Buenas Tardes,
Greetings from deep South Texas. I look forward to connecting with teachers of English Language Learners. I have worked with the ELL Network, Project Outreach II, and the National Writing Retreat's Facilitation Team. I am here to share my classroom experiences, and to learn from you!
Today's Rose: For the last week or so, I've used Ralph Fletcher's story, "Statue," from Marshfield Dreams to lead the students into thinking about all that imaginary play that kids love to do. My list included playing Maestritas (teacher), Raspa Stand (a story about selling homemade Koolaid snowcones in plastic tupperware containers out of my kitchen window), and panaderia or bakery ( where I sold mudpies and mud cookies). Each student made a list of all their imaginary play, and picked one of the topics to write a story using the hamburger model. I thought this was a great resource to get my little ones writing. We have enjoyed it.
Today's Thorn: Not enough time to conference with students about their writing. Each class comes in with only 45 minutes. Will find a way to make it work. I wonder how high school teachers handle conferencing when they have rotating classes.
Comments
Lola, your post is such a fitting segway to Janna's, where she discussed the dissapearing act that is writing time in many public school under the NCLB gun. You are in an elementary school, working as a resource teacher. Your situation is somewhat different, as I am thinking you see each of your 250 students once or twice a week, is that true? If so, please let us know later on how are you managing it.
I love imaginary play (an endangered species in this age of indoor kids) as a way to get children into writing. I did some of it in my classroom, calling it What If stories. But we were on a regular schedule and I saw my students five times a week.
Readers can actually get a good sense of Statue if you go to Google books and look inside Marshfield Dreams.
Hi Rebeca,
As far as my schedule goes, it looks something like this:
I have about 120 third graders. I meet with five 3rd grade classes three times a week (Monday-Wednesday) for 45 minutes each.
I have about 110 fourth graders, for a grand total of about 230 kiddos.
On Thursdays and Fridays, I meet with four fourth grade classes in my lab for 45 minutes.
Because I have some additional gaps in my schedule, I have 2 additional sessions with each of the fourth grade classes (where I travel out to their classrooms). I call this my mini lesson time, where I focus on writing craft, word choice, imagery, sentence structure games, or using mentor texts to point out what good writer's do. Once in the lab, I have to see evidence in their writing about the mini lesson for the day/week.
The whole vision behind working with third and fourth was this: Fourth graders test this year, but since we are switching over to a new state exam, their scores won't count for AYP. The fourth grade teachers and I still felt the students needed the writing lab time so we worked out a schedule that for now, let's me see them 4x per week.
So our principal at the time (we've had 3 changes this year!) thought that it would behoove the third grade classes to have 2 years of "lab time" behind them. This would make them fourth grade testers next year and allow me to build that writing community over the course of 2 years.
Conferencing: I have this conferencing form where I "meet" individually with EACH student via our note system on their drafts. Think of it as a written form of PQP (praise question and polish). Once each student receives a note from me, they take the feedback with them and make revisions and corrections. While they make these revisions, I walk around the room and spot check that 1 part that each student needs the most help with.
That's how my schedule goes.
Take care!
Lola
Dolores, it is always so tough to get conferences to fit into tight schedules. At Heart of Texas we had a Saturday morning workshop last week where our TCs presented on topics linked to the theme of the day: "Getting Writing Workshop Going Strong." Two of our HS TCs showed videos of themselves conferring with students. I watched one of the TCs stroll around the room as his students worked. His style of quick check-ins with students reminded me so much of Randy Bomer's advice to make coferences short and intentional. If we train students to initiate the discussion, asking for specific feedback like, "Would you listen to my introduction? I haven't gotten it quite right yet," we can make these conferences very quick and focused. In working with 4th graders, I made an anchor chart and as we did mini lessons, we made lists of what we might ask 'Ms. McKay' for help with as she approaches us for a conference. Sometimes just handing a child a mentor text that might help them out is enough of a conference. It' never easy to fit all of our kids in, but I found that moving around the room, focusing on just parts of the students' texts and expecting students to be accountable to ask for specific feedback are a few ways to keep conferences short and meaningful. Thanks for bringing up what's going well and what we're all struggling with as writing teachers each day! I love your idea of doing a 'rose' and a 'thorn'... at my school the students use a 'star' and a 'wish' when they give each other feedback. I think I'll try the 'rose' and 'thorn' tomorrow when we have a check in after the weekend!
Hi Katherine,
Thanks for your post. Like I mentioned to Rebeca, I see my students for 45 minute intervals where I develop writing craft using mentor texts, we delve into the state rubric to help students see things like "What does sentence variety mean?" What is word choice?
As far as conferencing goes, my students meet with me for mini lessons in their classrooms, but when they come to the lab, they write. Most of them create a "hamburger plan" for their writing and turn that in to me prior to composing their final draft.
My first type of conferencing is a simple PQP format (praise, question and polish) that each child receives from me attached to their plan. Once they know what needs to change, be moved, omitted, they take those suggestions and work on their paper. As they make those corrections, I call have a conferencing table in the back and we meet briefly to see if they need additional help. This doesn't all happen in one day. Over the course of about 2 or 3 45 minute periods, I try to get it all in. Some of them only need a pat on the back, or they may want to show me that they used a powerful word, a nice transition phrase, or to show me that they understood what needs to be revised. With others, we (the teacher of record attends class too to help supervise and to participate in the whole writing process. They also serve as interventionists for those students who need special help or who are recent immigrants and need translations, or for those who are transitioning into English). The other teacher and I will conference with the students over the course of a couple of days.
This week, before introducing the stimulus and the "charge/prompt" for the topic "Think about a time when you had trouble sharing a prized possession," I read them the story called, "Candy Bite" from Viola Canales' book, The Tequila Worm. I liked using it because it showed how she uses similes, dialogue, and how she stays in one moment (the candy sharing experience) without straying off topic.
Thanks for your interest in my post. Also, thanks for your tips as well. This is why we are here? Verdad? Write anytime.
Lola Perez