I begin class each day with journal writing and the opportunity to share. I provide a topic each day for students who may need a prompt, but students may choose any topic they like.
Last week, I began by having students visualize a time when they felt especially powerFUL or powerLESS. Then I showed the VW Passat commercial, which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6hf3adNqk and challenged them to see where that might take their thinking.
When it was time to share, one young lady (10th grade), who had never chosen to share before, went immediately to the author stool and lectern and began to read. Her journal that day was about her volunteer work at the SPCA and one particular pit bull puppy who had stolen her heart and to whom she had made the promise to find a good home. A few weeks later it seemed that promise was going to be fulfilled when paperwork was filled out by a woman who had also immediately connected with this particular dog. My student shared how powerful she felt being able to bring these two souls together.
Unfortunately, that puppy, along with dozens of other animals at the SPCA at that time, fell victim to parvovirus and died before ever getting to enjoy being loved as a pet. My student shared with the class how heartbroken she was to realize she was not going to be keeping her promise to the dog after all, that she was powerLESS in the face of this disease. The class rallied around her in reassurance and comfort. I believe it was a healing moment for her and certainly a reminder to me of the importance of providing time to write, share, and process in class.
Today I chose to try sharing similar to what we saw in the video last class. My students this morning had to write/draw about their field trip this past Friday, and I thought that it would be a great opportunity to revisit our trip and summarize what we each had learned by sharing our journal entries. The students took turns sitting in my rocking chair and reading their entries aloud to the class. After each student read their entry, he or she asked the question what did you learn? I had to model for the students for the first one since this was new, but they did really well with stating what they had learned. It even helped the children who were sharing to realize that they hadn't said enough information in their journal to allow students to state what they had learned. Tomorrow the students are going to revisit their entries and add more detail that came from the sharing time. I am anxious to see how much more they add to their writing. It was amazing to see the impact that they had on each other as authors and peers.
Last night I had my students share what they wrote for homework: 10 Things That Make Me Smile. It was so sweet! One man wrote: I smile when I see my family happy. I smile when I see something is funny. I smile when I hear something is funny. I smile when somebody tells a joke. I smile when I see a small dog. I smile when I see small monkeys doing a show. When I finish work I smile. I smile when I see babies. I smile when I finish eating. I smile when I watch my favorite show.:)
Everyone seemed very proud to share. I think that having something of a format to follow helped them have confidence. They made fewer errors than usual too.
Another man wrote: I smile when I get my paycheck. :)
I've enjoyed my conferences with my kids lately and am finally starting to see some patterns or trends in their habits and am starting to get some ideas for small-group mini-lessons. One conference I loved was when I sat down next to a little girl, S., and as she read her most recent book to me, I just thought, "OMG!" There were messy pictures and letters ALL over the pages. They were so squished together I couldn't even make out the pictures, let alone any of the beginning sounds of words. So, I thought, "What can I do to help sort this mess out?" We went to the classroom library and looked at how some other authors separated their writing and pictures. She found a Dora book (a favorite) and we talked about how the author put the words on the top of all the pages and the pictures underneath. Then, we went back to her desk and I drew a line across the top of the pages of her book as a visual separation between the two parts. Today she shared her finished book with the class and I think we will use it as a reference for several lessons over the next few days to help solve this picture/word separation problem that other students are having too. ~Katie
I have only just begun to make books with some of my groups of ESL students. We have not reached the final sharing stage yet, but I plan to try the "author's chair" idea. Conferring so far has included helping them choose a topic and assisting them in writing words and/or sentences to match their pictures. I realize we have some fine tuning to do as we learn together.
In my writing class we are currently working on fairy tails. The student can write any kind of fairy tales they want over the next two weeks. They just began on Monday. I told them that they can begin one and decide they don't like it and not finish it, they can brainstorm a bunch and it is their choice but they need to write and revise one by next Friday/Monday. I had a student who thought they were done on Tuesday. I had the student read it to me. The student was missing many details as well as a well rounded ending. So they wanted to share and I welcomed it. It was very productive. The students complimented the ideas and plot and then when it came time to give suggestions they said "MORE DETAILS!" The main aspect is the bird had some magical power that was never explained. They also commented on how it ended abruptly. They were very kind about it and the student took the comments from his peers very well. I hope to see him revise the story because it was very creative.
