Using Writing Checklists with Pictures

The newest version of Writing Pathways by Lucy Calkins is one of my favorite new resources, at this point, mostly for the new checklists with pictures. If you have any money left for professional resources, I recommend this one. It is $47 well spent. 

So, how have we been using these checklists? 

Many teachers are still using them throughout the units to help focus their teaching points, to remind students of goals they are working on, to challenge students to reach for higher levels, and to scaffold students to learn within their zones of proximal development.

One of our first-grade teachers took my suggestion of enlarging the checklist for first grade opinion writing and she made an anchor chart for her students. How great for her students to have their personal checklists match the anchor chart! The new checklists are divided into the components: structure, development, and conventions. While she made the anchor chart with just the structure skills, you could also make a chart of "Skills Writers Use to Elaborate" or "Conventions You Must Remember!" Because ALL grades now have pictures, these anchor charts could appear in higher grades, scaffolding ELL students and struggling readers. (Truth be told: we ALL like pictures more than print at times!)

In classrooms where I am coaching, I have starting using tripods at student work stations. That way, the charts and teaching points are closer to the students. I have made cards by cutting up the checklists. That way, when I confer with a student and he/she sets a goal, I can support that student with a visual reminder and I know that it is aligned to the grade level standards and coordinates with the unit's teaching points. 

I have made grade level sets of the checklists, coding the cards with the genre (N, I, and O), the grade level, and the category (S for structure, D for development, and C for conventions).

My biggest problem is that I keep leaving my cards behind with students when I am in their classrooms. 

I'd love to hear about other ways people are using the checklists. These are such powerful tools for getting students to develop independence and responsibility for their own learning!

Getting them Writing!!!

The second and third-graders of our district move from a personal narrative unit into a realistic fiction unit. Several lessons at the beginning of our current Realistic Fiction unit involve developing their character. They are supposed to draw their character, think about the inner traits as well as the outside characteristics. Then they are supposed to think about problems that their character could have. Basically, the curriculum gives students several days off of writing.

One of the second-grade teachers and I decided to try starting the unit off differently, presenting students with a circular anchor chart.

Then, I showed them how I had used them, introducing them to my character, Annie. Instead of thinking about the problems Annie could have, I showed them how thinking about the places Annie hangs out in leads me to think of stories about her. The chart that I am sharing I actually hand-wrote out, but I left it in the classroom, so I have typed a version out. What I wanted students to realize was that one character in one setting could lead to SEVERAL stories.

Since our second-graders don't have writing notebooks, I gave each student their own chart to fill out. If I had been teaching this lesson in third-grade, I would have had the students make a chart in their writing notebooks.

Then, as soon as one of the "troubles" called to them, we let them write! And they WROTE! What I realized was that the second-graders did not naturally get their characters out of the trouble or their solutions were far too complicated than their stamina for story-writing could handle, so we added a column to our chart during our mid-workshop interruption, providing our characters a way OUT of trouble:

One of my favorite stories was by a personal narrative struggler whose character couldn't find the right shirt at Justice. Another favorite that I watched come to life was about Sam who didn't like shots at the doctor's office. I have written about the power of starting with settings when you're trying to come up with ideas and again, I have to say, this strategy aims students at small moments with clear story arcs.

I don't want to sound like the stories were perfect, but I'm a big believer in volume. If I get a chance to teach this lesson again, I would remind students of the planning process that they learned during the Personal Narrative unit and encourage them to complete that step before starting to write their story. However, I strongly believe ( and have seen a lot of evidence that) when young writers write a lot of stories, the revision process becomes less of an event, and more of a continual practice.

Happy Writing!

Developing Students' Understanding of the Three Types of Writing

Watching students take the Smarter Balanced Assessment, it was really apparent how important it is that students understand that there are three types of writing. Even though students participated in the same background building activity and read the same articles, they randomly received either a narrative, informational, or opinion/argument piece to write.

