Article of the Week: I love reading your annotations!

I was so impressed with a lot of the thinking I saw on last week's Article of the Week about Antarctica!
The comments you write on articles are so much richer than they were at the beginning of the year; it's fun for me to read and respond to your reactions.

For example, many of you noted that you were surprised that people in Siberia might leave their cars running all day, just to make sure that the cars will drive when necessary.  I wondered right along with you about how much money people must spend on fuel for their cars, and I also wondered if fuel is extra expensive in that part of the world, due to its isolation.  I did some more reading about this level of cold, and I couldn't believe how well some people have adapted to it.  Check out this related article.

Your annotations open up conversations to me, so thank you!

Practice Giving Feedback
Let's take a look at some of the answers you gave me to the questions.  I purposely left vague feedback on these model papers, because I want you to practice looking at each other's thinking in a thoughtful way and then leaving specific compliments.

Model for Mrs. Taylor to use

Here's what you need to do in the comment section.

Choose one of the three pieces below, read it carefully, leave a specific compliment describing what was strong about the piece, and sign your comment with your first name ONLY, plus your period (3/4, 5/7, or 8/9).  Select "anonymous" to leave your comment.

I will leave a comment below modeling for you a comment about
<------- this example

You may leave a comment about any of these three examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

What I Didn't Do/What I Did Do Over Winter Break

Over break, I did not go to a tropical paradise.  I didn't dig my toes into warm sand, keeping my eyes peeled for itty bitty sand crabs running over my feet and taking in the salty, fresh air.  I didn't hear the waves crashing on the beach, my daughter laughing with delight, or seagulls shrieking in the distance.  I did not get a sunburn!

What I did do:

Visited the Louisville Slugger Museum - awesome tour!

Spent three hours at Starbucks with my childhood best friend (who has two kids of her own),
while my parents watched Z.  This is a VERY rare occasion -- just ask your own parents!

Get a whole lot bigger!

What else did I do? Got medium sick at the beginning of break and way sick at the end of break (Mr. Taylor and Z did, too - it was ugly). Read three adult books and one young adult book. Looked at pretty awesome Christmas lights synched with music. Joined Instagram. Discovered that Z can recite -- while looking at the book -- the entire text of Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons. Went to a dinner and a movie with my husband. Ate really tasty teriyaki tofu on New Years Eve... and then fell asleep at 9:45 p.m.  Traveled to Louisville, Dayton, and Cincinnati.  Heard the baby's heartbeat again -- Z heard it too (sounds like a "choo choo train!"). Wrote for another blog a post about running. Saw some videos from our class video shoot.  Brainstormed a list of new articles I need to work on. Booked a flight to New York City to be in a wedding in the fall. Enjoyed, treasured, and was so grateful for extra time with my little family -- eight weeks until the newest member arrives!

Tell me, in pictures or in words (or both): what didn't you do over break?  What did you do?

Exploring Characterization with Pinterest + Fan Fiction

Our post-Outsiders work with characters was hugely inspired by some resources in my learning network.  At NCTE, I had the pleasure of hearing author Lindsey Leavitt speak about her character creation process.  She mentioned using Pinterest to develop rich ideas for characters, so I thought that, as a wrap-up, my kids and I could go into that idea backward, pinning some of the things we wanted to remember about Ponyboy.  I started with a few pins to introduce them to the idea of Pinterest (moms, I think you are well familiar with it ... sixth graders, not so much :)), and then each class added to the board; students had to justify each pin they wanted me to add.

We also reviewed -- again, courtesy of some mental prompting from Lindsey Leavitt's
NCTE presentation -- ways authors reveal characters

Why did we do this?

Stolen idea #2: fan fiction.  After I read this Nerdy Book Club post, I decided that our waning days before winter break should be used to reinvigorate our appreciation for books, both our whole class novel (The Outsiders) and our independent reads.

We used Pinterest to talk about Ponyboy, because I wanted to emphasize to my students the importance of getting to the heart of a character we wanted to use in fan fiction.

Students could choose their narrator and their story line, but the spirit of their characters had to reflect SE Hinton's original gang.  I wonder if this might be an engaging way to prep kids for the next generation of Common Core assessments -- for Ohio, the PARCC narrative writing tasks, which are, of course, text dependent ;)

Points of Pride: Our Class Word Jars

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the need to re-invent word study in my classroom.  As with all Language Arts teachers, when it comes to word study, I'm balancing many different curricular and student needs, but the one commonality in my word study programming is that I need to help my students find -- or keep -- an interest in the power of words.

Fortunately, my friend and mentor Maria Caplin (you can find her @WonderLeadMaria and/or over at Teaching in the 21st Century) is one of my district's word study gurus, so I've been able to steal her ideas pick her brain this year.

One new idea to which I've been most consistently committed is the Word Jar.  Maria has had a lot of success with individual students collecting words in word jars; students find these words in their reading and all over the place.  It gives them an awesome awareness that fun words really are everywhere!

I decided to try out the Word Jar idea on a class level.  In September, each of my three blocks took a great deal of pride decorating its Word Jar during Study Center time.

3/4 loves its mascot -- on top -- "The Fuzz" (new nickname courtesy of The Outsiders).
5/7 is big on duct tape, and 8/9 could NOT get enough glitter on theirs.

We started collecting interesting words in our notebooks back when we were enjoying Wonder as our class read aloud.  Students drew mini Word Jars in their readers notebooks and collected as we read, and then we chose a few words from most chapters to add to the jar.

