Teaching Resources

Next week, Mr. Sneaker leaves for a business trip the US, so he will be stopping in OR to help me with some aspects of my relocation (like trying to get a car!). It would be nice if I could get around while I am there like I do here--with my two feet--but sadly, I will need a car because it is a 20-25 minute drive from my campus to my new elementary school and the public transportation takes for-ev-er. Since I pretty much have 30 minutes from the time I am finished working to the time I need to be in class for my doctoral courses, it just would not work to use public transportation (or bike or walk like everyone does around here in Gemany). Because we are trying not to make my time back in the states a costly endeavor, Mr. Sneaker is looking into vehicle options for me, so I will have something to get me from point a to point b while I am there. We'd like to have an idea of what we can get because once I arrive I will need to kick it into gear and get ready for the school year, so I won't have a ton of time to shop around for something to drive.

So, since he is going to Portland, I get to send some things with him to drop off at a friend's house so that I will have those items when I move in August. Since I will be traveling alone in August, I can't bring that much stuff, so we are spreading it out and moving some stuff now. I am thinking of sending winter clothing, coats, scarves, hats, shoes etc. because I won't need any of those things between now and August. That's not to say we won't have more cold, rainy, very non-summer-like weather between now and then, but I need to send something.

I have posted before about how I am so torn with regards to my collection of books that I have here that I really want to have access to once I am teaching Kindergarten back in OR. I have pretty much decided that most books can be found in libraries, so although that means having to be a bit more organized and making frequent trips to the good old library, I will be okay leaving most of my picture books behind. I did pick out some particular ones that are for instructional purposes that I know I would not find at a library, but I have significantly narrowed my pile.

My cute little coin books are coming. My character development books are coming too.

And my collection of simple decodable/sight word books are coming because it's hard to find texts like these in the real world of literature, yet this kind of book is important to have around so my little friends can practice words they know and can read a book from start to finish.

Then I started thinking about my teaching resource books....another dilemma! These types of books are ones that I refer to continuously for planning, teaching, and also for completing all of my papers for class that require links to research and best practices. It's not likely that I would find them at a library and I want to have them permanently while I am there rather than for only a few weeks at a time. I took a little inventory of all the books that I have (which by the way are organized by theme on my bookshelves) and made a list of the ones I am pretty sure I can't live without.

• Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
• Growing Readers by Kathy Collins
• The Daily Five by Gail Boushey & Joan Moser
• 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: Primary Grades by Ruth Culham
• Un-Standardizing Curriculum: Multicultural Teaching in the Standards-Based Classroom by Christine Sleeter
• Readers and Writers with a Difference by Lynn Rhodes & Curt Dudley-Marling
• (and of course my new book) Letter and Picture Sorts for Emergent Spellers-Words Their Way

It's not a ton of books, but the weight and space that they require adds up. I also have to make sure that I bring along my Boardmaker software and my portfolio containing all of my important documents. It is so hard to narrow everything down and I am really glad I left most of my teaching materials and supplies in storage back in OR. It will be fun digging through our unit to find the stuff, but at least I know my classroom won't have to be entirely empty and void of fun and interesting learning materials!

What are you favorite "teacher books"?

What resources have given you aha moments?

What personal items (i.e clothes, shoes, purses etc.) would you sacrifice (if you were me) in order to bring more books?

Oral Reading VS Silent Reading

Last year, I taught a reading group consisting of about 17 "approaching" first graders. The label approaching was derived from the fact that they did not meet benchmark scores on the fall DIBELS assessment which is a series of assessments that came out of the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!). My students began the year reading between 0 and 3 correct words per minute (the end of the year benchmark for first graders is 40 correct words per minute).

I will preface by saying that, I do think I did a good job teaching this group. By May, every student had increased his or her Oral Reading Fluency score (which is very important for the data loving literacy specialists at my school who track their progress on a weekly basis). I think the highest score achieved from my group was 56 correct words per minute and 5 or 6 students made benchmark by the end of the year. All of my students were identified in the lowest 20% of the grade level, which meant that they received Title I services for additional reading support and interventions. The students were skill grouped at my school, based on their initial scores, which is why my entire class was in the same range. I know that my class was successful and I was successful in the approach I took to teach them, however I do question some of the structures that I used, especially in light of some of my recent reading.

Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers. By Lynn K. Rhodes & Curt Dudley-Marling. Take a look here at amazon.com.

