Anticipation guides not only activate background knowledge but also give our students a purpose for reading! Keys:  1) Most important- model the process and make your thinking visible.  2) Use simple sentences that focus on content (Students should not spend a lot of time trying to understand the meaning of the sentence.) 3) Encourage students to make predictions by using clues but also model that being incorrect happens.  4) Modify the number of questions for students if needed.

EXAMPLES-

The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds

(Created by Leah Mussell)

In order for learning to occur, student engagement must be present in classrooms. Student engagement is crucial in making their thinking visible. As educators, we need to understand the importance of student engagement, be able to identify the different levels of engagement and have a toolbox of engagement strategies to deploy in our classrooms. Consider setting up a routine or protocol for  Making our Thinking Visible

When your husband creates a mashup

for you, you reluctantly make a video and quickly learn this should never happen again! 

See you 1/15/18!

#JLJ #MLKConference  #ourkidsaregoingtokillus

The best part about working with educators is the opportunity to steal all of their good ideas! York’s first-grade teacher, Merrilee Roemmich, shared this gem. To better accommodate her students’ handwriting, she enlarged the Quick Sketch/Notes and added lines. Developmentally the enlarged version is perfect! So cool!  (The one on the right is the original size from SUTW.)

Utilizing mentor text can be one of those game changers!  Mentor texts are simply good examples of writing.  In teacher terms, examples to use for modeling that you do not have to create!  For instances, Step Up to Writing identifies 6 tools to use when starting a narrative.  Rather than try and write examples of each, have students dive into books and study how each author started the narrative.  Students become enamored with looking at the actual craft of writing.  Some teachers call it sentence stalking.  Instead of reading the text for meaning, have students stalk or observe the actual writing. For example, students cannot only look at specific tools/craft (how did the author start the narrative) but can also study the craft of sentence structure.  This is an easy way to implement grammar into a more authentic practice than worksheets.  For lower elementary, this might look like what words are capitalized or not capitalized and why.  Observing other punctuation that is used (dash, colon, hyphen, comma, exclamation mark, question mark, etc) and making an effort to tell why and how the author used it. In a paragraph, does the author use a majority of simple, compound, or complex sentences? This will lead to discussions about the importance of sentence fluency in our writing.  Another area to stalk is noticing the author’s word choice or the organization of the sentence. More to come as Seward Elementary and I start planning a weekly schedule for implementing more mentor text.

Please, can we see a reform in our schools’ spelling programs? The standard list on Monday thing and testing on Friday is NOT working. Research supports this so why are we still practicing this?? Let’s study words, not memorize a list that may or may not be at an appropriate level. And please can we also ban these ridiculous spelling games that embarrass kids.

With the first day of school comes the long-standing tradition of taking the first day of school photo. Who started it? Why do I battle my kids to carry on this practice? I know because my parents made me do so now Josie and Ellie have to do it! Although this cannot be entirely true because my folks use to make my brothers and I go on long, daunting, excruciating mountain trips. It was the tradition! Yet, I do not force my daughters to undergo this tradition. Does this mean I can reconsider the first day of school pictures?

I do love jumping on social media and perusing all the first-day pictures. It is like this unspoken rite of passage and as a mother, if you do not post the photo then your mom card might be pulled. As I scrolled through the pics a few thoughts came to mind…

1. Holy crap Mary’s flowers look fantastic! Oh, and her boys look handsome too.
2. I cannot believe Teri is old enough to have a senior? Time is really catching up with her too!
3. Next year at this time, I should sell small chalkboards for an outrageous price. Did I miss the universal memo that all respectful first-day pics will use a cute chalkboard to identify the school year? These mothers are good! I can barely get my girls standing in the same spot with their eyes open.
4. Whoa, I guess we use decoupage frames too! Yep, kiss my mom card goodbye!

Just to prove my mom card is in serious danger here are my first day of school photos….

Josie has her eyes closed!                  El is refusing to smile!           Ellie is picking her breakfast out of her teeth.

PS…Noticed I used captions for each picture because that’s right you can barely see if those are even my kids!  I blame the blurry pictures on torrential rain!

Next year, I might hire a first day of school picture consultant. I did research this a bit. There are literally hundreds of ideas about this very subject. Who knew? From chalkboard sayings to optimal poses the research is there! I have a long way to go on this learning JOurneY.

My newest learning JOurneY was supposed to be me coaching two, young, new teachers hired by York Public Schools.  However, as soon as I walked into Nicole Miller’s classroom, I knew I was about to become the student.  In seventeen years of having my own classroom, I never had a classroom decorated and organized like hers.  The other teacher, Laura Bracken, and I had to take several
minutes to just grasp it all.  We kept apologizing to Nicole for just staring continuously at the walls.  I regret not taking more pictures of her perfectly designed classroom.  Heck, I would love to be a student in this room!  It is surrounded by positive messages and just truly student centered.  Nicole, thank you for reminding me the importance of creating an environment where students want to learn.  I also want to thank Laura for her well-timed questions.  I believe you were a Step Up to Writing guru in a former life.

Today, I had the privilege to work with the first-grade team at York Elementary in York, Nebraska. Our job was to continue to develop writing units from their scope and sequence. They worked crazy hard! I had to ask them if we could take a break (Stop forcing Pepsi down me)! This was definitely a first for me as a presenter. Below are a few lessons learned from our JOurneY together…

#1. Integrating writing with our science and social studies standards is easy with Step Up to Writing.

#2. The first-grade team sure knows how to butter someone up…

#3. If we expect students to do well on school writing assessments, we must set classroom and individual goals.

#4. We can help our students expand their stories by teaching show me sentences instead of tell me sentences.

I recently had the pleasure of working with individual grade level teams at York Elementary!  Our goal was to develop specific writing units from their scope and sequence.  Although it was my job to facilitate the process, I learned so much from this JOurneY!

#1.  The school year theme for 2017/2018 is superheroes. This was probably suggested by Cindy because she has super powers.

#2.  At the end of each session, teachers were more confident about teaching writing.  Molly, a second-grade teacher,  even said, “We all feel so much better already about teaching writing this coming year. All your tips and tricks are awesome!”  I appreciated this reaction because I knew asking teachers to come in during the summer to work on writing plans might get me escorted out of the building!

#3.  The first-grade team is equal parts crazy fun and task masters!  Thanks, Merrilee!

#4.  The Step Up to Writing informal outline is the perfect tool to help students with TDA questions.

#5.  Thanks to the fourth-grade team there is a tally sheet started to appropriately keep track of important data…the number of times I say, “Does that make sense!”