I handed back the stores the students wrote last week and explained that we were going to share them. I thought I would get a lot of complaining about that but to my surprise they were eager to share. I set the guidelines around how we share and respond. Then I modeled for them how this would look with my own writing. After each share the students had the opportunity to share something they learned or something they wanted to know more about. I was impressed with how well the sharing time went and how much the students seemed to enjoy it. Next, the students will work on making some changes to their writing that they learned from the questions posed during their shairing time.
While tutoring with my student we talked about spacing between words as well as adding a period at the end of sentences to let a reader know to stop. The student wrote about butterflies that they have in his class at preschool on his first writing (he likes to write two stories a day). When he was finished I modeled with his own story (words and spelling) adding spaces between the words. When I was done he started writing his second piece adding in the spaces when needed. He was able to verbalize when he needed to add those as well as periods.
The next day when he started writing he recalled the need for spaces as well as periods in sentences. This was the day that he also asked his mom for a story to write about from when he was a baby. He wrote a story after her retelling then shared with her his rendition. =)
My students have been working on brochures to finish up research on their careers. My ESL students have worked really hard on this project. As they have worked and I have met with them individually, it has been a good opportunity to help them with sentence structure and punctuation. They are excited about the fact that their brochures are going to be put on the bulletin board for others to see. While my focus for this grading period has been informational writing, the conferencing has gone well. I'm looking forward to being able to give them time for more creative writing soon.
My goal this past week is to shorten my conferences (down to 5 minutes or less) and try to make conferencing more inspiring. One student was working on a piece called "What I do after school." She was proud of what she had so far and read it to me eagerly. She told of how she usually makes a snack for her sister when she gets home from school. I asked about the different foods she knew how to make and the student broke into a huge grin as she talked about how she makes macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and lemonade. I thought aloud how neat it would be to have a book about different foods she knew how to make. She became very excited and has just begun her new recipe book. I will look forward to seeing how this book evolves. It was so rewarding to share an exciting moment together thinking of the possibilities her new book would hold. Jenny
I just finished working with my son’s first grade class. I read the book, The Penny Pot, and discussed with the class how math can be incorporated into fictional stories. I sent them off to work on their books. All but one student started a new book and they all incorporated math into their stories. We only had thirty minutes to spend for the entire lesson, so sharing time was limited. I asked them to share in pairs. They were eager to share. I noticed some kids took a very long time to share and others flew through their books. I can tell this is an area where knowing the students and experience is needed. Some students should only share one page, whereas others need to share their entire writing piece. A lot of the kids had a hard time saying what they learned and I realized this is something that takes practice too. I have enjoyed teaching the two lessons, but I wish I could work with the kids every day. This method takes lots of practice, both from students and teachers. -Mari
Well... I tried to model my student conference off of what we went over in class last week. We're reading aloud The Hunger Games, so I used that as my mentor text. We're working on personal narratives, and although the genres aren't necessarily a match, we focused on description. I gave a brief 5 minute overview of good description, re-reading some of the vivid passages in The Hunger Games. We broke out to write. I met with a student, a boy, and asked him what his writing ideas were. He said "I don't have any." Awesome. We tried to sit and flip through his journal to see if he had any great ideas. None. So, I tried to set him up with the "Small Moments" that we did in class. I modeled it for him in my journal, and then I let him loose and moved on. When I came back to him about 10 minutes later, he had one thing written down. I asked him to explain what that was and he told me a short narrative about a time that his friend threw his phone into tall grass and they had to look through the night for it. I told him that would be a great personal narrative. He seemed a little more motivated, so I left him to start on his draft of his story. It seemed to go okay. If we weren't reading The Hunger Games, it would be difficult to find time for a mentor text in there too. I'm still feeling new about this, but it seems to be okay. I think I just need more practice. ~erin
Yesterday was the second time I allowed students time at the end to share their writing with each other. I have a 3rd grade, below level group. The students were so eager to share their writing, but yet immature to take the questions from peers and actually turn those questions into a piece they can add to their writing. Does that make sense? One student in particular couldn't wait to read, but then didn't seem to understand that he wasn't actually "done" with his paper. I will then of course have to address this issue tomorrow and SHOW them what it means to add more, change order, things like this. I did have my students write on only one side of the paper so that we can literally "cut" parts out, and fit them where they belong. This seemed to work awesome today when I conferred with a student. I'm going to see how it goes tomorrow when I use this as a direction to go with in my mini lesson. *Tonya *If there are 2 posts from me, sorry, something happened when I was writing one. My school computer STINKS!