I am taking an online course right now called Teaching Reading to Students with Special Needs. Rather than focusing on direct instruction, our text offers a more holistic approach to literacy, asserting that in order to become better readers and writers, students (especially students who are struggling) need to actually READ and WRITE for the majority of their time rather than practice discrete skills and read words in isolation. I spent a lot of time last year focusing on decoding skills and teaching sound spelling combinations because these are necessary skills for reading accuracy that lead to increased reading fluency. This text/class have given me a new outlook on what is best for the types of students I taught last year.

One issue the book addresses is reading orally in a "round robin" fashion versus reading silently. The book definitely supports the benefits of having students read silently and I will sheepishly admit that I did a lot of round robin oral reading with my group. Sometimes I want to hit the bottom of my palm to my forehead ala Homer Simpson while uttering a loud "DOH," but I recognize that part of being a strong teacher is continuously learning, re-evaluating, and figuring out what works best, so I try not to be too hard on myself.

What I learned is:

• Round robin reading does not allow participants as much time to read--Some students process little text unless it is their turn to read. (I had a group full of wigglers who had a hard time paying attention--what did they actually gain from round robin reading?)
• The entire group may read a story, but each individual may only read a page or two--Consider that it may be the only page or two he or she reads all day.
• Round robin does not lend itself to the development of effective, efficient, and independent reading strategies--Aren't these exactly what we want to develop?
• Round robin reading typically focuses on correct pronunciation which can interfere with comprehension.

This information made me reconsider what my reading block should look like. Working within an adopted program, I did not have a ton of flexibility and I could not really conduct a reader's workshop type reading block, however, in the future I would want to think long and hard about procedures being used. For the immediate future, I get to see how two really great teachers do it with third graders at FIS in Germany!

One question I always had was, if students are reading silently, how can I ensure that they are indeed reading? The text offered a great list of conference questions that can be asked to investigate what skills are being employed by students as they read to themselves.

1. What would you like to tell me about what you've read?
2. Do you have any confusions about what you've read?
3. What have you been wondering about as you read this?
4. How did you decide to read this?
5. What kinds of things have you been wrestling with as you read this? How have you solved the problem(s)?
6. If you had a chance to talk with this author, what would you talk with him/her about?
7. What do you plan to read next? Why?
8. Does this make you think of anything else you've read? (text to text connection)
9. Why do you suppose the author gave this book this title?
10. What parts of this book have you especially liked? Disliked?
11. Do you like this more or less than the last thing you read? Why?
12. Is there anybody else in our class who you think would enjoy reading this? Why?
13. Did you skip any parts of what you have read? What? Why?
14. What is the main thing the author is saying to you?
15. Why do you suppose the author began the way he/she did?
16. Would you like to be one of the people in this? Who? Why?
17. What other texts by this author have you read? Are the other texts similar in any way to this one?

All of these questions may not apply to all grade levels, but they can be altered to fit whatever age group that you teach. I love to read professional development materials that challenge the way I think or teach. It always feels good to know that I am improving my critical thinking skills as well as my teaching skills.

Interesting Thought

Readers and Writers with a Difference: A Holistic Approach to Teaching Struggling Readers and Writers.

By Lynn K Rhodes & Curt Dudley-Marling

"We wish to emphasize that our goals for literacy instruction apply to all children, regardless of ability or economic, social, linguistic, or cultural background. Special literacy programs for poor and minority students (students often described as "at risk") that emphasize basic skills instruction and limit the purposes and audiences for students' reading can have the effect of reinforcing a status quo in which many people are disadvantaged because of their race, gender, class, ethnicity, or language."

When I read this quote, I felt very badly about how we configured our reading groups this past year. We skill grouped the children, which meant separating out all the students who were struggling and putting them in a group together and separating out all the students who were "beyond grade level" to be together in another group. I taught the "approaching" group and did spend most of our time working on basic skills such as phonemic awareness as opposed to having the students engage in meaningful reading of connected text for a large percentage of our time together. I feel like I taught them according to district expectations, using the adopted curriculum as I was told, but now I am seriously questioning the methods that we used.

I always love to read books in which teachers describe their "holistic" methods and I am always astounded by what young students are capable of doing. I am so anxious to see reading instruction at my new international school because I am just dying to see first hand how this more holistic approach really works!

Do you feel like whole language and direct instruction are two mutually exclusive camps that cannot be combined? (I always thought you were either a teacher who did one or the other!)

