Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Day Two--

We began our morning with our "Writing into the day" prompt. The prompt connected to our learning about Accountable Talk and its importance yesterday--How do we envision providing AT opportunities for our students? What challenges might we face and how will we address them? At my table we discussed the challenge of holding students accountable as a possible barrier, but believe that, with commitment, we can make this a successful "endeavor" for our school this year.

The community building activity focused on the question "What is your favorite gift you have received?" You would think that is a simple question, but I struggled (just like yesterday's question about my favorite book or series in middle school).  What I love about these tough questions is how revealing the answers are about the members of our community.

Jean shared a strategy adapted from The Literature Workshop by Sheridan Blau. Fantastic! I will use it, model it, share it. It is a close reading strategy called "Question Funnel."  It works just like a funnel--big going in and small (important ones) coming out. Big questions are asked and by the end of the protocol, just a few questions are left that may require further investigation. If you google Sheridan Blau and reading strategies there are tons of resources! I was going to insert a link, but there were too many to choose from.

To practice the strategy, we read the first three writing standards that introduce the three modes of writing. They look so simple on the page, basically three big sentences, but wow! The conversation was far from simple. With our partners and our table, we discussed our questions and help answer the ones we could. Holding on to the unanswered questions, we then read "Addressing Three Modes of Writing Kentucky Core Academic Standards in the 21st Century: Tips for Understanding Standards, Instruction, & Assessment" (that title is almost as long as an individual standard). Questions were answered and more were asked. The dialogue in the room was powerful--you could feel the learning going on, the ideas being generated, and the new questions being developed. This also clearly showed us that AT is a must in our classrooms or else strategies like this won't be as rich and meaningful. (P.S. We all need to finish this reading by Friday.)

Marsha introduced us to SciJourner: Teens Engaging Science Through Journalism and the Inverted Triangle. Marsha's students learned that writing about science and for a science journal has its own "rules." In order to discover this students x-rayed or "boxed out" text from the journal to get to the "bones" or structure of the text. Each paragraph has its "job," something it does for the overall text. I was so excited about this strategy because it is a perfect one for Reading Information Standard 5, which has been a struggle for us at TJ this year. This strategy also lends itself to the Writing Standard 5, where students need to organize their writing. So getting to the "bones" of an article gave us a perfect graphic organizer for writing that is modeled from the mentor text. "The occasion for writing is revealed." (Jean) Using mentor text helps to "reveal" anything we want our students to learn--here it was structure. We participated in the strategy using "Focus on Learning, Not Grades" by Brad Kuntz.
I love when I am learning a new strategy to use with students, but also getting great text. I will share this article with teachers because it is something we are really struggling with--how do you "grade" seems to be a big question, but the real question should be "how do I (teacher) know my student is learning?" The other big question for us as educators: "How am I leading students to independence?" (Jean) (I hope to see some blog posts to discuss this one!)

I am sharing this blog day with Noah. We are both new to this tool. For the rest of our brief four hours, there should be a post from him--it may be the only post you see if I can't figure it out....