Lit Coach Notes Nov. 09

NOTES

FROM THE LITERACY COACH

JEN MUNNERLYN

Organized and ready to use!

NOVEMBER 2009

Writer’s Workshop Update... We now have books to support our spiral! Hurray! The books are here. The Booksource order arrived 2weeks ago and the TAs and I have been busily organizing the books for classroom use. The grades 3-5 teachers each received a wide selection of books to support teaching the Lucy Calkins Units of Study. Not only did we order the basic “Anchor Texts” mentioned to support each unit, we also ordered books specifically for grades 3, 4 and 5- which we are calling “Mentor Texts”. Some of the bundled sets include: Launching, Breathing Life into Essays, Good

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Endings, Narrative Procedure and Character Traits. Looking through the books, and realizing how many we now have, I think it will take time to determine which grade level utilizes which book and for what skill. However, once we do that, we will again be able to strengthen the spiral formed by the units of study and be certain we are differentiating our teaching. For now, teachers are asked to try and dig into the texts as much as possible and especially to encourage students to read them with “writer’s eyes”. The only disappointment... Fireflies by Julie Brinkloe was not one of the books in the order. This

text is one of the best, and I’m hopeful we can order it as a single copy through Amazon this year.

WW Poll What is the hardest transition to make when moving to a workshop approach? Keeping mini-lessons short! Conferencing! Making time to share! Knowing when to move on/reteach! Determining when/how to assess!

0 2 0 0 4

TAKE THE POLL @ my blog www.literacybytes.com

ACS is interested in sending a group of teachers to this PD event this summer. Interested?

PICK UP YOUR INTEREST INVENTORY FROM JEN BY NOV. 1

Summer Writing Institute 2010

NOV

Curriculum Teams

Whole Staff (KG2-5)

Grade Spans

Meetings and Events...

4 *Teachers As ReadersCheck out this great website: www.whatshouldireadnext.com

Just type in a book you liked and the site gives you a list of books like it which you might also like to read. It’s like having a personal librarian there to guide you!

Staff Meeting

10

11

3-5 Writing Team Meeting 12:45-3:45

KG2-3 Collegial Conversations: Fitting it all in!? (As requested during our DRA meeting...) 3:30-4:30

11 KG2-3 Reading Team Meeting 12:45-3:15

18 3-5 ALL- Unit 2 Writing Celebration! 3:30-4:30

NO RR PD Sessions

FINALLY THERE IS A CHECK OUT SHEET FOR THE PROFESSIONAL LITERACY BOOKS. PLEASE SIGN OUT WHAT YOU TAKE.

Reading Workshop Update... We now have books to support our units of study! The last few weeks have been exciting in my new room as TAs worked to unpack, stamp, label, and haul our new books to classrooms. Grades KG2-3 received orders from Booksource to support their classroom libraries, teach comprehension strategies in RUOS, and/or books for use with the Fountas and Pinnell Phonics Program. Together with the WW books ordered for grades 3-5 we received around 1,600 highquality, beautiful, interesting books to help us impact student learning. My favorite part of the week had to be listening in on the TAs as they organized the books. Their interest in and excitement over the texts we received is exactly the response we should be hearing from kids. When I hear a teacher at our school say “I can’t wait to read this book!” I’m certain this order was a success. Next steps? I’m busy cataloging the titles into a database so teachers looking for a particular text can easily find it. As we move to teaching with literature like this, it will be important to share these books until everyone has what they need. However, we are certainly moving in the right direction!

The Booksource DATABASE will be available for you to search very soon... I will also provide teachers with a Share Sheet to help you share and keep track of the where-abouts of each new book.

Students in G1 Organizing Their Own Classroom Library

TA Training Things are busy, busy, busy right now, but I don’t want to forget about TA Training. Here are a few things to consider with your team... 1. What do all TAs need support with?

REGIE ROUTMAN PD... With no new sessions this month, teachers have time to try/apply some of the ideas from our ERD PD program: Regie Routman, Transforming Your Teaching Through Reading to Understand. In our last session we look a few minutes to brainstorm both how we can do what we’ve learned and the supplies we need to make it happen. Below is a list of what teachers recorded during that session...

HOPES/DREAMS... Ideas… How can we do what Regie describes? ! Teachers need to be readers ! We don’t need to ask kids to write about their reading all the time ! Kids always need to have a book around ! Students need to enjoy books! ! Model, model, model reading! ! Make reading areas/classroom libraries more inviting ! Classify by genre/author/ student interest ! Continue to share ideas among teams vertically and at grade level ! Try the partner reading concept ! Buzzing about books- getting kids excited to read ! Monthly book club share ! Redesign reading log ! Reading ourselves during independent reading ! Reorganize class library ! Model with teacher reading ! Celebrate reading print ! Share whatever you are reading- your reading life!

Ordering… What do we need to create rich, literacy environments in every classroom? ! Ordering Science/SS books for kids ! More space to display books (but how are we going to do that?) ! Order more age appropriate science/ss/math texts. ! Bookshelves that are better designed for book baskets ! Baskets and bins that are clear and fit books and shelves ! Lamps, cushions, gutters, display shelves that actually work ! Texts that students are most interested in ! Revolving bookshelves ! Rain gutters ! More shelving for my library ! More books ! More bins ! Good, solid, uniform book baskets ! More non-fiction ! Book displays or revolving Aframe ! More books in the other subject areas ! More shelving at the kids

level

Assistants come and go. Thinking not about the assistant you have now, but the things you always need to have someone trained to do, what is a grade level MUST for your assistants to know in the area of literacy?

2. What transferable skills can we work on? What can we train assistants to do which will be useful across literacy areas or even subjects?

3. How can Jen work with teachers to offer training? The experience will be richer for TAs if WE are able to share good teaching strategies together...

4. Realistically, when can we offer training? I’m beginning to think 2nd semester is the time for this, but I’m open for suggestions...

5. Realistically, how much do TAs really need to know? There still seems to be some difference in opinion over how much classroom instruction TAs should be asked to do. Before I begin any kind of training, I think we need to have a collective understanding of the duties/ role of assistants at each grade level.

ORDERING... At the Nov. Leadership Meeting I will be handing out information about the next Booksource order. This year grades KG-2 will be ordering books specifically to use with LC Writer’s Workshop and grades 3-5 will be ordering classroom library books and books to support our new Reading Units of Study.