The day always starts with a demonstration lesson. Maria Mallon hosted all 14 of us in her classroom for a Lucy-inspired (Lucy Calkins) lesson. We are just beginning the second bend of Informational Writing. Maria is our grade level lead so her job is to stay just a few lessons ahead of the pack so she can prepare us for what is to come. She and Reading Coach Melanie Holtsman worked together to provide the perfect day.
The thing that always impresses me about Maria is that her classroom is just so joyful. I can just imagine being a little first grader sitting on the floor at her feet. I would believe every single thing she said! She is so genuine and it just pulls you right in. I just feel good in her room. It just makes me smile. Of course, there is also a lot of learning going on. Her rituals and routines are such perfection that you feel like you want to rewind and figure out, "How did she do that?" The children transition with such ease. On this day she transitioned with a song for fluency. The kids went soundlessly to their seats on the floor and she started... First she told them how incredible they were and how proud she was. Then she launched into the gist of the lesson - which was about using all the tools in the room - the charts and rubrics and mentor texts and words around the room... Then it was off to writing. The children look like busy little bees. Every single child is engaged in the process of writing and the only sounds you hear are productive conversations between partners. Maria does drive by conferences, walking around purposefully stopping to chat with a few students, asking purposeful questions and just generally supervising the flow of the workshop. Before you know it, it's time to Close and the children quietly put all their supplies away and in a blink are back on the carpet. When they are settled Maria reads the informational rubric and challenges the children to work toward the second grade standards. You can see the excitement in their little bodies as they already begin to rise to the occasion. I think I want to be a first grader again in Maria's class!
Then it's to the conference room where we debrief the lesson with Melanie, commenting on the things that we really liked in the lesson, asking Maria questions about things we still wonder about. I think each of us questions how we would do the same lesson and we make a mental list of things we want to try or change tomorrow. That's what "starting with a demo" is all about.
Then it's to the work of the day. As we wait for the Calkins Reading Units to be released this summer, we know we need to ramp up our reading instruction. Melanie digs in and begins to challenge us to push the continuum of thinking in our classrooms. She frames the work that will be expected in second and third and fourth grade that is changing with the Common Core so that we begin to define a path from where we are to where we need to go. Melanie doesn't give us the answers. She doesn't spoon feed us but challenges us to think. We don't need dummy-proof curriculums. We don't need scripted Core Curriculums but we do need teachers that think. We need teachers who can look at the data, but so much more than that - teachers who can read the room, who KNOW their students as learners and from that wealth of information can take the standards and define the teaching that needs to be done. That's what will transforms education.
The room was full of artifacts to support the learning that is being integrated. For instance, it is obvious how the day is integrated when you look at the essential questions posted each day. 
You can see some of the earlier mini-lessons as you read some of the charts that are hanging around the room. 
As students completed their 
At the same time, Carrie, pulled a different small group to go over testing strategies of a state assessment-style non-fiction test. I am assuming this group was pulled together after a task analysis of last week's assessment to work with the students that had specific difficulties with specific types of non-fiction questions.
The point is that both of these small groups are off the topic that is echoing across the day!
Mini-lesson: The teachers began with connecting today's lesson with what the students were doing in reading and what they are doing in Science, which is a habitat and life cycles unit. For the teach the teachers are using butterflies as their example of a topic for writing a report. The students have plenty of background knowledge for this example because they are raising butterflies during Science. The teachers have a seed journal where they have been taking notes about caterpillars and butterflies. As the students begin their writing, they will each choose different animals to write a report on its habitat and life cycle. Some of the previous lessons are obvious, both from charts in the room and the teacher's seed journal example. Today's lesson was on how to organize the notes from the seed journal. The teacher thinks aloud her decision to start with a chapter on "Appearance" and then numbers her notes so that the sequence makes sense. For the active involvement she then turns to a new page in the seed journal where she has taken notes and has the children "turn and talk" about how they would organize this page of information. The link gives the children the facts they need to use the information they have just learned as they go into the work session. 
The UNIVERSE and more... 
End of the World
What did the Hopi wear?
