A Day with Matt Glover

On Thursday I spent the day with Matt Glover who has written a couple of books about kindergarten writers. Already Ready is a book he collaborated on with Katie Wood Ray who wrote About the Authors on which we base our writer's workshop format. Matt has been a teacher of young children, a director of an early childhood school, and his writing focuses on young children. He is what I would call an expert on growing young writers. There are three things he talked about that I would like to share with you; honoring approximations, nudging vs. pushing, and reading like a writer.



My students are 5 and 6 year olds, and while they are very smart I have to remember that they've only been alive 1/6 the time that I have. That means that I've had 6 times the experiences, learning, and time to get to where I am right now. I expect them to write and spell like 5 and 6 year olds and not like an expert. A lot of times even grown ups don't write and spell like experts. Very few adults I know can bang out a new text and have no spelling or grammar errors. While kids are writing I don't want the fear of messing up to stop them from writing. I want them to feel comfortable enough with their own abilities to try any word they've heard. Then after they feel like they can try risks and their writing shows their willingness to try without the fear of mistakes I can find teaching points within their writing and give them little nudges.

Nudging writers is seeing what they are "using but confusing" in their writing. For example, if I see a kid is putting periods all over the place I can use that as a teaching point and we'll practice using a period only at the end of a sentence. Compared to a push, nudges are within the kids' comfort zones and it's something they are going to be able to do successfully, maybe with teacher's guidance at first, but then independently.

I am so lucky. When I came back on Tuesday I asked all of my kids if they felt like writers. They ALL raised their hands and said that they all felt like writers. This is a huge advantage! With these writers we can go ahead and keep reading like writers. We can notice what professional authors do in their books and try to use it in our own writing. Some of the things we'll be observing in books this year are onomatopoeia, the language of writers, listing books vs. story books, how the writers use the words to show feelings, and so much more. Now should I be worried that when I asked if the kids thought I was a writer they all said no? Might need to work on that.

Assessments: Why I Loathe and Love Them

It's assessment time and I have been assessing my test off (switch the words around... it's OK to groan). OS scores and DRA's and more OH MY! Teachers this time of year are ready to pull their hair out, but with the little time and energy we have left for anything other than testing our hair is falling out on it's own. With the humidity lately it's hard to tell, but the ponytail is skinnier than it used to be. Wish I could say the same for other things. Moving on.

Formal tests are a necessary evil, but why?

Shouldn't informal, fly-by assessments do the trick and tell us what we need to know about the kids' development and future teaching points? Yes and no. The effort we put forth at this time of year to meet with each student individually and run through the battery of tests which a group of bureaucrats deemed important (I love that part!) actually force us to check and recheck what we know about each particular child's literacy development. Every year I am actually surprised to find one or two darling children who are lacking in one or two areas when through observation and conversations with them during our literacy block I would never have thought they needed help in that particular area. Time invested now also pays off later in the year when we can fly through the testing once - or twice - more and see that our teaching has taken hold and the students are progressing. We can also see who isn't and begin the necessary interventions so no one is left behind.
All sarcasm put aside it is nice to have hard data in my hands so I know specifically what pieces I need to focus on so all go forward. At least we can use the Observation Survey created by Marie Clay. I've heard through the grapevine that other school districts use assessments that are much less meaningful in showing what needs to be taught and they end up using the OS anyway.
Here's a brief explanation from a Reading Recovery website. http://www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/accountability/observation/index.asp
Throughout the year I will also do informal assessments with kids in flexible groups to see if they are progressing. This is another argument for the success of formal assessments. I can call groups of kids to meet with me by looking at exactly what they need. Say most of the class has mastered the connection between letters and sounds except for about 4 or 5 kids. I know exactly who they are and what sounds they are having problems with so I can really focus my lesson on what they have and what they need. No time is wasted and the kids get an individualized lesson. Win - win!
Yes, to complete these assessments is a huge investment of time and energy (and the Diet Coke consumption is no joke), but in the end the information I can get from the data is invaluable to my teaching and the differentiation for the students.

Retelling

We are now studying Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales. During this unit of study we practice retelling stories quite a bit. Why is retelling important? Retelling is a core component of comprehension. Reading without comprehending, or understanding what is read, is basically decoding. When retelling a story we focus on the story elements, details of the story, and making sure all the events are in order. When reading with your child ask what their favorite part was and then what happened after their favorite part. Ask about the characters in the book, where the characters were, or what they were doing. For higher level thinking ask what would happen if a character was missing or the setting would change. Reading is always better when you understand what is going on.

We Met a Real Author Today

Today we met Jeff Savage. He is a real author and he writes nonfiction books about famous sports figures. He showed us his first book about Jim Abbott, a Major League pitcher with one hand. He told us he writes at home and it took him only a week to finish writing his first book, but a year to get it published. Jeff's wife is a teacher and he has two sons. Jeff also has a press pass and can go to any sporting event for free. He gets to meet a lot of professional athletes. Here is his website. http://www.jeffsavage.com/

Back to School Night

Tuesday, September 22nd was our Back to School Night. We talked about all kinds of things like curriculum, the workshop approach, and reading 20 minutes a night.
Parent / Teacher conferences are October 22nd and 23rd. I will tell you all about your child's assessments and show you things I will teach them this year. We will also talk about home readers and specific things you can do at home to support my teaching.
Please register as a volunteer so you can help out with holiday parties, field trips, computer lab, or anytime in the classroom. Here's the link: http://www.springbranchisd.com/partners/part_dev/volunteers/volunteers.htm Anytime you come on campus please sign in in the office. This is the best way we know how to monitor all people on our campus and keep our kids safe.
The tardy bell rings at 8:00. Any change in transportation needs to be done with a handwritten note before noon.

Thanks for being a great part of the kids' education.

Aerial ABC's

I just found this cool article that showcased the alphabet found in pics taken with Google Maps. Some of the letters seemed to be a stretch, but they are discernible. Here's the link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/5757548/The-Google-Maps-alphabet-UK-an-A-to-Z-of-the-British-Isles.html

According to the article it took 15 hours to find all the letters and I think, if I read correctly, that they were found in the UK.

There are similar alphabets like the Butterfly Alphabet by Kjell B Sandved and Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson where letters can be found in everyday objects. This reminds me of a project I had in the one photography course I took at Texas Tech. At the outset of the project we had to turn in 3 magazine pictures that we planned to find and reproduce in everyday objects. It was one of my favorite assignments.

I can't wait to show this to my students on Tuesday.

School's In Session

School has officially started and we are off with a bang! What a wonderful start to this school year. I have 18 students in my class and each one has a marvelously unique personality.

This week we got to know each other through experiences such as cooperation games, brainstorming activities, tours of the school, graphing exercises, and beginning of what will become our basic routines.

We also started earning "Happy Tickets". These are red tickets like you might find at a carnival. On Mondays the students are given 5 tickets to start the week. They can earn more tickets throughout each day for good behavior. This really encourages the positive behavior we look for in our kids. If there is an occasion when a child misbehaves they might have to surrender a ticket. On Fridays the kids can use their tickets to visit the treasure box, sign up for special privileges in the classroom, or contribute to a group reward such as extra recess or a game day.

This upcoming week our theme will be All About Me. We will be getting to know each other even better.

What a great week!