Today was the first day of the International Reading Association (IRA) annual conference in Chicago.  I left my hotel room before 7:30 am to board the shuttle bus to the McCormick Place Convention Center.  When I got there I waited in a long line, that moved surprisingly fast, to register and get my program.  Up until this morning I hadn’t thought much about what sessions I wanted to attend.  I was spending most of my time working on my own presentation scheduled for earlier this afternoon or writing up lesson plans for the three days I would be out of school. More...

Professional Development-Good and Better

I’ve recently had a great experience doing professional development using Schoolwide’s Testing Fundamentals material with grades 3, 4 and 5 in an elementary school in the Bronx. Much of my previous work was centered around a professional development model whereby I met with a group of teachers on a grade, we discussed what was currently going on in their classrooms (either about reading, writing or testing), and then we discussed what to focus on during the lesson I would be modeling and they would be observing in one of their classrooms. After the lesson we would debrief and plan for the lessons they would be teaching until my next visit. More...

I have been rethinking my relationship with parents as I read, Becoming Teammates, Teachers and Families as Literacy Partners by Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, a National Council of Teachers (NCTE) publication. I am noticing a subtle change in the way I am willing to frame the conversation at the same time that I realize that many of my colleagues are not there, yet.

As I reflect on the ways I involve parents in my classroom I recognize that there are a lot of issues that I need to come to terms with and some perceptions and practices that I need to change. Most of this soul searching comes in the guise of questions for reflection. For example, how can teachers and families share and be responsible for the literacy learning of children? How will this re-visioning change my relationship with parents? How will this change impact children's learning? How can I relinquish control of my classroom in order to better partner with my parents for the sake of their children's learning?

Finally, what kind of parent involvement do I practice: avoidance (parents are seen as adversaries and it's better not to involve them in school at all), dependence (parents are seen as supporting teacher and school programs and as needing to learn from the teacher), mutualism (parents are valued as partners in their child's education so that an attitude of "let's learn together" prevails)? (Source: Becoming Teammates, Teachers and Families as Literacy Partners by Charlene Klassen Endrizzi.)  At the moment, I see myself as falling into a dependency relationship with parents and moving towards practicing mutualism; intellectually I am a mutualist.

More in a subsequent post.  In the meantime, into which paradigm do you fit?

Schoolwide Blog Entry
Feb. 25, 2010
Elisa Waingort

    After reading aloud a chapter book in the classroom I sometimes struggle with getting my students to respond in authentic and meaningful ways.  I’ve tried stopping whenever anyone has a comment, (these may be meaningful or not – it’s usually hit or miss - and may interrupt the flow of the story and interfere with attention); allowing children to comment at the end of a story only (some children can’t hold onto their ideas for that long and may lose interest in the discussion when it does happen); asking specific questions about the reading or prompting the children to make a particular connection to the reading; and modeling how a proficient reader (me) thinks about what she is reading.  More...

Schoolwide Blog Entry
Elisa Waingort
Feb. 17, 2010

    As a teacher of writing, I hope that all of my students will think of themselves as writers by acting like writers.  And, how do writers act?  Here’s my short list:
•    A writer is always writing even when she doesn’t have a pencil or laptop at hand.  
•    A writer loves to talk about what she is writing now and what she might write about next.
•    A writer is always planning the next piece of writing as she is finishing a project.  Sometimes the writer plans “in her head” and sometimes she plans on paper.  
•    A writer takes notes for future pieces and stores them in a place that she can easily access.  
•    A writer writes every day for different purposes.
•    A writer finds ideas for writing in everyday situations and in books.
•    A writer enjoys the act of thinking about ideas and topics for future pieces of writing.  
•    A writer sometimes gets stuck and doesn’t know what to write about; she keeps writing anyway. More...

What are you teaching for Valentine’s Day? In this week’s lesson and video, Schoolwide Educational Director Rory Cohen shows us how functional writing can be incorporated into notes and cards such as valentines to create practical, real-world compositions.

Learn how to:

• Create a fun exercise while integrating practical writing techniques;
• Explore how a writer communicates with different forms of functional writing; and
• Elicit a list for a chart of occasions for writing cards, including Valentine’s Day.
  
  CLICK HERE FOR THE LESSON OF THE WEEK.
  

Recently, I had the privilege of hearing the esteemed author Jane Yolen give the concluding remarks at a conference for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. To an audience of over one thousand children’s book people, Ms. Yolen eloquently provided an amusing and inspiring set of guidelines. She began with “Eschew the exclamation point” and “Go easy on adverbs,” along with a number of other warnings about mistakes even experienced authors make in first drafts. As I listened, I thought about my students. What mistakes do I see over and over again?  If I made a list of five rules for student writers, what would they be?

• Rule Number One: Use Your Inside Voice. Limit your use of exclamation points and capitals. Ten exclamation points in a row and capital letters are like shouting at your reader.
• Rule Number Two: Stop To Cross The Street. Watch out for the conjunction “and.” More than two “ands” in the same sentence are often a signal to stop and use a period.
• Rule Number Three: Dare to be Different. Beginning every sentence with “then” or “the” can be dull for the reader. Rearrange your words to vary the sentence structure.    
• Rule Number Four: Play With Words, Not Fonts. Spend your writing time choosing the perfect descriptive word, not the prettiest font type or size.
• Rule Number Five: Be Active. “Was” weakens the action. If Rapunzel needs to cross the street, say “she walked” instead of “she was walking” or “she started to walk.” 

These guidelines address some of the problems I’ve seen repeatedly in student stories.

Teaching students to watch for these pitfalls will help them be more effective editors of their own and their peers’ writing.   

Jacqueline Jules

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

Teaching writing is one of my passions.  I love to roll up my sleeves in order to get eye-level with my students to talk about their writing.  I love seeing the spark in their eyes and hearing the emotion in their voices as they talk about the piece of writing they’re working on or what they’re planning to write next.  And, then there are those times when it seems that I can’t find an entry point into a student’s writing or none of my suggestions are well received.  Instead, I aim at moving targets trying to find an angle that will get my students to extend their writing or to write pieces that are meaningful to them.  Recently, I’ve decided to be more proactive after reading a book that I will be reviewing for an online journal, soon.  More...