Do you think that there can exist a marriage of the two that results in more successful students?

What have you found useful in your classroom?

6 + 1 Traits of Writing

Check out this 6 + 1 Traits of Writing website. My teacher asked us to take a look at it and I am so happy that she did! There are lesson plans that address each of the traits at each grade level from 1st through 12th. There is also a Beginning Writer's Continuum (BWC) that looks like a fantastic tool for evaluating the writing of younger students according to the 7 different writing traits. You can also find writing pieces that have already been scored and you can practice scoring pieces as well.

Not familiar with 6+1 Traits of Writing? I wasn't either until last summer. I felt like everyone else knew about this secret and I didn't.

Ideas- the heart of the message

Organization- the internal structure of the piece

Voice- the personal tone and flavor of the author's message

Word Choice- the vocabulary an author chooses to convey meaning

Sentence Fluency-the rhythm and flow of the language

Conventions-the mechanical correctness

Presentation- how the piece looks

I have the 6 + 1 Traits book for primary students but the website has many additional tools to use!

Bio Poems

Have you heard of Bio Poems? This is one of the writing strategies that I learned in my writing across content areas class (from the book Write More! Learn More! by Tama & McClain). It was suggested that having students write this kind of poem is an excellent way to have them introduce themselves at the beginning of the year to build a classroom community of kids who know each other on a deeper level. It can also be used for other content areas (with creativity of course). Following the format, I wrote some examples.

Here is the format:

Line 1: First Name

Line 2: Four traits that describe character or topic

Line 3: Relative of ("brother, sister" etc.)

Line 4: Lover of (list three items)

Line 5: Who feels (three items)

Line 6: Who needs (three items)

Line 7: Who fears: (three items)

Line 8: Who gives (three items)

Line 9: Who would like to see (three items)

Line 10: Resident of

Line 11: Last name

Here is my Bio Poem

Katie

loyal, patient, thoughtful, klutzy

relative of Dan, Shari, & Alyssa

lover of peanut butter, reading, and Johnny

who feels excited, tired, and content

who needs love, support, and snacks

who fears frogs, loneliness, and crowds

who gives love, support, and snacks

who would like to see family, friends, and someone nice to rent my house

resident of Portland/Gemany

Toppel

In class yesterday, a few elementary teachers and I made up this one about frogs. A teacher in this group also said she had first/second graders write Bio Poems for their moms for Mother's Day. Such a cute idea!

Frog

webbed feet, bulging eyes, smooth skin, long sticky tongue

relative of toads

lover of bugs, water, and cool mud

who feels cold when it's cold and hot when it's hot

who needs prey, water, and land

who fears owls, blue herons, and snakes

who would like to see lots of juicy bugs

resident of the pond

Frog

For some categories I did not list three, but I think that this poem is very applicable to younger students. Maybe I would have them help me write one in a whole group before letting them try one on their own, but I am excited to try it. Maybe this year with the third graders....

Try it out! Anyone brave enough to leave their Bio Poem as a comment to this post!

More Kid Writing

I love this piece of writing by my little future scientist. Enzo is so into non-fiction and knows lots of information about animals and various creatures. 

My students have been working on writing 5 sentence paragraphs

 that begin with a main idea (topic sentence), followed by three details related to the main idea, and end with a closing sentence that tells how they feel about the main idea.  

Enzo's piece about the difference between saw sharks and hammerhead sharks is too cute! The difference between his writing at the beginning of the year and his writing now is astounding! I wish I had an example to post from September. 

Kid Writing 3

Every week the reading program I teach focuses on 4-7 high frequency words that can be found in all of the stories we read throughout the week. I like to do fun activities using these words so the kids really learn them. One of the games I do that is most popular is the dice game. This game requires students to read the words and use them in complete sentences. 

I bought a large inflatable dice that has the numbers 1-6 on the sides. I write the high frequency words or vocabulary words on the board labeled with the numbers 1-6. Each child gets a turn to roll the dice, read the high frequency word that matches the number on the dice and then use the word in a complete sentence. This is a great activity for developing language and ensuring that the kids understand the meanings of the words.

Following this game, I give the students a piece of writing paper and ask them to write a sentence using one of the high frequency words from the board. At the beginning of the year, this was a struggle. I asked students to write just one sentence and this took a lot of effort. 

I did this activity today and not only did the kids do an outstanding job on their writing, but they were able to use 2 or 3 high frequency words in their writing which remained on topic and many of them wrote 3 or more sentences. 