Our sixth-graders experienced writing instruction integrated in all of their subjects this year. I received concerned feedback about this at the beginning of the year; students became confused when they had to switch gears from informational writing in science to argumentative writing in social studies, and then to literary responses in reading. However, I think that this sort of integration helped our students when they face a random selection of writing on their SBAC performance assessment.

As a team, we developed anchor charts for the three types of writing that we shared with all of the teachers. The anchor charts that I am sharing in this post are from Peg Bruno's class, but a sample of each one is included in our district's curriculum and a derivative of them can be found in almost all of the district's 6th grade classrooms. We have even passed them up to the seventh grade teachers so that the language that students have already heard is there for their next teachers.

Anchor Chart for Narrative Writing

Anchor Chart for Information Writing

Anchor Chart for Argument Writing

One of my guiding beliefs about charts is that students should be involved in creating them. The duplicating of the charts from one sixth grade class to another is an exception to this belief because students have already been involved in the creation of the chart in one of the classes. To borrow one of my favorite lines from Kate Roberts, our TC Staff Developer, these teaching points are rinsed and repeated in various classes. These charts provide a scaffold and a structure for students to retain, transfer, and remain responsible for their learning throughout the year. 

Anchor Chart for the Three Types of Writing

As I am envisioning some of the revisions to the launching of some of our earlier grades' writing units, I am liking the idea of a lesson that teaches students that there are three types of writing. While I don't want to teach everything about each one, I think that developing their awareness of the different types of writing will help them learn the nuances of each type throughout the year. This awareness could also help them weave various types of writing within the curriculum throughout the year. I am picturing the development of a chart that contains bullets about each type of writing, done either as an inquiry lesson or as a presentation to students. 

If anyone has taught this lesson, I'd love to hear how it went and whether it helped students shift between various types of writing. Ultimately, the types of writing do not live in silos; strong writers use the three types purposefully and powerfully. My goal is to develop instructional strategies to help more and more students understand and appreciate how important words are in our lives. 

I hope that you are enjoying your weekends,

It's Monday! Here's What I'm Reading...

Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye and Ricki Ginsburg at Unleashing Readers cohost It's Monday! What are You Reading weekly on their blogs.   To see what others are reading and recommending each Monday, or to participate, be sure to head over to these blogs.


I am sure that most kindergarten teachers reading this blog will already know Howard B. Wigglebottom, but I happily met him last week. Our kindergarten teachers have been asking for more resources for their citizenship unit that they teach in social studies. Howard Wigglebottom is a lovable rabbit who I came across when i was searching for literature that teaches about courage, friendship, empathy, and respect. Our library had Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, written by Howard Binkow and illustrated by Susan Cornelison, so this was the first one I read. I laughed out loud. The pictures are hilarious, offering many opportunities for inferences and discussions, but, more importantly, the messages were crystal clear and developmentally appropriate for young children, as well as some of the older sets because of the humor. Howard Binkow also includes questions for discussions and websites for additional information about listening.  In our citizenship unit, we emphasize traits of citizenship and I have placed an order for some of Howard's other books, including Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Courage and Howard B. Wigglebottom and the Monkey on his Back--a Tale About Telling the Truth. 


Thanks to many of my IMWAYR for the recommendation of Manfish by Jennifer Berne and illustrated by Eric Puybaret.  Manfish  is the inspiring story of Jacques Cousteau and it is a wonderful mentor text for informational writing. For example, when Jennifer Berne describes Cousteau's first experience of seeing the underwater world with a pair of goggles, she writes, "Beneath the water, her was surrounded by silvery green forests of sea plants and fish he had never seen before. Everything was silent and shimmering. It was a whole new world." The story continues with beautiful images of the underwater world and ends with a charge to readers to discover, care for, and love the worlds that he explored.  Don't miss this book as it is an incredible example of a beautifully written biography.

I am savoring A Snicker of Magic  by Natalie Lloyd, as I have been reading this one out loud with my sixth-grade daughter, Cecily. It's taking a great deal of self-restraint on my part to not read ahead and find out all of the wonderful inter-connectedness and mysteries of the characters, but NCAA basketball has been incredibly distracting for us here in Connecticut.

