Launching the Writer's Workshop

Last week, PUSD kicked off the school year with staff development that focused on launching Lucy Calkins Common Core Writer's Workshop and Units of Study. Teachers discussed and collaborated about how to teach writing. How to spend time writing every day. How to become writers with the children. And how important it is to be a writer in order to be a teacher of writing. It is an exciting time. It will take a lot of hard work, commitment, and dedication. But it is so necessary to help our young people find their own voice within the walls of a time in which they are constantly saturated with information.  

I was inspired today when a collegue forwarded this YouTube clip of Lucy Calkins speaking about writing.    

"Read your writing like it's gold. And listen to your classmates writing. Listen to your own writing. And let it make the world of difference. It can change your world." ~Lucy Calkins

I was also inspired by our keynote speaker, Lisa Highfill. She addressed the need to engage and inspire the curousity in our students. She started with this YouTube clip of two babies playing with a rubber band. They giggle, explore, and try to place the rubber band on a kitchen cabinet knob.  

What the video reminds us is that curiousity is the purest form of learning and exploring. As a teacher, it is our responsibility to facilitate activities that promote this pure kind of learning and development. Hilarious! I could stop giggling myself when I watched these babies. 

Monday is the first day of school. I am trying to "Live like a Writer" and take a moment to remember what inspired me before the chaos of fall. Hope to keep up this inspiration all year. 

Lesson 2: Dreaming the Dream of the Story

After yesterdays lesson, I realized that we did not take the time to share, reflect, or make a plan for the next day. I conferred with a few kids, but I need to help them manage the small moments in a deeper way. Students are drafting these pieces for their personal blogs which be published on the Internet, so I also need to set the clear expectation that there is a writing/drafting time and then a time to format the blog. I noticed that writing pieces were shorter as student were distracted with formatting options. So keeping that in mind, today's lesson was building a little on yesterday's lesson.

First, we reviewed the "Strategies for Generating Narratives" chart. I added several strategies to it and shared it with the class.

Strategies for Generating Personal Narrative Writing

• Think of a person who matters to you, list Small Moment stories connected to him/her and write one.
• Think of the first times, last times, or times you realized something, list stories you could tell about each and write one. 
• Think about a place that matters, list small moments, that occurred in that place and write one. 
• Think of a strong feeling. List stories of particular times you felt it and write one. 

Each student thought about which strategy they used yesterday and shared it with the group. Then I shared an example from my writers notebook that I wrote several years ago. It was about the last time I held my mothers hand before she passed away. The piece is sad, but it caught the students attention and shared the vulnerability in writing. I did this to model a narrative about last moment in my life. 

Then, I shared today's teaching point as described by Calkins and Marron.....

"Today I want to remind you that writers of stories...and this is writers of true stories as well as fictional ones, climb inside the story, walking in the shoes of the character, experiencing the story as it unfolds and putting that onto the page so readers can experience it too." 

This is summarized on a new chart titled: 

Techniques for Raising the Level of Narrative Writing

• Dream the dream of the story and then write in a way that allows them to experience the moment along with you.

With that, I shared with them aloud the story of when I hit my first home run. I set up the story and expanded on the small moment. The kids were engaged and anxious to tell me more of their stories. At that point, I had them think about what story they were going to tell today. Were they going to start a new story or climb inside the draft they started yesterday? I gave each student a partner and had them orally share their idea focusing on dreaming the story and climbing inside the story as they share. When they felt reay to write and both had a chance to share, then they went back to their lap tops to draft. Today I gave them 20 minutes to draft and 10 minutes to format their blogs. 

Lesson 1: Starting with Turning Points

Today I taught this lesson during our Schoogle class. I introduced the topic of narrative writing as a type of personal blog that the students will publish and share the stories of their life. We started with identifying strategies that they already know that help them generate strong personal narratives. One that I had listed on the chart is listed below...

Strategies for Generating Personal Narrative Writing

• Think of a PERSON who matters to you, list Small Moment stories connected to him/her and write one.

TEACHING POINT 

After that,  I identified the main teaching point. In her book, Narrative Craft, Lucy Calkins and Alexandra Marron describe the dialogue to set up the teaching point in this way. 

"Today I want to teach you a new strategy - one that helps people write powerful stories. It usually works to jot moments that have been turning points in your life. These might be first times or last times, or they might be times when you realized something important. Then you take one of those moments and write the whole story, fast and furious."

After sharing the teaching point, I shared my examples.....

• The first time I hit a home run when I was playing Varsity softball for Amador.
• The first time I rode my bike. 
• The first time I went to Coloma Outdoor Education trip. 
• The last time I played powder puff football.
• The last time I held my moms hand. 
• The last time I spoke with my dad.
• A turning point in my life was when my fourth grade teacher read aloud, Where the Red Fern Grows.  
• When I got engaged and married. 
• When each of my children were born. 

At this point, the kids really wanted to share their ideas....I partner them up and give them time to share their ideas with each other.

We come together as a group and share out a couple ideas. Then...if they are ready to write, I excuse them to their laptops. If they need more time to brainstorm, they stay with me. 3 kids stayed with me to generate more ideas.

