Is This Applicable to Our Teaching or What???

The 9 Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers by Vicki Spandel

A few weeks ago we had parent-teacher conferences. I had one with some Korean parents, and I couldn't stop saying the word "amazing" even while I tried to stop saying it. "Your son is amazing, his work is amazing, you are amazing parents..." It just slobbered out of me. I'm feeling that way again.
Wow! Wow! and Wow some more! This is so inspiring. The chapter on The Right to Go Beyond Formula should be required reading for all teachers. It's inspired me to teach an essay unit that goes beyond the 5-paragraph essay formula.
I shared the chapter with my teacher friend, Jody, and she said that it said everything she had always thought, but didn't know she thought. I felt the same. Vicky Spandel has a way of putting my deepest beliefs about teaching into words.

Great Week!

I can't think when I've had a better teaching week. The funny thing is, I'd actually been dreading it. You know how it is, trying to get your class "whipped" back into shape after a 2 week vacation, don't you? And then there was the pain of leaving family after our marvelous two-week visit with them. And then (I know, I know...I always tell my students not to use and then--and here I am doing it!) we walked in the door from the airport at 4am Monday morning.

But I had a great and giddy kind of week. I think it was discovering the post below, where I gave myself permission to feel for the rocks with my feet. Although a planner, I am intuitive in my teaching and I need to permit myself to flow with intuition.

• We did readers' theater with each chapter of our read-aloud: The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
• There are plans in the works to do a book-wide readers' theater for other grades.
• We began to discover our Grammar Wizards. Can you imagine a class full of grinning students during grammar?
• Having the students design the groups for science was an inspired moment which led to finding a gift of inciteful analysis in one of my students--kudos to you, Alejandro!
• I realized that liunch-duty Thursday afternoons would be the PERFECT times to play math games.

Somehow, someway, we had a lot of fun and learned a ton. It doesn't get better than that.

I keep thinking about this quote from Jim Burke's blog that I read yesterday: "Chinese leader Deng Ziaoping apparently described his policy for running the country as mozhe shitou guo, which means roughly: fording a river by feeling for the stones with your feet. This seems to me an authentic, realistic way to think about each class, each day, each text or lesson we teach. No two classes, no two kids are the same; nor are any two days."

Although I am a planner, and always have unit plans and lesson plans done, this describes perfectly how I like to teach. I like to have it all planned, but throw it all to the wind when something better suggests itself.

Today was one of those days.

I started a new read-aloud, The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The students voted for it and it won by a large majority. But I could tell that they weren't getting into the first chapter of the book which was setting up the plot and the character development. I didn't want them to miss the character development, so I threw my plans to the wind, and set them up in groups of two to read the scene from the book where Claudia is telling her little brother that she has chosen him to run away with. I modeled the procedure with one of the students and showed how to act out the narration without reading it. Then we let her rip. And boy, were they ever super-engaged. I decided to work on reading fluency this read-aloud and do these mini-reader's theaters every so often. Also, having to physically act out the descriptions would help them visualize. I'll keep you posted.

Jackpot!

The best education book I've read in a long time! Unleashing Your Language Wizards by John T. Crow. I've revamped LA for the next few weeks based on what I've learned. He builds on Jeff Anderson and includes brain-based techniques for teaching grammar, punctuation, and rhetoric.
His viewpoint is that students already have a lot of grammar, punctuation, and rhetoric that they know and our job as teachers is to help students build on that knowledge.
When I get back to Ecuador I'm going to have grammar week, punctuation week, and rhetoric week along with some free-writing and some express edits! Fun.

It's Happening!

They're pulling it out of their hats. Yabba-dabba-doo! Most of them are getting the culture connections--finally. I forced them to meet for 12 minutes without touching a computer and this was a good strategy. They were much better organized when they started work today.

Thursday is Culture Walk Through the Continents which includes components from 2nd -5th, art, music, and Spanish class.

Back to the SS Inquiry Blues

I don't know if I took the learning and thinking out of my student's hands, but I ended up making a chart--with a lot of student input that compared country cultures, beginnings, development, and values and trying to help them connect some of the dots between those things and sports, yodeling, and urban games.

For example, the US, as a settler nation imported yodeling from Europe and Africa and those immigrants kept yodeling alive as a tie to their home culture. At the same time, yodeling became part of the American culture through country music and cowboy music. It was used in a uniquely American way.

Do you think I did too much of the thinking for them?

I've Got the Social Studies Inquiry Unit Blues

I'm so frustrated! My 5th grade class is working on collaborative inquiry projects about culture. The four groups they've formed are answering the following questions:

• How do sports affect culture in Canada, the United States, and Mexico?
• How do games develop in urban cultures? (Double-dutch, stickball, etc.)
• How has yodeling affected the US culture?
• How did the mass-produced automobile affect the culture in the United States?

So far, so good...but how can I get them making connections between facts and culture? I'm totally stuck. They're researching topics and I want them to think bigger. Are 5th graders able to do this? We have conversations like, "Can I explain the rules of basketball?" "How does that relate to culture?" "Can I write about the best football players?" "How does that relate to culture?" They can't seem to make the application.

I'm using Comprehension and Collaboration as a resource, which is a great book, but I can't seem to get them beyond report mode and into thinking mode.

Reading Notebook 2010-2011

It's the time of year when only halfway through the year, teachers start turning toward next year. Of course I'm talking in teacher years, not calendar years.
Next year I want to set up my reading notebooks according to these categories suggested by The Book Whisperer:

• Tally list by genre
• Reading list (all books read and/or abandoned)
• Books to read
• Response entries