When Michelle showed me her work, I grabbed her in for a big hug because I was so proud of how far she has come this year. You may recall Michelle as the author of the first kid written piece I shared which said "IHF" (I have friends).  All uppercase letters, no spaces. This was the piece that Michelle wrote today... 

"I em extremely hape bekus yestrday It was my brthey. my dad tak me to hagen and I so littie kacs kupcas wwith pingk frostren."

(I am extremely happy because yesterday it was my birthday. My dad took me to Hagan's and I saw little cakes cupcakes with pink frosting.)

Michelle is using spaces in between her words and she has ending punctuation on both of her sentences. She correctly uses capitalization at the beginning of her first sentence and with the word "I." Although her spelling is not entirely conventional, she has letters to represent almost all of the sounds in words and she incorporates some of the sound spellings we have worked on such as /ay/ and /th/. She used the word extreme(ly) which is one of our vocabulary words for the week and she also used a voice bubble in her illustration to depict what he mom said to her. Finally, she incorporated "stretched" sentences by telling who, doing what, where, when, and why. We have been working on the idea of stretching sentences and she included some great elements such as the word "because" to tell why, the word "yesterday" to tell when, and "Hagan's" to tell where. 

Another example from today's activity is Melinda's work. Melinda is an ELL student and was categorized as a "beginning" speaker at the beginning of first grade. She has been in my reading group all year and is very bright. I believe she got a zero on her first spelling test and has come a long way, frequently getting 90-100% each week!

"I am extremely happy because I have a noo shrt. It is so warm and free. my shrt is great"

(I am extremely happy because I have a new shirt. It is so warm and furry. My shirt is great.)

Melinda used two high frequency words (great & warm) and one vocabulary word (extreme(ly). She used correct capitalization in two out of three sentences and end punctuation on two out of three sentences. She used conventional spelling for challenging words like because, happy, and have and incorporated the correct usage of sound spellings that we have worked on such as /-y/ and /sh/ and gave a good try on the word new by using the /oo/ sound spelling that we have learned. Melinda has very nice printing and uses spaces in between words. Her family is originally from somewhere in the Pacific Islands so she speaks with an accent and often confuses the /p/ and /b/ sounds like when she wrote brisin (present) in her journal, but boy has she improved since the beginning of the year!

I am so thrilled with the improvements I am seeing in writing and the best part is my students ask me if they can write in their journal and I practically have to pull them out of their hands to get them to come to the carpet when writing time is over...even the boys!

More Kid Writing

Earlier in the school year, I posted some writing samples that were written by a few of my first graders. I am amazed at the difference in the quality of their writing and I am in love with the this piece, written by Enzo. 

We just finished a unit on American symbols and thanks to the great set of non-fiction books I got through my donors choose request, my students were very interested. Ever since watching the presidential inauguration, they have shown a lot of interest in Obama and the life of a president so it was a great time to teach them a little bit more about our country. I never thought I would be pulling down a map and talking to first graders about the Revolutionary War and the original 13 colonies, but they loved it!

We concluded the unit by talking about President's Day and why we honor all of the presidents, with particular emphasis on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Incidentally, we also just started our unit on coins, so the kids were very excited to find Lincoln on the penny and Washington on the quarter. It was really cool to show them what pictures are on the backs of coins and have them recognize them from our study on American Symbols. Isn't is great when it all comes together.

Their final assignment was to write 3 or more sentences telling what they learned about President's Day, Abraham Lincoln, and or George Washington. I had written some of the vocabulary on the board such as Revolutionary War, assassination, and the names of the presidents, but Enzo's work is still impressive in that he correctly uses the words and accurately describes facts that he learned. Enzo is a non-fiction fiend and LOVES to write about animals and invent imaginary face-offs between animals from different habitats after which he shows me and says something like, "Hippo or Bison....VOTE!" His enthusiasm for writing is enchanting, especially when I recall how he started out the year.

It took Enzo quite some time work spaces into his writing. He would write pages, but his pieces were essentially one long flow of letters, without any spaces, and everything was spelled totally phonetically. It is perfectly reasonable to first graders to spell phonetically, but even simple words like of, were written exactly as they sound (uv). Each day when I checked his work, I would compliment Enzo on his creativity and word choice, and kindly remind him to think about adding some spaces. This went on for quite some time.

Until one day, the spaces just appeared..... and his writing has continued to improve ever since!