Happy reading, and GO UCONN!

Why I Love Charts...And I Do!

I have now been in my role as the district's Writing and Social Studies Coordinator for a year and a half and I have learned so much in this position. One of the most important lessons for me has been about the importance of charts in classrooms at all levels. Yesterday, Melanie Swider wrote an amazing post about how her students use the charts in her classroom, demonstrating the importance and power of the charts. While I knew that charts were important from working so closely with Melanie for two years, I had not given as much thought about why they are so important.

I started to think about why when Emily Smith, a TC staff developer worked with some of our teachers and rattled off the words independence and repertoire in the same sentence. I loved those words and have held on to them, as my goal for all writers in our district is to have pathways that lead to independence and repertoire. A chart is an important place to pause on that pathway.

I'm going to pause and state some of the assumptions that I am making about charts in the classroom that serve as tools for students:

• They are co-created with students, meaning that students in the room have been a part of or have directly watched them being developed. Therefore, the charts are not laminated or pulled from a cabinet of saved resources from past years of teaching. They represent the tracks of the teaching and learning that has happened within the room in front of the current students.

• There are designated anchor charts and process charts. An anchor chart develops throughout the unit and contains the necessary skills for a particular unit of study. For example, Mel posted a picture of her literary essay chart on her last post about how her students use the charts in her room and it looks like this:
  

This chart is one that I would envision being created over the course of several days, or being created as students are about to begin drafting literary essays, but may be at different stages in their growing of ideas.

• A process chart reflects the work of a much shorter time period, maybe even just one day. For example, a teacher may create a process chart to show students how to make sure that their story is focused:

• The charts retire after a unit and are therefore representative of the unit and lessons that are going on at that time in the classroom.

Given that these assumptions are true, then I love charts because students can use them in order to be independent and develop repertoire. I loved when I was working in Melanie's classroom and students would look at the wall during a workshop. "What are you doing?" I'd ask. "I'm checking on that chart to see if there is a way that I could start my story," a student might say. Or, "I'm stuck and I know that there is a chart that will help me get un-stuck," another student might say. If we think about the gradual release model, this is exactly what we want to have happen. First, students receive explicit instruction. Then, they have the opportunities to practice the skills and use as much scaffolding as they need, provided by the charts on the wall. Eventually, they get to the point where they own the skills and strategies and they don't need the visual reminders in order to demonstrate their knowledge. 

Selfishly, as a coach, I love charts because I can tell exactly where a class is in a unit when I walk into a classroom if teachers are creating charts with fidelity. This helps me to coach both the teachers and the students-- I can see if students are practicing a skill that has been taught, which shows me that there has been effective instruction, and I can point to the chart and say to students, "It looks like you have had lessons on this--why don't you try..."

While there is more to love about charts than what I have written, I am sure, I also love charts because they focus the work for teachers. I would never say that a chart should be perfect; in fact, I would say exactly the opposite--a chart should NOT be perfect. Mel's charts tend to look perfect, even when she is making them with students. I am including here a chart that I made with a teacher spontaneously that is way less than perfect, but the students all find it helpful as they have been working on varying their introductions. In the case of this chart, I was writing students' responses on post-its as the classroom teacher was asking them about what introductions should include and they LOVED having their contributions publicly acknowledged on the chart--each post-it has a student's name on it. When you look at many of Mel's charts, as well as this one, you will notice that students' names are all over them and I think that this creates such a strong sense of ownership and pride that students are more apt to use the charts.

So, if you haven't checked out Mel's post about how much her students use her classroom charts, be sure to, and if you have any additional ideas and thoughts about charts, please share. Chartchums.wordpress.com is also a wonderful resource for learning about the importance of charts, especially for the younger grades.

Happy charting,

Students DO use the Charts in Our Classroom!

