Conference Night

It is conference week. My long night happens to be this evening, so I am typing this quickly in between families. As exhausting as conferences are I honestly often have a great time. I really love to share the work students have been doing and there is always something positive to share with parents. I love watching the pride in their eyes when I am able to show a sample of writing from September and then now. It is so distinctly different and amazing.

Brave Saige

You might have met Saige the other day in a previous post. She is a student of mine with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. A few days ago she was busily grabbing A LOT of paper and spreading it all out on the rug. Recently another student had modeled this way of organizing her ideas, however she had already begun writing. Saige was clearly still in the beginning stages of planning.
When I asked Saige what she was planning she started talking...I knew right away I needed to get my camera and film her. This was going to be big and I didn't just mean in the literal sense.

Saige begins telling her story about going to the circus. She visualizes her words on the page including her cover and title page. She knows where she wants it all to go and she is processing all the way through her ideas.

What a brave girl. I have never had a student take on a project of this magnitude and then go after it the way she has. She worked all through workshop time and through her playtime, more than an hour. Here she is midway through.

I did eventually have to stop her so she could go to gym with her classmates. The  next day she was back at it, working all through her workshop and playtime again! That is some stamina and drive. I hope to get a video of her reading the finished product this week.

Meet Saige

What is childhood apraxia of speech?

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a disorder that effects the brain's ability to plan movements of the mouth, lips, and jaw. The child knows what he/she wants to say but the brain is unable to form and produce words, syllables and sounds.

This is Saige.

 When I first met her she was four and attending preschool in my building. She busily colored while we discussed what her kindergarten school year experience would be like. When Saige had begun preschool she was able to produce approximately six sounds. She was in speech therapy and making great progress. Her teachers were learning her speech patterns and her parents were extremely supportive to Saige getting her as much help as needed.
I have learned so much from this little girl. I don't think I have ever met a child who is more understanding and tolerant of others with special needs. Her best friend has autism in our classroom and Saige, without fail, supports her and works to engage her in classroom activities. She has to do double sometimes triple the work to get her message across. She has to slow down, repeat, have patience with herself and her listeners.  Saige is the kind of student you meet and you know she is going to do something amazing with her life. Saige reminds me everyday how lucky I am to be a teacher. I get to watch her make leaps and bounds. I get to see her feel success. I get to watch her grow and celebrate with her each school day.

Revising My Role

Today was a day to celebrate. We talked about revision and made a chart. I'll take a pic tomorrow. I settled on three examples of revision I had witnessed students trying here and there, things we had already had in a mini-lesson. Today was the day to put it into words for them. We talked about crossing out and continuing on with our writing. We talked about adding a word to make a sentence more detailed. This one went two ways, add a word to the middle of  a sentence or to the end of a sentence. We seemed ready and kids went off to write. I noticed several kids crossing out, this was encouraging. This also meant kids were rereading independently! Yay! It's nice when a plan works. When we shared at the end of workshop almost half the class had an example of a way they revised their work. Some crossed out parts of a picture. Some had added an important word that they had forgotten. A few had crossed out words or parts of a sentence. I was impressed. Then I shared my poem from yesterday and told them how I did some of the same things when I revised. They could see where I crossed out words and added or changed the arrangement of my lines.
Why didn't I start with this? I almost did. But today I wanted to be a writer just like them. I wanted to share my work at the "sharing circle" instead of being the teacher. Today, we were all the same.

Social Stories in the Workshop

Every year is so different. I am always thankful for the students I have and the differences that challenge me each year. This year has posed new challenges and pushed me further. I have found this year that aspects of workshop time are overwhelming because of the number of transitions. There are materials to gather and talking and listening and drawing and on and on. I love all these things but not everyone does and it can be very challenging for even the brightest five year old! :)
I really feel that there will be great improvement as we sprint toward spring but in the meantime I decided today I would focus on creating some social stories and individual charts tailored to specific students. I really think this is going to benefit my whole class and hopefully create some confidence.

Take a look here at a class-size chart we can clip our way through as we progress in workshop time. This chart serves a different purpose than the other anchor charts that help children with the actual writing of workshop time. This will hopefully help students organize their time and work comfortably and happily.

Have you had your slice today?

You can go get several over at Two Writing Teachers with Ruth and Stacey. ENJOY!

Marla Frazee

For more great books and sharings go to Teach Mentor Texts where Kellee and Jen host the wonderful meme featuring everything from picture books to YA.

I am wrapping up a Marla Frazee illustrator study this week. She is the author of many books as well, but my kindergartners have been focused on many elements of her illustrations. She has taught us to use background color and shading. She has taught us to think about our color choices before actually filling in the drawing. She has also taught us a lot about how to show feeling in our own characters. I see glimmers of illustrations like Marla Frazee in my students more and more. It is because of her wonderful stories and characters. Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks.

The book above, pictured next to Marla Frazee is her most recent book, Boot and Shoe. A story of two funny characters who find themselves in an interesting situation.

Stars by Mary Lyn Ray is a lovely story about finding stars in all kinds of places.

All the World is a beautiful story by Liz Garton Scanlon with equally beautiful illustrations by Marla Frazee.

The Boss Baby, this is by far the most hilarious children's book I have read recently. 

Rollercoaster, another great offering by Marla Frazee that allows readers to see a small moment perfectly modeled for the young reader and writer.

 

Floating Stories

Prior to going on break I was trying to think about the foundations I wanted to continue building on when January came around. I knew that I would need to turn my attention back a bit and really re-focus my students on how to talk about their writing. How to plan their writing verbally. How to listen to someone else talking about their writing. Then I realized I didn't need to wait until January to review these topics, in fact maybe late December was a good time to review. In prior lessons on talking I used a catchy phrase, "knees and noses," to remind them how to sit and look at there partner during our "talking" time. I decided to ask them what "knees and noses," meant and what we would need to remember when we came back in January that we might otherwise forget. Then I made small charts of their thinking for them to use while practicing during the last week of school before winter break.

I go back to school tomorrow. This evening I made a larger version of the chart to share with the students on Monday. I am hopeful that some of the images and language will be familiar.

I hope to get each of the steps in the writing process clearly re-charted and visible for review as we get closer to the start of the second semester of kindergarten. I can't wait to hear all their stories tomorrow.