Wordle

Last thoughts about my placement this semester.....

(Caution: might be a bit cheesey)

Above is a representative of my students that I worked with this semester. They differ individually by personally, talents, abilities, and more. In the last few weeks I have caught myself observing and appreciating their different sense of humor and mannerisms. Realizing their interesting traits and qualities has caused me to become sad because I will miss them when I leave. And because they are in fifth grade there isn’t even a possibility that I will see them in the halls of the school next semester because they will be moving to middle school. In the past I have always been in lower grades and I have been able to go back and visit to get my “fix” when I started to miss them. I have learned so many valuable things from my students this semester. One is that 5^th graders really aren’t that scary after all. For the most part my experience is with the lower grades of elementary school, so when I found out in the beginning of the semester that I was in fifth grade I thought they would act like middle school kids, but they aren’t. They still have their innocence and sweetness, really not that intimidating at all. I have also learned from my students that flexibility and honesty is very important. When things didn’t go right they were able to sense if I was frustrated or stressed, so with honesty I was able to tell them how I was feeling and how I felt the lesson was going so that we could work to improve the current situation. This honesty also helped me gain respect with my students. I am so sad that this week is our official last week in the schools.

Comments4Kids

Search: #comments4kids on Twitter

Then: You can comment on a wide variety of student's work found online through their blogs, word documents, etc.

Here are my comments:

http://kidblog.org/stortz/lexi71/bully-prevention-week/#comment-1187

http://kidblog.org/Powell4thGrade/claireh10/if-i-could-move-some-where-new/#comment-767

http://year6l.blogspot.com/2011/04/our-collection-of-prezis.html

Origami Cranes for Japan

Beth told my LLED class about this special origami crane fundraiser for Japan.

http://studentsrebuild.org/japan/

I was totally and completely intrigued by this idea and so that week in my collaborating teachers classroom I decided to have my students create origami cranes. This activity for them was a little bit difficult, but I believe that they really enjoyed.

Before the activity I showed my students news clippings and videos about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan so they were more aware of the needs and struggles they are faced with.

Because the activity took longer than normal it went into their recess time however, one of my students said, "I wish we could go outside to recess, but i'd rather be make these for Japan." That comment was really sweet!

Here is the aftermath of the activity!

Whole Week Lesson

For my week long lesson unit I decided to do writing workshop. The standard that we focused on was responce to literature. The week went very well and I was very satisfied with how my students reacted and responded to the readings that were presented.
First I made each of my students there own personal response to literature folders. Each day I read a story and the students responded. Before reading the mentor text each day I did a little pre-read activity where I would ask them a question or give them a situation and they were asked to draw a picture of it. For example one day I asked to my students to think of a time they felt rejected or left out, then they drew a picture of it.
Next I would read the text to the students. After reading I would introduce them to a new way to respond to literature. And then I would ask them to respond to the book I just read using the specific reponse to literature they were taught.
Everyday had a different theme. I will list them all with the mentor text below:
1.Personal Narrative, Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
2.Scary Stories, More Scare Stories To Tell in the Dark  By: Alvin Schwartz
3.Racism, inequality, KKK, Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine Bessie Smith and the Knight Riders by Sue Stauffacher
4. Parents incarcerated, Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson
5. Border Crossing, My Shoes and I by Rene Laniez
I believe most of the students in my class found the ghost stories day to be the most fun! Although a lot of the students found the "controversial" topics interesting and I think they enjoyed talking and writing about them in school.
After my full week of teaching we had Spring Break. After spring break we came to the schools on Thursday and Friday. So on Friday I decided to give my students an assessment from our unit. We did the pre-read activity and read the text like normal. Then I passed around a hand out to each student listing all the different ways we learned (the week before spring break) to respond to literature. Then I told them this was an assessment and they were to identify a way they wanted to respond to the literature for that day and then respond using they way they choose. I was very happy to see that most of the students did very well on the assessment. 
Even though my unit wasn't very long there were little improvements in my students. I saw some students go from only writing a few sentences to writing a page in the week or so span of time.
Actually getting the chance to implement the writing workshop in my class was very fun. I used many of the ideas, tips, and tools that were presented in Katie Wood Rays text and they were very helpful. After having taught this lesson I know for sure that I want to implement writing workshop into my future classroom!

