Skills Block in January,2008

Blends chart

What's new in Skills Block as we come back in the new year? For one thing, the alphabet chart that the children chant each morning has been replaced with a "blends" chart. Each morning the teachers chant as they point to each block: My turn. /bl/ blanket block. Your turn. Snap. /bl/ blanket block... as the children echo the blend and words starting with the blend one block at a time. Children are encouraged and reinforced for using this chart as they write in Writers' Workshop.

The morning message reviews many of the skills that the children have worked on previously such as where to find sight words, color and number words in the room; the digraphs th/ ch/ sh/ wh; words with initial blends; punctuation marks such as periods, exclamation marks, and question marks; capitals for beginning sentences, names, and I; and a review of the vocabulary words that the children have been learning all year. After the holiday most kindergarten teachers add quotation marks or "talking marks" to their morning message. As they work on this in Skills Block, they begin to see the children using the "talking marks" in their writing during Writers' Workshop. Children also point them out in their independent reading in Readers' Workshop.

Kindergarten teachers also continue with the last few books of vocabulary (see the word hesitating in the message to the right) in their Skills Block.

The final activity is usually sounding out 3-4-5 sound words that have short vowels, digraphs and blends - some of the same words that children will need to sound out (segment) as they go into Writers' Workshop and that they will need to blend as they go into Readers' Workshop. Skills Block pulls together all of the skills that we are asking our children to use.

Book Study

We are so fortunate in Duval County that we have "Early Release." This means that every other Wednesday the students leave an hour and a half early so that the teachers can participate in Professional Development. Now that's hardly enough time for a school's entire professional study, so at Chets Creek, because we already have common grade level planning, we try to use these early release times for vertical articulation. We want teachers to establish relationships so that those relationships lead to sharing ideas across grades and disciplines. We are very intentional during these days to arrange activities to promote the dialog that we hope will happen. One of the things that we do at least once a year is to divide the faculty into smaller groups so that they may participate in a book study of their own choosing. Below is a list of some of the books we have offered in the past.

Young Mathematicians at Work: Fractions, Decimals and Percents by Fosnot
Young Mathematicians at Work: Number Sense, Addition and Subtraction by Fosnot
Bringing Words to Life by Beck and MeKeown
The Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins
When Kids Can’t Read by Kylene Beers
The Fluent Reader by Timothy Rasiniski
What a Writer Needs by Ralph Fletcher
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Craft Lessons by Ralph Fletcher

Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen

Growing Readers by Kathy Collins and Lucy Calkins

Learning to Learn in a Second Language by Pauline Gibbons

Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Teaching the Best Practice Way by Harvey Daniels
Teaching Science as Inquiry by Carin, Bass and Contant
Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson
Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
First Grade Writers by Stephanie Parsons

Teaching for Comprehension and Fluency by Fountas and Pinnell

The books are laid out for about a week after their introduction so that teachers can thumb through them. Then each educator is asked to sign up for the book of his/her choice. The Principal orders all of the books for the teachers to keep as their own personal copies! The Leadership Team does not lead any of these groups but becomes a member, allowing other teachers opportunities for leadership. These small, more intimate groups provide time for discussion and for teachers on different grade levels to become involved with each other in a new way.

This year we are going to change the focus just a bit... We are going to offer some fiction titles! Of course, they also have a tie to school issues or subjects, e.g., Jodie Picoult's Nineteen Minutes about bullying that leads to a school shooting. One of the reasons we are offering fiction this year is that we want our teachers to live the life of a reader. So far, we have only studied non-fiction text and we know that all readers do not prefer non-fiction, so we want to introduce our diverse faculty to other genres. We want to infuse a love for reading, not only in our children, but in our teachers! We want teachers to discuss the story line, but we also want them to look at the elements of the genre and to talk about author's craft. This will be a book study that models what we want to do with our children. We believe that if teachers live the experience then they will be able to think deeper about their own literature circles and book talks.

Science

Today all Science teachers at Chets Creek enjoyed grade specific workshops by Rick Ellenburg, the 2008 Florida Teacher of the Year. Rick is an elementary Science Resource teacher from Orlando and was actually a Kindergarten teacher for many years and has a degree in Early Childhood. Rick talked about centers that kinder teachers can use tomorrow. One of those was the "take apart center" which is a way for youngsters to practice fine motor skills by taking apart telephones, toasters, etc. He suggested cutting the cord off and then putting the appliance in a center with a few screw drivers. You might try loosening a few of the screws to get the children started. What a great idea for some of my youngsters - especially boys - who really need that extra practice!

Rick also talked about "observation centers." Normally we might include a few magnifying glasses and some shells or leaves and acorns for students to observe, but Rick includes pheasant feathers, snake skins, small eggs, rat skulls - more interesting things that children can observe. Rick also keeps small insects and objects in plastic medicine bottles that are the perfect size for little hands.

All in all, Rick believes that Science needs to be integrated into our entire day.

