What Impacts our Characters? What Impacts People?

Each year, in fifth grade, we teach a character unit in reading workshop and I love it because it really teaches students how to grow ideas about their characters.  In the past, I usually only taught two mini-lessons on character impact and how events and secondary characters impact the main character.  

This year, I chose to teach four different mini-lessons and focused on: How Events Impact Characters; How Decisions Impact Characters; How Words Impact Characters; and How Relationships Impact Characters (see charts below that were created in each mini-lesson).  This instructional decision had a positive impact on my students as readers and lifted the level of their thinking and understanding for how many different factors impact our characters and cause them to act or feel a certain way.  

After teaching these mini-lessons on character impact, I pushed my students' thinking even further and had them think about how we can apply these same lessons to our lives.  Since we have been talking a lot about fixed mindset, growth mindset, and respectful language in our classroom this year, the students immediately made the connection to how events, words, decisions, and people impact us in positive or negative ways.  This led to a powerful conversation about the power of words and actions and how someone else's words and actions can impact us.  The time spent teaching this string of mini-lessons on character impact was powerful and lifted the level of thinking in my students as readers, learners, and individuals! 

Enjoy the weekend! :)

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! :)

Using Digital Texts and Pop Culture in Mini-lessons

This past summer, I posted about my new learning from Kate Roberts' session on Using Pop Culture, Media, and Technology in Writing Workshop at the TCRWP Summer Writing Institute (click here to read my post about this session).  This past Saturday, I was excited to see that Maggie Beattie Roberts was offering a session on Teaching Writing using Digital Texts at the TCRWP Reunion.  One of my goals this year is to incorporate digital texts and pop culture into my reading and writing mini-lessons so each time I have the opportunity to attend a session on it, I jump at the chance.  In both sessions, I learned ways to include short video clips in purposeful ways to teach the qualities of writing and literacy skills in our mini-lessons.  Both Kate and Maggie shared how our students are immersed in pop culture in their daily lives so we need to think about how we can tap into that and use it in our classroom instruction.  

After attending these sessions, I learned that in writing workshop, we can use videoclips as a demonstration text to show how writers use a particular skill or strategy.  For example, to show how writers use backstory in narratives we can show a video clip and have students pay attention to the dialogue and how people act to help them gather information about the backstory.  In argumentative or persuasive writing, we can show a videoclip and have students pay attention to the character's claim and reasons and then chart them with boxes and bullets.  In informational writing, we can view a video clip to learn ways to include elaboration.  For example, while viewing, we can identify when we hear/see: problems, geography/location, statistics, comparison, facts, cause/effect, features, point of view, and so on.  

After this summer, I created a YouTube account and created folders to begin saving video clips I come across that may be good to use as mentor texts and demonstrations texts in our reading and writing workshop.  For example, I created a folder for book trailers that I can show to recommend books for independent reading and for our read alouds too.  I also created a folder for video clips I can use during reading workshop and writing workshop mini-lessons.  For example, today I showed a short 3 minute YouTube video clip from the movie, Akeelah and the Bee during my mini-lesson to have kids synthesize the skills we learned during our character unit. Students turned and talked to their partner mid-way through the clip and then again at the end to share their thinking about the character's relationship as well as a theory they can develop based on the characters' actions and decisions in the scene we watched.  The students loved watching the clip and applying their literacy skills to a different form of media. 

 I am excited to continue to work on my goal of including digital texts in my mini-lessons in meaningful and purposeful ways.  I would love to hear how you are including pop culture and digital texts into your mini-lesson instruction so please share any and all ideas you have! :) 

Pop Culture can Make Minilessons Come Alive in Writing Workshop

Today is day three of the TC Writing Institute and I have so much to share already!  Each afternoon, I can choose a closing workshop to attend out of a pretty extensive list of choices (wish there were more of me so I could attend them all!) Yesterday afternoon, I attended Kate Roberts' closing workshop on Pop Culture, Media, and Technology in Writing Workshop. First, I have to say that Kate Roberts is brilliant and my district is extremely fortunate to have her as one of our staff developers.  When I saw that Kate was teaching this workshop, I circled it immediately because I am now ready to try out incorporating media into my mini-lessons this school  year.  

Kate started off by stating that our students are immersed in pop culture in their daily lives so we need to think about how we can tap into that and use in our classroom instruction.  She shared the great idea of giving students a questionnaire at the beginning of the year that asks for their favorite TV shows, movies, music, and video games so we can then use that information to help us search for videoclips of media that interests our students.  

Kate shared four categories of work we can do with pop culture: 

• Using Pop Culture for Engagement - Think about how we start off our mini-lessons and fold some pop culture into our connections. For example, we can connect trying hard to get to the next level in a video game to having that same spirit in our writing. We can use the information from our media questionnaires to help us search on YouTube for short scenes to use. 
• Transferring Literacies - use what they do when they watch TV and transfer that into their writing.  We can use videoclips as a demonstration text to show how writers use a particular skill or strategy.  For example, to show how writers use backstory in narratives we can show a video clip and have students pay attention to the dialogue and how people act to help them gather information about the backstory.  Can also show a videoclip and have students pay attention to the character's claim and reasons and then chart them with boxes and bullets.  
• Creating Materials for Publication - We can get our students to make comics using ComicLife, make iMovies, create podcasts, and so on.  One option is to have students work on this for homework so it doesnt eat all classroom instructional time.  We can also devote time at the end of the writing unit for this kind of media work and ask students to translate their writing piece into a different form of media.  
• Building Community or for Assessment - Some examples of ways we can incorporate more technology and media in our classrooms is to use blogs, wikis, Edmodo, and Flip Cameras.  

