We had an astonishing day in the classroom today. Everyday is a challenge. In a positive way. Creating daily challenges makes our world spin.
1) Classical music always plays during writing. Today, something was in the air or we have just become that close. "Ode to Joy" kicked in and, I kid you not, I looked around and five boys started headbanging as they were writing. Talk about multitasking. Not one of them missed a beat... to the writing.
2) A young lady, who is loving her current read came into and explained how she didn't have time to read last night. She was disappointed. Later, when I was checking in with each reader's progress, I said to her, "That's right, you told me the story of why you couldn't read last night. She retored, "Its not a story! Its life!"
(... psst, that is why we learn writing!)
3) A maturing reader, reminds me every day of her lack of love towards reading. Funny thing is, she's not mean about it. When she tells me this, she always adds in how much actually read, even if just a page. Today, when reading A Sad Night (about Cortez & Montezuma), learning how to apply strategic reading strategies, she was the only one who brought out the previous day's work on Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" trying the clear up the song's hidden meaning.
4) We created a fantastic new writing idea template today. The idea is stemming from a mix of "Mass Customized Learning" and "Writing to Learn." The idea is to give students space to develop writing ideas by exploring different genres based on an idea. In this case, we are taking the book RUMP and kids are considering new ideas and ways to reflect comprehension of the text, including, writing alternate chapters, opinions about Red and Rump's relationship, and informational pieces about the geography. The key, as all students are learning, use evidence from the text.
5) A student and I had a great reading conference today. You know, she is reading a Wendy Mass text. She reads at 80 WPM, or so. She is taking a risk. She is trying to read a challenging book. And to make things better, she uses clarifying strategies as she reading by marking them on post - its. Right now, most of the clarification are in word recognition. The victory her is that she has started to self-monitor and consider what she needs to know, rather than just reading a book to turn pages and complete the task. No. She wont finish this book in a week, but she is setting herself up for great reading over the next two years we work together.
Bonus: Read aloud took 30 minutes today. And most of it wasn't reading. We were laughing, conversing about Rump and how I was reading the books. The kids love the read alouds because they are almost dramaticized. I ask this question, how can a reader clarify if they are not "feeling" the text. Our read alouds are models of how readers can infer emotion in dialogue, narration,