Learning with The Literacy Connection & John Schu

This past Saturday I had the pleasure to join a local group of educators; The Literacy Connection as they launched their year long book study of The Gift of Story by John Schu. John is full of energy, insight, and inspiration. He is truly a book ambassador and brought many books to give away to the audience. As he shared a bit about the book and why he was recommending it he asked the participants who needed this story. A few books he already knew who needed this book by listening in earlier in the day. I can't wait to dive in to The Gift of Story and think about the affective side of our reading lives.

Here are some tidbits I'm taking with me into a new week.

"A book can become your best friend." 

John was a great mentor for knowing books and sharing stories about how he shares books with people when they need it. I think I have some close listening to do and reading to help find best friend books for my students.

"Do you finish the book or prolong the experience?"

We spend a lot of time talking about reader identity and growing it across our third grade year together. This isn't a question I have pondered before myself or with my students. I was also reminded of a reading conference I had a couple of weeks ago. A student had abandoned a book in the Chicken Squad series and I was surprised. He had been reading the others in our classroom library after I read the first one for a chapter book read aloud. When I asked him why, he told me this was the last book we had and he didn't want the series to end. My whole body took a deep sigh and my heart radiated. I suggested we look up if we owned all the books in the series and discovered there were two which were quickly ordered. This third grade reader prolongs the experience.

"Be open to stories"

As I think about being open to stories, I find myself thinking I need to slow down and pause building in moments for stories to emerge. I think being open to stories fosters matching books to readers, guiding writers, and ignites connections. 

I love spending time with our local group of educators each year. It not only grows my thinking and work as a teacher it nurtures my soul. The energy in the room is always positive and welcoming. There is time built in for connecting with old friends and making new ones. The day is relaxing and fun. I can't wait to spend another day with John in March and you can too, if you are near Columbus, Ohio - just visit The Literacy Connection website.

Engagement Thinking Highlights {Professional Learning}

Today was our first district professional learning day and our essential question the year is; How might increasing engagement impact student learning, behavior, and well being? 

A resource we used to help us think about developmentally appropriate needs for  engagement at each grade level was the Yardstick book from the Responsive Classroom organization. I got to work with colleagues to develop a rough draft for engagement for 8 and 9 year olds.

Some thinking I gathered and want to spend time with...

    Engagement by vs engagement with

    The disengaged gaze gives you permission to punt aka change course.

    

Some questions I have after thinking about engagement...

    How can we show engagement when students are not present and actively                    engaged?

    Is engagement about the process of learning?

    How is engagement observed and captured?

    Is engagement the story of learning?

Articles shared to support engagement with...

    Voice and Choice Article

    How Implementing Voice & Choice can Improve Student Engagement

    20 Student Engagement Strategies for a Captivating Classroom

    Strengthening Student Engagement: What do Students Want

A resource we used to help us think about developmentally appropriate needs for  engagement at each grade level was the Yardstick book from the Responsive Classroom organization. I got to work with colleagues to develop a rough draft for engagement for 8 and 9 year olds and I'm looking forward to exploring this topic more this year.

OCTM Annual Conference {Math Monday}

Getting to an out of town conference always takes a bit of work and once I'm there, I never regret going.  Last week, I gathered with other state educators at the annual Ohio Council Teachers of Mathematics for two days of learning.   The conference theme was Bouncing Mathematical Ideas Around: Connecting and Collaborating in the Rubber City (Akron, OH).  The two days were just that; connecting and learning from and with others.  It's hard to replicate everything said, seen, and pondered so I'll share ten highlights in no particular order.

Juli Dixon shared, when students don’t have access to a productive struggle that becomes an equity issue.  We need to think about just in time scaffolding and not plan for just in case.  Allowing space for productive struggle and discourse.  That discourse could be student to student and student to teacher. 

Many of us live in a time where we are asked to post essential questions and/or learning targets in our classroom.  Juli Dixon urges us to zoom out for these to prevent giving away the punch line.  This encourages discovery and exploration.  I'd like to think of it as a means for fostering inquiry and connections.

Juli Dixon and friends have a new book, Small Group, Big Gains: Leading Effective Pulled Small Group Instruction.  She shared some sneak peaks from it that really nudged my own thinking about math workshop.  The purpose for small group work is for diagnosis and differentiation.  Diagnosis lets us see and hear student thinking up close; discovering misconceptions and understandings.  Differentiation is a place for remediation and enrichment.  

She also suggested small groups aren't needed every day and grouping should be organized in a moderately heterogeneous way.  I loved hearing her support small groups are NOT ability groups.

C-R-A model; Concrete (models), Representational (drawings) and Abstract (equations) was highlighted in two of my sessions.  Both sessions reminded us that at any given time we have students sitting in front of us at each of these stages.

We want to use the CRA model to help build mathematical fluency.

Dan Meyer encourages us to bring surprise back to teaching mathematics.  Good stories have lots of surprises and surprise brings interesting learning.   He had us ponder, What is a mathematical surprise?  He stated, textbooks ruin surprise.  He urged us to make math class more like things our students like to do.

Numberless word problems is something to look at.

I participated in my first 3 Act Math Tasks and would agree the purpose of these activities is to engage our students, understand math is needed in real life and changes math feelings.

Working with numbers abstractly doesn't work...students need numbers in context.  Let's anchor it to How Many pictures and children's literature.