I would love to hear how you incorporate pop culture, media, and technology into your mini-lessons so please share!  I look forward to trying out all these ideas in my minilessons this school year - Thank you Kate Roberts! 

Adventures in Graphica by Terry Thompson

I have always had some graphic novels in my classroom for students, but I wasn't a big graphic novel reader myself.  Yes, I read some books from the Big Nate and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, but never dipped into reading others until this year.  After joining Twitter this year and hearing so many great reviews about Babymouse, Squish, Lunch Lady and many others, I decided it was time to try out reading more graphic novels and I am so happy I did!  As I wrote in other posts, I love the Lunch Lady series by Jarrett Krosoczka and can't wait for the next book to come out in the series.  Now I know how the kids feel when they get hooked on a graphic novel series.

This summer, I did some damage on Amazon and at my local bookstores buying more graphic novels to add to my classroom library.  By reading more graphic novels this summer, I became more aware of how difficult it may be for some kids to navigate through this form of text and also how engaging it can be for reluctant readers.  I heard about Adventures in Graphica: Using Comics and Graphic Novels to Teach Comprehension, 2-6  by Terry Thompson years ago, but kept putting it off in my TBR stack because maybe I wasn't ready to fully embrace graphic novels in my teaching since I wasn't familiar with as many as I am now.  After reading many graphic novels this summer, I immediately bought Adventures in Graphica and absolutely loved it!  I have been reading, rereading, and marking up the text this week with excitement to use the strategies and lessons Terry Thompson shares.

In this professional book, Terry Thompson shares and explains ways to integrate graphic novels into our mini-lessons, small groups, and read aloud instruction.  He shows us how important it is to teach students about the layout and organization of graphic novels, just like we teach students about text features and structures in nonfiction reading.  I love his idea of having students engage in an inquiry lesson to explore graphic novels in small groups and chart what they notice about organization, conventions, and so on.

There is one chapter dedicated to comprehension skills and how we can use graphic novels in our instruction to help teach summarizing, visualizing, inferring, monitoring, and synthesizing.  This was one of my many favorite chapters.  It is full of lessons and examples to help us shore up students thinking and strengthen comprehension.  Another favorite chapter focuses on visualization and inferring.  This chapter gives examples of how we can engage students during read aloud by sketching their own panels at the end of chapters to create a visual read aloud timeline in the classroom.  This promotes the importance of visualization while also teaching how to summarize, determine importance, and synthesize the text as you read.

I could go on and on sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that Terry Thompson explains in his book, but instead I'm going to highly recommend that you purchase, borrow, or take it off your shelf to read and enjoy.  I have a new outlook now on sharing graphic novels with my students and using them in my reading instruction. I also encourage you to build up your graphic novel section of your classroom library if you already don't have a good selection available to your students.   Thank you Terry Thompson for writing this amazing book about using graphic novels in the classroom! :)

Happy Reading! :)

The Power of a Spontaneous Video

Co-teaching requires a fair amount of planning and cooperation in order to really work well but it also requires trust, respect and spontaneity. We had a moment in the classroom that really provided a great example of the last three. Mel was teaching a reading lesson. She was showing the class how she uses her chart to help her identify the social issues in Drums,Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick, a book that we read as a read aloud. She had categorized social issues into three categories: individual, family, and community. As Mel began to model her thinking, I picked up her phone from her table and began taping her. This action had some unintended consequences in that most of the students listened a little harder than they may have otherwise (no one wants to be caught not paying attention on tape.) However, my spur of the moment video provided me a valuable teaching moment, as well.

Many times, when Mel tells students to turn and talk, some of our students struggle to develop meaningful conversations. A successful conversation pre-supposes that they are attending to not only the question, but also the lesson leading up to the question. After Mel finished her demonstration, I turned off the camera and listened in on two pairs of students. Mel had asked them what they noticed about how she had used her chart to push her thinking. I had to remind them of the question and then help them along with thinking stems and sentence starters. Even then, by the time they got their conversation started, Mel was calling the group back together.

When the mini-lesson ended, we still had over thirty minutes of reading time so I pulled the four students into a strategy group. I explained to them that we all have the potential to space out during a lesson and responsible learners develop strategies that help them focus. Together, we re-watched the two-minute demonstration that I had taped and I paused it a few times to have them jot down key observations they made. At the end, one of the students and I had a model turn and talk. Then, we all talked about how much easier it is to generate ideas and have a conversation if you have a few written bullets in front of you. My challenge to these students is to use this bulleting strategy during upcoming mini-lessons. I will be there to remind them and support them but my hope is that they begin to integrate this note-taking strategy to help them initiate and engage in more meaningful peer conversations.

When we teach together and have so much trust in each other, we have opportunities like the one we had today. I would not spontaneously video all of the teachers with students I service. However, I did reflect on how this practice could be implemented in other classrooms. As our classrooms become more and more technologically oriented, our access to videoing equipment certainly increases. We have students in our classroom who would be more than willing to video for us. If we knew that we were about to teach a ten minute mini-lesson of a skill we really want all students to understand, what if we did ask a student to hold a camera? Then, we have the opportunity after the lesson, when other students are doing their independent work, to incorporate the video into a strategy lesson and review session for struggling students. If anyone out there has other ideas or ways they have successfully taped lessons, please share them! We'd love to hear from you!