Chapter+26


 * Chapter 26**

**#1 The end... until Sept. 6th and beyond**

//We made it. We made it through this very long professional text this summer... we made it through different terrains of thought...we made it through and we are probably a little different. If you've allowed this text to blend into your thinking about teaching and learners at all, then you are coming out of chapter 26 with some new thoughts, some revised thoughts, some confirmed thoughts, some disagreements and some lingering uncertainties. If you've allowed this text in (like I know you have from your thoughtful conversations on this wiki) then the first day of school and beyond will be a little different for you this year.//

//What is resonating with you now that this journey through __The Art of Teaching Reading__ is ending?//

This is not the end, it is the beginning of a new framework for me. This book is my guide, I have a focus as I develop a community of literacy. It has been a or almost two months of reflecting. Redesigning my library to be functional. Creating a curriculum of predictabilty. Creating units that are based on authenic research. Yes, I've been given permission to deliver lessons that are focused on the needs of my children, as I cover cover the goals of our district. I finally understand conferring. Like the children I'm dealing with I had the opportunity to talk about my readings this summer. Also Book Clubs that I believe will have substance. Paralleling the reading and writing curriculum was an "ahaa" moment. I am so pumped as I get ready to start my year but I am more focused.

//What teaching points will stay with you "today and every day"?//

//My teaching points are prdictability. Taking time to read aloud every day, through out the day to keep the connections at the forefront of mine and my students minds. Strategies that are based on authentic research. Giving my students the opportunity to have conservations about their literate world. Role playing to get the essence of the printed word.Also including my colleagues in my journey.//

//Margaret Fox﻿//

Something that will stay with me from this book is the importance of talk. Students need time to talk about what they are reading with their peers. They need to share their predictions, connections, and questions with each other on a daily basis. They need to learn to question each other and disagree with respect. It is our mission to teach students how to talk about books. We model this during our read alouds, which should be happening several times daily. We share our personal experiences surrounding talking about books so students see it’s not something relegated to a classroom, but something readers do in the “real world” each day. We make partner share time a priority, not something that only happens when we have a few minutes at the end of workshop. We take the leap and establish book clubs despite worries they will wreck havoc on our well oiled reading workshop that we have worked so hard to establish. We know that readers gravitate toward others with the same reading interests outside of the confines of the classroom so we encourage students to pursue their own reading interests and share these with others. Teachers must not fear the noise level accompanied by sharing, but embrace it and the learning that will grow as a result of this talk. Stephanie Cooper

What will stick with me? That is a question that can only be fully know later. But currently, that there is a guide. That the talking between children helps—if we can guide it the students will be the winners. That the notebook I used during the school year is a short cut to get teachers interested in this important work. KDN

Like Margaret and Stephanie, I want to focus more on accountable talk so students can dig deeper into a text and build a literate life together with classmates and me and their families. I want to better establish reading partnerships and reading centers so that children can pursue more of their interests, live the life of a literate person who is involved in reading projects and book clubs. I want children to role play their way into the life of being readers and writers. I want them to play with language, create stories, and put on puppet shows. I want my teaching to be relevant, meaningful, exciting, and to stick! I want to say what Kathy Doyle said to her fifth graders on page 537, “For homework tonight and for homework every night for the rest of your lives, I hope you will find a way to build a richly literate life for yourself.” And as Calkins urges us on page 536, I want to “use the power of [my] own literacy to make a better world for [myself] and [my] children.” Sara Sabourin Chapter 26 from Bobbi Friend #1 – Today I went into my classroom and completely rearranged my library. I combined series books, found common themes and placed them in one area, found authors and grouped their books together, put all my nonfiction in a separate place, and am trying to figure out how I will manage book check out when my students enter my classroom. I took the majority of the desks and put them in the room across the hall so I have more floor space for students to read and less crowded quarters. I talked to my administrator about the book shopping day for my students and how I will manage the library books along with my classroom library books. I am designing two different book logs, one for home and one for in the classroom. I am trying to figure out exactly how to plan my mini-lessons as well as how to design and implement my small group book study groups. I am so excited and so full of ideas, I can hardly wait for school to start! That is what this book has done for me. It has inspired me to be the best I can be and give my students what I believe is the best reading instruction possible. Ready, set, and go for September 8!

