is an exemplar for grades 2-3

After reflection and the big "reveal," we looked at some of the research on effective grammar instruction (hint: it's not how we were taught) and then finally got to play with a few sentences ourselves.  The strategy we looked at this week was sentence -- and paragraph -- unscrambling.  The below example is from the first page of another CCSS exemplar, The Black Stallion. The teams of teachers came up with several different versions, but the three below most clearly show how writers can play with the placement of clauses to create different effects.  Which do you think is most effective?

Countdown to Book Club

Recognizing that one of the most important aspects of building a culture of literacy within a school is to have teachers who not only love to read themselves, but also know YA literature and how to get the right titles into kids' hands, several of us started a faculty book club this year at Everett.  And it is a blast!  Our next meeting is coming up -- we're reading R.J. Palacio's huge hit Wonder -- and this time around we decided to invite some students to join us.  We figured: what better way is there to show our students how lifelong readers really interact with books and with each other than to bring them along to our book club?

I've invited Moriama, a 6th grader in my homeroom buddy's class.  She has a fair amount of reading to do in the next few days, so we set some goals using a little bit of math and a lot of post-its.  I think this method of goal-setting makes really tangible what she wants to accomplish.  I'm giddy just thinking about how much fun we're going to have once she finishes!

Peer Revision and Editing

One of the key tenets of Writers Workshop is that students should have authentic and meaningful ways to share their writing, both during the process and upon publishing.  Peer editing is therefore a natural fit, but all teachers know that it takes a lot of structure for it to create academic value.

 For her her narrative unit, Ms. Florita created a revision and editing guide that asked students to work with their peers' stories using a checklist of the objectives they had been working on that week.  Look how the addition of color-coded underlining increased the rigor and held the students accountable to making meaningful revisions.

Getting lost in a book

Hidden in Ms. Giudici's room

We know from research on adolescents and motivation that student choice over seating position is almost as powerful as choice over reading material.  Here one of our students finds a creative way to get cozy with her book.  Below is another favorite.

Ms. Hefty's readers

Alignment

8th Grade ELA

6th Grade SLA

We're always working on alignment -- vertical, horizontal, and across languages (since we are so lucky to have Spanish Language Arts classes at Everett) -- so I try to snap pictures when I see evidence that teachers have created curriculum together.  The above examples show the RACS test (in slightly different iterations) in play in English and Spanish, in 6th and 8th grade.  Notice how the rigor improves as the students move through our school.

Word Wonder in Action

Word Work PD Gallery Walk

Boggle board in Ms. Florita's classroom

Students use these slips to create their words!

In our most recent PD Cycle, we've been studying Word Work (vocabulary-building) through the Balanced Literacy framework.  We latched on to the idea, as expressed by Patricia Cunningham in her book What Really Matters for Vocabulary, that just as there is such thing as a "people person," there is such thing as a "word person," someone who loves meeting new words and loves interacting with them.  Since we know we can never teach as many words as our kids need to learn, we want to develop a building full of word people.  Step one is instilling a sense of "word wonder" in our classrooms.  Check out Ms. Florita's boggle board!  The students can compete in the game whenever they are finished with their independent work, and once every two weeks, Ms. Florita picks a winner and reshuffles her board.  The best part is the prize for winning: a book of the students' choice, ordered using grant money from Amazon.com.  (Overnight delivery free!  It's immediate gratification and a great way to build our reading culture as well).

Puppy = Reading Intervention?

It might not be systematic, replicable, or scalable, but it sure is a beautiful thing when it happens!  Does anyone besides Ms. Ginsburg have a puppy he or she can donate to the cause?  Cartez, Gabe, and David have never been so happy reading... (and this was voluntary and impromptu, during recess, instead of playing outside!)

Interacting with Standards-Based Grades

In this video, D'Airic explains his reflections on his work so far this quarter, using his standards-based progress report as a guide.