For anyone who knows me, you know I LOVE creating charts with the students for every subject, write their name next to their contribution, and hang them up in our classroom so they can reference them throughout our unit.  When some colleagues enter my classroom, they question why I hang the charts up and say, "You really think they use them?" I always defend my purpose and confidently respond with a YES! Yes, my students use them because they help create them and I write their name next to their contribution too! Even with my confident response, the look on their face tells me they still don't believe me and don't think the students use the charts at all.

Well…last week, my students were planning for their literary essay for the end of unit assessment and as they were working, one student raised her hand and asked, "Where's the chart that we made that has all of our abbreviations we created for the important parts in a text?"
Notice the key words in her question are, "We and Our".  They feel ownership for these charts! Immediately the students started chiming in and asked, "Yea where is that chart? I keep looking for it and it isn't hanging up where it should be."
Another student asked, "And where is that chart that has the possible thesis statements that we wrote together?"

These charts were still on our chart stand that we referred to during lessons, but I forgot to hang them up and they noticed!! This proves that students do in fact use the charts in our classrooms if they feel ownership in helping to create them.  Since my students help create all of our charts by contributing their thinking and I always write their name next to their contribution, they remember these charts and use them.  So to anyone out there who questions my purpose for creating charts and hanging them up in our classroom, now you know why - my kids use them and they find them helpful! :)

Below are some of the many charts we created together during our short text/literary essay unit that students referred to and used while planning and writing essays throughout the unit:

 

Happy Charting! :)

A Peek into our Literary Essay Unit

To read my post that I wrote last year about our literary essay unit, click here. 

Each time we begin a new type of writing in writing workshop, we immerse ourselves in a whole class inquiry to read mentor writing pieces.  As we read an example together, we discuss what characteristics we notice in this type of writing as well as similarities and differences to the writing we did in our previous unit.  

Below are two charts we created in our first 2 days of our literary essay unit.  The first chart lists the characteristics we noticed while we read a literary essay mentor.  The 2nd chart, lists the similarities and differences students noticed between personal essays that we wrote in our last unit and literary essays.  This lesson helped students understand and see how writers transfer skills and strategies and carry them forward to new types of writing and units.  I think this type of work is so important for not just writers, but learners in all subject areas.  Students need to learn and understand how to transfer skills and apply them in the future, not only in one unit or subject, but across units and across subjects.  This type of work also makes increases students' confidence in themselves as learners because they notice how many skills and strategies they have learned so far!

  

Throughout the unit, we have created a class chart that lists the steps to writing a literary essay.  This chart was created with the students, as all of my charts are, and you will see the students name next to their contribution.  This chart has been a helpful resource to the students as they write their literary essays throughout this unit.  

Each year, I work with students on developing more sophisticated claims/thesis statements.  This year, I  read the new Literary Essay book in the TCRWP writing units and saw some new possible templates to introduce to students that they can use when developing thesis statements.  These have helped my students write more sophisticated claims this year and have given them additional ideas on how to frame their claims.

Stay tuned to hear more about our literary essays next week!

Historical Fiction Book Club Unit: Part 3

Click here to read Historical Fiction Book Club Unit: Part 1 (Launching the unit)

Click here to read Historical Fiction Book Club Unit: Part 2  (Read aloud and writing about reading)

This month, students have been working hard in their historical fiction book clubs to read, think, write, and talk deeply about their historical fiction books.  They have been creating charts and using a variety of note-taking strategies to help them prepare for their book club conversations that they have on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Students choose whether to write their thinking on post-its, in their reader's notebook or book club notebook, or use Google Drive to help them deepen their thinking and prepare for their conversations.  

Below are some examples of the work students have been doing in their notebooks and on Google Drive to prepare for their conversations:

Bulletin Board where students post examples from their notebook 

Example of how one student used Google Drive to create a chart 

Another example of how one student used Google Drive to create a chart

Example of a chart created on Google Drive 

Example of a chart created on Google Drive

                 

Example of a plan one student created in preparation for conversation

   

Have a great week! :)

Close Reading and Literary Essays: Part 2

To read my first post in this Close Reading and Literary Essay series, click here.  