I agree with Margaret, I see this not as an ending but as a beginning. It is a new year with new students and a new format for my classroom. I have set goals realizing I cannot do everything that Reader's Workshop entails but I have a year 1 plan. I will confer with individual readers weekly and plan their next area of instruction based on the knowledge gained. I will also meet with strategy groups or individuals when necessary to reteach a skill. I am planning to do 3 book clubs throughout the year, 1 each trimester. I am so very anxious to see where this leads my students. I plan to revisit this book next summer to get to the next level for the 2012-13 schoolyear and beyond. --Jodee Tuttle

Bobbi...just reading your post in this section gave me goosebumps! I'm so excited for you too. I need more floor space. I brought in tables and got rid of half of my desks but now my numbers are around 29 students and two of them are handicapped...one is in a wheelchair. I am so afraid to get rid of more desks, but I may have to. I also organized all my books and am working on getting my conferring binder all set. I'm going to go back to chapter 1 and use this book as a guide and reference as I work through my second year of reading workshop. I'm so excited! Margaret, you are so right...this is not an end, but a beginning...fresh, new and freeing!!! Keri Cooper

My personal response to this book: There are far too many to list. That's why my book is full of post-it notes. LOL I don't think I'll ever read a book the same way!

I now feel a whole lot better about teaching and supporting our readers in my classroom. This book has given me the confidence to get out of my comfort zone and fill those gaps for my non-readers and readers alike. The many strategies and examples given by Lucy and other researched methods are a very necessary blueprint for all teachers. Thank You Lucy Calkins!

M.J.

Wow what a lot of details for us to take in. At times I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that I read. I can't wait to read it again so I can organize my thoughts about each chapter. I know that I need to help students really listen to each other during book talks and to build up a rich classroom library. I know that my classroom environment needs to be a "predictable, consistent and simple one because the work we will be doing will be so unpredictable and complex." I also realized the value of read alouds and need to make these a priority several different times during the day. Ronda

Yeah!! We're done!!! :) Now, what will stick with me? Lots!! But the chapters that I gained the most from were Ch. 13, "September in a K-1 Reading Workshop" and Ch. 16, "Reading Center in the K-1 Classroom". Being a Kindergarten teacher I LOVED the "nuts and bolts" about how this is accomplished. I will definitely have my students use a personal "bookshelf", I will re-read favorite books to my class (a new concept for me!), and giving them time to spend with books... reading! Oh boy! Most of all, though, I am so glad to have this book as a resource and guide for the future. I will be turning back to it frequently! Kari Bonnema

**#2 Refreshing our memories / reviewing our thinking / revising our teaching**

//Unless you have an exceptional memory, these fresh thoughts and ideas swimming in your brain now after soaking in this book this all summer will soon fade a little. By the beginning of school, we will be focused on the thousands of details that are necessary to tackle to start a school year well. These ideas that we've mulled over in processing this text and these claims we've made during this book study might get swept up in the hustle of the year and they might fade faster than we would hope.//

I //have an idea that might help. I offered this as the second face-to-face book study. What would you like me to email you and remind you about and when in the year would you like to get this reminder? Really. I'd love to help be that whisper in your ear at an ideal time and remind you of something that you've set as a goal, or ask you how its going with a certain hope you had for your students this year. This has been such an invigorating conversation this summer, and with such **wise** colleagues. It would be my **honor** to carry your exceptional thinking into the future and deliver it to you in this way// !

