What are you working on today as a writer?

I've seen a lot of posts lately on how other teachers teach writing so I decided to join along. 

This student regularly fills up pages all the way
down to the very end with words!

So before this year, students wrote in draft books and were responsible for writing something called DTAP (or DTEP? Something like that). It was very strict and students kept all of their writing in their draft books. Now in Madison where I did my student teaching, we taught writing completely 100% different. We used Lucy Calkins writing curriculum. In a nutshell, students write their own stories and books about things that really happened to them and each day, we teach a short minilesson to help them become better writers. 

Well, when I got to my new school, I definitely wasn't feeling the whole draft book kind of writing. I was used to kids writing what they 

wanted to write about and me teaching ways to make that writing better. I feel that students learn so much more if they have some independence in their learning so I secretly started teaching Lucy Calkins to my students. Basically I would rush through the draft books (since at my school, we all share lesson plans and teach the same stuff) to get to LC. Well, my kids loved it. They loved writing their own stories in their books and becoming authors. In fact, students used to ask me (when we were writing in draft books) when they could write stories. Music to my ears. 

This girl loves to show off her folder of stories. And that's probably only about two months of books too!

See the extra flap for added writing space?

Well long story short, I was talking to my principal who said that she used to use LC and that my school had the books buried in a closet! She then launched into that our writing scores weren't up to par and that she wanted us all to use LC. 

So the very next day = no more draft books and strictly LC.

So I love LC. The end. No just kidding. The beauty of LC is (I think) that students are able to really have an autonomy for what they do. They take pride and ownership in their books and stories.  

Proud of her work!

The year-long LC curriculum has seven books in the set:

1. Launching a Writing Workshop

2. Small Moments: Personal Narrative Writing 

3. Writing for Readers: Teaching Skills and   Strategies 

4. The Craft of Revision

5. Authors as Mentors 

6. Nonfiction Writing: Procedures and Reports

7. Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages 

There are also 2 "teacher books" The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing and The Conferring Handbook. The Nuts and Bolts tell how to launch writing workshop and The Conferring Handbook tells how to best help students individually during conferences. All of the books are easy to read since they written in a conversational style. Each minilesson depicts a real classroom in New York and is full of the dialogue that was actually said by the teachers and students. There are also side notes about what is happening, what do if your students need more time, and LC uses real life authors to show children what writers do. Also, each of the books builds upon the others and each book lays out specific minilessons that go in a certain order. Writing workshop also ends with a sharing time when a few students are invited to share what they have written that day with the rest of the class. They showing off their work!

She struggled with writing at the beginning of the year
and now can write lots of words.
And most are readable!

To me, there is nothing more satisfying than the "hum" of writing workshop. Some children are writing, some children are cutting flaps for their books, other children are stapling pages together. And I am going around to different kids, checking in on what they are working on and helping them become better writers. I might be helping one student stretch out words to include more sounds so it is easy-to-read. Then I go to another student to help him add periods and capital letters. And then I might check in with another student to help her add dialogue and get the quotation marks placed correctly.

My new friend from California...he'll catch on :)

To me, this is the best way to teach writing. It's also the only way I've taught writing so I may be a little biased, but my kids are excited to write and everyone can easily write 3 or 4 page books with others often writing 6+ pages. 

I recently got a new student from California and it's so obvious that he's never written this way before. He struggles to write stories that are cohesive and on one topic, even a struggle to get him to put multiple ideas on multiple pages. I've loved seeing how far my kids have come as writers and I can't wait to see how much more progress they make in the remaining months of school! 

Totally random note now. So I started off the year with way more girls than boys. And for awhile, I was only losing boys. But now the tables have completely flipped. I keep losing girls and getting new boys. Now I have way more boys than girls! 

September Currently and School Related News

Wow, how is it already September?!!? No idea how that happened, especially since that means I have been in school for almost a month! Completely baffled by that. 

So I'm linking up with Farley at Oh Boy Fourth Grade with her monthly Currently.