 The questioning that we are talking about as a reading comprehension strategy that good readers use is the same questioning that good Scientists use. We need to make that connections for our children. Science content can easily be integrated into our Language Arts work. Science and reading are intertwined as we think about nonfiction text features and comprehension strategies. Teachers need to develop a knack for asking the type of questions that lead children to think instead of simply giving them the answers. This is the same technique we use in Math - raising the level of thinking without giving away the answer. Bottom line - Science piques the interest of our young students, so let's use it!

Technology... Really?

I have recently been thinking about the technology that our children are growing up with and feeling compelled as an educator to make sure that I use technology to integrate and individualize for the students in my classroom, but I face the challenges of so many educators - living in a school system that is so tied to the past that it has trouble envisioning (and paying for) the future.

For example, I have 5 computers in the classroom where I work - enough to individualize for many of my students - enough to have at least one student blogging all day long. However, three have not been working most of the year. Work orders have been called in since September! One of the remaining computers crashed last week, so I'm down to one that works... most of the time - 30 kids - 1 computer.

I am in a county where each teacher is given a laptop computer (of course, new teachers are still waiting for their laptop this year - how frustrating is that?), but I've had mine for a while. I gave it up this year for a stand alone computer because my laptop had gotten so slow. I used to keep a book beside my laptop because I could read a page or two while it performed an operation. As a result most of my computer work has to be done on my home computer. I wonder what teachers do that don't have computers at home...

We were thrilled this year to get document cameras with projectors at our school. Wow - what a difference that has made in our ability to show writing and math work at our Closing meetings. We can easily correct misconceptions. We have also been bringing up interactive games that the children can play during Skills Block. Last week we wanted to show the children our classroom blog, BUT slide.com has been blocked at our school so the pictures won't come up. How disappointing! Children can watch it at home but not at school. (That also means I have to create my blogs at home, not on school time.) When we contacted technology they said it was just too dangerous! Programs like this are reviewed by a Committee and this one has been found to have access to too much inappropriate material. Wish I had been told BEFORE I created the slides!

We have a kindergarten student who is out sick and may be at home for 30 days. What an opportunity! Instead of hospital home bound, we can Skype him into the classroom! Maybe not... The district doesn't think Skype is an appropriate tool, so it is blocked. Our principal recently gave each member of the Leadership Team a web cam! WOW! Of course, with Skype blocked, my students will not have a chance to talk face-to-face with students in Australia who will also be studying Eric Carle next month! I had to load the web cam on my home computer. Maybe we can have a field trip to my house...

The point is that I live in a county that is like so many other counties. They want teachers to embrace 21st century technology, but at the same time they want to protect our youngsters (and I certainly understand that!), but the youngsters are so far ahead of us. I was recently talking to a teacher about Webkinz. The teacher explained a virtual world to me that I didn't even know existed. She said she corresponds with about 25 of her students who have their own Webkinz accounts. One of those was a kindergarten student and his mom was surprised when the teacher said she and the child were trading e-mails! Even our youngest children are e-mailing, setting up their own blogs, have their own phones and can text message - by 5th grade. We have fulltime employees sitting somewhere downtown watching what we are doing on-line. What a waste of money when everything is blocked. Maybe the money could be better spent figuring out how teachers CAN use the technology that our children already use at home. Let's face it - Most of the programs on the Internet can be "dangerous" if used inappropriately or naively. Would it be better to allow many of the programs that we are afraid of and use them to teach our children appropriate Internet behavior? Or do we just bury our heads in the sand and let them figure it all out on their own?

After the Holiday

Have you ever noticed with kindergartners that when they come back from the winter holidays, they seem to have grown?! It's only a two week break but when they come back they seem to have assimilated much of the teaching that you did before the break. When they left, you wondered if they were really getting it, and then you come back and realize that, "Yes! They are getting it!" It is what I call the "magic pixie dust" that gets sprinkled over the holiday!!

As we came back to Chets Creek our Kindergarten Pacing Guide said that we should be working on Reading Strategies in Readers' Workshop and on Response to Literature in Writers' Workshop. Our teachers quickly realized that Reading Strategies (such as "looking at the pictures," "getting your mouth ready," "skip and return") are exactly where we should be in Readers' Workshop, but in Writers' we really needed to revisit Narrative. So-o-o-o when you walk into classrooms, what do you see right now?

In Writers' Workshop, teachers are having students make decisions and cleaning out their work-in-progress folders. "Can you read this? If you can, you should keep it, but if you can't you should get rid of it." The children end up with a few pieces that they can read back to themselves to begin to revise (by adding to it), and to edit (for capitals, punctuation and spelling of words that can be found around the room).

Writers as Writing Teachers

I have always thought that teachers who were writers would make better writing teachers. As writers teachers would understand the difference between writing to a prompt - something that they had to think about on the spot - and writing from their heart about something they feel or remember or know lots about. As writers they would know, as author Jodi Picoult says, that you can edit something that is bad, but you can't edit a blank page. As writers, they would understand that if you just get started, the words do begin to flow. As writers, they would understand the sheer joy in editing something and making it sound like music. The problem has always been how to get teachers to write, if they were not already writers. As a literacy coach, I've done all the normal things, like giving teachers journals, or reading something that I knew would emit emotion and then having them write their responses or having them respond in a journal to a question and then asking them to read their response to a partner and sharing so that they would understand how it felt to their students. Teachers that already enjoyed writing loved these sessions and were usually proud of what they could write on the spur of the moment. Teachers who didn't really write hated them. Oh sure, sometimes they surprised themselves and wrote something that they liked, but mostly they just dreaded the professional development days when they were required to write. I never really turned a non-writer into a writer with those well-thought out professional development sessions...

