I’m joining up with Ruth Ayres for her weekly link-up, Celebrate This Week. Check out all of the posts linked up at her blog HERE.
I remember when
listening last summer to Jeff Anderson #Allwrite 2013 as he put an excerpt on the overhead of Three Times Lucky. He modeled for us how to lift a strong piece
of writing and teach around it. I
remember saying to Mary Lee I want to do this….fast forward to Wednesday's workshop. Why did I wait so long? Lifting text from our read aloud is
extremely powerful, and I wish I would have tried it earlier in the year. But I celebrate that I finally did.
I created a poster from
our read aloud: Snicker of Magic for our word study mini lesson. I
placed it on the board and remained quiet allowing students to buzz around the
room. I passed out the corresponding text and asked them to write around it. I have recently using a new strategy during workshop which has helped students focus on choosing only one aspect to share. I ask students to circle what they want to share, and I begin to record their thinking on the chart. At this point in the year, I was excited to see students pushing their thinking to a higher level. Several students were asking questions, collecting strong vocabulary especially verbs, and choosing juicy similes. The conversation was rich because several students had circled the same ideas and as they shared I heard, "I agree." "Did you notice?" But the best part of the lesson came when R. asked why did we do this in our word study spiral? I paused and asked her to "phone a friend" several hands popped up. R. called on a friend who replied because all thinking starts with strong word choice and Mrs. Caplin wants us to think always as a reader and writer. Celebrating still on Saturday.
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| I asked students to reflect on the mini lesson. |
I love the idea of "phone a friend!" It sounds like you have a lot to celebrate in your reading and writing lessons! That poster is FULL of great thinking. What a great idea to use an excerpt from your read aloud in this way...sometimes what we intend to do doesn't happen right away. Kudos on doing that something that you had intended to do.
ReplyDeleteThanks Andrea for your support. There are times in our classroom where you need to follow your heart and not always the lesson plans.
DeleteI love this and it sounds like the conversation was so rich in your class between the students! I've just recently heard about All Write. One day I'll be there!
ReplyDeleteAllwrite is worth every ounce of energy to get there. But if you can't follow us on twitter I'm sure it will be exploding. Thanks for your comment.
DeleteI'm always interested in what lessons based on current books happen in classrooms. I love A Snicker of Magic. The words are powerful and a perfect choice to teach students.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting about this Snicker lesson it was driven by the students. They were so entrenched in the writing that I knew we needed to lift a page and study it more carefully. Thanks for your comment.
DeleteI love taking nuggets from conferences and using them in my classroom. I love how you used this to push your students and Snicker of Magic is a great book! I am going to All Write! this summer for the first time and am so excited!
ReplyDeleteHooray you will love All Write can't wait to meet you in person. That is half the fun of the conferences. Thanks for your comment. Always enjoy getting feedback to help me grow.
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