6 Traits/VOICES and CAFE/FACE

Summer is nearing an end!

A couple days ago I went to school to help set up the annual Rummage Sale. Wow! SO MUCH STUFF! I ended up buying a few books, including an extra copy of one of my favorite kids books, The Fat Cat.

One of my fellow elementary teachers was helping too, and we had the chance to meet up with the temporary administrator to get an update on what we might be teaching next month. As of right now, if nothing extraordinary happens, I'm teaching...

*drumroll*

3rd grade!

I am so excited!

I'm already starting to hone in on ideas for what I want to do with this grade level. I mentioned before that I would like to incorporate some of CAFE for reading because it seems like a great way to let children know expectations, encourage self-monitoring, and provide strategies to improve.

But now I just discovered (amazing the things you can discover through teacher blogs!) the 6+1 writing traits! It's like CAFE but for writing, and not by the 2 Sisters.

Oooh, oooh, and the fun thing is CAFE can be rewritten into the acronym FACE and the 6 traits can make the acronym VOICES. (Or maybe I'll just stick with "CAFE" and the "6 Traits".)

So what FACE and VOICES does is create categories for what students should achieve in reading and writing.

READING
F - fluency
A - accuracy
C - comprehension
E - expand vocabulary

WRITING
V - voice
O - organization
I - ideas
C - conventions
E - excellent word choice
S - sentence fluency

The Plattsbugh City School District has provided a very helpful, free pdf overview of the 6+1 Traits of Writing that I'm going to use, though Amazon has a comprehensive book by Ruth Culham, as well as one by her on how to use picture books to teach the 6 traits.

I also really like this pinned idea of displaying the 6 Traits/VOICES:

My hope is that displaying these categories will give us focus and help us more clearly work towards improvement. And it will give me categories in which to insert my teaching! Today we're talking about synonyms and antonyms. Knowing synonyms and antonyms will help you with your WORD CHOICE when writing and may help you EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY in reading.

See? Oh, this is going to be so wonderful! *glee*

I'm just a little optimistic, can you tell?

Meanwhile, yesterday I stopped by the local library and visited their used book store. I came home with several books, but am especially excited about these two:

And that's that for now!

Feedback - figuring it out

I have a horrible memory. So I'm going to process some of what I'm learning here so that I don't forget it, okay? Thanks!

In Coursera's "Foundations for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment" the instructor discusses Hattie & Timperley's model of feedback (2007). The purpose of feedback is to reduce the discrepancy between where students are and where we want them to be.

The instructor notes 3 questions a teacher must address: 1) Where are we going? (clarify the goal), 2) Where are we now? (in reference to the goal), and 3) What next?

Those three questions tie in with what I've been reading in CAFE about reading conferences! So let me process this...

Where going: If my subject is reading, I have 4 levels of reading that we are trying to achieve - comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. The goal? To enjoy reading and understand what we are reading.  

Where now: Following CAFE, I teach and model reading strategies to the whole group. Then, as I meet with individual students, I discuss with them where they need to improve. 

What next: Together we choose a strategy for them to try out on their own (after further modeling). I allow them to have a day or so to practice the strategy on their own time before meeting with them again to see if it's helping them reach the immediate goal (e.g. better fluency).

The Coursera instructor also notes from Hattie & Timperley 4 levels of feedback.

Task: feedback about how to do it 

Process: feedback about if they are using the right and best process skill (still haven't quite figured out exactly the difference between process and strategy) 

Self-Regulation: feedback that helps them think about which strategy they are using and which strategy would be the best one for this situation (thinking about your thinking) 

Self: feedback that lets the students know where they are in reference to the goal (not just generic praise or condemnation, but feedback that truly helps a student head towards the goal)

I really want to improve in teaching self-regulation/reflection/assessment.

"Great Books" - what has worked

Inspired by Andrew Pudewa (Institute for Excellence in Writing), I began "Great Books" in our classroom two years ago ("Great Books" = me reading books out loud to my students). Pudewa advises reading to children "reliably correct and sophisticated language." Whether I've actually followed that prescription is debatable, but this is what I have done thus far that has worked for me.

Great Books: Method #1

I love this book! (I left out some words
when reading aloud to the kids.)

Read books that have been turned into movies.

The first year of Great Books we read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As we read through the chapters, w
e'd take breaks to watch clips of the movies. I annoyed the kids with my endless pausing and asking questions, but the comparing and contrasting between book and movie not only completely engaged their interest but also helped develop higher level thinking skills. The kids loved it, I loved it, it exposed them to the literature behind the movies, and hopefully taught them that they can view entertainment with a discerning eye.

We also read Winnie-the-Pooh and most of Wind in the Willows (elevated language, yes; easy to follow, no) and did author studies at the end of all these books.

Great Books: Method #2
Read a book and draw pictures at the end of each chapter.

November is considered novel-writing month, so last year I used that as a springboard for Great Books. Because my students overlapped from the year before, I wanted to do something different (even though one of my new students really wanted to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like his older brother had). I chose Patty Reed's Doll since it corresponded with our history curriculum. It ended up being a huge success, and I loved how the book immersed them in a period of history. At the end of each chapter, we would discuss some of the events in the chapter, and then I would have them draw a relevant picture. At the end of the book, every student had their own Patty Reed's Doll booklet to take home!

The one thing I would change here is to use the daily draw-n-write pages to teach and practice writing main ideas with supporting details. I didn't emphasize writing enough.

Through Patty Reed's Doll and with the help of the Internet we learned about prairie dogs and buffalo chips!

In March (while more organized people were doing March Book Madness) we picked up Great Books again with the first couple books of the Boxcar Children and Alexi's Secret Mission (by Anita Deyneka, put out by A.C.E.)

I'm still working on my plans for next year. I have aspirations of reading Pollyanna and The Tale of Despereaux and maybe mixing both Great Books methods! I also have been collecting copies of Sarah, Plain and Tall so we could do a unit study together, but I'm not sure if I'll tackle that this year (even though I already bought supplementary material for it last year!).

I blog to remember what I've done, because otherwise, I'll forget.

intro/summer reading

This is the place where I'll record my wanderings through the Wonderful World of Teaching. What I'm learning, what is working, what I cannot figure out for the life of me. Something like that.

The last couple weeks of summer I've been teacher-book motivated!I finally got out and read The Daily Five, began The Cafe Book, switched over to Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling, and hopped back into The Book Whisperer (which greatly influenced how much independent reading went on in my class last year).

You know what's been cool? This summer I took a satellite AACS class called "Diagnosing and Treating Reading Difficulties in Your Class" by Dana Davis of Maranatha Baptist University (excellent class, btw). And then I've been slowly working my way through Coursera's "Foundations for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment." And I've been looking at teacher blogs (teacher blogs rock!). But what has been so amazing is how I'll read about comprehension in one book that hearkens back to the satellite class I took. Then I'll read a blog post I was procrastinating reading that confirms exactly what I read in The Book Whisperer the night before. So many connections! I'm thankful to the Lord for connecting everything for me as I hop from one thing to another.

Right now I'm excited about Teaching Maddeness' Great Poetry Race idea for homework. The last couple years I've wanted to start doing monthly poems, but I've never been able to get the idea off the ground. I love how her Great Poetry Race idea not only exposes children to poetry every week but also helps build fluency!

Hopefully by next week I'll know what grades I'll be teaching so I can start planning for next year more concretely.

Until then, happy summer!