Happy Thursday Everyone!
I hope your week has been well and your family is looking forward to a weekend that promises nice, cool temperatures. As we wrap up our fourth week of school, I've been reflecting a lot on how things are going - specifically, what's going really well and what I need to think about revising. Here is a sampling of my current list of positives:
+ We've built really great relationships, especially given the fact we are virtual. We still have a good bit of informal time to chat and joke around. That goes a long way in keeping the kids engaged and working hard. Also, the Family Interviews you all made for me are phenomenal. I'm watching about five a week so I have time to take them in, jot notes, and think about how this can inform the instructional decisions I make this year. Thanks again for your support with this!
+ We're striking a really nice balance between time together on the screen (20 minute mini-lessons) and time for the kids to work away from the screen (reading and writing for 20-30 minutes at a time). This aspect of our reading and writing workshop feels really good right now. I'd be interested to know what you think. If you have something to add, feel free to shoot me an email.
+ As anyone who knows me can assure you, I'm not a "tech person." That said, I'm feeling very good about our use of technology so far this year in Morning Meeting, Reading Workshop, and Writing Workshop. I've tried to give the kids just enough to make sure they are successful while slowly introducing a few new things as we go along. In many ways, the work we're doing virtually is just like the work we'd be doing together in the classroom - read aloud, discussion, try out a new skill/strategy, and then go out to read or write independently while I meet with a couple people for assessment and/or support.
And here are some of things I know I need to better resolve:
- Conferencing with the kids one-on-one has been a real challenge because we sometimes experience lagging video and audio, glitches, or frozen screens. I'm talking through possible solutions for this with others in the building and the district now. Also, I can't conference with as many kids each day/week as I normally would so I don't feel quite as informed as I'd want to. I'm working on a plan for this as well.
- I can't see the work they do in writing. One solution would be to have you all take photos and email them to me but I sort of shrink thinking about 44 emails, between the two classes, to upload, post to a shared doc, and help the kids file in their Google Drive. So I'm going to continue thinking about how I might address this.
All in all, I'm feeling very good about most things. In truth, even when we're at school many of the same issues arise just in a slightly different form. There are always problems to solve!
Here's a quick update on the work we're doing as readers and writers...
Reading Workshop
We're continuing our inquiry into solving unknown words. After a number of experiences figuring out missing words from a text and detailing the precise strategies we use to solve these (backing up and re-reading, looking at the first letter, considering what would make sense, reading on then coming back, looking for picture clues, etc) we are now reading texts that have words we may not already know or understand. Today we used an article about how animals help young children learn about emotions.
We stopped to consider the words collected, gathered, and humanely and think about what they meant. Those these words were new to many of the kids, they were able to see how we can use context clues in the text to help us think about what they mean.
Writing Workshop
In writing, the kids have finished up their first pieces (some have written many more than this) and are now sharing them with their friends in class. Having an audience for their writing is extremely important because it provides an authentic purpose for their work - to share it out with the world. Beginning next week we'll begin talking about the basic conventions of writing and establish some expectations for the writing we'll do this year, not just in writing workshop but anytime we work in our notebooks and journals.
No comments:
Post a Comment