Once they were all at their lap tops, I walk around and celebrate the ideas being typed into their blog. I realize that some of them would rather format their blog rather that write their narrative. I monitor the work and encourage them to write for 25 minutes and then give them the incentive to format their blog and text after a drafting time. After 25 minutes of writing, they share their writing with their writing partner and work on format.

At that point, time was up. Looking forward to tomorrow's lesson...Dreaming the dream of the story.

Google Blogger

Readers Think. Thinkers Write. Writers Blog. 

Use Google Blogger to help you jot your thoughts about the books you read and get lost in!  Become a book critic!  Invite students to become readers who write book reviews! Once they complete a picture book or chapter book, they can summarize the text and follow up with their own thinking/opinions of the text.  Here is a structure you may find useful when learning to write a book review: 

Paragraph #1: Write a summary of the text!   You can use the outline provided here →	Sent.  #1: Attention grabber (ask a question, give a statistic, include a quote from the text, or?) Sent. #2: Include the title and author of the text Sent. #3: Describe the setting (there may be more than one place) Sent. #4: Describe when the story/text takes place Sent. #5: Characters or people involved (just the most important ones) Sent. #6-9: What happens (describe the main ideas, big problem, how it’s resolved) Sent. #10-12:Explain why the text is important “This story shows the value of …” “It’s important to read stories like this because it reminds us …” “From ________ I realized that …” I believe the author wrote this text to teach us that … Sent. #13-14:  What can we learn from this? Sent. #15: Conclusion sentence (very last thought you leave us with … make it count!)
Paragraph #2: Write your own thoughts and opinions about the story	Out of all the stories written about friendship, this is one of my favorites.  It is not often that you read of such an unlikely friendship.  Freak the Mighty is a story that takes the idea of friendship to a new level! I wish that more books took an honest look at how hard it can be to make new friends, and how we should be more open to finding a lifelong friendship in an unexpected place.
Paragraph #3: Include a rating/recommendation.	I would highly recommend this story to someone who is willing to dig deep into a character’s personality.  This story is not for someone who wants to read about some fantasy land or make-believe characters.  This is heart-warming, real-life story of a family who...
Paragraph #4: More information (author biography, video clips, images, other book reviews, student poll/survey, etc)	If you loved this book by Paul Fleischman, than you should definitely check out his home website.   If you want to find out what other readers think of this story, check out these reviews: LINK Also, did you know there was a video read aloud of this book? You can check it out here: LINK If you were the author, how would YOU have ended the story?

Here is a chart to help you respond to the books you read:

IF YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON:	WAYS TO WRITE YOUR THINKING DOWN, HELPFUL BOOK REVIEW SENTENCE STARTERS!
Genre	The genre of this book is … I know this is the genre because …
Author’s Craft	I love how the author uses the craft of ________ to … One strategy I noticed the author use is ________ and I think it made the story ___________ because … The author’s purpose was …
Character Development	The main character, _______________, teaches me that … The secondary characters taught me that … One change I noticed was that …
Story Structure (overview of setting, characters, plot, conflict, resolution)	This book is mostly about … In the beginning, … In the middle, … And by the end, I … The story takes place in … and this is significant to the story because … The story is set in _______, which changes the outcome of the story because … The plot had a surprising twist.  Little did I know … The main conflict in the text was …
Big ideas/theme	The theme of this story is … and I know this because … I thought the big idea of the book was … This book has taught me to …
Personal connections	When I was reading about the main character, I was connecting to a time when I … I was able to relate to the text when I read “ ______” The characters taught me that … I was surprised to read that …
Other	The pictures in the book show how … The movie version of this book is the same/different.  For example, ...

What are we doing here?

“Before you turn to the ins and outs of curriculum and the face of education today, the new standards and old standards and best practices, pause for a moment to picture the face of a child. One small someone you know well. When you see her running up to you, does it make you smile? When you picture him walking slowly with his head down, backpack slumped over his shoulder, do you want to reach out, maybe call him back? And when you think of all of them, their quirky, tousled, grubby beautiful faces looking up at you expectantly, I know you feel the tug in your chest. that tug of feeling we are so responsible for them all. We feel it deeply. And this is what I want to say: that is the core of all that matters in teaching. Without that care, the greatest curriculum in the world is only paper and a little dry ink.”

~ Lucy Calkins (A Guide to Common Core Writing Workshop)

AMEN SISTA! This blog is dedicated to share the journey that we are taking as educators. At the core of our study is the heartbeat of the classroom. The student reactions and the teachers knowledge to capitalize on the nuggets of brilliance that are shared. At the forefront of changing to Common Core Standards is reading and writing workshop. But now we are preparing our children to be thinkers and use the tools of technology as well as to express themselves and form their own opinions that contribute to our world. Take this trip with me as I will share classroom trials and discoveries.

For starters, I found this resource online tonight. Lucy Calkins and the teachers college have videos and sample lessons posted on vimeo. You can create your own cohort and observe some of the best practices happening in classrooms across the country. There are over 23 videos of lessons from Calkins Common Core Units of Study. Click this link to find the lessons that are best for your classroom.