A peek into the 8/9 jar.  I'm told that the jars still smell vaguely
of frosted animal crackers.

Every few nights during our Outsiders unit, for homework, I survey students about their reading.  One consistency is that I ask students to identify for me a sentence with an interesting or unfamiliar word that they would like to go over as a class.  Based on survey results, we choose three to four words every other chapter and spend 15-20 minutes talking about meaning, practicing application, and talking through in detail how readers could use the text to try to figure out the meanings of those words on their own.

This had made much more meaningful -- and lasting -- our vocabulary study for the book.  There's a crazy amount of rich and tricky vocabulary in The Outsiders that I could drill (and, ahem, have in the past drilled) in to them 100+ words and drag the unit out for weeks on end ... but instead, we've been much more successful with a smaller word list and a heavier emphasis on how to use context clue strategies to figure out the other words.

"The Fuzz" says, "We heart our Word Jar, Mrs. Caplin!"

Next step: I'm now trying most Fridays to open up our Word Jars and revisit the fun new words we've been collecting over the last few months.  My goal by the end of the year will be for all students to be able to use all words flexibly -- meaning they could change the part of speech of the word -- in new contexts.

Problem Solving Words

Check out the answers you gave when I asked, What you do when you come across an unfamiliar word?

What do you think about these answers?

Now, let's break down this answer a little bit more: "What do you mean when you talk about using context clues?"  I plugged your answers in to Wordle, which shows us what some of the most common responses were.

Sample answer 1: Using words around the word you don't understand to understand the word you don't understand.  Example: if you don't know what ajar means: The door was left ajar and a little bit of light poked through.  You would know it wasn't all the way closed because a little bit of light poked through but it's probably not all the way open if a little bit of light pokes through because it's only a little bit so I would be able to figure out that ajar means opened only a little bit.

Sample answer 2: To continue reading to see if you can figure out a word means just by the sentence or paragraph it is in.

What do you think of these sample answers?

Now, check out some specific context clue strategies that we'll practice (and have already been practicing, actually!) over and over again, not just with The Outsiders, but with all texts we read and with your own independent reading, as well.

How Do We Handle Reading a Tough Novel?

I've been thinking a lot this year about how to get more feedback from students to make our time together more effective.  Today, our fourth day working through the tough classic The Outsiders, I wanted to know how students were handling the layers of reading they need to do -- the literal comprehension, the interpretation, the reflection, and oh, right, the enjoyment!

Students let me know how they were annotating the text and how it was going.  A few notes, as you can see above:

• Some students are going to painstaking effort to show their thinking -- emphasis on the pain. This is no good.
• Some students want to listen to me read aloud or listen to the fun voice on the CD, but they can't figure out the best way to listen, read along, and record their questions and other thoughts
• Students are doing a lot of questioning in the book and marking more questions than any other group I've had -- this has actually taken the place of more traditional predictions in our room, because we're focused on idea that come directly from the text and we anticipate will be answered by the text. (Ditto connections -- our emphasis is connecting ideas within the book) I'm pleased that our KNOW/WONDER emphasis has carried over from Wonder, which was an easier book to understand

So, we used this feedback to create the following guide/anchor chart:

Yeah... it's super messy. Thinking is that way sometimes.

We decided it was important for us to discuss three things, as we reflected on our reading processes with rigorous texts:

• Reviewed the purpose of annotating (it's a process to help us, not a product for them to show me)
• Reviewed other phrases past teachers have used to describe annotating
• Reflected on the benefits of recording our thinking

We also came up with a better game plan for next week.  Students in all classes are nearly evenly divided by how they think they can most effectively read and think about the text.  We decided that they can pick from these three in-class reading options:

• Reading silently and checking in with a peer or me
• Having me read aloud to them in a small group (a few in block 3/4 helpfully suggested I attend play practice to pick up some new reading techniques ;))
• Listening to the CD in a small group and deciding as they go when they should stop it to talk and record their thoughts.  Block 5/7 suggested the best places to stop might be the places where SE Hinton made an extra block of space, because it looks like that is where scenes or big ideas change.

What's Important? An Annotation Intervention

*Screeeeech*

Block 1 came to a screeching halt today about three conferences in to my Outsiders check-ins.  The previous night's homework had been to finish reading and annotating Chapter 1 and to submit a Google Drive form with points of confusion (things Mrs. Taylor needs to clear up) and WONDERs (things we think the book will answer... we hope!).

Careful Preparation ... but for the Right Things?
We'd prepared yesterday by:

• starting our reading together -- it's tough being dropped right into a new setting!
• thinking aloud and walking through some annotations together on the ELMO
• talking about the purpose of annotating (to help us interact with a text, NOT to create a new product) 
• discussing what we could do in our texts to show our thinking: marking questions, identifying exclamations, circling interesting/unfamiliar words, jotting down reactions and things we want to remember, and underlining important ideas.

Great preparation, right?

Waiiiiiiiit.

What did I see, y'all, when I came around to check in on your reading and to address your points of confusion?

Either 1. a whole lotta nothing underlined or 2. a whole lotta everything underlined.  When I mentioned my observation, I asked how people know what to underline or highlight in a text: "You underline what's important, Mrs. Taylor."

It was time for an annotation intervention.

What's Really Important?
We've talked quite a bit about identifying important ideas in non-fiction, but it didn't occur to me to frame the following question in the context of fiction: "How do we know something's  important in a piece of fiction?"

Check out our findings:



Many students snapped photos of our anchor chart, so they could refer to it during their next chunks of reading.  Thanks all of you for your thinking!