//So here is how this could work://

//1. Please jot your message to yourself,// //2. the month you want the email,// //3. your name,// //4. and the email address to which you want me to send your message//

//and I would be more than happy to drop you a line... a note from the summer (if only we could download the sunshine and email that too).//

//Thank you, everyone, for making this such an enjoyable journey!// I would love another face to face meeting—

nashkimb@mhpsnet.org

Thanks for everything KDN

Thanks for a great offer ! I’ll take you up on it. I would like you to check in with me to find out how I’m doing with incorporating more accountable talk into my read-alouds. I specifically want to try the strategy I learned at the Home Grown Institute I attended this summer (hopefully by the first of October). That is, the plan where I use two different colored cubes to build trains to show whether the child’s response adds to the topic or if it doesn’t and to help the children move toward connected conversation. I’m thinking of having a few guests in my room (such as my wonderful principal who has helped me teach lessons in a similar way…where we use the fishbowl approach) who will role-play and the kids can then critique whether we were on topic or not. Also, I’d like support with forming reading partnerships and reading centers by late fall/early winter. Just checking in with me would be great. Thanks again. Sara Sabourin ssabourin@fruitportschools.net Chapter 26 from Bobbi Friend #2 – Thanks for your guidance Erin! What I would like is an e-mail asking me several questions to see where I am in November with these goals. I think these questions will be absolutely vital for me in November because I should have all the logistics of reader’s workshop developed and I should be modifying things as needed by that time. If you will send me this, I am sure it will help. Thanks for much! bobbifriend@whitehallschools.net
 * 1) 1. Have you had the opportunity to do a running record with each student?
 * 2) 2. How are you adjusting the reading levels of your students when they are reading fluently at a given level?
 * 3) 3. What are your plans for small group study this month?
 * 4) 4. How is conferring going? Are you meeting mostly with individuals, partners, or small groups?
 * 5) 5. How is reading workshop meshing with writing workshop? How are your students seeing the similarities? Are you capitalizing on teaching by using the same method for both?
 * 6) 6. When was the last time you checked your student’s reader’s notebooks? How often do you check?
 * 7) 7. How are you doing gathering data on your students? How are you holding them accountable for their reading? How are you being held accountable for your teaching?
 * 8) 8. How are your mini-lessons working? Are you able to plan many in advance or do you feel like you need to plan as you go along based on the needs of your students?
 * 9) 9. How are your colleagues understanding your reading workshop work? Are they supportive? Are they seeing changes in the students’ ability to think in other classes?
 * 10) 10. How are the parents of your students understanding your reading workshop work? Are they seeing results in their student’s reading ability?
 * 11) 11. How are partnerships working in your classroom? Have you found good matches for your students?
 * 12) 12. How are you using post-its with your students?
 * 13) 13. How are you using your reader’s notebooks as an assessment tool? Is it working or do you need to do something different?
 * 14) 14. What kind of recording sheets are you using? Are they working? Do you need to design anything different?
 * 15) 15. How are you keeping track of conferences? Do you like your recording form?

Erin, Thank you for all you do for us. All your encouragement and the knowledge that you have so graciously shared with us is greatly appreciated. Thank you for being on this journey with us and for helping to keep us focused this year. I am looking forward to working with you a lot this coming year. I will be attending the K-2 Reading Workshop each month and I'm hoping we will have time to touch base on those dates. If you want to email me I would love to hear from you, but I am currently brain-dead and can't think of a topic for an email for you to send me. I will need reminders of EVERYTHING I'm sure. LOL! My classroom is always open to you... Talk to you soon... Hugs, Keri Cooper

Erin, Thank you for guiding us through this awesome book. I have found myself like Keri overwhelmed with ideas just spinning around in my head. I would love an e-mail asking how my students are doing with writing about their reading. This is going to be a huge challenge for me and my first graders but I am going to go for it. I am not going to the extent of essays but will try writing at our grade level. I would love an email like the third week of September because I should be working on it by this time. My email is rondamorningstar@whitehallschools.net. Again, thank you for your time. Ronda

Thanks for challenging me in my thinking! :) I needed that! I, too, feel quite overwhelmed at the moment. However, I would like a simple email with the question of "how's it going?" I will need a reminder to keep incorporating all that I've learned and not to fall back into my usual ways. Thanks! My email is karibonnema@yahoo.com Kari Bonnema


 * //Here is a place to post other ideas and burning questions from chapter twenty five if any. (Remember, a high-quality comment in this bottom section does still count toward your total comments. So anytime the posts for a certain chapter don't speak to you and your thinking, feel free to share your own ideas from the text here...)//**