Each time we begin a new type of writing in writing workshop, we immerse ourselves in a whole class inquiry that allows us to read and discuss, "What do we notice about this type of writing? What are the characteristics of this type of writing?" I provide students with a few examples in a packet titled, "Mentors for......" and give students time to read a couple of the mentor writing pieces with their writing partner. As they read, they annotate them to keep track of what they notice about the structure, craft, and elements of the type of writing.  At least one of the mentors, included in their inquiry, is a writing piece I have written and will use during our mini-lessons.  The other mentors, are written by former students (I always keep student work examples for everything each year - great visuals to use as examples!)  Once students  read a couple examples and mark them up with what they notice, we come together as a whole class to mark up one of my mentors to label what we notice about the structure and parts of the writing piece.  

Below is a mentor literary essay that I wrote using Table Where Rich People Sit by Byrd Baylor.  We have used this mentor throughout our mini-lessons this week and continued to add to our annotations as we noticed more about the structure and elements of writing a literary essay.  

This is our chart we created as a class after reading literary essay mentors during our whole class inquiry.  We have also added onto this chart throughout the week as we noticed and learned more about writing literary essays during our mini-lessons.  

During our writing mini-lessons this past week, I used my mentor literary essay for my demonstration and our class literary essay for Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting for our active engagement. During each mini-lesson, they were able to watch me model using my literary essay and then actively try it out in their class literary essay.  During each mini-lesson, we wrote a paragraph for our essay so we were able to finish it by the end of the week.  We wrote our class literary essay on Google Drive while I typed, using our wireless keyboard, and projected it onto the Smartboard for all students to see. During the active engagement, students turned and talked with their writing partner and co-authored the essay as a whole class.  Then students went off to work on their own literary essays about a text they chose - some chose a picture book or other short text read aloud, while others chose a short text they read independently.  The students love writing their literary essays using Google Drive so they can share with their writing partners and comment on one another's writing.  This coming week, we will draft our second literary essay :)

Close Reading and Literary Essay Unit

Currently, we are in our Close Reading unit in reading workshop and Literary Essay unit in writing workshop.  The two units are integrated and students are writing about the texts they are reading closely. This is one of my favorite units because it teaches students strategies for close reading which deepen their comprehension, lift the level of their interpretation of texts, and strengthen their conversations and writing about reading.  Each time we begin a new unit, we always discuss its purpose and how it is going to help us as readers and/or writers.  Below is a chart we created during our first mini-lesson when discussing the purpose of the unit.   

For each unit, we also keep track of all of our teaching points for each mini-lesson so we can continue to refer to them, use the chart as a resource during independent reading/writing, and build upon our learning.  It is a great visual for students to see all the skills and strategies they have learned and are practicing as readers and writers.  Below is our first chart we have created with our teaching points - we are on our 2nd chart now of teaching points.  

As students are reading short texts closely, they have been leaving tracks of thinking in the margins and writing patches of thinking in their writer's notebooks. These tracks and patches focus on interpreting the text by analyzing the author's message, symbolism, important lines, character change, theme, theories, and so on.  A few students created this visual below for their classmates to use as a resource as they are working independently to remind them of the different ways they can interpret the text and lift the level of their thinking.  

I always love having students share and display their work so they can learn from one another.  Below are two bulletin boards our class created to showcase our patches of thinking for the short texts we have read aloud and discussed in class as well as their independent short texts they have read during independent reading.  

At the beginning of this week, students read through their patches of thinking and chose a short text to write a literary essay for that would extend their thinking and interpretation of the text.  I wrote my own literary essays to use as models during mini-lessons and mentors throughout the writing process.  We also have been writing a class literary essay together, which has been the basis of our demonstration and active engagement in our mini-lessons.  Students have been busy at work drafting their first literary essay using Google Drive (click here to read about how we are using Google Drive) and are just finishing them  - stay tuned to hear more about our literary essays this weekend! :)