Pam Allyn with The Literacy Connection

This past Saturday was a magical day here in Central Ohio.  The Literacy Connection brought Pam Allyn (co-author of Every Child a Super Reader) out of New York City to the Midwest to inspire and reaffirm what students need.  As I sat with colleagues from my district, I realized she wasn't only guiding us in our work with students she was filling our hearts and buckets to get back in the trenches and fight the good fight.  She urged us to stay true to our beliefs and was thrilled so many teachers had taken a Saturday to learn and grow.  While it's hard to give up a Saturday, if it's the right season for you I'd encourage you to do it.  It's more relaxing than taking a week day during the school year and builds relationships.  There's time to talk and listen.  There's time to catch up with old friends and make new.  I'm so glad I got to share this experience with so many teachers.

Ten thoughts from Pam Allyn that will guide me through the year - 


- "teaching is scientific about what works and then there’s also the love", so true we can't forget to love what we do, love the students we are with, and find moments of love.

- "we are in the world of ticket tape and it's scary but literacy gives us a safe space." 

- "have students read 20 minutes a day, independently."  

- instead of struggling readers, she recommends shifting our mindset with striving readers and reminded us reading levels have their place but students are not a reading level

- "our striving readers are our most fragmented readers, no more pulling during read aloud or independent reading"

- "we are micro-managing reading levels", she urged us over and over again, this isn't necessary.  

- "Books are just books until you put a relationship into them and they become different.", foster relationships with books

- "main thing we want to know about our kids - are they happy?"

- "let’s create a super reader community with our parents.  There's plenty parents can do around the social emotional and engagement piece.  They don't know what to do, get them involved."

- "illustrations also show 7 strengths of the Super Reader."

Top Ten Things I Heard that Filled My Heart at #NCTE16

As I sat in the Atlanta, GA airport last night I looked around at the nine of us visiting with each other and thought I leave with a full heart.  My heart is full because I felt encouragement, hope, and warmth while I attended NCTE.  Yes, the temperature was warm when we landed in Atlanta and enjoyed our lunch outside but the warmth in my heart is from spending time with friends.   

Friends is defined at dictionary.com as; a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard or a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter:

These definitions help me make sense of why my heart is full.  I spent time with old, new, and wanna be friends.  I passed lots of strangers but I never felt uncomfortable. I felt this year especially, the NCTE planning committee, volunteers, and attendees all came to give each other a lift because we do have common feelings about the work we do and live within our classrooms and out of our classrooms.

This list of Top Ten Things I Heard that Filled My Heart at #NCTE16 will just touch the surface from my two days, if you would like to know more about something let me know.

10.  "Words alone can make a story hard to figure out but illustrations help pull the story through." - Erin Stead.  She gave an example of just the words for a picture book without the illustrations; typed on one page and then we read the words with the illustrations spread across pages.  The meaning was truly stretched and strengthened.

9.  "It's not about a level, it's about a process.  We want the same effort for print and meaning strategies.  They often become unbalanced." - Kim Yaris and Jan Burkins

8.  Author, Kate Kine hated hyphenated words as a young reader and now she makes sure they don't show up in the books she's writing.

7. Matt Glover encouraged teachers to give students choice for the type of genre they want to write and not just topic choice within a school year, and shared several examples of just how powerful this is. 

6. "Conferencing gets to the heart of lifelong reading." - Karen Biggs Tucker

5.  "Trust your wisdom and connect it to observation and data ." - Terry Thompson

4.  "Our job is to watch, to notice and listen so closely, so we can connect those dots." - Tammy Mulligan and Claire Landrigan

3.  We often feed into their weaknesses, why not feed into their strengths.  We saw an example where painting led to powerful writing.  "I chose orange it makes me think of disappointment."  Cheryl Tyler

2.  "Creating is not magic, creating is for everyone." - Bill Bass

1.  "Students need to read powerful stories of the human condition.  Courage is not something you say but something you manifest." - Ernest Morrill

Learning with Kate Roberts and The Literacy Connection

This past Saturday, I took time to learn with our local professional group The Literacy Connection and Kate Roberts.  Kate Roberts came to spend time with us as we think through her new book, DIY Literacy.  Kate is delightful, uplifting, and offers sound advice as we think about instructing our students in reading and writing.  The only downside to our day together was the lack of wifi which limited our tweets for sharing our learning.  While it was great to stay in the moment, I might have shared these thoughts.

Look for the moments when you are frustrated and/or you say things in your head, I've already done this or said that - that's when a tool might be needed.

We want tools to be personal, responsive, supportive and lead to independence.

We have this weird idea – kids should be working really hard all day, its not healthy or necessary.

A bit part of tool making is personal, it isn’t perfect.

More tools are better than perfect tools.

I know this past summer the #cyberpd community read this book and had lots of grand discussions around it.  Authors Kate and Maggie released some wonderful videos at the website for readers to watch.  I have a confession, because this book is marketed for third grade and up I didn't order it for my summer pd stack.  I knew I was missing out on something but was determined to stick to my already purchased reading plan.  I think this book is going in my bags to #ncte16.  I'm so excited to read and learn more about demonstration notebooks, learning progressions, and chart planning.

Kate will be back in the spring, if you are local and would like to hear her speak.