This chart was designed for yesterday’s session with intermediate level teachers who are just beginning to implement writer’s workshop. They are unpacking the Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing written by Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project this year, and the chart provided a tidy snapshot of the anatomy of a quality mini-lesson.
This photo captures the thinking behind the most inspired moment of my week. I spent yesterday Gamestorming with a group of local English teachers in order to surface, prioritize, and resolve their emerging curricular needs. Once our work together was complete, we situated the games inside of a completely different context: lesson design. The anchor chart above reflects how we practiced using Post Ups, Clusters, Affinity Mapping, and Forced Ranking to help readers make…
I’ve spent part of this week with a group of elementary teachers who are neck-deep in curriculum design. Prior to our first session, I asked them to talk with their students about the types of learning experiences they value most. These data were captured via survey, which enabled us to organize and share the findings, so that they could influence our next steps. As it turned out, they were very important data to consider. Learners…
This year, I’ve helped teachers in varied districts adopt or adapt the New York State Curriculum Modules, Domains, and Units for English Language Arts. I’ve helped others design their own curricula as well. Regardless of the approach, I continue to hear great things from the teachers and fellow professional development service providers who are wrapping up their piloting processes and planning to make informed adjustments. I have to admit, it’s not their feedback that inspires…
Last month, a number of teachers and consultant friends of mine began kicking around the idea of creating an archive of paired passages and texts that educators could pull on for a variety of purposes. I liked this idea very much, but not for the reasons people might suspect. To be honest, I’m not sure how many people will find resources like this valuable in the long run. It’s not about the resource for me, though. It’s about…
When I began Common Core lesson studies with elementary teachers two years ago, they made the same surprising observation in each of the classrooms I taught in that spring: the background knowledge that many readers shared was often very interesting. Some was even compelling. And much of it was completely inaccurate. This didn’t surprise us, but what typically happened next did: when I invited readers to share their background knowledge through talk prior to reading,…
Recently, I created a landing page for all of the posts that I’ve been sharing relevant to my work with the Common Core. I plan to update it at the end of each week, as my work inside of local school districts continues and my reflections on that work unfold. You can find the archives here, linked within a larger narrative that summarizes my process so far. This week, I’ll be sharing a bit about…
When we write anything, it’s important to seek a bit of understanding before we begin drafting. For instance, it makes sense to read some quality fiction before we try our hand at composing it. If we’re eager to craft a powerful poem, we might learn a lot by studying the work of the poets who came before us. If we want to craft a quality argument? Analyzing the work of others would probably serve us…
This post is the next in a lengthy series intended to make the work that I am facilitating relevant to Race to the the Top and specifically, the alignment of curricula to the Common Core Learning Standards, transparent for others. Doing so has enabled me to gain clarity and new perspectives from others who are on the ground and doing this work. They have significant expertise to share. If you are approaching similar work in…
Perhaps you’re more than little bit invested in the idea of increasing job satisfaction for yourself and for those that you work with even as you’re Racing to the Top. Perhaps you can appreciate the importance of starting with vision, of thinking bigger (and smaller) than the CCLS, and of honoring the distinction between evaluation and assessment throughout every phase of this work. Perhaps you understand that this is not the time to simply get…