During many partner and group activities, my students get the opportunity to pick an area in the room and make it their "own" for that designated time. One spot that always gets much attention is my "teacher chair". It's bigger than the rest, it's in the front of the classroom, and the students view it as a coveted spot. After completing a writing activity, my students wanted to share their pieces. Before we started the sharing, the whole group made a chart about sharing time. We discussed that this was a time when students can come sit in the teacher chair and share their work with peers. We brainstormed questions that the audience members and sharer can ask. We also talked about appropriate behavior when people are sharing.
I made up a list of students and labeled their individual share times. So far, sharing has gone well. We are trying to spark more conversation by creating a list of more questions to possibly ask. Also, time is something that has been a factor. Some students are short in their presentation of their pieces, while other students ramble. Although I have limited their sharing to 2-3 pages, I don't know when it is appropriate to step in. Any suggestions?
I begin class each day with journal writing and the opportunity to share. I provide a topic each day for students who may need a prompt, but students may choose any topic they like.
ReplyDeleteLast week, I began by having students visualize a time when they felt especially powerFUL or powerLESS. Then I showed the VW Passat commercial, which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6hf3adNqk and challenged them to see where that might take their thinking.
When it was time to share, one young lady (10th grade), who had never chosen to share before, went immediately to the author stool and lectern and began to read. Her journal that day was about her volunteer work at the SPCA and one particular pit bull puppy who had stolen her heart and to whom she had made the promise to find a good home. A few weeks later it seemed that promise was going to be fulfilled when paperwork was filled out by a woman who had also immediately connected with this particular dog. My student shared how powerful she felt being able to bring these two souls together.
Unfortunately, that puppy, along with dozens of other animals at the SPCA at that time, fell victim to parvovirus and died before ever getting to enjoy being loved as a pet. My student shared with the class how heartbroken she was to realize she was not going to be keeping her promise to the dog after all, that she was powerLESS in the face of this disease. The class rallied around her in reassurance and comfort. I believe it was a healing moment for her and certainly a reminder to me of the importance of providing time to write, share, and process in class.
Cathy S.
Wow! Cathy, her story (& yours) is powerFUL!
ReplyDelete~Lynn
Today I chose to try sharing similar to what we saw in the video last class. My students this morning had to write/draw about their field trip this past Friday, and I thought that it would be a great opportunity to revisit our trip and summarize what we each had learned by sharing our journal entries. The students took turns sitting in my rocking chair and reading their entries aloud to the class. After each student read their entry, he or she asked the question what did you learn? I had to model for the students for the first one since this was new, but they did really well with stating what they had learned. It even helped the children who were sharing to realize that they hadn't said enough information in their journal to allow students to state what they had learned. Tomorrow the students are going to revisit their entries and add more detail that came from the sharing time. I am anxious to see how much more they add to their writing. It was amazing to see the impact that they had on each other as authors and peers.
ReplyDeleteoops forgot my name
ReplyDelete~Melissa
Last night I had my students share what they wrote for homework: 10 Things That Make Me Smile. It was so sweet! One man wrote: I smile when I see my family happy. I smile when I see something is funny. I smile when I hear something is funny. I smile when somebody tells a joke. I smile when I see a small dog. I smile when I see small monkeys doing a show. When I finish work I smile. I smile when I see babies. I smile when I finish eating. I smile when I watch my favorite show.:)
ReplyDeleteEveryone seemed very proud to share. I think that having something of a format to follow helped them have confidence. They made fewer errors than usual too.