Enzo is a classic example of a student who has excellent content and is so focused on what he is writing about that he does not worry too much about capital letters and punctuation. I love that about his writing. Although it would be great if he added in some more periods and uppercase letters, his writing outshines that of many other students because it is rich and interesting and shows his personality and interests. 

The funniest thing about Enzo is that he still says he can't read. (He totally can!). He can sound out words and read sentences, yet he is convinced he can't read. Go figure. Someday I think I will find a book in a bookstore written by my friend Enzo. :0)

Kid Writing

Sometimes when you look at the writing of a child, it is hard to decipher any meaning in what is on the page. Many of my first graders use unconventional spacing in between letters and words and their frequent use of mostly or only uppercase letters makes the message they are trying to convey pretty unclear. I want to know them better through their stories, so I pour over their writing looking at each letter and thinking about the sound it makes, trying to piece together the thoughts they have put down onto the page. 

 Although the words may not be spelled correctly, they are made up of letters representing the sounds students hear when they say the words.  Some letters may be missing, but sure enough when you say the sounds of the letters that are there, you hear the word they wanted to say. They are doing a wonderful job writing stories about their lives and I just love to read them. It is almost like decoding a secret, encrypted language. When I figure out the meaning I am so thrilled to know what they were trying to say.

Here are two  of my favorite journal entries from last week. The writing is very hard to see, but look hard! The stories are there.

Sam
 

"Dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago. 

They aren't alive anymore.

 If you were there you would get killed."

Michelle

"I have friends."

I have to admit, when I first looked at this piece, I thought to myself, "Michelle did not do what I asked, she just wrote down a few random letters and drew a picture." Then I stopped myself and remembered the fantastic book I read this summer about the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing. There was an example that looked just like this and the author found many wonderful things to compliment. 

I gave it another try. I asked Michelle to read to me what she had written. 

She read, "I have friends."

Of course that is what is says! She wrote down the first sound of each word and she drew all of her friends to illustrate her topic. This is wonderful. Michelle is a beginning writer. English is her second language and she did a wonderful job. She even included the date at the top of the page! Michelle will eventually learn to put spaces in between her words and to write down all of the sounds rather than just the first, but this is a great beginning! Michelle's friendships are obviously important to her since she wrote about them in her journal. Imagine if I did not acknowledge all of the great things she did in this piece?!

There is more to kid writing than meets the eye!

6 + 1 Traits of Writing

I attended a workshop this summer called Writing to Learn presented by the Northwest Regional Education Service District. Of all the things I did this summer, I think it was one of the most useful experiences I had. The workshop indicated the significance of using writing as a tool to learn, emphasizing the importance of writing during subjects such as science, social studies, and math as a way to better understand the concepts being learned.

Previously, writing for my first graders was simply writing in their journals. They were provided time to write about any topic they wished. Typical entries included stories about families, pets, and friends with some video game and super hero themes from the boys. Although this kind of writing is very important for young students, I realized during the workshop that writing can be about so much more than that! This year my class will learn through writing about amphibians, weather, states of matter, math story problems and much more!

We received a booklet containing images of many great graphic organizers and templates to utilize during writing to learn experiences. For anyone who teaches in Clatsop County, Columbia County, Tillamook County, of Washington County in Oregon, I highly recommend looking into when this course is available for teachers in your district! Not only is the class itself great, but you get a lot of great ideas and materials to bring back to your classroom.

During the class, there was discussion of the writing traits that are used to assess writing pieces for state assessments. I realized I was not at all familiar with these traits. I decided to take a peek at the new borders.com website to see if I could find a book describing these traits.

I found a great one!

6 + 1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for the Primary Grades by Ruth Culham is a terrific resource for teachers who are newer to writing instruction. There is also another version available for teachers of grades three and up.

Culham thoroughly discusses the traits: ideas, sentence fluency, organization, word choice, voice, conventions, and presentation. She not only clearly explains each trait, but also includes a rubric for each trait ranging from "Ready to Begin" to "Established" and provides examples of student work at each level for each trait. She walks the reader through the process of assessing and explains her reasoning for the level she assigns. She also provides a list of picture books that correspond with each trait that can be used for helping students to better understand the traits. Additionally, the book contains kid friendly rubrics that can be presented to students so they know what is expected of them.

I highly recommend this book. I read it in one day and am very glad I did. It is a resource I will keep close by when assessing my students this year.