"What happens on a daily basis in the workshop is always part of something bigger than that one day...

 "Any lesson that we teach, any conference that we have, has both a history and a future in the life of the workshop"

"Our units of study create important teaching time lines across the year"

 Units of Study

I agree that as teachers we need to have planned units of study for the year. The whole year's writing workshop doesn't need to be planned, but at least an outline of what you plan to do and for how long even if you include blank weeks for "class selected" units.

In regard to "planning" units in the writing workshop it makes me excited that you aren't suppose to plan every single thing out except for maybe the focus lesson. I like the flexibility of the writing workshop and the room it gives students to move about where there aren't any wrong answers or things to study. 

I also like that in addition to planning for specific units of study that Katie Wood Ray realizes that as we conference and look over our students work that we might find specific areas that students need help in and that we can take the time to teach these "as-needed" focus lesson. For example teaching about adjectives.

I thought the questions that Katie Wood Ray suggested that we think about for assisting in selecting our units of study, we very helpful. I appreciated her suggestion of have a unit of study on an aspect of writing that I have a strength. If I had to pick this now I definitely would pick my unit on "response to literature" and the different ways to respond. This unit would be good to implement in the beginning of the year seeing and how many lesson might involve some sort of responding to literature. I also liked Katie's idea of having two opposing grade (5th and 1st) have a literary study together in a co-genre study. I believe this would be very beneficial to both grades in having the students see how they both develop and learn. 

Lastly I liked her suggestion about have a genre study of testing. I am in 5th grade this semester and they had to take the 5th grade writing test a few weeks ago and I wondered how I would instruct my future students in how to prepare for the test. However Katie's suggestion is a great idea. To implement a writing workshop about teaching the difference between testing curriculum and writing curriculum would be beneficial. Also teaching students strategies and ways to take the writing test, I believe it would help ease their nerves.

The units of study chapter was very beneficial to me. At first I thought that the writing workshop just consisted of creating writing samples of different genres, but now I know it can be extended to more broad "units of study."

“When students are working in a relatively small space, there are bound to be some distractions”

"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”

"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”

When trying to tackle the many distractions that are present in the writing workshop I liked that Katie Wood Ray concise the main points to be presence, space, and supplies. I never realized how important the presence of the teacher is in writing workshop until Katie Wood Ray. I found it important that she pointed out that when we let our students loose to writing workshop it is not the free time for the teacher to work on other things. She describes the management of the writing workshop so well. That it is a place where many different things are happening at the same time, but it is all very productive. They all have to interact in some way. For the presence section a light bulb hit me when she spoke about how choosing not to work isn’t in option, but that we have to make sure that what were are seeing is clearly not working instead of maybe pondering their thoughts or getting ideas from other classmates. It is also important that different students in the classroom have different task or assignments within the writing workshop. This will help the flow of traffic and things. Also there need to be a routine or where things happen. For example there needs to be a sharing time area, a mini-lesson space, etc. I really like that “no talking” workshops are not allowed. I feel like it is SOOO unrealistic when one walks into a classroom and the students are suppose to be actively engaged in a project or piece of work and the room in completely silent. As Katie says it’s natural to talk to someone right next to you! I like that goal of have the workshop to be so structured that it could run itself. Lastly, I never thoughts about the importance of having all the right supplies for the writing workshop. I LOVE LOVE the idea of the sticky notes in students notebooks for teachers comments on the students work. This sounds as though it would be very effective.

“The best way to manage distractions in the writing workshop is to have plenty of attractions for students as writers”

I liked this section (although it was very small) because in talking about how the writing workshop will never feel complete, done, right, etc. A teacher will never feel like they have got a handle on it and that’s okay because that’s how its suppose to feel. I think she said it perfectly when she wrote “it’s all their different individual writing decisions that feel slightly beyond our control; it’s not their behavior that feels that way.”

Question: Can you collect writers notebooks at the end of each day or should they always be able to go home with the students?