We Level Books, NOT Readers

Friday was my last day at MCS, and today I start a new block at CCS. Thanksgiving weekend was lovely...We had a great time visiting with family and friends, and got our family pictures taken.

Anyway, it was wonderful. And to add to all that wonderfulness - the ILA Conference in New Orleans was live streaming many of their keynotes and speakers. 

I was able to hear talks by Dr. Pedro Noguera, Donalyn Miller, Tricia Ebarvia, Shawna Coppolla, Nell K. Duke, Sonia Cabell, and many other literacy experts. 

Donalyn Miller (author of The Book Whisperer, Reading in the Wild, ), spoke for an hour about the importance of book access and choice.

 Let me tell you, Donalyn does not hold any punches. And I love it. 

Some of the highlights:

-Students need "Book Floods" (school library, classroom library, public library, books at home)

-Stop charging students library fines

-We level books, not readers - students should NEVER identify themselves by the level they are reading. 

- Leveling of books in a classroom library is a privacy issue according to an ALA Position Statement: http://www.ala.org/aasl/advocacy/resources/statements/labeling
- Students need books that are windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors. 

And then today, one of my Facebook friends tagged me in a post with this cartoon...She said it made her think of me.

I can't imagine why:)

-Sonja

A Story is about a Character Who Wants Something (Part 2)

I'm telling you...this simple question is a game changer.

"What does your character want?"

Asking students to really think about this question and to reflect on whether they had really answered it in their memoir certainly encouraged them to revise. And it encouraged THINKING!

Students very quickly realized that when they couldn't answer that question, what they had written was a recount, not a memoir.

You could see the light bulbs going off.

Oh what a day!

This idea is found on p. 68 of "No More: How Long Does It Have To Be?"

-Sonja

Story Begins with a Character Who Wants Something

WEC Literacy Leads are using the book No More "How Long Does It Have to Be": Fostering Independent Writers Grade 3-8 by Jennifer Jacobson for a book study with two WEC schools. I love the way Jennifer Jacobson lays out lessons for teaching Narrative writing...and I have been itching to try out one of the lessons in a classroom. 

Today is the day! We will be exploring “what characters want” in grade 7. (Lesson on page 68).
I’ll let you know how it goes!

-Sonja

Break the Fake!

This week is Media Literacy Week!

MediaSmarts has wonderful lessons to support GCO #7 (students will respond critically to a range of texts, applying their understanding of language, form, and genre)

https://mediasmarts.ca

I am co-teaching in a Grade 6 class and we are using this lesson plan from the website:
Break the Fake: What’s real online?

The students really responded to the “Real or Fake” PowerPoint. Tomorrow we are going to learn about the “Pacific Tree Octopus”...and find out how we can verify online information.

 

The wonderful Erica Elliot 

-Sonja

BHH

BHH

In grade 7, we continued our personal narrative short story study with the text “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros.

We used the BHH Reading from “Disrupting Thinking” by Beers and Probst. We reread the story and paused to talk about what the text said (book), what surprised us (head) and what the story made us feel (heart).

Students were then challenged to answer the following questions about the personal narratives they have started planning and writing:

What is going to surprise the reader?
What is the reader going to feel?

On Monday, we will be looking at more mentor texts for personal narratives. The BHH will be our guide as we think about why the stories are effective personal narratives.

-Sonja

Signposts

I have been co-teaching in a grade 6 class this week. The teacher is such a joy to work with. This is the second year I’ve worked with her, and I really enjoy it. She is so open to co-teaching and having me in her classroom.

Yesterday, we started teaching the Signposts (Beers and Probst “Notice and Note”). We decided to start with “Again and Again”.

The texts we have used so far to teach the signpost:

 I Like, I Don’t Like
We Don’t Eat Our Classmates
You Don’t Want a Unicorn

Today, our lesson morphed into a brainstorming session for persuasive writing. I just love it when students run with an idea!

Tomorrow we will be doing a shared writing "You Don't Want a Troll"...should be fun!

Vocab-O-Grams (Day 2)

So, to finish up our Vocab-O-Gram activity (which is found on p.42 in the book "Words Their Way: Vocabulary for Middle and Secondary Students"), students read the story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros on their own with a highlighter - taking time to shade in the words on the list.

The students really enjoyed comparing their predictions to how the words were actually used in context! This is definitely on my list of activities to repeat! 

-Sonja