I Got One!

I am so glad to say I can enter into this next school year knowing that I passed on a love of reading to at least ONE student. And, as any teacher will tell you, even if she is the only one, I will retire happily knowing I did my part. 

As I opened up my email to search for the dreaded "Welcome Back" email and schedule (you know what I am talking about...teaching is great, but summer is sweet), I found an email written to me from one of my students from the past school year. It made me smile, and it took away the sting that accompanies the end of yet another restful summer break. She wrote:

"Hey, Mrs.Posey it is _________ ________! I was wondering how u have been. I hope u r doing well. I also wanted to tell u that I have continued to read Harry Potter. I am on book number 5! I now have all the books, plus Hermonie's replica wand. My room is filled up with Harry potter posters everywhere. I even have a Hedwig stuffed animal. I also wanted to say I really miss u. You know how I told you my mom would never read Harry Potter, well guess what I got my mom hooked now.Since I got her so hooked she even got me all the movies! Well hope u had an awesome summer!
Bye!"

*smile returning*

This is the power of Reader's Workshop. This is the power of allowing students to have choice in their reading and education. This is a power that I fear is going to be taken away in the upcoming school years with curriculum changes...but that's for another post. For now, I am going to hang on to the fact that all of my research, hard work, and stress of the past school year really did pay off :)

Tell me about a time you knew you had made an impact on a student in the comments below!

What a Year So Far!

Hi followers! It's been a long time! This school year is off to a great start so far...but it has been busy busy busy! I am currently in the throws of a full fledged reading and writing workshop. I have been doing a lot of reading and research to help guide me, but I am still trying to figure out so much. 

I am enjoying tailoring my teaching to my students' needs based on what I am seeing in their work, and I have found that this new model for teaching is giving me a lot more time for conferring with students. In the past four weeks, I have gotten to know my students' strengths and weaknesses and am already planning on how to better meet their needs through small groups and one-on-one teaching. 

The best part is that I have the full support of my principal, who is very excited about me trying out this new teaching style. I am the first person in my school to completely abandon the anthology. It's sort of scary to not have the assurance of a pre-planned curriculum, but I feel like I have found a lot of support via Twitter. 

Last school year, I implemented some pieces of the reading and writing workshop and saw so much growth in my students. I can only imagine what I will see by the end of this school year. For those of you who are interested in looking into the reading and writing workshop, here are some resources I have found the most helpful:

Guiding Readers and Writers by Fountas and Pinnell has a ton of information about implementing the reading and writing workshop. The book includes mini-lessons to help guide beginners in launching the workshop, along with images of anchor charts that I have found very helpful.






Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop by Franki Sibberson helped ease many of my fears when deciding to venture into the world of reading and writing workshop. Franki explains how to use student work, class discussions, and conferences to drive instruction. Reading this book helped me see all the different methods I could use to assess my students and gather data. There are student work samples and forms to help get you started, too!



I also downloaded a digital book by Lucy Calkins called A Curricular Plan for the Reading Workshop from the Heinemann website. This is a great tool to help provide a scope and sequence for the year. One of the most intimidating factors for making the switch to reading workshop was not knowing what units to teach and how to teach them. Let's face it, that's what makes anthologies so convenient. They tell you what stories to teach, and what skills to teach with them. This book Gives you a month by month sequence you can use to plan instruction. Calkins also provides teaching points to cover within each unit of study. There are not any actual "lesson plans," but I like that. It is up to me to figure out what is best for my students, but I like having a resource that will help provide some structure. Heinemann also has the same type of resource for writing workshop, and both resources can be found for any grade level. 

Well, that's all for now. I am still fine tuning and researching. This is going to be quite a big year for me, but I am feeling very excited and energized about this new adventure. I can't wait to see my students grow and thrive in an environment that is catered to each of their individual needs. 

Who else is using this structure for teaching language arts? What are some of your favorite resources that you use? I can't wait to hear from you all!

2012-2013, Here We Come!

I am heading back to school this Monday for the teachers' week back. As I stated in my last post, I have not and do not plan on purchasing a lot of new materials for my room this year. I am going to make a few things (one of which includes a neat Boggle bulletin board) and change up my set up a bit, but other than that not much room decorating going on this year...at leas that's the plan for now! My real focus during the next week is going to be planning the first week back and making some changes to the way my classroom will be run.

I am tired of giving my students a bunch of busy work on the first day/during the first week. I know this time should be spent teaching routines and such, but I know there has to be a more enjoyable and productive way. I want to hook them in the first week! I have a found a few ideas, but I am looking for more and I am sure that other teachers out there are, too! So...let's share! 

Here are some things I found that I may want to try during the first week:

1. Team Challenges

This site is GREAT! There are tons of activities that you can use to help build team spirit in your classroom. What better way to start off the year than to challenge kids to work together and get to know one another in a positive way. I really like the idea of our classroom becoming a family, and I think activities like these are the ticket! 

2. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Last year, our school implemented a school-wide "respect project." I would not describe our school as one with a great deal of behavior challenges, but there is always room for improvement, right? We felt that by encouraging our kids to be more respectful, we were setting them up for life-long success. I think talking about respect and creating an anchor chart like this one will help set the tone for the year. Some of the ideas we covered as a school last year came from The Essential 55 by Ron Clark. These are basically behaviors that should be expected of all students. We did not do all 55, but selected 10 that we felt were the most important. I found a shortened version of these expectations here. 

3. Find out THEIR expectations

I like the ideas I found on Mrs. Robinson's Classroom Blog, specifically her activity that asked students to think about their ides to help their classroom run smoothly. I love the charts she created with her students in this team activity. 

That's all I have so far. Please let us all know what you are doing for the first week back by linking your blog below, or just leave a comment! The more ideas the better!