Another man wrote: I smile when I get my paycheck. :)
I smiled as they shared.
~Lynn
I've enjoyed my conferences with my kids lately and am finally starting to see some patterns or trends in their habits and am starting to get some ideas for small-group mini-lessons.
ReplyDeleteOne conference I loved was when I sat down next to a little girl, S., and as she read her most recent book to me, I just thought, "OMG!" There were messy pictures and letters ALL over the pages. They were so squished together I couldn't even make out the pictures, let alone any of the beginning sounds of words. So, I thought, "What can I do to help sort this mess out?"
We went to the classroom library and looked at how some other authors separated their writing and pictures. She found a Dora book (a favorite) and we talked about how the author put the words on the top of all the pages and the pictures underneath. Then, we went back to her desk and I drew a line across the top of the pages of her book as a visual separation between the two parts. Today she shared her finished book with the class and I think we will use it as a reference for several lessons over the next few days to help solve this picture/word separation problem that other students are having too.
~Katie
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ReplyDeleteI have only just begun to make books with some of my groups of ESL students. We have not reached the final sharing stage yet, but I plan to try the "author's chair" idea. Conferring so far has included helping them choose a topic and assisting them in writing words and/or sentences to match their pictures. I realize we have some fine tuning to do as we learn together.
ReplyDeleteForgot my name.
ReplyDeletePatsy
In my writing class we are currently working on fairy tails. The student can write any kind of fairy tales they want over the next two weeks. They just began on Monday. I told them that they can begin one and decide they don't like it and not finish it, they can brainstorm a bunch and it is their choice but they need to write and revise one by next Friday/Monday. I had a student who thought they were done on Tuesday. I had the student read it to me. The student was missing many details as well as a well rounded ending. So they wanted to share and I welcomed it. It was very productive. The students complimented the ideas and plot and then when it came time to give suggestions they said "MORE DETAILS!" The main aspect is the bird had some magical power that was never explained. They also commented on how it ended abruptly. They were very kind about it and the student took the comments from his peers very well. I hope to see him revise the story because it was very creative.
ReplyDeleteJen G.
I handed back the stores the students wrote last week and explained that we were going to share them. I thought I would get a lot of complaining about that but to my surprise they were eager to share. I set the guidelines around how we share and respond. Then I modeled for them how this would look with my own writing. After each share the students had the opportunity to share something they learned or something they wanted to know more about. I was impressed with how well the sharing time went and how much the students seemed to enjoy it. Next, the students will work on making some changes to their writing that they learned from the questions posed during their shairing time.
ReplyDeleteKim
While tutoring with my student we talked about spacing between words as well as adding a period at the end of sentences to let a reader know to stop.
ReplyDeleteThe student wrote about butterflies that they have in his class at preschool on his first writing (he likes to write two stories a day). When he was finished I modeled with his own story (words and spelling) adding spaces between the words. When I was done he started writing his second piece adding in the spaces when needed. He was able to verbalize when he needed to add those as well as periods.
The next day when he started writing he recalled the need for spaces as well as periods in sentences. This was the day that he also asked his mom for a story to write about from when he was a baby. He wrote a story after her retelling then shared with her his rendition. =)
~Heather
My students have been working on brochures to finish up research on their careers. My ESL students have worked really hard on this project. As they have worked and I have met with them individually, it has been a good opportunity to help them with sentence structure and punctuation. They are excited about the fact that their brochures are going to be put on the bulletin board for others to see. While my focus for this grading period has been informational writing, the conferencing has gone well. I'm looking forward to being able to give them time for more creative writing soon.
ReplyDeleteKathy B.
