Schoolwide Blog

On my last day at the International Reading Association (IRA) Convention I attended two excellent sessions.  The first one, on spelling, was led by Jan Turbill, Wendy Bean, and Lisa Kervin, all associated with Wollongong University in Australia.   The second session with Patrick Allen, author of Conferring, focused on purposeful conversations with students in the reading workshop. 
These are some of the important ideas from the session on spelling:  More...

In another sneak peek at the forthcoming Schoolwide Network video site, author Vera B Williams advises on when to edit and write using her book, Scooter, as an example.  Look here for more announcements on the official launch of the Schoolwide Network in the weeks to come.

As we move closer to the new school year, Schoolwide is pleased to announce we are also closer to the launch of our new Schoolwide Network, a video site focused on quality. The Schoolwide Network is meant to be a filter for pooling together the web's best and most comprehensive professional development content. Our goal: to give teachers one place to search for their teaching tools and professional development resources in a faster and more organized fashion.

Anyone interested in getting a preview of the site please comment below with your contact information.

Below is another sneak peek at the kind of content you'll be likely to find on the Schoolwide Network.  Here staff developer Linda Bausch explains the writing process and how to inspire students to write.

Starting the year off with establishing routines and procedures for reading and writing workshop will get you and your students off to a successful year.  It took me years and lots of research to find the most efficient way to get organized with setting routines.  I like to start both workshops on the first day of school with a mini lesson on routines.  For example, on the first day of school the mini lesson for reading workshop may have to do with how to choose a book and enjoy reading it.  I start off by showing my students a variety of genres I enjoy.  I’ll bring in magazines, newspapers, novels, professional journals, etc. for my students to see the kind of reading I do.  One of my goals is for them to notice my enthusiasm for reading and that we can make choices of what to read. Your classroom library would be set up ahead of time by putting books into bins.  More...

Another sneak peak from our forthcoming Schoolwide Network video site (coming this fall), this video is a nice illustration of a detailed bulletin board for writing workshop. Look for more quick tips like this to show how the visual impact of classroom presentations can aid the learning process.

How do you use visual aids in your classroom? What do you like about this presentation? What would you do differently?

Great Video on transcending international barriers and using technology as a barrier-crossing tool. Can these techniques be applied to younger students at various points of entry? How do you think technology can aid the reading and writing skills of ESL students across the world?

I love talking about the power of poetry. I have been giving teacher workshops for many years on this topic and it always feels fresh and new. Maybe it’s because I get to read aloud poems all day. Or maybe it’s the fact that before my eyes I see teachers being transformed into poetry lovers as well. After all poetry is magical. When beginning a unit of study on poetry I remind myself that this is very different from a poetry activity (i.e. You have your whole class make a spring acrostic poem). A unit of study allows children to feel the power, purpose, and sounds of poetry. I often tell my students, “For the next few weeks we are going to read, write, think, eat, breathe, sing, dream, draw, and live poetry!”  Before you begin your poetry unit you must consider the poets and poems that will mentor your students. Choose a variety of poems and poets that show your students all poetry can be. Don’t only use rhyming poems. Look for poems that add to your student’s knowledge base of poetry and being a poet.  

• Poets: Children should be familiar with different poets, from different backgrounds, with different voices. I love to find anthologies where poets talk about poetry and their process. Two favorites are: A Jar of Tiny Stars Bernice E Cullinan, Editor and The Place My Words are Looking For selected by Paul Janeczko.

• Sounds of Poetry: Children need to hear the music of poetry. Feel the rhythm. Clap their hands and move to the beat. Rhythm can come from rhyme, repetition, white space, alliteration, onomatopoeia. The two poetry books I always go back to are Honey I Love by Eloise Greenfield and On the Wing by Douglas Florian.

• A Poet’s Inspiration: Children realize poetry can be about anything and everything. It’s how poet’s look that makes the difference. Find poems that show where poetry comes from. Observation and wonder – All the Small Poems by Valerie Worth Persona Poems – Dirty Laundry Pile Selected by Paul Janeczko Memories – Toasting Marshmallows Camping Poems by Kristine O’Connell George

• Poems Create Images: Image is the seed of a poem. Find poems that create images in the reader’s mind. Poems that your children can picture and connect with. Poems that create vivid images often include sensory detail, vivid verbs, simile, small details or specific language. I have been using Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts by Anna Grossnickle Hines and Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky by Georgia Heard.

• The Look of Poetry: Children see that pets, more than other kinds of writers, consider how their words will be placed upon the page. Find poems that play with shape and structure, white space, font size and punctuation. Flicker Flash and Splish Splash by Joan Bransfield have wonderful concrete poetry. Dear World by Takayo Noda are poetic notes to the earth. Little Dog and Duncan by Kristine O’Connell George has interesting use of white space and font.

…is what my 6^th graders would say to me everyday when they walked into the room.  That year, I had taken over a maternity leave of a teacher who never did interactive read-alouds with her students.  That was “baby stuff”.

I started reading to these students from day 1 in that middle school classroom and the ate it up!  They looked forward to hearing the story, as well as how it would lend to our writing.  They could see the connection.

            We had a lot of great dialogue at the Literacy Workshops in Staten Island on March 20, but what stuck in my mind was the topic of middle school students and their generally negative attitudes towards reading and writing in particular. 

What happens to that enthusiasm that oozes during elementary school? 

The love of books, authors, drawing, creating, sharing? 

What happens to our students as they cross through the doors of  middle school, that they dread when they are asked to read or write?

A few things I am sure of;

“activities” (as they are referred to in elementary school) become “assignments”,

“reading” becomes “homework” and

“discovery” becomes “research”.                                                                

And I suggest that us teachers have the power to change that mentality.

        How?

We can show our students how we engage ourselves in the reading and writing process and how we are passionate about our own reading and writing by:

·        sharing good literature and reading aloud to our students on a regular basis

·        humanizing authors by reading about them and their passions for writing

·        writing in our writer’s notebooks, as our students write

·        sharing our notebooks with our students

·        encourage risk taking by reducing the assessment of every written word

What other ways can we show our students our passions and that we are lifelong readers and writers? How can we revise the ideas in our middle school classrooms that reading and writing are nothing but classroom tasks?

We want all of our middle school students asking, “When are you going to read to us again?”