Finally, I think I have found the vehicle that makes teachers really WANT to be writers, a way for them to get feedback, and a way for them to write for a real audience - blogging! Take Maria Mallon, for example. Maria is an exceptional Kindergarten teacher in every way. This year she decided to blog and she writes an entry several times a week - usually a single picture and an explanation of why the activity is important or the fun the children had. It's an on-line journal of the community life in her classroom. Her kids read it every day. Her kids' parents read it every day. The kids' extended families all over the world read it every day. Her peers read it every day. I read it every day! I can't wait to see what's going on in Maria's room. It's a benchmark for me to make sure I'm moving along with her. Of course, I drop by her room all the time, but the blog entries tell me even more - things I might not have seen when I drop in. But more than that, Maria's own writing gets better and better. She may have already been a good writer before she started blogging, but now she knows she has a limited space to get an important message across. Her entries are thoughtful and entertaining. They teach. Through blogging she has really found her voice. Over this holiday break she wrote our Florida Congressmen because there has been talk of eliminating National Board money, and she believes going through the National Board process made her a better teacher. Would she have written that letter if she had not had so much success with writing on her blog? Would she have had the same confidence? I don't know, but I know that as I read her letter, I could clearly hear her remarkable voice. She is doing all that I would ever hope that a writing teacher would do - she writes. Blogging may not be for every teacher but it certainly is a way for teachers of writing to enter the international conversation...

The Literate Kindergarten

Have you ever read that a new book is coming out and you just can't wait to read it? That's the way I felt when I read the quote below about The Literate Kindergarten by Susan L. Kempton.

"This very important book reaffirms the beauty and uniqueness of children’s developing minds and the power that is unleashed when their imaginations are nurtured. —Susan Zimmermann

If Susan Zimmermann - one of the coauthors of Mosaic of Thought -recommended this book, then it just had to be something special - a way to take the Mosaic comprehension strategies into kindergarten. WOW! I just couldn't wait. I ordered the book even before it was published! When it came in the mail I opened it excitedly and started reading it that very night. I was so-o-o-o disappointed. As she opened talking about the importance of song and language, I saw lots of familiar rituals and routines, but nothing really new or profound. Then as she went into keeping play alive and described ways to put writing into Blocks and turning Housekeeping into a Pizza Restaurant, I was reminded of a book I wrote twelve years ago. Her ideas of centers contained so many of the things that I had put into my Pre-K class years ago. I felt like I had come so far from those days when I was satisfied if a child could write a single phonetic sentence as they left Kindergarten. I was now teaching four genres of writing and teaching children comprehension strategies. Was Susan Kempton really suggesting that I take ten steps backwards? And why was anyone promoting this book? I put the book down...

As I have been reprioritizing the stack of books by my bedside over the holiday, I decided to finish the book. If I were going to say that I didn't like this book, then I needed to at least finish reading it. Beginning with Chapter 6: Write to Read, I began to see the structure of mini-lesson/ work period/ share that is familiar to me now. I saw children's writing that looked like what I am seeing in my own classroom. My engagement with this book began to change. I found ideas that I loved and could use, such as the ones below:

• Make a word card for each child for the writing folder of sight words from the DRA 2. When the child identifies the word, punch a hole beside the word on the card and hold the child responsible for spelling it correctly. How easy is that!


• Four strategies from Mosaic of Thought can be taught in kindergarten - activating schema, creating mental images, questioning, and inferring... and why... and how. (Loved this!)


• Dr. Seuss's ABC book can be sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." The strategy that she explains with this book is one that I will be trying as we return from the Winter holiday with that very small group of my students who still don't have the letters and sounds. 


• I loved her explanation of the difference between steady beat and rhythm and how they relate to reading. I guess I knew this at some level but her explanation made it so clear.


• When lining up use snapping and counting backwards as a calming segue. Great technique that actually reinforces a math skill.

So, now that I have finished the book, I guess I can say that it was really worth reading. I think the beginning that was a turn-off for me was really just a reminder that these are 5 year olds. Most of the children that come to me have had good, strong pre-kindergarten experiences. Some even come in knowing their letters and sounds and how to write their names, but for those other students who do not have the opportunity of a rich literacy background, Susan Kempton's words are a warning- do not skimp on the foundation. As I reflect on that, I have been thinking about ways to build working with play dough, cutting with scissors, and building with leggos for those students that do seem to still need more fine motor development or ways to build reading and writing into our afternoon "choice" centers...

The holiday break really gives us time to think about our students and to reflect on our practice. Professional reading stimulates those thoughts. Thank you, Susan Kempton, for helping me think about my teaching...