Yes you read that right - I got a new puppy! One of the girls on the first grade team found her wandering around on her way to school so she picked her up and brought her to school. She spent two days in the janitor's office before coming home with me! It's funny since Evan and I had decided to get a cat because they are a bit easier to care for than dogs since they are more self sufficient, Marlee kind of just fell into our laps. She's super sweet!

Look at her little face!

She's super sweet and pretty low key...except at bed time. For some reason, she's always super perky and wants to play at bedtime. Last night she was bounding around, trying to jump in bed and squeaking. Originally, we had her in the bathroom and she just barked and barked and barked. Then we tried tethering her with her leash but no gate in hopes that that would make her feel better, but instead, she thrashed around and barked some more. So we ultimately let her have free roam of our bedroom which worked ok. She was still a nuisance during the night, but way better than her barking for hours. So hopefully she gets used to our routine soon...especially since school resumes for me tomorrow and Evan has to go to ASU for class tomorrow too!

I'm really missing fall weather too, even though I feel like it's still pretty hot in Wisconsin. I think just the beginning of September, plus the fact that most schools are starting tomorrow is enough to make me want fall weather. The crunchy leaves, the slight chill in the air, the fall foods, wearing boots and scarves - I love it all! I'm really glad to be going home during my fall break in early October. That's when fall is in full swing! Maybe I can convince my family to go to a pumpkin farm!

In school-related news, our first publishing party is on Wednesday. My kiddos are pretty excited about it (I think mainly because of the prospect of juice and snack), but I think they are also excited to read their stories to their parents. I hope parents can come. If not, my backup plan is to ask kinder teachers or second grade teachers if they wouldn't mind having a few of my kids come in to read their stories. Tomorrow we are adding titles, finishing up the words, and coloring the pictures and on Wednesday, we will be putting the final touches on them. 

I have heard so much wonderful things about Daily 5 that I am determined to do it in my room. We have been Reading to Self for the past few weeks. We finally got to ten minutes on Friday! So exciting! And this week, I'm going to introduce Read to Someone. I hope my kids can handle it, but a lot of modeling and expectation laying out should help. I just wish I could skip ahead to where they are independent.

Math, I am trying to incorporate more number sense into the day. When multiple kids write something similar to 4+0=6, I know there is a problem. So I've been doing a number of the day during Morning Meeting, and on Friday, I started number cards and collection counting. Plus I've been using subitizing cards during five minute downtime to help them build their ability to look at a number of objects and know how many are there without having to count them.

So yeah, we are in for a busy week! Luckily, it's only a four day work week!!! :)

I Love Lucy

I am in such an amazing mood yesterday, a far cry from yesterday that ended with a headache and defeated feelings. To think that everything can be made better with little old Lucy Calkins. A bit of background - I love teaching literacy - both reading and writing. I especially love Lucy Calkins. I think she is amazing and I love how her books are written in narrative form. Granted it takes longer to get to the meat of what she is saying, but it makes for such an easy read that I actually end up understanding each bit more. Anyways, at my school, the first grade team creates lesson plans together, and dear Lucy wasn't included in the plan. I tried to teach with the plan on Monday, and it was a complete disaster. The kids were not engaged and I didn't get much writing from them. So on Tuesday, I decided to secretly do my own thing aka start a writing workshop the Lucy way. Let me tell you, I got way more writing when they had the freedom to write about something that they know - themselves! And today, when I said it was time for writing, I even got some cheers. Never thought I'd hear that. But a big part of me felt guilty for not following the lesson plans. However, today, the first grade team met with our principal and assistant principal to discuss writing rigor. And my assistant principal revealed that she loves Lucy Calkins and used her books when she was a teacher. And she went on to suggest that we use it in our rooms! Oh my, I can't even tell you how my face must have lit up. I was so excited. I went and got my very own set of writing books (which were stashed in a resource room), and got full permission to use them!

Happiness in the form of Lucy. 

So, needless to say, I am beyond pumped that I can not-so-secretly be a writing workshop lover, and I can't wait to have writing again tomorrow! And I'm starting Daily 5 tomorrow too. I'm bringing in a bag full of shoes to discuss finding Just Right books. I bet that will be a lot of fun and the kiddos will get a kick out of seeing me hobble around in my fiance's shoes!