ReplyDeleteMy goal this past week is to shorten my conferences (down to 5 minutes or less) and try to make conferencing more inspiring. One student was working on a piece called "What I do after school." She was proud of what she had so far and read it to me eagerly. She told of how she usually makes a snack for her sister when she gets home from school. I asked about the different foods she knew how to make and the student broke into a huge grin as she talked about how she makes macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and lemonade. I thought aloud how neat it would be to have a book about different foods she knew how to make. She became very excited and has just begun her new recipe book. I will look forward to seeing how this book evolves. It was so rewarding to share an exciting moment together thinking of the possibilities her new book would hold.
ReplyDeleteJenny
I just finished working with my son’s first grade class. I read the book, The Penny Pot, and discussed with the class how math can be incorporated into fictional stories. I sent them off to work on their books. All but one student started a new book and they all incorporated math into their stories. We only had thirty minutes to spend for the entire lesson, so sharing time was limited. I asked them to share in pairs. They were eager to share. I noticed some kids took a very long time to share and others flew through their books. I can tell this is an area where knowing the students and experience is needed. Some students should only share one page, whereas others need to share their entire writing piece. A lot of the kids had a hard time saying what they learned and I realized this is something that takes practice too. I have enjoyed teaching the two lessons, but I wish I could work with the kids every day. This method takes lots of practice, both from students and teachers.
ReplyDelete-Mari
Well... I tried to model my student conference off of what we went over in class last week. We're reading aloud The Hunger Games, so I used that as my mentor text. We're working on personal narratives, and although the genres aren't necessarily a match, we focused on description.
ReplyDeleteI gave a brief 5 minute overview of good description, re-reading some of the vivid passages in The Hunger Games. We broke out to write.
I met with a student, a boy, and asked him what his writing ideas were. He said "I don't have any." Awesome. We tried to sit and flip through his journal to see if he had any great ideas. None. So, I tried to set him up with the "Small Moments" that we did in class. I modeled it for him in my journal, and then I let him loose and moved on.
When I came back to him about 10 minutes later, he had one thing written down. I asked him to explain what that was and he told me a short narrative about a time that his friend threw his phone into tall grass and they had to look through the night for it. I told him that would be a great personal narrative. He seemed a little more motivated, so I left him to start on his draft of his story.
It seemed to go okay. If we weren't reading The Hunger Games, it would be difficult to find time for a mentor text in there too. I'm still feeling new about this, but it seems to be okay. I think I just need more practice.
~erin
Yesterday was the second time I allowed students time at the end to share their writing with each other. I have a 3rd grade, below level group. The students were so eager to share their writing, but yet immature to take the questions from peers and actually turn those questions into a piece they can add to their writing. Does that make sense? One student in particular couldn't wait to read, but then didn't seem to understand that he wasn't actually "done" with his paper. I will then of course have to address this issue tomorrow and SHOW them what it means to add more, change order, things like this. I did have my students write on only one side of the paper so that we can literally "cut" parts out, and fit them where they belong. This seemed to work awesome today when I conferred with a student. I'm going to see how it goes tomorrow when I use this as a direction to go with in my mini lesson.
ReplyDelete*Tonya
*If there are 2 posts from me, sorry, something happened when I was writing one. My school computer STINKS!
During many partner and group activities, my students get the opportunity to pick an area in the room and make it their "own" for that designated time. One spot that always gets much attention is my "teacher chair". It's bigger than the rest, it's in the front of the classroom, and the students view it as a coveted spot. After completing a writing activity, my students wanted to share their pieces. Before we started the sharing, the whole group made a chart about sharing time. We discussed that this was a time when students can come sit in the teacher chair and share their work with peers. We brainstormed questions that the audience members and sharer can ask. We also talked about appropriate behavior when people are sharing.
ReplyDeleteI made up a list of students and labeled their individual share times.
So far, sharing has gone well. We are trying to spark more conversation by creating a list of more questions to possibly ask.
Also, time is something that has been a factor. Some students are short in their presentation of their pieces, while other students ramble. Although I have limited their sharing to 2-3 pages, I don't know when it is appropriate to step in. Any suggestions?
Amee