Time for Small Groups to Begin!

We have been in school for several weeks  and the students are successfully building reading and writing stamina every day!  It is time for the next steps.  Our conferring notes have been viewed, the formative assessments have been collected and the data from the MAP assessments are in.  This all leads to what we already knew...
         our students will need differentiated lessons or we will never meet their learning needs or support their learning strengths!

Last year I worked in a Kindergarten and 3rd grade classroom on a regular basis.  It can be tough going into a classroom to support readers and/or writers without all of the "teaching stuff" you need at a moment's notice.  I developed a small group reading binder that works well for me.  This year I am in a co-taught first grade room so I am going to use the same methods and I added a few things.  I thought the best way to show the idea was through pictures.....

I will keep my binder, students trays, books and magnets in one large plastic tote or basket.

This is one idea but sometimes seeing one idea leads to something that works best for you.  One point I wanted to make is that you do not need to have lots of shelf space to house your small group reading supplies.  I could easily carry my binder & basket room-to-room if I travel to various classrooms.

If you see a sheet in the post & would like a copy....let me know.  Most of the items are from our F&P Phonics CD, The CAFE text & website or from the The Next Step in Guided Reading text & website.

 If you are new to teaching small groups and would like help in getting started let me know-stop in my office or send an email.  I will gladly help you get your supplies ready to go!

Happy Reading! Mrs. Speake p

Being a Writer -Differentiation Possibilities

Mrs. Meyer and I are using the Being a Writer curriculum in 1st grade for the first time this year.  The curriculum is set up for a four day week using a workshop model.  We have found it is easy to modify the week's plan to fit our student's needs.  I wanted to share a few ideas we have used so far.

As we begin the week we use the book to introduce the week's theme or topic.  We use the starter sentence for students to begin their story.   Instead of having children write only this beginning sentence we encourage them to take this idea and write a story adding details.

This week's big idea was to see how Little Critter can do many things all by himself based on the text by Mercer Mayer, All by Myself.  After reading the text & modeling a story we write, the children are sent off to write a story about something he/she could do alone.  We encouraged students to write a story about one idea but expanding to this idea by adding details.  Each day the students were taught to add to their stories and illustrations along with the lesson goal each day. This allows students to go further than the one topic sentence but it also allows struggling readers an anchor to at least get something on paper.

Day 4 is sharing day but we modified just a bit.  We moved sharing to Day 5... Mrs Meyer began having the students sit in a circle with their "I can" story sitting in front of them.  We have 2 or 3  students model how to read their story aloud.  The other students practice active listening and then share something they learned about the writer.  Students then go off and read their stories with their writing partner around the room.  Once the sharing partners are finished they have 2 options: hand in their finished story & begin a new story for free writing or they must finish the "I can" story.

We collect all "I can..." stories at the end of the week so Mrs. Meyer & I can read their awesome ideas.  This has motivated our struggling writers to get busy and get the story finished!  They want us to read the story and they seem to love free writing time.

The stories we collect become our formative assessment.  We read each story and look at the data.  For the " I can..." week the assessment was listed in the manual and in the assessment resource book.  It was my week to do the assessing and reading.  I tweaked the assessment and made my own grid quickly.  I used a simple 1-2-3-4 system to match our assessment system.   I now can glance at the info and see who needs differentiation lessons.  I decided 2- is needs more work, 3-right on target, 4-working above grade level and 1-not there yet.  This is what my chart looked like.

For example...all of our students show they cannot consistently or successfully use a capital letter at the beginning of sentences or include periods in appropriate places.  Time for a mini-lesson.  Some students struggle greatly with phonics and how to use stretchy snake when sounding out words...time for a mini-lesson on stretchy snake or possibly how to use the word wall for sight words.

I used the grid above to share the way I used the student work as formative assessment.  As I read each child's story I actually just jotted the info on a piece of notebook paper.  I did not need to make the above grid but it definitely helps my planning & organization time.
 An effective teacher looks at the student data and plans lessons to meet the student's needs and/or strengths.  The total activity took me about 30 minutes.  I did NOT spend too much time dwelling on if they were a 2 or 3 but only as a quick snapshot to know what is needed next in regards to my teaching. Now I can decide to add mini-lessons to the weekly plans or differentiate by pulling over small groups during writing time for about 5-10 minutes or while 1:1 conferring.

Here is a sample of a student's writing during the "I can.." week.

Happy Reading & Writing- Mrs. Speake

Differentiation

It's been several months after I attended Richard Allington's conference regarding RTI and I am still hearing his words of wisdom.
 "Get rid of your "one-size-fits-all" curriculum!"
"Make your content area teacher throw away their text books that many students can't even read!!"

 Our district has made HUGE gains in the area of literacy.  We THREW out our "one-size-fits-all" curriculum and began to embrace our student learning diversity through a workshop model.  I am so PROUD of our H-D teachers who took on change fast and furious.  As a group we decided to jump in feet first....new writing, new reading, new small group reading, new phonics, new workshop model and a new title reading plan.  All this change in one year???  I sometimes forget what we have accomplished in such a short time frame.  

Diversity=  variety, miscellany, assortment, mixture, mix, range, array, multiplicity; variation, variance, difference, contrast.

Mr. Allington stated over and over.... we must have our students reading materials at "their" reading ability level.  This is a great way to differentiate.  We haven't thrown out our textbooks for science and social studies yet but we are definitely bringing in rich picture books and informational text to help in this area.  Our scholastic BookFlix and TruFlix sites through our AEA are helping in this area too.

Differentiation doesn't mean everyone is doing something "different".  Differentiation is responsive teaching rather than one size fits all teaching (Tomlinson, 2005).  To put it yet another way, it means that teachers proactively plan varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they will show what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can, as efficiently as possible (Tomlinson, 2003).  This model and statements are from Carol Tomlinson.  Her work in differentiation is powerful. Check out her work !



I am an early childhood graduate and have my reading masters,  but even through this training in developmentally appropriate curriculum and best practices in reading, I still have much to learn about "differentiation" or creating quality lessons that truly meet the needs of ALL learners.

(Another reason we must establish the RTI process!)

 Through our South Side S.I.N.A. (School in Need of Assistance) reading plan we hope to further study differentiation to help our diverse learners.  If you are a teacher take time to look at Carol Tomlinson's work.  Each child is different unique and he does deserve a teacher who knows his strengths and weaknesses.  Along with Tomlinson's work don't forget Bloom's Taxonomy and the Zone of Proximal Development theories.  Check out the links!  Share your knowledge and learning with others but remember to embrace your own learning.  Model to our students that we are life-long learners!

Happy Reading!  Mrs. Speake